Lamb to the Slaughter (Serenity's Plain Secrets Book 1) (34 page)

Suddenly, I knew and I grabbed Daniel’s arm, pulling him to the car.

“I think I know where he is,” I whispered, opening the passenger door for him.

When the Amish men pushed in, ready to enter my vehicle, I held out my hand. “Sorry, guys. You’re not going with us.”

They didn’t argue, but as I dropped into the driver’s side and started the engine, I caught their annoyed looks. Daniel took it in stride, and said, “Where are we heading?”

“To the cornfield.”

40

DANIEL

November 19th

S
erenity pulled into the field as far as she could go before her little Honda was rim deep in the mud and unable to go an inch further. We both jumped from the vehicle and ran along the mowed corn. Serenity knew where she was going, so I followed her, amazed with each step that I took that she was able glide over the corn stumps like a gazelle, while I had nearly fallen twice already.

The day had turned out to be one of the prettiest ones we’d had in weeks, with barely a cloud in the sky—only bright blue above us and a cool breeze in the air. Ironic that this was the type of day that young Mervin might choose to leave the world. Somehow, the kid had managed to keep it all together for weeks following the shooting, but now, when the news was out in the open for everyone in the community and outside of it to hear, he couldn’t deal with it any longer.

Serenity slowed, and I nearly slammed into her back. Our breathing was labored and we both stood for a few seconds
catching our breaths. I questioned her with my eyes, unable to break the silence surrounding us. She brought her finger to her lips, and then she pointed up into a tree.

I saw Mervin then. He was sitting in the barely noticeable tree stand, his black coated back to us. He wore a matching ski cap and his head was bent down. Was he already dead?

Meeting Serenity’s gaze, I saw her practical nature shining through. Either he was dead or alive—running forward wouldn’t help either situation. So we proceeded carefully though the tall, dry grass that was between the last crop row and the hedgerow where Mervin was.

When we reached the spot almost below the old wooden boards, Serenity nudged me and pointed up to Mervin, who still hadn’t moved. I was full of doubt now, knowing that the kid would definitely have heard our approach.

“Mervin?” I called, shielding my eyes from the sunlight.

There was a few seconds of unbearable quiet, and my heart felt the strain, pounding hard in my chest.

Just when I was about to give up hope, Mervin’s voice broke the silence, and I finally breathed.

“I don’t want to go back. And you can’t make me,” he said at the same time he lifted the shot gun, maybe the same one that had killed Naomi, into the air.

I wasn’t worried about my safety or even Serenity’s. What was making my heart race uncontrollably was the knowing that if he turned the gun on himself, we couldn’t reach him in time.

“No one is going to make you go back, Mervin. I can guarantee you that,” Serenity spoke and then motioned for me to climb the ladder to the platform. If she could keep the boy occupied, I might just make it in time.

“I’m only fifteen. I have no choice in the matter,” Mervin said, anger peppering his words. I took a rung and stalled while Serenity spoke again.

“I’m the sheriff. I can make things happen.” She glanced at me with a strange calmness and continued, “Why do you want to leave? Don’t you like being Amish?”

“Are you kidding me? After what I seen last night, I want no part of it. It would be better to put a bullet in me and die the same as Naomi rather than to live here.”

I took another rung, holding my breath.

“Yeah, I hear you. Everything I’ve seen so far about your Amish culture really sucks. I’d say most of you kids want out,” Serenity said casually, but I could hear the slight elevation of her voice. She was doing a good job though, I was almost there.

Mervin set the gun down on the board with a thud. He leaned out over the side and peering at Serenity he said, “It ain’t all bad—a lot of the others don’t seem to mind. Naomi was different though. We had that in common. That’s probably why I loved her.”

It was enough time. I hurried up the last rung and through the opening, grabbing the gun. Once I had it securely in my possession, I called down, “I’ve got it.”

Serenity sighed loudly and sat down on the ground. After a minute of her remaining there in the grass as quiet as a doe, I suddenly realized that she expected me to finish the talk with Mervin, who didn’t seem at all surprised at my appearance. The boy obviously didn’t want to use the gun on himself, but who knows what he might have done if we hadn’t shown up. The ghost of Naomi lying dead some feet away might have pushed him to it.

