Plain Dead (22 page)

Rachel was shaking all over from cold. And stark fear. “You . . . you can't . . . just . . . drown me and expect no one to find out.”

“No?” She shoved Rachel's head under the water again.

Again, Rachel tried to fight, but not as hard as the last time. This time, she couldn't hold her breath as long, and the choking water didn't seem as cold, and the flashes of pictures in her head were fainter.

The strange thing was she felt removed from the woman whose head was being held underwater. It no longer seemed so urgent that she care.

And then Naamah jerked her up again and flung her face-down on the floor. Rachel vomited water, curled into a ball, and fought to draw in a breath. “H-how did you get into Billingsly's house?” she asked, panting.

“I knocked. On the back door. He let me in.”

The straw on the barn floor scratched Rachel's cheek. One minute Naamah sounded crazy, the next . . . not so crazy. Then crazy again. “But . . . there was no sign you'd been there.”

“I cleaned up his mess.” Naamah seemed to be babbling now, speaking not so much to Rachel as to herself. “Wiped down the counters. I keep a tidy kitchen. He left the stove on. Just like a man. Nearly burned his steak. Wasting good food like that.”

“The robe,” Rachel murmured, remembering how out of place it had seemed in the formal living room. Folded neatly, thrown over the back of the chair. Naamah had folded it and left it there; her instincts had been right. And she must have just locked the front door from the inside after she left Billingsly on the porch, and then gone out the back, locking the door from the inside before closing it.

Naamah kicked at Rachel's sprawled body, and Rachel instinctively curled into a tighter ball in the straw, to protect herself.

“Wake up, lazy,” Naamah commanded. “You're not dead yet.”

Rachel tried to clear her mind, trying to push back the pulsing black spots in her vision. She tried to pray.

“Are you listening? Do you hear me?” Naamah kicked her again. “I brought you the cat. And the poker. The newspaperman's fire poker. When they find your body, they'll know it was you that killed them both. And maybe you'll even have killed the cat.” Naamah laughed. “Wring its neck.”

Rachel choked up more water.

Naamah crouched down next to her. “I'll tell you a secret. I'm going to have a baby. Abner's baby. So he doesn't need the harlot.” She patted her own stomach. “And he doesn't need Eddie.”

Warm blood trickled down Rachel's cheek. She was aware of the cold seeping up out of the stone floor and the weight of her wet parka. She was suddenly weary, so weary. She had to force her eyes open to look up at Naamah. “But . . . the bishop will wonder . . . where you are this morning. Why you aren't in church? He . . . will worry.”

“I had a baby, you know, one, two, three, three little baby boys,” Naamah went on. “But they all went to heaven. And now I'm having another, a stronger one. One that will grow strong and be smart. Not like Sammy. A boy who listens to his mother.” She smiled. “I know it's a boy.”

“This won't look like an accident,” Rachel croaked. “The police will know. Evan will find you. He'll put you and your baby in jail.” She tried to push herself up in the hay, and her hand closed over something hard and cold.
The poker.
She lay down again, wrapping her fingers around the metal.

“I'll drown you and then throw your body in the millrace. It's a good thing the water runs so fast here. It never freezes,” Naamah pronounced. “And then everyone in Stone Mill will know. You killed the newspaperman and you killed Sammy and Abner's boy. And you were so ashamed, you couldn't live with yourself.”

What Naamah just said took a moment to sink in. Rachel closed her eyes, trying to focus. Her wrist was throbbing with pain. Trying to think. “What did you say about Eddie? You killed him?”

“First you. Then him.” She sounded so . . . pleased with herself. “Eddie delivers the paper on Sunday mornings. He'll be here any moment. And I'll be waiting for him. I'll lure him to the barn, tell him you're hurt, and then I'll drown him, too. Water washes away sin. He's a child of sin.”

“You can't kill an innocent boy,” Rachel argued, trying to push herself up off the floor now, her fingers wrapped tightly around the fire poker in the straw. She couldn't let Naamah hurt someone else. “Not Abner's son.”

“Abner won't need him. He'll have our boy. He'll understand. You've talked enough.” Naamah reached to grab hold of Rachel's hair again, and Rachel swung the poker with every ounce of her strength.

Rachel slammed the poker into Naamah's knee, and the big woman howled, grabbing her injured leg. “Wicked!” she cried. “Wicked girl!” She limped away and seized a pitchfork from its peg on the wall. “I'll teach you to strike your elders!”

