“A good lawyer, a lenient parole board, time off for good behavior, prison overcrowding—you name it. There’s all kinds of reasons these guys get out.”
The sheriff leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms. “I want to go find this Owen Peterson and bring him in for questioning. I want the three of you to stay here until I do.”
“May I come with you?” Grace asked.
“Why?”
“There are a lot of outbuildings behind Grandma’s house. The weeds are high and thick, and finding the right building won’t be easy. Make enough noise opening and closing doors, and Owen might hear you and run off into the woods. I know exactly where the smokehouse is, and I can lead you straight to it.”
“That’s a good point, but there’s always the chance he might be armed.”
“I’m ex-military, Sheriff. I know how to defend myself and I don’t scare easily.”
The sheriff steepled his fingers and considered. “Well, we are short-staffed tonight.”
Levi felt uneasy. It wasn’t the Meidung, and it wasn’t the scene with the sheriff and Becky. It was something else. Something he couldn’t put his finger on, and it was definitely keeping him awake.
He paced through the house, unable to settle down, looking out each window. He checked the boys’ room. Albert was carefully tucked beneath the covers, lying flat on his back. His eyes were closed and his breathing was steady. He slept so carefully, he would barely have to straighten the covers of his side of the bed when he awoke to make it tidy.
Jesse lay sprawled out, taking up most of the space on the full-sized bed the two boys shared. His pillow had been pushed to the floor and his covers were in total disarray. Jesse slept like he lived. Too much energy, too much movement, too much curiosity, and so much potential. Life would not be easy for Jesse, but it would be interesting.
Levi picked the pillow up, placed it beneath Jesse’s head, and rearranged the little flayed-out limbs until they lay beneath the covers. Then he smoothed back the boy’s sweaty bangs and placed a kiss on his forehead.
Jesse opened his eyes. “Is that you, Bruder?”
“Yes. It’s me. Go back to sleep now.”
“I am glad you are here,” Jesse said sleepily. He yawned, closed his eyes, and fell back to sleep.
“Gute Nacht, ihr meine Lieben,” Levi whispered. “Good night, my loved ones.”
He entered his little sister’s room. Her prayer Kapp was gone, and her baby-fine blond hair was unpinned and unbraided. She looked like a tiny angel lying there. He ran his fingers gently through her soft curls.
What lengths would he go to in order to protect this child? Was there anything he wouldn’t do to save her if she or her brothers were threatened?
As he stood on guard between these innocent children and a possible threat, he knew in his heart that he could never stand aside and watch passively while someone hurt one of them. He knew that he would protect these children with his life.
These were not the thoughts of a proper, God-fearing Amish man. A good Swartzentruber would leave everything in the hands of God.
He wanted to have that kind of faith, but deep down he knew that if any of the people beneath this roof were in mortal danger, he would take it into his own hands to protect them.
God help him, he couldn’t be any other way.
He knew in that instant, as he watched the shadow of the moon dance upon his baby sister’s sleeping form, as he watched her curls moving in the gentle breeze that came through the open window, he would never be able to change.
He went into his old bedroom. It was a corner room, with a window on each side. One window overlooked the back of their property. The barn and some of the outbuildings could be seen from the other. The air felt stuffy in his old room, and he opened a window to let in a breeze.
Tomorrow morning would come very early. He lay down on top of the coverlet, fully clothed, and tried to relax. Perhaps he could at least doze a little before morning came.
He tried hard, but he could not relax. It seemed as though every muscle in his body was clenched like a fist, and he didn’t know why.
And then he heard a nervous whinny from within the barn where he had put Angel Dancer, and then another, louder one.
Something was upsetting her.
He hoped it was nothing. He hoped it was just a stray dog or cat that had wandered into Angel Dancer’s stall.
Looking out the window that faced the barn, he didn’t see anything. Then Angel Dancer whinnied again and kicked the wall of her stall. She was definitely upset.
Angel Dancer was too valuable and intelligent an animal to overreact.
High above the kitchen door—so high the children could not easily reach it—was the loaded hunting rifle that Abraham had kept ready to protect his chickens and livestock from predators. Levi went down to the kitchen, grabbed the gun, and went outside to investigate.
chapter TWENTY-SEVEN
Grace led the sheriff behind Elizabeth’s old barn, past the tumbledown corncrib, the unused outhouse, and the old chicken house. The sheriff pointed his flashlight downward and motioned for her to look. There was a break in the tall grass, the beginnings of a path. Quietly they approached the smokehouse. There was a faint light spilling out through various cracks.
“Owen Peterson?” The sheriff drew his gun. “If you’re in there, come out. This is the county sheriff.”
Grace held her breath.
The door opened, and a disheveled, lanky young man came out with his hands up.
“Are you Peterson?” the sheriff asked.
The man nodded. Grace thought if she had ever seen a deer-in-the-headlights look in someone’s eyes, it was Owen’s.
“What do you want?” the boy asked. “I’ve kept every appointment with my probation officer. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I just need you to come down to the station with me for questioning. We’re not charging you with anything.”
“Okay.” Owen was skinny and scared looking. “I guess. Can I put my hands down now?”
