he heads for the back door.
“That’ll buy us a few minutes.” Grabbing a mug, Miriam walks to the table and sinks into a chair. “You bring news?”
I take the chair across from her. I’m hyperaware of that ticking clock that has embedded itself in my brain. An unbearable amount of time has passed since the girl went missing; there’s no time for niceties. I’m too tired to make the effort. Worse, I’m pissed off, because I’m pretty sure this woman has been lying to me, so I get right to the point of my visit.
“Elam was born in November of 2011,” I tell her. “Becky was born in December 2012. Miriam, there’s no way you could have had Elsie in between.”
The woman blinks at me. “But … she came early, you know. Just four pounds of her.”
“When was Elsie born?”
For the first time she looks flustered. “The babies came so close together sometimes I lose track.…”
“Stop lying to me.” I smack my hand against the table. “Your little girl’s life is in danger and all I’m getting from you are lies.”
“I’m not. I just … I got a little confused on the dates is all.”
I rise, go to her, bend, so that my face is less than a foot away from hers. Now that I’m close, I see the telltale signs of sleepless nights and stress piled atop of stress. The whites of her eyes are a road map of capillaries. Lips dry and cracked. Breath that smells of coffee and sour milk. Worst of all is the abiding terror that’s got its claws sunk deep into her, a relentless beast devouring her from the inside out.
“Elsie isn’t your biological child, is she?” I say quietly.
The woman stares at me, unspeaking for the span of several heartbeats. Then the flesh of her cheeks begin to quiver. Her body follows suit, shaking so violently I’m afraid she’s going to vibrate off the chair and fall to a heap at my feet.
“She’s mine,” she whispers. “She’s always been mine. In every way.”
Generally speaking, the Amish are stoic when it comes to displays of emotion. That’s not to say they don’t grieve, or have tempers or feel fear; like the rest of us, they do and just as keenly. But they’re not prone to outbursts, not even children.
Evidently, Miriam Helmuth has reached her breaking point. Her child is missing. Her mother is dead—violently murdered. If I’m going to get anything out of her, now is the time to do it, so I push.
“The choice you make at this moment may be the only thing that saves your daughter’s life,” I say. “Think about that before you lie to me again.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she lowers her head.
“Do you know where she is?” I ask.
“God, no.”
“Do you know who has her?”
Closing her eyes tightly, she shakes her head, grappling for control, her emotions teetering on the edge of some bottomless abyss. “I don’t know,” she cries. “I don’t know why they did what they did.”
“Who are ‘they’ and what did they do?” I ask.
A sob escapes her. She puts a trembling hand over her mouth, holds it tightly against her face, and then she doubles over as if she’s in physical pain.
I wait, impatience and compassion and anger warring inside me.
After a moment, she sits up and meets my gaze. “They brought her to us,” she whispers. “In the middle of the night. This screaming, red-faced little baby.”
“Elsie?”
She nods. “She was a tiny thing. Just hours old. Hungry. Frightened. Wanting her mamm and some milk.”
The reality of what I’m hearing strikes me with the force of a blow. The floor shifts beneath my feet. I almost can’t believe my ears.
“Who brought her to you?” I ask.
“The midwife. The bishop from Scioto County.”
“I need names.”
Scrubbing her fingertips over her eyes, she looks at me through the layers of misery and exhaustion and guilt. “I don’t know.”
Lowering myself into the chair, I pull out my notebook and stare down at the blank page. I almost can’t get my head around what I’ve been told. What it could mean in terms of a missing little girl and the brutal murder of her grandmother.
“Who’s the baby’s mother?” I ask.
“No one ever said, and I didn’t ask. They were secretive about it.”
“Who else was involved?”
“The bishop. The midwife.” She hesitates. “Bishop Troyer.”
The floor shifts again, violently this time, a small boat tossed about on a raging sea.
“Bishop Troyer?” I echo the name dumbly. A man I’ve known my entire