“Jack Warner?” I hold up my badge.
He can’t hide his surprise. “Yes?”
“I’m Chief of Police Kate Burkholder. I’d like to ask you some questions.”
He looks past me as if expecting an armada of police cars, lights and sirens. “What’s this about? Has something happened?”
“There’s no problem, sir.” I try to turn off some of my intensity. “I just need to verify some information.”
“Whew.” He puts a hand against his chest and laughs. “For a second there I thought maybe someone had been in an accident. My mom or sister.” Another sigh. “I guess the late hour made me think this was some kind of emergency.”
“I apologize for the late hour.” I try a smile to put him at ease. “If you prefer, I can come back tomorrow.”
“No, of course, not.” Stepping back, he swings open the door. “I’m kind of a night bird, anyway. Come in.”
I enter a large living room with textured stucco walls and tall ceilings bisected with rough-hewn beams as thick as a man’s waist. A leather sofa and two cowhide chairs form a grouping adjacent a massive river-rock hearth.
“Nice place,” I say.
“Thanks. I designed it myself and had it built four years ago. Been working on it ever since.”
Above the hearth, a striking black-and-white photo of a massive bear standing on a river bank with a big salmon in its mouth catches my eye. “You a photographer, too?”
“My nephew took that.” He grins sheepishly. “Right before we started running.”
I smile back.
He motions toward the sofa. “Have a seat.”
I cross to the couch and sit, noticing the Mexican vases on the trunk-style coffee table. On the wall opposite me, I see a slab of rustic wood upon which a hex symbol is painted.
“Interesting piece of art,” I comment.
He looks at the hex sign and smiles. “I tore down a barn for a guy down in Coshocton County a couple of months ago. The barn was almost two hundred years old. I asked him if I could cut out the hex symbols and keep them, and he agreed. I repainted them and sold them to one of the tourist shops in town. I liked them so much, I kept one for myself.”
Something goes ping in my brain. “Which shop?”
“Carriage Stop right off the traffic circle.”
“You go in there often?”
“You know, Christmas shopping. Birthdays.” Moving a Navajo print pillow aside, he takes the chair across from me. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee?” He smiles. “A beer? I’ve got Little King’s.”
He’s trying to charm me. Had the circumstances been different, he might have succeeded. Tonight, I’m too preoccupied with the case. “Can you tell me where you were Sunday night?”
“Sure.” He leans forward, puts his elbows on his knees. “I left the office around six P.M. and stopped by the Brass Rail. Had a burger and a couple of beers. Played pool with some guys. I probably left around midnight or so.”
“You always stay out so late on a work night?”
Another charming smile. “I’m not that old, Chief.”
I don’t smile back this time. “Were you alone?”
“I was with a couple of buddies.”
“What are their names?”
His eyes narrow. “Well, I was with an old friend of mine by the name of Todd Long. Alex Miller from work was there, too.” He cocks his head. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re asking me about Sunday night?”
I pull out my notebook. “How long have you known Todd Long?”
“Oh, gosh, since grade school. I beat him up once when we were in sixth grade.” He smiles. “We’ve been friends ever since.”
“Good friends?”
“I’ve known him for a long time, but we’re not real close.” He shrugs. “We kind of drifted, especially after he got popped on that burglary charge. Different lives. You know.” He pauses, gives me a sage look. “Is Todd in some kind of trouble?”
“I just wanted to verify his whereabouts.”
Warner’s eyes widen. “Wait a minute. That’s the night . . .” Putting his hand to his chest, he falls back in the chair as if flabbergasted. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that Amish family, does it? The family that was murdered? Jesus Christ, there’s no way Todd had anything to do with that.”
“I’m basically ruling people out at this point.”
“That’s a relief. For a moment there, I thought you were looking at Long.”
“This is just routine.” I tell him about the witness seeing a dark truck in the area. “We’re checking the owners of every vehicle that matches that description.”
“I gotcha.” He whistles. “Pretty shocking crime.”
“Did you know any of the Planks?” I ask. “Never met them.”
“What about Mary Plank?” I watch his eyes closely, but they reveal nothing.
“No, why do you ask?”
“She worked at Evelyn Steinkruger’s shop.”
“Ah.” He grimaces appropriately. “Never met her. I’m sorry.”
Rising, I start toward the door. “Thanks for your time.”
“Hey, no problem. I hope you guys get him.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “We will.”
Uncertainty dogs me as I walk back to the Explorer. I should feel better now that Long’s alibi has been verified. But something about my visit with Warner vaguely disturbs me. Maybe because I can tie him to the shop where Mary worked. I know it’s a small town and coincidences are more likely to occur. Still, it’s enough for me to add him as a person of interest.
I’ve been racing against the clock for almost three days now, and all I have are dead ends leading to dead ends. A cycle that makes me feel like a hamster running on a wheel.
In the back of my mind I know there’s no such thing as the perfect murder. Somewhere, someone left something behind. However small or seemingly inconsequential, it’s my job to find it. I owe that to the Plank family. I owe it to this town and the people I’ve sworn to serve and protect. Most of all, I owe it to myself.
