Blood of the Prodigal

by P. L. Gaus

  Robertson, standing wordlessly down on the lawn in front of the large porch, might have laughed if he hadn’t spent the last two hours with the FBI, trying to explain to them how best to handle the Amish.

  These two had arrived at nine. Ricky Niell and Mike Branden had left earlier, by seven. By nine thirty, whatever else might happen that night, Robertson had promised himself resolutely that he would not take Walters and Galloway out to the Millers’ until close to midnight. Maybe later. Perhaps not even until tomorrow.

  From the front lawn, Robertson spoke softly up to the porch, “Walters, this is not the way.” He shook his head in the dark.

  Walters turned to knock again on the door. As he raised his knuckles, a match was struck behind the screen, and he stepped back, startled, as it flared. The silk mantle caught on a Coleman lantern, and he stepped closer to the screen and saw Isaac Miller in denim trousers, his suspenders hanging down.

  “Stan Walters, FBI,” he announced and showed his badge. He pulled the screen door open from the outside and started to move inside, but Isaac held his position at the threshold with the lantern at shoulder height, the light glaring directly into Walters’s eyes. Galloway moved a step closer. Walters stopped, surprised and confused, and the screen door closed gently against his back.

  “I said, FBI,” he said again. He was here from Columbus because he had a reputation for handling delicate matters with soft hands, but Walters found himself put out that the people here were not responding to his authority in the way he had come to expect. Still, he recognized the irritation that was mounting in him, and he choked it back. Stay cool, he thought.

  Isaac held a blank expression and did not move.

  Robertson moved forward on the lawn below and came into the edge of the light thrown by the lantern. He caught Isaac’s gaze and shook his head. Walters saw Isaac glance past him to Robertson and turned in the doorway to say, “Tell him, please, Sheriff. We are here to help.”

  Robertson said, “These agents are from Columbus, Isaac. They’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  When Agent Walters turned again to face Isaac, a woman in a long plain dress and white apron had appeared behind him. To the woman he said, “Ma’am, can we please get started.”

  Robertson motioned silently for Isaac, and waited for him on the lawn in front of the porch. Isaac glanced briefly back at his mother, set the lantern down inside the house, hooked up his suspenders with a swing of each shoulder, and came out to the sheriff, who drew him aside in the dark, whispered in German dialect, and sent him off. Then Robertson came lazily up the steps.

  Walters studied the woman in front of him. White chambray prayer cap, tied under her chin. Pleated high-necked dress of surf turquoise. White apron. A small girl came forward, in a long nightshirt, and stood slightly behind her mother, barefoot.

  “Your granddaughter?” Walters asked, trying to sound pleasant.

  “My daughter, Mr. Walters.”

  Walters said, “Again, Ma’am, I’m with the FBI. This is agent Galloway.” He held out his hand.

  Mrs. Miller shook it gently, politely, somewhat bashfully.

  Still on the threshold, with the screen door pressed against his back, Walters asked, “Are you Mrs. Miller?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Bishop Miller is my husband.”

  As she said this, Walters heard the hooves of a horse pound furiously on the drive and then fade on the lane. He turned to look back, saw nothing in the dark, and then held the door open for Galloway. Robertson stepped forward onto the porch and watched intently through the screen, curious to see how Gertie would handle the FBI.

  “As I understand it, Mrs. Miller, it is your grandson, then, who is being ransomed.”

  Gertie Miller agreed with the slightest nod of her head. She looked out to Sheriff Robertson with both puzzlement and concern. She drew her daughter closer to her and waited.

  Walters eased himself a bit further into the doorway, and Mrs. Miller stepped back. He said, “Can we talk inside, Mrs. Miller?” and motioned for Galloway to follow.

  “The bishop’s not here presently,” Gertie said and waited. The young girl at her side watched Walters curiously from behind her mother’s dress.

  Walters said again, “Where can we talk?” and looked around in the dim light of the Coleman lantern on the floor. He, Galloway, Gertie Miller, and her daughter all stood just inside the door in the front hall, with Isaac’s propane lantern glowing at their feet. Galloway felt for a light switch beside the door and then let his hand fall to his side, embarrassed.

