Whiskers of the Lion (3 page)

Wednesday, August 17

11:15
A.M.

WELL BEYOND the bounds of propriety, and significantly past all pretense to the contrary, Sheriff Bruce Robertson was indignant. Also irate, and why try to hide it? He wanted them all to know—his wife, the medical examiner; his captain of detectives; and all the patrol captains. His three detectives, and all the deputies inside and outside the jail. Everyone for miles around for that matter, Amish and English alike. The whole state of Ohio, if need be. Because murder in Holmes County was one thing, but torture/murder was quite another.

The sheriff's deepest instincts told him to charge into the investigation of this murder, but his intellect told him to wait. It told him to let his new detective bureau take the lead, and with mounting difficulty, Robertson was struggling to obey his intellect. So outside on the Helmuths' driveway, as Bobby Newell's and Missy Taggert's investigations crept forward in the farmhouse, the heavy sheriff paced beside his blue Crown Victoria, relegated to the role of an observer.

Truly, it galled Robertson to have to watch from a distance. Scuffing at the gravel of the drive, the sheriff heard himself growl, and he recognized the agitation that this morning of disengagement was causing him. He marched back to his Crown Vic, bent over to the glove compartment, and pulled out his bottle of Ativan. This was his latest prescription. Something new to address his long summer's anxiety over the failed search for Fannie Helmuth. Years before, he had taken Ativan in combination with an antidepressant. That was before he had married Melissa Taggert.

But Missy had been a blessing to him, and he hadn't needed the Ativan so much. In the years since their marriage, he had tapered off the medicine. Now, with Fannie Helmuth missing, everything had changed, and Missy had insisted that he start taking the Ativan again. For his anxiety. And a regimen of aspirin for the chest pains.

Still, the last four months had been harder on Robertson than anything he could remember, and although he grumbled about having to take the Ativan, the truth was that it cooled him out when he most needed to remain calm. He crunched one small white tablet between his back teeth, took a long pull from a bottle of water, and slammed the door on his Crown Vic, all the while watching the back corner of the house for movement.

After long and anxious minutes, the sheriff finally saw Bobby Newell come around the corner of the house, walking slowly as he made notes in a spiral pad. The captain was still dressed in his checkered golf outfit. Robertson marched immediately up to him and spouted, “Bobby, I need to get down there.”

Newell looked up from his notepad and shook his head. “No, Sheriff. We're still processing evidence.”

“Does Missy know that I want to see the body?”

“You're not the only one, Sheriff. She's telling everyone ‘no.' She's not ready.”

“Then she can send somebody up here with a report!”

The sheriff got no reply from Captain Newell other than a slow shake of his head, so as Newell returned his attention to his notepad, Robertson struggled alone to frame the argument that would get him into the basement. The argument that Missy could accept.

But Missy had said no, and Robertson knew his wife better than anyone did. There might as well be an iron gate bolted across the door to the basement steps. Nobody but Taggert and her people was going down to the body. Not until she was ready. Robertson clamped down on his ire and started again to pace on the drive. When it was apparent to Newell that Robertson would have nothing further to say, the captain returned to the kitchen at the back of the house, leaving Robertson alone again with his thoughts.

A short while later, tires crunched in the gravel behind the sheriff, and Robertson turned to see his chief deputy, Dan Wilsher, pull in behind the sheriff's Crown Vic. Wilsher climbed out into the August heat, pulled off his gray suit coat, and asked Robertson, “Why are you out here on the driveway?”

Exasperated, Robertson huffed, “Missy says I'll contaminate the scene.”

A sympathetic smile drifted across Wilsher's face. He tossed his suit coat onto the driver's seat of his car and loosened his tie. With his belly straining against his belt more than last year, Wilsher smoothed his shirt in front and took his first look at the scene outside. There was the main house—two and a half stories of white-sided solidity. There was the tall barn—painted tobacco red and faded in weathered places to rust brown. There was the little Daadihaus to the rear—an Amish tradition for farmers who had raised their families and then retired. And there was the yellow VW with its doors standing open—parked like an abandoned wreck, near the front corner of the house.

Wilsher frowned and rubbed at a nervous tic on the back of his neck. “You sure that's Howie Dent's yellow bug, Bruce?”

“Yes,” Robertson muttered. “The plates match.”

“It looks like somebody pulled it apart,” Wilsher said. “And tossed its contents out onto the driveway.”

“They did. Stan Armbruster insisted that he needed something to do. He has just cataloged and photographed everything that was in it.”

“Is Armbruster still here?”

“Went home to change. He's still
wobbly
, as Bobby puts it.”

