Her Last Breath

  The old farm had once been owned by my parents and was passed down to Jacob—the eldest male child—after the death of our mother three years ago. I drive by the place several times a week when I’m on patrol. Every time, I envision myself stopping in to say hello to Jacob or sharing a cup of coffee with my sister-in-law, Irene. I envision myself getting to know my two young nephews, becoming part of their lives. But I always find an excuse to keep going.

  When we were kids, Jacob, Sarah, and I were tight. We worked as much as we played and somehow we always managed to have fun. Jacob and I were particularly close. He was my big brother and I looked up to him the way only a little sister can. He could run faster, throw farther, and jump higher than anyone else in the world. If an Amish girl could have had a superhero, Jacob was mine. I could always count on him to watch my back, even if whatever trouble I’d found was my own doing, which was often the case. All of that changed when I was fourteen years old and Daniel Lapp came into our house and introduced me to the dark side of human nature. All of us lost our innocence that day.

  I pull into the long gravel lane and speed toward the old farmhouse, white dust billowing in my wake. I steel myself against the familiarity of the place, but the memories encroach. To my right lies the apple orchard planted by my grandfather over fifty years ago, a place where Jacob, Sarah, and I spent many an afternoon picking McIntosh apples to sell at the fruit stand down the road. I see the cherry tree upon which Sarah and Jacob and I gorged ourselves every summer. The sapling maple tree I helped my datt plant is now tall enough to shade the house.

  I pass by the house and the chicken coop looms into view. Jacob has replaced the wire and added a few concrete blocks at the base, probably to keep out the foxes and coyotes that roam the area at night. When I was a kid, caring for the chickens was my responsibility. I’d spend twenty minutes collecting eggs, changing the water, feeding, and raking the shit into an old dustpan for the compost pile. On a freezing January morning when I was eight years old, I came out to find feathers everywhere and all twenty chickens dead. It horrified me to realize I’d left the gate open and an animal had gotten into the coop during the night and torn them to shreds. It was a silly thing, but I’d become attached to the chickens. I had even named them. Frivolous, English names like Lulu and Bella and Madonna. When I saw what had been done to them I ran to the house, crying. My datt came out to assess the damage and quietly informed me, “A lazy sheep thinks its wool is heavy.” I knew what that meant and the words devastated me. It was his way of telling me I was lazy and all of those pretty hens were dead because of me. He bought more chickens at the auction the following weekend, only this time he assigned their care to my sister. I wasn’t allowed near the coop.

  Jacob is married to a nice Amish woman by the name of Irene, who’s little more than a stranger to me. She bore him two sons—Elam and James—who are six and seven years old, respectively. It pains me deeply that my nephews are strangers, too. I hate it that I don’t know my sister-in-law. That I’ve never laughed with her or helped her in the kitchen or listened while she grumbled about her husband. What I hate most is the chasm that exists between me and my brother. Not for the first time, I think of all the things Daniel Lapp stole from me that day. What he stole from all of us. And I hate him for it.

  I park near the sidewalk between the gravel parking area and the back of the house and shut down the engine. I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to speak to Irene or even my brother, actually. I don’t want to see my nephews because I know it will only remind me how much I’ve let slip by and how little I’ve done to rectify it.

  “Katie?”

  I turn to see Jacob coming up the sidewalk from the barn. For an instant, he looks like the brother I so admired all those years ago. A tall boy with a quick grin, a protective nature, and muscles I longed to possess myself. In that instant, I want to launch myself at him, throw my arms around him, tell him I’ve missed him, and beg him to love me the way he used to because I need him in my life.

  Instead, I stand there and wait for him to reach me. Like all married Amish men, he wears a full beard. There’s more gray threaded through it than the last time I saw him. He’s wearing gray work trousers. A blue work shirt with black suspenders. Work boots. And a straw, flat-brimmed hat.

  He stops a few feet away from me. “What are you doing here?”

