Fading Into the Night

by Vannetta Chapman

  “That’s our Dash all right.”

  But they didn’t find anything at the market, or in the crowds of tourists going from shop to shop, or in the restaurants. Nora gave Ben one of the radios and showed him how to use it, but the only time he called her was to see if she wanted one of JoJo’s Pretzels.

  They’d agreed to meet back at the buggy at noon. She got there first, and when she saw him hurrying toward her, she knew something had happened.

  “It’s Atlee. He’s got something. Wants us to meet him at the Yoder place, out beyond my farm.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Atlee told Jeremiah and Caleb, who he knew would be working their booths and would probably see me.”

  “You people don’t even need phones.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Though they’d be more efficient.”

  “You think?”

  “Trust me.”

  BEN WASN’T SURE WHAT he expected to find when they reached the Yoder farm. It was technically in the next church district, so he didn’t know the family well, but it was also within two miles of his place so he saw them fairly often passing on the road.

  When he arrived at the farm, Atlee was waiting on the porch. “Deborah and the other children have gone next door to her bruder’s. Didn’t think they needed to hear this.”

  They walked into a sitting room very much like his own. The only persons there were Thomas Yoder and his oldest daughter. Ben couldn’t remember her name.

  Atlee introduced everyone.

  The girl, Miriam, kept her eyes on the ground.

  Thomas explained the situation rather succinctly. “A man showed up here two weeks ago. Miriam told us that he knew our family in Ohio, and was passing through—needed work and a place to stay. So we put him in the Dawdi Haus, and he worked in the fields with me. Man knew nothing about farming, I can tell you that. He disappeared two nights ago. Bishop came to me, asking about strangers we might have seen in the area. I don’t know if this is the man you’re looking for or not.”

  Ben glanced at Nora, who was watching the girl intently.

  After a moment during which the father offered up nothing additional, Nora tapped her fingers against the arm of the chair she was sitting in. “What did he tell you his name was, Miriam?”

  “David. He said his name was David.”

  “And you thought he was Amish?”

  Miriam glanced at her father, then at the floor again.

  “Speak the truth to her, child. This is important.”

  “And what you tell us might save lives. You’d want that, wouldn’t you Miriam? You’d want to save people that David might hurt?”

  “He’d never do that.” She’d been fairly trembling, but now she looked up defiantly.

  “He must have seemed like a nice person to you.”

  “He was. He is.” She clutched her arms around her stomach. “I thought he was.”

  “Is there anything you can tell us? Anything at all?”

  “He was Englisch—taller than I am by a few inches, thin, and had dark hair. I met him...met him in town. I was there with some girlfriends, and he started talking to us. He seemed...seemed to like me best.”

  “Did he ask you to say he was Amish?” Ben was floored by the girl’s naiveté, but he could see that she was ashamed of what she’d done. In truth she was only guilty of being young and gullible.

  “He said it wouldn’t hurt anyone to pretend. He said that it would be like a game. We went shopping, and he had money to buy clothes... Amish clothes.”

  “And then you brought him home.” Nora sat forward, her forearms on her knees, her hands clasped together. “Why did he want to come home with you?”

  “Said he needed a place to stay a few weeks, and then...” Tears began running down her face. “And then he was going to take me with him. Said he had a place in California and that it looked out over the ocean. That he had family there—his mom and sisters—and I could stay with them.”

  “Tell me you were not planning to run away with that boy.” Her father’s face had blanched white.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know, Dat. It’s just... it seemed like my chance to go somewhere different, to be someone different. Is that so wrong?”

  When no one spoke, Atlee cleared his throat. “Your parents love you, Miriam, as does your Heavenly Father. What you’ve done is no worse than what all of us have done at one time or another. Trusting someone you shouldn’t, and recognizing that mistake, is part and parcel of growing up.”

  “So you’re not mad at me?”

  “No one’s mad,” Atlee assured her.

  Ben wasn’t so sure. Thomas looked pretty steamed, but then what parent wouldn’t be? No doubt that came from fear—fear over what could have happened.

  “Did he hurt you, Miriam?” Nora’s face had taken on a particular fierceness that Ben hadn’t seen before.

  “Nein.”

  “You’re certain about that? Because if he has, we can get you to a doctor.”

  “We only...only kissed a few times.”

  “Okay. Is there anything else...anything at all that you can tell us?”

  Nora’s patience surprised Ben. She’d apparently worked with timid witnesses before, though probably none of those had been Amish teenagers.

  “He had a gun. He told me it wasn’t loaded and that he just had it for when he was hitching rides, so no one would try any funny stuff.”

  “And a cell phone?”

  “Ya.”

  “All right. I’m going to get a sketch artist our here in the next hour. I’d like you to work with her.” Nora stood, thanked Atlee and Thomas and Miriam, and motioned to Ben that they could go. They were halfway to the door when Miriam spoke up, her voice pleading.

  “Do you really think he would hurt anyone?”

