Shadows of Lancaster County

by Mindy Starns Clark

“Keep reading,” Reed said, gesturing toward the papers in my lap.

  I did as he said, noting that there were two more patient files. One was very brief, with a single entry that indicated prenatal testing for WKS had been conducted on a twenty-one-year-old pregnant woman, one who had lost two infants to the disorder in the past. The fetus she was currently pregnant with, however, tested negative. At the end of that entry was the sentence: Patient indicates that her mother, age forty, is also pregnant, due in August. I have recommended testing for her as well, particularly considering her age. File closed on this date of December 21, 1996, HU, MD.

  “Explain something to me,” I said, glancing at Reed. “How does this disorder thing work? This woman lost two previous babies to WKS, but then her third baby apparently didn’t have it. Why is that?”

  “Didn’t you ever have to diagram genetics in high school, back in biology class? You remember those little charts that showed dominant genes and what chance the offspring of two people would have for inheriting blue eyes or a big nose or something? It’s a statistical thing. For a child to be born with WKS, both parents have to have been carriers. Even then, there’s only a twenty-five percent chance that their offspring will have the disorder, but when you consider that’s one in four kids, that’s pretty high.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Keep reading.”

  I turned to the next page, which was apparently the file for the previous girl’s mother. The forty-year-old woman had come in for testing, only her news was not so good, as the fetus did test positive for WKS. Though parts of this file had also been blacked out, it looked as if a different treatment approach had been used this time, some sort of procedure done to the fetus in utero rather than waiting to treat the child once it was born. It must not have worked though, judging by the final entry: In-home delivery at 9:35 pm, male infant pronounced dead at 10:15 pm. The rest of the paragraph was blacked out, and there were no other pages.

  “What was it about this file that bothered Doug so much?”

  “Check the name and the date.”

  I looked at the top of the page to see that the pregnant woman in question, the one whose baby had WKS and died shortly after it was born, was listed as “Katherine Beiler Schumann.”

  “Katherine Schumann…is that Kate Schumann? Lydia’s mother?” I cried. Flipping backward, I checked the name on the previous patient, which confirmed it. The twenty-one-year-old whose fetus tested negative was listed as “Grete Schumann Stoltzfus.” That must have been when she was pregnant with Tresa. Flipping forward again, I scanned all of the dates in her mother’s file until I got to the one that mattered: According to the final entry, Grete’s mother’s baby was born and then died on August 16, 1997, the very night of the fire.

  The night that changed all of our lives forever.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  At first, I was simply speechless. I needed to process this, to think, to walk, to move.

  “Can I walk around out here?” I asked, nearly hyperventilating. “I need some air. I have to process.”

  “I don’t see why not. It’s just a field.”

  Not even waiting for him to join me, I simply got out and started running. I ran back up the gravel road the way we had come, blood rhythmically coursing through my veins like a drum. When I reached the blacktop, I turned around, slowed my pace, and jogged all the way back to the car. By the time I got there, Reed had turned off the car and was standing in the sun, leaning against the hood, his back to me. He was talking on a cell phone, and by the tone of his voice and the words I could hear, the conversation sounded personal, not business.

  I walked toward him, and when he noticed me, he spoke again into the phone.

  “Sorry, Heather. I have to go. I’ll call you later. You too.”

  After he had hung up the phone, I spoke.

  “First of all, this means we didn’t kill three people, only two. Not that it makes that much of a difference, but in a way it does. At least in here.”

  I put a hand on my heart, the ache of guilt and loss fading just a little as I absorbed the realization that my actions that night hadn’t helped to kill a newborn baby. By the time the fire started, that baby was already dead—and had been dead for several hours.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. Though, as Doug pointed out in his phone message, in another way this makes it worse. The Schumanns had already been through the heartbreaking death of their baby on that very night. After going through all of that, then they ended up burning to death in the fire? It’s enough to make you sick. No wonder Doug was compelled to send me those records.”

  Reed was right. Regardless of the exact sequence of events, by the end of the night three charred bodies were found in the remains, even if one of them had been dead before it happened.

  “I have questions, lots of questions,” I said, pacing in front of the car. “First, what does this have to do with Bobby? These files are old. His only connection to any of those procedures is that he was an intern at the WIRE the summer that Kate Schumann was a patient. I know Bobby’s smart, but you can’t tell me that any of his duties there involved high-level stuff like this.”

  “No, of course not. I was the highest-ranking intern that summer, and even my work was pretty low level. At least I got to deal with viral vectors. Bobby’s job was pretty basic. Lab cleanup, sterilizing equipment, things like that.”

  “So what does any of this have to do with him?”

  “I’m not sure. My guess is that Dr. Updyke continued to be involved with clandestine human trials—and maybe, these days, they’re still going on, only now Bobby helps in some capacity. You know how your brother always worshipped the brilliant Dr. Updyke. Maybe Doug found out about these old experiments, so he called Bobby to get more current information about what might be going on over there.”

