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age of ten in the Miller family, the King family, the Lapps, and both sets of Fishers. Aaron Fisher’s family and Levi Fisher’s family both lived on Grimlace Lane, and it turned out Aaron and Levi were cousins. The audio interviews were on my iPad as well as photos. The Amish dislike having their photos taken, but I’d insisted to Grady and he’d backed me up. With so many Samuels and Miriams, I had to have the photos to keep them all straight. The organization geek in me was already planning out my situation board in my head.
    Of all the people we’d interviewed, no one admitted to recognizing the dead girl from our photo of her face, and if any of them were lying, the natural wall of their reticence around strangers hid it well. In a sense, everyone had an alibi, and in another sense, they didn’t. At the time the body was moved, between midnight and two A.M. , everyone was in bed. Wives claimed husbands never stirred all night, and husbands said the same about their wives. Most of the children in these large families slept two or more to a room, and siblings swore no one had gotten up and left for more than a bathroom run last night.
    There’s no more annoying alibi than “He was sleeping beside me all night.” Wives will tell you they are such light sleepers they wake at the drop of a pin, and husbands aren’t about to contradict that and admit that their wives could sleep through a brass band in the bedroom, because that would break their own alibi. Siblings are unlikely to rat on their own flesh and blood out of fear of retaliation, if not loyalty.
    We’d asked each family to make a list of anyone who visitedtheir farm on a regular basis and we had a long list of names to check already.
    Our last stop was Ezra Beiler. I knew nothing about Beiler except that he owned the farm at 467 Grimlace Lane and that his twenty-five-acre farm was one of the ones with an animal trail to the creek. As we pulled in I saw a sign:
Beiler’s Molly Mules
. A number of the long-faced creatures were grazing in the fenced pasture along the road. They were big, magnificent animals, light tan in color with tightly groomed manes and squarish heads. They didn’t look anything like donkeys, which is what I would have guessed. They looked more like very homely Clydesdales. I was staring at them as Grady stopped the car and flipped open his notepad.
    â€œEzra Beiler. Widower. No children. Maybe this one will be quick.”
    He sounded relieved. I couldn’t blame him. Birth control was not the Amish way, and we’d interviewed enough people already today to make my voice hoarse and my mind spacey with the weight of all those blank stares. I was looking forward to a hot meal and getting back to the station to put my thoughts in order.
    As we got out, I took stock of the property. The farmhouse was a bit small, an old clapboard two-story, the top of which had strongly sloped eaves. I imagined there were only one or two rooms upstairs, the kind where you had to duck your head. But though rough, the house was freshly painted white and had a porch with welcoming tan rockers. In front of the house on the driveway’s left was the winter shell of a kitchen garden. What looked like grapevines and possibly berry canes stretched barebranches along a trio of thick wires. It was neat and clean and probably quite a sight in the summer.
    The barn was directly opposite the house on the gravel drive. Everything else appeared to be fenced-in pasture. In the distance I could see the line of trees that marked the creek.
    Grady and I looked at the house and the barn for a moment. It was silent, so silent that I could hear the crunch of the mules’ hooves as they walked through the snow and the creak of the trees in the wind. Damn, it was cold. I desperately needed some coffee.
    Grady nodded his head at me. “Check the barn. I’ll try the house. After this, we’re going to get some damn