CHAPTER 6
I’m still thinking about the children when I climb into the Explorer, bag the mason jar, and start down the gravel lane. Their pain is palpable, and my meeting with them has left me feeling uncharacteristically bleak. Maybe it’s because I know that even if I solve the case—and I have every intention of doing so—it won’t bring back their parents. No matter what I do, three lives have been lost forever. Four other young lives have been irrevocably changed. This is one of those times when justice will make for a very cold bedfellow.
A cast-iron sky spits sleet pellets against the windshield as I turn onto the township road and head toward town. I flip on the wipers and defroster, then grab my cell and dial T.J.
“Hey, Chief, what’s up?”
I tell him about the day laborer and the missing cash. “I want you to recanvass the farms around the Slabaugh place. Find out if anyone remembers seeing someone. See if you can come up with a name.”
“Will do.”
“One of the men who worked for Slabaugh supposedly had a white dog with him. Ask about that, too. Can you give Skid a call and get him out to the Slabaugh place? I want him to look around for any kind of records Solly Slabaugh might have kept. If we can get the names of the men he hired, we might catch a break.”
“Sure thing.” T.J. pauses. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way to the station.” I ring off and dial the switchboard.
My daytime dispatcher, Lois, answers with a high-speed utterance: “Painters Mill PD!”
“You sound busy,” I say.
“That’s kind of an understatement, Chief. Phones are ringing off the dang hook. Folks asking about the Slabaughs.”
I know from experience that the volume of calls will double once word gets out that we may be dealing with a triple murder. “Media catch wind of it yet?”
“Steve Ressler has called a couple of times, looking for you. Columbus Dispatch is sending a reporter. Ohio Farm Journal is going to do a piece on the dangers of methane gas. And a couple of radio stations have called.”
Ressler is the publisher of Painters Mill’s weekly newspaper, the Advocate. He’s a pushy, type-A bully who has a difficult time accepting the words no comment. “Tell them I’ll have a press release this afternoon.”
“Sure thing.”
“Patch me through to Pickles, will you?”
“Yup. Hang on.”
A click sounds and then Pickles growls his name. That’s when I remember he covered for Skid last night and probably hasn’t slept for twenty-four hours. “You feel up to a little overtime?” I ask.
“I don’t think it will kill me,” he replies.
I’m glad to hear the humor in his voice. We’re going to need all the humor we can muster in the coming days. “I need you to run Adam Slabaugh’s name through LEADS for me.” LEADS is the acronym for the law enforcement automated data system police departments used to check for outstanding warrants.
“That’s a mighty interesting request, since this was an accident.”
“Doc Coblentz is pretty sure it wasn’t.”
“I’ll be damned.” I hear computer keys clicking. “You on your way in?”
“I’m almost there.”
A few minutes later, I pull into my reserved spot next to Lois’s Cadillac. I push through the front door and see her at her workstation, the phone pasted to her ear. She pirouettes in her chair and shoves a handful of message slips at me. “You’ve got two messages from Sheriff Rasmussen. John Tomasetti called twice. And Pickles wants to talk to you.”
A small thrill runs the length of me at the mention of Tomasetti, but I quickly tamp it down. I’m not accustomed to the feeling, and it unsettles me. It’s been a couple of months since I last saw him. I’ve been thinking about calling him, but I always find a reason not to. I’m sure some shrink would tell me I have commitment issues. He would probably be right. I warned Tomasetti that a relationship with me wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. He doesn’t seem to mind, so things have worked out just fine so far.
I take the messages from Lois, shuffle through them, decide to call Rasmussen first. He’s the interim sheriff for Holmes County, appointed last year after former sheriff Nathan Detrick tried to kill me during the Slaughterhouse Killer investigation. He’s serving a life sentence in the Mansfield Correctional Institution, about eighty miles southwest of Cleveland. A good place for a man who tortured and killed over twenty women.
