Dead Broke

by Vannetta Chapman

  While Emma looked rested, there was a furrow to her brow that hadn’t been there before. And Henry, well, Henry looked exhausted.

  Concern for her guests replaced all other thoughts. Had her small flock of guineas landed on the roof above their room? Guineas were gangly animals and made a terrible noise, but they were good at keeping the snake population in check. She’d purchased a half a dozen earlier in the year. They roosted each night in the trees at the back of the house, but occasionally they also dropped down onto the roof. “You didn’t sleep well?”

  “I did, for a few hours.” Henry accepted the cup of coffee from his wife, then they both sat down across from Agatha.

  It wasn’t unusual for her guests to rise early, especially her Amish guests. After all, the majority of them were farmers, used to rising before the sun tiptoed past the horizon in order to care for horses and cattle, goats and pigs. Since Henry was a bishop, he carried the work of a farm plus the duties of a church leader...though he had shared that they lived with Emma’s son in a Dawdi Haus. The younger man did the majority of the farm work.

  Still, she’d never had anyone join her for coffee at five-thirty in the morning.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s something we need to tell you, Agatha.” Henry looked at his wife.

  Emma nodded emphatically before adding, “And something we need to show you.”

  Henry pulled in a deep breath and blew it out. Looking up at her, he gave a tentative smile. “I was injured, when I was only twelve.”

  Agatha sat back, interested, but wondering how something that happened so long ago could cause him such worry now.

  “I was playing baseball that day—the day that changed my life—and my friend, Atlee, he was up to bat. Atlee had a powerful swing. I turned sixty-seven this year, but I can still remember that day as if it just happened. The sun shone brightly in the sky, and the temperature was warm. The leaves in the trees were just beginning to turn.”

  He stared out the kitchen window, and though there was no tremor in his voice, Agatha felt a chill creep down her spine.

  “I even remember the sound the ball and bat made as they collided with one another.”

  Henry sipped from his coffee. It seemed to Agatha that he did so more to give himself time to collect his thoughts than out of a love for the drink. She suspected that Henry had slipped into the past, and he was no more aware of the coffee in his mug than he was of the Texas hills outside the window.

  “The impact was to my skull.” He touched a place on the side of his head. “I was taken to a hospital, where they drilled a small hole to reduce the pressure on my brain.”

  She couldn’t imagine such an impact. How terribly painful it must have been. “But you recovered,” Agatha said.

  “I did. They called it a catastrophic brain injury. My condition stabilized rather quickly. I went home, and I lived a rather normal life.”

  “Except for the drawing,” Emma murmured.

  “Yes, except for the drawing.” He sat up straighter and locked gazes with Agatha. “Some doctors called me an Accidental Savant and others said that the injury caused Acquired Savant Syndrome. The names are synonymous to me and beside the point. I was suddenly able to draw, completely and accurately, anything and everything I had seen.”

  “He doesn’t remember all those things, mind you.” Emma smiled at her husband. Had she told Agatha they’d been married for two years? Agatha would have guessed they’d shared an entire life together, and perhaps they had—a lifetime could be calculated in so many different ways.

  Henry watched Agatha carefully. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say. She couldn’t think of why he was sharing this event from his past with her.

  “My unconscious mind remembers, and I’m able to draw scenes people and places and things down to the smallest detail.”

  Agatha tilted her head to the side. “That’s what you were doing last night?”

  “Ya.” He again sipped the coffee.

  “And you were drawing...” Her thoughts tossed about, trying to put together Henry’s story from his childhood with anything that could have to do with her. And suddenly Agatha understood, or she thought she did. “Oh...”

  Emma jumped to Henry’s defense. “He doesn’t do it all the time, mind you. He doesn’t want to intrude on people’s private moments. It’s been hard, this gift that Henry was given, but it’s also...well, it’s brought some unsavory characters to justice.”

