The Names of Our Tears (5 page)

Niell took a few steps toward her, not really knowing what he might say, but she cast him an angry scowl, as if accusing him for her loss. He took another step toward her. She glared both determination and isolation down at him, and then she turned and walked back into the house without speaking.

*   *   *

By the time Cal Troyer arrived at the Zook residence, Stan Armbruster had returned to the murder scene on TR 165. He was to assist Melissa Taggert, who had phoned Robertson to say that she had gotten her ME’s crew out to the location. Pat Lance was still there, too, retaining the horse and buggy for Taggert’s inspection.

Cal pulled in behind Niell’s cruiser. In front of it sat Robertson’s blue Crown Victoria. Beyond that, on the long drive back to the biggest of three barns, black buggies were parked in a neat row. There the horses had been tethered to a picket line strung from a maple tree out front, back to the nearest corner of the barn. Cal counted nearly a dozen buggies as he walked forward.

Niell and Robertson stood with a slender, white-bearded Amish fellow about sixty-five years old. As Cal walked up, the man was saying to Robertson, “The fish were all dead when I got up this morning.”

Cal listened and started to ask a question, but Ricky pulled
him aside and said, “They took it badly, Cal. But one little girl seems worse than the others. Ten years old. Lilac dress and white cap.”

Grandfather Zook turned to Niell and Troyer, and said, “That’s little Emma Wengerd. Ruth was the only one of us that she was close to.”

“Why’s that?” Cal asked. He held out his hand and said, “I’m Pastor Cal Troyer, Alvin. We met at a barn raising a couple of years ago.”

Alvin Zook nodded a confirmation. “Swinging hammers on the peak.”

“She’s a Wengerd?” Cal asked.

“Yes, but she’s adopted,” Zook said. “Her family—all six of them—was killed when a truck ran over their buggy, over near Farmerstown.”

“I remember the crash,” Troyer said.

Zook lifted his hat and ran a wrinkled handkerchief across his brow. “Emma hasn’t been able to adjust to her new family. Except that she took to Ruth. She followed her around everywhere. They used to talk about all sorts of things. You know, life. Like real sisters. So Emma is probably going to take this as hard as any of us.”

WITH CAL and all the Zooks headed inside, Robertson asked for the memory card from Ricky’s camera. Niell pulled it out of its slot in the camera and opened the rear door of his cruiser to take an evidence bag from his kit. He dropped the memory card into the plastic bag and attached a voucher slip to it. Then he signed and dated the voucher slip and handed it to Robertson. While the sheriff signed the slip, Ricky loaded another memory card into the camera’s slot.

Robertson said, “I’ll get these photos up on our computers while you go back to help Lance and Missy. Call me if Missy finds anything I should know about.”

Ricky stowed his camera in its case on the backseat and turned back to Robertson. “Are you going to call in Rachel Ramsayer, to help with the photos?”

“She’s already there,” Robertson said. “I asked her to help with dispatching, when your wife went home.”

“Why’d Ellie go home?” Ricky asked.

“Upset stomach. She said she’d be fine in a little while.”

Ricky nodded and held his peace.

Curious to know why Niell hadn’t asked more about Ellie, Robertson asked, “Is there something I should know, Detective?”

“It’s probably just the stomach flu,” Ricky said. “I’ll lead you over to the murder scene. If we go through Farmerstown, it’s not too far.”

“No,” Robertson said. “You handle things over there, with Missy and Lance. But send Armbruster back to Millersburg. In the meantime, I want to have Bobby Newell look at these pictures with me. Are they all on this one card?”

“Everything I have so far,” Ricky said. “I’ll get more.”

“Anything unusual that I should know about, before we go through these photos?”

“Well,” Ricky said, “she’s a mess. Trampled by her buggy horse. I think she was shot. With a Black Talon. And there are Humvee tracks that overlie her buggy wheel tracks. She’s got an entrance wound on her forehead, and she’s got an exit wound at the back of her head. We found the bullet embedded in the backseat of her buggy. And she’s missing the ring finger on her left hand.”

Robertson frowned. “It’s too far out of the way for her to have stumbled onto something. You know, she wasn’t just
in the wrong place at the wrong time
.”

“I think she must have gone there to meet someone,” Ricky said. “So the question is, who would want to meet her there?”

