A few feet away, the four Amish children huddle, their eyes filled with hope that the Englischers and all their high-tech rescue equipment will save their mamm and datt. I see faith on their young faces, and my heart breaks, because I know faith often goes unrewarded.
“You look like you could use some air.”
I turn, to see Officer Rupert “Glock” Maddox standing a few feet away, looking at me as if I’m a dog that’s just been hit by a car—a badly injured dog that might bite if touched. I have no idea how he got here so quickly; he doesn’t come on duty until 8:00 A.M. It doesn’t matter; I’m just glad he’s here.
“She’s gone,” I say.
“You did your best.”
“Tell those kids that.”
Grimacing, he crosses to me. “Let’s get some air.”
Glock isn’t a touchy-feely kind of guy. I’ve worked with him for two and a half years now, and I can count on two fingers the number of intimate conversations we’ve had. It surprises me when he takes my arm.
“Goddamn it,” I mutter.
“Yeah.” It’s all he says, but it’s enough. He gets it. He gets me. It’s enough.
He ushers me through the main part of the barn. It’s not until I step outside that I realize I’m woozy. Though the barn doors and windows have been thrown open wide, there’s not much of a cross breeze, and the air inside is polluted with an unpleasant mix of ammonia and stink. Not to mention all those nasty gases. I’ve been inside only for ten minutes or so, but I can already feel the effects. A headache taps at my forehead from inside my skull.
For a full minute, I do nothing but stand in the rain and snow and breathe in the clean, cold air. It feels good, like cool water on heated skin. After a minute or so, I look at Glock. “I’m okay.”
“I know you are.” Sighing, he shoots a glance in the direction of the barn. “Tough scene.”
I think of the kids, and a lead weight of dread drops into my stomach. “Worst is yet to come.”
“You want me to give you a hand with their statements?”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“We going to do it here?”
I look around. We’re standing twenty feet from the barn. Around us, emergency workers—paramedics and firefighters—move in and out of the big door. The strobe lights of a fire truck and two ambulances from Pomerene Hospital glare off the facade. To my right, the pretty white farmhouse looks cold and empty. The windows are dark, as if some internal light has been permanently extinguished.
“We’ll do it in the house. The kids’ll be more comfortable there. They’ll need to eat something.” I know it seems mundane, but even in the face of death, people need to eat. “I’ll call Bishop Troyer to be here with them.”
If Glock is surprised by my response, he doesn’t show it. I don’t have a maternal bone in my body, but I’m feeling protective of these kids. All children are innocent, but Amish youngsters possess a certain kind of innocence. They have further to fall when that innocence is shattered. I was fourteen years old when fate introduced me to tragedy. I know what it feels like to be abruptly plunged into a world that is so far removed from the only one you’ve ever known.
I glance toward the barn and see Pickles and the four kids standing outside the big door. Firefighters and EMTs pass by them without notice. The last thing I want to do is question them about the horrors they witnessed, but as is the case with most of the curveballs life throws at us with indiscriminate glee, I don’t have a choice.
CHAPTER 3
Ten minutes later, I’m standing in the big Amish kitchen with Glock and Pickles. The four children sit at the heavy wood table, their pale faces lit by the flickering kerosene lamp. The house is warm inside and smells of hot lard and lamp oil.
I take a few minutes to light a second lantern on the counter next to the sink. A lifetime ago, the dim lighting wouldn’t have bothered me. Up until I was in my late teens, it was all I’d ever known. This morning, the lack of fluorescent bulbs makes me feel half-blind.
An old-fashioned kerosene stove next to the sink is still hot from earlier this morning. On its top, a cast-iron skillet filled with scrapple, an Amish breakfast staple, sits in a bed of cooling, thickening lard. On the table, the remnants of a breakfast left unfinished sits cold. I see a basket of bread and a small bowl filled with apple butter. A pitcher of milk, fresh, probably. Seven plates. Seven glasses. Three cups for coffee.
