Plain Refuge

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Most interesting was the succession of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers about the shocking embezzlement of funds some ten months before from G, G & S by Steven Stowe, who had handled the money for the firm. The implication was that Griffen and Gregory had begun to suspect some malfeasance and perhaps confronted Stowe, who then disappeared with the money. The amount hadn’t been disclosed, but the writer suggested it was “certainly” millions of dollars. Investigators were initially reported to be confident that they would find Stowe and be able to recover some, at least, of the stolen money. Later articles became shorter and moved from the front page to inside sections. Stowe appeared to be staying on the move. Customs was on alert to prevent him from fleeing the country with his stolen wealth.

  Days and weeks between articles followed. Daniel read an interview in a business magazine with Tim Gregory, who expressed heartfelt dismay that a friend could betray him and Griffen. At the same time, he was confident G, G & S would survive and continue to grow. He deftly directed attention to ongoing projects, including the new headquarters for a bank in the financial district.

  Months later, that was where the situation remained, without Stowe having been dragged back to the city to stand trial, and with the construction firm seemingly bouncing back from the significant loss of operating capital. A little help from Daddy? Daniel wondered.

  He was unable to determine when the divorce had happened without the kind of digging he’d promised not to do. The article that included the picture of Rebecca was dated eighteen months ago. She hadn’t mentioned the embezzlement. Because she had already separated from her husband?

  What were the odds this had nothing to do with her problems? The marriage might already have been history, or the separation and divorce happened later but had nothing to do with the uproar at her husband’s company. Or it did, but only because stress exacerbated other problems.

  He wasn’t buying any of that.

  He typed in a query about Robert Allen Gregory’s wife and came up with an obituary dated sixteen years before. Quick calculations told Daniel that Tim would have been seventeen. Tim’s looks must have come from her: Robert was undistinguished in appearance, except for a certain intensity the camera had captured. Like Josh Griffen, he never seemed to be smiling when the shutter clicked.

  Daniel checked email and then turned off his tablet, disturbed. Instinct told him that Robert Gregory could be a dangerous enemy. With Tim, it was harder to determine—but Daniel had seen Rebecca’s ambivalence where her husband was concerned. She didn’t want to believe Tim was behind the assaults, which was dangerous in and of itself. If he found her, would she give him the benefit of the doubt for what could be a fatal instant?

  After a minute, Daniel reached for his remote to turn on the TV.

  Staring unseeing at the television screen, he tried to decide what, if anything, he could or should do about Rebecca Holt. Did she really need him?

  The answer was very likely no. Given his uneasy feeling she still wasn’t offering the entire truth, it might be best if he stayed away from her.

  * * *

  HER METAL BUCKET overflowing with weeds, Rebecca straightened with a groan, then was hit with a wave of light-headedness. Even midmorning, it was roasting hot out here.

  The summers of her memory had always been hot, but not like this. Onkel Samuel and her cousin Mose weren’t saying much—the weather was in God’s hands and they wouldn’t chafe against His decisions—but she’d seen worry on their faces nonetheless. There hadn’t been so much as a thunderstorm since she’d arrived. The corn looked dry. If the cobs didn’t mature in time, the entire crop would be a failure. Even the weeds she’d been pulling from the vegetable garden looked anemic, and at least this patch was being watered.

  Laughter and shouts came from the back of the property. The creek there, while lower than she remembered it, still had enough water to entertain the children. Earlier, Sarah had taken Matthew, Abram and two of Abram’s younger siblings to play in the water. Rebecca wanted to join them. Oh, to take off the stockings, hoist her skirt and dip her feet in chilly water! But she had resolutely shaken her head when they’d invited her. Aenti Emma had to spell Grossmammi in caring for Grossdaadi, who wasn’t feeling well. He was irritable at the women hovering, but they were afraid to leave him alone. The least she could do was maintain the garden that supplied a good part of the family’s food throughout the year.

  She should count her blessings they weren’t canning today. The hot stove would raise the temperature in the closed air of the kitchen unbearably.

  The sound of a car engine came to her. Tensing, she made herself keep trudging to the compost bin. Even here, occasionally cars came and went. The near neighbors were Amish, but they had Englisch friends, or their teenage children did, or a sheriff’s deputy patrolled, or...

  Even if Tim drove up the lane right this minute, Matthew was out of sight and she could disappear by stepping into the cornfield. He would be greeted by puzzlement. Rebecca? Ja, they remembered her, she had visited when she was a kind, but here now? Why would he think such a thing? Was something wrong? They would pray for her well-being. They could imply much without actually lying.

  But this car continued by and her shoulders relaxed.

  Rebecca had learned something about herself in the past few weeks. She was very bad at waiting. And that was what this felt like: knowing the other shoe would inevitably drop, but when?

  Almost more bothersome was the alternative. What if no one ever came looking for her and Matthew, or they simply never found them? What would she do? Become plain in truth? Raise her son Amish?

  In her haste to find safety for herself and Matthew, she hadn’t given any thought to a future beyond the coming days and weeks. Now the necessity was becoming unavoidable.

