Page 20 of The Hidden One

“You must have been pretty tight for you to take time off and drive all the way over here to help him out.”

I tell him about the three elders who came to see me in Painters Mill. “Until this afternoon, I haven’t talked to Jonas in almost twenty years.”

“Ample time for someone to change,” he says.

I don’t respond.

He opens the case file and begins to page through. “Most of this information has been made public,” he tells me, letting me know in advance he’s not going to give me anything that’s not. “I’m sure you know there are some details I can’t share.”

“Of course.”

He outlines the timeline first, giving me the framework of events in the order they occurred. I put my pen to use and write down all of it.

“Stoltzfus went missing in October 2004. Widower. Eighty-six years old. Lived on a farm out on Indian Ripple Road. Son, thirty-five-year-old Henry Stoltzfus, went out to see his dad, couldn’t find him, and reported him missing the next day. We searched the area most of the day and into the night. Ananias Stoltzfus was elderly, so as you can imagine the family was concerned. There were dozens of volunteers, both Amish and English. We brought in dogs. The whole nine yards.”

“You were there?” I ask.

“I was a rookie back then. Spent a cold night tromping through the woods out there by his house. We didn’t find so much as a single footprint.”

He licks his finger and turns the page. “We didn’t know if he’d left or collapsed or if there was foul play involved. Next morning, deputies began interviewing people. Family. Friends. Neighbors. Most were Amish. We learned pretty quick the old man was on the outs with an Amish dude by the name of Ezra Bowman, who was deceased. He’d been shunned or whatever it is they do. Evidently, that caused bad blood between the son, Jonas Bowman, and Stoltzfus. We looked into that and learned there had been an altercation between the victim and Bowman a couple of months before Stoltzfus disappeared. Multiple witness statements say Bowman threatened Stoltzfus.”

“What was the nature of the threat?”

He frowns as if I’m questioning his assessment, so I quickly add, “I’m curious. The Amish are pacifists. A physical threat would have been unusual.”

Even as I make the statement, Jonas’s words come back to me.

I lost my temper. I shouted.

I’m not proud of it.

Gainer squints down at the file in front of him. “According to one witness, Bowman told the victim something like: Your time is coming, old man. Sooner than you think. When it does, you won’t be going to heaven.

“Witnesses paraphrased, but that’s how the threat was framed.”

“Got it.”

“We also have the vandalism charge. It was enough to pick up Bowman for questioning. We conducted an interview, and he was released without charges. He paid a fine.” He flips the page, looks at the back side. “By then, we were pretty sure Stoltzfus was dead. Whether his demise was from natural causes or foul play, we had no way of knowing. All we had was a missing elderly man and a handful of circumstantial evidence. We had no body. No witnesses. We didn’t have enough to make an arrest, so the case went cold.”

He leans back in his chair and crosses his leg over his knee. “Of course, the case remained open. Every year or so, we’d look at the file. Send a cadaver dog out to the woods around the Stoltzfus farm. We kept an eye on Bowman. He never gave us cause to take any kind of action.” He slips off the eyeglasses, puts an endpiece in his mouth. “Until that muzzleloader was found, anyway.”

I let my eyes flick to the file. “It would be tremendously helpful if I could read the file.”

“Some elements of the case weren’t made public, Chief Burkholder. I’ll check with the sheriff and get back to you.”

A polite way of saying no without having to say no. “Are the state police assisting?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’ve brought in a forensic anthropologist?”

He sits up a little straighter, tilts his head in a way that tells me he’s surprised that I can pronounce the term let alone that I’m familiar with it. I hold on to my neutral expression.

“We worked with a guy out of the university up in Buffalo,” he tells me.

“Was he able to determine official cause and manner of death?”

“Ananias Stoltzfus sustained two gunshot wounds. One to the torso. One to the head. Manner of death is homicide.”