Fallen

by Linda Castillo

  He screamed. “Yawwww! Fuck!”

  “Get off her!”

  Levi was climbing out of the buggy when another crack! sounded, like a firecracker. He lost his footing and fell to his knees in the dust.

  Loretta scrambled to the door. Rachael stood a few feet away, buggy whip in hand, fury in her eyes. In that instant, Loretta knew that while Levi Yoder might be bigger and stronger, he didn’t stand a chance against her friend.

  “Come on!” Rachael cried. “Run!”

  Loretta didn’t hesitate. She scrambled from the buggy, stumbled over Levi even as he lurched to his feet. Rachael threw down the whip and they ran.

  Levi hurled expletives at them as they fled into the darkness. By the time they reached the road, both girls were breathless and laughing so hard they couldn’t speak.

  That was the night Rachael Schwartz became Loretta’s hero. She was the only person who’d ever stood up for her. The only girl who’d ever fought for her. She was the best friend Loretta had ever had and there was nothing on this earth that could ever tear them apart.

  CHAPTER 24

  Day 3

  There is a rhythm to a small town. An ebb and flow of a community in constant motion. A certain way of doing things. Expectations to be met. There’s a set dynamic among the citizens. Reputations to uphold or cut down. Rumors to be told, stories to be embellished upon or brought to an end. If you’re a cop and you’re not cognizant of all of those subtleties, you’re not doing your job. Having lived in Painters Mill most of my life, I also know that sometimes it’s those very same undercurrents that can make my job more difficult.

  It was after four A.M. when I arrived home from the Bontrager place last night. Mona and I, along with a deputy from the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office, searched the entire Bontrager farm from corncrib to barn to chicken house and all the way to the fence line at the back of the property. The only indication anyone had been there other than Ben and Loretta was a single muddy footprint in the pen behind the barn. I snapped a dozen photos of it, but the ground was too juicy to pick up any tread and the images aren’t going to be helpful. There was no sign of a vehicle. Nothing dropped or inadvertently left behind. Because of the hour, we couldn’t canvass. I left instructions with Glock to talk with the neighbors at first light. Considering the time of the attack and that most of the farms are a mile or so apart, I’m not holding my breath.

  Tomasetti spent most of the night at the police lab in London, which is just west of Columbus. He crawled into bed a little before five A.M., just as I was making my way to the shower. He let me know the information technology people at BCI are working on improving the quality of the video or at least trying to come up with some decent stills. A process that will likely take a couple of days.

  I arrive at the station at seven A.M. to find Margaret’s Ford Taurus parked in its usual spot. A lone buggy sits next to the car. The horse—head down, rear leg cocked, snoozing—is tethered to the parking meter. If I’m not mistaken, the buggy belongs to the Bontragers. I wonder if one of them had an attack of conscience for not telling me the whole story about the intruder last night, and decided to make things right this morning.

  I enter to find Margaret standing at the reception station, six P&P manuals stacked on the credenza behind her.

  Ben and Loretta Bontrager sit stiffly on the sofa, looking uncomfortable and out of place. Previously, Ben was a talkative, mild-mannered man. This morning he’s stone-cold silent with a fractious air. Loretta looks as if she spent the night sleepless and crying. Her face is the color of paste, dark circles beneath troubled eyes. The marks on her neck have bloomed into bruises. Their daughter sits between them, her head on her mamm’s shoulder, faceless doll in her lap, unaware that this isn’t the kind of visit to be enjoyed.

  Loretta gets to her feet when I enter, the knitting in her lap falling to the floor. I can tell by her expression this is the last place on earth she wants to be. Something has changed since I last spoke to her and the upshot isn’t good.

  “Good morning,” I say.

  “Morning, Chief.” Margaret motions to the family. “Mr. and Mrs. Bontrager arrived a few minutes ago. They’d like to talk to you if you have a few minutes.”

  I turn my attention to the couple. “What can I do for you?”

  The Amish woman stoops to pick up her knitting, nearly drops it again. She looks flustered and on edge. I can’t help but notice that her hands are shaking when she tucks the spool of yarn into her sewing bag.

