Once more, he called out her name and listened closely before moving a few more yards upstream searching for her footprints in the muddy banks. From somewhere downstream he heard water splashing, then a dog’s bark. Male voices murmured in the crisp air, too muffled for him to make out what they were saying over the noise of the nearby water, but they weren’t far away. His instincts told him to go towards them and he scrambled up the small slope before crossing back over the bridge. All he could think about was Rachel and that they had found her frozen body floating in the icy water. She must have gone to the bridge, perhaps sat there to write the letter before she slipped and fell in. Guilt overcame him, nearly drowning the little bit of sanity he had left. The men’s voices grew louder and soon, between the trees, Caleb could see where the men stood next to the water, two canines by their heels. It took no time at all for Caleb to reach them and when he came close, he noticed something white dangling from the tip of a stick that one of the men held in his hand.

  “What is it? Did you find her?” Caleb’s slightly panicked voice drifted toward them.

  “We don’t know for certain yet,” the team leader quickly replied when Caleb came to stand next to them. “One of the dogs picked up a scent and led us straight here.”

  Caleb’s stomach turned as his eyes homed in on the dangling piece of cloth. When he spoke, his voice cracked.

  “It’s a covering, a bonnet. All the girls wear them.”

  The man beckoned for one of his team members to hand him a plastic zip bag, and Caleb watched as he lowered the bonnet into the bag before he sealed it.

  “Scour the area!” he yelled out. “All along the banks on both sides. She can’t be far, but we need to hurry. The storm is rolling in. Let’s go!”

  The man’s words echoed in his ears as Caleb watched the search party deploy, two men at a time while the dogs sniffed their way along the banks in search of Rachel’s scent. Realizing the dogs might pick up her smell from the letters in his pocket he made sure to stand against the wind, keeping a fair distance from the dogs as he went after them. Above his head the dark clouds grew thick and heavy, reminding them that the storm was imminent. The wind had turned thin and icy, warning of the snowstorm. He could no longer feel his face or the tingling in his hands from the cold water. It was as if his body had gone entirely numb. Except for the dread that lingered in the pit of his stomach. That he could still feel.

  If he still had any doubts, finding the bonnet just confirmed his earlier suspicions that Rachel was in trouble and that something horrible had happened to his sister.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the time the first flakes of snow fell to the ground between the leafless trees, there was still no sign of Rachel. It had been nearly four hours of searching; two since they had found her bonnet. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, the light snow now a fierce blizzard.

  The search commander’s voice rang over the walkie-talkie that dangled from Caleb’s hip. He was rounding up his men and calling off the search. Caleb’s heart jumped in his chest. “No!” he yelled out to a dead space in front of him then snatched the radio from where he had clipped it onto his belt.

  “You can’t stop now,” he yelled into the receiver. “My sister is out here somewhere! She won’t survive another night in this cold. Please! You have to keep the search going,” Caleb pushed, desperate to find Rachel by any means necessary.

  “I’m sorry, Caleb, I have no choice. The weather has turned and there’s no sign of it letting up. I can’t risk my men getting caught in these conditions. It’s too dangerous. The dogs also need to rest. As soon as the blizzard dies down, we’ll pick up where we’ve left off. But for now my hands are tied,” the search leader’s voice came back over the walkie.

  The radio clicked off and Caleb found himself unable to move. He had taken shelter from the blustering wind behind a tree where it felt his feet were stuck to the layer of snow beneath them.

  “Where are you, Rachel?” His voice drifted off in the howling wind.

  A sudden gust slammed into his cheek causing him to shut his eyes and cover his face with his arm. The team commander was right; it was ludicrous trying to find anyone in this weather. Yet, he couldn’t get himself to turn back and abandon the search. If Rachel had fallen into the river and managed to get out, she’d be nearly frozen by now. He had to keep looking, at least until the sun went down.

  Without his scarf around his neck, his ears took a beating from the icy wind, and he pulled his coat’s collar higher and over his chin, sheltering his eyes with his hands.

  “Rachel!” He continued to shout out, repeating it several times as he kept walking all along the banks of the river.

  There was no sign of her anywhere.

  Exhausted and bitterly cold, Caleb dropped to his knees, his bare palms stopping him from falling flat onto his face as they scraped against the frozen soil in front of him. The icy grasses and weeds pushed up between his frozen fingers, nearly swallowing his bare hands whole. He couldn’t give up, shouldn’t give up, he told himself. Not this time, not ever.

  Get up! His mind tried to convince his frozen limbs, fighting to stay awake as exhaustion and hypothermia threatened to overtake him. But his arms and legs refused to obey, and he could do nothing but stay in place on all fours, his head hanging forward between his shoulders.

  “Caleb!” A voice came toward him from somewhere behind.

  “Caleb!” he heard again, this time right beside him as two sets of strong hands wrapped around his armpits and lifted him to his feet. He looked up to find Angus’ face in front of him.

  “We got you, Caleb. Lean on us,” Angus told him, but Caleb argued back.

  “No, Sheriff, I can’t leave her. We have to keep looking for Rachel,” he said, his speech stuttering from his teeth chattering.

