Harmless as Doves: An Amish-Country Mystery

by P. L. Gaus

  As the bailiff approached Burkholder, Crist rose and asked, “Is it my turn to speak?”

  A strong rap of the judge’s gavel put Crist back into his seat. “You’re to be sworn, Mr. Burkholder,” Knowles intoned. “You stand up there and keep your mouth shut, until I tell you that you may speak.”

  When the bailiff was ready, he carried a Bible over to Burkholder, held it out, and waited. Not knowing what to do, Burkholder stared at the bailiff for direction.

  So the bailiff said, “Place your hand on the Bible, and repeat after me.”

  Crist hesitated and then slowly laid his hand flat on the Bible.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? If so, say ‘I do.’”

  Shaken and confused, Burkholder said, “I am not permitted to swear, Judge. I am especially not permitted to swear in God’s name.”

  Instantly on his feet, Knowles shouted out, “Enough!” and came down the steps beside his bench to approach Burkholder’s table. He unbuttoned his robe, pulled loose his tie, and dismissed the bailiff. Then Knowles demanded of Burkholder, “Are you going to tell the truth, yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell the whole truth, yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you consider these promises to be honorable and sacred, both to you and to God? Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  The judge nodded with satisfaction and reclaimed his seat on the bench, saying to Burkholder, “Young man, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law, I promise you that. You have the right to an attorney, but I see you already know that. At any rate, if you cannot afford your attorney, she will be provided to you free of charge. Your attorney will be available to you before you choose to speak, and she will surely advise you not to speak, but I gather that has already happened several times. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Bailiff, I want him in the stand.”

  Once Burkholder was escorted to the witness stand, Knowles said, “OK, Mr. Burkholder. Tell me what you did.”

  “He offered me fifteen thousand dollars not to marry Vesta Miller, and it made me mad. I hit him with my fist, and he fell down. So I killed him.”

  Incredulously, Judge Knowles demanded, “What more?”

  “Nothing, Your Honor. He fell down, and I went to tell my bishop.”

  Flaring heat into his neck and cheeks, Knowles demanded of Hart, “Did you know he would say this, Counselor?”

  “I suspected it, Your Honor, but I am still rather surprised.”

  Turning to face Burkholder squarely, Knowles asked, “How many times did you hit Mr. Spiegle?”

  “Once, Your Honor. As hard as I could.”

  Looking to his court recorder, Knowles asked, “Where is my coroner’s report?”

  The recorder handed a document up to Knowles, and halfway through it, he told his bailiff, “Get Missy Taggert over here. Get her over here right now.”

  * * *

  Burkholder was escorted back to Hart’s table, and he waited there beside his attorney, neither of them speaking. Judge Knowles leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, his robe still undone in front, his tie still hanging loosely from his neck. Through the side door, Sheriff Robertson quietly reappeared. When Missy Taggert arrived in her green autopsy scrubs, the bailiff directed her to take a seat in the witness stand.

  When she was seated, Knowles asked, “How many times was Glenn Spiegle hit?”

  “Repeatedly, Your Honor.”

  “Which blow killed him, the first one, or later ones?”

  “It’s difficult to say which of the later ones, Your Honor, but the first blow was not fatal.”

  “The first blow simply knocked him out?” Knowles asked.

  “I believe so, Your Honor. There is some guesswork here, but after an initial blow, Spiegle was beaten mercilessly, and during that subsequent beating, bones in his face and skull were fractured. That is clearly what ruptured his aneurysm.”

  “Missy, are you dead certain about this?”

  “Your Honor, I am sure about what is in my report. The first blow did not kill Glenn Spiegle. I believe that he would have come around, eventually, and gotten up. But he was beaten subsequently. That’s what killed him. The first blow did not kill Glenn Spiegle.”

  23

  Thursday, October 8

  4:30 P.M.

  “HE COULD be lying,” Robertson said to Cal.

  “I’m sure you don’t really think that,” Cal said. “Just like I’m sure you never really believed this was a simple case.”

