Pray for Silence

CHAPTER 19

Hire’s Carry-Out is located near the intersection of Highway 83 and Township Highway 62. The store carries staples like milk, bread, soda and cold cuts. But the brunt of their business is derived from the drive-through where they sell cold beer, wine and cigarettes. When the nearby speedway holds a race, the drive-through line has been known to back up traffic for a quarter mile.

I busted Art Hire a couple of years ago for selling a six pack of Little King’s Cream Ale to a fifteen-year-old girl. He claimed she looked like an adult. Since he’s old enough to know a size-C bra cup doesn’t necessarily signify the legal drinking age, I threw the book at him. As I pull into the parking lot, I know it’s probably optimistic to hope he doesn’t hold a grudge.

The bell on the door jingles when we enter. The first thing I notice about the place is the smell. Old wood and dust with an underlying hint of freezer-burned meat. We make our way past shelves filled with bread and packaged pies. Art Hire sits behind a counter next to the drive-through window cash register. Above him, a baseball game blares from a small television mounted on the wall. He’s smoking a brown cigarette that looks inordinately thin in relation to his bratwurst-size fingers.

He’s a heavyset man with small, piggish eyes and full, feminine lips. He looks up from a copy of Muscle Car magazine as I make my way toward the counter and gives me a what-did-I-do-now look. Something tells me he hasn’t forgotten about the selling-beer-to-a-minor incident.

“Mr. Hire, if you have a few minutes I’d like to ask you some questions,” I begin.

His teeth are the color of ripe corn. “You’d think with seven murders on your hands, the police in this town would have better things to do than hassle law-abiding citizens.”

Ignoring the jab, I pull the bottle from the bag and set it on the counter. “Is this from your store?”

He squints at the bottle. “How would I know?”

“Because you’re the only place in town that sells this kind of Chianti.”

Looking put out, he pulls a pair of readers from his shirt pocket, slides them onto his nose and leans forward to squint at the label. “Runs about five ninety-nine a bottle. Don’t sell a whole lot. Most of our customers prefer plain old Bud.”

“I need the customer’s name.”

“The only way we’ll have that is if they paid with a check or credit card. If he paid with cash, you’re shit out of luck.”

“Can you pull the records?” I ask. “I believe I have the date it was purchased.”

“Maybe.” He lifts a beefy shoulder, lets it drop. “How far back?”

“September twenty-second.”

His expression turns smug. “We only keep records for a month.”

“What about security cameras?” Tomasetti asks.

“Can’t afford cameras.” He sneers at me. “Not with the cops in this town breaking my balls. That fine cost me five hundred bucks.”

I try again. “What about credit-card receipts? Surely you keep transaction records longer than a month.”

He returns his attention to the magazine, turns the page, ignoring us. “Nope. Sure don’t. That would be against banking rules.”

Annoyed, I look at Tomasetti and sigh. He gives me a small smile, then turns and walks down the narrow aisle toward the rear of the store. “Do you smell something?” he asks.

He’s standing next to the walk-in freezer door. Only then do I realize what he’s doing, and I withhold a grin. “As a matter of fact, I do. Smells like rotten food.”

Hire sits up straighter. “What are you talking about? I just cleaned the freezer. There’s nothing rotten anywhere in this store.”

“You sure?” Tomasetti jabs a thumb at the freezer door. “Smells like you’ve got a dead cow in there.”

“That isn’t really a police matter,” I say reasonably. “Maybe we ought to call the Health Department and let them handle it.”

“Health Department?” Hire looks alarmed now. We have his full attention. “You have no cause to do that.”

“They’ll shut this place down in a New York minute,” Tomasetti mutters.

I look at Hire. “That would be a shame. There’s a race at the speedway this weekend. You’d lose a lot of business.”

Hire raises his hands. “All right! I’ll check to see if I have the damn name!”

Muttering beneath his breath, he stubs out his cigarette and slides off the stool. He glares at me, and then comes out from behind the counter. Without speaking, he heads toward the rear of the store. He’s midway down the aisle when a buzzer sounds, signaling a customer at the drive-through. Hire stops and turns. “I gotta get that.”

