Blood of the Prodigal

by P. L. Gaus

  When he was ready, Robertson turned to Niell, jabbed his smoldering cigarette at the door to Interview B, and softly asked, “Hostettler?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Been there long?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Does he know about Jonah Miller?”

  “Knows he’s dead. I can’t say whether he knows more than that.”

  “Has anyone talked to him? Questioned him?”

  “We’re saving that for you.”

  “OK, Ricky,” Robertson said. “We’re going to play this for Hostettler like it’s a murder. Could be a suicide, but I want to sweat him anyway. We’ve got nothing to lose, and we might learn something that’ll tell us why Jonah Miller was there and whether or not he actually did have a reason to kill himself. So, play it like we think we’ve got a murder on our hands.”

  Niell nodded.

  “What’s he done while he’s waited?” Robertson asked.

  “He sits mostly. Sometimes stands to stretch. He seems almost sleepy, if you can believe that.”

  “Perhaps he’s been up all night watching the road to Jonah Miller’s house?” Robertson offered. “What’s he wearing?”

  “A forest green cammo shirt, khaki slacks, hiking boots. When we picked him up, he was packing a van. He says he’s going camping.”

  Robertson scoffed, “Right,” and then asked, “Have you looked his van over?”

  “No blood, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Mud on the wheels, under the frame, anything like that?”

  “It’s just been washed. Besides, you gotta figure the rain,” Niell said.

  “How perfectly convenient. Any other vehicles out at his place?”

  “There’s an old Chevy pickup under a car port, and it’s been washed too.”

  “Did you look it over carefully?”

  “Not really. Mostly we just brought him in, saying that you wanted to talk with him about Miller.”

  “If I remember right, he’s not too big. Not too smart, either. About five-five. That about right?”

  Niell nodded yes.

  “So, if he comes at you, you could take him?”

  “I believe so.”

  Robertson frowned, thought, and then said, “OK. Now, has he asked for anything?”

  “Coffee and cigarettes.”

  “What kind does he smoke?”

  Niell shrugged.

  Impulsively, Robertson popped the door open to Interview B and stuck his head in at a startled Jeff Hostettler, who was sitting alone at the end of a rectangular gray metal conference table. Hostettler was a boyishly small man, looking to Robertson a decade older than his actual thirty-seven years. His brown hair was not graying, but it had thinned to baldness on top. He wore the rest of it combed back above his ears in long, thin strands. His blue-gray eyes were bloodshot in the whites and in the watery lids. Their hollow look confirmed the story of how he had squandered his father’s money on drugs.

  Robertson held his head in through the crack in the door and asked, expansively, “What brand do you smoke, Mr. Hostettler?”

  Hostettler looked skeptical, but Robertson held his gaze. Hostettler eventually replied, “Camel Lights.” He was obviously exasperated.

  Robertson closed the door with a dutiful smile, stepped down the hall, pulled a deputy who was just coming on duty out of the locker room, and whispered instructions for him to go out to Hostettler’s to have another look around outside. “I want a report before we finish with Hostettler here.”

  Then Robertson returned to Niell and said, “You get two packs of Camel Lights. Two packs, Ricky. Bring ’em in and drop ’em as arrogantly as you can on the table in front of Hostettler. No matches. I want you to glare at him like you think he’s worse than pond scum and then take up a position behind his chair so he can’t see you unless he turns around.” And then, because Niell was new, Robertson explained his plan in detail.

  When Niell had ducked out of the back door carrying an umbrella, Robertson slipped down the hall to Ellie Troyer’s desk, poured two cups of coffee, creamed and sugared one, carried both down the hall, balanced the two Styrofoam cups in the upturned palm of his left hand, turned the doorknob with his right hand, strolled imperiously into the room, and blurted out, “Man, I hate these rainy days.”

  The sheriff set the two cups of coffee in front of Hostettler, on the right end of the gray metal table. He drew a chair up to the corner beside Hostettler, sat down to Hostettler’s left with a sigh, leaned back casually, and said, in a bantering tone, “You sure picked a fine day to go camping.”

