by Gaus, P. L.
Two murders in less than a month, and Niell hoping Cal could talk Hawkins into coming down to the jail. Could Cal do that? Not if Hawkins were guilty. And what was that about Hawkins being dressed Amish? It didn’t fit. Nothing did.
He finished the tea as he stood on the back porch. He thought again about everything that Niell had said, and scowled at the tangled mess the deputy had brought him.
David Hawkins, Special Forces, now missing. Cal Troyer, country preacher, material witness. Sands, ex-con held for the murder of Janet Hawkins. Sheriff Robertson, suspecting Cal of being involved. Eric Bromfield, reporter, murdered. And the reason? Was it as simple as Robertson had figured? Murder a reporter for nothing more than an upcoming article?
David Hawkins was an Amishman. Niell had said that plainly enough. But how had Hawkins made the change from U.S. Special Forces to Amish?
And Hawkins’s English daughter? Shot in her home the middle of May, and now evidently the pivot point in an entirely different case, the murder last week of the reporter, Eric Bromfield.
Satisfied that he had the facts and names in place, Branden slumped into a wicker chair and marveled at the larger question. Did Cal Troyer really know that the “Dutchman” he had taken to the jail to forgive Jesse Sands was, in a prior life, a soldier in the U.S. Army Special Forces?
5
Sunday, June 8 3:30 P.M.
CALEB Troyer was on the water by midafternoon the day of Branden’s commencement exercises, easing slowly around the pond with a fly rod and a popper. It was an unusually warm and windless Ohio spring day, and with a bright sun, there was not the slightest wave or ripple on the surface of the water.
Cal was dressed casually in blue jeans and a dark blue cotton pullover. His flowing white hair normally resembled the style of an Amish bishop’s, though considerably longer, but today he had it pulled back in a short tail. His full white beard was prominent, set off distinctly against the tan of his rough and leathered face.
Since the day his grandfather had quit an Amish sect more than fifty years ago, none of the Troyer men from Caleb’s line had worn the traditional Amish beard, trimmed and shaved smooth around the mouth. Instead, as if to emphasize the distinction in a county where only the locals would notice the difference, Cal Troyer’s mustache was long, and trimmed to the curve of his lips. Still, his short arms and legs gave the impression of the small Dutch stature of his Amish heritage.
His arms and hands were massive and strong, since, in the hours between Sunday sermons and Wednesday evening services, Troyer earned his living as a carpenter. That is, he earned a living when he wasn’t building things free for friends or family in need.
Under the bright sun that afternoon, Cal worked the fly rod high overhead in strong, confident strokes, elbows held close to his ribs. The pole lifted slowly up and back, and the line followed in an arching ballet. The leader and popper came off the still surface gently, softly, and then picked up speed at the end of the line, sailed back overhead, wrapped into a tight curve at the end of its run, and came on gracefully with the forward stroke of Troyer’s arm. The thick orange fly line laid itself out straight, and the clear leader followed softly. At the end of the thin leader, the popper settled delicately onto the water and lay motionless.
Cal held it there, about a foot off the bank ahead of him, and then, after a suitable spell, he gave the line the slightest of taps, and the popper’s rubber legs twitched. Almost immediately, there came a surge under the lure. The line disappeared, and Cal lifted the rod to twelve o’clock to set the hook.
The line shot down into the water, came up directly, and darted erratically left and right several times. The pole took the surges overhead, pumping under the strain on the line. When the bluegill eased off, Cal brought it in flat, along the top of the blue water. Landed, it lay straight in his palm and completely covered all of the outstretched fingers of his hand. The little lips were even with his fingertips, and the tail stretched back as far as the middle of his forearm. On its flank, it flashed the colors of a thousand iridescent hues, gills pumping the air, eyes wide in alarm. Cal removed the hook, put the bluegill on a stringer with a dozen others, and wound line back onto the reel.
When Mike Branden arrived, he took note of Cal’s fly rod and wordlessly chose a lightweight, open-bail spinning rig for himself. This choice defined the terms of the afternoon’s competition. It wasn’t lost on Cal.
