Between Two Worlds Page 14

  Aiden gazed out the window overlooking the small parking lot. Left boot missing? That seemed odd. He took out his notepad and pencil and jotted down a few notes. For what purpose, he really didn’t know.

  He continued reading the coroner’s report: “External Injuries on Body: 1) On left parietal ridge, pink linear laceration, 2cm length. 2) On left crown, 1.5cm light contusion. 3) On neck, 8 1/4cm length x 1cm width linear contusion, likely caused by rope. 4) On anterior neck, 1cm laceration, likely caused by shattered thyroid cartilage protrusion….”

  Most of those injuries, with the exception of the neck contusion and shattered thyroid caused by the rope, could have occurred at any time, either when Kyle was in the process of hanging himself or even before that. Farm work entailed much manual labor, and one received many cuts and bruises as a result. Aiden had experienced it himself while working on the Schrock farm back in June. Most of the Amish he knew, male and female, had many scars and nicks. And he had seen more people in Henry hobbling along on crutches than in any one place. All part of a semi-subsistence lifestyle.

  The coroner’s report contained a front and back outline drawing of the human body, depicting the precise location of each injury. The drawings made Kyle’s death all the more real. Aiden had come across enough death while in Amish Country.

  Below the drawings the coroner had written in an abrupt script: “Manner of Death—self asphyxiation.” Aiden braced himself for the coroner’s description of Kyle’s internal neck injuries. But what he read surprised him. The coroner described limited neck trauma; he merely repeated the words “shattered thyroid cartilage” and “8 1/4cm length x 1cm width linear contusion around neck,” clearly caused by hanging from a rope. Nowhere did the coroner mention that Kyle’s neck was broken, or that he suffered any severed spinal nerves.

  The more he thought about it, the more strange it all seemed. He thumbed through the next few leaves of the binder until he came to the police reports. Perhaps those would explain the coroner’s findings.

  According to the police reports, Kyle had hanged himself by jumping off the barn’s loft. The image of the teenager leaping to his death, then dangling in midair, made Aiden cringe. But from that image it became even clearer that Kyle could not have escaped a more serious neck injury.

  He uncovered another interesting fact, one he would have expected to have made it into the Blade or the regional newspaper, if for no other reason than its human interest angle. According to several of the police reports, Kyle Yoder’s father had been the one who had found him hanging in the barn. A police photograph of the father accompanied one of the reports.

  At first he did not recognize the man with piercing blue eyes and a scraggly silver beard. As he narrowed his eyes at the photograph, he gasped. The records lady, lowering her bifocals, glanced at him. Aiden smiled at her to ease her concern. He pretended to have a slight cough, and she went back to her work.

  Turning back to the photograph, Aiden brought the binder up to the window to utilize more natural lighting. The photograph revealed the old minister who had preached at the Schrocks when they had hosted Church Sunday last month. He was the one who had given the opening sermon with his eyes glued to his Bible. Aiden had been introduced to him briefly, between the sermons. There were so many Yoders in the community, of course he had not assumed he was Kyle’s father. The photograph was eight years old, but there was no mistaking the somber-looking man with the piercing crystal-blue eyes.

  So far nothing in the police reports mentioned anything suspicious. Still, Aiden could not get the missing left boot or the fact that Kyle had no broken neck out of his mind. Perhaps he had misread. He read further, his fingertip firm to the laminated pages, taking many notes as he scanned for any clarifications.

  Not a single mention of a broken neck anywhere, or any other spinal injuries. No mention of the missing boot, either. The next few pages revealed grim color copies of the photographs taken at the scene. Several wide shots from different angles showed Kyle’s body hanging lifeless from the barn’s rafter. Aiden was grateful none of the photographs exposed Kyle’s face, for his head slumped to his chest. Indeed, it was clear from the photographs he had on only one boot.

  If Kyle had lost his boot in the process of hanging himself, wouldn’t it have been lying around the barn somewhere, perhaps in the loft where he had jumped, or on the barn floor, possibly knocked off from the force of the fall? Yet there was no sign of it in any of the photographs, and none of the police reports mentioned finding it. Shouldn’t the police have been suspicious of his wearing one boot?

  But there was more.

  Kyle was hanging from the highest rafter of the gambrel ceiling, which someone had marked along the edge of one photo as being “16 ft.” in height, indicating it with two arrows pointing in opposite directions from the top to the bottom. The loft was several yards to Kyle’s left.

  This all looked odd to Aiden. Kyle could only have managed to tie a rope to the center rafter while standing on the loft if he were made of rubber. Curious, Aiden again scanned through the police reports, thinking he had missed something in his initial readings. But nothing mentioned the implausibility of Kyle tying a rope to a sixteen-foot rafter so far from where he would have been standing before leaping to his death.

  Aiden considered the possibility that Kyle had used a ladder, like the aluminum stepladder in the photographs that was mounted on the wall to the horse stall. But no way could Kyle have managed to climb the ladder (which looked to be about twelve feet in height in comparison to the ceiling), tie a rope to the rafter and his neck, climb back down the ladder, replace it neatly on the wall, then climb up to the loft where he jumped to his death.

