Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

The detective took a bite of the bagel in front of her. “How come you’re only happy when everyone around you is devouring something?”

“Must have something to do with being a lawyer.” He blotted his mouth with his napkin, then leaned back in his chair. “You’re going to need your energy today. You ever tried to get unsolicited information from the Amish?”

Lizzie let her mind spiral back. “Once,” she said. “That case with Crazy Charlie Lapp.”

“Oh, yeah-the schizophrenic kid who went off his meds and drove a stolen car down to Georgia. Well, take that case, and multiply the degree of difficulty by about a hundred.”

“George, why don’t you let me do my job? I don’t tell you how to try cases.”

“Sure you do. I just don’t listen.” He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table. “Most neonaticides don’t even make it to trial-they get plea-bargained. If the mother does get convicted, it’s on a minimal charge. You know why that is?”

“Because no one on a jury wants to believe a mother’s capable of killing her baby?”

“In part. But more often because the prosecution can’t pin a motive on the crime, which makes it seem less like murder.”

Lizzie stirred her coffee. “Ellie Hathaway might notice up an insanity defense.”

“She hasn’t yet.” George shrugged. “Look. I think this case is going to blow big, because of the Amish angle. It’s a chance to make the county attorney’s office shine.”

“It doesn’t hurt, of course, that this is an upcoming election year for you,” Lizzie said.

George narrowed his eyes. “It has nothing to do with me. This wasn’t Mary coming into the barn to deliver the infant Jesus. Katie Fisher went there intending to have a baby, kill it, and hide it.” He smiled at the detective. “Go prove me right.”

Ellie, Sarah, and Katie were in the kitchen pickling cucumbers when the car drove into the front yard. “Oh,” Sarah said, moving the curtains aside for a better look. “It’s that detective coming around again.”

Ellie’s hands froze in the middle of skinning a cucumber. “She’s here to question you all. Katie, go up to your room and don’t come back until I tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s the enemy, okay?” As Katie hurried upstairs, Ellie turned to Sarah. “You have to talk to her. Just tell her what you feel comfortable saying.”

“You won’t be here?”

“I’ll be keeping her away from Katie. That’s more important.”

Sarah nodded just as there was a knock from outside. Waiting for Ellie to leave the room, she crossed the kitchen and opened the door.

“Hello, Mrs. Fisher. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m-”

“I remember you,” Sarah said. “Would you like to come in?”

Lizzie nodded. “I’d like that very much. I’d also like to ask you a few questions.” She surveyed the kitchen, with the bottles sealing on the stove and the piles of cucumbers heaped upon the table. “Would that be all right?” When Sarah nodded stiffly, Lizzie took her notebook from her coat pocket. “Can you tell me a little about your daughter?”

“Katie’s a good girl. She is humble and giving and kind and she serves the Lord.”

Lizzie tapped her pencil against the paper, writing nothing at all. “She sounds like an angel, Mrs. Fisher.”

“No, just a good, Plain girl.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

Sarah twisted her hands beneath her apron. “There have been a few, since Katie came into her running-around years. But the most serious has been Samuel. He works the farm with my husband.”

“Yes, we’ve met. How serious is serious?”

“It’s not for me to say,” Sarah ventured, smiling shyly. “That would be Katie’s private business. And if they were thinking of marriage, it would be up to Samuel to go to the Schtecklimann, the go-between who’d come and ask Katie what her wishes are.”

Lizzie leaned forward. “So Katie doesn’t tell you everything about her personal life.”

“Of course not.”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

Sarah looked down at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“At the risk of being rude, Mrs. Fisher, either she told you, or she didn’t.”

“She didn’t tell me right out, but she wouldn’t have volunteered that information, either. It’s a very personal thing.”

Lizzie bit back her retort. “You never noticed that her dresses were getting bigger? That she wasn’t menstruating?”

“I have had babies, Detective. I know the signs of pregnancy.”

“But would you have recognized them if they were intentionally being hidden?”

“I guess the answer is no,” Sarah softly conceded. “Still, it is possible that Katie didn’t know what was happening herself.”

“She grew up on a farm. And she watched you through your other pregnancy, right?” As Sarah bent her head, nodding, something sparked in Lizzie’s mind. “Has Katie ever exhibited a violent streak?”

“No. If anything, she was the opposite-always bringing in stray squirrels and birds, and feeding the calves whose mothers died birthing. Taking care of whoever needed caring.”

“Did she watch her little sister often?”

“Yes. Hannah was her shadow.”

“How did your youngest die, again?”

Sarah’s eyes shuttered as she stepped back from herself. “She drowned in a skating accident when she was seven.”

“I’m so sorry. Were you there at the time?”

“No, she and Katie were out at the pond by themselves.” When Lizzie did not ask another question, Sarah looked up at the detective, at the conclusion written across her face. “You cannot be thinking that Katie had anything to do with her own sister’s death!”

Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “Mrs. Fisher,” she murmured, “I never said I did.”

In a perfect world, Lizzie thought, Samuel Stoltzfus would be gracing the pages of magazines dressed in nothing but Calvin Klein underwear. Tall, strong, and blond, he was so classically lovely that a woman of any faith would have had trouble turning him away-but Lizzie had been questioning the young man for twenty minutes, and knew that even if he looked like a Greek god, he sure as hell didn’t have the smarts of Socrates. So far, although she’d verbally held up every single piece of medical evidence of his girlfriend’s pregnancy, Samuel wouldn’t budge from saying Katie hadn’t had a baby.

Maybe denial was catching, like the flu.

Exhaling heavily, Lizzie backed off. “Let’s try another tack. Tell me about your boss.”

“Aaron?” Samuel seemed surprised, and with good reason; all the other questions had been about his relationship with Katie. “He’s a good man. A very simple man.”

“He seemed sort of stubborn to me.”

Samuel shrugged. “He is used to doing things his way,” he said, then hastened to add, “but of course he should, since this is his farm.”

“And after you’re a member of the family? Won’t it be your farm, then, too?”

Samuel ducked his head, clearly uncomfortable. “That would be his decision.”

“Who else is going to take over the farm, especially once Katie marries? Unless he’s got a son waiting in the wings that no one’s mentioned.”

Without meeting her eye, Samuel said, “He has no sons anymore.”

Lizzie turned. “Was there another child that died? I was under the impression it was a little girl.”

“Yes, Hannah.” Samuel swallowed. “No one else died. I meant that he has no sons. Sometimes, with the English, I forget how to say it.”

Lizzie eyed the blond man. Samuel stood to inherit the farm-as long as he managed to claim Katie Fisher. Having Aaron Fisher’s grandchild would cement that deal. Had Katie killed the infant because she didn’t want to be tied to Samuel? Because she didn’t want him to inherit?