The Names of Our Tears (8 page)

Eventually, an older woman in a dark blue dress and white day apron walked forward from the kitchen at the back, drying her hands on a plain white linen towel. She came out through the screen door, and Lance stepped back to allow her to pass.

“I am Mrs. Zook,” the woman said, glancing at Lance’s badge. “Ruth was my daughter.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” Lance said earnestly.

Mrs. Zook didn’t reply.

“May I use your first name?” Lance asked. She sat in a rocker
and laid her tablet across her knees, fingers poised to type as she looked up to Mrs. Zook for an answer.

“Mrs. Andy Zook,” the woman said.

“But your first name?”

Hesitating, Mrs. Zook held to a formal posture and replied, “Irma.”

Lance typed her name. “I was hoping to speak with Alvin Zook, and to your husband.”

“My husband is praying,” Irma said with wooden weariness. “Alvin is in the kitchen.”

“Can you ask them to come out?”

Irma hesitated. “I can speak with you myself, Deputy.”

Eyes fixed on her tablet, Lance asked, “Did you speak with Ruth after she came home?”

As if deflating, Irma lowered herself into a rocker beside Lance. “I did not, Deputy,” she confessed. “Her grandfather Alvin brought her home from the bus at Sugarcreek, and she went right up to her room. Alvin said she was tired, but I still should have gone up to her.”

“I am truly sorry for your loss, Irma,” Lance said. “If I can help…”

Irma shook her head and stared at her hands in her lap. Knotting her fingers into her kitchen towel, she whispered, “I should have gone up to her.”

Lance lifted her fingers from her tablet and reached a gentle hand over to Irma’s wrist. “Irma, I will do everything I can to find out who killed her.”

Mrs. Zook looked to Lance and back to her hands. “What good will that do, Deputy?”

“It’ll be justice,” Lance said.

“Justice, in place of a life?” Irma asked. “How is that a fair trade?”

“It’s all I can offer.”

“I know. We understand the finality of death as well as any people do.”

Lance let a quiet moment pass. Irma gazed out across the front
lawn and seemed to watch traffic on 557 without seeing any of it. Gently, Lance asked, “Irma, may I speak with your husband?”

“I can only ask,” Irma said. “He is praying.”

“Really, Mrs. Zook, I need to speak with Alvin, too. Both of them.”

When Irma Zook went back into the house, Lance typed a few notes on her tablet. After ten minutes alone on the porch, she stood and nosed back up to the screen. At the end of the long hallway, she saw short Alvin Zook standing beside a middle-aged Amish man seated on the last chair on the right. Lance knocked softly on the door, and Alvin looked up. The man he had been speaking with also looked up briefly, but bowed his head to return to his prayers.

Alvin came forward in the hall, pushed out through the screen door, and said, “Andy has asked me to speak for him.”

“Does he know anything about Ruth?” Lance asked, holding her tablet across her breast. “Can he tell me anything to report to the sheriff?”

Alvin answered, “No,” and led Lance down the front steps. They crossed the front lawn to the driveway at the side of the house, and Alvin added, “I think I am the only one of us who spoke with Ruth.”

Tablet at her side, Lance asked, “You think?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Emma went up to see her last night.”

“Then maybe I should talk with Emma.”

“I can answer all of your questions, Deputy,” Alvin sighed. “At least for now.”

*   *   *

When Bruce Robertson arrived at the Zooks’, Alvin was standing with Pat Lance on the driveway. Under the wide brim of his black felt hat, his face was ashen. He took a side step away from Lance, as if he were embarrassed to be seen talking alone with her, and as Robertson walked up to them, Alvin said, “Your deputy has been asking a lot of questions.”

“She’s a detective, Mr. Zook,” Robertson said, holding out his hand.

They shook briefly, and Robertson added, “She needs to be asking a lot of questions right now, and I hope you’ll answer all of them.”

Alvin turned his face down and said, “I’ve told her everything I can.”

To Lance, Robertson said, “Do you have everything you need, Detective?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, then,” Robertson said, and Lance knew she had been dismissed.

She stepped back to her black-and-white cruiser, got in behind the wheel, and backed around Robertson’s Crown Victoria to leave. As she was driving away, Robertson asked Alvin, “Is your son here? Ruth’s father?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have some questions of my own. Please ask him to come out.”