  I had almost expected him to greet me with a smile or good morning or a how-are-you. Instead, his eyes are hard and he’s looking at me as if I’m the tax man with my hand reaching for his mason jar.

  “We have a problem,” I tell him. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  I hear a noise behind me and turn to see my sister-in-law, Irene, standing on the back porch, shaking the dust from a rug. She makes eye contact with me and nods, but she doesn’t look happy to see me and makes no move to come over to greet me. I know my nephews won’t be coming out to bid their Englischer auntie hello. It isn’t the first time the Amish have let me know I’m a bad influence on their young.

  “Has something happened?” he asks.

  I didn’t expect him to invite me inside for coffee and pie. I don’t want to go inside, especially considering the conversation we’re about to have. Still, it hurts.

  “They found Daniel Lapp’s bones,” I tell him. “In the grain elevator down in Coshocton County.”

  Jacob is a stoic man. Even as a boy he rarely displayed his emotions. But some responses are too powerful to contain, and I see a ripple of shock go through his body.

  “Are you sure?” he asks.

  “I’m sure.”

  He looks toward the barn, then back at me. “It’s Daniel Lapp?”

  I resist the urge to snap at him, ask him who else it could be. “The police haven’t identified the remains. I don’t know if they’ll be able to. If they do, you can bet they’ll come here to talk to you.”

  The muscles in his jaws begin to work.

  “Benjamin Lapp knows Daniel baled hay here the day he disappeared,” I add.

  He looks down at the ground, but not before I see the extent of his concern. He may not have killed Lapp, but he was complicit. It was he, after all, who helped our father transport the body and dump it into the boot pit of that abandoned grain elevator.

  “This is terrible news,” he says.

  The statement doesn’t require a response, so I say nothing. For the span of several minutes we stand there and watch the chickens scratch and peck the ground in the coop.

  “Jacob, if the police come here, I want you to tell them Daniel left at the end of the day and you never saw him again. Just like you did seventeen years ago. Tell them he was fine when he left and you have no idea what happened to him.”

  “Maybe they won’t come here.”

  “They will. We have to get our stories straight.” I hear myself say the words, hating the way it sounds, then push on. “You have to be prepared.”

  “I don’t like this, Katie. The lying. The secrets.”

  “Neither do I, but we have to deal with it. We can’t change what happened.”

  He looks away, studying something on the horizon. Or maybe he simply can’t bring himself to look at me.

  “There’s a chance the police may not be able to identify the remains,” I tell him. “There may not be DNA or dental records. If that’s the case, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “What happened that day … what we did … it has haunted me all these years.”

  “It’s haunted all of us, Jacob. But I’m the one who pulled the trigger. The sin was mine, not yours. Not Sarah’s.”

  His eyes find mine. “It is our sin, Katie.”

  I want to say something to remind him that Lapp was no innocent bystander. He’d still be alive today if he hadn’t been a violent man to begin with. Even if I could find the words, I don’t know if they would matter.

  “I’m going to talk to Sarah,” I tell him.

  He looks at me in a way I don’t understand, then turns aw
ay and starts toward the house without saying good-bye.

  * * *

  I don’t believe either of my siblings will divulge the truth about what happened the day Daniel Lapp was killed. Our datt swore us to silence, and for years none of us questioned his decision. We never discussed it after that day, and any emotional trauma we suffered was rebuffed or downplayed or both. But you never forget an ordeal like that, and I know, perhaps more than most, that injuries to the psyche run deep. Sometimes those scars break open and bleed.

  The farm where my sister lives with her husband, William, sits at the end of a dead-end road. A razor-straight row of blue spruce trees whiz by my window as I zip up the lane. The barn and house loom into view. Like the Amish, both buildings are plain, without the ornamentation of shutters or even landscaping. In the side yard, trousers and dresses pinned to a clothesline flap in the breeze, reminding me of all the times Sarah and I helped our own mother with laundry.

