Plain Truth (52 page)

He cleared his throat. “Samuel Stoltzfus. Blossom Hill Road, East Paradise Township.” He hesitated, then added, “Pennsylvania, U.S.A.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stoltzfus.”

“Ellie,” he whispered loudly, “you can call me Samuel.”

I grinned. “Okay. Samuel. Are you a little bit nervous?”

“Yes.” The word came out on a guffaw of relief.

“I'll bet. Have you ever been in court before?”

“No.”

“Did you ever think you would be in court, one day?”

He shook his head.
“Ach
, no. We don't believe in the filing of lawsuits, so I never gave it a minute's thought.”

“By ‘we' you mean whom?”

“The People,” he said.

“The Amish?”

“Yes.”

“Were you asked to be a witness today?”

“No. I volunteered.”

“You willingly put yourself into an uncomfortable situation? Why?”

His clear, blue gaze locked on Katie. “Because she didn't murder her baby.”

“How do you know?”

“I've known her my whole life. Since we were kids. I've seen her every single day for years. Now I work for Katie's father on the farm.”

“Really? What do you do there?”

“Anything Aaron tells me to do, pretty much. Mostly, I'm there to help with the planting and the harvesting. Oh,
ja
, and the milking. It's a dairy.”

“When is the milking done, Samuel?”

“Four-thirty
A.M
. and four-thirty
P.M
.”

“What does it entail?”

George raised a brow. “Objection. Do we really need a lesson in farm management?”

“I'm laying foundation, Your Honor,” I argued.

“Overruled. Mr. Stoltzfus, you may answer the question.”

Samuel nodded. “Well, we start by mixing the feed. Then we shovel up behind the stanchions, and that goes into the manure pit. Aaron's got twenty cows, so this takes a while. Then we wipe down their teats and put on the milking pump, which runs on generator. Two cows get hooked up at a time, did I say that? The milk goes into a can that gets dumped into the bulk tank. And usually in the middle we have to stop and shovel up behind 'em again.”

“When does the milk company truck come to pick up the milk?”

“Every other day, save the Lord's Day. When it falls on a Sunday, it comes crazy times, like Saturdays at midnight.”

“Is the milk pasteurized before the truck takes it?”

“No, that happens after it leaves the farm.”

“Do the Fishers get their milk from the supermarket?”

Samuel grinned. “That would be sort of silly, wouldn't it? Like buying bacon when you've just slaughtered a perfectly good pig. The Fishers drink their own fresh milk. I have to bring a pitcher in to Katie's mother twice a day.”

“So the milk the Fishers drink has not yet been pasteurized?”

“No, but it tastes just the same as the stuff you get in the white plastic jug. You've had it. Don't you think so?”

“Objection—could someone remind the witness that he's not supposed to be asking questions?” George said.

The judge leaned sideways. “Mr. Stoltzfus, I'm afraid the prosecutor's right.”

The big man reddened and looked into his lap. “Samuel,” I said quickly, “why do you feel that you know Katie so well?”

“I've seen her in so many situations I know how she acts— when she's sad, when she's happy. I was there when her sister drowned, when her brother got banned for good from the church. Two years ago, too, we started to go together.”

“You mean date?”

“Ja.”

“Were you dating when Katie had the baby?”

“Yes.”

“Were you there when she gave birth?”

“No, I wasn't,” Samuel said. “I found out later.”

“Did you think at the time that it was your baby?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He cleared his throat. “We never slept together.”

“Did you know who the father of that baby was?”

“No. Katie wouldn't tell me.”

I softened my voice. “How did that make you feel?”

“Pretty bad. She was my girl, you see. I didn't understand what had happened.”

For a moment, I simply let the jury look at Samuel. A strong, good-looking man dressed in clothes that seemed strange, speaking haltingly in his second language, trying to keep afloat in a situation that was completely unfamiliar to him. “Samuel,” I said. “Your girlfriend gets pregnant with someone else's baby—the baby's mysteriously found dead, although you're not there to see how it happens—you're nervous about being in a courtroom to testify—yet you've come here to tell us she
didn't
commit murder?”

