“Are they looking at you?”
“Probably. They won’t find anything.” He looks down at our clasped hands and then makes eye contact with me. “Are we all right?”
“Yes,” I say.
As he walks out the door, all I can think is that they didn’t find anything the last time the police looked at him, and Tomasetti had been guilty as sin.
CHAPTER 30
I arrive at the station a little after seven. I’m preoccupied by my conversation with Tomasetti and operating in a fog as I go through the front door. Mona greets me with her usual cheery, “Hey Chief,” as I make a beeline for the coffee station.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Jodie’s flooded in, so I told her I’d cover her shift.” She rises and crosses to me, her hand extended with a dozen or so pink slips. “I hate to hit you with this with everything else that’s going on, but I just took a 911 from Randy Trask. He says the water’s up over the Tuscarawas Bridge.”
“Of course it is,” I mutter.
The Tuscarawas Bridge is a covered bridge of historical significance and a Painters Mill icon that spans Painters Creek and part of a floodplain. “Get T.J. out there to set up flares. Notify the sheriff’s department.” I take the messages and glance through them. “I want the road blocked and a detour set up.” I pour coffee into my cup, knowing there’s always some motorist who’s in a hurry and takes a chance by driving through high water. “Give the mayor a call and put in a call to ODOT.”
“Will do.” I can tell by the way she’s fidgeting that she’s got something else on her mind. Before I can ask, she blurts, “Chief, I think I found something on Ruth Weaver.”
I set the coffeepot back on the burner and give her my full attention. “Let’s see it.”
I follow her to the dispatch station. She slides behind her computer and deftly runs her fingers over the keyboard. An instant later, a photo of an Amish woman appears on the screen. I guess her to be about twenty-five to thirty years old. Plain gray dress. Dark bonnet. Swartzentruber, I think.
“I found it on a blog site,” she tells me. “A blogger posted it eight years ago on a site called A Lid for Every Pot.”
“That’s an old Amish saying,” I murmur.
“I was just messing around and did a search for Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania, and the blog came up. I started reading, and the blogger, a lady by the name of Gwen Malcolm, had driven across Pennsylvania while on vacation and ran across this Amish woman on the roadside selling handwoven baskets. She bought a basket and started talking to the woman and somehow ended up taking the photo, which she used in her blog.”
“That’s surprising,” I say. “That dress and bonnet are Swartzentruber.”
“According to the blogger, the Amish woman’s name is Ruth Weaver.”
I lean closer to the monitor. “Can you enlarge it?”
“Yeah, but we lose resolution.” She taps a menu tab, and a larger but grainier photo augments.
I stare at the woman’s face, and a vague sense of familiarity grips me. I know it’s impossible; I’ve never met Ruth Weaver. Still, staring at the photo is like having a word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite conjure. “Mona, I think I’ve seen her before.”
“Here in Painters Mill? Or when you drove over to Pennsylvania?”
“I’m not sure. But her face … there’s something familiar about her.”
“Like passing-on-the-street familiar or you’ve-talked-to-her familiar?”
“I don’t know.” I shift my attention to Mona. “See if you can get in touch with the blogger and get your hands on a better photo. Or if she has others, ask her to send them.”
“I’ll do it right now.”
“E-mail it to me.”
“Will do.”
Half an hour later, I’m in my office on my second cup of coffee, staring at the grainy photo on my twenty-one-inch monitor. I hit the Print key and the printer spits out a not-so-great black-and-white reproduction. Grabbing it out of the tray, I leave my office, and head to the jail cell located in the basement.
Skid is sitting in the chair with his feet on the desk, playing with his iPad. “Oh. Hey.” His fleet slide from the desk. “Didn’t realize you were here.”
I glance at the cell, where Blue Branson lies on his cot, watching me. “Get up,” I tell him, crossing to the cell door.
The big man rolls and gets to his feet. His hair is mussed. His face pushed slightly aside. His typically crisp white shirt is wilted. Somehow he looks older than last time I saw him. He looks at me with eyes shot with red as he pulls his black jacket over his shoulders.
“I need you to look at a photo,” I tell him.
“All right.” He approaches me.
When he’s close enough, I produce the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch photo. “Do you recognize this woman?”