by Jane Jensen
“How does a curse like that work? How is it done?” I asked, trying to sound curious.
Henry swallowed. He thought about it and shook his head. “I only read about it years ago. I have not studied it.”
“But you have a general idea. Better than I would have anyway. Can you describe how it would work?”
Henry crossed his arms, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him, his face closed off. “To make a blessin’, you draw certain figures and give special prayers to God, maybe use oil or plants, ashes, milk, and suchlike. To curse would be the same, only the words and intent change, the prayers call on God for justice and retribution maybe. I told you, I haven’t ever done suchlike. My mother taught me powwow, and she warned against the curses. Evil comes back tenfold. It’s God’s place to punish the wicked, not ours.”
“Would a curse ever involve putting something in someone’s food? Or an animal’s feed?”
“No.” His blue eyes flashed angrily.
My gut believed him, but my mind remained suspicious. “So if someone came to you, a customer, and offered to pay you to curse someone, you wouldn’t be interested? Even if he had a story you sympathized with? Or he offered you a great deal of money?”
“No one ever asked me to lay a hex, and I never would do,” Henry said firmly.
“What if someone was hurting your family? Hurting Rachel?”
Henry merely shook his head. “I told you, it’s playin’ with fire to do such things. I’m not a foolish man.”
I glanced at Glen, silently asking him what he thought.
“What about the tall boneset oil we found in your cabinet?” Glen asked. “Why do you have that?”
Henry’s jaw clenched. “It’s for faintin’. You burn the oil in a little pot. Put it under the person’s nose. The smoke wakes ’em. Sometimes just a dab of oil under the nose will do it.”
“So it’s like smelling salts?” I asked.
Henry’s eyes flickered to me. “Boneset has a very ugly scent. It’d wake the dead.”
“It’s also poisonous,” Glen said, “to animals and humans.”
“Don’t use it like that,” Henry said firmly. “Never have. And the children know not to touch anythin’ in the shed.”
What about Rachel? I thought. As my internal radar liked Henry for the crime less and less, my thoughts turned to his daughter. Rachel felt no moral conflict about sex. Would she feel guilt about hurting others? Was she capable of lashing out in anger? Henry said she knew plants instinctively. And he must have trained her, just as his mother had trained him. She would know what the boneset oil could do.
“Where did you get the oil? Do you grow the boneset plant, also called white snakeroot?” Glen asked.
“Never have grown it. Had that bottle for years. Not much call for it.”
Glen narrowed his eyes. “You granted us permission to search your garden and shed, Mr. Stoltzfus. If you have the plant, we’ll find it. So you may as well tell us now.”
“If you find it, it’ll be the first I knew of it,” Henry insisted. He didn’t appear worried.
The muscles in Glen’s jaw twitched with annoyance. “You admitted you know how to give a cow milk sickness, and we found boneset oil in your possession. What do you expect us to make of that, Mr. Stoltzfus?”
Henry stared Glen down. “To do such a thing—this would never occur to me! You are a doctor. I’m just like you. Like you, I know how to kill a man if I wanted to. I could do it ten times over, in painful ways or in easy ways, quick or slow. But I never have and I never would. And to go the long way around? To kill a man through his cow? What madness is that? What purpose does it serve?”
It was an interesting question, I thought. And at least one answer was obvious. “It would serve very well if you wanted to kill not only the man, but his whole family,” I pointed out.
“Ocht!” Henry made a dismissive gesture. “A man who would kill babies . . . he is the devil. I am not a perfect man, but I pray to God and I live the best I can. I am not such a man.”
I wished I found Henry Stoltzfus less believable.
—
Rachel’s interview was even less productive. She was upset when she came in and asked for her father in a panicky voice, refusing to calm down. We finally gave her hot chocolate and cookies, which got her to sit and eat, but she retained a stubborn silence. When questioned, she claimed, with shakes of her head, that she didn’t recognize any of the victims’ names. She wouldn’t talk about the church she and her father used to attend, only shrugging and looking confused or talking about the “baby sheep at church,” which I assumed had been something she’d seen at an Amish farm where they’d held a service. Talking to Rachel about powwow led to a recipe for making tea that she repeated like a broken record.
Giving up, we released Rachel to return to her children and father in a waiting room until we decided what to do with them. Glen and I stepped into Grady’s office to hash it out.
“We could bring in a psychiatrist to talk to Rachel. Someone used to dealing with the mentally handicapped,” Glen suggested.
“We could,” I agreed. “But I’m not sure we’d learn much. If Henry did this, I doubt he’d tell Rachel. He’s very protective of her. As for Rachel doing it, I . . . God, I just don’t see it. Even if she was capable of the malice needed to poison a family, and knew how to do it using plants or boneset oil, I can’t imagine her pulling off the kind of planning and cunning this would require. There’s also quite a bit of traveling involved. Henry said she couldn’t drive. And he’s gone during the day, leaving the children with her at the house.”
“What about Henry? What do you make of him?” Grady asked me. He was half-seated on the edge of his desk, his big arms folded across his chest.
