I cleared my throat and looked at Abner and Joanna’s expectant faces. “Have either of you noticed anything…different about Mariah lately? Maybe she’s been moodier or more tired or a lot less social.”
Joanna nodded vigorously. “Why yes, she’s been very aloof lately, and always sassing back at me.”
“Well, that’s because she’s been getting into some things that have affected her heath and her mind. I’m sorry to say that your daughter has been doing drugs with a few of the other Amish kids.” I said it as delicately as possible, but it still sounded so horrible.
Luckily, I only had to see Joanna’s stricken face for an instant when a nurse popped up and asked if Joanna and Abner were Mariah’s parents. The nurse quickly hustled them away to the counter, and I was left uncomfortably alone with Brody and Jotham.
I glanced at Jotham. As much as I tried to look neutral, I know that I failed miserably.
“How is my friend, Rowan?” He tilted his head at Brody and said, “Sheriff Gentry told me that it’s pretty bad.”
I nodded slowly and pursed my lips. The burning desire to confront Jotham about the barn fire nearly twenty years ago was only tempered by the obvious distress on his face. After quickly thinking it over, I decided that that conversation could wait a little longer.
“Honesty, I’ll be surprised if he lives. His injury was substantial.” I paused as a thought popped into my mind, “What about his kids—do they know?”
“I was visiting with Abner when the sheriff arrived and gave us the news. We stopped at the King’s on our way here and I asked Anna to go to Rowan’s and spend the night there so that the children wouldn’t be alone, come morning. She’ll tell them the news.”
I breathed out in sudden relief that it would be Anna telling the kids about their father. The woman loved Rowan and his children and I was sure that she’d be there one hundred percent for them. But then I wondered who would be there to comfort her. I quickly let the thought go and said to Jotham, “The waiting room is over there. You’re not going to be able to see Rowan until after surgery.” Or maybe not at all if he dies, but I kept that to myself.
Jotham began to turn away and then suddenly stopped. “I don’t understand exactly what happened tonight, but did you find out who has been setting the fires?”
I glanced at Brody who was still looking off into space, completely ignoring the conversation. “Yes I did. Right now, all you need to know is that your community doesn’t have to live in fear that it will happen again. We got our man.”
Jotham nodded acceptingly, but his lips were still tight. My gaze narrowed as I waited for him to speak.
Finally, he said, “And…did you discover anything else of importance?”
I stared hard at Jotham. He obviously suspected that I knew the truth about the ninety-seven fire, but was still playing cloak and dagger with me about it. And then there was the house explosion that killed Hedy Schwartz still on my mind.
“Actually I found out several new items of information tonight, but I still have a few questions unanswered. Don’t worry. I’ll be contacting you when it’s a more appropriate time.”
Jotham’s eyes acknowledged that he understood. He said to Brody, “Thanks for allowing me to ride along.”
I saw a wave of conflicted emotions wash over Brody’s face as he watched Jotham walk away. Oh yeah, I was sure that he knew, but I still couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just go ahead and arrest Jotham. I was still too confused on the matter to speak up myself, and decided that the best course of action at the moment was to remain cautiously silent.
“How many men do you have looking for Asher?” I asked casually.
“I’ve called in the neighboring counties, probably about twenty-six officers out there right now.” He seemed to be finished talking, but then he dared to look at me with moist eyes and asked, “What the hell happened?”
I had seen Brody talking to both Nathan and Cody and even Jory. He had also said a few words to Damon. And he had listened in as I had spoken to one of his deputies taking notes for the official report. He already had a pretty good idea of the way it went down, so I guessed that his question now was much more about the fire that had taken his other grandson’s life.
“Asher and Julian had arranged to meet the Amish kids in the secluded hunting cabin to sell their wares. At the point that I arrived, Asher was outside arguing with Damon. The gist of the conflict was that Damon was growing concerned about the more dangerous type of drugs that were being provided to the teenagers. He was worried about the kids, especially since he was already aware that Asher’s own girlfriend had overdosed on a bad batch of Hash oil.” I paused and took a quick breath before continuing. “I already knew about Kristen Humphrey before I even went into the woods and had drawn the conclusion that the only reason Asher had burned down the Fisher barn was to hide the body. Damon knew that too…and so did you. But you chose to ignore it in an attempt to protect Damon from the law.” Brody tensed, but remained silent. “I suspect that you feared that Damon had burned the other barns in retaliation for his brother’s death, but once again, in an attempt to protect Damon, you didn’t do your duty.” I sighed and added, “You were afraid of Asher bringing Damon down with him, so you let him go along with his criminal activities…and now look at your town.”
“You’re right about most of it, except two things. I didn’t have the woman’s identity until this afternoon and secondly, I had no idea that Damon had set those other fires.” He took a deep breath. “Now that part of the story is a little hazy from the boys’ statements. Maybe you can enlighten me.”
I was inwardly relieved myself. I really had hoped that Brody wasn’t entirely corrupt. How the sheriff decided to handle the truth would be the ultimate judgment of his ethics, though.
