by Emma Miller
“Only God can judge,” he interrupted.
“Not in a court of law. And a lawyer wouldn’t judge you. He or she is only there to protect your rights. Even if you did . . . if you did what you say you did, you have a right to a fair trial. Every American has that right.”
“Englisher law.”
“Ne, Moses, American law. And even Amish men and women are Americans. Remember, our ancestors came here from the Old World to find those rights. You have to ask for an attorney. If it’s money you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ll think of something, and I’ll find a lawyer for you, a good one.”
He shifted in his chair, looking at his fingernails. “I’m supposed to be at work.”
Rachel wasn’t certain what to say to that, so she said nothing.
“I am. I’m supposed to be at work. I don’t like to be late.”
“You can’t go to work if you’re locked in here.”
Moses seemed to consider that. “My mother needs my pay. I give her my pay. Not all. Most of it. Some I keep for lunch. For soda pop on Saturday. Just Saturday. They cost a dollar twenty-five at Wagler’s Grocery. I get a grape soda pop and a submarine sandwich. Every Saturday. That costs six dollars. The rest goes to my mother. She depends on it.” He folded his arms and rocked back and forth in his seat. “I think I should have my hat. My mam would want me to wear my hat.”
“It will be all right,” Rachel said. “She’ll understand.”
Moses didn’t seem to hear her. He was quiet for a minute or two, and then he said, “It wasn’t an accident.” He was looking over her head now, and he’d clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “I don’t think so. I don’t think it was an accident that Daniel died. But he’s in heaven now, so it’s all right.”
“How do you know?” she pressed. “How do you know it wasn’t an accident? Were you there?”
“I confessed.” He smiled again, that same sad smile.
The shadow of a beard showed on his thin cheeks. She’d have to remember to see that he had the means to shave if that was permitted. “I don’t believe you’re telling the truth, Moses,” she said softly. “I don’t think you killed Daniel.”
“Why do you say that? You don’t know me. Maybe I could have done that. Maybe I could have pointed a rifle at him and pulled the trigger.”
“Can you look me in the eye and tell me you did?” Rachel asked.
Moses blinked back tears. And then, slowly, he shook his head from side to side.
“So you’re telling me that you’re innocent?”
“If the police ask me, I will say I did it. I will.”
“Why? Who are you trying to protect?”
An insistent rap came at the door. It opened a crack. “We have to go now,” Evan said.
She looked back at Moses. He’d lowered his head to the table and was silently weeping. His arms hid most of his face, but she was touched by his trembling shoulders. “You have to have a lawyer,” she repeated. “Your mother wants you to have a lawyer. Don’t make this even harder on her.”
Moses said nothing.
“I’ll take that as a ya,” she said. “I’ll come again, if I can, and I’ll pray for you, Moses. I will pray for you.”
Moses said nothing more and Rachel allowed Evan to lead her out of the room. She said nothing as she followed Evan back through the metal doors and checkpoints. She didn’t speak as they walked to his SUV; he unlocked and opened the passenger’s door for her. She kept her silence as he drove away from the forbidding prison.
“Will he accept an attorney?” Evan asked as he pulled onto the highway and accelerated.
“I think so. He didn’t say that he wouldn’t.”
“What did he say?”
She looked at him. What had Moses said? What had he meant? “I don’t think he did it, Evan.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Not directly,” she answered.
“So you didn’t learn anything, and you’re not sure if he’ll agree to have a lawyer?”
She thought about what Moses had said about Daniel’s death not being an accident. Did he mean he knew who did it, or did he mean he had done it accidentally? She groaned inwardly. She’d believed that coming to see Moses would put her conscience to rest, but it hadn’t. She was more confused now than she had been before she’d entered the prison. “I think he was trying to tell me that he didn’t shoot his brother-in-law,” she said, not answering his question.
“But he gave a confession to the police.”
“Yes, he did.”
“And now he’s saying that he’s innocent.”
