by P. L. Gaus
“Billy. Heartache. Spiegle. Beaten. Burkholder. Vesta. Vesta.” She opened her eyes. “What will become of Crist and Vesta?”
That’s rational, Carson thought, a good sign. “Billy was your first word, Darba. Why?”
Darba shrugged. “Glenn Spiegle was his best friend. They’ve known each other since they were kids. They grew up together, in Bradenton.”
“I know Billy was trying to help him,” Carson led.
“He did. He helped him start new, up here. After Glenn got out of prison.”
“Why here, Darba? Why’d Spiegle come up to Ohio?”
“Billy was here, and they had a secret, Dr. Carson. He and Billy had a big secret.”
“How long was Spiegle in prison?”
“I don’t know for sure. Twenty years?”
“Darba, I want you to think about this. Why did you say ‘Billy’ first?”
Darba’s eyes danced with anxiety, and she blurted out, “He has to run!”
“Because of something they did?”
Darba nodded. “It was Glenn Spiegle. It’s why he went to prison.”
“Billy was there, when Spiegle did something?”
Another nod, and Darba said, “They drank a lot back then.”
“Billy’s been sober for a long time,” Carson said, intending encouragement. “He has you to thank for that.”
“I know. He dried Glenn out, too. While Glenn was still in prison.”
“How could he drink in prison?”
“Oh, you can get a lot of things in prison, Dr. Carson. And alcohol isn’t the only thing that will get you high.”
“Spiegle was using drugs?”
Darba nodded. “But he quit. Billy helped him, like I helped Billy.”
“Again, Darba, why did you say Billy first, when I asked you for your first words?”
“Because he doesn’t know Glenn is dead, Dr. Carson. He doesn’t know to run.”
10
Wednesday, October 7
11:55 A.M.
DR. CARSON asked Darba to lie down in her bedroom and gave her a sleeping aid, hoping that Darba could rest for a few hours. She promised Darba that when she woke up, they would talk some more about how to reach Billy before nightfall. She also promised that she would stay in the house while Darba slept.
While cleaning up coffee cups at the kitchen sink, Carson heard a knock at the back screened porch, and she went, towel in hand, to answer it.
Bruce Robertson was standing at the back door, peering in through the screen. Carson went out to him, opened the porch door, and stepped back to admit him. Down at the barn, she could see Deputy Pat Lance and Coroner Missy Taggert-Robertson fixing yellow crime scene tape over the big barn doors, which had been pulled closed and bolted in place.
Evelyn Carson was a short, round woman with blond hair clipped to an easy, wash-and-go style. Her features were continental—middle European, Robertson had always thought, with perhaps a hint of stubborn peasant stock in her attitude. She always stood her ground in front of the sheriff, as if she were defending the innocent against marauders, and today she blocked Robertson’s way into Darba’s house by standing in front of the sliding doors into the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest, saying, “She’s sleeping, Bruce. I don’t want to wake her up.”
Robertson shook his head. “I need to ask her again about this morning—when she says she found the body.”
“What do you mean, ‘says she found the body’?”
“So far, Evie, we’ve got only a partial account from Crist Burkholder. I need to hear what Darba found when she first went down to the barn.”
“I can’t let you do that, Sheriff. She needs to rest. You’re just going to have to wait.”
“I need to know if she saw the fight, Evie.”
“More likely, you don’t believe everything Crist Burkholder has told you, and you’re just fishing.”
Robertson complained, “I just need to know if she saw the fight.”
“What makes you think she did?”
“Something she said when she called us.”
“What?” Carson asked, impatiently.
Sighing, the sheriff said, “She said she didn’t think an Amish kid could throw a punch like that.”
“Maybe she got that from seeing Spiegle. You know, seeing the condition of the body.”
“What do you know about that?”
Exasperated, Carson answered, “Nothing, Bruce.”
“Sounds like you do.”
“Well, I don’t,” Carson said, planting herself more firmly in the doorway.
