I can’t help it; I laugh. “What else?”

  He glances at the clock. “What time does an Amish bishop get up?”

  “About four A.M.”

  Grinning, he reaches for his keys. “Anyone ever tell you you have excellent timing?”

  “No one has ever told me that.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Tomasetti and I are standing on the front porch of the farmhouse Bishop Troyer shares with his wife, Freda. This time, she doesn’t keep me waiting. The hinges squeak and the door rolls open a few inches.

  The Amish woman squints at me through the gap, thick-lensed glasses making her eyes look huge. “Ach du lieva,” she says in a gravelly voice. Oh my goodness. “You again.”

  Her eyes travel to Tomasetti and her upper lip curls. “Was der Schinner is letz?” What in the world is wrong?

  She may be a tiny thing, but the force of her personality more than makes up for her lack of physical stature. No one, Amish or English—maybe not even the bishop himself—speaks out of turn to Freda Troyer without risking a verbal beatdown—or a smack with the horsewhip she purportedly keeps on her kitchen counter.

  “I’m sorry to bother you so early this morning, Mrs. Troyer,” I say in Deitsch. “I need to speak with the bishop.”

  She doesn’t open the door any wider; she doesn’t give up any ground, literally or figuratively. Her stare flicks from Tomasetti and back to me. “If you think he’s got anything else to say about a dead man, I reckon you have another thing coming.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I say.

  A flash of annoyance, an instant of hesitation, and the door creaks open. Without speaking, she turns and trundles toward the kitchen.

  Tomasetti and I exchange looks and follow. In the kitchen, the aromas of pancakes and some kind of breakfast meat lace the air.

  “Sitz dich anne.” Sit yourself there. “Witt du kaffi?” Would you like coffee?

  “Dank.” I take one of six chairs at the rectangular table that’s draped with a checkered cloth. Tomasetti takes the chair across from me. Between us, a lantern flickers next to salt and pepper shakers in the shape of cats.

  Freda is pouring from an old-fashioned percolator when the back door swings open. Bishop Troyer enters with a gust of wind, a flurry of snow, and glares at me.

  “I thought I saw a car come up the lane.” His voice is like a dog growling through wool.

  “Guder mariye,” I say to him. Good morning.

  He looks at his wife and responds, “Never a good sign when trouble comes to your door before you’ve fed the cows.”

  “I had no say in the matter.” Huffing, she brings our cups to the table and sets them down. “Now come on over here and talk to this druvvel-machah before she gets too comfortable.” Troublemaker.

  CHAPTER 17

  “What’s so important that you’ve come to our home at four o’clock in the morning?”

  Bishop Troyer sits at the head of the kitchen table. Tomasetti and I are across from each other. Freda Troyer busies herself at the counter, clanging the occasional dish, listening.

  “Last time I was here, I asked you specifically if you’d had any problems with Milan Swanz,” I say. “You lied to me.”

  He takes the accusation in stride. “Milan Swanz is gone. He met a bad end. I’ll not speak ill of him. Nor should you.”

  Impatience thumps, but I knock it back, concentrate on keeping my focus. “Tell me about the night Milan Swanz and Clarence Raber came into your home and assaulted you and your wife.”

  Behind me, I hear Freda’s quick intake of breath.

  The bishop stares at me, unruffled, rheumy eyes as sharp and cold as the night outside. “I’ve nothing to say about Milan Swanz.”

  “I know what he did to you,” I tell him. “I know what he did to your wife.”

  The old man waves his hand dismissively. “Even as a girl, you always thought you knew more than you did.”

  “Bishop, this isn’t about me. It isn’t even really about Milan Swanz or his shortcomings. This is about finding the person responsible for his death.”

  “That is your path to walk, Kate Burkholder, not mine.”

  I bring my hand down on the tabletop hard enough to rattle the salt and pepper shakers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Freda jump. Across from me, Tomasetti’s brows go up.

