by Jane Jensen
“I agree. But you know the old line about how, when you eliminate the impossible, what’s left must be true, no matter how improbable?” I ticked off points on my fingers. “The CDC hasn’t found any tremetol in any of the feed or medicine that was given to the cows.” Another finger. “The DCNR hasn’t found any plant containing tremetol naturally growing at any of the affected farms—or anywhere else in Pennsylvania.” Another finger. “This nonindigenous plant is supposed to have suddenly cropped up at these few farms, which aren’t even close to each other, and which all happen to be Amish. I know you said birds could have carried it in their droppings, Glen, but that’s some selective pooping.”
Glen smiled at my wording.
“The plant could be on non-Amish farms though, right?” Grady put in. “Hell, it could be all over the place. But because most milk is pasteurized, we’d never know it, because there wouldn’t have been any problems.”
“That’s not actually true,” Glen said. “Pasteurization doesn’t neutralize tremetol toxin, so if other dairy farms had been affected, we’d know.”
I was unable to believe what I’d just heard. I must have been gawking stupidly at Glen. “Pasteurization doesn’t neutralize the toxin?”
“No. That’s why it’s imperative we locate the source.”
“But—in the press conference, the implication was that it was all about raw milk! And they’ve only banned raw milk sales. Now you’re saying it could be in any milk?”
Glen looked uncomfortable. “That wasn’t my call, Harris. It was the state’s decision. I recommended they stop all milk sales from Lancaster County farms, and this was their compromise. Raw milk is the only place the toxin has actually shown up so far. And it’s a small fraction of the dairy business, so it’s less devastating to the economy and to the farmers.”
“Oh my God,” I said quietly. Ezra was right. The Amish made an easy target, didn’t they? Blame it on them, blame it on their lack of regulation, and give the public a scapegoat.
“All right, all right,” Grady said impatiently. “Forget about pasteurization for a minute. What else were you going to say about this possible sabotage business, Harris?”
I pulled myself together. There were only so many battles I could fight at one time, but Glen’s revelation left me with a very uneasy feeling. “Okay. We should have the test results on that plant matter tomorrow right?”
Glen nodded in confirmation. “I’ve rushed it. Shouldn’t take more than twenty-four hours.”
“Right. So if it does come back positive for tremetol, Grady, we need to open this as a homicide investigation. If this is a deliberate act, there are leads we should be following. Why these farms? How did the saboteur choose them? Is there a connection between the farms? And this plant doesn’t exactly grow on the side of the road. Where did the killer get it? Also, we should interview the families involved again. Maybe someone else saw someone around their cow who shouldn’t have been there, but didn’t realize it was important at the time.”
Grady tugged on his ear the way he did when he was making a decision. He sat up straight. “Right. Let’s meet back up once you have those lab results, Dr. Turner. In the meantime, Harris, clean up anything that’s urgent on your plate. You don’t need to spend any more time on this until we know for certain there’s something to it. But clean up what you can in case we do need to open up an official investigation. Got it?”
“Yes. Thank you,” I said, relieved that Grady seemed to be taking the possibility seriously.
“Your gut’s been right before.” Grady gave me a knowing look. “I ignore it at my peril.”
“If this does become a homicide investigation, I’d like to continue to work with Detective Harris on it,” Glen put in.
“Don’t you have . . . doctory, CDC stuff to be doing?” I asked. It wasn’t that I minded Glen as a partner, but I was starting to wonder if his obvious interest in me was clouding his professional judgment.
“I have team members working on analysis, but right now my chief objective is to find the source of this toxin. This is the best lead we have on it right now.” He muttered, lower, “Hell, it’s the only lead.”
“Anything we can do to help, Dr. Turner,” Grady said. “Now get out of here. And Harris? I’m not convinced about this, but if someone is doing this deliberately? We need to rip that son of a bitch a new one.”
“Yes, sir,” I agreed. I’d promised someone else the same thing weeks ago, and it was long past time to make good on that promise.
