“Hey!” Agent Cooper barked, and then pulled Joshua away from Detective Torres, but still close enough that Had could hear. “What’s with you shooting down every idea that’s not yours?”
Joshua pulled his arm away. “Nothing. Just don’t want to waste time.”
The former agent glanced over at Leslie, and Had realized what might be going on. Joshua didn’t want to be away from his grandson any longer than he had to be.
What seemed like him just being an ass was really him trying to be a good parent. Why couldn’t he just say that? It was like Joshua was so worried about people getting to know him that he tried to piss them off on purpose.
Had was about to go over to the man to talk it through, when there was an odd sound. What was that?
Was that Britney Spears?
* * *
Ruben felt the vibration at the same time he heard the song.
“Toxic.”
That could not be coming from his cell phone. He hated Brittney Spears.
Grabbing at his pockets, trying to locate the device, Ruben finally discovered a hard, cell-phone-shaped bulge in the inner pocket of his suit coat.
Pulling it out, he was surprised to see a pink device covered in sequins. Whose phone was this?
There was a text, and it said that it was from “Hunky Latino.” Then, in parenthesis, it said “Detective Ruben Torres.”
What the hell was going on here?
Then he read the message, and everything made sense. It was from his least favorite profiler of all time.
You’re asking all the wrong questions.
Great. Kent was backseat driving from several states away. Ruben wasn’t sure how he was doing that, but he certainly wasn’t going to let the man’s insults get under his skin. He ignored the text, focusing instead on everything surrounding how Ruben had received it.
“Hey, nice phone,” Joshua Wright called out to him, but Ruben was too busy figuring out what was going on to pay much attention.
Kent had texted this cell from Ruben’s own phone. But then whose phone was this? And who was it that thought Ruben was a hunky Latino?
It wasn’t his fiancé’s phone. He would have recognized it.
Ruben shook his head. Didn’t matter.
“Toxic” rang out again. All eyes were on him.
Sighing, Ruben looked at the phone.
Check out the Amish.
“Um… I think we should go out and talk to the Amish guy and his wife,” Ruben said to the team, all of whom were facing him.
“Why should we do that?” Agent Cooper asked, puzzled.
Ruben had no idea. Well, other than the fact that Kent had said it. There was no way in hell that Ruben would ever admit it, but He trusted Kent’s judgment. At least when it came to solving crimes.
Honestly, if Kent had been here, Ruben would have been one of the first ones to argue with him. But since he wasn’t…
Why? Ruben texted back to Kent. He ground his teeth. When he got back, he was going to shove this phone so far up that profiler’s…
“Toxic” rang out for a third time, and Ruben cursed himself for not putting the phone on silent. Doing so, he read the response.
Because they’re creepy.
Fantastic. Kent was doing his whole Svengali thing again.
He faced the team.
“Ah… how would it be if you just… went with me on this one?” he asked.
CHAPTER 3
Sariah wasn’t sure how Torres had managed to convince her that this was a good idea. So far, there were about three other directions she wanted to take this investigation. Even the worst of those seemed better than chasing down a pacifist Amish guy, hot-tempered or no.
As she walked up to the front door of the modest home that belonged to Isaiah and Christy Stoltzfus, she noticed that there were solar panels up on the roof. Weren’t the Amish supposed to shun electricity?
Reggie seemed to notice her attention and answered her unspoken question. “They don’t do it lots, but sometimes the community decides that solar power is okay. They don’t link to the power wires from the outside, though.”
There was so much Sariah didn’t know about the Amish.
She knocked on the door, and when it swung wide, she was faced with the woman they had seen earlier, back at Peter’s Pumpkin Patch. There was a look of surprise on the woman’s face, and she took a step back.
“Christy Stoltzfus?” Sariah asked.
The woman nodded. “Yes. That’s me. What can I do for you?”
“Is your husband around?”
Christy shook her head, making a face. “No. He’s out slaughtering a pig.” Shuddering, she gave Sariah a weak smile. “I could never handle watching it, so he left me here.”
From the brief altercation between Peter and Isaiah earlier, Sariah could tell that there was a marked difference in Christy’s speech, compared to her husband’s. Perhaps the fact that she was a convert was the cause.
“We just wanted to ask you a few questions about what happened back at the farm,” she answered, trying to keep her tone gentle. It couldn’t be all that often that the Amish got FBI agents at their door.
“I heard about the boy as we were leaving today,” Christy murmured, then her eyes widened. “But you can’t think that we had anything to do with that?”
“We just wanted to find out about your relationship with the Gesners,” Sariah demurred. “It seemed like there was some tension there.”
Christy sighed. “You have to understand. It’s the way things work around here.”
“What do you mean by that?” Torres asked, stepping forward.
The movement seemed to catch the woman off guard, and she retreated another step inside her home. But after a moment, she stepped forward once again.
“My husband doesn’t like to associate with the English. But it gets worse when they’ve… when they’re…” Her speech ground to a halt, and Christy’s face flushed. After a long moment, she continued. “There were rumors.”
