Harmless as Doves: An Amish-Country Mystery

by P. L. Gaus

  In front of the cabin, there was a fire pit in the sand, with a spit hung over it from two tripod stands on either side, and in the ashes were the burnt tatters of blue jeans and a red flannel shirt. A deputy who was stirring through the ashes in the fire pit fished out a patch of blue fabric and the bill of a blue baseball cap. Behind the cabin, strung between the trunks of two pines, they found a tangle of wires and rope, with two sets of handcuffs suspended from the wires.

  Outside the cabin, as the sheriff deputies finished loading boxes into the boats, Orton asked Niell, “Was your Billy Winters an Indians fan?”

  Niell shook his head and drew his palm over his hair. “I don’t know,” he said, shaken. “Really, I don’t know.”

  “If Render got to Winters,” Orton said, “we’ll never find a body.”

  Branden tried his cell phone, making a call to Bruce Robertson, but the call wouldn’t go through. So he stood to study the fish camp and said to Niell, “Render’s gone, Ricky. If he’s back in here, somewhere, they’ll never find him.”

  Niell asked Orton, “Do you have any other places to look?”

  “This was it,” Orton said. “These were our best chances to get him.”

  “So,” Niell said, “he could be anywhere.”

  “We’ll get him another time,” Orton said. “But you boys might as well go home.”

  Niell turned in place and studied the camp. “This’d be an awful place to die,” he said. “If Render brought Billy Winters back in here, this’d be just about the worst place he could die.”

  * * *

  Once Sergeant Orton had them back at the docks at the Bradenton Beach marina, Branden was able to place his call to Robertson. He stood beside the water while Ricky finished up inside with Orton, and after he had told the sheriff about the unsuccessful search for Conrad Render, Robertson said, “OK, Mike, but before you come home, you’ll want to check with Orton, again. I just faxed him the travel details for Jacob Miller, going down there on the bus over the last year. I also faxed the travel information for one of your Render aliases, William Jeffries. He traveled up here twice. Once two weeks ago, right after Jacob Miller had been down there.”

  Branden shaded his eyes from the afternoon sun and asked, “You think that’s Conrad Render? William Jeffries, I mean.”

  “Yes,” Robertson said. “We’ve checked this alias with the Manatee County sheriff’s office. William Jeffries is Conrad Render. And we found the records for his flights to Akron/Canton, from Tampa International.”

  “We found?” Branden asked. “Who is we?”

  “Rachel Ramsayer, Mike. I got her logged into bus company and airline records through FBI channels. Rachel can find anything with a computer.”

  “Why are you working… ?” Branden started, but Robertson cut him off, saying, “We’re working on some Internet things, Mike.”

  “OK,” Branden said tentatively. “Rachel knows computers, but what are you doing?”

  “Mostly just looking over her shoulder,” Robertson said. “Maybe taking a few lessons.”

  “And you said Render was up in Ohio two weeks ago?”

  “Yes, he was,” Robertson said. “But he also flew up here this last Tuesday, the day before Glenn Spiegle was murdered. Then he flew right back, around noon, the morning of the murder. He’d have been back in Sarasota by four P.M.”

  “Spiegle and Winters,” Branden mumbled into his phone.

  “What?”

  “He could have killed both Spiegle and Winters, on the same day.”

  “I figure he did, Mike. I figure he killed them both. And they know he killed Jacob Miller down there yesterday.”

  “Busy fellow,” Branden said.

  There was a pause over the connection, and then Robertson asked, “Did you get a chance to talk to the driver who was shot with Miller?”

  “No,” Branden said. “Before we went looking for Render, he hadn’t come around from his anesthesia.”

  “OK,” Robertson said, “but check with Orton before you come home. Maybe they can make use of this new travel information.”

  32

  Friday, October 9

  6:10 P.M.

