The Names of Our Tears (12 page)

“I don’t think so. What I saw was enough. Plenty enough.”

“You didn’t see a vehicle?”

“No.”

“Maybe you remember hearing something.”

“No.”

A shout came from one of the lads out front. A harmony of laughter followed. Directly, the boys shot around the corner of the house in their pony cart, John holding a buggy whip lightly against the rump of the pony. Mahlon slapped the reins and drove the pony around the bend in the driveway. A thin pole fixed to the back of the cart waved over their heads, with a triangle of orange fabric flying at the end. Mahlon slapped the reins again, and the pony darted along the wide drive behind the house. They made the circuit around to the front and soon reappeared at the side where Ricky and Mervin could see them again. Faster now, the boys drove forward, rounded the bend balanced on one wheel, and shot around to the back, heading toward the barns beyond.

Niell and Byler watched them disappear behind the woodshop, and Mervin said, “I used to do that, when I was a lad.”

Smiling, Ricky asked, “Have you always lived here?”

“No. I grew up over near Charm. But Leona and I built the big house, here, when we first bought the land. Now it’s Daniel’s, but our sons built us this cottage. So I guess that’s fair. The old step aside to make way for the young. Anyways, I used to have a pony, too. When I was just a lad.”

“When did you put that little phone booth in, out by the road?”

“I’m not sure who put that there,” Byler answered circumspectly.

“It had to have been after you moved here,” Ricky said.

“I can’t watch the whole family, Detective. Not all the time.”

“Maybe one of your sons installed the phone.”

“Oh, it could be. Maybe, I suppose. I’m really not sure about it.”

“Does your bishop approve of phones?”

Byler gave a wry smile. “I think he’s making a study of the matter. Hasn’t really decided, yet.”

“What would you have done yesterday, if a phone weren’t handy?”

“Oh, there are plenty of phone booths around. I’d have found one.”

“Do you expect that your bishop will ever make a ruling about phones?”

“Not if he’s clever,” Mervin said.

“He’ll stretch it out?”

Byler ate another chocolate with obvious satisfaction. “He’s going to decide about the phones one at a time. Might not get to ours for a while.”

“Clever man,” Ricky said.

“He’s the bishop. He’s supposed to be clever.”

Standing, Ricky said, “Thanks for the chocolate, Mervin. But are you sure you didn’t hear anything yesterday morning? Maybe before you left for Walnut Creek?”

Byler stood with his box. “Like a gunshot?”

Ricky nodded.

“If I did, I don’t remember it. Or I didn’t understand what it was. There’s a lot of noise on a farm in the mornings.”

From the barns at the back, John and Mahlon ran their pony cart up to the rear of the house, hopped down laughing, and hitched the reins to a cast-iron post beside the back door. Still laughing, they scurried up the steps into the house.

Mervin watched them run into the house and said, “That’s what Ruth Zook should have been doing yesterday morning, Detective. Having good fun with a white pony.”

“I think she was a little too old for that,” Ricky remarked.

Byler shook his head. “We’re never too old to have fun with a pony.”

IN A high-backed wooden booth at the restaurant in the Hotel Millersburg, less than a block west of the courthouse square, Pat Lance poured another cup of coffee for Fannie and said, “We should think about going back soon. The sheriff will probably want to talk with you again.”

“But are you sure it’s really that big an organization? Did Sergeant Orton say they were sure? That it’s a big drug ring?”

“Yes, Fannie,” Lance said. “They’ve been stealing boats for a couple of months. It’s bigger than you knew.”

With tears puddling over in her eyes, Fannie drew a hankie out of her little purse and dried her cheeks. “Why would they hurt her now? I gave them their stupid suitcase.”

Lance let a moment pass and said, “Maybe the sheriff can tell us more.”

“I think I should just run away. I think Jodie should run away.”

Lance smiled. “Maybe you could hold off on that idea for a while.”

Fannie smiled, too, grateful for the friendship.

Lance asked, “Can we talk with the sheriff again?”

Eyes dried, Fannie said, “I need to use the bathroom first.”

Lance waited in the narrow lobby of the old hotel, standing beside the oak staircase to the second-floor rooms, then she escorted Fannie through the heavy walnut door to the sidewalk. They crossed Clay Street to the flagpole in front of the Civil War monument, and Fannie sat on one of the wrought-iron benches to tighten a shoelace.