—
I didn’t get away from work until almost nine P.M. As I got into my car, I thought about calling Ezra to let him know I was on my way. That’s when I remembered—Ezra had called me that morning when I was in the car with Glen. I’d told him I’d call him back, but I’d forgotten. Damn it. Ezra wasn’t prone to calling me for no good reason, even though he’d insisted we could talk later.
I dialed Ezra before starting the car. “Hey! I’m just leaving work. Be home in twenty. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to call you back today. Is everything all right?”
Ezra was silent for a moment. “All’s well. I made some dinner I can warm up for you. Talk to you when you get here.”
“Okay.” But my heart beat a little faster at the weighted tone in Ezra’s voice.
—
Ezra preferred to come out with things in his own time. So I ate my warmed-up roast and vegetables slowly and waited for him to talk. He was sitting in the chair across from me at our small kitchen table. His head was bowed, and the overhead light cast a shadow over his strong features. He played with a clean fork in his long fingers. Unhappiness radiated off him, making me more and more concerned.
“I saw my father today,” he said at last.
I took a careful sip of water. Oh. “I take it that didn’t go well?”
He huffed, twisting the fork in his fingers like an acrobat spinning around a pole. He started to speak, then just shook his head.
“I’m so sorry, babe,” I offered.
“I wanted to warn them ’bout the milk. Don’t know why I thought he might listen more if it was comin’ from me. He didn’t want to hear me. Didn’t say a word.” Ezra got up and put some water in the kettle for tea, his actions slow and angry.
I left my plate half-eaten and got up. I stopped his fussing by wrapping both arms around his waist from behind. My cheek rested on his warm, broad back. “I will never understand how a parent can disown their child. Or how anyone could not want you in their lives.”
He remained tense in my arms, but he didn’t pull away. He’d been hurting like this all day, I realized, since he’d called me this morning, and I hadn’t been there for him. I felt utterly inadequate. He covered one of my hands with one of his—large and warm. But he said nothing. I could feel the dampness of his body heat and the overly fast beat of his heart through his shirt. He was really upset. I squeezed him tighter.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back earlier today. I was completely distracted by this milk case, but that’s no excuse.”
“You have your own life.” Ezra’s voice was distant. He probably didn’t mean it as an accusation, but my guilt made me hear it as one.
I drew away, no longer sure of my welcome. He turned to face me and leaned back against the sink. I couldn’t read a thing in his expression. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. “I . . . have my work. And yes, it can be very demanding at times. But that’s not my whole life.”
“I know what it demands of you. Can’t say as I understand it.”
I felt a sense of wrongness, like the floor was tilting under my feet. There had always been a hint of this between us. How could there not be? Ezra had grown up in a world where women stayed at home, did the cooking and the cleaning and a hundred other tasks around the homestead. They didn’t go off to work ten to twelve hours a day. They didn’t run afte
r criminals, walk through bloody crime scenes, or carry a gun. They didn’t say, “I’ll call you back” when a member of their family was in pain and then totally forget to do so.
My hands found each other, and I clasped them together to resist reaching out to him again. Ezra’s handsome face was closed off, and I didn’t know how to make it right.
“The problem is not with you, Elizabeth,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s in me. I admire who you are. You know that. But I don’t . . . I don’t know who I am when I’m with you. Who am I? I’m not an Amish man anymore. I’m not a father. I’m not even a husband. And I don’t take care of you. Even if I made enough money to do it, you make your own money and want to pay your own way. So what am I good for? Those mules out there are ’bout the only creatures on this earth that need me.”
His face was bitter; his eyes glistened. He was as close to tears as Ezra Beiler probably ever got. I was exhausted after the near sleeplessness of the night before and the long day. So when my heart broke for him, it did so with surprisingly little effort or fuss, spilling a quiet, toxic grief.
“You, Ezra, are the man that I love. And I hope I’m the woman that you love. And the rest of it we’ll build, Ezra. We will.”
