“Exactly. Put me on bottom.”
“I wouldn’t be able to climb on your shoulders and have the strength to pull Katie Ann up.”
“We’re going to crush you, Henry.”
“It won’t be for long. Let’s try it my way first.”
The first two times Sam tried climbing on Henry’s shoulders, he lost his balance, probably because he was trying not to lean too heavily on his bishop. Henry put both hands on his shoulders and said, “We don’t know how long he’ll be gone. We need to do this, and I’m not worried about your hurting me.”
Henry squatted, Sam climbed onto his shoulders, and Emma and Katie Ann, each grasping one of Henry’s arms, helped him to stand.
Emma didn’t think he’d be able to do it. Didn’t think he would have the strength. Henry turned red in the face, but he motioned for Katie Ann to hurry.
Putting his hands in front, he laced his fingers together. Both men had their backs against the wall.
“Send her up,” Sam said.
Katie Ann placed her foot into the bishop’s hands.
Emma stood behind her. “On three,” she said.
“One. Two.”
Katie Ann bounced up on three, and Emma steadied her from behind.
Henry gasped, “Better… hurry.”
Again they counted, and this time Katie Ann stepped up into Sam’s outstretched hands.
“I can reach it!” she called down. “But it’s locked.”
“Try turning the… latch,” Henry said. “Quickly!”
There was the squeak of rusty metal and then fresh air poured into the room.
“Can you fit through?” Emma asked.
“Ya, I think so.” Katie Ann squirmed up, through, and out the window.
Sam jumped down from Henry’s shoulders, and the bishop sighed in relief.
For a moment all Emma could see was the hem of Katie Ann’s dress, and then the bottom of her shoes, and then nothing.
“Katie Ann?”
The girl’s head popped into the window opening. “Lucky me, there’s a fire escape directly outside this window.”
“Thanks be to Gotte,” Henry said. “Remember what we talked about. Walk until you find someone who will help you. Walk across the bridge and toward the lights.”
Emma stepped back and craned her neck to see better. “Can you get down okay?”
The girl’s head disappeared, and then she popped back into the opening and said, “Ya. The ladder lets down to the ground.”
Henry sank to the floor.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked.
“No doubt we’ll both have a stiff neck tomorrow.” Henry smiled at them, and then he called out to Katie Ann.
“Take a gut look at the buildings around you, so you can describe it to the police.”
“Ya, okay.” Katie Ann stuck her head back through the window. “I’ll hurry,” she promised.
And then she was gone.
Seventy-Nine
Time passed slowly.
Emma prayed for Katie Ann. Her heart cried out to God, petitioning for the girl’s safety. But eventually she ran out of words, so she sat there silently, waiting, hoping God would hear and answer the prayers she didn’t know how to speak. The pain of her migraine had not abated. When Sam found a box of food, Henry brought her a bottle of water and a granola bar.
“I don’t think—”
“Eat, Emma. We must keep up our strength.”
“I’ll try.” She nibbled at the granola bar, and though it didn’t have much taste, it did settle her stomach. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was until she’d guzzled nearly half the bottle.
Sam had carried the box of provisions over to where they sat in the middle of the room.
Henry turned the lantern to low.
“It’ll save the batteries,” he said. “It could be that we’re in for a long night.”
They made a small circle, the three of them. Sam had no qualms pillaging the supply box. “Missed supper,” he said when he caught her looking.
Emma laughed. It sounded strange in the large, abandoned room. “You’re no longer a growing boy, Sam, but I suspect you work hard and are used to a gut dinner.”
“Mom keeps us well fed.” He stared at the peanut butter crackers in his hand. “They’ll be worried now. Your family, mine, and the whole community will be looking for Henry.”
“They will all be looking for all of us.” Henry ran both hands up and down the sides of his face. “As will Sheriff Grayson and Meg Allen.”
“Tell us about Douglas.” Emma peered at Sam, not sure she wanted the details, but knowing she needed to fill this time of waiting with something, some new information.
“I met him in eighth grade, the first year we were here.”
“We hadn’t established our parochial school yet,” Henry said. He was reminded of the conversation he’d had with Meg. Everything was coming together, starting to make sense, but to think that Douglas’s anger had been boiling for so long was disconcerting. “We talked of it and decided to wait until the second year.”
“It was different from school in Indiana, of course. Mostly I was ready to be out.”
“He was in your classes?” Emma asked.
“One, maybe two.”
“And how did he… how did he do?”
“Well, academically. Douglas was always at the top of the class, and it didn’t seem to take much effort.”
“Socially?”
“Not so well. Kids made fun of him for the way he dressed, the way he talked, even the fact that he was so smart.”
It seemed to Emma that Sam was lost in that memory of thirteen years ago. Henry was content to listen.
“Maybe I should have reached out and tried to be a friend to him. But Douglas Rae was not an easy person to like, and at the end of each day I was ready to get home and help Pop with the fields. I didn’t exactly hang around the school. I don’t even remember the time he talked about, when he tried to befriend me.”
