A stinging retort teeters on the tip of my tongue. But I know losing my temper won’t win me any points. Trying not to gnash my teeth, I step back and walk over to Liza Kaufman. She refuses to make eye contact with me, but the two teenage boys have no problem meeting my gaze. “Can one of you tell me what happened?”
“We want no involvement in this,” says a tall blond boy. I guess him to be about fourteen years old. He wears a brown wool coat that looks at least two sizes too big, and has the sharp, intelligent eyes of his father.
“You’re already involved, whether you like it or not.”
He tightens his lips.
“Sticking your head in the sand is only going to make things worse.”
When he has nothing to say about that, I skewer the second boy with a hard look. “What about you? Do you know who did this?”
He’s older. Maybe sixteen. Tall and skinny, with huge feet he hasn’t yet grown into. I can tell by the way his eyes skate away from mine that he takes after his mother. Less confrontational, but no less stubborn. “I do not wish to be involved,” he tells me.
“You don’t have to get involved. Just tell me what you saw, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Enough!”
I look over my shoulder and see the elder Kaufman glaring at me. “‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers!’” his voice thunders. “‘For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness?’”
Those two Bible passages epitomize the Amish view of separation from the rest of the world. I heard them many times as a child. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I began to question the whole idea of separateness. By the time I was eighteen, I knew I would never fit in.
I glare back at Kaufman. “Mer sott em sei Eegne net verlosse; Gott verlosst die Seine nicht.”
For an instant, he looks taken aback. I can’t tell if it’s because of the words or my use of Pennsylvania Dutch, but his uncertainty doesn’t last. Bringing his hands together sharply, he motions toward the house. “I’ve said my piece.” He looks toward his wife and sons. “There’s work to be done.”
I stand in the lightly falling sleet and watch the family walk away. Frustration is a knot in my chest. For the span of several minutes, Pickles and I don’t speak. It’s so quiet, I can hear the sleet hitting the trees and the dry leaves on the ground. The sizzle and pop of moisture against the still-hot wood of the burned-out buggy.
Pickles comes up beside me. “Chief, I hate to lay this on you, but I think I just connected a couple of dots that are starting to make a pretty ugly picture.”
I start toward the Explorer, pissed, my mind still on Kaufman. “What are you talking about?”
He falls in beside me. “I took a call from the widow Humerick last night.” He tells me an unsettling story about an old Amish woman whose four sheep were found slaughtered in their pens. “Them sheep wasn’t killed by dogs or coyotes, Chief. Someone went into the pen and slaughtered those animals.”
I’ve met the widow Humerick a couple of times over the last three years. She’s one of the more colorful characters in Painters Mill. No family or friends. She claims to be Amish, but the church district refuses to claim her as one of its own. Of course, when she shows up for worship—albeit on a hit or miss basis—Bishop Troyer doesn’t turn her away. She’s got a personality like sandpaper and invariably rubs people the wrong way. She’s been involved in half a dozen incidents over the years, ranging from simple assault to making terroristic threats. Every time, she’s been the perpetrator, not the victim.
Regardless of her reputation, I have a sinking suspicion the dead sheep might have more to do with hate than with an old woman’s prickly personality; that we may be dealing with something much more insidious than vandalism. “Used to be these kinds of crimes were harmless pranks,” I say. “Bored teenagers. Drunken idiots.” I sigh. “Sounds like this might be something else.”
“I don’t get the Amish-hating thing,” Pickles says.
“Hate never makes any sense.” But I’ve heard all the reasons behind the crimes. The Amish are stupid. They’re dirty. Incestuous. Religious fanatics. The buggies hold up traffic. It’s all bullshit, except for the traffic reference, anyway.
Part of the problem is that a large number of incidents go unreported. As a result, the perpetrators are rarely caught or punished. The Amish endure in silence much the same way they’ve endured persecution the last two hundred years.
“Someone’s kicking it up a notch.”
“Molotov cocktail’s pretty damn serious.”
“Someone could have been killed.”
Killed. The word conjures a possibility my brain wants desperately to deny. For a moment, I’m so shocked by the direction my mind has gone, I can’t speak. I sure as hell don’t want to say it aloud. That would make the connection too real. “Shit, Pickles. You don’t think…”
The old man’s eyes widen. “The Slabaughs? I don’t know, Chief.”
I nod, and we go silent, our minds grinding out thoughts too ugly to voice. After a moment, I shake my head. “Triple murder would be one hell of a leap.”