Alvin turned for the front porch, and Robertson followed him up the steps. When both Alvin and Andy were out on the porch, Robertson led them down the steps to the driveway, to stand at the front bumper of his blue sedan. He sat back against the hood and asked, “So, who brought Ruth home from the bus?”

Alvin said, “I did. And I told that earlier to your Captain Newell.”

“Did you tell that also to Detective Lance?”

“Yes, Sheriff. I told them both. Also your Detective Armbruster.”

“He’s just a deputy, Mr. Zook. Not a detective yet, so that’s why he wears a uniform.”

Both Alvin and Andy gave Robertson blank stares.

Robertson folded his arms over his chest and continued. “How many suitcases did she bring home?”

“Two,” Alvin said.

“Did she take two down with her?”

“Only one,” Andy said.

“You drove her to the bus?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

“Only one suitcase?”

“Yes.”

To Alvin, Robertson said, “Did you ask her why she had a second suitcase when she came home?”

“Why would I?” Alvin asked.

“Because maybe she acted strange about it.”

“Well, she wouldn’t let me carry it.”

“But you told Captain Newell that she seemed tired to you.”

“Yes.”

“So, why didn’t you offer to carry her suitcases?”

“I offered, Sheriff. She let me carry the one, not the other.”

“Did it seem to you that the suitcase you did carry was too heavy?”

“Not really,” Alvin said.

“Was the other suitcase heavy? As far as you could tell?”

“I think so,” Alvin said. “She struggled with it.”

“How about her clothes? Did she do any laundry on Saturday?”

Andy answered, “No. My Irma does laundry every day, except Sundays. Ruth didn’t even come down from her room.”

“Because she was sick?”

“Yes,” Alvin said. “She told me she didn’t feel well.”

“When did she tell you that, Mr. Zook? Right when you picked her up?”

“Yes, but it’s a long bus ride. I thought she was just tired from the trip.”

“What else did she say?”

“Nothing, really.”

“Was she talkative? I mean normally.”

“No more than anyone,” Andy said. “She was a normal person.”

“Normally happy, or was she moody?”

“Happy,” both men answered.

Robertson pushed off the hood of his car. “Who talked to her? Who went up to her room?”

Alvin shook his head. Andy answered, “Maybe only Emma.”

“Do you know Emma went up, or are you just guessing?”

“I just think that maybe she would have.”

“Were they confidantes?”

The men stared back, puzzled.

“Were Emma and Ruth close? Talk a lot?”

“Emma preferred Ruth to the rest of us,” Andy replied.

“Enough that she might have talked to Ruth last night? Or maybe earlier, during the day? Or Saturday?”

Andy nodded. “Emma liked to sleep in Ruth’s room. They were ‘confidantes.’”

Robertson stuffed his hands into his pants pockets and toed the gravel, thinking. The Zook men stood in front of him, one short and round, the other tall and slender. They exchanged glances and waited for the sheriff to speak.

Robertson looked up to study the largest barn behind the house. Stan Armbruster’s cruiser was still parked in front of it, at the far end of the driveway. To both men he said, “Do either of you know what my men are looking for in the bottoms below your broken dam?”

“Bags?” Alvin asked, tentative.

“Plastic wrapping,” Robertson said. “They’re trying to find all the wrappings that flushed out of your pond when you blew the dam this morning.”

“Is that really important?” Andy asked.

“Yes. We’ll be able to estimate how much cocaine your daughter brought home with her.”

“What does it matter?” Alvin asked.

Robertson pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and said, “Because, Mr. Zook, later today I’m going to call a Sergeant Orton I know down near Sarasota. I need to be able to tell him how much cocaine someone was trying to send up here.”

“But she dumped it all out,” Alvin said. “So, she didn’t want to bring it up here at all.”

“I know,” Robertson said. “The question is, who could have induced her even to try?”

While the men thought about that, Robertson punched Armbruster’s number into his phone. When the corporal answered, he asked, “Stan, are you about done searching down there?”

“We need another half hour, Sheriff.”

“How many wrappings so far?”

“Only four.”

“Small enough to fit in one suitcase?”

“Probably.”

