In the Land of Milk and Honey
Page 1
FACING EVIL . . .
The last room on the left was the parents’ bedroom. There was a man in the bed. He was on his back, and I could see his full, long beard and bloodless face, eyes closed. He had to be the family’s father, Thomas Kinderman. Grady was standing next to the bed, arms folded in his yellow hazmat suit. He walked over when he saw me. Danielle began to photograph the body.
Grady’s eyes were troubled above his paper mask. “No signs of foul play. Nothing environmental . . . You ever seen anything like this, Harris?”
I shook my head. When I’d been a beat cop in New York, I’d occasionally been on calls to check on a neighbor, or investigate a foul smell, and found someone deceased. Many of those deaths were illness-related. But this? An entire family? And so fast too . . .
There was a loud knocking from downstairs. Someone was pounding on the front door. Grady and I looked at each other and both headed down. When Grady opened the door, the neighbor, Jacob Henner, was standing there with an officer in uniform. Jacob’s face was wild. . . .
What now? I thought, feeling a new wave of dread.
Berkley Prime Crime titles by Jane Jensen
KINGDOM COME
IN THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.
Copyright © 2016 by Jane Jensen Holmes.
Excerpt from Kingdom Come by Jane Jensen copyright © 2016 by Jane Jensen Holmes.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jensen, Jane, author.
Title: In the land of milk and honey : an Elizabeth Harris novel / Jane Jensen.
Description: Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition. | New York : Berkley Prime Crime, 2016. | Series: Elizabeth Harris ; 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2016009050 (print) | LCCN 2016015740 (ebook) | ISBN 9780425282908 (softcover) | ISBN 9780698407213 ()
Subjects: LCSH: Women detectives—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Amish—Pennsylvania—Lancaster County—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3560.E583 I5 2016 (print) | LCC PS3560.E583 (ebook) |
DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009050
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition / August 2016
Cover art: Amish buggy © Willard/iStock/Thinkstock; Landscape © Mischa Keijser/Plainpicture.
Cover design by Sarah Oberrender.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For my husband,
who gave up a lot to move back to Lancaster County with me.
Love you Farmer Bob!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Kim Fielding for assisting me on criminal justice issues and my agent, Shawna McCarthy, and Berkley editor Katherine Pelz for encouraging the creation of this book. This story was inspired by the dedicated, passionate, and hardworking people in the Lancaster local foods movement.
CONTENTS
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME TITLES BY JANE JENSEN
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
PART I: The Curse CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
PART II: Straw Man CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
PART III: Poison CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM Kingdom Come
PROLOGUE
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, April 2015
“Mama! Mama!”
The strained cry pulled Leah from a fevered dream in which she’d been sewing and sewing. The stitches fell apart, disintegrating as she frantically worked. It was something important and she had to finish it . . . a bridal dress.
No. A shroud.
“Mama!”
Leah sat up in bed. Beside her, Samuel was asleep. She touched his forehead. It was still hot and dry with fever. But it wasn’t Samuel who had called for her. It had been a child’s voice. She left her husband to his fitful rest and went out into the hall in her white cotton nightgown and bare feet.
Coming! she thought. She left the reassurance unspoken because it was the middle of the night, and she didn’t want to wake the rest of her children.
A shining band of lantern light peeked out from under the door of the upstairs bathroom the children all shared.
She knocked lightly. “Hast du mich gerufen?” she asked, her voice low. Did you call me?
“Mama!” Breathless and weak, the cry came from behind the door. Leah opened it.
On the floor by the toilet lay Mary. She was pale as snow. Her thirteen-year-old body had recently begun to develop a woman’s shape, but she looked years younger now. Her long dark hair, loosened for bed, was sheeted around her, damp and oily at her brow. Her eyes were closed. One of her hands twitched weakly as if it wanted to reach for her mother. The smell of vomit and bile, sharp as the January wind on the open fields, hit Leah in the face. The lid of the toilet was open, small amounts of bile the only evidence of Mary’s heaving. Her stomach was empty, poor thing. But the back of her nightdress was stained brown.
“Oh, Mary!” Leah fought her own nausea, exacerbated by the smell, and bent to help her daughter. She managed to get Mary sitting up and stripped off her soiled nightgown and undergarments. She cleaned Mary up with a wet rag and bundled all the stained cloth up together. Leah enumerated the tasks in her head. She had to put Mary in a clean nightgown and get her back into bed. And she had to see to it that Mary drank a glass of water too. The doctor said water was important with all the vomiting and diarrhea, but it was hard to get the children to drink it. When they did, it often came right back up. After Mary was settled, Leah had to open the little window in the bathroom to air it out and take the dirty bundle down to the laundry room.
