by P. L. Gaus
“The sheriff and I go back quite a ways with Jonah Miller,” Donna said. She paused, expecting one of the Brandens to have questions. Neither of them pressed her, but they seemed interested, so she began explaining herself.
“That summer when Jonah was locked up at the county jail, I used to drive down to see him there. Sheriff Robertson was a scoffer. He told me to quit wasting my time. I told him to pretty much mind his own business.
“Then, after about five or six visits, Jonah began to open up about his father and the ban. We talked mostly about why I thought he ought to try to go home, and about why Jonah felt he never could. Never did resolve anything, but I think he liked the company.
“Then, when I spoke with you, Mrs. Branden, at the school, I couldn’t seem to shake the notion that the whole sorry mess was the bishop’s fault.
“Well, now that I know Jonah is dead, I realize the troubles weren’t all Jonah and they weren’t all Eli Miller, either. It was their circumstances, I guess. If you look at it fairly, the ban was righteous, and Jonah deserved it as far as any folk in these parts will ever think. But Eli Miller was also at fault for being so stubborn about Jonah’s behavior. The father pushing the son and the son pushing back, so to speak.
“At any rate, I want to clear it up, if I gave you the impression that Bishop Miller was out of line. Given his culture, he couldn’t have done anything else. And given Jonah’s temperament, he had few other choices.”
Donna paused and studied the carpet, hoping they would see what it was that she was trying to tell them. Hoping that the death of Jonah Miller and his coming home were things that they could be made to understand. Eventually, she said, “What I didn’t tell you is that, from everything I’ve heard about the bishop since the ban, he has hoped and prayed for his son’s return. It wasn’t done in anger, you see. The ban I mean. If anything, Eli waited longer than most, hoping that his son would change.”
Caroline said, “I don’t think you gave me the wrong impression, Donna. I only came away with a feeling that the whole thing was tragic. That the bishop had little choice. At least that’s what I’ve come to think once I put your conversation alongside of other things we’ve learned.” She looked to her husband, encouraging him to agree.
Branden said, “Most people have told us that the ban was proper.”
Donna said, “There’s something else, though, that I didn’t tell you, Mrs. Branden. Do you remember that I said that the bishop drove his buggy to my school in Massillon?”
Caroline nodded.
“Well, Jonah’s younger brother Isaac did the same thing. For a different reason, but he also drove all that way to talk to me about Jonah. It was in those days when I was visiting Jonah in the jail.
“It was strange, but I believe to this day that his father put him up to it. You see, Isaac asked me to convince Jonah to come home when he got out of jail. And I believe the bishop wanted the same thing. He was behind it, I think. He used Isaac to talk to me, to talk to Jonah in jail, to tell him he could come home if only he’d take his Amish vows.”
After she had left, the Brandens sat in the darkened living room and talked about the death of Jonah Miller. Branden mentioned that he still had not seen Jeremiah.
“What did Bruce say about that?” Caroline asked.
“Haven’t said anything to him yet,” Branden said. He saw Caroline react in disbelief.
“You can’t be serious, Michael!”
“I’ve been close to telling him a number of times, but things keep popping up that don’t make sense. There’s something I don’t understand. Maybe several things that I don’t understand, and telling Bruce about Jeremiah just hasn’t felt right. First, I believe Jonah was murdered and that someone dropped the gun to try to make it look like suicide. Or more likely, just to get rid of it. Second, we really don’t know that Jeremiah isn’t home with his family right now.”
“Jeremiah Miller has been missing all this time, and may very well now be at peril from someone who has killed his father, and it hasn’t felt right to you to report it?” Caroline scoffed. Heat rose in her cheeks. There was the promise of tears as she stood in the living room, thinking instinctively of the gravest possible dangers.
“Michael, you’ve got to take this case to Robertson. You probably should have done that in the beginning.” Her voice was strained and starting to show her panic.
