Kingdom Come

by Jane Jensen

  “I see it,” he said, frowning worriedly. He started the car and drove the short distance to the Lapps’.

  When we arrived, the door was answered by Sarah Lapp, the oldest daughter. She was twelve, tall for her age, and rail thin, with a face so narrow it was almost sharp. Her tightly pulled-back dark hair and white cap made her features look even sharper.

  “Can I help youse?”

  “We need to speak with your parents,” Grady said.

  Sarah looked doubtful. “Wait here already.”

  After several long minutes, the door opened again and Miriam Lapp stood there looking at us with pressed lips that said she wasn’t happy to see us. “I’m sorry, but my husband went to town.”

  I glanced at Grady. Maybe this was a stroke of good fortune. We might get more out of Miriam Lapp if Aaron wasn’t around.

  “That’s fine. We’d like to speak with you in that case,” I said firmly but politely.

  “Oh, I mustn’t, with my husband out.” Miriam made no move to open the door farther.

  “It will only take a moment,” Grady said with a conciliatory smile. “If you’d be so kind.”

  Apparently she wasn’t used to being outright defiant. She reluctantly let us in.

  “I must make supper in a bit,” she hedged as we sat down in the living room. She looked like she didn’t want either one of us to be there.

  “This won’t take long,” Grady said, still smiling.

  I got out my iPad and started the recorder. A clock ticked loudly on the wall. Like the Yoders’ home, the living room was clean and neat, with traditional furniture in oak and plaid. There was the smell of just-baked sugar cookies in the house.

  “This is Detective Elizabeth Harris interviewing Miriam Lapp, Deacon Aaron Lapp’s wife, February third, 2014. With me is Detective Mike Grady.”

  Miriam’s hands anxiously twisted a handkerchief, but her face was unreadable.

  “We have some questions about Katie Yoder,” I began. “We understand she worked for you?”

  “’Tis so.”

  “And what did she do for you exactly?”

  “She come to help clean. She don’t work here no more though.”

  “No,” I said coolly. “We’re aware of that. When did Katie start working for you?”

  “Just after my daughter Rebecca was born. I was laid low for a bit. Had a surgery. Katie started comin’ to help.”

  “What year was that?”

  Miriam had to think about it. Her fingers moved as if she were counting on them. “Would have been . . . 2006.”

  I did a quick mental calculation. Katie started cleaning house for the Lapps at eleven years old. In my world, that was still young enough to be babysat. “And you paid her a wage?”

  “Course we did!” Her back stiffened. “She didn’t do it for charity.”

  “How often was she here?”

  “She come Mondays and Thursdays.”

  “And when was the last time you saw Katie?”

  “Last October.” Miriam didn’t flinch but her mouth took on that hard line again.

  “So she worked for you up until the time she disappeared?”

  “’Tis so.”

  Grady and I exchanged a look. I had a million questions, but the challenge was to find the right ones.

  I gave Miriam my best sympathetic, womanly look. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Were you and Katie close? Was she a friend or perhaps more of a daughter?”

  Miriam frowned, as if confused. “She was a third cousin. Her mother, Hannah, is my second cousin.”

  “What I meant was, did Katie discuss things with you? For example, boys she liked, her friends, or any trouble she might have had at home?”

  Miriam glanced at the clock. Her forehead and cheeks blushed pink, but she spoke firmly. “We would never discuss such like, not Katie and me. She was much younger. She did housework, that’s all. We didn’t gossip.”

  I thought her blush indicated she was aware of Katie’s reputation though.

  Grady broke in gently. “Did you ever discuss Katie with Hannah?”

  Miriam looked down into her lap where her large hands were wringing the handkerchief to within an inch of its life. It if had been a chicken, it would have been decapitated by now.

  “Hannah and me prayed over Katie many times.”

  “What did you pray about?” I asked softly.

