After the Storm (18 page)

Around me, the reception area has gone silent. Vaguely I’m aware of Lois speaking to a caller. Mona is standing between dispatch and the coffee station, where she’d been texting, but now she’s looking at me. Skid and T.J. and Pickles are standing outside their cubicle area, where they’d been talking. Even they have gone silent, all eyes on me.

Glock, who’d been at the coffee station, comes up beside me. “Everything okay, Chief?”

“Probably not,” I mutter.

“I heard about Kester.” He takes a sip of coffee as if all of this is routine. We both know it isn’t. “You’re aware that Ohio has a Good Samaritan law, right?”

He’s the second person to remind me of that. While I appreciate the sentiment, I know that even with such a law in place, a lawsuit of this nature could cause problems. And it could be expensive, not only for the township but me personally.

I raise the envelope and smack my hand against it. “I need to take a look.”

“Damn ambulance chasers,” Pickles mutters.

Skid motions toward the door where the courier just left. “I knew I should have given that squirrely little son of a bitch a ticket the other day instead of a warning.”

Leave it to my team to make me smile when I’m facing a situation that’s not the least bit funny. I appreciate it nonetheless. “I don’t think that would help in this situation.”

“Yeah, but it would have made all of us feel better,” Glock says.

*   *   *

I’m no lawyer, but it doesn’t take a law degree to know the lawsuit is going to become a serious issue. Not only is Kester suing the township of Painters Mill and the police department, but me personally. Despite Ohio’s Good Samaritan law, I’ll have no choice but to participate in the proceedings. I’ll be forced to pay for a lawyer and invest the time and energy into defending my actions the day Lucy Kester died. Though I’ll probably be cleared of any wrongdoing, there’s always a chance that I won’t, an outcome that would affect me not only on a personal level but could jeopardize my position as chief.

I skim the details of the lawsuit:
On or about the afternoon of June 3, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder, who was off duty at the time, entered the badly damaged premises of Paula and Nick Kester at 345 Westmoreland in Painters Mill, Ohio. Burkholder, who is a certified emergency medical technician, proceeded to assess the seriously wounded infant, four-month-old Lucy Ann Kester, and, against EMT training protocol, moved the child without the aid of a neck brace or backboard. As a direct result of Burkholder’s decision to move the infant patient, Lucy Ann Kester expired four hours later at Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg. According to the Holmes County Coroner’s autopsy report, the infant child, Lucy Ann Kester, had suffered from a fracture of the vertebra prominens. It is asserted that had the deceased infant been moved with the assistance of a backboard or neck brace, she would have likely survived the ordeal.…

The lawsuit goes on for several more pages, but I don’t read them. For the hundredth time I’m reminded that while Ohio’s Good Samaritan law may protect me legally, it doesn’t protect me from my own conscience.

I want to talk to Tomasetti and run all of this by him. It scares me how much I need him at this moment. It scares me because if the time ever comes when we’re not together, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe I’ve come to rely on him a little too much. That scares me, too.

I dial Mayor Auggie Brock’s office number from memory. He picks up on the first ring sounding perturbed, and I know even before asking that he’s been served, too. I ask anyway. “Did you get served?”

“I did,” he says. “You?”

“Unfortunately.”

“The loss of a young life aside, Kate, this is not good PR for Painters Mill or the PD. We’re a tourist town, for God’s sake.”

“I’m aware.”

“Do you have a lawyer?”

“No.” The thought sends a quiver of uneasiness through my gut. “Do we have someone on retainer?”

“Seitz and Seitz.”

Hoover Seitz is a brilliant attorney, but it’s common knowledge around town that he enjoys his happy-hour martinis a little too much.

Auggie sighs, already moving on to his next immediate problem. “We don’t have the budget for a damn lawsuit.”

I want to believe he’s just venting his frustration, but in some small corner of my mind I know there’s a possibility he won’t back me on this. He’ll be forced to pay for the legal defense for my department, but not me personally. It could wipe me out financially.

“Auggie,” I say firmly, “I expect your support on this.”

“Of course I’ll support you, Kate. I’ll do everything I can, but if the money isn’t there, it isn’t there.”

I curb a rise of anger, even though I know there are already too many emotions tangled up in this mess.