  Hostettler looked puzzled momentarily. Snapping back, he blustered, “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  Robertson ignored the tone, leaned forward, pushed the two cups of coffee toward Hostettler and asked, “Black, or cream and sugar?”

  Hostettler took the black one and sipped at it with a brooding antagonism, eyeing Robertson over the rim of the cup.

  Robertson took the creamed one, stirred idly at it with a little red and white plastic stick, smiled broadly and lied, saying, “Good. I like it sweet.” He watched Hostettler for a spell and then added, “Jeff, I’m glad you agreed to come in.”

  Hostettler griped, “Like I had a choice.”

  Robertson noticed the condescension in Hostettler’s voice and looked the man over carefully. He seemed no bigger than a thoroughbred jockey. Next to Robertson’s bulk, Hostettler was a distinctly small man.

  “I know, Jeff, and I’m sorry about that,” Robertson said, pleased by how easy he found it to sound genuinely apologetic. He intended to pratter inconsequentially over a cup of coffee and a pack of smokes, all afternoon if necessary, and learn everything Hostettler could be tricked into telling. He focused on the light brown coffee, and after a moment added, “Jeff, I figure it’s been eight or nine years since you and I last tangled, and I have to say you’ve showed me I was wrong about you. Seems like you turned out OK.”

  Robertson peered at Hostettler intently and was satisfied to note an uneasy constriction around his eyes. Hostettler sipped compulsively at his coffee, turned his head left to face the sheriff, and rubbed at the right side of his neck, one eye squinted shut, the other eye watching Robertson suspiciously, evidently deciding against saying anything.

  The truth was, the sheriff ruminated, both Brenda and Jeff Hostettler had been raised in a fine, prominent, Millersburg family. Their father had owned a feed-stock business, and the Hostettler kids had enjoyed every privilege and advantage that could be given children in an upper-middle-class family. But, for some reason, Brenda Hostettler had gone completely wrong, and Jeff Hostettler had wasted a college education and the family fortunes on cocaine.

  Robertson waited until he thought Hostettler’d be suitably unprepared to hear it, and then said, with affected tenderness, in a manner that wasn’t altogether unconvincing, “Jeff, you know how sad I was about your sister.”

  Hostettler sat back straight in his chair, and Robertson saw antagonism flood into his eyes. Hostettler turned again to face the sheriff and said pointedly, “I did not kill Jonah Miller.”

  “I believe you, Jeff,” Robertson answered passively, dominating an urge to berate. “Believe me I do. But you’ve got to understand that my deputies, who don’t know you quite so well, think you’re good for this one, and there’s nothing I’ve been able to do about that. I agreed that they could bring you down here only because I thought that’d be the best way for you to clear things up.”

  Hostettler shifted sullenly in his metal chair, turned away from Robertson, and reached, out of habit, for a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. There were none there.

  Robertson noticed the instinctive reach of a smoker, considered an impulse to offer him one of his Winstons, decided coldly against it, lit one up for himself, and let the minutes pass in silence.

  Hostettler thought matters through from several angles and then seemed to relent. Gaze focused on the far end of the table,
he started to talk about the time Brenda and Jonah Miller had spent together. The bar hopping, the booze, and the dope. He spoke with mounting bitterness about the terrible days before Brenda had killed herself. How she had kept her baby, hoping against reason that Jonah Miller would one day come home to her. How she had beseeched Eli Miller to send for his son, bring him back, cancel the Mite. How the bishop had insisted that Jonah would have to come home on his own accord. How Miller had explained that Brenda did not belong with The Low Ones, either, and that she should forget the Amish altogether. Mostly she should forget Jonah and think of her son.

  Hostettler’s account took only a few minutes. He finished matter-of-factly, as if rehearsing the lines of a grade-school poem. As if he had pushed the play button on an old recording and had settled onto a hard bar stool to listen to a favorite song from a bygone day. Then he straightened in his chair and faced Robertson with a scornful coldness. “Sheriff, if Jonah Miller had shown himself around here in those days, I’d have ripped him open in a heartbeat.”