Rachel scrambled to her feet and stood swaying, the poker in her hand. “Naamah, please,” she begged. “Think what you're doing.”

“I know what I'm doing. I'm running this fork through a snooping busybody, and then I'm throwing your sorry, carrot-haired body in the millpond.” She moved forward menacingly, the pitchfork held out. “I never liked you. You always thought you were better than us, with your English ways, Rachel Mast.”

Rachel was trapped between the windowless wall of the barn and the goat stall. She knew she couldn't manage to climb over the fence before Naamah ran her through with the deadly prongs of the pitchfork. She had the poker, but a poker against the longer pitchfork wasn't an even match. And Naamah outweighed her by a hundred pounds of sheer muscle and bulk.

“Please, Naamah,” Rachel reasoned as she watched Naamah walk slowly toward her, the pitchfork poised. “Think about what you're doing. You don't want to hurt me.”

“
Ne,
” she replied. “I want to kill you.” The distance between them was narrowing by the second.

“Think of your baby,” Rachel heard herself say. She was suddenly feeling so dizzy that she felt like she was going to collapse. Her head lolled, and she felt the strength left in her good arm waning. Her eyes closed against her will. “He'll—”

“Naamah.”

A man's voice penetrated Rachael's fog. She blinked, not certain if she'd really heard the voice or if her mind was playing tricks on her.

“Naamah, put that down, wife.”

Rachel forced her eyes open.

Abner walked slowly toward them. “The pitchfork is sharp,” he said. “You might hurt yourself.”

Naamah turned her head to stare at him. “Husband?” Her tone became sweet. “Why aren't you in church?”

“I came for you, Naamah.” Abner smiled at his wife, and the scene struck Rachel as being so surreal that she still wasn't absolutely sure that the bishop was there.

“I couldn't give my sermon without you there to hear,” he was saying. “You're always there in the front.”

“We're having a baby,” Naamah told him. “A baby boy. Aren't you happy?”

He held out his hand. “Give me the pitchfork, wife.”

“I went to the doctor. Don't you remember? In May our son will be born.”

Abner's face creased with sorrow. “There's no baby, wife. I told you that. Again and again. Remember when you went to the hospital? When our last child . . .” He choked up. “You had surgery . . . a hysterectomy. We can't have a baby, Naamah. We had children, but God took them all home. They were born too sick to live in this world.”

“Some people should die,” Naamah insisted; she was still holding the pitchfork, but she'd lowered it.

Rachel took a step back and leaned on the rail of the goat's stall.

“First Rachel and then Eddie and then the harlot,” Naamah declared. “We can do it together. Help me hold her head underwater and then—”

“
Ne
.” Abner's hands closed over the handle of the pitchfork. “Give it to me, Naamah.”

She shook her head stubbornly. She'd lost her black bonnet at some point, but she was still wearing her white prayer cap. “Not until I stick it through her.”

“Wife. I am your husband. I am the head of the house. You will do as I say, won't you?” For a moment, the two struggled for possession of the pitchfork, and then Naamah's face crumpled and seemed to collapse like a discarded Halloween mask. She released the handle and began to weep.

Rachel dropped the poker to the straw on the floor. She was shivering violently inside her sodden coat, but she was no longer afraid that she was going to die. And she was suddenly overwhelmed with compassion for Naamah. “She's sick, Abner,” she murmured.

Like a puppet with the strings cut, the bishop's wife sank onto the floor. Abner dropped to his knees beside his wife and pulled her into his arms. “She's been sick for a long time, in her mind,” he told Rachel. “Since our babies . . .” He trailed off, his voice nearly drowned by Naamah's sobbing. “That's why Sammy came to live with us. Not for Naamah to care for, but so that I didn't have to leave her alone. But I didn't know how sick she was until I realized she'd taken the top-hack to town that night. Taken Sammy with her to Billingsly's house. And then, when I realized she was gone this morning—”

“I had to do it,” Naamah wailed. “Don't you see, Abner? It wasn't my fault. Rachel wouldn't leave it alone. God took the newspaperman for his sins. It should have been over. But she kept nosing around. Nosing and . . .”

“Go to the house,” Abner said firmly but kindly to Rachel. “Call 9-1-1. Do you think you're strong enough to walk to the house?”

Rachel nodded. She could have walked farther. She could have
run
into the sunlight. She might have died here in the barn, but she'd been spared. So instead of running out of the barn, she paused a moment, bowed her head, and murmured a brief prayer of thanks for her life and a plea for God's mercy for Naamah and Abner and all the heartbreak that would soon come their way.

