Blood of the Prodigal

by Gaus, P. L.

“Jim, I’m only gonna tell you this once more, and then ...”

  Larson interrupted, “Then you’re gonna what?” adding a challenge, “Everybody’s seen her flirting with you.”

  “For crying out loud, Jim,” Niell said, caught his father’s smile, gave up, and muttered to himself, “For crying out loud.”

  Larson chortled a small triumph, pushed out of the booth, and sauntered up to the counter still wearing his filthy clothes, the stench of the swamp traveling with him.

  Niell Sr. explained again about the truck. “Like I was saying, we really weren’t looking for anything. First we found the campfire, out near Killbuck. It was used pretty light, maybe two nights at most. Then the truck. I remembered you said you needed to find one for Robertson. It looked to me like somebody pushed it in, hoping it would sink.”

  That’d be whoever had killed Jonah Miller, Ricky thought. His mind worked slowly at first. He rubbed at his hair, annoyed, and forced himself to think. Why would they sink the truck? Then again, maybe it was Jonah Miller himself who’d sunk the truck. Perhaps that’d fit. Before Jonah started walking home, either before he bought his Amish clothes or after, he drove to the swamp, camped, and . . . . what? Ricky Niell thought about that, came up with nothing, gulped the rest of his coffee, stood up from the table, and asked, “You said you found tracks?”

  “Two sets for sure, maybe more,” the senior Niell replied. “Trouble is, we stomped the place up pretty good ourselves, before we found the truck. But there were two sets of prints at least, one a man’s, the other smaller.”

  “Small?” Ricky asked.

  “Like a kid’s,” Niell Sr. said.

  “Two tracks for sure?”

  “Those two at least, plus ours. Gotta remember we didn’t know it was your guy Miller that had been there. Then I recognized his picture. Got himself a different name on that license, though.”

  “Amish don’t take pictures,” young Niell said. “How’d you know it was him?”

  “Oh, I’d know Jonah Miller’s face pretty much anywhere,” Niell Sr. asserted. “That kid was into more trouble than you’d believe for an Amish lad.”

  And now the picture of Jonah Miller lay flat on the table. Thirty-one. Black on brown. Long black mustache, carefully groomed, and a flattop haircut. Killeen, Texas. Niell scraped mud from the corner where the renewal date was printed. The license had recently expired. The name on the license read Jon Fenimore Mills.

  Niell lifted the license, wiped it clean, slipped it into his back jeans pocket and said, “I’ve got to take it in right away. Then you’ll need to take us out there.”

  In the parking lot beside his truck, Ricky added, “Let me tell the sheriff about the name on the license.”

  22

  Thursday, June 25

  9:00 A.M.

  “SOME bozos will do anything,” Ricky Niell barked for all ears to hear—the sheriff, Niell Sr., Branden, the deputies, Ed Lorentz on the tow truck’s winch, and anyone else that morning who might have been near the southern reaches of the vast Killbuck watershed. As he spoke, Jim Larson came up spitting mud and wiped dirty water out of his eyes, exasperated to see them all standing there, encouraged to laughter by Niell, who wore an expression of utter disgust.

  Larson swore profusely, waded with difficulty toward such shore as can be distinguished in a swamp, held up a hand, and was hauled out unceremoniously by Niell, who gave him a look that said “Listen, turkey—lay off.”

  Larson scraped muck out of his shirt collar and stomped over to the winch, dripping swampwater, mumbling to himself, fuming at the way the other men had seen Niell handle him. “This time, just give her a slow tug, Ed,” Larson said, sounding bossy.

  Ed Lorentz dismissed Larson’s advice with a grunt, hitched his jeans up with a disrespectful scowl, and slammed the winch into gear. The cable tightened abruptly on the hook attached to the rear axle. This time the hook held, and the truck began to emerge tail first out of the swamp. It was a fairly new, full-sized, tricked-out Chevy, and it prompted whistles from a couple of the men.

  Branden stepped well clear of the operation, waiting for water to surge out of the now-vertical truck. Ricky Niell came over to him and pointed at the license Branden held.

  “Couldn’t find Jonah Miller because he changed his name,” Niell said matter-of-factly, and watched the truck spill water as it hung from the cable.

