Where Shadows Meet(5)

“Can’t or won’t?” he asked as O’Connor rejoined them.

“Matt,” O’Connor said with a warning in his voice. “I want to talk to you.” He retreated a few steps from the woman.

Matt joined him. “What is with you, man? I’ve never seen you act like this. You’re mucking up the investigation.”

O’Connor glanced at Hannah, then back to Matt. “She was with me.”

“With you? What does that mean?”

“I mean she slipped away to meet me.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “We were together. That’s all you need to know.”

Matt couldn’t wrap his mind around it. O’Connor was a good eight years older than the Schwartz woman, and as one of the “Englisch,” he should have been the last man she’d consider getting involved with. “I see,” he said. “A little cradle robbing?” He knew he was pushing it. O’Connor was his boss, but that was hard to remember when they were friends, practically brothers, before they were partners.

“Shut up. You know nothing about it. I’ve been waiting all my life for someone like Hannah—sweet and good. When I’m with her, I’m better than I am alone. She had nothing to do with this crime,” O’Connor said, his voice firm.

“You know as well as I do that the perp is usually known to the victim. You need to tell Sturgis. You can’t work this investigation.”

“This is my case. I know my limits, and I can handle it, Beitler.”

“O’Connor, think about this. You’re already on thin ice with that brutality charge.”

O’Connor ran his hand through his hair. “And you think about how you got this job. And where you’d be if not for me.”

It went against Matt’s strong sense of right and wrong, but he finally shrugged. “Have it your way.” Both men went back to the girl. “I’m going to take a look at the scene,” Matt said.

Hannah trembled. “I don’t have to go, do I?”

“No, you stay here with Detective O’Connor.” At the house, Matt ducked under the yellow tape at the door and entered the living room. Halogen lights mounted around the room illuminated the bodies lying on the wood floor. “What have we got?” he asked Sturgis.

“Two adults, I’d guess in their early fifties. Poisoning, maybe strychnine from the contortions of the bodies. The autopsy will tell us.” He nodded toward a heap of cloth. “A quilt was over them. The daughter removed it before we were called.”

“Who called it in?” Matt asked.

“The daughter. She went out to the greenhouse and used the phone there.”

“They have a phone?”

The captain shrugged. “The Amish use phones in their businesses. You ever notice the little phone booths out by the road in their communities? Some of the families will share a phone, but they only use it to make appointments or do business. They don’t want it intruding on their personal lives.”

Matt depended on his cell phone. He barely glanced at the quilt before allowing his gaze to wander the room. A sofa with worn seat cushions sat against the middle of the wall. Sturdy wooden tables, most likely handmade, flanked it with gaslights flickering on top of them. No rugs, no wall ornamentation or pictures.

A red symbol and words on the wall caught his attention. “Blood?” he asked.

“Paint.” Sturgis stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and chomped on it.

Matt wanted to chomp on something himself, anything to get the vile taste of murder out of his mouth. “It’s a peace symbol. We know what this is all about?”

“Well, the Amish are all about peace. Maybe it’s a hate crime in some twisted way.”

“A hate crime against the Amish?”

“That was my first thought. It seems very well thought-out. The killer brought in everything he would need.”

“Not everything,” Matt said, his gaze lighting on a spilled pool of liquid. “Hannah Schwartz mixed up some lemonade that came in the mail.”

“Might be coincidence.”

“Maybe.” But Matt would lay money on finding poison in the drink. “What about the foreign word? We know what it means?”

“Not yet. I think it’s Greek.”

Parke County was a quiet area, and murder was uncommon here. The largest town in this west-central Indiana community was Rockville, where Matt lived, with a population of 2,650. The joke in the area was that they had more covered bridges than residents. Driving through thick forests and hills was a peaceful pastime of Matt’s. He’d been on the force less than a year, and this was his first murder. Seeing something like this was a shock he could not imagine getting used to.

Matt dragged his gaze from the bodies. “Let’s get the Schwartz woman in here and ask her some more questions. I’ll have one of the deputies take Ajax out and see if he can get a scent on the perp.”





TWO


“Demut and gelassenheit are at the heart of a good life, Hannah. Accept whatever God gives you without murmur.”

PATRICIA SCHWARTZ

Sitting on the porch of the plain white farmhouse, Hannah couldn’t quit rocking. The cold wind laden with the scent of water from the lake behind the house tugged at the strings of her bonnet and lifted the hem of her long skirt. The rocking calmed the screams still hunkering in her throat. It’s not true. It’s not.