The Names of Our Tears (6 page)

“I think I know someone who will help,” Niell said.

“Mervin Byler?” Lance asked.

Before Niell had answered, Stan Armbruster pulled in behind the buggy and got out holding a small Ziploc bag with a blue liquid inside. As he walked up beside the horse and buggy, he held out the bag and said, “On a hunch, I took some water samples. This last one came from almost a quarter mile downstream from the Zooks’ pond, but they all tested the same.”

Taggert took the little test bag from Armbruster and gave it a shake. She recognized the classic color, a deep turquoise blue, and said, “That looks like a positive test for cocaine.”

“It
is
cocaine,” Armbruster said. “It’s a very concentrated sample. It must have come from a batch that was close to pharmaceutical grade, and everything downstream from that pond is either dead or dying.”

*   *   *

Back at the Byler farm, Ricky pulled in on the driveway, circled around to the back, and found Mervin Byler sitting out on the front porch of his Daadihaus. He was in a hickory rocker, but he wasn’t rocking. His hat lay on the porch boards beside him, and in his lap he had an open box of Coblentz chocolates. Ricky climbed the porch steps, sat in a matching rocker beside the motionless Byler, and said, “You weren’t kidding about the sweets.”

Byler stirred wordlessly and took another piece out of his box. He put it in his mouth and offered the box to Ricky. Niell said, “Thanks,” took one, and bit into a cherry center. “Good,” he said, and eased back in his rocker.

Byler held the box in his lap for a moment, then set the box on the floorboards between him and Niell. He rocked forward and back once, rubbed at his white chin whiskers, got up, paced a bit, and sat back down. “I’m eighty years old, Deputy,” he said. “And she was dead before she even got started.”

“I know,” Ricky said. “Doesn’t seem fair.”

“It isn’t fair,” Byler said.

“Her folks say she was only nineteen.”

Mervin picked up the box of chocolates, thought for a moment, and set it back on the floorboards. “You met little John and Mahlon?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“So how many years will they get, Deputy?”

Ricky shook his head, ate the rest of his chocolate, and said, “They were brave.”

Byler nodded. He pulled a handkerchief from his side pants pocket to dry his eyes. “Is there something I can do for you, Deputy? Something to make myself useful for a change?”

Ricky stood up. “Would you drive Ruth’s buggy back to the Zooks’?”

“I can do that,” Byler said, keeping his seat, eyes cast down.

“I’ll follow you over to Zooks’ and give you a ride back.”

Mervin nodded glumly, but remained seated.

Ricky leaned back against the porch railing and said, “This isn’t your fault, Mervin. Really, you didn’t even know her.”

Mervin growled restlessly, pushed his hat onto his head, stood up, and said, “Come on, Deputy, you’ll have to take me back there.”

“First,” Ricky said, “tell me again how you found her.”

Mervin dropped back into his rocker, tossed his felt hat to the floorboards, took up the box of chocolates, and said, “Do you know the widow Stutzman?”

BEHIND THE largest of three tobacco-red barns, Captain Newell stood with Grandfather Alvin Zook, on the high bank of the Zooks’ mostly empty pond. The muddy bottom of the pond was strewn with dead aquatic animals—fish, turtles, snakes, and a few mud puppies. “Tell me again when you blew the dam,” Newell said. “Before the sheriff got here?”

Zook answered, “Well, actually, it was before your deputy arrived. Maybe fifteen minutes before that.”

“What time was it?”

“Around ten. Maybe ten thirty. But I don’t keep a watch.”

“And when did you discover that the fish were dead?”

“First thing this morning. Daylight.”

“When did you decide to breach the dam?”

“Oh, right away, Captain. We had to let the bad water out. And it took us a couple of hours to drill the holes for the dynamite.”

“How’d you know the water was bad?”

“Dead fish.”

“Where did you get the dynamite?”

“My father had some left over from when they dug out the pond.”

“Is there any of it left?” Newell asked.

“No, that was the last of it.”

“Good,” Newell said, and circled around the high edge of the pond to the deep V-shaped cavity in the wall of the dam. There at the deepest part of the pond, a wide oval of muddy water remained in the bottom, below the level of the breach. Zook followed and said, “I wish I had used more dynamite.”

“You used plenty,” Newell said. “Really, Mr. Zook, I wish you hadn’t used any at all.”

Zook shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “I had to release the bad water.”