“Caroline,” he said, trying to assuage her, “we had good reason to honor the bishop’s distrust of the law when we first took the case. I’ll admit that Jonah’s murder changes a lot, but as far as Jeremiah is concerned, we’ll probably find tomorrow that he is home, and that he is safe.”
“You don’t know that he’s safe,” Caroline berated.
“Neither do we know that he isn’t at his grandfather’s house, Caroline.”
“Why didn’t you ask about him when you were out there?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“I didn’t exactly get a straightforward answer.”
“See?” Caroline challenged. “They don’t know where he is either.”
“We can’t be sure of that.”
“You’ve got to go to Robertson.”
“I promised the bishop that I would not.”
“Michael, everything has changed.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Their culture remains the same. Bishop Miller did not want the sheriff involved in finding Jeremiah. I doubt, now, that he’ll even cooperate with the investigation into Jonah’s murder.”
“That ought to tell you something right there,” Caroline said. “If he still feels that way about Jeremiah after Jonah has been murdered, then he’s pegged himself a fool.”
“I don’t know how he feels, Caroline. Don’t know what he thinks. I can’t even tell you what he knows now or what he knew when he had me promise to keep the law out of this. But he did that, Caroline, and to break faith with that would betray not only his culture but also my promise to him when we took the case.”
“Fine. You’ll honor your promise. Remain true to the culture of those who have withdrawn from the world. But you’re not Amish, Professor Branden, and the day is going to come when you’ll have to explain this whole sorry mess to the sheriff.”
Her eyes were moistened with tears, and Branden crossed the room to her and took her into his arms. He whispered, “Tomorrow, Caroline. Just until tomorrow. Then I’ll have an answer from the bishop, and we’ll know if Jeremiah is safe at home.”
“He had better be, Michael,” Caroline said, “or I’ll go to Robertson myself.”
15
Tuesday, June 23
8:00 A.M.
THE TALL Miller house stood quietly in the morning light behind the silver maples that shaded the lawn in front. The gravel drive was muddy and rutted from the visitors of the day before. There were three standardbreds hitched at the fence, and their buggies were pushed off to the side, lined up neatly along the driveway as it led to the house. The trees and the lawn still held water from the all-night rains, but the sun was coming out strong, and birds and squirrels were foraging. Half a dozen robins worked the lawns for bugs and worms. A band of jays marauded through the yard and raided a corn feeder the Millers had put up on a white pole. The black rubber middle of the children’s trampoline sagged more than usual with the soaking it had taken, but the yellow bumpers were beginning to dry and brighten as the sun slanted in from the east.
Branden walked down the drive past the south end of the house and found three women with two younger girls scrubbing and cleaning vegetables beside the house. Mrs. Miller sat barefoot on the slanting boards that served as a cover to the outside cellar stairs. She and the two girls, evidently her daughters, were cleaning small carrots, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, and snap beans. The girls’ dresses were dirty, and so were their hands, but their faces were bright. They were barefoot like their mother, and their feet seemed leathered and tough. There were brown grocery bags from the market at Becks Mills, folded empty nex
t to the women. They each had a plastic bucket and a pail of water beside them. The work seemed to be about half done as he approached them. The two older ladies who had been sitting with the bishop’s wife got up directly and moved their work onto the more private back porch.
He stopped to exchange greetings and found Mrs. Miller unwilling to say much more than simple courtesy required of her. She worked awkwardly with a large knife to slice carrots. Her fingers were roughened by years of labor, and the skin was cracked and darkened at the knuckles and near her chipped fingernails. Her hands were twisted with arthritis.
Branden asked about her son Isaac, but all that she would say was that he was working behind the house.
“And how is the bishop?” he asked.
“He is all right, yet, I suppose,” she said and reached down for the handle on her pail. She spoke curtly to her daughters and moved straightway with the girls onto the back screened porch.