Mary was trembling like a leaf in the breeze, her eyes bleary. But at least she was able to sit up by herself. Leah draped her in a few towels to keep her warm and went to fetch a clean nightgown.
As she passed the boys’ room she heard the muffl
ed sound of crying—miserable, lonely gasps. She hesitated, wondering if she should first get Leah’s nightgown, but the sound was too worrying. She pushed open the door to the boys’ room.
“Aaron!” She hurried to the child’s side. Six-year-old Aaron, who looked so much like his papa with their identical sandy-colored Amish haircuts, was sitting up on the lower bunk. He was crying, quietly but full-out, his mouth wide open.
She pulled him into a hug and checked his forehead. His fever seemed to have broken for the moment. His skin was clammy and covered with sweat.
“Was ist das?” she tsked quietly. Across the room in the other set of bunk beds, Mark, her twelve-year-old, was asleep on the upper bunk. He had his back turned to her. The bottom bunk the boys used for playing—at least until little Henry outgrew his crib.
“Ich hatte einen Albtraum,” Aaron sobbed. A nightmare.
Leah felt a touch of relief. At least Aaron was not as sick as Mary, or as he himself had been earlier that evening. Maybe he was on the mend. Maybe they all would be soon, and her own nightmare would end. “Es war nur ein Traum. Schlafen tu.” It was only a dream. Go back to sleep.
She tucked Aaron in, his eyes already drooping, and straightened up from the lower bunk. Her back ached deep and low, and she put a hand to it, rubbing. Chills ran though her, shaking her so hard the wooden boards beneath her feet creaked. Dear God, let this terrible flu pass soon. She should fetch her shawl. But first—Mary’s nightgown.
She turned to go but decided to check on Will first. He was in the bunk above Aaron’s. Her fourteen-year-old had been very ill all day, refusing food and going to bed at six o’clock after dragging himself through the daily chores. The cows had to be milked, no matter that the entire family was sick as dogs.
She stepped closer to the top bunk, went up on her tiptoes, and reached a hand out to touch William’s forehead. He was a barely distinguishable shape in the dark. Her fingers touched wetness, partially dried and sticky. It was around his mouth, which was slack, open, and felt oddly firm. The smell of something foul came from where her fingers had been. Alarmed, she drew back her hand and paused for only a moment before reaching for the Coleman lamp on the bedside table. She turned it on. Keeping the other boys asleep was no longer the foremost concern on her mind.
“Will?” She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light. She stepped on the lower bunk and pulled herself up to look at her son.
A moment later her scream echoed through the silent house like a gunshot.
PART I
The Curse
CHAPTER 1
I pulled into the driveway at the Yoders’ farm and turned off my car. I forced myself to sit still for a moment instead of hopping out immediately. I needed to get my head out of my current caseload and hectic mindset before I could appreciate Amish hospitality.
It was early April. The weather had warmed early this year, and the signs of spring were everywhere. The dark brown wooden fence along the Yoders’ pasture contrasted with the brilliant green of new grass and the white and purple of early-blooming crocus. The late afternoon light was just turning golden and soft. Several fawn-colored Jersey cows were completely engrossed in tugging up mouthfuls of the new growth. And the little decorative windmill in the center of the kitchen garden on the other side of the gravel drive spun in a light breeze. The garden was still in its winter hibernation, dormant but cleared. I imagined it held its breath in expectation.
This is why I’d moved back to Lancaster County. Every once in a while I had to remind myself of that before I got bogged down with head-in-the-sand-itis. Feeling better, I grabbed Sadie’s present and headed for the house.
Sadie Yoder had turned seven a week ago. This was the first chance I’d had to come by, having snuck out early from an afternoon of tedious paperwork. I’d debated what to get her. Ezra said dolls were acceptable for the Amish as long as they were modestly attired. No glam rock Barbie for Sadie, then. But I didn’t want to reinforce the grow-up-and-have-lots-of-babies message, for no reason other than my core streak of feminism and innate rebellion. So I settled on a game of Chutes and Ladders.
I’d struck up a tentative friendship with the Yoders, specifically Hannah and a couple of her daughters, Sadie and Ruth. We were odd bedfellows—a female police detective and Amish womenfolk. But we’d shared a tragedy. Or, rather, the Yoders had tragically lost their daughter Katie, and I’d found her killer. I’d nearly died in the process.