Epilogue

Rachel opened her eyes and blinked. It was so bright. Where was she? She smelled roses. She swallowed. Her mouth felt dry. . . her eyes as though they were weighed down with bricks. The ache had returned in her arm, heavy, dull.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She squinted. Pale green walls and the smell of what? Alcohol? Disinfectant?

A hospital? Was she in a hospital? Impossible. She'd just tried to call Evan on the phone. Why? Why had it been urgent that she talk to him? Why was she in a hospital?

She opened her eyes again and saw roses: bouquets of red roses. And white . . . and yellow. The windowsill, the bedside table, and a rolling stand near the door. There had to be a dozen vases of roses. No wonder the smell was so strong.

“You're awake.”

A familiar hand squeezed hers.

“Evan?” she croaked. Her voice cracked and came out as a rasp. “Evan?”

His face blurred and then came into focus. He was leaning over the bed, smiling down at her. “Hey, sleepyhead.”

“Where am I?”

“The hospital. State College.” He put a finger to his lips. “Don't try to talk. You're going to be fine.”

The pounding pain in her arm grew more intense. She tried to turn her head so that she could see it, but she couldn't. Some kind of collar was keeping her head immobile. She touched it with her good hand, noticing an IV line in the arm. “What . . .” she managed.

“The neck brace is just a precaution. Dr. Patel said that should be coming off tonight. But your wrist is broken. It was a bad break; you're scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning.”

She closed her eyes and opened them again, trying to follow what Evan had just said.
I'm in State College?
“What time . . . is it?” she whispered. She'd gone out to the barn before eight; the sun had just come up. It was dark outside now. How many hours' time had she lost?

“It's seven fifteen, Sunday evening. You've been sleeping on and off since I got here.”

“Naamah?”

“In the hospital as well. She's under observation in the psych ward.”

“Here?”

He shook his head. “No, not here.” He grimaced. “I'm so sorry. Not much of a detective, am I? She wasn't even a person of interest.”

“How's Abner?”

“Taking it hard. He told me what she did. About Billingsly and Sammy. Abner had no idea, not until he figured it out this morning.” He shook his head again. “Funny thing is, there was nothing in Billingsly's files about Abner or the Millmans. It's why I was skeptical of your hunch that Bishop Abner, or anyone Amish, had anything to do with Billingsly's murder. There was no need for Mrs. Chupp to have done any of this. Her secret would have stayed safe.”

Rachel tried to process what he was saying. “Did she say
why
she thought Billingsly was going to tell Abner's secret or why she thought he knew?”

“I only questioned her briefly, but somehow she got it in her head that Billingsly knew
everyone's
secrets. She thought it was just a matter of time before he told Abner's.” He exhaled. “She's mentally ill, Rache. The intake psychiatrist thinks it's all wrapped up in her inability to have children.”

“Poor Naamah,” Rachel breathed. She squeezed his hand, felt the ring on her finger, and raised her hand to stare at it.

Evan nodded. “I put it back where it belongs.”

She smiled, flooded by so many emotions that she couldn't categorize them. “You . . . didn't ask me.”

He sat down on the edge of the hospital bed, looking down on her. “I'm asking you now. Will you be my wife? I love you, Rachel Mast. I don't want to be without you.” He gathered her hand in his and brought it to his lips. He kissed her knuckles. “Can you forgive me?”

“Nothing to forgive.”

“You didn't answer the question,” he reminded her. His shirt was rumpled, and a faint haze of beard was beginning to shadow his chin. He looked as though he hadn't slept in days.

“
Ya,
I will.”

An expression of relief flooded across his face. “You will? Really? Great.” He gave a sigh of what appeared to be relief. “Now I won't have to tell your mother I'd gotten her riled up for nothing. She's downstairs. She and your father. Mary Aaron wanted to be here, but she thought she was needed more at Stone Mill House. She said to tell you that she and Hulda have everything under control. No worries. Your house is well looked after.”

She felt dizzy, and she closed her eyes. “Eddie and Sandy?”

“Fine.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “It's over, Rache. I'll have questions for Bishop Abner, but I doubt that he's involved in any way. The troopers who picked up Mrs. Chupp said that he seemed genuinely stricken, learning what she'd done.” His mouth tightened into a thin line. “They said she was pretty much a basket case. Not rational.”

“What will happen to her?”

“She'll face murder charges, but she'll be evaluated to see if she's psychologically able to stand trial. It's out of our hands once an arrest has been made.”