“OK, thanks,” Robertson said, and switched off. To the Amish men, he said, “If my Detective Lance comes back out here, gentlemen, I’d appreciate it if you’d answer all of her questions, as if I were asking them myself.”

Alvin looked to Andy, and Andy nodded. Then Alvin said, “We will, Sheriff. But when she comes out, could you ask her not to wear the pants of a man?”

IT WAS quiet at the jail when Robertson came in through the rear entrance. At the end of the hall, Ed Hollings had returned early to start his night shift at the radio consoles. He took a call and waved briefly to Robertson.

To his left, the sheriff heard the faint clacking of a keyboard and the whir of a printer. He stepped into the duty room and found Ricky Niell typing at a small desk at the back of the room. Ricky stood to retrieve a document from the printer beside the desk and said, “I’m just finishing my report.”

Threading his way past long tables, Robertson crossed the room and asked, “How’s Ellie?”

“She’s better,” Ricky said, stacking the pages of his report. “Wasn’t so great this morning.”

“You’ll let me know how she is?”

“Sure. Or she will.”

“OK. And you talked with Missy?”

“She doesn’t have much yet, Sheriff. She’s made a preliminary assessment of the body, and there was cocaine residue on Ruth Zook’s hands, sleeves, and apron. Also on the knife that was in her pocket, plus inside one of her suitcases. But Missy hadn’t started on a full autopsy when I left.”

“You tested the horse and buggy,” Robertson said. “Was the residue just what we’d expect if Ruth had handled the reins and harness?”

“Yes. That and the seat. The bit and bridle, too. But nothing else.”

“Did Stan finish up at the pond?”

“Yes, and his report is appended here. They found a total of four wrappings. He says they searched a good mile and a half, along both sides of the creek. He came back muddy and tired, but he’s sure he found everything that was there.”

“Four bricks of cocaine,” Robertson said, “and Ruth Zook just poured it all out in her pond.”

*   *   *

Missy and the sheriff lived in Millersburg in a large Victorian home on the Wooster Road, north of the courthouse square. The house sat on a west-facing hill, with a commanding view of the old neighborhood.

When Missy came into the kitchen by the back door, the sheriff was cooking sautéed chicken in a deep skillet, with a pan of water heating on the stove for pasta. Despite the cool spring temperatures, Missy was still dressed in her green autopsy scrubs. She hooked her jacket on a wall peg beside the back door and said, “I need a shower.”

The sheriff said, “Twenty minutes,” and Missy climbed the steps to the second floor.

At dinner, Robertson gave Missy details about his conversation with the Zook men, and about Stan Armbruster’s search for plastic packaging in the bottoms below the Zook’s pond.

Dressed in house slippers and a long burgundy robe, Missy ate and listened. As they cleared the dishes, she told her husband what she had learned at the morgue and concluded by saying, “She hadn’t eaten, Bruce. Maybe for three or four days.”

Opening the dishwasher, the sheriff asked, “Small woman, right? Maybe she never ate much.”

“It was more than that,” Missy said. “I don’t think she had
eaten a decent meal in days. And she had a rash on her hands and wrists.”

“But she was bruised and cut, right? The horse pounded her. I mean apart from the fact that she was shot. So, are you sure about the rash?”

“She had a rash, Bruce. And one gunshot wound to the forehead. On top of all that, she was bruised, cut, and broken—three fractured limbs and several broken ribs—so yes, she was bruised and cut. But, she also had a mild rash on her hands.”

“Would you be able to tell if she had been harmed before she came up on the bus? Or physically coerced in some way?”

“Not yet,” Missy said. “Maybe I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow. I’ll be with her all day.”

*   *   *

After he had finished loading the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen, Robertson joined Missy in her first-floor study. Bookshelves lined three walls, and an antique writing desk sat in front of a window that looked out over a wide front porch of gray boards, edged by an ornate, cast-iron railing under yellow porch lights. Missy looked up from a letter she was writing and said, “There’s another thing, Bruce. I took a liver temperature reading when I got out to the glen. The way I figure the time of death, she can’t have been killed more than a few minutes before Mervin Byler says he found her.”

Standing in the doorway, the sheriff said, “OK, we’ll have to talk with Byler again. But it’s the why and the how, Missy. That’s what I’m not seeing.”

“Why would she transport drugs?” Missy asked.