It went against Matt’s strong sense of right and wrong, but he finally shrugged. “Have it your way.” Both men went back to the girl. “I’m going to take a look at the scene,” Matt said.
Hannah trembled. “I don’t have to go, do I?”
“No, you stay here with Detective O’Connor.” At the house, Matt ducked under the yellow tape at the door and entered the living room. Halogen lights mounted around the room illuminated the bodies lying on the wood floor. “What have we got?” he asked Sturgis.
“Two adults, I’d guess in their early fifties. Poisoning, maybe strychnine from the contortions of the bodies. The autopsy will tell us.” He nodded toward a heap of cloth. “A quilt was over them. The daughter removed it before we were called.”
“Who called it in?” Matt asked.
“The daughter. She went out to the greenhouse and used the phone there.”
“They have a phone?”
The captain shrugged. “The Amish use phones in their businesses. You ever notice the little phone booths out by the road in their communities? Some of the families will share a phone, but they only use it to make appointments or do business. They don’t want it intruding on their personal lives.”
Matt depended on his cell phone. He barely glanced at the quilt before allowing his gaze to wander the room. A sofa with worn seat cushions sat against the middle of the wall. Sturdy wooden tables, most likely handmade, flanked it with gaslights flickering on top of them. No rugs, no wall ornamentation or pictures.
A red symbol and words on the wall caught his attention. “Blood?” he asked.
“Paint.” Sturgis stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and chomped on it.
Matt wanted to chomp on something himself, anything to get the vile taste of murder out of his mouth. “It’s a peace symbol. We know what this is all about?”
“Well, the Amish are all about peace. Maybe it’s a hate crime in some twisted way.”
“A hate crime against the Amish?”
“That was my first thought. It seems very well thought-out. The killer brought in everything he would need.”
“Not everything,” Matt said, his gaze lighting on a spilled pool of liquid. “Hannah Schwartz mixed up some lemonade that came in the mail.”
“Might be coincidence.”
“Maybe.” But Matt would lay money on finding poison in the drink. “What about the foreign word? We know what it means?”
“Not yet. I think it’s Greek.”
Parke County was a quiet area, and murder was uncommon here. The largest town in this west-central Indiana community was Rockville, where Matt lived, with a population of 2,650. The joke in the area was that they had more covered bridges than residents. Driving through thick forests and hills was a peaceful pastime of Matt’s. He’d been on the force less than a year, and this was his first murder. Seeing something like this was a shock he could not imagine getting used to.
Matt dragged his gaze from the bodies. “Let’s get the Schwartz woman in here and ask her some more questions. I’ll have one of the deputies take Ajax out and see if he can get a scent on the perp.”
TWO
“Demut and gelassenheit are at the heart of a good life, Hannah. Accept whatever God gives you without murmur.”
PATRICIA SCHWARTZ
Sitting on the porch of the plain white farmhouse, Hannah couldn’t quit rocking. The cold wind laden with the scent of water from the lake behind the house tugged at the strings of her bonnet and lifted the hem of her long skirt. The rocking calmed the screams still hunkering in her throat. It’s not true. It’s not.
The chant echoed in her heart over and over. This had to be a nightmare. She’d awaken any moment to find herself helping Mamm make noodles or shoofly pie. She’d hear Datt yodeling on his way in from the greenhouse.
She’d expected God to punish her for her sin. Even when she’d put her black shoes on the road to the bridge, the knowledge settled over her like one of her mother’s heavy quilts. The heart commits sin first, and her heart was as black as the night. This punishment, though, was too much. She couldn’t bear it.
Reece stayed close, but she huddled inside herself, undeserving of his comfort.
“Hannah, liebling?”
Hannah looked up to see her aunt Nora and her cousin Moe standing by the steps. “You’re not yodeling now,” she told Moe. Confusion contorted his face, and she knew she wasn’t making sense.
Her aunt rushed up the steps with her arms outstretched. Hannah rose to meet her and practically fell into her arms. “They’re dead,” she sobbed. The screams she’d been holding back built in her throat, moving closer to her mouth. She clamped her teeth closed again.
Nora held her, their tears mingling. Hannah became conscious of Moe’s big hand on her shoulder too. He wouldn’t know what to say, but his presence calmed her. Nora had to be grieving too. She’d lost the brother she loved. How could a loving God allow something like this to happen? Hannah didn’t understand.
“Ms. Schwartz?”
Hannah lifted her gaze to meet that of the young cop. She struggled past the cotton wool in her brain to find his name. Deputy Beitler. He was a merciless hunter, his blue eyes assessing her for any weakness. His gaze softened for a moment, then hardened to flint again.
He couldn’t blame her any more than she blamed herself.
“Come inside with me a minute. There are some questions we need to ask, and we want you to see if anything is missing in the home.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. Her gaze went past his shoulder to the black body bags being wheeled out of the house on gurneys. A scream rose in her throat, but she locked it behind her teeth. Her mouth and eyes watered with the effort of holding in her grief.
“Be strong, Hannah,” Moe said. “We’ll go with you if you need us.”
Before she could answer, she heard the sound of buggy wheels and the deep vibration of her cousin Luca’s voice calling to her. The blood rushed to her head, and without realizing she was moving, she found herself by the buggy as Luca swung his boots to the ground. He was more like a brother than a cousin to her, having lived with the Schwartz family since he was five.
The Amish didn’t hold much with hugging, but in her desperation for comfort, she hurtled herself into her cousin’s arms. He smelled of sweat and horse as his arms came around her awkwardly, though he hugged her as tightly as she clung to him. His chest heaved, and she knew he’d heard the news.
She lifted her head and saw his shocked gaze on the body bags being loaded into the emergency vehicle, but she couldn’t turn and look too. One glimpse had been too much to bear.
“Both of them?” he whispered.
She wet her lips, but no words could make it past the tight constriction of her throat, so she merely nodded.
His gaze roamed her face as though to seek out some glimmer of hope. When he found none, his shoulders drooped. “It is God’s will,” he said. “Will we not accept both good and evil from his hand?”
It was the way of the Amish to accept whatever came, to turn the other cheek when injured. But both of Hannah’s cheeks felt brutalized, left raw and bleeding. She had no more to give. Seeing the bodies of her parents had shattered her innocence. The pain in their faces had driven a spike deep into her heart and left a wound that would never heal. Why should they have had to suffer on her behalf? And there was another death, one few people knew about. Mamm was going to have a baby after many years of trying.
Luca released her, and she followed him as he went to where Reece stood with Deputy Beitler. Nora and Moe were a few feet away, and Moe was comforting his mother. Even if Luca was unaware of the detective’s speculative stare, she was not. How could the man suspect they might be capable of such a horrible deed? He must know nothing about her or her people.
Luca stopped in front of the detectives. “I am Luca Schwartz, Hannah’s cousin. I live here too. Can you tell me what has happened?”