Branden tied on a small spinner bait with a feathered tail and a Colorado blade. After they had worked silently, side by side, for nearly an hour, the professor admitted defeat and switched to a fly rod, too.
“I expected you earlier,” Cal said.
Branden tied on a black and yellow popper, nipped off the end line with his teeth, spat it out, and said, “We finished up with commencement pretty much on time, but I had company waiting when I started home.”
“Anyone I know?” Cal asked and landed another.
Branden made a cast, set his hook on a sunfish, and said, “Ricky Niell.”
“Oh?” Cal asked, sounding only slightly surprised.
“Do you know he’s looking for you?”
“I imagine it’s more like Bruce Robertson who’s looking for me,” Cal said.
“It sounded serious to me,” Branden said. He tossed the small sunfish back into the pond and held his eyes on Cal.
“Not really,” Cal said and strolled along the bank to a new spot behind a stand of cattails. Branden followed.
“You want to tell me about it?” Branden asked.
“Look, Mike,” Cal said, “there’s nothing there. Robertson’s running around half-cocked, again, that’s all. Just like when we were kids.”
Branden sat down on the bank near Cal and asked, “Then do you want to tell me about David Hawkins?”
“He was a member of our church.”
“Nothing more?”
Cal stopped fishing and turned back to Branden. “I’m sure you know that David Hawkins’s daughter was murdered,” Cal said. “The fellow who did it is a guest at the county brick house.”
“Did you also know that Eric Bromfield, one of Marty Holcombe’s young reporters, was found murdered yesterday?” Branden asked.
“No,” Cal said, disquieted. “Is there a connection?” Cal stepped over to the professor and sat down on the high bank beside him. “What’s this got to do with David Hawkins?”
Branden explained. “Bruce thinks that Bromfield was working up a series of articles about how Jesse Sands murdered Janet Hawkins.”
“So?”
“So, in the process, Bromfield looked into your guy Hawkins and uncovered his past. Now Hawkins is missing, Bromfield is dead, and Robertson surmises that you know something about all of that. In particular, he thinks Hawkins killed Bromfield to stop his stories, and he considers you to be a key witness, because you know where Hawkins can be found.”
Branden studied Cal’s eyes. Cal shook his head, seeming disappointed. Then Cal said, “I do know where Hawkins is.”
“Are you going to tell Bruce Robertson?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
Cal fell silent for a moment and said, “Because David Hawkins cannot have murdered anyone.”
“Hawkins was a soldier, Cal.”
“I know that well enough. That was in the past,” Cal said forcefully.
“Ricky Niell says that Hawkins took Sands by the throat the night you two went over to the jail.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s capable of murder.”
Branden acknowledged that with a nod and said, “Do you know what set Hawkins off? What Sands might have said to him through the bars of that cell?”
“No.”
“Then how can you be sure that Hawkins hasn’t flipped?”
Cal shrugged a silent but confident answer.
“Could Sands have whispered something that would have blindsided Hawkins? Something about the murder of his daughter that we don’t know?”
“David Hawkin
s will not have murdered anyone,” Cal asserted softly. “I’d stake my life on that. David Hawkins is a changed man. Has been for nearly seven years.”
“Then why not tell Bruce Robertson where Hawkins is?”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone, least of all Bruce Robertson.”
“Then how about me?”
“Not even you, Mike,” Cal said. He sat back and closed his eyes against the sun and the stress. A silent moment passed with Cal on his back, eyes shut, thinking. Branden sat on the bank and fiddled with his line. The sun broke low under Branden’s cap. Barn swallows and martins dropped out of the afternoon sky and made their strafing runs over the surface of the pond, snatching bugs. The slightest of warm breezes stirred, promising summer.
Eventually, Cal said, “OK, Mike, suppose I do the next best thing. I’ll introduce you to his fiancée. If she wants you involved, she can take you to Hawkins herself.”
“Today?”
