by Jane Jensen
“I will.”
I looked at him for a heartbeat and then took the two steps to where he stood on the kitchen’s hardwood floor. I wrapped my arms around him and he held me tightly, his face buried in my hair. Silent apologies passed between us. Death has a way of making arguments feel trivial, and I wasn’t even sure what we’d been arguing about. I found his mouth and kissed him deeply for one brief moment. Then I left him in the kitchen and hurried to my car.
I tried to steel myself on the drive, my stomach clenching around sips of coffee. Grady had said “multiple dead” and that it was a family. There’d be children, like at the Kindermans’. That was not a scene I’d ever wanted to see again in my lifetime. But seeing it—seeing them, the victims—was my job.
The farm was well off the beaten path, not even on Drytown Road, which was edged by farms for miles, but down a dirt road off that. I passed fields of unused land thick with weeds. Approaching the Troyer farm, there was an overgrown pasture surrounded by an old post-and-barbed-wire fence. The two-story brown barn looked halfway to falling down, but the farmhouse was neat, with rows of tulips around the porch.
God, there were still clothes hanging on the line. Their flat and empty aspect felt sinister as they billowed in a light breeze like fabric ghosts.
The driveway was crowded with an ambulance, three black-and-whites, the coroner’s van, and Grady’s car. All this, and the sun was barely over the horizon. It didn’t look like Glen was here yet, but I’d texted him. He was on his way.
The mood was solemn as I approached the house. I passed several uniformed officers, who looked at my badge and then away again without saying a word. They seemed shaken. At the front door I closed my eyes and blew out a long breath. I took a pair of latex gloves and paper booties from a box on the porch, put them on, and went inside.
The Wayne Troyer family had been dead for over twenty-four hours. They’d died early Tuesday morning, before dawn, and within a few hours of each other. One of them, a teenage girl, had been found in the back field, apparently attempting to reach a neighbor’s farm. She must have been going for help. She didn’t make it.
The others—mother, father, an older female relative, and seven other children ranging from two to fourteen—were all found in the house. The place was ripe with the smell of decomposing bodies, and I was forced to dab some Vicks under my nose as I went about my work.
I looked over each body, recording my observations into my cell phone. This time there was a hard line inside my chest that kept my feelings distant. It felt almost surreal. I had the idea that if I were truly to feel it, I’d be incapable of doing my job. So I accepted the numbness and did what I had to do.
Glen was beside me at some point, pulling up the eyelids on an Amish boy, maybe eight years old. Something about signs of acidosis. I was barely aware of it when he walked away. I kept recording.
I saw Grady in the house, and the coroner, even Glen again, but no one seemed inclined to talk. It was the quietest crime scene I’d ever attended. There was no doubt about what had killed the Troyers or how. There was only the task of witnessing and recording the lives passed, one by one. When I’d seen all of the dead in the house, I went down to the kitchen. Glen and Elaine from the CDC were there. The refrigerator door was open, and Elaine was taking samples from a Tupperware bowl that looked like leftover casserole. She acknowledged me with her gaze, but neither of us smiled or said a word.
Glen waved his hand at a large glass gallon jar on the counter. On the bottom was a scant half inch of creamy white.
“We’ll sample everything in the kitchen, but my guess is this milk is the culprit. Looks like they had it with one of their last meals, but God knows how long it’s been poisoning them.”
“He’s getting too good at this,” I said. “The timing of it, and the amount. He’s got it down to a science.”
Glen nodded, his brow furrowed and his eyes upset. He wasn’t having much luck keeping this strictly professional either. “I was just going to check the barn. Want to come?”
I nodded in answer. There was little room for words in the thick atmosphere of tragedy that hung over the house, and my throat felt too tight to form any sentences that weren’t absolutely necessary. Glen seemed to be feeling the same, because we said nothing more as we left the kitchen through the back door and walked to the barn.
