Linda Castillo - Sworn to Silence

Kate emerged a few minutes later. She’d changed into jeans and an oversized gray sweatshirt with Columbus Police Department emblazoned on the front. She’d washed the dirt smudges from her face and run a comb through her hair.

“Nice place,” he commented.

She brushed past him without responding. Walking to the refrigerator, she stood on her tiptoes and retrieved a bottle from the cabinet above. “The cabinets need updating.”

“Unless you’re going for some quaint country look.” He frowned at the bottle of Absolut in her hand.

“I hate country.” She gave him a sagacious look. “Don’t bother telling me alcohol isn’t going to help.”

“That would be hypocritical of me.”

“By the time I finish telling you about those remains, you’re going to need it.”

Setting two glasses and the bottle on the table, she went to the back door and opened it. A ratty-looking orange tabby darted in, hissed at John, and then disappeared to the living room.

“He likes me,” he said.

She choked out a sound that was part laugh, part sob, pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. “You’re not going to like this, John.”

“I figured that out when I saw the skull.” He took the chair across from her.

She uncapped the vodka and poured. For a moment they stared at the glasses, unspeaking. Then she reached for hers, drank it down without stopping and poured another. That was when John knew she was a hell of a lot more cop than she was Amish.

He asked the question that had been pounding at his brain since he’d spotted the bones. “Does the body have anything to do with the serial killer operating in Painters Mill?”

“I’ve been operating under that assumption.” She looked into her glass and shrugged. “Until tonight.”

“Maybe you ought to start at the beginning.”

I feel as if my life has been building to this moment. Still, I’m not prepared for it. How in the name of God does one prepare for complete and utter ruination? Worst-case scenario, Tomasetti walks out of here, goes straight to the suits at BCI who will proceed to destroy my life. If that happens, I’ve already resolved to protect Jacob and Sarah. Not because they’re any less guilty than me, but because they have children; I don’t want my nephews or Sarah’s unborn child dragged into this. I don’t want the Amish community tarnished; they don’t deserve that.

I look at Tomasetti, taking in the cold eyes and harsh mouth. He might walk a thin line, but I have a terrible feeling that ambiguity won’t help me tonight. “Regardless of what I tell you, I want to see this case through. You have to promise me.”

“You know I can’t promise that.”

I take another drink, force it down. Alcohol, the temporary cure for misery. The words I need to say tumble inside my head, a tangle of memories and secrets and the dead weight of my own conscience.

“Kate,” he presses. “Talk to me.”

“Daniel Lapp lived on a farm down the road from us,” I begin. “He came over sometimes to help with baling hay and chores. He was eighteen years old.”

Tomasetti listens, his cop’s eyes watchful and assessing. “What happened?”

“I was fourteen years old that summer.” I barely remember the young Amish girl I’d been, and I wonder how I had ever been that innocent. “Mamm and Datt went to a funeral in Coshocton County. My brother, Jacob, was in the field cutting hay. Sarah was delivering quilts in town. I stayed home to bake bread.”

I pause, but Tomasetti doesn’t give me respite. “Go on.”

“Daniel came to the door. He’d been helping Jacob in the field and cut his hand.” Even now, a lifetime later, recalling that day disturbs me so profoundly my chest goes tight. “He attacked me from behind. Took me to the floor. I screamed when I saw the knife, but he hit me and he kept hitting me.” I feel breathless and lightheaded. Vaguely, I’m aware of my breaths coming too quick, too shallow. “He raped me.”

I can’t look at Tomasetti, but I hear the scrape of whiskers as he runs his hand over his jaw. “The Amish like to believe we’re a separate society,” I say, “but that’s not always the case. We knew about the murders that had occurred in the last few months. Datt told us it was an English matter, the deaths were of no concern to us. But we were scared. We kept our doors locked. We prayed for the families. Mamm took food to them.” I shrug. “We didn’t get the newspaper, but I’d been to the tourist shops in town and read the stories. I knew the victims had been raped. I thought Daniel Lapp was going to kill me.”

“What did you do, Kate?”

“I grabbed Datt’s shotgun and shot him in the chest.”

He stares at me, unblinking. “Did you call the police?”