  “Don’t give me that crap,” I snap. “Stop playing games with me. A man is dead. He was killed in the most horrific way imaginable. His killer is still out there. If he does it again, if he takes another life, it’s going to be on you, Bishop.”

  The old man doesn’t react. Nothing seems to shake him. Nothing moves him. “It is in God’s hands. Not yours. Not mine.”

  Freda comes to the table, sets a steaming cup in front of her husband, and addresses him, ignoring me and Tomasetti. “Milan Swanz was no friend of the Amisch.”

  The bishop’s expression is hard to read, but he doesn’t dispute her claim. Something within him seems to shift.

  Grumbling beneath her breath, Freda goes back to the counter.

  The silence that follows drags on for so long that I don’t think he’s going to respond. When he finally speaks, his voice is so low, I have to lean closer to hear.

  “Milan came in the middle of the night,” the bishop begins. “By the time I got downstairs, he’d already let himself into the kitchen. He’d been excommunicated for a few weeks by then, and he wanted to be reinstated. He’d been drinking, you know, crying and shouting. I told him it had been decided by the congregation and the decision was unanimous and final.”

  “What did he do?” I ask quietly.

  The bishop looks down at his hands on the tabletop in front of him. “He took my cane. Pushed me to the floor. Took a knife out of his pocket. And he cut my beard. Some of my hair. Hacked off a big chunk of it.”

  “I thought Milan was going to cut his throat,” Freda says from her place at the sink.

  The bishop waves his hand at her.

  “Was Clarence Raber with him?” I ask.

  “Ja.”

  “Did Clarence participate in the attack?” I ask.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t do anything to stop it either,” Freda puts in.

  I look at her. “Did Milan hurt you, too?”

  “He pushed me down,” she huffs. “Tore off my kapp. Sawed off some of my hair.”

  I nod, trying to absorb the scenes they are describing. An elderly Amish couple attacked in the middle of the night. I consider what that could mean in terms of Swanz’s fate. If someone found out about it …

  “Mr. and Mrs. Troyer, does anyone know what happened that night?” I ask. “Did you talk to anyone about it?”

  Even as I ask, I realize the question is moot. Bertha Swanz knew about it. The women who’d told her knew. Still, I let the question stand to see where it leads.

  The couple exchanges a look. “The Diener,” the bishop says. “I told them. I thought they should know.”

  The Diener, or “servants,” are the elected officials who are the leaders of the church district. In Painters Mill, that includes the bishop, the deacon, and the minister. I think of Monroe Hershberger, the deacon whose cornfield was destroyed, and make a mental note to talk to him again.

  “Can you think of anyone else who might’ve been wronged by Milan?” This from Tomasetti. “Someone he’d hurt? Or crossed in some way?”

  “The Amish are not violent,” the bishop says adamantly, then turns his iron gaze on me. “You know that.”

  “Why did you and the Diener and the congregation finally decide to excommunicate Milan?” I ask.

  A moment’s hesitation and then the bishop shakes his head. “There were many reasons. Too many. Milan was a fool and his own worst enemy.”

  It doesn’t elude me that he didn’t answer the question.

  As if unable to maintain her silence any longer, Freda slings the kitchen towel over her shoulder and comes back to the table, sets her hands on her hips. “I was close with his mamm for a time. We thought Milan’s misbehaving would get better once he got baptized. Got married. Had children. Responsibility, you know.” She shakes her head. “But it didn’t get better. And we began to hear things.”

  The bishop looks up at her and frowns. “A man’s marriage is not the business of others.”

  “A child being hurt is,” Freda snaps.

  “What kinds of things did you hear?” I ask.

  She tightens her mouth. “We saw little Aaron come to worship with his arm in a cast. I noticed the way Bertha wouldn’t look at me. Saw a black eye on her, too, once or twice. Said she fell down the steps.” She clucks her lips in disgust. “As if I was born yesterday. Wouldn’t talk about it. But I knew. All of us knew.”

  “They don’t need to hear all of that,” the bishop grumbles in Deitsch.