  Gertie Miller looked blankly at Agent Walters. She acknowledged the sheriff with a bashful look, picked up the Coleman lantern, ushered her daughter outside, came slowly down the steps, and turned to stand peacefully with her little girl under the branches of the large oak. Walters and Galloway followed her down the steps.

  “As I have said,” she said politely, “the bishop is not home just this minute. Perhaps we can do our talking out here.”

  “Mrs. Miller. The FBI is here to help in rescuing your grandson,” Galloway said. “Jeremiah, as the sheriff has told us. How long has he been missing?”

  “A few weeks, already,” Gertie said, and “I’m sure you’ll be wanting to speak with the bishop.”

  Walters knelt to try with the girl, but the child eased out of his reach.

  Gertie Miller calmly laid her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and spoke a few words in German dialect. She stood erect beside the lantern and said, “The bishop will be along, directly, Mr. Walters. I’d rather we didn’t wake the other children.”

  Robertson, standing to the side with his hat in his hands, listened with great interest.

  A match sputtered and caught behind him. A lantern was lit, and a man dressed in Amish style came forward toward Robertson, greeted him with a gentle hand on his shoulder, and stood beside the sheriff.

  “Andy,” Robertson said in a greeting tone.

  “Sheriff.”

  Galloway came over and asked, “Bishop Miller?”

  Andy Yoder shook his head “no.”

  Another lantern flared to life under the oak. A buggy came up the drive, the harness jangling and the horse snorting in front of a whip.

  To the driver Galloway said, “Are you Eli Miller?”

  “Yes,” softly.

  “Bishop Miller?”

  “That would be Eli P. Miller.”

  Galloway shook his head and almost laughed. He gave Walters a wry look that said, “How are we going to sort this out, Stan?”

  More men arrived. More lanterns glowed. Eight in all, and now agents Walters and Galloway stood in the center of a ring of Amish lights under a heavy oak tree, after midnight, on the lawn in front of the Miller home. The light fell on Walters and was amplified by the heavy green canopy of the oak overhead and by the glistening lawn.

  A horse, galloping on the lane beyond the picket fence, slowed and turned into the drive. Walters watched as Isaac slid off and whispered to Robertson in German.

  Then Robertson allowed himself the faintest of smiles and said, “Agent Walters, I’d be more than happy to introduce you to Bishop Miller.”

  The bishop emerged from beyond the ring of lanterns and stood beside his wife.

  “OK. Mr. Miller. Bishop,” Walters said, “We are here to help find your grandson.”

  Robertson showed no reaction. Inside, privately, he celebrated the small victory of his last few hours. Niell and Branden would surely be at Port Clinton by now. Isaac had gathered the district, and Gertie Miller, unprepared, had nevertheless handled the FBI as he had hoped she would. Distrusting the law. Yielding to her husband, who now stood before the two agents in his everyday denim suit.

  Walters said, “Your wife preferred to wait for you to arrive.”

  “She recognizes my authority,” the bishop answered and smiled at his wife.

  “Please, Mr. Miller. We need to ask you both a few questions.”

  “I am her husband.”<
br />
  “I understand that. ”

  “And bishop.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means, I answer to a higher authority.”

  Walters said, “I appreciate that, Mr. Miller, but we need to get started. In truth, we need your help, if we are to help you. You do want to find your grandson?”

  “Of course,” Miller said.

  Galloway tried, “We want to bring your grandson home to you, Mr. Miller.”

  Miller thought about that for a moment and said, “We are powerless to save, if the Lord will not.”

  Walters studied the bishop’s eyes. They remained steady, peaceful.

  Miller spoke briefly in soft, authoritative German and the lanterns were shut off around the circle, leaving only the one at the feet of Gertie Miller. The bishop reached down to it and turned it off as well and said, “I trust you’ll allow us a moment to ourselves,” and left Robertson, Galloway, and Walters under the oak with their retinas glowing white from memory of the light.

  Robertson quietly stood his post on the lawn, satisfied.

  Walters asked, “What do you think they are doing?”