  CAL JUMPED out of his truck in Darba’s driveway and struggled to open his umbrella in a cold, slashing rain as he ran around to Caroline’s passenger door. Once he had the umbrella up, Caroline pushed her door open with her foot and stepped out balancing three large pizza boxes. The wind caught the boxes and nearly upended them, and while Cal wrestled with his umbrella, Caroline clamped one hand over the top box and moved forward at a run, quickly outdistancing the cover Cal was offering. Cal followed close behind her, and they ran through the rain, along the front walkway, under silver flashes of lightning, with nearly simultaneous explosions of thunder overhead. As they ran, the rain blew at them on a fierce slant and pelted them with leaves and debris from nearby trees.

  When they reached the front stoop, Katie Shetler pushed the screened door open for them, but the wind snatched the door handle from her fingers, and the screened door flew back and slapped flat against the side of the house. Cal tried to reach for it as Caroline darted inside, but the wind tore his umbrella inside out, so Cal tossed it down to the grass at the edge of the porch light, where the wind took it away into the dark. When Cal stepped inside, he pulled the screened door closed. Dripping rainwater onto the entryway tiles, he latched the screened door and closed the front door against the storm.

  Caroline struggled out of her raincoat and reached for Cal’s, saying, “These didn’t do us much good.”

  Katie stood by, and when both raincoats were off, she carried them through the living room and into the kitchen, where she hung them side by side on Shaker pegs over Darba’s boot tray.

  Cal and Caroline followed Katie into the kitchen. Cal took a hand towel from the oven handle and gave it to Caroline. Then he took a second towel from a rack beside the stove and dried his hair. Katie took both wet towels down the hallway to Darba’s bathroom and pulled two bath towels out of the hall closet. With these, Cal and Caroline were able to dry off enough to sit at the kitchen table without dripping onto the floor.

  While they were sitting down with Katie, Darba shuffled into the kitchen in her blue robe and a pair of fuzzy pink bedroom slippers, and after looking at Cal and Caroline, she went back down the hall and brought a long, terry-cloth bathrobe for Caroline and a dry pair of jeans for Cal. Caroline went into the bathroom first, took off her wet blouse and jeans, and pulled on the oversized robe. While she did that, Cal asked Darba if she had a dry shirt, and Darba brought out a Cleveland Indians jersey for Cal to wear. When Caroline came out in Darba’s spare robe, Cal went into the bathroom and changed into Billy’s jeans and jersey. Then, once they were in dry clothes, Katie hung the wet clothes on the Shaker pegs, and Katie and Darba took seats in the living room with Cal and Caroline.

  Darba sat without speaking, her gaze wandering slowly around the room. She brushed at hair hanging in front of her eyes, but to Cal, the motion seemed sluggish. He asked, “Have you been able to sleep, Darba?” and she turned her eyes slowly toward him, saying only, “A little, I guess.”

  Katie said, “You should lie down again, Darba. Dr. Carson wants you to sleep right now.”

  Darba shook her head. “I’m waiting for Billy to call,” but her eyes closed almost immediately, and she fell asleep on the couch.

  Katie lifted Darba’s legs up onto the couch and placed pillows under Darba’s head. Then she led Cal and Caroline into the kitchen, carrying the pizza boxes.

  As they were sitting down, there was a soft knock on the back door, and Katie crossed the back porch to let in her husband, the bishop. Leon propped his wet umbrella open on the back porch and came into the kitchen trailing Katie, and the four friends sat together at the kitchen table, while Darba slept in the adjoining living room.

  Bishop Shetler asked Cal about news from Florida, and Cal told him about the search for Jacob Miller’s murderer, as they ate pizza from the b
oxes. Leon listened, shaking his head with sadness, and said, “This Render held vengeance in his heart for all those years. What price has he paid for that type of hate?”

  Cal shook his head and said, “I’ve got all I can do to answer for my own sins.”

  “Grace,” Leon said. “But for the grace.”

  “I know,” Cal answered. “But I don’t think Conrad Render is the type to ask for forgiveness.”

  “He will,” Leon said, “when he meets his Maker.”

  Cal nodded without taking any satisfaction.

  To Caroline, Katie said, “The Bishop,”—she tilted her head toward her husband—“has taught often about forgiveness.”

