A Gathering of Secrets Page 18

  “This is about the Gingerich case,” I say.

  He sighs. “You got someone in mind?”

  The names scroll through my brain again, but one doesn’t stand out above the others. “No, but I know it circles back to Daniel Gingerich. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “So tell me about Gingerich.”

  “Everyone thought he was such a great guy. An innocent Amish kid. Hardworking. Charming.” Disgust rings hard in my voice. “Tomasetti, that son of a bitch was the worst kind of predator. He preyed on young girls. Amish girls, for God’s sake. Young women he knew would never tell a soul, not even their parents.”

  “How many women are we talking about?”

  “At least two that I know of, probably more.”

  “The assaults were never reported?”

  “All of it was swept under the rug so everyone could pretend it never happened. Except for those young women. They’re forced to live with what happened to them. In some cases, they were blamed. Made to think it was their fault, that they did something wrong. And, of course, no one wants to talk about it.”

  “Evidently someone said something.” He thinks about that a moment. “These young women that Gingerich preyed upon,” he says. “They have boyfriends. Brothers. Fathers. Husbands.” He shrugs. “The need to protect those you love can be a powerful motivator. It runs deep and it can transcend even religion.”

  “Two of the women became pregnant. One committed suicide. The other married. Her husband doesn’t know. Both were still in their teens.”

  My voice shakes with the final word. I should leave it at that. Shut the hell up. Enough said. Blame that telltale quiver on the painkillers or the fact that I’m hurting and angry and repulsed. But it’s as if some floodgate has been opened and a torrent of emotions whose existence I’ve refused to acknowledge rushes out.

  “I know this isn’t solely about them,” I whisper. “But what happened to them is part of this.”

  “Motivation.” Tomasetti holds my gaze, his expression contemplative and level. “You probably don’t want to hear this, Kate, I think there are some parallels mixed up in all of this, too.”

  “Maybe. I don’t want this to be about me or my past.”

  “For better or worse, our pasts are part of who we are. The things that have happened to us, good or bad, affect our perspectives, our outlook. They are our experience, and the tools we bring to the table. That’s not always a negative.”

  “Duly noted.” When he only continues to look at me, I add, “I can handle it.”

  “I know you can.” His eyes probe mine. “So how did all of this culminate in someone taking a shot at you tonight?”

  “Someone thinks I’m getting too close to the truth. Someone who has something to lose. Or else they’re protecting someone.”

  “They want you to back off.”

  “Evidently, they don’t know me very well.”

  “They have no idea,” he mutters, and then reaches over, closes my laptop, and slides it onto the night table beside him. “Didn’t the doc tell you to take the rest of the night off?”

  I sense the tension coming off him. He’s being kind. Patient. He’s said and done all the right things since arriving at the scene on Hogpath Road a few hours ago. But I’ll never forget the look on his face as he’d run to me. The way his eyes swept over me, as if looking for some catastrophic injury I wouldn’t survive. I knew exactly the thoughts that were running through his mind. I’d hated doing that to him, and yet I don’t know how to make it right.

  We fall silent, thinking, listening to the night sounds outside the window. After a moment, I scooch higher on my pillow and turn slightly onto my side, facing him. “One more thing we need to cover.”

  “I’m not in trouble, am I?” The lightheartedness of the statement doesn’t match the gravity in his eyes.

  Still, I smile. “I want you to know … I’m careful when I’m on duty. I don’t take chances. What happened tonight was … bad. But I’m good at what I do. I want you to understand … you don’t have to worry about me.”

  Sliding down a bit, he turns to me, takes my uninjured hand in his, and kisses my knuckles. “That kind of comes with the territory.”

  I start to speak, but he presses two fingers against my lips and I realize there’s something he needs to say, too. Something I need to hear that’s important to both of us.

  “I’m not going to lie to you. When I got the call … it scared the hell out of me. On the drive over, I was already making deals with God. The devil. Whoever happened to be listening. But, Kate, that fear was tempered by the knowledge that you’re a good cop. I mean that.”

