Shunning Sarah (13 page)

My childhood priest might have just hit on the pivotal question in this homicide. “Their reason for shunning Sarah could be a motive for murder,” I said.

We were discussing that possibility when I hit a dead-cell zone north of Rochester on Highway 52 and lost him. A half a mile later I was glad not to be on the phone because an SUV pulled out at a notoriously dangerous exit and a truck in front of me swerved to avoid a collision.

The close call made me once again miss Malik and a second set of eyes on the road. As far as brushes with death, this one was minor. Not like some of the scrapes I’d endured, such as the day of the newsroom shoot-out.

Since then, I’d been thinking of asking Father Mountain to anoint me, just in case. But that strategy made me feel a little like a quitter. And when it came to sacraments, he was a by-the-book priest. Without me being close to death, or even sick, he might be reluctant to administer what the Catholic Church used to call last rites. Soldiers going off to battle could be anointed, and while I was prepared to argue that news was fundamentally a war of words, I could imagine Father Mountain telling me to pray more if I sought peace.

W
hen I sent Bryce my corn-maze story, instead of reading the script, he merely asked me the length. When I told him a minute twenty, he replied, “Good job.”

If I’d told him two minutes, he’d probably have ordered thirty seconds chopped. To him, the math of a story seemed to mean more than the words. I’d heard him telling one of the newscast producers earlier to increase story count. So bringing Lost Corn Maze in tight was my way of showing him I could be a team player.

Sort of like a cyber high five. The best part being I didn’t have to touch him.

Channel 3 ran the 911 audio during all the network prime-time crime shows that evening as a tease.

((TEASE))

HELP! WE’RE LOST IN

THE CORN.

Even the techs in the news control booth were chuckling at the hysteria. And not too much amused them these days as automation took over their jobs.

Once I’d voiced my audio track, my mind left the corn maze and became engrossed with questions about the Amish murder:
Why had Sarah left the fold? Had her departure put her in danger? Or could her attack simply have been random?

I started to arrange a murder wall in my office with a map of the area and Sarah’s sketch. Then I paged through my notebook, looking at names and listing how they related to the homicide case.

Sarah Yoder—victim.

Kueppers family—Josh, Michelle, Brian. Found body—Rescued—Possible suspect.

Ike Hochstetler—identified Sarah’s picture/employer.

Yoder family—Mother, sister, others?

Abram Stoltzfus—Amish bishop.

Ed Eide—Fillmore County sheriff.

More people would certainly yield more clues. Like the owner of the bed-and-breakfast where Sarah spent her final nights. How best to approach? While I hated the idea of driving back south, a phone conversation would go bust.

I decided to ask Bryce if the station would pay for me to stay there overnight—undercover. Maybe I could strike up a conversation over breakfast.

He said no, and didn’t even hesitate.

“We’re trying to keep costs down. That would be an unnecessary expense on an unnecessary story in an undesirable location.”

“But I thought we wanted to own this story.”

“You had your chance, Riley. If authorities make an arrest, we’ll cover that development. Otherwise this story seems like it will be difficult for us to nail. For lots of reasons. So let it go.”

From a purely dollars-and-cents position, his decision was logical. But in journalism, story selection is not all about money. Or at least shouldn’t be. The cheapest news shouldn’t rule.

I still wanted to tell Sarah’s story, but when I tried filling Bryce in on shunning, and what I had learned about our victim leaving her faith and meeting murder—he didn’t want to listen.

“I think you’re more enamored with this Amish story than the viewers are,” he said. “Maybe this weekend you need to give
some thought to how we can work better together. Just because you’ve spent your career at Channel 3 does not mean your job is guaranteed.”

He paused, like he was giving me a moment to weigh his words. And he was the boss.

So I nodded like I agreed with him. “Some of these answers may not come instinctively to me, like they do to you, Bryce. But I think I’m trainable and I think I proved that with the corn-maze story.”

“I think you are, too, Riley. And I’m looking forward to us working closely together to turn Channel 3 around. And your work on the corn-maze story deserves congratulations.”

