The Road Home (40 page)

Bobby smiled. Radford obviously had a shady background, or the cops wouldn't have been so eager to nail him. He decided to try one more thing. “So did you know this Sammy Bender before he stole your car?”

There was another long pause.

“Mr. Radford?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah, okay, I used to see him and his brother around. We ran in somewhat the same circles.”

Bobby smiled. He had been right! Radford was most likely shady too.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Radford said. “The eyewitness saw a woman and maybe a kid in the back of the car.”

“A woman and a small child?” Bobby asked.

“Is there an echo in here?” Radford snarled. “That's what I said.”

“Thanks a lot, Mr. Radford,” Bobby said. “You've been a big help and—”

Radford interrupted. “Are we done?”

“Sure,” Bobby said. “Unless you can think of something else, I think that will do…for now.”

There was a click as Radford hung up. Bobby looked at the phone and then smiled. Maybe they were getting somewhere.

Jenny sat with Jonathan on the swing on the front porch of the Springer house. She wanted Jonathan to put his arms around her and hold her, but her parents were inside, so they sat apart. Jenny pushed on the porch with her feet, setting the swing in motion.

“I used to do this when I was a little girl,” she said. “I had so much energy, I would swing for hours. Mama would sit over in that chair and sew or read her Bible. I never seemed to have enough time to read as much as she did. I was always on the go, like a shooting star buzzing across the horizon. When I had swung long enough, I would do this.”

Without thinking about her sore ankle, Jenny pushed really hard with her feet, and the chair swung far up on the backswing. When it came forward, Jenny jumped from the swing and sailed over the porch steps and landed on the lawn. Her bad leg buckled under her, and she went down on her face in the grass. Jonathan got off the swing and knelt beside her.

“Jenny, are you okay?” he asked. “You need to be more careful of that ankle.”

Jenny lay still, her heart pounding, afraid to look at him for fear her heart would burst in her chest. Then she rolled over and looked up at him.

“Jonathan, do you love me?” she asked simply.

Without caring if her parents saw, Jonathan enfolded Jenny in his strong arms and held her close. Jenny's words came out in a rush.

“I'm so afraid, Jonathan. I cry at the least thing. Everything is mixed up and crazy. I love you and yet I'm Amish—but am I really? And if I am, I shouldn't love you because we come from different worlds, and I belong here but I belong to you and…and…oh, Jonathan, can you help me? I don't know what to do.”

Jonathan held Jenny in his arms without saying anything. There was the sound of a cough behind them, and they looked around. A tall, older man wearing an old baseball hat was standing on the lawn, self-consciously shifting from one foot to the other.

“Hi there, er…I didn't mean to interrupt, I mean…well…”

Jenny sat up and rubbed her tears away with her coat sleeve. “It's all right, Mr. Lowenstein. This is my friend Jonathan. He helped me get home. Jonathan, this is our neighbor, Mr. Lowenstein.”

Jonathan got to his feet and shook Hank's hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

“You too, son,” Hank replied. He looked at Jenny. “Jenny, is your pa around? Sheriff Bobby just called, and he said it's important that Reuben call him right away. Can you tell him?”

“I will, and thank you, Mr. Lowenstein.”

Jenny looked at Jonathan, and then Reuben came out on the porch. “Hello, Hank,” he said.

“Howdy, Reuben. Just came over to let you know that you should come over and call Bobby. He said he has some interesting developments concerning Jenny to share with you.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-F
OUR

The Visit

J
ENNY WATCHED OUT THE CAR WINDOW
as the Pennsylvania countryside rolled by. Uncle Bobby was driving, and her papa sat in the passenger seat. Jonathan sat with her in the back. They were trying to be respectful to her papa by not sitting too close, but Jonathan had slipped his hand over to hers about an hour before, and she took some comfort in his touch.

They had been on the road for what seemed like hours, and Jenny was tired. So much had happened to her in the past two weeks. Her ankle still hurt, and she had a nagging headache. Her hopes had risen when Uncle Bobby told her about the man who might know about Joseph Bender. But since then she had slipped back into a dark mood. Even Jonathan had been unable to cheer her up. Now she sat staring out the window, lost in her thoughts.

“Jenny?”

Jonathan's voice brought her back from her musing. “Yes?”

“We just passed the place where they captured us.”

A chill ran down her back as she remembered how close she had come to death, or worse, at the hands of Jorge. She leaned forward to
speak to Bobby. “What's going to happen to Jorge? I feel sorry for him. At first he seemed nice, but he couldn't break away from his uncle's influence. Then he tried to…hurt me.”