“Did she tell you something?”
“No.”
“Did she move the body?”
“I don’t know.”
“I need to ask her about these types of things, Evie.”
“She’s taken some medication. Might sleep for a couple of hours, if she’s lucky.”
Robertson studied Carson, thought, and said, “Is there something wrong with her? You know, aside from the usual?”
“Like what, Bruce?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Evie. Maybe she saw the fight, and she’s flipped out about it. That’s why I need to talk with her.”
Carson cracked a knowing smile. “I know how you operate, Bruce. You’ve handled some of my patients before.”
Robertson studied the back windows of the house. “What’s wrong, Doctor? Where’s Billy?”
“He delivers cheese every week to Florida. He’s down at the Pinecraft community.”
Robertson took a step forward. “I want you to wake her up, Evie. Let me ask her some questions. Right here, today.”
“I’m not going to do that, Sheriff. Now, stop wasting my time.”
Pulling a grin for show, Robertson said, “Then I want you to bring her down to my office. When you think she can talk.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Carson offered.
Robertson nodded and backed up to the porch door. “And I want to see Billy, too. As soon as he gets back.”
“You can find Billy yourself, Sheriff. I’m not his doctor.”
“But you’ll bring Darba in?”
“When it’s in her best interests.”
“Of course, Evie, whatever.”
“And Bruce?”
“What?” Robertson asked, impatient to leave.
“Don’t call me Evie.”
“Carson, we’ve all called you Evie since the playgrounds at school.”
“You’re the sheriff now, Bruce, and I’m not that scrawny girl with pigtails anymore.”
Robertson considered the doctor’s expression and smiled. “Is it like that now, Dr. Carson?”
“Yes,” Carson said. “As long as you’re the sheriff, wanting to question one of my patients.”
11
Wednesday, October 7
12:25 P.M.
BRUCE ROBERTSON stood at Courthouse Square in Millersburg and studied his old red brick jail with an attenuated degree of satisfaction, tainted with unease by the arrest he had made that morning at Darba Winters’s barn. Amish as murderers? Robertson didn’t like that notion at all.
But Burkholder’s confession was solid. He had insisted more than once that he had killed Glenn Spiegle. And normally, Robertson wouldn’t have hesitated to file charges. But an Amish murderer? That had to be wrong. So, standing outside the courthouse in bright afternoon sun, Robertson eyed the square exterior of his red brick jail and tried to draw reassurance from the way its old-fashioned solidity anchored its corner of the square.
The jail’s two stories of Victorian brick and ornate yellow sandstone trim were topped with a black roofline sporting seven weathered chimneys and a tangle of satellite dishes, microwave arrays, and radio antennas. Its matching red brick extension on the back had eight large windows to a side, each covered on the exterior with a grillwork of black iron jailhouse bars.
It was not a modern structure by any means, and Robertson liked it that way. It looked old, it was old, and it promised to do
its duty the old way—steadfastly, resolutely, and without compromise with the pop psychology that taught citizens that criminals were only human, after all. Maybe they were human, Robertson was fond of saying, but in his jail, they were first and last prisoners who owed society a debt for their lawlessness. That’s how he saw it, and to his way of thinking, that’s why he had been elected sheriff of Holmes County for thirty continuous years.
Bruce Robertson was the old, steadfast, resolute kind of sheriff, and that’s just how Holmes County liked it. But Amish as murderers? At the very core of Robertson’s steadfast resolve, that just didn’t make sense. So, as he climbed the stone steps that took him to the north entrance of the jail, he drew scant satisfaction from the arrest. Crist Burkholder might have confessed, but Cal Troyer was right. This had to be handled differently. If Robertson were going to press forward, he’d first have to be convinced that the Burkholder confession could be trusted.
Inside, Robertson pushed through Ellie’s swinging counter door and started down the long paneled hallway to his office, saying, “Coffee please, Ellie, and tell your layabout husband that I want to see him.”