“I might have if we’d had a phone. But we didn’t. I was hysterical. There was blood everywhere.” A breath shudders out of me. “My sister came home. She saw the body on the floor and ran out screaming. She ran for over a mile and got Jacob.”

“No one called the police?”

I shake my head.

“What about your parents?”

“It was dark by the time they got home. Jacob explained to Datt what happened. I think if Lapp had been English, Datt would have called the police. But Daniel was one of us. My father told us this was an Amish matter and would be dealt with his way.” I take another breath, but I can’t get enough air. “He and Jacob wrapped the body in burlap feed bags and put it in the buggy. They drove to the grain elevator and buried it.” I look at Tomasetti. “When they came home, Datt told us never to speak of it.”

“Didn’t people wonder what happened to Lapp?” he asks.

“His parents spent weeks looking for him. But after a while most of the Amish came to believe he’d fled because he could not abide by the Ordnung. Eventually, his parents believed it, too.”

“So the crime was never reported,” he says.

“No.”

“Tough thing for a fourteen-year-old kid to handle.”

“You mean the rape or the fact that I killed a man?”

“Both.” He grimaces. “And the fact that you could never talk about it.”

“I started acting out after that. I hooked up with some English kids. I started smoking, drinking. Got into trouble a few times. I suppose it was my way of dealing with it. The murders stopped after that. Until tonight, I thought Lapp might be the killer.”

“So when the first body showed up, you thought what? That he’d survived?”

I stare down at my hands, find them shaking, so I clasp them together. “Yes.”

Silence ensues. My mind scrolls through the repercussions of what I’ve done. I have no idea how Tomasetti will react. One thing I’m certain of is that my law enforcement career is over. But that’s a best-case scenario. If the media gets wind of this, they’ll descend like vultures and rip me apart as if I were carrion.

“Evidently, Lapp isn’t our man,” he says after a moment.

“I killed the wrong man.”

“He was a rapist,” he says.

“But not a serial murderer.”

“He had a weapon. You acted in self-defense.”

“Taking a life is against God’s laws.”

“So is raping a minor child.”

“Covering up a murder is against our laws.”

“You were fourteen years old. You trusted your father to do the right thing.”

“I was old enough to know killing a man is wrong.” I force myself to look at him. The house is so quiet I hear snow pinging against the window. The hum of the refrigerator. The hiss of heated air through the vents. “Now that you know my deep, dark secret, what are you going to do about it?”

“If you confess publicly, you can kiss it all good-bye. Your career. Your reputation. Whatever financial security you’ve got. Not to mention peace of mind.”

“Haven’t had much of that, anyway.”

“Look, Kate, I’ve done some things that aren’t exactly aboveboard.” He shrugs. “I’m in no position to judge you.”

“Aside from my family, you’re the only one who knows.”

He refills our glasses. I don’t want any more; the vodka is fuzzing up my head. But I pick up the glass anyway. “I don’t understand why the murders stopped after that day.”

“Maybe what Lapp did to you is completely separate from the murders.”

I know sixty to seventy percent of sexual assaults go unreported. I suspect that percentage is higher in the Amish community. For the first time, I wonder if I was Lapp’s only victim.

“Kate, this leaves us with a big fucking problem.”

“You mean me, don’t you?”

John leans forward. “Your fate as a cop aside, let’s say we get this guy and the case goes to trial. If someone finds out you were involved in a crime that was covered up, some hotshot defense attorney could use that to discredit both of us and blow the case to hell and back. Maybe even put this guy back on the street.”

“No one has to find out about Lapp,” I say.

He gives a harsh laugh. “Who else knows?”

“My brother, Jacob. My sister, Sarah.”

“What if they decide to talk?”

“They’re Amish. They won’t.”

“Who sent the note to the bishop?”

“My sister.” My laugh is dry. “She thought I should share that with my counterparts.”

“How are you going to explain it?”

“An obvious hoax.”

He picks up his glass and downs the drink. I do the same, and we set our glasses down simultaneously. He gives me a grim, unhappy look. “I don’t know you very well, but I think you’re a good cop. I think you care. That alone makes you a better cop than me. But you know as well as I do secrets have a way of getting exposed.”

“Kind of like old bones.” I stare hard at him. “Unless you bury them really deep.”