  “Sei ruich.” Be quiet. The Amish woman utters the words gently, then puts her hand on his shoulder and pats it. “A few days later, Bertha came to me. She was at wits’ end. Needed to talk. To an elder, you know. A woman. And I got an earful.”

  “Freda.” There’s a warning in the bishop’s voice.

  His wife pays him no heed. “He’d been hitting her. The little ones too—and not just spanking when they needed it.”

  The bishop picks up his spoon and taps it hard against the tabletop. “Enough.”

  I look from the bishop to Freda. “Did anyone else know Bertha and her children were being abused?” I ask. “A father? Brother? Uncle? Someone who might’ve wanted to protect them? Someone who might’ve confronted Milan about it?”

  “We’ve said our due,” the bishop growls. “You’ll have to ask Bertha about the rest of it.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Troyer.” Tomasetti’s voice seems loud and deep in the silence of the old farmhouse. “Do either of you have any idea who might’ve done that to Swanz?”

  The bishop stares at him for a long time. Wily, intelligent eyes belie the failing body, and not for the first time I’m reminded that there’s nothing even remotely frail about David Troyer.

  “No,” he says simply.

  I look at Freda, but she turns back to the counter without meeting my gaze.

  I rise. “Thank you for the coffee.” Without waiting for a response, I start for the door.

  I hear Tomasetti behind me as I stride through the living room. The hiss of the potbellied stove in the corner. The tinkle of ice crystals against the north window.

  Frustrated that we didn’t glean any new information, I yank open the door, step onto the porch, take in a breath of cold air.

  “That was a waste of time,” I mutter.

  “Old man’s a hard case.” Tomasetti closes the door behind us, looks out into the darkness. “Why the hell did I get the impression that they know more than they’re letting on?”

  “Welcome to Amish country.”

  We’re midway down the steps when I hear the front door creak. I turn to see Freda close it behind her and come down the steps.

  “I knew he wouldn’t talk to you,” she says.

  “Nice of you to come out and tell me that.” I start to turn, but she stops me.

  “Katie. Wait.” Her face is a mosaic of conflict, of warring emotions, and a loyalty she cannot betray.

  Because I understand, because I’ve felt all of those things myself when I was Amish, I wait.

  “There are whispers,” the woman says quietly. “About a group of men. Former Amish mostly. Mennonite and Hutterite, too, maybe. Anabaptists, you know.”

  “What about them?”

  “These men … Katie, I don’t know if you can understand. The things they do … it goes against everything we know. Everything we believe. It goes against God’s will.” She struggles for a moment, then stiffens her spine. “These men … their souls are dark. They know that when they die, they will not be going to heaven. They live with that knowledge. They accept it. Somehow, they see the ungodliness of that as the freedom they need to do the things that a godly man cannot.”

  I stare at her, perplexed, and yet at the same time I feel a distant memory scratch at the back of my brain. A story or rumors that I’d heard in my youth but were lost over the years.

  “What does this group have to do with what happened to Milan Swanz?” I ask.

  “These men have given their souls to da deivel,” she tells me. The devil. “They do bad things—very bad things—but for a greater good. If that’s even possible. Things that a good Amisch cannot and will not do.”

  “Are you telling me these men, this group, had something to do with the murder?”

  “I couldn’t say.” She shrugs. “I always thought it was a rumor. A shtoahri.” A story. She lowers her voice. “Now, after all of this, I’m not so sure. I think there may be some truth to it.”

  I almost can’t believe what I’m hearing. Not from the bishop’s wife. The notion that such a group exists is so crazy I can’t get my head around it. “Freda, how do you even know about these men?”

  “I don’t. But I’ll tell you what I do know.” She pauses as if searching her memory. “I have relatives in Shipshewana. I spent many a happy time there with my cousins when I was little. Spent a whole summer there once when my niece was born. Anyway, an Amish man was killed that last summer I was there. A druvvel-machah by the name of Marvin Lengacher.” Troublemaker. “Awful thing. Hanged himself in the barn. Or so everyone believed.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Turned out someone did that to him. Tied him up and hung him up by his neck. I was thirteen years old that summer. Scared me and my little cousins half to death.”

