Shamed (Kate Burkholder #11) - Linda Castillo Page 0,70
anguish churning in her eyes. “I don’t know what that has to do with what’s happened to my husband.”
“It has everything to do with it, Freda, and if you know anything at all that will help me get to the bottom of it, you need to speak up right now.”
I tell her about the eyeglasses, my trip to Crooked Creek. “Freda, look at my face. I was ambushed and beaten. Bishop Schwartz is dead. The midwife who helped bring that child up here was murdered this morning. Now your husband has been shot. If you care one iota about that little girl, you need to start talking.”
The Amish woman stares straight forward, frozen, except for the occasional tremor that runs through her. For the first time I see tears on her cheeks. But she doesn’t make a sound.
I push harder. “What if he kills little Elsie Helmuth?” I shout. “What if he goes after Miriam and Ivan or their children? Is all that holier-than-thou-art silence of yours worth it if someone else is killed?”
“Don’t you dare speak to me in that manner, Kate Burkholder. You of all people. Backslider. Maulgrischt,” she hisses. Pretend Christian. “Your mother didn’t know what to do with you and you broke her heart.”
She’s getting herself worked up. Maybe because it’s easier to be angry with me than it is to be terrified for the life of her husband.
I keep my voice level. “This isn’t about me.”
She’s not finished. “Mer sott em sei eegne net verlosse; Gott verlosst die seine nicht.” One should not abandon one’s own; God does not abandon his own. “You did just that, Katie. And now look at you, talking to me as if I’m somehow to blame.”
I’ve heard the words a hundred times since I came back to Painters Mill. I want to believe they no longer affect me. That I’m immune. Above it. But even after all this time, the small part of me that is Amish—that will always be Amish—recoils from the sting.
“That’s enough,” I snap. “I know you’re hurting and afraid, but I need your help and I need it right now. I’m trying to do the right thing. Do my job. Do you understand?”
Turning her head, she looks out the window, shutting me out.
I hit her with the coup de grâce. “If Elsie Helmuth is killed, it’s on your shoulders, Freda. You got that?”
Silence reigns for the span of several minutes. I make the turn onto US 62 and head north. Neither of us speaks until I’m stopped at the traffic light at Jackson Street in Millersburg. The courthouse is to my right, the old Hotel Millersburg to my left.
“You have to understand,” she says in a strangled voice. “Being the bishop’s wife … I see things. I hear things. That doesn’t mean I’m told what’s going on.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“I was there the night they brought her,” she whispers. “David told me I was to never speak of it. I took those words to heart.”
“Who brought her?”
“Bishop Schwartz and a midwife. They brought her here to the house. A tiny little girl. Hours old. She was desperately hungry. I fed her, held her in my arms…”
“Do you know who the parents are?” I ask. “I need names.”
“No.” She shakes her head adamantly. “They did not say, and I did not ask. It was a night filled with worry and tears and many things left unsaid.”
“Why did they do it?”
“There is a saying among the Amish.” She looks at me. “Die besht vayk zu flucht eevil is zu verfolgen goot,” she whispers. The best way to escape evil is to pursue good.
“The bishop, my husband, and that midwife were pursuing good, Katie. All they wanted was to place that innocent baby in a loving home, where she would be safe, and so she would be raised Amish.”
“The baby came from an Amish family?”
She shrugs. “I assumed so. Why else would they do such a thing?”
“Freda, why did they take her?”
“I don’t know, Katie. They were … secretive about all that.” The woman shrugs. “I suspected there was something wrong in the home. Some … problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Something bad, or they never would have done what they did. I know my husband. He is a good man, a godly man, and a good bishop. He does not overstep. If there is something I need to know, he will tell me.” She shakes her head. “Katie, it would have been unseemly for me to ask questions at