“He would come by our vegetable stand,” Emma said. “Said he was buying things for his mother. It was obvious something was off, but I never guessed he would harbor such animosity toward us.”
“I’ve testified in only one trial since we moved to Monte Vista,” Henry said. “The DUI case where the driver killed Mervin and Lilly Weaver.”
“That was a terrible time,” Emma remembered.
“I can’t remember the name of the person who was found guilty.”
“Shawn.” Emma stared down at her hands. “Shawn Neely. I don’t know why that name stuck in my head. I remember the trial and how devastated Barbara Weaver was. She moved back to Elkhart. We still write one another occasionally.”
Sam crammed the last of the crackers into his mouth and took a swig of water. “Douglas said you testified against his brother.”
“Doesn’t make sense, does it? Rae? Neely? And I remember no family at the trial. None at all.”
No one spoke after that. Emma was wondering what it would feel like, to be accused of something, found guilty of a terrible thing, and have no one to stand beside you. To be completely alone in the world. Was that how Douglas felt? If so it explained a lot, though it excused nothing he’d done. The man was still guilty of murder.
Henry reached over to check on Lexi. Satisfied that the dog was no worse, he lay back on the floor, his fingers laced together and forming something of a pillow beneath his head.
Sam moved away from their circle and sat with his back braced against the wall. “If I had acted differently, all those years ago, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”
“It is not your fault for failing to see the need in the boy. Douglas was plenty smart, and he had apparently learned to keep his feelings well hidden. The pain in his heart simply overrode any moral qualms he may have had. His actions resulted in Vernon’s death.”
“All so tragic.” Emma rubbed at the muscles on the back of her neck.
“Indeed, and yet our Gotte is all about heal
ing. He can restore even the likes of Douglas Rae.”
“I hope he experiences any such healing from a federal prison,” Sam said. “The man is a danger to those around him.”
“It’s true he needs to be incarcerated—to protect himself as well as others,” Henry admitted. “But never doubt the reach of Gotte’s love and the life-changing power of it.”
“I know a little about that firsthand.” Emma glanced up from the granola bar she was still holding. Henry was staring at the ceiling, but Sam was watching her closely. “When George died, I thought my life was over. I was convinced all joy had been buried with his body on the hill at Leroy’s place. I still miss my husband, but Gotte has healed the grieving places in my heart.”
“Paul prayed that we would be rooted and grounded in love.” Henry sat up and offered them both a weak smile. “If we are? Then we may have the power to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of His love.”
Eighty
Emma would never understand how, but she must have fallen asleep when she moved to rest her back against the wall.
She woke to a commotion outside the door. Sam and Henry were already rushing across the room. Emma rubbed at her eyes and realized the migraine continued to pulse, especially on the right side of her head, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was Katie Ann. She put a hand against the wall and struggled to a standing position.
By the time she reached the others, a man’s voice was hollering through the metal door. “An officer has gone to fetch a bolt cutter from the trunk of his vehicle!”
Sam cheered, Henry reached out and grabbed their hands, and Emma nearly collapsed with relief.
“Katie Ann?” she called through the door.
“I’m here, Mammi.” The rest of what she said was garbled, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the girl was all right and they were being rescued.
Emma thought she would never hear a more satisfying sound than the pop of the metal chain as the officer cut through it, and then the chain being dragged through the handles of the door.
An older man in a police uniform opened the door, a smile wreathing his face.
Emma barely took the time to notice him. Her eyes were on the girl standing at the back of the group, waiting to make her way inside, her hands clasped together, and an expression of hope on her face.
“You’re okay!” Katie Ann flew into Emma’s arms.
“Of course we’re okay, child. It was you we were worried about.” Emma’s heart beat rapidly as joy and adrenaline surged through her veins. She hadn’t allowed herself to imagine what might have happened to Katie Ann, but the weight of those possibilities suddenly fled, and she felt as light as a fluffy cloud in the summer sky.
“I had to walk a long way, Mammi. I kept my head down, like Henry said. The few stores I passed were closed and the homes looked boarded up.” Katie Ann glanced at Henry and then smiled weakly at Sam, even as she continued to clutch her grandmother’s hand. “I found the bridge over the river, and then… and then I saw a couple walking back to the college. They helped me.”
“Praise be to Gotte.” Henry raised his hands skyward.
“They… they called the police on their cell phone and insisted on staying with me until someone came.” Tears slipped down Katie Ann’s cheeks. She swiped at them and cleared her throat, allowed herself to be pulled back into Emma’s arms. “I was scared, so scared that he had come back to hurt you.”
“We’re fine. Better than fine, especially now that you’re here.”
One of the officers had radioed for an ambulance, and after the paramedics arrived, they insisted on checking everyone in their group. By the time the four of them answered the officer’s questions, there was a clatter at the door. Sheriff Grayson and Meg walked in.
Meg scanned the room quickly, and then she nodded to someone behind her that it was okay to enter. Immediately, a whole group of people began pushing inside. Some carried large cameras. Others toted devices that looked like toolboxes.
