“How far along was she?” I ask.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t showing yet.”
“She confided in you?”
Her gaze skates away from mine, and I realize she’s more hurt by the fact that her daughter didn’t confide in her than she is by the out-of-wedlock pregnancy. “I found the . . . plastic thing,” she tells me. “You know, from the drugstore.”
“A pregnancy kit?”
“Ja. In the trash. She’d tried to hide it, but . . .” A sigh shudders out of her. “That’s when I knew.”
“You asked her about it?”
“She denied it at first, but when I told her I’d found the test, she . . . confessed.”
“Do you know who the father is?”
My question elicits a blank stare, as if it hadn’t occurred to her to ask. But I know it had, and I realize with some surprise there’s something else going on that she considers even worse than the pregnancy.
“Who’s the father?” I ask again.
She transfers another number onto the columnar pad.
“Mrs. Fisher?” I say gently. “This could be important. Who is he?”
The woman looks down at the desktop, folds her hands in front of her. “Bonnie doesn’t know,” she whispers.
“She had more than one partner?”
The woman jerks her head. “I don’t understand her. I don’t understand why she does these things.”
“Do you know the names of the men she was with?”
Her face screws up, but she regains control before the tears come. “She would not say.”
“Do you know how many there were?”
She puts her face in her hands and shakes her head. “No.”
“Do you know where she met them?”
“She is . . . secretive about such things. She gets angry when I ask too many questions.”
I want to say something to comfort her. But I’m so far out of my element, I can’t find the words. The things I know as a cop would be no comfort, and so I hold my silence.
“We did not teach her to be that way. I don’t know how she knew. . . .”
I nod, give her a moment. “Is there anything else you can think of that might help us find these young men?”
She shakes her head, as if she’s too upset to speak. When she raises her gaze to mine, her eyes are haunted. “Do you think one of the boys might have taken Bonnie?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “But I’m going to do my best to find out.”
Ten minutes later, I slide into the Tahoe beside Tomasetti. Neither of us speaks as he backs from the parking space. The two horses and the wagon filled with furniture are still there. Eli Fisher is helping a younger man load a cabinet into the back. He stops what he’s doing to watch us. His eyes are shadowed by the brim of his hat, so I can’t discern his expression, but he’s not smiling and he doesn’t wave.
“Mrs. Fisher isn’t a very good liar,” Tomasetti says as he pulls onto the road. “Did you get anything?”
“Bonnie Fisher was pregnant.” Only after the words are out do I realize I’m speaking of her in the past tense.
He glances away from his driving and makes eye contact with me. “Who’s the father?”
“She doesn’t know.” I pause. “Evidently, the girl didn’t know, either.”
He cuts me a sharp look. “Maybe her disappearance is some kind of jealous-lover situation. One guy finds out about the other and the girl gets the short end of the stick.”
“Or maybe lover boy decided he didn’t want to be a dad.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
I think about that a moment. “Two of the missing girls were involved in relationships.”
“I don’t think that’s unusual.”
“Undesirable relationships,” I say, clarifying. “Especially in the eyes of the Amish.”
He nods. “Might be something we need to add to the profile.”
I run all of that through my mind. “Do you think she’s dead?”
“Two months is a long time to be missing, Kate.” He grimaces. “We need the names of the men she was involved with.”
“All we can do at this point is talk to the people she knew,” I tell him. “Especially her friends.”
As we pull away, I try to put my finger on something else that’s bothering me about our meeting with the Fishers, but I can’t pinpoint it. I glance out the window and see Eli Fisher standing at the rear of the wagon, watching us, his mouth a thin, flat line.
“You know, Chief, that was pretty smooth, asking for one of those bread boxes.”
I glance over at Tomasetti and see one side of his mouth twitch, and I know he’s messing with me. “How much do I owe you?” I ask.
“I thought maybe you could buy dinner.”
I glance at the clock on the dash. It’s almost 6:00 P.M. I wish I could reach out and stop time. “Is later okay?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I thought we’d drive up to Monongahela Falls and talk to the parents of the missing boy.”
He gives me a look of feigned disappointment. “You’re not trying to weasel out of dinner, are you?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
CHAPTER 8
Irene and Perry Mast live on a mile-wide swath of farmland cut into national forest fifty miles north of Buck Creek. According to Goddard, the farm is over two hundred years old. During the Civil War, the house was part of the Underground Railroad, a stopping point for African slaves escaping to Canada. Now the Masts run a large hog operation and farm corn and soybeans.
Dusk has fallen by the time Tomasetti and I turn into the narrow gravel lane. It’s bordered on both sides by vast fields of corn as high as a man’s head. I catch the telltale whiff of hog manure as we speed toward the house. Most Amish farms are neat and well managed, the kinds of idyllic places photographers like to capture for postcards or coffee-table books. That’s not the case with the Mast farm.
The lane curves right and a sprawling brick house with peeling white paint and a rusty tin roof looms into view. Ahead, a massive barn with red paint weathered to brown greets us like a grizzled old friend. Looking through the fence rails, I see a dozen or so Hampshire hogs rooting around in mud so deep, their bellies scrape the surface.
The farm has a depressed, overused look to it, as if the people who own it no longer have the will to maintain it. I wonder if the loss of their son nine years earlier has anything to do with it.
Tomasetti steers the Tahoe around deep ruts and parks adjacent to the fence. “Damn place stinks,” he says as he slides out.
“Pigs,” I tell him as I start toward the house. “Poorly managed manure pit.”
“Great.” We share a look, and I know he’s thinking about the case we worked last winter, when three family members perished in the cesspit on their farm.
“There’s a light in the metal building over there.”
His voice jerks me back to the present, and I follow his finger as he points. Set back a short distance from the barn, a large windowless steel building looks out of place among the older wood structures. The sliding door stands open about three feet and dim yellow light slants through the opening.
A narrow dirt path cut into knee-high grass takes us toward the shed. We’re fifteen feet from the door when I notice several objects the size of soccer balls in the grass. At first, I think they’re decorative rocks. I’m nearly upon them before I realize they’re severed hog heads.
Tomasetti actually takes a step back, sends me a “What the fuck?” look.
“They’re probably slaughtering hogs,” I explain.
“Well, if the smell of shit isn’t bad enough, let’s just throw in a couple of severed heads.”