Wilsher ignored the indignant tone of the sheriff. “OK, Bruce, do we know for certain who is dead down in the basement? Who it is that Missy is looking at?”

“It's more like ‘what it is' that Missy's looking at.”

“But is it Howie Dent?”

“Missy won't say for sure.”

“Do we have a wallet, fingerprints, anything like that?”

“Haven't found a wallet. And Missy told Bobby it'll take some time for the swelling to go down. Can't get prints just yet.”

“Once she gets him to the morgue, she can use dental records,” Wilsher said.

“Missy says that's gonna take a while.”

Then, wondering why the Ativan wasn't helping, Robertson held an uncomfortable silence beside Wilsher and rode the strong pulse in his temples. Gauging his level of anxiety to be increasing, Robertson stepped back to his sedan, crunched a second tablet of Ativan, and carried his water bottle back, to stand again beside his chief deputy. “That's Howie Dent's VW,” he complained to Wilsher. “And if it's really Howie Dent in the basement, then Fannie Helmuth is already dead.”

“You didn't find her here, did you?” Wilsher asked.

“Doesn't mean she isn't dead.”

“OK, Bruce. But if this really is Dent, his parents could identify the body. It's the best ID we could get.”

Robertson shook his head. “He was tortured, so Missy has ruled them out for an ID. She wants Mike Branden to identify the body.”

“Why Mike Branden?”

“Howie Dent was Branden's student a few years ago. She figures that if Mike can give us a more reliable identification, then that spares the Dents.”

“More reliable than what?” Wilsher asked.

“Armbruster. He's the only one who's sure that it's Dent.”

“You'd think the Dents would be here, waiting or something,” Wilsher said. “Keeping vigil.”

“Here and gone already,” Robertson said. “I had a deputy take them back to their farm. It's the next one over.”

“How bad is it in the basement, Bruce? Really.”

Robertson kicked hard at the gravel under his feet and stared angrily at the deserted farmhouse. “Missy says he was tortured with a syringe. Other than that, she really hasn't told me much.”

Wilsher acknowledged the sheriff's display of anger with a silent and awkward nod of his head. He rubbed at the nervous twinge on the back of his neck and said, “I've called in all the patrol captains, Sheriff. I've got everybody I can spare out looking for Fannie Helmuth.”

Robertson's eyes drifted to the skyline, and there was distance in his gaze. “I should have found her a long time ago, Dan.”

Wilsher stiffened. “This is not our fault, Sheriff.”

Robertson wheeled around to face his chief deputy. “It's somebody's fault, Dan!”

“Yes, but not
our
fault,” Wilsher said evenly, taking Robertson's heat and trying to quench it with reason. “Dent should never have come back here, Bruce. Not before you had the Molina crew in custody.”

Robertson took an aggressive step forward to reply, but at the end of the long drive, Professor Michael Branden pulled his small white pickup onto the gravel lane. Once he had parked, the professor came up to Robertson directly. “Any sign of Fannie?”

Robertson growled out, “No!”

Long familiar with the sheriff's intensity, Branden said only, “OK, Bruce. Where's the body?”

Robertson led the professor up to the back steps and handed him nitrile gloves and paper booties. Raising his voice over the portable generator, Robertson said, “Missy's still working on him. In the basement.”

Branden gloved himself and pulled the booties over his sandals. “I was in a meeting with the new college president. She's not happy with my status as a reserve deputy.”

“She's been there a year,” Robertson said. “You'd think she'd be used to it by now.”

“I was on sabbatical, Bruce, and we only just met. She thinks I should have come back to campus sooner.”

“When did you get back?” Robertson asked as he led the professor up the steps.

“Couple of days ago.”

“When will classes start?”

Branden said, “Week and a half.”

Robertson turned back to face the professor. “Tell her you're mine until then, Mike.”

“I don't think she'll appreciate that.”

The professor was wearing jeans and a green and white Millersburg College T-shirt. His full gray beard, trimmed close and carefully edged, made sharp contrast with his new Florida tan. His hair was still mostly brown, but it was bleached lighter from the Florida sun. It was long, parted, and combed, and it showed a little more gray at the temples than Robertson remembered from before the professor's sabbatical.

Inside the kitchen, the sheriff took Branden to the top of the basement steps. There he called down to his wife. “Mike Branden's here, Missy. I'm sending him down to give us a better ID.”

Branden stepped around the generator's electrical cables that fed down the steps, and he descended into the basement that Missy had flooded with light.

When Branden came back up, the sheriff thought he looked pale under his tan. Outside, Branden stripped off his gloves and booties and leaned back against the house. The fumes of the gasoline generator soon made him nauseated, so he rounded the corner and stood in the narrow line of noon shade between the driveway and the house.