The sheriff frisked him for weapons. “Yes. You can put your hands down now.”
As the sheriff took Owen back to the car, Grace looked inside the small building where the original owners had once smoked their hams. It hadn’t been used in decades. It was about ten feet by ten feet, but Owen had made a small home for himself. It had been swept clear of dirt and spiderwebs. There was a blow-up mattress in one corner of the floor with a sleeping bag on it. Becky had evidently managed to find an old table somewhere, and a chair with one rung missing. A few cans of food were stacked on the table, along with a half-empty bag of Doritos. The only light was from an old oil lamp. There were a few articles of clothing folded neatly beside his bed and a large container of water and a wash pan with a washcloth folded beside it.
Her guess was that everything except the mattress had been scrounged by either him or Becky from various outbuildings.
Everything was as neat and clean as possible. But the thing that broke her heart, and helped her understand why Becky had felt it was necessary to help him, was the open Bible lying on the table. The Bible had seen much use. A yellow highlighting pen lay, with its cap off, between the pages.
She put the cap back on, blew out the lamp, and closed the door behind her. It was time to go. She would deal with the pitifulness of this scene later.
Levi had just stepped into the darkened barn door when he saw a match flare and got a glimpse of a man’s face. The man lit a lantern that Levi kept hanging in the barn for doing chores in the dark, early hours.
“You don’t actually plan on using that peashooter on me, do you, Amish?” he calmly asked.
All Levi could see now was a shadowy form backing into the darkest corner of the barn.
“What do you want?” Levi asked.
“I’m looking for something that belongs to me.”
“Why are you looking for it in my barn?”
“Well,” the man drawled,
“that would probably be because I dropped it somewhere around here.”
A chill ran up Levi’s spine. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the thing this man was looking for was the handgun his little brothers had found.
“You should leave now.” Levi cocked the rifle. It was only a .22, but it was an automatic. He wished he had thought to see how many bullets were in the chamber before leaving the kitchen.
“And here I thought you Amish didn’t believe in guns.”
The man had somehow circled around and was behind him now. Levi whirled just as something solid knocked into him and his rifle went skittering off into the dust. The fall caused the cocked rifle to fire one round and it reverberated throughout the barn. He tried to get up, but the man’s hands gripped him around his neck.
“You should have left well enough alone, Amish, and stayed inside. I was just trying to find the gun I dropped. I was too drunk that night to remember whether or not I had wiped my prints off.” He chuckled as though amused by his own incompetence, even as he struggled to squeeze the life out of Levi. “And believe me—my fingerprints are on all kinds of cops’ computer files.”
Levi did not know how to get this man’s hands off his neck. He writhed in the dust of his own barn with the man’s long fingers wrapped like steel bands around his throat. He grappled at the man’s arms and wrists, trying to yank them away, trying to dislodge them long enough to gasp for air—but the man held doggedly on, his fingers immovable, strangling him to death.
Levi knew no fancy moves, he had no idea how to fight this man, but what he did have was a lifetime of hard physical labor. He grappled at the man’s hands and finally managed to wedge two fingers beneath his palms.
Whether it was from the anger of knowing that this was the man who had tried to destroy his family, or whether it was a gift from God, he didn’t know, but suddenly he found the strength to tear the man’s hands away from his throat.
He felt a violent urge as he flipped the man over onto his back and pinned him to the earth. Levi was no fighter, but he had wrestled calves, wrangled horses, and forked tons of hay into the mow of his barn. He held the man, bucking and kicking, against the floor.
The fight upset Angel Dancer, who whinnied and stamped against the inside of the stall while Levi struggled to decide what to do next. He knew now that his strength was superior to the man’s. He knew that he could probably crush the life from this man’s body with his bare hands.
And he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to!
In his mind he saw images of his mother lying in the hospital, pale and shaken.
Images of his newborn baby brother in that incubator.
Images of Albert, Jesse, and little Sarah crying in the hayloft while their mother bled in an upstairs bedroom.
Jesse’s and Albert’s faces when they told him they had hidden the gun because they were afraid.
Images of his family’s peaceful life being left in shreds because of this man’s greed.
“Levi?”
He heard a familiar voice—Jesse!
“Bruder? Are you okay?”
The rifle shot. Jesse had awakened because of the rifle shot. Jesse—always such a restless, light sleeper.
“Bring me that rope.” Levi nodded toward one looped over a nail in the barn wall. “Quick.”
Jesse didn’t hesitate. He ran to get the rope.
Levi’s attention was diverted by his brother for only a split second, but his grasp loosened a fraction, just enough to give the man the opening he needed. He twisted like an eel beneath Levi, freed himself, and lunged for the rifle lying discarded on the ground. He had it in his hands before Levi could stop him.
Jesse had already returned to Levi’s side. The now useless rope dangled from his hands.
It was probably simply a trick of the light, but Levi would have sworn that the man’s eyes glittered like an animal’s as he sighted down the rifle barrel.
“This gun’s not much, but if you take one step toward me,” the man said, “I’ll shoot the boy.”
