“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Viola whispers.
“You should have gone to the police after what he did to Emma,” I say. “Instead, you took things into your own hands. You made a bad decision, and look where you are now.”
“We did nothing,” Ina says.
“Which of you did he rape?” When no one answers, I focus my attention on Neva. “Was it you?”
She raises her hands, sets them against her face. Bending, she lets out a wail so filled with agony that I feel it echo all the way to my bones. “Stop saying that! You’ve no right to say it!”
Ina rushes forward, grasps her friend’s shoulders, sets her hand against her back; then she raises her gaze to mine. “You’re wrong, Chief Burkholder. She didn’t do anything. None of us did.”
I push harder. “He raped Emma. He got her pregnant. And she committed suicide. Then it was Neva. The three of you knew what he was, and you knew he wouldn’t stop. So you put your heads together and came up with a plan.” I look at Viola. “You wrote the note. Purple ink. Little hearts and swirls.” I look at the other two. “Then you lured him to the barn, locked him in the tack room, and you set the place on fire.”
Viola launches herself off the wall where she’d been leaning. Her face is contorted and red. “He was a monster! He was … da Deivel!” The Devil. “I hated him. Hated him!”
I face her, step back, keeping a safe distance between us. “That doesn’t give you the right to murder him.”
Viola opens her mouth as if to say something, but no words come. Holding her hand up as if to stop me, she takes a step back, stumbles over some debris, nearly falls, keeps backing away. “I thought you cared about us. How could you do this? How could you betray us like this?”
“Because I don’t have a choice,” I tell her. “Because life isn’t fair. Because you didn’t do the right thing, and I have a job to do.”
Neva straightens, raises her face from her hands. “I thought you were our friend.”
“Right now I am the best friend you have,” I tell her. “I will help you, but you have to tell the truth. All of it. Do you understand?”
“Don’t do this,” Ina cries. “Please don’t make us—”
I cut her off. “I know he was a monster. I know what he did. And I know Emma and her unborn child weren’t his only victims.” I can hear myself breathing. I stop speaking, rein in my emotions. “You can’t do what you did. You can’t do that. Even if he deserved it.”
My own damning words echo within the confines of the barn. For a full minute no one speaks. I’m aware that Neva is crying openly, choking back sobs. Ina is standing next to Neva; she’s shaking so violently, I see her dress quivering.
“Please don’t tell,” Viola whispers.
“I do not have a choice. It’s over.” I look at each of them. “You should have done the right thing. You should have gone to the police.”
Neva sobs hysterically, her entire body quaking. “Emma would have been shamed. She was ime familye weg.” Pregnant. “Everyone would have assumed she’d given in to Elam. The bishop would have put her under the bann.” Her voice is strangled, the words running together. “She didn’t do anything wrong. Daniel did that to her. He treated her like an animal. Made her want to die!” She screams the last sentence at the top of her lungs.
I struggle for calm, reach for it, grab it hard and snatch it back. “Which one of you lured Daniel to the barn that night?” When no one answers, I turn to Neva. “Was it you?” I turn my attention to Ina. “I know you used the guise of a meet-up to get him into the tack room. Then all you had to do was lock the door and set the fire.”
“I did it,” Neva cries, slanting a look at her friends. “It was me. Just me. They had no part.”
Viola shoots her a warning look. “I wrote the note. I gave it to him, told him I wanted to meet him in the barn. That I was … ready.”
“He was so stupid and predictable,” Ina hisses. “We knew he would come. He couldn’t stop himself. He deserved what he got!”
I divide my attention among them. “Who was in the barn with him the night he was killed?”
“All of us,” Ina says, her eyes flicking to Neva, her voice breathless and shaking.
“Who set the fire?” I ask.
“I bought the gas.” Viola looks from girl to girl.
“I closed the door, locked it.” This from Neva. “Then I poured from the can.”
“We piled some things against the door,” Ina adds. “All of us. The cinder blocks. That old wheelbarrow and hay.”
“I threw the matches,” Ina tells me.
Viola starts to cry. “He was pounding on the door.”
“We wanted to let him out.” Neva sobs the words. “But the fire got too big, too fast. And then we couldn’t.”
“So we just … ran,” Ina finishes.
I stare at them, feeling as if I should be pondering the question of how they could do something so monstrous. But I already know.
“What about Edna?” I ask. “How much did she know?”
Neva looks at me as if I just thrust a knife into her belly. She’s sobbing, her face red and tear-streaked. “My mamm was only trying to protect us.”
Ina puts her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Edna knew what he was.”
“We didn’t tell her,” Viola puts in. “She just sort of figured things out.”
“She was smart that way,” Ina adds.
“And the night she was killed?” I ask.
“She did it for us,” Neva tells me. “For Emma. For all of us.”
* * *
The Amish believe that every day is a gift from God. It’s the Amish way. Be thankful for what you have, even in the face of adversity. Especially in the face of adversity. It’s one of many Amish tenets I could never quite subscribe to. There are certain days I wish I could erase from my life. Today is one of them.
It’s dusk now, and I’m at the farm, sitting on the dock, looking out across the pond. Around me, the frogs are just getting warmed up. The blue jays in the woods are arguing about something of consequence. It’s a beautiful night, warm and humid with a barely discernible breeze from the south that carries with it the aromas of fresh-cut grass and Mr. Cline’s meat smoker from a quarter mile away. I’ve got my jeans rolled up to my knees, my feet in the water, and a cold bottle of Killian’s Red beside me.
“I thought I might find you out here.”
I look over my shoulder to see Tomasetti approaching from the house. He’s already changed into faded jeans and a T-shirt that has a hole the size of my thumb in the shoulder. He’s holding a Killian’s Red in his right hand. “You found the Killian’s.”
