me. I’d hoped the diary would offer some clue as to the identity of the man she was seeing, but she didn’t name him. I looked for other details, too. His profession. Physical description. The make of his vehicle. The address of the places he took her. Was she being careful in case one of her parents found the journal? Or had he coached her, told her never to use his name even in her most private moments?
All that reading wasn’t totally in vain because I determined two important things. I’m convinced Mary Plank’s lover and the murders are related. And I know he’s not Amish. With nothing else to go on, it’s a starting point.
“You think the killer is Amish?” T.J. asks.
“No.” He gives me a so-why-are-we-here look, so I tell him about the journal. “She was in love with the guy.”
“Probably the source of the sperm, huh?”
“I think so.”
T.J. considers that for a moment. “What about motive?”
“She was pregnant and barely fifteen years old. The age of consent in the state of Ohio is sixteen.”
“So he could be facing statutory rape charges.”
“Even more charges if he was drugging her and taking sexually oriented photos.”
“Could be a pretty strong motive for murder.” T.J. mulls that over. “But why kill the whole family?”
“She told her parents about this guy. She told them about the baby.”
T.J. nods. “He murdered them to shut them up.”
“If they threatened to go to the police, he knew he would be facing a multitude of serious charges. Rape. Maybe child molestation. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Possession of a controlled substance. If he published sexually oriented photos of her, child pornography.” I shrug, disgusted by my own words. “He would have been facing years of hard time.”
“Pretty powerful motive.”
“It doesn’t explain the torture aspect, what he did to those two girls in the barn.”
“Hard to figure something like that.” He turns thoughtful. “Probably removed the, uh . . . uterus to keep the police from getting their hands on paternal DNA.”
“That makes sense in a sick sort of way. Maybe he included the sister to make the scene look like something else.” I consider the level of cruelty and shake my head. “I can see this as a crime of passion. The guy snaps, kills his girlfriend, then guns down her family. I’ve seen it happen before. But this is so . . . brutal.” My shoulder is getting damp from the drizzle, so I close my window. “We’re missing something.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
T.J. looks out the window at the stream of buggies turning into the gravel lot of the cemetery. “You think he’s local?”
“If he doesn’t live in Painters Mill, I’ll bet he lives nearby.”
“Right under our noses.”
He goes on to say something else, but I’m no longer listening. My attention zeroes in on a silver Toyota parked on the shoulder fifty yards away. A dark-haired young man sporting a goatee and video camera gets out. Several buggies have stopped to make the turn into the cemetery lot. Mr. Camcorder had decided this might be a good time to get some Amish video for YouTube.
He’s wrong.
While some of the more liberal-minded Amish will allow it, the majority do not like to be photographed. There are differing views as far as the origin of this aversion. Some believe it is the Bible’s second commandment:
Grabbing my citation book, I shove open the door. T.J. calls out, but I barely hear him over the drum of my heart. My temper writhes beneath my skin as I start toward the tourist. I know full well anger has no place in police work. But the part of me that is Amish is outraged that some unthinking moron would try to capture such a private, heartbreaking moment for the sake of entertainment.
A second person gets out of the Toyota. A young woman with red hair and several facial piercings. Wearing cutoff shorts and a University of Michigan sweatshirt, she’s sitting on the hood, watching the scene as if it were unfolding on the big screen.
I’m fifteen feet away when the man spots me. He lowers the camcorder and gives me an unctuous smile. “Hello, Off—”
I snatch the camcorder from his hand. It takes a good bit of control not to slam it onto the ground and stomp it, but I manage.
“What are you doing?” he demands.
“Hey!” The female slides off the car, her eyes flaring. “You can’t do that.”
I swing around, stick my finger in her face. “You take one step closer to me and you’re going to jail.”
She steps quickly back, as if realizing she’s ventured too close to an animal that bites. “Fine. Whatever.”
I turn back to the man. He glares at me. In a small corner of my mind, I find myself wishing he’d take his best shot so I could deck him.
“Give me back my camcorder,” he says.
“You can pick it up when you pay your citation.” I pull out the pad and start writing.
“This is a no parking, no standing zone.” I motion toward the sign. “Ever heard of that?”
This isn’t the first time some photo-seeking tourist has stopped on this stretch of road to capture an Amish funeral on film. In light of several Amish-English skirmishes in the last few years, the town council petitioned the county to declare the shoulder within one hundred yards of the cemetery driveway a no parking or standing zone. With tourism being a large chunk of the local economy, the county obliged by putting up four signs.
“I didn’t know,” the man says. “I didn’t see the sign!”
“Now you know.” I slap the citation against his chest. “Have a nice day.”
He throws his hands up in the air. “For chrissake!”
“This is a funeral. Show some respect.” Stuffing the pad into an inside pocket, I start toward the Explorer, think better of it and turn to him. “And for your information, most Amish don’t like having their picture taken. Next time, ask their permission before you snap.”
By the time I reach the Explorer, the final buggy has pulled into the gravel driveway.
“I thought you were going to punch him,” T.J. says.
“Too many witnesses.”
He blinks.
I point at him and smile. “Gotcha.”
T.J. smiles back. “So are we just going to surveil?”
I look through the windshield at the ocean of black-clad mourners. “I thought we’d make an appearance, see who’s here.”
We disembark simultaneously and head toward the graveyard, our boots crunching on the gravel. Beyond, a hundred or more plain headstones form neat rows in a meadow that had once been a soybean field. Dozens of black buggies are parked neatly along a lesser used dirt path. Nearer the graves, I see families. Young couples. The elderly. Children. Mothers with babies. All of them standing in the cold drizzle. The community came out in force for the Plank family. But then that is the Amish way.
Bishop Troyer reads a hymn in Pennsylvania Dutch as the pallbearers lower the coffins into the graves. When he finishes, heads are bowed, and I know the mourners are silently reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I find the words coming back to me with surprising ease.
T.J. and I stand on the perimeter, two outsiders looking in. Like the Amish themselves, the scene is solemn and hushed. I’d like to discreetly record this for later review. Knowing how most Amish feel about graven images, I won’t. Instead, I take in as many faces and details as I can. I’m not sure what I’m looking for; it’s one of those things a cop feels. An instinct that tells me when something isn’t right. A lone mourner. Someone making a scene. An argument. Unduly vigorous crying. Physical collapse. None of those things happen, but then I’ve learned not to
