or trash that had blown in with the storm last night. Orin put his hand to his lips and whistled.
“Jojo! Kumma inseid!” Come inside.
The dog was usually obedient, especially during breakfast when more than likely he was in store for table scraps. This morning, he didn’t even look back. In fact, if Orin wasn’t mistaken, the dog’s barking seemed frantic. What was he barking at? And what on earth was that on the ground?
Muttering beneath his breath, Orin crossed the driveway, opened the gate, and started across the field. He was thinking about cinnamon rolls and the possibility of scrambled eggs when he realized the dog wasn’t barking at some flapping piece of trash. At first, he thought maybe a deer had come into the field and died. At forty yards, he realized that wasn’t the case at all.
Concern twinged in his gut, and he broke into a wobbly old-man run. “Hello?” he called out. “Who’s there? Are you all right?”
The person on the ground didn’t move. A young man. Just a boy, in fact. The hat and suspenders told him he was Plain. He was sprawled on his side, one arm thrown over his head, legs splayed.
Jojo looked up at Orin, tongue lolling, tail wagging.
“Good boy, Jojo.”
Ignoring the arthritis protesting in his knees, Orin knelt beside the boy. Recognition kicked him hard enough to shake his innards when he got a look at his face. “Noah,” he whispered. A quiver of fear went through him when he noticed the blood. It was on his shirt. More matted in his hair. On the side of his face. Dear Lord, what had happened?
“Noah?” He set his hand on the boy’s shoulder, found it cold and wet to the touch. “What happened, son? Can you hear me? Can you move?”
No answer. No movement. Not even a shiver or twitch. No sign of life. For a terrible moment, Orin thought the young man was dead. Relief skittered through him when he saw the boy’s chest rise. At least he was breathing. Working off his coat, he draped it over the boy.
“You just stay there and get warmed up.” He patted the boy’s shoulder and looked around. “I’ll get help.”
The old man struggled to his feet and took off at a lumbering run for the neighbor’s house.
* * *
My name is Kate Burkholder, and I’m the chief of police of Painters Mill, a pretty little township in the heart of Ohio’s Amish Country. I’ve just pulled into my parking spot outside the police station when my cell phone vibrates against my hip. The screen tells me it’s my graveyard shift dispatcher, Mona Kurtz, who also happens to be a part-time patrol officer, and she hasn’t yet left for the day. “Hey, Mona.”
“Chief, I just took a call from the Amish pay phone out on Township Road 4. Orin Schlabach says the neighbor’s son, Noah Kline, is injured and unconscious in his field.”
It’s not the kind of call I’d expect at 7:00 A.M. on a Sunday morning. “How seriously is he hurt?”
“Orin says it’s bad. He went back out to the field stay with him.”
“Do Noah’s parents know?”
“Not yet. No one has a phone out there, except the Boedeckers.” The couple are the only non-Amish who live on the township road.
“Get an ambulance out there,” I tell her.
“They’re en route.”
“Tell Skid to meet me there,” I add, referring to Chuck “Skid” Skidmore, my officer on duty this morning. “I’m on my way.”
* * *
The Schlabach farm is on a township road that’s more dirt than asphalt and dead-ends at Painters Creek. There’s an ambulance parked on the shoulder when I arrive, red and blue lights flashing. An Amish man and two paramedics are standing in the field fifty yards away. Skid’s not arrived yet. A dog sniffs around in the distance. I park behind the ambulance and head toward the men.
I reach them as the paramedics are loading the patient into the ambulance. The young man is draped with a Mylar blanket; there’s a cervical collar wrapped around his neck and an IV drip in his arm.
“What’s his condition?” I ask.
“We’ve not been able to rouse him, Chief,” the EMT tells me as he slams the rear doors. “He’s got visible injuries about his head. Compound fracture of his arm. He suffered some kind of trauma. Pulse and heart rate are extremely slow. If he’s been out here long, chances are he’s hypothermic.”
They’re in a hurry to get their patient to the hospital, so I