  Agatha felt her heartbeat kick up a notch. “You’ve been involved in a murder investigation before?”

  “Three times in Monte Vista and once in Goshen.”

  Agatha shifted in her chair, suddenly remembered the food in the oven, and jumped up to check on it. She set her wind-up timer for ten more minutes, and returned to the table. “So you have a photographic memory?”

  “Nein. No one has that, or so the doctors say. My conscious memory is the same as anyone else’s. It’s my subconscious that records and is able to produce the images.”

  “Okay. And last night you...what did you do exactly?”

  “Last night I drew what I saw on the far side of the river. I drew Nathan King’s murder scene.”

  It was then that Agatha noticed he’d placed a spiral journal on the table next to where he sat. He picked it up, turned to a page in the middle, and passed it to her.

  Agatha thought she had understood what Henry had told her, but when she looked at the drawing, a gasp escaped her lips. She’d seen plenty of photographs before, though in general Amish didn’t own cameras or have their pictures taken. There were exceptions in the last few years it had become quite common for a bride and groom to have their picture snapped a few times. Nothing like hiring an Englisch photographer and staging a photo shoot, but a few mementos for the couple that they could keep or share with family.

  The drawings before her were like that.

  What Henry had drawn, it resembled a photograph more than a drawing.

  It contained such detail that she leaned forward to catch the smallest things, then she sat back and held it at arm’s length. “This is amazing, Henry. It looks...it almost looks as if it could jump off the page, as if it isn’t flat at all but rather a physical model of the thing.”

  “There’s more.” He nodded at the journal. “Turn back.”

  So she did, first one page, then two, then a third. He’d made four drawings in all, and she had the sense that she was looking at a time-lapse video.

  “How can you do this?”

  “Technically—well, technically no one can explain it, and I certainly don’t understand. It has something to do with the brain injury though. I couldn’t...” He ran a hand across his brow, pausing to rub above his left eye. “I couldn’t draw stick figures before I was hit with Atlee’s baseball.”

  Emma stood up, snagged the coffee pot, and refilled their cups. Agatha immediately liked the woman even more than she had the night before. Emma saw a need and filled it, and at the moment Agatha desperately needed more coffee.

  The timer dinged, and she removed their breakfast from the oven, covering both dishes with a clean kitchen towel to keep them from cooling too quickly. Gina would arrive soon. The Hochstetlers would come to breakfast, and perhaps Joey Troyer would show, though Agatha hadn’t heard him come back to the B&B. He must have, though. Where else would he have spent the night?

  She had two more couples checking in, and she’d meant to work on a quilt she was making for a couple at church. Plus, visitation would begin with Nathan’s family. She knew his parents though only casually, and there was a younger brother the one who would probably take Nathan’s goats. Nathan hadn’t talked about his family nearly as much as he’d talked about those goats.

  Like most days running a B&B, this one was going to be busy. But all those things she had to do faded as she again scanned through Henry’s drawings.

  Finally she raised her eyes to theirs. Henry and Emma were worried. About what? About t
he drawing? Why would that concern them so much? It didn’t implicate them in anyway. And yet it did involve them, and perhaps those other investigations hadn’t gone well. Perhaps they weren’t eager to again become involved with the Englisch police. It was a basic tenet of Plain life that they strove to live alongside other people and faiths, but still set apart.

  With these drawings, Henry was walking right into the thick of things—right into the middle of the Hunt Police Department and a criminal investigation. And he was doing it because he knew that what his mind had seen could help solve the murder. Her respect for the couple seated across from her increased even more, and it had been considerable to begin with.

  Agatha reached across the table and squeezed both Emma’s and Henry’s hand. “We’ll show these to Tony. He’ll know what to do.”

  Because Tony Vargas might be retired, but he was still the finest detective in the state of Texas.

  HENRY AND EMMA DECIDED to take a walk along the river before breakfast.

  “Agatha was surprised.” Emma reached for his hand.