  Branden studied the face on the license. Then he read the name again. Jon Fenimore Mills. He remembered the books Jonah’s teacher had given him in the fifth grade and shook his head. Jon Mills, on its own, wasn’t that different from Jonah Miller. The middle name Fenimore obviously came from Miss Beachey’s gift of The Last of the Mohicans. Branden wondered about a man who had changed his first and last name so slightly, but also had given himself a name taken from a favorite author, as if he wanted to embrace the future, but couldn’t escape his past.

  “We’ll be able to trace him, now,” Niell remarked, eyes still on the truck. “But we’ve got another problem.” Niell turned to face Branden. “The truck changes everything.”

  Indeed it does, Branden thought. There must have been a good Amish reason for Jonah Miller, aka Jon Fenimore Mills, to have abandoned the truck. A reason not to have sold it. Had he disdained the money? Maybe not. The Amish don’t disdain money outright. And Jonah Miller could have used the money that the truck would bring. Or his family could have used it. But perhaps Jonah Miller had not simply been heading home. Perhaps there was more to his being on that lane than simply going home. “Got any ideas why he’d abandon the truck?” Branden asked Niell.

  “You mean instead of selling it?” Ricky asked.

  “For one thing, yes,” Branden said. “But also, it’s not just abandoned. Somebody also ...” Branden stopped abruptly, thought a spell, and then asked, “You did say there were two sets of tracks?”

  “Two at least. Several large prints, some small,” Niell replied, interested.

  “If it was only two sets, then who tried to hide the truck?” Branden asked.

  “You figure it was more than Jonah’s just not wanting the money from selling it,” Niell commented, not needing an answer.

  Branden nodded pensively, and remembered Millie Dravenstott, the saleslady in Fredericksburg who had kept back a box full of fancy western clothes for Jonah Miller, “in case things didn’t work out.” So Jonah Miller would have walked back to his truck, driven to Fredericksburg to collect his English clothes, and gone away, again, if his father had rejected him. But Jonah never got the chance to find out what his father would do, Branden thought morosely.

  The sheriff had the truck doors open now, and Ed Lorentz had released the slack on the cable, letting the truck down on its tires.

  Ricky Niell’s posture had shifted perceptibly. He asked suspiciously, “You know who made the little tracks?”

  “A boy,” Branden said, and then added, “Deputy, I’m going to need your help.”

  Then Branden motioned for Sheriff Robertson, left Niell standing in place, met the sheriff halfway, and said, “Bruce, this license explains a lot.”

  “Sure does,” Robertson said. He glanced approvingly at Niell and took the license from Branden.

  “You’ll be able to check it through? On the name Jon Mills, I mean?” Branden asked.

  “No problem,” the sheriff said, looking back at the truck. “But, we’ve got a lot of work here with the truck alone. It’ll hold clues to his recent whereabouts, too.”

  “Then I’d like to go ahead with our plans out at the Millers’,” Branden said and studied the sheriff’s expression. “And I’d like to take the deputy with me,” indicating Niell with a nod of his head.

  The sheriff glanced over at Niell, still not in uniform. Up all night from his looks, the sheriff thought, either out on the town or hunting, maybe both. Then he had carried that license into the jail as cool as ice, laid it on the counter, and waited for Ellie to figure it out. They called back to me, and then waited without
speaking for me to react. “Niell shows promise, don’t you think?” Robertson commented in a low voice.

  “That’s why I need him out at the Millers’,” Branden said.

  “He’s been piling up overtime,” Robertson said. “Might not want to go.”

  “Oh, I think I can tell him a few things to entice him.”

  The sheriff looked back at the truck, saw Jim Larson leaning in over the front seat and hollered, “Not so fast, Larson,” then to Branden, “OK,” and made a hurried march to the truck, giving orders.

  Explaining his intentions to Niell, Branden led the way back to his truck, tossing his hat in through the open window. With Niell on the passenger’s side, he backed down the muddy path that leads into the town of Killbuck.

