Blood of the Prodigal

by P. L. Gaus

  “I’m gonna walk a ways,” Branden said nervously, and started off in the direction of the nearest crest in the road. Robertson watched him intently and then waded into the crowd of onlookers, asking questions.

  Branden walked slowly along the road, eyes down as he marched off a zigzag path from one side to the other, inspecting the shoulders. Puddles from the night’s storms dotted the pavement. A remnant flash of lightning appeared in the eastern distance. The steamy haze over the pavement carried the scent of tar and earthworms. The thickets of trees overhanging the road were silent except for the occasional slight splashing of drops on the pavement, as the wind dislodged water from the branches overhead.

  It was the type of back-country Holmes County road that saw little car traffic. Doughty Creek, brown and swollen from the overnight rains, surged at turns as it ran alongside. The road, sometimes black-topped and sometimes gravel, ran over hills, around sharp corners, and through stands of timber beside the stream, along the north side of the valley. Small gravel lanes intersected the larger road at intervals, and today their surfaces showed numerous thin, overlacing buggy tracks, made after the rains.

  In some of the remotest regions, the road narrowed and passed directly beside an Amish house, sometimes separating house from barn by a mere ten paces. It was a road meant exclusively for buggies. It meandered through a sequestered community nurturing a slower, more deliberate culture than can be found in larger America. Like dozens of others in the Doughty Valley, it was never a road meant for autos, nor for any of the other intrusions of modern life.

  At the crest of the nearest hill on the lane, Branden stooped over, gently touched a rain-softened tire mark in the loose gravel, stood pensively upright, and then walked purposefully over the crest of the hill.

  On the other side, not quite out of view from Robertson, Branden leaned over and picked up one of several wet cigarette butts from a scattered pile beside the road. His gaze worked along the road, away from the body, beyond the crest where he stood. When he had spotted what he was looking for, he whistled for the sheriff with his fingers stuck against his teeth, and stood by the pile of burned cigarettes.

  Robertson arrived, breathing heavily from the exertion of the climb and carrying his yellow rain slicker loosely over one arm. “This better be good, Mike. Body’s back down there, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Branden pointed to the road at his feet.

  “Cigarette butts in the dirt?” Robertson asked.

  “Not just that. Look, it makes sense. Suppose Jonah Miller was walking this way, toward his home. Rather, toward his father’s home.”

  “And?” Robertson asked.

  “And, someone stood here, watching. Waiting. See how you can just look over the crest of the hill, down along the road?”

  “So far, I’m with you, but what makes that interesting to us?” Robertson said, glancing back over the crest of the hill to the place where the deputies still talked to the crowd around the coroner’s wagon.

  “That,” Branden said, pointing in the opposite direction, at a long skid mark that arose in the berm and played out onto the pavement, leaving a sizable patch of mud and burnt rubber.

  “So you figure someone stood here,” Robertson said.

  “And smoked cigarettes waiting for Jonah Miller.”

  “And when Miller came along, he . . . ?”

  “Or she.”

  “Right,” Robertson said. “He or she got in the car, popped the clutch, and came over the hill. It just doesn’t seem likely. For all we know, those are Miller’s cigarette butts. I figure he stood here thinking something through. Then he walked down there and shot himself under the chin.”

  “Why suicide?” Branden asked.

  “Why not?” Robertson said. “These skid marks could have been made a week ago.”

  “The mud wouldn’t have been there a week ago,” Branden retorted. “Besides, why would he kill himself?”

  “Jeff Hostettler might have had a good reason to kill him,” the sheriff offered.

  Branden thought it over. “So you think Jeff Hostettler could have lured Miller back home, somehow? It’s worth a shot. I notice you didn’t waste any time having him picked up.”

  Robertson swivelled to face the cruiser where it stood by the body in the ditch. He signalled to a deputy and indicated the pile of cigarette butts. As the deputy climbed the slight rise, Robertson said thoughtfully, “Still, if it’s murder, then there’s one thing I can’t figure. How would Hostettler know that Jonah Miller would be walking along this road, at this time? For that matter, how would anyone have known?”