Tomasetti points at him. “I’ll do it. You get the information Chief Burkholder needs.”

“You don’t know how to run the cash register.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Hire’s face turns bright red. I see sweat on his forehead. He looks at me as if he wants to throttle me. “You cops aren’t allowed to do stuff like this.”

I don’t like Tomasetti’s tactics, especially since he’s not here in an official capacity. But if it gets me the name, I’m willing to look the other way. “Just get us the name and we’ll get out of your hair.” I glance past him to see Tomasetti hand a carton of Virginia Slims cigarettes through the window.

“He’s going to screw up my inventory,” Hire whines.

“In that case, you’d better hurry.”

Cursing, he takes me past a rattling refrigerated display case. Traversing the place is like walking through a camper jam-packed with enough food for a decade. At the rear of the store, he opens a narrow door. A pretty young woman with burgundy hair and big doe eyes sits behind a steel desk. She’s drinking a Budweiser and smoking the same brand of cigarette as Hire. A plaque on the desk tells me her name is Cindy Hire, but I can’t tell if she’s his wife, daughter or sister.

“Can I help you?” She asks the question in a way that tells me the last thing she wants to do is help. That cooperative spirit must run in the family.

“I need the name of a customer who purchased a bottle of Chianti on September twenty-second,” I say.

“We don’t keep credit card info,” she says. “It’s against the rules.”

I look at Hire. “Remember, the race this weekend.”

Growling like a cross dog, Hire says to the woman, “It’s in there. I haven’t purged the records in a while. See if you can query by date. Get her the name and address of this customer.”

For a second, Cindy looks like she wants to argue, then acquiesces. “I think the computer just keeps the number, expiration and name.”

“All we need is the name,” I tell her.

Putting the cigarette between her lips, squinting against the smoke, she begins pecking at the computer keys.

If my memory serves me, I’m pretty sure card processing rules mandate that merchants destroy or purge all credit-card information every so often due to the threat of data leaks and hackers. I find myself hoping Hire’s computer system is in as much disarray as their store.

I watch as the computer screen turns blue, then data entry boxes appear. Squinting at the screen, Cindy types the date into one of the boxes.

“Got it.” She hits Enter and waits. “Looks like the guy used a Visa. Card stolen, or what?”

Tomasetti peeks his head in. “Guy wants to know if you sell Cherry Berry ice cream.”

“No.”

He looks at me and raises his brows. “They get it?”

The woman gives a phlegmy cough. “I got it,” she says. “Guy’s name is Scott Barbereaux. Expiration date December next year.”

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting behind my desk, mentally sorting through my growing list of suspects. The newest addition is Scott Barbereaux. Of course, the bottle I found isn’t incriminating in itself. All it does is place him at Miller’s Pond near the date that Mary Plank was there with her mystery lover. It’s a nebulous connection. But combined with the diary and his link to the shop where Mary worked, it’s worth pursuing. I’ve been around long enough to know those kinds of coincidences don’t happen without a reason.

But why would a man like Barbereaux risk everything to be with a fifteen-year-old Amish girl? He’s good-looking, relatively successful and financially established. The kind of man who could have his choice of females. Why would he choose Mary Plank?

That makes me think about motive. If Barbereaux was involved in an illicit relationship with a minor female, he would have a lot to lose if the relationship ever became public, especially if she turned up pregnant or appeared in pornographic photos. If she’d told her parents and they threatened to take the information to the police, he would be facing time in prison. But is that enough motive to wipe out an entire family? And what about the torture aspect?

I remind myself that Barbereaux has an alibi. But lovers have been known to lie to protect the one they love. I decide Glenda Patterson is the next stop on my list. I also make a mental note to check Barbereaux’s finances. A lot can be learned by the money people take in and spend.