Seventeen years ago, I didn’t get justice for a crime committed against me. But I’m a cop now. It’s within my power to see this through, and get justice for another young Amish girl who can’t do it herself.
The sun isn’t quite above the horizon when I pull into my parking space at the station the next morning. Beside me, Mona’s Ford Escort is covered with a diamond layer of frost. T.J.’s cruiser is parked farther down, and I know he’s come in early to finish up his Internet assignment before he goes on patrol.
Mona sits at the switchboard-dispatch station with her feet on the desk, a lollipop in her mouth and a college text open in front of her. Her feet slide off the desk the instant she sees me walk in. “Hey, Chief.”
“You look busy.”
She grins. “It’s been kinda quiet.”
“That’s the way we like it.”
T.J. peeks at me over the top of his cubicle. “You got a sec?”
I enter his cube to see he has both his desktop and a laptop computer running. A printer I’ve never seen before hums from atop a two-drawer file cabinet, and I realize he brought it from home. “Find anything interesting?”
Looking uncomfortable, T.J. slides behind his computer. “I hit a few uh . . . porn sites last night and this morning. I’ll tell you, there’s some weird shit out there.”
“Like murder weird or sex weird?”
“Both.” He face reddens. “We’re talking fetishes.”
“Violence?”
“Foot fetishes, mostly.”
“That is weird.”
He taps a couple of keys on the desktop keyboard. “We have man on man. Woman on woman. Animal on woman.” He looks at me. “You ever seen the size of a—”
“Just case stuff, T.J.,” I cut in before he can finish.
“Oh. Right.” Rolling his chair to the laptop, he types in a login and password. “I searched for anything Amish, and I was b
lown away by the number of porn Web sites into that sort of thing.”
“To each their own,” I mutter.
“I guess.” He hands me a sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of Web sites with IP addresses. I bought photo paper and printed some of the . . . uh . . . images. A lot of the female . . . uh . . . perpetrators don’t match Mary Plank’s description, but I went ahead and printed the ones that were even close. A lot of the . . . actors wear wigs and try to conceal their identity.”
“Let’s take a look.”
“I found about a dozen.” He hands me a manila folder with several eight-by-ten photos inside. “They’re kind of shocking, Chief.”
I take the folder and open it. He’s right. The photos are not only shocking, but disturbing. Outrage rises inside me at the sight of a young woman clad in traditional Amish garb. Plain dress. Gauzy kapp. No makeup. She’s Caucasian. Brown hair peeks out from beneath the kapp. The photo is relatively good quality, but her face is turned so that I can’t make out her facial features. She may or may not be Amish; there’s no way to tell, but it feels like sacrilege.
The woman and two men are on an antique-looking steel bed. I see rumpled white sheets. A windowless, white-walled room. Shadows raining down, giving the photo the stark ambience of an old film. The woman straddles a white male, who’s lying on his back. He’s in his late twenties or early thirties. Dark brown hair. Goatee. His head is angled so that I can’t see his face. A second white male is grasping her hips and pumping into the woman from behind. Again, his face is turned. He’s larger with a heavily muscled body. A weight lifter, probably. More body hair. Sideburns. No beard. No visible birthmarks.
I’m no prude, but this staggers me. I stare at the young woman’s profile. Her head is thrown back as if in ecstasy. Her dress is open in the front and her tiny breasts are bared. I can’t tell if it’s Mary Plank. She has pretty skin and a girlish figure. She looks very young. So skinny I can see her ribs. But she still has the chubby hands of a child.
I try to take in the details with the unaffected eye of a cop, but I can feel the pound of outrage in my ears. The burn of embarrassment on my cheeks. A depth of sadness in my heart that surprises me.
“Is it her?” T.J.’s words snap me from my momentary fugue.
“Hard to tell.”
“They kept their faces angled away from the camera the duration of the video.”
“I can see why they don’t want people recognizing them. This is pretty raw stuff.” I glance at the folder in my hand. I don’t want to look at the other photos, but I don’t have a choice. “Get the domains and IP addresses to Tomasetti. Get BCI to run down the owners of the sites.”
“Sure.”
“In the interim, why don’t you cruise out to whoisit.com and see if you can come up with contact information or names.”
“Probably a long shot.”
“We might get lucky.”
I take the folder to my office so I can look at them in privacy. I’m midway there when the bell on the door jangles. I look over my shoulder to see Tomasetti enter, a cardboard tray filled with six biggie coffees in his hands. Glock brings up the rear holding a white paper bag. Despite my resolve to maintain an even keel, a small thrill that has absolutely nothing to do with coffee or doughnuts runs the length of me.
“Brain food,” Glock comments.
Skid enters behind Glock. “Gotta have a brain for that, dude.”
“Can’t you guys ever bring anything even remotely healthy?” Mona usurps the bag from Glock and carries it to the coffee station. “Does an apple fritter count as a fruit serving?”
“We’re cops,” Skid says. “We eat doughnuts.”
I feel Tomasetti’s eyes on me as I head toward my office. I know dodging him is a stupid reaction. We’re working together; more than likely, I’ll be dealing with him every day until the case is closed. But just the sight of him shakes me up a little.