  “His father’s house is just down the way,” Branden offered, not entirely certain himself what that might signify.

  As they walked back toward the cluster of onlookers, neither spoke. The deputies had the body tucked into the coroner’s wagon.

  “I’ll grant you that we can’t rule out murder,” Robertson said. “But killing himself out here in Amish dress is the kind of wacked-out thing Jonah Miller was always capable of doing.”

  Branden said, “The gun could have been dropped there after the murder, to make it look like a suicide.”

  “The gun wouldn’t be in his hand, anyway,” Robertson said. “Most guns fly out of the hand in a suicide.”

  “Will Missy Taggert be able to tell us anything down at the coroner’s labs?” Branden asked.

  “You bet,” Robertson said, and lowered himself awkwardly into his cruiser, intending to follow the coroner into town. Branden stood beside the cruiser, shut the car door, and then leaned down to speak quietly through the window.

  “I’ll see you later, Bruce. In town. First, I thought I’d stop by Eli Miller’s house.”

  “You know where it is? It’s hard to find,” Robertson said.

  “Been there once before. In a buggy,” Branden said, and then walked away, slowly working through the crowd of curious onlookers, who still maintained a vigil behind the yellow police-line ribbons.

  AT the Miller house, Branden parked at the end of the driveway, pulling off to the side to allow a buggy to enter the yard where several other rigs were already parked on the grass. A plain white picket fence surrounded the yard. A large black mailbox was mounted on the fence near the gate. Canning jars were set to dry upside down on several of the fence posts. Behind the fence, large shade trees dominated the front yard. A new concrete walkway led from the driveway to the porch. A large round trampoline was set on the lawn, but no children were in sight.

  The windows of the white, two-story, frame house were covered inside by heavy, full-length, dark purple curtains. As he approached on the sidewalk, the curtains of one downstairs window were pulled back to reveal a child’s face, that of a small girl in a bonnet. After an unhurried, curious look at Branden, she disappeared from view.

  As Branden stepped onto the porch, a short, round woman came out through the front door. She was dressed, as was the girl beside her, in a bonnet, long gray dress, and black shawl.

  “Mr. Miller is not home, at present,” she said formally.

  Branden introduced himself. He explained where he had been, mentioned that the bishop had sought his help, and inquired apologetically when the bishop might be expected.

  “I’ll tell him you were here,” she said politely. She held her hands gingerly in front of her waist. Her fingers were bent with arthritis. On one finger, she nervously twisted at one of the magnetic iron bands favored among the Amish for its effects on rheumatic heart disease.

  A young boy slipped bashfully through the screened door and stood beside Mrs. Miller. Jeremiah? Branden wondered. About the right age, he thought. The lad wore plain denim jeans, a plum-colored shirt with no collar, and a straw hat. A young man appeared, dressed to match the boy, and stood before Branden, somewhat in front of Mrs. Miller, who stepped back and fell silent.

  The young man spoke with a tone of extreme formality bordering on animosity. “I am Isaac Miller. My father is with the Dieners,” he sa
id, cocking his head toward the large red bank barn on a slope beside the house. “He’ll not need to be talking to you anymore, I reckon.”

  “And Jeremiah?” Branden asked.

  “You need not concern yourself,” the young Miller said firmly, and drew the younger boy closer to himself. “The bishop feels that he does not need your services any further, but he’ll be happy to speak with you about it sometime next week. But Professor, as you can see, even now the family is gathering.”

  Branden turned and saw a procession of three more buggies wheeling down the drive. He excused himself, walked past the line of parked buggies to his truck, and drove into Millersburg.

  BRANDEN found the sheriff at the coroner’s office. In the examination room, the coroner worked at her task. She had cut the shirt away from the torso of Jonah Miller, and she had set a pan under the large exit wound at the back of the skull.

  Robertson, squeamish, was standing in Melissa Taggert’s office, making a show of studying the diplomas from Ohio State that hung on her walls.

