Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

"What's so important that you've come to our home at four o'clock in the morning?"

Bishop Troyer sits at the head of the kitchen table. Tomasetti and I are across from each other. Freda Troyer busies herself at the counter, clanging the occasional dish, listening.

"Last time I was here, I asked you specifically if you'd had any problems with Milan Swanz," I say. "You lied to me."

He takes the accusation in stride. "Milan Swanz is gone. He met a bad end. I'll not speak ill of him. Nor should you."

Impatience thumps, but I knock it back, concentrate on keeping my focus. "Tell me about the night Milan Swanz and Clarence Raber came into your home and assaulted you and your wife."

Behind me, I hear Freda's quick intake of breath.

The bishop stares at me, unruffled, rheumy eyes as sharp and cold as the night outside. "I've nothing to say about Milan Swanz."

"I know what he did to you," I tell him. "I know what he did to your wife."

The old man waves his hand dismissively. "Even as a girl, you always thought you knew more than you did."

"Bishop, this isn't about me. It isn't even really about Milan Swanz or his shortcomings. This is about finding the person responsible for his death."

"That is your path to walk, Kate Burkholder, not mine."

I bring my hand down on the tabletop hard enough to rattle the salt and pepper shakers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Freda jump. Across from me, Tomasetti's brows go up.

"Don't give me that crap," I snap. "Stop playing games with me. A man is dead. He was killed in the most horrific way imaginable. His killer is still out there. If he does it again, if he takes another life, it's going to be on you, Bishop."

The old man doesn't react. Nothing seems to shake him. Nothing moves him. "It is in God's hands. Not yours. Not mine."

Freda comes to the table, sets a steaming cup in front of her husband, and addresses him, ignoring me and Tomasetti. "Milan Swanz was no friend of the Amisch. "

The bishop's expression is hard to read, but he doesn't dispute her claim. Something within him seems to shift.

Grumbling beneath her breath, Freda goes back to the counter.

The silence that follows drags on for so long that I don't think he's going to respond. When he finally speaks, his voice is so low, I have to lean closer to hear.

"Milan came in the middle of the night," the bishop begins. "By the time I got downstairs, he'd already let himself into the kitchen. He'd been excommunicated for a few weeks by then, and he wanted to be reinstated. He'd been drinking, you know, crying and shouting. I told him it had been decided by the congregation and the decision was unanimous and final."

"What did he do?" I ask quietly.

The bishop looks down at his hands on the tabletop in front of him. "He took my cane. Pushed me to the floor. Took a knife out of his pocket. And he cut my beard. Some of my hair. Hacked off a big chunk of it."

"I thought Milan was going to cut his throat," Freda says from her place at the sink.

The bishop waves his hand at her.

"Was Clarence Raber with him?" I ask.

" Ja. "

"Did Clarence participate in the attack?" I ask.

"No."

"Didn't do anything to stop it either," Freda puts in.

I look at her. "Did Milan hurt you, too?"

"He pushed me down," she huffs. "Tore off my kapp. Sawed off some of my hair."

I nod, trying to absorb the scenes they are describing. An elderly Amish couple attacked in the middle of the night. I consider what that could mean in terms of Swanz's fate. If someone found out about it…

"Mr. and Mrs. Troyer, does anyone know what happened that night?" I ask. "Did you talk to anyone about it?"

Even as I ask, I realize the question is moot. Bertha Swanz knew about it. The women who'd told her knew. Still, I let the question stand to see where it leads.

The couple exchanges a look. "The Diener, " the bishop says. "I told them. I thought they should know."

The Diener, or "servants," are the elected officials who are the leaders of the church district. In Painters Mill, that includes the bishop, the deacon, and the minister. I think of Monroe Hershberger, the deacon whose cornfield was destroyed, and make a mental note to talk to him again.

"Can you think of anyone else who might've been wronged by Milan?" This from Tomasetti. "Someone he'd hurt? Or crossed in some way?"

"The Amish are not violent," the bishop says adamantly, then turns his iron gaze on me. "You know that."

"Why did you and the Diener and the congregation finally decide to excommunicate Milan?" I ask.

A moment's hesitation and then the bishop shakes his head. "There were many reasons. Too many. Milan was a fool and his own worst enemy."

It doesn't elude me that he didn't answer the question.

As if unable to maintain her silence any longer, Freda slings the kitchen towel over her shoulder and comes back to the table, sets her hands on her hips. "I was close with his mamm for a time. We thought Milan's misbehaving would get better once he got baptized. Got married. Had children. Responsibility, you know." She shakes her head. "But it didn't get better. And we began to hear things."

The bishop looks up at her and frowns. "A man's marriage is not the business of others."

"A child being hurt is," Freda snaps.

"What kinds of things did you hear?" I ask.

She tightens her mouth. "We saw little Aaron come to worship with his arm in a cast. I noticed the way Bertha wouldn't look at me. Saw a black eye on her, too, once or twice. Said she fell down the steps." She clucks her lips in disgust. "As if I was born yesterday. Wouldn't talk about it. But I knew. All of us knew."

"They don't need to hear all of that," the bishop grumbles in Deitsch.

" Sei ruich. " Be quiet. The Amish woman utters the words gently, then puts her hand on his shoulder and pats it. "A few days later, Bertha came to me. She was at wits' end. Needed to talk. To an elder, you know. A woman. And I got an earful."

"Freda." There's a warning in the bishop's voice.

His wife pays him no heed. "He'd been hitting her. The little ones too—and not just spanking when they needed it."