I move the cast-iron skillet onto a hot burner to warm it; then I go to the table. I feel Glock’s and Pickles’ eyes on me as I pour milk into four glasses. It’s a strange role for me, but I’m compelled to play it. I place a slice of bread in front of each child. Bread that I know was baked by their mother just a day or two before. A mother who will never make breakfast for her children again.
The kids are probably too upset to eat, but I serve the warmed scrapple anyway. When I run out of things to do, I sit down at the table and fold my hands in front of me. “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents,” I begin.
The youngest child, a boy I guess to be about ten years old, looks at me. “Is Mamm coming?” he asks.
“I’m sorry, but your mamm and datt passed away.” Because I’m not sure if he understands the expression, I add, “They’re with God now.”
“But I saw you save her. I saw you.”
“I couldn’t save her. I’m sorry.”
The boy looks down at his plate and begins to cry. “I want my mamm.”
“I know you do, honey.” Reaching across the table, I pat his hand. It’s small and soft and cold beneath mine. Feeling helpless and inept, I turn my attention to the eldest boy. He stares back at me. I see defiance in his eyes, and I wonder if he’s trying to defy death or maybe deny his own grief. “What are your names?” I ask.
“I’m Salome.” The girl sitting across from me is in her mid-teens, with mouse brown hair and a pale complexion mottled pink from crying. Her eyes are forest green and skitter away from mine when I look at her. She’s the only one who has picked up her fork and sampled the scrapple.
I give her a nod, then I turn my attention to the boy sitting next to her.
“I’m Samuel,” he says.
“How old are you, Samuel?” I ask.
“Twelve.”
I give him a smile I hope looks real, then I look at the youngest child, who’s sitting two chairs over from me. He’s a blond-haired boy with blunt-cut bangs and a sprinkling of freckles across a turned-up nose. “How about you?”
“I’m Ike and I’m ten.” The words are barely out when he lowers his face into his pudgy hands and bursts into tears. “I want my mamm.”
I feel like crying, too, but of course I can’t. That kind of emotion is as contagious as any virus, and I can’t afford to allow it into my psyche. Instead, I touch Ike’s shoulder and then look across the table at the eldest boy. “What’s your name?”
“Moses, but they call me Mose.”
He’s a tall, thin boy with greasy blond hair and patches of bright pink acne on both cheeks. But any hint of teenaged homeliness ends there. His eyes are crystalline blue beneath blunt-cut bangs. I see the unmistakable glint of intelligence in those eyes, and I know he’s smart enough to realize that all of their lives are about to change in a very profound way.
“How old are you, Mose?”
“I am a man.” His voice cracks, belying the words, and he sits up a little straighter. “I’m seventeen.”
“My name’s Kate. I’m the chief of police, and I need to ask you some questions about what happened.” No one says anything. No one looks at me. “What are your parents’ names?”
After a moment, Mose raises his eyes to mine. “Datt is Solomon, but they call him Solly. Mamm’s name is Rachael.”
“And the other man?”
“Our uncle, Abel.”
“Last name Slabaugh?”
“Ja. He’s visiting from Lancaster County.”
I feel ancient as I look from young face to young face. I
nnocent kids whose lives, until now, have been untouched and undamaged by the ravages life can sometimes inflict. My gaze stops on Mose and I say, “I need for you to tell me what happened this morning.”
His eyes go to the plate of untouched food in front of him and for a moment he looks as if he’s going to throw up. He takes a full minute to gather himself, then speaks to me without looking up. “Datt and Uncle Abel were feeding the hogs and cleaning the pens. Mamm and the rest of us were in the house. She sent Samuel out to fetch Datt so we could say our before-meal prayer and eat breakfast.” He closes his eyes briefly. “Samuel came back screaming.”
I turn my attention to Samuel. “What happened?” I ask gently.
The boy looks down at his plate. From where I sit, I can see that his hands are dirty and scabbed, with short, bitten nails. Typical boy hands. Amish hands that work and play in equal measure. “Datt and Uncle Abel were in the pit. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Were they awake?”
Samuel looks at Mose. Mose gives him a nod, which seems to bolster the boy. Samuel meets my gaze, then his face screws up. “Ja. Datt couldn’t speak. But Uncle Abel … he yelled for me to get help.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran to the house to get Mamm.”
