“I’ve taken one man into custody. The others were murdered.”

“God will make the final judgment.”

His progress is slow and uncomfortable to watch. I have to resist the urge to help him into the chair. I wait until he’s settled in before continuing. “Did the police talk to you about what happened that night?”

“The English police.” He says the words with disdain. “They don’t care about the Amisch. Not then. Not now.”

“I care.”

He meets my gaze, but he is unmoved. “What is it you need from me?”

“Is there anything you can tell me about the night Willis Hochstetler was killed?” I ask. “Do you know of anything unusual that happened in the days before or after? Or did you hear any rumors?”

“What happened in the house that night was gottlos.” Ungodly. He sets down the toast as if realizing it’s covered with maggots. “When we found the boy, he was … shattered. It was a painful time for all of us.”

“Did you know Wanetta and Willis?”

“I baptized them when they joined the church. I spoke to them many times. Saw them at worship.” He nods. “Willis es en faehicher schreiner.” Willis was an able carpenter. “Wanetta—” He shakes his head.

“What about her?”

“I talked to William after … what happened. He was a boy. Only fourteen years old and innocent. But even then, he knew things.”

“Like what?”

He raises his gaze to me. “Those men … they took Wanetta. They used her. Soiled her. Forced her to break her vows to her husband. Her sacred vow to the church.”

The words, the meaning behind them, light a fire of outrage inside me, a mix of anger and disbelief and the sense of unfair judgment levied upon the innocent. “She had no choice in the matter.”

He raises rheumy eyes to mine. “Some things are so broken, they cannot be mended. It is the way of the world.”

“I don’t agree with that.”

He gives me a sharp look. “I thought it best that she didn’t return.”

I stare at him, incredulous, and so taken aback by his narrow-minded arrogance that for a moment I’m rendered speechless. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s not for you to understand. It’s done. In God’s hands.”

Before I realize I’m going to move, I’m hovering over him. “Do you know something about what happened to her?” Despite my efforts, my voice has risen.

His eyes roll back in their sockets slightly when he looks at me. “A few years after Willis and the children were killed, I received a message from the bishop of the Swartzentruber Amish in Pennsylvania.”

The Swartzentruber clan are the most conservative Amish. The group emerged after a split of the Old Order back in 1917 over a conflict between two bishops regarding Bann und Meidung, or “excommunication and shunning.” Several Swartzentruber families live in Painters Mill. Generally, they’re stricter with regard to the use of technology, rejecting conveniences like milking machines and indoor plumbing. Their buggies are windowless. Even their dress is plainer, especially for the women.

“What message?” I ask.

“One of the families in Cambria County had taken in an Amish woman who’d been in an accident and had severe injuries. The woman had no memory. She didn’t know her name or where she lived. The family nursed her back to health, fed her, clothed her, and opened their home to her.” He looks down at his gnarled fingers. “Months after she arrived, the woman began to remember things. She was fluent in Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch. She knew she had a husband and children and wanted to come home. The Swartzentruber family began contacting Amish bishops all over Pennsylvania and, later, Ohio.”

“The woman was Wanetta Hochstetler?”

“All I can tell you is that she was not the woman who had been married to Willis Hochstetler.”

I can’t tell if he’s speaking figuratively or literally. “What happened?”

“The Swartzentruber Amish do not permit a community telephone booth, as we do here. It took several weeks, but she was finally able to contact me.”

“You spoke with her?”

“On the telephone.” He hesitates. “She didn’t know that Willis and the children had passed. When I told her, she became very distraught. She accused me of lying and used ungodly words.” He touches his left temple. “Sie is ganz ab.” She was quite out of her mind.

“Did you go to the police?”

“Why would I? We are Amish. It was an Amish matter.”

“But they would have—”

“There were bad feelings between the Amish and the English police.” He shrugs. “I don’t know how it would have been for her, coming back, after everything that happened. There had been talk.”

“What kind of talk?”

“That she’d left her husband and children. That maybe she didn’t want to come back.”

“But she had a son,” I say. “William.”

“The boy was with an Amish family. A good family that had welcomed him into their lives and given him a home. This woman was … narrish.” Insane. “It was for the best. For the boy. He needed to be protected from what she had become.”

“That wasn’t your choice. It wasn’t your decision to make.”

“I left it in the hands of God.”

I look at him, this grizzled, disapproving old man, and I want to rail at him, call him a son of a bitch. I want to tell him the woman could have sustained a head injury or suffered a stroke. But I hold my tongue. “How long ago did you speak with her?”

“Many years,” he says.

“She was living in Pennsylvania at the time?”

“Yes, but many of the Swartzentruber Amish have left that area for New York. Too many disputes with the government.”

“What was the name of the family that took her in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the bishop’s name?”

He shakes his head.

I sigh. “Where in Pennsylvania? What’s the name of the town?”

“Cambria County,” he tells me. “Near Nicktown.”

CHAPTER 24

My head is reeling with the bishop’s disturbing revelations as I get into the Explorer and start down the lane. It’s difficult for me to believe an Amish bishop could be so cruel. Is it possible Wanetta Hochstetler is still alive? Did she, as a damaged and broken woman, try to return home to her family, only to be shattered by news that they were dead? Or that she wasn’t welcome?

But there are other, darker questions pulsing at the back of my brain. Did Wanetta Hochstetler find her way back to Painters Mill? Did she have something to do with the murders of Dale Michaels, Jules Rutledge and Jerrold McCullough? The people who murdered her husband, caused the deaths of her children and destroyed her life? It doesn’t seem likely. She was thirty-four years old when she was kidnapped; that would put her at around seventy now. The more recent murders required a good bit of strength—too much for a woman that age. Too much for a woman of any age.

But I know better than to discount a female perpetrator based on strength alone. If she’s determined and armed—or insane as the bishop asserted—anything’s possible.

I pull over in the parking lot of a carryout on the west side of town and call Glock. He picks up on the first ring with his usual, “Hey, Chief.”

I summarize my conversation with Bishop Schweider.

“You think she’s got something to do with these murders?” he asks.

“I don’t know. She certainly qualifies in terms of motive, but she’d be old now. I can’t see her pulling off three murders.”

“She might’ve had help.” He pauses. “Hoch Yoder.”

I tell him about my conversation with Hoch. “Pay him a visit. Tell him you’re following up. See if you can get anything new out of him. Put some pressure on him. Rattle him a little. At this point, I think it’s best we don’t let on that she might still be alive.”

“Where are you going?”

“Nicktown, Pennsylvania. It’s about four hours away. The Swartzentruber Amish don’t use community pay phones, so I’m going to drive over there and see what I can find out.”