Whiskers of the Lion (5 page)

Wednesday, August 17

3:30
P.M.

WITH THE white box from Miller's Bakery still on his passenger's seat, Stan Armbruster drove his red Corolla to Sugarcreek on Ohio 39 from the west. As he came into town, he passed the red-brick Mennonite church on his left. He slowed around the sharp bend at the edge of town and continued past the sprawling Amish flea market on the right, where cars, vans, and buses were scrimmaging for parking spots beside the cluster of old buildings. Slowing further, Armbruster angled gently right onto West Main St. and drove several blocks through an older residential neighborhood into the small downtown business district. At Factory Street, he turned left to follow the railroad yard, and soon after the turn, he pulled in at the plant and business offices of the
Budget
. His new suit lay in a crumpled heap on his bedroom floor. He was dressed now in brown loafers, tan slacks, and a yellow button shirt, a change of clothes that he thought was appropriate, considering the disaster of his morning. He got out, looped his badge case over his belt, and locked up. Here he hoped to redeem himself with his plans to search all of the letters that had been sent by Amish scribes into the
Budget
since April.

Inside, Armbruster spoke to the lady at the counter. While she took notes, he explained which back issues he wanted to buy, and then she took her notes down the hall. When the lady came back, she had an old ten-ream copy paper box stacked full of newspapers. When she lifted it up onto her counter, she asked, “This for the sheriff?”

Armbruster nodded and pulled his wallet out, but the lady said, “No charge.”

“Thanks.”

“That's a lot of letters,” she said tapping the side of the box. “We get them from all over the world.”

“I just need the ones from the States,” Armbruster said.

“They're all mixed in,” the lady said.

“And you don't have a database?” Armbruster asked. “You don't keep any digital copies?”

“No,” she said. “These Amish scribes write by hand, mostly. They mail their letters to us on the Mondays after their Sunday services. Some of the letters are typed these days, but mostly they're still handwritten.”

“What about when you set type for the paper each week?” Armbruster asked. “That's digital now, isn't it?”

“Yes, but we erase the files to make way for next week's letters. We don't save a copy.”

“That'd be easy enough to do,” Armbruster lamented. “To save copies I mean.”

“We don't.” The lady shrugged. “Sorry.”

“OK, thanks,” Armbruster said. He carried the box out to his trunk. He climbed in behind the wheel of the hot car, started his engine, cranked the air conditioner to max, and called Rachel Ramsayer's cell phone.

Rachel served as IT chief for the sheriff. She had spent the spring and summer months upgrading computers and modernizing software and databases. She had also created a Web site for the sheriff's department. She was a dwarf woman from Atlanta, the daughter of Caleb Troyer—a friend since kindergarten to both Mike Branden and Bruce Robertson. Cal Troyer was the pastor at Millersburg Christian Church, and his daughter Rachel had moved to town only recently. Because of her relationship to Cal Troyer and because of her extraordinary expertise with all things digitized, she had been accepted as IT chief in the sheriff's department almost immediately. She answered Armbruster's call on the first ring.

“It's Stan,” Armbruster said over the chatter of the Corolla's interior fan. “I've got the
Budget
s.”

“How many letters?” Rachel asked.

“I'm guessing hundreds,” Armbruster said. “It's a boxful. It'll take hours to scan them all.”

“Did you ask again about a database?”

“No luck. They start over each week. They don't save the files.”

“Have you got today's issue?”

Armbruster thumbed the papers and said, “It's the top one.”

“OK,” Rachel said. “You'll fold and scan, and I'll devise a strategy to search the results. It's going be a long night.”

Armbruster put his gearshift in reverse. “Like anybody's actually slept through the night since April.”

Wednesday, August 17

6:45
P.M.

AFTER AN administrative stop at the jail, Bruce Robertson climbed the steps to the back porch of his Victorian house and pushed inside to a spacious and modern kitchen of stainless appliances and white quartz countertops. He called out to his wife and got no response. He changed into house slippers, pulled a Diet Pepsi from the refrigerator, and carried it into the parlor to sit on the sofa in front of the cold fireplace.

When the phone rang, the sheriff had no idea how long he had been sitting there. The Diet Pepsi sat unopened on the coffee table. He answered the call, “Bruce,” and Missy asked, “You cooking anything for dinner?”

“Nope.”

“Go out?”

“Where?”

“I'll think about that. I'll be home in thirty minutes.”

