If Ananias Stoltzfus had secrets, he did a damn good job of keeping them hidden. I’ve discovered a slew of peculiarities about the bishop and his wife, but zero in terms of anything concrete that might explain what happened to him or why.
Between the phone call and frustration stemming from my lack of progress, I didn’t sleep much last night. I researched Ananias and Mia Stoltzfus. Harmony, Minnesota. I looked at Mary Elizabeth Hershberger. Henry Stoltzfus. I even spent some time delving into the lives of the three elders who brought me into the investigation. Nelson Yoder, the bishop. Nathan Kempf, the deacon. And Mahlon Barkman, the minister. There isn’t much out there. No criminal records. No legal issues or lawsuits. No drama. Even in terms of the Amish, they lead quiet lives.
I wrote down everything I could remember about the call.
I got proof Jonas Bowman killed Ananias Stoltzfus.
Nelson Yoder knows the truth. He was there the night Stoltzfus was killed.
Bowman wasn’t the only one who wanted Stoltzfus gone. They all did.
Everyone hated him, including Yoder. Don’t let them lie to you. They’re covering for Bowman.
I said: Why should I believe you?
… I was there, too.
The statements are not random. They’re bold and specific. The caller claimed Yoder hated Stoltzfus. That there were others who wanted him dead. He admitted to witnessing the murder. It’s a troubling notion, but is it possible the murder was some kind of concerted effort? With the days slipping by and my making little in the way of progress, I’m bound to follow up.
Nelson Yoder and his wife live in a heavily wooded area high on the ridge. As I make the turn into their driveway, a sign welcomes me to Yoder’s Harness Repair. I take the sidewalk to the front door, which opens to a reception area furnished with a sofa, chairs, and a coffee table piled with magazines. A woman stands at the counter, her nose buried in a paperback novel. Through the doorway behind her, I see the bishop sitting at a sewing bench, running a big black sewing machine.
“Can I help you?” asks the woman.
I introduce myself. “I’m looking for the bishop.”
She calls out to him in a loud voice, and I’m reminded that he’s hard of hearing. “Mir hen Englischer bsuch ghadde!” We have a non-Amish visitor.
The old man finishes his stitching, then struggles to his feet and hobbles to the doorway. “I’m hard of hearing, not dead.” He turns his attention to me. “Kate Burkholder. You come with news?”
“Just a few questions, Bishop.”
He motions me in. “Come on back. I think I can work and talk at the same time, but we’ll see.”
I follow him into a room that was once a bedroom, before the house was converted into a business. Twelve feet square. Two windows without curtains. He indicates a metal folding chair, then slides onto the bench. Giving me only part of his attention, he feeds a wide leather belly band into the sewing machine.
“Albert Miller is expecting his harness this afternoon, so I need to keep working. He’s not known for his patience, even if his repairman is the bishop.” He glances up at me, smiling, then goes back to his work. “If he spent more time saddle soaping, and a little less time talking, the leather wouldn’t need repairing.”
I smile politely. “Do you happen to have a copy of Raber’s New American Almanac?”
“You might check with Deacon Kempf,” he replies.
“I’m wondering if there’s anything new you remembered about Ananias or Mia Stoltzfus that you haven’t told me, Bishop.”
He glances at me over the tops of his wire-rim glasses, his eyes sharp, then back down at his work and continues feeding the leather into the sewing machine. “Not that I recall.”
“Last night, I received a call from a man who claims he was there the night Jonas Bowman murdered Ananias Stoltzfus.”
The old man deftly swivels the leather strap, takes the stitching down the other side, pulling it toward him now. “Who is this man? Why didn’t he go to the police with what he knows?”
“He wouldn’t say.” I pause. “He said you were there, too, Bishop.”
The old man stops sewing and gives me his full attention. “Now you’re investigating me, Chief Burkholder?”
“I’m asking you a simple question.” When he says nothing, I put it to him. “Were you there the night Ananias Stoltzfus was killed?”
His expression tells me he’s not accustomed to being questioned. Certainly not by a woman or non-Amish. “Of course I wasn’t there,” he snaps. “That’s a reckless, irresponsible question.”
“Maybe it is,” I tell him. “I had to ask.”
For a minute, the only sound comes from the rhythmic clank and hum of the sewing machine. I watch, let him stew, take the time to get my words right.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me about Ananias or Mia Stoltzfus?” I ask. “Anything at all?”
Irritation flares in his eyes. “I heard you were hardheaded and difficult.”
“Two things that have served me well.”
He looks past me, where his wife is standing at the counter, pretending to be immersed in the book.