“If you get any media inquiries, send them to my office,” he tells me.

“All right.”

“And for God’s sake, call Hoover before happy hour starts.”

*   *   *

After a brief conversation with Hoover Seitz, I’m feeling marginally better about the lawsuit. He assures me that the legal counsel for the Kester family—a firm out of Columbus known for taking cases like this one pro bono—is on a fishing expedition and using the bereaved parents’ grief to earn a little blood money. Chances are they’ll settle out of court, the cost of which will be covered by the township’s liability insurance. Everyone gets a little money. Happy ending for everyone. Except, of course, Lucy Kester.

I spend an hour poring over every piece of paper and report I’ve amassed so far in my ever-growing John-Doe-aka-Leroy-Nolt file. I still don’t have cause or manner of death, but when I look at all of the information as a whole, I believe it indicates he met with a violent end. The presence of a garbage bag where the bones were found tells me someone moved and/or tried to conceal the body. If Nolt’s death was due to some innocuous farming accident, anyone with the common sense of a toad would have called the police—unless they directly or indirectly caused his death. But who would have a reason to murder a twenty-year-old Mennonite man?

Two possible motives come to mind, the first being drugs. Thirty years ago, methamphetamine was a rising star among dope dealers. Cocaine, marijuana, and an array of bootlegged pharmaceuticals were big business, too, even in rural areas like Painters Mill. If Nolt liked to “live his life on the fast road,” as his parents had asserted, and he was anxious to make money, a drug deal gone bad is a reasonable scenario.

But the drug angle doesn’t sit quite right. When parents tell me their child isn’t “into” drugs, I invariably take that information with a grain of salt, because the parents are always the last to know, usually right after the local police department. In this case, however, I believed Sue and Vern Nolt. And I believed Clarence Underwood—despite his being an ex-con with a history of drug use himself—when he told me Nolt never used or sold drugs.

The second scenario lies with the as-yet unidentified woman Leroy had purportedly been involved with. The
Amish
woman Rachel Zimmerman saw him with. Was she underage? A minor? Was she married? Is that why they kept their relationship secret? Either scenario fits. Infidelity is a common motive for murder and has driven many a man to violence. Is that what happened in this case? Who was the woman? Does she know what happened to Nolt? And what became of her? Is she still living in the area?

I blow an hour looking through missing person reports for Amish and Mennonite females between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five who disappeared about the same time as Nolt, but I strike out. It isn’t until I’m rereading the notes from my meeting with Leroy Nolt’s parents that I’m finally able to put my finger on the thought that’s been hovering just out of reach. The Amish quilt hanging on the wall at the home of Sue and Vern Nolt. According to Sue Nolt, her son gave it to her for her birthday shortly before he disappeared. Where did he get it? Amish quilts are extremely labor intensive—and they’re not cheap, some costing upward of a thousand dollars. How is it that a twenty-year-old man, who’s working at the local farm store and trying to save money, was able to afford an Amish quilt for his mother?

Energized by the thought of fresh information, I snatch up my phone and call the Nolts. Sue picks up on the third ring. “Oh, hello, Chief Burkholder.”

“I’m sorry to bother you again,” I begin, “but I was going over my notes from our earlier conversation and realized I forgot to ask you about the quilt.”

“Quilt? You mean the one Leroy gave me for my birthday?”

“Do you know where he got it?”

“I don’t know. Always assumed it was from one of the shops in town.”

“Would you mind taking a look at it for me? Sometimes the quilter will stitch her initials somewhere on the quilt.”

“I’ve never looked, but I’m happy to check if you’d like. Hang on a sec.”

I hear her set down the phone. Distant voices on the other end. I wait, tapping my pen against the folder. Two full minutes pass before she comes back on the line.

“Well,” she begins, “I wasn’t tall enough to reach the top two corners, so I had Vern take it down and, sure enough, the quilter embroidered her initials in the corner.”

“What are the initials, Mrs. Nolt?”

“A.K.,” she tells me. “They’re embroidered right into the fabric in brown thread.” She sighs. “Whoever it is, she does fine work.”

