by Jane Jensen
“Damn,” I breathed. “I wish we had Skype.”
“Sky?”
“Skype. Have you ever had phone sex?”
“What now?” He sounded very confused.
I smiled. “Not you having sex with a phone. Two people having sex over the phone.”
“How could we . . . ?”
I explained to him the principle of the thing and got a strangled reply. “I knew there was a reason I shoulda installed a lock on my bedroom door.”
I grinned, unreasonably happy to have made him suffer a little. “Well, someday we’ll try it. Someday when you’re not living with your sister. To be honest, it doesn’t quite live up to the real thing though.”
“Bet it beats Parcheesi.”
I laughed. “What?”
“Been playing way too much of it with Martha in the evenings.”
“Yes, I think we can safely say it beats Parcheesi.” I sighed, wishing I could reach through the distance between us and touch his hand as it held the phone—anything.
“If that’s what you English get up to, I think I understand why cell phones are forbidden ’cept for work.”
I laughed.
“Well.” His voice was heavy with things he didn’t say.
“Good night, Ezra. Send me those addresses.”
He hesitated as if there was something he wanted to say, but he didn’t. “Good night, Elizabeth.”
After we hung up I had the most terrible feeling. What if this case never ended? What if Ezra changed his mind about leaving the Amish? What if we were never together, in the flesh, again?
It was like having the stomach flu. No matter how bad the end might be, or what terrible things you might have to go through to get past it, at this point, I was willing to face it all just to have this done so we could get to the other side and things could be better.
I needed it to be done.
—
It must have been the sound of rain battering my bedroom windows, along with my stress about the case, but I dreamed again of drowning.
I was in the water looking for Katie. I knew she was there, but the water was muddy and I couldn’t see her. I searched around for her with my hands, blindly. I kept thinking, I need to go up for air, and I kept deciding just one more step, just let me reach this way. And then I realized I’d left it too late, and I was losing consciousness.
I woke up suddenly and sat up in bed. I wanted to go out there right now. It was a lingering panic brought on by my dream, that Katie was in the creek, she was drowning. I knew, of course, that Katie was long dead. There was no one I needed to save in Rockvale Creek. But I couldn’t sleep anymore either. I looked at the clock—it was half past midnight.
I got dressed, got in my car, and headed toward Grimlace Lane.
I had no plans other than to drive around the area, make sure nothing looked amiss, and to use the quiet time to think about the case. That, and glean what hollow satisfaction I could just from driving by Ezra’s house. But as I drove down a country road on my way there, I got behind a slow car. It was a sedan, and in the glow of my headlights I could see a young guy driving. His arm was around a girl who was seated as close to him as possible. They had no interest in going over twenty miles an hour.
After a few frustrating minutes, the car rolled into a pullout with an irritating nonchalance. I passed it.
I pushed the gas pedal, glancing behind me at the car, which seemed content to sit where it was for a while. It reminded me of something—Ezra turning the mule and buggy into a pullout while we were on our way to the farmers’ market that day in February. I came to the next intersection and sat there, thinking. In the dark of night, in the heavy rain, I sat at a stop sign in the middle of farm country. If it had been the summer, I’d be serenaded by the sound of crickets and the glow of fireflies. In the March rain, the staccato beat of raindrops supplied the soundtrack.
Jessica hadn’t been killed in the Millers’ barn. She’d been killed elsewhere and then, already cold, stiff, and dead, guided through the water of the creek to her final resting place.
She could have been killed anywhere, we’d agreed. She could have been killed in a Klein’s Dairy truck—except we’d found no trace of it—or at the park where Larry Wannemaker took his lunch break—though blacklight tests there had found no blood. She could have been killed on any of a million country roads, like the one back there. When we hadn’t found footprints in the snow exiting the creek toward the road, we hadn’t followed up heavily on that theory.
I turned my car and headed for Ronks Road.
—
I started at Route 30. From there I followed Ronks south, toward the area of Grimlace Lane. I remembered from the map—it was a few miles before Ronks curved and parallelled Rockvale Creek for a time. I passed a pullout too close to 30 and kept going. Then I saw one on the right side of the road. I had a sense the creek was over there. I lowered my car window, but the rain made it impossible to hear the sound of moving water. I was pretty sure I was still downstream of the Millers’ farm. I pulled into the dirt area. In my headlights I noted muddy wheel tracks and hoofprints from earlier in the day. This pullout was used by buggies.
I parked and got out, grabbed a flashlight from my glove compartment, and flipped up the hood on my windbreaker. The pullout was roughly curved and framed by trees. There was enough gravel to keep the dirt from completely turning to mud, but the footing was slick and wet. The rough shapes of larger rocks shone in the flashlight’s beam. I walked to the woods, the trees foreboding in the dark and the rain. I pressed on, and a few minutes later I was on the bank of Rockvale Creek. Or, to be honest, the bank was submerged, flooded from the recent rain, and I was as close as I could get to it without wading.
I shone the light upstream. I could make out nothing but trees, but I knew the farms on Grimlace Lane lay in that direction.
