Blood of the Prodigal

by P. L. Gaus

  Except for the boots, all of Jonah Miller’s clothes had been new. None of them were improperly English. New, store-bought, and highly plain. Plain enough to be approved even by Bishop Eli Miller.

  Eli’s probably got a good idea who’d want to kill Jonah, so why hasn’t he been to see Bruce about that?

  People arriving in buggies at the Miller’s house, while the body of Jonah Miller lay in a cold ditch.

  He felt somehow, as if he were, mysteriously, very close.

  If Jonah Miller was banned, why so many neighbors and relatives at his house the day he died? Was Donna Beachey right? Was Jonah still welcome at home, on their terms, after all those years in the World?

  And finally, if Jeremiah Miller is still missing, what in the world has Miller thought was so important about the next three days?

  The rain had stopped. The tires of Branden’s truck hissed on the wet pavement as he climbed the hill to the eastern cliffs of town.

  Branden felt as if a revelation hovered near at hand. It danced just out of range, flickering in and out of focus in the mist. He fought for a solid hold on it.

  A singular, pivotal fact suddenly teased the edges of his mind. An image clamoring for recognition.

  What was it? Something so obvious.

  All of the images from the case washed through his mind again. Then, one image above all others rose into bright relief. An image of simple power and pure revelation. It had been there all along. It proffered only two sensible conclusions. One, on the day he was killed, a repentant Jonah Miller had been going home to take his vows. Or two, he had made it home, been rejected by his family, and then killed himself.

  Slowly he checked over his thoughts, and then realized the truth. “It was murder,” he said aloud. “I know that, and so do you, Eli Miller. So do you. Because if it were suicide, then Jeremiah would now be safe at home.”

  17

  Tuesday, June 23

  7:00 P.M.

  ELLIE Troyer leaned sideways on her elbow against the back of the pinewood counter, grinning broadly, listening through the wall to Sheriff Robertson on the phone in his office, resting her eyes on the uniformed torso of Deputy Sheriff Richard “Ricky” Niell. He was slender and muscular, with jet black hair, fair skin, and intelligent brown eyes. His thin black mustache was neatly trimmed. His uniform fit crisply, and she liked to watch the way he moved in it. All of this together had caused Ellie Troyer to take definite note of the new deputy.

  A month ago, she had started on the secretary’s desk, sometimes helping evenings on the dispatcher’s console. Then, Ricky Niell had started, too, fresh from a tour in the Air Force. At first she had thought him cool, aloof. For so long he hadn’t spoken. At least not more than duty required. Now she realized he was only reserved. Dreadfully shy. Perhaps careful. But certainly not arrogant or aloof.

  She’d wait. Not push him. That’d be better. Let him ease toward it. He’d ask her out when he was ready. Better to leave it that way, she thought. She studied his uniform and listened to the sheriff’s booming voice.

  “Ben, you SURELY DON’T BELIEVE I laid a hand on him? NO. Dog Gonnit! I DID NOT.”

  Niell set his coffee cup on the counter and leaned over it, listening. That brought him closer to Ellie, who, he noticed, did not retreat. He glanced at her bashfully.

  Was he right? he wondered. Had she been flirting with him? Not in what she had said, but how she had said it? Perhaps it was something with her eyes.

  Ellie grinned, held her finger to her lips, and tilted her head to hear better through the wall.

  “I’m telling you, Ben, for the LAST TIME I hope, that I have not been harassing Jeff Hostettler!”

  Out in the front room, Niell whispered over the counter. “How long’s he been like that, Ellie?”

  “All his life, I guess.”

  “No. I mean on the phone,” Niell said, chuckled, and straightened up to sip his coffee.

  “All morning,” Ellie said. “First with Jeff Hostettler’s lawyers and now with the prosecutor.”

  Robertson’s voice boomed again. “Ben, THAT’S NOT FAIR. You know Hostettler’s our best suspect.”

  Niell eased around through the swinging counter door and poured another cup for himself from the coffee maker on a low table beside Ellie’s gray metal desk. “What’s the problem with the prosecutor?” he asked, nodding down the hall toward the sheriff’s office.