  They were standing outside, at the top of the steps, on the east side of the courthouse. Wayne and Mary Burkholder waited below, beside their buggy, hoping to speak with Crist, and Vesta was still inside the courthouse with Linda Hart and Crist.

  “If he’s not lying, Cal, then someone else found Spiegle in that barn, and beat him to death, after Crist left.”

  “OK,” Cal said, “but who? Who hated Spiegle so much that he’d crush his skull with his fists?”

  “Darba’s a strong woman,” Robertson offered.

  “Oh, come on, Bruce. You don’t believe that.”

  “Then maybe Billy Winters,” Robertson said.

  “He’s in Florida, Bruce.”

  “Everybody thinks he’s in Florida. What if he isn’t?”

  “Billy was Glenn Spiegle’s best friend,” Cal said. “Why would he kill him?”

  “I’m just saying it’s possible.”

  “You’re grasping at straws, Sheriff.”

  Robertson sighed. “I know. We wasted too much time with Burkholder. Now, whoever did this is long gone.”

  “Unless he’s local.”

  “What about Vesta Miller’s father?” Robertson asked. “Maybe he killed Spiegle.”

  Cal smiled. “Sheriff, you’re back to thinking that Amish people are capable of murder. That was your mistake all along.”

  Robertson groaned. “We made a lot of mistakes.”

  “Like what?”

  “I should have interviewed Jacob Miller, yesterday.”

  “Again, Bruce, Amish aren’t murderers.”

  “And I should have questioned Darba Winters.”

  “She’s been worried about Billy,” Cal said. “Even her psychiatrist isn’t getting coherent talk from Darba right now.”

  “That’s because she’s thinking Billy isn’t missing. She’s worried that he’s run off. That he killed Spiegle.”

  Behind the sheriff, the courthouse doors opened, and as Robertson made room at the top of the steps, Linda Hart stepped outside with Crist and Vesta. Hart stopped beside Cal and Robertson, and Vesta and Crist went down to Crist’s parents.

  Addressing Robertson, Hart said, “I know you didn’t want to charge him, Sheriff. But I thought the motion to suppress was too important to pass up.”

  Robertson considered the lawyer skeptically and said, “Linda, you’ve wanted a shot at the Miranda question for years.”

  Hart smiled. “I won’t deny it. And this was the perfect case to use.”

  “Oh, you used it all right,” Robertson conceded. “But it was a reckless thing to do, Hart, considering that he was facing a murder charge.”

  “This was the perfect case,” Hart argued. “You just don’t like it that I’ve tied your hands.”

  “Now, you listen to me,” Robertson started, but Hart cut him off, saying, “Don’t you try to bully me, Bruce Robertson. You’re an old, washed-up misogynist, whose best days are past and gone, and because of today, you won’t be able to bully any more Amish folk with your ham-handed style.”

  “You need to simmer down, Hart,” Robertson said. “You won your motion. Let it go.”

  “I’ll simmer down when I’m good and ready,” Hart sang. “In the meantime, you can schedule some clinics out of
that big office of yours. To retrain all your deputies on Miranda.”

  * * *

  After Hart descended the steps, Robertson watched her cross the street at the far light, and then turned to Cal and asked, “Do you think I was trying to bully her, Troyer?”

  “Not you, Sheriff,” Cal said, smiling.

  As he spoke, Crist Burkholder climbed the stone steps and said to Robertson, “I need to get my keys back. The keys to my car.”

  Eyeing Cal, Robertson turned toward Burkholder and said, “You can get all of your belongings from Ellie at the front counter.”

  Crist hesitated, took a step down, hesitated again, and came back to ask, “The coroner really doesn’t think I killed him?”

  “No,” Robertson said, “and really, neither do I.”

  After another pause, Burkholder asked, “Who would have done it, Sheriff?”

  Robertson shrugged, “Someone who was very angry with Spiegle.”

  Cal asked Burkholder, “Was Spiegle having any trouble with anyone in the congregation?”

  “Not really,” Burkholder said. “Not that I knew.” After thinking, he added, “Maybe Vesta’s father.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Robertson asked.

  “I wouldn’t say it was trouble, really,” Crist said. “But they argued for a couple of weeks about Vesta.”