  I stare at him, wishing my head was clear, realizing that as usual he’s one step ahead of me. That I’ve underestimated him.

  Taking his time, he continues. “You’re a small-town cop. We both know there are times when there’s no one else. Times when you’re on duty and a call comes in, and you take it regardless of the hour or location or nature of the call.”

  Of all the things he could have said, this is the most unexpected. The thing I didn’t anticipate. I’d been trying to find a way to downplay the shooting. Or skirt the issue altogether if I could. Find a way to apologize for worrying him without shouldering the blame for doing so. I was going to promise to be more careful. Make some kind of compromise, even. But I’d also been prepared to do battle had he asked me to do something I didn’t want to do.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I tell him.

  “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to tiptoe around me. I’m a big boy, Kate. Good or bad or somewhere in between, I can handle it.”

  Because I don’t trust my voice, I nod.

  “Would I have said that two years ago? A year ago?” He shakes his head. “Probably not. Instead, we would have been lying here, arguing about your future as a cop. There was a time when I would have asked you to choose. You can be a cop or you can be with me but you can’t do both.”

  “I know what you went through with your wife and kids,” I say. “I understood it. I accepted it. And I knew we could work through it.”

  “A few months ago, none of those things would’ve stopped me from asking you to give up something you love. I would have forced the issue. Tried to manipulate you in whatever way I thought might work. That would have been incredibly selfish.”

  I start to speak, but he raises his hand and quiets me. “Someone tried to kill you tonight. They came pretty damn close to succeeding. And yet when you walked into our home with a bullet wound in your arm, your only thought was of me and my feelings. How screwed up is that?”

  “No one said it’s easy being married to a cop.”

  “I will never ask you to give that up.”

  I want to respond. Say something to let him know how much the words mean to me. But my throat is so tight, so clogged with emotion that I can’t speak.

  Reaching out, he cups the side of my face and caresses my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Now you cry,” he says dryly. “That’s just like you, isn’t it?”

  I set my hand over his, find my voice. “I do have one small concern.”

  “Yeah?” He scoots closer to me. “Shoot.”

  I smack his shoulder for the poor word choice and then I nestle closer, lay my head on his shoulder. “I’m not sure how people will adjust to calling me Chief Tomasetti.”

  “It’s got a nice ring.”

  “You think?”

  “I think you don’t have a thing to worry about.”

  * * *

  I dream of Daniel Lapp. I’m fourteen years old and I still believe the world is a safe place where nothing bad could ever happen. I’m innocent and carefree and I have no concept of the violence that is about to shatter my sheltered and protected life.

  I’m in my mamm’s sunny farmhouse kitchen, washing dishes and daydreaming about all the things I’m going to do with my life. The window is open and the curtains are blowing in the breeze, th
e little lead weights sewn into the hem tapping against the sill. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The next thing I know Daniel Lapp is there, touching me, hurting me, and in that instant I understand that the world as I know it is about to change. I know it will never be the same. I’ll never be the same.

  I lie on the dusty floor as he rips at my clothes. My dress. My prayer kapp. Shock and shame and numbing disbelief punching me as violently as any fist. His fingers dig into my throat, cutting off the blood flow to my head, and I feel as if I’m leaving my body, floating, watching the scene unfold from somewhere above.

  I can see his face, and he looks down at me the way a starving dog might look at a pile of meat. I writhe and scream and claw; I scream for help, but no one comes. No one comes. And the shame that follows makes me want to die.…

  I wake gasping, my heart pounding. I sit up, my breaths shallow and fast. Pain streaks down my left forearm at the movement and I curse the son of a bitch who shot me.

  I look around, realize I’m safe at home in my bed. Just a nightmare, I think, and the residual fear scampers back into its dark hole. It’s early; the windows are gray with morning light, but Tomasetti is already gone.