  As increasingly comfortable as she was becoming in the Graber household, she knew that staying wasn’t really an option. She might be able to give up her telephone and computer—although right now she’d have given a lot to go online to see if her disappearance had become public. But if she stayed and was baptized, Matthew would be limited to an eighth-grade education, and even though she understood and sympathized with the Amish reasons for limiting further education, she wanted something different for him.

  Obedience would be a big problem for her, too. In the Grabers’ hearing, she said the right things but knew that in her heart she was incapable—okay, unwilling—to yield herself to a higher authority completely. Rebecca remembered becoming impatient when she was a kid, annoyed at being forbidden to do something because the Ordnung said it wasn’t allowed, and Grossmammi lecturing her on accepting the will of God and others better able to judge His will, such as the bishop. Gelassenheit, the Amish called this yielding. Grossmammi claimed that it led to a calm spirit, in contrast to the seemingly eternal discontent of moderns.

  Rebecca understood the Amish puzzlement with the frenetic way outsiders lived—always wanting more than they had, to get places faster whether there was any urgency or not, suffering boredom when life slowed down. But she didn’t believe herself capable of giving up her independence or her right to make decisions for herself—and for her child.

  No, like a turtle, eventually she would have to stick her head out of her shell to see whether danger had passed.

  There had to be a way to find out who had made those threatening phone calls.

  She smoothed damp strands of hair off her sweaty face, tucking them beneath the kapp, and carried her empty bucket back to the garden.

  A bright flash of blue caught her eye. The bird settled for just an instant on a post at one end of a row of raspberries before taking flight again. Not big enough to be a blue jay. A long-ago memory surfaced. An indigo bunting. Grossmammi liked to identify birds and had had a book about them. Rebecca wondered if she still had that book. She’d seen half a dozen differ
ent birds today and had no idea what they were. Matthew might be interested, too.

  She dropped to her knees and started on a row of green beans.

  Another worry crept out of hiding. Had Sheriff Byler kept his word? She’d seen his skepticism and had expected him to appear with more questions, but four days had passed without him dropping by. She ought to be relieved, but for reasons she didn’t understand, his absence left her...anxious.

  * * *

  DANIEL STEPPED OUT of the courtroom. He’d just testified in juvenile proceedings having to do with a teenager who had spray-painted obscenities all over two Amish barns. Daniel saw the Byrum police chief walking down the hall toward him.

  “Ben.”

  Around Daniel’s age, Benedict Slater had become the chief here in Byrum, the county’s largest city and center of government, only a year ago, after the previous police chief suffered a heart attack. The ultimate outsider, Slater had come from Camden, New Jersey, right across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. Nobody seemed to quite know why he’d left a job in a major metropolitan area to take a job in Missouri. Daniel hadn’t asked and didn’t intend to. The two men were cautiously becoming friends and developing a level of trust, but they hadn’t exchanged much that was personal.

  Ben was tall and lean, with dark hair and eyes. He smiled and said, “Don’t suppose it’s anything good that brought you here.”

  Testifying wasn’t Daniel’s favorite way to kill half a day. Cops rarely enjoyed the experience of having defense attorneys trying to discredit them.

  “Vandalism, believe it or not. And just a kid.” He grimaced. “I let him slide the first couple times we caught him, but he won’t let up, and he’s targeting our Amish families.”

  “Doing?” When Daniel told him, Ben grunted. “I’d have lost patience, too.” He raised his brows. “Do you have time for lunch?”

  Ten minutes later, they had taken a booth in the back corner of a Mexican restaurant. After ordering, they exchanged news about ongoing investigations and problems.

  Ben had just fired an officer for stealing money and drugs that should have been safely locked in Evidence.

  “I’m having trouble holding on to the best officers,” he grumbled. “Once they get some experience under their belt, they want to head for the big city.”

  “Same crimes wherever they go.”

  He dipped a chip in salsa. “Can’t convince ’em.”

  “I’ve been lucky,” Daniel said. “My deputies all grew up around here, want to stay near family. It helps that they know everyone, and I like that they understand when we need to be flexible and when we can’t be.”

  Having heard only the basics, he asked more about the armed holdup of a popular restaurant here in the county seat. The thieves had struck after closing and gotten away with a surprising amount of cash.

  “Including the tip money out of two waitresses’ pockets and what the staff had in their wallets.” Ben shook his head in disgust. “The employees were all forced to lie facedown on the floor in the kitchen. I think they half expected to be executed.”

  “Nobody recognized a voice?”

  “Nope. The consensus was they sounded like Northerners.”

  Daniel grinned. “Kind of like you?”

  Ben laughed. “Afraid so.” Once their entrées had arrived, he said, “Got any suggestions for persuading an Amish man to testify even if he has ‘forgiven’ his assailant?”

  “Not happening.” Daniel took a bite of his burrito, enjoying the spicy flavor, before shrugging. “I shouldn’t say that. Mostly, if the assault was personal, you won’t get anywhere pursuing it. It’s different if the Amish can see that the person you’ve arrested will continue to be a danger to other people. Cooperation might be possible. They can forgive him for whatever wrong they personally suffered, but testify as to the facts to ensure there are consequences. They hope a stretch in jail will give a wrongdoer time to repent.”

