Material Witness

by Vannetta Chapman

  “No. Martha was with us. I realized I’d left my wallet somewhere, but wasn’t sure where. So we decided to go back and find it.”

  “That was my idea,” Aaron piped in. “Remember? I suggested that Martha go to where you bought the slingshot and you go to where you bought the candy apple. It was my idea that you leave.”

  Matt licked his lips. “I’m the oldest. I should have known better than to leave you alone.”

  “I wasn’t alone. You left me with Max.”

  Matt didn’t answer that. Instead he went back to staring at the spot on the ground.

  “What time do you think that was?”

  “Wasn’t dark yet.” Matt looked up and out across the crowd that had gathered down the street. “But the lights in the trees had already come on, so it was tending toward dark.”

  “All right, we can check the timer on those.”

  “I’ve got it!” Matt sat up straighter and smacked has right fist into his left palm, exactly like when he was warming up to catch a baseball. Aaron loved that sound. “It was seven o’clock exactly when we left him. I know because I heard the clock tower — the one down by the train station — strike seven times. I thought, If I run, I can be to that booth before the seventh strike.”

  Shane waited for Aaron’s mamm to confirm the time.

  She nodded once. “Sounds about right. It was growing dark when I first heard Max bark. I thought he’d seen a squirrel or a bird. After that, Martha came running inside telling us to call for help.”

  “We were gone ten, maybe fifteen, minutes. No more than that. I heard Max barking too, and I started running back.” Matt turned and pointed to the north. “You can hear Max from a long way when he’s bedauerlich or naerfich.”

  Shane glanced toward Melinda.

  She mouthed the words sad and nervous to him.

  “Good. Those are good details. Now this is very important.” Shane looked each person in the eye, making sure he had their attention, then he focused on Aaron. “You were waiting here alone with Max — say, from seven to seven-fifteen. Tell me what you saw first.”

  Aaron felt everyone’s attention on him. He tried not to squirm in his seat. “I was staring straight ahead, and I saw someone’s shoes, then dark green cloth. I thought, That can’t be a man, because no man would have pants that color.”

  Shane stood and backed up so he was looking toward the body from Aaron’s vantage point. “You could only see the woman’s shoes?”

  “And the bottom of her dress.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because she was hiding in the bushes.”

  Shane stood there for a minute, staring at the same thing Aaron was staring at — which at the moment was a lot of crime techs crowded around a dead body. Then he walked in front of him again, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Ya. I thought it was strange, and Max and I, we leaned out to see better. She kept disappearing, because of the light and because her dress was sort of the same color as the leaves of the bush.”

  “Huh.”

  Aaron realized that was the first thing any of them had said that had surprised the officer. He hadn’t expected that. And come to think of it, why had Mrs. Knepp been hiding?

  As if he were echoing his thoughts, Shane asked, “Any idea what she was doing there, hiding in the bushes?”

  Aaron began to chew on his thumbnail, though there wasn’t much of it left.

  “Aaron?”

  “I wouldn’t want to speak badly of anyone. And she’s dead, right? It’s not pretend, like … like in the movies?”

  Beside him, he felt his mamm stiffen.

  “No. It’s not pretend.” Shane didn’t seem surprised at all that Aaron had asked the question. “Whatever you tell me, it stays between us, Aaron. But maybe —” Shane glanced up and over to where Mrs. Knepp lay. “Maybe it will help me catch whoever did this to her. So probably she wouldn’t mind.”

  “Well …” Aaron ran his hand over the top rim of one of his wheels, another thing he did sometimes to calm himself. “It looked to me like she was spying on Miss Callie’s shop. She was holding something up to her eyes, you know?”

  Then he mimicked making two circles with his hands and holding them in front of his eyes.

  “I know it was almost dark, but did you see any reflection coming from her direction?”

  Aaron glanced at his mamm, unsure what Shane was asking.

