Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel

“In case you’re wondering, the Amish have no problem utilizing doctors or the ER when necessary. There are no rules against that.”
    “To tell you the truth, Chief, I wasn’t sure what the belief system was in that area,” he drawls. “Did you ever wonder what happened to Daniel? I mean, since he’d been at your parents’ farm that day and no one saw him again?”
    “Sure,” I tell him. “Everybody wondered.”
    He waits, watching me.
    I don’t believe the sheriff suspects me or anyone in my family of wrongdoing. But he hasn’t ruled us out and he’s not above using law enforcement interview techniques to trip me up. In this case, it’s the give-someone-enough-rope-and-they’ll-hang-themselves tactic. I don’t bite. “Like I said, I always thought Daniel took the money he was paid that day and left.”
    “Benjamin was adamant that Daniel wouldn’t do that. Said he was looking forward to getting baptized.”
    I shrug. “No offense to Benjamin, but sometimes the family is the last to know. The Amish don’t want to believe there are others living among them who no longer want to be Amish.”
    “I guess you got a point there.” He chuckles, a grandfatherly sound designed to disarm. I don’t buy it for a second. The sheriff is about as grandfatherly as Charles Manson. “So you think Daniel Lapp, an eighteen-year-old Amish kid, just up and left town without so much as a good-bye to his brother and parents?”
    “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
    When neither man responds, I look from Redmon to Fowler and back to Redmon. “Do you have any idea how he got down in that pit?”
    “We’re not sure,” Redmon tells me.
    “Do you suspect foul play?”
    “Coroner says someone shot him with a shotgun.”
    I tamp down a quick rise of alarm. “So you got results on the autopsy?”
    “Autopsy isn’t complete, it’s all preliminary at this point. Coroner didn’t have much to work with.” He makes a sound of distaste. “We’re talking bones and a few strands of rotted fabric, as you can imagine. While they were gathering samples for the lab, one of the technicians took a metal detector to the scene and found shotgun pellets in the soil. They’re pretty sure the pellets were inside Lapp’s body.”
    “So we’re talking homicide.”
    “Looks like.” He scratches his head. “I just can’t figure who’d want an Amish kid dead.”
    The phone on my desk buzzes; the sound echoes in my ears as if I’m standing in a cave. I let it go to voicemail. “Wasn’t that grain elevator closed down back then?” I ask.
    “Wilbur Seed Company closed down back in 1976,” Redmon tells me. “I checked.”
    “Perfect place to hide a body,” Fowler adds.
    Redmon’s gaze burns into mine. “Anyone in your family ever have any kind of dispute with Lapp? You know, over money or pay? Anything like that?”
    I’ve lived this moment a thousand times in the last seventeen years. I’ve coached myself on how to respond right down to my body language and the tone of my voice. Now that the time is here and there are two cops looking at me as if I know more than I’m letting on, all the words I had so diligently rehearsed fly out the window, leaving me alone with my conscience and the lie I’ve been living with half of my life.
    “Nothing that I know of,” I say. “My father was an honest man and fair with wages.” I put on a face of disappointment and look from man to man. “Whatever happened to Daniel Lapp didn’t happen at our farm.”
    “Well, I appreciate your answering my questions, Chief, especially when you’re occupied with that nasty hit-skip.” Redmon pulls his card from his shirt pocket and hands it to me. “We had to do our due diligence. You know how it is.”
    “No problem.” I set the card on my desk. “If I remember anything else, I’ll call you.”
    I stand and watch the men shuffle to the door. Tension runs like hot wires up and down the back of my neck. At the doorway to the hall, the sheriff stops and turns. “Oh, one more thing, Chief, before I forget. Did your father own a shotgun?”
    I stare at him, aware that my knees are shaking, my hands are shaking, so I lower myself into my chair and press them against the desktop. “My father kept a twenty-two. For hunting.”
    “Thanks.” He ducks his head slightly. “We’ll get out of your hair now.”
    The men trundle out, leaving me with a knot in my gut, an old, familiar fear in my heart, and the disturbing suspicion