  “Who did it?” I ask.

  “Everyone was talking about the Schwertlers. Even the elders were whispering about it, saying they’re the ones came for Marvin and done him like that. And it never got told to the police.”

  I scribble the name in my notebook. “Who are the Schwertlers?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Freda, what year was that?”

  “Well, I’m eighty-six this fall. My goodness, happened over seventy years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “Do you have any names?”

  “No one knows their names.”

  “How many people in this group?”

  “No one knows that, either, Katie.” She makes the statement with impatience, as if I should already know the answer.

  I look down at my notes. “Freda, if that happened over seventy years ago, whoever belonged to that group would be elderly now. Most would be gone.”

  “Unless there’s new blood for every generation. There are a lot of fallen men out there, ready to step up to do what they need to do.”

  “Are you telling me this group of men still exists and they’re in Painters Mill?”

  “They’re everywhere,” she whispers.

  “How do I find them?”

  Freda glances over her shoulder, toward the door, which has remained shut. In the back of my mind, I wonder if she has any idea how crazy her story sounds. How unlikely it is that any of what she’s told me is seated in reality.

  “I don’t know,” she tells me.

  “Is there someone I can talk to who knows about them?”

  “I heard there’s a Hutterite man.” She whispers quickly now, as if the words aren’t meant to be spoken aloud or heard by others. “He lives in a compound over to Dundee.”

  Another vague memory, something I’ve heard …

  “What’s his name?” Tomasetti speaks up for the first time.

  “Last name is Hofer. That’s all I know.” She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t even be speaking to you about it. Most Amish don’t believe this group exists. Call it folklore. But I’m old enough to remember.”

  The door creaks. I glance past her, see Bishop Troyer standing in the doorway, holding open the door, looking out at us. “Die zeit fer kumma inseid is nau.” The time to come inside is now.

  “Find him,” the old woman whispers, and turns away.

  I call out her name.

  She doesn’t stop and she doesn’t look back.

  CHAPTER 18

  “Do you have any earthly idea what the hell she was talking about?” It is the ten-thousand-dollar question and Tomasetti is the one to pose it.

  We’re in the Explorer, parked on the street outside the police station. We didn’t talk much after leaving the Troyer farm earlier. Neither of us has a clue what to think of Freda Troyer’s assertion that there’s a group of Anabaptist men who do away with fellow evildoers.

  “She is elderly,” he says slowly, “is it possible—”

  “This is going to sound odd, but I think I’ve heard of them.”

  He makes a sound of incredulity. “Are you saying you believe this group actually exists?”

  “I’m saying I remember a story like that from when I was a kid. Like a ghost story that gets repeated and yet no one really believes it.”

  He looks dubious.

  “I don’t blame you for being skeptical. I’m right there with you.”

  I consider the scene back at the Troyer farm for a moment. “I think it’s noteworthy that the bishop stayed inside while Freda talked to us. If he’d objected, you can bet he would have stopped her.”

  “So, she did it with his blessing.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I might think he wanted us to have the information.”

  “If we can even refer to that as ‘information’ at this point.”

  I frown at him. “I’m going to dig around. See what I can find. Run the name. See if anything pops.”

  “In the meantime, if I were to plug a few signature aspects into ViCAP, what the hell would they be?”

  ViCAP is a database administered by the FBI that’s used to match connections between cases. I shrug. “Amish. Homicide. Suicide. Religious. Fire. Burning. Wooded area. Barn. Ritualistic.” I feel my brows furrow as my memory stirs. “Tomasetti, I do recall reading about a Hutterite community opening a business in Tuscarawas County. They’ve been around a few years.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly is a Hutterite community?”

  “The Hutterites are Anabaptist, as are the Amish, but the similarities end there. The Hutterites use more technology—like vehicles and electricity—and seem to have more industrial-type businesses. Probably the biggest difference is that they live in a commune-type colony.”