Linda Castillo - Sworn to Silence

Of all the things I’ve had to do this morning, this is the most difficult. That I can look at the tortured corpse of a young woman more easily than I can face my own family is not a comforting thought. I don’t want to ponder what that says about me as a person. It shames me to admit I could live the rest of my life quite contentedly if I never saw either of my siblings again.

I force myself to leave the Explorer. Like the Stutz house, the sidewalk has been shoveled. Not the work of a motorized snow blower, but shoveled by hand, the Amish way. My legs tremble as I step onto the porch and cross to the front door. I want to blame my shaky state on too much coffee or stress or the cold. But the tremors rippling through me have nothing to do with the temperature or caffeine—and everything to do with the man I’m about to face and the secrets that bind us.

I knock and wait. Footfalls sound, then the door swings open. My sister-in-law, Irene, is younger than me by several years. She has pretty skin and clear, hazel eyes. Her hair is drawn into a bun at her nape, and she wears the traditional kapp . Dressed in a green print dress and white apron, she is the kind of woman I might have been had Fate not stepped in and changed everything.

“Good afternoon, Katie.” She speaks in Pennsylvania Dutch. Her tone is friendly, but in her eyes I see a caution she cannot hide. Stepping aside, she swings open the door. “Wie geht’s?” How are you?

The smells of baking lard crust and rhubarb greet me as I step into the living room. The house feels warm and cozy, but I know the rooms get drafty when the temperature dips to below zero.

I don’t waste time on niceties. “Is Jacob here?”

Irene doesn’t understand my inability to interact with my family. I’ve only met her a handful of times, but I always get the impression she thinks my brusqueness stems from my being under the bann . Reality couldn’t be further from the truth. I have great respect for the Amish and their way of life. I do not begrudge them for trying to bring me back. But I have no desire to enlighten Irene.

“He’s in the barn, working on the tractor,” she says.

I almost smile at the mention of the tractor. My father used only horse-drawn plows. Jacob, considered a liberal by many of the old order, bought a steel-wheeled tractor just last year.

“Would you like me to fetch him for you?”

“I’ll meet him out there.” I want to ask about my nephews, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I tell myself I don’t have time, but the truth of the matter is I don’t know how to reach out.

Straightening her apron, Irene starts toward the kitchen. “I was just making rhubarb pies. Would you like a piece, Katie? Would you like a cup of hot tea?”

“No.” My stomach burns with hunger, but I have no appetite as I enter the kitchen. The room is hot from the stove. The walls are a different color than the last time I was here. New floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with canning jars and dried beans line the wall to my right. But none of the cosmetic changes can erase the memories that haunt this room.

Those memories press into me like rude, insistent fingers as I walk toward the back door. My chest tightens as I pass by the sink. In my mind’s eye I see blood, stark and red against the white porcelain. More on the floor. On my hands. Sticky between my fingers . . .

I try to draw a breath, but can’t. My lips and cheeks begin to tingle. Vaguely, I’m aware of Irene speaking, but I’m so immersed in my thoughts I don’t respond. I fumble with the knob, yank open the door. The cold snaps me from the dark tunnel of my past. The memories recede as I make my way down the sidewalk. By the time I reach the barn, the shakes are gone. I’m thankful because I’m going to need every scrap of strength I can muster to deal with my brother.

The barn door opens to a clean and well-maintained workshop. My brother’s booted feet protrude from beneath the undercarriage of a tractor, which is supported by two old-fashioned hand jacks.

“Jacob?”

He slides out and sits up. His eyes meet mine as he rises and brushes the dirt from his trousers and coat. He’s surprised to see me. His expression isn’t hostile, but it’s not friendly.

“Katie. Hello.”

At the age of thirty-six, my brother’s full beard is already shot with gray. A mouth that had once smiled at me with genuine affection is now permanently lined and turned down into a perpetual frown.

“What are you doing here?” Removing his work gloves, he tosses them onto the tractor seat.

In the back of my mind I wonder if he already knows about the murder. The Amish strive to believe they are a separate society from the English, but I know that isn’t wholly true. My sister works in the Carriage Stop Country Store in town. Most of the customers are English tourists and townspeople. A healthy grapevine runs the length of this town. If you have ears, you hear things. Even if you’re Amish.

Shoving my hands into my pockets, I walk deeper into the shadows of the barn, taking a moment to get my thoughts in order. The earthy smells of animal dung and hay remind me of childhood days spent in this barn. Ahead, four jersey cows, their pink udders swollen with milk, stand head-in. To my right, a dozen red and white mailboxes fashioned to look like farmhouses line shelves built from pine and cinder block. I see intricately built birdhouses and rocking horses with genuine horsehair manes, and I realize Jacob is as good with his hands as our father was.

I hear Jacob behind me and turn to him. “A girl was murdered in Painters Mill last night,” I begin.

He stands a few feet away, his head cocked, his expression circumspect. “Murdered? Who?”