  “You’ll die out here,” Angus said. “We have to get you inside. We’ll resume the search as soon as the storm dies down, I give you my word.”

  Caleb wanted to fight them off and keep looking for Rachel, but he no longer had control over his frozen limbs. Nor did he have control over the thoughts that now plagued him, that his sister was likely somewhere dead and buried beneath the snow.

  All he had left was a flicker of hope nestled in a tiny corner in the back of his mind. That hope helped him cling onto the notion that perhaps she had found somewhere to hide from the storm, a hollowed out tree, or a makeshift shelter she’d craftily thrown together. She was smart, and she was a fighter. If anyone could survive, Rachel could.

  Caleb let Angus and one of the members of the search team carry him back to safety. The bishop had offered for the search team to bunk together in the small hall the community used for church gatherings on Sundays. Although they were left to sleep on the floor, it was at least dry. In addition to a fire in the fireplace, several cast iron fire caldrons on tripods were also positioned around the open room, providing warmth that instantly enveloped Caleb’s face as they placed him on the floor beside one.

  “Let’s get him some dry clothes,” Angus said.

  But when one of the men tried to remove Caleb’s wet coat, he wrestled against it.

  “No, leave it on,” Caleb said, his voice as stern as he could make it amidst the shivers.

  “You’ll get ill if we leave it on,” Angus intervened.

  “No! I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s just your coat, Caleb. I’ll hang it up over there, in front of the fire,” Angus tried again.

  Caleb turned his shivering body away from the two men and shuffled closer to the fireplace.

  “It’ll dry off soon enough,” he mumbled.

  “If you insist, my friend,” Angus said. “Can I at least persuade you to have a cup of warm soup. Your mother was kind enough to whip us up a pot.” Angus pushed a mug of soup under Caleb’s nose.

  The once familiar staple in his mother’s kitchen teased his senses and he closed his hands around the cup.

  “Thanks. Sorry for before,” he muttered a swift apology to Angus.

  “It’s fine, I understand. This is all very upsetting. She’s your sister. I would have done the same in your shoes.”

  As the hearty soup started to thaw his body from the inside, allowing life back into his body, so too did the dreaded feeling in his stomach return. After a second helping of chicken and vegetable soup, Caleb felt like talking again. He turned to Angus who sat nearby.

  “Do you think she’s dead?”

  Angus took a brief pause before he answered.

  “I’d like to believe she’s still alive. We don’t even know for sure if the head covering is Rachel’s. For all we know the wind could have blown it off a washing line and dragged it into the river. Until the lab confirms it, we just don’t know for sure.”

  But Caleb did. He knew it was his sister’s, knew she had been at the bridge. The letter proved it. He wanted desperately to read it, to see if she had mentioned anything more about her visits to the doctor, if she knew anything about his death.

  His hand went quietly to the bulge on the side of his coat where he’d wrapped the wet letter in his scarf and hidden it in his pocket. If only he could dry it out next to the fire. Perhaps once everyone was asleep, he mused.

  “No matter what, Caleb, we need to keep hoping and praying that your sister is still alive. We will find her,” Angus said as he got to his feet. “You should get some sleep. I’m told the blizzard will be gone by daybreak.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Angus was awakened by a woman’s scream. He’d spent the night sitting up against one of the walls and had hardly slept a wink. At first, he thought he was imagining it but when another wailing scream chilled him to the bone, he knew it was real.

  Jumping up, he ran to the door to look outside. It was early and the sun had just poked its first rays through the clouds. Several early risers had heard the screams too and were running down towards one of the barns. Angus trailed behind to where a small group of men, women, and older children stood huddled outside the barn door, guarded by two middle-aged farmers.

  “What’s going on?” Angus asked when he found his way to the front of the huddle.

  The two Amish men exchanged looks before one answered.

  “One of our men, well, he’s no longer with us,” he said struggling to find the words.

  “He’s dead?” Angus clarified to which they both nodded.

  “Do you know what happened?” Angus pressed.

  “We don’t know, Sheriff, but it’s not very pleasing to the eye. Bishop Yoder and a few of the elders are inside. It’s better to leave them be.”

  “Not if the man was murdered,” Angus said sternly sending gasps through the small gathering behind him.

  The way the two farmers’ eyes doubled in size told Angus they were as shocked by his statement as the onlookers behind him.

  “Let me through, please, gentlemen,” he added.

  Without uttering another word, the men parted like the Red Sea and opened the barn door for Angus to enter. The moment he stepped inside and the doors closed again behind him, Bishop Yoder’s voice bellowed toward him.

  “With respect, Sheriff, this matter doesn’t concern you,” he said as he hurried toward Angus.

  “The respect is mutual, Bishop. However, this community does fall within my jurisdiction. As the county sheriff this is very much my business.”

  The bishop shook his head, his face stern.

  “We deal with these matters privately. This is a working farm and accidents happen.”

  Angus felt the frustration push harder into his already half-clenched fists.

  “If indeed it was an accident, I’d like to make my own assessment, ” Angus said then walked toward where the elders were blocking him from seeing the corpse on the floor behind them.

