A Prayer for the Night (10 page)

Robertson’s cell phone rang, and he stepped outside and down the steps of the porch to answer it. Dan Wilsher reported that Deputy Carter had found something interesting on the videotapes: John Schlabaugh taking a briefcase from a tall, redheaded man.

Branden came out on the porch, saying, “Bruce, look here.”

Robertson switched off and turned to see Branden holding an old-fashioned, hinged leather briefcase.

Branden said, “It was stuck up behind the sink, under the counter.”

Robertson knelt with Branden on the rough boards of the porch to open the briefcase. Inside, they found a thick bundle of twenty-dollar bills and a large plastic bag of white powder. Another bag held gray tablets imprinted with the emblem of a shooting star.

Robertson said, poking the bag, “That’s gonna be cocaine. And the tablets? Dollars to doughnuts that’s Ecstasy. The big X, Mike. These boys were into real trouble.”

Friday, July 23
2:00 P.M.

 

 

CAL TROYER drove Bishop Raber to John Schlabaugh’s place in the Doughty Valley, expecting to meet Professor Branden there. When Raber indicated the driveway, Cal pulled his work truck in beside a battered single-wide mobile home on a yellow concrete-block foundation set close to the road. Next to the rusty home, about twenty paces down a dirt lane, a tall gray barn stood on level ground in the deep shade of a stand of old hickory trees, which had peppered the barn and ground with dead branches and cast-off bark.

Raber said, jingling keys on a ring, “We can start in the barn. I got these from young Andy Stutzman. He says at least three of the fellas have keys to the place. To store their cars.”

At the barn, Raber unlocked a new, shiny padlock on a heavy metal hasp and pulled one of the corrugated metal doors around and back against the barn’s left front. Cal matched him on the right, and afternoon sun streamed into the structure, sparkling through a light haze of suspended dust. A flutter of wings in the peak brought a flock of startled pigeons out into the open air.

Inside the barn, in dim light to the right, there were two cars parked with their front ends pointed out. A cotton dustcloth haphazardly covered the windshield and roof of one of the cars. In the center of the barn stood an old green and yellow John Deere tractor, and behind that there was an assortment of farm implements, most showing rust.

Raber stared at the tractor distastefully, lifted his eyebrows, and let out a long sigh. “To think that such a machine could cause so much trouble,” he whispered.

Cal pulled the dust cover off the one car, a dull yellow Ford Escort, and climbed in on the passenger side. He opened the glove box, sorted through some papers, read a name on the registration, and asked, “John Miller?”

“That’s one of them,” Raber said.

In the other car, a white Chevy Nova from the ’60s, Cal found the registration papers and said, “I know this fellow. Lives down the valley. Jeremiah Miller.”

Raber smiled wanly and said, “That’s one of the boys who want to marry Sara Yoder.”

“He’s not in your district,” Cal said. “He’s with the Melvin Miller congregation.”

Raber shrugged. “The kids all know each other these days. Ten miles is only a ten-minute ride for them, anymore. It’d take an hour in a buggy.”

Cal’s phone rang, and he stepped outside to take the call. As he listened, he waved Raber over to him, said, “OK, Mike,” and switched off.

Intently, Cal said, “Irvin, they’ve found a young man, hurt, and Mike thinks it may be Abe Yoder. They’re at Pomerene Hospital.”

 

CAL pulled in under the carport at the emergency room doors, let the bishop out on the blacktop, and backed up into a parking space at Joel Pomerene Memorial Hospital, on a steep hill beside the Wooster Road. In the lobby, they found Mike Branden and Bruce Robertson talking with a doctor in green scrubs. As they walked up, the doctor was saying, tying on a scrub hat, “I don’t think it nicked the kidney. It’s the infection I’m worried about.”

Branden introduced the doctor to Raber, and the bishop followed the doctor to one of the curtained rooms. When he came out, Raber stated, “It’s Abe Yoder, all right.”

Cal said, “We need to get Albert and Miriam Yoder to come in.”

“They’re taking him into surgery,” Robertson said. “Going to clean out the wound.”

Raber asked, “How long could that take, do you think?”

Robertson said, “Depends.”

Raber asked, “Does anyone know how bad off he is?”

Branden said, “He tried to stitch himself up several days ago. The infection has had a long time to fester.”

“He could die?” Raber asked.