“Close the door,” he says.
I rise and click it shut, then settle back into the folding chair.
“Being struck by the lot and becoming bishop is a weight to bear, Kate Burkholder. It is a blessing and gift. But it is also a burden that has broken many a strong man.”
I nod my understanding of that.
“My dawdi had a saying about speaking out of turn.” He switches to Deitsch. “Blessed are the ones who have nothing to say and cannot be persuaded to say it.”
I wait.
“It’s not easy to speak ill of a man, especially when he was your bishop. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Grimacing, he leans forward and shuts down the sewing machine. “The meting out of punishments is a weight to bear,” he says. “There is no enjoyment. Only duty. The call to do God’s will.”
I say nothing.
“Shortly after Ananias became bishop, there was a young Amish man in the congregation who worked at the mill in Lewistown. It was too far for him to drive his buggy every day, so he borrowed a car from an English friend. He didn’t own it, mind you, but drove it nonetheless. Ananias warned him, but the driving continued. A few weeks later, Ananias put him under the bann. In the end, that young man left.”
It’s not an unusual story. But it’s exactly the kind that could cause hard feelings. “You disagreed with the decision to bann the young man?”
“No. That young man had been warned and refused to comply. I would have done the same.” The bishop seems to look inward, remembering, his lips turned down as if he’s realized a bad taste. “But I was there the day Ananias excommunicated him. There were tears; this young man cried. He begged. Could something have been worked out?” The bishop shrugs. “Who knows?”
He raises his eyes to mine. “My point, Chief Burkholder, is that Ananias Stoltzfus enjoyed hurting that young man. He relished the tears. The begging. I saw the pleasure of it in his eyes. It was the kind of look a man gets when he has lust in his heart. That was the day I realized Ananias Stoltzfus was cruel.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I did nothing. I was young and inexperienced. Naïve.” He sags in the chair as if he’d failed a challenge he should have aced. “I didn’t have the courage to do the right thing. At the very least, I should have consulted with the Diener.” He looks down at his hands, but not before I see shame in his eyes. “I saw darkness in Ananias. I knew that darkness would cause problems. That one day there would be a reckoning.”
“Bishop Yoder, do you have any idea who killed him?”
He bristles. “You’re a fool, Kate Burkholder.”
I sigh. “So I’ve been told.”
He looks at me the way a teacher might look at an unruly student in need of a good paddling. “By the teachings of Christ, violence is prohibited. The taking of a life is the darkest of sins.”
“The Amish may be pacifists,” I tell him, “but they’re human, too. They have the same frailties as the rest of us.”
“Sell is nix as baeffzes.” That’s nothing but trifling talk.
It’s a standoff. For the span of a full minute, neither of us speaks. The time gives our respective tempers a chance to cool.
“Were there any other displays of cruelty?” I ask.
He picks up the leather strap and runs his thumb over the stitching. “There was talk.”
He raises his eyes to mine. In their depths I see a quicksilver glint. Shame? Guilt? Something else?
He looks away, snips the thread, and pulls the leather from beneath the presser foot. Leaning against his chair back, he gives me his full attention. “Mia came to me,” he whispers.
Surprise cuffs me, a blow against my cheek, hard enough to jar. “What about?”
“She told me Ananias had … strayed.” The old man’s face darkens. “She was distraught. I counseled her. She told me other things, too, Chief Burkholder. She said Ananias had beat a man nearly to death. She said the devil had crawled into his soul. And that she was afraid.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“I went to Ananias. He denied all of it. He said Mia was having a mental relapse. He said it had happened before.”
“Did you believe him?”
The old man turns his head and looks out the window, as if wishing he could be anywhere but in this room talking to me. Or maybe wishing he had the power to go back in time and change what has already been done. “No. Two days later she was gone. Killed herself in that church.”
“Did you speak to anyone else about what you knew? Or about what Mia had said?”
He shakes his head. “She was gone. I didn’t know if any of it was true, so I never spoke of it. I knew God would see us through whatever darkness lay ahead.”
The Amish eschew power and yet the bishop wields a vast amount. A good bishop is cautious about how that power is exerted—if at all. If Nelson Yoder believed Ananias Stoltzfus was abusing the authority of his position and tearing the church district apart with his strict rules, tyrannical leadership, and cruel punishments, how far would he go to bring the other man’s reign to an end?
It’s a question I’m loath to ask, let alone answer.
Ananias Stoltzfus enjoyed hurting that young man. He relished the tears. The begging. I saw the pleasure of it in his eyes.