Below the dam, from the timbered valley where the creek flowed away, they heard the distant bark of a gunshot. Soon Stan Armbruster came into view in the muddy bottoms. He was carrying a large evidence bag. A deputy slogged along behind him, carrying the carcass of a dead raccoon by its tail. They climbed the steep bank to the top of the dam, and Armbruster displayed the evidence bag. Inside it, he had two wads of brown plastic wrapping, with edges that had once been sealed with packing tape. He thumbed the contents around inside, showed a ragged cut in the plastic wrapping, and said, “Here’s where someone cut the packs open, Captain, to pour it all out. We’ll be able to get some fingerprints.”

Newell turned to Zook. “When did Ruth come home from Florida?”

“Friday evening,” Zook said. “It’s a twenty-four-hour trip, so the bus left Pinecraft on Thursday.”

“The Pioneer Trails bus?”

“No, the other one. It’s new. The Sugarcreek-Sarasota Bus Company.”

“OK,” Newell asked, “what did Ruth do the rest of Friday and Saturday?”

“Mostly she slept, I think. She said she had a cold and was tired from the trip.”

“And Sunday?”

“Same thing. It wasn’t a church Sunday.”

“Did she really have a cold, or was it something else?”

“Like what, Captain?”

“Maybe she was crying and didn’t want anyone to know.”

Zook hesitated. “Could be. She didn’t eat anything. Why?”

“Because I think she got mixed up in something,” Newell answered.

Armbruster nodded his agreement. “Mr. Zook,” he said, “there’s a little plastic rowboat downstream from here, like it was flushed out of the pond when you blew the dam.”

Zook nodded. “That’s ours. It was floating in the middle of the pond this morning, capsized.”

Newell turned to Armbruster. “How far downstream did you search?”

“Quarter of a mile, Captain.” He hesitated, looking back into the bottoms. “Maybe a little more.”

“I think we’re going to need more men out here,” Newell said.

“Why is that?” Zook asked.

Newell asked, “Mr. Zook, did Ruth bring home suitcases?”

“Yes, two.”

“Is that how many she took down to Florida?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“Did they seem heavy to you?”

“I think one was, but she wouldn’t let me carry it. Why?”

Armbruster said, “We’ll find more than these two wrappings, Captain.”

“So, let’s find them all, Stan. I want to know how much there was.”

Armbruster walked down the slope toward the barns to make a call, and the deputy with the dead raccoon followed.

Newell called after them, “Why’d you have to kill the raccoon, Stan?”

“It was already dying,” Armbruster called up the slope. “Lying beside the stream, heaving from the gut.”

“What’s going on, Captain?” Zook asked. “Is this why Ruth was killed?”

Newell nodded, frowned, and studied Zook’s eyes. Gently he said, “I’m just guessing, Mr. Zook, but I think Ruth brought something back from Florida that she regretted. Something that got her killed.”

“But why?” Zook asked. “What was in those bags?”

“Cocaine, Mr. Zook. A lot of cocaine. And if Ruth changed her mind and poured it all out in your pond last night, then someone here in Ohio would have been very angry about it.”

“So they just killed her?” Zook asked, incredulous.

“Mr. Zook, if it really was as much cocaine as I think, I’m surprised they didn’t do worse.”

*   *   *

Out front on the Zooks’ driveway, Cal Troyer scowled renewed heat at Sheriff Robertson and barked again, “It’s preposterous!”

“It fits the evidence, Cal,” Robertson said with forced calm. “I’m getting tired of explaining that to you.”

“Amish girls don’t mule drugs!” Cal shot. “It’s just preposterous.”

Robertson broke off and turned out a frustrated circle ten paces away.

Cal advanced and growled, “You can’t be serious.”

“Those are Humvee tracks over there, Cal. Amish don’t drive Humvees. And the bullet was a Black Talon. That’s a city round, not something we have out here in the country.”

“I don’t care,” Cal said. “This is a good family. They could no more be involved in drugs than you could turn down a meal. It’s just not in their natures.”

Angered even more by the insult, Robertson pushed past Cal and stepped over to the nose of his blue Crown Vic. He leaned forward and planted his palms flat on the hood of his car, drew several slow breaths, pushed away, and turned back to Cal. “You’re not listening, Cal. She probably did this on her own. The family didn’t have to know anything about it.”

Cal followed the sheriff. “There has to be another explanation.”

“Cal, it was cocaine that killed everything in that pond. We tested it. And they’re finding plastic wrappings downstream. So Ruth Zook went to that clearing this morning to tell someone she had dumped it all out. The whole shipment. That’s what got her killed.”

