Rachel's Rescue

by Serena B. Miller

  All her life Bertha had tried to live up to those biblical standards, but the by-product of happiness still eluded her. She knew the reason, of course. It was her deepest secret. No one had ever known.

  To her abiding shame, she had once allowed herself to fall in love with another woman’s husband.

  In those days Bertha had been quite beautiful.

  His wife was not.

  He was a good man, but she could tell that he was sorely tempted. So was she.

  She supposed that in today’s self-centered culture of the Englisch, there would have been little thought about the devastation a love affair might cause. A divorce would have probably followed. Their happiness would have superseded all other considerations. It seemed as though in recent years, individual happiness had become society’s most sacred cow.

  But Bertha had been raised in a different culture and a different time. Rather than destroy his family, not to mention her own soul, she fled.

  She had never cared for another man. Instead, she had poured her life into good works and other people. Perhaps it had made her a more brittle person, but she had done the best she could. She found as she grew older that she did not regret the lack of a husband in her life as much as she regretted not having had a houseful of children.

  Now, faced with the possibility of losing the child she loved above all others, she did not think she could bear it. It made her want to hurt the people who had done such a thing to those two innocent children.

  Maybe there was such evil in the world that the Englisch were right to create tools to combat it after all. Maybe she had been too hard on Rachel for her choice of a job.

  Bertha shook her head. What was she thinking? She had lived a lifetime believing and participating in a life of nonviolence. Jesus had said to turn the other cheek. She had believed she could do so…until it came to protecting Bobby.

  Looking at the hay scattered beneath her feet, she tried to allow the peaceful feeling she always got in this barn to infuse her soul—but it did not come. In fact, she wasn’t sure she would ever feel anything close to peace again unless Bobby and Ezra came back unharmed.

  She knew that she needed to pray like she had never prayed before—a powerful prayer that would wake the heavens and draw God’s attention.

  Staring up into the hand-hewn timbers of the old barn, she tried. She really did try. But the only words that came were a heart-wrenching, “Lord, please have mercy!”

  After that, she broke down crying. The old woman whom everyone thought so strong was helpless in the face of this evil, and all she could do was cry.

  Chapter 57

  Rachel pulled into the dark church parking lot in Millersburg. George and Carl were waiting outside for her with Shadow. Seeing Carl made her stomach churn yet again. She was grateful for George’s presence.

  She did not waste time with pleasantries. “Tell me everything,” she said. “Do it quickly, but leave nothing out.”

  Carl told her every detail, quickly and concisely. Had he been any other civilian, she might have been impressed.

  “That’s an awful lot for someone to take in so quickly and to remember with such detail,” Rachel said.

  “When you’ve spent twenty years in prison trying to stay alive, you develop the ability to read details about people fast because it can save your life.”

  “Right,” she said. “I’d like to search the church before we go.”

  “Why?” George said. “I thought you’d want to get on the trail as soon as you got here.”

  “It’s because she wants to check to make sure I don’t have the children hidden away in the church,” Carl said.

  “Why would she think that?” George was genuinely puzzled, but Carl was not.

  “She thinks I might have done something to them out of spite.”

  “Rachel!” George sounded genuinely shocked.

  “She’s right,” Carl said. “There are people twisted enough to do something like that. The fact that I’m the one who saw Ezra feels too easy. A good cop would ask to search the church.”

  “Coincidences are often God’s way of making things happen,” George said.

  “May I look inside, or will I have to get a search warrant?” Rachel said.

  “Goodness!” George unlocked the church door and held it open for her. “No, you don’t have to get a search warrant.”

  Rachel had been inside the building a couple of times before—the last time being when she had confronted Carl. The first thing she noticed now about the church was the smell. The musty odor that clung to most old churches, including this one, was gone. Instead, it smelled clean. The floors shone. The oak pews gleamed. Hints of lemon and beeswax were in the air.

  None of the inside doors were locked. She opened one that said Janitor’s Closet and was surprised to see a neatly made cot, a handful of clothes hanging on hooks, and at least a dozen books on dogs and animal care on top of a shelf beside a small TV. One straight-backed chair served as a bedside table where an alarm clock sat. It was clean and Spartan. Not what she had expected.

  It was not a particularly large church, so it did not take her long to search. Once she finished, she was convinced that there was no place Carl could have hidden the children. She had, however, taken the opportunity to use the restroom. There had been another small cramp as she did so. She ignored it. Willed it away. There was no other choice.

  “I had to make sure,” she said as she emerged from the building and rejoined the men. “If your dog is ready, let’s go.”

  “You realize he’s not completely trained for this yet,” Carl warned. “If he doesn’t find anything, I’ll at least try to point out where the woman was walking. I hope that will be enough.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” Rachel said. “Which is what I have right now.”

  “Do you have that piece of Ezra’s clothing I asked you to bring?”

  “Naomi gave me these.” She handed him two small black socks. “He wore them all day yesterday.”

  Carl took the socks, gave Shadow a sniff, and then walked ahead of them with the dog on the leash. Rachel switched on her flashlight and illuminated the path.

