Plain Truth Read online

  Aaron turned, shrugging off the bishop’s hand. “Thank you. But we will not hire a lawyer for Katie, and go through the Englischer courts. It’s not our way.”

  “What makes you always draw a line, and challenge people to cross it, Aaron?” Ephram sighed. “That’s not our way.”

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Aaron nodded at the bishop and his father and struck off toward the barn.

  The two older men watched him in silence. “You’ve had this conversation with him once before,” Elam Fisher pointed out.

  The bishop smiled sadly. “Ja. And I was talking to a stone wall that time, too.”

  Katie dreamed she was falling. Out of the sky, like a bird with a wounded wing, the earth rushing up to meet her. Her heart lodged in her throat, holding back the scream, and she realized at the very last second that she was heading toward the barn, the fields, her home. She closed her eyes and crashed, the scenery shattering like an eggshell at impact so that when she looked around, she recognized nothing at all.

  Blinking into the darkness, Katie tried to sit up in the bed. Wires and plastic tubes grew from her body like roots. Her belly felt tender; her arms and legs heavy.

  A comma of a moon split the sky, and a smattering of stars. Katie let her hands creep beneath the covers to rest on her stomach. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht,” she whispered. I did not have a baby.

  Tears fell on the blanket. “Ich hab ken Kind kaht. Ich hab ken Kind kaht,” she murmured over and over, until the words became a stream running through her veins, an angel’s lullaby.

  The fax machine in Lizzie’s house beeped on just after midnight, while she was running on her treadmill. Adrenaline had kept her awake, anyway, and perfectly suited for a workout that might make her tired enough to catch a few hours of sleep. She shut off the treadmill and walked to the fax, sweating as she waited for the pages to begin rolling out. At the cover page from the medical examiner’s office, her heart rate jumped another notch.

  Words began to reach at her, tugging at her mind.

  Male, 32 weeks. 39.2 cm crown-heel; 26 cm crown-rump.

  Hydrostatic test . . . dilated alveolar ducts . . . mottled pink to dark red appearance . . . left and right lungs floated, excluding partial and irregular aeration. Air present in the middle ear.

  Bruising on the upper lip; cotton fibers on gums.

  “Good God,” she whispered, shivering. She had met murderers several times-the man who’d stabbed a convenience store owner for a pack of Camels; a boy who’d raped college girls and left them bleeding on the dormitory floor; once, a woman who had shot her abusive husband’s face off while he lay sleeping. There was something about these people, something that had always made Lizzie feel that if you cracked them open like Russian nesting dolls, you’d find a hot, smoking coal at their center.

  Something that did not fit this Amish girl at all.

  Lizzie stripped out of her workout clothes, heading for the shower. Before the girl was no longer free to leave, before she was read Miranda and formally charged, Lizzie wanted to look Katie Fisher in the eye and see what was at the heart of her.

  • • •

  It was four in the morning by the time Lizzie entered the hospital room, but Katie was awake and alone. She turned wide blue eyes to the detective, surprised to see her. “Hello.”

  Lizzie smiled and sat down beside the bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” Katie said quietly. “Stronger.”

  Lizzie glanced down at Katie’s lap, and saw the Bible she’d been reading. “Samuel brought it for me,” the girl said, confused by the frown on the other woman’s face. “Isn’t it allowed in here?”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s allowed,” Lizzie said. She felt the tower of evidence she’d been neatly stacking for twenty-four hours now start to waver: 'She’s Amish. Could that one excuse, that one glaring inconsistency, knock it down? “Katie, did the doctor tell you what happened to you?”

  Katie glanced up. She set her finger in the Bible, closed the book around it with a rustle of pages, and nodded.

  “When I saw you yesterday, you told me you hadn’t had a baby.” Lizzie took a deep breath. “I’m wondering why you said that.”

  “Because I didn’t have a baby.”

  Lizzie shook her head in disbelief. “Why are you bleeding, then?”

  A red flush worked its way up from the neckline of Katie’s hospital johnny. “It’s my time of the month,” she said softly. She looked away, composing herself. “I may be Plain, Detective, but I’m not stupid. Don’t you think I’d know if I had a baby?”