“Not exactly,” she admitted. “But that’s what he meant. At least, I think that’s what he meant.” She laid her hand on his arm. “It was a cry for help, Evan. I can’t just walk away from this. Not now.”
“The thing is . . .” Evan hesitated as if searching for the right way to explain his thoughts. “The thing is, Rachel, once someone makes a confession, justice takes a certain path. He said he did it, so they believe him. I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s more likely he’s lying now.”
“I know that.” She glanced at the window, watching the scenery go by but not really seeing it. “But I’m telling you,” she said softly, “Moses didn’t kill Daniel.”
Chapter 6
“Moses is definitely different,” Rachel said to Mary Aaron as she dropped into her recliner and pulled off her boots. “But he doesn’t seem like a killer to me. He seems . . . I don’t know, sweet.” She reached for her sheepskin slippers, her favorite winter footwear, at least when she was at home.
“Sweet?” Her cousin wrinkled her nose.
Rachel wasn’t certain what Mary Aaron meant by that observation. The two of them were shut away in Rachel’s suite on the third floor of Stone Mill House. Mary Aaron was perched on the corner of the bed, tossing a toy mouse for Bishop. The big Siamese would fetch for Mary Aaron but not for her. Odd, since Bishop was her cat. Sometimes, Rachel thought the animal only tolerated her, but to others he could be quite affectionate.
“You don’t think Moses is sweet?” Rachel asked, bringing her own thoughts back to the matter at hand. “Do you know him well?” She was familiar with most of the Amish families in the valley, but some she knew only by hearsay. “Are you friends with Mary Rose?” Rachel didn’t know any of the Studers well. She’d rarely seen Moses’s mother or sister in town, and of course, she didn’t attend Amish worship service anymore. She couldn’t remember Daniel at all, other than as another German face in a straw hat and suspenders.
Mary Aaron unpinned her kapp and shook out her bun. She placed the head covering on the quilt and combed out her hair with her fingers. “I don’t think anyone knows Moses well,” she said as she began to plait her hair into one thick braid. She was wearing her own jeans, new running shoes, and a pale-pink cotton sweater.
Mary Aaron had recently begun running seriously and was doing thirty miles a week. Rachel was glad to see her testing the bounds of her culture, but she hoped her cousin wasn’t running just because it was something Rachel did. Or at least, she hoped that Mary Aaron enjoyed running. Rachel had had little enough time for it the past year, and she was afraid that her endurance was slipping.
Rachel didn’t say anything about Mary Aaron’s attire. Some days her cousin wore traditional Amish dresses; others, casual English clothes; and often a mixture of the two. Rachel wished she would make up her mind because the suspense was worse than knowing—and because Timothy, Mary Aaron’s faithful admirer, kept asking her when Mary Aaron was returning to the fold. As if Rachel knew . . . anything.
Although Mary Aaron was at an age where most Old Order Amish women had already been baptized into the faith, she hadn’t made the commitment yet. The decision was up to each individual, but it was a choice rather than an absolute. Waiting didn’t jeopardize her place in the community, but it did upset a lot of people, especially her parents. In spite of that, Mary Aaron was still permitted to attend wor
ship and was welcome in her family’s home. Had she been baptized and then reconsidered her dedication to being Amish, she would have been shunned and that meant almost everyone she knew and loved would turn their backs on her.
The house phone rang and Rachel checked the caller ID. She grimaced. It was the bridal shop. They were anxious for her to make another appointment to have the last fitting on her gown, but she didn’t want to commit to a particular time because what if she couldn’t make that one, either? The dress had seemed to fit well enough the first time she’d tried it on. Okay, so it needed a little letting out in the waist. Just a little. Bridal gowns all seemed to come in size 6 or 4, and she was definitely an 8 . . . or maybe more of a 10. But she wasn’t vain. And she was no one’s idea of a fairy-tale princess. Making her look like someone she wasn’t for one day didn’t seem as important right now as trying to help Moses Studer save his life.
