Kingdom Come

by Jane Jensen

  “Please go now,” she said firmly. And without another word, she turned and went into the house.

  —

  I sat in the deli waiting for the to-go bags of sandwiches for another long night at the station. I twiddled with my phone. I felt uneasy about my visit with Hannah Yoder. Should I have put things more delicately? Was there a way to delicately ask if Hannah suspected that her husband or sons had sexually molested her young daughter?

  Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about Ezra. I felt supremely shitty for the way things had been left with him. It was true that he’d withheld information from me, but I no longer thought he’d done it with any sort of evil intent. Nor did I believe he’d fooled around with Katie Yoder.

  Unless he was still lying. Unless he’d been messing around with her after all, and I was too mesmerized by him to think objectively.

  No. I didn’t believe that.

  Cursing myself, I looked at his photo on my phone, the one I’d taken the day we’d interviewed all the farmers. I’d moved all the others to my PC at the station and deleted them off the iPad, but not this one. I hadn’t been able to resist keeping it in the cloud.

  I scrolled through my received texts. I still had the one he’d sent me when he picked me up from the farmers’ market. My thumb hovered over it uncertainly.

  I was absolutely not going to call him.

  I did, however, type out a text.

  Sorry about earlier. I was frustrated about the case. Hope I didn’t offend you and Martha.

  I stared at it. As a detective, I had nothing to apologize for. But as a friend, I did. I argued with myself for a good five minutes over whether or not to send it. A young single woman, a police detective, could not be friends with a hot young Amish guy. And certainly not anything more.

  But he’s leaving the Amish. He was leaving even before you showed up. That did put things in a slightly more hopeful light. After all, if Romeo had willingly renounced the Montagues, if Tony had quit the Jets . . .

  I laughed at my own ludicrousness and pressed Send. And then I sweat.

  The sandwiches and drinks came out and I was nearly back at the station when my phone pinged. I parked and fought to get it out of my pocket.

  Ya did a bit.

  Well that was honest. I typed in a response.

  Sorry.

  He replied. Ok.

  The man was succinct, I had to give him that. I tapped the phone on my leg, trying to think of what to say. “Can we still be friends” sounded absurd. And I certainly couldn’t write something like “I’m glad you’re not still offended because I like you.” Geez, this was nuts. I finally went with:

  Ok then.

  Alright came back quickly. I smiled, hearing Ezra’s laconic tone.

  Very good, I typed.

  Settled came back. I laughed, joy and anxiety bubbling up in my chest. Holy cow, I was in so much trouble.

  Good night, Ezra, I typed. Send.

  Good night, Elizabeth.

  CHAPTER 11

  Germination

  We worked late, and then I hit the gym at the station for an hour to relieve some stress. By the time I had a snack, took a shower, and went to bed, it was after one A.M. My alarm failed—probably because I hadn’t remembered to set it—and I woke up late. I arrived at the station the next morning at nine A.M.

  I turned into the parking lot and rolled to a confused stop. Tied up in front of the station house were eight buggies with their horses. My phone pinged. It was Grady.

  Where are you? Need you here now.

  I had a very bad feeling about this. I parked and hurried inside.

  Grady met me in the hall and pulled me toward the chief’s office.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “There’s a delegation here from the Amish church. They asked to speak to the chief and they want you and me present.”

  I wondered if this could be a good thing—maybe they’d come to give up Katie’s abuser? The firm set of Grady’s jaw told me nothing.

  The office of Chief Lumbaker, our chief of police, was filled with Amish men in their black clothes and long beards. As we entered, they were speaking among themselves in German, but they stopped as soon as they saw us, their demeanors going blank. I noticed Aaron Lapp was front and center of the group. The look he gave me was hard enough to make me shiver. I straightened my spine and gave him a friendly smile, mostly because I figured it would annoy the hell out of him.