 • • • 

The sheriff was still immobile on the sofa when Missy walked into the parlor. She saw the unopened can of Diet Pepsi, picked it up to gauge its temperature, and carried it back into the kitchen. When she returned, she had a cold Diet Pepsi for her husband. She set it on the table next to his elbow, and she climbed the stairs to change out of her scrubs. When she rejoined her husband, taking a seat beside him, his eyes held a fixed gaze on an inward thought. She reached around him, opened the Diet Pepsi can, and handed it to him. When she gave his hand a nudge, he drank and seemed to regain the present.

Recognizing his brooding mood, she asked, “How long have you been sitting here?” and he answered, “Don't know. Couple of minutes.”

“Your Pepsi was warm.”

Robertson cast a frown toward the fireplace and closed his eyes. “Been thinking.”

“About what?”

The sheriff turned to look at Missy. “Retirement.”

Missy nodded with a chagrined smile. She recognized the hollow tone in his voice. He had been sliding in this direction since early summer, when it had become obvious that Fannie Helmuth would not be easily found. “You think you're done with law enforcement?” she asked. “Because I don't.”

Robertson shook his head and stared again at the sooty bricks inside the fireplace. “I should have found her by now, Missy. Maybe a younger sheriff would have.”

“You don't really believe that,” Missy said.

Robertson stood to pace in front of the fireplace. He made two passes, kicked an old coal back onto the grate, set his Diet Pepsi on the end table, and dropped back onto the sofa beside Missy. “Missy, Mike thinks there may have been messages that we missed in the
Budget
. If it's true, then it's my fault that Howie Dent is dead.”

“I'm not going to listen to this,” Missy said sternly. “You've had your whole department in turmoil since the day Fannie walked out of your jail, and if anyone
could
have found her, it would have been you and your people who did it. Well, you didn't find her because she didn't want to be found.”

“And if she gets dead because I failed?” the sheriff said, turning with weary eyes to face his wife.

Missy stood up in front of him. “Mike said you'd been talking this nonsense.”

“He called you?”

“Of course.”

“What'd he say?”

“That you'd been talking about resigning. Which is nonsense.”

The sheriff stood with a self-disgusted “Harrumph,” and carried his Diet Pepsi back into the kitchen. He poured the rest of the Diet Pepsi into the sink, crushed the can, and cast it into the recycling bin.

Missy followed him into the kitchen and said, “We're going to the Brandens' house for pizza.”

“Maybe we could stay in tonight.”

“Not a chance in the world, Sheriff. And you're not resigning.”

“Oh? Why's that?”

“Because I'm not ready to retire, and I don't have the patience to break in some new kid as sheriff.” She fished her keys out of a bowl on the kitchen table and said again, “Pizza at the Brandens'. Then maybe we'll check in with Rachel and Stan at the jail.”

Robertson followed her out through the back door. “You talked to Rachel?”

“No, Bruce, to Stan. He says the
Budget
letters are going to give us something we can use.”

“Why'd you call him?”

“He called me at the lab.”

“I didn't get a call.”

“Bruce, really. After the kind of day he's had, do you think he'd call you at home?”

“He should have.”

“Well, he didn't,” Missy said while locking up. On the steps of the back porch, she added, “He's embarrassed, Bruce. He contaminated a crime scene, and he knew I'd see you tonight. So he asked me to tell you that the
Budget
s might be useful after all.”

“He can't have read them all by now,” Robertson said and opened the driver's door on the Crown Vic. He got in with Missy, and while she buckled herself into the passenger's seat, he backed up into the graveled alley behind their house.

“He's scanning them,” Missy said. “Rachel's scanners have optical character recognition. They're scanning the scribes' letters to make digital files, and they're searching the digital files for specific phrases and key words. It's impressive, and you need to pay Stan a compliment. He could use a boost.”

Wednesday, August 17

9:30
P.M.

AT THE boxy red-brick jail on Courthouse Square in the center of Millersburg, Rachel Ramsayer's corner desk in the first-floor squad room had been custom built for her because as a dwarf woman of Amish descent, she was only four feet three inches tall. Her desk therefore sat lower to the floor than average, as did her computer consoles, bookshelves, monitors, copier/scanner/fax, and phones. Even her power and data outlets had been custom installed at the proper height for her. The same was true of her light switches, phone jacks, floor lamps, and file cabinets. It was Rachel's special den, suited to Rachel's special size, and it was well insulated from the rest of the large and busy squad room by soundproofing partitions of average height, so that with an excellent degree of privacy behind her tall partitions, she commanded an elaborate IT hub for the sheriff department's data centers, servers, networks, and systems. Only the communications consoles at the jail's front entrance had more elaborate equipment.