  “The place where we saw the woman was a mile or two down the trail,” Carl said.

  “Were there other people on the trail?” George asked.

  “A few. Not many. I nodded when I saw her and kept going, but I couldn’t get that kid’s scared face out of my mind. When I looked back, they had disappeared.”

  Rachel was trying hard to continue to hate this man, but his concern for those children seemed so real that she was finding it difficult. Besides, at the moment she was a whole lot less interested in worrying about her own twenty-year-old emotional wounds than in saving her son’s life.

  “I’ve been thinking ever since I heard about the kidnapping,” Carl said as they walked. “Dogs have the ability to remember smells for a long time. When I first went to Bertha’s, Bobby gave Shadow part of his sandwich. He petted and made over Shadow until Rachel told him to go sit in the car.”

  “I remember. He did spend time with your dog,” Rachel said. “Why does Shadow have his nose in the air? I thought tracking dogs were supposed to keep their noses close to the ground.”

  “There’s a difference between tracking and air-scenting,” Carl explained. “Dogs who are trained to track tend to stay ground-oriented, but German shepherds are natural air-scenters. Humans shed about forty thousand dead skin cells per minute. Each cell carries vapor and bacteria that represents the unique scent of a person. I’m thinking some of Bobby’s scent lingered on Ezra. My theory is that the reason Shadow kept looking back at the woman and child was because he caught Bobby’s scent but knew Bobby wasn’t there. He was trying to figure out why that little boy had Bobby’s smell on him.”

  “Have you seen Anna?” Lydia asked as Bertha came in from the barn.

  “No,” Bertha said. “Have you looked in her room?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said. “Anna
overheard some of your conversation with Rachel. After you left, Anna started pestering me to tell her where Bobby was. She was getting more and more insistent, so I finally told her as much as I thought she could comprehend. She acted like she understood and went up to her room. I knew she was upset, so I made some hot chocolate and took it to her. But by the time I got there, she was gone. I thought maybe she’d decided to find you.”

  “How much do you think she really understood about the kidnapping?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid that Anna can’t deal with something like this. I hope she didn’t try to go look for him herself.”

  “It’s dark outside and Anna doesn’t like the dark,” Bertha said. “Remember, when Anna is upset, sometimes she hides. We probably just need to look in her favorite hiding places.”

  Chapter 58

  The darker it got outside, the more fidgety Bobby became. He did not know why his dad and Rachel had not come to get him yet, but he was tired of sitting in this living room that smelled like mildew and cat. He was tired of Junior and Greta. And he was getting a little bit tired of Ezra, who thought if he did everything just the way Junior and Greta told him to, everything would be okay.

  Bobby was beginning to regret his temper tantrum over the peanut-butter sandwich. After he threw it into the garbage, nothing else had been offered to them.

  Bobby sat very still beside Ezra and pretended to watch the silly television shopping program that Greta was watching. He hoped that if he didn’t bother her, maybe she would go to sleep. Grown-ups did that sometimes—doze in front of the TV. Junior was already snoring in the bed in the next room.

  He could hardly wait for Greta to fall asleep too, because he kept thinking about something he had seen.

  The front door he had tried to open was locked, and he didn’t know how to unlock it. All he knew was that when he twisted the handle, it wouldn’t open. He was pretty sure the back door would be locked too, although they had not let him wander that far out of sight. He might be able to get out through one of the windows, but not without making a lot of noise, and even then he wasn’t sure he could do it. But in the little bathroom off the kitchen, he had seen something that gave him hope.

  There was one window in that bathroom. It was high and small, but it was cranked open. It was covered with a screen, but Bobby thought he could get past the screen. If the drop outside wasn’t too much, he might be able to leave.

  The idea of escaping was almost as scary as staying. As it grew darker he was getting more and more afraid to escape, because he didn’t know what was outside that bathroom window. He thought there might be bad things out there—but he definitely knew there were bad things in here!

  When Greta made him go throw the sandwich from the floor into the garbage, he had done so. Fortunately, she had also left the small peanut butter knife laying on the counter. With her and Junior paying attention to the television or their plans, he managed to put the knife in his pants pocket. It was not a long knife, but a short stubby one like what Rachel placed beside the butter dish.

  The knife might be helpful in getting that bathroom screen off. Or it might not. All he knew was that he wanted to get out of there and it might be a handy tool.

  He would have no chance of escaping if Greta or Junior were awake, but he had seen Greta’s head nodding and thought she might go to sleep for real before long. If he was patient, there might be a chance.

  Bobby curled up into a ball on the floor as far away from the couch as he could get without making her suspicious and then pretended to go to sleep. If she ever really fell asleep, he would climb on top of the bathroom sink and try to crawl out the little open window. He was pretty sure the bathroom door had a lock, and he would use it. That should give him a little bit of time if they woke up and came looking for him.

  Lydia and Bertha were growing frantic. They had worn themselves out searching every corner of the barn, the sheds, the nearby pasture, the attic, every room, every closet, under every bed, and the culvert beneath the driveway. Bertha even went to Cousin Eli’s house next door, and he joined in the search. They had to face the facts. Anna was gone.