  Even if the police were wrong about his jumping from the loft, and he had instead jumped from the ladder, there was still the mystery of who had mounted the ladder back on the wall.

  When Aiden set out to quench his reporter’s thirst, he never expected to find so many missing pieces. The more he uncovered, the more his blood heated with suspicions.

  He closed the binder, realizing there was only one thing to do. He needed to interview the police officers and coroner who had worked on Kyle’s case and see if they could fill in any of the holes they had either purposefully or inadvertently left open.

  More importantly, he needed to go to the scene of Kyle’s death itself—to the Yoder farm and the barn in which the Reverend Yoder had found his son hanging from a rafter.

  Chapter 16

  “Would you like another slice of applesauce cake?”

  “Danke.” Daniel handed Tara his crumb-covered plate, and she disappeared with it into the kitchen around the corner. Itchy eyes focused on the wooden floor, he wiped his hands on the thighs of his broadfall pants and tried to bite down on his boredom. Willing off a yawn, he forced himself to stay alert, to concentrate more on Tara. Leaving now would give her the wrong impression. He took another sip of his black coffee and set the cup on the coffee table, hoping time picked up its pace.

  “Here you go,” Tara said, strolling into the room a few minutes later with a fresh slab of cake.

  “Danke.” Daniel took the plate from her small hand and ate a few forkfuls of the moist cake, careful to avoid dropping crumbs onto her mother’s sofa.

  “It’s real good,” he said, for what he thought must’ve been the tenth time that night.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “You can make real good cake.”

  Tara’s mouth seemed to stretch to the brim of her kapp. She always grinned like that when he complimented her. Still grinning, she poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot on the coffee table. The strings of her kapp dangled like cobwebs in a barn caught in a draft. He thought she wore her head covering farther over her face than was necessary for a woman her age in the community. She always dressed far more conservatively than the other maydels. Daniel thought he had liked that in her. Lately, he found it dull.

  “Do you want more coffee?” she asked, fl
ashing him her indigo eyes.

  “Ach, nay.” Daniel shook his head. “I’ll be up the rest of the night for sure as it is.”

  Settling back against the sofa, Tara held her cup and saucer delicately over the lap of her white cape. “All that coffee hasn’t kept your mouth awake. You been awful quiet tonight, more than usual.”

  “You keep filling me up with this wunderbar goot cake,” Daniel said. “I can barely keep my mouth free.” He caught a glimpse of their reflections in the darkened pane of the awning window, tilted up just enough to release the day’s heat. The two of them looked so stiff sitting on the sofa, the glow of the gas lantern on the coffee table like an eerie orb. They looked like ghosts, he thought. Shussly ghosts.

  Doubt filmed over Tara’s eyes when she turned her slender neck and gazed at him. “Is that all that’s keeping you quiet, my wonderful good cake?”

  The right words failed to come. He squirmed, hoping they’d rise to his head. He did not want to offend her. He liked having her as a distraction, yet being attentive to her did not come easy. The past few weeks he’d sensed she was wanting more assurance from him. Assurance that his interest in her was genuine.

  Intimate gestures in the Amish faith were uncommon (for which Daniel was grateful), but holding hands in private after an appropriate period of courtship was expected. They had been courting a little more than a month. Enough time had passed for him to at least hold her hand, even for someone as conservative as Tara. Daniel could barely compel himself to do it.

  “I figure I got many thoughts tonight,” he said, averting his eyes to the floor. “With the threshing coming up day after tomorrow, I haven’t been able to concentrate much on anything else.” He was partly telling her the truth. Threshing was the highlight of the season, and anticipation of its return preoccupied his mind. Yet he knew he had been quieter than was typical, even with the threshing. Even for him.

  He always felt a bit tongue-tied in Tara’s presence. What was there to say to her? There wasn’t even farming to discuss, as much as he would’ve liked to. Her family had stopped commercial farming several years ago when her father and three older brothers began working for the English wooden beam manufacturer. Word was they brought home hefty paychecks. Daniel had thought about applying for a job there; everyone said he’d be accepted. But Daniel valued his independence and working at his own pace.

  “You always think too hard.” Tara giggled. “Sometimes I think I can see your thoughts pouring out your ears.”

  Daniel, glancing at her, dropped his fork onto his empty plate with a clink. “What a thing to say.” He worried she was being literal, and really somehow could see his thoughts floating out of his head, although rationally he knew that could not be. But was she astute enough to read his face? Were his thoughts so obvious to her and everyone else in the community, as clear as words written across a blackboard with the starkest white chalk?

  “Well, it’s true.” Tara lowered her head, her cheeks pink. “But that’s why I like you; you’re smart, some men aren’t. I like how you ponder things.”

  Daniel grinned. He remembered how Aiden had once said the same thing to him. Picturing the two of them sitting on Aiden’s sofa watching the Chicago White Sox when he had told Daniel he was the most—what was the word he had used?—“ruminative” man he’d ever known made his own cheeks flush. Daniel hadn’t really known what the word meant, but it had made him smile nonetheless. Next day at the furniture shop, he had looked up the word on the Internet. He’d smiled even further, and had felt another burning flush. The word had seemed fitting, especially for a farmer like him.