  To Cal, Robertson said, “Maybe that’s an angle worth considering.”

  Crist said, “But, two days ago, they patched it all up, and Mr. Miller told Vesta that it had all been arranged for Herr Spiegle to ask Vesta to marry him. So, that’s when Vesta and I decided to elope.”

  Robertson asked, “Miller and Spiegle argued about Vesta, and then Miller said he’d patched it all up, so that Spiegle would agree to ask Vesta to marry him?”

  “Something like that,” Crist said. “Vesta says her father has been pretty happy about it these last few days.”

  Cal asked, “Why did Spiegle change his mind?”

  “I don’t know,” Crist said. “We weren’t going along with any of that nonsense anyway. You just can’t force a girl to marry someone.”

  “No,” Cal said. “Not in this day and age.”

  “What I don’t get,” Robertson said, “is why Jacob Miller would think Vesta would agree to an arranged marriage.”

  Crist shook his head. “You’d have to know Jacob Miller to understand that. He tries to control people. He told Vesta that he’d cut her out of his will if she didn’t marry Herr Spiegle.”

  Frowning, Cal asked, “Did Bishop Shetler know anything about this?”

  “I told him yesterday,” Crist said. “When I was riding with him, going back to Darba Winters’s place, to turn myself in.”

  Cal shook his head. “Leon has let this go too far.”

  “Jacob Miller doesn’t always listen so good,” Crist said. “But Vesta says that when he gets back from Florida, the bishop has instructed him to come straight to the bishop’s house, instead of going home to his family.”

  Cal nodded a degree of satisfaction. “Sounds like Leon has had enough of this nonsense.”

  Crist said, “I don’t think Jacob Miller is paying any attention to what the bishop thinks. He’s asking for it, and you’d better believe it.”

  “He’s gone to Florida?” Robertson asked.

  Burkholder nodded. “He’s made four or five trips down to Pinecraft this fall.”

  Robertson thought and said, “Glenn Spiegle was from Florida.”

  “What’s the connection?” Cal asked.

  “Don’t know,” Robertson said.

  “Anyway,” Burkholder said. “Vesta and I are going to leave, so I was hoping to get my car keys back.”

  Distracted, Robertson said, “At the front counter. See Ellie Troyer-Niell.”

  “Is she related to Sergeant Niell?” Crist asked.

  “His wife,” Robertson said. Then he asked, “How many trips to Florida?”

  “Four or five,” Burkholder said. “Yesterday, he flew on an airplane.”

  Robertson raised an eyebrow and turned to go back into the courthouse. Burkholder started down the steps, and Cal followed him, saying, “Do you need a ride out to Darba’s, to get your car?”

  “No,” Burkholder said. “My parents will take us. I need a chance to explain to them that we can’t live Amish anymore.”

  “Where are you going to stay?” Cal asked, descending the steps with Burkholder.

  “We’re going back out to Jeremiah Miller’s place tonight. After we buy some new English clothes at Walmart.”

  24

  Thursday, October 8

  5:45 P.M.

  CAL KNOCKED on the Brandens’ door, at their brick colonial on a cul-de-sac near Millersburg College. He waited on the stoop, and then he tried the bell. After a few moments had passed, he knocked again, keyed himself in, and called out, “Caroline? Are you home?”

  Getting no answer, he went down the front hallway to the kitchen, turned into the family room, and crossed to the screened back porch. There, Caroline sat in a deep wicker chair, gazing out at the eastern vistas of Amish farms. Cal stepped out onto the porch, said, “I knocked, but you didn’t hear,” and took a seat in a matching chair beside her.

  When she turned to him, Cal saw that her eyelids were red and swollen. He touched the back of her hand, saying, “What’s wrong?”

  Caroline shrugged with a weak smile. “I can’t stop thinking about Eddie Hunt-Myers.”

  Cal eased his chair closer and said, “He gave you no choice, Caroline.”

  “Maybe there was another way.”

  “He had a knife and a gun. He was going to kill us all.”

  “I still can’t stop crying about it. Can’t get the thoughts out of my head.”