  “Ya, but not frightened by what she saw. I’ll take that as a good sign.”

  So instead of worrying over what might happen in the next few hours, they watched the sun rise over the hills, sending rays of orange and pink across the Texas sky. They were even treated to the sight of several fish jumping out of the water and slapping back down, causing water and light to spray across the surface of the river.

  “Nickel for your thoughts.” Emma bumped her shoulder against his, drawing him out of his reverie.

  “I thought it was a penny.”

  “Yes, but your thoughts are worth immensely more to me.”

  Henry nodded toward the river and the hills beyond. “I was thinking that I’d like to draw that.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Perhaps I could take up landscapes instead of murder scenes.”

  “No doubt they would sell better.”

  They’d never tried selling his drawings. They’d talked about it, but Henry didn’t want the attention it might bring. Whatever money could be earned wasn’t worth that trade off. But perhaps there was a way he could do so through a third-party, and the funds would certainly help their family as well as their congregation.

  “Interesting how Agatha thought immediately to share them with Tony.”

  “She trusts him.” Henry picked up a smooth flat stone and skimmed it across the water, feeling like a child again. It was a good feeling—clean and fresh and filled with optimism. “They’ve been through something similar together, as she hinted at last night. She trusts his reactions as well as his instincts.”

  “Then we will too.” Emma smiled broadly.

  It was that simple with her. Put your trust in the good people, step away from the bad ones. And she definitely knew how to discern one from the other. They both did.

  The truth of it was that Henry was tired of drawing scenes of the worst that one man could do to another. He’d thought he was done with that, and yet here it was again.

  He did believe that God directed his steps. He’d spent as much time praying as he had drawing through the long sleepless night. Because he didn’t understand why this was the cup he must drink from once more.

  But he did understand his duty.

  They’d eat breakfast with Agatha’s other guests, and then they’d take his journal to Tony.

  An hour later they were sitting in Tony’s kitchen. He offered them coffee, but Henry thought he might begin buzzing if he had any more. Instead, he asked for a glass of water.

  “Henry needs to show you something,” Agatha explained. “It’s about Nathan’s murder.”

  “Okay.” Tony drew the word out, like a long piece of taffy.

  So Henry again told the story of his injury, but this time he added the reactions he’d dealt with each time he’d dared to show someone his drawings.

  “My parents were the first to see what I could do. I was just fiddling around, drawing people from a church social, wishing I could be outside playing instead of inside recuperating. I drew our friends and neighbors. I didn’t realize that I had caught some of those people in an unflattering light.”

  “Such as?” Tony wasn’t actually taking notes, but Henry had a feeling the man forgot very little when he was interviewing someone regarding a murder.

  “A man speaking unkindly to his wife, two boys fighting, a teenaged boy about to kiss his girlfriend.” Henry cupped both hands around the glass. “It wasn’t so much what I drew as it was the...the intensity of it.”

  “It was intrusive.”

  “Yes. It was.” Henry felt his head bobbing, surprised that Tony had understood what he was trying to say. “As if I had an Englisch camera and was taking pictures of people when they weren’t aware, when they thought they were alone. My parents told me that no one wants their every action and emotion recorded. They called it a curse, this unusual ability of mine, and they strongly suggested I never draw again.”

  “But you did?” Agatha looked riveted by the story, even though she’d heard the first part earlier that morning. Now she was hearing it after having seen for herself what he could do.

  “Not for a long time. There was a murder, in Goshen, and I thought—I knew—I could help find the killer of a young Amish girl—Betsy Troyer.”

  “You did help find her killer.” Emma tugged on her kapp strings so hard, Henry thought she might tear them. “Remember, I was there, Henry. You suffered mightily when they arrested you, but in the end you’re the reason that Gene Wooten didn’t kill again.”

  “All right.” Tony sat up straighter. “I’m beginning to understand why you might not want to jump into a situation. Your ability somehow makes you suspect.”