I sighed. “He knows how to do it and had reason to hate at least two of the victims. That’s means and motive. He drives, and he’s away from home during the day, so he had the opportunity. He used to be Amish, so he’d know his way around those farms.”
“But?” Grady prompted at the doubtful tone in my voice.
“It doesn’t feel right to me. It’s possible he has a grudge against the Amish because of what happened to him. Maybe he wants to hurt the community as a whole, but I don’t really sense that in him.” I shrugged minutely. “I’m far from crossing him off as a suspect though. We should see if Mark Hershberger can identify his car or Stoltzfus himself. And we need to check his alibis for the likely times the cows were poisoned.”
“Right. So what’s your call? Arrest him now, hold him as long as we can, or let him go?” Grady pressed.
“Hold him. He said we could search his property, so I’d like to go back out there today. Maybe we can find something that links Stoltzfus to the victims, and we need to check for white snakeroot plant. We know he has the boneset oil, but the cows were actually fed a plant. His property is pretty wild. It will take time to search.”
“I can call DCNR and see if they’ll meet you over there,” Glen said.
“Great.” I gave him a tired smile. “We can ask Henry if Rachel and her kids could go visit a friend until we’re done. They’ll be bored to death in the waiting room, and I don’t see any reason to hold them.”
“I’ll get someone on it,” Grady said briskly. He opened the door of his office and strode out. Meeting adjourned.
“I’d like to go along for the search of Stoltzfus’s place,” Glen said.
“If you have something more urgent to do, Doctor, I’m sure I can handle it.”
Glen flushed and glanced at his watch. “Hmm. I really should check in with DC and my team. Will you call me if you find anything interesting? I can drive over.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks . . . Elizabeth.” Glen gave me a lingering look before leaving the office.
I rolled my eyes. This was ridiculous. I had one man
I was spending way too much time with and another I barely got to see. If only I could swap the two.
I checked the time. It was four already. It would be another late night. I’d hoped to get home a bit early tonight, see if I could get Ezra out of his funk, have some quiet time together. But that would have to be put off for another day.
I could only hope he was still there when I finally had time for him. For now, I had a property to search.
—
Ezra liked the little market down the road from their farm. He liked its gingham-lined shelves of health foods, bulk candy, and local produce. It was homey and far less overwhelming than the Giant market where Elizabeth preferred to shop. When she did shop. Not that he could remember the last time that had happened.
He didn’t mind picking up the load when she was busy. He liked to do things for her. She worked too hard. And there was only the two of them, so it wasn’t like the household work was a bother, especially not with the dishwasher and the washer and dryer and all of those other time-saving devices he’d been getting used to. He was getting spoiled real fast.
No, it wasn’t the work he minded. But he did mind doing it all by himself. He did mind that, right now, it felt like there was a space between he and Elizabeth like a crack in the earth, one that kept growing bigger.
Ezra had grown up in an Amish household with ten children. He’d never spent a single day of his life alone until his young wife, Mary, had died. But even then he’d had visitors three or four times a day during the grieving period. They had stopped by to check up on him or bring him food or just chat and “ease his sorrow.” Then his sister Martha had moved in with him two months after Mary’s funeral. It just wasn’t the way in the Amish community to live alone.
Now he worked on his own farm raising mules and keeping up with his carpentry business, so some days he didn’t see a living soul. Elizabeth was gone such long hours. He was alone far more than he was not, and it wasn’t good, wasn’t healthy. He knew it, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
In front of him in the checkout line was an older Mennonite woman. She took her time, placing each of the items on the counter with care, making sure nothing had gotten damaged nor any of the price tags miraculously changed since she’d put them in her cart. Ezra wasn’t in a hurry, and the woman reminded him a little of his grandmother. He smiled and met the eyes of the clerk at the register.
Huh.
Ezra knew him. The clerk was Amish, and he was Ezra’s age. Ezra had seen him at sing-alongs and weddings here and there. They’d spoken but hadn’t been particularly close.
For an instant, Ezra felt an ache of dread. His inner guard went up, and he steeled himself to be treated coldly or ignored. Then he realized that was unlikely. The man’s beard was short, and his hair tapered in a modern style at his nape and was slicked back. He wore a store apron, but under that was a plain white shirt—with buttons. The man was no longer Amish.
When the older lady shuffled away, Ezra stepped up to the register.
The clerk smiled. “Ezra Beiler. Right?”
It felt good to be acknowledged. “Hello, Jacob.”
Jacob looked him over, taking in his light tan pants and denim jacket. “You left too?”
“Yup.”
Jacob started to scan Ezra’s purchases, but he must have been doing this job for a while, because he was able to do it while chatting away. “I didn’t know! How long has it been, then?”
“Since last April. You?”
“Comin’ up on two years.” Jacob said it proudly, as if he was talking about kicking alcohol or staying out of prison.
A spark of Ezra’s humor returned. “Huh. Do they give you an award for that?” he teased in his dry fashion.
Jacob looked confused for a moment, then smiled. “Ocht! Yeah, the ceremony is at the county courthouse and everythin’.”
“So you’ve met the president, then.”
