In the Land of Milk and Honey

by Jane Jensen

  We entered the stall, and Glen ran his hands over the cow’s flanks, clucking his tongue softly.

  “Know much about cows do you?” I asked with a trace of humor.

  “Not a thing.” Glen waggled his eyebrows at me, causing a funny spot of warmth in my belly.

  I shook it off and turned to Samuel Hershberger. He and Leah were in their late thirties or early forties, I guessed. They were close in age to Hannah and Isaac Yoder. Samuel looked younger and certainly healthier than he had in the hospital. His skin no longer looked stretched over his skull, though he was still pale and thin. His beard was nearly to his breastbone, and its chocolate tones showed no hint of gray. His brown eyes were warm.

  “Hannah Yoder mentioned to me that, just before your family got sick, you noticed the cow trembling when you milked her. You thought she might have been spooked by a fox in the pasture?” I asked.

  Samuel stroked his beard. “Ja. ’Tis so. I remember.”

  Glen, still petting the cow, raised his eyebrows with interest. “How many days did you notice the trembling?”

  “That day at the evenin’ milkin’.” He swallowed. “When I mentioned it at supper, Will—he was my oldest son that passed—he said he thought he noticed it a bit that mornin’ too.”

  Glen spoke up. “And the next day? Did you or Will take notice of the cow?”

  “Can’t say. Will milked both turns, and by then the little uns was sick and we didn’t talk about the cow. It was Will’s job to milk, and he didn’t say nothin’ about it, and then he . . .” Samuel swallowed again, his lips tight. “He was taken to our Lord. Leah can tell ya who done the milkin’ while I was in the hospital.”

  I looked Ginny over. Her big brown eyes were clear, her fawn-colored flank smooth and still. “She looks healthy now.”

  “She might have gotten a small dose of the plant,” Glen said. “That could also explain why most of the family recovered.”

  “Did you happen to notice anything unusual around the cow’s feeding trough, Samuel?” I asked.

  “What d’ya mean?”

  “Something leafy and green, perhaps? Maybe you thought it might be a plant the cow brought in from the pasture.”

  “Don’t recall such like, no. Can’t say as I’ve ever noticed somethin’ like that.”

  I was disappointed. If Will was the one who’d milked the cow more often before the family got ill, he would have been the person to ask. But Will was dead.

  A face had been peeking around the side of a post in the opening to the pasture for the past few minutes. Children were always present at Amish farms, usually in energetic flocks. This one was a boy, maybe twelve, slim and lanky. Like all Amish boys, he wore black pants and suspenders over a long-sleeved shirt. He had a store-bought wool jacket over the top. His hair was very blond, and he had a narrow, curious face. He made me smile. He reminded me of what Ezra must have looked like when he was a boy.

  “Maybe one of your younger sons milked Ginny while you were in the hospital?” I said, looking right at the boy.

  “Maybe so,” Samuel agreed. “If they weren’t too sick.”

  “How about you?” I asked the boy directly. “Do you ever milk Ginny?”

  The boy, knowing he’d been seen, stepped out from behind the post. He fiddled with the zipper on his jacket and looked at the cow with a thoughtful press of his lips, as if considering it.

  Samuel spoke up. “Mark. Answer the question now.”

  Mark nodded a yes at me.

  “Did you do any milking while your dad and brother were in the hospital?”

  Mark nodded again. “I done it all.”

  “How was Ginny then?” Glen asked. “Did you notice her shaking at all? Any foam or mucus around her nose and mouth? Did she stumble or have a stiff walk?”

  “Try to remember gut now,” Samuel added firmly but not unkindly.

  Mark bit his lip and contemplated the question, his eyes rolling skyward. He tapped his chin, which made me fight back a smile at his drama. He probably wasn’t used to holding the spotlight. “She was movin’ kinda slow. Had to prod her gut to get her into the milkin’ stall. She shook her head a lot. But I thought she was just missin’ Will.” He pressed his lips tight, his eyes growing bright.

