Gone Missing (Kate Burkholder 4)

The air is overly warm and unpleasantly humid. But it’s the smell that unsettles me. Corrugated steel panels comprise the walls. In the center of the room, a dead hog hangs suspended by a single rear leg, a chain wrapped around the area between the hoof and hock. The chain is attached to a pulley affixed to a massive steel beam overhead. A second Amish man, presumably Perry Mast, stands next to the dead animal with a large knife—the sticking knife—in hand. There’s a drain cut into the concrete floor and blood still drips from the hog’s snout.
    “Fuck me,” Tomasetti mutters.
    “Maybe we can do this outside,” I hear myself say.
    Yoder looks at the hog approvingly. “That’s a good bleed, Perry,” he says.
    The other man doesn’t even look up. With gloved hands, he shoves the giant carcass toward a massive steaming vat. I don’t want to watch what comes next, but I can’t look away. I remember my datt and brother doing the same thing. They called it “the scalding tank.” Not bothering with gloves, Yoder jumps in to help guide the carcass toward the vat. He quickly checks an industrial-size thermometer and nods. Using the pulley and chain, they lower the carcass into the hot water.
    “Mir hen Englischer bsuch ghadde, ” Yoder says when the carcass is lowered. We have non Amish visitors.
    Mast finally glances at us. “Es waarken maulvoll gat.” There’s nothing good about that.
    Yoder lowers his voice and, speaking in Pennsylvania Dutch, tells him about us drawing our sidearms. Yoder breaks into laughter again, unabashedly amused. Mast’s reaction is more subtle. If I hadn’t been watching him, I would have missed the whisper of a smile on his lips.
    He motions toward the hog. “When the hair slips easily, pull it out. I won’t be long.”
    Without looking at us, he peels off his gloves and removes his blood-spattered apron. He tosses both on the scraping table and starts toward us. Perry Mast is a tall, thin man with sagging jowls and hound-dog eyes. He wears black work trousers with a dark blue shirt, black suspenders, a black vest, and a flat-brimmed straw hat.
    “I am Perry Mast,” he says by way of greeting.
    Tomasetti and I introduce ourselves, letting him know we’re with BCI. Neither of us offers our hand.
    “Is this about my son?” he asks.
    The question is clearly devoid of hope. And I wonder how many times during the last nine years he asked other law-enforcement officials the same question. I wonder how many times their answers tore the last remnants of hope from his heart.
    “I’m sorry, no. There’s a girl who’s missing,” I tell him. “An Amish girl. Annie King.”
    “ Ja. ” He closes his eyes briefly. “I heard.”
    Tomasetti motions toward the door. “Is your wife home, Mr. Mast? We’d like to speak with her, as well.”
    Mast looks as if he’s going to refuse; then his shoulders slump and he seems to resign himself to unavoidable unpleasantness. “This way,” he says, and leads us through the door.
    A few minutes later, Perry Mast, Tomasetti, and I are sitting at the table in their small, cluttered kitchen. The interior of the house isn’t much neater than the exterior. Dozens of jars of canned fruits and vegetables cover every available surface on the avocado green countertops. A hand-painted bread box—perhaps from the Branch Creek Joinery—encloses a crusty loaf of bread. A well-seasoned cast-iron skillet sits atop the big potbellied stove. The open cabinets expose stacks of mismatched dishes—blue Melmac and chipped pieces of stoneware—and sealed jars of honey with chunks of honeycomb inside. Homemade window treatments dash the final vestiges of daylight, giving the kitchen a cavelike countenance. A kerosene-powered refrigerator wheezes and groans. The lingering sulfur stink of manure has me thinking twice about coffee.
    Irene Mast stands at the counter, running water into an old-fashioned percolator. She’s a substantial woman, barely over five feet tall, with thinning silver hair and a bald spot at her crown. She wears a light blue dress with a white apron and low-heeled, practical shoes. The ties of her kapp dangle down her back. She hasn’t said a word since we were introduced a few minutes ago, but she immediately set about making coffee and bringing out a tin of peanut-butter cookies.
    “I understand you’re a deacon, Mr. Mast,” I say.
    The man looks down at the plate in front of him, gives a single, solemn nod.
    “It is a