With a tap at her keyboard, Ellie saved a file on her computer, and said, “He’s already in there.”
Ellie followed the sheriff down the hall to Robertson’s big corner office with a fresh tin of coffee. She nodded to Ricky, who sat in a straight-backed office chair in front of Robertson’s cherry desk, and then she turned to the credenza behind the door and started to put up a fresh pot of coffee for the sheriff.
Robertson dropped into a battered swivel rocker behind his desk and asked Sergeant Niell, “Where’d you put him?”
“Second floor,” Niell said. “Gave him his own cell.”
Taking papers out of his in-box, Robertson asked, “He still in his Amish clothes?”
Niell answered, “Yes,” and holding up a blue form, Robertson asked Ellie, “What’s this?”
Ellie finished with the coffee pot, turned to look, and took a seat in a chair beside Ricky. “County’s got a new Emergency Contacts form, Bruce. You’re supposed to fill that out with all your numbers.”
The sheriff rolled his eyes and crumpled the blue form into a tight ball before he launched it at his wastepaper basket. Ellie retrieved the crumpled blue form, saying, “We recycle now, Bruce.”
Robertson smiled and continued to sort papers, some into his out-box, most back into his in-box. To Niell he said, “When did Ellie turn into a recycling enviro-nut, Sergeant?”
Ricky shrugged a halfhearted answer, hoping Ellie would let it drop. But seated at his side again, Ellie said, “I’m moving us into the digital world, Bruce. Then you won’t get any more paper to waste.”
Ellie’s dark hair was styled long and straight, and her skirt and blouse outfit was plain and simple, soft green and rose colors typical of those favored by Mennonite women, although Ellie wasn’t Mennonite. But with her hair in a bun under a white prayer cap, and wearing simple, black flats and black hose, she would easily pass for Mennonite anywhere in Holmes County. It wasn’t a deception she tried to practice; she just preferred simple dresses and skirts at work. And when opportunities like this one presented themselves, she also preferred to pester the sheriff with her assertiveness. So she smiled and stated, “We’re just gonna get modern.”
“That’s how it is?” Robertson grinned, leaning back on his swivel rocker, hands clasped behind his head.
“That’s exactly how it is,” Ellie said and smiled.
The coffeepot finished chattering, so Ellie got up to pour some coffee for the two men. At Robertson’s door, Ellie said, “I put our new intake and discharge forms on our FTP server.” Stepping out into the hall, she added, “That’s not the kind of server you find at a restaurant, Bruce.”
“Like I know how to use an FTP server,” Robertson complained to Niell once Ellie was gone.
Niell wanted to smile, but he couldn’t decide if Robertson would interpret that kindly, so he shrugged and said, “I called that restaurant down in Pinecraft. They say Billy Winters delivered a truckload of Kline’s Amish cheese this morning. They say he’s already left.”
Robertson nodded. “Probably no point in checking on him with the Klines. They’ll confirm the shipment.”
“It was a long shot, anyway,” Niell said.
“No longer a shot than thinking that an Amish kid is guilty of homicide.”
“I suppose not.”
“OK, Ricky,” Robertson said. “Let’s write it up for the prosecutor, but hold the paperwork. I’m not ready to press forward, yet.”
“What charge?”
“Manslaughter, for now. But don’t file the charges, just yet.”
“Let me interview him again,” Ricky offered. “Maybe Spiegle provoked him.”
“It’ll still be manslaughter,” Robertson said. “If he really did it.”
“I’ll just make sure.”
Robertson shrugged a detached approval. “You think Ellie is serious about going all digital, here?”
“You should use her to get us modern, Sheriff. While she’s still working.”
“What’s that mean?”
“She’d be an asset, if we all need to take it to the next level with IT.”
“No. What’s that mean—‘while she’s still working’?”
“We want to have a family.”
“You think she’d stop working?”
“I know she would.”
“What are you, Ricky? Thirty-five?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“And Ellie?”
“Thirty-four.”