None of the three English men volunteered an answer.

Cal cleared his throat and said, “Irvin, do you know their cell phone number?”

Raber shook his head and turned to go back to where the nurses were working to prepare Yoder for surgery. Cal laid a hand on his arm and pulled him gently back around. “Don’t worry about it, Irvin. Ricky Niell wrote their numbers down,” Cal said, and let the distracted bishop go.

Robertson said, “I’ll call Niell,” and stepped outside to call the jail.

Branden stopped a nurse in pink scrubs and asked, “Can we talk to him?”

The nurse said, “He hasn’t been conscious. We’ve sedated him now for surgery.”

Down the hall, an orderly pushed Abe Yoder’s gurney out into the hall, and then into the elevator while a doctor held the doors open. As Yoder rolled by, Bishop Raber reached out and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. When the elevator doors closed, the nurses and orderlies in the emergency room went quietly and efficiently about their other duties.

Cal watched Irvin Raber take it all in with a stunned look on his face, and the pastor said to him, gently, “The sheriff will have Sergeant Niell contact the Yoders and bring them into town, Irvin.”

Raber blinked and looked at Cal and then Branden in turn. “It suffices to know that he is alive,” he said. “He’s been in God’s hands since the day he was born.”

 

WHEN Albert P. and Miriam Yoder arrived, t hey were dressed in formal Sunday attire. Albert P. wore a black suit with a plain waist-coat, and Miriam wore a long, dark green dress with a white lace bodice. He was in a black felt hat, she in a black bonnet. Bishop Raber got up from a waiting-room chair and took them aside. He spoke solemn Dutch at some length, and then the Yoders took seats next to each other in the waiting room. Beyond the few words they spoke to Raber, the Yoders said nothing. The cast of their eyes seemed to be at once purposeful and resigned.

Cal whispered a few words to Branden, and the professor stepped outside to stand under the carport with Robertson and Niell, letting Cal take the lead with the Yoders. Cal came outside after speaking a few words of encouragement to the Yoders, and asked Niell, “How’d they take it?”

Niell said, “Shocked. Like anybody would be, I guess. Also, glad that he’s still alive.”

Branden asked, “None of the kids came with them?”

“They’ve all got their orders, Doc,” Niell said. “Chores and such. I couldn’t get them here any faster. Mrs. Yoder took the time to speak to each one of the kids. Wouldn’t leave any sooner.”

Cal asked, “Did you tell them much about what happened? Explain how bad he is?”

Niell said, “Only what I know myself, and that isn’t much.”

Robertson said, somewhat bemused, “You notice they took the time to dress formal? You’d think they could have gotten here faster.”

“Just being conservative,” Cal said. “Amish don’t panic readily.” To Branden he said, “You found him in one of the old Peterborough cabins?”

“Right,” Branden said. “There was someone with him who ran off when I got there. I think he’s been hiding there since the trouble at the Spits Wallace place.”

“Hiding from whom?” Cal asked.

Robertson said, “Look, Cal, it was always heading this way with the Rumschpringes. Sooner or later. Now two kids have gotten themselves shot over drugs, and the whole bunch of them is tied up in it. For all I know, one of them shot the other!”

“That’s just baloney,” Cal growled, muscles tensing in his arms and neck.

Robertson said, “They’re going to account for themselves, and I’m not waiting any longer. Every hour puts Sara Yoder at greater risk.”

Branden said, “Good luck rounding them up,” and got a scowl from the sheriff.

Cal said, “They’ve all agreed to an interview at 6:00.”

Robertson said, “I don’t think I can wait that long under the circumstances.” To Niell, Robertson continued, “Ricky, bring them in. Any of them that you can round up. Just bring ’em in.”

“Wait,” Cal said. “I’ll go back in and talk to Raber. Maybe he can get them together faster.”

Cal left and Branden said, “There’s still going to be plenty left to do.”

Robertson said, “It’s the weekend coming up, Mike. That’ll stall us out.”

Niell said, “The state BCI lab people aren’t going to go through the Pontiac until Monday, anyway.”

Robertson said, “OK. What else have we got?”

Branden volunteered, “Cal and I can still go out to Schlabaugh’s trailer. I have the keys now. We could do that before we talk with the kids.”

Robertson nodded approval.

“You’ll also want to go through that cabin,” the professor said. “See what we missed.”