The road back to town is narrow and steep, short straightaways interrupted by switchbacks and hairpin curves. I’m so immersed in my thoughts I barely notice the beauty of the terrain or the dapple of shadow and light on my windshield.
That was the day I realized Ananias Stoltzfus was cruel.
I’m driving too fast, but I’m the only one on the road. I negotiate a banked curve with ease, then speed up for a ruler-straight stretch.
She told me Ananias had … strayed … beat a man nearly to death. She said the devil had crawled into his soul. And that she was afraid.
I catch a glimpse of a vehicle nestled in the trees to my right. As I pass, a pickup truck rockets out. I yank the wheel left, mash the brake. Steel clanks against steel as the front end crashes into the passenger door. I’m jerked right. My airbag explodes, punching my face and chest hard enough to daze. The passenger-door window bursts. Glass cascades over me. My rear tires skid, lose purchase. The other vehicle keeps coming, tires screaming, shoving me left.
The guardrail looms to my left. I wrench the wheel right. The guardrail strikes my door. Wood splinters. Steel groans. I glance right, catch a glimpse of a grille; then the rental car lurches violently and plummets.
My car tilts crazily. Saplings scrape the undercarriage. Gravity throws me against the door. My head strikes the window. Then I’m upside down, the safety harness digging into my chest. Glass breaking all around. A kaleidoscope of brush and debris flies outside the windshield. The car comes to a halt. I’m hanging sideways. The hiss of steam in my ears. The creaking of steel.
“Shit. Shit.” Hoping the car doesn’t roll again, I look around, try to get my bearings. The windshield is a shattered slab of ice crystals. A green canopy overhead. Through the passenger-side window beneath me, I see leaves and grass and dirt.
The top half of my body has come out of the shoulder harness. The seat belt burrows uncomfortably into my pelvis. I’m so shaken, it takes me several seconds to process what happened. I hang suspended, try to settle. My hands shake violently when I set them on the wheel. The smell of something burning tells me I don’t have time to waste.
Holding the wheel with my left hand, I use my right to unbuckle the harness. Gravity slams me to the passenger-side door. I land on my knees. Bracing against the interior roof, I use my right foot to punch out what’s left of the windshield, and I slip through.
I’m on a steep incline, branches tangling in my hair and clutching at my clothes. I look up the hill, realize my vehicle rolled about thirty feet, crushing dozens of saplings, landing against a tree on the passenger side. The hood is unlatched. A thin veil of smoke wafts out. I smell burning oil and radiator fluid.
I look around for my cell, go back to the car, peel back the windshield, and spot it on the ground. Reaching through, I snatch it up and get out. My hand is shaking so violently, I can barely punch in 911.
“Mifflin County Sheriff’s Department,” comes a female voice on the other end.
“I’ve been in a vehicle accident.” Even as I say the words, it occurs to me that this was no accident. Someone ran me off the road. I look up the hill, but there’s no one there. I look down the hill, assess its pitch, and I realize that if it hadn’t been for one tree, the car would have continued rolling for another thirty or forty yards, picking up speed, ejecting or crushing me on its way down.
By the time the sheriff’s department cruiser and rescue truck for the Belleville Fire Company arrive on scene, I’ve climbed up the hill and I’m standing on the shoulder of the road. I’m still shaking when the paramedic takes me to the rear of the rescue truck, sits me down on a pull-out bumper, and performs a cursory physical assessment. He’s blinding me with a pen-size flashlight when a Mifflin County deputy sheriff saunters over.
“You’re kind of popular around here, Chief Burkholder,” he says.
He’s a middle-aged guy with a wrestler’s physique, a too-tight belt, and trousers creased with ruler perfection. I don’t recall his name, but remember seeing him at the Bowman house the day the search warrant for the water well was executed.
“Tough on vehicles, too, evidently.” He walks over to the road’s white line and looks down the hill. “Rental car folks aren’t going to be too happy with you.”
I wince when the paramedic prods my knee. I look down to see that my jeans are ripped and blood has soaked through.
The deputy walks over to me and I’m able to read his name tag. Deputy Trombley. “You in a hurry today? Take one of those curves a little too fast?”
“No, but I suspect the guy who hit me did,” I tell him.
His expression falls. “There was another vehicle involved?”
“A pickup truck.” I motion toward the pullover from which the truck emerged. “Rammed my vehicle on the passenger side and proceeded to push me off the road.”
The paramedic raises his gaze to the cop, looking concerned.
“Did you get a look at the vehicle?” Trombley slips a notebook from his pocket. “Make? Model? Color?”