  The barn’s sliding door stands open, telling me William is probably mucking stalls or feeding the livestock. I’m relieved. Like many of the Amish in my former church district, my brother-in-law believes I’ll be spending all of eternity burning in hell. He thinks I’m a bad influence on my sister, as if some decayed part of me will rub off.

  Most of the time, I’m able to overlook that kind of narrow-minded thinking because I understand the Amish mindset and I have great respect for the culture. Still, I was once close to my sister; I used to be part of this tight-knit community. While the pain of being unofficially excommunicated is no longer the agony it once was, I still feel the losses.

  I park on a patch of threadbare grass where the driveway meets the backyard and kill the engine. I get my thoughts in order as I slide out and start toward the house. A glance behind me tells me William is still in the barn. He knows nothing of what happened all those years ago and I prefer to keep it that way.

  I ascend the concrete steps to the porch. Before I can knock, the door swings open and I find myself face-to-face with Sarah. She’s wearing a blue dress with a black apron. Her blond hair is pulled back and tucked into her kapp. She looks the same as the last time I saw her, pretty and plain, with an air of contentment I never seemed to find. Despite the reason for my visit, the sight of my niece in her arms makes me smile. The baby is swaddled in a blanket, a fat bundle of pink skin, colorless hair, and a bow mouth covered with spittle. Eyes the same color as mine stare back at me from within that round, perfect face.

  “Katie! Hello!”

  I look away from the baby. My sister seems genuinely pleased to see me. But I don’t miss the exaggerated enthusiasm of her voice, or the way her eyes flick toward the barn as if she’s concerned that William will notice my vehicle and come inside to scowl at me. While she may be happy to see me, she wants me in and out quickly, before he can pass judgment on both of us.

  “Sitz dich anne un bleib e weil.” Sit down and stay a while. She speaks rapidly in Pennsylvania Dutch. “Witt du wennich eppes zu ess?” Would you like something to eat?

  “Nee, denki,” I tell her. “I can’t stay.”

  She feigns disappointment, but she can’t hide the relief I see in the way her shoulders relax. I tell myself these games we play don’t hurt. I know her husband is a large part of the reason she doesn’t enjoy my company. But a keen sense of regret unfurls in my gut as I watch her flit around the kitchen with her child in her arms, trying desperately to find something to do so she doesn’t have to sit down and talk to me.

  “Witt du wennich kaffi?” she asks.

  “Coffee would be great.”

  “Millich? It’s fresh from this morning.”

  “Sure.”

  I sit at the kitchen table and watch as she sets to work, pouring water from the tap into an old-fashioned percolator with one hand, holding the baby with the other. “How old is she now?” I ask.

  “Nineteen months.”

  “Hard to believe that much time has passed.”

  “You mean without a visit from her aunt?” She asks the question teasingly, but there’s censure in her voice.

  I sigh. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I’ve been…” My response is lame, so I let the words trail.

  She looks over her shoulder at me and smiles kindly. “William doesn’t help.”

  When the coffee is made and milk added to my cup, she crosses to the table and sets a steaming mug in front of me. I sip while she takes the chair across from me, cooing to the baby. “Is everything all right, Katie? You look … troubled.”

  “The police found Daniel Lapp’s remains,” I tell her.

  Sarah goes still. “What?” Her eyes fly to mine. “You mean … in the grain elevator?”

  I nod.

  “But … how? I thought … I mean, Datt and Jacob buried … everything.”

  “Two kids playing in the boot pit found the bones. The parents called the police.”

  “Oh no.” For a moment she looks physically ill. I see her trying to digest the information, work her way through the repercussions. “What does this mean, Katie? Are we going to get into trouble?”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I tell her.

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t think the police will be able to identify the remains.” I pause. “Someone from the sheriff’s office will probably come and talk to you.”

  “Me?” Her eyes widen. “But why?”