  “Actually,” I corrected, thinking of the phone message that night from Doug to Bobby, “Bobby is the one who asked Doug to get some information. There’s a message on Bobby’s machine from that night, from Doug. He said something like ‘I have the info you asked for, including some you didn’t expect.’ ”

  “Maybe it was the part he didn’t expect that caused the problem. Then, instead of ratting out the doctor, Bobby acted to protect him instead.”

  “Protect him. By killing Doug?”

  “It sure could look that way.”

  I moved in front of him, hands on my hips.

  “You think Bobby killed Doug to protect Dr. Updyke?”

  Reed studied my face, the blue of his eyes almost piercing in their intensity.

  “I’m afraid that’s one possibility. I’m sorry, Anna, but it’s a logical conclusion, given all the facts. We know for sure Updyke didn’t do it himself. He was at a symposium in Pittsburgh that night, speaking to an audience of a couple hundred people.”

  I paced some more as my mind rolled around the possible events of last Wednesday night.

  “In his phone message to you, Doug said that he was selling out his company, and that doing so was probably going to cost him his marriage and his job.”

  “Yes, that’s what he said.”

  “So why would Bobby be the killer? He may be a big fan of Updyke, but he’s not particularly invested in Wynn Industries, other than as a low-paid employee. I mean, haven’t you heard the expression ‘Follow the money’? A big medical scandal at the WIRE would be a disaster for Updyke personally, sure, but something like that would come at a much higher cost to Wynn Industries at large. The company would lose a fortune, not to mention its reputation, which in turn would further lower its value. The ripple effect could end up costing them millions—even billions. Given that, who’s to say that Orin Wynn didn’t kill Doug? The way I see it, that’s a much more logical conclusion, especially since Orin’s daughter was in a loveless marriage with Doug.”

  “Orin Wynn also has an ironclad alibi. At the time Doug was killed, Orin was in a board meeting at company headquarters with nine other people.”r />
  “So maybe Orin arranged to have Doug killed by someone else. Either way, I’d point the finger in his direction long before I would suspect Bobby. If we’re comparing the two, Orin had a much bigger motivation. So did Updyke, who also could afford to hire someone to do his dirty work for him.”

  Reed folded his arms against his chest, seeming to consider my words.

  “To be honest, Anna, knowing all three of these men as I do, I can’t imagine any one of them doing something like this. They’re honorable and kindhearted, and they live with integrity.”

  I waited for Reed to make his point, gazing out at the field beside us. In the fall, they would be bursting with beautiful cornstalks. Now, however, those stalks were nothing more than ugly nubs in the ground.

  “If Orin and Harold and Bobby are all good men,” he continued, “then you have to think of their unique positions in this. If Orin or Harold killed Doug, it would have been a crime of calculation. But if Bobby killed Doug, it would have been a crime of passion, a coldhearted act motivated by greed. As much as you don’t want to hear this, Anna, the facts do point to a hothearted impulse motivated by the desire to protect someone’s reputation and career. Given that none of them is the type to commit a murder, which crime sounds more likely to you? I say the crime of passion makes a lot more sense. Bobby being the guilty one here.”

  I also folded my arms across my chest and turned to face the same direction as Reed, leaning back against the warm car. The sun was creeping toward noon overhead, and I still hadn’t called the cops to tell them to check out that farmhouse. Now the man I had longed for and loved for many years was calling my own brother a murderer. Truly, at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to go home to California, sit on the rotting back porch, and forget all about any of this. Of course, given Kiki’s injury and attitude, not to mention the break-in at our house, things had changed back there as much as they had here. Maybe it was time to reinvent myself yet again, only this time leaving the country and starting over somewhere else, somewhere very far away, where no one would ever figure out my true identity.

  “If you really think Bobby could have killed Doug, then why did you come,” I asked softly, “especially if you’ve already turned in your evidence to the FBI?”

  Reed was quiet for a long moment, his shoulder warm against mine despite the cold air that surrounded us. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentle, the voice of a man who had suffered much and learned from his pain.

  “I’m here because Bobby is my friend. Regardless of what he may have done, I came to see if I could talk him into voluntarily surrendering himself while he’s still in a position to make a deal. At the very least, I came to show him I’m here for him. People sticking by you in times of trouble, that’s one of the most important things in life. I think we all learned that the hard way.”

  I nodded, knowing I certainly had.

  “Besides,” Reed added, “I was worried about the impact all of this might have on you. When I heard you were in town, I had to come and see you and tell you what I knew.”

  “Why tell me at all?”

  “Because I didn’t want you hearing it somewhere else. As a friend, I thought I owed you that much.”

  Though I resisted the impulse, what I most wanted to do, right then, was lean more tightly against him, maybe even rest my head on his shoulder. I thought about the years that had passed since we last saw each other, about the summer I met Reed and fell in love with him. He was smart and fun and good looking, yes, but as it turned out he hadn’t been the man I thought he was. Except for that one kiss, he also hadn’t been the least bit interested in me as anything other than a friend. We had corresponded when he was in prison, but even then his letters weren’t about us. They were about all the things that had happened and all the ways he was changing. Of course, his words had made up for what he had done that night and made me fall back in love with him again. Much to my dismay, the letters eventually came to an end, and once he got out, he never looked me up or made any effort to see me. Eventually, as I tried to nurse my twice-broken heart, I decided that I would not mistake Reed Thornton’s friendship for something else ever again. Judging by the phone call I had interrupted earlier, he was involved with someone now anyway, someone named Heather.