We found the cow, a pretty Jersey, in a stall in the barn. The large door to the pasture was closed, and the sour stench of manure and sickness hung in the confined space. The cow lay on her side in a straw-strewn stall. She was panting, and her udder was so huge and distended that it looked like she had a beach ball between her legs. There was dried foam and mucus over her nose and mouth. Her brown eyes, dull and glazed, rolled to look at us, but she didn’t try to rise.
I felt sick. “Oh God! Poor thing. She must have gotten a heavy dose of it.”
“Looks like she hasn’t been fed or milked since the family died,” Glen said. “We should call the ASPCA.”
“I have the number of that vet who was at the Fisher farm. He’s familiar with milk sickness.”
“Even better. Can you call him now?”
I stepped out of the barn to call Dr. Richmond. Anything was better than looking at that suffering animal. Nevertheless, after getting the vet’s assurance he was coming straightaway, I made myself go back into the barn. I found Glen kneeling by the cow. He stroked her head with one hand and checked her mouth with the other.
“We need to check everywhere, especially in the stall and around the food trough. There has to be some trace of white snakeroot,” I said. “If not in here, then by the fence line. He could have fed her over the fence. If we’re lucky, we can find some trace of our killer too. Footprints. Fibers. As soon as the crime scene team is done inside, I’ll get them out here.”
“I don’t see any traces of plant matter in her mouth,” Glen said quietly. He put his hand assessingly on the cow’s trembling flank.
I began to examine the feeding trough in the stall. The lighting was dim, so I pulled a small flashlight from a pocket and studied the smooth metal surface carefully.
“It’s just so hard to believe,” Glen said, “that someone would deliberately do this. I mean, if they wanted to poison a family, why not just put arsenic in the milk? Or in the well for that matter. Aren’t all these farms on wells?”
“Now you’re thinking like a homicide detective,” I said, my gaze intently focused on my search. “And for that, I am truly sorry.”
I glanced at him, and he gave me a sad smile. “A week ago I would have said I had no naïveté left.”
“There are always things, people, that can shock you. Seems like there are always people who find a way to be worse than you can possibly imagine.” At this moment, that weighed more heavily on me than it had in a long time. It felt like I had a ship’s anchor tied to my soul.
The last time I’d felt like this, I’d considered giving up being a detective, finding some profession where I could hide from the darkest side of life. Flower arranging maybe. Trail guide. Bubble-bath salesman. Instead, I’d moved here to a rural paradise. But there was evil here in Lancaster County. It just hid better.
—
Dr. Richmond showed up and began, with the grimly unpleasant demeanor he’d shown before, to treat the Troyers’ cow. Between him and the crime-scene crew, the barn was overcrowded. There was nothing more I could do now but wait for the results. I walked to a slight rise in the pasture and looked out over the farm. From here I could see the farmhouse, the barn, the driveway, and the dirt road. Across the road was a parcel of native growth with tall pine trees mixed with deciduous ones. The bright green leaves of spring danced in a slight breeze as if the trees were vain about them.
Why here?
The Knepps, the Hershbergers, the Kindermans, the Fishers, now the Troyers. I’d been looking for something that connect
ed them all to Henry Stoltzfus or some other suspect, or even to Amber Kruger. But if the killer truly was a serial killer, a poisoner, the connection might not be there. It was even harder to imagine the Troyer family, living well away from the heart of Lancaster County, was connected to any of the others.
So why here? How does he choose them?
The Troyers were the most remote family yet. And the white snakeroot was given to their cow only a few days ago, after the press conference, after the protest had started, after the deaths had become major headlines.
Was the killer going farther afield to look for a family who wouldn’t have heard the news, who would still be drinking their cow’s milk? Unfortunately, I had the feeling that, despite our best efforts , there were hundreds of Amish families like that in Lancaster County. But how had the killer found this one? The Hershbergers’ cow had been fed the poison plant at the fence line near a road. That could have been opportunistic. The killer could have seen the cow while out driving around and just decided it was an easy target.