Jacob laughed. “I remember that about you, Ezra. You had a way of makin’ people smile. If you wanna know the truth, the ex-Amish group I belong to will celebrate my anniversary with a potluck. But you know how we are. Any excuse to eat, don’t say?”
Ezra felt a hopeful stirring of interest. “There’s an ex-Amish group?”
“Oh, ja. Good-sized too. Maybe fifty people all told, though not all come at the same time. You know the Strausses from Soudersburg? Big family, all as redheaded as they come? Well, two of the Strauss brothers left the Amish. They’re doin’ carpentry for an RV company in Lititz. And you remember Leah Helmuth? She came up with you and me, and she’s in the group. I’m datin’ her now.”
Jacob looked smug about that. Ezra did remember Leah. And the Strauss family sounded familiar too.
“You should come,” Jacob said. “At least to say hello. Everyone’d be sure glad to see ya. There’s a meetin’ tonight.”
“I’d like that.” Ezra felt a wave of happiness, and he realized he really would like it. In fact, he looked forward to it more than he’d looked forward to anything in a long time.
And perhaps he revealed something in his tone or expression, because Jacob put Ezra’s last purchase in the bag and looked him in the eye. He reached out a hand, steady and firm, and when Ezra shook it, Jacob held it tight, his eyes warm. “It’s real good seein’ you, Ezra Beiler.”
“It’s good seein’ you, Jacob Zook.”
They held each other’s gaze until Ezra, feeling self-conscious, released Jacob’s hand.
“Lemme give you my number. Call or text me and I can give you the time and place.” Jacob tore off Ezra’s receipt and wrote it on the back.
—
Over the next week, the urgent desperation of a new case turned into the methodical clockwork of long hours, endless interviews, daily reports, and sifting through crumbs of evidence. The search of Henry Stoltzfus’s property came up with nothing to tie him to any of the victims nor any trace of white snakeroot plant. The only thing we found that contained tremetol on the property was the tall boneset oil, which, according to tests of the bottle by forensics, did appear to be relatively old. Without further evidence with which to charge him, Stoltzfus, the brauche man, was released.
We spoke to all the affected families again, and their neighbors, but got no new insight into the saboteur. We rounded up and interviewed anyone we could think of to question. Amber Kruger came in as soon as she was discharged from the hospital. She’d have minor kidney damage and persistent weakness in her leg muscles for the rest of her life, but she was alive. She was a lucky woman.
I took Amber into a room at the station where we could do an official taped interview. The room was decorated in soothing blues and it was not particularly foreboding, but Amber seemed to find the process upsetting.
“Will I be charged with manslaughter? Will I go to jail?” she asked me as soon as she was seated. Her youthful, freckled face was pale, and she looked ready to faint from anxiety.
“Amber, you didn’t know there was anything wrong with the milk, and neither did Levi Fisher. We’re not looking to charge you at this time. However, the state is still reviewing the case, so I can’t make any guarantees. And . . . you should probably get a lawyer. It wouldn’t be unusual for relatives of the victims to file a civil suit even if there are no criminal charges.” I explained this as gently as I could.
“Oh God.” Amber put her hands over her face. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed hard.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Can I get you something to drink?”
Amber shook her head and lowered her hands. Her eyes were dry, but somehow that was worse than tears, as if she’d already cried them all out days ago. “I was trying to do something good. I still believe in natural, local food. I do. My friends keep telling me this could happen to any food, that there’s been lots of cases of processed food causing illness, like that spinach problem a few ye
ars ago. And I know that’s true but . . . this is me and this is something I did. Children are dead because of the milk I sold in Philadelphia. How do I live with that?”
Amber looked so lost. I couldn’t resist giving a squeeze to her cold, trembling hand. I knew something about living with guilt. “You do what you can to make it right and then you forgive yourself and let it go. It’s not your fault, Amber.”
She nodded, but she didn’t seem to really take it to heart. She was rattled to her core, like a child who adored Santa Claus only to find the jolly old elf wielding a chainsaw in the living room.
“Can we begin? Maybe you know something that could help us.”
“Yes,” Amber said. “Anything.”
She gave me a list of every Amish farm she’d ever been to in her quest to find products for her business. I was hoping to find some connection between Amber and all the farms where the poison had appeared. But Levi Fisher’s farm was the only one Amber had ever had any interaction with. She knew nothing about the other victims or Henry Stoltzfus.
“Have you come across anyone who’s passionately against raw milk? Maybe at the farmers’ market?” I asked.
Amber appeared to mull it over. She took a shaky breath. “No. I’ve gotten some dirty looks, but it’s hard to know why. No one’s ever stopped and lectured me about it, if that’s what you mean. My ex-husband is not a fan.”
“Oh? In what sense?”
She gave an exasperated eye roll. “He didn’t like me working in local foods. It didn’t pay well enough to make him happy, and he just didn’t get it. He’s a Pizza Hut and Wonder Bread kind of guy. Not a fan of the Amish either. The more I got into the local food scene, the more we fought. We got divorced last year.”
It sounded to me like the perfect recipe for anger and resentment. “What’s his name?”
“Nate Kruger. He wanted me to take his name when we got married, so I did. I haven’t messed with changing it back.”
