After the Storm (36 page)

I listen, but the only reply is the moan of the wind. I venture more deeply into the shadows. To my right are the bony ribs of a hay rack that’s pitted with rust. A child’s Radio Flyer wagon that’s missing both front wheels lies on its side. To my left, half a dozen bags of feed are stacked against the wall. On the rear wall ahead, three grimy windows, some with broken or missing panes, stare blankly at me like dead eyes. I go to the nearest one and squint through the cobwebs and grunge. The pasture beyond is hilly and lush with a wet-weather creek where cottonwoods and elms jut fifty feet into the air.

Turning away from the window, I go to the wooden steps and take them to the loft. It’s a small mow with a dozen or so bales of hay stacked haphazardly. Some of the bundling strings have broken open, spilling loose hay onto the floor.

“Abigail Kaufman!” I call out.

But I know she’s not here.

Disappointment presses into me as I take the steps back down to the first level. I’ve just reached the ground, when Naomi comes through the sliding door. “I told you she’s not here,” she says, looking triumphant.

Ignoring her, I walk past her and leave the barn through the sliding door. I break into a jog and go around the side of the barn, where I’d seen a gate earlier. The area is overgrown with weeds as high as my chest. I’m about to turn away, when I notice some of the weeds are laid over. The thought of ticks and other unsavory insects crosses my mind as I wade in. Some of the stems are broken and bent. Renewed interest flares when I discern the wheel marks of a buggy in the damp earth. They go through the gate and into the rear pasture. But why would she take the buggy back there?

Naomi Kaufman calls out my name. I glance around the side of the barn to see the elderly woman slowly making her way down the incline toward me.

“Are there any other structures on the property?” I ask.

She stops a few feet away. She’s breathing hard. Sweat beads on her forehead and upper lip. “Only thing standing is that tumbling down old barn where we used to butcher years ago. I don’t even know if the thing is standing anymore, especially after that storm.”

I almost can’t believe my ears. In the back of my mind, I recall Sally Burris’s words:
That old bank barn in the back.
I’d assumed she meant the second barn within sight of the house. But she hadn’t; she’d meant a third structure set farther back on the property.…

“Where is it?” I ask.

“It sits on the property line between our place and Abram’s farm. About half a mile thataway.” She motions toward the earthen dam that bridges the creek. “Used to be an old two track that ran along the fence line.”

I point in the direction of the house. “Go back inside, Mrs. Kaufman.”

“Abigail wouldn’t go back there.” She glares at me, angry because she knows she won’t be able to keep up with me and I’m not going to wait.

Turning away, I jog toward the dam, my eyes on the buggy tracks in the soil. The
jug-o-rum
bellows of bullfrogs echo within the canopy of the trees as I cross the dam. I feel the humidity rising off the mossy surface of the water, smell the mud baking on the bank. It’s so quiet I can hear the flies and mosquitoes buzzing. Pig frogs grunt from within the cattails.

On the other side of the dam, the ground is soft and spongy beneath my boots, and I find the shod hoof marks of a horse bracketed on either side by wheel ruts. The tracks are fresh, and though the path is overgrown, the trail is easy to follow.

The terrain is rolling and crowded with saplings, brush, and mature hardwoods, which makes it difficult to see more than fifty yards in any direction. The sun beats down with merciless intensity, and I find myself wishing I’d looked at an aerial view before venturing out, but of course I didn’t realize I was going to be tromping through an overgrown pasture this afternoon.

I crest the second hill, and the rusty tin shingles of a roof loom into view ahead. I traverse a dry creek bed, elbow my way through a patch of reeds on the other side, and get my first good look. The structure is a dilapidated bank barn with a swaybacked roof and wooden siding the color of old bone. Several shingles have been peeled back by decades of wind. Much of the wooden siding has fallen to the ground, where the earth is slowly reclaiming it. The rear portion of the gambrel-style roof has collapsed. Through the opening, I see the top of a tall concrete silo with a missing dome.

I’m looking down at the faint trail through the weeds, when I hear the snort of a horse. Thirty feet away, through a stand of saplings, a bay horse is looking at me, its ears pricked forward. The animal is still hitched to the buggy. I’ve startled him, and I can tell he’s thinking about bolting.