I’ve met Sheriff Rasmussen several times since he was appointed. A former sheriff’s deputy from Canton, he’s low-key and no-nonsense, two personality traits I greatly admire, especially when it comes to small-town politics. City and county law-enforcement agencies work together closely here in Painters Mill. The sheriff’s office has a small budget and pretty much runs on a skeleton crew. We pick up the slack, taking county as well as city calls. I’m wondering what prompted two phone calls in one day as I shrug out of my coat and head toward my office.
I get Rasmussen’s voice mail and leave my cell number. Without hanging up, I dial Tomasetti. I get voice mail there, too, so I leave a message. Sighing, I vaguely wonder if they’re talking to each other. After checking e-mail, I snag my coat and head toward Pickles’ cubicle. I catch him coming out, a cup of coffee in hand. “Anything on Slabaugh?” I can tell by his expression that he found something.
“Two years ago, Adam Slabaugh was arrested on a domestic.”
“Well, that’s interesting. Conviction?”
“Charges were dropped.”
“Who was the complainant?”
Pickles offers a “cat that swallowed the canary” grin. “Solomon Slabaugh.”
“Nice work,” I say, but my mind is racing. “Want to go talk to him?”
“I’m game.”
Pickles ducks back into his cubicle, sets his cup on the desk, and grabs his parka. We’re on our way to the door when Lois stands up and raises her hand like a traffic cop. “Whoa!”
Pickles and I simultaneously stop and turn.
Giving us the hand signal to wait, she finishes her call and disconnects. “Chief, I just took a call from Ricky Shingle. He was out on Sampson Road and saw a buggy on fire and a runaway horse.”
The first scenario that comes to mind is a spilled kerosene heater or lantern. “Anyone hurt?”
“He didn’t know.”
“Where on Sampson Road?”
“At the Painters Creek bridge.”
“Call the fire department. Get an ambulance out there, too. We’re on our way.” I look at Pickles. “I think Adam Slabaugh can wait.”
“Me, too, Chief. Me, too.”
* * *
Dusk has fallen by the time we turn onto Sampson Road. It’s a little-used dirt track that runs parallel to Painters Creek, crossing over the stream twice and then snaking north through a heavily wooded area that’s prone to flooding in the spring.
Only one Amish family lives out this way, so I head directly to the Kaufman farm. I’ve met Mark and Liza Kaufman a handful of times over the years. They’re a quiet couple with three teenage children. They’re of the Old Order, devout, and they tend to avoid contact with the English as much as possible.
I don’t have to go far to find what I’m looking for. At the mouth of the gravel lane, the charred remains of a four-wheel buggy on its side are smoldering in the bar ditch like a pile of firewood. A plume of gray-black smoke billows into the cold air. A few yards away, several Amish people stare at my vehicle as if I’m there to cart them off to jail.
“This ought to be interesting,” Pickles remarks.
“That’s one word for it.” Hitting the emergency lights, I park the Explorer on the shoulder and we get out.
“How in the hell would a buggy catch on fire?” Pickles grumbles as we start toward the group.
“Maybe a lantern or heater tipped over.” But I don’t think that’s what happened. Most Amish know all too well the dangers of fire and are cautious when handling flame or any kind of ac
celerant.
Winter-dead trees curl over the gravel lane like curved, arthritic fingers. In the distance, I hear the sirens of the fire department. I walk around a dozen or more hoof marks that are sunk deeply into the muddy ground—the kind of mark a terrified horse might make while trying to escape danger. I find myself hoping no one was seriously injured.
“Mr. Kaufman?” I call out when I’m a few yards from the group. “Is everyone okay?”
Mark Kaufman is a stern-looking man with shrewd, intelligent eyes and an angular face, which gives him a gaunt countenance. His steel-wool beard reaches nearly to his belt. He wears a black coat, a straw hat, and black work trousers. He stares at me with unconcealed displeasure as I approach.
“Is anyone hurt?” I ask, rephrasing my question.