“I'm afraid Jorge is going to spend a few years behind bars,” Bobby said. “He's over eighteen, so they'll try him as an adult. He wasn't in San Francisco when Jonathan's friend was killed, but he has been involved in a lot of other crimes. The state will make sure he gets indicted along with the rest of them.”

“Shub wasn't my friend,” Jonathan said. “I just knew him. I'm really sorry I ever got involved with him.”

Jenny felt irritated at Jonathan's response. She wondered why he couldn't just accept the truth that he had done some really foolish things out in San Francisco. Jonathan heard her sigh.

“Are you okay, Jenny? You seem awfully—”

“Uptight?” Jenny asked, with a half-smile.

Jonathan smiled back. “Yeah, really uptight, man,” he said in an exaggerated hippy drawl.

That produced Jonathan's desired effect—a smile at last. He looked at her face and took her hand again. “Look, Jenny, I know that everything that has happened in the last two weeks has taken a toll on you. I just want you to know that I'm so sorry I ever got you into this mess. I've done some really dumb things and messed my life up pretty good. But in the midst of all this I'm beginning to believe that maybe there might really be a God after all.

“I mean, just think of all the things that have happened. How did I end up at that traffic light just in time to almost hit you? How did we end up finding out about my family? How did you find the cave? The list goes on and on. And it seems like every time I pray, I get an answer. I've never gotten answers before—not with Buddha or Krishna or any of the drugs I took. Maybe your mom is right. Maybe God is trying to tell me something.”

Jenny didn't know what to say to this admission.

In the front seat, Reuben smiled.

Bobby Halverson sat at a metal table in a grim, olive-green room at Sing Sing prison. The single fluorescent light above his head made the setting even starker. The man across from him was slouched in his chair, staring at Bobby. A guard stood at the door, and another was outside looking through the observation window. It was obvious that the prison officials considered Sammy Bender worth watching.

“So what do you want from me, copper?” Sammy snarled.

He was a scruffy, heavyset man with bad teeth. Longish black hair curled down his neck, but he was balding on top. The sleeve of his prison issue T-shirt was rolled up and held a pack of Camels. Bobby looked closely at the man. Underneath the Camels, Bobby could see a large tattoo on Bender's shoulder. Bobby recognized it. It was the same tattoo the man in the pond wore on his shoulder.

“Sheriff,” Bobby said, “I'm a sheriff.”

“Like Sheriff Matt Dillon?” cracked Sammy. “Hey, Chester, woo-woo.” Sammy guffawed at his own joke.

“Not exactly,” Bobby said patiently. “Matt Dillon is a TV marshall. I'm a real sheriff, and I'm here on official business.”

“Yeah? What official business?”

“I want to know about the bank robbery that put you in here. I want to know about the car you were driving, and I want to know about the man who was with you.”

“What man?” Sammy asked. His eyes blinked several times, and he fidgeted in his chair.

“We found the stolen car in a pond outside of Apple Creek, Ohio, in the spring of fifty-one,” Bobby said, ignoring Sammy's question. “There was a dead man in the pond with the car. Interestingly enough, he had a tattoo just like yours on his arm.”

Sammy jerked upright. “Joe's dead? I mean…the guy is dead?”

He looked away from Bobby and grimaced as he realized he had given himself away.

Bobby smiled pleasantly. “Now that we know you knew the man, I just need a few details. The man had been in the pond for a few months, so there was no way to take fingerprints. But his tattoo, the one that matches yours, was still intact, and there was a military service number under the statue. Based on that number, we believe the man was Joseph K. Bender, a former naval officer, and since he has the same last name as you he must have been related. Is that true?”

Sammy slumped back down. “My brother,” Sammy muttered. “Joe was my brother.”

“Go on,” Bobby said.

Sammy looked stunned. “So Joe's dead. I always thought he got away to California.”

He sat in thought for a few moments.

“So the man's name was Joseph K. Bender?” Bobby asked again.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sammy grunted. “It must have been Joe. We did the heist together. He was outside the bank waiting for me in the car. I messed up and let the teller trip the alarm. The cop on duty shot me. I got off a couple of shots and I guess I hit him and got the teller too. I never blamed Joe for running. I would have done the same.”

Bobby took a chance. “What about the woman and child that were in the car with Joe?”

Sammy looked at Bobby with surprise. “You know about Rachel?”