Jessica was hit in the back of the head while turned away, then finished off with suffocation. She’d lain somewhere, in the snow, for ten to twelve hours before she was moved via the creek.
Why had she lain outside? Why not in a car trunk?
I had a deep, intense burning in my gut. I wanted to search this area. I wanted a forensics team here, now.
I looked at my watch. It was a little after one in the morning. If I called a forensics team out in the middle of the night, in the rain, and it turned out to be a false lead, I’d never hear the end of it. Grady would say it could wait till morning. After all, we were well past those critical first few days. But the rain . . . The heavy rain was going to wash away any evidence that might be left, if it hadn’t already.
—
I drove to the Lancaster Police Station. Some facilities stayed open twenty-four hours including, thankfully, the Equipment Rec office. The female officer who worked the night shift got what I asked for and signed me out with no words wasted. At least, until she looked at her log.
“Huh. Third time on this metal detector, Detective Harris,” she said with a quirked brow. “This a kink of yours?”
“You know what they say: Third time’s the charm.”
“Well if you find RoboCop with that thing, bring him back here. He’s hot.”
I smiled. “The original or the remake?”
She snorted like I was out of my mind. “You kiddin’? Peter Weller all the way.”
I gave her a high five and lugged my stuff out the door.
—
By the time I got back to the pullout it was almost two-thirty. I started getting tired on the way back, and I contemplated the wisdom of what I was doing—as opposed to, say, going back home to bed and returning in the morning. But I wanted to at least do a quick pass with the luminol to see if I could find any traces of blood. If I did, that would be a good reason to pull the forensics team out bright and early. So I parked my car at the pullout, took my flashligh
t and the newly mixed spray bottle of luminol powder and H2O2 liquid, and got to work.
Once I was there, with the potential for discovery on every patch of ground, my energy and excitement returned. The rain had eased off to a sprinkle, which made the work slightly more rational. It was quite dark out, so if there was anything to react to, the luminol would glow blue. I sprayed it at various places around the pullout. I got reactions immediately and I was excited until I remembered that luminol detects iron and also reacts to fecal matter. There was plenty of horse manure in the pullout, both old and new. They showed up as round blue blobs. But near the edge of the clearing I found a patch that was sprayed out in a pool—it was a shape I recognized from plenty of crime scenes. I’d bet anything it was blood, blood that had soaked into the dirt and gravel of the pullout and was probably nothing more than a darkish stain during the day.
I followed the blobs that trailed from that patch into the trees.
—
I searched for an hour, tantalized to keep going by bread crumbs of blue glow on leaves and on the ground in the woods, getting closer and closer to the creek bank. And then I found it. There was a pile of brush with bits of blue glow on it. When I moved some of the brush aside, I found the bower. I could almost picture Jessica lying here—a large patch of deep blue marked where her head had been. Here, the killer hid her after she was dead, roughly covered by brush and blanketed by snow. She’d lain here in the cold for hours until he came back and dragged her into the creek. But I was sure this area had been searched the day we’d found the body and no footprints found. The snow would have hidden his tracks from earlier in the day, when he’d killed Jessica, but not from that night, when he’d moved her. Which means he had to have walked back through the creek to pick up the body. Smart. But where had he come from?
I took photos with my phone, even though they really didn’t turn out. I felt a burning sense of satisfaction. Luminol is like God’s eye, revealing the invisible blotches of sin. I had a fleeting sense of being an avenger.
Then I went and got the metal detector.
I was still obsessed with the idea of the phone. I searched in a wide swath around the area but found nothing. Of course, this was where Jessica had been killed, not Katie. And Katie was the one who’d had the phone. But I couldn’t get the damn thing out of my mind. At last I stood at the edge of the creek and looked north.
It was time to stop, I knew that. But I was wide-awake now, adrenaline in my blood and the scent of victory in my nose. I’ll just go upstream far enough to see how far this is from the Millers’ farm.
That’s what I told myself. I went back to the car and put on the chest-high waders I’d checked out at the station. I stuck the spray bottle of luminol down inside my waistband. Carrying the metal detector across my shoulders, I waded into the creek.
—
Rockvale Creek was running very high—and it was cold. I walked for a good ways. I had to stay thigh deep, because the sides of the bank that were newly flooded were riddled with branches and bushes and debris. The rush of the current around me was like an embrace that wanted to pull me down. Adrenaline or not, exhaustion was threatening to put an end to my midnight adventures. Then I hit the first chicken-wire barrier.
I saw it, stretching from the sides of the creek bank, mere seconds before I ran into it. I stopped. I had to be on the property line of a farm with livestock, though whether or not it was one of the farms on Grimlace Lane remained to be seen.
The water was so high the chicken-wire fencing disappeared in the middle of the creek, its top underwater. It was like an invitation. There’s no barrier here, keep going. I waded to the middle and pushed the fencing down farther with my hand and allowed the water to push me over it, the rubber of the waders catching only a little on the wire. I kept going.
After the third chicken-wire fence I crossed I started to recognize the area. I waded out and climbed up the creek bank. In front of me was a pasture, the grass low but already greening up in the March rain. Beyond that was Aaron Lapp’s big red barn and new, ranch-style farmhouse. The night was silent except for the sound of the running creek and the increased beat of the rain, coming down hard now.