I nod, trying not to imagine the horror of that. I look at Mose. “Then what happened?”
“We ran to the barn to help them,” he replies.
“Who ran to the barn?”
“All of us. Mamm. My brothers and sister.”
“How did your mamm get into the pit?”
Little Ike rubs his eyes with small, dirty fists. “She tried to save Datt.”
Mose cuts in. “She lay down on the concrete, right in all that muck, and tried to get Datt to take her hand. She was screaming for him to wake up, but he wouldn’t. She tried to save Uncle Abel, but he fell asleep, too. Mamm started to cry. She was too close to the edge and fell into the pit.”
In the back of my mind, I wonder if she succumbed to the gases emanating from the manure and fell unconscious. “What did you do when your mamm fell in?”
“We were scared. It was like a bad dream. Too bad to really be happening.” Mose lifts a shoulder and lets it drop. “I knew the air was bad, so we opened the door. We yelled at Mamm, tried to wake her up, but she wouldn’t. The children were crying.” He looks at his younger brother. “That’s when I decided to bridle the horse and sent Samuel to Bishop Troyer’s house for help. The bishop has a telephone.”
“What did you do after Samuel left?”
“I kept trying to get Mamm and Datt and Uncle Abel out of the pit. I tried to use the hose, you know, as a rope.”
I recall seeing the hose lying on the concrete, and I nod. “Were any of them conscious at that point?”
Salome cuts in, tears streaming down her cheeks. “They wouldn’t wake up. We yelled and yelled, but we couldn’t get them to wake up.”
“Why wouldn’t they wake up?” Ike whines.
I glance over at the boy. Generally speaking, I’ve found Amish children to be slightly more stoic than their English counterparts. But kids are kids, regardless of culture. Most are unequipped to handle this kind of situation. Some grief is simply too heavy a load for such a young heart to bear. “It’s the gases that made them sleepy,” I say.
“I want my mamm!” Ike cries. “I want her back. Why couldn’t she just wake up? Why couldn’t you save her?”
The accusation in his voice hits me like a slap. I know it’s only the grief talking. Still, I can’t deny there is a part of me that feels guilty for not being able to save them.
Salome gets up from her place and goes to the boy. The sight of her setting her slender hands on his bony, shaking shoulders, and pressing her face against his cheek is so heart-wrenching that I have to look away. “Shush now, Ike,” she coos. “Mamm and Datt are with God now. Remember that when your heart hurts for them.”
The back door creaks open. I turn in my chair, to see my youngest officer, T. J. Banks, peek his head in. “Coroner is here, Chief.”
I’d hoped Bishop Troyer would arrive before I had to leave the children to deal with the coroner. The bishop’s farm is only a couple of miles away, but he’s getting on in years and it takes time to harness and hitch a horse and cover that much distance. I look at T. J. “Can you stay with the kids until Bishop Troyer gets here?”
“Uh … sure.” He eyes the four youngsters with trepidation as he sidles into the kitchen.
I motion for Glock and Pickles to follow me and we head toward the barn. I’m midway there when I spot the coroner, Dr. Ludwig Coblentz, sliding out of his Escalade. Large medical bag in hand, he waits for me to approach.
“I was hoping your dispatcher had somehow gotten the call wrong,” he says when I reach him. “I can tell by the look on your face that’s not the case.”
“I wish it was.” I motion toward the house. “There are four kids inside who will never see their parents again.”
“Kind of thing that makes you question just how benevolent God is sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“Makes me question a lot of things.” Like why I’m still a cop when the last two cases I’ve worked have taken such a heavy toll. Don’t get me wrong; I love what I do. I’m an idealist at heart, and I love the idea of making a difference. But it seldom works out that way, and it’s not the first time I’ve questioned if I’m cut out for the job.