Levi saw the muzzle of the rifle lower until it pointed directly at Jesse. And then he saw a crazy half smile spread over the man’s face—an expression that Levi had never seen on a human before. It looked as though the man was looking forward to pulling the trigger. Relishing it. As if shooting people were a sport.
If he had ever doubted that there was true insanity in the world, that doubt disappeared.
Grace was getting into the sheriff’s car when she heard a shot coming from Levi’s farm. It could be Levi scaring off a fox or coyote, or it could be something more sinister.
She and the sheriff looked at each other. He had heard the gunshot, too.
“Get out of the squad car, son,” the sheriff said.
“What?” Owen looked totally confused.
“Just get out—and don’t run away. I’m coming back for you later. Remember, you’re not under arrest. We just need to talk with you.”
The boy got out.
The sheriff turned to Grace. “You’re military-trained in weaponry?”
“I’m a nurse, but I did well on the rifle range in basic.”
“You know how to handle a shotgun?”
“Yes, sir.”
He backed out of her driveway and jammed his foot down on the accelerator.
Without giving thought to his own safety, Levi lunged toward the man, closing the distance between them at a full run. His headlong rush caught the man by surprise, but he still reacted in time to get off two shots that tore into Levi’s shoulder.
Levi felt the fire go through his body, but his only thought was to stop this man from hurting Jesse.
He fell against him, taking him down by the sheer force and weight of his body. The blow knocked the rifle out of the man’s grasp. Two seconds later, Levi had the man’s arms locked behind him. Without having to say a word, Jesse was already beside him, placing the rope in his hand.
Levi wound the rope around the man’s hands, and then both of his feet, hog-tying him as he would a calf.
The man lay cursing on the ground. He reminded Levi of a wounded snake as he writhed in the dust, and he hoped with all his heart that Jesse would not remember the bad words streaming from the man’s mouth.
By the grace of God, it was finished—and he had not even struck the man except to knock him to the ground with his own body. He had absorbed the bullets into himself rather than allowing Jesse to be harmed.
He yanked on the end of the rope binding the man’s hands and feet, giving it one more cinch. He could feel the dizziness coming and he did not want to lose consciousness until he made certain that Jesse would no longer be at risk. Then he sank to the ground.
At that moment, the big sheriff came through the door with his gun drawn—and Grace directly behind him holding a shotgun.
“Not again!” Grace knelt beside him, held her hand pressed tight against the wound in his shoulder, and flipped open her cell phone with the other.
The last thing he remembered was thinking that he really needed to get one of those things. A man never knew when he might need one—for an emergency.
“Is my Bruder going to be okay?” Jesse’s voice was unsteady.
“Come here, sweetheart,” she said. “Do you suppose you could give me a hug? I could sure use one right now.”
The little boy didn’t hesitate. He flew toward her. She held him with her left arm while she pressed down on Levi’s wound with her right hand.
“Better?” she asked the little boy.
He nodded.
“It’s over now. This man will never hurt anyone again,” the sheriff said. “Your brother is very brave.”
“Now go get your Maam,” Grace said. “I think she will want to know what has happened.”
A few moments later Claire arrived wearing a long, plain nightgown. Her prayer Kapp was missing, her hair was plaited down her back. Grace was impressed with the woman’s relative calm under the circumstances.
; “How is he?” she asked anxiously.
“I’m pretty sure he’ll be fine, Claire,” Grace said. “Where’s Daniel?”
“Jesse is watching him.” She stared at the man lying trussed up on the ground. “Is that the man who shot my Levi?”
“Evidently,” the sheriff said.
“And killed my Abraham?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy.”
Claire walked over and squatted down beside Skraggs. “Why did you do these terrible things?”
Grace hoped nothing too vile would come out of the man’s mouth. It didn’t. He simply lay in the dirt, glaring at Claire, and then he spat at her.
Claire calmly wiped the spittle off her arm, stood up, and said the harshest thing Grace had ever heard her utter.
“I am glad my Levi knows how to tie such strong knots!”
chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
“Is Levi going to be okay?” Becky asked when she picked up Grace at Pomerene Hospital at dawn the next day.
Grace snapped on her seat belt. “By the grace of God, he is.”
Becky backed out of the parking spot. “Are you mad at me?”
“‘Mad’ isn’t a strong enough word, Becky,” Grace said. “I’m positively furious at you.”
“Because I gave Owen a place to stay?”
“No!” Grace slapped the seat. “That I can understand. I even understand trying to help him get enough money together to keep a killer at bay. What I’m furious about is that you kept all this from me.”
“You heard what the sheriff said.” Becky waited for traffic to clear, then pulled out onto the highway. “Frank might truly have hurt you.”
“He’s wrong about that.” Grace sank back into her seat, exhausted from a night of watching and worrying over Levi. “I can take care of myself. You should have told me.”
“Okay, so I made some stupid decisions. If I could do it over, I would make different ones. I was just doing the best I knew how. Can you ever forgive me?”
“I honestly don’t know yet.” Grace rummaged around in her purse. “Do you have a mint? I feel as if my mouth is filled with cotton.”
An Uncommon Grace Page 26