Harmless as Doves: An Amish-Country Mystery

by P. L. Gaus

  Standing, Cal offered, “Maybe she’ll have a way to work around that.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I did it. I killed him.”

  Cal studied Burkholder’s expression for signs of contrition, but all he saw was the self-disgust of a boy who believed wholeheartedly that he was the author of his own disgrace. Thinking Burkholder should have been more concerned about his future, Cal asked, “What does your bishop say, Crist?”

  Burkholder shook his head. “He says I have to take my medicine.”

  “Do you agree?” Cal asked.

  “Sure. I did it. Now I’ll die in prison.”

  “Crist,” Cal asked, “did Glenn Spiegle provoke you?” and laid his hand back on Burkholder’s shoulder.

  Again Burkholder pulled away at Cal’s touch.

  “What’s wrong, Crist? What haven’t you told us?”

  Burkholder offered nothing.

  “You’re upset,” Cal said. “I don’t blame you. I would be upset too, if I were sitting in a jail cell. But people want to help you now, and you need to let them do that.”

  “Why, Mr. Troyer? Why do I have to let anyone help me? I killed a man. I beat him to death with my fist. Now I deserve what I get.”

  “Do you believe that, Crist? That you deserve whatever punishment you get?”

  “Yes!” Burkholder shouted. “I killed a man! Don’t you understand?”

  “OK, Crist, but let some of us try to help you.”

  Burkholder shook his head and turned to face into the corner of the cell. “Please leave me alone.”

  “I will,” Cal said. “But listen, just this once.”

  “What?” Burkholder said, turning back toward Cal. “You think I don’t deserve to go to prison?”

  “Probably you do, Crist.”

  “What can anyone do for me now?” Burkholder asked, facing back into the corner like a chastened youngster.

  Softly Cal said, “Maybe you can get out, someday.”

  Turning around again, Burkholder asked, “How?” eyes cast down with shame.

  “I don’t know. But maybe you don’t need to go to prison for the rest of your life.”

  “I murdered a man,” Burkholder said, turning his gaze up to Cal’s.

  “The law distinguishes between murder and manslaughter, Crist. And manslaughter is not as bad. Maybe you could think about the day when they’ll let you out of prison.”

  “They’d do that?”

  “Eventually, yes. But it depends, now, on what happens in court.”

  “What should I do?”

  “For starters,” Cal said, “stop telling people you killed him.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s just for starters,” Cal said and turned to knock on the cell door.

  As Sergeant Niell opened the door from the outside, Cal added, “In the meantime, Crist, you need to listen to your lawyer.”

  “She’s a woman.”

  “She’s a very good lawyer, Crist. That’s all you should care about.”

  12

  Wednesday, October 7

  1:45 P.M.

  BACK ON the first floor of the jail, Cal knocked on Bruce Robertson’s door and went inside to find the sheriff frustrated, clicking uselessly with his mouse, and mumbling as one document after another opened up on his monitor. The sheriff caught Cal smiling, and he shoved his mouse aside and barked, “I hate these stupid Internet servers!”

  Cal asked, “May I?” and Bruce rolled his chair back to let Cal lean over in front of the monitor. Cal clicked through all fourteen of the documents the sheriff had managed to open, closing each one in turn, and got Robertson’s computer back to the desktop presentation—a special little item that Ellie had rigged for the sheriff—lilies and lambs scattered over a field of robin’s-egg blue.

  “Cute, Bruce,” Cal said when he discovered the desktop theme. “Now, what were you looking for?”

  Robertson sighed, “New intake and discharge forms. Ellie said they’re supposed to be on the server.”

  Still leaning over in front of Robertson’s computer, Cal clicked keys and the mouse, navigated to the department’s FTP site, and pulled up a folder labeled “New Forms.” This he dragged onto Robertson’s desktop, and when he opened it, he found a document labeled “Booking Sheet.” He highlighted the document, said, “It’s right here,” and opened it for the sheriff.

  Robertson rolled his eyes and leaned as far back in his swivel rocker as he could manage, as if to say he couldn’t sit far enough away from the machine.

