“No shots, though.”
“Suits would probably frown upon that.”
It’s nearly ten o’clock when we pull into the gravel lot of the Flying Buck. Our headlights wash over a single vehicle, a nondescript Camry that looks as if it’s just been waxed. The building itself is actually a double-wide mobile home painted in green camo. A hunting mural depicts two Labradors bounding through water and two orange-vested hunters taking aim.
A gravel walkway takes us to a covered porch scattered with tables for summertime dining. We enter through a thick wooden door capped with a set of twelve-point antlers. The interior is dim and smells like dozens of other bars where I’ve spent too much time—a combination of cooking grease, liquor, and cigarette smoke. An old Allman Brothers song about one more silver dollar crackles from a single overhead speaker. The bar is to our right, an ancient slab of wood that’s seen more than its share of calloused elbows, slurred speech, and spilled beer. A hunched old man in a cowboy hat sits with his leg crossed over his knee, smoking a pipe. The rest rooms are in the back. A sign says SIT THE HELL DOWN. We choose a table at the rear.
Tomasetti pulls out my chair for me. I want to believe he’s doing it because he’s a gentleman. But I know he will never sit down in any public place with his back to the door. Some people might call that paranoid. Not me. Maybe because I know if some crazy shit walks in with a gun, Tomasetti will be ready.
A skinny waitress with blue-gray hair and bony legs rushes to our table and slaps down menus. “Hi, folks. You here for dinner or drinks?”
“Both,” Tomasetti says. “And not necessarily in that order.”
She chuckles. “That’s what I like to hear. What can I get for ya?”
We order two bottles of Killian’s Irish Red and burgers with fries, and the waitress hustles away.
“What bothers me about Stoltzfus,” Tomasetti begins, “is that he’s put himself in the position of having access to disgruntled Amish teenagers.”
Something scratches at the back of my brain, but I can’t quite reach it. “Child predators operate much the same way.”
“And he’s had contact with at least one of the missing.”
The waitress returns to the table with our beers and two frosty mugs. “Be right back with those burgers.”
Tomasetti pours. We pick up the glasses and, watching each other over the rims, drink deeply. It’s the first alcohol I’ve had since the Slabaugh case six months ago, and I don’t want to acknowledge how good it goes down.
I’m still thinking about Stoltzfus when my cell vibrates against my hip. I glance down at the display, expecting another frantic call from Auggie. I’m surprised to see a name I don’t recognize on the display.
I answer, saying, “Burkholder.”
“This is Suzy Fisher.”
Surprise ripples through me at the sound of her voice. Not only is it unusual for an Amish person to use the telephone but it’s also late—well past bedtime for an Amish woman. “Hello, Mrs. Fisher. Is everything all right?”
“I’m sorry about the lateness of the hour,” she says breathlessly. “But I couldn’t sleep. I took the buggy to town to use the pay phone there.” She chokes out the words, as if her throat is too tight. “Eli doesn’t know.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “What is it?”
“I didn’t tell you something today that I should have. I think it might be important.”
“About Bonnie?”
“Ja.” Only then do I realize she’s crying. “Bonnie loves babies. She loves children. She’s so excited about teaching at the school in the fall.”
I wait, knowing there’s more.
“Chief Burkholder, she was confused about the baby.”
“What do you mean?” But even as I voice the question, realization dawns. “She didn’t want the child?”
“We would have loved the child.”
“Mrs. Fisher, did Bonnie talk about terminating the pregnancy?”
“It goes against our belief system.” She begins to cry in earnest. “I tried to talk her out of it, but she was so ashamed. So determined to do this thing. It was the last time I saw her.”
The words shock me. Most Amish believe abortion is murder. During my lifetime, I’ve known two Amish women who terminated pregnancies. One of them, though she confessed her sin before the congregation, felt so condemned by her peers, she ended up leaving the Amish way. The other committed suicide.
“Mrs. Fisher, I know it wasn’t easy for you to come forward with this,” I tell her. “Thank you. I think this could be important.”
“Please find her for us, Chief Burkholder. We don’t care about her mistakes. We just want her back.”
“I’ll do my best,” I tell her. “I promise.”
The line goes dead. I take my time clipping my phone to my belt, then turn my attention to Tomasetti and recap the conversation. “She never told her husband.”
“It sounds like these two girls—Bonnie Fisher and Annie King—were behaving way outside of Amish norms,” Tomasetti says after a moment.
I nod in agreement, thinking of the third girl, whose family was killed in the buggy accident. “It would have been helpful to talk to Leah Stuckey’s parents to see if she was somehow acting out, too.”
“Might have helped us figure out if their behavior somehow ties in to their disappearances.”
“We both know certain kinds of behavior can put people at risk.” I shrug. “But does it connect the cases?”
“We’ve got too many threads, and none of them ties to anything.”
We pause when the waitress sets our burgers in front of us. We both look down at our plates. The food looks good and smells even better. We dig in with gusto.
“Let’s put everything on the table,” he says.
I go first. “Maybe there’s a religious angle.”
“The Twelve Passages Church,” he says. “According to Goddard, they don’t like the Amish.”
“That could tie in. Annie King had an English boyfriend. Bonnie Fisher was pregnant, had multiple partners, and was considering an abortion.”
“That’s enough to piss off any self-respecting religious fanatic.” Tomasetti’s tone is bone-dry.
“So we keep everyone with ties to The Twelve Passages Church on our list of suspects.”
We concentrate on our food for a couple of minutes. Tomasetti finishes the last of his Killian’s. I look down at my plate, drag a fry through catsup, running everything we know about the case so far through my head.
“Do you think Noah Mast’s disappearance is related?” Tomasetti asks after a moment.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “According to Stoltzfus, he talked about leaving.” I think of the place setting for him in the Mast kitchen. “You’re checking into other missing-person cases? Cold cases?”
He nods. “If there’s something else out there, VICAP will kick it out.”
“If it’s been reported.”
He gives me a sharp look. “Do you think Amish parents might not file a missing-person report if one of their kids went missing?”
“Most would,” I tell him. “Initially, they might try to handle it themselves. But I think eventually, when they got scared and the reality of the situation sank in, they’d turn to the police.” I think about that for a moment. “That said, there’s a large faction of Amish who believe God will take care of them. If you combine that with a general mistrust of the English, particularly the English police, then I could see a family not making an official report.”
“Something to keep in mind.”
I nod, move on to other possible scenarios. “What about the photographer Goddard mentioned?”
“Stacy Karns.”
“That conviction and the fact that his victim was a young Amish female definitely puts him on the list.” I glance at my watch. “We could pay him a visit.”