  ”Kindly ask your men to step away from the body,” Angus instructed when he was stopped by men whose eyes looked as stern as the bishop’s. When they didn’t move, Angus held a firm gaze as he waited for the bishop to comply. The bishop must have gestured for them to step aside because moments later they cleared the way. Angus saw that the dead body on the floor beside them looked strikingly similar to that of Dr. Fisher’s.

  It was all Angus needed to instantly know that whoever was laying on the floor in front of him had died in the exact way the doctor had and that all evidence was now pointing to the fact that Dr. Fisher had been murdered. But what was even clearer to Angus was that he now had two mysterious murders on his hands with no known cause of death.

  “Gentlemen, I am sorry to inform you,” Angus started as he turned to face the bishop, “that this was no accident. This man was murdered. I’m going to need you to step outside and prepare yourselves for a little bit of disruption around here as we further investigate the matter.”

  “How could you know for certain that he was killed? Looks to me like he had a stroke. It happens,” the bishop argued.

  “Actually, I do know for a fact that this man was murdered because this is precisely how we found Dr. Fisher two days ago.”

  The men murmured amongst each other as Angus shared the information. They moved to one side and listened as the bishop spoke to them in hushed tones. When he turned back to face Angus his voice was calm.

  “Whatever you need to find out who did this, Sheriff, you have our full support. All I ask is that you keep me informed and allow me to convey the news to his wife and children. And if at all possible, keep the disruption to the minimum, please.”

  Angus nodded, his mind already on the magnitude of the situation.

  “I’ll try my utmost, Bishop, but in the meantime, I would appreciate if you could lock down the community as soon as possible. I don’t want anyone coming in or leaving. Also, I will need to speak to whoever found him so if you can point that person out to me, please, I would appreciate it.”

  The bishop nodded in agreement and proceeded toward the exit, his men in step behind him.

  “They’re outside, two of our younger adults who came in to do their chores this morning.”

  Angus followed him to where the bishop pointed at two youths no more than twenty years old, sitting to one side on a bale of hay.

  “One last thing, Bishop. I’m going to need the victim’s name, please.” Angus had his black pocketbook in hand.

  “Jonathan Lapp. He lived a few houses over from that paddock over there. Now if you’ll excuse us, Sheriff, I have to pay his family a visit.”

  “Thank you. If you can let Mrs. Lapp know, I’ll be popping around myself in a little while. We do still have a missing girl to find so as soon as the search party heads off, I’ll be stopping by to see her.”

  The bishop’s forehead drew into a deep frown.

  “Do you think Rachel had something to do with Brother Lapp’s death? Is that why she ran away?”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to any conclusions about Rachel. At this point, we don’t know for a fact that she did run away. We found what we believe is her head covering in the stream so it’s entirely possible that she could have slipped and fallen into the water. We’re hopeful that she might have found shelter from the storm last night and that we will locate her today.”

  Satisfied with that answer, the bishop and his men left and Angus called his office to report the incident.

  His thoughts were consumed by the events that had taken place and he quickly sent a text message to the rescue team telling them to start Rachel’s search without him. This case now demanded all of his attention.

  Angus walked over to the pair of youths who had found Mr. Lapp’s body in the barn where they sat waiting for him between stacks of hay bales. The boy, no older than twenty, sat with his head in his hands while the girl, who strangely matched him in both age and appearance, sat fiddling with her fingers in her lap.

  “Hi, I’m Sheriff Reid. You can call me Angus if you’d like,“ Angus said when the young man with the boyish face looked up at him.

  “I’m Timmy,” he replied. “This is my sister, Justine.”

  “We’re twins,” she added when Angus’ face revealed his curiosity.

  “That explains it,” Angus smiled. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  The youngsters shook their heads in unison.

  “Can you tell me what happened - how it came that you found Mr. Lapp?”

  “There’s not much to say. We went in at five to fetch fresh fodder and he was just laying there, all curled up with his eyes—” Timmy dropped his head between his shoulders again.

  “Did you see or hear anything or anyone else when you went in?”

  Timmy’s eyes grew big.

  “I thought it was a stroke or something. Did someone do this to him?” he asked, looking shocked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to establish. So, did you hear or see anything strange when you went in this morning?”

  Once more, they both shook their heads.

  “Only—” Timmy started saying then stopped.

  “Only what, Timmy?”

  “The footprints in the snow when we first walked up to the barn. I thought it was strange, that’s all.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because they were coming out of the barn, not going in. I just thought it was strange considering we had all this snow last night so someone must have come out of the barn just before we got there.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Timmy’s astute observation made Angus promptly look over his shoulder at the barn, his eyes scanning the area in front of the door. The ground had turned to a muddy slush as a result of the foot traffic from the onlookers and others that had already entered the barn. He hurried to the barn’s entrance, disappointment surging through him as he took a closer look. He was careless. He should have known to protect the area sooner, he thought, biting down on his bottom lip. When he turned and walked back to the twins, he prayed the oversight wouldn’t be one he would come to regret.