His shoulders relaxed a little, and his chin dropped to his chest. He looked up at me from under his blond eyelashes and quirked one eyebrow. “You sound pretty sure ’bout that.”
“I am so damn sure,” I answered adamantly.
He huffed and stared at me a moment longer. Then he sighed. It was enough to allow me to go to him. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he opened up to receive me, putting his hands on my back.
“I’m so, so sorry I didn’t call you back this morning. I hate how much they can hurt you, and I hate myself for not being able to prevent it.”
“Not your mess,” he said into my hair. “Not your fault.”
It wasn’t. Ezra had been preparing to leave the Amish before he’d even met me. But even so.
My body was tired, and my spirit too, but he needed me. He needed to feel loved, and I needed to make up for my thoughtlessness. I kissed him, pressing into him as he leaned against the counter. But it wasn’t going to be that easy this time. After a moment, he reached up to unlace my arms from around his neck and push me gently away. With an unreadable look, he went to the back door, put on his hat, and went outside.
CHAPTER 9
The following day was a Friday. The CDC lab results on the plant matter found in Levi Fisher’s barn came in at eleven A.M. At four P.M. Grady, Glen Turner, and I walked up the wide steps of the state capitol building in Harrisburg to meet with several state departments and an aide of the governor’s.
It was the first time I’d ever been to the state capitol, and I was impressed. The stately building was made of ivory granite with a green dome. It was on a natural high point with views of the city, expansive grounds, spring flowers, and blooming trees. I was also anxious as hell. Glen would be doing the introductions, but I’d have to outline an initial plan and answer any questions about the case—a case which was less than five hours old.
“Oh, great,” Grady muttered sourly. He paused on the steps.
“What’s the matter?” I paused next to him.
He nodded with his chin. There were a dozen or so protesters near the front door of the capitol building. That probably wasn’t a rare occurrence and I wondered why it had put Grady off. That’s when I noticed the word “milk” on the protest signs. My gaze flickered from sign to sign. “My Body My Choice.” “Food Freedom Now.” “Keep Your Laws Off My Milk.” “I Want It Raw.” One woman who couldn’t have been over twenty had a huge white sign that said, “I Drink Raw Milk. Arrest Me.” The protesters were ordinary-looking people, young to middle-aged, and casually dressed. Amber Kruger would fit right in at a protest like this—if she weren’t in the hospital fighting for her life.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” I said. “The press conference was only yesterday morning.”
Glen spoke up. “The farmers will be out here soon too, if we can’t get this ban lifted.” He sounded calm about it.
“You must be used to this, working in the CDC,” I said as we continued up the steps.
Glen gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve personally seen to the recall of thousands of pounds of meat and forced manufacturers to pull product from grocery stores worldwide. So, yes. Companies hate the CDC even more than they hate tax auditors, and protests tend to crop up when we’re around.”
“Good. Then I can place the blame on you,” Grady said. He pulled open the heavy door and held it as we passed through.
“Well, personally, I’m glad you’re here,” I said. I meant it too. I didn’t want to see anyone else die from this, and I was prepared to defend the raw-milk ban to anyone who would listen.
“Thanks.” Glen looked at me warmly.
I ignored a wave of uneasiness and tried to get my mind back on what I planned to say.
—
The conference room had wood paneling and a mural of George Washington giving a speech. A fine-weave blue carpet covered the floor and an enormous round conference table was made of polished dark wood and surrounded by plush blue chairs. I recognized several of the state officials from the CDC debriefing at the station, but others I’d never met. Mitch Franklin was there from the Department of Agriculture and there were also people from the DCNR and the Department of Health. Margaret Foderman, the governor’s middle-aged and smartly dressed aide, was the only other woman in the room.
She began the meeting. “Dr. Turner, can you give us a brief update on the situation? And then, I believe it was the Lancaster Police who requested this meeting.”