  Chief Lumbaker was in his fifties. He looked like the picture of a conservative businessman in his suit, but from my few dealings with him, I thought he was fair and open-minded. Still, I didn’t know him all that well.

  “Now that we’re all here,” he said, “why don’t you proceed, Mr. Lapp?”

  Aaron Lapp took a step forward and clasped his hands in front of him gravely. His blue eyes were cold. “We have come to a decision amongst ourselves. We’ve tried to cooperate with the police on this matter, but it’s now at the point where we are being unfairly harassed.”

  I clenched my jaw, feeling queasy. My heart started beating too hard. This was not good.

  “Mr. Lapp—” Grady began, but Lapp held up a hand and went on.

  “In particular, Detective Harris is no longer welcome.” He pointed at me accusingly. “This woman wears a gun and uses foul language—”

  I was going to use some foul language in a minute.

  “—she goes against all our beliefs, yet she has made no effort to maintain the distance we desire, but has made overtures to befriend our children and seduce our young men. This will not be tolerated!”

  Geez, the guy had a voice like Abraham thundering down the Ten Commandments from on high. He made me squirm inside, made me feel guilty, and worried about what my bosses would think. And then—then I felt angry.

  Everyone was looking at me. Chief Lumbaker and Grady too.

  Grady tried to defend me. “I don’t believe that, Mr. Lapp. I have never seen Detective Harris act disrespectfully or do anything inappropriate.” Despite his words, there was a hint of doubt in his eyes. Maybe he was wondering about the way Ezra had smiled at me the day we’d walked into that barn. Hell, I would have if I were in his shoes right now.

  “You are not always there,” Lapp said pointedly.

  Grady blinked. “Detective Harris?”

  I folded my arms. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” I gave Grady and Chief Lumbaker my silent assurance with a hard look.

  “We will not argue the point,” Lapp said. “We sincerely request that Detective Harris be removed from any dealings with our community. And the truth is, we have answered your questions several times over. We want no more badgering of our people, especially not our women and children, having their heads filled with unwarranted and inappropriate allegations.” He gave me an ugly look. “From here on, any more questions you have for one of ours, you must come to the elders first. If we agree the question has value, we will go with you to do the questioning. We will work with Detective Grady in those things.”

  Grady broke in. He sounded calm but his hands were fisted at his side. “Detective Harris is the most experienced homicide detective we have. We need her expertise on this case.”

  Chief Lumbaker grunted. “I thought you were pursuing other angles. Is there any reason to believe the Amish are more deeply involved? Do you have proof they haven’t already told you everything you need to know from them?”

  I looked at the chief in disbelief. “Sir, with all due respect, we should not discuss the details of the case in front of . . . of civilians.”

  The chief frowned at me. “These men are not suspects, Detective Harris. If you have something to say, say it now.”

  Holy hell. He said it so flatly, so indisputably. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “No, sir. I think we have all we need from the Amish for
the moment,” Grady said tightly. “Is there anything else?”

  I shut my mouth, which had been hanging open, with a snap.

  “You and Detective Harris are excused,” Chief Lumbaker said. He and Grady exchanged a look I didn’t like, a look that said they’d be talking about this later. Probably without me in the room.

  Grady took my elbow and steered my numb body out the door.

  —

  I paced in the break room. Grady had shut the door behind us so we’d have privacy. At least until the next cop had a caffeine crisis.

  “But this is sexism, pure and simple!” I all but shouted.

  “Of course it is,” Grady admitted. “But it’s not on the department’s side, it’s on our constituency’s side. Unfortunately, we can’t afford to ignore what the Amish elders want.”

  “Why not? They don’t run the police department, do they?”

  “Of course not!” Grady snapped. “But they’re a large and important part of this community. And they have a point, Harris. It’s not our job nor our place to try to influence their beliefs.”

  “I never—!” I was too flabbergasted to even finish that sentence.

  “I know that,” Grady said in an almost-pleading voice. “But you are a role model, whether you try to be or not.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Come on, Harris. You’re beautiful and you’re smart and you exude competence.”