  “Reflection,” his mamm repeated. He noticed her eyes were shiny behind her glasses, and he wondered if what he had done was going to make her cry. “Reflections are like the sun shining off water.”

  “Oh, ya. When she’d put her hands up, there would be a shiny sparkle for a minute. I suppose that’s what made me notice her to begin with. It was sort of like a game spotting her hiding there, but then … but then the big Englisch man came. He came up behind her and maybe pushed her. I’m not sure about that part.”

  “Go on,” Shane said softly.

  “Well, she sort of jumped, sort of fell then. Like when we catch a fish and Dat cleans it. ‘Cept once I was helping and didn’t hold the fish tight enough. Dat put his knife in, and the fish jumped.” Aaron stole a peek at his bruder, but Matt only shrugged. “Like that, I guess. She jumped sort of, then lay there, like the fish lies there after Dat finishes gutting it.”

  Aaron felt coldness spread inside him then, and he didn’t know what it meant. All he knew was that he wanted to go home.

  Maybe he shouldn’t be here.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have seen all he had seen.

  Maybe it was because he’d watched the movies with Justin and now he was paying for that sin.

  “She never did move again. The man didn’t even seem surprised.” When no one said anything, Aaron pushed on. “Dat, he’s kind with the fish, the ones we throw back and the ones we keep. He says gut things to them and talks of how we need to eat and how Gotte provides for us. The Englisch man, well, he didn’t seem kind at all, and he didn’t say anything. He stood over her, then reached forward and grabbed her bag and maybe …” Pulling in a big breath that rattled against his ribs and squeezed his heart, Aaron forced himself to finish his sentence. “Maybe he did pick up something else too. It was getting toward dark then, and I couldn’t see so well. Then he walked away. Like she meant less than a fish. Like she meant nothing.”

  Aaron didn’t realize he was crying until Shane patted his knee, stood up, and told him he’d done well, that he and Matt had both done well. There was a big roaring in Aaron’s ears, and then his mother was standing behind his chair, both of her hands on his shoulders.

  Chapter 5

  MELINDA WATCHED HER SON answer Shane Black’s questions, and the pain was nearly more than what she’d experienced birthing her boys. Hannah had been easy, barely any labor at all, but both her boys were delivered after hours of long, excruciating agony. Rebecca, the district’s midwife, had assured her the babies weren’t in danger, but she’d seen the worried looks exchanged between Rebecca and her own mother.

  Nothing about those first two births had been normal.

  The pain of watching Aaron’s telling was as real and as hurtful as what she’d experienced when the boys were born.

  Why couldn’t she protect them?

  Why couldn’t she stand between them and the world a little longer?

  As a teenager her parents had sheltered her. She’d never strained against it as some of her friends had. Part of being Amish was being separate. She accepted that easier than some, she supposed.

  As a parent, she’d done her best to keep her children within the safe haven of the Amish community. She protected Matt. He was her first, and it was a natural thing to do. But when Aaron was born …

  A lump rose in her throat, and she fought against the fears hammering in her chest — fears that were always a mere heartbeat away.

  To think her son had witnessed the death of someone, possibly a murder.

 
To think he was a few feet away when such a terrible thing had happened.

  She wanted to grab him in her arms and run, run back to their farm. She wanted Noah by her side, and she wanted him here now.

  Aaron drew in a deep breath. She thought she could hear his lungs rattling. What if the shock was too much? What if it caused him to regress?

  She gripped the back of his chair more firmly with both of her hands and refused to shy away from Shane Black’s intense gaze. Forcing all the strength she could muster into her voice, she declared, “We have to go home now.”

  Shane nodded as if he understood. “You and Matthew can go, but I need Aaron to stay a little longer.”

  “I’m not leaving him here.” She pushed up on her glasses.

  “I need to take Callie’s statement, maybe Deborah’s.” Shane studied the crime scene as he rubbed the muscles along the back of his neck. “I also need to see what the crime techs have for me. Then I need to look through the reports from people in the shop. Shouldn’t take more than an hour, maybe two.”