“That's right.”

“Why are you sticking up for Katie, who, by all means, has wronged you?”

“Everything you said, Ellie, it's true. I should be very angry. I was, for a time, but now I'm not. Now I've gotten past my own selfishness to where I've got to help her. See, when you're Plain, you don't put yourself forward. You just don't do it, because that would be
Hochmut
—puffing yourself up—and the truth is there's always others more important than you. So Katie, when she hears others telling lies about her and this baby, she won't want to fight back, or stand up for herself. I am here to stand up for her.” As if listening to his own his words, he slowly got to his feet and stared at the jury. “She did not do this. She could not do this.”

Every one of the twelve was arrested by the image of Samuel's face, set with quiet, fierce conviction. “Samuel, do you still love her?”

He turned, his eyes sliding past me to light on Katie. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

George tapped his forefinger against his lips. “She was your girlfriend, but she was sleeping with some other guy?”

Samuel's eyes narrowed. “Did you not just hear what I said?”

The prosecutor held up his hands. “Just wondering about your feelings on that subject, that's all.”

“I didn't come here to talk about my feelings. I came here to talk about Katie. She's done nothing wrong.”

I covered my chuckle with a cough. For someone inexperienced, Samuel could be a hell of a mountain to move. “Does your religion practice forgiveness, Mr. Stoltzfus?” George asked.

“Samuel.”

“All right, then. Samuel. Does your religion practice forgiveness?”

“Yes. If a person humbles himself and confesses to his sin, he'll always be welcome back in the church.”

“After he admits to what he did.”

“After confessing, that's true.”

“Okay. Now let's forget about the church for a minute. Don't answer as an Amishman, just answer as a person. Aren't there some things you just can't excuse?”

Samuel's lips tightened. “I cannot answer without thinking Plain, because it's who I am. And if I couldn't forgive someone, it wouldn't be their problem, but mine, because I wasn't being a true Christian.”

“In this particular case, you personally forgave Katie.”

“Yes.”

“But you just said that forgiveness implies the other party has already confessed to a sin.”

“Well…
ja
.”

“So if you forgave Katie, she must have done something wrong—in spite of the fact that you told us not five minutes ago she didn't.”

Samuel was silent for a moment. I held my breath, waiting for George to strike the killing blow. Then the Amishman looked up. “I am not a smart man, Mr. Callahan. I didn't go to college, like you. I don't really know what you're trying to ask me. Yes, I forgave Katie—but not for killing a baby. The only thing I had to forgive Katie for was breaking my heart.” He hesitated. “And I don't think even you English can put her in jail for that.”

Owen Zeigler was apparently allergic to the courtroom. For the sixth time in as many minutes, he sneezed, covering his nose with a florid paisley handkerchief. “Sorry.
Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Judge Ledbetter.

“Dust mites. Nasty little creatures. They live in pillows, mattresses—and, I'll bet, under the rugs here.” He sniffed a bit. “They feed on the scales shed by human skin, and their waste products cause allergic symptoms. You know, if you monitored the humidity a little better in here, you might reduce the irritants.”

“I assume you're referring to the mites, and not the lawyers,” the judge said dryly.

Owen glanced dubiously at the air-conditioning vents overhead. “You probably want to take a look at the mold spores, too.”

“Your Honor, I have allergies,” George said. “Yet I've been perfectly comfortable in this courtroom.”

Owen looked aggrieved. “I can't help my high level of sensitivity.”

“Dr. Zeigler, do you feel that you'll be able to make it through your testimony? Shall I see about procuring another courtroom?”

“Or maybe a plastic bubble,” George muttered.

Owen sneezed again. “I'll do my best.”

The judge kneaded her temples. “You may continue, Ms. Hathaway.”

“Dr. Zeigler,” I said, “did you examine the tissue samples from Baby Fisher?”