  Damn. Will’s death must have been hard on Mark.

  “If she was shakin’ her head, she might have been sick. They can also do that if they get stubborn or mad,” Samuel explained.

  “You didn’t notice any—” Glen began.

  “Oh!” Mark said, as if he’d just remembered something.

  “Don’t interrupt your elders,” Samuel scolded.

  “Sorry,” Mark muttered. Then, as if worried he hadn’t been contrite enough to appease his father, he repeated it louder, looking at Glen. “I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  “It’s okay, Mark. What did you remember?” I asked.

  Mark shrugged.

  “Anything that occurred to you might be important, no matter how small, Mark. We’d like to hear it.”

  Mark shrugged again. “All right. Well . . . I just remember. The way Ginny was actin’, I thought maybe someone had been messin’ with her agin and had made her mad. And she was takin’ it out on me.”

  I exchanged a confused look with Glen. “Messing with her?”

  “It was just a dumb idea.”

  “Who messes with Ginny? What do you mean?” I encouraged him, keeping my voice mild.

  “Speak up,” Samuel said. He folded his arms and looked at Mark as if he didn’t have a clue what the boy was talking about either.

  “Well, people at the road.” He looked at his father, as if Samuel should know. “Ginny likes to eat the grass by the fence, and sometimes people stop their car and take her pitcher or pet her and stuff.”

  Samuel’s shoulders relaxed. “Ja. ’Tis so. No harm done.” He shook his head, his expression saying that he didn’t understand the appeal of a stranger’s cow, but then, English were crazy anyway.

  “Hmm.” Glen looked thoughtful. “Mark, when Ginny was being stubborn and shaking her head, do you remember if she was shaking in her legs too? You might have noticed . . .” Glen went on, but I stopped listening.

  Messing with her.

  Messing with Ginny. At the road. Again.

  This time it was I who rudely interrupted. “Mark? Was someone else messing with Ginny earlier that week? At the fence line?” My voice came out more worried than I’d intended.

  Glen fell silent, obviously getting the gist of my question at once. Mark nodded, biting his lip.

  “Who? Can you describe the car? The person? What were they doing exactly?”

  Mark glanced at his father as if asking permission. Samuel nodded.

  “I saw a man when I was muckin’ out the barn.” Mark pointed to the wall, where thin slits of daylight shone through. “There’s cracks and you can see outside. I noticed a car was stopped, and Ginny was at the fence. A man was pettin’ her and givin’ her somethin’ to eat. I watched a minute, but he didn’t seem like he was gonna hurt her or anythin’, so I kept workin’.”

  A warm gush of certainty filled my stomach. My body had a mind of its own, and it was usually right. “What did he look like, Mark?” I asked.

  Mark puffed out his cheeks and gave a big sigh, thinking about it. “Didn’t see him gut. He had a hood up. Like English boys do? It was black.”

  A hooded sweatshirt maybe. I’d have to get some photos and show them to Mark for verification.

  “And the car?” Glen asked.

  Mark shrugged.

  “Was it a car and not a truck? Do you remember the color?” I pressed.

  Mark looked down at the barn floor as if uncomfortable with the questions. “I didn’t look real gut at the car. Don’t think it was a truck though.”

  “And what was the man fee
ding Ginny?”

  Mark glanced at his father. “We seen ’em givin’ the cows and horses carrots and stuff, the people who stop. Or once a lady gave Ginny an apple. I didn’t see it gut this time though. Dunno what it was. I remember thinkin’ it was probably carrots, but . . .” He shrugged again.

  A cartoon image of Bugs Bunny eating a carrot came to my mind. “Did you see the orange of a carrot? Or maybe it was the kind that had a leafy green top?”

  Mark’s face cleared and he smiled. “Yeah! I saw something green and bushy like. Like a carrot top.”

  I looked at Glen. He was shaking his head, not at Mark or at me, but at whatever was going through his mind, as if he couldn’t believe it. But he was CDC. I was a homicide detective, and I recognized the sick feeling in my veins.