I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something important. It’s there, floating around somewhere in my subconscious. But all I can see at the moment is white noise. My brain is tired and distracted. This case has reawakened some personal baggage I don’t want to deal with. Maybe because I see too much of my own past in some of the choices Mary Plank made, and that’s skewing my objectivity.

“What am I missing?” I say aloud.

This isn’t the first case that’s stumped me. Experience tells me when that happens to go back to the beginning. Look at the evidence again. Try to see it in a new light, regain an objective perspective. Pulling a fresh legal pad from my pencil drawer, I begin a stream-of-consciousness dump

DNA—semen inside Mary Plank’s body. Where is the fetus? Get DNA sample from James Payne. Talk to Glenda Patterson. Does Scott Barbereaux have an alibi for September 22? Check his finances. T.J.—IP addresses. Dark pickup seen near the Plank farm on the night of the murders. Run through names of vehicle owners again. Evelyn Steinkruger—Mary got into car. Nice car. New. Blue or black. Barbereaux drives a black Grand Am. Canvass downtown area near shop. ID the driver. Check with the bank down the street—do they have an ATM camera? Mary went to the park often for lunch with her lover. Did anyone see them? Canvass park. Her lover liked to take photos. Important? Glock—check area photographers and photo studios. Skid—keep an eye on James Payne. How does he spend his spare time?

As I stare down at my notes, something prods at the back of my brain. Some thought or theory that hadn’t yet congealed. I pull out the crime scene photos. I look at the bloody handprint on the jamb. The print in the living room. The instruments in the barn. Finally, I come to a single photograph of the three scuff marks on the dusty floor. I look at my notes and one line I’d written stands out like neon. Her lover liked to take photos. I stare at the photo, and I think: tripod.

“What’s up?”

I glance up to see Tomasetti standing at the door to my office. “I think he may have photographed or filmed the murders.”

“What?” He’s already crossing to my desk. “How do you know?”

I show him the photo of the scuff marks. “No one could figure out what made these marks. Mary wrote in her diary that her lover was into photography. I think the marks are from a tripod.”

Intensity tightens his features as he stares down at the photo. “Maybe that’s why the girls were tortured.”

“Jesus. A snuff film.” The words feel like rancid grease pouring from my mouth. They make me sick to my stomach. I flip over the photo of the instruments. “He left these behind.”

He stares at the photo, his expression unreadable. But his eyes are a little out of focus when he raises his gaze to mine, and I know this has brought back his own past, reminded him of the murders of his wife and children. My initial instinct is to reach out to him, but I don’t. I know him well enough to realize that while he might need sympathy, it’s the last thing he wants.

“I’ve got a contact down in Quantico,” he says after a moment. “I’ll give him a call, tell him to put his ear to the ground.”

I nod.

He gives me a grim look. “The FBI has never been able to authenticate a snuff film, Kate. Never. They’re an urban legend. A Hollywood invention.”

“Maybe this is a first.”

The muscles in his jaws flex. “I’ll make the call.”

The awful weight of this new possibility settles onto my shoulders with a crushing heaviness. I look down at my notes. “Did anything come back on Barbereaux?”

“One speeding ticket. Guy keeps his nose clean. Or else he’s careful.” He slides into the chair adjacent my desk.

“I’m going to talk to Barbereaux’s girlfriend to verify his alibi. Want to come?”

“Sure,” he says.

I’m reaching for my keys when Lois appears at my door. “Chief?” She’s wearing a gold pantsuit that clashes with her hair. “Evelyn Steinkruger is here to see you.”

Tomasetti shoots me a look. “Busybody from the shop?”

“That’s the one.” I set down my keys. “Send her in.”

A moment later, Evelyn Steinkruger walks into my office. She’s wearing a red suit and matching pumps with heels so high my feet hurt just looking at them. Her eyes flick from me to Tomasetti and back to me, and I see a trace of curiosity in their depths. I almost smile when I realize she’s wondering if it’s all business between us.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Steinkruger?” I begin.