  En route to the bishop’s house, Branden told Ricky Niell the curious saga of Bishop Miller’s request for help in finding his grandson Jeremiah. Of the note Jonah Miller had written saying the boy would be back by harvest. Of the bishop’s insistence, from the start, that they not go to the authorities. That if they found the boy, they were not to try to retrieve him from his father. Of the search for Jonah before his death. Of the investigations after the murder. And of their concerns that something about the bishop and his actions wasn’t quite right.

  First of all, now that Jonah was dead, why was the bishop proceeding so cautiously? Then, since the boy was still missing, why hadn’t the bishop gone to the sheriff and told everything he knew?

  Now that the truck had been found, there was evidently more trouble than Branden had earlier realized. Why would Jonah and Jeremiah sink the truck in the swamp? And if they didn’t, who did? Millie Dravenstott had been holding clothes for Jonah Miller in Fredericksburg, in case his father rejected him. Now why would Jonah save back a suit of English clothes and not an exceedingly more valuable truck? And more importantly, if Jonah and Jeremiah were simply heading home and Jonah had turned up dead, then why would Bishop Eli Miller hunker down at home without so much as a word? Unless the bishop, as Caroline had surmised, was still protecting the boy.

  At the bishop’s house, they parked out on the lane and walked openly up the driveway. There were hammering sounds coming from the rear. No one answered their knock at the front door.

  In the back, they found Isaac Miller putting up frame on the poured concrete foundation on the knoll behind the barn. He wore a straw hat identical to Jonah’s and a denim carpenter’s apron over trousers. His light blue shirtsleeves were rolled up neatly, precisely to the elbows. When confronted, Isaac Miller said little. He would only remark that his father was in the fields, pointing into the rolling valley behind the barns.

  They took a path around a vegetable garden where two teenagers were hoeing weeds. The children looked up shyly, without speaking, and quickly returned to their work. There was a bricked well in the backyard, with a hand pump and a tin cup hung on the spigot. A long run of clothesline, with clothes fluttering black, with a sprinkling of subtle Amish hues.

  Branden and Niell ducked under a tall grape arbor of weathered boards and stood to gaze at the fields of Bishop Eli Miller. The wide valley was planted in Amish crops. Corn, barley, oats. The dark soil at their feet was trampled by the hooves of horses. The short rows of grain in numerous small fields fanned in several directions, blown first this way and then another by a warm, irregular breeze. Purple martins skirmished through the air from a triple-decked martin house on a tall pole. A dinner bell rode high atop another pole.

  On the far side of the valley, a line of timber showed white patches where the trunks of sycamores marked a stream. The sky was unusually blue for northern Ohio, but showed heavy gray clouds to the south. Branden, like many Buckeyes, was essentially forest bred. Accustomed to hills, trees, and vistas foreshortened by clouds. To him, sky blue was just another shade of gray, and any sunny day could hold the promise of rain. He stood at the edge of Eli Miller’s fields and studied the sky. He lifted his hat and used a handkerchief to wipe out the hat band, confident that the approaching storm would drop the temperature ten degrees in as many minutes. Thinking that the next few moments would hold the fate of Jeremiah Miller.

  In the farthest field, near the wooded stream, they found Bishop Miller sitting quietly on the buckboard of a hay wagon, reins limp in his hands, head bowed. Cut hay lay scattered in the field in arching rows that roughly followed the curves of the wandering stream.

  At the sound of their approach, Bishop Miller looked up. He was obviously startled by the new Amish trim of the professor’s beard. After gazing at the Amish-Branden for several minutes, apparently working on a decision, Miller climbed down wearily from the bench and grasped one of the tall wooden-spoked wagon wheels, which bore knobbed steel rims.

  Branden’s stance before the bishop was rigid and silent, feet planted somewhat apart, hands clasped behind his back, waiting for the bishop to begin. Niell stood to the side, a pace back.

  After a silent interval, the bishop spoke falteringly. “I’ve been praying, Herrn Professor, for guidance.”

  Branden waited.

  “I see that you’ve understood about Jonah’s clothes. About his beard. What it means, that is.”

  “He was coming home on your terms, Bishop,” Branden said. Then he held his peace, eyes steady and confident, partly accusing, mostly just waiting.