“Yes. The infant was a premature liveborn male with no congenital abnormalities. There was evidence of acute chorioamnionitis and infection in the baby. The cause of death was perinatal asphyxia.”

“Your findings, then, did not disagree with those of the medical examiner?”

Owen smiled. “We agree on the cause of death. However, regarding the proximate causes of death—the events leading up to the asphyxia—our analyses are markedly different.”

“How so?”

“The medical examiner found the manner of death to be homicide. I believe the infant's asphyxia was due to natural causes.”

I let the jury absorb that for a moment. “Natural causes? What do you mean?”

“Based on my findings, Ms. Fisher did not have a hand in her newborn's death—it stopped breathing all by itself.”

“Let's walk through some of those findings, Doctor.”

“Well, the most puzzling was liver necrosis.”

“Can you elaborate?”

Owen nodded. “Necrosis is cell death. Pure necrosis is usually caused either by congenital heart abnormalities, which this newborn didn't have, or by infection. When the ME saw the necrosis, he assumed it came part and parcel with the asphyxia, but the liver has a dual blood supply and is less susceptible to ischemia than other organs.”

“Ischemia?”

“Tissue hypoxia—lack of oxygen—caused by this loss of oxygen in the blood. Anyway, it's very unusual to find this sort of lesion in the liver. Add this to the chorioamnionitis, and I started to wonder if an infectious agent might have been at work here, after all.”

“Why would the medical examiner have overlooked this?”

“A couple of reasons,” Owen explained. “First, the liver showed no signs of polys—white blood cells that respond to a bacterial infection. However, if the infection was very early, there wouldn't have been a poly response yet. The ME assumed there was no infection because there was no inflammatory response. But cell death can occur several hours before the body responds to it by mounting an inflammation—and I believe the infant died before this could happen. Second, his cultures showed no organism that would have been a likely cause of infection.”

“What did you do?”

“I got the paraffin blocks of tissue and did Gram's stains on the liver. That's when I found a large number of cocco-bacillary bacteria in the neonate. The ME chalked these up to contaminants—diphtheroids, which are rod-shaped bacteria. Now, cocco-bacilli are often misidentified as either rod-shaped bacteria, like diphtheroids; or cocci, like staph or strep. There were so many of these organisms I began to wonder if they were something other than mere contaminants—like perhaps an infectious agent. With the help of a microbiologist, I identified the organism as
Listeria monocytogenes
, a motile pleomorphic Gram-positive rod.”

I could see the eyes of the jury glazing, bogged down in scientific terms. “You can say that again,” I joked.

Owen smiled. “Let's just call it listeriosis. That's the infection caused by these bacteria.”

“Can you tell us about listeriosis?”

“It's an often unrecognized cause of preterm delivery and perinatal death,” Owen said. “Infection in the second or third trimester usually leads to either stillbirth or preterm birth followed by pneumonia and neonatal sepsis.”

“Hang on a second,” I said. “You're saying that Katie contracted some infection that may have compromised the health of her baby before it was even born?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying. Moreover, it's extremely difficult to diagnose in time to initiate therapy. The mother will exhibit flu-like symptoms—fever, aches, mild pain—only hours before the premature delivery takes place.”

“What is the effect on the newborn?”

“Perinatal depression, fever, and respiratory distress.” He paused. “The mortality rate for the newborns, in case studies, is somewhere between thirty and fifty percent even after treatment.”

“An infant infected with listeria has a
fifty percent chance
of dying even if treated?”

“Correct.”

“How do you contract listeriosis?” I asked.

“From the studies I've seen, eating contaminated food is the most frequent mode of transmission. Particularly unpasteurized milk and cheese.”

“Unpasteurized milk,” I repeated.

“Yes. And people who are in contact with animals seem to be at particular risk.”

I put my hand on Katie's shoulder. “Dr. Zeigler, if I gave

AAA

you the autopsy report for Katie's newborn, and then told you that Katie lived on a dairy farm, drank unpasteurized milk daily when she was pregnant, and was actively involved in the milking of the cows twice a day, what would you infer?”