  “And you feel guilty about it?” Cal asked.

  “I feel sad, Cal,” Caroline sighed, turning her eyes away. “I’m so very sad, and I can’t stop crying. I get so angry, even at little things.”

  “That’s remorse, Caroline. Good people are built to experience remorse.”

  “I’m not good, Cal. Not anymore. I killed a man.”

  “I know you’re a good person, Caroline. You know it, too. You just need to learn to forgive yourself.”

  “I think I’ve forgotten how to do that, Cal, if I ever knew how. Anyway, killing Eddie washed that capacity out of me. I don’t know how to get back to normal. I don’t know what normal is, anymore.”

  “We were sheep, Caroline. He was a wolf.”

  “What?”

  “Scripture. We are sheep among wolves. So, we are to be ‘wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’”

  “I can’t be both, Cal. I know that, now.”

  “This is remorse talking,” Cal said. “It’s the consequence of your capacity to know guilt. So, for our own peace of mind, the scriptures teach us to be as harmless as doves. Because remorse is one of the cruelest tortures in life.”

  “Don’t I know it!”

  “So, learn again how to forgive yourself.”

  “It’s not that simple, Cal.”

  Cal thought, leaned closer in his chair, and took Caroline’s hand. “I just watched a lad confess repeatedly to a murder he didn’t commit.”

  “Crist Burkholder?”

  “Yes, and he needed to confess because of his intense capacity for remorse.”

  “He didn’t kill Spiegle?”

  Cal explained about the Miranda hearing and about the autopsy results that exonerated Burkholder, and he said, “So, it turns out that he didn’t kill anyone. But his need to confess was so strong that he almost went to prison, trying to ease the pain of his remorse.”

  “But, I really did kill a man, Cal. I did it, and I can’t take it back.”

  “I know. That’s what I’m trying to explain. You can’t change it, so you have to learn how to forgive yourself.”

  Caroline dried her eyes and gave a sad, fatalistic shrug of her shoulders. She looked around the porch to get her bearings, looked out o
ver the backyard, and turned back to Cal to ask, “They just let him go?”

  “Nobody thinks he should be held in jail.”

  “Did he go home?”

  “No. He’s taking Vesta out to Jeremiah and Sara Miller’s house tonight. They’ll get married and live English.”

  “But now he has a record,” Caroline said.

  “No, he was never charged,” Cal said. “No record.”

  Caroline gave a weak laugh. “First Amish man suspected of murder, and Michael missed it all.”

  Cal smiled. “Now we need to figure out who really murdered Glenn Spiegle.”

  Caroline got up and started through the family room, toward the kitchen. “I can’t get Michael out of the Duke library, Cal.”

  Cal followed her back into the house. “How long is this sabbatical going to last?”

  “Two semesters,” Caroline answered over her shoulder. “We’ve been down at Duke since August first.”

  “Why are you home?”

  “I came back to manage some of the trust fund issues for his museum at the college. I should be headed back tomorrow, but I’m not done, so maybe Monday or Tuesday. Then I’m going to haul him out to the Outer Banks. Get him out of that library.”

  As Caroline pulled a pizza out of the freezer, Cal’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened, and said, “I’ll get Caroline to call him,” and switched off.

  Caroline turned her oven on, set the temperature, and asked, “Who was that?”

  Cal shook his head. “Bruce Robertson. Jacob Miller has been killed. Down in Bradenton Beach.”

  Caroline stepped back from the oven. “Bruce wants me to call Michael?”

  Cal nodded. “He asked if you’d call Mike, to see if he’d be willing to meet Ricky Niell down in Sarasota.”

  * * *

  “It’s all happening down in Florida, Dad,” Rachel said at her computer. “Billy Winters missing, Jacob Miller shot dead, and now my truck has been seized by the DEA.”

  “Why?” Cal asked. “Just because they found blood in the cab?”

  “No. They also found drugs hidden in the door panels. They think Billy was hauling cocaine up here, from Florida.”

  Sitting down beside Rachel, Cal asked, “Do you think that’s possible?”