And here, at the Troyers’? Had he just been driving around looking for . . . what?
They were all Amish families. Large Amish families. Lots of children. Was that why he’d targeted them?
I let my instinct guide me. He’s not Amish himself, or ex-Amish. He sees them as “other,” expendable. That felt right, though maybe it didn’t go far enough. He hates the Amish. Hmmm. I supposed he had to hate them to kill them so ruthlessly. But was the poisoner a sociopath who hated everyone, or the Amish specifically? If so, why? Had he had bad dealings with the Amish? Did he resent them on religious grounds?
And why the children? Did he have an issue with how many children the Amish had? Did he have sadistic pedophilic tendencies? Did the idea of innocent children suffering satisfy him in some way?
It didn’t quite fit. If he was a sadist or pedophile, wouldn’t he want to see the children suffer in person? My eyes shifted to the house, contemplating the possibility that he had watched from the windows as the family died or even entered the house to see up close.
But we had nothing that indicated that was the case. Other than Mark Hershberger seeing the man at the road, none of the survivors had seen any strangers lurking about. And I’d seen no evidence of an intruder at the Kindermans’ or here, no indications that the bodies had been disturbed after they’d died. There was something else, something I wasn’t seeing.
My eyes wandered to the woods across the road. If he’d watched the Troyers, studied them to determine if they were a good target, that would be the ideal place from which to do it. I could almost picture him there, looking back at me from the cover of the trees. I pictured him the way Mark Hershberger had described, wearing a black sweatshirt, hood up, face obscured.
We needed to search those woods.
“We’re on to you, asshole,” I muttered under my breath. “I will find you.”
CHAPTER 15
I couldn’t find the poisoner.
The police and the CDC had pored over the Troyer farm and had little to show for it. We discovered a few leaves under the trough that were positively identified as white snakeroot. And the crime-scene team found shoe prints from Converse tennis shoes in the woods across from the Troyers’ land. But the shoes were a popular variety and also not found in the thick matted grass of the Troyers’ pasture or the cement floor of their barn. He was careful. And smart.
The death of another large Amish family had the press in a frenzy. And now the protesters at the state capitol building in Harrisburg and Penn Square in Lancaster had been joined by a new faction—one that demanded action from the police and state government, one that pointed the finger of blame at the police and thus, essentially, at me, since I was in charge of the investigation.
No, I wasn’t the only one second-guessing my leadership, but the voice of my own internal critic was the loudest.
I was poring over my files again on Friday afternoon.
Someone who knows the history of milk sickness and how to cause it.
Someone who hates the Amish.
Someone who wants public fame, who fancies himself a poisoner on a historic level.
Henry Stoltzfus would not have left the graffiti. The FBI profiler I’d talked to said our perp was male, likely under thirty. Single. Bright. He could have a political agenda about the raw milk or the Amish, but even if he did, it was a thin veil for an ultimately sociopathic and megalomaniacal wish for fame and notoriety, a notoriety he believed he deserved because he was smarter and more ruthless than most people.
I went through my list of all persons of interest but was only able to eliminate an unfortunately small number of them with certainty.
Someone hovered over my desk. I raised my head to see Hernandez. His expression was sympathetic. “Hey. I’m gonna run out and pick up some sandwiches. You wanna go? Get some fresh air?”
I glanced at the time stamp on my monitor. It was after one P.M. “No thanks. I’m in the middle of this. But I’ll take a sandwich if you’re buying.”
“No way, Harris. You gotta go along. I need to fill you in on some stuff. You can stretch your legs and work at the same time. How’s that? Anyway, I’m always happy for your company, ma’am.”
I gave him a dubious look. “Are you ordering me around or sucking up? You seem confused, Hernandez.”
“Yes to both, ma’am.” Hernandez grinned.
I rolled my eyes, but I grabbed my wallet without further thought and we headed out. He was right. I did need some air. I’d been looking at the same damn data until I was cross-eyed.