“Meet her there,” Robertson nodded, “with a Humvee and a Black Talon.”

*   *   *

While Ricky and the sheriff were talking on the Zooks’ driveway, Cal Troyer climbed the steps to the front porch and knocked on the door. Alvin Zook answered the knock, held the screened door open for Cal, and let the pastor into the front hallway.

To Cal’s right, the parlor was filled with Amish folk, sitting wordlessly on several church benches. Two older ladies flanked Mrs. Irma Zook, who was Alvin’s daughter-in-law and the mother of Ruth. When Cal entered, the men looked up with unanswerable sorrow, then turned their heads down to resume their meditations. Of the women there, none looked up as Cal came through.

At the back of the hallway, the large kitchen was filled with a half-dozen Amish women cooking food in the oven and on the stovetop. All of the available counter space was being used for other preparations. From the back porch, two more Amish ladies carried cloth bags filled with groceries into the kitchen, then turned around and went back down the steps to get more bags out of a buggy parked at the back of the house. Alvin led Cal down the back steps and pulled him aside, so that the women could pass up the steps again with more groceries.

Whispering, Alvin said, “We know death, Cal. We know it well. But murder? Who knows anything about that?”

Mindful of all the people inside, Cal whispered, too. “Alvin, why would Ruth head over that way? Did she know anyone there? Because it’s not on the way to anywhere.”

“I don’t think so. Not in particular. But you know how it is. Amish people know everyone. In one way or another. We know all the Amish families, and they all know us.”

“Do you need any help?” Cal asked.

“We know what to do for the family,” Alvin answered. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Maybe you could try to talk with Emma.”

“Of course,” Cal said, turning back toward the steps.

Alvin turned him around with a light touch on his elbow. “She’s not in there, Cal.”

“Where, then?”

“She’ll be in the barn. She’s got a secret place where she goes to be alone. I’m sure she’s there now, and I’m sure she’s alone. Someone needs to talk with her.”

“Shouldn’t someone in the family come with me?” Cal asked.

“Normally, yes,” Alvin said. “But Emma doesn’t talk to us very much. I really don’t think she likes us. I’m sure she doesn’t like living with us.”

“How long has it been since her family was killed?”

“Almost two years.”

“Is she still sad?”

“Not really,” Alvin said. “It’s more like she’s angry. She acts like she never got past the anger.”

“Doesn’t she talk with anyone, Alvin?”

“With me, I guess. A little bit. Sometimes. Mostly she talked with Ruth.”

“She doesn’t speak otherwise?”

“Oh, she talks about regular things. Everyday conversations. Doing chores. School and such. But she doesn’t really let anybody get close to her thoughts. She’s private, and sometimes I fear what she’s thinking.”

“Like what, Alvin?”

Zook hesitated, cleared his throat, and said, “I’m afraid she’s going to hurt herself.”

“Then what makes you think she’ll talk to me?”

Zook shook his head sadly, and puddles of tears appeared in his eyes. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose. “She has a secret name I use. When no one else is around. I call her my stratus flower. It makes her smile.”

“Stratus flower? Like in the atmosphere?”

“Right. She’s a flower. And she holds herself far apart from the rest of us. She’s withdrawn, like she’s as far away as she can get, and still be here. You know, like she’s up in the stratosphere. So I call her my stratus flower, and when I’ve said that, I think I’ve seen her smiling inside. I think those are the only times I’ve ever seen her smile.”

WHEN SHERIFF Robertson pushed through the front door of the jail, Rachel Ramsayer—a dwarf lady, the daughter of Cal Troyer—was standing to Robertson’s right, on her stepped platform behind the dispatcher’s long wooden counter. To the sheriff’s left, a black iron door served as the sole entrance to the first-floor gang cell, for prisoners who were not a danger either to themselves or to others.

The dispatcher’s radio and recording equipment, a tall and wide battery of lights, dials, wires, and switches, was stacked on the tables behind Rachel. The dispatcher’s computers, keyboards, and monitors sat on the tabletop below the radios. Underneath were the new servers that Rachel had installed for the department. Today, between calls, Rachel had been finishing her efforts to modernize the department’s data and evidence logs and to install new desktops and routers, a task on which she had been working since coming on board full-time for the sheriff last spring.

