by Jane Jensen
I just glared at him.
“This is the way it’s gotta be, Harris. Do it,” he barked.
I went to type up my damn list.
—
Grady arranged the meeting with the Amish elders, which wasn’t going to happen till after supper. So I was still at the station, waiting anxiously, at nine P.M. when he returned. Everyone else had left for the day. Grady nodded at me and I followed him into his office.
“Well?” I asked, before he even sat down.
“I got the whole thing on audio, so you can crawl over it at your leisure but, bottom line, they still claim they don’t know.”
“Goddamn it!” I paced. “They have to know!”
“Closed doors, Harris. I dunno. I don’t think they’d outright lie to me. Maybe they really had no idea Katie was being abused.”
I growled.
“I did impress upon them the importance of finding out. They promised me they’d do their own inquiry. Maybe they’ll turn something up. They have a better shot of getting their own people to talk than we do.”
I wanted to say: Bullshit! They’re the very people who aren’t talking. But I kept it to myself.
“There’s . . . something else, Harris. Have a seat.”
The tone of Grady’s voice was worrying. The dark look on his face was downright stomach-dropping. I sat down in his guest chair.
“Okay.”
He leaned forward, putting his forearms on his desk and folding his hands neatly. He pinned me with a stare and suddenly I felt like I was sitting across the interrogation table from him. That was not a place I wanted to be.
“Tell me the truth—are you seeing Ezra Beiler? Because Aaron Lapp says you are.”
Shit. Did the guy have eyes in the back of his head or what? I licked my lips, my heart racing. I considered lying. I didn’t.
“Yes, I am seeing Ezra Beiler.”
Grady let out a groan and fell back in his chair, hand over his eyes.
“It’s not the department’s business who I date after hours. The man is not a suspect.”
“Everyone involved in this case is a suspect!” Grady shouted angrily. He lowered his hand and glared at me.
“Calm down. It’s not that bad.”
“Of course it’s that bad! One of my homicide detectives is having sex with an Amish man, a murder suspect! What could be worse than that?”
I couldn’t resist. “I could be the killer,” I deadpanned.
“Damn it, this is not funny!” Grady slammed his hands down on his desk. I winced internally, but managed to keep from showing it on the outside.
“You’re right. The situation is . . . somewhat labyrinthine.”
“Labyrinthine? Maybe while you were getting that hundred-thousand-dollar education, you should have learned some fancy words for ‘no’ and ‘hell no.’”
I knew a few fancy words for those, but I figured he wasn’t literally asking me.
“Listen, Grady, it’s not what you think.”
I fought to stay calm, even though I was getting a sick, horrible feeling I was about to be fired. After the meeting with the Amish delegation, I already felt like I was on shaky ground. I should have followed orders and laid off. And I did—to a point.
I spoke low. “First of all, Ezra Beiler is one of the only people in this entire thing who has an ironclad alibi for when Jessica was moved that night. You know that. He is not a murder suspect.”
Grady’s nostrils flared with his heavy breathing as he glared at me. “He is a person of interest, though. That puts him off limits. Jesus, I shouldn’t have to tell you that!”
“Okay,” I agreed. “He’s a person of interest. But he’s only tangential to the case. He’s also an Amish man who’s struggling to find his way to a new life. Did you know he was married to a suicidally depressed girl, and that when she lost their baby and then stepped out in front of a car and killed herself, the Amish made Ezra feel like it was his fault?”
Grady gave a very annoyed, very grumpy huff, as if he didn’t want me to stir his sympathy.
“You heard him yourself. He’s trying to get up the resources to leave, and he’s alone, Grady. I befriended him, and I’m not ashamed of that.”
“And then?” Grady’s hard look said, Don’t tell me that’s all there is to it.
“And then . . . well . . . stuff happened. It does sometimes between little boys and little girls. See, there’s this stork. . . .”
Grady made an exasperated noise and got to his feet, too angry to sit.
“No, I need to hear it all, Harris, whether I want to or not. Who started what? And when? Did you—”
“Seduce him? Come on! Don’t treat me like a predator.”
Grady’s eyes swept up and down me in annoyance. His look seemed to acknowledge the fact that a lot of effort probably wouldn’t have been required on my part.
He sighed and tapped the desk with his pen. “Jesus. Wait till Sharon hears about this. So you ‘befriended’ Ezra, and you ended up sleeping together?”
I thought about giving another smart answer, but I knew Grady deserved my full honesty. Plus, I really hoped not to lose my job. “I went to see him a few times, asking him questions about the Amish. He was the only person who would talk to me! And the only one I believed for sure wasn’t a suspect. We enjoyed spending time together, but that was all. Then he . . . he came to my house a week or so after I’d been banned from Grimlace Lane.”
Grady stared at me.
“He brought me blueberry jam!”
He rolled his eyes. “You must have indicated that you were interested.”
“I knew there was an attraction there, yes. But I thought I could manage it, at least until the case was over. I thought that right up until the moment when I couldn’t. He told me about his wife and I . . . He needed me, Grady. And I didn’t have it in me to reject him.”