Mervin was looking at his hands in his lap, moving his fingers in and out from each other. I reached back into my own childhood and tried to remember how I’d felt. It wasn’t too difficult. The feelings had never completely abandoned me, even after all these years.

“Do you come out here to be alone a lot, Mervin?” I asked.

“Yep, it’s the one place where I don’t feel like I’m Amish. I’m just me. I never even hunted much. I just like to sit up here and watch the animals come and go once they’ve forgotten me.”

“Is that why you were out here the night that Naomi was shot?”

Mervin raised his face, which was still heavily freckled, his green eyes intelligent. “I was so tired that day. We’d been bringing in the corn with the horses and I was helping Dat in the evenings put up the new fence. He’d told me that I could head to the house early to get cleaned up for the ball game, but I didn’t want to go. I’m smaller than the others my age, and they don’t talk to me much anyway. I came here instead. I figured David was already playing ball with the rest of ‘em, when I spotted him on the stand. Couldn’t hardly believe my eyes, I was so confused, but he had the gun raised and pointed. I stopped and stood stock still waiting. If only I’d called up to him at that moment—Naomi would probably still be alive. But I was afraid of David—certainly didn’t want to do a thing to rile him. If I’d disturbed his hunt, it would have done just that. When the shot blasted and after the smell of the gun powder was in the air, I finally moved and shouted to him.”

Mervin paused, looking toward the place where Naomi had died with glazed eyes. The poor kid was seeing it again.

“What did you say to your brother?” I pressed, hoping he’d follow through and tell the whole story.

He didn’t look at me when he said, “I asked him what he got. That’s when he turned to me and I saw something horrible in his eyes. The look made me go cold all over. I’d seen it once before—after he’d killed a small stray dog that was hanging around the farm. It was just a starved, scrawny thing, and Dat believed that it had caught one of the hens. Dat himself had told us that if we saw the mutt we were supposed to do it in. But, David didn’t do it with the gun, the way he should have. When the little thing came up to us, all shy and whimpering, he hit her with a board, over and over again.

Mervin shook his head, trying to wipe the image from his mind. Then he looked at me, his eyes glistening. “I told Ma and Dat about what David did to the little mutt, but they didn’t say a thing to him. Instead, they told me to leave it be—that what needed being done had been done. I didn’t agree with ‘em…and I still don’t. All the dog wanted was some food and to be taken care of—that’s all.”

I sighed, glancing down at Serenity. Seeing the tightness of her lips, I knew that Mervin’s words had disturbed her greatly. I certainly loved dogs too, and like Mervin, would never have had the heart to follow Lester’s orders. But I also knew how life in the country went—a stray killing the chickens or livestock wouldn’t be tolerated. Of course, there were other ways to handle the situation—like taking the dog to the animal shelter, though it was a bigger deal for an Amish man to go that route than an English one. Lester would have needed to hire a driver to take him into town with the animal, which was more cost and trouble than any Amish man would place on
the stray dog’s life—just one more reason why I was better off not remaining in the Church.

As I gazed at Mervin, whose face was tight with thought, I felt even more pity for the boy. Serenity was wrong. She might be able to pull some strings and get Mervin removed from his family and placed in a foster home—but that wouldn’t be much better for him. Not now. It would be more beneficial for him to make the move when he was old enough to do it on his own. He needed to wait a few more years—but could he survive it?

Mervin began speaking without my prompting. “David didn’t answer me. He just stood up and stared at where he’d shot. I was already scared when I started running into the corn. I felt…like something really bad was happening. Somehow, I just knew.”

“Was Naomi alive when you found her?”

He nodded. “She was blinking, and when I tried to talk to her, she didn’t seem to see me. She coughed a little and that’s when I saw the blood spreading on her belly. Her coat was open, and even against the navy of her dress I saw the wetness and knew what it was. When she stopped moving all together, it was about nightfall. The moon was huge that night and I could see her perfectly.” He stopped and took another deep breath before he said, “I remember how pretty Naomi was while she laid there, the moon light shining on her face.”

