“What happened?”
“They talked to the bishop. They forced me to talk to the bishop.” He smirks. “I refused to confess. Needless to say it didn’t go well.”
“I talked to one of the bishops in Lancaster County. I specifically asked about relatives, but your name never came up.”
“Well, there are several church districts and more than one bishop in the county. That’s not to mention the rift in communication between the Amish and the English.”
“Who was your bishop?”
“Edward Fisher.”
I write down the name. “So what happened?”
“I was pretty much excommunicated.”
“Were you upset?”
“You bet I was. I was seventeen years old. I hadn’t even been baptized. Yet I would be cut off from my family and the rest of the community. No one would take meals with me.” He gives a shrug. “I was sad because I knew no matter how hard my parents and the bishop tried, I couldn’t go back.”
“Must have been a tough transition.”
“My parents and the Amish community made me feel . . . dirty. I had a lot of guilt.”
“Were you angry?”
“I know what you’re getting at. I’m not that way.”
“You’ve got an assault conviction on your record.”
His face reddens. “I guess you did your homework.”
“I know about your juvie record, too.”
“Oh, come on! I was a kid. I was confused and angry.”
“Sometimes a confused and angry kid grows up to be a confused and angry adult.”
“That’s not the way it was.”
“Look, Aaron, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get some answers. It would save both of us a lot of time if you just opened up and talked to me.”
We fall silent a moment, and then I ask. “So what did you do as a juvenile?”
Shaking his head, he presses his fingers against his forehead. “I burned down a barn.”
“Why?”
The muscles in his jaws clench. “Because my parents forbade me to see Rob.”
I nod. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“How did the cops get involved?” Having grown up Amish, I know many Amish parents would not contact the English police.
“A sheriff’s deputy saw the smoke. Called the fire department.” He sighs heavily. “We were trying to put it out when the fire trucks arrived, but it was a total loss. The sheriff’s office showed up. In the end my father told them I’d done it.”
“You must have been really angry.”
“I was.”
“You were arrested?”
He nods. “And charged. Arson.”
“Went to court?”
“I pled no contest. Judge gave me two hundred hours of community service. Ordered me to help with the rebuilding, which came in the form of a barn raising a month later. Believe me, I paid for what I did.”
“What about the assault?”
He flushed. “Look, it’s not what you think. I’m not a violent person.”
“You torched a barn. You slugged someone. What do you expect me to think?”
He settles himself. “I lost my temper. And, frankly, he had it coming.”
“Who is ‘he’?”
“Some guy at a bar. Some fucking . . . homophobe. He made a bunch of inappropriate comments.”
“You touchy about your sexuality?”
“No, I’d just . . . had too much to drink.”
I nod, but I’m not yet satisfied.
“Can I go now?” He stands abruptly, looks from me to Glock and back to me. “I just attended the funeral of seven of my family members. And you have the nerve to drag me in here and question me like I was some kind of criminal.”
“I know this is tough,” I tell him. “I know you just lost your family. But it’s my job to get to the bottom of it. In order to do that I need to ask the hard questions.”
“I didn’t kill them.”
“Nobody said you did.” I take a breath, reel in impatience. “Sit down. Please.”
“You’re treating me like a suspect, for God’s sake.”
Aaron is not a suspect at this point, but I’m not inclined to tell him. I need to know all the family dynamics before I let him off the hook, especially the ones nobody wants to talk about. “You have motive. You have a record. A shaky alibi. What am I supposed to think?”
“I haven’t seen my family for nearly four years!”
“That’s a long time for anger to fester. Sometimes those emotions don’t go away.”
“Look, do I need a lawyer?”
“That’s your prerogative.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, but I’m not going to let you or anyone else railroad me.”
I stare hard at him, trying to see inside his head, inside his heart. “Did you kill your family?”
“No!” His hand shakes when he scrubs it over his forehead, and he sinks back into the chair. “I loved them. All of them. I would never do anything to hurt them. Never.”
“You believe him?” Glock asks a few minutes later.
“I don’t think he did it.” I’m sitting at my desk, watching Aaron Plank through the blinds as he gets into a newish Camry. “But I think he might be holding out.”
Glock raises his brows. “You mean when you asked him about his sister having a boyfriend?”
I nod, relieved I’m not the only one who caught Plank’s moment of hesitation. “I think he’s lying about having been in contact with her.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
He nods. “Hard to tell when someone is lying.”
“That’s the thing about liars. There are good ones and there are mediocre ones. What separates the two is that the good ones convince themselves it’s the truth. It’s like the Big Lie theory, if you repeat a lie enough times, people will start to believe it.”
“Adolf Hitler,” Glock says.
I watch Aaron Plank pull away. “If someone convinces himself a lie is true, he’s basically not lying.”
I spend the next twenty minutes digging up everything I can find on Aaron Plank. Arrest record. Conviction record. Background check. But other than the juvenile record, the DUI and the assault, the information is unimpressive. He’s a graphic artist, living in an established Philly neighborhood of renovated old homes where a high percentage of his neighbors are young gay professionals. Not exactly the profile of a mass murderer. But I know how difficult excommunication can be for a young Amish person. At the age of seventeen, Aaron basically had to reinvent himself and start over. Hatred can be a strong motivator. Did he hate his parents enough to murder his entire family?
It’s hardly a viable theory. For one thing, I can’t see him torturing his sisters or cutting the fetus from Mary