Robertson followed Branden without comment, and the professor took a minute to speak. “Bruce, it's Howie Dent,” Branden said eventually. “I'm certain of that. I'm also certain that if you let his parents see him like that, they'll never get over it.”

Robertson punched a fist into his palm. “We should have prevented this!”

“What would you have done, Bruce? Maintained county-wide roadblocks for the last four months?”

“I don't know,” Robertson answered. “This weighs on me, Mike. It weighs on me hard.”

“Well, it shouldn't,” Branden said.

Robertson had nothing to say. Head down, he glowered silently at the gravel of the drive.

“That's Howie's VW, right?” Branden asked.

Robertson tipped a nod.

Branden continued. “But I thought he left it parked in the lot in Sugarcreek when he and Fannie Helmuth got on that bus to Sarasota.”

“He did,” Robertson said. “I impounded it for a couple of weeks, right after they disappeared. Then I sent it back to the Dents.”

“OK, but when did
Howie
get it?”

“Don't know.”

“But you sent it back to the Dents?”

Robertson straightened up a bit. “A couple of months ago.”

“Has it been at their farm all this time?”

“Yes,” Robertson said, heading immediately for his Crown Vic. He pulled the door open, sat behind the wheel, and said, “Mike, you're right. If Howie had come home for his car, they should have called me right away.”

Branden leaned in at the window. “Maybe the Dents haven't been telling you everything they know about their son.”

Robertson cranked the engine of his Crown Vic to life. More exasperated than at any other time that morning, he said to the professor, “Get in, Mike. While Missy finishes up here, I've got some new questions for Richard and Susan Dent.”

Wednesday, August 17

12:20
P.M.

IN UNIFORM, Deputy Ryan Baker ushered Sheriff Robertson and Professor Branden into the Dents' living room. Richard and Susan Dent, looking haggard and worn, came immediately forward from their kitchen. Susan Dent, thin, short, and frail, paused in the archway wringing her hands silently, as if her not asking about her son carried the power to deny his death. Richard Dent, stout and authoritative, addressed Robertson directly. “Is it really our Howie, Sheriff?”

Robertson walked past Richard Dent and took Susan's arm to escort her to a seat on the sofa. She cried out, “No!” as he seated her, seeming to deflate with the sheriff's gentle and telling gesture, losing all the stubborn hope she had managed to sustain as she had waited for official news of her son's death to arrive.

Only when Robertson had attended to her did he turn back to Richard. “Yes, Mr. Dent, I'm sorry. We think it is your son.”

Richard took the news with mechanical woodenness. Stubbornly, he asked, “How do you know?”

“We've had his photo for four months, Mr. Dent. Our Detective Armbruster identified him from that. And the professor, here, knew your son well.”

Branden held out his hand to Dent. “I am Mike Branden, Mr. Dent. Howie was my student. I am sorry for your loss.”

Stunned by the professor's words, Mrs. Dent whispered from the sofa, “He liked you, Professor. Are you certain it's Howie?”

“Yes, Mrs. Dent,” Branden said. He sat on the edge of the sofa beside her. “He doesn't look good right now, but I'm certain that it's Howie.”

Susan Dent held her head in her hands and wept. Robertson waited a discreet moment and then said to Richard, “Mr. Dent, can you tell us if Howie has a doctor in Millersburg? Or a dentist?”

“Why?” Susan asked, standing abruptly. Branden stood beside her, worried that she might fold.

Robertson turned back to face her. “We would want dental X-rays, Mrs. Dent. For comparison.”

“So, you're not really certain,” Richard Dent asserted. “You're just guessing.”

Branden shook his head but didn't speak. Robertson said to Richard, “We just want to be thorough, Mr. Dent.”

Susan stepped toward the sheriff and pleaded, “I want to see him.”

“Susan, really,” Richard said, sounding reproachful.

“Please, Richard,” she answered him. “We need to see him. Then we'll know.”

“Mrs. Dent,” Robertson said. “You shouldn't see him right now. Not like this.”

Susan Dent retreated and sank again onto the sofa. Branden moved some newspaper clippings off the sofa and onto the coffee table so that he could sit beside her.

Robertson motioned Richard Dent to a soft chair at the end of the coffee table and asked, “Please, Mr. Dent. Can you take a seat?” Over his shoulder, he asked Baker, “Ryan, can you get the Dents some water?” and Baker stepped back to the kitchen.

