Whiskers of the Lion

by P. L. Gaus

  “I don’t see why anyone would trust me, Missy.”

  “I’m not willing to listen to this, Sheriff. Even Fannie Helmuth trusts you. And she met you, what, maybe once? She met you once, and based on one letter you wrote to her, she trusts you enough to walk away from FBI protection.”

  “I didn’t tell her anything, Missy.”

  “That’s nonsense. I know what you wrote to her.”

  “What?”

  “You wrote at least five versions of that letter, Bruce. I found them in the wastebasket. I know what you wrote to Fannie. And I’ll tell you something else. I also read Fannie’s letter to you.”

  Struggling inside the strictures of his medications, Robertson stared at the ceiling and considered what Missy had said. The letter. Fannie’s letter. He hadn’t read it. He had lost it. There had been so much to do, to set up for Earnest Troyer. Fannie’s letter.

  Robertson looked at Missy. He squeezed her hand. “I never read the letter,” he said.

  “I have it, Bruce. It was in your coat pocket when they brought you to the hospital.”

  “You have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it say?”

  Missy laid her husband’s hand gently on the sheet beside him, and she stepped away from his bed. Robertson misinterpreted the moment, and he closed his eyes, expecting no reply. But momentarily, Missy retrieved his hand, and the sheriff heard the rustle of paper. He held his eyes closed and waited. Missy began to read.

  Friday, August 19

  Hotel near Middlefield

  Dear Sheriff Robertson,

  Thank you for your letter. I know what I have to do. I know that wherever I go, I will be safe among my people.

  I miss Howie so very much, but my fiancé is a fine and wonderful man. I will have a good life with him. But Howie wanted his car. He had it all through college. I told him to forget it, but I guess he just couldn’t do that.

  Thank you for helping me see my way free of this. I have courage because you trusted me with the truth.

  I have always believed that the faith of a single person is more consequential than all the powers on earth. In this, I believe I will be proven right.

  Sincerely and truly yours,

  Fannie Helmuth

  36

  Saturday, August 20

  4:10 A.M.

  IN THE darkest hours before sunrise, when the nurse came into Armbruster’s hospital room, Pat Lance was still sitting at his bedside, holding Armbruster’s phone. The nurse hung a new dose of platelets on the IV stand and connected the tubing to the new bag. He adjusted the delivery rate, tossed the empty bag into the medical waste container, and came to the foot of the bed to take up the medical chart. As he recorded Armbruster’s newest IV data, he said to Lance, “You’ve been here almost all night, Detective.”

  “I know,” came a weary reply.

  “Should you maybe get something from the cafeteria?” the nurse asked.

  Lance shook her head. “He’s going to wake up.”

  The nurse hesitated at the door. “It’s still a couple of hours before daylight, but it’s warm outside. Maybe you could get some fresh air. Fresh air might do you a lot of good.”

  Lance clicked on another photo in Armbruster’s phone and shook her head.

  “Are you going to call someone?” the nurse asked as he came back to stand beside Lance.

  Again, Lance shook her head, but did not speak. She held Armbruster’s phone so that the nurse could see the photo of her in Irma Mast’s parlor, and when she turned her face up to the nurse, there were tears in her eyes.

  37

  Saturday, August 20

  6:20 A.M.

  AT ELLIE Troyer-Niell’s bedside, Caroline Branden held her vigil of prayer. The late-night Cesarean deliveries had been complicated. The babies had been so very small. The doctors spent a long time closing Ellie’s incision. They had spent far too long, Caroline realized. But she tried to say encouraging things to Ricky. She tried to give him hope, both for his children and for his wife. She hid from him the fear for Ellie that had engulfed her. The fear she suffered for the babies.

  Memories of her own miscarriages haunted Caroline through the night, and although she had lost her babies many years ago, she was powerless at Ellie’s bedside to dispel the pain and sadness of those losses. She was powerless to hold out more than the frailest of hopes for Ellie and Ricky.