It was a very warm April day, and the sunlight made me feel like a mole emerging from hibernation. At a crosswalk, we stopped behind a handsome young blond father holding an adorable baby in his arms. The baby stared at me curiously.
And suddenly, my mind shifted tracks.
Who am I? I’m not a father. I’m not a husband.
Ezra’s words came back to me, low and frustrated. He wasn’t happy. It was like he was anchorless, and I . . . I was not enough to anchor him. Would he feel less adrift if we were married? If we had a child? Or would he feel trapped in a life he didn’t want? With my job, the bulk of the child-rearing would be on his shoulders. Would that make him feel more needed? Or just resentful?
Then I wondered: Why hadn’t he asked me to marry him?
We’d been together for just over a year. It was a lifetime in one sense, a heartbeat in another. It wasn’t like I had dreams of a white dress and a church wedding. I was a widow, after all. I thought I had a realistic view of marriage. I was in no hurry to make it official. But Ezra was a traditional man. In the world he came from, you didn’t just shack up with your sweetheart. So why hadn’t he asked? Was he unsure if he wanted to be shackled to a modern woman? One who was not only rarely home but couldn’t even return his phone call when he needed her?
I still bore guilt over my marriage with Terry. I’d worked so many late nights and weekends, and Terry was—mostly—understanding. He’d been considerably older than me, and he’d had his own life. And then he’d been the victim of a random shooting. And any chance to make up all those lost hours with him was abruptly gone.
My work wasn’t like this all the time. Months would go by with only routine cases and almost normal hours. But something like this . . . I couldn’t bring myself to regret my ability to focus so intensely. It was that obsessive focus that enabled me to solve cases. And my work wasn’t just about me. I avenged the dead. I put people away so they couldn’t hurt anyone else. It was something I could do, something I contributed, that went beyond the narrow twists and turns of my own life. I didn’t want to give it up.
But Ezra . . . He was a gorgeous man—tall, broad, blond, and strong. He was funny and good-hearted, utterly honest and loyal, gentle and passionate in bed. He deserved a woman who could give him everything. It hurt knowing it wasn’t me.
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“Harris!”
The blond father and his precocious offspring were long gone, and I was still standing on the curb, blocking access to the crosswalk. Hernandez was looking at me funny. I stepped aside and let a group of protesters past. They were stocky-looking men, probably farmers, and they had on black T-shirts with the slogan “Safe, Legal, PASTEURIZED Milk!” I gave Hernandez an unhappy glance, and he nodded his head, indicating we should abandon the crosswalk and continue on our current side of the street.
He led me on an out-of-the-way path down an alley to avoid the crowds. I was relieved. I knew the protesters were there and what they wanted—for me to solve the case, even if they didn’t know it. I didn’t need the reminder.
Fortunately, our usual deli wasn’t too busy. Hernandez ordered a dozen sandwiches to go for the team, and I placed my own order. As we waited, we watched the passersby through the window.
“So, I was thinkin’. . . .” Hernandez began.
“Yeah? You mentioned you had something to tell me.” I perked up. When Hernandez had something to say, it was worth listening to.
“I’ve been doing a lot of research. You know, this milk sickness was a thing, back in the pioneer days. Lots of people died of it before they figured out it was caused by a plant their cows were eating.”
“Yeah, Glen—Dr. Turner told us that.”
“Glen, huh?” Hernandez raised one eyebrow knowingly.
I rolled my eyes. “That’s what he asked me to call him. Anyway, what were you going to say?”
“Did you know that Lincoln’s mother died of milk sickness?”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. So, I was thinking. . . .” He paused.
“You’re doing a lot of thinking,” I pointed out dryly.
“Aw, Harris. Don’t bust my chops, man. No, listen. Most people alive now have never heard of milk sickness. So how’d our perp find out about it? What if it has to do with Lincoln’s mother?”
“I don’t think she’s doing much talking these days,” I said, unable to help myself. It felt good to joke around with Hernandez for a few minutes and take a break from the gravity of the police station.