Page 53 of Fallen

“You’ve met him before?” he asks.

“I’m not sure. Maybe. Something in the way he moves. There. The way he swings his arms when he walks, the tilt of his head.”

“Do you mean, see-him-at-the-grocery familiar? Or maybe you’ve seen him around town? Or have you met him? Arrested him?”

“I don’t know.” Frustration sizzling, I play it again, taking it apart frame by frame.

Tomasetti waits, dividing his attention between me and the video. I turn to him. “I need a clear shot of his face, damn it. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him before. I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him. Maybe talked to him. His mannerisms are familiar.”

He reaches for my laptop, presses the button to eject the disk. “Let me get to work on this.”

CHAPTER 22

I’m tired to my bones, already missing Tomasetti and nearly to the farm in Wooster when my police radio barks. “Chief, I’ve got a ten-fourteen.” Margaret uses the police code for “prowler” and then rattles off an address that’s familiar—and still fresh in my memory bank.

“Is that the Bontrager place?” I ask.

“RP is Ben Bontrager,” she tells me, using the abbreviation for “reporting party.” “I know you’re on your way home, but since they’re Amish I called you instead of Mona. Do you want me to send her since she’s on duty?”

“That’s okay. You did the right thing.” I turn round in the parking lot of a Methodist church and head that way. “I’m ten-seven-six.”

One of the things my years in law enforcement have taught me is that coincidences rarely occur, especially in the course of an investigation. I’ve been chief in Painters Mill for about eight years now. Aside from the selling-of-unpasteurized-milk incident, my department has never been called to the Bontrager farm. And yet just outside of twenty-four hours after the murder of Rachael Schwartz, I receive a call to report a prowler. Coincidence?

“We’ll see,” I murmur as I crank up my speed to just over the limit and run my overhead lights. In minutes I pull into the lane of the Bontrager farm. The house is lit with the yellow glow of lantern light. I keep my eyes open for movement as I barrel up the lane. There are no vehicles in sight. No one outside. I park behind the buggy at the rear of the house. I’m on my way around to the front when the back door swings open.

“Chief Burkholder?”

I turn to see Ben Bontrager standing on the porch, holding the door open, a lantern in hand.

“What happened?” I ask.

“There was a man. In the barn. A stranger. He threatened my wife. Roughed her up some.” Looking distressed, he opens the door wider and ushers me through. “Kumma inseid.” Come inside.

“Is anyone hurt?” I ask as I enter.

“No.”

“Where’s the man?”

“He ran away.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“I didn’t see him.” But his eyes skate away from mine. “Deah vayk.” This way.

I speak into my lapel mike and ask for assistance. “Mona, ten-fourteen. I’m ten-twenty-three the Bontrager farm. Ten-seven-eight.”

Her voice cracks over the radio. “Ten-seven-six.”

Ben and I pass through a back porch that’s been enclosed and is being used as a laundry/mudroom. An old-fashioned wringer-style washer squats in the corner. A hat rack where four kapps and a man’s straw hat are hung. A clothesline decorated with men’s shirts bisects the room. Open shelving laden with canning jars. A taxidermy deer head with twelve-point antlers stares at me from its place on the wall.

“You didn’t have to come, you know.”

I look toward the kitchen to see Loretta Bontrager standing in the doorway, looking at me as if I’m going to pull out my .38 and cut her down. She looks shaken and pale, her nose and eyes glowing red as if she’d been crying. Even from ten feet away I see the marks on her throat.

I cross the distance between us. “Are you hurt?” I ask. “Do you need an ambulance?”

“I’m fine.” She does her best to scoff, but doesn’t quite manage. The look she gives her husband is fraught with recrimination. “I told you not to call. It was nothing. I’m fine.”