  Ricky was standing in the neonatal unit down the hall, unable to decide whether Ellie needed him more, or whether their babies did. Caroline had promised him that if Ellie woke up, she would summon Ricky immediately. So far, Ellie had slept, and Caroline had sat alone with her. Because of her own heartache of loss, Caroline could not find a way to understand Ellie’s sleeping as an encouraging sign. Ellie’s breathing was shallow and labored. It would be weeks or months before she could hold her children. If they survived, Caroline thought, losing heart. If Ellie survived.

  Caroline rose and stepped with her burdens to the window. A chaos of despondency and despair tumbled through her thoughts. The Akron skyline was emerging from shadow as the sun came up, but the elaborate play of architecture and form, and the chorus of morning traffic on the streets below, meant nothing to her. It was a city, Caroline thought bitterly. Just a stupid city. No one down there knows a thing about Ellie Troyer-Niell. Even if they knew, these were not the people who would care.

  Behind her, Michael entered the room silently. As he crossed to stand beside her, he whispered, “She’s going to be OK, Caroline.”

  Caroline turned to her husband with negativity and denial laced fiercely into her tears. “You don’t know that, Michael!” she shouted, and then quickly she covered her mouth. Whispering, she accused her husband with her grief. “There’s nothing we can do to make this right, Michael.”

  The professor reached out to embrace his wife, but she stiffened as he drew her close. He caressed her hair and kissed her forehead. “We lost children, Caroline. That doesn’t mean Ellie and Ricky will. You’re talking this way because of the pain of your memories.”

  “What if I am, Michael? I know what she faces. I know what is possible, here, better than anyone. I can’t handle it, if her babies die like ours did. I can’t handle it if Ellie dies.”

  “You’re letting the pain talk, Caroline. You don’t have any good reason to fear for Ellie. You don’t have any good reason to fear for these babies.”

  Standing stiffly in her husband’s arms and thinking only that her fear would never abate, Caroline said sternly, “I want you to call Cal, Michael. I want you to call Cal Troyer to pray.”

  The professor caressed Caroline’s hair and pulled her tightly into his embrace. “He’s already here, Caroline. I brought him with me. He’s down the hall right now, with Ricky and the children.”

  38

  Saturday, August 20

  6:20 A.M.

  ALTHOUGH REUBEN and Fannie got an early start Saturday morning, the travel was slow because of weekend traffic on SR 87. Reuben held to the berm wherever possible, and this impeded their progress even more, because the overnight rains had made potholes in the gravel beside the road.

  When they approached the wetlands bordering the Pymatuning River, they found that the rain had produced flooding. Standing water had risen nearly to the level of the pavement. This was low country. They passed swampland, marshes, creeks, and lily pads. Everywhere they saw the encroachment of brown river water.

  In Kinsman, Reuben followed 5W/7S through town. First there came Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church. Then the Kinsman Chapel of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, plus the Dollar General, Marathon, and Main Drug. As they approached the gazebo at the center of town, they passed nineteenth-century homes set well back from the road. Brick-fronted businesses on the town square. Old buildings, with weathered and cracked bricks that had settled on their foundatio
ns.

  Reuben paced his horse steadily south out of Kinsman on Route 7. At 88, he turned east, and the long low span of the Vernon Center Bridge came into view. The straight run of blacktop led from the intersection to the bridge, and Fannie could see a small blue pickup truck parked to the side, halfway across the bridge. Beside the pickup, Jodie Tapp was standing out on the pavement.

  Reuben moved forward slowly. There were heavy metal guardrails on either side of the road. Over the guardrails, the land dropped steeply into the river bottoms. On the span of the bridge, low white walls guarded the edges. The lowlands bordering the Pymatuning River were flooded on each side of the road. The dirty brown water surged around marsh grasses, tall timber, and tangles of dense, bushy cover.

  As Reuben started across the bridge, Fannie saw brown water rushing along at flood stage, only inches from the underside of the bridge. At the center of the bridge, Jodie stood smiling. She waved for Fannie to come to her. Fannie climbed down from the buggy’s seat as Reuben set the hand brake. Fannie walked forward, and Reuben sat with the reins.

  Over the swollen river, the two women met in the middle of the span. When Fannie held out her arms to embrace Jodie, Tapp stood stiffly in place, with her hands tucked into the front slit pocket of a gray hoodie.