  Cal tapped the screen and asked, “That’s what you’re looking for?”

  Robertson nodded and stared blankly at the monitor, hands clasped behind his head.

  Cal shrugged a smile, stood up, and changed the subject. “Bruce, Crist Burkholder doesn’t have the slightest idea how this is going to play out for him. Not the faintest idea how the courts work.”

  “He’s got a lawyer,” Robertson argued.

  “He’s Shetler Amish, Bruce,” Cal countered. “That’s Leon Shetler’s group, and they haven’t got any experience with the law.”

  “That’s why he’s got a lawyer!” Robertson sang, still frustrated by Ellie’s push for digital modernization. Still frustrated by the new computer on the corner of his desk. Half a dozen times he had considered just shoving it off the edge onto the floor, and claiming it slipped.

  Cal watched the sheriff churning unhappy thoughts and eventually said, “Ellie can help you with this, Bruce. She’s bored, just handling your usual business.”

  “Oh, she is?”

  “Frankly, yes. You should let her drag you into the twenty-first century. You’d be doing her a favor.”

  Robertson considered that angle, and Cal could tell from the sheriff’s expression that he liked the way Cal had phrased it—“Doing her a favor. “But Cal wasn’t willing to let the sheriff settle on that one rather belittling aspect of the characterization, so he added, “Ellie’s the most accomplished assistant you’ve ever had, Bruce. You’ve seriously underutilized her.”

  Robertson came forward on his chair, considered that, and decided he couldn’t find a satisfactory way to scowl about it. He studied the flat, serious stare on the pastor’s face, assessed that he was seeing forthright honesty rather than challenge, and he said, “Sure, Cal—computers. IT. Why not?”

  Cal tipped his head and said, “Now let me tell you about Crist Burkholder.”

  Robertson leaned back on his rocker and waved the pastor ahead.

  “Leon and Katie Shetler have fifteen children, all grown. He’s the bishop out there. They are Old Order Amish to a point, but not conservative like some outfits. Certainly not like the Schwartzentrubers.”

  “Why do I care about this, Cal?”

  “Bear with me, Sheriff. Now, Crist Burkholder is Leon’s nephew. He’s the son of Wayne and Mary Burkholder, and Mary is the sister of Leon’s wife, Katie. She herself is the middle of thirteen children. The whole Shetler sect is spread out along Township 601, out on the ridge overlooking the valley at Leeper School, south of Fredericksburg. That’s where Billy and Darba Winters live, right in the middle of the Shetler bunch, on a stretch of road with four other English families.”

  “Cal!” Robertson complained.

  “No, Bruce. You need to get this.”

  The sheriff waved him ahead with a scowl.

  “Leon and Katie Shetler have the farm on the highest ground out there. You can see three counties at once from their front porch. At night you can see the lights of cars on Rt. 83, heading into Millersburg. That’s probably ten miles away.”

  Robertson raised his palms to say, “So what?”

  Cal nodded. “That’s an out-of-the-way corner of the county, Bruce. That’s as far back, out of the way, as you can get. And as long as you’ve been sheriff, I’d bet you’ve never had any trouble from anyone out there.”

  “So?”

  “So, now you’ve got the murder of an Amish man and a confession from an Amish fellow,
and Bishop Shetler wasn’t even sophisticated enough about legal matters to advise his nephew to wait to talk to a lawyer first.”

  “But Burkholder does have a lawyer—Linda Hart.”

  “I know, Bruce. I lined her up for him.”

  “I’d have gotten him court-appointed counsel, Cal. You know that.”

  “I got him someone better.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. As far as understanding the law is concerned, these are extremely backward people.”

  “OK, Cal, I get it. But even Linda Hart isn’t going to be able to get this kid off.”

  “I don’t expect she will.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Maybe she can get him a lighter sentence. Maybe get him a reduced charge. Maybe a chance for parole sometime before he’s an old man.”

  Robertson showed the pastor no opinion in his expression, but inwardly he congratulated Cal for his kindness. “You going to pay for the lawyer, Cal?”

