Page 73 of Shamed

“Our neighbor is going to take me. He’s harnessing the buggy horse now.”

“I’ll ask one of my deputies to let him know you got a ride.” When she hesitates, I add, “I’m going anyway; you may as well ride with me. I’ll get you there a lot faster.”

While Freda gathers her things—a canvas bag filled with what looks like knitting supplies, a small devotional book—I radio Glock and ask him to tell the neighbor that I’ll be driving the bishop’s wife to the hospital.

“You guys figure out where the shooting took place?” I ask him.

“Deputy followed the blood trail,” he tells me. “Looks like it happened where County Road 150 intersects with Township Road 104.”

I know the area. It’s rural, not many houses. The perfect place for an ambush. “Anyone see anything?”

“We’re canvassing now.”

“Tire marks? Anything like that?”

“Still looking around, Chief.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I drop the cell into my pocket, turn to see the bishop’s wife standing in the doorway, clutching her bag, staring at me. “Let’s go,” I say.

She follows me outside. I feel the stares track us as I make my way to the Explorer, but I don’t make eye contact with anyone. I open the passenger door for her, and then I round the front of the vehicle and get in. I don’t see Tomasetti anywhere. I put the vehicle in gear and we start down the lane.

I raise my hand to the deputy at the road, then make a right and head toward Millersburg. I only have a few minutes to ask the questions that need to be asked. I have no idea what we’ll find when we arrive at Pomerene Hospital. Glock had said it’s bad. The one thing I am certain of is that this woman may hold the key.

“I know Bishop Schwartz from Scioto County brought a newborn baby to Bishop Troyer seven years ago,” I say as I pull onto the highway. “I know the baby was taken to Miriam and Ivan Helmuth.”

She looks over at me, anguish churning in her eyes. “I don’t know what that has to do with what’s happened to my husband.”

“It has everything to do with it, Freda, and if you know anything at all that will help me get to the bottom of it, you need to speak up right now.”

I tell her about the eyeglasses, my trip to Crooked Creek. “Freda, look at my face. I was ambushed and beaten. Bishop Schwartz is dead. The midwife who helped bring that child up here was murdered this morning. Now your husband has been shot. If you care one iota about that little girl, you need to start talking.”

The Amish woman stares straight forward, frozen, except for the occasional tremor that runs through her. For the first time I see tears on her cheeks. But she doesn’t make a sound.

I push harder. “What if he kills little Elsie Helmuth?” I shout. “What if he goes after Miriam and Ivan or their children? Is all that holier-than-thou-art silence of yours worth it if someone else is killed?”

“Don’t you dare speak to me in that manner, Kate Burkholder. You of all people. Backslider. Maulgrischt,” she hisses. Pretend Christian. “Your mother didn’t know what to do with you and you broke her heart.”

She’s getting herself worked up. Maybe because it’s easier to be angry with me than it is to be terrified for the life of her husband.

I keep my voice level. “This isn’t about me.”

She’s not finished. “Mer sott em sei eegne net verlosse; Gott verlosst die seine nicht.” One should not abandon one’s own; God does not abandon his own. “You did just that, Katie. And now look at you, talking to me as if I’m somehow to blame.”

I’ve heard the words a hundred times since I came back to Painters Mill. I want to believe they no longer affect me. That I’m immune. Above it. But even after all this time, the small part of me that is Amish—that will always be Amish—recoils from the sting.

“That’s enough,” I snap. “I know you’re hurting and afraid, but I need your help and I need it right now. I’m trying to do the right thing. Do my job. Do you understand?”

Turning her head, she looks out the window, shutting me out.

I hit her with the coup de grâce. “If Elsie Helmuth is killed, it’s on your shoulders, Freda. You got that?”

Silence reigns for the span of several minutes. I make the turn onto US 62 and head north. Neither of us speaks until I’m stopped at the traffic light at Jackson Street in Millersburg. The courthouse is to my right, the old Hotel Millersburg to my left.

“You have to understand,” she says in a strangled voice. “Being the bishop’s wife … I see things. I hear things. That doesn’t mean I’m told what’s going on.”

“Tell me what you know.”