  Fannie released Jodie and stepped back. “What’s wrong, Jodie? Is it your mother? Teresa Molina? What?”

  Tapp answered, “I can’t believe you are this naive.”

  “What are you talking about?” Fannie asked as she stood in front of Jodie.

  Reuben climbed down from the seat of the buggy and came forward to stand beside Fannie. “Is there a problem here, Fannie?”

  Tapp stepped back a pace. “I knew you’d come,” she said flatly.

  Reuben held Jodie’s gaze. At his side, he took Fannie’s hand in his.

  Tapp’s hand clutched at something inside the slit pocket of her hoodie. She snarled and said, “I can kill you both right here.”

  Reuben stared peacefulness back at Tapp. “You can do nothing to harm us that God has not already allowed.”

  Fannie reached a hand out to Tapp, and Tapp shouted, “Stay back!”

  Fannie put her hand back at her side. “Jodie,” she said, “were you really part of the drug smuggling?”

  “Oh, I cannot believe you naive and stupid Amish girls!” Tapp laughed. “Of course I was part of it.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Fannie said.

  “I know you don’t. That’s why it was so easy to talk you Amish girls into carrying my suitcases home on the buses. Dozens, Fannie! It was dozens of Amish girls. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana. And it worked, too. Until stupid Ruth Zook dumped my drugs into a farm pond.”

  “Did you kill Ruth?” Fannie asked.

  Exasperated, Tapp shouted, “No, you moron! I was in Florida!”

  “Then who killed her, Jodie, if you didn’t?”

  “Teresa’s cousin. Dewey Molina. They tracked him down in Bradenton. I had to pretend to be his hostage.”

  “I grow weary of this,” Reuben said. “Fannie, this cannot be a part of our lives.”

  Fannie took a step toward Tapp. “Are you really going to kill us, Jodie?”

  With scorn, Tapp said, “You’re too stupid to live, Fannie.”

  Fannie stood immobile. She studied the face of her friend and grew sad. She stepped back to stand beside her fiancé.

  Tapp glared spitefulness into Fannie’s eyes.

  Fannie looked sadly back at Tapp, and then she closed her eyes. She beheld the oneness of creation, and she embraced the true and eternal testimony of her life, even if that required her death at the hands of a friend, on a deserted bridge over a swollen river.

  “Take out your cell phone,” Fannie heard Tapp command.

  Fannie opened her eyes. She lifted the phone from the pocket of her dress, and she held it forward for Tapp.

  “Throw it in the river,” Tapp said.

  Fannie turned around and threw the phone into the roiling brown water. Then she turned back to face Tapp.

  Tapp turned to Reuben. “Do you have a phone, too?”

  “No,” Reuben answered flatly.

  “Why not?”

  “They are harmful.”

  “Oh,” Jodie ridiculed. “Are we afraid of frequencies close to the brain?”

  “No.”

  “Then explain why,” Jodie insisted, stepping closer. “Because you people don’t make any sense to me at all.”

  Reuben glanced right to smile at Fannie, and he turned back to Tapp. Slowly and deliberately, Reuben answered. “In your world with cell phones, Jodie, who among you deems a friend so precious that you would ride for half a day in a buggy, just to sit on a porch with a glass of tea and talk for an afternoon?”

  “You’re crazy,” Tapp replied.

  “I don’t think I am,” Reuben said evenly.

  Jodie Tapp seemed to stall on a thought. She seemed to have caught a fleeting insight that she had never before considered. She realized that Fannie had spoken to her, and she said, “What?”

  “Jodie,” Fannie said, “aren’t you afraid of Teresa Molina? Shouldn’t you be hiding from her?”

  Tapp laughed, and she laughed again, as if pleased by some hidden mystery or taken with some entertaining irony. Fannie and Reuben waited for her answer.

  Tapp swallowed nervously and wetted her lips with the tip of her tongue. She appeared to be pressurized by bottled anxiety. It was apparent both to Fannie and to Reuben that she was not a woman at peace. She was not a woman who enjoyed simplicity of thought. The plain beauties of life would forever be inaccessible to her.