  “We’re going home.”

  “Sure. When we’re finished.”

  “We’re going home now.”

  “He’s my primary witness, Melinda. He’s my material witness.”

  “He’s a child.”

  “What he saw will affect the outcome of this case.”

  Melinda didn’t see Noah walk up, but she sensed it the moment he was there. She knew it by the scent of the soap he washed with, by the soft touch of his hand at her back, and most importantly, by the way her fear settled like a colt suddenly calmed.

  “Problem with the boys?” he asked, handing her Hannah. Their youngest was nearly two now and not really a baby anymore, but Melinda still thought of her that way. Her daughter reached for Melinda’s kapp, then snuggled into her neck.

  Melinda closed her eyes and pulled in deep, cleansing breaths as the panic finally settled for the first time since hearing Martha tell Deborah to call 9-1-1.

  “Dat!” Matthew jumped up, grabbed his father’s hand.

  Aaron squirmed around in his chair, offered his father a genuine smile as he reached for his baby sister’s foot.

  “Evening, Noah.”

  “Shane.”

  “There’s no problem with the boys,” Melinda said, answering Noah’s original question. “I was explaining to Shane that it’s getting late, and it’s time to take the boys home.”

  “Can’t do it.” Shane held up his hand to ward off her arguments. “I understand. I do. But your son’s the single witness who saw the perpetrator, and the guy’s still out there. We need to bring our sketch artist over here and have her work with Aaron while his memory is fresh.”

  “Ya, I heard about the death. So it’s true, son? You saw what happened?”

  Melinda noticed that Aaron nodded but didn’t offer to repeat the details to his father.

  “Can it be done in the office?” Noah asked. “This cool night air isn’t gut for his breathing.”

  Shane nodded. “Sure. Yeah. We can do it at the station. Is that okay with you, Aaron?”

  Aaron nodded as he squirmed back around in his seat. “I don’t have to go alone, do I?”

  “‘Course not. One of your parents can come with you.”

  “I’ll go,” Melinda assured him, kissing Hannah and handing her back to Noah.

  “We’ll be home as soon as we can,” she whispered. “No one’s eaten yet.”

  “I’ll see to Matt and Hannah. Be sure to grab a bite for you and Aaron.”

  “We keep some snack food at the station.” Shane nodded to Melinda and her family, then turned to answer a question from one of the crime techs, who had been waiting patiently behind him for a few minutes.

  “I’m sure Shane will do his best to hurry things along here.” Noah squeezed Melinda’s arm softly, ruffled Aaron’s hair, then put his hand to Matt’s back and walked him away from the site.

  It was a small comfort, but at least Melinda knew two of her children were out of harm’s way. Now to finish with what Shane needed and see Aaron safely home. She had no desire to hinder the police investigation, but neither did she want her son to be in the middle of it.

  Go to the station, sit with the artist, and then this thing will be over, she thought to herself.

  Deborah sat across from Callie in the otherwise empty waiting room of the Shipshewana Police Department. Martha had gone home with her aenti an hour ago.

  Callie and Deborah had decided to skip dinner, since neither had any appetite. Deborah knitted as Callie stared at the pages of the latest Agatha Christie novel she was reading.

  “You haven’t turned a page in nearly twenty minutes,” Deborah observed.

  “Yes, well, you keep pulling out that row of stitches. Maybe I should try knitting and you should try reading this story.” Callie slapped the book shut and drummed her fingers against the cover.

  “I’m distracted,” Deborah admitted. “And you seem naerfich. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “At least Esther wasn’t at the store tonight. I wouldn’t have wanted her waiting inside with all the grumbling customers while they filled out Gavin’s forms.”

  Callie smiled, but it was a sad thing. “Tobias would have come up and pulled baby Simon out through a back window.”

  “Ya, I believe you’re right. He’s considerably protective of that boppli.”