  She used the handkerchief to wipe at her brow and eyes, which were dry as far as I could see. “Hannah worried that Katie was so man hungry. We prayed for God to give her modesty. We prayed for her soul. Now I must get to supper. It’s late.” She stood, clearly willing the interview to end. But Grady didn’t move and I didn’t either.

  “Did Katie tell you she was leaving?” I asked, deliberately sitting back in the chair to show I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Yes.”

  Now that surprised me. I sat up straighter. I recalled that Hannah Yoder had mentioned that Katie had told a cousin Miriam she was leaving. Damn, had it been Miriam Lapp? I’d met at least three other Miriams since this case began and a dozen cousins. All these common names were confusing.

  “What exactly did Katie say to you?”

  Miriam stuffed the handkerchief into a pocket of her apron and kept her hands in there. I could practically taste her desire to get to the kitchen.

  “She come for work as usual. Said she was leavin’ and wouldn’t be back again. She asked me to say good-bye to her mother. Now I must get on.”

  “This is very important, Mrs. Lapp,” Grady put in gently. “If you could just spare us another five minutes.”

  With extreme reluctance, Miriam sat back down. She seemed calm enough but very interested in getting rid of us. I wondered if Aaron Lapp was the type to get angry if supper was late or if she spoke to us alone. I wondered if he was the type to hit her for such transgressions. He didn’t come across as a tolerant man, and Dr. Foster had me seeing potential trouble when I hadn’t seen it before. I felt sorry for Miriam, but I didn’t want to leave without the answers we needed.

  “Did she say she was planning to leave that same day? The day she told you this?” I asked.

  “Didn’t say so. I weren’t surprised to hear she’d gone though.”

  “So Katie told you that she was leaving the community?” I reiterated, looking at her hard.

  “She did.”

  “You said the two of you weren’t close, and you didn’t gossip with Katie. So why would she tell you she was leaving when she didn’t tell her own family?” I heard the chill in my voice, the frustrated anger that had been lurking resurfacing once again.

  “Well, she wanted me to pay her, not so?” Miriam blinked innocently, as if it were obvious. “Said she was quittin’ and wanted what we owed. Fifty-six dollars, I think it was. ’N’ I give it to her and wished her luck.” Her hands twisted in the pocket of her apron anxiously. “In truth, I weren’t sorry. ’Tween Sarah and me, we didn’t need the help no more, but I hated to fire her.”

  I sighed and looked at Grady. “Did she tell you how she was planning to go? If someone was picking her up?” I asked.

  Miriam shook her head. “Didn’t say.”

  “And when did you tell Hannah and Isaac about Katie’s good-bye?”

  “Next day, Isaac come around lookin’ for Katie since she never come home that night, and I told him what Katie said.”

  “How did Katie get here, when she came to work?”

  “She rode a bike.”

  “And that last day she was here, she left on the bike?”

  Miriam thought about it. “S’pose so. Didn’t watch her, but after she left the bike was gone. Now I really must make supper. I’m sorry, but if you have more questions, you’ll have to talk to my husband.” She stood up once again, very determined this time.

&n
bsp; I stood up too and took a step into Miriam Lapp’s space. “Just one more thing, Mrs. Lapp.” I took a breath and tried to connect with her, looking her in the eyes, but her gaze darted away from mine as if it made her uncomfortable. I spoke softly. “We have reason to believe Katie was sexually abused from the time she was young. Do you have any idea who might have been her abuser?”

  I felt Grady tense beside me. Miriam looked like I’d slapped her in the face, her cheeks going pale and slack with shock.

  “’Tis a lie,” she said in a soft, mortified voice.

  I pressed on doggedly. “Katie spent time here. Maybe you heard or saw something—”

  “No! I don’t believe it,” Miriam said with utter determination, her lips pulled tight in anger. “’Tis a sin to spread such filthy lies!”

  She looked at Grady as if for support, her cheeks splashed with the blush of outrage. His fingers closed on my elbow.

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Lapp,” he said. “Please, if you can think of anything further, contact us.” He tossed a card onto the coffee table and all but pulled me out the door.