“A young woman by the name of Amanda Horner.”

“Is she Amish?”

It annoys me that it matters to him. But I don’t voice my feelings. There are too many boiling inside me. Once I open that Pandora’s box, I’m afraid I won’t be able to close it. “No.”

“What does this murder have to do with me and my family?”

I give my brother a hard look. “The woman was murdered exactly the same way those girls were killed in the early 1990s.”

His quick intake of breath is but a whisper in the silence of the barn. He stares at me as if I’m some outsider who’s come here to wreck his world.

“How can that be?” he says after a moment.

The same question roils inside me like a storm. Because I have no answer, I stare back at him and try desperately not to tremble. “I think it might be the same guy.”

I see Jacob’s mind dragging him back to that terrible day. A day that devastated everyone in our family, but most of all me. He shakes his head. “That’s impossible. Daniel Lapp is dead.”

I close my eyes against words I’ve believed for sixteen years. Words that have caused me insurmountable pain and guilt for half of my life. When I open my eyes and meet my brother’s gaze, I can tell he knows what I’m thinking. “I have to be sure,” I say. “I need to see the body.”

He looks at me as if I’ve asked him to renounce God.

It wasn’t until weeks after the incident that I found out Jacob and my father buried the body. Horrific nightmares had been plaguing me. One night I woke screaming in my bed, certain the man who’d tried to kill me was in my bedroom. But my big brother came to my side. Jacob held me, and in the warm comfort of his arms, he revealed that Datt had buried the body in a defunct grain elevator in the next county, and he would never hurt anyone again.

“You know where he is buried,” Jacob says. “I told you.”

I know the place. The old grain elevator has been abandoned for twenty years. I’ve driven by it hundreds of times. But I’ve never stopped. I’ve never looked too closely. I rarely let myself think of the secrets buried there. “I need your help.”

“I cannot help you.”

“Come with me. Tonight. Show me where.”

His eyes widen. I see fear in their depths. My brother is a stoic man, which makes his reaction even more profound. “Katie, Datt did not take me inside. I do not know where—”

“I can’t do it alone. The elevator is a big place, Jacob. I don’t know where to look.”

“Daniel Lapp could not have done this terrible thing,” he says.

“ Someone killed that girl. Someone who knew details about the murders that were never released to the public. How do you explain that?”

“I cannot. But I saw . . . his body. There was blood . . . too much for him to have survived.”

“Was he still bleeding when Datt buried him?” Dead men don’t bleed. If Lapp was still bleeding at that point, he was alive. He could have dug his way out of a shallow grave and survived . . .

“I do not know. I do not wish to be part of this.”

“You already are.” I step closer to my brother, invading his space. This surprises him, and he steps back, looking at me as if I’m a dog with contagious mange. I raise my finger, shove it to within an inch of his nose. “I need your help, goddamn it. I need to find the remains. There’s no other way.”

He stares at me, as stoic and silent as a statue.

“If I don’t stop this son of a bitch, he’ll kill again.”

Jacob winces at my language, and a small, twisted sense of satisfaction ripples through me. “Do not bring your English ways into my home.”

“This has nothing to do with Amish or English,” I snap. “This has to do with saving lives. You stick your head in the sand and more people could die. Is that what you want?”

My brother drops his gaze to the dirt floor, the muscles in his jaws clenching. When he raises his eyes to mine, they seem ancient. “For sixteen years, I have asked God for His forgiveness. I have tried to forget what we did.”

“You mean what I did, don’t you?”

“What all of us did.”

The barn falls silent, as if in reverence to the secret that’s been revealed. I knew he would be reluctant, that I would have to push. But I hadn’t anticipated a refusal.

Words I need to say stick in my throat like a dull razor blade. I can feel the veins pulsing in my neck. My cheeks growing hot. I remind myself that I’m a cop working a case. But deep inside, I’m still a child cowering from unfathomable brutality. A girl crushed by secrets no one should have to bear. A teenager shocked by her own capacity for violence.

“If you go to hell it won’t be because of what you did that day.” My voice quivers. “But because of what you didn’t do today.”

“I will be judged only by God, not you.”

A hot rush of anger propels me to him. I can hear my teeth grinding, the blood roaring like a freight train in my head. “If he kills again, you’ll have another death on your conscience. An innocent woman will suffer unspeakable torture before her throat is cut. Think about that tonight when you’re trying to sleep.”

Dark emotions thrash inside me as I spin and start toward the door. I want to crush the pretty mailboxes and birdhouses my brother has so painstakingly built. I want to lash out and hurt him, the same way he is hurting me. I cling to control, telling myself I can do this on my own.

I hit the barn door with the heels of both palms and send it flying open. I’m midway down the path when I hear Jacob’s voice behind me.

“Katie.”

Under any other circumstance, I’d keep going. Or revile him with a few choice words that would illuminate just how far I’ve strayed from my Amish roots. I stop and turn only because I’m desperate. Because I’m scared. Because I don’t want anyone else to die.