We pass by two firefighters when we enter the barn. The rotten-egg and ammonia stench has dwindled, but it’s still strong enough to make my eyes water. Twenty-five feet away, in a concrete-floored pen, a young paramedic stands near the three bodies, scribbling furiously on a clipboard. He looks up when we approach and greets us with a tight smile. “We figured you’d want to do a quick field exam before we bag and transport,” he says to the coroner.
“Thank you.” Doc Coblentz goes directly to the nearest body, that of Rachael Slabaugh, and kneels. Pickles, Glock, and I stop several feet away to let the doctor do his work. I haven’t smoked for a couple of months now, but it’s moments like this when I want a cigarette most.
“Hell of a way to go,” Pickles mumbles.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Glock shakes his head. “Death by shit.”
The older man nods in solemn agreement. “It’s almost worse when it’s an accident. No one to blame.”
“No one to shoot.” Glock offers a grim smile. “Makes it even more senseless.”
Nodding in agreement, Pickles looks at me. “Seems pretty cut-and-dried, don’t it, Chief?”
I nod. “Kids’ statements are consistent with an accident.” I watch Doc Coblentz move from body to body. Using the stethoscope, he checks for vitals. Because the cause of death is evidently accidental, he forgoes the kind of thorough preliminary field exam a murder would warrant, such as ascertaining body temperature to help pinpoint the time of death. I know he’ll take a core liver temp for his final report once he gets the bodies to the hospital morgue. Because the deaths were unattended, he’s required by law to perform autopsies, which will tell us the cause and manner of death. In this case, the cause is either asphyxiation or drowning; the manner is accidental.
I force my gaze to the nearest victim. Rachael Slabaugh was in her mid-thirties. An Amish mother of four. She’d once been pretty, but in death her face has a blue-white cast that lends her a ghostly countenance. Her left eyelid has come open halfway, and the cloudy white of her eyeball is stained with a coffee-colored film. Her mouth hangs open. Glancing inside, I see the dark mass of a tongue and teeth colored brown from muck. She wears a green dress, an organdy kapp, and an apron that had once been white. The dress is twisted at an uncomfortable-looking angle, and I have to resist the urge to go to her to straighten it.
Her husband lies next to her. I estimate Solomon Slabaugh to be about forty years old. He wears dark trousers with a blue work shirt and suspenders. His full beard is clotted with solids from the pit. At some point during the retrieval o
f his body, the insulated jacket came off one of his shoulders. No one bothered to right it, so his left arm is twisted and slightly beneath him.
I guess Abel Slabaugh to be the younger of the two brothers. His lack of a beard tells me he is unmarried. He wears brown trousers with suspenders, a blue work shirt, and insulated coveralls. I’m sure he’d been wearing work boots as well, but they are nowhere to be seen. I imagine them sliding off his feet as he was pulled from the pit.
The three bodies are a horrific sight to behold as they shimmer wetly beneath the glare of the emergency work lights set up by the fire department volunteers. A lot of stomachs couldn’t handle it, but you get used to things in my line of work. My thoughts drift to the four orphans, and I wonder if they have relatives to take them in. If they don’t, I know there are dozens of Amish families in the church district that would be more than happy to open their homes and hearts. I’m obligated to contact Children Services, but I know this is one of many instances where the Amish will go above and beyond the call of duty.
“Chief Burkholder.”
Doc Coblentz’s voice pulls me from my thoughts. I start toward him as he stands and snaps off a pair of latex gloves. “It’s a damn shame.”
I stop a few feet away from him. Neither of us looks at the bodies. “You’ll autopsy all three victims?”
He nods, grimaces. “My schedule’s pretty clear, so I should be able to start this afternoon.”
I want to say, “Good,” but this is so far from good, I can’t manage the word. For a moment, the only sound comes from the rumble of the generator, the buzz of work lights, and the occasional grunt from the hogs in a nearby pen.
“Do they have next of kin?” the doctor asks.
“I’ll check with Bishop Troyer. Notify them as soon as possible.”
“I don’t envy you that part of your job.”
Notifying next of kin is undoubtedly one of the most difficult aspects of being chief. But I’ve always thought cutting into a dead body would be worse. This morning, I’m not so sure. “Will you fax your reports over when they’re finished?”