  Robertson held his gaze unwaveringly for nearly a full minute, until Hostettler looked away, disquieted.

  Robertson stubbed his cigarette out in a glass ashtray on the table and said, “And now you’d have me believe that you didn’t kill Jonah yesterday, when he did come home.”

  Hostettler gave a disaffected wave of his hand, and, as Niell came in through the door and dropped two packs of Camel Lights abruptly onto the metal table, Hostettler said, wearily, “I told you. I didn’t kill him.”

  Niell muttered, as previously instructed, “Right,” disrespect-fully, and then stood in the corner behind Hostettler’s chair.

  Robertson shot an exaggerated, angry scowl at Niell, held it long enough for Hostettler to notice, and said, “Knock it off, Ricky.” Then he reached into his shirt pocket to extract a pack of matches. He tossed them to Hostettler and said, with a slight chuckle, “The deputy doesn’t like to be sent on my little cigarette errands, Jeff. Don’t take it personal.”

  Hostettler muttered something, opened one of the packs, and lit up.

  Robertson glanced briefly at Niell, who stood with a satisfied smirk, dripping water in the corner behind Hostettler. Niell knew instinctively to watch Robertson’s eyes. He knew from the stories that nothing would show in Robertson’s chubby face. No tell-tale pulsing of the veins in his bulging neck. Nothing in Robertson’s expression. No changeable lines or wrinkles in his face. Nothing from his lips. Niell watched only the dance of the sheriff’s eyes.

  Robertson sat perfectly still, legs crossed in a casual pose that belied a taught inner focus. His massive hands lay delicately in his lap, motionless, almost floating. His head was cocked at a curious angle, the short gray hairs on his head standing somehow straighter than usual. His breaths came regularly, easily, relaxed. Everything about him seemed nonchalant, disinterested. Everything except his eyes. Ricky Niell stood behind Hostettler and watched Sheriff Robertson’s eyes as they danced over his subject, taking in everything: Hostettler’s lips, his pulse, his posture, attitude, and gaze. Robertson scanning, probing, thinking. His mind racing headlong, anticipating what Hostettler might say or do, evaluating every possibility, shifting adroitly with each thing Hostettler did or said. As the interrogation continued, each sentence opened new avenues, closed off others. Robertson’s mind raced easily ahead with the chase, master of the conversation, his entire personality having swung “hard a-lee,” keeled over dangerously in a gale like a close-hauled sloop on a manic tack.

  When he had finished, Robertson had learned everything Hostettler would have to say about Jonah Miller. How he had hated him for deserting his sister. How Hostettler had looked for Miller in those early days, certain that he would come home, sooner or later. The ordeal of the custody hearings. In college, Hostettler had pretty well forgotten Jonah Miller. After college, Hostettler had found trouble of his own. There had been numerous drug arrests. Probation. More arrests, and finally a charge of burglary with criminal trespass, which landed him in the county jail for seven months. Finally, he had smashed up several cars in a D.U.I. and drew three years in the state penitentiary. Released on shock probation, he had found the courage to straighten himself out enough to hold a job in a grocery store for the past several years. Last, Hostettler added sarcastically, with all that in his life, where would Robertson figure he had time to worry at all about a jerk from ten years ago, much less plan to murder him?

  Under the circumstances, most people were intimidated by Robertson, whatever his mood. They walked a circumspect path around him, not knowing whether they’d get Good Bruce or Bad Bruce, his moods almost impossible to judge, unless they had, like the deputies who stayed on, learned to read Robertson’s eyes. Now, Ricky Niell looked into Robertson’s eyes with a growing admiration, guessed correctly that he should push harder on Hostettler from behind, and quipped, with an insulting tone, “Jeff, here, says he’s going camping.”

  Hostettler craned his head around to the deputy, thought about saying something, reconsidered, and turned back to the table. He knocked the first line of ash off his seventh Camel and said, “Like I was saying, I did not kill Jonah Miller.”

