Among the Wicked: A Kate Burkholder Novel (33 page)

I’d called Tomasetti from the ambulance. He took the news of the end of the assignment in stride and without a single I-told-you-so. The news of my impending trip to the hospital not so well. He didn’t rant or overreact, which he’s been known to do on occasion, at least when it comes to me. It was the quiet, creeping fear I discerned in his voice that scared me. That hurt me. I hated doing that to him.

“You don’t have to drive all the way up here,” I told him.

“I’ve always wanted to see Plattsburgh in January,” he returned.

I laughed a little too hard.

Tomasetti must have heard something in my voice, because he asked, “Are you all right?”

“Aside from the hypothermia, a couple cracked ribs, and superficial frostbite, I’m fine.” We both know that’s not what he meant, but he lets it pass. Ground that can be covered later.

I was really thinking that I was fortunate to be alive and we were both lucky he wasn’t driving up here to claim my body.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he told me. “I’ll be there in a few hours.”

*   *   *

It’s one
P.M.
and I’m occupying a visitor chair in Frank Betancourt’s office at the state police Troop B station in Plattsburgh, an hour’s drive from Roaring Springs. Earlier, he sat with me in one of the interview rooms with a laptop and pumped me full of hot coffee while I completed a seven-page report relaying the events that transpired overnight in the woods and on Schrock’s compound. It was a slow process, made worse by the bandage wrapped around my pinky and ring fingers to protect my frostbite-damaged skin. If Betancourt noticed my shaking hands, he didn’t show it. But he hasn’t let me out of his sight for more than a few minutes at a time.

Last night, the ER folks kept me pretty busy at the hospital. Hypothermia and frostbite are common in upstate New York this time of year. Hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts mostly. The male nurse who took care of me had a wicked sense of humor, which I appreciated. This afternoon, I’m mostly recovered physically. The painkillers make me loopy, but they help with the cracked ribs and lingering headache, so I keep them handy. I’m doing well psychologically. It’s only when I’m alone that my mind drags me back to my wild run through the woods, the whine of the snowmobile engines, and the time I spent in the water, fighting for my life.

Betancourt pops back into his office a little too often, each time looking at me with shoddily concealed concern in his expression and some lame excuse for needing to talk to me.

“I’m still okay,” I mutter, hoping I manage the frown I was going for.

“I didn’t ask.” He grins unconvincingly. “Just FYI, I’ve been instructed to stay with you.”

I roll my eyes. “I should have figured he’d call you.”

“So you two are…” He lets the sentence dangle.

“Yep.”

He clears his throat. “We’ll just pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”

I grin. “What conversation?”

He sobers as he slides into the chair at his desk. “I thought you should know, Chief. I just got word from the hospital. Dan Suggs is dead.”

It’s the first bit of new information I’ve received about the case since I’ve been here; Betancourt has kept me sequestered in his office since I arrived, obviously wanting to keep me focused on my statement. The news is a shock and I’m not exactly sure how to process it. “How?”

“I guess he knew how things were going to go down. Drove out to his favorite fishing lake. Put his thirty-eight in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“I never suspected him.” I don’t mention the fact that I’d enjoyed working with him. I’d trusted him. I’d actually
liked
him.

“No one did. Dan had been a cop for going on thirty years. He was highly respected. Not a mark on his record. Happily married. Who would’ve thought he was involved in something like that?”

I recall our strange last moments together. The way Suggs had looked at me when he told me they were going to kill me. I’d seen regret in his eyes. But whatever regret he’d been feeling wasn’t powerful enough to stop it. It hadn’t been enough for him to spare my life. Dan Suggs might’ve been sucked into the operation for reasons understood fully only by him. But he was still a dirty cop.

“What about Schrock?” I ask.

“Taken into custody without incident.”

“Yoder? Smucker?”

“Yoder’s in the hospital. Critical, but he’s going to make it.” He grimaces. “We didn’t get Smucker. We think he took the snow machine and crossed into Canada. We’ve alerted the border patrol and the local authorities up there. Chances are he’ll seek medical attention for that gunshot wound. We’ll get him.”

