A Prayer for the Night (9 page)

Branden said, “Is there anything still out there, Bruce?”

“If I remember correctly,” Robertson said, “that’s out on a looping road off 129. Spits Wallace lives about a half mile through the woods from there. As far as I know, the cabins are still there. Simple, one-story boxes, with tin roofs and brown wood siding. A couple of windows in each one, plus a bathroom, and kitchenette, and a small front porch. They’re going to be pretty run down by now.” He turned back to Wilsher. “Anything on the Firebird?”

“I’ve been through the trunk,” Wilsher said. “I found some smoky English clothes, a ratty sleeping bag, some canned and boxed foods, and a box of videotapes.”

“Pornography?” Robertson asked.

“I don’t think so,” Wilsher answered. “Not unless it’s homemade stuff. No, these are the little tape cassettes that go in a video camera. Somebody has shot a bunch of videotape.”

“So what’s on them?” Robertson asked.

“I’ve got Carter watching them now. It’ll take a few hours before I can tell you what we’ve got.”

As he spoke, Robertson’s phone rang. He picked up and said, “Yeah.” Then, “OK, I understand. We won’t mess in your game, Tony. But we want to go ahead with an Amber Alert on Sara Yoder. Like I told you, it’s Sara we’re most concerned about. Could be Columbus folk who grabbed her.”

Robertson listened, scribbled a few notes on a yellow pad, said, “Good. I’ll expect to hear from you if you see her down there. No, it’s not routine at all. It’s urgent. OK. Fine. I understand.”

Robertson hung up, and through his intercom, he told Ellie, “Set up a press conference for three o’clock, Ellie. And post the Amber Alert to all Ohio sheriff and police departments. Use the state’s system to get it out to everyone.”

Ellie said, “The stroke of one key, Bruce. There, it’s done.”

Robertson said, “Thanks,” and switched off. To the men in the room he declared, “Ellie just put that Amber Alert into effect. I’ll announce it to the media at 3:00 P.M. Also, the DEA is going to put double surveillance on all their spots down in Columbus. Evidently Gahanna, too. Watch for Sara Yoder to turn up. Now, what’s our next step?”

Niell said, “There’s that Firebird to process. It looks like there’s dried blood in the front seat.”

Wilsher said, “I want the state BCI lab people to go through the Firebird.”

Robertson nodded approval.

“Someone needs to go out to Schlabaugh’s place at two o’clock,” Cal said. “Mike and I can handle that.”

Robertson turned questioning eyes to the professor.

Branden said, “I’ll meet you at the Schlabaugh place, Cal, if you can give me directions.”

Cal nodded.

“In the meantime,” Branden said, “I think I know where to go hunting for Abe Yoder.”

“OK. Just fill me in before you leave. But listen up, everybody. Sara Yoder is the priority here. Dan, I want everybody we’ve got out looking for her. Call in the night-shift people. Everybody goes out. We’ll have to trust DEA to cover Columbus spots, but if she’s still in Holmes County, I don’t want to hear later that we missed her for lack of trying. It’s been nearly three hours since she was abducted, and I don’t want to hear that we’ve found her dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Friday, July 23
1:15 P.M.

 

 

PROFESSOR Branden drove up onto the college heights to his home, where he changed into hiking boots and a long-sleeved khaki shirt. While drinking a quick cup of coffee with his wife in their kitchen, he told Caroline about the events of the morning and the pressing search for Sara Yoder, both in Holmes County by sheriff’s deputies and in Columbus by DEA agents operating an undercover investigation there. He gulped the last of his coffee, pushed back his chair, saying, “Got to get going,” and headed for the hall to the garage.

Caroline sprang up to block him. She stood nearly an inch taller, and resolutely faced him down. “You can take time for some lunch, Michael.”

She reckoned that he hadn’t told her half the important details in the case. She also knew the danger he sometimes put himself in, and she intended this morning to know his plans before he left. So she pushed up against him, hands on his shoulders, and moved him back to his kitchen chair.

When he was reseated there, smiling but giving no indication that he would jump up again, she put a box of saltines, a jug of milk with two glasses, and a jar of peanut butter with a table knife on the curly maple tabletop, and spread peanut butter on one of the crackers. She handed it to him and spread one for herself.

