The Names of Our Tears (17 page)

When he hung up the call, Robertson said to Detective Lance, “Stan thinks they took the bus to Florida,” and he explained about the bus company brochure and the VW parked in the Sugarcreek lot.

“Do you want me to help with that?” Lance asked. She had been at the jail since 5:00 A.M.

“Stan can handle it,” Robertson said. “Tell me again about the Humvees.”

“The search was finished when I got here. There are over a thousand registered in northern Ohio. Eleven in Marion and Barberton. No one owns both a Buick and a Humvee.”

“And the Buicks that Rachel did identify?”

“Only the Marion PD has gotten back to me. That one belongs to a widower in a wheelchair. Emphysema. He hasn’t driven in months.”

“And Barberton?”

“Nothing helpful yet. They’ve been to the address, but the
place is boarded up. Registration is to a Teresa Molina, fifty-one. Barberton PD is still running it down.”

“They have all your numbers?”

“Home, work, and cell. And your numbers, too.”

“When’s the last time you talked with Barberton?”

“Ten minutes ago.”

“OK, we’ll wait for Barberton to call,” Robertson said. “In the meantime, you can follow me out to the Helmuth farm. I want you to relieve Baker out front, but I also want you to talk to the Helmuths about those sketches we need. Try to convince them to help us identify this woman.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m wearing a skirt suit,” Lance said, “and not slacks.”

“It’s a skirt, Lance. What they’d prefer is a long dress.”

“I shouldn’t have to change.”

“No,” Robertson smiled. “Just be sure to talk to the women instead of the men. They might be more inclined to help, anyway.”

“You’d think they could at least give us a good verbal description,” Lance said.

“Go for that, Lance, if they really won’t give us the sketch. A good description of her is more than we have now, anyway.”

“I’ve got a driver’s license photograph of Teresa Molina. We should show them that.”

“We will, Lance. But after we get a description. If it’s her, that’ll make the ID more solid.”

WITH RACHEL’S help at the jail, Armbruster was able to use a law enforcement reverse directory database to trace the name and address of the answering service that handled reservations for the Sugarcreek-Sarasota Bus Company, and armed with several phone numbers, he was able to contact the shift supervisor for the phone banks where bus reservation calls were answered. After some considerable time on the phone with the supervisor, he was able to talk his way past her objections to get another phone number—an accounting service used by the bus company.

When he called the accounting service, a woman answered, saying, “Holmes Payroll and Business Accounting, William J. Donaldson, CPA.”

While Rachel listened in the squad room, Armbruster said, “Mr. Donaldson, please. Holmes County Sheriff’s Department.”

“I’m sorry, but he’s not in yet. Can I take a message?”

“Yes, this is Corporal Stan Armbruster. It’s important that I get some information about one of your clients.”

“Your number, Corporal?”

Armbruster gave her his cell number and said, “Really, all I need is a name and an address for the owner of the Sugarcreek-Sarasota Bus Company.”

“We just do their payrolls and taxes, Corporal. The company is owned by several investors from the Columbus area, and I couldn’t possibly be responsible for giving out their names.”

“Could you place a call to Mr. Donaldson?” Armbruster asked. “It’s important.”

“I’ll give him your message. But I don’t think he’ll want to give you any information. Not without a warrant.”

“Just a minute,” Armbruster said, and muted the phone. To Rachel, he said, “They’re a group of investors in Columbus. She doesn’t want to give out the particulars.”

Rachel thought. “OK, but they’re investors, right? So maybe they don’t run the day-to-day business.”

Armbruster returned to his call. “Do the investors really operate and manage the company? On a day-to-day basis?”

“No, Corporal,” the woman said, sounding exasperated. “The business is handled by a gentleman in Sugarcreek.”

“Can you at least give me his name?”

“Everybody knows him out there. Mr. Earnest Troyer. He meets the buses when they return. Gases them up, and goes through them to clean them, before they turn around to go back.”

“Can you give me his numbers?”

“Really, Corporal, he’s in the book. Earnest Troyer, Sugarcreek. Spelled with an A. E-A-R-N-E-S-T Troyer.”