Robertson considered that. “You’ll make lieutenant by the time you’re forty.”
Smiling, Ricky said, “Sheriff, I’m really not sure I want to work for you for the rest of my life.”
There was a knock through the wall, and they heard Ellie sing out, “You have company, Bruce!”
Robertson pushed up from his chair and started out to the front just as Cal Troyer opened the door to the office and came in, announcing, “Bruce, I want to talk with Crist Burkholder.”
“Cal, you need to let us handle this,” Robertson complained, and dropped back into his swivel chair.
Cal nodded to Ricky, “Sergeant,” and took a seat next to him in front of the sheriff’s desk. “Bruce, you need to move him to a single cell. He shouldn’t be in with the others.”
Ricky said, “We already did that.”
Cal nodded his appreciation to Niell and said, “Rachel says you helped her out, a couple of days ago.”
“Out at Kline’s,” Ricky said. “There were too many kids skateboarding on the parking lot.”
“She’s a technician there,” Cal said for Robertson’s benefit. “She handles their Information Technology Services. You know, Bruce, IT.”
Robertson quipped, “Like a cheese factory needs IT,” and pulled papers out of his in-box again.
“You need to get a little modern yourself, Bruce,” Cal chided. “Nobody uses in and out trays anymore.”
Growling, Robertson said, “You two can have your reunion out in the hall,” and stood up behind his desk.
Cal shrugged at the sheriff’s gruff tone, smiled his awareness of Robertson’s impatience, and followed the sergeant out into the hall, saying, “I need to talk to Crist, Ricky. Can you take me up?”
Ricky paused outside Robertson’s door and said, “He claims he did it, Cal. Burkholder says he hit him.”
Cal started toward the stairwell at the end of the hall, saying, “I know, Ricky. I just want to talk to him about court practices.”
“Why?” Ricky asked, following Cal down the hall.
Cal answered, “Amish folk don’t know anything about trials.”
“There probably won’t be a trial, Cal.”
“Won’t he have to explain himself to a judge?” Cal asked.
“Sure. If the judge requires it. He’ll have to admit to what he did.”
Cal nodded and started u
p the steps. “I doubt he knows what that means.”
“He’s gonna have a lawyer, Cal,” Ricky argued.
“Let me talk to him, Ricky. I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take all the time you want, Cal,” Ricky said at the top of the steps. “He’s not going anywhere.”
* * *
When Ricky opened the cell door, Cal pulled a chair inside from the aisle between the cell blocks and sat down next to Burkholder. Crist was seated on the edge of his bunk, elbows planted on his knees, head cradled in his hands. He did not look up when Cal sat down.
Dressed in his Amish clothes—blue denim trousers and a blue cotton blouse, but without his black cloth suspenders—Burkholder looked as out of place as a peasant in Tiffany’s. His brown leather work boots, hanging open as if they were three sizes too large, had been stripped of their shoelaces. A blue denim vest with hook and eye closures hung limp from his shoulders, open in front. His black hair was cut to the tops of his ears in Dutch-boy style, and his face and neck were tanned, his forehead showing pale white skin where his straw hat had shaded his eyes through the long summer in open fields. He had started a fancy beard, trimmed thin along the jawline, broadcasting his unmarried status and his spirited personality. But there in his cell, all of Crist Burkholder’s spirit and personality had been quenched, and his fancy beard communicated more bravado than was warranted.
Cal reached up to lay a hand on Burkholder’s broad shoulders, intending to minister comfort to the lad, but Burkholder pulled back sullenly.
Removing his hand, Cal said, “I arranged for you to have a lawyer, Crist. To help you navigate the courts.”
“She’s a woman,” Burkholder said, and stood up to stare down dully at Cal. “I’ve already met my lawyer, and she’s a woman.”
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m guilty.”
“You still need to listen to her advice.”
“She says I’m going to prison, if I confess in court.”
“Look, Crist, if she says you shouldn’t confess, then maybe you shouldn’t.”
“But I already did.”