There was guilt and gratitude on their side, and I couldn’t even begin to untangle the mare’s nest of motivations on mine. I felt protective of Katie’s younger sisters and bonded to the family through the sympathy and pain of Katie’s murder case—and I was curious. I wanted to learn about Hannah’s way of life. Of course, I lived with Ezra, who was ex-Amish. But he couldn’t tell me what it was like to be an Amish wife and mother, and he didn’t like to talk about his life before anyway.
Also, if I were perfectly honest, I simply liked coming here. It made me happy. I went up the porch stairs and knocked on the door.
“Hallo, Elizabeth!” Hannah opened the door and welcomed me inside with a smile. She always looked so young for a mother of eleven—slightly built, her dark hair pulled back tight under a white cap and her face without a trace of makeup. Her plain, royal blue dress was covered with a large black apron that had traces of flour on it.
“Hi, Hannah.” I smiled. I wanted to give Hannah a quick hug, but I refrained. Instead, I held up the gift. “I brought Sadie a birthday present.”
“Ocht! You spoil her!” Despite her words, Hannah seemed pleased. “We’re making strudel. Would you like to cook with?”
“Sure.” Being in the Yoders’ kitchen was soothing. And it would be fun to surprise Ezra by learning how to make something from his childhood.
The kitchen was crowded with girls and young women. The center pine table had been cleared and covered with wax paper, rolling pins, and large bowls of dough and chopped apples. Sadie’s face lit up when she saw me. She ran over to give me a hug around the hips. The others all said hello. Sadie’s older sisters, Ruth and Waneta, who still lived at home, were there, as was Miriam, who was grown now and had children of her own. There were two young women I didn’t know. Before I could introduce myself, my dark pantsuit was covered by an apron and I was clutching a rolling pin. En garde. I bit my lip and refrained from saying it. They wouldn’t find it funny.
The sheer volume of strudel they were preparing came as no surprise by now. I’d seen Hannah cook before. Not only did the Yoders have a large family, but they always made extra, either to freeze or to share with the community at some get-together or other. And the two young women I hadn’t met before had probably come over to make batches for their own households. Cooking in a group made things a lot more fun.
We rolled out the dough, cut it into large square sheets, sprinkled on a sugar-cinnamon mixture, added raisins and nuts to some and not to others, and layered on small slices of apple before rolling them up and brushing the tops with melted butter and powdered sugar. The bushels of last fall’s apples were from cold storage, according to Hannah. Those that hadn’t been eaten over the winter had to be used up before they went bad. They were a tough-skinned green variety, and they were pared and chopped in an endless assembly line. And while trays of rolled strudels sat and rose in the warm kitchen, more and more and more were made.
It was a repetitive task that soothed me after a long week of work. This past week I’d investigated a man who’d killed his wife accidentally during a heated argument, a Jane Doe found near the highway, and a baby whose supposed crib death I suspected was really abuse. It all melted away under the steady motions and the pleasant singing in complicated-sounding German words.
I couldn’t contribute much to the singing or the conversation. With the older Amish, most of my life was topic non grata. I was living in sin with Ezra Beiler, who was, in any case, an Amish ma
n who’d taken the church vows and then left the Amish, and was therefore shunned. And my work as a homicide detective wasn’t something Hannah cared to have her girls learn much about, even if she did respect it. But Sadie, as usual, had a million nonsensical questions for me like Do you like grass? and Do you have red birds at your house?
The last strudels were rolled. A few of the dough logs were stuffed into the warm oven, but most were wrapped in cling film for later baking. Hannah’s guests left with cheerful good-byes and boxes bursting with strudel. Sadie opened her birthday present, thanked me for the “most wonderfullest gift” and ran off with Ruth and Waneta to play the game before supper.
I washed the dough off my hands at the sink. The window above the basin overlooked the fields outside. The sun was sinking, and I saw Hannah’s husband, Isaac, and two of her boys heading home on a plow pulled by two horses. It was getting late—time to let Hannah get to their evening meal. Besides, the sight made me long sharply for Ezra, who would be ending his own day about now.
“Thank you for allowing me to stay,” I told Hannah. “This was just what I needed to relax.”
Hannah was placing two wrapped, unbaked strudels into a bag for me to take home. She paused, an odd look on her face, like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if she should.
“What is it?” I asked.
Hannah looked troubled. “I meant to speak to you. . . . It is about a bad business.”
“Of course.” I stepped closer to Hannah and leaned against a counter, making it clear I was happy to listen.
Hannah sighed. “There ist some trouble lately, among the people in our church. Now a boy has died.”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“My friend Leah Hershberger, her whole family is sick. They called in a doctor, and he said it was the flu. But . . . there has never been such a flu. So sick they were, and her son William, only fourteen and strong before now—he died from it.”