He shrugged again.
“Rosh, you had to have been on the property. You must have been close to the house to know that the detective was asking questions.”
He avoided her gaze. “Maybe I was.”
She considered his answers or lack thereof. “Alma says you spend a lot of time in the woods, hunting and such. Mary Rose said you were the one who came to tell them about Daniel. So, I guess you were in the woods the day Daniel was shot?”
Rosh shifted from one worn hunting boot to the other. The tip of his tongue licked a chapped lower lip. “Ya.”
“Lots of people were hunting deer that day,” Rachel said. “Were you?”
“Ya, I was.”
She took two steps toward him. “Rosh, I need to ask you,” she said softly. “Did you shoot him? Maybe . . . accidentally?”
Rosh rubbed at his chin with the back of a gloved hand. “Did you know him? Daniel. You know what kind of man he was?” He surprised her by meeting her gaze.
“Only what people say about him. I didn’t know him personally. But a lot of people in the community thought he was a good person: a hard worker, faithful to the church, and kind to the less fortunate.”
The young man’s mouth twisted in disdain. “That was what he wanted folks to think. But . . .” One slim hand knotted into a fist, released, and then tightened again. His voice dropped. “Daniel had a mean streak.”
Rachel thought back to what Moses’s employer had said about seeing Daniel hit Lemuel. “How do you know he had a mean streak?” When he didn’t respond, she went on. “Did you see Daniel strike Lemuel the day Daniel died? Before the hunt? Did that make you angry?”
The boy shook his head. “Don’t know anything about that. Wasn’t with them. I hunt alone.”
“Sooo . . . did you know Daniel hit Lemuel?” she repeated.
“Heard about it. Don’t doubt it was true. Like I said, he could be mean. He caught me in his barn one time. Beat the—” He looked down, his shoulders quivering. “Hit me, kicked me. Near broke my wrist. I wasn’t doing nothing wrong. I’m not a thief. I’d never steal from nobody. You go to hell for stealing.”
Rachel took a step forward, shocked by the idea that an Amish person would commit such violence. “He beat you up?”
Rosh’s voice was muffled, almost as though he was trying not to cry. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Ya. He beat me up. Told me to run and never come back, else my dat would be laying me to rest in the cemetery.”
His words shocked Rachel. Surely he couldn’t have been talking about the man the elders in the community were talking about. The man who went out of his way to help a neighbor. “Did you tell anybody?”
He turned back to face her. His eyes were red and moisture pooled in the lower lids. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
How old was he? she wondered. At first, she’d guessed sixteen, but something in his eyes . . . “How old are you, Rosh?”
“Nineteen.”
Nineteen. Almost a man in the Amish way of thinking, though he looked younger. There was an unworldly, almost fey quality about Rosh Hertzler . . . but there was something more. Her gaze dropped to the hunting knife strapped to his waist just as a gust of chill wind found its way down the back of her neck. She shivered and, involuntarily, she took a step back.
Faintly, almost as if in a dream, her father’s voice sounded in the recesses of her memory. “Look closely, Rachel, because the young ones are deceptive. Never trust the young ones. A good mushroom and a poisonous one are too much alike before they reach full maturity. What you’re thinking is an oyster mushroom could be a death cap that hasn’t quite reached its full growth.”
“I gotta go,” Rosh said. “I got chores at home. My father will be mad if I’m late for milking.”
“What did your father say about Daniel beating you?”
“Didn’t tell him. Said I took a tumble down the mountain.” He turned away.
“Rosh, wait. Can you tell me how you knew . . . why you were the one who went to tell Mary Rose that Daniel had been shot?”
He stopped where he was and for a long second he said nothing, then he turned back to her. “Heard the commotion when he was found.”
“Do you remember who was there? Who told you to run and tell his wife?”
“A lot of people there by the time I got there. Paramedics were there.” Rosh met Rachel’s gaze. “Nobody told me to. I wanted to. I thought . . .” He looked at the ground. “I thought someone who cared about her ought to be the one to tell.” He turned again and walked away.
“Rosh!” Rachel called after him. “Why would you lie to your dat to protect Daniel Fisher? After he beat you.”
“Why?” Rosh said. “Simple. ’Cause my father would have beat me again for causing trouble with the neighbor.”
* * *
“Be careful,” Rachel’s mother cautioned. “Don’t fall.”
“I’m not going to topple off a peach basket.” Rachel stifled a giggle. Her mother was afraid of heights and had been warning her of the dangers of breaking her neck since she was a baby. “And if I do fall, it’s not that far to the ground.” She stretched her arm to remove the cord that held up a hefty side of smoked bacon.
They were