When Kaufman doesn’t answer, I look past him and make eye contact with his wife. Liza Kaufman looks to be ten or fifteen years younger than her husband. Clad in black winter clothes, she’s a petite woman with anxious eyes and quick, nervous hands. She looks away, and I sigh.
I turn my attention back to Mark. “I got a call that there was an accident.”
“We do not need the English police,” he states.
“I need to know if anyone was hurt,” I repeat.
“No.” He bows his head. “We are fine.”
“Chief, I’ve got blood here.”
I turn at the sound of Pickles’s voice and see him kneeling in the grass next to the gravel lane. I cross to him and look down at the area he’s indicated. Sure enough, a dinner plate-size puddle of blood shimmers bright red against the yellow winter grass.
“Horse, maybe?” he asks.
I’m no expert on horses, but I spent a quite a bit of time around them as a girl. I know if the animal was scared, it was probably moving too fast to leave a puddle of blood that size. I look at Kaufman. “If someone got hurt here, they should get themselves checked out. There’s an ambulance on the way.”
“We do not need anything from you,” Kaufman says. “We are fine.”
Shaking my head, I cross to the buggy—what’s left of it. It was originally black, with four wheels and a covered top. Not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. I can see where the harness leather snapped. The right shaft is broken as well, and I imagine the panicked horse, running full out, must have fallen at some point, struggled to its feet, and then broken free.
“Looks like a total loss.” Pickles whistles. “I wonder if the horse got hurt.”
“Probably ran up to the barn. That’s what they do when they’re scared.”
Pickles picks up a good-size stick, begins poking around in the pile of smoldering wood and ash.
The crunch of tires on gravel drags my attention away from the wreckage. I turn to see a young man get out of a newish Ford Ranger pickup truck. He’s thin, with long hair, buckteeth, and toothpick legs. “Everyone okay?” he asks me.
“Are you the one who called 911?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am.” He crosses to me and looks down at what’s left of the smoldering buggy. “Damnedest thing I ever saw in my life.”
“Did you see it happen?”
“Alls I seen was this crazy horse running down the road. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that buggy. I swear to Jesus, flames was shooting twenty feet in the air. There was a couple of Amish folks in the buggy. They was yelling their heads off, and I knew straight away they was in trouble.”
“Did you see it catch fire?”
He shakes his head. “It was already on fire and going pretty good when I saw it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ricky Shingle. I live a couple miles down the road. I was on my way to work.”
“Did you see anyone else?”
“I don’t know if they was part of it, but a couple of young guys in a pickup truck just about ran me off the road.”
My cop’s radar goes on alert. “What direction were they going?”
“Same as the buggy, and they was movin’ fast. They was left of center and, I swear to Jesus, I’d be wearing their teeth in my forehead if I hadn’t driven into the ditch. Crazy shits. Probably high on whatever it is them youngins get high on these days.”
“Chief!”
I look over my shoulder and see Pickles holding up the stick. On its tip, I see something that looks like the broken mouth of a mason jar. “Molotov cocktail, anyone?” he says.
Only then does the implication strike me. Never taking my eyes from the jar, I cross to Pickles for a closer look. “You sure?” I ask.
“I seen enough of ’em in my day.” He hefts the stick, brings the broken jar closer. “Fill it with gas. Use a piece of fabric for a fuse. Screw on the lid.” He shrugs. “Crude, but effective as hell. I betcha one of them young guys threw it into that buggy.”
The images that rush through my brain are vivid and disturbing. Outrage rattles through me. I spin back to Shingle. “Did you get a look at the young guys?”
He shakes his head. “Not really. They was just a couple of guys.”
“Can you give me a description? Hair? Clothes?”
“Didn’t really get a good look.”
Pulling my pad from my pocket, I write, “Two Caucasian males. Young.” “What about the vehicle?”
“A truck. Ford, I think. Blue. Or black, maybe. Didn’t really get a good look at it. I couldn’t take my eyes off that damn buggy. Thought the horse was going to go right through the fence.”