Rachel let the call go to voicemail; she’d call the bridal shop back later. “I don’t think he did it,” she told Mary Aaron.
Mary Aaron got up and put her kapp on the bookcase near the door. “But he confessed,” she said. She glanced at her reflection in the oval antique mirror that hung on the wall. “I think I should dye it back to its original color,” she said. “The streaking looks silly.”
“I don’t think it looks silly, but if you ask me, your hair doesn’t need streaking. It’s lovely as it is,” Rachel remarked. She heard her cell phone, lying on a table, vibrating. She ignored it and glanced at Mary Aaron.
Her cousin’s hair was wheat-colored, thick and shining. In the summer, the sun tinted it with golden highlights, and in winter, it darkened a little and became a rich honey hue. With her rosy complexion, even features, sparkling eyes with their thick lashes, and a faint scattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones, Mary Aaron’s face was fresh and charming. Personally, Rachel had always thought that Mary Aaron had a classic girl-next-door face, and that she was someone who would retain her natural beauty into her eighties. Rachel would have said so, but she knew that Mary Aaron would be embarrassed by the compliment. It would be too English. Not Amish.
Mary Aaron looked into the mirror again and grimaced. “I wish my hair was either strawberry blond or butter yellow or as dark as Evan’s.”
Rachel chuckled. “If wishes were horses.” Though younger, Mary Aaron was as close to her as any of her sisters—closer. She was her dearest friend and usually had better sense than most women twice her age. But her cousin’s venture into rumspringa was sometimes trying. At least she hadn’t taken up smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol like some Amish young people did during their running around time. And it was Mary Aaron’s common sense and her rock-solid faith that Rachel was certain would set her right eventually.
“Do you think Moses is the type of person who could point a gun at someone and shoot him?” Rachel asked, bringing the subject back to what was troubling her.
Mary Aaron shook her head. “Ne, but I’ve been wrong before, haven’t I?” She dropped onto the bed again. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you?”
“Do you think I should?”
“I don’t want to talk you into something that will cause you trouble. Have you prayed on it?”
Rachel nodded. “On my knees. But I’m not sure He heard me because I haven’t . . .”
Mary Aaron’s eyes widened with concern. “He always hears us, but we don’t always hear Him when He speaks to us. What does your conscience tell you to do?”
Rachel didn’t hesitate. “To do something. To ask questions. To see that Moses has legal representation that will look out for his best interests.”
Her cousin sighed. “Then that’s what you have to do . . . what we have to do. It won’t hurt anything if we talk to his family and to men who might have been out hunting in that area that day. People who might have seen or heard something.”
“That’s what I thought.” She got up out of the chair and crossed the room to her desk. Mounted on the wall beside it was a large whiteboard. Using an eraser, she wiped clean the list of chores she’d planned for the B&B that week.
She took several dry erase markers from a pottery cup on her desk. Picking out a teal marker, she printed Daniel Fisher’s name at the top center of the board in all caps and underlined it in red. Beside his name, she wrote deceased in cursive, lowercase. Then, a few inches below, on the left side, she printed FAMILY in caps and underlined the word. She listed all the members of Daniel’s immediate family: Mary Rose Fisher, Baby Eliza Fisher, Alma Studer, and Lemuel Studer.
Below, boxed in red, she printed Moses’s name. And beside it, in cursive, lowercase, she wrote confessed.
“Moses didn’t actually live with Daniel,” Mary Aaron pointed out.
“Right, but he’s family.”
Directly below Daniel Fisher’s name and to the right of family, Rachel printed HUNTERS in caps. And then, to the right of HUNTERS, she printed ENEMIES. She glanced over at Mary Aaron, who was now on her feet and standing an arm’s length away. “I don’t need to tell you that anything you see here is just between the two of us.”
Mary Aaron rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Do you think you need to remind me of that? When have I ever let slip something that was supposed to be private between us?”
“You’re right,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry.” She took a green marker and printed across the bottom of the whiteboard, ACCIDENT or MURDER?
