able to bring back these kids’ parents, but the one thing I can do is find the son of a bitch who killed them.
CHAPTER 6
I’m still thinking about the children when I climb into the Explorer, bag the mason jar, and start down the gravel lane. Their pain is palpable, and my meeting with them has left me feeling uncharacteristically bleak. Maybe it’s because I know that even if I solve the case—and I have every intention of doing so—it won’t bring back their parents. No matter what I do, three lives have been lost forever. Four other young lives have been irrevocably changed. This is one of those times when justice will make for a very cold bedfellow.
A cast-iron sky spits sleet pellets against the windshield as I turn onto the township road and head toward town. I flip on the wipers and defroster, then grab my cell and dial T.J.
“Hey, Chief, what’s up?”
I tell him about the day laborer and the missing cash. “I want you to recanvass the farms around the Slabaugh place. Find out if anyone remembers seeing someone. See if you can come up with a name.”
“Will do.”
“One of the men who worked for Slabaugh supposedly had a white dog with him. Ask about that, too. Can you give Skid a call and get him out to the Slabaugh place? I want him to look around for any kind of records Solly Slabaugh might have kept. If we can get the names of the men he hired, we might catch a break.”
“Sure thing.” T.J. pauses. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way to the station.” I ring off and dial the switchboard.
My daytime dispatcher, Lois, answers with a high-speed utterance: “Painters Mill PD!”
“You sound busy,” I say.
“That’s kind of an understatement, Chief. Phones are ringing off the dang hook. Folks asking about the Slabaughs.”
I know from experience that the volume of calls will double once word gets out that we may be dealing with a triple murder. “Media catch wind of it yet?”
“Steve Ressler has called a couple of times, looking for you.
Ressler is the publisher of Painters Mill’s weekly newspaper, the
“Sure thing.”
“Patch me through to Pickles, will you?”
“Yup. Hang on.”
A click sounds and then Pickles growls his name. That’s when I remember he covered for Skid last night and probably hasn’t slept for twenty-four hours. “You feel up to a little overtime?” I ask.
“I don’t think it will kill me,” he replies.
I’m glad to hear the humor in his voice. We’re going to need all the humor we can muster in the coming days. “I need you to run Adam Slabaugh’s name through LEADS for me.” LEADS is the acronym for the law enforcement automated data system police departments used to check for outstanding warrants.
“That’s a mighty interesting request, since this was an accident.”
“Doc Coblentz is pretty sure it wasn’t.”
“I’ll be damned.” I hear computer keys clicking. “You on your way in?”
“I’m almost there.”
A few minutes later, I pull into my reserved spot next to Lois’s Cadillac. I push through the front door and see her at her workstation, the phone pasted to her ear. She pirouettes in her chair and shoves a handful of message slips at me. “You’ve got two messages from Sheriff Rasmussen. John Tomasetti called twice. And Pickles wants to talk to you.”
A small thrill runs the length of me at the mention of Tomasetti, but I quickly tamp it down. I’m not accustomed to the feeling, and it unsettles me. It’s been a couple of months since I last saw him. I’ve been thinking about calling him, but I always find a reason not to. I’m sure some shrink would tell me I have commitment issues. He would probably be right. I warned Tomasetti that a relationship with me wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. He doesn’t seem to mind, so things have worked out just fine so far.
I take the messages from Lois, shuffle through them, decide to call Rasmussen first. He’s the interim sheriff for Holmes County, appointed last year after former sheriff Nathan Detrick tried to kill me during the Slaughterhouse Killer investigation. He’s serving a life sentence in the Mansfield Correctional Institution, about eighty miles southwest of Cleveland. A good place for a man who tortured and killed over twenty women.
I’ve met Sheriff Rasmussen several times since he was appointed. A former sheriff’s deputy from Canton, he’s low-key and no-nonsense, two personality traits I greatly admire, especially when it comes to small-town politics. City and county law-enforcement agencies work together closely here in Painters Mill. The sheriff’s office has a small budget and pretty much runs on a skeleton crew. We pick up the slack, taking county as well as city calls. I’m wondering what prompted two phone calls in one day as I shrug out of my coat and head toward my office.
I get Rasmussen’s voice mail and leave my cell number. Without hanging up, I dial Tomasetti. I get voice mail there, too, so I leave a message. Sighing, I vaguely wonder if they’re talking to each other. After checking e- mail, I snag my coat and head toward Pickles’ cubicle. I catch him coming out, a cup of coffee in hand. “Anything on Slabaugh?” I can tell by his expression that he found something.
“Two years ago, Adam Slabaugh was arrested on a domestic.”
“Well, that’s interesting. Conviction?”
“Charges were dropped.”
“Who was the complainant?”
Pickles offers a “cat that swallowed the canary” grin. “Solomon Slabaugh.”
“Nice work,” I say, but my mind is racing. “Want to go talk to him?”
“I’m game.”
Pickles ducks back into his cubicle, sets his cup on the desk, and grabs his parka. We’re on our way to the door when Lois stands up and raises her hand like a traffic cop. “Whoa!”
Pickles and I simultaneously stop and turn.
Giving us the hand signal to wait, she finishes her call and disconnects. “Chief, I just took a call from Ricky Shingle. He was out on Sampson Road and saw a buggy on fire and a runaway horse.”
The first scenario that comes to mind is a spilled kerosene heater or lantern. “Anyone hurt?”
“He didn’t know.”
“Where on Sampson Road?”
“At the Painters Creek bridge.”
“Call the fire department. Get an ambulance out there, too. We’re on our way.” I look at Pickles. “I think Adam Slabaugh can wait.”
“Me, too, Chief. Me, too.”
Dusk has fallen by the time we turn onto Sampson Road. It’s a little-used dirt track that runs parallel to Painters Creek, crossing over the stream twice and then snaking north through a heavily wooded area that’s prone to flooding in the spring.
Only one Amish family lives out this way, so I head directly to the Kaufman farm. I’ve met Mark and Liza Kaufman a handful of times over the years. They’re a quiet couple with three teenage children. They’re of the Old Order, devout, and they tend to avoid contact with the English as much as possible.
I don’t have to go far to find what I’m looking for. At the mouth of the gravel lane, the charred remains of a four-wheel buggy on its side are smoldering in the bar ditch like a pile of firewood. A plume of gray-black smoke billows into the cold air. A few yards away, several Amish people stare at my vehicle as if I’m there to cart them off to jail.
“This ought to be interesting,” Pickles remarks.