“You’re saying he came on to you?” Grady pushed, looking doubtful.
I ruffled my hair in frustration. “I’m saying I opened the door, but he walked through it on his own two feet. It was mutual. Mutual-of-Omaha mutual. All right? I’m not trying to justify myself, only—”
“What’s going to happen if Ezra turns out to be more than tangentially linked to this case, huh? We don’t have all the facts yet. We don’t know what happened out there on Grimlace Lane. And even if he’s got nothing to do with it, how do you think it’s going to look when this story breaks? And it will, Harris. Via Jim Johnson or someone else, this story is going to break, and if the killer turns out to be Amish, it’s going to be ugly.”
I had no response.
“We found the body of a gorgeous young girl in an Amish barn,” he reminded me. “Then a beautiful young Amish girl who’d been sexually abused turned up naked in the Susquehanna. I send in my female detective to investigate, and she starts having an affair with the hunky widowed Amish guy who lives next door. What do you think the National Tattler would do with that story?”
For a moment, I had a mental image of Ezra’s face plastered on the National Tattler with a stark headline: “Detective’s Hot Amish Lover.” No, we didn’t want to go there. I couldn’t do that to Ezra, and not to Grady either. Crap. Lancaster County was so small and remote. I’d forgotten that nothing was really secret in this world anymore. Viruses could spread from a province in China to the backwoods of Canada in just a few days, and news moved even faster.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and with the horror of what could be crawling inside me, I damn well meant it. “I had no intention of bringing harm to this department. I didn’t think of it like that.”
“You thought with your . . . your . . .”
I raised my eyebrow at him.
“Lady bits, is what you did,” Grady sighed.
I laughed, but I thought that analysis was a bit unfair. Well
, maybe not entirely unfair.
Grady ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus, Harris. Sharon likes you. I like you. A lot of people here like you. But you don’t make it easy for me to support you.”
That made me feel just great.
“Ezra was already planning to leave the Amish,” I pointed out glumly.
“Do you think the media will care?”
I really didn’t.
“Does anyone besides Lapp know?” I asked, hoping it was contained.
“Not that I know of. Not sure even Lapp knows for sure. He’s suspicious. He pulled me aside to speak to me about it. Worried for Ezra’s soul, of course.”
“Naturally. So tell me what you want me to do.”
Grady glared at me as if to say, Now I’m supposed to fix this? “Well, first of all, I’m gonna have to talk to Ezra. See if he backs up your version of things. Make sure it was mutual in absolutely every fucking sense of the word.”
I held my tongue and nodded. I would have done the same in his position. A police officer had authority. That could be dicey when it came to matters of consent.
“Assuming that’s the case, then I might be able to refrain from telling the chief about this. Poor guy doesn’t deserve the ulcer. But you are not to see Ezra again, not till this case is well closed. With any luck, we can keep this thing under wraps, but no more taking the risk. Is that clear?”
I sat back and closed my eyes, feeling sick. “Come on. That’s not fair. What if we—”
“You guys lay off until you solve the case, period. Once the dust settles, if he’s not involved, we’ll help him get out of there if that’s what he wants, and then I really don’t care what you two do. But I don’t want one of my detectives seeing an Amish man while he’s still Amish. And definitely not someone linked to an open case. This is nonnegotiable. Unless you want to turn in your badge right now.”
I really didn’t. I was frustrated as hell though. “What if the case goes cold? What if it’s open for years?”
“Sounds like motivation to me,” Grady said with a bit of snark.
“Can I at least see him long enough to explain why I can’t be with him for a while?”
“Nope. I’ll explain it when I talk to him.”
I pleaded with Grady silently. He leaned over his desk and frowned at me. “There’s one way out of this, Harris. Solve the goddamned case.”
“Without talking to any Amish people,” I said drolly. “What’s next, one arm tied behind my back? Blowing a kazoo?”
A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “You said when I interviewed you that you liked a challenge. Welcome to Lancaster. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see Ezra Beiler.” He shook his head in disgust and grabbed his coat.
“Kiss him for me,” I said as Grady went out the door.
He huffed a laugh. “Oh my fucking God.” He slammed the door only a little on his way out.
He really was the best boss I’d ever had. I hated him.
CHAPTER 14
The Bloody Bower
I couldn’t stand thinking about what Grady was saying to Ezra. I went home feeling pretty bad. It felt like someone had stolen my wallet, keyed my brand-new car, and told me I had to get a tetanus shot all in the same day.
Ezra.
I hoped Grady didn’t make Ezra feel like he’d done anything wrong. He’d had enough guilt heaped on him in his life. And I hoped Ezra understood this separation was only temporary.
God. He was a grown man. I was being ridiculous.
I took my phone to bed with me, but he didn’t text. When I was sure Grady could no longer be there, I sent him one.
Sorry. It’s just till we solve the case.
I got back a quick response.
Yeah. Don’t like it tho.
I HATE it. Miss you.
He didn’t reply.