“Yes, thank you, Ms. Foderman.” Glen plugged his laptop into the projector and ran quickly through pictures of the farms that had been infected and a blown-up map of the county showing where the farms were located. He brought up the current total of victims. “As of thirty minutes ago, there are twenty-nine deceased and an additional forty-six that have gotten ill. We have one unconfirmed but suspected source of tremetol-poisoned milk—Aaron Knepp’s farm in Paradise—and three confirmed cases. The confirmed cases are Samuel Hershberger in Paradise, the Kinderman family on Willow Street, and Levi Fisher in Bird-in-Hand.
“Right now, we have a handle on where it’s been. Or we think we do. It’s possible there are cases out there that have gone unreported. Unfortunately, we still haven’t stopped the source of the tremetol. Which means it could crop up again anywhere, anytime. And probably will.”
“Excuse me, but how is it possible you haven’t found the source yet?” Mitch Franklin interrupted. “Those farms are hardly in a state of flux. That’s as stable an environment as you could hope for. And I thought your people had been all over them.”
“I didn’t say we hadn’t found the source. Only that we haven’t stopped it. I’m going to let Detective Harris explain.”
I got out of my chair and walked around the conference table to Glen’s laptop, swallowing down my nerves. There was a lot more at stake here than my dislike of public speaking. Glen had shown me the pictures in his slideshow on the drive up here, so I knew the order. I clicked to a picture of the Fishers’ cow trough.
“Yesterday, CDC investigators found a small amount of green plant matter in the cow trough on Levi Fisher’s farm. It was tested by the CDC labs and came back this morning as positive for tremetol. The plant matter has been identified as white snakeroot, also called Eupatorium rugosum. In other words, we have evidence that the toxin was eaten by the cows, from their trough, in plant form. It was not in their feed or in their hay. And the plant was not found by the DCNR anywhere in the Fishers’ pasture, just as it hasn’t been found at the other farms where this sickness has cropped up.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction?” Margaret asked, looking confused.
“It’s not a contradiction if someon
e brought that plant onto the farm and put it directly in the cow’s trough. Levi Fisher claims to have no idea how the plant got there, so we’re talking about someone, not a member of the family, coming onto the farm and feeding this to the cows. That’s why this morning the Lancaster chief of police approved opening a criminal investigation.” I looked at Grady.
He nodded. “That’s correct. We believe there’s enough suspicion of malicious intent to open it as a homicide case. Because the first big outbreak, the Kindermans, was in the jurisdiction of the Lancaster City Police, we’ll be running the investigation from our violent crimes division. We have one of the most experienced and well-trained homicide detectives in the area—Detective Harris.” He nodded at me. “She was a detective for the New York City Police Department, and she solved the Yoder/Travis case last year. She’ll be heading up this investigation.”
“Homicide?” This was clearly unexpected news to the state officials in the room. The reactions ranged from shock to surprise to disbelief.
After discussing it in whispers with his aide, Mitch Franklin stood up. His heavy, hanging-judge face wore a scowl. “Now, before we all get excited, I’d like to voice some skepticism. Just because no one’s found the plant on the farms yet, doesn’t mean it’s not there. A cow can eat a plant down to the ground, can’t it? You’d be left with stubs in that case, or even just roots. And . . . heck, are we confident that the team even knows what it’s looking for? This seems pretty straightforward to me. The cow eats a plant, the plant makes the cow sick. I don’t see a conspiracy here.”
I pushed down my impatience and replied in a reasonable tone. “The DCNR team does know what it’s looking for. Do you agree, Mr. Ellis?”
Dirk Ellis from the DCNR looked like a retired park ranger, still fit and handsome in his fifties. “Yes, we do, Mr. Franklin. My staff knows what to look for, and we haven’t found it growing on any of these farms. Honestly, I’m not surprised. From what I understand, white snakeroot wouldn’t be any cow’s meal of choice. It normally grows in damp, shady areas and would be something cattle might eat during hard times, like in a drought, when other food sources weren’t available. But these farms are flush with good spring grass.”