I agree. Even a flesh wound is serious. Smucker’s no criminal mastermind. With no one to tell him what to do, he won’t last. That’s not to say he isn’t an extremely dangerous individual, an animal caught up in the flight or fight instinct. I know when law enforcement catches up with him, he’ll go down hard.

“What about the other people out at the compound?” I’m not sure when we began referring to Schrock’s farm as “the compound” but that’s what it is now.

“We got the warrant shortly after you were brought in. State police and St. Lawrence deputies are out there now, searching the place. Chances are there will be more arrests; Schrock and Yoder and Smucker didn’t do this by themselves.” He sighs. “They found three females locked in that old barn. We’ve run into some language issues. We think some of the women are Ukrainian. We’ve got a translator on the way.”

“They were smuggling people into the U.S. from Canada?”

“Smuggling and possibly trafficking. Some of these women were promised husbands. Evidently, Schrock and his pals made contact with men via the Internet. The men basically paid cash for these women, either to marry or prostitute them. We confiscated four laptops. Going to take a while to sift through all of it, but preliminarily, it looks like Schrock took in illegals and other vulnerable individuals, people down on their luck or homeless, and kept them at the compound. An unknown individual in Canada was sending people down to Schrock. Smucker and Yoder would smuggle them into the country using snowmobiles at night. Most were women, but we believe there may have been children involved, too.”

“Somehow, it always makes it worse when kids are involved,” I say.

“Whatever the case, multiple individuals were being held against their will. Most were subjected to physical abuse and sexual assault while they were here.”

“What about the Amish kids living at the compound?” I ask.

“We’ve got social workers out there. I’m assuming most of them will be placed with foster parents until we can figure out what else was going on out there. Interviews are happening today and will probably continue the next couple of weeks.”

I nod, wondering what they’ll find. If the kids will talk. How much they know. If the parents will cooperate.

Betancourt studies me a moment. “What’s your take on the Amish connection to all of this, Chief?”

“I think all this began with Schrock,” I tell him. “He’s a predator and a sociopath. His views are extreme. I’m guessing, but he was probably ousted from his former community because the leaders there realized what he is. He came to New York. Designated himself bishop. He used his charisma to bring people in. Amish who were disgruntled with their own church districts. He took in those who’d been excommunicated. The lost and unwanted. People looking for something. He controlled them through intimidation and violence.” I shrug. “In essence he was running a cult. When someone displeased him, he punished them. Or did away with them.”

“Suggs knew about the Esh girl?,” Betancourt says with a good bit of anger.

“Interestingly, when I asked Suggs about her, all he would tell me is that she’d become a threat. I don’t know how or why. He said she tried to run away.” I shake my head, remembering Suggs’s bizarre reaction. “I suspect they caught her and let her die in the cold.”

“Any idea who?”

I shake my head. “Maybe Schrock will be able to shed some light.”

“So far the son of a bitch isn’t talking,” he growls. “We’re probably not going to get a handle on the scope of this thing for a while, Chief.” Leaning back in his chair, he contemplates me. I can tell by his expression there’s more and it’s not good. “Call came in from Franklin County twenty minutes ago. They found some graves on that hill by the barn.”

Something inside me sinks. “How many?”

He shrugs. “They’re trying to get a forensic anthropologist out there now. I guess one of the deputies uncovered some bones. He started looking around and sure enough, he found more. He’s pretty sure they’re human. We’ll get a better picture of things in the hours to come.”

I think about Rebecca’s family. Her missing son and daughter-in-law. Her missing grandchildren. Schrock is a murderous son of a bitch. So much pain. So many lives destroyed, and for what?

*   *   *

Tomasetti arrives forty-five minutes later. Betancourt rises to greet him and the two men shake hands. “Chief Burkholder and I were just finishing up the debriefing.”

“Good timing on my part,” Tomasetti says. He’s trying to play it cool, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off me since he entered the room. “I hear you guys broke the case wide open.”

“It was bigger than any of us imagined.” Betancourt grimaces. “Dan Suggs was involved. Shot and killed himself sometime last night.”

“Sad for his family.”

“Chief Burkholder had a few dicey moments. I was just thanking her for sticking with it and making the sacrifices she did. We appreciate it.”