Meg was directing the crime scene investigators, while Sheriff Grayson pulled Henry aside to speak with him. After a few minutes, Meg rounded them up and herded them toward the door. “I need you to go to the station with me. We’ll take a statement, and also we’ll need your fingerprints.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“So we can eliminate your prints from the others left in this room.” A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “What we’ll be left with—”
“Will be Douglas Rae’s.” Henry rubbed at his neck, which was no doubt sore, but he looked relieved. He glanced at Emma, smiled, and turned his attention back to the arson investigator. “So you haven’t caught him yet?”
“No. When Clyde returned home and found you all missing and the fire damage to the barn, he called me right away. We don’t know where Douglas is at this moment, but we will find him. And when we do, we’ll have plenty of evidence compiled to ensure we can keep him. The prints here should match those found at Emma’s barn. Because it didn’t burn, we were able to pull some good ones. We’ll have a strong case.”
“Once you catch him.” Sam looked less convinced that things would end so easily.
A squawk sounded over Grayson’s radio. He turned away from them, listening and then responding to the person. When he turned back, his expression was serious but Emma thought hopeful too.
“The volunteer fire department in Monte Vista responded to a fire at the school, main building. It has to be him. Officers are on their way.”
Eighty-One
The doctor ordered Henry to observe strict bed rest for the next week. He’d badly bruised his hip when he’d fallen on the ground running into the barn, pulled a muscle in his back from holding Sam on his shoulders, and then he’d come down with a nasty cold. Abe suggested perhaps God was helping him to follow the doctor’s orders.
In truth, Henry didn’t mind too much. He was able to read and rest with Lexi lying at the foot of his bed. If ever a dog had earned a place indoors, the little beagle had.
Doc Berry had fixed up Lexi’s wounds, including a thorough examination, stitching the cut over her eye, and x-raying and wrapping her ribs that had been badly bruised. All of the costs were paid for by the reward fund created to catch the Monte Vista Arsonist—that was the paper’s name for Douglas Rae.
Henry, Sam, Katie Ann, and Emma had refused the rest of the money, suggesting that it be donated to a local charity. When that had run in the local newspaper, even more donations had come in. They lived in a giving community, and it seemed to Henry that the fires had brought them together—Amish and Englisch working side by side to help one another.
So it was that he didn’t mind the week of bed rest too much. He was well taken care of.
The widows supplied him with plenty of food, friends tended his garden, Katie Ann cared for Oreo, and his elders took care of any needs among his congregation.
Emma and Katie Ann came every other day to check on him, clean the house, and generally kick up a fuss. Katie Ann was quick to finish anything her grandmother asked and then hurry to the barn. Henry might have thought the experience with the horses and the fire would have given her pause. After all, she could have been trampled when the Percheron panicked. She could have been killed. But if anything, Katie Ann was more interested in the horses than before.
Resting in the rocker in his sitting room, where he could watch Emma as she moved from room to room in the house, Henry tried reasoning with her to no avail. “I’m not out of bed enough for the house to get dirty.”
“And yet there’s all this wood dust on the floor.” Through the bedroom door he saw that she spied the corner of something sticking out from under his bed, leaned down, and picked it up. She turned on Henry with a knowing look. “Sandpaper? Have you been working on your projects in bed?”
“A little. Ya. I suppose I have.”
Emma shook the sandpaper at him and tried to look disappointed. When he started to laugh, she said, �
�You’re incorrigible. You know that, right?” Without waiting for an answer, she hurried into the bathroom to give the tub a good scrubbing. An hour later, his small home fairly sparkled.
When he smelled fresh coffee percolating in the kitchen, he stood and made his way to the table. Lexi followed, collapsing in a heap at his feet.
“Does she follow you everywhere?”
“Ya, she does. Though to be fair, I’ve barely left the house in a week.”
“Gut to know you’re following Doc Wilson’s orders, except for working on projects while you’re supposed to be resting.”
“It was your son who brought me a magazine that showed different types of bookends.”
“Clyde did that?”
“Sure and certain, and then Leroy brought me some nice lumber scraps. How could I resist?”
“How indeed?” Emma poured them both a cup of coffee and then set an apple crumble coffee cake on the table between them before sitting down. “One moment I’m so relieved Douglas is behind bars, and then I immediately feel guilty for wishing such a fate on someone.”
“Incarceration may be the best thing for him.”
“I’m not sure jail is gut for anyone, no matter how well deserved.”
“He’ll finally get the help he needs—physically, mentally, and emotionally.”
“Maybe he wanted to be caught, at the end. Why else would he have hung around the school? Why the need to watch it burn?”
“I imagine his school days were a source of great distress for him, perhaps even greater than what he told us in the warehouse.”
They sat quietly for a few moments, considering the fate of Douglas Rae.
Emma glanced across the room, and a smile replaced her look of consternation. “I see the widows have visited.”
“They all came together, which was something new.”
Emma’s eyebrow rose as she cut them both a piece of coffee cake. “Strength in numbers?”
Henry laughed. He felt a delicious lightness, as if the heavy burdens he’d been carrying since the death of Vernon Frey had been lifted. He suddenly realized the time for somberness was behind them.
What the Bishop Saw Page 30
