Page 29 of The Hidden One

“How long ago did it happen?” I ask.

“Been about a month now.”

“Interesting timing, don’t you think?”

Her eyes probe mine. “Jonas Bowman was still on the loose.”

“Are you saying you believe he started the fire?”

“You’re the one mentioned timing.”

I nod. “Did you report the fire to the sheriff’s department?”

“Like I said, we prefer to handle things our own way. Nothing much they could do, anyway.” Bending, she picks up the laundry basket. “I know you don’t mean any harm with all these questions, but I think I’ve had enough.”

I pass her a card with my cell phone number scribbled on the back. “Let me know if you think of something that might be important, or if you just want to talk.”

After a brief hesitation she takes the card. “I don’t think I will, but thank you.”

I’m midway to the Explorer when a final question occurs to me and I turn back to her. “Mrs. Hershberger, can you tell me where your datt was living when he disappeared?”

Holding the basket at her hip, she motions toward the road. “He’d been living out to the dawdi haus since Mamm passed.” It’s Deitsch for “grandfather house” and is generally a small abode where Amish grandparents live with—or close to—their grown children when they become too elderly to manage on their own. “Little cottage on Indian Ripple Road. It’s been vacant since we lost him.”

“Would it be all right if I took a quick look around?” I ask.

“I don’t know what you expect to find. A mouse or two maybe.” She shrugs. “I don’t think my brother keeps it locked, so go ahead.”

“Thank you.” I turn and start toward the Explorer, but she calls out to me.

“You want to know what the worst part of this was, Kate Burkholder?”

I reach my vehicle and turn to her.

“The not knowing,” she tells me. “Eighteen years of wondering. Is he alive or dead? Is he hungry and cold and hurting? Did he suffer? Cry out for us? Think about that while you stand there and ask questions so you can get that hohchmeedich friend of yours out of jail.” It’s the Deitsch word for prideful. “All the talk of justice. Tell me, where’s the justice in that?”

According to my GPS, Indian Ripple Road runs east and west on the north side of Belleville. There’s a good bit of daylight left, so I head that way and quickly realize it’s a barely-there asphalt two-track shrouded with trees and marred with potholes. I’ve just spotted the dead-end sign when I notice the narrow opening in the trees to my right. I slow, discern the patches of gravel, and pull in.

The canopies of seventy-foot-tall trees fill the cab with shadows. Spindly fingers of bramble scrape at the doors. I’m wondering if I made a wrong turn and thinking about turning around when the forest opens and I find myself looking at a small cottage. The siding had once been fresh and white, but time and the elements have worn it to gray. A porch encompasses the front, but the character is lost due to a dozen or so missing rails and a warped floor that gives the place a lopsided appearance. A stone chimney juts from a steeply pitched steel roof that’s gone to rust. There are no shutters or landscaping. A tiny one-horse barn is the only other building. The attached pen is filled with weeds as tall as a man’s shoulders. In the side yard, I see the scar of what had once been a garden, the picket fence grinning a hit-or-miss smile.

I park in front of the cottage and get out. A breeze eases past me from the west, carrying with it the scent of the forest and fresh-cut hay. Taking in the sight of the house, the place where the garden had once been, and the old horse pen, I get a sense of what the place might’ve looked like in its heyday. Peaceful. Quiet. Pretty. The perfect dwelling for an elderly widower to live out his twilight years.

A blue jay scolds me from the branch of an elm as I start toward the house, my feet swishing through weeds. The sidewalk is uneven and cracked. The wood steps creak beneath my feet as I take them to the porch. I know there’s nobody inside, but I knock anyway.

“Hello?” I call out. “Is anyone home?”

No answer.

I try the knob, but it’s locked. “Crap,” I mutter.

I didn’t come here expecting some earth-shattering piece of evidence to fall into my hands, but I’ve got enough experience under my belt to know it can be helpful to see the residence of the victim. Not giving myself time to debate, I leave the front porch and head around to the back.

I wade through hip-high weeds and a profusion of thistle to reach the rear. An antique-looking hand pump stands guard over a galvanized trough that’s eaten through with rust. Between the house and barn, a chicken coop not much bigger than an outhouse is nearly swallowed up by saplings and weeds. A hitching post slants up from the ground at a forty-five-degree angle.

The porch is a small slab of concrete that’s surprisingly intact. Half a dozen wasps buzz around a nest beneath the eave. A clay pot lies on its side next to the step. A screen door hangs by a single hinge. I take the steps to the door and find it unlocked.

“Hello?”

I step into a small kitchen. The stink of mildew and rotting wood hangs in the air. The linoleum floor is covered with dirt and indistinguishable debris. Yellow Formica counters are littered with rodent droppings. Plain wood cabinets line walls painted robin’s-egg blue. A battered porcelain sink has collapsed into the cabinet below. Through the opening, I see water damage and a tangle of insulation that’s become a nest for some lucky mouse.