Crossing over the lawn in front of the tan sandstone courthouse, Fannie remarked, “Sun is bright today,” and Lance asked, “Do you miss Florida? The sun and beaches?”

“Not on days like this,” Fannie said as they climbed the steps to the front entrance of the jail. “But I know northern Ohio weather. We get bright days like this only because some storm is brewing out west, and then we’ll pay for it.”

Behind the reception counter, Ellie sat at her desk in front of a wall of radio equipment. She looked pale to Lance, and the detective asked, “Still not feeling well?”

“Just in the mornings,” Ellie said, smiling. “But don’t tell Bruce.”

“He’s here?” Lance asked, returning Ellie’s smile.

“He’s still out at the Zooks’.”

“OK,” Lance said. “We’ll just talk a little and wait for him. Interview B, when he gets here.”

In the interview room across from the sheriff’s office, Fannie dropped onto a chair at the end of the table and said, “Long day. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

Lance sat at the corner beside her. “When did you learn about Ruth Zook?”

“Yesterday afternoon. On the gossip mill. A neighbor lady drove by the Zooks’ when deputies were carrying her suitcases out of the house. She said there were deputies searching the bottoms along 557, too. Below the pond, and around through the woods down there in the marshes.”

“You knew by then that she had been shot?”

Fannie nodded wearily. “We got calls from the Byler phone. My brother has a cell phone. His wife told me Ruth Zook had
been shot dead. Then the neighbor came over to say that she had seen the deputies at Zooks’.”

“Did you meet them with your own suitcase at the same little turnoff where Ruth was found?”

“No. I did that closer to home.”

“Did anyone tell you where to take it?”

“No. I picked the spot.”

“How did you tell them about it?”

“I didn’t. Jodie showed me a Holmes County map, and I marked it for her.”

“Jodie told them? And she had a map down in Florida?”

“Yes. That was the same day she brought me the suitcase. Before I got on the bus.”

“Then she must have told Jim or John.”

“I’m not really sure about that. But she’s the only person I told. I marked it for them, on Jodie’s map.”

Reaching under the interview table, Lance flipped on the switch for the room’s recorder. “OK, tell me where it was. Where you met to hand over the suitcase.”

“I met her on a hilltop just south of Charm.”

“Can you describe her?”

Fannie closed her eyes to remember. “Short. Black hair, not so long. Kinda brownish skin. Stocky and strong. Eyes close together on a pudgy face. Got out of a little Buick sedan. It was old and gray and beat to pieces. And she had a silver gun.”

“Did she threaten you?”

“No, but she let me see her gun. It was sticking out of her purse.”

“Do you remember her license plate?”

Fannie opened her eyes. “No, I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK. Where did you meet her?”

“Up on the hills south of Charm. Right where 156 cuts into 19. There’s a little gravel berm there, on the high ground. That’s where I waited with the suitcase.”

“Why’d you pick that spot?”

“It’s isolated, remote, so no one would see us. I thought if I
did a good job, nobody would hurt Jodie. Who’s going to help her, now that Ruth Zook is dead?”

“The sheriff will send someone down to Pinecraft, Fannie. And Ruth wrote some letters home to Emma Wengerd. Maybe she told Emma something that’ll help them in Florida.”

Restlessly, Fannie pushed up from her chair and paced the length of the room once and back. Sitting down next to Lance, she asked nervously, “What now?”

“I want you to stay with me. Maybe sleep at my place for a while.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” Fannie said. “I’d be in the way.”

“Really, Fannie, I think you should plan to stay at my place for a while.”

“But why?”

“Maybe we’re wrong,” Lance said. “But if these drug runners are dangerous for you right now, you should stay with me.”

“They’ll come after me, now that I’ve talked?”

“Maybe.”

“But why?” Fannie asked, crying again. “I don’t really know anything.”

“But you know too much. And you might remember something about Jim or John. Or about their boat.”

“Or about the woman I gave the suitcase to?”

“Yes, and about her car.”

“But I don’t remember anything more,” Fannie said, kerchief pressed again to her eyes.

“They don’t know that, Fannie. Really, they have no idea what you’ve told us. Or what you’ll remember. And if they’ve killed Ruth, then we’ve got to consider that they might try to kill you.”

