by Jane Jensen
Grady smirked. “Well, if the killer dumped her here, he had to come from somewhere.”
I hummed. I knew what Grady was thinking. I was thinking it too. A car full of rowdy youths, or maybe just a guy and his hot date, out joyriding in the country. A girl ends up dead and someone gets the bright idea to dump her on an Amish farm. They drive out here, park, cross a snowy cornfield, and leave her in a random barn.
It sounded like a stupid teenage prank, only it was murder and possibly an attempt to frame someone else. That was a lot of prison years of serious. A story like that—it would make the press happy and Grady fucking ecstatic, especially if we could nab the guy who wore those boots by tonight.
“Get a photographer and a recorder and let’s go,” I said, feeling only a moment’s silent regret over my good black leather boots. I should have worn my wellies.
—
It wasn’t that easy.
The tracks crossed the field and went into the trees. They continued about ten feet before they ended—at a creek. It hadn’t been visible from the barn, but there was running water here, a good twelve feet across. The land dipped down to it, as if carved out over time. The snow grew muddy and trampled at the creek bank. The boot prints entered the water. They didn’t reemerge on the opposite side.
“Cattle use this creek?” I asked Grady, looking at the mess of mud and snow and hoofprints along the bank.
Grady sighed. “Hell. It’s not legal, but a lot of the farmers do it, especially the Amish. It’s hard to explain to a man whose family has farmed the same land for generations why politicians in Baltimore don’t want his animals to have access to the free and plentiful water on his own land.”
I really didn’t give a toss about the pollution of Chesapeake Bay at the moment. But our possible killer’s footprints, so clean in the snow, had vanished into a churned-up creek bed that had been literally ridden herd over. I walked up and down the bank as carefully as I could, trying not to step anywhere there might be evidence. There was chicken wire strung up across the creek to the north, and a matching wire wall glinted to the south. Presumably, this kept the farm’s animals from escaping the property.
The freaky thing was, there were no signs of tracks on the other side of the creek anywhere between those two makeshift fences. I rubbed my forehead, a sense of frustration starting in my stomach.
“Damn it!” Grady cursed, apparently reaching the same conclusion.
“How far is the road?” I asked.
As if to answer my question, an SUV lumbered past, visible through the trees on the far side. There was a road maybe thirty feet beyond the other side of the creek.
In a righteous world, the boot prints would have climbed out the opposite bank and led right to that road. In a righteous world, there’d be tire tracks off the side of the road over there, tire tracks we could attempt to trace.
No one had to tell me it wasn’t a righteous world.
I looked at the creek again, then went back to look at the boot prints. The prints with the toes facing the creek definitely overlaid the prints with the toes facing away. Unless the killer had walked backward in both directions—one way carrying a dead body—he hadn’t come from the farm.
Grady stood there shaking his head. I decided, Screw it, and shucked my boots and rolled up my pant legs. At least this suit was a trendy wash-and-wear and didn’t require dry cleaning.
“You don’t have to do that.” Grady sounded uneasy.
I ignored him. If there was one thing I knew for sure about being a woman on the police force, it was that you didn’t turn up your nose at getting physical or messy. You didn’t wait for some guy to do it. If you wanted respect, you had to be willing to jump into the shit headfirst.
But, goddamn, this sucked. I waded into the ice water masquerading as a creek and followed the bank to the chicken-wire obstruction.
“Anything?” Grady called to me as I ran my hand along the chicken wire and stepped deeper into the creek.
When I reached the middle, the frigid water was streaming painfully around my upper thighs.
“Damn,” I muttered as I felt along the fence.
A few inches below the surface of the water the wire ended. To be sure, I sent one leg forward on a foray. It swept through nothing but water. No wonder our Jane Doe had gotten wet. The killer had pushed her under these barriers and then likely followed by ducking under himself.