She sets a quilted satchel the size of a small purse on my desk. “After you left, I remembered telling Mary she could keep her things on the bottom shelf in the storage room. I never thought about it again because she never carried sunglasses or a phone or iPod thingie like most girls do nowadays. I checked the shelf and found this.”

I look down at the satchel. The workmanship is good, but it looks hand sewn, and I wonder if Mary made it herself. The fabric is pink with white and lavender flowers. Not an Amish print. She probably bought the material at a fabric store without her parents’ knowledge and sewed it in the privacy of her bedroom. Though a purse isn’t in any way against the Ordnung, I suspect whatever’s inside it might be.

“There are a few things inside,” Evelyn says. “Including some kind of computer plug-in thing. I thought it might be important.”

My mind jumps at the mention of a flash drive.

“Did you touch or handle anything?” Tomasetti asks.

She shakes her head. “Just the satchel. I peeked inside, but as soon as I realized it was Mary’s, I closed it and came straight here.”

She waits a beat, her eyes flicking to the satchel. “Are you going to look inside?”

“I’ll need to process it first,” I say, ignoring Tomasetti’s pointed look.

“Oh.” She sighs, her disappointment clear that she won’t be able to discuss her discovery with her friends over chai tea later. “I need to get back to the shop.”

“We appreciate your bringing in the satchel,” I say.

“In light of what happened to that poor family, I felt it was my duty.”

She’s midway to the door when I think of one more question I need to ask her. “Mrs. Steinkruger?”

She turns, raises a brow. “Yes?”

“Do you know Jack Warner?”

“I bought some folk art from him a while back.”

I offer a smile. “Thanks. That’s all for now.”

Returning the smile, she turns and walks out.

“Interesting connection,” Tomasetti says.

I nod. “I just don’t know if it means anything.”

“Everything means something.”

I wait until the sound of her shoes fade and then I pick up the satchel. Tugging open the drawstrings, I upend the bag and dump its contents onto my desktop. I’m not expecting some earth-shattering revelation. But I find myself hoping the drive will give us something to work with.

A mirror, a tube of lip gloss, two crinkled dollar bills, a single dried flower, a quarter and a flash drive tumble onto my desktop. Ordinary items any young woman might have in her purse. Except the drive, and my cop’s radar begins to wail.

“Flash drive might be interesting.” Tomasetti states the obvious.

“What the hell is an Amish girl doing with a flash drive?” I wonder aloud. “The Planks didn’t have a computer or electricity.”

“And why would she leave it at the shop?”

“Good question.”

“Let’s take a quick look-see, then I’ll courier everything to the lab,” he tells me. “I’ll call ahead, make sure it gets priority.”

His unofficial status flicks through my mind, but I don’t say anything. I’m too focused on the items laid out in front of me.

Quickly, I don a pair of latex gloves, thumb the lid off the drive and slide it into my computer. A couple of keystrokes and my virus protection software deems it safe. I go to the drive and pull up the first file.

“Could be photos,” Tomasetti says.

“A face would be nice.”

“That’d be way too easy. And not necessarily incriminating.”

“Unless they’re inappropriate. Even if we can’t get him on murder, we might be able to get him on statutory rape or child pornography.” I’m aware of Windows Media Player spooling up on my screen. Tomasetti watching my every move. I use the mouse and click the Play button. Images materialize. Music. The punch of shock freezes me in place when I recognize Mary Plank’s face. “That’s her.”

Vaguely, I’m aware of Tomasetti coming around my desk to look at the screen. I can’t take my eyes off the images playing out. I see Mary Plank clad in traditional Amish clothing. She’s lying on a bed draped with a pink spread. I see a backdrop of cheap motel fare. Bad artwork. Mismatched lamps. Built-in night table. Chainsaw rock and roll.

We watch as a male enters the room. I can only see his back, but I take note of his appearance. White male. Late twenties. Light hair. Slight build. He’s wearing blue jeans and an untucked navy shirt. On the bed, Mary raises her head and looks at him. Her eyes are unfocused. Drugged, I think, but the revulsion on her face is unmistakable, and a slow burn of outrage spreads through me because I know whatever is about to take place isn’t consensual.