  “Exactly. It’s as if I know things that I shouldn’t be able to know, unless I was complicit.”

  Tony was already shaking his head. “That’s not possible this time. I was with you, before, during, and after Nathan’s murder. So the worst that happens is someone will think you’re a bit unbalanced mentally.”

  Emma was quick to defend him. “Henry’s the most stable person I know.”

  “There were three more murder investigations, in Monte Vista, that I found myself caught up in,” Henry said. “On at least one occasion, I needed an alibi and I didn’t have one. Things were...tumultuous for a while. The police eventually caught the killer, though.”

  “All right. Warning issued and received. Let’s see what you’ve got there.”

  Henry, Emma, and Agatha exchanged a look.

  Then Henry passed the journal to Tony.

  Tony didn’t speak at first. He studied the drawings, glancing more than once at Henry. Then he stood, fetched a glass of water, and gulped downed the entire thing. He remained there at the kitchen sink for a moment, staring out across his backyard that, like Agatha’s, sloped down to the Guadalupe. Finally, he returned to the table and smiled at Henry.

  “I thought I was ready for that.”

  “Indeed...”

  “I was raised a Catholic, still am a Catholic, I suppose.” Tony smiled a bit apologetically. “Mostly I find God out there...on the river, but my mother, she made sure I understood and appreciated Our Lady of the Lourdes, the Shroud of Turin, even The Holy Face of Manoppello. Catholics—we’re not skeptics as far as believing in miracles goes, and this...”

  He tapped the journal. “This is a miracle.”

  He ran his fingers down the edge of the page.

  “My point is that I don’t doubt what you’ve done here. More importantly, I think there may be some very important clues.”

  “I thought so too,” Henry murmured.

  “Let’s take it one page at a time. It looks to me as if you drew them in chronological order.”

  “Yes, the first is when we ascended the hill and saw the goats and the man’s body.”

  Everyone leaned forward to study the page that Tony had opened the journal to, though Henry and Emma were looking at it
upside down.

  “Here we have the goats—in amazing detail. Probably not much use to the investigation though.”

  “Look at this goat. There seems to be some sort of fibers or...something...around his neck.” Agatha looked at the others. “Any idea what that might be?”

  No one had a guess at all, though Tony complimented her fine powers of observation. He turned to the next page. “Here we have Nathan, arms spread wide, lying face up, after he’d been shot through the chest. I suspect what you’ve drawn will mirror the photographs taken on scene.”

  “Ya. I imagine so.”

  “Remember the rain began as we were crossing the river. The evidence surrounding the body was being erased as we made our way up the hill, but still there was more there when we arrived than when the police did. So let’s look at what might have been erased in the fifteen minutes before the Hunt Police Officers took control of the crime scene.” He pointed to a spot beside the body. “Here’s a small scrap of paper. You only drew a corner of it, why?”

  “Because that’s all I saw. It was crumpled, like you see in the drawing. My mind can only reproduce what my eyes actually saw—there’s no guesswork. That corner was all that was visible.”

  “I don’t even remember it, and I’m fairly sure it wasn’t there when the police arrived, so the rain must have washed it down the hill. But we can just make out the words pay for what...”

  “Most bills aren’t handwritten, so it’s not that.” Agatha crossed her arms, curiosity coloring her features. “And why was he holding it in the middle of the woods while he was tending to his goats?”

  Tony shrugged. “Possibly it was a note someone left for him earlier. Maybe he’d stuck it in his pocket and his hand brushed against it—remembering, he pulled it out.”

  “Or maybe someone threatened him, then killed him,” Emma said.

  “Why threaten him, though? Why make yourself known?”

  “Because they wanted something?” Henry understood that the reasons for murder were varied, and sometimes—to a sane and balanced person—there seemed to be no reason at all.

  “Let’s move on.” Tony pointed to the bottom of the drawing. “Here you have the heel of a boot print.”