  I tell her the same thing I told Jacob. “Daniel’s brother, Benjamin, will tell them the last place Daniel was seen was our farm. That he’d come over to bale hay that morning.”

  She looks down at her baby, but her mind is no longer on the child. “What do I tell them?”

  “Same thing you told them when he initially disappeared. You were in town, selling bread, remember?” That much, at least, is true. “Tell them you think Daniel was helping bale hay, but you don’t remember seeing him. That’s all you have to say.”

  “Katie, I don’t want to speak with anyone. I don’t want to lie to the police.”

  “You don’t have a choice. If they come, you have to talk to them. You have to be consistent. You can’t tell them what happened.”

  “How will I explain all of this to William?” she whispers furiously, as if her husband is standing at the back door, listening. “He knows nothing of this.”

  “Tell him the same thing you tell the police. Keep it simple. Stick to your story.” I feel like a hypocrite—or worse, a crooked cop—saying those words. How many criminals, in an effort to conceal their crimes, have said the very same thing?

  “I don’t like all of this lying, Katie.”

  “None of us do,” I say, meaning it. “But the alternative is worse.”

  She says nothing. That worries me because I know a decent number of cases are solved not because of solid police work, but because someone with intimate knowledge of the crime talks about it to the wrong person or says the wrong thing to the police.

  “What about Jacob?” she asks.

  “Don’t worry about Jacob. I’ve already talked to him.” When she says nothing, I add, “Datt made a decision that day, Sarah. We were children; we didn’t have a choice but to go along with it.”

  “He was trying to protect you.”

  I don’t have anything to say about that, so I remain silent.

  She looks down at the baby, but there’s no joy in her eyes now. It’s as if she’s no longer seeing the child because of this massive black cloud I’ve brought with me and laid at her feet. Kate, always the bearer of something dark.

  “Sarah.” I say her name with an urgency I hadn’t intended. My sister is not a liar; it doesn’t come naturally to her. There’s a part of me that’s terrified she won’t keep her mouth shut. During the Slaughterhouse Murders, she sent a note to the bishop, telling him I knew something about Daniel Lapp. The bishop went to the mayor, who passed the note on to Tomasetti. He held on to the note, protecting me in doing so, but my sister’s actions put me in a precarious position. What if she d
oes something like that again?

  “I’m the chief of police,” I remind her. “If word of this gets out—if you tell anyone what happened that day—I’ll lose my job. I’ll never work in law enforcement again. Sarah, I could be charged with a crime. All of us could be charged.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I killed a man. My guilt or innocence won’t be determined by you, but by a jury. If it goes that far, it’s over for me. At least in terms of my career.”

  “Fine.” She snaps the word without looking at me. “I’ll do it. But I don’t like it.”

  Leaving my coffee unfinished, my little niece unacknowledged, I rise and start toward the door without thanking her.

  CHAPTER 14

  I’m still worrying over the exchange with my sister when I pull onto the dirt track of the Wengerd farm fifteen minutes later. There’s no doubt in my mind that the sheriff’s investigators will be taking a hard look at the disappearance of Daniel Lapp—if they haven’t already. Even without DNA or dental records, they’ll be able to match height, age, and sex. They’ll look at the timing and start connecting the dots—right back to me.

  The Explorer bounces over deep potholes. To my left, a pasture with the grass shorn down to bare earth accommodates a dozen or more pygmy goats. On my right is a cornfield with slightly crooked rows of yellow stalks fluttering in a stiff breeze. The lane swerves and I see a mobile home with a nice wood deck tucked into a stand of trees. Beyond, a red metal building surrounded by a wood pen holds a dozen more goats with kids. Twenty yards away, Enos Wengerd stands next to a pile of burning brush, poking at it with a good-size stick, looking at me.

  The breeze carries gossamer fingers of smoke my way as I get out of the Explorer. Somewhere nearby, a dog begins to bark. I hit my radio, “Six two three. I’m ten twenty-three.”