  Caroline blushed and looked to Cal for an explanation.

  Cal said, “I told Leon and Katie that you’ve been struggling with remorse.”

  Caroline smiled self-consciously and said to the bishop, “I killed a man in self-defense. I can’t shake the guilt I feel. It’s tearing me apart inside.”

  Tears appeared in her eyes. Caroline wiped them with the flats of her fingers, and then she accepted a handkerchief from Cal and dried her eyes with it.

  Katie retrieved napkins from a drawer, set them out beside the pizza boxes, and sat back down. Intending encouragement, she said to her husband, “Tell her what you tell Darba about grace, Leon.”

  But Caroline interrupted her, saying, “Really, I know about forgiveness. I just can’t seem to find it for myself. It seems so out of reach to me, like it’s parked on the moon or something. I can see it, but I can’t reach it. It’s—I can’t think of another way to say it—parked on the moon.”

  Leon nodded. “You’re trying to get there, yourself.”

  Caroline said, “I know. But I can’t forgive myself. Or I’ve forgotten how, if I ever knew.”

  “You have to let God do it for you. By grace, He does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. Like forgiving ourselves.”

  “But I feel like I don’t deserve to be forgiven,” Caroline said. “I can’t forgive myself, because I know I don’t deserve it.”

  “Really,” Leon said, “no one deserves it, on their own merit. But by God’s grace, it is possible. We have to ask for forgiveness, and then we have to trust God to do what He has promised He will do. Trusting God this way is an act of faith. And faith is the only thing we have to offer in this transaction.”

  “Forgiveness for killing a man?” Caroline asked.

  “Yes,” Shetler said. “It’s that way for all of us. Outside of grace, we are powerless to forgive ourselves.”

  Caroline held her thoughts for a moment and then asked, “You’ve been talking about this type of thing with Darba?”

  “Yes,” Leon said, “going back a long time. Going back to when her troubles really began.”

  Caroline said, “I’ve known her for several years, but I don’t think I know what Darba’s troubles really are. At least I don’t know how they started.”

  Cal said, “She has a mental imbalance, but it started one year when she was still teaching. She had a fourth-grade classroom in Fredericksburg.”

  “I didn’t know Darba was a teacher,” Caroline said. “That seems improbable, now.”

  “She was a good teacher,” Katie said. “But she became troubled, and it went untreated. Then she snapped one day in class.”

  Cal explained. “One of her boys ran down to the principal’s office, saying there was something wrong with Miss Darba. When they got down to her classroom, she had a little girl backed into a corner, screaming at her about not being a ‘nosy little bossie.’ They couldn’t get her calmed down, and deputies and paramedics had to escort her out of her classroom.”

  Caroline argued, “Darba’s troubled, but she’s not mean like that.”

  “No, she’s not,” Leon said. “But she can’t forgive herself for hurting that little girl. Dr. Carson treats her mental problems, but guilt is one of the things that Darba can’t seem to shake.”

  “Darba didn’t kill someone,” Caroline whispered. “I’m sorry, but it’s not the same.”

  “We are taught that we are to be harmless as doves,” the bishop said. “It means a lot of things, but one thing is that the harm we do is always harmful to us, if for no other reason than the guilt that we shoulder for it. So, that’s where forgiveness is necessary.”

  “I know I am not harmless,” Caroline said.

  The bishop nodded. “None of us is. That’s why forgiveness is necessary.”

  “It’s hard to accept,” Caroline said. “It sounds so easy, but really it’s hard.”

  “It may not be easy,” the bishop said, “but it is simple. I was just getting Glenn Spiegle to understand that. I think maybe he was finally able to accept it.”

  “Forgiveness?” Caroline said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then, what about people like Jacob Miller?” Caroline asked. “He apparently never even knew that he needed to be forgiven.”

  Shetler smiled sadly. “I spoke to Jacob, yesterday. I asked him what he thought it meant in the scriptures, where it reads, ‘Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves. Wherefore, be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.’ I asked him if we are to be harmless as doves for the well-being of the wolves.”