I thank her for checking, end the call, and write the initials on a fresh sheet of paper.
A.K.
I search my memory for the names that have been mentioned in relation to this case, but I come up blank. I page through my notes and reports, looking for a name to match the initials, but there’s nothing there. Is A.K. the girl Leroy Nolt had been seeing at the time of his death? Was she a quilter? Or is A.K. the mother or a relative of the girl? Or am I wrong about all of this and in the weeks leading up to his death, Leroy shelled out a thousand dollars to buy his mother a quilt for her birthday? The itch at the back of my brain tells me no.

I pull out the list of hog raisers my dispatchers assembled, and I scan it for Amish and Mennonite names beginning with the letter “K.” But none of the Amish last names begin with that letter. Either there are none or, more than likely, the Amish didn’t report in with their information.

Frustrated, I toss the list onto my desktop and sigh. That’s when I realize there’s one more resource I can utilize to find the name of the quilt maker, even an old quilt—and it’s within walking distance of the police station.

*   *   *

En Schtich in Zeit
is Pennsylvania Dutch for A Stitch in Time. It’s an Amish quilt and sewing shop on Main Street just two blocks from the police station. I’ve driven past the place hundreds of times in the years I’ve been back. I don’t sew, so I’ve never had reason to venture inside. One of the things I love about it is the display windows. Every holiday, the owner decorates the old-fashioned windows in creative and interesting ways, but especially at Christmastime.

The wind chimes hanging on the front door jingle merrily when I step into the shop. The aromas of cinnamon and hazelnut greet me, conjuring images of fresh-baked pastries and coffee. The space is long and narrow with plenty of natural light coming in through the storefront windows. The walls to my left and right are adorned with children’s clothing—plain dresses, boys’ shirts and trousers—hanging neatly on wooden hangers, the hand-printed price tags dangling and discreetly turned. Ahead and to my right are a dozen or more hinged wooden arms set into the wall. Each arm is draped with a quilt that’s been neatly folded so that its best qualities are displayed. I see traditional patterns—diamond and star and peace birds. Farther back, twin beds are set up. Each is covered with an heirloom-quality child’s quilt. Crib quilts and wall hangings are displayed on the wall above the beds.

At the rear, five Amish women sit at a long folding table that’s covered with fabric, tools of the trade, and, in the center, an antiquated sewing kit. The women are looking at me as if I’m a stray dog that’s wandered in. Their stares are not unfriendly, but I’m not met with smiles either, and I wonder if they know who I am.

“May I help you?”

I glance to my left to see a young Amish woman wearing a plain blue dress, a black apron, and an organdy
kapp
standing behind the counter. She’s slender with a milk-and-honey complexion and liquid green eyes fringed with thick lashes. On the counter next to her is a platter heaped with what looks like homemade oatmeal raisin cookies.

“Hi.” Returning her smile, I cross to her, pulling out my badge. “I’m Chief of Police Kate Burkholder.”

“Oh. Hello.” She cocks her head. “You must be Sarah’s sister.”

“I am. Do you know her?”

“Sarah comes into the shop every so often for supplies. In fact, she was here just yesterday for thread and some fabric. She’s working on a wedding quilt for her neighbor.” She looks away, uncomfortable now because she’s aware that the other women are listening and she isn’t sure how friendly she should be, now that she knows who I am.

“Sie hot net der glaawe,”
one of the woman says beneath her breath. She doesn’t keep the faith.

“Mer sot em sei Eegne net verlosse; Godd verlosst die Seine nicht,”
whispers another. One should not abandon one’s own; God does not abandon his own.

The young woman tightens her mouth and looks down at the cash register in front of her. Not speaking. Not meeting my gaze.

I lean close to her and lower my voice.
“Wer laurt an der Wand, Heert sie eegni Schand.”
If you listen through the wall, you will hear others recite your faults.

The young woman bursts out laughing, catches herself, and puts her hand over her mouth. But I can tell by the way her eyes are lit up that she appreciates good Amish humor.

“How can I help you, Kate Burkholder?” she asks.

“I probably need to speak with one of the other ladies, if they’re not too busy,” I say loud enough for the women to hear.

A plump woman of about forty anchors her needle and sets her fabric on the table in front of her. Scooting back her chair, she rises, her eyes holding mine as she starts toward me. She’s a large, solidly built woman and moves like a battleship, shoulders back, chin up, her practical shoes clomping against the wood-plank floor.