Armbruster was thanking the lady when she switched off. He put his cell on speaker phone for Rachel, dialed the number she found for Troyer in the Sugarcreek phone book, and heard the click and tone of an answering machine that sounded old, as if it were sending and recording messages on a spool of worn magnetic tape.

Gruffly, Earnest Troyer said in his greeting, “I’m sleeping! Always am at this time of day. Everybody knows that, so call back after six. And NO! I can’t get you free tickets to Florida.”

*   *   *

Armbruster stopped home at the double-wide unit he rented from a farmer in a wooded valley east of Holmesville. He parked
his truck in front of a fenced beagle run at the back of his trailer, and he fed and watered the rabbit dogs he raised for the farmer as part of his rental agreement.

Inside, he changed into his uniform, pinned on his badge, strapped on his duty belt, holstered his gun, and locked up. His black-and-white cruiser was parked in a shed behind the dog cages. As he rolled it down the drive, he buckled himself in.

In Sugarcreek, he found Earnest Troyer’s home on a slope just north of the downtown district, sandwiched between a small neighborhood-bank parking lot and a white-sided prairie-style home on the other side. The sidewalk in front of Troyer’s brown house was cracked and tilted by the wide trunk of a weathered maple tree on the curb lawn. All the trees in the neighborhood were catching a steady breeze in their canopies, coolness riding in with the clouds ahead of another storm.

On the front porch, Armbruster pulled the screen door open and proceeded to pound on the varnished hardwood of the front door. He switched to the doorbell for several rings, and then gave a final triple knock on the door.

From inside on the second floor, Armbruster heard a door slam shut, then a rumble of footfalls on wooden steps and cursing behind the front door. Earnest Troyer pulled the door open from the inside, shouting, “What!” His pillow-wrinkled face was red and his eyes were shadowed by sleep. He was dressed in long, blue-checked pajamas. He looked as weathered and rough as the old maple on his curb lawn. His face was deeply creased with his years, and his eyes were bleary bulges under unruly brows. Armbruster was reminded of an untended scarecrow, forgotten and left in place from a year gone by.

Armbruster displayed his badge and said, “I have questions, Mr. Troyer, about your buses.”

“You couldn’t just call?” Troyer growled, brows tilting in toward the center over his nose.

“I did,” Armbruster said evenly. “Got your machine.”

“What do you need? I’m trying to sleep.” He rubbed his big hands over his hair, trying to lay it down.

“Did you sell bus tickets yesterday to an Amish woman and a farm lad? Fannie Helmuth and Howard Dent?”

“Can’t be sure”—mobile eyebrows arching up—“we sell a lot of tickets on a cash basis.”

“She’s about twenty-two and a little stocky. He’s about twenty-five. Tall. She’d have been dressed Amish, and he parked a yellow VW bug in the lot.”

“They’re not supposed to do that,” Troyer said, his face a weary sag of wrinkles. “Not supposed to park in the lot on a long-term basis.”

“But did they get on the bus?”

“Can’t be sure.”

“Why’s that?”

“We don’t really take any names,” Troyer said, now bored and still tired. “Look, Deputy, cash gets you a ticket, whoever you are.”

Armbruster thought, then asked, “Can we call one of your drivers? Ask if these two are on the bus?”

Seeming defeated by Armbruster’s persistence, Troyer groaned consternation and held the door open to let Armbruster enter to a front living room with old furniture and worn carpet.

“Wait here,” Troyer said, and he plodded into the kitchen at the back of the house. A drawer scratched open and there was a rustle of pencils and papers. When Troyer returned, he had a tattered scrap of paper with four phone numbers arranged in two pairs. He held it out for Armbruster and said, “You can call the second set of numbers, here. Those are the drivers making the run right now. They should be somewhere south of Charlotte.”

Consulting Troyer’s list, Armbruster entered all four numbers into his phone’s address book. He thanked Troyer and stepped out onto the front porch. Before the screen door had closed on its piston, the heavy wooden door slammed shut behind him.

Coming down the steps, Armbruster keyed up the first number from the second set and stood on the front sidewalk to let it
ring. More clouds had gathered overhead, and the morning light began to shade toward gray. A few sprinkles fell, and Armbruster carried his cell phone to the cruiser out by the curb. By the time he was seated behind the wheel, the rain had begun to patter on the windshield and hood.