Branden judged that they had paid him less attention than was warranted, considering that her husband had made an extraordinary effort only a week ago to enlist his help. He decided to push his inquiries beyond simple pleasantries, and stepped up to the screened door. The girls scurried behind the women and watched bashfully from behind their dresses.
With his palm cupped to shade his view through the screen, Branden said, “Then I am sure you must be glad to have Jeremiah home again.”
Abruptly, she raised up, puzzlement showing on her face. One of the girls began to answer him, but Mrs. Miller hushed her, and sent both girls into the house. She dried her hands on her apron, said, “The bishop is around to back,” and disappeared into the house with the other women.
Branden pulled back from the screen, rounded the far back corner of the house, and stepped down a steep and awkward slope to the lower level toward a two-story, red bank barn. He heard a gasoline engine and then saw the tumbler of an old, white cement mixer beyond the corner of the barn. There he found Isaac Miller and his father on a little knoll about thirty yards beyond the barn, working with two older Amish men to shovel fresh concrete mix into wooden molds planted in the ground. A large rectangle was marked out with wooden stakes and yellow strings. The men had poured and worked about seven or eight of the footers. They would need fifty before the job would be done.
When he saw Branden approaching, Bishop Miller broke off working, called the other men with him, and anxiously motioned for Branden to come down the slope to the tall doors to the barn. The three Amish went in quickly, motioned for Branden to follow, and hurriedly closed the giant doors behind him.
On the lower level, with the doors rolled shut, there was scant light reaching down through the haylofts above. There was a propane lantern, and one of the men started to light it. The bishop quickly spoke against it.
Miller took his hat off, and scratched at the top of his head. He looked to both of the men and then introduced them. They were two of his five deacons. As Branden’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw a clear and deep anxiety on each of their faces.
Miller began to speak to the men in their low dialect and stopped. He then pulled them aside and whispered urgently with the deacons for a long time. When Miller did finally speak in English, Branden thought that the deacons seemed relieved of a heavy burden.
“It’s Jeremiah,” the bishop spoke in a low voice. “Are you still willing to help us find him?” The deacons drew closer to hear Branden’s answer.
Branden did not answer right away, partly because he was taken by surprise. He had suspected something still was badly wrong at the Millers’ since the day before, when Isaac had dispatched him so abruptly. He had sensed there was trouble with the Jonah Miller case when he had driven home to Caroline. Even after their talk with Donna Beachey, his doubts remained. Not as strong as Caroline’s, though now it seemed that she had been right.
Branden had not truly prepared himself for the notion that the bishop might have stood idly by, all the while knowing that the boy was still missing. It was the one thing Branden hadn’t allowed himself to consider, in order to explain the way the family had responded to him and to Jonah’s murder so close to home. But Caroline had said it for him. Maybe the case of finding Jonah Miller was closed, but what of finding Jeremiah? He groaned aloud, remembering Caroline’s words last night.
“You don’t have Jeremiah?” Branden asked.
“Can you help?” the bishop implored.
“You don’t have the boy.”
“No.”
“Then it’s out of my hands. You’ve got to go to the sheriff.”
“We cannot do that. We cannot let you do it either.”
“Your son is dead, Mr. Miller. You don’t know where your grandson is. It’s time to get the police involved.”
“Just another day or so will not matter.”
“It will matter a great deal. Every day that Jeremiah is gone increases the risk of something happening to him.”
“We know that. But not the law. Not yet, Professor. Remember, you promised. You do not know everything about this matter, as it stands.
“Everything has changed now. Why can’t you see that?”
“Nothing has changed for us, Professor.”
“Why?”
“Because it was a policeman that my youngest daughter saw on the lane the day our Jeremiah was taken from us. A policeman, Professor Branden. We cannot trust the law. So we have put our trust in you.”
“There’s not much that I can do, now.”
“Professor. We know what we are asking. We have three days. I cannot tell you why, now, but we have still got three days to find him.”
