Page 100 of Sworn to Silence
“You don’t know the truth!” Turning away from her, I begin to pace. “Sarah, how could you?”
“Your police friends can help you find Daniel now,” she offered.
Heart pounding, I rub my hands over my face and try to calm down. “Did you sign the note? Do they know it came from you?”
“I did not sign my name.”
I try to think through the ramifications, but my brain is so muddled by exhaustion, I can’t think past the panic clenching my chest.
“Katie, what happened?”
I stop pacing and look at her. “Bishop Troyer took the note to the town council. Maybe the mayor. Now, they’re suspicious of me. Are you happy now?”
“I am not happy to see you hurting. All I want is for Daniel Lapp to be caught.”
“We don’t know that he’s the killer!” I shout.
She glances nervously toward the door. “Please do not shout.”
Trying hard to fend off the fingers of panic crawling all over me, I draw a deep breath. “Sarah, I need to talk to you about what happened that day.”
She starts to turn away, but I set my hands on her shoulders and force her to face me. “I need you to remember. Think back to that day. Is it really possible Daniel Lapp survived?”
“If he’s back, then he must have survived.” Her fingers flutter at the neckline of her plain dress. “You saw him, too.”
The human mind is a powerful thing. Like the body, it possesses protective mechanisms to safeguard it against trauma. The abject horror of what happened that day was branded into my brain and will remain there forever. But I remember few details of the rape, even less of the shooting. The one thing I do recall with vivid clarity is the blood. On the curtains. On my hands. An ocean of it glistening on the floor.
Too much blood for anyone to have survived.
“There was too much blood,” I whisper.
“What?”
I look hard at my sister. “Did you go withDattand Jacob to the grain elevator?”
She stares back, her expression stricken. “No.”
“How do you know they buried the body?”
“I heardMammandDatttalking. In the barn. A few days after it happened.”
“What did they say?”
“DatttoldMammhe put Daniel in the hole where no one would ever find him.”
“In the hole?” My heart tap dances against my ribs. “What does that mean? What hole?”
“I do not know. A well, maybe. I did not ask.”
In the hole...
The words tumble in my head like sea glass in a kaleidoscope. “I have to go.” Sarah looks alarmed. “Where?”
“To find Daniel Lapp,” I say, and hit the stairs running.
CHAPTER 25
Following the chief of police on some half-baked hunch probably wasn’t a very good idea. With the temperature dropping fast and the snow coming down in earnest, John figured it fell into the downright stupid category. He was reaching for the ignition key when headlights cut through the darkness, telling him a vehicle was coming down the lane. “Shit,” he muttered.