  The dream lingers, a stain, ugly and unwanted. I’ve spent years trying to erase that day from my memory. This morning, I open the gate and let myself remember. I think about Daniel Gingerich and all those parallels Tomasetti had mentioned, and it occurs to me that no matter how hard we try to forget, some emotions are indelibly branded onto our psyches. They become part of us. We wear the shame and the rage like invisible scars, unseen by others, but seared onto our souls, visible only to us, the damaged ones.

  I consider taking the morning off, but there’s too much going on, too much to do. Whoever ambushed me last night is still out there. Daniel Gingerich is still dead. And his killer is still on the loose.

  Keeping those things in mind, I roll out of bed and head for the shower.

  CHAPTER 17

  Sexual assault is a hideous crime, one that wrecks lives and affects all the relationships in a victim’s life. It shatters trust and destroys promising futures. It steals hope and changes the way a person views the world, the way they view others. The way they view themselves. Worst-case scenario, such as in the case of Emma Miller, it can kill.

  It’s the crime no one wants to talk about. The crime that too often goes unreported because of stigma, ignorance, self-blame or any combination of the above. When that happens, the perpetrators go free. Wash, rinse, repeat.

  Despite my best efforts, it’s ten A.M. by the time I hobble into the station. Lois is standing at the front desk, waving a handful of pink slips at me, when I walk in the door. As expected, I find Mona sitting cross-legged on the floor behind the desk, filing paperwork that could probably wait until her shift at midnight. They’re both looking at me a little too closely and with a little too much concern.

  “I’m fine,” I say as I cross to the desk.

  “Heard things got dicey out on Hogpath Road last night,” Lois says as she hands me my messages. “Any word on the shooter?”

  “Not yet,” I tell her. “We’ll get him.”

  Raising her brows, Mona rattles the bottle of ibuprofen she keeps on hand. I nod and she taps three tablets into my hand. “Thanks.”

  “Oh. Before I forget.” Mona plucks a plain white envelope from my message slot and holds it out to me. “Someone left this for you.”

  I take the envelope, curious because the only thing written on it is my name. “Any idea who it’s from?”

  She shakes her head. “T.J. found it taped to the door when he brought in breakfast burritos at six A.M.”

  In my office, I flip on my computer, use my letter opener to slice open the envelope, and read.

  Mark Petersheim killed Daniel Gingerich.

  Rising, I leave my office and go back to reception. Both women watch in silence as I cross to the front door where the note was found, open it, and peer out across Main Street.

  “Mona?” I say, without looking at her.

  “Yeah?” She comes up beside me and we look across the street at the newest Amish tourist shop.

  “Dawdy Haus” is Deitsh for “Grandfather’s House.” Owned by Janine Fourman, the shop is the first “gently used” Amish shop to grace downtown Painters Mill and carries everything from bassinets and lanterns to postcards and homemade fudge. Like most downtown merchants, Janine had been assigned five parking slots in front of her rental space. She came to me a month ago, complaining about the customers from Gordon’s Five and Dime next door commandeering her parking spaces. The situation wasn’t high priority; no one in my department wrote any citations, so in typical Janine Fourman fashion, she took matters into her own hands and installed security cameras.

  I motion toward Dawdy Haus, spot one of the cameras next to the striped awning that shades the sidewalk. “If I’m not mistaken, that security camera will capture the front of the police station.”

  Mona looks at me, her eyes widening. “The note.”

  “Might be worth a shot.”

  A few minutes later, Mona and I are in the small office at the rear of Dawdy Haus. The manager, Jenna Fourman, is Janine’s daughter. She’s about twenty-five years old and sitting at the computer, tapping keys. “Heard what happened to you last night, Chief Burkholder. This have something to do with it?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I say vaguely.

  “Well, no one ever looks at these security-camera tapes,” she tells us. “I mean, except for Mom.” She gives me a knowing look. “She’s kind of fanatical about the whole parking thing.”