The male bends to her, kisses her hard on the mouth. She tries to twist away, but he pushes her back and begins to tear at her clothes. The sound of fabric ripping is drowned out by the blare of guitar and bass drum. Nausea seesaws in my gut when her pale flesh looms into view. I don’t want to bear witness to what happens next. But I can’t look away.

She still has the angular body of a pubescent. Gangly arms and skinny legs. Small breasts. Plain underclothes. She makes a halfhearted attempt to cover herself, but the man is relentless. Fisting her hair, he shoves her backward onto the bed and comes down between her legs. He shoves his jeans down to his knees. Then he’s pumping into her. Her legs flying apart with every thrust. Child-like hands clutching the sheets. Tears streaming from heavy-lidded eyes. For a moment I’m afraid I’m going to throw up the coffee I just drank.

“Show us your face, you cowardly son of a bitch,” Tomasetti growls.

But the man’s face is angled away from the camera. All we can see is his profile.

“Do you recognize him?” Tomasetti asks.

Here I am—a cop—and the obvious question didn’t even register. I’m too blown away by what he’s doing to her. A fifteen-year-old kid. An innocent girl. An Amish girl. “No.”

“We need a fuckin’ ID. What about your guys?” Rising, Tomasetti starts toward the door. “This is a small town. Someone might recognize him.”

I know it’s a stupid reaction, but all I can think is that I don’t want any of them to see her like this. I try hard to shake off the emotions curdling inside me. “Get Glock and T.J. in here.”

Tomasetti disappears into the hall. Thankful I have a few minutes to regroup, I pause the video. I’m in the process of bagging the rest of the items when Glock, T.J. and Tomasetti enter.

I tell them about the flash drive. “It’s tough to watch, but we’re trying to identify the male.”

“You think this is about the murders?” T.J. slides into a visitor chair.

I nod. “She’s a minor. This is pretty hard-core stuff.”

“There’s a motive for you.” Glock remains standing. “You think he’s local?”

“Maybe.” Tomasetti comes around my desk and stands next to me. “Play it.”

Using my mouse, I click the Play button.

The four of us stare at the screen, frightened kids watching a terrifying horror flick. My initial shock transforms into rage as the images play out. I notice more details this time around. Mary Plank isn’t just drugged; she’s stoned out of her mind. Unable to move. Unable to protect herself. I see a total disconnect from reality in her eyes.

“Why would she keep something like this?” I wonder aloud.

“Why would she keep it at the shop of all places?” T.J. throws in. “Pretty public place.”

“Maybe she was afraid someone would find it at the house,” Tomasetti adds. “So she took a chance, kept it at the shop.”

“Maybe she was going to take it to the police,” Glock offers.

We stare at the screen. The man appears. The angle and lighting are better now. He’s tall. Thin. Faded blue jeans. Strawberry blond hair. A weird flicker of recognition snaps through my brain.

“I’ve seen him before,” I say.

Tomasetti jabs a finger at the monitor. “That’s Long!”

Todd Long. The man we talked to just last night.

Rising, I grab my keys and jacket and address Glock. “I’m going to pick him up.”

Glock and Tomasetti exchange a boys-club look that puts my teeth on edge. They think I’m going to go vigilante on Long. In some small corner of my mind, I acknowledge the possibility is there. Rage pulses inside me like a pressure cooker on the verge of blowing. I want to make him pay for drugging and raping a fifteen-year-old girl.

“I’ll go with you,” Tomasetti says.

I know he will stop me, but I’m too damn angry to appreciate it. The self-destructive side of me wants to tell him to stay out of it. But the part of me that is a cop realizes any misconduct on my part could jeopardize the case.

“Fine,” I snarl.

“He might be at work,” Glock says. “You want me to swing by there?”

“Take T.J. or Pickles with you.” I look at Tomasetti, hoping the dark impulses jumping through my mind don’t show on my face. “Let’s go,” I say and we head for the door.