“If I found out, someone else can.”

“I don’t want my family brought into this. I don’t want the Amish community to pay for something I did.”

“Look, Kate, you’ve got a few things going for you on this. There were extenuating circumstances. There’s the self-defense angle. Your age at the time of the shooting.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

I stare at him, my heart pounding. I want to know if he’s going to turn me in, but I’m afraid to ask. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I hold them at bay. The last thing I want to do is break down in front of the man who’s probably going to destroy my life.

“I have to go.” His chair scrapes across the floor as he rises. “Try to get some sleep.”

He leaves the kitchen. A little voice inside my head screams for me to go after him, plead with him to keep his mouth shut, at least until this case is solved. But I can’t make myself move. The slamming of the door is like a death knell in my ears. As I reach for the bottle, I know there’s not a damn thing I can do but wait for the hammer to fall.

CHAPTER 27

I arrive at the police station a few minutes before seven. Mona sits at the switchboard, her feet on the desk, eating an apple and reading her usual fare.

“Hey, Chief.” Her feet hit the floor. Her eyes widen slightly when she looks at me. “Tough night?”

I didn’t sleep much after Tomasetti left, and I wonder if I look as wrung out as I feel. “Nothing a cup of whatever you’re brewing won’t cure.”

“It’s cinnamon hazelnut.” She passes messages to me. “Doc Coblentz probably won’t get to the autopsy until midmorning.”

The news suits me just fine. Now that I know for a fact Daniel Lapp isn’t the killer, I plan to spend the morning working the relocation angle.

“Weatherman says we got more snow coming,” she says.

“He’s been saying that for a week.”

“I think he’s right this time.”

I snag coffee on the way to my office. Sliding behind my desk, I pull out the Slaughterhouse Killer file and a fresh legal pad. While my computer boots, I hit Skid’s cell number. “Did DRC give you anyone besides Starkey?”

“He was the only one.”

“Did you check with hospitals?” I ask. “Institutions?”

“I struck out, Chief. Sorry.”

“It was worth a shot.”

“You got anything new?”

“I’m working on it. See you in a few.”

I disconnect and spend a few minutes Googling moving companies within a thirty-mile radius of Painters Mill. There are none with a Painters Mill address, but a Web site pops up for a moving company in Millersburg along with a U-Haul franchise. Grabbing the legal pad, I jot contact information. I know the angle I’m pursuing is a long shot, but it’s all I’ve got. I dial Great Midwest Movers, where I’m put on hold and transferred.

“This is Jerry Golan, how can I help you?”

I identify myself and get right to the point. “I’m working on a case and need the names of people who moved out of the area from 1993 to 1995. Do you guys keep records that long?”

“This about them murders up there?”

“I’m not at liberty to get into details.” I lower my voice. “But just between you and me it could be related. I’d appreciate if you’d keep it under your hat.”

“My lips are sealed.” He lowers his voice as if we now share a secret, and I hear the tap of a keyboard on the other end of the line. “The good news is we’ve kept all our records since we opened in 1989. The bad news is, they’re all over the place. We moved back in ’04. Everything got boxed up. Some of it’s in storage and some’s here at the office.”

“All I need is the names and contact information.”

Another whistle sails through fiber optic cable. “Might take a while.”

“Any way you can expedite that for the chief of police?”

“Well, jeez, I guess I could call in a temp.”

“Would it help if I told you to send the bill to me?”

He brightens. “Yes, ma’am. That’d help a lot.”

A temp isn’t in the budget, but I’ll cover it somehow. After hanging up, I go to the Coshocton County Auditor Web site. I stumble through a few pages before finding what I’m looking for. The site offers public access to tax records for real estate sales and transfers. I click on the link and go to the Advanced Search. “Bingo,” I whisper and enter the dates I’m looking for.

Unfortunately, the database only goes back ten years. I click on the “Contact” button and request a listing of sales for the county between January 1, 1993 and December 31, 1995.

Next, I go to the Holmes County Auditor Web site. I’m pleased to find that the site offers a “sales search” by property district. There are dozens of districts, broken down by township and village.

My phone buzzes. I see Glock’s cell number on the display and pick up. “Hey.”