“Whoa,” I whisper as I approach. “Easy.”

I reach the buggy and peek inside. A crocheted afghan is draped across the seat. An empty bottle of water lies on its side on the floor. There’s no sign of Abigail. I walk to the gelding and set my hand against its rump, then slide my fingers beneath the harness leather. The place where the leather presses against the horse’s coat is wet with sweat, telling me it hasn’t been standing idle long. Oddly, one of the leather driving reins is missing. I look around, but it’s not on the ground.

I nearly call out for Abigail, but a small voice warns me that stealth may make for a safer approach. I don’t know what her state of mind is. I don’t know if she’s armed. In fact, I don’t know if she’s the one who’s been taking shots at me. Concentrating on keeping my feet silent against the ground, I go to the front of the barn. The sliding door is closed, but I don’t need it to enter; several pieces of siding have fallen away, leaving plenty of room for me to slip through.

Giving my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light, I thumb the keep strap from my holster. I don’t believe Abigail intends to harm me; more than likely she’s come out here to end her own life. But I know the lengths to which a desperate individual will go to get the job done.

Light slashes in through hundreds of gaps in the siding, illuminating dust motes and flying insects. Ahead, a large flatbed hay wagon sits front and center. Above it, a set of massive grappling hooks holds several hundred pounds of loose hay that smells relatively fresh. I can just make out the pulley-and-cable system that runs the length of the roof at the ridge board. Vaguely, I wonder if the Kaufmans lease this part of the property or allow one of their neighbors to store hay.

I step over fallen boards and other debris. A shovel handle. A broken cinder block. A leather strap that was once part of a harness rigging. Mounds of loose hay. Cobwebs droop from every surface like silver moss. Rodentlike squeaks from the rafters overhead tell me there’s a healthy population of bats. It’s not until I’ve walked a dozen or so steps that I notice the smell. A strong, unmistakable stench I recognize from my youth.
Hogs.
I’d approached the scene upwind, so I didn’t notice until now. Naomi had said no one used this barn and no one had been back here for years. I wonder who owns the hogs, who’s taking care of them.

Straight ahead, a large hay door looks out over the pasture beyond. I can hear the pigs grunting and moving around in the pen below.

Something splats against my arm. At first I think it’s an insect, but when I glance down, I see the black smear of guano on my forearm. I look up and see dozens of bats hanging from the ridge rafter at the roof’s peak. “Shit.”

I’m looking around for something with which to wipe my arm, when movement to my right snags my attention. I startle and find myself looking at a disheveled Abigail Kline. She’s wearing a gray dress with a black apron. Her
kapp
is untied and slightly askew. Her sneakers are covered with mud. She’s holding the leather rein from the buggy in her left hand. In her right, she’s clutching a knife the size of a machete.

CHAPTER 27

“Abigail.”

She’s standing about fifteen feet away. Butcher knife in her right hand. Buggy rein clutched in her left. I’m aware of her body language, and I keep a close eye on her hands. I wonder if she was planning to use the leather to hang herself.

“How did you find me?” she asks.

“It wasn’t easy.” With deliberate slowness, I tilt my head and speak into my lapel mike. “Ten-seven-five,” I say, letting dispatch know I’ve made contact with her. But I never take my eyes off of Abigail.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask.

She’s staring at me as if I’m an apparition that’s arrived to drag her to hell. In the light slanting in through the door, I discern dull eyes and a flat expression. She’s a pretty woman with a wholesome smile and easy-to-read expression. Today, her face has transformed into something I barely recognize. Dark circles beneath her eyes. Hair that’s greasy at her crown. The crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes seem deeper. Lips that had once smiled so easily are dry and cracked.

“I just … want to be alone for a while,” she says quietly.

I nod toward the knife in her hand. “Will you do me a favor, Abigail, and put down the knife?”

She doesn’t comply, doesn’t acknowledge my request, and she doesn’t release the knife. “How did you know I was here?”

“I was looking for you,” I tell her. “I saw the buggy tracks. I need you to put down the knife so we can talk about what’s bothering you.”

She offers a smile, but it conflicts with the hollowed look in her eyes. “I don’t think I have anything to say, Chief Burkholder. To you or to anyone else.”