  “But you can understand how we might think you did,” Robertson said directly, eyes still dancing.

  Hostettler shrugged a noncommittal answer.

  Niell came right back with, “Oh, he did it all right; he’s no better than his sister was.”

  Hostettler bolted out of his seat, skittering the metal chair at the wall as he turned to lunge at Niell.

  Niell ducked a solid right hook, and in a single, smooth action, pinned Hostettler’s arm to his back, pushed him against the wall, spun him around, and slammed him back into the chair next to Robertson.

  Robertson looked reproachfully at Niell, slowly and deliberately lit another Winston, and calmly remarked, “I don’t see any reason for rough play here, Deputy.” He motioned with a backwards jab of his thumb over his shoulder that Niell should leave them alone.

  Hostettler, released, leaned over on his elbows, and picked nervously at his fingernails, waiting for Niell to disappear, angry with himself for the outburst.

  Robertson waited until Niell had closed the door indignantly, said, “Relax, Jeff. I’ll be back in a minute,” and left Hostettler alone in the room.

  Outside Interview B, Niell leaned sideways against the wall in the hallway, shaking his head with a smile. Robertson gave him a slap on the back and then marched down to Ellie’s desk to ask her to phone the coroner for news.

  While the sheriff stood behind the jail’s front counter, Sergeant Wilsher came through the front door, and Robertson took a report from him about the condition of Hostettler’s Chevy truck. Then he led Wilsher back down the hall. There, he instructed his deputies precisely where to stand, Niell leaning casually against the left wall of the narrow hall, Wilsher against the right. When he opened the door to Interview B, Robertson leaned in and softly said, “Jeff, you can go now. We’ve got what we need.”

  When Hostettler emerged with the two packs of cigarettes, Robertson stepped back from the door, blocked the way down the hall to the front entrance of the jail, clamped an enormous left arm over Hostettler’s shoulders, said something expansive and jovial about keeping the cigarettes, and marched Hostettler down the hall, between the two deputies, who forced Hostettler and Robertson closer together as they passed.

  When he returned from the back exit of the jail, Robertson told Niell and Wilsher, “Either he’s a cooler head than I figured, or he’s telling the truth. Anyway, find out where he’s going camping. Follow him if you have to, anywhere in Ohio, and back. Then bring him in again. In the meantime, I’m going to get a warrant to search his place.”

  14

  Monday, June 22

  4:00 P.M.

  BRANDEN drove home slowly from the coroner’s lab. When he came onto the hills where Millersburg College stood at the east edge of town, he drove past the college grounds to the south point where the cemeter
y held the highest ground. He parked beside the low chain fencing and walked to the little cupola that faced out over the valley. He took a seat on one of the rough wooden benches, laid his raincoat at his side, and sat quietly, thinking. The rain slackened to a drizzle and then to a mist. After nearly an hour, when he was satisfied that he could not think of a single good answer to the several remaining questions in the Jonah Miller case, he got back into his small truck, drove home, and found Caroline in the living room, talking with Donna Beachey.

  Caroline introduced her husband to the teacher, adding that Miss Beachey had only just arrived. Branden crossed the room to shake her hand, and then he took a seat on a couch. He noticed that Donna Beachey had been crying.

  “I understand that Caroline spoke with you at the old schoolhouse,” he said.

  “Yes,” Miss Beachey said, “I can’t believe that Jonah is dead. So close to home. It doesn’t make sense.” She dried her eyes with a small lace hankie and said to Caroline, “I’ve been upset with myself since we first talked. I’m afraid I left the wrong impression about the Millers. Well, at least about the bishop.”

  Branden asked, “Miss Beachey, do you think Jonah would kill himself?”

  Beachey looked puzzled for a moment and said, “I don’t know, I suppose. A lot of time has passed. But the way I heard it, he was shot.”

  Branden nodded silently.

  Caroline said, “You were going to explain something about Jonah.” She looked with interest, first at the teacher, and then at her husband.