I hit my lapel mike, then think better of it and grab my cell. This is one of those times when I wish I had more officers. At the moment, every member of my force is tied up with the Slabaugh case. I hit the speed dial for the station. “Lois, call the sheriff’s office and tell them we need extra patrols out on Sampson Road. A couple of guys tossed a Molotov cocktail into a buggy.”
“Roger that, Chief.”
“Tell them to be on the lookout for a dark pickup truck. Possibly a Ford with two white males inside.”
“You got it.”
Sighing in frustration, I hit END and cross to Pickles. “Get a statement from Shingle. I’m going to see if I can get Kaufman to talk to me.”
Pickles gives me a knowing look. “Good luck with that.”
We both know Kaufman isn’t going to cooperate. The Amish are sectarian and strive to remain separate from the rest of the world. Having grown up Amish, it’s a mind-set I understand. As a cop, the lack of cooperation frustrates me to no end.
I walk over to Kaufman. “What happened?”
“We do not want your help,” he responds.
“Please, Mr. Kaufman, I need to know who did this. If you could just give me a description of the vehicle.”
He stares at me, his expression as hard and unmoved as a stone statue. “This is an Amish matter and will be dealt with by us.”
My father cited that very same phrase a thousand times when I was growing up. Even after all these years, those words still wield the power to send gooseflesh up my arms. When you’re an Amish kid, you obey your parents without question. I learned early in life that such blind trust can come back to bite you in a very big way later in life.
Shaking off thoughts of the past, I frown at Kaufman. “I’m trying to help you,” I say firmly. “Please. Work with me. Help me. You can’t deal with this kind of violence alone. Sooner or later, someone’s going to get hurt.”
“God will take care of us.”
A stinging retort teeters on the tip of my tongue. But I know losing my temper won’t win me any points. Trying not to gnash my teeth, I step back and walk over to Liza Kaufman. She refuses to make eye contact with me, but the two teenage boys have no problem meeting my gaze. “Can one of you tell me what happened?”
“We want no involvement in this,” says a tall blond boy. I guess him to be about fourteen years old. He wears a brown wool coat that looks at least two sizes too big, and has the sharp, intelligent eyes of his father.
“You’re already involved, whether you like it or
not.”
He tightens his lips.
“Sticking your head in the sand is only going to make things worse.”
When he has nothing to say about that, I skewer the second boy with a hard look. “What about you? Do you know who did this?”
He’s older. Maybe sixteen. Tall and skinny, with huge feet he hasn’t yet grown into. I can tell by the way his eyes skate away from mine that he takes after his mother. Less confrontational, but no less stubborn. “I do not wish to be involved,” he tells me.
“You don’t have to get involved. Just tell me what you saw, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Enough!”
I look over my shoulder and see the elder Kaufman glaring at me. “‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers!’” his voice thunders. “‘For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness?’”
Those two Bible passages epitomize the Amish view of separation from the rest of the world. I heard them many times as a child. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I began to question the whole idea of separateness. By the time I was eighteen, I knew I would never fit in.
I glare back at Kaufman. “Mer sott em sei Eegne net verlosse; Gott verlosst die Seine nicht.”
For an instant, he looks taken aback. I can’t tell if it’s because of the words or my use of Pennsylvania Dutch, but his uncertainty doesn’t last. Bringing his hands together sharply, he motions toward the house. “I’ve said my piece.” He looks toward his wife and sons. “There’s work to be done.”
I stand in the lightly falling sleet and watch the family walk away. Frustration is a knot in my chest. For the span of several minutes, Pickles and I don’t speak. It’s so quiet, I can hear the sleet hitting the trees and the dry leaves on the ground. The sizzle and pop of moisture against the still-hot wood of the burned-out buggy.
Pickles comes up beside me. “Chief, I hate to lay this on you, but I think I just connected a couple of dots that are starting to make a pretty ugly picture.”
I start toward the Explorer, pissed, my mind still on Kaufman. “What are you talking about?”