“Rumors?” Sariah prompted.
The woman nodded. “About some of the things that go on there at the Gesner’s place.”
“We know this can be tough,” Torres stated, “but we need you to be more specific.”
“Well, it’s… it’s Alyson. She…” Once again, the woman fell silent.
“She was having an affair, wasn’t she?”
It was Joshua, with Bella at his side, speaking as he crossed the yard from the van. He was supposed to stay there, with just Torres and Sariah approaching the house. But since when did Joshua listen?
While the new voice seemed to startle Christy, she nodded. The red flush deepened until it was almost purple.
“Was she having an affair with the boy that was murdered?” Sariah asked, putting the links together. That had been the thread they needed to follow from the beginning. The fact that they were out here in Amish territory made her want to punch Ruben Torres in the face. She glanced over. At least the man had the decency to look embarrassed.
But Christy’s face clouded over at Sariah’s question. “I don’t know that for sure. I can tell you that the one killed was no innocent.” For a moment, there was a flash of something resembling anger in her face.
“How do you mean?” she prompted.
“There were two of the girls from our community. They went on rumspringa… you know about that, right?”
“It’s a rite of passage,” Reggie called out from where she was standing back by the van with Leslie, who was still cuddling with the baby. That relationship had done a 180. “They go out and experience life in the modern world. See if they want to stay.”
“So the girls went on this rum-thingy,” Sariah said, turning her attention back to Christy. “What then?”
“That boy Byron took advantage of them,” she said, her tone hardening. “One of the girls came back, filled with shame at what he had done to her. The other…”
“What happened?” Torres asked, his voice g
entle.
“She got pregnant. Left the community. We don’t know where she is now.”
It was clear that the woman was upset by what had happened. Sariah wanted to comfort her, but wasn’t sure how to go about it.
What was more important at this point was what the information meant from a practical standpoint. It pointed the finger at Peter, that was true.
But it also seemed to point the finger at pretty much all of the Amish.
That was a lot of suspects to track down.
* * *
“So, you want to tell us about the affairs, or would you like for us to tell you?” Joshua asked. He pushed Bella back, as his dog was trying to get through to the woman. Probably to lick her, which wouldn’t really help with the interrogation he was trying to conduct at the moment.
Alyson blanched, but there appeared to be enough spunk left in her to try to worm her way out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“All right. So I tell you,” Joshua responded. “From what I hear, you’ve been a busy girl.”
Joshua felt a hand on his shoulder. Didn’t really matter much who it was, their intent was clear. He was being too direct. Not enough finesse.
Screw that.
He pulled his shoulder away, glancing back, and was surprised to see Had there. It would have made more sense if it had been Reggie or Coop. They were always riding his tail about the attitude with which he interrogated suspects.
But Had? If the young cop was saying that he needed to back down, maybe he should listen.
In the meanwhile, Alyson was standing there with her mouth working. At length she spoke.
“You’re asking if I ever slept with Byron?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Detective Torres said with a grim smile, “but go ahead.”
She glanced around, perhaps looking to see if her husband was nearby. “Yes, okay? Yes, I did.”
“He looks like he’s nearly half your age,” Reggie accused.
Alyson threw her head back. “Age is a number,” she responded with some heat. “And he was sweet. He cooked for me.”
Cooked for her? That sparked something in Joshua’s brain.
Byron was the one who had been eviscerated, his stomach turned inside out and his intestines spread around the grounds. And he had used food as a seduction tool.
“The first victim,” Joshua said. “Did anyone look closely at the tox screen?”
Ruben nodded. “Yeah. He was positive for that neuromuscular drug.”
“Anything else?”
The detective scratched his head. “Um… THC, I think.”
A pot smoker. And his thumb and first two fingers had been mutilated, as well as his mouth.
“What is it, Joshua?” Reggie asked.
Her eyes were bright. She could see that he was onto something. And for a moment, it was like they were back to where they had been before…
Before he had stood outside a certain hotel door, watching as Agent Cooper came up behind her, shirt unbuttoned and untucked. He shook his head to rid himself of the image, pushing it back down inside himself.
“The mutilations were based on the victims’ seduction techniques,” he explained. “I’m guessing the first one would get his conquests high.”
“But what about the second one?” Had asked. “Hands chopped off… what would that signify?”
Joshua shrugged. “Maybe he was famous for his backrubs. Not sure. But it’s something we can look into.”
Alyson pushed herself forward once more. “I don’t know about all of this, but I haven’t done anything wrong here. He’s over eighteen. It’s not illegal.”
“No, it’s not,” Agent Cooper agreed. “But it is motive.”
It took a moment to sink in, but when it dawned on her, Alyson gasped.
“You’re not talking about Peter, are you?”
Joshua just looked at her. Understandable that you weren’t at your best when you were being questioned about a young man’s murder that it just so happened you had screwed. But that was not a smart question.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not him.”
“He has motive, opportunity…” Agent Cooper said.
“I get that, but there’s something you don’t understand,” Alyson argued.