  I’m all too aware of Janine Fourman’s petty obsessions and her heavy-handed tactics when it comes to handling something she doesn’t like. The owner of the insurance-company office next door has complained about her take-no-prisoner tactics on more than one occasion.

  I opt for diplomatic. “I understand.”

  The girl shoots me a grin that’s part knowing, part apologetic; then her attention snaps back to the screen. “Oh, here we go.” She presses the down-arrow key a dozen times; then her finger pauses. “This particular tape runs from six P.M. last night through six A.M. this morning.”

  “That’s the time frame we’re looking for.” The last thing I want to do is sit through twelve hours of video of downtown Painters Mill overnight. “Is it possible to fast-forward through it?”

  “Sure.”

  The buzzer on the outer door sounds, telling us a customer has arrived. Jenna glances at the door and rises. “I gotta get that.” She motions toward the computer. “You guys can mouse through pretty quickly. Just drag that little blinking line from left to right.”

  “Got it.” I motion Mona into her chair. “Thanks, Jenna.”

  She grins. “Just don’t tell Mom I let you put your fingers on that keyboard.”

  I grin back. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  Mona sets to work mousing through twelve hours of video. There’s not much action in downtown Painters Mill after hours. For twenty minutes, the only movement we see comes in the form of a stray cat and Mr. Wetzel out taking his midnight walk. At the 12:45 A.M. mark, we both see the shadowed figure and lean closer to the monitor.

  “It’s a woman,” Mona murmurs.

  “Looks Amish,” I say, squinting because the resolution is grainy and dark. The camera angle is bad. “Any idea how to enlarge that?”

  “I can try. Probably lose resolution and it’s not great to begin with.” She hits the mouse roller and sure enough the image jumps and expands.

  “Run it again.”

  The woman enters from the left, or south, side of the police station, walks directly up to the outer door, looks both ways, reaches into her pocket, and slaps the note onto the glass.

  “Too dark to see her face,” Mona comments.

  “Or make out the details of her clothes. Definitely wearing a dress, though. Average build. Not too tall. She’s sticking to the shadows.”

  “You thi
nk she knows about the camera?”

  “Maybe.” I reach over and usurp the mouse. Right-click and enlarge, but it’s no help because the resolution deteriorates tenfold. I can’t make out the details of her face. All I can see of her clothes is the silhouette of her dress and kapp.

  Mona runs it again and sighs. “At least we know the culprit is a woman.”

  “And Amish. That’s significant.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I thought we might borrow this tape and see if we can get some stills.” Even as I say the words I’m not optimistic that an image will be helpful in terms of the case. Not only is the quality poor, but I have no idea if the note is even legitimate. I don’t know the motive of the person who left it. Does she know what happened the night of the fire? Is she trying to influence the case? Or does she have some ax to grind against Petersheim? Some agenda? Still, it’s something; it’s more than I currently have, so I’m obliged to explore it further.

  “Once we get the images,” I say, “I want you to courier this tape up to BCI to see if they can enhance it.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Thanks.” I start toward the door. Midway there I stop and turn to her. “Did Bob Schoening with the fire marshal’s office send that key over?”

  “It came in this morning.”

  “On your way home I want you to hit the two hardware stores in Painters Mill to see if they can tell us if they made that duplicate key.”

  Mona looks after me, her face broadcasting how pleased she is to be part of this. “Anything else, Chief?”

  “If it’s not too difficult, you might want to squeeze in a few hours of sleep.”

  We grin at each other and then I turn and go through the door.

  * * *

  A lot of people had motive to want Daniel Gingerich dead. My mind always circles back to a single name: Emma Miller. Of all the people who were victimized by Gingerich, it was Emma who ended up dead. A sweet Amish girl forced into an agonizing situation. A girl whose parents blamed her. Whose church district would not support her if they found out she’d become pregnant out of wedlock. She took the only way out she could find.