  This? This was murder.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ezra rolled his pickup truck as silently as possible into the driveway of his parents’ farm and cut the engine. He sat behind the wheel feeling fear and was irritated with himself for feeling it. The very act of driving a truck onto his parents’ farm felt like a slap in the face to them. He’d considered parking down the road and walking in. But it seemed ridiculous when they all knew he was driving now. He didn’t want it to look like he was trying to lie, or to admit what he was doing was wrong before he even knocked on the door.

  This was hard. He sat there a moment, feeling dread. But he was a man, and men got on with it.

  There were no signs of his brothers and sisters. The younger ones were at school this time of day, but the older ones, the ones still living at home, should have been around. Jacob. Mary. And Martha, of course. He suddenly wanted to see them all so badly his ribs ached with it. They used to just be around, the way the sun rose in the morning. You took them for granted until they weren’t there anymore. His father would likely be in the barn. Ezra made himself relax his fists and went to find him.

  Amos Beiler looked just as Ezra thought he himself would look in his older years. At fifty-five, Amos was handsome and sturdy. His hair had always been as blond as Ezra’s and was now lightened further by strands of gray. His beard was long and ragged on the ends, and his straw hat, the one he wore around the farm while he was working, was stained from sweat and dirt. He didn’t look at Ezra when he came into the barn, but his face went tight and unnatural.

  “Jacob, go to the house,” Amos ordered in German, without looking at Ezra.

  Jacob set down the tools he’d been using to help their father mend a wagon wheel and slipped out without a word. He dared a glance at Ezra as he passed though, hurt and longing in his eyes. Ezra offered him a tight smile but didn’t speak. The door banged as Jacob went out, and Ezra felt that bang like a stab in the heart. Jacob was, what, thirteen now? He’d always been the goofy one. Ezra longed to see that side of him again.

  “Father,” Ezra said.

  Amos continued his work. There was a bad dent in two of the wheel spokes. Amos was using the flat end of a hammer to pry off the rubber rim so he could work on the spokes. It was a tough job for one person. Hating to see his father struggle, Ezra picked up a heavy screwdriver. He could hold the rim up while his father worked around to loosen it.

  “Don’t.” Amos’s tone was flat and absolute. It was one you didn’t ignore. He stood frozen with the hammer holding up part of the rim until Ezra put the screwdriver down. Then his father began working again. Not once did he look at Ezra.

  Ezra stepped back, feeling his cheeks burn and his stomach sour. “I came to warn you ’bout this sickness in the milk. Maybe you know my girlfriend, Elizabeth, works for the police. It’s killed a lot of people yet. Cows eatin’ some plant that poisons the milk. They don’t know where all this plant is growin’, so it’s best to keep the family off the milk for a time.”

  His father said nothing, nor did he pause in his work. He cursed under his breath as the rubber rim slipped back in place. “Ah, klere!”

  Ezra had to clench his fists to keep from reaching out to help again. “I’m sure you heard ’bout the Kinderman family. Best not to take chances, especially not with the little ones.”

  Ezra’s mother had had her last baby only eight years ago—little Ameron. Ezra supposed she was too old now to have any more. But his older brother and sister had their own toddlers running around when they visited.

  “Might pass the word on to Henry and Jane too,” Ezra added, now that he’d thought of them and their babes.

  Ezra had no idea if his father would listen to him or not. But Ezra had come and said it in person. That was all he could do. Maybe his father would take it more seriously coming directly from a son than from some stranger, even if that son was dead in his eyes.

  “If you need me, Da, I’ve still got the same cell phone number I did before for work. And I wrote down my address.” Ezra took a piece of notepaper from his pocket and laid it on the worktable.

  The rim slipped back into place again and Amos cursed. He put the hammer down, turned to the worktable, crumpled up the piece of paper Ezra had put down, and tossed it into an old barrel that was used for a garbage can.

  Amos turned and left the barn. The door banged hard on his way out.