  “So how are you these days?” he asked.

  “I’m doing okay. Good job, friends, church. If I could erase the fire and everything else that happened that night, things would be a lot different, obviously, but I can’t complain. How about you?”

  He shrugged, raising a thumb to scratch at his eyebrow, a gesture I fondly remembered.

  “I probably work too much, but otherwise I’m good.”

  “Good.”

  Reed suddenly excused himself to go around to the back of his car and root around in the trunk.

  “Here we go,” he said, coming out with a pair of binoculars. “These have been in there since football season. A gift from my girlfriend.”

  He came and stood beside me and looked through the binoculars in the direction the car was facing.

  “Here, take a look,” he said, passing them off to me as I tried not to think about his girlfriend remark. I put the binoculars to my eyes and peered through them in the same direction.

  “What am I looking at? It’s all fuzzy.”

  He tried to make an adjustment, took off his gloves, and tried again. That time, it worked. I still wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but after a minute of scanning the hillside in the distance, I realized that we were now on the opposite side of Bobby’s accident site. Watching through the binoculars, I saw the crowds of people along the roadway, the cops climbing all over the hill like ants, the crumpled piece of metal that had once been a motorcycle.

  “I think the police are finally checking out that farm,” Reed said, and with a surge of hope I turned my attention in that direction, realizing the field we were in probably belonged to the people who lived there.

  My hope faded a bit as I carefully scanned the scene and realized that the home and outbuildings looked as though they were abandoned. At least there didn’t seem to be any animals to speak of, any clothes flapping on the clothesline, or toys left in the yard. Uniformed policemen were swarming the property, though, so if Bobby really had gone there, I hoped they would turn up some sign of him, of what had happened next.

  Together, we watched and waited, taking turns with the binoculars, until it was clear from the policemen’s movements and body language that they had discovered something. I wondered if they had found Bobby, but after a while it became obvious that their discovery wasn’t nearly that monumental. Still, they knew something, and Reed promised to find out what it was and report back to me.

  Finally, we decided to go. As Reed took the wheel without his gloves, I was startled to see scarring on the back of his now-bare hands. That reminded me that he had been dealt one of the biggest blows that night, receiving third-degree burns on his back, arms, and hands while saving Ezra from the fire. Now, all these years later, I wondered if he had any lingering physical problems related to the burns or the scar tissue. How sad, that all our scars were emotional, but Reed’s were physical as well.

  He started up the car, made a tight K-turn in the narrow space, and headed back up the gravel road. When he pulled onto the blacktop, turning to go back the way we had come, I asked him the question that was most prominent in my mind.

  “So what happens next?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With the FBI. I assume they’ll come to the WIRE and start investigating more recent cases, to see if the doctor’s illegal activity continued?”

  “Yep,” Reed said, turning again as he reversed our earlier route down picturesque, winding roads. “If they decide that the files I gave them provide enough evidence of wrongdoing—which they should, especially if some of the blacked-out text can be recovered—then they’ll move in and subpoena other files, confiscate records, whatever is necessary to uncover the full extent of what
’s going on there. As they do, you need to be prepared for the possibility of Bobby being implicated.”

  We passed a cluster of Amish girls who were walking in single file along the side of the road. From the back, they looked like a gaggle of cute little white-topped geese. The tallest one seemed to be about eleven—the same age that the Schumann’s newborn son would have been now if he had lived.

  Reed and I were both quiet on the drive back. When we reached the area where my rental car was parked, I gestured toward it and told him he could drop me off there. After he pulled over, he grabbed a pen and a notepad from the glove compartment and wrote down his contact information for me, asking me to do the same for him. As we traded papers, I looked into his eyes and thanked him for coming to town, and for caring about my brother.

  “And you,” he added. “I care about you.”

  I studied his face, understanding completely why I had loved him all those years ago. I was about to say something in reply when we both noticed a commotion in front of the car. Before we could do anything about it, a bright flash went off in our faces.

  We had been recognized by a photographer.

  “Anna, get in your car and drive away,” Reed said evenly. “I’ll stall them.”

  Thanking him, I did as he said, moving quickly from his vehicle to mine. Other photographers and reporters seemed to be catching on, but I managed to make an escape with only a few more flashes in my face. Reed, on the other hand, sacrificed for my sake, getting out of his car and saying something to draw everyone’s attention.

  When I was past all of the cars and crowds, I pressed down the accelerator and went as fast as I could, away from it all. I took a few detours, just to make sure I hadn’t been followed, and then I slowly let out my breath and tried to regroup.

  The moment I had been dreading had now happened, which meant our photo would likely make the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper—and my new identity would be blown to bits.

  Please God, let the story just stay local this time.