Annoyed with myself for not noticing the things I’ve been trained to notice, I shake my head. “Dark. Blue or black.” In the back of my mind, I recall the pickup truck I’d seen at Roman Miller’s place and add, “I caught a glimpse of the grille when he came at me.”
Tilting his head, the deputy speaks into his lapel mike. “Ten-fifty-seven,” he says, using the ten code for hit-and-run. He crosses to the gravel pullover, pulls out his cell phone, and snaps a few shots of the skid marks on the asphalt.
The paramedic rises. “You’re kind of banged up, Chief Burkholder. What do you say we get you down to Geisinger Hospital over in Lewistown?” he says. “Get that knee checked out. Make sure you’re not concussed.”
“I’m okay.” To prove my point, I get to my feet. “I’ll stop by the hospital later.”
He glances over his shoulder at the deputy and lowers his voice. “If you don’t ride with me, you’ll likely have to ride with that guy.”
It’s not that funny, but I laugh. “I’ll take my chances, but thanks.”
He snaps his equipment bag closed and gets to his feet. “You be sure and ice the knee tonight. Tylenol for pain. Get yourself checked out as soon as you can.”
As the rescue truck pulls away, I approach the deputy, who’s walking along the shoulder near the pullover, snapping pics with his cell, looking down at the gravel. “There was definitely someone here.” He motions to the place where the tires dug into the gravel. “Looks like he tore out pretty quick.”
“He shot out fast. Came at me from the side.” I look at the place on the road where the truck struck my vehicle, notice the two-foot-long skid mark. “I didn’t see him until I was right in front of him.”
“We get some drinking and driving up in these hills,” the deputy drawls. “Workers on their lunch hour. Stop to have a beer.”
“I don’t believe that’s what happened,” I tell him.
He stops what he’s doing and throws me a puzzled look. “You want to explain that?”
“This was deliberate,” I tell him.
He chokes out a sound that’s part laugh, part incredulity, but sobers quickly. “To what end?”
“I’ve been looking into the Ananias Stoltzfus case,” I tell him. “After the incident at the Kish Valley Motel, I’d say this individual doesn’t want me asking questions.”
“Look, I’m not discounting what you’re telling me, but I don’t think we have any proof of that.”
I look down at the skid mark. “I guess that depends on your perspective.”
Frowning, he slants his head and speaks into his shoulder mike. “Ten-fifty-one,” he says, requesting a tow truck.
It takes the rest of the morning to get the rental car uprighted and winched out. Sure enough, there’s substantial damage where the truck’s bumper or brush guard plowed into the passenger-side door. As the deputy and I worked to re-create what happened, he warmed to the notion that someone ran me off the road. When we finished and the car was towed, he offered to drive me to Lewistown and I accepted. I called the repair shop where the Explorer was and the manager assured me it would be ready in a couple of hours. It’s a good thing, because I’m pretty sure the car rental agency wouldn’t be thrilled to rent another vehicle to me.
It’s almost four o’clock by the time the Explorer is ready. I’ve just pulled onto the street when a call comes in from Minnesota.
“Chief, this is Deputy Leonard with the Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office.”
It’s the female deputy I talked to yesterday. I feel a quick jump of hope in my chest; I’d all but given up on any information coming from the Amish community in Harmony.
“I’m out here at Bishop Hostetler’s farm,” she tells me. “He’s happy to talk to you if this is a good time.”
“Put him on,” I tell her.
Rustling sounds as her cell phone is passed to the bishop, and then an old man’s voice rumbles over the line. “I had a cousin lived down to Pennsylvania,” he begins.
“Kish Valley?” I ask.
“Lancaster County.”
I clear my throat and switch to Deitsch. “Bishop, I understand Ananias Stoltzfus was the bishop in Harmony years ago. Did you know him?”
“How long ago was that?”
“In the 1960s, I believe.”
“I’m eighty-two years old, Chief Burkholder. I’ve lived here in Harmony since 1974 when I left Ohio. I’ve never heard of anyone by that name, certainly not a bishop. Either he’s mistaken. Or you are.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore, but I remember my Diener just fine. Orla Weaver was bishop from the time I was knee high. He baptized me in 1963. He got me married off in 1965. He spoke at my mamm’s funeral in 1973. The next year, several Amish families—my own included—moved from Wayne County, Ohio, to Harmony.” He pauses. “Orla went to the Lord in 1985. June, I think it was.”
“Is it possible Ananias Stoltzfus was Diener in another community?” I ask. “Nearby?”
“If someone told you this Ananias Stoltzfus character was Diener in Minnesota, I might just think they were pulling your leg.”