Page 50 of A Gathering of Secrets

Motive, a little voice whispers.

“How did he react?” I ask.

“He said they shouldn’t tell the bishop. If the bishop found out he would be forced to excommunicate them for six weeks. We didn’t want that to happen.” She looks down at the ground and then levels her gaze on mine. “Chief Burkholder, I know how all of this must sound to you, what you must be thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything, Mrs. Miller.”

“I was not a bad mother to Emma.”

A hundred words tangle in my throat. None of them are kind, so I buckle it down and keep my mouth shut.

After a moment, she closes her eyes, presses her fingers to her lids as if to keep the dam from bursting. “If God were to give me another chance, I would have stopped Daniel.”

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Miller,” I say, and I walk away.

* * *

God doesn’t let things like that happen to good girls. She must’ve done something to tempt him …

I can’t get the words out of my head. The thought of an Amish girl being abused in her own home is bad enough. But to know that girl went to her parents for help only to be blamed by them fills me with outrage. How could parents crush their daughter so completely, allow her to feel so hopeless, so betrayed, that she chose death over life?

The ugliness of the question drags me back to a time in my own life when I was that girl. The girl who still believed the world was a safe place and people were fundamentally good. The girl who had no concept of violence or the darkness that lurked in the depths of the human heart.

I was fourteen years old when Daniel Lapp walked into my mamm’s sunny farmhouse kitchen and destroyed everything I believed about the world and the people I knew. He stole my innocence, shredded any semblance of happiness, replacing both with shock and shame and numbing disbelief.

I don’t dwell on the past or what happened to me; I don’t let myself think about it and I damn sure don’t let it define me. But there are times, when I’m tired or my guard is down, that all those old emotions come creeping back. Sometimes when I close my eyes I still see his face. I see the way he looked at me, as if I weren’t there, just a piece of meat to be torn to bits, devoured, digested. I still feel the revulsion of his closeness, the stink of his breath, the pain of the violation. The sense of betrayal that followed.

No one came to help me that day. No one stepped in to defend me. I was alone with a monster, and I did what I had to do to survive. An act that, according to my parents, was the darkest sin of all.

Furious, hating the parallels, I rap my hand hard against the steering wheel. “They swept it under the rug,” I want to shout, not sure if I’m talking about what happened to Emma Miller or myself.

I’m northbound on Ohio 83 when suddenly I can’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. I clutch the wheel, order myself to calm down, get a grip. It doesn’t help.

My vision narrows and dims. I hit the brakes, pull onto the shoulder, stop hard enough to make the tires skid on gravel. For the span of a full minute, I hang on to the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles go white. The sound of buzzing fills my ears; I hear the pound of my heart beating out of control. I taste vomit at the back of my throat, grapple for the door handle, shove it open, spit.

“Goddamn you.” I choke out the words, not sure if I’m cursing my own weakness, my hapless parents, or the son of a bitch who caused so much pain in my life.

After a few seconds, the vise around my chest loosens. The haze clears. I become aware of traffic passing me on the road. The sound of a lawnmower somewhere nearby. The smell of fresh-cut grass. The call of a blue jay from the treetops in the woods to my right.

“Officer?”

I glance left to see a red SUV roll up beside me. A young woman in the passenger seat has her window lowered and she’s looking at me with concern. “Everything okay?”

“I’m fine.” I muster a smile. “Lunch didn’t agree with me.”

“Just checking.” She smiles back. “Have a good day.”

Closing my door, I watch the vehicle pull back onto the highway. I lean against the seat back and close my eyes, taking deep, slow breaths, trying not think about what just happened.

Too close to home, a little voice whispers.

The logical side of my brain reminds me that emotion has no place in police work. This case isn’t about me or my feelings. It isn’t even about Emma Miller, despite what happened to her. This case is about the murder of Daniel Gingerich. My job is to find the person responsible and build a case against them. The rest is up to the courts.

But I’m human and as imperfect as the next guy and I know better than most that emotions rarely cooperate with intellect. Daniel Gingerich wasn’t some innocent farm boy. If what I’m hearing is true, he was a rapist and a son of a bitch. I’d damn well better get used to it, because I’ve been charged with finding the person responsible for killing him despite the fact that some small, unacknowledged part of me believes he deserved his fate.

In terms of motive, the sexual assault and death of Emma Miller are important developments. If she was, indeed, raped, discovered she was pregnant, and committed suicide to escape the stigma and pain, those who loved her would have a pretty strong motive to seek vengeance on the perpetrator. That includes Elam Schlabach and Sam Miller. I think about her mother but dismiss the notion. Any woman who could blame her daughter for being raped possesses no sense of justice, not even the dark and twisted variety that leads to vigilantism.

CHAPTER 12