  Tara turned as red as a radish. He wondered if she had misread his grin from what she had said, when in truth he had been smiling over Aiden’s words. Guilt rapped his brain. He shouldn’t be imagining himself sitting next to Aiden while with her. He needed to train himself not to think of such things. It was unfair to everyone. Awfully unfair. And wrong.

  Saturday night when Aiden had had supper with the family at the farm, Daniel had been more talkative, but he’d still had a tough time looking at him without the crushing shame. He’d hoped spending more time with Tara would help lift some of the weight. But whenever he was with her, all that he wanted was to be with Aiden.

  He had promised himself he would try to avoid him. Promises to oneself. They were sometimes as difficult to keep as dandelion seeds in one’s palm. His determination to steer his mind from running off into those dark ravines filled with Aiden hadn’t made it any easier. Sweeping him from his mind was a daunting chore.

  As Tara sipped her coffee, he wondered what Aiden was doing at that moment. Was he watching that television contraption, baseball or some silly DVD? Or reading in bed the way he’d said he liked? He was probably still at the Blade office, bent over his desk getting his latest story typed. It was a Monday. Tomorrow would be the newspaper’s deadline. He remembered Aiden telling him that Tuesdays were so hectic. He probably wanted to ensure he got as much done as possible to lighten tomorrow’s load. Aiden was industrious like that.

  Two of Tara’s barefooted younger siblings peered around the corner at the two “lovebirds” sitting on the sofa. Tara saw that Daniel had spied them and she shooed them away.

  “Get up to your beds, and stop being so nawslich.” After they ran off giggling, she turned her attention back to Daniel. “The kinner can be an armful. I’m so glad the rest are gone and married, but I still don’t get all that much peace. Being the oldest left in the house, I get all the responsibilities that come with it.”

  “Ya, that can be trying.” Daniel was glad that Tara’s older siblings were out of the house and married too. Five fewer pairs of peering eyes to have to contend with. They were all settled with children, living in homes of their own. Tara, the middle child, was next in line. Daniel sensed that whenever he came over for visits, Tara’s parents were eager to marry her off. The way they always looked at him, as if he were a prized hog. He hoped they didn’t expect too much. Thank goodness they were visiting Tara’s aunt for the evening and he wouldn’t have to face their gushing smiles.

  “Do you want to go sit out on the porch?” Tara asked. “It’s a pleasant night, and we can get away from the younger ones.”

  “Ya, that would be nice.” Daniel was grateful just to leave the balmy confines of the house with the pesky children. Also, it was a few steps closer to Gertrude, waiting for him tied to a hitching post in the driveway.

  They sat on the porch bench, a good arm’s length between each other. Tara set the lantern on the oak side table next to her and gathered her hands into a ball on her lap. She smiled at Daniel.

  “So you didn’t work the furniture shop today?”

  “Ya, that’s the case,” Daniel said. “I work tomorrow.”

  “You chored in the field?”

  “It was too hot for the horses. I worked in my woodshop.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Did you have a good day at the fabric shop?” Daniel often had a difficult time remembering that Tara worked at the English owned shop in Unity. He prided himself on being able to think of it out of the blue for conversation.

  “I work Wednesdays through Saturdays,” Tara said. “Don’t you remember? Today’s Monday.”

  “Ach, ya. That’s right. Sorry.” Daniel cringed. “So, how’s everything going there? Business been good?”

  “It’s going good,” she said. “Not too busy.”

  “Anything interesting happen lately?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Tara said, “last Saturday was an interesting day. There was this English woman who came in, never seen her before. She actually wanted to barter down the price of ribbons and buttons. Can you believe? Just because we’re Amish doesn’t mean we barter down prices in commercial stores. Don’t you hate that? Mrs. Chandar laughed when I told her about it. She says everyone in India barters down prices, even in the nicest shops. You remember Mrs. Chandar, don’t you? She’s the Hindu woman who drives me to and
from the shop sometimes. She’s a maid at the motel near the fabric shop. Her family’s from India. She’s very nice. Daniel? Daniel….”

  Daniel jerked up and feigned a smile. “I’m listening. Mrs. Chandar? I remember her, she’s a real nice lady. She’s Hindu, isn’t she? Her family’s from India, right?”

  “Ya. A goot woman, very easy to talk to. Easier than you, I have to say.” Tara gave Daniel a sidelong look.

  Daniel gripped his knees and squared his shoulders. He could feel Tara’s eyes burning into his knuckles. She wanted him to take her hand, he knew it. He flexed the fingers on his right hand, warming them up, willing his hand to rise up off of his knee.

  Slowly he raised his hand. He held it there, as if he were about to swat a fly. Staring straight ahead at the shadowy elms in the front yard, he took a deep breath and placed his hand on top of hers, balled in her lap.

  A sigh left Tara, light and airy like the breeze. Mockingbirds sang in the trees, filling the awkward silence that followed.