Page 32 of Rage

The woman’s face contorts as if she’s grappling with some acute physical pain. “Those two boys have been best friends since they were little.”

“Aaron’s been helping Samuel with that tree-planting business of his,” Doyle tells me.

“Aaron was working for Samuel?” I ask.

“On and off,” Doyle says. “Aaron puts in a full week at the farm store, you know. Helps Samuel when he can. On his days off mostly.”

“Have there been any problems between the two of them?” I ask. “Any disagreements? Over money? The business? A woman? Anything you can think of?”

“Not those two,” Doyle says adamantly. “They got along like brothers. Never seen them argue about anything. Not once in all the years they’ve been friends.”

“Do either of you have any idea where I might find Aaron? Is there someone he visits? A place where he goes for leisure? Fishing or hunting?”

Doyle’s eyes skate away from mine. “I don’t know where he is.” He concentrates a little too hard on picking up his coffee cup and sipping. “Hard telling these days.” Ellen sets her hand on her husband’s arm as if to shush him, but he shakes it off. “Chief Burkholder, we had a falling-out with Aaron a few weeks back,” she says. “He hasn’t come around since.”

“What was the falling-out about?” I ask.

The man’s eyes hit the floor. I wait a beat, but no one responds, so I turn my attention to his wife. “Mrs. Shetler?”

She presses her hand to her mouth, looks at me over the tops of fingers, her face anguished. “I can’t.”

Impatience flares, but I curb it, turn my attention to her husband. “In light of what happened to Samuel, I think we may have reason to be concerned about Aaron. I need to find him and make sure he’s okay.”

Doyle raises his gaze to mine, holds it. “I told him not to come around anymore.”

“Why?” I ask.

Ellen drops her hand away from her face. “We thought he was a bad influence on the children. They’re younger, you know. Innocent.”

“How was he a bad influence?” I ask.

The couple look at each other again. It’s obvious that whatever problem they’re having with their son, they don’t want to discuss it.

After a moment, Doyle sighs. “There have been some changes in the boy over the last few months,” he says. “We don’t know what got into him.”

“What kind of changes?” I ask.

“He’s a good boy,” Ellen puts in.

Doyle waves her off. “Wearing all them fancy clothes. Driving that car of his. Hanging out with all them slick Englischers.”

“What Englischers?” I sit up straighter. “Give me a name.”

“Don’t know their names,” he snaps. “Don’t care to know.”

I see anger, guilt, and shame on his face. A too-long moment of silence ensues. I’m about to give them another push when Ellen puts her hand on her husband’s shoulder, then turns her attention to me. “We’ve had some … tax problems last couple of years,” she says. “You know, with the farm. We owed, but we didn’t have the money to pay.”

“Ain’t nothing we can’t handle on our own,” Doyle grumbles.

She grimaces at her husband. “We’re managing, but … last time Aaron was here, he tried giving us a big bundle of cash money. He said we should take it, use it to pay off the taxes, and be thankful for it.”

“Don’t know where he came into that kind of cash,” Doyle adds. “Don’t know what he had to do to get it. The boy works at the farm store and he don’t make that much. I wanted no part of that kind of handout.”

The Amish woman sighs her husband’s name. “We didn’t take the money.”

Doyle shakes his head. “When he argued with me, I told him to leave. You know what he had the gall to do?” The muscles in his jaw tighten as if he’s grinding his teeth. “He gave a stack of twenty-dollar bills to William, our sixteen-year-old.”

“How much money are we talking about?” I ask.