Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

Sarah Fisher, on the other hand, had not.

Lizzie considered this as she stood in the milk room, watching Aaron Fisher empty a small hand tank of milk into a larger one. He was tall and dark, his arms thick with ropes of muscle developed by farming. His beard brushed the second button of his shirt. As he finished, he set down the tank and turned to give Lizzie his full attention.

“My wife was not pregnant, Detective,” Aaron said.

“You’re certain?”

“Sarah can’t have more children. The doctors made it that way, after she almost died birthing our youngest.”

“Your other children, Mr. Fisher-where were they when the baby was found?”

A shadow passed over the man’s face, disappearing as quickly as Lizzie had marked it. “My daughter was asleep, upstairs. My other child . . . is gone.”

“Gone, like down the road to her own home?”

“Dead.”

“This daughter who was asleep is how old?”

“Eighteen.”

At that, Lizzie glanced up. Neither Sarah Fisher nor the paramedics had mentioned that there was another woman of childbearing age who lived on the farm. “Is it possible that she was pregnant, Mr. Fisher?”

The man’s face turned so red that Lizzie grew worried. “She isn’t even married.”

“It’s not a prerequisite, sir.”

Aaron Fisher stared at the detective coldly, clearly. “It is for us.”

It seemed to take forever to get through milking all forty cows, and it had nothing to do with the arrival of a second battalion of police officers. Samuel closed the pasture gate after letting out the heifers and walked toward the main house. He should go help Levi sweep out the barn one last time for the morning, but this once it would wait.

He didn’t bother to knock. Just opened the door, as if the home was already his and the young woman inside at the stove also belonged to him. He stopped for a moment, watching the sun grace her profile and gild her honey hair, her movements quick and efficient as she fixed breakfast.

“Katie,” Samuel said, stepping inside.

She turned quickly, the spoon flying up in the batter bowl as she started. “Oh, Samuel. I wasn’t expecting you yet.” She peered around his shoulder, as if she might see an army behind him. “Mam said I ought to make enough for everyone.”

Samuel walked forward and took the bowl, setting it on the counter. He reached for her hands. “You don’t look so good.”

She grimaced. “Thanks for the compliment.”

He drew her closer. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes, when they met his, were the jewel blue of an ocean he had once seen on the cover of a travel magazine, and-he imagined-just as endlessly deep. They were what had first attracted him to Katie, across a crowded church service. They were what made him believe that, even years from now, he would do anything for this one woman.

She ducked away from him and began to flip the pancakes. “You know me,” she said breathlessly. “I get nervous around these Englischers.”

“Not so many. Only a handful of policemen.” Samuel frowned at her back in concern. “They may want to talk to you, though. They seem to want to talk to everyone.”

She set the spatula down and turned slowly. “What did they find out there?”

“Your mother didn’t tell you?”

Katie slowly shook her head, and Samuel hesitated, torn between her trust in him to tell her the truth and the desire to keep her blissfully unaware for as long as possible. He ran his hands through his straw-colored hair, making it stand on end. “Well, they found a baby. Dead.”

He saw her eyes widen, those incredible eyes, and then she sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Oh,” she whispered, stunned.

In a moment he was at her side, holding her close and whispering that he would take her away from here, and to heck with the police. He felt her soften against him, and for a moment Samuel was triumphant-after so many days of being rebuffed, to finally come back to this. But Katie stiffened and drew away. “I don’t think this is the time,” she chided. She stood and turned off the stove’s gas burners, then folded her arms across her middle. “Samuel, I think I would like you to take me somewhere.”

“Anywhere,” he promised.

“I want you to take me to see this baby.”

“It’s blood,” the medical examiner confirmed, kneeling in the calving pen in front of a small, dark stain. “And placenta. Not a cow’s, from the size of it. Someone had a baby recently.”

“Stillborn?”

He hesitated. “I can’t say without doing the autopsy-but my hunch says no.”

“So it just . . . died?”

“I didn’t say that, either.”

Lizzie sat back on her heels. “You’re telling me someone intentionally killed this baby?”

The man shrugged. “I guess that’s up to you to find out.”

Lizzie calculated quickly in her mind. Given such a small window between the baby’s birth and death, chances were that the perpetrator of the crime was the infant’s mother. “What are we talking? Strangulation?”

“Smothering, more likely. I should have a preliminary autopsy report by tomorrow.”

Lizzie thanked him and wandered away from the scene the patrolmen were now securing. All of a sudden this was no longer an abandonment case, but a potential homicide. There was enough probable cause to get a warrant from a district judge for blood samples, evidence that might point a finger at the woman who had done this.

She stopped walking as the barn door opened. A tall blond man-one of the farm help-stepped into the dim light with a young woman. He nodded at Lizzie. “This is Katie Fisher.”

She was lovely, in that sturdy Germanic style that always made Lizzie think of fresh cream and springtime. She wore the traditional garb of the Old Order Amish: a long-sleeved dress, covered by a black apron that fell just below her knees. Her feet were bare and callused-it had always amazed Lizzie to see these Amish youth running down gravel roads without their shoes, but that was how they spent the summer. The girl was also so nervous that Lizzie could nearly smell her fear. “I’m glad you’re here, Katie,” Lizzie said gently. “I’ve been looking for you, so that I can ask you some questions.”

At that, Katie moved closer to the blond giant beside her. “Katie was asleep last night,” he said. “She didn’t even know what happened until I told her.”

Lizzie tried to gauge the girl’s response, but something had distracted her. She was staring over Lizzie’s shoulder into the tack room, where the medical examiner was supervising the removal of the baby’s body.

Suddenly the girl wrenched away from Samuel and ran out the barn door, with Lizzie chasing her to the farmhouse porch.

As reactions to death went, this was a violent one. Lizzie watched the girl trying to compose herself, and wondered what had prompted it. Had this been any ordinary teen, Lizzie would have taken such behavior as an indication of guilt-but Katie Fisher was Amish, which required her to filter her thoughts. If you were Amish, you could grow up in Lancaster County without television news broadcasts and R-rated movies, without rape and wife-beating and murder. You could see a dead baby and be honestly, horribly shocked by the sight.

Then again, there had been cases in recent years; teenage mothers who’d hidden their pregnancies and after the birth had tied up the loose ends by getting rid of the newborn. Teenage mothers who were completely unaware of what they’d done. Teenage mothers who came in all shapes, all sizes, all religions.

Katie leaned against a pillar and sobbed into her hands. “I’m sorry,” the girl said. “Seeing it-the body-it made me think of my sister.”

“The one who died?”