  —

  We were quiet on the way back to the station. My mind was churning.

  Katie’s bike. Where was the bike now? Had it ever turned up? If Katie did intend to leave the community that day, or shortly thereafter, had she actually done so? Had someone agreed to help Katie get out and then killed her after she was under his control? Or was it possible that she’d told someone other than Miriam Lapp that she was leaving, and this other person had a real problem with that?

  “I still think it’s someone who picked them up on Craigslist,” Grady said at last.

  “Maybe,” I agreed.

  “The guy could have known this area. Maybe he’d even picked Katie up here before, after work. He could have put her bike in the back of his car or truck and that would have given them some extra time to fool around for an hour or two.”

  “Uh-huh.” I tapped my fingers on the door handle.

  Grady sighed. “Maybe Katie told him about the animal trails. And if he was used to picking her up around here, he’d know the area.”

  “Interesting idea,” I said, and it was. It didn’t strike me as terribly likely though. At this point we weren’t just grasping at straws, we were working a double shift in a goddamned straw factory.

  Grady pulled out his phone and made a call. I heard him talking to Hernandez. He shut the phone. “We got the IP addresses of people who responded to Jessica’s ad from Craigslist. Finally. Smith and Hernandez are going to work late, and I told him to recruit Anderson and Levine. You in?”

  “Sure. But I really want to check up on Katie’s bike. I’d call the Yoders if they had a phone, but not. It won’t take me long to drive over there.”

  Grady sighed. “I want to get back to the station and get the IP address check rolling. You can grab your car and go from there. Don’t be long?”

  “It’ll take forty minutes, and I’ll bring back food.”

  “My hero,” Grady said.

  —

  When I got out of my car at the Yoders’, Sadie was swinging on the porch swing with one of her brothers, who was maybe a year older than her, both of them bundled up in their winter coats. Sadie jumped from the swing with an uncaring thwack and ran toward me. Her brother eyed me warily but stayed where he was as the swing twisted in Sadie’s wake.

  “Hey, Sadie. How are you?” A big smile hijacked my cheeks as I bent down to greet the little girl.

  I thought she was going to throw herself into my arms, but she stopped short of that and, with great decorum, patted my cheek instead with her cold little hand. I could see the tips of mittens tucked into her pockets. Apparently she didn’t like wearing them.

  “Lizbess! You missed supper.”

  “Oh, darn! Well, that’s okay. I’m not hungry.” That was a total lie. “It’s nice to see you. You look very pretty today.” I tugged on her black wool coat teasingly. She had a streak of dirt on her nose and her end-of-day hair had all but broken free of her black bonnet. She was so damn cute.

  Her face got even more serious than usual and her lower lip trembled. “Katie is dead,” she told me.

  I felt horrible. I remembered the day I’d cajoled Sadie into giving up the whereabouts of Katie’s “bestest things” with the promise that we were trying to help. I also felt pain at Sadie’s wording. There was no attempt to soften the blow. It wasn’t “Katie isn’t coming back.” Or “Katie’s with Jesus” but “Katie is dead.” Did Sadie even know what that meant? Living on a farm, perhaps she’d already seen death up close and personal.

  “I know, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. There was a warning voice in my head telling me to proceed with caution. But when the heavy drops fell from Sadie’s eyes, her face still so quiet and solemn, I didn’t have it in me to resist pulling her into a hug. She didn’t fight me, but put her little arms around me with enthusiasm and, with a soft wail, cried into my shirt.

  It felt sweet to have the little girl in my arms, even though her grief was hard to bear. We were like that for maybe thirty seconds before Hannah Yoder came charging out of the house. She was drying her hands on a dishcloth and her face was worried. “Sadie! Come in the house now.”

  Sadie pulled away and ran to her mother before I could say good-bye. With a pat on the little girl’s shoulder, Hannah sent her on into the house.