Richard Dent dropped wearily into the chair, and Robertson pulled a wooden chair in from the dining room table. By the time they were all seated, Baker returned with two glasses of water, and Robertson directed Baker back outside, saying, “Get pizzas and drinks out to the Helmuths' farm, Ryan.” Baker pulled his phone and went out through the door to make his calls from the front porch.

Susan Dent stared blankly at her glass of water. Richard Dent set his glass on a side table and pressed the sheriff, “When can we see him?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Robertson said.

“Because he'll look better by then?” Susan whispered.

“I think so,” Robertson said. “The ME says there are some puncture wounds and a lot of swelling.”

“Is he just lying in that basement?” Richard demanded.

“No, Mr. Dent,” Branden said. “He was strapped to a post. He's standing upright.”

“Did he die that way?” Dent demanded of the professor.

“Yes, I think so,” Branden said. “I think he died there, and they just left him.”

Susan groaned and sank back against the sofa cushions. She dropped her glass of water, and it spilled across her dress. She seemed to take no notice of it. She pushed forward slowly as if caught in a dream. She took the newspaper clippings from the coffee table, and she sat clutching them to her breast as if they held something precious to her. As if there were something in them that was more fragile even than her tenuous hold on reality.

Richard Dent then addressed Robertson. “Who's gonna decide when we can see our son, Sheriff?”

Robertson moved to the edge of his chair. “Mr. Dent,” he asked, “do you know where Fannie Helmuth is?”

“No. Is this about her?”

“I think you know it is, Mr. Dent.”

“Well, we don't know where she is.”

“Were Fannie and Howie
involved
?” Robertson asked.

“You mean like lovers?”

“Yes.”

“Howie was sweet on her when they were younger. But she made it plain that he'd have to convert to Amish. So, no. They weren't
involved
.”

“But they were good friends.”

“Very good friends, Sheriff. Maybe more special than lovers would be. Seems to me that's what got Howie killed. So I want to know. Was our son tortured?”

“Yes, Mr. Dent,” Robertson said carefully. “We think he was.”

Next to Branden on the sofa, Susan Dent groaned mournfully with her eyes closed. She clamped her newspaper clippings to her breast, rocking in place as if she were holding an ailing child.

Richard Dent ignored her and asked Robertson, “Why? Why would someone kill him like that?”

“You know they've been hunting for Fannie, Mr. Dent. I've explained this to you many times since April. They'd kill her, too, if they could find her.”

“Your Deputy Armbruster has pestered us all summer,” Dent complained. “Like we'd somehow
magically
be able to tell you where to find them.”

“I thought you might have gotten a letter or a phone call.”

“Well, we haven't.”

Robertson pressed forward carefully. “I'm not trying to make you angry, Richard, but I think your son was tortured so that he would tell them where Fannie is.”

Dent closed his eyes and shook his head. As if drained of all strength, he whispered, “They were best friends. He would never have told them where she is. He never would have told them. So that's the reason he's dead.”

Professor Branden returned from the kitchen with a new glass of water for Mrs. Dent. He set it on the coffee table in front of her, and he sat at the opposite end of the coffee table from Richard Dent. Catching Robertson's eye, he asked Dent, “When did Howie get his car, Mr. Dent?”

Sullenly, Dent muttered, “Night before last. Monday night some time.”

“But was it evening or night?” Branden asked.

“Night. We were asleep.”

“Did he wake you up?”

“No. We just saw that his car was gone the next morning.”

“Why did you assume that he was the one who had taken it?”

“Who else?”

Branden shrugged, and Robertson said, “You might have thought it was stolen, Mr. Dent.”

Dent shook his head with certainty. “He came inside and got his spare keys from the back porch.”

Robertson stood. “Anyone could have taken the keys, Richard.”

Again Dent shook his head. He stood and led the men through the kitchen and out to the back porch. Behind a battered hutch with tall shelves that held canned goods and old magazines, he reached in with his hand and said, “See for yourselves. Other than us, Howie is the only person who knew where we hid the spare keys.”

Robertson took Dent's place beside the hutch and felt blindly behind the shelves. “A nail for the keys,” he said to Branden, and he withdrew his hand.

Back in the living room, the three men stopped near the front door. Taking a sterner tone, Robertson asked Dent, “If you knew yesterday morning that your son had come for his car in the night, why didn't you report that to us immediately?”

“Why?” Dent huffed. “It's his car.”

“Because we would have gone out looking for him,” Robertson said with a mix of consternation and surprise.

Still clutching her clippings, Susan Dent stood up from the couch. “What? What about looking?”

Robertson turned to her. “If you had told us Howie was back in Holmes County, we would have looked for him, Mrs. Dent. Maybe we could have found him first.”