“Bastard walked through the creek,” I said, my voice shaking with cold and not a little disgust. “He came in and out under one of these fences, but he had to leave the water somewhere. We need to search the banks upstream and down from here. We’ll find his tracks.”
I sounded confident. And I did believe what I was saying. We were talking about a man, after all, not a superhuman, not a ghost.
I was wrong.
CHAPTER 2
Fistful of Seeds
I sat at my desk and stared at the situation board I’d set up right behind me. The mug in my hands was warm, but its heat ended where porcelain met skin. Nothing could penetrate the chill I lived with. It was psychological, or so my therapist had said, the one they made me see after what went down in New York. That didn’t make it any damn less unpleasant.
Always so cold, deep down inside. Moving back here to a simpler life was supposed to change that.
The property survey map in front of me had been marked up with permanent pens and Post-it notes. It’d been only twenty-five hours since I’d pulled up to that barn yesterday in the predawn hours to get my first look at Jane Doe. By now I knew this case wasn’t going to be one of the quick ones.
The teams had crawled all over the countryside yesterday. Grady even called in reinforcements from Harrisburg. We’d carefully gone up and down that creek bed for several miles in either direction. The killer’s tracks never emerged from it.
Which led me to one inescapable conclusion, and I’d marked it on the map.
As for our Jane Doe, we hadn’t found her coat and shoes. The coroner was almost certain her death was caused by asphyxiation. The autopsy would reveal more. The time of death was a bit of a surprise—between ten the previous morning and four in the afternoon, depending on how long she’d been in the cold water. And we knew she’d been moved to the barn most likely between midnight and two A.M., giving her clothes and hair a chance to mostly dry before Jacob found her at five.
It was still dark outside, but there were rousing sounds of life in the sparkling new facility that was the Lancaster City Bureau of Police. I saw Grady in my peripheral vision. Like me, he’d gone home after midnight and was back before dawn. He wheeled over a roller chair and planted himself next to me, a mug of joe in his hands. He yawned hugely, making no attempt to cover it up. I smiled to myself. I appreciated the fact that Grady treated me like one of the guys. And I liked his wife, Sharon. The wife of the last partner I’d had in New York had hated me at first glance and was always going into jealous rants on the phone when we had to work late. But Sharon was a petite, redheaded spitfire whose passion was the LGBT youth center in Lancaster. She and Grady had three boys and they were solid. They’d had me over for dinner a few times. Sharon didn’t find me a threat.
Detective Lieutenant Mike Grady wasn’t my type anyway, even if I’d been into home wrecking—which I wasn’t—even if I’d had any interest in sex at all since Terry died—which I didn’t. Grady ran the Violent Crimes Department for the Lancaster City Bureau of Police. He was in his late thirties and, like many Pennsylvania men, he was big—six foot two and at least two hundred fifty pounds. He’d probably played football or wrestled in high school. He had short, curly brown hair, beefy hands and shoulders, and a reddish complexion. A lot of years behind the desk and serious home cooking had given him a belly and bulky heft all over. Grady was a nice guy. Then again, most people who lived here were.
I was from here originally too, but my
“nice” had been hammered down by ten years of being a police officer for the NYPD. I had to be tough because a) I was a woman and b) I had a tall but somewhat fragile build and a pretty face to overcome. Everyone thought I was crazy when I decided to join the police academy. I’d never been a natural jock. But I liked that—liked the fact that it was something that really challenged me, that I was going against type. I loved being sweaty and tough. I’d worked my ass off, trained hard then—and still did. No perp was going to take advantage of me, and no fellow police officer either. I wore my dark hair pulled back in a bun and little makeup to work. That didn’t keep men from being, well, male, but most of them knew better than to treat me like a dumping ground for their hormones. At least they did after the first time they tried it.
“No matches in missing persons,” Grady said by way of greeting. “Today I’m sending Hernandez and Smith out to talk to all the high school principals in the area, show them her picture. And we’ll send out a missing persons bulletin to all the Mid-Atlantic precincts. If we don’t get an ID on her today, I’ll have to do a press alert.”