Sliding behind my desk, I open the folder and start flipping through the photos. All depict young women in various stages of undress and engaging in some form of sex. Oral. Anal. Threesomes. All wear Amish clothing. Kapps. Plain dresses. Practical shoes. But all semblance of plain or practical ends there. The photos are triple X and difficult as hell to look at.
I arrange the photos into two piles. T.J. did a good job, but none of the women’s faces is fully visible. Of the twelve images, ten of them could be Mary Plank. All I can do at this point is give them to John and see if the BCI lab can magnify them and find some identifiable mark. A birthmark or scar I can connect to Mary Plank. There’s a chance his technology people will be able to identify the owners of the Web sites. From there, they may be able to locate the person who submitted the image.
My brain is still working that over when I look up to see Tomasetti standing in the doorway to my office. “T.J. said you had some photos.”
My eyes skitter away from his, but I force them back. “He got them off the Internet. Amish fetish stuff. A few could pass for Mary Plank.” I shrug. “Can you have someone at BCI take a look at the domains and IP addresses? Maybe we can find the owner of the site or at the very least find out who posted the pics.”
“We can try. The problem is that a lot of porn sites are based overseas where we have little or no control. Might take a while.”
Sighing, I look down at the two piles of photos. “These are the most promising.”
Taking the visitor chair across from me, Tomasetti reaches for the photos and begins flipping through them. I see his face darken. His brows knit. Frown lines appear on either side of his mouth. “Shit. Girls look young.”
“They do.” I reach for the case file, pull out one of the autopsy photos of Mary Plank and set it on the desktop between us for reference. “Can your lab enhance the photos? Maybe do some kind of comparison with the autopsy pic? If there’s a birthmark or something, we might be able to make a positive ID.”
“I’ll get it couriered this morning.” He focuses his attention on me. “You check out Long’s alibi?”
“Warner panned out. Seems pretty solid. But get this: he sold some folk art to Evelyn Steinkruger at the Carriage Stop.”
“So you can tie him to the shop.” He thinks about that a moment. “Does he know the Plank girl?”
“Says no.”
“What about the other truck owner?”
“Robert Allen Kiser.” I glance down at my notes. “Glock talked to him. Kiser was at the Lion’s Club meeting and reception that lasted until one A.M.”
“Substantiated?”
“By about a dozen witnesses.” I sigh. “After the reception, Kiser went home with his wife.”
“What’s Glock’s take on him?”
“Said he seemed like a pretty solid guy.”
“Everyone’s a solid fuckin’ guy.”
I don’t like the cynicism in his voice, but I feel that same sentiment growing inside me. I reach for the Speaker button and dial the switchboard.
“Mona, get me contact info and addresses for Glenda Patterson, will you?” Patterson is Scott Barbereaux’s girlfriend. “Work and home.”
“You got it, Chief.”
I end the call and sigh. “You know a case is going to shit when you spend time checking the alibis of the alibis.”
Across from me, Tomasetti is looking at the photos. His usual poker face has given way to raw disgust. “You ever work vice?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Went straight to homicide from patrol.”
“It sounds weird, but I’ve always thought vice was somehow worse. A lot of nasty stuff. Prostitution. Drugs. Porn. Especially when there are kids involved.” He shoves the photos into the file and closes it. “The thing about homicide is that the dead are dead. Gone. No more suffering. The living go on. They keep on suffering. Some keep on repeating the same tired cycle over and over again.”
“The living always have hope,” I reply.
He shakes his head. “Sometimes they don’t.”
My cell pho
ne vibrates against my hip. I pull it out. My heart jigs when I see the sheriff’s office of Lancaster County pop up on the caller ID.
“This is Deputy Phelps with Lancaster County. Corporal Rossi said I should give you a call when I located Bishop Fisher.”
“You’re there with him now?”
“Standing on his front porch, drinking a cup of coffee.”
“Can you put him on the phone for me?”
“Sure can.”
I put my hand over the phone and glance at Tomasetti. “I’ve got Aaron Plank’s bishop on the line from Lancaster County.”
“Nice work.”
I smile and then Bishop Fisher comes on the line. I greet him in Pennsylvania Dutch, identify myself and then I ask him about the Plank family.
“It pained me greatly to hear about the passing of Amos and Bonnie Plank and their children.” The bishop has the slow, thick accent characteristic to many Midwestern Amish. “But I know they believed in the divine order of things and the will of God.”
“Did you know them well?”
“Yes. I conducted their wedding ceremony. I spoke to them many times over the years.”
“Do you know why they left Lancaster County?”
For the first time, he pauses. “There were some problems a few years back with their son, Aaron. An Englischer was involved. Problems developed between Bonnie and Amos. Some members of the community could not condone Aaron’s . . . relationship with this outsider, nor the way Amos and Bonnie handled it. In the end, Amos decided a fresh start in a new church district would be best, so he moved the family.”
“What can you tell me about the problems?”
“Bonnie loved her son very much. She was a very tolerant woman. Willing to abide by almost anything to keep her son. Amos was not as tolerant. Neither was the community as a whole.”