Branden ate the cracker, poured two glasses of milk, and said, “I thought I’d go looking for Abe Yoder.”

Caroline brushed her long auburn hair behind her ears and said, “Why wouldn’t you help look for Sara?”

“Everybody else is already doing that. In the meantime, I’m supposed to meet Cal Troyer and Bishop Rader at the murdered boy’s trailer at two o’clock.”

“John Schlabaugh?”

“Right. It’s Schlabaugh who is dead. Abe Yoder has been missing for a week or so, and Sara Yoder was abducted this morning. There was trouble, like I told you, at Spits Wallace’s place a week ago, so there’s a connection there somehow. Wallace said Abe and John had a run-in at his house with some ‘city slickers’ in a white SUV. Today, Sara was driven off by two English men in a white SUV. It’s all related, somehow. So, I figure finding Abe Yoder is, at this point, every bit as important as finding Sara Yoder. If he’s still alive.”

Caroline eyed her husband, handed over another peanut butter cracker, and said, “Lawrence Mallory was here today, looking for you.”

“He’s drafting another one of our papers on the siege of Atlanta.”

“He said you wanted this one finished by the start of fall semester, and you had worked on the draft only once.”

“I’ll get to it after this case wraps up.”

“And Arne Laughton called. He says your committee on the Favor estate owes him another report.”

Branden grinned, then drank some milk, eyes laughing.

“What’s so funny, Professor?”

“He’s worried that I’ll allocate more money for the sciences.”

“That’s going to be a problem for you?”

“Not a problem for me. But for him, yes, when classes start. He’ll have a dozen unhappy professors in his office. In the meantime, I’ve got this case with Robertson, and that’s what I’m going to work on.”

Caroline knew better than to try to talk him out of it. She spread peanut butter, ate a cracker, and remembered the dozen or so cases for which the professor’s involvement as a sheriff’s reserve deputy had made the difference in the sheriff’s investigation. She had wondered, sometimes, who was helping whom. Were they Robertson’s cases, or Branden’s? The men had known each other since grade school. Bruce Robertson, Cal Troyer, and Michael Branden. Compared to that, she was a latecomer in the professor’s life. She wasn’t insecure about that, but she did recognize the pull each man had on the others’ lives. Working together when Amish were involved because Cal knew the Amish and because Branden and Robertson thinking together always added up to more than twice what each could accomplish alone. Holmes County’s famous threesome. Her husband’s identity was defined here as much as at the college where he taught.

Gazing across the table, Caroline recognized the impatient attitude in his posture and expression. She handed him a last cracker, and said, “Just be careful, Michael.”

 

BRANDEN took his truck back out County 58 to 129, and followed the map Cal Troyer had made for him to the old cabins on the property bordering the Spits Wallace place.

The road looped around a tall stand of old pines, and came back in front of the cabins, locked in a tangle of new-growth trees. Seeing a path worn through tall ferns in front of the third cabin, Branden parked there, and mounted the steps to the weathered front porch. He pushed on the door and heard a clatter at the back of the cabin, then someone crashing through the bushes behind the cabins. He thought he heard an anxious voice inside the cabin, and he rattled the doorknob. There was a thump as if something heavy had hit the floorboards. He moved to the window beside the door, looked in, and saw a work boot and a leg in denim trousers lying on the floor beside the foot of an old, sagging bed.

At the door, he took hold of the knob and threw his shoulder against the old wood. Part of the doorjamb cracked and splintered, and he stepped back and kicked the door in. As he crossed the threshold, the first thing that assaulted him was the odor of rotting flesh.

On the floor, he found a boy in Amish clothes, with a scruffy Vandyke beard and mustache, in a bloody shirt, lying prone on the old linoleum, trying to lift a black revolver from the floor to point it at the door Branden had splintered. Branden advanced quickly, kicked the gun loose, and picked it up. It was sticky, and when he pulled his hand away from the grip, he saw blood on his fingers and palm.

He put the gun on the kitchen table, knelt beside the boy, felt his forehead, pushed himself upright, and stepped outside. He wiped the blood off his hand with a handkerchief and called Ellie down at the jail.

“Ellie, I’m gonna need an ambulance out at the old Peterborough cabins.”

Ellie answered, “I’ll roll a squad right away.”

“It’s a young Amish kid,” Branden said. “He’s barely conscious. And I think he’s been shot.”