I hummed. I knew a press alert was the last thing we needed. I was surprised the story had been kept quiet so far. We’d been lucky that the area where the farm was located was well off the beaten track.
“I want to interview everyone at those farms today,” I said, nodding at the map.
Grady sighed. He was silent for a good while as we both regarded the layout. “Talk to me, Harris,” he said in a tone that acknowledged that he wouldn’t like what I had to say. “What are you thinking?”
I stood up and drew my finger down six lines I’d drawn with a brown pencil. Each one ran from the creek—which we’d since learned was called Rockvale Creek—to the farms. The lines were on the Millers’ property and five of their neighbors’.
“The killer used one of these animal trails to get in and out of the creek. Had to. We didn’t find his prints leaving the creek because they were trod over at some point after he left her body at the Millers’, covered up by hoofprints.”
I looked at Grady. He was frowning, but he didn’t say anything.
“We saw dairy cows out in a couple of these fields yesterday.” I tapped two Post-it notes I’d put up with cow stick figures. My attempt at high art. “So for sure he could have used either of these trails. As for the others, all these farms have at least a horse or two for the buggies. We’ll have to interview the farmers to know if their animals were out between midnight and when we were looking, I’d say as late as ten A.M. yesterday.”
“He could have kept to the creek. Could’ve walked miles,” Grady countered.
“Even in the water, it wouldn’t have been easy to manage a dead body, and it was damned freezing. Plus, we looked up and down both banks of the creek and didn’t find fresh prints coming out of it for at least a mile. And there aren’t any more animal tracks along it for a good ways either.” I tapped the paper. “He used one of these trails, Grady. Which means he knows this place. He knew where those trails were and when the animals moved. He came from one of these farms.”
It was the first time I’d said it out loud, but I’d started thinking it yesterday afternoon. I knew Grady didn’t want to hear it. Then again, I didn’t want a lot of the shit that had happened to me. Life sucked that way.
Grady rubbed at his jaw. He looked around as if worried about being overheard. But most of the detectives didn’t get in until after seven. He still lowered his voice.
“Okay, I agree that he knows the area. That doesn’t mean he’s Amish. He could be someone who works with the Amish—a driver, someone who picks up dairy or produce. Hell, a mailman. Or a customer.”
He grabbed my Post-it pad and began scribbling. He tore off the top page and slapped it over one of the properties marked Fisher. “Eggs and dairy,” he said, repeating what he’d written on the note. He scribbled another one and put it on the map. “Chicken coops.” Another. “Baked goods.” Another. “Mules.” He waved his hand. “All these farmers sell goods directly off their farms, which means they have customers driving in and out all the time. Any of those customers could have thought, Gee whiz, where should I dump this body? How ’bout where I buy my eggs? No one would ever guess because I’m such a clever bastard.”
“Just because you stop in someone’s driveway to buy eggs doesn’t mean you can see the creek or the animal trails leading to it. The creek’s in a gully.”
“Maybe they wandered around a bit one fine spring day. Maybe their dog took off across a field and they chased it. Maybe they chatted with the farmer and he mentioned it. Could have been months ago, even years, and only now they had a reason to use that information. Hell, it could have been a fisherman or hunter who wandered up and down that creek in his youth. These farms have had cows and horses living there for a hundred years, which means those trails have been there forever.”
He had a point. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. “Right. We should get started on customer lists, and lists of anyone who visits these farms regularly. But . . . I’m gonna say this, Grady, at least once.”
I waited until he looked at me.
“I’m not ruling out anything, not yet. These farmers and their families have to be considered suspects, at least until we can cross them off officially.”
I made it sound logical, but it was more than that to me. It was a gut feeling, a feeling that said the killer knew this area like he knew his own skin.
Grady’s frown deepened. “Look, Harris, I hired you because you’ve got the best homicide training from one of the biggest cities in the world. So I’m glad I have you available for something like this. But you’re not from around here, so you don’t know the Amish.”