  Robertson said, “Praying, Agent Walters,” and added, “I reckon we’ll have to do things their way for a spell.”

  Then Robertson turned and ambled over the low hill beside the big house, leaving Walters and Galloway under the oaks, listening alone in the dark to the opening strains of a German martyr hymn rising from the bank barn where Jeremiah Miller had first met his father.

  25

  Friday, June 26

  8:30 A.M.

  BRANDEN cast off from the marina on Catawba Island Peninsula, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a green and white Millersburg College sweatshirt. He started the engine of the Bayliner and pointed it out into the waters of Lake Erie. He waved to Ricky Niell, heading up the marina steps to return to Port Clinton, where they had spent the night after their hurried drive north.

  They had first called the neighboring Marblehead police station, but their only response, both last night and this morning, had been a recorded message. At breakfast, Branden had called the marina where Jonah Miller’s Bayliner was docked for repairs. He had gotten directions. Route 163 East to 269, and then north onto the Catawba Island Peninsula.

  Then he had called Tarshish Construction. Yes, they employed Jon Mills. Certainly, he could talk with Ray Tarshish, the owner of the construction company, but he’d have to get himself out to the condo project on the islands.

  At the marina on the Catawba Peninsula, Niell, in uniform, had presented the boat’s registration, with the keys on Jonah Miller’s buoy keychain, explaining that the late Jon Mills was a murder victim in a case they were investigating for the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department. Niell had paid the repair bills with cash that Robertson had instructed Ellie Troyer to give him the evening before, and the marina had released Jonah’s boat.

  Branden eased the boat away from the docks, out through the narrow channel between the break walls, and into the larger waters among the islands, sharing the channel with the last of the fishing guides who puttered out of West Harbor in single file and then jammed into high once clear of the break walls, racing with their customers to sweet holes near the islands where the walleye were known to be running. The ferries had begun their rounds, stopping near Perry’s Monument at Put-in-Bay and at Kelleys Island to the east.

  Once clear of the channel, Branden made for Middle Bass Island. Far to the west he could make out the inverted cone evaporator at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant and its white plumes of steam against blue sky. To the southeast, the entrance to Sandusky Harbor was obscured by the Marblehead Peninsula. The famous roller coasters at Cedar Point stood out above the trees, the view in the eastern distance fading into a hazy blur in the morning sun.

  As he motored to the island, Branden was keenly aware that he traveled the same waters as the great Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, who had defeated the British fleet northwest of Put-in-Bay, in September of 1813. The professor in him came to the fore, and he found himself reciting Perry’s famous dispatch announcing the end of the War of 1812 in the North: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

  Branden tied up at the construction site on Middle Bass Island’s eastern shore and scrambled onto a floating pier. As he steadied himself on the slow-rolling platform, gentle waves broke on the shore. He caught the smell of sea grass and rotting driftwood as the water rose and fell, teasing a jumbled pile of floating debris along the shore. He stepped off the pier onto a black stone and gray boulder beach where a trail began at the base of cliffs, leading up about thirty feet to a construction site hugging the edge of the bluff. There was a sign indicating that Tarshish Construction was putting up luxury condos. The trail branched, the left fork offering a direct and steep ascent, while the right led along the shore several paces to a scaffolding with an elevator cage and crane.

  He took the steeper trail to the left, which skirted the face of the cliff at an angle. After forging his way to the top, he paused to catch his breath while looking out across the water, now serenely blue-green. On the horizon, he saw one of the massive ore boats riding high in the water, empty, bow pointed west. Branden turned to face the condos under construction in a narrow glade between the edge of the cliffs and the island’s vineyards to the rear.

  The site was filled with the sounds and smells of construction. There were shrill, ripping screams from a dozen power saws and the clatter of rapping hammers. A fire barrel gave off slow curls of smoke.

  At the far end, the last unit had been framed out, windowed, and roofed only recently. In units closer, electricians and plumbers were busy with their various tasks. Closer still, drywallers worked in units nine and ten. Roofers were laying shingles on units fifteen and sixteen.