“Damon was driving an old woman with Alzheimer’s a few months ago and she let it slip that the fire that had killed your grandson and his girlfriend was set by a few of the Amish boys. He must have internalized the information, and decided to strike back. I knew early on that the Fisher barn fire was set by a different person than the others. I don’t think that Damon intended to hurt anyone, even livestock, purposely. But there you go.”
Brody was deep in thought and the silence was becoming uncomfortable when he finally spoke.
“Rowan set the fire that killed Austin?” Brody said the words slowly and carefully, never taking his gaze off me.
“We don’t know that for sure. Asher’s a psychopath. He might have been placing blame away from himself.”
Brody’s phone went off. I began to walk away to give him some privacy, but stopped when his hand touched my arm.
“Hello…what the hell…are you sure…all right…I’m coming.”
Brody hung up and cupped his mouth in distress for a moment before he spoke. “That was one of my deputies. He said that Anna King had just met him on the road with her buggy. She told him that when she arrived to the Schwartz house, the littlest girl was missing.”
My jaw dropped and I interrupted, “Maybe she’s hiding or something.”
Brody shook his head sadly and went on to say, “My deputy found blood in the house and a trail through the snow. It disappeared about halfway through the field, covered by the freshly fallen snow.”
“Asher?” I dared to say.
“I would stake my life on it,” Brody said steadily.
“I’m coming with you,” Jotham said from behind us. He must have been listening.
I could hardly breathe, let alone argue about whether Jotham came with us or not. My only thought as we sprinted out of the hospital was that I should have shot Asher right in the head when I had had the chance.
26
I had hugged or been hugged by more women in the past few hours than I ever had in my life, I thought, as I pulled back from Anna to look at her tear streaked face. Her gray eyes were bloods
hot and her usually pale skin was even whiter than normal.
“Why would he take her? I don’t understand,” Anna asked in between sniffs.
I put my arm around her shoulder and guided her over to the chair by the fireplace. Jotham was filling it up with wood in a fit of anxious energy as Anna sat down. I gazed around the room and noted that the two deputies were doing a good job at collecting samples of the blood on the floor and smeared on the door handle. The blood was Asher’s, I was sure of it, but the evidence still needed to be collected to build a case.
The minister, Mason Gingerich, was seated at the table with Gabe and Seth, and his wife, Martha, was busily brewing coffee at the cooking stove. I knew that dozens of other men from the community were riding their hastily saddled horses through the snowy fields and along hedgerows in the darkest part of night. Again, it amazed me how quickly the Amish came together in a crisis, but the English were doing their part too, with over one hundred emergency response personnel and neighbors already scouring the roads and fields.
I turned my attention back to Anna and said, “I think he’s using Cacey to get out of town. She’s a bargaining chip for him.”
“He might hurt her,” Anna cried out softly.
“Shhh, you don’t want the boys to hear that kind of talk and you just got the girls back in their beds,” I said, trying to keep the worry out of my own voice. “All you can do is keep on praying and let us do our job.”
Anna nodded in agreement, but Jotham spoke up, “We aren’t doing anything, Serenity, except sitting here, waiting.”
The ruined part of his face twitched and, I wondered once again if he lived with constant pain from the scarring. His eyes were certainly shining with pain, but the psychological kind, not the physical kind.
I took a deep breath and told him once again what I had already told him five minutes earlier. “Everyone else is out there searching, hoping that by chance, they come across Asher and Cacey—and with the snow still falling it’s going to be impossible to track them anyway. We’re just going to stop, breathe and think.” I spoke up louder, addressing the room, “Where do you think he would go with Cacey. He’s a smart man and trudging through a snowstorm with a little girl is not something that he would likely rush into unthinkingly. He’s also injured. Asher used to be Amish. There might be a safe place that he remembers from his childhood that he would go to hole up in until the weather breaks.”
My own heart still thrummed against my chest, even though my words were spoken with calm sensibility. I knew the statistics all too well. The longer it takes to find a missing child the more likely that the child is dead. And I couldn’t erase the memory of the sick smirk that Asher had directed my way, even after his brother had been shot. He was definitely deranged and I seriously worried that he’d use Cacey to take revenge on his former community. Asher was also the type of guy that would gladly go out in a blaze of glory if he thought that he had no chance of escape. I shivered thinking about it and looked up at Jotham with a pleading look that silently shouted, “Think man, think!”
It was Gabe who broke the hanging silence. “What about the schoolhouse? There are no classes this week…”
The mustached officer looked up and added, “And the schoolhouse isn’t that far from Hoover Road, which goes straight to the interstate.”
Bingo. I grabbed my coat and toboggan and headed for the door. Jotham was at my side and for the first time since I had first seen him at the hospital, there was hopefulness in his good eye.
“Be careful you two. After Rowan and Cacey, I don’t think I could handle any more bad news,” Anna called after us.
Over my shoulder, I replied, “Don’t worry, we’ll bring Cacey home.”
It was still a long shot that Asher and Cacey were in the schoolhouse, but just in case, we parked about a quarter mile away on a side road and hiked through an open field toward the school, with the hopes of taking Asher off guard.