I huffed. “I was born and raised in Quarryville. You know that.”
“Yeah, but you probably had about as much dealings with them in high school as I did, which is to say the occasional ogle at a horse and buggy. I’ve been an officer of the law in Lancaster County for fifteen years and I know their culture. There’s never been a murder among the Amish—ever. And I especially can’t imagine one involving a beautiful young English girl in the middle of the night. Why would she even be out there with them? These people don’t associate with girls like her. Somebody she knew killed her and dumped her out there, someone with a car. We need to find that person.”
I bristled instinctively. Jane Doe was young and perhaps a little too made-up, but that didn’t make her a “like her” in my mind. I was defensive of my vic, which was foolish and sentimental, but it was a sentimentality I’d been prone to ever since I became a cop. It helped me stay motivated when things got tough, so I didn’t fight it. But I didn’t have to voice it and make myself look like a sap either.
“I don’t disagree. It’s probably an ex-boyfriend or a stepdad, someone she knew well. I’m just saying we need to look at all possibilities with a clear eye, not go into it with a list of won’ts and couldn’t-bes, because that’s the surest way to screw yourself over.” I folded my arms over my chest, prepared to be stubborn. They’d brought me in to do a job, and I was going to do it.
Grady visibly relaxed. “I’m not asking you to ignore them. Just—we have to be circumspect. Know what that word means, Harris?”
Now he was just yanking my chain. I laughed. “Circumspect? Kind of a personal question, isn’t it? Are you asking me if I’m Jewish? I don’t even have the equipment for that, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Grady rolled his eyes. “That’s just gross. I’ll take that for a no. Which is why you and me are partners on this case.”
“What?”
I thought for a moment that Grady was still pulling my leg. There were a whopping eight investigators in the Violent Crimes Unit, including Grady himself. I wasn’t surprised to be partnered up for a case this serious, but I had no idea Grady still took cases himself in addition to overseeing the lot of us.
“This could get ugly,” Grady said quietly. “I need your expertise, Harris, because it has to be solved fast. But I need to be in it myself. I know the area. I know the people and the . . . delicacies, for lack of a better word. I already discussed it with the chief. He thinks it’s a good idea.”
I couldn’t help thinking they wanted a man involved, maybe because the Amish would take a man more seriously. But the goal was to solve the case. I wasn’t going to argue with what would work.
“Are you going to want to lead the interviews?” I asked in a neutral voice.
“Nah. Like I said, you’ve got a lot more recent homicide experience than me. Besides, I want to see you in action.” He smirked.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “If you watch me very, very carefully, you might learn something.”
Grady snorted. “Like how to wipe my ass and text at the same time the way you New Yorkers do? Lookin’ forward to it. Hell, let’s go get started on those interviews. The Amish are early risers.”
—
It was mid-afternoon when Grady pulled into Ezra Beiler’s farm. On my iPad were interviews with every member over the age of ten in the Miller family, the King family, the Lapps, and both sets of Fishers. Aaron Fisher’s family and Levi Fisher’s family both lived on Grimlace Lane, and it turned out Aaron and Levi were cousins. The audio interviews were on my iPad as well as photos. The Amish dislike having their photos taken, but I’d insisted to Grady and he’d backed me up. With so many Samuels and Miriams, I had to have the photos to keep them all straight. The organization geek in me was already planning out my situation board in my head.
Of all the people we’d interviewed, no one admitted to recognizing the dead girl from our photo of her face, and if any of them were lying, the natural wall of their reticence around strangers hid it well. In a sense, everyone had an alibi, and in another sense, they didn’t. At the time the body was moved, between midnight and two A.M., everyone was in bed. Wives claimed husbands never stirred all night, and husbands said the same about their wives. Most of the children in these large families slept two or more to a room, and siblings swore no one had gotten up and left for more than a bathroom run last night.