Behind them, two deputies carried women’s clothing and two old leather suitcases out of the front door of the Zook house. As they came down the porch steps, Robertson nodded at them and said to Cal, “That’s all gonna test positive for cocaine, Cal. And Missy’s gonna test her hands. If you come up with another explanation, let me know. In the meantime, I’m gonna run an investigation that assumes she was transporting drugs up here from Florida.”

As he spoke, Ricky Niell pulled in behind the sheriff’s Crown Vic, and soon he was followed by Mervin Byler, driving Ruth Zook’s horse and buggy. Frustrated by the sheriff, Cal turned angrily for the house and went up the front steps.

Ricky parked and got out, and Byler swung the rig around them and drove on down the driveway, stopping beside the house. Robertson waved Ricky forward and marched ahead toward the buggy, calling out, “Wait just a minute.”

Ricky trotted up behind the sheriff and asked, “What’s the problem?”

Robertson turned back to him and asked, “Did we test this rig for cocaine?”

“Stan and I already did that, while Missy was finishing up with the body.”

Robertson waited for more, and Ricky added, “There’s cocaine on the reins, and on the brake handle. Some on the harness, too, but not anywhere else.”

Hearing that, Byler dropped the reins and groaned, “What’s going on around here?”

Robertson stepped up beside the buggy and said to Byler, “Are you Mervin Byler?”

“Yes. This is crazy talk, cocaine. What’s going on?”

“Mr. Byler,” Robertson said, “I think you stumbled onto something much bigger than a murder.”

Laboriously, Byler climbed down from the buggy seat. He shook his head sadly and asked again, “What’s going on out here, Sheriff?” Then he walked slowly back to stand beside the passenger’s door of Ricky’s cruiser, gazing skyward, as if he needed more answers than any man could provide him.

To Robertson, Ricky said, “While I was talking with Mervin Byler, over at his house, Missy found the finger in the dirt at the clearing.”

“Has she taken the body back to Millersburg?” Robertson asked, eyeing Byler. “And do you have everything you need from Byler?”

“Yes, to the first, and yes—I have everything I need from Byler. For now. I’ll come back down tomorrow and talk with him again.”

“What did Missy say about the finger?” Robertson asked. “Did someone torture her? You know, cut it off?”

“She says she can’t tell yet.”

Cal came back out of the house, eased slowly down the front steps, and walked up to Robertson and Niell on the drive. “I wanted to talk with Emma again,” he said, sounding defeated.

“What have you been talking about?” Robertson asked with a conciliatory tone.

“We haven’t been talking about anything, really,” Cal said. “She’s just been listening. At least I hope she has. And I’m sorry I called you fat.”

Robertson shrugged it off, saying, “I know what I am, Cal.”

“Sorry,” Cal muttered.

“OK,” Robertson returned. “What’s going on inside the house?”

“They’re praying for the man who killed Ruth.”

“You’re kidding,” Robertson said.

“No. They’ve agreed to forgive him.”

“Just like that?”

“No, Sheriff, not
just like that
. But yes, they’re praying for him, and for Ruth.”

Robertson said, “It sounds to me like somebody needs to be praying for Emma Wengerd.”

ON THE second floor of the Millersburg jail, Captain Newell led Ricky Niell and Pat Lance into his corner office. He took a seat at a black metal desk, with his back to a tall window with white venetian blinds. During recent expansions in the sheriff’s department, new offices had been created on the second floor of the jail for the captains and for Chief Deputy Wilsher. With seniority, Newell and Wilsher had been given corner offices. The chief’s windows faced the courthouse square, like the sheriff’s on the first floor. Newell’s, when his blinds were open, gave a view of the parking lot for the bank next door. Most of the time, Newell’s blinds were closed.

As Ricky pulled a second memory card out of his camera, Captain Newell switched on his monitor. Sheriff Robertson came into the small office, and Niell and Lance shuffled forward to make room for him. Then the captain took the memory card from Niell and put it into his desktop computer.

Once the captain had his photo program running, he reached over to switch on the wall monitor, and when he opened the proper folder on the memory card, the murder scene photos appeared as small thumbnails in a grid display. Newell focused his attention on his desktop monitor. To watch the wall display,
Ricky and Pat stood together at the left front corner of the captain’s desk, facing the wall to Newell’s right. Robertson watched from a position just inside the doorway, leaning back against the frame.