  Taggert was average in height. She had soft brown hair tied in a ponytail and tucked up under a pale green scrub hat. She was dressed in green scrubs to match, and she wore amber latex gloves and a clear plastic bibbed apron. She had a pleasant face and a nearly constant happy disposition, which sometimes irritated the changeable sheriff to the point of distraction. “Missy,” he would say, “you can’t always be happy.” “Bruce,” she would answer, “why in the world not?”

  The coroner knew that Robertson liked her for it, and she wasn’t above using the advantage when she needed something unusual for the labs. She also knew that Robertson was not altogether comfortable in her examination room, and she took more than a few opportunities to needle him about it.

  “Bring me those forceps, Bruce,” she was saying as Branden arrived. “Second drawer down. The little ones.”

  Robertson stepped into the lab, walked over to the drawer and took out small forceps. “Melissa, even I can see that you won’t find anything in that wound except blood, brains, and bone.”

  Robertson liked Melissa Taggert. He liked her because she was competent, professional, and strong-minded. Also because she was smart. He even liked the way that she teased him in the morgue. He liked the fact that, on forensic problems, if she did not have an answer, she said so honestly. And then, in nearly every case, she set about the business of coming up with answers, no matter what it took. Most of all, he liked the fact that he could push her hard on any case whatsoever, and she had never faltered.

  She took the small forceps, scolded him by waving them wordlessly in front of his face, then bent over at the back of Miller’s head and began searching for debris. After several minutes of washing the wound into the pan, she smiled with grim satisfaction and pulled out a small sliver of copper metal. “I expect this’ll match the copper casings on the hollow points that are left in that revolver you found,” she said.

  Robertson nodded briefly, and, relieved to have the interruption, turned to Branden and asked, “What’d you learn at the Millers?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Branden answered. “There’s a house full of relatives and neighbors out there, but no one’s talking. Does that seem strange to you, Bruce? A house full of mourners for a man who was shunned?”

  “No stranger than this,” Robertson said. He stepped closer to the body. “Look at the clothes. Old Order Amish, head to toe.” Then Robertson asked, “You about done there, Doc?”

  “Only with the preliminaries,” Melissa said. “It’ll take some time before we have the rest.”

  “We’ll need to know if there’s gunpowder burns on his hands,” Robertson asserted. “He probably shot himself.”

  “As usual, you sound blissfully sure of yourself, Bruce,” Melissa said playfully. “I, on the other hand, being actually responsible for a professional opinion, will need to run some tests.” She winked at Branden.

  “Go right ahead, Doc. But look,” Robertson said, “let us have a little peek at the body first.”

  Melissa shrugged, pulled off her surgical gloves, and stepped into her adjoining office. The sheriff and Branden moved closer to the table.

  Jonah E. Miller was laid out straight on his back. His hair had once been cut in a flat-top style. Now it was unkempt, grown somewhat long, and lay down limp and straight, where there was still any left. His face had about half an inch in growth of beard, shaved clean around the mouth, top and bottom, in Amish style.

  He was dressed in a plain white shirt, a black vest, blue denim trousers without a cuff, and brown work boots. All but the boots were new. The boots were stained with smudges of black tar.

  There was no jewelry, nothing in the pockets, no watch. The plain straw hat that had been found at the scene lay muddied at his side. The sheriff inspected the hat and studied the hands.

  “Still a carpenter,” he said, pointing to callouses.

  “Why the clothes?” Branden asked.

  “You mean ‘why the brand-new Amish’ clothes,” Robertson said.

  “Why the brand-new clothes, and why was he walking along that road?” Branden asked.

  “And where’s his car?” Robertson added.

  “Do you think he had one?” Branden asked.

  “Jonah Miller?” Robertson scoffed. “Oh yeah, he had a car all right.”

  The phone rang next door. Melissa Taggert came out of her office and said, “Bruce, they need you over at the jail.”

  When the sheriff had left, Branden stood beside the stainless steel table where Jonah Miller lay. The Jonah Miller he saw was fitted out Amish, proper in almost every detail. The hair was not long enough, and neither was the beard. But that was it. The upper lip was shaved smooth, and the costume was regulation “Bishop Miller Old Order” all the way.