Robertson turned right inside the front door and pushed through the wooden swinging door at the left end of the counter. He handed Rachel the plastic evidence bag, with the SDHC
memory card from Ricky Niell’s camera, said, “Thanks for coming in,” and lumbered out of his suit jacket.

Rachel signed and dated the voucher slip on the bag. “It’s been quiet, Sheriff. Except for Mervin Byler’s 911.”

Robertson laid his suit jacket over an arm. “Niell, Lance, Armbruster, and Taggert are all still out at the murder scene. There’s preliminary photos of it on that card.”

“The usual with the photos, Sheriff?”

“Yes, then please voucher the card over to Captain Newell. We’ll both look at the photos, once you have them uploaded and backed up.”

*   *   *

When Robertson had left for Millersburg, Ricky Niell headed back to the kill spot by circling up through the heights at Farmerstown and dropping down again on a sharp angle onto TR 164. Then as he descended lower into the cuts east of town, he swung hard right into the draw where TR 165 led south. Soon he had reached Melissa Taggert’s medical examiner’s panel truck, parked beside the clearing, nose to nose with Pat Lance’s cruiser. Farther down the lane, Pat Lance attended Ruth Zook’s horse and buggy while talking on her department cell phone.

Missy had a team of two medical assistants working to lay the body of the Zook girl on a body bag that had been spread open on the ground beside her. Two Holmes County deputies stood back several paces, holding a collection of rakes, hoes, and shovels. There weren’t any other vehicles parked on the lane, so Niell concluded that all four attendants had come out with Taggert in her van.

As the two assistants worked with Ruth Zook’s body, Taggert met Niell at the edge of the clearing and asked directly, “Ricky, did you get a chance to search for her finger?”

“Not really, but we found a bullet and the casing.”

They heard the finalizing rasp of a heavy zipper closing the body bag, and Niell and Taggert turned to look.

With equal parts anger and frustration, Missy complained,
“She’s very small, Ricky. Tiny. That horse must have broken every bone in her body.”

Surprised by Taggert’s emotion, Niell said, “That doesn’t sound like you, Missy.”

“She’s so young, Ricky. And small. It just tears me up to see young women like this. I need a vacation.”

“The Zooks told me she was only nineteen,” Niell said. “She had gone down to Pinecraft for February and March. Her first Florida vacation. Worked in a little restaurant there.”

Taggert’s assistants rolled a gurney into the clearing and loaded the body bag onto it. Then they rolled it to the back of Taggert’s truck, lifted it forward so that the legs folded against the bumper, and slid it on its rails into the back of the truck. When they had closed the doors, they stepped over to Niell and Taggert, and one of them asked, “Find the finger?”

Missy nodded. “Start right where the body was lying, and work outward from there. It has to be here. Somewhere. Because the wound on her hand is fresh.” Then Missy sighed out frustration and added, “What I mean is, she hadn’t lost her finger earlier, so it still has to be here.”

Thinking Taggert might say more, the assistants held to their place beside her on the lane. With uncharacteristic harshness, she waved them back to work. Eyeing Niell, they stepped away, took a hoe and a rake from the deputies, and began to work their way into the pulverized dirt and trampled weeds, where the horse had danced out its fright.

Once they had started their search, Missy drew a cleansing breath, motioned Niell along, and said, “Let’s go talk with Pat.”

Pat Lance finished her call as they approached. She flipped her cell phone closed and said, “That was Stan. Before he left the Zooks’, he stopped to ‘take a few samples.’ He’s on his way here, and he says he has something interesting.”

“Like what, exactly?” Missy asked, sounding curt, almost disdainful.

Niell arched an eyebrow, and Lance said, “He didn’t say.”

Surprised again by Taggert’s display of emotion, Niell asked, “Are we finished with this buggy, Missy?”

“For now,” Missy said, and rolled her shoulders to dump frustration. “We’ve been all through the thing, looking for her finger. Under the seat, in the back, floorboards and crevices, and it isn’t there.”

“Can we have someone take it back to the Zooks’?” Niell asked.

Taggert looked to Lance and back to Niell. She laughed unconvincingly, rubbed at her temples, and said, “Detective, I don’t think any of us knows how to drive a horse and buggy.”