All Rachel could think was that Naamah had seemed so normal until she walked into the barn.

“Do you feel strong enough to see your mother and father?” Evan asked.

Rachel's opened her eyes. “They're here?” And then she remembered that he'd just said that. Her thinking wasn't clear.

“They've been here all day. Your mother let me buy her lunch downstairs in the cafeteria. We had quite the conversation. And I think we've worked out a few of our differences.”

She looked at him, wanting to ask what he meant, but decided that she didn't have the energy to ask. Each word she uttered seemed an effort, as though she were wading through waist-high snow. “I want . . . to see them.”

“I'll get them.” He got up, squeezing her hand. “Sit tight. I'll be right back.”

And where would I go?
Above her head, just inside her line of vision, a bag of clear solution dripped and ran down a tube to her arm. A broken wrist? Why were they keeping her in the hospital for a broken wrist? She fixed her gaze on the door.

“Oh, you're awake. Lovely.” A pert nurse in violet scrubs came in and approached the bed. “Nice to see you. I'm Arlene. I'll be here until shift change at eleven. Need anything?”

“Water?”

“Certainly.” Arlene removed a foam cup from a stack and poured water from a pitcher. Rachel heard the clink of ice. “Just a few sips to begin with.” She lifted the cup so that Rachel could drink from the bent straw. The water was cold and tasted wonderful. “Nothing solid to eat tonight. You're scheduled for surgery at nine tomorrow morning.” She walked out of Rachel's line of sight. “I'll be back.”

More footsteps. Evan's. Her parents entered the hospital room first. Her mother was pale, and there were lines around her mouth.

“Rachel, daughter,” she said in Deitsch.

“
Mam?
” Rachel wondered if she'd drifted off to sleep and was dreaming her parents were here. Her mother talked to her only in her dreams.

“Are you in pain?”

“Not much,” Rachel replied, stretching the truth. Her father came to stand on the other side of the bed. He didn't speak; he just smiled down at her, his eyes full of love. “Sorry,” Rachel murmured, “to cause . . . such a fuss.”

“
Ne
. No fuss.” Her mother switched easily to English as Evan brought her a straight-backed chair and she sat on it. “
Goot
doctors, you have. They will put a metal piece in your wrist and make you
goot
as new. They say you will come home tomorrow.”

A rush of emotion made it hard for Rachel to say a word. “
Mam
.”

“You should mind your own business. Let the police do their job.” Her mother gave a sigh of resolution. “Stubborn you are, and stubborn you will always be, I suppose.”

“And from whom does this stubborn nature come?” her father remarked. “The Masts are known for their gentle nature, but the Hostetlers . . .” He chuckled.

“Not now, Samuel,” she admonished. “I am talking to our daughter.”

“About time, too,” he added.

“
Hmmph
.” Her mother sniffed and took Rachel's uninjured hand. “As I was saying, Rachel. You will go your own way in spite of all that I have tried to teach you, but you are a
goot
daughter and we love you.” She cut her eyes at Evan. “And I suppose we must learn to love this Englisher son as well.”

“He told you?” Rachel managed.

“That you will be married?” her father said. “I knew that for a long time. But we had to hear him say it.”

“You'll accept Evan?” Rachel whispered. “Accept us?”

Her mother shrugged. “It is a burden, truly, but one child out of so many . . .” Her eyes sparkled with tenderness. “I suppose I will have to learn to bear it. Of course it would be easier to bear with grandchildren.”

Rachel smiled at her as tears clouded her vision. “You'll give us your blessing?”

“I suppose,” her mother replied. “For who am I to question God's plan for you?” Her lips curved into a smile. “We could have so easily lost you this morning to Naamah's madness, but the Lord brought you safely through the valley of the shadow. Maybe I have been guilty of having too little faith, both in Him and in you.”

“Then it's settled,” Evan said, coming to stand at her mother's shoulder. “All we have to do is pick the date for the wedding.” And then his eyes narrowed. “I have just one stipulation.”

“That is?” Rachel asked.

“That you promise, after we're married, to leave the crime fighting in this family to me.”

Rachel managed a weak smile. “I'll try.”

Evan gave her his most authoritarian expression. “I'm not convinced.”

“Maybe,” her father answered, “because she is half Hostetler, and he knows our Rachel all too well.” He chuckled at his own joke and Evan joined in.

“I don't see what's so funny,” her mother remarked. And then the four of them laughed together, their genuine affection for one another and relief that the nightmare was over echoing out into the corridor and lifting the hearts of everyone who heard.