  “Ben thinks the sheriff’s been heavy-handed with Jeff Hostettler on the Jonah Miller case. He has had Hostettler in twice for questioning,” Ellie said. Then she added, sounding flippant, “Can you imagine? Our Sheriff Robertson? Heavy-handed?”

  Again, she held up her finger and listened.

  “You’re tying my hands here, Ben,” Robertson said, and then at intervals, “No. OK. No. Right. Right! I won’t!” and slammed the receiver onto its cradle.

  Niell gave Ellie a glance and then eased noiselessly back around to the front of the counter. Sheriff Robertson punched the intercom and shouted, “Ellie!”

  Ellie winked at Niell, sat calmly down at her desk, and answered softly into the intercom. “I’m right here, Sheriff. No need to shout.”

  “For CRYING OUT LOUD, Ellie, I’m not shouting!”

  She held Niell’s eyes and answered, “Really, Bruce, when you get like this, we don’t need an intercom. I can hear you just fine through the wall,” and flicked off the intercom switch, smiling a triumph.

  “Oh, is that right?” the sheriff hollered, switched off his unit, paced around to the front of his cherry desk, faced the wall separating him and his secretary/dispatcher, and shouted, “I suppose you can hear this just fine, young lady!”

  “Yes,” Ellie said coyly over the intercom. Niell shook his head, almost disbelieving.

  “Then send young Niell in here as quick as he shows,” the sheriff said loudly.

  “Certainly, Sheriff Robertson,” Ellie answered smoothly over the intercom. “Just as soon as he arrives.”

  Ellie Troyer looked up at Deputy Niell with a satisfied smile.

  Niell said, “They say you’re the only one’s been able to handle him since Renie Cotton died,” and finished his coffee.

  Had Irene Cotton been so fearless? Niell thought to himself. How long ago had that been? Five years? Maybe six. About the time Ricky Niell had finished his first tour in the Air Force. Maybe a year later. Robertson had asked her many times to marry him, or so the stories went. And some said that she had finally agreed. Then Renie had died, and there had been rough times for the sheriff. Rough, too, for the deputies.

  First Renie, Niell thought. And the sheriff had nearly lost re-election. Then a quick succession of four or five replacements for Renie, until finally Robertson had found one who looked like she would stay. Little Ellie Troyer, who could tie her hair in a bun, change her dress, and pass authentically for Mennonite anywhere. Niell stood across the counter and admired the one lady since Irene Cotton who had proved the equal of Big Sheriff Robertson. But there was more to it than that, he thought as he drained his cup. More than simply the way she handles her duties. Ellie Troyer had a handle on Sheriff Robertson himself. She managed him, just like Branden had said. And Robertson liked it. Irascible, smoldering, shoot-it-out Bruce Robertson, and she gave it back to him, tit for tat.

  “You’ve been good for him, Ellie,” Niell remarked offhand.

  “Nonsense,” she said, nodding toward the hallway. “You’d better go on back.”

  RICKY Niell found the sheriff standing behind his desk. His swivel chair was pushed back into the corner against the bookshelves. “You don’t look tired to me,” Robertson snapped. Niell instantly regretted stepping down the hall.

  “Sir?” Niell said.

  “Ellie says you’ve been working hard and I should be nice to you.”

  Niell stood up straighter and thought, Good grief, Ellie, thanks for nothing.

  “You got anything for me on Jonah Miller?”

  “Not exactly, sir,” Niell said, un
comfortably.

  “No address?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No records?”

  “None, sir,” reluctantly.

  “No employment history?”

  “No, sir,” embarrassed.

  “Welfare records? Military service?”

  “Not even a social security number,” Niell said. “You know how they apply to get out of that, and he’s probably got himself a job working ‘off the books,’ just like they all do. I’ve run every angle we discussed,” Niell said and shifted his stance in front of the sheriff’s large desk. “Even some we didn’t. Outside of his family, Jonah Miller simply does not exist, sir.”

  “Then what’s that lying in a drawer in the coroner’s refrigerator?” the sheriff shot back, and stepped around the desk to eye the deputy directly.