  Simple questions began to wander into Branden’s mind. Was Jonah walking toward home? Had he been alone? Had he been taking Jeremiah home? Was Jeremiah at home now? The young Isaac Miller had seemed to imply that, but he had never really said it outright. All he had said was that Branden should consider himself out of a job.

  Branden walked outside to the parking lot beside Joel Pomerene Hospital. The skies had darkened again, and a steady rain came down. He pulled the hood up on his thin green raincoat, walked to his truck, and thought about the biggest question of them all. As Jonah Miller was walking along that road, had he killed himself, or had someone smoked a dozen or so cigarettes, and waited for Jonah Miller to wander into a trap?

  13

  Monday, June 22

  3:45 P.M.

  AS MUCH as he liked Melissa Taggert, and as well as he tolerated her teasing, Bruce Robertson still hated visiting the morgue. In truth, he hated hospitals in general. In particular, today, he had hated the sight of Jonah Miller’s body on the slab. He had barely been able to keep up pretenses for the sake of his reputation. Once again, Taggert had almost joked her way past his rough facade.

  As he left the coroner’s office for the jail, his thoughts turned morose, dwelling on a mental list of his more depressing memories. In the parking lot of Joel Pomerene Hospital, his outlook darkened rapidly, poised to give way to the depression that sometimes gripped him. From this state he could fall into a world of limitless bitterness and stay there for days. For most of his life, he had thought everyone was this way. There were ups, and then there were downs. When he was down, his depressions could become almost debilitating. Debilitating, that is, unless he saw them early for what they were, and fought back with the medicine. He was supposed to take it all the time, but he used it only sporadically. Today he took the medicine bottle from the glove compartment of the cruiser and swallowed two of the pills dry.

  In the rain, Robertson drove down off the little hill where the hospital sat along the Wooster Road. Pounding his fist on the steering wheel in frustration, he drove south past the old Victorian homes, along the winding streets of Millersburg, stacked on a tumble of hills like a river town. On the square, he sat in
his cruiser for a while and studied the old jail. It was two and a half stories of weathered red brick, with faded yellow trim, and gray bars over the windows of the two-story cell block attached to the rear. The rain pinged steadily against the hand-hammered tin gutters and window moldings.

  In the blocks he had driven from the hospital, Robertson’s mind had refocused from a somber and diffused state of ineffectiveness to a purposeful, elevated state of action. He lumbered out of his black-and-white cruiser in a steady downpour and marched purposefully across the blacktopped parking lot strewn with earthworms, his head down under his uniform rain hat, hands stuffed in his pockets, his long yellow slicker pulled back and hanging carelessly open in front. He stomped to the back of the old jail with his sense of order and purpose restored. Ellie had put it out on the radio that the deputies had brought in Jeff Hostettler.

  Robertson pushed through the door at the rear of the jail and slapped his rain hat several times against a cold steam radiator, knocking off a small shower of water. Ricky Niell, in uniform, stood in the long paneled hall outside one of the two interrogation rooms. Robertson’s large office was situated to the left, across the hall from these two small rooms. Ellie Troyer was at her desk at the far end of the hall, where a right turn led, through the wooden counter’s swinging door, to the front entrance of the jail and the first-floor gang cell behind a black iron door.

  Robertson stepped out of his slicker, gave it a snap, and hung it, with others like it, on one of the Shaker wall hooks outside his office. He glanced questioningly at Niell, who nodded at the closed door to Interview B. Robertson ducked into his office across the hall, lit a cigarette from a pack on his desk, inhaled hugely, held the smoke, stepped out into the hall again, looked down the hall toward Ellie Troyer, and blew out the remains of the smoke gratefully. He paused there, watching Ellie work the dispatch radio, drew again heavily on the Winston, and rubbed at the back of his neck while rolling his head in a slow circle. Niell stood quietly at ease, letting the minutes pass, knowing instinctively to hold silence.