  The answer was so open, so earnest, that Lizzie mentally stepped back. What am I doing wrong? She’d questioned hundreds of people, hundreds of liars-yet Katie Fisher was the only one she could recall getting under her skin. She glanced out the window, at the simmering red of the horizon, and realized what the difference was: This was no act. Katie Fisher believed exactly what she was saying.

  Lizzie cleared her throat, manning a different route of attack. “I’m going to ask you something awkward, Katie. . . . Have you ever had sexual relations?”

  If at all possible, Katie’s cheeks glowed brighter. “No.”

  “Would your blond friend tell me the same thing?”

  “Go ask him,” she challenged.

  “You saw that baby yesterday morning,” Lizzie said, her voice thick with frustration. “How did it get there?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Right.” Lizzie rubbed her temples. “It isn’t yours.”

  A wide smile broke over Katie’s face. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “She’s the only suspect,” Lizzie said, watching George stuff a forkful of hash browns into his mouth. They were meeting at a diner halfway between the county attorney’s office and East Paradise, one whose sole recommendation, as far as Lizzie could tell, was that they only served items guaranteed to double your cholesterol. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep eating like that,” she said, frowning.

  George waved away her concern. “At the first sign of arrhythmia I’ll ask God for a continuance.”

  Breaking off a small piece of her muffin, Lizzie looked down at her notes. “We’ve got a bloody nightgown, a footprint her size, a doctor’s statement saying she was primiparous, an ME saying the baby took a breath-plus her blood matches the blood found on the baby’s skin.” She popped a bite into her mouth. “I’ll put five hundred bucks down saying that when the DNA test comes back, it links her to the baby, too.”

  George blotted his mouth with a napkin. “That’s substantial stuff, Lizzie, but I don’t know if it adds up to involuntary manslaughter.”

  “I didn’t get to the clincher yet,” Lizzie said. “The ME found bruising on the baby’s lips and fibers on the gums and in the throat.”

  “Fibers from what?”

  “They matched the shirt it was wrapped in. He thinks that the two, together, suggest smothering.”

  “Smothering? This isn’t some Jersey girl giving birth in the toilet at the Paramus Mall and then going off to finish shopping, Lizzie. The Amish don’t even kill flies, I’ll bet.”

  “We made national headlines last year when two Amish kids were peddling cocaine,” Lizzie countered. “What’s 60 Minutes going to say to a murder?” She watched a spark come to George’s eyes as he weighed his personal feelings about charging an Amish girl against the promise of a high-profile murder case. “There’s a dead baby in an Amish barn, and an Amish kid who gave birth,” she said softly. “You do the math, George. I wasn’t the one who asked for this to happen, but even I can see that we’ve got to charge her, and we’ve got to do it soon. She’s being released today.”

  He meticulously cut his sunny-side-up eggs into bite-size squares, then placed his knife and fork down on the edge of his plate without eating a single one. “If we can prove smothering, we might be able to charge Murder One. It’s willful, premeditated, and deliberate. She hid the pr
egnancy, had the baby, and did away with it.” George glanced up. “Did you question her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  Lizzie grimaced. “She still doesn’t think she had a baby.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “She’s sticking to her story.”

  George frowned. “Did she look crazy to you?”

  There was a big difference between legally crazy and colloquially crazy, but in this case, Lizzie didn’t think George was making the distinction. “She looks like the girl next door. One who happens to read the Bible instead of V. C. Andrews.”

  “Oh, yeah,” George sighed. “This one’s gonna go to trial.”

  Sarah Fisher pinned her daughter’s kapp into place. “There. Now you’re ready.”

  Katie sank down on the bed, waiting for the candy-striper to appear with a wheelchair and take her down to the lobby. The doctor had discharged her minutes before, giving her mother some pills in case Katie had any more pain. She shifted, folding her arms across her stomach.

  Aunt Leda put an arm around her. “You can stay with me if you’re not ready to be at home yet.”

