Plain Truth Read online

  Which is why Lizzie nearly fell over in her seat when the attorney approached her with a genuine, friendly smile. "Did you know I used to spend summers here?"

  Lizzie blinked at her. "At the courthouse?"

  "No," Ellie laughed, "contrary to popular belief. I meant in East Paradise."

  "I did not know that," Lizzie said stiffly.

  "Well, my aunt lives here. Used to own a little farm." She grinned. "But that was before real estate taxes went as high as the new cellular towers."

  At that, Lizzie chuckled under her breath. "That's why I rent."

  "Your Honor," George interrupted, giving his witness a warning look, "I'm certain the jury doesn't need to hear Ms. Hathaway's stroll down memory lane."

  The judge nodded. "Is there a point to this, counselor?"

  "Yes, Your Honor. It's that growing up around here, you get to watch the Amish quite a bit." She turned to Lizzie. "Wouldn't you agree?"

  "Yes."

  "You said you hadn't booked many Amish. When was the last one?"

  Liz2ie backpedaled mentally. "About five months ago. A seventeen-year-old who drove his buggy into a ditch under the influence."

  "And before that? How long had it been?"

  She tried, but she couldn't remember. "I don't know."

  "But a good length of time?"

  "I'd say so," Lizzie admitted.

  "In your dealings ... both professional and personal ... have you found the Amish to be fairly gentle people?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know what happens when an unwed Amish girl has a baby?"

  "I've heard that they take care of their own," Lizzie said.

  "That's right, and Katie wouldn't have been excommunicated--only shunned for a while. Then she'd be forgiven and welcomed back with open arms. So where's the motive for murder?"

  "In her father's actions," Lizzie explained. "There are ways around excommunication if you want to keep in touch with family members who've left the church, but Aaron Fisher didn't allow them when he banished the defendant's brother. That severe fact was in the back of her mind, all the time."

  "I thought you didn't interview Mr. Fisher."

  "I didn't."

  "Ah," Ellie said. "So now you're psychic?"

  "I interviewed his son," Lizzie countered.

  "Talking to a son won't tell you what's in the father's mind. Just like looking at a dead baby doesn't tell you that its mother killed it, right?"

  "Objection!"

  "Withdrawn," Ellie said smoothly. "Do you find it odd that an Amish woman is being accused of murder?"

  Lizzie looked at George. "It's an aberration. But the fact is, it happened."

  "Did it? Your scientific proof confirms that Katie had that baby. That's indisputable. But does having that baby necessarily lead to killing that baby?"

  "No."

  "You also mentioned that you found a footprint in the dirt near where the infant's body was found. In your mind, this links Katie to murder?"

  "Yes," Lizzie said. "Since we know that she wears a size seven. It's not convicting evidence in and of itself, but it certainly adds support to our theory."

  "Is there any way to prove that this specific footprint was made by Katie's foot?"

  Lizzie folded her hands together. "Not conclusively."

  "I wear a size seven shoe, Detective Munro. So theoretically, it could have been my foot that made that print, correct?"

  "You weren't in the barn that morning."

  "Did you know that a size seven adult woman's shoe is also approximately equivalent in length to a size five child's shoe?"

  "I didn't."

  "Did you know that Levi Stoltzfus wears a size five shoe?"

  Lizzie smiled tightly. "I do now."

  "Was Levi barefoot when you arrived at the farm?"

  "Yes."

  "Had Levi, by his own admission, been standing on the floor near that pile of horse blankets to reach for one when he happened to find the body of the infant?"

  "Yes."

  "So is it possible that the footprint you're chalking up to evidentiary proof of Katie committing murder actually belonged to someone else who was in the same spot for a completely innocent reason?"

  "It's possible."

  "All right," Ellie said. "You said the umbilical cord was cut with scissors."

  "Missing scissors," Lizzie interjected.

  "If a girl was going to kill her baby, Detective, would she bother to cut the cord?"

  "I have no idea."

  "What if I told you that clamping and cutting the cord prompts the reflex that makes the newborn breathe on its own? Would it make sense to do that, if you're going to smother it a few minutes later?"

  "I suppose not," Lizzie answered evenly, "but then again, I doubt most people know that cutting the cord leads to breathing. More likely, it's a step in the birthing process they've seen on TV. Or in this case, from watching farm animals."

  Taken down a peg, Ellie stepped back to regroup. "If a girl was going to kill her baby, wouldn't it be easier to cover it up with hay and leave it to die of exposure?"

  "Maybe."

  "Yet this baby was found wiped clean, lovingly wrapped. Detective, what murderous young mother is going to swab and swaddle her baby?"

  "I don't know. But it happened," Lizzie said firmly.

  "That brings me to another point," Ellie continued. "According to your theory, Katie hid the pregnancy for seven months and sneaked into the barn to deliver the baby in absolute silence--going to great lengths to keep anyone from finding out that a baby ever existed either in utero or out. So why on earth would she leave it in a place that she knew very well would be crawling with people doing the milking a few hours later? Why not dump the baby in the pond behind the barn?"

  "I don't know."

  "Or in the manure pile, where it wouldn't have been found for some time?"

  "I don't know."

  "There are a lot of places on an Amish farm where the body of a baby could be disposed of that are far more clever than under a pile of blankets."

  Shrugging, Lizzie replied, "No one said the defendant was clever. Just that she committed murder."

  "Murder? We're talking basic common sense here. Why cut the cord, get the baby breathing, swaddle it, kill it--and then leave it where it's sure to be discovered?"

  Lizzie sighed. "Maybe she wasn't thinking clearly."

  Ellie rounded on her. "And yet by the very terms of a charge of murder, you allege that she was cognizant of this act, that she premeditated this act, that she committed it with intent? Can you be deliberate and confused all at the same time?"

  "I'm not a psychiatrist, Ms. Hathaway. I don't know."

  "No," Ellie said meaningfully. "You don't."

  When Katie and Jacob had been small, they'd played together in the fields, zigzagging through the summer cornfields as if they were a maze. Incredible, how thick and green those walls could grow, so that she could be a foot away from her brother just on the other side, and never know it.

  Once, when she was about eight, she got lost. She'd been playing follow-the-leader, but Jacob got ahead of her and disappeared. Katie had called out for him, but he was teasing her that day and wouldn't come. She walked in circles, she grew tired and thirsty, and finally she lay down on her back on the ground. She squinted up between the slats of stalks and took comfort from the fact that this was the same old sun, the same old sky, the same familiar world she'd awakened in that morning. And eventually, feeling guilty, Jacob came and found her.

  At the defense table, with a flurry of words hailing around her like a storm, Katie remembered that day in the corn.

  Things had a way of working out for the best, when you let them run their course.

  "The patient was brought into the ER with vaginal bleeding, and a urine pregnancy test was positive. She had a boggy uterus about twenty-four weeks' size, and an open cervical os," said Dr. Seaborn Blair. "We started her on a drip of pitocin to stop the bleeding. A BSU conf