“Tomorrow. I’ll need the time to set it up.”
“And why is that?”
Cal looked at Branden and gave a wry smile. “Because she’s Amish. An Amish lass of twenty-nine.”
“Hawkins intends to marry Amish?”
Cal nodded.
Branden’s eyes narrowed with an expression that said, “I think you’d better explain.”
Cal pulled himself up from his seat on the bank and said, “I’ll tell you this little story, but only while we work the pond. Too nice a day not to fish.”
Branden agreed and followed Cal along the bank, several paces back. As they hooked and landed the day’s catch, Troyer ran it all down for the professor.
“When David Hawkins first moved to Millersburg, he was a mess—Vietnam, and more. It took nearly a year, but we eventually got him straightened around. He cleaned up, forgave himself, became a member of our church, and sent for his daughter.
“For several years, things were fine. But eventually it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t settle in. Couldn’t handle retirement. He worked for us as a janitor at the church and for me, building houses, and refused to accept a salary. He was working off a burden that had smothered his conscience—laboring as an act of contrition. It was something in his past, I can’t tell you the whole story, but a quiet life in town wasn’t going to be enough for him.
“Gradually, he took an interest in the Amish. He’d been fascinated with them since he moved to Millersburg, anyway. The long and the short of it is, he met a girl, fell in love, and decided to convert to Amish. A cold warrior turned Amish pacifist.
“By then we were good friends, and to tell you the truth, I thought it was an OK thing. I don’t usually encourage that sort of thinking, because most Amish sects are a closed and suspicious bunch. But a life closed away from the rest of the world was the best thing for David Hawkins, if the stories he’s told me are any indication. I’d never known anyone who had converted to the Amish, but I hear it happens from time to time.
“Well, eventually, like I said, Hawkins found a family that would have him, with a daughter whom they had not yet managed to marry off. Plus it was obvious that he did truly love her, and she him.
“For the past year or so, he has lived a genuine Amish life. The girl’s father asked Hawkins for a two-year courtship to prove himself. Not an unwarranted precaution when you consider Hawkins’s past. That was a little more than a year ago, now. In the meantime, Hawkins gave his house in town to his daughter and made plans to move out into the country.”
Branden asked, “Hawkins came out of the service, and he was converting to the Amish?”
“Has converted, for all intents and purposes.”
“And you can’t imagine that the recent murder of his daughter will have snapped him back, hard?”
“He is a pacifist,” Cal said. “He understands, completely, what that means.”
“Maybe now, but he used to be a soldier,” Branden argued. “And the cold-blooded murder of his daughter would have to be the harshest, rawest test of any pacifist’s convictions.”
“One of the roughest tests I can imagine,” Cal said, “and I’m certain, beyond limit, that David Hawkins could not kill someone. Anyone. Certainly not some young reporter.”
“He’s killed before, evidently with great skill.”
“That was a different life. David Hawkins has been made new. Plus, there’s his Amish commitment to nonviolence.”
“Then what was that about holding a gun to Ricky Niell’s head?”
Cal sighed. “A lapse.”
“And you’re banking that it was only a temporary lapse,” Branden said.
“I’d stake my life on it,” Cal answered, eyes leveled confidently at his friend.
“So you’ve said. Look, Cal,” Branden said, “you’ve got to admit. Whatever else you might say about David Hawkins, on that night in the jail, he cracked. Whatever it was that Sands told him, Hawkins cracked.”
“There’s nothing Sands can have told him that would send David Hawkins back to killing.”
“What makes you think so, Cal?”
“Because I’ve measured the depth of his conversion. I know the strength of his convictions.”
“Too bad Robertson doesn’t know that, too.”
“Indeed,” Cal answered.
“I want to talk with Hawkins, Cal.”
“Can’t do that, Mike.”
“Then let me talk with the family where he’s living.”
“Then you’d know where he lives.”
“All right, then let’s start with the girl. I’ve got to have something to go on, Cal,” Branden argued. “According to Ricky Niell, Bruce Robertson’s bound to haul you in for questioning before too much longer, and if I’m to help, you’ll have to trust me a little on this.”