  Katie shook her head. “Denke. But I ought to get back. I want to get back.” She smiled softly. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Leda squeezed her shoulders. “It makes more sense to me, probably, than to anyone else.”

  As the door swung open, Katie jumped to her feet, eager to be on her way. But instead of the young volunteer she’d been expecting, two uniformed policemen entered. Sarah stepped back, falling into place beside Leda and Katie; a united, frightened front. “Katie Fisher?”

  She could feel her knees shaking beneath her skirts. “That’s me.”

  One policeman took her gently by the arm. “We have a warrant for your arrest. You’ve been charged with the murder of the baby found in your father’s barn.”

  The second policeman came up beside her. Katie looked frantically over his shoulder, trying to reach her mother’s eyes. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said. “Everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be represented by an attorney-”

  “No!” Sarah screamed, reaching for her daughter as the policemen began to lead Katie through the doorway. She ran after them, ignoring the curious glances of the medical personnel and the cries of her own sister.

  Leda finally caught up with Sarah at the entrance of the hospital. Katie was crying, arms stretched toward her mother as the policeman set a hand on her kapp and ducked her inside the squad car. “You can meet us at the district court, ma’am,” he said politely to Sarah, then got into the front seat.

  As the car drove away, Leda put her arms around her sister. “They took my baby,” Sarah sobbed. “They took my baby.”

  Leda knew how uncomfortable Sarah was riding in her car, but pressing circumstances called for compromises. Driving with someone under the bann was considerably less threatening than standing in court while one’s daughter was arraigned for murder, which Sarah was going to have to face next.

  “You wait right here,” she said, pulling into her driveway. “Let me get Frank.” She left Sarah sitting in the passenger seat and ran into the house.

  Frank was in the living room, watching a sitcom rerun. One look at his wife’s face had him out of his chair, running his hands over her arms. “You all right?”

  “It’s Katie. She’s being taken to the district court. They’ve charged her with murder.” Leda could just manage the last before breaking down, letting go in her husband’s embrace as she hadn’t let herself go in front of Sarah. “Ephram Stoltzfus raised twenty thousand dollars from Amish businessmen for Katie’s legal defense, but Aaron won’t take a penny.”

  “She’ll get a public defender, honey.”

  “No-Aaron expects her to turn the other cheek. And after what he did to Jacob, Katie’s not going to disagree with him.” She buried her face in her husband’s shirt. “She can’t win this. She didn’t do it, and she’s going to be put in jail anyway.”

  “Think of David and Goliath,” Frank said. With his thumb, he wiped away Leda’s tears. “Where’s Sarah?”

  “In the car. Waiting.”

  He slid an arm around her waist. “Let’s go, then.”

  A moment after they left, Ellie walked into the living room, wearing her jogging shorts and tank top. She’d been in the adjoining mud room, lacing up her sneakers for a run, when Leda had come home-and she’d heard every word. Her face impassive, Ellie stepped up to the picture window and watched Leda’s car until it disappeared from view.

  Katie had to hide her hands beneath the table so that no one would see how much they were trembling. Somehow she had lost the pin to her kapp in the police car, and it perched uneasily on her head, slipping whenever she shifted. But she would not take it off-not now, especially-since she was supposed to have her head covered whenever she prayed, and she’d been doing that constantly since the moment the car pulled away from the hospital’s entrance.

  A man sat at a table just like hers, a little distance away. He looked at her, frowning, although Katie had no idea what she might have done to make him so upset. Another man sat in front of her behind a high desk. He wore a black cape and held a wooden hammer in his hand, which he banged at the moment Katie saw her mother and aunt and uncle slip into the courtroom.

  The man with the hammer narrowed his eyes at her. “Do you speak English?”

  “Ja,” Katie said, then blushed. “Yes.”

  “You have been charged in the state of Pennsylvania with murder in the first degree, whereby you, Katie Fisher, on the eleventh of July 1998, against the arms and force of the State of Pennsylvania, did willfully, deliberately, and premeditatedly cause the death of Baby Fisher on the Fisher farm in the East Paradise Township of Lancaster County. You are also charged with the lesser included offense of murder in the third degree, whereby you . . .”