I nod, taking my time, not rushing her. “I know you’re upset. I think if we could just sit down and talk for a few minutes, I think we could get all of this straightened out.”

“Some things can’t be straightened out,” she whispers. “You don’t understand what’s happened. You don’t know what’s been done. You don’t know what
I’ve
done.”

“I know you poisoned Jeramy,” I tell her. “I know you tried to poison your parents. What I don’t know, Abigail, is why.”

She raises her gaze to mine. It’s not guilt or sadness I see in the depths of her eyes, but righteousness. The expression of a woman who’s righted a wrong and in doing so made the world a better place. “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.”

I recognize the quote. It’s from the German Martin Luther Bible and has been interpreted a dozen ways over the centuries. But it’s not the origin or meaning of the quote that interests me. It’s the intent behind her utterance of it.

“Exodus,” I say.

“I’m impressed, but then you used to be Amish, didn’t you? Of course you know the Bible.”

This barn is far from the ideal location to question a suspect, particularly with regard to a serious crime. I’d much prefer to have her in an interview room with a camera rolling and at least one other cop present. But my instincts tell me that if Abigail is going to talk—if she’s going to tell me anything even remotely useful—it’s going to be here and now and on her turf.

“Abigail, why don’t you explain that quote to me?” When she doesn’t respond, I push. “Does it have something to do with Leroy Nolt?”

“Leroy.” A sound that’s part sob, part sigh escapes her, and she presses a hand to her mouth as if to prevent another. “They betrayed me. All of them.”

“Jeramy?”

“Yes.”

“And your parents?”

Her hand trembles. She looks at me over the top of it, her eyes filling with tears. “How could they?”

“What did they do?”

She shakes her head, her hand clamped tightly over her mouth. “I can’t.”

“Were you involved with Leroy?” I ask.

An odd laugh bubbles out of her. “I married Jeramy when I was seventeen years old, Chief Burkholder. I’ve always been with Jeramy.
Always.
Since I was a girl.”

“But it was Leroy Nolt you loved, wasn’t it?”

“Sell is nix as baeffzes.”
That is nothing but trifling talk.

“I know you gave him that quilt, Abigail. It’s got your initials on it. I know you initial your work.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she says. “It’s gone. Everything. He’s gone. All of his dreams. They’re … dust.”

I look through the hay door. I can’t see the hogs below, but I can hear them moving around, grunting, rubbing against the steel pens, cloven hooves tapping against concrete.

I choose my next words with care. “I met your eldest son earlier,” I tell her. “Levi.”

“Do not speak of him.” She raises her hand as if to prevent me from continuing, as if she already knows what I’m going to say.

I don’t stop. Instead, I take a step closer and lower my voice. “He’s the spitting image of Leroy Nolt. The eyes. His smile.”

“No…”

“Levi is Leroy’s son. You were pregnant with Leroy’s child when you married Jeramy.”

“That’s not true.” Turning away, she moves closer to the wide door at the back of the barn.

I follow, hoping she doesn’t intend to jump. She’s armed with a knife. I have my sidearm, but I know from experience her frame of mind is such that it won’t matter. You can’t threaten someone with deadly force when they want to die.

“Abigail,” I say softly, “Tell me what happened to Leroy.”

She stops at the door that looks out over the pens and the overgrown field beyond and takes a deep breath. My attention is honed on Abigail, but I’m ever aware of the hogs below. Several of the animals—the boars—are huge and probably weigh in at three or four hundred pounds. They have a feral, intelligent look about them. Some of the smaller animals are wallowing in a mudhole in the corner of the enclosure. Others, having noticed us, are standing below the door, their beady eyes trained on us as if expecting us to drop feed to them.

“Did Jeramy do something to him?” I ask. “Was he there the day Leroy was killed? Is that why you poisoned him?”

Her face screws up. “I can’t speak of it.”

“What about your parents? Were they involved? Do they know what happened? Is that why you tried to poison them?”

“They murdered him.” Her voice is so low, I have to lean close to make out the words.

“What did they do to him?”

“They hated him.” She sucks in air as if coming up for a breath after a long underwater dive. “Because of me. Because I loved him.”