The snow was falling more gently now and the wind had subsided. I actually had to unzip my coat to keep from sweating too badly with the physical exertion.
“You must be exhausted,” Jotham commented.
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning and this was my second hike through half a foot of snow that evening. Normally, I would have been passed out, but the adrenaline to find Cacey was keeping me going. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until we found her.
“I’m all right. What about you? You’ve had a rough night yourself,” I said, glancing at Jotham from the corner of my eye.
“God gives us the strength to keep going when we really need to.”
“I hope God’s with us right now, we might need Him,” I said seriously.
Jotham smiled. “Oh, no worries, He’s here.”
His confidence made me feel a little better, but then the schoolhouse came into view and I took a measured breath. The building looked almost lonely resting on the snow covered knoll with only a large tree and a swing set as company. I didn’t like the fact that if Asher was indeed in the school, he had a bird’s eye view of anyone approaching. I suddenly wished that Jotham and I were both wearing white instead of black. If someone was indeed looking out of one of those darkened windows, we’d stick out against the snow for sure.
When we reached the fencing that enclosed the schoolhouse yard, I motioned for Jotham to stop. We kneeled on the ground, using the boards for a little bit of cover.
Jotham sighed and his breath was an icy puff in the air between us. “What’s the plan?”
I liked that he had listened to what I said earlier in Rowan’s kitchen. He was amazingly calm.
“Rowan is fighting for his life because he insisted on going into danger with me. Are you sure you want to do this? I’ll be perfectly honest with you—we might not make it out alive.”
A sad smile tugged at Jotham’s mouth and a single tear fell from his good eye, but when he spoke, he was completely resolute.
“I was there to save Cacey’s life five years ago,” he swallowed, “I won’t let her down now.”
“All right then.”
We stole silently up the softly rising hill, past the swing sets and only paused when we finally reached the trunk of the tree. I peeked around the bark and studied the building. All was eerily quiet and dark.
“There aren’t any lights on,” Jotham whispered.
“There wouldn’t be. Asher’s too smart for that,” I replied, slowly running my gaze over the front of the building, stopping on the door. It had a small glass panel near the top and a silver colored knob. With the snow illuminating the scene, the red smear on the white board beside it was clearly visible—and exactly what I was looking for.
“Damn. He’s in there,” I said softly, pointing at the door for Jotham to take a look.
“He’s injured. We have the advantage,” Jotham said when he straightened back out.
“No, don’t fool yourself into thinking that. Sure, he’s lost a lot of blood, but I would guess that he has his hand wrapped by now…and he has Cacey. He’s holding all the cards,” I scolded him in a hissing whisper. “Here’s what we’re going to do…”
I carefully gave him instructions and then slipped away to the side of the building. I only hoped that God really was with Jotham, because I had just put the man’s life in jeopardy.
27
I took a quick breath and turned the corner alone. Bending down, I passed directly below the windows at a jog, only stopping when I reached the back door that Jotham had told me entered into the school’s kitchen.
Careful to not jingle the keys, I pulled them from my pocket. Since Jotham was one of the men who volunteered to do regular maintenance at the school, he had a set of keys into the building. Unfortunately, the handle was an older type that would be easy to jimmy open with the right tool. Since there weren’t any broken windows, I assumed that must have been what Asher did to
enter the front door.
The key turned with a quiet click that normally wouldn’t have even been noticed, but with the desperate need for silence, the sound seemed to split the snowy night air. Pushing the door ever so softly, I peeked in. The room was empty, but there were a few wadded up sheets of paper towels on the counter. There was blood on them and the smell of a cleaning agent was still strong.
I closed the door quietly behind me and moved through the kitchen as if I was a ghost, listening, but careful not to make a sound. I took another steadying breath, hoping to slow down the pounding of my heart, which was blasting loudly in my ears as I pressed myself up against the wall and glanced down the hall way. The coast was clear.
As I began to step away from the wall, my back brushed against a broom that was hanging in the corner. There was a scraping sound that I stopped quickly with my hand. Holding my breath, I listened again.
It was still deathly silent. I suddenly wondered if we were too late. Asher might have already killed Cacey and taken his own life. It made no sense why he would bring the child into the equation if he was going to give up so easily, but crazy people often times did completely irrational things. I remembered a case that I had worked on in Indy where a bipolar mother had thrown her five month old baby boy into a frigid river in February and then shot herself on the bridge. Both had died and none of it made any sense at all. That was the really scary part. It couldn’t even begin to be explained.
The muffled sound of movement at the end of the hall caught my attention and I quickly squeezed myself in between the counter and a trash can. It was a pretty lame hiding place, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
I held my breath and listened. The sounds were definitely from the plastic tread of tennis shoes on linoleum.
I eased the gun from my side and forced myself to take shallow breaths. At this close range I only had one shot if Asher was armed. Poised on the ball of my foot, I prepared to go around the corner.
Whispers from the Dead (Serenity's Plain Secrets Book 2) Page 20