“I’ll go to the sheriff myself.”
“We cannot have you doing that.”
“What if I do?”
“We will deny that there is any trouble.”
“This isn’t the best way, Bishop Miller. Not the best way at all.”
“We are not fools, Professor. Trust us. Give it three more days, and then we will go to the law ourselves.”
AS he walked back up the drive past the house, Branden muttered angrily to himself, rankled by their lack of trust and by the lost hours their mistrust had cost him. Had cost Jeremiah. Gradually he became aware that he was exasperated at least as much with himself, because, as the buggies had begun to fill the drive, when he had had the chance to ask pointedly and specifically about Jeremiah yesterday, he had somehow failed to get a clear answer. He stopped on the drive, looked back at the front porch, and shook his head, remembering how Isaac had turned him away.
On the lane where he had parked, Branden found Ricky Niell’s black rig behind his own small truck, with the deputy standing casually, chewing on a blade of grass. Niell was dressed in civilian clothes. He wore trim cut blue jeans, creased meticulously down the front. The cuffs were pulled down over polished cowboy boots. On his head he wore a sheriff’s department field cap, and he watched, arms folded over his chest, as Branden approached along the gravel lane.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Professor,” Niell said as Branden came alongside. “You know, with Jonah Miller being dead.”
Branden slipped in between the two trucks and leaned back against the tailgate of his truck, one heel propped up on the chrome bumper. “I see you have a taste for big rigs, Ricky,” Branden said, and motioned at the full-sized truck, sport-rigged and jacked high on its wheels with after-market lifters. Then Branden said, “I’m still looking into the matter for the family.”
“Robertson said you wouldn’t let it go,” Niell said, and smiled.
Branden shrugged and asked, “You here on business?”
“I was just delivering a message on my day off,” Niell said. “The sheriff wanted the Millers to know that it’ll be a while before the coroner releases the body.”
“Does that mean Bruce suspects someone out here?”
“To tell you the truth, Professor, I’m not altogether certain what Robertson thinks. He talks like it was possibly a suicide, but he’s going
about the investigation as if it were a murder.”
Branden nodded sympathetically.
“Take yesterday,” Niell said. “We interrogated Jeff Hostettler for nearly two hours, and then Robertson sent him on his way as if it were nothing. I thought he was locked in on Hostettler, and the next thing I knew, Robertson was escorting him out the door like an old friend. But he also put two of us on the job of following him, and he told us he didn’t want us to go to any trouble to keep our tail at a distance.”
“And you don’t know what to make of that?” Branden asked.
“Not entirely.”
“It’s a game to him,” Branden said. “Even if Hostettler doesn’t seem right for this murder now, Robertson will keep pressure on, just to ratchet up the tension. If Hostettler is the murderer, he’ll make a mistake sooner or later.”
Niell thought about that and said, “It doesn’t leave much room for subtlety.”
“Bruce doesn’t handle people with subtleties, Ricky. That doesn’t mean he’s a dimwit, either.”
“You won’t get an argument there,” Ricky said.
“I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts he had some little skit rigged up for Hostettler’s benefit before you even began with the questions.”
Niell’s eyes answered yes with his smile. “The sheriff had every detail worked out before we started on Hostettler.”
“That’s what you’ve always got to remember about Bruce Robertson,” Branden said. “He looks like a simple man. Too big to be taken seriously. But he’s smart. Smarter than most of the rest of us. And he’s compulsive at times, which makes it hard to predict what he’ll do next.”
“You’re telling me,” Niell said. “Was he always like that?”
“Compulsive? Yes, even when we were kids. He’ll get moody too. You’ve got to watch for that. Any of the older deputies mention that to you?” Branden asked.
“More than once.”
“Then you know basically what you need to know about Bruce Robertson,” Branden said. “If he’s not happy, he’ll let you know. If he thinks you don’t get it, he’ll explain it to you in very precise terms.”