Cal stopped beside the pond, looked down to think, and said, “Remember the high ground south of Fredericksburg where we used to camp?”
“Sure.”
“The little knoll at the edge of the cliffs where we used to watch the car lights out toward Millersburg?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll meet you there, tomorrow, at 11:00 A.M.”
“I’d like to bring Caroline.”
“Fine. That’ll work.”
Branden thought for a moment and said, “And what do you intend to do, Cal?”
“I’ll bring his fiancée—the one person who can tell you everything you need to know about David Hawkins.”
6
Monday, June 9 10:00 A.M.
THE next morning, after attending to business in Wayne County to the north, the Brandens drove southeast out of Wooster on Route 250 past the little roadside community of Guerne and then turned right onto the Fredericksburg road. From there, the road takes a straight course south for about seven miles through the country before it drops into a deep pocket where Fredericksburg sits at the intersection of small county roads. Those travelers who drop down into that little burg and spend enough quiet time there soon realize that they’ve found the old world.
Just off the northeast corner of the one main intersection there stands a little brick church with a neighborly steeple. On the southeast corner is an antique shop in a brown and tan brick building with large glass windows. A “closed” sign hangs there more often than not.
Across the street, on the southwest corner, there is a quiet, two-story, brick general store with groceries, dry goods, household items, and a short wall rack of old videos for the English to rent. In the back of the store, on worn wooden planking, an old-fashioned meat and cheese cooler stands next to a butcher’s block where the local residents, mostly Amish, have their goods sliced to order and wrapped in white or brown butcher’s paper. Out back is an ample lot for horses and buggies, where, on most days, an assortment of rigs will be hitched at the rail.
The Brandens stopped at the blinking yellow light, waited for a buggy to clear the intersection, and then began the long, slow climb up the steep hill out of Fredericksburg. The road climbed south and wound its way over the
hills into Holmes County. For the second day in a row, the sun was out strong in an astonishing aqua sky. A forecaster on Cleveland radio had read the pattern of winds aloft, and was calling for a clear and windless day, highs in the upper seventies.
After several miles, the Brandens turned onto a small gravel lane that disappeared into a stand of timber near a wooded stream. The road meandered with the stream and then carried them over the water on a bridge of wooden planks. As the stream fell away into a long valley of Amish farms to their left, the Brandens skirted high on the right, along the west rim. They passed large Amish houses and barns, Daadihauses, grape arbors, and watering troughs. Windmills stood idle against the sky amid fields of crops newly planted.
They passed a one-room schoolhouse with a woodshed. Behind the little school, there were two outhouses, and an old merry-go-round tilting wildly at an angle on its rusty center post. There was a softball diamond with a new backstop.
An engine shop and a family sawmill came up on the left, and then a little cemetery stood quietly on the right, with white head-stones in tall grass. A wagonload of kids, drawn by two sluggish Haflingers, came along the road from the other direction.
Eventually the road leveled out onto a wide, high plateau planted luxuriantly with spring crops. Iron-wheeled farm machines stood along the fences, motionless without their teams. In the distance, an Amish farmer in a straw hat stood atop a boxy red manure spreader, working his way through a fallow field behind a pair of draft horses.
Branden turned off the lane and followed a worn path of weed-choked gravel across a field of winter wheat. The little path looped back behind an oil pumper and came to an end at the southernmost edge of the high plateau. The view, at three points of the compass, carried the eyes to at least four counties.
Caroline stood beside their small sedan in the delicate, knee-high winter wheat and took in the panoramic vista. To her right, about two hundred yards farther west on the plateau, there was a tall red barn and a two-story white frame house, perched near the rim with a view into the west. Straight ahead, on a distant hill, she recognized the curves of Route 83 as it turned into Millersburg. To her left, she saw the receding hills in the east, where the miniature smokestacks of a plant near Massillon put a round puff of white against the horizon.