“Balm for a troubled cop’s soul,” I tell him.
He reaches the dock, sets down his beer, toes off his sneakers, and proceeds to roll up his pants. “How’s the water?”
“Not too bad for October.”
He sits down beside me and lowers his feet into the water. For the span of several minutes, neither of us speaks. Instead, we sit in companionable silence, listening to the sounds of early evening.
“Rasmussen booked the three girls into the county jail,” he tells me. “They’ll be arraigned and formally charged in the morning.”
I close my eyes against an unexpected rush of heat. A tangle of emotions I don’t want to feel. Remorse. Guilt. The loss of something that had seemed innocent and good.
Tomasetti had been there for the arrest, along with a female deputy with the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department. It was an intense and emotionally wrenching event. Ina had been stoic. Neva and Viola had cried throughout. I’d done my utmost to keep them calm and explain to them what would be happening in the coming hours and days and weeks. I don’t think it was much help.
“Their lives are ruined,” I say.
“Changed to be sure.” He shrugs. “Maybe not ruined entirely.”
“I talked to the prosecutor,” I tell him.
He sends me a sideways look,
arches a brow. “And?”
“He’s talking about second-degree homicide.”
“That could change.”
I slant him a look.
“Neva Lambright told Rasmussen that Mark Petersheim had been threatening her.”
“Did she explain why?”
“According to her, he blamed her for his wife getting into the car with Gingerich the night she was raped. Blamed her for all of it. He was afraid Neva was going to talk about it and the Amish community would find out. He didn’t want that to happen.”
“Jesus.”
“Look, there’s no doubt those girls are in serious trouble, but there are extenuating circumstances. There was a certain level of intimidation occurring.” He shrugs. “Prosecutor might be a little more willing to cut a deal.”
“Tomasetti, what they did was wrong on every level. I mean that. But I don’t think they’re…” I almost say “criminals” but that wouldn’t be true. The fact of the matter is they are criminals. “They’re not sociopaths. I don’t believe they’re a danger to society.”
“If you want to help them, I suggest you get the other women who were victimized by Gingerich to come forward.”
I find myself thinking about Milo Hershberger and our final conversation. If I could, I swear to God I’d make it right.… He isn’t the only person with regrets. Emma Miller’s mother remained silent and her daughter died because of it. I don’t think she’ll make the same mistake twice.
“I’ve got a couple of people in mind who’ll step up,” I tell him.
Leaning closer, he puts his arm around my shoulders and presses a kiss to my temple. “Is there anything I can do?”
I rest my head on his shoulder. “Just be you.”
“Now, there’s a scary thought.”
I laugh and it feels good; it releases some of the melancholy that’s been plaguing me. It reminds me that life goes on. That it’s good. That I’m a lucky woman with a lot to be thankful for.
“What do you say we swing by the barn on our way back inside?” he says. “Check on those chicks?”
“I’m game.” I get to my feet, brush dust from the seat of my pants. Tomasetti rises, too, and we take the time to roll down our cuffs and step into our shoes. For a moment we stand there, looking out over the water.
I hear the bawling of a cow somewhere in the distance. I think of the man standing beside me and I acknowledge how far we’ve come in the short years we’ve known each other. How much we have to look forward to in the future.
“That water looks nice,” he says after a moment.
I nod. “Nice on the feet.”
“You know what we haven’t done yet?”
I slant him a look. “Had dinner?”
He grins. “Christen the pond.”
I grin, step away from him. “You wouldn’t.”
“You know I would.”
“John Tomasetti, you’re so not going to—”
He reaches for my hands, pulls me against him, crushes his mouth to mine. The next thing I know we’re falling. His body is solid and warm against mine, then the quick slap of cold as the water envelops me. The smells of fish and earth and living things in my nostrils.
The water isn’t deep, about four feet. We come up sputtering, facing each other. His hair is sticking up on one side. He’s got moss on his forehead.
We burst into laughter.
“I thought that might cheer you up,” he says after a moment.
“That speck of moss above your eyebrow helped.”
“Small sacrifices and all that.”
Leaning into him, I put my arms around him. “Seeing those chicks probably would have done the job.”
“Now you tell me,” he says with a laugh.
Hand in hand, we wade to the bank and then start toward the barn.
ALSO BY LINDA CASTILLO
Sworn to Silence
Pray for Silence
Breaking Silence
Gone Missing
Her Last Breath
The Dead Will Tell
After the Storm
Among the Wicked
Down a Dark Road
About the Author
Linda Castillo is the New York Times bestselling author of the Kate Burkholder novels, including Sworn to Silence, which was adapted into a Lifetime Original Movie starring Neve Campbell as Kate Burkholder. Castillo is the recipient of numerous industry awards, including a nomination by the International Thriller Writers for Best Hardcover Novel, the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence, and a nomination for the RITA. In addition to writing, Castillo’s other passion is horses. She lives in Texas with her husband. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Also by Linda Castillo
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A GATHERING OF SECRETS. Copyright © 2018 by Linda Castillo. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: field © Lenore Humes/Arcangel; sunset © Vahan Abrahamyan/Shutterstock.com; texture © PhotoAlto/Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress has catalogued the print edition as follows:
Names: Castillo, Linda, author.
Title: A gathering of secrets / Linda Castillo.
Description: First edition. | New York: Minotaur Books, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004425 | ISBN 9781250121318 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250121332 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women—Violence against—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation— Fiction. | Women detectives—Fiction. | Amish—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3603.A8758 G38 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004425
eISBN 9781250121332
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at
[email protected] First Edition: July 2018
Linda Castillo, A Gathering of Secrets
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