  “She’s doing it pro bono,” Cal said, stepping to the door. As he opened the door, Cal turned back and added, “I can show you how to navigate to your FTP server, Bruce.”

  “Don’t need you to do that,” Robertson muttered.

  Cal thought, hesitated, and said, “Like I said, Bruce, my daughter is IT chief for the Klines. She could give you a lesson or two, on your computer.”

  Robertson ran his eyes up toward the ceiling to think, and then he looked sheepishly back at Cal and asked, “Would anyone have to know about that?”

  * * *

  As Cal was walking out of the jail, Linda Hart was coming up the steps to go in. She took him lightly by the elbow and led him down the short steps to stand on the lawn near the Civil War monument. There, Hart leaned down close to Cal and whispered, “You knew, didn’t you, Cal. Or, if you didn’t know, I’m betting that you guessed.”

  Hart was a tall, solid woman with large ears and a narrow face made angular by a long Roman nose. Her small mouth with straight, thin lips seemed humorless to those who didn’t know her well, and her height and angularity were enhanced by the austere business suits she wore. Her commanding tone in the courtroom led most people to conclude that she was too aggressive to be polite or too intense to be pleasant.

  “Knew what, precisely?” Cal asked Hart.

  Still leaning over close to his ear, Hart whispered, “That the Burkholder confession is ‘bent’ somehow wrong, Cal. It’s kinked funny. It bends where it shouldn’t, and I can’t put my finger on it.”

  Cal led Hart to one of the iron benches spaced along the sidewalk surrounding the courthouse square, and he sat with her by the street, where the noise of traffic would give them some cover for their voices. As a tour bus huffed by on the street in front of them, he asked Hart, “You don’t believe his confession?”

  “I do, but only to a point, Cal.”

  “Robertson says he confessed to him and to his bishop. More than once. And just between you and me, he told me the same thing.”

  “I know, Cal. I’ve already talked to him.”

  “So?”

  “So, Burkholder says the same thing each time. To Robertson and to me. But it’s bent strange, Cal. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s not a straight deal. It’s strange in some way that I can’t figure out.”

  “Don’t you think Bruce will have noticed the same thing, Linda?”

  “Cal, of course not. Bruce Robertson is the kind of dope who’d use a chess set for a checker game.”

  “OK,” Cal laughed. “Maybe he’s not seeing it.”

  “I’m not really seeing it, either, Cal. I’ve just got a hint of something’s being wrong.”

  “Kinked, you say?”

  “Not straight. Not straightforward.”

  “I’ve got to tell you, Linda, I’ve heard him confess, too. And if Bruce files against him and Crist says anything like that in court, he’s going to prison.”

  “I know,” Hart smiled. “But oh, how I love this hunch. Bruce Robertson is going to take a two-foot ladder down a ten-foot well, and I’m just going to leave him there.”

  “But what are you really going to do?”

  Lifting a small recorder out of her purse, Hart said, “I’m going back to talk with Crist again. I’m going to have him tell it to me a dozen times, if I have to.”

  Cal watched traffic roll by on the street, and said, “Do you think he’s innocent?”

  “I don’t know, Cal, but his confession doesn’t ring true to me.”

  “I’d be surprised if he were lying,” Cal said, turning back to face Hart.

  “I don’t think he is. I just know I don’t believe it. Not as far as it goes. I don’t think he murdered anyone.”

  Distracted by new possibilities, Cal remarked, “I was headed over to church. I have to prepare for Wednesday night services.”

  “It’s OK, Cal. I’ve got this.”

  “I’m going out to see Vesta Miller after dinner. Can I tell her anything?”

  “I don’t know, Cal. I only have hunches here. But I think I’m right, and you can tell that much to Vesta.”

  13

  Wednesday, October 7

  2:30 P.M.

  IN CRIST Burkholder’s jail cell, Linda Hart sat on the bunk and switched on her tape recorder. “Crist,” she said, “I want you to tell me again what you did. I want you to tell me why you did it.”