“Can you give me more for the squad, Mike? His condition?”

“Hang on,” Branden said and stuffed the phone into his shirt pocket.

Back in the cabin, Branden turned the now-unconscious boy onto his back and unbuttoned his blood-soaked shirt. In the lad’s left side, there was an ugly wound, surrounded by a hideous bruise, oozing a thin stream of blood. Across the circular wound, there were several black threads sewn into the skin. Most of them had torn loose, and all were crusted with blood.

Branden checked his breathing and left him where he was, while he made a fast search of the cabin. There was a kerosene lantern on an old round table, and the floor was littered with empty cans and cast-off wrappers and boxes from fast-food chains.

At each of the small windows, he pulled back tattered curtains to admit more light, and then he knelt again beside the boy and turned him onto his side. He lifted the shirttail and found another wound at the lad’s back, near the left kidney.

Outside, Branden fished his cell back out of his pocket and said, “He’s been shot, Ellie. In at the back left, and out at the left side, front. He’s been here a while. There are food scraps from several days, anyway. Breathing is shallow, temperature high, and there’s a bad odor to the wound.”

Ellie said, “I got that, Doc. The squad is on its way. I’ll relay everything to them.”

“Tell them to run with full sirens, Ellie. I want whoever is out here to know they are coming. I don’t want anyone thinking they have time to come back and jump me.”

“Full sirens, Mike.”

“Good, now can you get me Bruce?”

Immediately, Robertson said, “I’m right here at Ellie’s desk, Mike. How long’s he been there?”

Branden said, “Couple of days, anyway. Probably more like a week. The place is full of garbage. Old meals, and empty cans and wrappers. And I think he tried to sew himself up.”

Ellie said, “My guys should be there soon. You hear any sirens?”

Branden said, “Faintly. OK, yeah, that’s them coming up the hill. Ellie, tell them the access road loops around some pines and comes in through a dense tangle of trees, west of the cabins. I’m in the third one.”

Back in the cabin, Branden tried to rouse the boy, talk to him. When the paramedics climbed onto the front porch and clumped into the room, Branden was cradling the boy’s head in one hand, the other palm taking the temperature of the forehead.

The paramedics moved Branden aside quickly. They took vitals, hooked up an IV line, and had the boy loaded into the ambulance before Branden could tell them anything of significance. When the ambulance was headed back down the access road, Branden’s cell phone rang and Robertson said, “They have him loaded up yet?”

“They’re on their way back into town.”

“Good, Mike. I’m on my way, too. You stay put. I’m coming up 129, now. I’ll be out there in two minutes.”

 

ROBERTSON pulled around to the front, parked his black-and-white unit behind the professor’s truck, and got out and climbed up to the porch. He called out, “Mike!” and Branden answered from behind the cabin. Robertson bounded down the steps and circled around through tall weeds to the back of the cabin, where he saw Branden studying a pushed-out screen over the window of the cabin’s bathroom.

Branden pulled the screen loose and said, “When I knocked, someone punched out through this screen and ran off through the woods, there.”

Robertson paced off a few steps along a narrow path in the weeds, came to the edge of dense woods, and said, “We’re not going to be able to track anyone here.”

Branden led the sheriff around the cabin to the front porch, and the two men climbed the steps. Inside, Robertson kicked his toe through some of the refuse on the floor, and then saw the table and the gun lying on it.

“He had a gun, Mike?” Robertson asked.

Branden said, “Yes, I took it from him.”

“Do we know who he is?”

“He’s about the right age to be Abe Yoder. And his beard is cut to a fancy trim, typical of a rebellious kid on the Rumschpringe.”

Robertson stood beside him and asked, “Did he point that gun at you?”

“Not really. He was too weak to lift it.”

“Amish don’t use handguns, Mike.”

“Sheriff, it appears that maybe one of them does.”

“Let’s search the place,” Robertson said, and turned back into the cabin.

In the kitchenette, there were old pans and metal dinner plates in the sink. In the one cupboard, there was an old jar of freeze-dried coffee and a flour sack, split open along the bottom seam. In the corner beside the bed stood an old, pressed-board suitcase with its handle torn off. It was tied shut with cotton twine. When they had it untied, they opened it on the bed and found Amish clothes, male, fairly new. Under the bed, they found several bloody towels.