  “Who can blame him after all they’ve been through?”

  Deborah’s mind drifted back over the last murder investigation, back to the young girl she and Esther had found in Reuben and Tobias’ pond, and back to Samuel Eby — the boy who was now working building cabinets in the RV factory twenty miles to the northwest.

  “ ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ ” She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Callie bumped her with her foot.

  “Amish proverb?”

  “Nope. Scripture.”

  “I don’t remember that one.”

  Callie reached down and ran her fingers through Max’s coat. The Labrador rolled over on his side and groaned in his sleep. Deborah wondered if the Shipshe police allowed everyone to bring their canines into the station or if they made an exception for Callie. She was certainly becoming a frequent visitor — they both were.

  “I should have let it go,” Callie whispered, still staring at Max. “You told me to drop it. Lydia told me to. Even Esther told me to. All I could think of was making my shop better than hers. All I could think of was competing, and now she’s dead.”

  Deborah stood, holding her knitting by her side, and moved to the seat beside Callie. Max opened one eye and gazed at her, but didn’t bother changing positions.

  “You did try in the beginning, remember? You went and visited Mrs. Knepp. You even sent cookies to her shop once. Wasn’t that last Christmas?”

  “Yes.” Callie pulled in a shaky breath, then wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress.

  “That’s new, and you’re soiling it. Use this.” Deborah handed her a handkerchief, which made Callie’s tears fall faster. “Tell me the real reason you’re bedauerlich.”

  “She was a cranky old woman, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t win her over. So it became a game of sorts. You know? Like in high school when you couldn’t get in with a group, so you decided it wouldn’t matter — except it did matter. You only had to pretend that it didn’t.”

  Deborah nodded, though in truth she wasn’t sure exactly what Callie was talking about.

  “If she wouldn’t like me, I decided I would make a sport of it. So I walked by and scoped out her displays, and a few times a week, I’d catch her walking by to check out mine. She was always crabby. I never saw her smile, and not once did she say a kind word to me.”

  “You’re saying you’ll miss her?”

  “I will miss her.” Callie blew her nose in the handkerchief. “In my mind there was a
lways going to be a day — sometime in the future — when we would call a truce. Then we’d find a way to work together, to make Shipshewana the quilt capital of Indiana. Now she’s dead, and she died in my parking lot. Someone did something to her —”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “You think she died naturally as she was hiding in my bushes?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Do you think the person who pushed her was playing around and then ran off?”

  “No. I don’t think that at all.”

  “Do you think Shane would bother with a sketch artist unless he was convinced this person was dangerous?”

  “All right,” Deborah acknowledged, though the admission sent a weariness through every part of her body and soul.

  “Someone killed her.”

  “Ya. I suppose you’re right.”

  “Someone killed her, and they didn’t even wait until it was dark. Who does that? He walked up behind her and somehow struck her down so that she fell in the middle of the pavement without any dignity at all. No one deserves to die that way, least of all a little old lady whose biggest crime was …”

  Callie’s tears came again in earnest. Max rolled over on his stomach, laid his head on his paws, and stared at her with what Deborah thought seemed like great sorrow in his eyes. “Her biggest crime was being old and cranky. Maybe she was … lonely. Maybe I should have taken her a casserole!”

  Deborah put her arm around Callie and rubbed her shoulder. “I believe you’re tired. You’ve worked hard preparing for this weekend.”

  “That’s some of it, yes.”

  “And perhaps you’re experiencing regret. My mamm always said, ‘To forgive heals the wound; to forget heals the scar.’ ”

  Callie frowned, rubbed at her forehead with the fingertips of both hands. “Is that one of your Amish proverbs?”

  “I suppose Englischers might call it that. It’s one of those things my mamm said when I worried a thing too long.”

  “But what does it even mean?”

  “Rather depended on the situation.”

  “But you think it applies here?”

  Deborah smiled, patted her on the back a final time. “Ya. Perhaps.”