The bishop picks up his spoon and taps it hard against the tabletop. "Enough."

I look from the bishop to Freda. "Did anyone else know Bertha and her children were being abused?" I ask. "A father? Brother? Uncle? Someone who might've wanted to protect them? Someone who might've confronted Milan about it?"

"We've said our due," the bishop growls. "You'll have to ask Bertha about the rest of it."

"Mr. and Mrs. Troyer." Tomasetti's voice seems loud and deep in the silence of the old farmhouse. "Do either of you have any idea who might've done that to Swanz?"

The bishop stares at him for a long time. Wily, intelligent eyes belie the failing body, and not for the first time I'm reminded that there's nothing even remotely frail about David Troyer.

"No," he says simply.

I look at Freda, but she turns back to the counter without meeting my gaze.

I rise. "Thank you for the coffee." Without waiting for a response, I start for the door.

I hear Tomasetti behind me as I stride through the living room. The hiss of the potbellied stove in the corner. The tinkle of ice crystals against the north window.

Frustrated that we didn't glean any new information, I yank open the door, step onto the porch, take in a breath of cold air.

"That was a waste of time," I mutter.

"Old man's a hard case." Tomasetti closes the door behind us, looks out into the darkness. "Why the hell did I get the impression that they know more than they're letting on?"

"Welcome to Amish country."

We're midway down the steps when I hear the front door creak. I turn to see Freda close it behind her and come down the steps.

"I knew he wouldn't talk to you," she says.

"Nice of you to come out and tell me that." I start to turn, but she stops me.

"Katie. Wait." Her face is a mosaic of conflict, of warring emotions, and a loyalty she cannot betray.

Because I understand, because I've felt all of those things myself when I was Amish, I wait.

"There are whispers," the woman says quietly. "About a group of men. Former Amish mostly. Mennonite and Hutterite, too, maybe. Anabaptists, you know."

"What about them?"

"These men… Katie, I don't know if you can understand. The things they do… it goes against everything we know. Everything we believe. It goes against God's will." She struggles for a moment, then stiffens her spine. "These men… their souls are dark. They know that when they die, they will not be going to heaven. They live with that knowledge. They accept it. Somehow, they see the ungodliness of that as the freedom they need to do the things that a godly man cannot."

I stare at her, perplexed, and yet at the same time I feel a distant memory scratch at the back of my brain. A story or rumors that I'd heard in my youth but were lost over the years.

"What does this group have to do with what happened to Milan Swanz?" I ask.

"These men have given their souls to da deivel, " she tells me. The devil. "They do bad things—very bad things—but for a greater good. If that's even possible. Things that a good Amisch cannot and will not do."

"Are you telling me these men, this group, had something to do with the murder?"

"I couldn't say." She shrugs. "I always thought it was a rumor. A shtoahri. " A story. She lowers her voice. "Now, after all of this, I'm not so sure. I think there may be some truth to it."

I almost can't believe what I'm hearing. Not from the bishop's wife. The notion that such a group exists is so crazy I can't get my head around it. "Freda, how do you even know about these men?"

"I don't. But I'll tell you what I do know." She pauses as if searching her memory. "I have relatives in Shipshewana. I spent many a happy time there with my cousins when I was little. Spent a whole summer there once when my niece was born. Anyway, an Amish man was killed that last summer I was there. A druvvel-machah by the name of Marvin Lengacher." Troublemaker. "Awful thing. Hanged himself in the barn. Or so everyone believed."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Turned out someone did that to him. Tied him up and hung him up by his neck. I was thirteen years old that summer. Scared me and my little cousins half to death."

"Who did it?" I ask.

"Everyone was talking about the Schwertlers. Even the elders were whispering about it, saying they're the ones came for Marvin and done him like that. And it never got told to the police."

I scribble the name in my notebook. "Who are the Schwertlers?"

"I couldn't say."

"Freda, what year was that?"

"Well, I'm eighty-six this fall. My goodness, happened over seventy years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday."

"Do you have any names?"

"No one knows their names."

"How many people in this group?"

"No one knows that, either, Katie." She makes the statement with impatience, as if I should already know the answer.

I look down at my notes. "Freda, if that happened over seventy years ago, whoever belonged to that group would be elderly now. Most would be gone."

"Unless there's new blood for every generation. There are a lot of fallen men out there, ready to step up to do what they need to do."

"Are you telling me this group of men still exists and they're in Painters Mill?"

"They're everywhere," she whispers.

"How do I find them?"

Freda glances over her shoulder, toward the door, which has remained shut. In the back of my mind, I wonder if she has any idea how crazy her story sounds. How unlikely it is that any of what she's told me is seated in reality.

"I don't know," she tells me.

"Is there someone I can talk to who knows about them?"

"I heard there's a Hutterite man." She whispers quickly now, as if the words aren't meant to be spoken aloud or heard by others. "He lives in a compound over to Dundee."

Another vague memory, something I've heard…

"What's his name?" Tomasetti speaks up for the first time.

"Last name is Hofer. That's all I know." She shakes her head. "I shouldn't even be speaking to you about it. Most Amish don't believe this group exists. Call it folklore. But I'm old enough to remember."

The door creaks. I glance past her, see Bishop Troyer standing in the doorway, holding open the door, looking out at us. " Die zeit fer kumma inseid is nau. " The time to come inside is now.

"Find him," the old woman whispers, and turns away.

I call out her name.

She doesn't stop and she doesn't look back.