  “I need to tell you something,” she blurts. “About last night.”

  “All right.” I motion toward my office.

  Loretta looks at Margaret and offers a tremulous smile. “If you could keep an eye on Fannie for a few minutes?”

  “Sure I can,” Margaret says cheerfully. “I was just going to fix myself a nice cup of hot chocolate.” She looks at Fannie. “Whipped cream or marshmallow, young lady?”

  The Amish girl grins. “Both.”

  “Heicha dei fraw.” Obey the woman. Loretta eases her daughter toward Margaret, but her attention is already on me and what lies ahead.

  At the coffee station, I pour three cups and hand both of them a cup. I unlock my office door and we go inside. I motion them to the visitor chairs and then take my own chair at my desk.

  Before I can say anything, Loretta sets down her cup. “I wasn’t completely honest with you last night, Chief Burkholder. I’m sorry. I should have … I should have … Ben thought I should come in as soon as possible and set things straight.”

  “We didn’t want to get involved in all of this, Chief Burkholder,” Ben adds. “But telling the truth … is the right thing to do, so we came.”

  “I’m glad you did.” Interest piqued, I wait.

  Loretta sits up straighter, folds her hands in her lap, looks down at her hands. “I know who came to the barn last night. I saw his face. I know him.”

  “Who?”

  “Dane Fletcher,” she tells me. “He’s a police. A deputy. With the sheriff’s office.”

  I barely hear anything past the name, over the gong of disbelief in my head. Fletch? I struggle to get my mind around the notion that he assaulted an Amish woman. I’ve known Dane Fletcher for years. He’s been with the sheriff’s office as long as I can remember. He’s a solid guy. A husband and father. A volunteer. Little League coach. Why in the name of God would he accost an Amish woman in her barn? It simply doesn’t make sense.

  “Are you telling me Dane Fletcher accosted you in the barn last night, physically assaulted you, and demanded money?”

  “He didn’t demand money,” she tells me. “What happened last night is about … something else.”

  I stare at them, first Loretta and then her husband, and I can’t imagine where this is going. Is she telling the truth? Is it possible Fletcher and this woman are involved in some sort of illicit affair?

  “Loretta, you need to tell me exactly what happened,” I say firmly. “All of it. Don’t leave anything out this time.”

  She looks away, fingers a frayed thread at the hem of her halsduch.

  “Fazayla see,” Ben snaps. Tell her.

  I lean back in my chair, irritated that I’ve been misled, more than a little skeptical that I’m going to get the whole truth now.

  “This deputy,” Loretta begins. “He thinks I know something about him. Something he doesn’t want me to talk about.”

  “It has to do with Rachael Schwartz,” Ben cuts in, glaring at his wife. “Talk.”

  Loretta takes a deep breath, like a child who doesn’t know how to swim contemplating a dive into a deep pool. “Fletcher did something bad to Rachael. A long time ago. When she was a teenager. She told me not to tell. Now…” She shrugs. “I think I need to tell you.”

  I nod for her to continue.

  “When Rachael was seventeen years old, right before she was baptized, she got a job as a stocker at Fox Pharmacy and bought a car with the money she earned. It was an old piece of junk that
didn’t start half the time. But Rachael loved that car.” She catches herself smiling at the memory, ducks her head, embarrassed. “Leave it to Rachael to do something like that, right?”

  The Amish woman sighs. “She never ‘officially’ got to have her rumspringa. Sometimes the girls don’t, you know. They sure didn’t want Rachael having that kind of freedom. That didn’t stop her. After she’d gone through die gemee nooch geh in preparation for her baptism, she was sneaking out almost every night. Drinking. Listening to music. Getting into trouble. My parents didn’t like me spending too much time with her.” Another smile, regretful and melancholy this time. “Maybe if I had…”

  Her mouth tightens. “Toward the end of that summer, I didn’t see her for a while, which was odd. She was always coming over in that old car. To visit with me, you know. Then she stopped coming. A couple of weeks passed. When she finally came by …

  “She took me out to the barn.” Loretta closes her eyes tightly, scrubs her hand over her face. “And she told me the most horrible story I ever heard.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Summer 2008

  Rachael Schwartz was seventeen years old the night she learned how the world worked. When she understood that getting what you wanted boiled down to how much of yourself you were willing to betray.