A brief silence ensues. Betancourt makes a big deal of looking at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting to get to.” He raises his hand. “Take care, Agent Tomasetti.”

We watch Betancourt go through the door and close it behind him. I’m still sitting in the visitor chair. Tomasetti is standing next to the desk. He looks at me and says, “Ten to one there’s no meeting.”

“He sort of figured things out. I mean, about us.”

“Probably didn’t help that I called him six times,” he admits. “Asked him to keep an eye on you.”

Then I’m out of the chair. Tomasetti steps toward me, raw emotion flashing on his face before he can tuck it away. I fall against him. His arms wrap around me and pull me close. I take in his scent and the feel of his body against mine, and I’m overwhelmed with the knowledge of how things could have turned out. I’m about to thank him for coming, let him know how happy I am to see him, but his mouth comes down on mine. The words leave my head and I forget about everything except kissing him back.

After a full minute, he eases me to arm’s length and looks me over. “You’re in pain.”

It’s not a question, so I nod and tell him about my cracked ribs.

He sighs. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You never do.”

He’s looking at me closely, running his hands up and down my arms as if making sure I’m really there. That I’m not going to slip away. “You look shaken up.”

“I guess I am.”

“That’s honest.”

“My new policy, remember?”

“Betancourt told me what happened. Kate, for God’s sake, you were nearly killed.”

“‘Nearly’ being the key word in that statement.”

Growling low in his throat, he faces me more squarely, takes both of my hands in his and squeezes gently. “I don’t want to be the guy getting a phone call in the middle of the night, telling me the person I love was killed in the line of duty.”

“No one knew what was happening out at that compound. No one could have foreseen things turning out the way they did.”

“That’s the thing, Kate. No cop eats his bowl of Cheerios in the morning and then leaves the house expecting to get shot in the course of his first traffic stop. It just happens.”

“Had you been in my shoes, you would have done the same thing.”

He starts to argue the point, but I raise my hand and press two fingers against his lips. “
Shhh
. I’m here. I’m okay. It’s over.”

Taking my hand from his mouth, he turns it over in his and brushes his lips across my knuckles. “What am I going to do with you?”

“For starters, you can take me home.”

CHAPTER 25

An hour later, Tomasetti and I are in my Explorer eastbound on State Route 11 traveling toward Roaring Springs. Unbeknownst to me, he’d rented a car in Wooster, made the nine-hour trip in seven, and returned the rental car in Plattsburgh, so we could drive my vehicle back to Painters Mill.

I’m thankful because I didn’t get much sleep last night; I’ve been running on caffeine and adrenaline most of the day. Now that those two things are waning, I’m starting to relax. The case is over, I can leave Roaring Springs, and I’m ridiculously happy Tomasetti is here to drive me home.

I must have dozed because when I open my eyes we’re idling through downtown Roaring Springs. It’s nearly four
P.M.
and the downtown area is, as usual, deserted.

Tomasetti glances over at me and takes my hand. “I figured you’d sleep.”

I sit up straighter, give his hand a squeeze. “Didn’t want to miss seeing this place in the rearview mirror.”

It’s a true statement. But the heart is a fickle thing. When I see the sign for The Calico Country Store, an emotion I can’t quite identify jumps inside me. I find myself thinking of Laura Hershberger and her homey little shop and for the first time it occurs to me that not all of my time spent here was unpleasant.

I glance over at Tomasetti. “Are you game for a cup of coffee?”

He knows it’s not coffee I’m craving, but he doesn’t ask and angles the Explorer into a parking space.

“This is the shop where I met the Amish women,” I tell him.

“Ah … the quilt shop where you passed off someone else’s work as your own.”

“Thanks for reminding me of that.”

But we grin at each other as we disembark.

Snow flutters down from a pale sky as we cross the sidewalk. Tomasetti opens the door for me. The cowbell jingles cheerily as we walk inside. The aromas of hazelnut coffee and cinnamon rolls welcome us. The shop is quiet; a single customer picks through the jams and jellies at the far wall. The Mennonite girl at the cash register looks up from her romance novel and smiles.