Stricken, Susan Dent looked first to Robertson and then to her husband. With tears spilling out onto her cheeks, she shrieked at Richard, “We killed our own son!” and then she stabbed a finger at him and cried out, “You should have told them!”

Fighting a rush of anger, Richard Dent turned on the sheriff. “Just what makes you think you could have found Howie before these people did? You haven't been able to find anyone. You've had four months!”

“We could have tried,” Robertson said. “We might have had a chance, here. If we had known he had come home.”

Overwhelmed with grief, Susan doubled at the waist and dropped her clippings onto the carpet. Richard Dent went to her, but she pushed him away and sank to her knees. He looked impotently to Branden and then to Robertson, and said, “These clippings are from the
Budget
.” He tried to lift his wife to her feet.

She refused his efforts, choosing instead to lie weeping on the carpet between the sofa and the coffee table. Richard stood with a bewildered vacancy in his eyes and muttered, “She thinks she sees messages in the
Budget
.”

 • • • 

When they drove back toward the Helmuth farm, Robertson and Branden left Deputy Baker to tend to Mr. and Mrs. Dent. Branden briefly read some of the clippings as Robertson drove, and he said to the sheriff, “What have you tried, Bruce? To locate these two.”

“Nothing that worked,” Robertson said as he pulled into the Helmuth drive.

“But what?” Branden insisted.

Rolling toward the house, Robertson answered, “Greyhound bus records, credit cards, Howie's phone records. Plus road patrols in Holmes County, places they might go, like motels and restaurants. And Ricky made a couple of trips down to Memphis, to try to trace them after they got off the bus from Charlotte.”

As Robertson pulled up at the back of the house, Branden asked, “Do you have a likeness of Fannie?”

Robertson and Branden got out, and Robertson said over the top of his Crown Vic, “We put together a composite sketch. It looks just like her.”

Branden followed Robertson to the back door, where the cables from the gasoline generator snaked up the steps into the house. Robertson hesitated there as if perplexed.

So they could talk above the growl of the generator, Branden pulled the sheriff back twenty yards toward the barn and said, “We're going to have to do better, Bruce. Finding Fannie Helmuth has got to be the first priority, now.”

Robertson kicked angrily at the gravel where they stood and said, “I should have anticipated this, Mike.”

“And what would you have done?” Branden asked. “Shown their pictures to everyone who enters Holmes County?”

“Something like that.”

“No. This is on the Dents, Bruce.”

Robertson glowered pent-up frustration at his friend. “It's on me, Mike! I have to take the weight, here.”

Branden smiled a degree of concession, and Robertson spun away from him to walk off several paces toward the tall red barn. Branden followed and said, “OK, Bruce, you take the weight. But listen. Just listen.”

Robertson stopped and turned back on the wet gravel to face the professor with a menacing scowl, looking for all the world as if what he needed most right then was a purging fistfight.

The skies were overcast again, and a light rain began to fall. Robertson held to his exposed position, refusing to surrender any ground to Branden's attempts at encouragement.

Branden held up a warding palm, stepped five more paces to gain shelter inside the barn, and turned back toward Robertson. “You've been on this for four months, Sheriff. How'd
they
find him in a single day?”

Some of the antagonism bled out of Robertson's gaze. He joined Branden inside the barn, and the rain fell harder outside. “What do you mean?” the sheriff asked over the clatter of the rain on the barn's metal roof.

Branden stepped closer. “Could the Molina crew have known exactly what day out of the last four months to come back here looking for Dent?”

“Too much of a coincidence,” Robertson sputtered.

“OK,” Branden continued. “Could the Molina crew have been here all along, looking for Dent right beside you? In your county, Bruce? Right under your nose, and you didn't notice them?”

“We'd have noticed,” Robertson allowed as he lumbered out of his wet suit coat. “Somebody would have noticed them.”

Branden nodded. “And could the Molina crew have camped unnoticed out here at the farm, anticipating that this was the one place where Howie would eventually show up?”

Robertson started pacing a circle inside the barn, thinking new thoughts. To let the sheriff think, Branden stood to the side. When Robertson stopped pacing, Branden asked, “Do you see it?”

Robertson punched his palm. He faced Branden briefly and then with a smile, as if he were experiencing a degree of optimism for the first time that morning, he turned in place to face the big house.

When he turned back to the professor, he was purposefully composed. “OK, Mike. This changes it all around. I need to tell Missy. She might find something along these lines anyway, but I need to tell her while she's still processing the basement.”

Then the sheriff marched across the gravel in the rain and climbed the block steps leading into the back of the house.

Before Robertson disappeared inside, Branden called after him from the barn. “Bruce, I'm going to read more of those clippings.”