A minute quiver runs the length of him as my words register. I expected him to wave off the statement. Make some joke. Laugh it off. Chalk it up to inexperience and immaturity. But he doesn’t do any of those things. Maybe because we both know what happened that summer was as genuine and pure as it was wrong.
“It was a bittersweet time,” he says quietly. “For both of us. You were too young. I was—” He bites off the word. The smile that follows is sheepish and reluctant. “I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming to get away from you.”
“You lost a lot.”
“You lost something, too, no?” He studies me with such scrutiny that I can barely hold his gaze, but I do. “We both did.”
“You paid a big price,” I tell him. “So did your family.”
“Bad timing, no?” He cocks his head, his eyes probing mine. “A few more years and things might’ve worked out differently.”
I’m not sure I agree, but I don’t say. He wanted to marry me. I was too young, too screwed up, to know what I wanted let alone make such an important life decision.
“The years teach a lot of lessons the days never know,” I tell him.
It was one of my mamm’s favorite sayings. As a fifteen-year-old Amish girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders and a duffel bag full of anger in her heart, I had little understanding of its meaning. As a grown woman, I’ve never appreciated it more.
The sound of shod hooves against gravel and the music of children’s voices come to us through the screen door, telling us Dorothy and the kids have arrived home.
And the moment is gone.
* * *
I call Deputy Vance on my way to the motel. I can tell by his tone he’s not happy to hear from me. I make a halfhearted attempt to soften him up with small talk and a not-so-funny joke. He doesn’t bite.
“I need your help,” I say.
“Nothing personal, Chief Burkholder, but I think I’ve done my share of helping.”
“I know this isn’t an ideal situation,” I begin, but he cuts me off.
“You’re going to get me fired.”
“There’s no one else,” I tell him. “I’m not getting much cooperation from your department.”
“Let it go through the channels.”
“Kris, you know as well as I do that Jonas Bowman didn’t murder Ananias Stoltzfus. He didn’t leave his muzzleloader at the scene. He didn’t cut off a dead man’s hands and toss them into his own well.”
“Murderers aren’t exactly the brightest bulbs in the pack.”
“Will you at least hear me out?”
Vance says nothing, so I trudge on. “I’ve discovered some things about Stoltzfus that don’t sit well. The more I uncover, the more convinced I am that he’s not who he claimed to be.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks irritably.
I give him the rundown of incongruities, starting with Mia’s suicide and her request for absolution and ending with the beating of Levi Schmucker. “I grew up Amish. I can tell you those are not the actions of an Amish bishop.”
“Maybe he was just an asshole.”
“You guys should have looked into it.”
He groans. “Look, I wasn’t exactly involved in the case, Chief Burkholder. What the hell do you want from me?”
I pause, close my eyes briefly. “I need a DNA sample from those remains.”
He has the gall to laugh. “You’ll have to talk to the sheriff about that. I’m not part of chain of custody,” he says. “I spend my time writing tickets and rounding up cows, for God’s sake.”
“Kris, if I can get my hands on that DNA, I’ll send it to the lab and have it run through some databases to see if we get a hit.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A definitive ID for one thing. I know it’s a long shot, but—”
“I’m not going to risk my job on a long shot, Burkholder.”
“Will you at least look into it?” I think about Tomasetti, wonder if he has the connections to help, if he knows anyone on a federal level who might be able to step in and grease the wheels.
“Look, I’m not going to make any promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Fair enough. Thank you.”
He’s anxious to end the conversation, so I jump into my next question. “One more thing. Do you have any idea what happened to the diary that was found with Mia Stoltzfus when she committed suicide?”
“I don’t know anything about a diary.”
“Do you know who might—”
He hangs up on me.
* * *
I’ve devoted most of my adult life to law enforcement and solving crimes, which sometimes includes putting someone in jail. How ironic that the one time I’m trying to prove a man’s innocence and keep him out of jail is the one time I can’t pull all the loose ends of the case together.
It’s nearly midnight. I’m sitting at the table in my room at the Kish Valley Motel, thinking about old bones and the story those bones have told so far. I’ve been at it for a couple of hours and I’m doing my best not to be discouraged. I’m failing at that, too.
A DNA sample from the human remains found in the field or the water well could be tremendously helpful. Not only in terms of matching, but also running it through some databases to find out exactly who those bones belonged to. Chances are, that won’t happen; the lab will likely only make the match and not take the testing any farther. That’s when it occurs to me that at some point, I’ve come to believe Ananias wasn’t the man he proclaimed to be. If I’m right and that’s the case, who was he really? And why was he doing his utmost to conceal his identity?
Frustration sits in the chair across from me, a foul apparition, mocking me. I resolve to call the sheriff’s department first thing in the morning and formally request that the DNA results be run through several databases. They may or may not agree to do so. I’m not going to hold my breath.
I google “Minnesota Amish” and tap a key, landing on the blog of a well-known scholar on the Amish culture. He writes about the settlement in Harmony, Minnesota, and I read with interest. I’m midway through when something pings my brain. I stop reading and backtrack, read the passage again.
Founded in 1972, Wadena is the oldest Amish community in Minnesota. Harmony was founded by the Swartzentruber Amish in 1974.
My conversation with Amanda Garber flashes in my brain. They moved here in 1967 or so.
If the Harmony, Minnesota, settlement was founded by the Swartzentruber Amish—in 1974, no less—how is it that Ananias was elected bishop? He wasn’t Swartzentruber. According to Amanda, he arrived in Belleville in 1967.
“The timeline doesn’t add up,” I whisper.
It’s possible that Ananias and Mia lived in Harmony before the church district was formally established. But in order for a bishop to be elected, there must be an organized church district, even if the term is used in a loose sense. In addition, it would be extraordinarily unusual for a bishop to move. Usually, when a bishop is struck by the lot, it is a burden he bears the rest of his life.