  Niell stiffened. He felt heat on his neck, and knew he was blushing, but didn’t care. He didn’t care if the sheriff saw him flushed, because he had tried. He had worked every angle. He hadn’t found anything on Jonah Miller, because there was nothing to find. “There is no Jonah Miller anymore, sir,” Niell asserted. “Hasn’t been for ten years.”

  Robertson stood a scant six inches from the deputy, glowering at him from the side. Niell stood his ground in front of the desk, eyes focused on the bookshelves directly behind it.

  “You said you checked on things we hadn’t discussed,” the sheriff said, this time less intensely, noticing the blush in the deputy’s neck.

  “Just trying to be thorough,” Niell said.

  “Tell me about that,” Robertson said. He walked behind his desk, lit a cigarette, pulled his chair forward, and sat down.

  “You know most of it,” Niell said. “Like we discussed. Social security number, work, phone numbers, criminal records.”

  “You’re satisfied there’s no record of Jonah Miller?”

  “Yes, sir, no record other than what you already have from ten years ago.”

  “You said you checked some other places?”

  “Right,” Niell said, slightly more relaxed, not entirely certain why.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “It’s not all that important,” Niell hesitated.

  “You might not think so,” Robertson said and pushed back from his desk. He leaned the swivel chair back at a gentle angle. “Nevertheless, I want everything you’ve got.”

  Niell studied the sheriff’s face, endeavoring to gauge the tone in his voice.

  “It’s OK now, Ricky. I’m over it. Sit down and relax.” Robertson waved his arm at the soft leather chair beside his desk. Niell took a straight-backed wooden chair in front.

  “Here’s the thing,” Robertson continued, softly now, leaning forward to crush out the cigarette. He took another from the pack of Winstons on his desk, held it between his lips, struck a match, and then spoke as the flame developed.

  The cigarette bobbed up and down with his words. “It’s the details. You may not think they’re important. But it’s always the little things.”

  The flame had burned close to the tips of his fingers. He held the match a moment longer, brought it close to the Winston to emphasize his point, and then lit up at last and shook out the flame.

  “So, Deputy Niell. Ellie thinks you look tired. I’m betting you’re not. You’re just coming to tell the Old Man you have nothing to report, and it made you nervous.”

  Niell shrugged, uncertain whether he should agree.

  “Well, here’s the thing, Ricky. If you say Jonah Miller doesn’t exist, then I believe you. As far as you’ve looked. Point is, where have you looked?

  “If it’s county records and no luck, well, then, that’s one thing. But if it’s no Jonah Miller and you’ve looked everywhere —and I mean everywhere—all the places we mentioned and then some you cooked up on your own—then you can readily see that that’s another matter altogether.

  “So. I want to know the details. Not just what you found, or did not find. Also where you looked.”

  Niell shifted in his straight chair, ran his hand back across his short black hair, and pulled a spiral notebook from his uniform breast pocket. He looked at the sheriff, then at his notes, and began.

  OUT in the front room, Ellie Troyer smiled to herself with satisfaction, pulled her ear away from the wall and returned to her backlog of typing. After an hour or so, Sheriff Robertson came out behind Ricky Niell, with his immense hand laid confidently on the deputy’s shoulder.

  “Ellie, Niell here’s got a theory. The stiff on the slab is not Jonah Miller. From what he tells me, I think he’s right.”

  Ricky smiled weakly, embarrassed, and pushed through the swinging counter door. The sheriff poured a cup of coffee at the table beside Ellie, and glanced at Niell with an expression that might almost have shown outright approval.

  “I’m going to the coroner’s. You two can handle things here,” the sheriff said, and strode back down the corridor to his office.

  Ricky stood at the counter, thinking that he hadn’t told Robertson everything. That he hadn’t mentioned the stops he had made at law enforcement agencies in bordering counties. If any such agency happened to come across an abandoned car or truck, they were to let Niell know. Anything that looked suspicious.