  “If you’re trying to butter me up . . . !”

  “So, yes, you do influence the people who you come into contact with. That’s not a bad thing. But I can see why the Amish don’t necessarily want you spending a lot of time around their young girls and, yes, young men.”

  He eyed me pointedly. He had to suspect something about Ezra Beiler. But at least he wasn’t going to ask about it. I hoped.

  “But . . . that’s ridiculous! This isn’t high school! They can’t just ask me to not sit at their lunch table! I’m a homicide detective. Whether they like me or not, I have to do my job!”

  Grady rubbed his forehead as if a construction crane were moving blocks around in there. He sighed. “Okay, look, no one is saying you’ll be taken off this investigation. But Lapp has a point. We don’t have any direct evidence tying the killer to the Amish—”

  “That’s bullshit!” I started counting off my fingers. “There’s the sexual abuse—”

  “Which is Dr. Foster’s assumption that we haven’t proved—”

  “—there’s the fact that Katie worked for the Amish family two doors down from where Jessica’s body was found, there’s the fact that both were likely placed in Rockvale Creek—”

  “Also unproven. We don’t know for sure that Katie wasn’t dumped in the Susquehanna.”

  “—and the fact that the killer knows the area. Come on!”

  Grady took a deep breath. “I know all that. But, in fact, we don’t have any irrefutable evidence that cannot be explained another way. Now, I know you’ve had a hard-on for this being a member of that neighborhood since day one, and I was willing to give you some space on that. But in all honesty—”

  I’d turned sideways to Grady, huffily closing him off, and he pulled me back by my arm and made me look at him. He spoke intently. “I’m talking as your supervisor here, Harris. In all honesty, our best lead on this case right now is those Craigslist responders. We already have a few names and addresses that need to be checked out. That’s where I need you to focus. And that doesn’t require you to interview the Amish, does it?”

  I was still angry, but doubt started to trickle in like rainwater down the cellar walls. As much as I wanted to kick and flail about being told I couldn’t talk to anyone I goddamn well wanted to, there was some logic to what he was saying. We had followed up with the Amish quite a bit without much progress, and from any objective point of view, the Craigslist angle was the most promising. We needed to find the men who had actually spent time with Jessica and Katie, who had paid for their nubile young bodies. Even if Katie’s past abuse was very real, it might have no direct relation to these murders—that is, to my ultimate objective of finding the killer. Katie might have been sexualized when she was young, that might have led to her willingness to trade her body for money, and some john may have killed her for that. Sometimes you don’t learn everything you want to know on a case. Sometimes you have to let go of the details to make progress on the bigger picture.

  Why was I so fixated on the Amish? Was it really gut intuition about the murder? Or had some wrong switch gotten flipped in my head? Was I just enamored by them, wanting to spend time among them and dig into their world? Or did I have some desire, hidden even to myself, to despoil? Did I want to be an influence for another way of life?

  I had to admit that when I’d spent time with Sadie and Waneta, seen them look at me with such curiosity and admiration, I’d hoped I could maybe open up some other potential paths in their minds. My intentions were nothing but good—what woman wouldn’t want to give a hand to a girl she suspected was being forced down a narrow path without much real choice? But who was I to make such a judgment? Was my life so incredible that I wanted everyone else to live like I did? A lonely workaholic with a perpetual psychosomatic chill and nightmares of her beloved’s murder? God forbid.

  And then there was Ezra. I was guilty as charged there, even if only in my own heart. He liked me, I was pretty sure of that. Had I led him on?

  “Fine. I’ll focus on the Craigslist angle,” I said abruptly.

  Grady looked relieved. “I appreciate your cooperation, Harris. We’ll get through this.” He put a hand on my shoulder.

  Requisite boss pep talk. I forced a smile. “Yeah.”

  “We’ll find this guy.”

  I nodded, pretending enthusiasm.