Robertson nodded again.

Niell asked, “What has Wilsher gotten off the phone dump?”

“Still working on it,” Robertson said. “And Carter is screening more videotapes.”

“Someone should try to talk to Abe Yoder when he wakes up,” Cal said, as he walked up to the men. “Irvin is using the Yoders’ cell phone. Might be his first time doing that. Anyway, he says he’ll have them all here by four o’clock at the latest.”

“He can do that?” Niell asked.

“He’s the bishop,” Cal said flatly.

When Robertson and Niell had headed for their car, Cal said to Branden, “Mike, one of the cars in Schlabaugh’s barn belongs to someone we know.”

Branden waited.

“You saved his life when he was ten.”

“Jeremiah Miller?”

“He’s the one who wants to marry Sara Yoder.”

Friday, July 23
2:45 P.M.

 

 

AT John Schlabaugh’s trailer, Cal’s gray work truck was parked back by the barn, under the tall hickory trees. Branden found Cal and Bishop Irvin Raber going through the trunk of the yellow Escort parked inside the barn. As sunny as the afternoon was, the light was dim in the barn, and Troyer and Raber were working with a flashlight.

When Branden arrived, Cal said, “Hold these, Mike,” and handed Branden a tangle of English clothes smelling strongly of stale cigarette smoke and beer. Branden laid the clothes across a wooden sawhorse that stood against the interior wall of the barn.

Next, Cal pulled out an assortment of camping gear, and handed the items one at a time to Branden, who stacked the goods on the concrete pad, behind the parked cars. In Branden’s stack there was a sleeping bag of green nylon and a green Coleman lantern in a red plastic case. A small hatchet. An aluminum cook kit of nested pans and skillets, banded together with a loop of copper wire. Fishing tackle. A folding chair. And last, a GPS receiver like the one they had found in John Schlabaugh’s grave. Branden switched it on and found the batteries dead.

Cal observed, “This is John Miller’s car, Mike. He’s one of the kids in Schlabaugh’s gang.”

In a cardboard box pushed to the back of the trunk, Irvin Raber found a collection of pornographic magazines. He dropped the box back into the trunk as if it were a palpable evil and muttered to himself, something in dialect that Cal didn’t understand.

Cal said, “It’s pretty much the same thing in the Chevy, Mike,” tipping his head at Jeremiah Miller’s car.

Branden walked over to the tractor, studied the farm implements, and asked Raber, “This all belong to John Schlabaugh?”

Raber said, “Some of the men helped to pay for the plow and the reaper. The rest is John’s.”

At the trailer, out beside the road, Raber tried the keys and got the right one on the third try. Inside, they found a jumbled mess. Curtains torn from the windows, books strewn about on the floor. Dishes pulled down from the cupboards and shattered. Kitchen table upended, and balanced at an acute angle in the corner. Appliances tossed into a heap on the kitchen floor. A TV screen broken and the glass gouged out onto the carpet. Overturned ashtrays. Clothing emptied out of drawers. Bed off its frame, sheets and blankets crumpled and tossed into a corner.

Branden crunched through broken glass and turned the kitchen table upright. He set the two chairs beside it. Cal walked back to the bedroom and started sorting through the clothes that had been pulled from the drawers. Bishop Raber cleared a spot on the couch and sat down wearily.

Branden said, “It’s been searched, Cal.”

Cal came into the living room, studied the disarrayed electronics there, and said, “There used to be a computer here.”

Raber gave a sorrowful moan, got up and sat on one of the chairs at the kitchen table. Cal joined him there, and Branden leaned back against the sink, arms folded over his chest. Raber cradled his head in his hands and began to talk softly.

“They’ve got everything they need, Cal, our kids. Homes, families, security. They’ve got it all, and still it’s not enough. They’ve got an itch to scratch. So they scratch.

“They could make plenty of money and just stay home. It’s not like we don’t let them take jobs. Even with a 14/7, they lack for nothing.

“But that’s where they get into trouble, on the jobs. Computers and phones. TVs and videos. It’s all out there for them, the English world. Who can stop it? And it’s been getting worse every year.

“And if, when they are young, we haven’t managed to give them a faith that will sustain them, they are lost to the world when they leave us. Which one of us, without our faith, could hold to righteousness in this vain and faithless world?