“No…I wasn’t particularly stressed. Things were going well with the Fling. Why would I collapse like that? I’m no fainter. I never have been.”
“I’ve been thinking…,” Joe said. “When you were working in Akron, weren’t you in the hospital for a while? A domestic-violence altercation that you tried to deal with?”
“I got beat up,” she said. “What does that have to do with now?”
“You were unconscious for a few days then, as well. Maybe something happened to trigger that response again.”
“But why?” she said. “That’s in the past. My body healed.”
“Rachel, you were reaching for your gun as you fainted, but there was no threat.”
“I don’t remember.”
“When we were at the hospital, Anna went in to visit you. When she came out, she said you told her you were afraid of the bad man.”
“The bad man? Who was I talking about?”
“We don’t know. We hoped you could tell us.”
“It doesn’t make sense. I’m trained to deal with bad men. I’ve had to deal with bad men, and sometimes bad women, for the past ten years of my life. It’s my job. Why on earth would I faint during a perfectly normal festival?”
“Beats me.” Joe shrugged. “But it definitely made for a memorable weekend.”
She bit her lip, thinking. What Joe was describing sounded like someone else, not her. If there was one thing she had always been certain of, it was having a strong mind. It was part of her identity as a cop.
“You didn’t recognize me,” Joe said. “The only people you knew were your aunts. You were afraid of me. It was as though you had to regress into childhood to escape the fact that I was your husband.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. I would never want to escape from you.” Rachel’s legs felt weak, which was unusual for her. “I need to sit down, Joe.”
“You were in bed for a long time.” He helped her to a bale of hay inside the barn and sat close beside her, his arm steadying her. “You’re still weak from it.”
“Whatever happened to me, it had nothing to do with you.”
Joe intertwined his fingers with hers. “We’ll figure things out, sweetheart.”
Rachel held onto Joe’s hand, a life preserver in a turbulent sea. Clinging to his hand, she allowed herself to concentrate hard now, trying to remember what might have triggered this anomaly.
There was nothing but blankness. Her analytical and common-sense mind, which she had always thought she could depend on, had failed her, and she had no idea why.
Chapter 28
Ed informed her that she would not be needed for a few days; she was to rest. Rachel felt she had already had enough rest, but her boss was adamant. In Rachel’s opinion, Ed was overreacting.
With nothing else pending, she tried to surfeit Bobby with Candy Land. Perhaps, if she played it long enough, he would finally tire of the game. Instead, all she accomplished was making her stepson very happy and nearly driving herself up the wall with boredom. She loved the little guy to pieces, but he needed an awful lot of attention. It was tempting to sit him in front of the TV to watch cartoons, but she and Joe had vowed to limit his television time. They had discussed the fact that going without television seemed to do good things for all the bright, well-behaved Amish children they knew.
Today, though, Bobby was hanging out with Joe for a few hours. Their church was involved in a repair project on an elderly veteran’s home, and Joe had wanted to take Bobby along so he could participate in helping others.
Her foggy-minded feeling had finally, completely, lifted, and with Bobby gone, Rachel decided there was no good excuse for not digging her way through the paperwork that had continued to pile up on her roll top desk. She was afraid they’d ignored the stack for so long that there were some overdue bills in it. The problem was, she had so much paperwork to do while at work that she tended to drag her feet about the stuff coming into her house.
Rachel fixed a cup of tea and sat down in front of the desk, determined not to stop until the surface was pristine and envelope-free. She slit open the first envelope: the electric bill. Few people could appreciate electricity more. After growing up in her aunts’ Old Order home, she cherished being able to have light at the flick of a switch. She set the bill aside to be paid later.
All fliers and advertisements got tossed into the trash can. She fed several credit-card applications into the small shredder she kept beside the desk. None were things she had wanted or asked for. For a full hour, she automatically opened and discarded or filed and dealt with each piece of mail in the pile, feeling lighter by the minute.
With an enormous feeling of accomplishment, she picked up a sporting-equipment catalog of Joe’s that had been on the very bottom of the pile. Every now and then he would pick up a pile of the junk mail that began arriving during the months he and Bobby lived at the daadi haus. Lydia had a basket in the kitchen where she’d place anything that came addressed to him. There wasn’t a lot, so they didn’t check it often.
As she started to toss the catalog in the trash, she felt something on the back and turned it over. An envelope addressed to her—with her aunts’ street address—had somehow gotten stuck to it. Worry blossomed in the pit of her stomach when she read the words Ohio Parole Department, Victims Notification Division.
Fearful of what might be inside, she started to read. It took a moment for the words on the page to fully register.
Carl Bateman, the man who had murdered her father, was up for parole. The cold-blooded killer who had given her nightmares and caused her to devote her life to protecting the weak and helpless was being considered for release because of his good behavior.
