Page 64 of Shamed

“Did your husband keep a journal or write things down while he was bishop? Anything like that?”

“Noah kept everything in his head.” She presses her hand to the left side of her chest. “Or here, more like. In his heart.”

“Who’s the new bishop?” I ask.

“They just nominated Melvin Chupp.”

“Do you know where he lives?” I ask.

“Near Wheelersburg, I think.”

I reach into my pocket and set my card on the table in front of her. “If you think of anything else or if something comes to mind that you forgot to tell me, will you let me know?”

“I will.” Giving me a sad smile, she reaches out and pats my hand. “You’ll do the same, Kate Burkholder?”

“Bet on it.”

I make the drive to Wheelersburg, but there’s no one home at the Chupp house so I head back to Crooked Creek. I find the one and only motel and pull into the lot. The Sleepy Time Motel is a mid-century modern dive. I suspect even back in 1960 the place was low-budget. The years haven’t been kind. A tangle of chain-link surrounds what was once a swimming pool. An earthquake-size crack splits the concrete where the drain had been. The restaurant in the space next to the office is boarded up with plywood, the single remaining plate-glass window hastily patched with duct tape. I’m desperate for a shower and a bed, so I park and check in.

The room is exactly what I thought it would be. There’s a swayback queen-size bed with a tattered headboard and spread. Bad wall art from the 1970s. The bathroom fixtures are rusty, loose tiles on the floor, the grout stained with a couple of decades’ worth of mold. But the room is clean, and will do just fine for a shower and sleep.

I brave the shower and crawl into a lumpy bed that smells of scorched cotton and a mattress well past its prime. A mix of rain and sleet pounds the window like handfuls of pea gravel tossed against the glass. Outside, the temperature has dropped twenty degrees in the last hour. The room is cold despite the fact that I’ve cranked the heater up as far as it will go. I’ve got my wet jacket draped over the back of the desk chair to dry.

Pulling the spread up to my waist, I fire up my laptop. I run a few searches on Cohen syndrome, but there’s not much out there. The symptoms include a host of problems—developmental delay, intellectual disability, muscle weakness, eye problems. It’s a rare disorder, caused by a gene mutation, and slightly more prevalent among the Amish. Both parents have to have the gene, but usually don’t show signs of the disorder themselves.

If that holds true, it rules out my theory that the mother may have been physically or intellectually unable to care for her child due to Cohen syndrome.

It’s eleven P.M. when I call Tomasetti. I summarize my conversation with Lizzie Schwartz. “She overheard most of it. Bishop Schwartz and the midwife conspired to bring a newborn infant to Painters Mill.”

“You talk to the midwife?”

I take him through my exchange with Sadie Stutzman. “She danced around most of my questions. Tomasetti, she suggested Bishop Schwartz’s death wasn’t an accident.”

“Did you look at the police report?”

“I talked to the deputy who investigated the accident. They have no idea who was responsible and attributed it to a drunk driver.”

“Was the midwife able to make a case?”

“That’s the problem. She’s … eccentric. She’d suffered a stroke recently and the general consensus is that she may be in the early stages of dementia.”

“Is she completely diminished mentally?” he asks.

“Not so much that I felt I needed to discount everything she said. And I got the distinct impression she’s afraid.”

Tomasetti falls silent, digesting; then he asks, “What’s your gut telling you? Do you think it’s possible someone killed him because of what happened with the kid seven years ago?”

“I think the timing of it and the circumstances are suspect.”

“Why now?” he asks. “After so much time?”

“Maybe the parents or a parent or even a family member recently found out what happened and who was involved, and they decided to … take back what had been stolen from them.” I pause, thinking about the notes. “Look, I’m going to try the midwife one more time tomorrow before I leave, talk to the new bishop, then I’ll head back.”

After hanging up with Tomasetti, I go back to my search engine, using a multitude of criteria for a missing child five to ten years ago, but nothing comes back. I strike out with the law enforcement databases, too. No newspaper stories. I even spend some time floundering around some of the social media sites. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I go back to the file I brought with me, rereading every report, every interview transcript, every form, and my own personal notes. One name that keeps popping up is Marlene Byler, Mary Yoder’s sister. I think about familial connections. The rumors surrounding her death. Is there some nexus I’m not seeing? I flip the page, look at the crime scene photos, desperately seeking something—anything—I missed before, all to no avail.

By the time midnight rolls around, I can’t keep my eyes open. I shut my laptop cover, turn off the TV, and exhaustion drags me into a hard sleep.