“Did you help him?”
“I would have, but I never heard from him again.”
“At the time, had you been actively helping other Amish youths leave the lifestyle?”
“Well, I wasn’t organized about it, not like I am now. But yeah. I helped a couple kids back in those early days. I mean, it had been so hard for me.” Another nervous laugh. “I felt . . . compelled to help others.”
“What else can you tell us about Noah?” Tomasetti says the words amicably, but his stare is intense.
“Alls I remember is he told me he wanted out. I gathered he wasn’t getting along with his folks. I offered to help him.” Stoltzfus shrugs. “Next thing I know, he’s missing.
“Were you surprised?”
“Not really. I figured he’d just done it on his own.”
“Do you know Annie King?” Tomasetti asks.
His eyes go wide, and he begins blinking. He looks at us as if realizing he’s wandered into a lion’s den and his only escape is now blocked. “You guys don’t think I had anything to do with
“Did you know her?” Tomasetti repeats.
“No.”
“Did you have any contact with her?”
“No!”
“She didn’t approach you? Ask you to help her?”
“Lookit, I never met her. Never talked to her. And that’s the truth.”
CHAPTER 9
“He’s either a damn good liar or he’s telling the truth,” Tomasetti says as he makes the turn onto the highway that will take us to the motel.
“I believe him,” I say. “At least with regard to Noah Mast.”
“Seemed kind of nervous.”
“You were snarling at him.”
“I wasn’t snarling.” But in the dim light of the dash, I see his mouth curve.
Feeling the drag of thirty-six hours without sleep, I look out the window. “No one seems like a good fit.”
“Until we find someone more viable, we’ve got to go through the motions.” He glances away from his driving. “You hungry? There’s a restaurant down the road from the motel.”
“I saw it. The Flying Buck.” Having not eaten since last night, I’m starving. “And it’s a bar, Tomasetti, not a restaurant.”
“Since our restaurant choices are limited, we could probably have a beer with a burger without breaking too many rules.”
“No shots, though.”
“Suits would probably frown upon that.”
It’s nearly ten o’clock when we pull into the gravel lot of the Flying Buck. Our headlights wash over a single vehicle, a nondescript Camry that looks as if it’s just been waxed. The building itself is actually a double-wide mobile home painted in green camo. A hunting mural depicts two Labradors bounding through water and two orange-vested hunters taking aim.
A gravel walkway takes us to a covered porch scattered with tables for summertime dining. We enter through a thick wooden door capped with a set of twelve-point antlers. The interior is dim and smells like dozens of other bars where I’ve spent too much time—a combination of cooking grease, liquor, and cigarette smoke. An old Allman Brothers song about one more silver dollar crackles from a single overhead speaker. The bar is to our right, an ancient slab of wood that’s seen more than its share of calloused elbows, slurred speech, and spilled beer. A hunched old man in a cowboy hat sits with his leg crossed over his knee, smoking a pipe. The rest rooms are in the back. A sign says SIT THE HELL DOWN. We choose a table at the rear.
Tomasetti pulls out my chair for me. I want to believe he’s doing it because he’s a gentleman. But I know he will never sit down in any public place with his back to the door. Some people might call that paranoid. Not me. Maybe because I know if some crazy shit walks in with a gun, Tomasetti will be ready.
A skinny waitress with blue-gray hair and bony legs rushes to our table and slaps down menus. “Hi, folks. You here for dinner or drinks?”
“Both,” Tomasetti says. “And not necessarily in that order.”
She chuckles. “That’s what I like to hear. What can I get for ya?”
We order two bottles of Killian’s Irish Red and burgers with fries, and the waitress hustles away.
“What bothers me about Stoltzfus,” Tomasetti begins, “is that he’s put himself in the position of having access to disgruntled Amish teenagers.”
Something scratches at the back of my brain, but I can’t quite reach it. “Child predators operate much the same way.”
“And he’s had contact with at least one of the missing.”
The waitress returns to the table with our beers and two frosty mugs. “Be right back with those burgers.”
Tomasetti pours. We pick up the glasses and, watching each other over the rims, drink deeply. It’s the first alcohol I’ve had since the Slabaugh case six months ago, and I don’t want to acknowledge how good it goes down.
I’m still thinking about Stoltzfus when my cell vibrates against my hip. I glance down at the display, expecting another frantic call from Auggie. I’m surprised to see a name I don’t recognize on the display.
I answer, saying, “Burkholder.”
“This is Suzy Fisher.”
Surprise ripples through me at the sound of her voice. Not only is it unusual for an Amish person to use the telephone but it’s also late—well past bedtime for an Amish woman. “Hello, Mrs. Fisher. Is everything all right?”
“I’m sorry about the lateness of the hour,” she says breathlessly. “But I couldn’t sleep. I took the buggy to town to use the pay phone there.” She chokes out the words, as if her throat is too tight. “Eli doesn’t know.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “What is it?”
“I didn’t tell you something today that I should have. I think it might be important.”
“About Bonnie?”
“
I wait, knowing there’s more.
“Chief Burkholder, she was confused about the baby.”
“What do you mean?” But even as I voice the question, realization dawns. “She didn’t want the child?”
“We would have loved the child.”
“Mrs. Fisher, did Bonnie talk about terminating the pregnancy?”
“It goes against our belief system.” She begins to cry in earnest. “I tried to talk her out of it, but she was so ashamed. So determined to do this thing. It was the last time I saw her.”
The words shock me. Most Amish believe abortion is murder. During my lifetime, I’ve known two Amish women who terminated pregnancies. One of them, though she confessed her sin before the congregation, felt so condemned by her peers, she ended up leaving the Amish way. The other committed suicide.
“Mrs. Fisher, I know it wasn’t easy for you to come forward with this,” I tell her. “Thank you. I think this could be important.”
“Please find her for us, Chief Burkholder. We don’t care about her mistakes. We just want her back.”
“I’ll do my best,” I tell her. “I promise.”
The line goes dead. I take my time clipping my phone to my belt, then turn my attention to Tomasetti and recap the conversation. “She never told her husband.”
“It sounds like these two girls—Bonnie Fisher and Annie King—were behaving way outside of Amish norms,” Tomasetti says after a moment.