Even though murder while committing a felony, like the bank robbery her father had interrupted, meant a mandatory life sentence, she had known this day might come. That was why she had registered for the victim-notification program when she was only nineteen and had just entering the police academy. Family members of victims had rights, and she wanted them!
Even as she read, she was starting to make plans. She would write letters. The aunts would write letters. She would get other people to write letters. She would bury Carl Bateman with letters to the parole board. She would personally appear at the hearing, where she would be allowed to speak against him getting out.
A calendar hung near her desk, so she grabbed a pen. Glancing at the letter, she started to write in the all-important date of the parole hearing: May second.
May second?
Today was June fifteenth. She stared at the date on the letter, unable to believe her eyes. The parole date had already come and gone? And she had done…nothing?
Her heart sank. Preoccupation with spinning all the plates in her life had caused her to miss one of the most important things she could have done—keep Carl Bateman where he belonged.
Of course, there was always the chance that the parole board had turned down his request. With hope rising, she made a quick call to the number listed on the letterhead. The woman on the other end of the line did not have good news. The parole board had released him. He was still answering to a parole officer—and would be for the next year—but her father’s killer was walking around free.
“Where is he living?” she asked. “Are you allowed to tell me that?”
“A church in Millersburg is sponsoring him,” the woman on the phone said. “Looks like he’s living and working there. Is that close to you?”
“Eighteen miles.” Rachel was devastated. “Only eighteen miles.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, “but there is nothing we can do about that. It does say that he was released for good behavior, and it appears that he had some sort of religious conversion while in prison.”
“Thanks.” Rachel disconnected.
She jumped up from the desk and started pacing the living-room floor. Of course her father’s killer had experienced a religious conversion while in prison. Didn’t they all?
&n
bsp; Even though she believed in redemption, as a cop she was highly suspicious of prisoners who suddenly embraced God. Often it was done solely to manipulate people on the outside. It was also done to impress parole boards.
Apparently it had worked.
The man was a drug user, a thief, a bank robber, and a killer. She had memorized his rap sheet long ago when she had first joined the police force. There was no doubt in her mind that Carl Bateman was evil. He belonged in prison.
Her mother had died early enough that Rachel didn’t remember her, but the scene of her father being shot on her eleventh birthday was so burned into her conscience that there was rarely a day she didn’t remember the shock of hearing the gunfire, the feel of her father’s arm in front of her as though trying to protect her as he went down, the acrid smell of gunpowder permeating the bank, the screams of the people as they dived to the floor, or the realization that her father had stopped breathing while she sobbed on his chest.
And then there was the feel of cold gunmetal in her hands as she hefted her father’s revolver and pointed it at the man who had made her father die.
Right or wrong, by the time she was eleven, her dad had already taught her how to handle a gun. When he was off duty and there was no school, Rachel was his constant shadow. As a peace officer, he often practiced target-shooting with her behind their home.
Although she could push aside the bad memory and go on with her life, she knew it was impossible for her to ever forgive the man who had taken away her kind and loving father.
What she wouldn’t give to have her dad alive today. He had been a relatively young man when he died. Today he would only be in his late fifties. How he would have loved Bobby and Joe and this new baby she was carrying!
She often wondered what would have happened had she pulled the trigger as her father’s murderer stared into her eyes. She still believed that if he had been given a few more seconds, she would be dead now too. It had only been the shock of seeing a little girl in a pink party dress holding a gun on him that made him hesitate. There had been a wildness in his eyes that she later realized was from being hopped up on drugs—she had seen that look so many times as a cop in the years since.
Years had come and gone, but the memory of that day was lodged in her brain forever. It was the day she left childhood behind. No more dolls. No more pink party dresses. No more days of growing up with a father who loved her.
It was the day she determined that, no matter what, she would become a cop just like her daddy. She would learn how to pull the trigger on the bad guys if she had to. She would protect herself and the people she loved.
Her determination for her future life never wavered from that moment. It was probably the reason her actions seemed a little unnatural to those who expected her to wail and cry like a normal child who lost a parent. But after those few wild sobs on her daddy’s chest, after she’d held his gun aimed at the murderer, after courageous bank customers took Bateman down as he’d stood there undecided about what to do with the little girl pointing the gun, her eyes had remained dry.
She remembered the aftermath of the funeral when both Amish and Englisch had tried to comfort her with hugs and pats and words of condolence. She had thanked them, mechanically and politely, wishing they would go away so she could continue to plot out her life and how she would never again allow a bad guy to hurt someone she loved.
What none of them understood, and what she had not understood until many years later, was that what she was feeling was not grief. It was fury. It was an anger so deep that she somehow knew—even at the young age of eleven—that if she let down her guard for just an instant, she might start screaming and never stop.
That was the kind of cold fury she felt at this moment upon knowing that Carl Bateman was out on the streets—and apparently only eighteen miles away. Her fury was so intense that she was shaking. So intense that she felt her mind starting to shut down again.
“Stop it!” she said aloud to herself. “Pull yourself together.”
