He shakes his head. “I cited Hoskins.”
Garth Hoskins is eighteen years old and drives a 1971 Mustang fastback that has more horses than the kid has brain cells.
“I’ll talk to him,” I say.
The room falls silent, all eyes landing on me. I tell them everything I know about the case. “Apparently, Perry and Irene Mast suffered some kind of breakdown after their daughter committed suicide. For reasons unknown, they held their son responsible and imprisoned him. They began preying on troubled Amish teens.”
“How many dead?” Glock asks.
“Four,” I tell him. “Coroner’s office is still there.”
“How’s Sadie Miller doing?” Lois asks.
“I’m going to drive over there and take her final statement in a few minutes,” I tell her.
My cell phone vibrates against my hip. I see Tomasetti’s name on the display and hit TALK as I start toward my office. “You make it home okay?”
“Been here a couple of hours,” he tells me. “What about you?”
“Letting myself into my office now.” I toss my keys on my desk. “Any news?”
“Noah Mast is missing. He left the hospital this morning and no one has seen him since.”
“That’s odd. They checked the farmhouse? The tunnel? Sometimes people go back to the places they’re used to, even if those places are unpleasant.”
Tomasetti makes a sound that tells me he’s not convinced. “If he doesn’t turn up in the next hour or so, the sheriff’s office is going to put out an APB.”
“You don’t think he hurt himself, do you?”
“Nothing would surprise me at this point.” He pauses. “Have you talked with Sadie Miller yet?”
“I’m heading out to the farm now. I’ll send my report your way as soon as I get everything typed up.”
*
I find Esther Miller in the backyard of her farm house, hanging trousers on the clothesline. A wicker basket full of damp clothes sits at her feet. She smiles around the clothespin in her mouth when I approach.
“Guder mariye,” I say, wishing her a good morning.
“Wie bischt du heit?” How are you today?
She looks like a different woman. Her eyes are bright and alive, and I can tell she’s truly happy to see me. Dropping the trousers back into the basket, she crosses to me, throws her arms around me, and clings.
“Gott segen eich.” God bless you. She’s not crying, but I feel her trembling against me. “Thank you for bringing her back to us.”
After a moment, feeling awkward, I ease her to arm’s length and offer a smile. “How is she?”
“Good. Happy, I think.” She blinks back tears. “She’s to be baptized in two weeks.”
“I’m happy for you.” But I feel a pang in my gut. I think of Sadie’s passion for her needlework and the part of her that will be lost when she takes her oath to the church, and I realize something inside me mourns its loss.
“I need to get a final statement from her, Esther. Is she busy?”
“She is in the barn, feeding the new calf.” Bending, she reaches for the trousers, pins them to the clothesline. “Go on, Katie. She’ll be happy to see you. I’ll be out as soon as I get these clothes hung.”
I take the crumbling sidewalk to the hulking red barn. The big sliding door stands open. The smells of fresh-cut hay and horse manure greet me when I enter. An old buggy in need of paint sits in the shadows to my left. I hear Sadie singing an old Annie Lennox song, and I head toward where the sound is coming from.
I find her in a stall. She’s holding an aluminum pail with a large nipple affixed to the base. A newborn calf with a white face sucks greedily at the nipple, his eyes rolling back as he gulps and nudges vigorously at the pail. The sweet scent of milk replacer fills the air, and for an instant the familiarity of the scene transports me to the past.
“He’s cute,” I tell her.
Sadie looks up from her work and grins. She’s wearing a light blue dress with a white apron and kapp. There’s no sign of the girl who was fighting on the bridge just a few days ago. The transformation seems to go deeper than clothing. There’s a peace in her eyes I didn’t see before. “He is a she and her mamm has decided she wants nothing to do with her.”
“She might come around.”
“Maybe.” She looks down at the calf and smiles. “I kind of like bottle-feeding her, though.”
We watch the animal in silence for a moment and then I ask, “How are you doing?”
She doesn’t look at me. “Fine.”
“Your mamm tells me you’ll be getting baptized soon.”
“After everything that happened with…” Her words trail off. “I think it was God’s way of telling me the path I should take.”
“That’s good, Sadie. I’m happy for you.”
The calf’s mouth slips from the nipple. We laugh when she makes a slurping sound and reattaches.
“I need to ask you some questions about what happened,” I say.
Sadie nods, but she still doesn’t look at me. “Are they in jail?”
“They’re dead,” I tell her.