Shamed (Kate Burkholder #11) - Linda Castillo Page 0,53

The ground is muddy, so I put the Explorer in four-wheel drive and press on.

The first property I pass is an abandoned mobile home that was apparently swept off its foundation at some point by floodwaters and never put to rights. It’s green and white, striped with rust, and sits at a cockeyed angle against a huge tree that prevented it from being carried downstream. As I pass by, I realize the power of the current bent the mobile home nearly in half.

Mud pings inside the Explorer’s wheel wells as I approach the neighboring property. I see a small frame house covered from foundation to roof with vines. At first, I think the place is abandoned—another casualty of hard times and a river with an insatiable appetite for anything bold enough to stand too close. Then I spot the loafing shed at the rear; a horse and several goats graze in a tumbling-down pen someone has slapped together with stock panels and wire. An Amish buggy sits at the back side of the shed. It doesn’t look as if it’s been used in a while.

The mailbox slants at a precarious angle, as if the water encroached and tried to push it downstream. There’s no name, just two numbers someone smeared onto the post with a finger and some paint. I glance at my GPS. The two numbers match, so I pull in and park next to a big clump of pampas grass, its golden spires jutting six feet into the air.

I take the cracked sidewalk to the steps. Stepping onto the front porch is like entering a cave. Vines cover every surface, climbing up the wrought-iron column like snakes. A storm door hangs by a single hinge, so I ease it out of the way and knock.

I wait a full minute, but no one comes. No voices or the sound of footfalls from inside. Thinking of the animals out back, I resist the urge to check the knob to see if it’s locked and I descend the steps. I’ve just started toward the Explorer when a sound tells me there’s someone in the backyard. Pulling up my collar against the wind and drizzle, I walk around the side of the house.

I get my first good look at the river, a vast expanse of shimmering brown water that slides along the muddy bank. A few yards away, a diminutive figure is at work on some earthen project. A woman, I realize. I start toward her.

She’s Amish. Small in stature. White kapp. A charcoal-colored dress that reaches nearly to the ground. Gray barn coat. Black muck boots. No gloves, even though she’s got a shovel in hand.

“Hello?” I call out. “Mrs. Stutzman?”

The woman shovels dirt from a wheelbarrow onto a pile of earth that’s about three feet high. Her coat and head covering are soaking wet and spattered with mud, telling me she’s been outside for some time. Upon hearing my voice, she stops working and turns to me.

“Who might you be?”

She’s barely five feet tall, with a voice like rusted iron. Her face is deeply wrinkled and dotted with age spots, a good bit of facial hair on her chin. Gold, wire-rimmed glasses cover viscous eyes.

I introduce myself. “I’m from Painters Mill. I’d like to talk to you about something that may have happened here in Crooked Creek a few years ago that involves a child.”

“Painters Mill, huh? Never heard of it.”

She’s standing so close I can see the silver glint of the pins she used to close the front of the dress. Her eyes are cloudy with something yellow in the corners. The left side of her face sags slightly and I recall Mrs. Fisher telling me this woman suffered a stroke a few months back.

“Are you sure about that?” I ask.

“If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t say it now, would I?” Hefting the shovel, she jams it into the dirt in the wheelbarrow, and dumps it onto the mound. I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing; it’s the kind of project a woman her age shouldn’t be taking on. That said, she’s strong for her size and her age.

“What are you working on?” I ask.

“Levee,” she tells me, ramming the shovel into the wheelbarrow. “Storm comin’.”

I was raised to respect my elders. You don’t talk back to them. You don’t let them exert themselves to exhaustion while you stand there and do nothing. “Big job.”

“That’s why God gave us hands, now, isn’t it?” She’s breathing heavily as she upends