Chapter 29
“Looks like you’ve been busy.”
Still in shock, Rachel turned in the swivel wooden desk chair and looked up at him.
“What?”
“I see you’ve worked your way through that pile of mail.” He nodded at the overflowing trash can. “The desk looks nice.”
Then he looked directly at her and touched her face. “Why are you crying?”
She silently handed him the notice. Her throat was so swollen with emotion that she couldn’t speak.
He read it, dropped it onto the desk, and opened his arms. “Come here.”
As he held her against his chest, she found her own racing pulse slowing down as she listened to the steady beat of his heart. In a turbulent world where murderers were released from prison willy-nilly, Joe’s arms felt like an oasis.
“Where is he now?” Joe asked.
“Millersburg.”
“Millersburg!” Joe tightened his grip on her. “So close? Is Ohio big enough to hold the both of you?”
“The universe isn’t big enough to hold both of us. I don’t know if I can handle this, Joe.”
“Maybe, maybe not—but you won’t have to face it alone.” He stroked her hair. “I’m here. We’ll figure out how to get through this together.”
“People are going to say that it happened twenty years ago,” Rachel said. “They’ll tell me that it is time to let it go—but time doesn’t heal all wounds, Joe. It just doesn’t.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
“What I dread most is having to break it to my aunts. Dad was their little brother. They loved him so much.”
“Come with me.” He took her over to the couch, pulled her onto his lap, and settled her against his chest.
“I’m afraid the aunts will blame me. I’m the law-enforcement person in the family. I should have been more vigilant. I should have seen this coming and headed it off. If I’d only seen that notice sooner… If I hadn’t allowed myself to get too busy to sort the mail…”
“This isn’t your fault,” Joe said. “I should have gone through that stack as well.”
“This is going to devastate Bertha. She practically raised my dad.”
“Shh,” Joe tried to soothe her. “It will be okay. Maybe you and your aunts will hardly know he’s been released. If I were him, I know I would steer clear of you.”
“I hope you’re right. His was the face of every monster I ever feared as a child.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
“I intend to get in touch with his parole officer. Then I’ll find out exactly which church is sponsoring him and where he’s living. I’ll check in with the Millersburg police and ask them to keep an eye on him. If he so much as drops a gum wrapper, I want them to arrest him for littering.” She heard the coldness in her voice, but she didn’t care. “It isn’t easy for an ex-con to follow all the restrictions put on them when they get out. About fifty percent of them end up being arrested again. With any luck, he’ll be put back in prison before the year is up.”
“I’m glad you’re my friend,” Joe joked. “I would hate to have you for an enemy.”
The back door suddenly slammed. Rachel heard Bobby’s footsteps pattering against the linoleum kitchen floor.
“We’re in here!” Joe called.
Bobby ran into the living room and looked longingly at them snuggled up on the couch. Rachel held out her arms and he ran into them.
Joe groaned with mock pain at the addition of his son’s little body.
“You are getting so heavy, son. I’m going to have to start making you eat lettuce for dinner,” he said. “Like a rabbit.”
This immediately triggered Bobby’s making faces and squeaky noises that Rachel presumed was his attempt to mimic a rabbit. She slid off the couch so Joe could wrestle with his son without her getting an elbow or a knee in the face. She wasn’t in the mood for play at the moment.
As Joe tussled with his son, and wi
th Bobby’s giggles in her ears, Rachel went back to her desk, grabbed some notebook paper, and began drafting a scalding letter to the parole board. Considering the fact that Carl had been in prison for murder, more attempts should have been made to contact her. She might have only been eleven at the time of the killing, but she had pulled a gun on that man—and who knows what sort of twisted mind he might have. Victims of violent crimes and their families should not be left unaware—even if it was their own fault for not going through their mail in time to contact the parole board.
As she penned the letter, she remembered how Carl’s craggy face had given her nightmares as a child—from which she would awake, screaming, with one of her aunts holding her and trying to reassure her. The nightmares had not completely stopped until she was in her twenties.
In spite of her years in law enforcement and all the anomalies she had experienced with the courts, when it came to what Carl Bateman had done to her family, it felt inconceivable that he could already be out of prison after serving only twenty years of a life sentence. Inconceivable and unacceptable.
Bertha appeared to be a gentle, elderly Amish woman, but looks could be deceiving. Bertha was the strongest person, spiritually and emotionally, that Rachel had ever known. Lydia looked frail and fragile, but she could work circles around most women half her age, managing to be cheerful and positive despite her arthritic pain. Anna, a woman with special-needs, was often overlooked by people who thought their notions of Down syndrome defined her—but it didn’t. Anna often surprised all of them with an unsuspected reserve of understanding and strength. Rachel hoped her aunts could somehow manage to deal with the terrible news she had to deliver. She had been cared for by these decent, loving, godly woman for most of her life and could not bear to think of the trauma she was about to cause by telling them the news.
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