  “What did he say?” Caroline asked.

  “He had no reply,” the bishop said.

  “Wise as serpents and harmless as doves?” Caroline asked. “Both for our benefit?”

  Leon smiled, “Doesn’t that make sense to you, now that you know guilt? To be harmless spares us, first.”

  “And forgiveness is always possible?”

  “Yes, if we will only ask.”

  “By grace?” Caroline asked, tears flowing again. “Not because we deserve it?”

  “Yes,” the bishop said and reached over the table to take her hands. “Outside of grace, forgiveness isn’t possible. It might as well be parked on the moon.”

  * * *

  Riding home later in Cal’s truck, the storm over, Caroline called her husband. He asked how she was, and she said, “Better, Michael. I’ve been talking with Cal. And Katie and Leon Shetler.”

  “Are you still sad about Eddie?” the professor asked.

  “A little, I guess. It’s not so bad, now. Did they catch that Render?”

  “No,” Branden said, and he explained.

  “Where are you now?” Caroline asked.

  “We’re at the hospital. Waiting for the doctors to let us talk with Stevens Clark.”

  “I don’t remember who he is,” Caroline said.

  “He was driving Jacob Miller, when Render shot them. He’s been through two surgeries, and now they think he can talk a little bit.”

  “Does he know where Render is?”

  “We don’t know,” Branden said. “But if he doesn’t, then nobody does.”

  “When are you coming home, Michael?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Branden said. “We have a flight at five o’clock.”

  “Do you need me to pick you up?”

  “At Akron/Canton,” Branden said. “Gets in at seven-ten.”

  “What are you going to do until then?”

  “If Clark tells us anything we can use, we’ll go back after Render.”

  “I don’t want you chasing this guy down, Michael.”

  “It’ll be the sheriff or the Coast Guard. We’ll hang back.”

  “Not the lead boat, Michael.”

  “No,” Branden laughed. “Not the lead boat.”

  33

  Friday, October 9

  7:15 P.M.

  WHEN ORTON, Niell, and Branden got to Stevens Clark’s room in the surgical ward at Manatee Memorial Hospital in Bradenton, Clark was sitting in a padded chair beside his bed, fumbling with the red button on a gray metal box that controlled his pain medication. An IV line fed drugs into the back of his hand, and the right side of his face was bandaged heavily. He looked as haggard as battle fatigue, but he reacted strongly to the uniforms Niell and Orton w
ore, barking out, “I’ve got nothing to say! Leave me alone!” as he tried to stand. But his IV lines were tangled around his arm and in the clamps on their stand beside him, and after a frustrating attempt to unravel the lines, Clark flopped back in his chair and cursed the tubing for its stubbornness.

  Branden stepped forward and said, “I can get that.” Too frustrated to argue, Clark hung his head and surrendered his arm to Branden, muttering, “Whatever.”

  Branden untangled the lines, and Clark stood up, sat on the edge of his bed, and fell back sideways on the mattress, grumbling, “We never should have gone out to Cortez.”

  Niell stepped to Clark’s side and said, “We’re looking for the man who shot you.”

  Clark eyed Niell’s uniform and asked, “You’re not local?”

  “Holmes County, Ohio,” Niell said.

  Derisively, Clark shouted, “Wonderful! First Jacob Miller nearly gets me killed, and now you boys are gonna want to ask me stupid questions about the man who shot me.”

  “That’s what we want to ask you about,” Niell said. “Jacob Miller. How did he nearly get you killed?”

  Clark laid his fingertips against the bandages on the side of his face and said, “These aren’t chigger bites, Deputy.”

  Branden said, “I think what Sergeant Niell means is, ‘What were you two doing when Jacob Miller nearly got you killed?’”

  “Running!” Clark shouted and winced at the pain under his bandages. “We were running from Conrad Render.”

  “But why, Mr. Clark?” Ricky asked. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Clark complained. “It was all Miller. He came hotfooting it out of that warehouse and told me, ‘Drive!’ So I did. Made it over the bridge, got myself shot at the light, and don’t remember much after that.”