  “And, you know, if you have any more questions for the Amish, just tell me and I’ll talk to them. I can even record the conversations, so it’ll be like you were there.”

  Virtual detective work. Because I was a pariah. Perfect. I forced a smile. “I’ll go check with Hernandez on the Craigslist stuff now.”

  “Good.”

  Grady looked relieved that I wasn’t going to throw some emotional scene. Well, maybe I had thrown a teensy one, but I’d pulled myself out of it. The last thing I needed was to be labeled an emotional female who had to be tiptoed around. Not Elizabeth Harris. I was a pro. I did what was best for the team.

  That didn’t stop me from resenting the hell out of it.

  —

  For the next week I worked on the Craigslist angle with twelve-hour days and no break for the weekend. A lot of people had responded to Jessica’s ad. Here’s an analogy: Place two large prime ribs with all the trimmings on a silver platter in the middle of a wolf preserve. We had hundreds of responses to check out.

  Unfortunately, all we had were the user names, e-mails, and IP addresses of the people who had responded to the ad, because they’d done so through Craigslist. Jessica’s computer didn’t have a record of her old e-mails, because apparently she’d done all her e-mailing in the cloud, and we didn’t have her password. Our tech team had tried to break it without success. The mail service, tmailer, had an aggressive privacy clause in their terms of service, and they weren’t being helpful. Grady was working to get a subpoena, but none of us wanted to wait around for that. So we went down the list we had one by one, going to see them in person if they were anywhere nearby—and most were. We were looking for men who had at least met up with the girls. So far, we hadn’t found any who admitted to doing so. Jessica was apparently very picky about who they accepted “dates” with. If not for Charlie Bender’s testimony about seeing her driving around with strange men, I would have wondered if she’d accepted any at all.

  I focused on the work and tried not to think about that scene with the Amish delegation. Still, at odd times it wafted through my brain like a bad odor, m
aking me angry all over again. I also tried not to think about Ezra Beiler. Grimlace Lane was off limits to me now. And, in no uncertain terms, Ezra was too. It wasn’t that I was so obedient that I couldn’t rebel a time or two—or twelve. But I thought it best to let things ride, focus on work, and let the juices settle—sort of like resting a roast when you take it out of the oven.

  Ezra threw me for a loop, and right now, I needed my sanity intact. And, yes, the idea of driving up to his house with Lapp’s eyes watching me didn’t seem like a good idea.

  I didn’t text him either. He didn’t text me.

  —

  It was almost two weeks before I saw Ezra again. It was a Saturday in mid-February and the weather forecast was for four to six inches of new snow and high winds. I didn’t miss my days in a uniform, when that sort of weather would have meant extra hours on slick roads trying to keep senseless people from killing themselves. As a homicide detective, it was something of a snow day. Grady came by to shoo us out about noon.

  “You’re not going to be able to do any house calls in this weather. Go home before the roads get crazy. You’ve been hitting it hard for a long time, Harris. Take a break,” Grady told me.

  I leaned back in my chair and stretched my shoulders, which ached from too many hours hunched over either a computer or a steering wheel. The thought of going home while it was still daylight—or at least overcast storm light—and having a long hot bath, maybe a relaxing, self-administered pedicure while watching bad TV . . . It sounded like heaven.

  “Let’s pretend I argued with you vehemently, but in the end you convinced me,” I sighed.

  “Done,” Grady said with a chuckle. “Now, stop wasting my time with your hardheaded arguments and go home. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  I thought there might have been an insult in there somewhere, but who cared?

  —

  By the time I got out of the bath, it had started snowing in earnest. I peeked out the curtains I hardly ever bothered to draw and saw big, fat flakes and a leaden gray sky. I found a flashlight in a kitchen cupboard, brought it into the living room, and plopped it on the coffee table in case the power went out. Wearing flannel pj’s, I put on Four Weddings and a Funeral and started taking the old paint off my toes.