Crying softly with her hankie to her nose, Fannie asked, “Did I do the wrong thing? In coming here?”

“No,” Lance said. “If you hadn’t come here, you’d be home, where they could find you easily. You wouldn’t know it, but they may be trying to find you right now.”

Eyes shifting about, Fannie got up again and paced. “But I
wrote letters home, too. To my brother and his wife. So, what if these people know that? What if they think my brother knows something?”

“Maybe I’m just being too cautious,” Lance offered.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“No. Not really. That’s why I want you to stay with me for a while.”

CAL SEARCHED for Emma Wengerd in each of the three Zook barns, but he didn’t find her. On a patch of barnyard gravel outside the massive doors of the largest barn, he turned in the sun and studied the back of the big house and the outbuildings, trying to guess where Emma might be. Typical of most Amish homesteads, the Zook farm offered many fine places to hide.

Beside the house, on a low knoll, there was a metal door that Cal knew covered a staircase leading into an underground fruit cellar. It’d be dark inside, Cal thought, but Emma might use a candle. He would check, but it had been a cold spring, and the fruit cellar still likely held the chill of a long winter. Other places were better to search first.

Next to the fruit cellar, set into the foundation stones of the house, he saw the exterior entrance to the house’s basement, low-angled doors hinging up and over to the left and the right. There was another good place to check for Emma, but it would also be a cold place for her to sit.

Alvin Zook’s little Daadihaus sat on a concrete pad adjacent to the Zooks’ back door, and it was connected to the back porch by a breezeway with a grape arbor cover. Emma might be fond of spending time with her adopted grandfather, but he was inside
the big house with the others, and Cal doubted Emma would be in his house alone.

A carpenter’s shop beside the Daadihaus occupied a shed with a red metal roof. On the near side of the woodshop, there was an angled exhaust pipe with a mound of wet sawdust lying on the ground underneath its wide aluminum vent. Between the house and the driveway, the Zooks had a swing set, a sandbox, and a green-padded trampoline. A sand-carpeted volleyball court sat on the opposite side of the driveway. Other than the three barns, which Cal had already searched, the only remaining structure above ground was a wood-framed garage attached to the side of the largest barn behind him.

Cal entered the garage through tall doors that had been swung out and propped permanently open. The doors lay back flat against either side of the entrance, held in place by unfinished four-by-four poles set fast, with each of their ends anchored in the dirt and the other ends nailed to the top of the wood of the hinged doors. The rusty metal roof of the garage was high enough to make room underneath for the Zook family buggies, but nothing taller.

To let his eyes adjust, Cal stopped several paces inside the dim interior of the garage. There was a kerosene lantern hanging from one of the uprights supporting the roof, and he considered lighting it. But he heard soft crying from a back corner and decided he could best start his conversation with Emma without the intrusion of the lantern’s light. He called out, “Emma?” and walked toward the sound of her crying.

In one far corner, there was a long buggy with two seats and a large cargo bay at the back. He found Emma sitting there alone, on the covered rear cargo deck, with her legs hanging over the side. In light so dim that his eyes still hadn’t adjusted, he saw only the vaguest outline of Emma’s oval face, framed by her bonnet and shawl.

Standing a few feet back from her, Cal said, “I’ve been looking for you,” and he saw Emma’s head move side to side in a slow-motion rejection that told him silently what he had hoped he wouldn’t find.

Slowly he approached her, saying, “Have you been crying?” but she pushed back from her edge seat, scooted farther into the buggy’s cargo bay, and disappeared completely from Cal’s view.

Thin blades of light shined through slits between the rough-hewn slats of the garage walls, but it wasn’t enough light for him to see even the outline of her inside the flat-black buggy. Cal knew she was still there only because the buggy hadn’t rocked on its strapped metal springs as much as it would have if she had climbed down through a side door.

“Emma,” Cal said to the darkness. “It’s OK if you’ve been crying.”

Emma said nothing, so Cal turned around and sat back against the rear ledge of the buggy, facing away from her. With neither of the two speaking, a long moment passed as Cal’s vision began to adjust to the darkness. With his silent reserve, Cal hoped again to earn her trust. As Emma settled in behind him, he felt the lightweight buggy rock on its springs. He wanted to speak, but he knew he shouldn’t. So he chose the response of wordlessness, and his eyes began to pick out the details of the buggy parked in the corner beside Emma’s.