  Fannie said to her, “Have you ever known any peace?”

  As if addressing a simpleton, Tapp smiled with condescension. “Teresa Molina was running from her own cartel, Fannie. They don’t tolerate failure. So I killed her for them. No one will ever find her body. I made sure of that.”

  Hoping that Jodie would talk a little more, Fannie asked, “How did you find us, Jodie?”

  “I just kept calling you, Fannie. I knew you’d tell me where you were, eventually. Once you called me with that new phone of yours, I knew I’d find you, sooner or later. I have to admit, I didn’t expect it would take four months.”

  “I mean, how did you get here so fast this morning?” Fannie said.

  “Oh Fannie, really? Are you kidding? Each time I called you, I learned a little more about where you were. ‘It’s raining here,’ you said once. I checked my radar. ‘There’s a fabric store here.’ I checked the Internet for fabric stores near Amish communities. ‘The Indians’ games are on the radio all the time.’ That meant near Cleveland. More and more, each time we talked, I drew closer to you. I moved every day. I was in Middlefield last night. I must have just missed you.”

  “You said you were down in Akron, Jodie.”

  “See? It was so easy to fool you.”

  With deep and genuine chagrin, Fannie said, “I’m sorry, Jodie.” She pulled a wire loose from inside her apron, and she showed Jodie the microphone that had recorded their conversation.

  Jodie stepped back, startled. She drew her hands out of the pocket of the hoodie, and she pointed a revolver at Fannie.

  Immediately, three uniformed deputies dashed out of the bushes at the ends of the bridge. They were led by Captain Bobby Newell. They all rushed forward on the flat span of the bridge, and Newell shouted, “Drop your weapon, Tapp!”

  Jodie stared slackjawed at Fannie. She turned her head to see Newell approaching, but she did not drop her weapon.

  Again, Newell shouted, “Drop your weapon!”

  Jodie leaned over at the waist, put her revolver on the pavement at her feet, and backed up slowly to the edge of the bridge. “How did you know?” she asked Fannie. “How did you figure it out?”

  Fannie sai
d, “Jodie, how did you know I had been staying with the FBI?”

  “You told me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “No, Jodie. I never told you that. So that’s when I began to suspect you. When you first asked me about the FBI. Only then. Until then, I thought you really were my friend.”

  Jodie pressed back against the low wall at the edge of the bridge. Behind her, the brown flood waters rushed away under the pavement. Newell and his men surrounded Tapp with their guns pointed at her. Jodie looked a last time at Fannie, smiled as if lost in tragic irony, and threw herself backward into the surging river water.

  The current drew Jodie immediately under the bridge. Fannie rushed to the other side and watched for Jodie to pass from under the bridge. She saw nothing at first. Then, some fifty yards downstream, Fannie saw the lifeless body of Jodie Tapp, snagged on a tree trunk, head down in the water, limbs twisting erratically in the current.

  39

  Thursday, September 29

  7:40 A.M.

  SIX WEEKS after the stabbings, Detective Pat Lance drove down the farmer’s lane to Stan Armbruster’s old trailer. She parked beside a Dumpster where friends and family had thrown out what no one wanted of the brittle and broken household goods that Armbruster had left behind.

  Slowly, Lance climbed the wooden steps to Armbruster’s trailer door. She used a key his sister had given her to unlock the door, and once inside, she drifted from one empty room to another.

  There was half a roll of paper towels left in the kitchen. Maybe a new tenant would want that, Lance thought. There was a stack of old magazines on the carpet where Armbruster’s couch had sat with its back to the trailer’s kitchen counter. No one would want them, Lance realized. She carried them outside to the Dumpster.

  Back inside, she wandered from corner to corner in the musty rooms. It was all gone, she realized. Nothing left. But in the bedroom, in a corner behind the folding door to the bathroom, Lance found two brown paper grocery bags. Inside there was damp, musty clothing—a blue business suit, with subtle charcoal pinstripes. A white dress shirt and a red tie. It was all dirty, and it was all ruined by mold. Armbruster had dropped it there the day he had found the body of Howie Dent, and that had been the end of it, Lance realized.