  I got to my feet, feeling a little uneasy about what had just transpired. It was clear my attention to Sadie wasn’t welcome, but I hadn’t meant any harm. It made me wonder if Hannah was overprotective of having people touch her children. It made me wonder if she had a good reason for that. I wanted to find out.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Yoder,” I said, pulling myself back into police mode and walking slowly closer. “Sorry to disturb you after supper, but I needed to check on Katie’s bike.”

  Hannah folded her arms across her chest, not smiling. “Haven’t seen the bike. Thought Katie took it with her.”

  “So the bike went missing the same time Katie did?” I asked, to be sure.

  Hannah shrugged. “Course. Katie rode that bike everywhere. Figured she rode it to meet up with whoever was . . .” There was a pause, her breath hitching. “Back when it happened, we thought whoever she was leavin’ with. Figured she took it with her in their car. She couldn’t drive, so she’d need it to get around still.”

  The bike was another thing it would have been helpful for them to have mentioned from the start. In fact, I recalled Isaac specifically using the words “walking away.” He must have meant that metaphorically.

  If you don’t ask the question specifically, they’re not going to tell you.

  I felt the start of a headache. I took a deep breath for patience. “Mrs. Yoder. You said Katie had told a cousin of yours that she was leaving.”

  “Ja.”

  “Can you give me the full name of that person?”

  Hannah looked uneasy. “My cousin, Miriam Lapp.”

  “I see. This is Deacon Aaron Lapp’s wife? Residing on Grimlace Lane?”

  “That’s her.” Hannah folded her arms more tightly and spread her feet, in black athletic shoes, a bit apart, as if steeling herself. Her face was completely neutral.

  “And Katie worked for the same Lapps cleaning house, is that correct?”

  “Sure.” Hannah said it like it was something everyone knew. Somewhere deep inside my head, I screamed.

  “You didn’t mention it when we asked about Katie’s work or about Grimlace Lane,” I pointed out, smiling tightly.

  Hannah shrugged. “Guess I didn’t think much of it.”

  I scratched my forehead with my thumb, trying to figure out what to say next. I supposed I’d learned what I’d come out here to learn about the bike, and I should have been on my way. But I
could hear Dr. Foster’s stern words. Someone abused Katie from a young age. Did her mother know? It was possible she didn’t. Children are often reluctant to admit abuse to their parents, either because they’re ashamed of it, think they’ll get in trouble, or their abuser threatens them if they tell. Still, it bothered me that Hannah remembered Katie as some Jezebel without knowing that Katie had been victimized. Besides, Hannah surely had to know something.

  “Hannah,” I said quietly, switching to her first name in a bid to gain her confidence. I took a step closer and tried to impress upon her, with my expression and tone, that I wanted to help. “There’s something I want to ask you. You remember that story you told me, about Katie touching a guest to your home inappropriately at age twelve?”

  Hurt came into Hannah’s eyes. She gave a slight nod.

  “Well, we spoke to a psychiatrist. She believes Katie was sexually abused, starting from when she was quite young. There’s no reason a girl her age would—”

  Hannah took a step back, as if disgusted by me. Her hand flew to her mouth but she didn’t speak.

  “Please,” I urged. “I believe that you didn’t know about it. And I know it’s difficult to think about something like this happening in your own family. But maybe you had a slight suspicion. Or maybe you noticed Katie going off with someone, or there was someone who paid her a little too much attention, or someone she seemed nervous around.”

  Hannah lowered her hand, her face stony. I could see it come over her, as if she’d decided I was not to be trusted.

  I cut off the questioning with a sigh. “I’m only trying to do my job.”

  “Your job? Our Katie is dead and you want to defile her memory in this way? Bring these dirty lies, suspicions into our home? Accuse us of—”

  “I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m just trying to find out what happened to Katie.” I’d hoped, as Katie’s mother, she would understand, that ultimately she and I had the same goal. But all I saw on Hannah’s face was fierce protectiveness—against me. Maybe Hannah cared about Katie, but she cared about her living family more.