  “It’s not easy to know what to do. We are a simple people. Thoughts come slowly, decisions even more so.”

  The bishop seemed bewildered, not secretive as Branden had expected. Branden eased his stance somewhat.

  “We’ve all been praying, first for Jonah and now for Jeremiah.”

  He reached up under his straw hat and pulled out a tattered paper. He held the folded page with trembling hands, his thumbs up, as he had obviously done through many hours of prayer. His head bowed slightly, out of habit.

  Then the bishop offered the folded page to Branden, and looked beseechingly into Branden’s eyes.

  Branden unfolded the page and read an erratic scrawl:

  $75,000 or the kid will never come home.

  Jonah knows nothing.

  Tell no one.

  Dont go to the police.

  Wait for instructions.

  Dont try to find us, or they both die.

  One month, so be ready!

  Branden, flabbergasted, handed the page silently to Niell, who read it and then ran his fingertips through his hair with an indignant groan.

  Branden asked, “How long have you known?”

  “This note came at the same time we got Jonah’s note, when Jeremiah was taken.”

  “You knew this when you first came to see me?”

  “We knew Jonah had the boy, and we knew someone had delivered that note.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want us to let on that we were searching for Jeremiah?”

  The bishop nodded yes.

  “And why you haven’t come for help, now that Jonah is dead?”

  The bishop nodded again.

  “And you knew the day Jonah was murdered that he had been coming home? He’d repented. You wrote his obituary?”

  The bishop nodded yes again, his mind numbed by the cruel circumstances. Branden noticed especially that Miller had not argued with his assertion that Jonah had repented.

  Niell stepped forward angrily and asked, “Do you know where the boy is? Who has him?”

  “No,” the bishop said, looking helpless.

  “Have you looked for the boy?” Niell asked and then to Branden, “What’s his name? Jeremiah?”

  “Jeremiah,” Branden acknowledged and waited for the bishop to answer.

  “We have not,” the bishop said, anguish in his eyes. “We thought it best to let the professor do the looking, while we kept up our usuals and prepared the money. In case.”

  Niell paced in a circle, manifestly indignant.

  Branden peered into the eyes of the bishop and saw uncertainty and heartbreak. He realized instinctively that, with the death of Jonah Miller, there wo
uld be more to the ransom scheme than was first intended.

  Softly he asked, “Have you heard again from these people?”

  The bishop produced another worn and tattered page.

  Warned you about Jonah.

  $100,000 now!

  Five Days.

  Be ready.

  Branden handed the second page to Niell, who read it while pacing and then stopped and eyed Branden, astounded.

  “How long have you had this second ransom note?” Branden asked.

  “Four days,” the bishop said.

  “So that’s why you wanted me to keep searching for three more days. After that it wouldn’t matter anymore.”

  The bishop nodded, “Yes.”

  “We saw your son Isaac back at the house,” Branden said, deliberately calm. “I presume he’s building a Daadihaus?”

  The bishop nodded yes, speechlessly.

  “Then you plan to retire?”

  “Yes,” the bishop said and then explained, “Isaac is to have the big house. The little Daadihaus is for the Mrs. and me.”

  Branden took the two pages from Niell, refolded them, and held them, hesitating a moment before saying, “I gather you’ve not yet decided whether or not you’ll pay the ransom.”

  23

  Thursday, June 25

  12:45 P.M.

  BRANDEN and Niell parked at the Millersburg Courthouse amid a noisy procession of autos, trucks, and buggies. At the curb marked for horses only, some of the rigs were plain in the extreme, and flat black. Others were more elaborate, and sported mirrors, reflectors, and other fixtures. Some of the Amish had unhitched their horses and pushed their buggies to the side. Those on shorter errands had left their horses hitched at the rail along the eastern sidewalk on the courthouse grounds. Tourists slowed traffic on the square or congregated on the sidewalk, taking pictures, pointing crassly, and talking loudly.

  The morning had been breezy and warm, but now the advance clouds of thunderstorms had started to gather as Branden and Niell made their way around the brown and tan sandstone courthouse, Branden seething at the tourists. He glanced up to gauge the coming storm, dark clouds setting off the green copper roof of the old, boxy building.