  Bertha considered calling Rachel, but she didn’t know that Rachel could do much under the circumstances. Then Lydia hurried out to where Bertha and Eli were standing on the porch, discussing what to do next.

  “I was just in Anna’s room again.”

  “And?” Bertha asked.

  “Her little Gray Cat bank is gone!”

  When Bobby awoke, he was angry at himself for falling asleep. He wished he knew what time it was, but he could not tell time yet. He had been practicing with Bertha recently, but he still hadn’t mastered it. He did know that it was late, because Greta had fallen asleep on the couch and pulled a cover over herself. Her mouth was hanging open and making a “pup-pup-pup” sound. Junior was still snoring in the next room. Ezra was asleep too. The TV was still on and some woman was talking about jewelry and trying to convince people to buy a big, fancy ring that Bobby thought was ugly.

  If he was going to try to go out that little bathroom window, now was the time. He was frightened but utterly determined. He sat up slowly and waited to see whether anyone noticed. Ezra stirred beside him. Bobby didn’t know if it would be a good thing or a bad thing if his friend woke up. He wasn’t sure Ezra would be happy with his plan. His fear was that Ezra might try to stop him.

  There had been a couple of times in the past when Ezra had told on him to Naomi, when Bobby had been getting into some small mischief he didn’t think was all that bad. Ezra was his friend, but he didn’t trust him not to go tattling to Greta.

  Bobby laid back down and pretended to go to sleep. He waited to make sure Ezra was deeply asleep again and then he began to creep a few inches at a time across the carpet. Greta stirred a couple of times and Bobby immediately lay in perfect stillness.

  It took all he had in him to go slowly, when what he wanted to do was get up and run toward the bathroom and try to claw his way out the window as fast as he could—but he knew if he didn’t move slowly he might wake someone up, and that was something he could not afford to do.

  As Bobby inched his way across the carpet, he went over his plan in his mind…just like Daddy said he always did before a big game. When he finally made it to the bathroom, he would lock the door behind him, climb up on the sink, try to punch out that window screen…

  As he lay on the floor, almost afraid to breathe, staring through the kitchen table legs, he saw something that he had not noticed earlier. There, at the bottom of the door that led outside from the kitchen, was a tiny door covered with some sort of black material. It was big enough for maybe a cat or a small dog to come through. He knew exactly what it was because Aunt Anna’s Gray Cat had one.

  If he could squeeze through it, he wouldn’t have to climb out the scary window or make any noise going into the bathroom and locking the door. If he could squeeze through, he could go get help. Maybe he could find Rachel and Daddy and they would come and take care of these bad people—although he hoped they didn’t hurt Greta. She had been nicer to them than her brother.

  He carefully wiggled toward the little door. The linoleum kitchen floor was a lot easier to slide on than the dirty carpet. He was careful not to let his sneakers squeak as he pushed himself along.

  Chapter 59

  “What’s a gray cat bank?” Eli asked.

  “It’s a piggy bank, except it’s a shaped like a cat instead of a pig,” Lydia explained. “Carl bought it for Anna. She’s been putting stray change in it ever since. She loves going into the rooms after guests have left, hoping to find a dropped penny or two.”

  “Do you think she took it with her?” Bertha asked. “It had a good bit of change the last time she showed it to me. It can’t be all that light.”

  “She must have overheard us talking about the ransom money and whether the bishops would decide to provide it,” Lydia said.

  “Anna can’t grasp the concept of money va
lues,” Bertha explained to Eli. “She doesn’t know the difference in value between a penny and a quarter and a hundred-dollar bill.”

  “But she likes to count things,” Lydia added. “Yesterday she took all the money out of her bank and told me she had two hundred monies.”

  “So, to Anna,” Eli said, “a piggy bank filled with pennies could seem as valuable as a million dollars.”

  “She went to ransom Bobby!” Bertha exclaimed. “But where?”

  “Anna is a special child of God,” Eli said. “He will look after her. He will not allow any harm to come to her.”

  “This has been an awful day,” Bertha said, wringing her hands. “Bobby kidnapped, Anna missing… If only daylight would come.”

  As Rachel and George followed Carl and Shadow, she wondered if they were going on a wild-goose chase. Could this ex-prisoner possibly hold the key to finding Bobby? She’d been a cop for way too long to get her hopes up.

  On the other hand, as a cop she’d seen a few incredible strokes of luck lead to important captures. It would be incredibly lucky if Carl had happened upon Ezra earlier in the day. Of course, Bertha would attribute it to God’s mercy rather than luck, and Rachel was okay with that too. She didn’t care who or what got the credit as long as she got her son back.

  Carl was right about one thing: someone who survived twenty years as a prisoner had well-honed instincts about people. Some got practically psychic in their ability to read people’s facial expressions and body language. When it was a matter of life or death, one got really good at it or one got dead.

  It could be that Carl was that good. Or he could be leading her on for spite or even just for the fun of it. She figured one outcome was about as possible as the other. She didn’t trust him, but she had no choice. They had to check this out.