  Niell was glad he hadn’t mentioned any of this to Robertson, because it seemed like such a lame move. But, if Jonah Miller had had a car, then someone was going to find it. And why shouldn’t Niell be the one to bring that to Robertson? So, in the end, Niell was more than satisfied to have handled it the way he had learned in the Air Force motor pool. Never give them everything you’ve got. Always hold something back, against a rainy day, when you need a little something to pull out, just to look competent. Because, above all else, Ricky Niell hated looking incompetent.

  The sheriff bellowed through the wall. “Can you still hear me well enough, Ellie Troyer?”

  “Yes, Sheriff,” Ellie said through the intercom, smiling demurely at Niell.

  “Then tell young Deputy Niell there that, since we both know he’s smart enough to be chasing all the details on his own, he should be faster next time gettin’ ’em to us.”

  “Right,” Ellie said, watching the skin on Ricky Niell’s neck flush red against his black hair and meticulous uniform.

  Then the sheriff hollered, “Niell always gets through.”

  “Right, Sheriff. Deputy Niell always gets through.”

  18

  Wednesday, June 24

  3:00 P.M.

  CAROLINE let out a delighted laugh, standing behind her husband, both of them staring into the mirror at Professor Michael Branden in the simple glory of plain Amish attire. Millie Dravenstott, a particularly small Mennonite saleslady of about thirty years, had stepped down off the wooden crate where she normally stood to work her cash register, and had shown them into a rear washroom to use the only mirror in the store.

  When he had arrived home in the rain the night before, the professor had explained his revelation about the Jonah Miller murder to Caroline. The realization that Jonah Miller had been going home as a changed man. And he had explained his promise to the bishop, that he’d give it only three more days. A chance, still, to find the boy, by tracing the last few days of Jonah’s life. Then, in the morning, as soon as the stores had opened, they had started their search.

  Finding this particular general store had consumed the majority of the Brandens’ morning together. It was an old-style country store with groceries to the sides, hardware in the middle, and dry goods in the back, all stacked in careful piles on dented metal shelves. The worn and irregular wooden floor had taken a sag over the years.

  They had started in the smallest towns. Walnut Creek, Sugar Creek, Berlin, Winesburg, and Charm, seeking out the hats, bypassing bolts of Amish cloth in approved colors—dull midnight black, deep peacock blue, chambray blue, ash gray, navy bean, surf turquoise, lilac, and spring jade. They had compared Branden’s recollection of Jonah Miller’s straw hat with those offered for sale. When it
proved convenient, they had inquired into the styles of straw hats currently approved in the various districts of the area.

  First, they had learned, there were the brims. All plain, round, and flat. But some brims were two inches wide, some three. Some were permitted stitching around the rims, others not. Some could be woven to leave holes in the brims at regular intervals, making patterns. Jonah Miller’s was a flat-brimmed three-incher, with no stitching and no decorative pattern of holes.

  Gradually, they had learned to inquire more knowledgeably into the matter of styles, and they had become expert at spotting the subtle differences. Not only the brims, but the crowns varied. Some crowns were creased, for sale mostly to the English tourists. Some crowns were flattened on top, others domed. Some crowns were tall, others squat. Eli Miller’s people wore plain, round, five-inch domed crowns, without a crease.

  In Berlin, they had found a near match. In Charm, the sales-ladies had recognized the style, but had sold out.

  Then in Fredericksburg they had found what Branden had been looking for all along. Not only the proper style of straw hat, but the very person from whom Jonah had bought his own hat.

  After confirming that the hat was precisely the style approved by Bishop Eli Miller, they had begun the task of suiting Branden in Amish dress. With Millie’s help, they picked out each item, as Branden remembered it, to match the clothes on the corpse of Jonah Miller.

  First the trousers. Plain dark-blue denim, no cuffs, no belt loops, and a square flap with the buttoned, broadfall style instead of a vertical zipper.

  Then the shirt, a factory-made, long-sleeved white shirt with buttons and a plain collar. Millie Dravenstott assured them that Jonah had bought one like it. She also informed them that Jonah would have needed to replace it with a plain one, stitched up the front, with no collar.

  Suspenders came next. Cloth, not rubberized. Never leather. They knew not to ask for a belt.