“I don’t know.” I think about that a moment. “Do you know how much money was in there?”
She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t even know it was here if I hadn’t seen Datt drop in some money when I was getting sausage for Mamm.”
“When’s the last time you saw it?”
She traps her lower lip with her teeth. “I don’t know. I never pay attention.”
I pull a pair of latex gloves from my coat pocket, slip them on. I don’t have an evidence bag with me, but I pick up the jar anyway, decide to carry it out to the Explorer to bag it.
Salome turns wide eyes on me. “Whoever stole the money,” she begins. “Did they kill my mamm and datt and Uncle Abel, too?”
I look down at her, shocked that her mind had already made the leap. She stares back at me, her expression as guileless as a child’s. The lantern casts pin lights in her eyes. “I don’t know, honey, but I’m going to find out.”
She blinks back tears, and for an instant her grief turns to anger. “I don’t understand why this had to happen. If someone needed money, Datt would have given it to them.”
“These kinds of crimes never make any sense,” I tell her. But even to me, the words sound like a practiced understatement. She deserves a better answer. Because there isn’t one, I sigh and motion toward the stairs. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Mose is sitting at the table when we return to the kitchen. Salome takes her place at the table and puts her face in her hands. As if knowing something has changed, the younger children stare at her, wondering about the tears. They look up to her, I realize. And in that moment, I vow to do everything in my power to keep them from being separated.
I remain standing. “If any of you remember anything about the men who worked for your datt, let me know, okay?”
The request elicits four blank stares. After a while, Mose perks up. “The Englischer had a white dog. I remember because it killed one of our chickens.”
“What kind of dog?”
“It was a mongrel. Small. With wiry hair.”
I make a mental note to canvass the area and ask about any day laborers with white dogs. “Did your datt keep records? Write things down?”
Three heads shake in unison. Samuel pipes up with a solution. “Do you want us to look for his papers?” When I look at him, he smiles. He’s anxious to help, the kind of child who likes to please. He stares at me with the most innocent blue eyes I’ve ever seen. He’s got a smudge of dirt on his cheek, freckles on his nose. His lashes are still wet from an earlier cry. Before realizing I’m going to touch him, I lean forward and run my fingers through his mussed hair. “Thank you, Samuel, but I’ll have one of my officers do it,” I say.
My heart turns over in my chest when he smiles. The emotions running through me are so powerful, I take a step back, closer to the door. “You guys did good,” I say after a moment. “Thanks for all your help.”
One of the Amish women approaches the table with a dishcloth in her hand, gives me a firm look, and then addresses the children. “Supper’s ready,” she says softly. “Go wash your hands.”
Knowing that’s my cue to leave—or escape, I’m not sure which—I turn and start for the door. I may not be able to bring back these kids’ parents, but the one thing I can do is find the son of a bitch who killed them.
CHAPTER 6
I’m still thinking about the children when I climb into the Explorer, bag the mason jar, and start down the gravel lane. Their pain is palpable, and my meeting with them has left me feeling uncharacteristically bleak. Maybe it’s because I know that even if I solve the case—and I have every intention of doing so—it won’t bring back their parents. No matter what I do, three lives have been lost forever. Four other young lives have been irrevocably changed. This is one of those times when justice will make for a very cold bedfellow.
A cast-iron sky spits sleet pellets against the windshield as I turn onto the township road and head toward town. I flip on the wipers and defroster, then grab my cell and dial T.J.
“Hey, Chief, what’s up?”
I tell him about the day laborer and the missing cash. “I want you to recanvass the farms around the Slabaugh place. Find out if anyone remembers seeing someone. See if you can come up with a name.”
“Will do.”
“One of the men who worked for Slabaugh supposedly had a white dog with him. Ask about that, too. Can you give Skid a call and get him out to the Slabaugh place? I want him to look around for any kind of records Solly Slabaugh might have kept. If we can get the names of the men he hired, we might catch a break.”
“Sure thing.” T.J. pauses. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way to the station.” I ring off and dial the switchboard.
My daytime dispatcher, Lois, answers with a high-speed utterance: “Painters Mill PD!”
“You sound busy,” I say.
“That’s kind of an understatement, Chief. Phones are ringing off the dang hook. Folks asking about the Slabaughs.”
I know from experience that the volume of calls will double once word gets out that we may be dealing with a triple murder. “Media catch wind of it yet?”
“Steve Ressler has called a couple of times, looking for you. Columbus Dispatch is sending a reporter. Ohio Farm Journal is going to do a piece on the dangers of methane gas. And a couple of radio stations have called.”
Ressler is the publisher of Painters Mill’s weekly newspaper, the Advocate. He’s a pushy, type-A bully who has a difficult time accepting the words no comment. “Tell them I’ll have a press release this afternoon.”
“Sure thing.”
“Patch me through to Pickles, will you?”
“Yup. Hang on.”
A click sounds and then Pickles growls his name. That’s when I remember he covered for Skid last night and probably hasn’t slept for twenty-four hours. “You feel up to a little overtime?” I ask.
“I don’t think it will kill me,” he replies.
I’m glad to hear the humor in his voice. We’re going to need all the humor we can muster in the coming days. “I need you to run Adam Slabaugh’s name through LEADS for me.” LEADS is the acronym for the law enforcement automated data system police departments used to check for outstanding warrants.
“That’s a mighty interesting request, since this was an accident.”
“Doc Coblentz is pretty sure it wasn’t.”
“I’ll be damned.” I hear computer keys clicking. “You on your way in?”
“I’m almost there.”
A few minutes later, I pull into my reserved spot next to Lois’s Cadillac. I push through the front door and see her at her workstation, the phone pasted to her ear. She pirouettes in her chair and shoves a handful of message slips at me. “You’ve got two messages from Sheriff Rasmussen. John Tomasetti called twice. And Pickles wants to talk to you.”
A small thrill runs the length of me at the mention of Tomasetti, but I quickly tamp it down. I’m not accustomed to the feeling, and it unsettles me. It’s been a couple of months since I last saw him. I’ve been thinking about calling him, but I always find a reason not to. I’m sure some shrink would tell me I have commitment issues. He would probably be right. I warned Tomasetti that a relationship with me wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. He doesn’t seem to mind, so things have worked out just fine so far.
I take the messages from Lois, shuffle through them, decide to call Rasmussen first. He’s the interim sheriff for Holmes County, appointed last year after former sheriff Nathan Detrick tried to kill me during the Slaughterhouse Killer investigation. He’s serving a life sentence in the Mansfield Correctional Institution, about eighty miles southwest of Cleveland. A good place for a man who tortured and killed over twenty women.