“It might not have been either,” Mary Aaron suggested. “It could have been self-defense or maybe a struggle that . . . you know. Something else?”
Rachel considered that and then carefully erased or MURDER. “You’re right,” she agreed as she erased the question mark and put it immediately after ACCIDENT. And then, below the word, she wrote a single sentence.
Why a false confession?
Rachel looked back at Mary Aaron to see if she’d missed anything.
“Goot start.” Mary Aaron nodded. “But there were probably a lot of hunters and I don’t know of a single enemy, so maybe you should have given more room for the hunters.”
Rachel dropped the markers into the cup and stepped back to look at the board. “That’s what we’re going to find out. But first, I’m going to call a few attorneys.”
“You think the Studers can afford a lawyer?” Mary Aaron asked. “The community may not want to pay for one since Moses said that he did it. I know Dat wouldn’t. He said so this morning. He doesn’t believe in lawyers anyway. He said God will protect the innocent and punish the guilty.”
Rachel shrugged. “He wouldn’t want to pay for one anyway. You know that he wouldn’t accept one for himself. I love Uncle Aaron, and I know he’s your father, but he is set in his ways.”
“Ya,” Mary Aaron agreed. “That he is. And he’s influential with the community. You can’t count on financial help for Moses. They’ll pray for him, but I doubt they’ll open their wallets.”
“I know,” she answered. “I was thinking of asking Ell to help. Part of her inheritance from her father was that charitable fund for emergency assistance here in Stone Mill. I’d offer to pay for the attorney myself, but I have no idea how much we’re talking about. The will stipulated that the needs of the traditional communities were foremost. And I know they helped to pay for Eli Beiler’s son’s kidney transplant last year.”
“It might not cost anything if Moses tells a judge he’s guilty.”
“Even a guilty man needs a lawyer,” Rachel explained. “To be sure his sentencing is fair.”
“That makes sense.” Mary Aaron shrugged. “Maybe Ell would be willing to help. Unless his confession makes her believe he’s guilty. I don’t understand why he’d say he killed his brother-in-law if he didn’t.”
Rachel grabbed the red marker and drew a line under confessed on the board. “That’s a good question. I did some research on the Internet. I’m not sure what people did before so much information was so easy to find. Anyway, it happens more often than we realize. False co
nfession. There are several reasons. The first is that many suspects are questioned over long periods of time by the authorities. They may be mentally unsound, frightened, or they simply want to please. Others confess for the attention they think it will bring them, or just to get away from the police because it’s suggested they’ll be released if they confess. Many suspects don’t understand the consequences.”
“Moses wasn’t . . .” Mary Aaron seemed to search for the English word. “Intimidated by the police, was he?”
“I don’t think so. He confessed right in front of us. The police’s response to him was based on his behavior. Tea?” Mary Aaron nodded, so Rachel switched on the electric teakettle. She had a small refrigerator where she kept milk and snacks for the times she didn’t want to walk down multiple flights of stairs for a cup of tea and a piece of fruit or some cheese and crackers. She felt as if they needed a cup of tea right now, to calm their minds and steady their thoughts. “More confessions than you’d think are false confessions, and a lot of people are behind bars who are innocent. I read that one of the primary groups DNA testing has helped is those convicted due to false confessions.”
“That’s awful.”
“It is. Evan didn’t really want to talk about the possibility of Moses being innocent, but I finally got him to open up a little. He said that once someone confesses to a crime, it’s difficult to get law enforcement or anyone in the judicial system to consider the suspect might be innocent. And it’s almost impossible to have a suspect released on bail once he’s confessed, even if he withdraws his statement. Everyone chalks it up to the criminal regretting telling the truth.”
“But if the wrong person goes to jail, the dangerous person is still out there. And the police aren’t even looking for him.”
“Exactly.” Rachel sighed. “The other reason a person might give a false confession is obvious to me: to protect someone else.”
“Right. Someone who Moses cares about more than himself? That makes sense to me.”