The next morning, I stopped in Grady’s office to fish around for how Ezra had taken it, what Grady had said, what Ezra had said. Grady just grunted at me. “Morning, Harris. Get to work.” Then he firmly shut his door in my face.
I figured that meant that, whatever Ezra had told him, it hadn’t gotten me fired.
I tried to solve the case.
—
Two weeks went by. Somehow March had snuck up on me and our snowy winter turned into a soaked early spring. It rained as if the heavens were crying.
I spoke to every one of the “clients” who’d contacted Jessica through that Craigslist ad, or at least all the ones we could trace. About ten of them had actually gotten to meet the girls. The others had apparently not satisfied Jessica’s criteria and had been declined. When I spoke to the ones who did meet up with them, their stories of how things went down matched Larry’s pretty well. We checked out alibis. We checked backgrounds for any link to Grimlace Lane—and found none. Larry, meanwhile, sat in jail on the drug charge. I wasn’t able to dig up anything more substantial to tie him to the murders, and several more interviews with him just ended up pissing off the both of us.
I was frustrated being stuck on the Craigslist angle. I knew our best lead was Katie selling her story about abuse, but I couldn’t do much about that due to my ban from seeing any of the Amish. I plagued poor Grady until I think he was about to ban me from talking to him too, maybe making it nice and legal with a restraining order.
“Have you talked to Isaac Yoder again about that whole birthmark comment? Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
“I’ve talked to him. Twice. He can’t even stomach the thought that Katie was abused. He didn’t know.”
“What about her older brothers?”
Grady shook his head. “I gave you the audio interviews. They don’t seem guilty to me. If they are, they’re lying their pants off.”
“It didn’t sound like you grilled them that hard, though.”
“Harris—”
“What about Amos Miller?”
“It’s not him.”
“How can you be so sure? It was his barn. He’s an older man and he lived close to the Lapps. He had opportunity.”
A grand rolling of the eyes.
“What about Aaron Lapp? Katie cleaned house for them for years.”
“Miriam Lapp swears she was always with Katie when she was in the house. I got the feeling she didn’t particularly trust Katie. So even if Lapp would have, which I highly doubt, he never had the opportunity.”
I wasn’t convinced on that score. Miriam couldn’t have been there all the time every time for all those years. But I had to admit to myself that my dislike for Lapp could be coloring my suspicions.
“What about a grandfather? Uncle? Older cousin? She has to have dozens of them.”
“What if Katie wasn’t abused at all? What if she was making up a story to get money?” Grady said. I knew he was goading me though. Mostly.
“I don’t believe that. And neither do you.”
And so it went.
—
On Saturday night, when there wasn’t one more thing I could think of to do at the station, I went home and went to bed early. I was all caught up on my sleep now that Ezra wasn’t around. I hated it.
I lay there staring at the ceiling and gave in to an irresistible urge to call the man. After all, Grady had said I couldn’t see Ezra. Talking on the phone wasn’t seeing him, right? I’d been a good Girl Scout for two weeks. I needed this.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
For a moment, we just listened to each other breathe.
“You know I don’t want this, right?” I told him morosely.
“All right. You solved the case already?”
“No, babe. But I’m doing everything I can. How are your plans going?”
“Got my social security card in the mail. And I looked at a couple of places I could maybe ren
t. Places where I can have the mules. Ain’t cheap though.”
“Yeah? Where are they?”
“One’s south of Mount Joy. One’s near Stevens.”
Stevens was too far away.
“Can’t afford it yet.” Ezra sounded a bit low.
“If I moved out of this place, I could pay half.” My chest hurt just saying that. God knows, I hadn’t planned on saying any such thing.
There was a long pause. “Don’t think you mean that, Elizabeth.”
I sighed. “I dunno. Right now the idea of being able to see you every day is pretty sweet.”
Ezra’s voice was dry. “What about after two months? Maybe it’ll sour by then.”
“I like you sweet and sour.”
“You ain’t even seen me sour yet, Detective Harris.” I could hear the hint of a smile in Ezra voice. I’d give anything to be able to see that tiny, wry tilt to his lips right now. And then kiss it away. Being with Ezra had revved me all up again, gotten me used to being held, being touched. Now I’d been forced to go cold turkey. It wasn’t fair.
“Well, maybe you could text me a few of those addresses you’re looking at. And maybe I could just happen to drive by and take a look.”
Ezra was quiet again. “All right.”
“Good then.”
I could feel his confusion and doubt over the phone, wondering if I was stringing him along. Or maybe I was just projecting my own fears about what he was feeling.
“Ezra, I can’t see you right now because it would be a mess for the police department if the press found out about us. You see that, right?”
A shaky breath. “I see it.”
“It’ll pass. I want to be with you.”
“Okay.”
I waited. “Is that all you’ve got for me, farm boy?”
“I’m glad you want to be with me,” he said solemnly.
I snorted. “Nice. Thanks a lot.”
“And I want to be with you more than anythin’.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m really missin’ the smell of you.”
There was a teasing heat in his words that sent what was already a perked-up libido, just from the sound of his voice, all the way to eleven.