  The words ran over her like a rain shower, too much English at once, all the syllables blending. Katie closed her eyes and swayed slightly.

  “Do you understand these charges?”

  She hadn’t understood the first sentence. But the man seemed to be waiting for an answer, and she had learned as a child that Englischers liked you to agree with them. “Yes.”

  “Do you have an attorney?”

  Katie knew that her parents, like all Amish, did not believe in instigating lawsuits. In rare cases, an Amishman would be subpoenaed and would testify. . . but never by his own choice. She glanced over her shoulder at her mother, sending her kapp askew. “I do not wish to have one,” she said softly.

  “Do you know what that means, Miss Fisher? Is this on the advice of your parents?” Katie looked down at her lap. “This is a very serious charge, young lady, and I believe you should have counsel. If you qualify for a public defender-”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Like everyone else in the courtroom, Katie turned toward the confident voice coming from the doorway. A woman with hair as short as a man’s, wearing a neatly tailored blue suit and high heels, was briskly walking to her table. Without glancing at Katie, the woman set her briefcase down and nodded at the judge. “I’m Eleanor Hathaway, counsel for the defendant. Ms. Fisher has no need of a public defender. I apologize for being late, Judge Gorman. May I have five minutes with my client?”

  The judge waved his assent, and before Katie could follow what was happening, this stranger Eleanor Hathaway dragged her to her feet. Clutching at her kapp, Katie hurried beside the attorney down the central aisle of the court. She saw Aunt Leda crying and waving to her, and she raised a hand in response before she realized that this big greeting was meant for Eleanor Hathaway, not for Katie herself.

  The attorney steered Katie to a small room filled with office supplies. She closed the door behind her, leaned against it, and folded her arms. “Sorry for the impromptu introduction, but I’m Ellie Hathaway, and I sure as hell ho
pe that you’re Katie. We’re going to have a lot of time to talk later, but right now I need to know why you turned down an attorney.”

  Katie’s mouth opened and closed a few times before she could summon her voice. “My Dat wouldn’t want me to have one.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes, clearly unimpressed. “You’ll plead not guilty today, and then we’ll chat. Now, looking at these charges, you’re not getting bail unless we can get around the ‘proof and presumption’ clause in the statute.”

  “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  Without glancing up from the sheaf of papers she was skimming, Ellie answered, “It means that if you’re charged with murder, and the proof is evident or the presumption great, you don’t get bail. You sit in jail for a year until your trial comes up. Get it?” Katie swallowed, nodded. “So we have to find a loophole here.”

  Katie stared at this woman, who had come with her words sharpened like the point of a sword, planning to save her. “I didn’t have a baby.”

  “I see. Even though two doctors and a whole hospital, not to mention the local cops, all say otherwise?”

  “I didn’t have a baby.”

  Ellie slowly looked up. “Well,” she said. “I see I’m going to be finding that loophole myself.”

  Judge Gorman was clipping his fingernails when Ellie and Katie reentered the courtroom. He swept the shavings onto the floor. “I believe we were just getting to ‘How do you plead?’”

  Ellie stood. “My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.”

  The judge turned. “Mr. Callahan, is there a bail recommendation from the state?”

  George rose smoothly. “I believe, Your Honor, that the statute in Pennsylvania requires that bail be denied to defendants charged with first degree murder. In this case, the state would recommend this as well.”

  “Your Honor,” Ellie argued, “with all due respect, if you read the wording of the statute it requires bail to be withheld only in the cases where ‘the proof is evident, or the presumption great.’ That isn’t a blanket statement. Particularly, in this case, the proof is not evident, and the presumption is not great, that this was an act of murder in the first degree. There’s some circumstantial evidence that the county attorney has gathered-specifically, medical testimony that Ms. Fisher’s given birth, and the fact of a dead infant found on the premises of her farm-but there are no eyewitnesses to what happened between the birth and the death of the infant. Until my client gets her fair trial, we aren’t going to know how or why this death occurred.”