I hated to put the kid through it, but the fear of him clamming up, pushed the next question out of me. “What did David do when he saw Naomi dying on the ground?”

Mervin looked me square in the eyes, and I believed at that instant he’d tell the same thing to a judge in a courtroom. “He done laughed. And the sound chilled me to the
bone. He started saying all kinds of awful things about her and how she’d deserved it. He told me that we’d tell Dat and Ma that it was just an accident—that he wouldn’t even get in trouble for it.” Mervin shook his head angrily. “I wouldn’t lie to protect him—and I told him that. That’s when he went crazy like, and took his gun and hit my legs with it. I was on the ground and hurting and all, but I was so mad, I forced my body up and crashed into him. He wasn’t expecting it. Even though he’s bigger than me, I managed to get him down. We fought and rolled for a while—don’t right know how long, but at some point, when I thought David would kill me too, my hand touched the rock. I was almost afraid to use it, knowing it might do him in, then I’d be a murderer too, but I had no choice. I hit him in the head with it.”

We sat quietly for a couple of minutes as the birds called to each other in the bright sunshine of midafternoon. The breeze was gentle and smelled of decaying leaves making me feel nostalgic for simpler days.

Mervin didn’t need to finish the story. I already knew the rest. Lester was an honest man and what he’d already told matched with his son’s account.

When Mervin’s eyes met mine again, the tears began falling. He sniffed, trying desperately to hold it in. I wouldn’t let him though. Pulling him against me, I hugged him tightly until the tears flowed freely, his soft sobs vibrating against my chest. I wasn’t sure if any amount of counseling would help the kid get over this kind of trauma.

But that was for later. Right now, all he needed was a friend.

41

SERENITY

December 22nd

I
pushed the papers out of the way, gazing out the window at the white, fluffy world. Large flakes were still falling heavily, proving that the weather forecasters had gotten it right for a change—we really were going to have a white Christmas.

The gruff throat clearing brought me back from the winter wonderland. Bobby stared at me in shear annoyance.

“Really, Serenity, you’re as bad as a toddler, losing complete focus since the snow began falling.”

“Don’t you remember the excitement of rushing outside after school to make a snowman or toss a hard packed snowball at one of your buddies?” I asked, leaning back in the chair and noticing that Todd had been doing the same thing as I had been doing—only I’m sure he was dreaming about the ski slopes.

“Trust me, when you get to be my age, snow loses its appeal entirely. The cold is not good for arthritis my girl. Now, I
might be distracted if there was a warm beach with palm trees beyond the glass.”

The thought of Bobby in swimming trunks made me grin and I hid my mouth with my hand.

“Have you heard that’s where Tony is right now—recovering at some damn retreat in sunny, Florida.” Todd snorted.

“Just shows that there’s very little justice to be had in Blood Rock, Indiana, or the world for that matter,” I said sourly. I still hadn’t been able to prove that the ex-sheriff had a hand in my house burning down. To rub salt in the wound further, the local judge had only slapped his good old buddy on the wrist for assaulting me—something about how the two of us had been squabbling for a while now and there was no need to drain the tax payers’ dollars about it in today’s economic conditions. It made me sick just thinking about it.

“If you spend as much time in this town as Tony has, you’ll have the friends to get you out of a fix too,” Bobby said matterof-factly. I shook my head. The statement just didn’t deserve a response in my book.

“Getting back to what I was trying to tell you, Serenity. My friend from Ohio listened to the interrogation room audio tape and was able to give me a pretty good gist about what Daniel Bachman said to Eli.”

Bobby’s words pulled me from any remnants of my daydreaming with startling force.

“What did he say?” I rushed out, hardly believing that the old coroner had come through with the information. The man really did have connections.

“Daniel wasn’t being the traitor you thought. He was actually helping us out.”

“How so?” I asked, wanting to go around my desk and shake the information out of him so that I could hear it quicker.

“He told Eli that the unborn child was his, but that that was not evidence that could be used against the boy.”

“And how was that helpful?” I immediately felt a blanket of gloom go over me.

“Hold your horses, and let me tell you everything. You’re so impatient all of the time. I’m surprised that you can sit still for even a minute.”