  —

  Ezra made it about a mile down the road before he had to pull over, his eyes blurry and his breathing harsh and pained. He sat on the shoulder of a country road clutching the steering wheel hard. On all sides were Amish fields. It was a warm, blue-sky day, and the April crops were lush and green in their newness, only inches from the earth but holding the promise of eternity. In the distance, an Amish man rode through the rows of his field on a horse. His small son sat behind him. The boy’s bare feet bounced on the horse’s flank as his little arms encircled his father’s waist.

  Ezra felt a pain that seemed to swarm out of the core of him, as if its wellspring were a sulfurous black hole in the center of his soul. He’d lost so much—his first wife, the baby she’d carried, his birth family, and all of this—this way of life, this community. Everything he knew was gone. How could he miss it so fiercely and at the same time know it was irrevocably lost to him, not because of some outside agency, but because of a flaw of faith in his own heart? He reminded himself that he had a new life now, with Elizabeth.

  He took out his cell phone and rubbed his thumb over the edge. He didn’t like to bother her during the day when she was working. He didn’t want to distract her, didn’t want her to feel like he was clinging. But right now, he needed to hear her voice. Maybe he could just mention that he’d warned his family about the milk.

  She sounded confused when she picked up. “Ezra? Is everything okay?”

  He took a shaky breath. “Sure. Just wanted to talk a minute. You busy?”

  “Well, yes, actually.” He heard her speak, muffled, to someone else. “Turn here.”

  “You in the car?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “With Hernandez?” The words were out before he’d thought them through. He’d only wondered. He liked Manuel Hernandez. But it had come out all wrong, hard sounding, the words of a jealous man.

  “No.” Elizabeth hesitated. “I’m with the agent from the CDC you met the other day. Glen. I mean, Dr. Turner. Look, we learned something interesting at the Hershbergers’, and we’re heading back into the office. Can I call you later?”

  “It’s not important. I’ll see you tonight,” Ezra offered, hoping she’d call anyway.

  “Okay. Talk to you soon.” Elizabeth sounded distracted. She hung up.

  Ezra covered his eyes with his hands for a moment, telling himself it didn’t mean anything. Everything was fine. His life was fine. He’d made his choices and they were good. He started his truck again and pulled away. He kept glancing at the young boy on the back of the horse in the rearview mirror until he was out of sight.

  —

  “It’s sabotage,” I said vehemently as I paced back an
d forth in Grady’s office. “Someone deliberately fed a plant containing tremetol to those cows.”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Glen hedged, sounding unsure of his own argument. “It could have just been a random tourist at the Hershbergers’ place, like the kid said. As for the plant we found in the Fishers’ barn, we need to wait for the lab reports to confirm that it actually contains tremetol.”

  I supposed I was getting ahead of myself. But I couldn’t help the passion that made me feel I was finally on the right course. Furthermore, I didn’t want to help it. Investigations are usually dull or intractable. When you find a spark, you grab it with both hands and you ride it for as long as you can, because it’s that type of energy that gets things done.

  I took a breath and forced myself to sound objective. “You’re right. We won’t know for certain that this is real until we get that lab report. But let’s suppose for one minute that it comes back positive, that the traces of the plant found in the cows’ trough at the Fishers’ is a plant that contains tremetol. Right? Now let’s further suppose that the DCNR doesn’t find that plant anywhere in the Fishers’ pasture. After all, they haven’t found it yet, and they were out there all day.”

  I looked back and forth between Grady and Glen and summoned up the most confident professional demeanor I could. “Assuming those two things are true, that means someone put that poisonous plant in the cows’ trough. That person either had to be a member of the Fisher family—who had no reason for doing so and every reason not to—or some unidentified person. A saboteur. And that makes sense with what Mark Hershberger saw. He saw a stranger feeding their cow something green over the fence the day before the cow got sick.”

  “It’s interesting,” Grady said dubiously. “But . . . I dunno, Harris. Seems pretty far-fetched.”