  “I know he would.” Nora walked back to the couch and pulled up the sleeve of her t-shirt, revealing the pressure bandage that Ben had changed that morning. “He did this—yesterday, and he also killed a man.”

  Miriam was visibly shaking now. “He made me promise not to tell. He told me it was our secret.”

  “What? What were you not supposed to tell?”

  “About the lake. About the little garden shed by the lake.”

  TWO HOURS LATER BEN and Nora stood on the old fishing dock at Lake Shipshewana. They’d found the shed where Dash had stored his supplies.

  “How did he even find this place?”

  “The man is resourceful.”

  “What do you think he was using it for?”

  “Maybe to store his electronic equipment, even a portable server. That would explain why his signal eventually bounced to this area, which he would have known that we’d see. He wanted us here. Wanted us close but not too close.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it shows his superiority.”

  Ben could practically feel the frustration building inside her. It was almost as if he’d known her for years instead of hours. She’d called in a tech crew and they were going over the shed, which couldn’t have been larger than six feet by six. It was amazing no one had stumbled on it.

  One of the techs poked his head out. “You’re going to want to see this.”

  They hurried over. The shed itself was dark, but the men were holding different sorts of light instruments in their hands that revealed blues, reds, and greens throughout the shed...as if colored paint had been splashed across the workbench and floor. Nora took one look and stormed out of the shed, to the end of the pier, and pulled out her phone. When she finished the call, she motioned to Ben.

  He hurried with her toward the buggy. “What just happened?”

  “Bomb residue. He’s doing it, Ben. He took advantage of that young girl, inserted himself into this community, and used her to provide an alibi to help him keep his secrets. He brought her out here and had her act as his lookout. He convinced her that he was doing important work, something that would ensure their future
together in California.”

  “Let me guess...this had nothing to do with California.”

  “Nothing. He was making a bomb, and Miriam? Miriam was covering for him, and she never knew it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We stop him. We find him and we stop him before that bomb he’s created has a chance to detonate.”

  Chapter 6

  THEY SPENT THE NEXT two hours going over their plan—studying a layout of the park and discussing contingencies. The director would send more people if he could, if the intel warranted it. Twenty different disaster scenarios in twenty different towns at the same time. Dash hadn’t been bluffing. Confirmation of sites similar to the fishing shed was coming in from all over the country. Once again, the agency was running a step behind.

  Chances were that help wouldn’t be coming. They should proceed as if they were on their own.

  They arrived back in town two hours before the concert was set to begin, splitting up and observing the park site from every angle, looking for anything suspicious, anything that would indicate exactly where or how he planned to detonate the explosive.

  They came up with nothing. The park was clean.

  The sketch artist had finished working with Miriam and had forwarded a composite sketch of Dash. Nora uploaded it to her phone, and they showed it to anyone who might have seen him.

  Her director had shared pertinent information with the local police, along with a warning that a dangerous suspect was in the area. Nora didn’t bother providing those details to the people she showed the sketch. They didn’t need to know, and she didn’t want to alarm them when this could be a mere distraction perpetrated by Dash. The director thought it was real. The intelligence confirmed it was real, as did what they’d found in the shed.

  But Dash was wily. He could have planted all of this and killed Tate. He could also be far away by now, planning something much worse. No one had seen a man fitting Dash’s description.

  No one had seen anything out of place.

  Nora released the clip from her gun, checked that it was full, slapped the clip back in, and racked the slide.

  “We’ll find him,” Ben assured her.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.” He nodded as if it were possible to become more convinced by saying it. “We will.”

  They’d met back at the buggy and taken a moment to arm up, which equaled Nora checking the gun she’d been carrying all day and slipping an extra clip into the back pocket of her jeans.

  “Still have your radio?”

  Ben held it up and wiggled it back and forth. “You?”

  She patted the front of her denim vest. She’d feel better in her Kevlar, but you couldn’t walk around a Saturday night concert in Kevlar and not alarm people. “Let’s go.”

  They were running out of time.

  In spite of the information her director had shared with the local police, the decision was made to go ahead with the evening’s festivities. Local officials were skeptical that any sort of terrorist attack could happen in their town. They’d put their entire police force on duty for the event, but other than Tate’s dead body they’d found nothing to concern them. Perhaps he’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Someone was making announcements over the large speakers set up around the park. “Music starts in twenty minutes, folks. Get your refreshments, grab the kids, and find your seats. We’ll start at seven o’clock sharp.”

  Nora exchanged a glance with Ben. Twenty minutes. Whatever was going to happen would happen soon.

  They walked side-by-side through the crowd and stopped near the center. Standing back to back they pivoted in a circle, watching, looking, needing to separate the madman from the crowd.

  He was there.

  She knew it as surely as Ben knew they would find him. Why couldn’t she see him? Why couldn’t she stop what was about to happen? She hadn’t been able to save Tate, but she would avenge his murder. All her training ached to fire the shot that would stop this.

  As her frustration built to a near crescendo, she found herself doing something she hadn’t done in many years. In her heart, she cried out to God. Surely He would save these people. He wouldn’t allow such destruction to happen.