  She’d spent the day at the county fair with Loretta and what a blast it had been. At dusk, she’d ridden the Ferris wheel with the English boy she’d met last weekend. Later, she and Loretta had bought a six-pack of beer and she’d driven out to the Tuscarawas Bridge to hang out with the usual crew, a group of both English and Amish kids, and they spent the evening swimming and drinking beer.

  It had been the most wonderful day of her life. No work. No worries. No one looking over her shoulder and telling her she was going to go to hell if she didn’t change her ways. She’d dropped Loretta off at ten and now Rachael was on her way home. She’d never felt so free. So alive. It was as if her heart couldn’t contain another ounce of happiness or else it would simply burst from her chest. How could God frown upon all the things that made life so wonderful?

  Most Amish girls didn’t do much during their rumspringa. Not like the boys, anyway. Rachael had no intention of wasting what little time she had. The adults were pushing hard to get her baptized. Once that happened, she was sunk. Her parents didn’t approve of her running around. They didn’t approve of her friends or the choices she made. They didn’t approve of the job she’d taken at the drugstore in town. But it was the car that they simply couldn’t abide. Datt wouldn’t even let her drive it onto the property, forcing her to park it at the end of the lane. Rachael didn’t care. She wasn’t going to let that keep her from doing what she wanted to do. She was finally having fun. Why did they have to go and ruin it?

  No one understood. Loretta tried, but she was a good girl through and through. Unlike Rachael, who’d never quite been able to follow the rules. Just yesterday Mrs. Yoder had called her hochmut. Who cared if she was prideful? When you were Amish, it seemed, no one approved of anything. Did God approve? She’d been wondering about that, too. Wondering if maybe the Amish had it all wrong. Maybe she’d just find her own way. If she had to leave the fold to do so, then so be it.

  Tom Petty was belting out “Breakdown,” the music turned up loud enough to rattle the speakers. Rachael sang along, the windows down, the night air cool on her skin, her hair flying. How was it that she’d lived her entire life without rock and roll? And boys? And beer? Thinking about how that must seem to her Amish brethren, Rachael threw her head back and laughed out loud. She turned up the radio another notch, until the knob wouldn’t go any further, and she sang along with Petty, slapping her palms on the steering wheel. She was so embroiled in the music that she didn’t notice the headlights behind her until they were right on her tail. She was just a few miles from home when the red and blue lights flashed in her rearview mirror.

  “Shit!”

  She was still wearing her English clothes. A can of Budweiser sweating in the console. The empty one she’d finished before dropping off Loretta lay on the floor on the passenger side. She didn’t think she was drunk, but she’d heard about the local cops. If they caught a whiff of alcohol on your breath, they’d make you take the sobriety test. Even if you weren’t drunk, they’d haul you to jail.

  Trying to remember if she had any gum, she slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. Quickly, she picked up the can of beer, looked around wildly, and shoved it into the opening between the console and seat, out of sight. A glance in the side-view mirror told her the cop had gotten out and was coming her way. Unfastening her seat belt, she lunged at the empty can on the floor and pushed it beneath the seat.

  “Good evening.”

  Gasping, Rachael turned in the seat to see a young Holmes County deputy standing outside her car, bent at the hip, looking in at her. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.”

  “Can I see your driver’s license and proof of insurance please?” he asked.

  He was young for a cop. Just a few years older than she was. Professional and clean shaven with buzz cut hair and the prettiest brown eyes she’d ever seen.

  She dug into her bag for her driver’s license, then checked the glove compartment for her insurance card and handed both to him. “Was I speeding?”

  He took her license and insurance card and studied both, taking his time answering. She’d turned down the radio and with half an ear listened to the Petty song end and Nirvana start in. Hopefully, he wouldn’t keep her too long.