“What would that be?” Joshua demanded.
There was another long pause as the woman seemed to be deciding whether or not to continue. Then, after staring at each one of the team members there, she spoke.
“He knew about the affairs. He’s always known.” Alyson cleared her throat. “And what’s more… he’s okay with it.”
Well, that was not what Joshua had expected.
* * *
Ruben didn’t buy it for one second.
“How could he be okay with it?” he asked.
There was no way. Men were far too territorial when it came to their love lives. Was it sexist? Maybe. But it was also millions of years of evolution at work.
You could pretend to be all right with the woman you loved sleeping with someone else. It never was.
Now why did that thought bring up an image of Nicole?
He refocused on Alyson as she forced the words out. There was obvious reluctance on her part to share the information.
“My husband is… well, he’s pretty much… ahh… impotent. He took Propecia after he got hair transplant surgery, and… it…” She glared around at the group. “Please, don’t tell him that I told you.”
“Just because he’s impotent doesn’t mean he’s all of a sudden inhuman,” Joshua argued. “Jealousy doesn’t just go away.”
Exactly Ruben’s point. But was it his imagination, or did the former agent glance over at Officer Black when he said that?
The dog down by his side sat up all of the sudden, her ears back, her body tense and alert. A growl issued forth from her throat.
She was staring off at someone behind them. Alyson noticed and turned around to see what Bella was responding to. Even as Ruben’s head followed, he heard a scream rip from the woman’s mouth.
There, coming toward them, was Isaiah Stoltzfus. There was murder in his eyes, in the way he held his body, in his angry stride. And blood covered his hands and arms.
Reacting without thinking, Ruben rushed forward to confront the man, unsurprised as he balled his bloody hands into fists and threw a punch at him. Ruben allowed his training to take over, dodging the man’s wild swings.
“Where is my wife?” the large Amish man raged. “I know that she is here!”
That wasn’t what Ruben had expected to hear. Of course, he hadn’t expected to see Isaiah at all. So there was that.
Kent had been right once again, that bastard.
Isaiah clipped him in the jaw, causing Ruben’s sight to reel about like a drunken sailor on a day’s leave. But Ruben was a champion boxer. He knew how to handle himself in a fight.
“Have you also known my wife?” the man raged, spittle flying from his mouth.
There it was. That was the motive.
It wasn’t just Alyson who was sleeping around. This poor sap of an Amish man had been cuckolded too. Or at least he thought he had been.
Taking the man’s next blow high on his shoulder, Ruben followed with a one-two punch to the gut and to the head, forcing the big man back on his heels. There was another half-hearted attempt at another blow from Isaiah, but Ruben caught his hand with ease and whipped it back around behind the man’s back.
It all made sense. Isaiah, jealous of his convert wife, had run around the community, taking out every Lothario character he could find. Gelding them, like he might do to a problematic stallion or aggressive bull.
Ruben thought back to the mutilations. Well, maybe a little bit more than just a gelding, but same basic idea…
In one fluid motion, Ruben’s cuffs were out and the man was handcuffed. A picture-perfect takedown, if he did say so himself.
“We got him,” Ruben called back to the
group, feeling the flush of a job well done flow through him.
He had set out to take down this killer, and he had done so. Maybe not quite as fast as Kent would have done it, but it was still within the first day, so Ruben was more than pleased with the results.
In fact…
Handing off Isaiah to Agent Cooper, Ruben pulled out the gaudy cell phone and typed out a text to the profiler. We got him. Then he pressed send.
It seemed as if it was less than a second before he got a response back.
Him? Try again, Romeo.
Well, that wasn’t good.
CHAPTER 4
Joshua had to take a leak.
Bad.
“Had, would you take Bella for a second?” he asked. “I gotta hit the head.”
The young cop nodded, taking the leash and bending down to scratch Bella’s head. Bella reached her muzzle out to give Had a lick on the cheek.
There might be times that Had got under Joshua’s skin, but he had to admit the guy was good to his core. No one but Joshua himself was better with Bella.
Joshua also had to admit that watching Torres take down the muscular Amish man was pretty impressive. The Latino detective maybe wasn’t his favorite guy on the planet, but it turned out he was a good detective.
Trotting toward the back of the farm house, Joshua scanned for a bathroom. There had to be one around the gift shop. There were porta-potties around the grounds, but those things were disgusting.
Everything seemed wrapped up. Time for the team to pack up their things and head back to Quantico. Hell, he wasn’t sure about anyone else, but he hadn’t even had time to open his suitcase.
But something was nagging at him. Some loose end that hadn’t been tied off yet.
There seemed to be motive and opportunity here. And the man had been caught red-handed, in a literal sense. Which never happened.
That was the problem.
What kind of guilty man came to a crime scene, raging about his wife’s infidelities… with blood on his hands? It would take a special kind of idiot to do something like that. And while Isaiah might be hot-tempered, he didn’t strike Joshua as a complete moron.
And hadn’t his wife said something about her husband being out with the farm animals? What had he been doing?
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