  Ben gave a sharp, hard laugh.

  “Your best bet,” Daniel continued, “is to speak to the bishop. Without his permission, no one in the church district will go along with you, whatever their feelings. It pays to try to build relationships with the bishops and ministers in every church district.”

  Lines in his forehead, Ben said, “My only dealings with them have to do with the businesses that are within the city limits. Not many actually live in Byrum.”

  Daniel hesitated. “I have more of a history with the Amish. If it’s someone I know...”

  They talked about the situation, and Daniel shook his head. He knew the bishop in question. “I think you have to let this one go.”

  “I was afraid of that.” Ben gave him a speculative look. “I thought you’d been in office only three years.”

  “I have.” He could, and usually would, leave it at that. But he didn’t want to shut the door on potential friendship, not when he had been so aware lately of the distance between himself and others. “I grew up Amish,” he said abruptly. “My family lives here in Henness County.”

  He explained why he wasn’t under the bann, but that his relationship with his parents and brothers and sisters wasn’t an easy one, either. “Jumping the fence is one thing,” he said, “but being a cop is something else. We’re taught to turn the other cheek, not fight back.”

  Ben winced, then pushed his almost empty plate away. “Do you mind me asking how it happened?”

  Daniel couldn’t remember ever telling his story. The reason his family had moved to Missouri from their previous home in Illinois and that he’d jumped the fence was known only among local Amish.

  “You know Amish businesses rarely accept credit cards.”

  “Which means they tend to have a lot of cash on hand.”

  “Yes. This happened when I was a teenager. The father of a friend of mine owned a furniture and cabinet shop. He had just been paid for a big order, so he had an unusually large amount of money on the premises. He got a call that his mother had taken a bad turn and been transported to the hospital here in Byrum. As it turned out, she’d had a stroke.” That part still made Daniel cringe. His friend Josiah had shrugged, insisting that his grandmother was always complaining and this wouldn’t be any different than usual.

  Ben’s gaze never left Daniel’s face.

  “My friend was working for his dad by then. He promised to close up and take the day’s receipts straight to the bank. But he figured, what was the hurry? He could take the money home and drop it at the bank in the morning. His daad would never notice. He had a cell phone, as plenty of teenagers do during Rumspringa. He called around, said, ‘Let’s party.’ One of the other boys brought beer. There ended up being seven of us there, including two girls.”

  Daniel didn’t like how vivid this memory was, but it wasn’t surprising. In something like forty-five minutes, so many lives were damaged, his changed forever.

  “It came out later that my friend’s father had talked to a fellow merchant about when he was getting paid, and was overheard. Three young guys decided to rob him. When they stormed in, armed, my friend agreed to let them take the money. No matter our belief system, we couldn’t have stood up to them bare-handed.”

  “But the money wasn’t all they wanted,” Ben said softly.

  “No, it wasn’t. We stood between those men and the girls, kept blocking them, but doing more than that is in violation of Amish beliefs. They slugged us, knocked us down. I...broke, I suppose you could say. I ripped one of the men off a girl, hit another. I was pistol-whipped and barely conscious from then on. Both girls were raped while the other boys watched. Every minute of it.” Anguished, but abiding by their beliefs. “Ultimately, the girls and I were taken to the hospital, so the police were involved, but our bishop was rigid. I had recognized two of the assailants. All three were arrested and most of the money recovered. I was
the only person who had been present when those girls were assaulted who was willing to testify against the assailants in court. The bishop reluctantly conceded that I should, but wanted me punished for transgressing our beliefs in fighting back. My father had more mixed feelings, but we still had raging arguments. I felt so guilty, so angry.” Meeting Ben Slater’s dark eyes, he smiled wryly. “I suppose, in a way, I wanted vengeance.”

  He still believed he had made the right choice for himself, but he had never entirely quieted doubt, either. “Vengeance is mine,” the Lord had said. When would that vengeance be taken? he had asked himself. In the afterlife? How many women had those men already raped? How many would they have gone on to rape, had they been allowed to go free? And yet, his childhood beliefs ran deep. He still had moments when he feared God had tested him, and he had failed.

  “My parents understood my decision enough to choose to leave our church district. They pulled up roots and moved here, to Henness County. I stayed at home for a while, but I no longer belonged.”

  Daniel had no idea what Ben saw on his face, but, after a minute, Ben said, “Becoming a cop hadn’t even crossed my mind when I went to college. I was thinking law school. Big, prestigious firm, lots of money.”

  Both men smiled at the irony. There weren’t a lot of zeroes on either of their paychecks.

  “My older sister was raped,” Ben said abruptly. “No arrest was ever made.” His jaw muscles spasmed. “She was never the same. I changed my major to criminology.”

  Stunned to learn that such similar events had driven them both, Daniel could only nod his understanding.

  Ben sighed. “And I have an appointment with the mayor in fifteen minutes, so I need to get moving.”