He walked around his desk toward me and I prepared for another uncomfortable high five. But that didn’t happen. Instead he rested his hands on my shoulders and kissed me. On the forehead. It was more insulting than sexual.

I wanted to tell him that better not happen again. But I also wanted to keep my job. The news business is full of strong, assertive women who are supervised by pigs and after weighing their options, chose to let it go. I didn’t know Bryce well enough to know where this situation was headed, and didn’t want to overreact. At least I hadn’t had to worry about that with Noreen.

A
wild animal out of its territory can be newsworthy. Viewers perceive them as underdogs, even if they’re wolves or mountain lions. Sightings of a black bear had started to circulate in southeastern Minnesota, more than two hundred miles from the real bear country up north.

A couple of kids waiting for a school bus cried bear first. Then a lady collecting autumn leaves for a scrapbook claimed to have surprised one in the bushes. The most believable sighting came from a farmer atop a corn harvester who insisted a bear ran out of his field. A few naysayers insisted the creature was a large dog. But my parents started keeping their canine buddies, Blackie and Max, inside at night, and my dad began carrying a rifle when he walked to the mailbox.

I had tried reassuring them that night after work that they were safe. But safe was dull. So even while no one actually wanted to face a bear, they still liked the allure of one lurking.

“The closest sighting to the farm was a good forty miles away. Dad, even if there is a real bear, you’ve got plenty of distance.”

“Not risking any trouble,” he said. “Just glad we don’t have any cattle around.”

For more than 135 years, my family had farmed corn and raised cattle. Now my parents rented out the land to neighbors and tried to relax in retirement. Despite all their bravado, this
bear talk was making them tense. And they weren’t the only ones. Local parents were encouraging kids to play video games on the couch rather than run outside in fresh air.

State wildlife officials had downplayed the odds that a bear had wandered into that geographical area. While some creatures may have been migrating from the deeply forested areas of northern Minnesota, those bears were heading west toward North Dakota, not south toward Iowa.

“They’d have to move through the Twin Cities to reach southeastern Minnesota,” one of them said during a radio interview. “And that’s not likely.”

Yet earlier in the year, DNR officials had shot a bear spotted running through suburban neighborhoods east of St. Paul. Authorities had speculated that any bear in that location probably swam across the Mississippi River from Wisconsin. Forested valleys were intermingled with farmland in that corner of the state. So while there were no endless woods like in northern Minnesota, plenty of nooks existed for bears to hide. And if nuts and berries were scarce, farm grains beckoned, as did the potential for a dangerous run-in with humans.

I told my parents I’d bring Husky down to the farm the next morning and spend the weekend disproving their bear theory. What I didn’t tell them was that I was also going to be investigating Sarah Yoder’s murder. I didn’t tell Bryce my plans either. What I did on my time was my business.

What I didn’t know then was that Amish out of their culture could also be like wild animals.

I
stopped by my parents’ farm early to reunite Husky with his canine brethren, Blackie and Max. They raced between barn and silos, never giving me a second sniff.

Mom and Dad were abuzz with the news that the nearby Taopi Post Office—the second smallest in the country—had closed.

“It’s the end of an era,” he said.

“Maybe that could be a news story for you,” she said.

Taopi was far outside the Channel 3 DMA and had only reached a population of fifty-eight in the last census. If Bryce wasn’t interested in small-town murder, there was little chance he’d care about small-town mail.

I told them I needed to run over to Harmony and poke around the Amish for information. “Keep the dogs away from bears while I’m gone.”

•   •   •

The old house had a wooden sign advertising the Lamplight Inn. I knocked on the door and told the owner I’d heard she’d been a friend to Sarah Yoder.

She invited me inside. “The word is out that I allow Amish to stay here for free while they sort their lives out,” Linda Kloeckner
said. “Sarah brought very little with her. Not even a change of clothes. Just a small bag.”

She opened a closet door in a rear bedroom and showed me a row of Amish garb for men and women. “They leave these behind when they move on. I told her to help herself if anything fit. She was going to use her first paycheck to buy English clothes.”