From her hub, Rachel programmed, monitored, and maintained all of the department's digital and wireless concerns. It was a system that Rachel had designed and built herself, and it had taken her over a year to accomplish it. More than any other person—and where everyone else had relented—she had dragged the obstreperous sheriff into the twenty-first century by demonstrating to him the power of the digital age, and tonight her accomplishments were proving of greater value to the department than the resolutely twentieth-century Sheriff Robertson could have imagined when Rachel first had laid her IT plans before him for approval.

Now she sat at her desk searching digital files that were coming in from scanners run by Stan Armbruster on the far side of the squad room, and by Pat Lance in Captain Newell's office on the second floor. At her computer, Rachel had created separate folders for each of the scanners, and as Armbruster and Lance scanned the scribes' letters published in the
Budget,
the files automatically accumulated in Rachel's two new folders, with file names indicating city location and date of publication.

While the initial files accumulated, Rachel had developed a search strategy that employed Boolean operators, finding instances where words such as
friends
OR
visitors
OR
guests
were combined using the AND operator with descriptors such as
Ohio
OR
Buckeye
OR
Holmes
. In this way she was able to identify text segments in which scribes had written about friends/visitors/guests in conjunction with the words
Ohio/Buckeye/Holmes
. With the early samples, she had learned to include
Millersburg
and
Charm
among her location descriptors. Whenever these methods flagged a passage, Rachel printed the passage and marked it with a place/date indicator.

When Bruce Robertson and Missy Taggert entered the squad room after pizza with the Brandens, Rachel had three passages to show them, all found by her search strategy in letters from the
Budget
between the middle of April and the beginning of May.

While Missy checked on Armbruster at his scanner, Robertson threaded his way across the crowded squad room to Rachel's far-right corner hub. He peered in over the top of Rachel's partitions and started to ask a question. Rachel held up a hand, typed briefly, and then took the three passages from a tray on her desk to hand them to the sheriff. When Robertson took the pages, she said over her shoulder, “I've got another one running right now, but see what you think so far,” and she returned her attention to her monitor and keyboard.

Robertson retrieved a metal chair from one of the squad room's long tables. He brought it back to sit at the opening to Rachel's IT den, and he sat there to read the first letter's excerpt. Rachel had identified it as coming from Whiteville, Tennessee, for the April 27 edition of the
Budget
:

Guests from Ohio by way of Memphis surprised us yesterday at services and may stay only a while.

Robertson started again to ask Rachel a question, but she stopped him with a shake of her head. As she continued to work, the sheriff turned his attention to the second excerpt:

Paris, TN, May 4

Our Ohio travelers stayed only two nights at the John Troyers and want their families in Charm to know that they are well.

Robertson then read the third excerpt Rachel had given him:

Cub Run, KY, May 11

Two friends from Ohio traveled through after services yesterday at Daniel Brocks and report to Holmes County that they are well but weary.

When Robertson looked up from the page, Rachel was waiting for him. He asked, “Where are these places?” and she pointed to a large wall-mounted monitor above her desk. There she had posted an electronic map of the center states, and on it, red digital pins marked the towns of Memphis, Whiteville, Paris, and Cub Run.

Robertson smiled. “They're traveling from one colony to the next.”

“Yes, if it's really them,” Rachel agreed. “But chances are it is.”

Robertson passed a palm over the bristles of his flattop haircut and blew a breathy whistle. “Rachel, if this is them, they're right here in these letters. Right out in the open.”

“It's only three letters from this spring,” Rachel said. “We'll get more, if there are any, but it'll take most of the night. And if you weren't looking for it, these references to them wouldn't register like they do with us. We know what we're looking for. I don't think Teresa Molina will ever get this, even if she did read a
Budget
once in a while. My guess is that she doesn't have a clue.”

Robertson paused with a thought and then asked, “Are you scanning them in sequence?”

Rachel nodded. “Starting with April.”

“Why not go straight for the recent ones?”

“Because I'm finding it necessary to revise the search strategy as we go along. Before I got that second one, I wasn't using
travelers
. Then the third one gave me
friends
. It's going to evolve and expand with each new letter. So by the time we have scanned them all, I may have to adjust the search parameters. Maybe use
couple
AND
Charm
NOT
Saskatchewan
. Like that.”

