Page 57 of Shamed

Hoping to get into their good graces, I switch to Deitsch. “Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, are either of you aware of a child or baby that went missing from this area in the last eight years or so?”

“A missing child? Here?” Mrs. Fisher looks at me as if I’ve sprouted a third eye. “Not that I know of.”

Mr. Fisher stares at me, his expression inscrutable. “An Amish child?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Could be Amish or English.”

“That sort of thing doesn’t happen around here,” the Amish man tells me. “If it did, it would have been big news. We would have heard.”

“You’re Amisch?” Mrs. Fisher asks.

“I was, but I left.”

“We’re sorry for you.” Mr. Fisher doesn’t say the words unkindly.

I don’t respond. “Do either of you know Marlene Byler?”

Both assume puzzled expressions. The Amish man shakes his head. “Can’t say we do.”

I pass him my card. “If something occurs to you about a missing child, will you get in touch with me?”

He takes the card, drops it into his pocket without looking at it. “Have a blessed day,” he says, and closes the door in my face.

CHAPTER 13

Forty-eight hours missing

In the early stages of a case, a cop never really knows if the premise they’re operating on is right or wrong or somewhere in between. The longer I’m here in Crooked Creek, the more pronounced the feeling that my time might be more wisely spent in Painters Mill. Every minute that passes is one more minute that Elsie Helmuth is gone, that her life is in jeopardy. My gut is telling me I need to be there, at the heart of the investigation, looking for her. Not here where facts are scarce and no one seems to know shit.

The theory that two Amish bishops and a midwife transported a baby to Painters Mill, perhaps against the wishes of the baby’s mother or without her knowledge, seems outlandish. The Amish are not in the business of stealing babies. Certainly not the bishops or elders.

But as I pull onto the county road and head south, Miriam Helmuth’s words replay in my head. They brought her to us. In the middle of the night. This screaming, red-faced little baby.

A baby that may have come from Crooked Creek.

Shoving my doubts aside, I plug the address for Sadie Stutzman into my GPS, but quickly discover that some of the roads aren’t on the map. Half a mile from the river, I realize why. The road isn’t really a road at all, but a narrow dirt track crisscrossed with tire ruts. The ground is muddy, so I put the Explorer in four-wheel drive and press on.

The first property I pass is an abandoned mobile home that was apparently swept off its foundation at some point by floodwaters and never put to rights. It’s green and white, striped with rust, and sits at a cockeyed angle against a huge tree that prevented it from being carried downstream. As I pass by, I realize the power of the current bent the mobile home nearly in half.

Mud pings inside the Explorer’s wheel wells as I approach the neighboring property. I see a small frame house covered from foundation to roof with vines. At first, I think the place is abandoned—another casualty of hard times and a river with an insatiable appetite for anything bold enough to stand too close. Then I spot the loafing shed at the rear; a horse and several goats graze in a tumbling-down pen someone has slapped together with stock panels and wire. An Amish buggy sits at the back side of the shed. It doesn’t look as if it’s been used in a while.

The mailbox slants at a precarious angle, as if the water encroached and tried to push it downstream. There’s no name, just two numbers someone smeared onto the post with a finger and some paint. I glance at my GPS. The two numbers match, so I pull in and park next to a big clump of pampas grass, its golden spires jutting six feet into the air.

I take the cracked sidewalk to the steps. Stepping onto the front porch is like entering a cave. Vines cover every surface, climbing up the wrought-iron column like snakes. A storm door hangs by a single hinge, so I ease it out of the way and knock.

I wait a full minute, but no one comes. No voices or the sound of footfalls from inside. Thinking of the animals out back, I resist the urge to check the knob to see if it’s locked and I descend the steps. I’ve just started toward the Explorer when a sound tells me there’s someone in the backyard. Pulling up my collar against the wind and drizzle, I walk around the side of the house.

I get my first good look at the river, a vast expanse of shimmering brown water that slides along the muddy bank. A few yards away, a diminutive figure is at work on some earthen project. A woman, I realize. I start toward her.

She’s Amish. Small in stature. White kapp. A charcoal-colored dress that reaches nearly to the ground. Gray barn coat. Black muck boots. No gloves, even though she’s got a shovel in hand.

“Hello?” I call out. “Mrs. Stutzman?”

The woman shovels dirt from a wheelbarrow onto a pile of earth that’s about three feet high. Her coat and head covering are soaking wet and spattered with mud, telling me she’s been outside for some time. Upon hearing my voice, she stops working and turns to me.

“Who might you be?”

She’s barely five feet tall, with a voice like rusted iron. Her face is deeply wrinkled and dotted with age spots, a good bit of facial hair on her chin. Gold, wire-rimmed glasses cover viscous eyes.