  Burkholder studied the recorder in Hart’s hand, and then he glanced at Hart briefly, stared at the floor, and asked, “Are there a lot of women lawyers?”

  Hart switched off the recorder, and with a hint of an aggressive tone, said, “Is this going to be a problem for you, Crist? Because from where I sit, you need to be focused on the things that matter to your defense.”

  “Maybe it does matter, Ms. Hart.”

  “At least you’re not calling me Mrs.”

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Look, Crist, I’m your lawyer. Why should it matter to you that I’m a woman?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Then to whom should it matter, Mr. Burkholder? Who gets hung up on this type of silliness, anymore?”

  “It doesn’t matter to me, Ms. Hart, but it would matter to certain men in my church. And if the judge or somebody important thinks like that, too, then it’ll matter to my defense.”

  Impressed with the logic, Hart said, “I’m glad to see that you’re finally interested in your defense.”

  “Mr. Troyer says I might get out of prison, someday.”

  Hart nodded. “I’m going to try to keep you out of prison altogether.”

  Burkholder smiled and glanced at Hart, this time for a little longer. “It’s just that Vesta’s father—and one or two other men in my church—don’t think women should be in charge of things.”

  “Do you think that, Crist?”

  “No. I wanted to get Vesta away from that. Her thinking is too modern for Amish ways. Mine, too. We were leaving.”

  Hart switched on her tape recorder. “Leaving town?”

  “Leaving the church. We were supposed to elope this morning.”

  “You’d quit the church? Both of you?”

  “No, but we were going to elope and find a Mennonite church. Stop living Amish.”

  “Did anyone know that, Crist?”

  “Darba Winters. She knew. And I told Glenn Spiegle.”

  “When?”

  “Right before I killed him.”

  “Why would you tell him anything, Crist?”

  “He stopped me in the barn. We argued. And I told him he couldn’t marry Vesta, because I was going to marry her this morning. I told him we were leaving.”

  “Were you on your way to get Vesta?”

  Burkholder nodded. “The car was already running, and I was packing the trunk. He came in and started yelling at me. Said that he’d die if he couldn’t marry Vesta.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told h
im Vesta couldn’t live Amish anymore.”

  “Then what?”

  “He tried to give me money, and that made me mad. So I threw it back at him, and he threw it into the trunk.”

  “Is that when you hit him?”

  “Yes,” Burkholder whispered, the shame of it registering in his features.

  “Tell me everything that happened, then, Crist. Everything you can remember.”

  “He dropped straight down at the back of the Chevy. His legs were tangled underneath him.”

  “What next?”

  “I felt his neck, like they do on the TV.”

  “You thought he was dead?”

  “I’m sure he was. He sure looked dead.”

  “Did you move him?”

  “I think I just ran away. That’s all I remember—running up the driveway.”

  Hart switched her recorder off. “Crist, when they found Spiegle’s body, he was laid out straight on his back. He’d been severely beaten, by someone who was very angry with him.”

  “Then I must have done that,” Crist said, “and I don’t remember it.”

  “Show me your hands, Crist.”

  Burkholder held out his palms.

  “No, the other side. The knuckles.”

  Burkholder flipped his hands over. They were the large, meaty hands of a farmhand. Thick calluses, protruding knuckles, rough skin, cracked and jagged nails. And on none of his knuckles were there any cuts or bruises.

  “Crist, did the sheriff let you clean up? Wash your hands? Anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Did you wash up earlier? Use any ointments?”

  “I just ran right to the bishop’s house.”

  Hart jammed her tape recorder into her purse and took out a point-and-shoot digital camera. She took several photos of Burkholder’s knuckles and hands, with time stamps and a voice recording describing the shots as she took them. When she was finished, she packed the camera back into her purse and stood up.

  Burkholder stood beside her and asked, “Glenn Spiegle was beaten pretty badly?”

  Pensive, Hart answered, “Right.”

  “Why aren’t my knuckles bruised?”

  “I don’t know. They should be.”

  Crist said, “The sheriff said I probably beat him, and I just don’t remember it.”