  Would He?

  If she’d hoped to hear a still small voice, she was disappointed.

  No angel appeared at her side directing her right or left.

  No heavenly chorus broke into song declaring what her path should be.

  She broke out of her reverie when a small boy standing next to her grabbed his mother’s hand. Amish, wearing the same clothes as his father only in miniature, he looked up at his momma—his mamm as Ben said. The smile on the child’s face was practically angelic, and his voice, though pleading, hadn’t slipped into a whine. “You promised. Remember? If I ate all my dinner, if I was good, I could have a snow cone. I’ve been good. Right?”

  The mother laughed. “Ya, you’ve been very gut.”

  “Snow cones,” Ben said, his voice a whisper in her ear.

  “What?”

  “Snow cones.” He turned south. “I’ve never...I’ve never seen a snow cone truck in Shipshe before.”

  They broke into a run at the same moment, dodging families, feinting left and right.

  The snow cone truck was parked near the stage. A long line of children waited patiently for their turn. Nora nearly tripped over a toddler. A parent called out, “Hey, slow down before you hurt someone,” and Dash looked up from the trailer’s window. His eyes met hers, and even from the distance of thirty yards she saw a smile twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  Then he was gone.

  Adrenaline coursed through her veins and she ran harder, faster, hitting the back steps of the trailer at the same time that Ben did.

  No one was there. Dash had fled. She scanned the room and saw jars of syrup, chests of ice, a cash drawer, and beneath the counter a box flashing three minutes.

  Not enough time.

  She couldn’t call in a bomb squad. She didn’t know how to dismantle it.

  Ben was standing behind her, his breathing ragged.

  “Get them out of here, Ben. Get them all away from this trailer.”

  She darted out the back, spotted Dash crossing the main road, and took off after him.

  THE RED NUMBERS FLASHED 2:55, 2:54, 2:53.

  Ben’s life had come to this. His purpose was in the small faces looking up to the window, waiting for a cold syrupy treat on a summer evening in August.

  The woman standing at the front of the line with three children looked up in alarm as he tore around the corner of the trailer. He picked up the smallest, tossed the child into her arms, and tucked the other two under his arms as if they were no heavier than the scarecrows his mamm once kept in her garden.

  “There’s a bomb! Run! Everyone run!”

  Later he would puzzle over why they believed him—an Amish man, snatching up children and screaming of Armageddon.

  He would never completely understand the why or even the how of it, but they did believe him.

  People started running—Amish and Englisch— helping one another to their feet and urging each other to move faster. A great wave of humanity all seeking a safe harbor. They left behind blankets and dinners and baskets and baby strollers. They left behind the things of their lives that didn’t really matter, the things that could be purchased again. They grabbed their loved ones and their friends and the strangers beside them, and they moved with great urgency to the opposite side of the park.

  He’d stayed toward the back after handing the children over to their father and pushing them to the north, telling them to go—to run. Ben’s mind tried to calculate how much time had passed since he stepped out of the trailer.

  What were the red numbers flashing now?

  Had they moved everyone in time?

  His eyes scanned the sea of possessions in front of him, needing to be sure that no one was left. A woman�
�s voice came over the speakers telling everyone to remain calm, and sirens were blaring in the distance.

  And then the red, glowing numbers on the small black box must have reached zero because there was an explosion, and people were screaming, and something was running down the side of his face. And the spot where the snow cone trailer had been was nothing more than a wall of flame.

  NORA KEPT UP WITH DASH until he ducked behind the Davis Mercantile.

  She had gained a lot of ground, but he was a few seconds ahead of her, and when she turned the corner she saw only a quilt shop window, closed stores, empty parking spaces. Everyone was at the park. She’d heard the explosion as she was running but hadn’t turned back. She couldn’t turn back. He would do it again, and it would be worse. She was not going to let that happen.

  Her radio squeaked—Ben asking where she was. She reached up with her left and turned the volume all the way down. She led with her right, the bicep once again throbbing, the gun in front of her and chest high. She walked down the alley behind the building, heel to toe, silent except for the sound of her beating heart raging in her ears.

  He’d stashed a car there, an old beat up Volkswagen. He looked up as he slipped the key into the lock, and again he smiled.

  “Step away from the car.”

  “Shouldn’t you be over there? Saving people?” The smile slipped away, like a mask might fall off an actor, and she saw him for what he was—a bitter, frightened, and angry man.

  “I said, step away from the car.”

  “You people. Your money is so important to you that you’d rather risk the lives of hundreds, of thousands...”

  “Both hands in the air.” She closed the gap between them to ten feet and pointed the gun like they’d first trained her—center of mass.

  “I was trying to keep you safe. I was trying to wake you up.”

  “With a bomb in a public park?”

  “You should be thanking me. Now you see how vulnerable you are. Now everyone will see. These people think they’re safe because they’re in a small town, but no one’s safe. Not anymore.”