“All night, you say?”

“It's just the three of us—me and Pat and Stan. Everyone else is working to find Fannie.”

“Chief Wilsher put double shifts into the deputy rotations,” Robertson commented.

“It has been a little crazy around here,” Rachel laughed. “But we've got the two scanners running. Still, it'll be morning before we're done.”

Robertson stood. “Can you send me that map during the night? As you update it?”

“I'll put it on the FTP server, Sheriff. You can log in anytime from home.”

 • • • 

On the other side of the room, Missy was helping Stan Armbruster fold newsprint for his scanner. Robertson came forward and asked, “Can you do that, Stan, and talk a little, too?”

Without interrupting his rhythm, Armbruster said, “Sure. It's not a thinking job.”

“Then tell me what was in the yellow VW, Stan. Howie Dent's things, I mean.”

Armbruster laid newsprint on the flatbed scanner, closed the lid, chose
PREVIEW SCAN
, and turned to answer the sheriff. “The only personal item was his old red backpack. And it was empty.”

Armbruster's preview scan finished quickly. He turned back to use his mouse to select one specific letter from the page, and then he initiated a full scan.

Robertson waited and asked, “No other personal items, then?”

“Nothing,” Armbruster said, turning around to the sheriff again. “No keys, no wallet, no phone. Neither in the car, nor on the body.”

Armbruster looked to Missy, who confirmed, “There wasn't anything, Bruce. Nothing in the basement and nothing on the body.”

“Luggage or toiletries?” Robertson asked Armbruster.

Armbruster shook his head. The scan finished and he used the mouse again to select another letter in the scan area. After he selected
SCAN
, he turned again to Robertson. “No watch, no glasses, no prescriptions. He didn't have papers, receipts, or books.”

“Bills, Stan? Maps? There had to be something.”

“There wasn't, Sheriff.”

“Kids these days always have a tablet,” Missy said. “Or some game.”

“Sorry,” Armbruster said. “He didn't have anything like that.”

“Then it was all taken,” Robertson concluded.

Armbruster nodded his agreement. “Whoever killed him took everything he had.”

 • • • 

Before pushing out through the back door of the jail, the sheriff hesitated and asked Missy to wait at the end of the hall. He went back into the squad room and pulled Armbruster out into the long hallway, saying, “Stan, about this morning.”

Anticipating what was coming, Armbruster shrank a little in stature. But Robertson shook his head and said, “No, that's not it, Stan.”

“I know I ruined a crime scene, Sheriff.”

“No, you
found
a crime scene,” Robertson said. “And as soon as you knew it
was
a crime scene, you cleared out and called in.”

“Mud, fingerprints, and vomit, Sheriff. I fouled the scene.”

“I don't disagree,” Robertson said. “But the next time, Stan? Before you discover a murder scene? Don't eat such a large breakfast.”

Looking puzzled, Armbruster seemed to bend at the shoulders, as if struggling under a new burden.

 • • • 

In the squad room, Armbruster crossed back to Rachel's corner and asked, “What's wrong with the sheriff?”

Rachel looked up. “I didn't know there was anything wrong.”

Armbruster furled his brow and said, “It's weird. And I don't like it.”

“What?”

“I ruined his crime scene today.”

“So?”

“So, he's not angry.”

“And you're complaining?”

“This is
Robertson
.”

Rachel smiled. “You just have to know how to handle him.”

“I've mostly dealt with Wilsher. And now Captain Newell.”

“You have to handle Robertson.”

“Nobody just
handles
Robertson.”

“Ellie always does.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She started here over fifteen years ago as a dispatcher, and she's handled him from her first day on the job.”

Armbruster gave a perplexed shrug of his shoulders. “OK, what do you think of this temp dispatcher?”

Rachel smiled confidently. “Del knows what she's doing.”

“Are you talking about doing her job, or about handling Robertson?”

“They're the same thing, Stan. That's what I've been telling you.”

Armbruster walked slowly back to his scanner. He pondered what Rachel had said to him about
handling
the sheriff, but he could not imagine any such thing. He didn't think he could ever muster the nerve to do it.

Once back at his scanner, he took up another page of the newspaper and began to fold it for a scan. As he worked, he thought again of Pat Lance, working a second scanner in Captain Newell's office. He considered climbing the steps to see her. Maybe just to say hello. Then he thought again of the gruff sheriff, and the notion of asking Lance out on a date seemed preposterous.