While she might not have known Sarah long, I could tell she was shaken by the nature of her death. Knowing someone who has died violently makes us all feel more vulnerable. After all, what if Sarah’s killer had watched her through this very bedroom window? To switch the mood, I grabbed a hanger from the closet, and held a modest black dress in front of me and imagined I was Amish.

Linda pointed me toward a full-length mirror on the back of the door. “If you want to play dress-up, go ahead.” She was serious. So I was tempted in the name of research. The hooks and eyes were tricky and she helped me tie the apron in back.

“My hair isn’t long enough.” Just past my shoulders. A knot at the nape of my neck would be more convincing.

“Pinned up under your bonnet, who can tell?” she said. “If it wasn’t for your makeup and lipstick, you’d blend right in at her funeral.”

“Sarah’s funeral?” I asked. “When and where?”

“About a half hour. At her family’s house.”

“Are you going, Linda?”

“No, I’m English. And not one the Amish especially appreciate. Best I stay away.”

But ten minutes later, I had scrubbed my face and talked her into dropping me off down the road from the funeral. And when she crowned me with a white pleated cap, we were both surprised at how realistic I appeared.

“I won’t say anything at the service,” I promised. “I just want to observe.”

Linda liked the idea that somebody cared about Sarah’s story.
She felt some guilt that she’d done nothing. But the first night Sarah didn’t show up after work, she too had assumed that the young woman had gone back to her Amish family.

“I was disappointed she didn’t even stop by to say goodbye or thank you,” Linda said. “Then I learned she was murdered and felt terrible for my thoughts.”

When I arrived at Sarah’s home farm, an interesting line of buggies were parked along the gravel road. Each had a chalk number on the side, presumably their order to drive to the cemetery. Or maybe so their owners could tell them apart. The largest number I noticed was thirty-eight.

The sight was unusual enough that I shot some video with my cell phone through the windshield. Then I fastened the device under my skirt to my leg with duct tape so I could call my ride later to be picked up.

Linda reminded me to act quiet and shy. “If anyone asks where you’re from, say ‘Ohio.’”

A few other cars also were dropping off Amish men and women for the funeral service. With them, I walked the last hundred yards or so to Sarah’s house. The other women also wore black dresses; the men, black pants and vests over white shirts.

I saw no tears. Only stoic expressions that I tried to mimic.

Inside the barn, a simple pine casket sat on a table at one end. Closed to viewing. No surprise, considering the description I’d heard of her mangled face. Under English circumstances, a photograph of the deceased in happier times would be prominently displayed next to the coffin. But not among the Amish. No flowers either.

Hay was strewn on the floor. Rows of benches filled the building. I took a seat on an end by other women, in case I needed to leave quickly should my impostor role be discerned. I noticed the men kept their hats on while they sat. The duct tape holding my phone to my leg started to itch.

My observation of the ceremony didn’t yield much insight because
the service was in Pennsylvania Dutch—the Amish tongue. I chimed in for Amen, but didn’t volunteer anything else. Occasionally, a word reminded me of high-school German. The prayers and preachers went on for hours.

A jug of water and glasses were passed around and I had a drink. A kitten in a corner started to meow. Later, I heard cows mooing and a horse whinny.

Toward the end, I heard the name “Sarah Yoder” called out. Some more scripture was read, then most of the folks knelt for a final prayer and the service appeared over.

All present lined to file past the casket, and I noticed a girl with her hand outstretched, touching the wooden box. I pegged her as the sister I’d briefly met in the yard the other day. Near her, her mother and a young beardless man I presumed could be a brother mingled with mourners. I wasn’t sure who among the men might be her father, but thought I heard someone refer to Sarah’s mother as Miriam.

I steered clear of anyone who looked like family, while contemplating my next move. Some sort of protocol seemed under way, with the bereaved separating in groups, possibly by age.

An Amish man without a beard came up beside me, took me by the elbow, whispering in my ear. “You need to follow me outside.”