  “I clocked you going sixty-seven miles an hour,” he said. “Do you know what the speed limit is?”

  She searched her mind for the right answer. Tell him the truth? That she knew the speed limit, but hadn’t been paying attention? Tell him she thought the speed limit was sixty-five? Maybe she could tell him she was late and rushing home so her parents wouldn’t be angry with her. Or that she badly had to use the restroom.

  She looked up at him, saw that he was looking back at her, waiting for an answer, and she smiled. “I guess I didn’t realize I was going so fast.”

  “Well, you were.” He smiled back and cocked his head. “Are you Dan and Rhoda’s girl?”

  “They’re my parents.”

  His eyes landed on her English clothes. “If you don’t mind my saying, you don’t look very Amish tonight.”

  She laughed. She almost told him she was on rumspringa, which wasn’t quite true, but thought it might lead to a question about her drinking. Better to play it safe. “I had to work today,” she said. “Then I went to the movies with my girlfriend.”

  “Yeah? What did you see?”

  “Twilight.”

  “I hear that’s a good one,” he said.

  She began to relax. For a police, he seemed like a nice guy. Laid-back. Reasonable. Hopefully, he wouldn’t give her a speeding ticket.

  He stepped back and looked at her car. “Never seen an Amish girl driving a car alone on a back road at one o’clock in the morning.”

  “I’m on my way home.”

  “Parents let you stay out this late?”

  She laughed. “I’m kind of late.”

  “They wait up for you?”

  “I hope not!” She laughed again and she thought maybe he liked her and had decided not to write her a ticket. All she had to do was be nice and polite. Charm him a little, the way she saw the English girls do. She was home free.

  He laughed, too, then came closer and leaned in. “You been drinking tonight?”

  “I don’t drink.” She punctuated the statement with a laugh, but she didn’t miss the nervous tick at the back of her throat. “It’s against the rules, you know.”

  “Huh.” He scratched his head, looked around. “That’s what I thought.” Grimacing, he turned back to her and sighed. “I still have to check. You know, do my job. Would you get out of the vehicle? This won’t take too long.”

  Rachael didn’t move. She didn’t want to get out. Didn’t want this to go any fu
rther. But what could she do?

  “But I haven’t been drinking,” she said. “I just … want to go home.”

  “It’ll be all right.” He reached for the door handle and opened it for her. “Come on, now. A quick sobriety test and then you’ll be on your way. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

  “Oh. Well.” Not knowing what else to do, Rachael got out of the vehicle. Feeling self-conscious now. Nervous because she thought he probably knew she’d lied to him. That she’d been drinking and maybe he wasn’t her new best friend after all. What was she going to do if he wrote her a ticket? Or worse, took her to jail? What would she tell her parents? What if they had to bail her out of jail? How much would it cost them?

  “Here’s what you need to do,” he said, indicating the painted line on the shoulder of the road. “Put your arms out like this.” He demonstrated. “Take nine steps, one foot in front of the other, heel to toe. When you reach nine steps, put your head back like this.” He tilted his head back so that he was looking up at the night sky. “And touch your nose with your index finger.”

  Rachael took in every word, a little relieved because she thought she could do it. If she could remember all those instructions. The truth of the matter was she had been drinking and she wasn’t exactly at the top of her game. Surely she could manage something so simple. Then she would drive straight home. Even if she got a ticket, she could pay for it herself. Her parents didn’t have to know. No one had to know.

  He leaned against her car and crossed his arms at his chest. It was as if he was settling in to watch a movie or something. When she hesitated, he raised his brows. “Go on,” he said.

  Feeling self-conscious, she walked to the painted line. She took a deep breath, stretched out her arms, and began to walk, heel to toe. Two steps in and she lost her balance, missed the line by a few inches. It was the heels, she realized. She looked back at him. “It’s the shoes. May I take them off?”

  He was already coming toward her, reaching for something in his belt. Alarm swirled in her gut when he pulled out what looked like handcuffs. She raised her hands, felt the tears spring in her eyes. “I can do it. It’s just that these heels are—”