After six rings, the call switched to a message center. Armbruster broke the connection and tried the second number. That one answered after two rings.

“Bruder,” the man said abruptly. “Do for you?”

Armbruster introduced himself and explained that he needed to speak to either Fannie Helmuth or Howie Dent, passengers, he suspected, on the bus.

Bruder said, “I’ll get them.” After a pause, he returned. “Sorry, I guess they didn’t get back on for Florida.”

“They didn’t make the trip?”

“Got on in Sugarcreek. Got off for breakfast in Charlotte, like everybody else. But it looks like they never got back on, and so I can’t let you talk to them.”

“OK,” Armbruster said. “Where are you now?”

“Just crossed over the South Carolina border.”

“Do people get on and off like that? I mean usually?”

“Most people want to go to Florida, Corporal. But we do make five stops along the way. And sometimes people make only part of the trip.”

“Did Helmuth and Dent pay for the whole trip?”

“Let me check the receipts,” Bruder said. There was another brief pause. “They booked for Sarasota. You have any idea why they’d get off in Charlotte?”

“I’m afraid I do,” Armbruster said. “Have you got a phone number for that restaurant?”

Bruder gave it to him. Armbruster said, “Thanks,” and switched off.

When he started his cruiser, a torrent of rain was blowing across his car. As he pulled away from the curb, it switched to a dense rattle of sleet. Rolling slowly down the curb lane, he tried Howie Dent’s cell again, but got no ring. Then he punched in
Robertson’s cell number and pressed his phone tighter against his ear, wondering if the sheriff would hear him over the clacking din of the sleet pinging his roof.

*   *   *

When he took the corporal’s call, Sheriff Robertson had just wheeled into the Helmuths’ drive under a steady, cold drizzle that seemed intent on drifting to flakes. Lance had preceded him down the lane, and Robertson had stopped to send Baker back to base. Robertson finished his call with Armbruster as he reached the house, and he pulled himself out of his Crown Vic under a red-and-black golf umbrella. Lance had already knocked on the front door, and as she stepped to a porch window to peer inside through the glass, Robertson mounted the steps to the porch, turned his umbrella upside down on the porch boards, and asked, “Nobody home?”

Lance shook her head, crossed to the window on the opposite side of the front door, peered in with her hands cupped to the glass, and said, “Baker would have told us if they went out past him.”

Robertson pulled the screen door open and tried the knob. It turned, and the door opened when he pushed on it. He put his head inside and called out, “Sheriff, here. Hello?” but he got no answer.

He knocked loudly on the doorjamb, pushed the door all the way open, took one step inside, and called out again.

Inside the Helmuth house, it was as quiet as a library. None of the kerosene lamps on table stands in the living room or front parlor were lit. There was no heat in the house, and no light or noise came from the kitchen at the far end of the hall. He backed out onto the porch, pulled the front door shut, and asked Lance, “You wearing sturdy shoes?”

“Not really,” she muttered, and descended the steps ahead of him to follow a concrete walkway around the side of the house. Robertson followed with his umbrella overhead.

At the back door, they knocked again. The screened back
porch and a mudroom leading into the kitchen were both dark. Robertson retreated onto a patch of driveway gravel between the house and the barn, and he studied the second-floor windows. No light came from any of them.

He called Lance down to the driveway, and the two crossed under his umbrella to a large, two-story barn whose doors stood open to the weather. The mud in front of the doors was thick, and it had been deeply rutted recently by wide and thick wagon wheels and thin buggy wheels, hoof prints, too, all tracing around the corner of the barn toward the fields at back. The morning rains had already begun to wash out the tracks.

Robertson handed his umbrella to Lance and waved her around the front corner of the barn. As carefully as she could, she stepped over to the grass beside the rutted path and disappeared from view as she turned the corner to parallel the wheel and hoof trail toward the back. The sheriff went into the dark barn.

Hanging on the first upright post to his left, there was a kerosene lantern, with a long-tipped butane lighter on a shelf next to it. He lifted the globe of the lantern, put fire to the wick, and replaced the globe. Orange and blue flame gave off a wave of black smoke, but once he had the wick adjusted properly, the light glowed pleasantly orange. He carried the lantern farther into the barn and saw Lance enter the barn through a door at the far end.