  The units to his left looked nearer to completion and showed the gray and white vinyl siding and scarlet roofing that the other units eventually would wear. Under all the units, the white concrete block foundations, painted with black waterproofing compound, had long since been laid. They were still exposed, surrounded by jumbled piles of dirt, rock, cast-off lumber scraps, metal sheeting, concrete block fragments, torn roofing shingles, empty cans of roofing cement, and bottles, pop cans, and paper lunch bags. Wooden planks had been laid in several directions over the muddy debris.

  Branden started at the first unit, found it empty, and moved to unit two. There he found a carpenter working alone on molding trim. He was Eric Sutton, an older, slender, weathered man who had known Jon Mills, and took the news of his death hard.

  Branden stood near the large window in the front room of the unit, gazing out awkwardly past pink manufacturer’s stickers on dirty glass. Sutton stood in the back room, in an efficiency-style kitchen separated from the living room by an unfinished counter where bar stools would be used. Sutton had his hands planted on the countertop, elbows locked, shaking his head at the news. Branden wished he had handled it better. That he’d somehow managed to bring the news to Sutton more gently.

  “You say his name wasn’t Jon?” Sutton asked, studying the countertop.

  “He changed his name to Jon Mills, evidently down in Texas, but he was born Jonah Miller, in Millersburg,” Branden explained. He turned from the window and studied Sutton, who was dressed in a flannel shirt with the sleeves torn off, jeans, and work boots. Sutton had a heavy leather tool belt strapped to his waist.

  “How did he die?” Sutton asked, straightening up and facing Branden.

  “Shot,” Branden said. “Down in Holmes County.”

  “That’s where his son came from,” Sutton remarked absently.

  Branden took an involuntary step forward. “You know Jeremiah?”

  “Jon called him Jerry. Or Little Jer. Saw him once or twice, when he first came up here, and then saw a bit more of him lately,” Sutton replied. “Jon’d bring him to work sometimes.”

  “Can you tell me about him?”

  “What was he doing back in
Millersburg?” Sutton asked, shaken.

  “We think he was going home with his son,” Branden said, and then tried again with, “What can you tell me about Jeremiah?”

  Sutton acquired a distant look in his eyes and then said, “I never knew he had a son until a month ago.”

  He slipped his hammer out of its loop on the tool belt, pried a bent nail out of a length of red oak trim, tossed the nail to the floor, and threw the trim into the front room. Then Sutton shook his head, disbelieving. “We both signed on with Ray in Texas. Trim carpenters in a boom town. Got any idea how good construction work is in a boom town?”

  Branden didn’t.

  “Plenty good, let me tell ya. But, when the oil went bust, Tarshish went bankrupt, and moved here to the lakes to start over. Lately, it hasn’t been boom-town great, but at least it’s been steady.”

  “I’m hoping to find Tarshish here today.”

  “He’ll be along,” Sutton replied, and returned to his work in the kitchen. Branden stood in the front room and watched Sutton, thinking.

  In the kitchen, along a vertical seam between a cabinet and a wall, Sutton drew out his tape rule, noted the length, snapped the rule into its case, slid the metal case onto its hook on his tool belt, and came around the counter into the front room. From a stack of red oak trim, he selected a piece of suitable length. At the table saw, he made quick marks with a carpenter’s pencil, blew sawdust off the top of the saw, threw the switch, made two precise cuts, and immediately shut power to the blade.

  As the blade whined to a stop, Sutton lifted his hammer out of its belt loop, and, back in the kitchen, carefully pried the defective trim from its place. He tossed the flawed trim onto the floor, and inserted the new piece.

  Two gentle taps with his hammer started the first nail, and two more started the second. His eyes fluttered and closed partway against the dust he had made. He squinted in the direct sun, guided the new piece into position, drove the nails home, reached for a counter punch from his belt pouch, sank the nails, and stepped back. His arms dropped listlessly to his side, and he turned to study Branden. The table saw had run to a stop, leaving the room quiet except for the shuffle of Sutton’s boots on the plywood flooring. The slight haze of rising sawdust glinted in the rays of the morning sun as it broke through the front window at an angle. Branden caught the aroma of freshly cut oak.