I’d used the metal detector at the Millers’ and at Ezra’s place, but not here. I swung it off my shoulders and gave silent thanks when I turned it on and it was still working. I started to search.
I found nothing along the creek bank, so I followed the animal trail across the pasture toward the barn, swinging the metal detector along the way. I’d been banned from Grimlace Lane, so I wouldn’t be able to come back and search in the day. But now? No one was here to see me. I was interacting with no one.
I reached the barn having found nothing but three large nails and an old metal buckle. I turned the metal detector off and stood there.
The Lapp house was silent and dark. The barn loomed like a living presence. Aaron Lapp would be incensed to find me here. Which was why I’d likely never have this opportunity again.
I thought of the laws governing police searches of outbuildings. It was iffy territory. But the Lapp barn was at least a hundred feet from the house and not marked in any way, either by fencing or signage, as private. In the normal course of my job, I would not hesitate to check it out if I had good reason to do so. Even so, I knew Grady wouldn’t like it.
But I thought of Jessica, her body left unclaimed in that barn, and of Katie, who was lost in the river. And I thought, more selfishly, of Ezra. This needs to end. I went inside.
The Lapps had four horses in one large free stall at the end of the barn, and two cows in a stall on the other side of the aisle. They were rough shapes in the dark, unalarmed by my presence. There was a light switch just inside the door. Dare I risk it? The part of the barn I was in faced away from the house. Still, I decided to stick with the flashlight.
The aisle was apparently used for feeding, with long food troughs on either side that opened onto the stalls and large plastic bins of grain. I ran my flashlight over everything and ran the metal detector briefly around the food bins—nothing.
The aisle opened onto a larger room with a cement floor, steel plates lay over what appeared to be channels for manure, and several rusty chutes disappeared into the upper story. I figured the metal detector was going to be useless in a place like this, but I did run it in the shadows along the wall, under a wooden cabinet that sat up off the floor, around a large bin of firewood. The readout spiked. I ran it around the wood bin again—the metal detector was reacting to the back of it.
It was probably a large metal hinge or even nails. I told myself that, but my stomach twisted with anxiety. I put the metal detector down and shone the flashlight inside the bin. It was a large container, around five feet long and four feet high. It was made of rough boards, well aged, and filled with chopped wood and twigs sized to burn in a wood stove. The back of the bin was taller than the front and some of it showed over the logs. It looked normal—unusually clean even. I debated turning on the light so I could get a better look. Then I remembered the spray bottle of luminol I’d tucked into the waders. I pulled it out and sprayed the top of the woodpile and the back of the bin and turned off the flashlight.
The back of the bin had an apple-sized smear of blue glow—blood.
A body would fit in that bin. In fact it would be a good place to hide it until it could be disposed of. Was that blood Katie’s? Jessica, I was fairly certain, had been killed at that pullout, hidden in the woods there until the killer could return and drag her body downstream to the Millers’ barn. But Katie? Had Katie been killed here?
I propped my flashlight up on a nearby ledge so it shone over the wood bin, and I started removing logs.
CHAPTER 15
Drowning
I found the phone with the hot pink cover in the woodpile, where it had slipped down through the top layer of logs some time ago, probably the previous October. I
stood there holding the phone in my hand. I hit the power button, but of course the battery was long dead. I knew as soon as I picked it up that I shouldn’t have touched it. I had to put it back, call Grady, and get the forensics team in here. I could stand watch outside, make sure no one got a chance to move it before—
The light in the barn went on.
I turned. Aaron Lapp stood in the doorway blinking at me. He looked like he’d hastily dressed in his black pants, suspenders, and a worn blue shirt. His hair was wild around his head from having been asleep. His eyes narrowed in anger as he registered who I was and what I was doing—standing in his barn and going through his woodpile.
“Get. Off. My. Property,” he said, through gritted teeth.
I felt a hot wave of fear. I had no backup. No one knew I was here, on private property in the most secret part of night. I hadn’t worn my gun, had no reason to think I’d need it. And I was pretty sure I was looking at the man who had killed Katie Yoder and Jessica Travis. How much further would he go to hide his crimes? And then I realized—I was a police officer, an ex-member of the NYPD, and I had years of self-defense training on Aaron Lapp. I was not a girl he could bash on the back of the head. I wasn’t going to be afraid of him.
In fact, I was pissed.
Instead of dropping the phone back where I’d found it, I held it up. “Did you know this was here? I’m betting you didn’t, or you would have gotten rid of it. You know what’s on it though, don’t you?”
He looked at the phone with a frown. “You . . . That does not belong to me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s Katie Yoder’s phone. The batteries are dead, or we could take a little look at what’s on here together. But you know, don’t you? That’s why you killed her. Last fall, she took a video of the two of you messing around and she was going to sell it to the papers.”
Aaron wiped his face and left his hand clasped over his mouth as if to hold in words or the contents of his stomach. I could see panic and calculation in his eyes as his gaze moved from my face to the phone in my hand and back again.