He motions toward the hog. “When the hair slips easily, pull it out. I won’t be long.”
Without looking at us, he peels off his gloves and removes his blood-spattered apron. He tosses both on the scraping table and starts toward us. Perry Mast is a tall, thin man with sagging jowls and hound-dog eyes. He wears black work trousers with a dark blue shirt, black suspenders, a black vest, and a flat-brimmed straw hat.
“I am Perry Mast,” he says by way of greeting.
Tomasetti and I introduce ourselves, letting him know we’re with BCI. Neither of us offers our hand.
“Is this about my son?” he asks.
The question is clearly devoid of hope. And I wonder how many times during the last nine years he asked other law-enforcement officials the same question. I wonder how many times their answers tore the last remnants of hope from his heart.
“I’m sorry, no. There’s a girl who’s missing,” I tell him. “An Amish girl. Annie King.”
“Ja.” He closes his eyes briefly. “I heard.”
Tomasetti motions toward the door. “Is your wife home, Mr. Mast? We’d like to speak with her, as well.”
Mast looks as if he’s going to refuse; then his shoulders slump and he seems to resign himself to unavoidable unpleasantness. “This way,” he says, and leads us through the door.
*
A few minutes later, Perry Mast, Tomasetti, and I are sitting at the table in their small, cluttered kitchen. The interior of the house isn’t much neater than the exterior. Dozens of jars of canned fruits and vegetables cover every available surface on the avocado green countertops. A hand-painted bread box—perhaps from the Branch Creek Joinery—encloses a crusty loaf of bread. A well-seasoned cast-iron skillet sits atop the big potbellied stove. The open cabinets expose stacks of mismatched dishes—blue Melmac and chipped pieces of stoneware—and sealed jars of honey with chunks of honeycomb inside. Homemade window treatments dash the final vestiges of daylight, giving the kitchen a cavelike countenance. A kerosene-powered refrigerator wheezes and groans. The lingering sulfur stink of manure has me thinking twice about coffee.
Irene Mast stands at the counter, running water into an old-fashioned percolator. She’s a substantial woman, barely over five feet tall, with thinning silver hair and a bald spot at her crown. She wears a light blue dress with a white apron and low-heeled, practical shoes. The ties of her kapp dangle down her back. She hasn’t said a word since we were introduced a few minutes ago, but she immediately set about making coffee and bringing out a tin of peanut-butter cookies.
“I understand you’re a deacon, Mr. Mast,” I say.
The man looks down at the plate in front of him, gives a single, solemn nod.
“It is a heavy burden,” Irene tells me.
“We’d like to talk to you about your son, Noah,” Tomasetti begins.
The woman’s back stiffens at the mention of her son, but when she turns to us, her expression is serene. “It’s been nine years now.” She doesn’t look at us as she pours coffee into cups.
That’s when I notice the fourth place setting: a plate and silverware, a cup for coffee, a plastic tumbler for milk.
“Nine years is a long time,” I say.
Irene sets a plate with two cookies on it in front of me. “At first, we hoped, you know. We prayed a lot. But after so much time … we’ve come to believe he is with God.”
“Do you believe he left of his own accord?” I ask. “Or do you think something bad happened to him?”
The Amish man looks down at the plate in front of him. He’s got blood spatter on his shirt, a red smear on the back of his neck. He didn’t wash his hands when he came in.
“Noah got into some trouble,” Perry says. “The way young men do sometimes.”
“What kind of trouble?” I ask.
“The drinking, you know. The listening to music. And he liked … the girls.”
“He confessed his sins before the bishop,” Irene adds.
In the eyes of the Amish, confessing your sins is the equivalent of a “Get out of jail free” card. No matter how heinous the offense, if you confess, you are forgiven.
“The English police say Noah wanted to leave the plain life,” Perry says after a moment. “I don’t know who told them that. We don’t believe it. We never did.”
“Noah loved being Amish.” Emotion flashes in Irene’s eyes. “He was a humble boy with a kind and generous heart.”
“What do you think happened to him?” Tomasetti asks.
Perry shakes his head. “We don’t know. The things the Englischers say…” His voice trails off, as if he’s long since tired of saying the words.
I skimmed the file that had been amassed on Noah before leaving the sheriff’s office. A missing-person report was filed. People were interviewed, searches conducted. The cops—and most of the Amish, too—believed the boy ran away.
“What did the Englischers say?” I ask gently.