“Who called you?” Rachel asked, gripping the armrest for support.
“Rosh Hertzler.”
“The old one or the teenager?” Hertzler was a common name in the valley, and Rachel knew of at least two Rosh Hertzlers.
“The younger.”
“Young Rosh has access to a phone?” Rachel guessed him at twenty years old, old enough to be kicking up dust, but young enough to still be under his father’s roof. Rosh’s father was conservative, not someone who would condone his son possessing a cell.
Mary Aaron shrugged. “He’s rumspringa. A friend of the Studers.”
“But too young to be in Moses’s gang.” Her time in the English world always made her wince when she used the word gang in connection with Amish youth, but it was innocent enough, and the best translation of the word they used. Kids of the same age group in school tended to bond, and they stayed close friends as they married and raised families of their own. In many ways, Amish friendships were stronger than most Englishers’, almost as tightly knit as blood kin.
“Ya, but Rosh’s steady, a good head on his shoulders. He told me he was going down the road when he saw the patrol cars in the barnyard. He thought I should know.” Mary Aaron braked to turn sharply onto a wooded lane, scaring up two pheasants that exploded into flight a hand span from the front bumper.
“This had better be an emergency. This will be the third dress fitting I’ve missed.”
“Rosh said there was trouble,” Mary Aaron repeated, hitting the gas hard and sending them both back in their seats. “He said to come.”
Rachel grimaced. Mary Aaron was her dearest friend, but she wished she’d insisted on driving. She was definitely driving home. “So where was Rosh that he could see that there was already one police car there? Because I can’t see the house yet.” Branches were brushing the top of the Jeep as they pulled onto the dirt driveway. It was late fall, so the trees were leafless, but in the other seasons, this lane must have felt like driving through a shadowy tunnel.
“He didn’t say.”
The trees behind them, Rachel could see open pastureland and grazing cattle on either side. Ahead sprawled a two-story house built of gray fieldstone, a huge barn, and several outbuildings. She counted two marked police cars parked near the house. An Amish woman stood near the police cars, waving frantically toward a smaller structure between the house and stables.
Mary Aaron brought the vehicle to a stop, and they both got out. Rachel saw that the woman in the blue dress was Daniel’s widow, Mary Rose. She had a black shawl thrown over her shoulders and was wearing a pair of men’s knee-high muck boots. Despite the oversized clothing and her frightened expression, Rachel was struck by how young and attractive Mary Rose was, far too young to be a widow.
“Mary Aaron! Rachel!” Mary Rose gestured toward the open shed stacked with cords of wood. “Over there!” she shouted in Deitsch. “The woodpile. I’m afraid for Moses. You must do something.”
A woman came around the shed. It was Lucy Mars, tall in her trooper’s uniform, boots, and hat. She stopped abruptly and gestured. “Rachel. Can you come and see if you can talk to this boy? I’m afraid we’ve got a situation here. I’m pretty certain he understands what we’re saying, but he’s not responding when we ask that he put the ax down.”
“He’s got an ax?” Rachel asked incredulously.
“Sounds to me like someone’s cutting wood,” Mary Aaron interjected.
Rachel and Mary Aaron followed Lucy to the back of the building where Detective Sharpe and another trooper stood. Rachel didn’t know the second man well, but she thought his name was Lincoln.
Mary Rose came behind them. “Moses, don’t be scared,” she said in Deitsch. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I’m going to ask you one last time to put that ax down and answer my questions,” Sharpe barked.
Moses seemed not to have heard him, because he didn’t respond or even glance in the detective’s direction. The young man set another section of oak on top of a chopping block and brought the ax blade down to neatly divide the chunk in half. Without pause, he picked up another piece of wood, placed that on the block, and drove the ax head down with more power than Rachel would have thought he possessed.
Rachel glanced over at Lucy. Her expression gave nothing away, but Rachel knew that she was concerned . . . and maybe even a little scared. Sharpe and the craggy-faced Lincoln were tense; the trooper’s right hand hovered above the butt of his holstered pistol. Lincoln’s face was pitted with scars, probably the result of a bad case of acne when he was a youth, Rachel supposed. But it made him appear fierce and threatening.
Mary Rose tugged at Rachel’s arm. “Do something,” she begged in Deitsch. “They will hurt him.”
Sharpe glanced at Rachel and Mary Aaron for the first time. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “This is a police matter.”
“What’s the problem, Detective?” Rachel asked.
Alma Studer hurried toward her. “I’ve told them to leave,” she said in Deitsch. “This is still my property. I don’t want them here upsetting my children, frightening Mary Rose.” She was wearing a man’s barn coat and muck boots similar to her daughter’s. She had a scarf tied over her head in place of a bonnet. She scowled at Sharpe. “Moses has nothing to say to them. He did nothing wrong. They should go.”
“Calm down,” Rachel soothed in the same dialect. “The police are just doing their
