Chapter Ten
Saturday
10:19 am
81st St. Subway station/Museum of Natural History
Central Park, NYC
As much as he could, given his schedule, Flack had been taking Hannah around to see the city. He had taken her with him to the YMCA, at first to watch him shoot hoops with the kids, but almost as soon as she pulled her knitting from the I Love New York bag he'd found for her she'd been surrounded by a small flock of girls, all demanding that she teach them something. He'd explained to the girls that she couldn't talk, and didn't understand much English, but many of them came from immigrant families and didn't mind a bit. She'd become a fixture now, and her knitting group tended to follow the basketball boys around, knitting while they watched the game, occasionally thrusting their knitting into her hands to have her show them how to work this bit.
On his days off they started with the various parks and outdoor places while the weather was still nice. She loved Central Park, clearly, and had been utterly thrilled by the Statue of Liberty. It was when she saw it, he realized, that she really figured out that she was in New York. He still smiled when he remembered her face as she looked back at the skyline, utterly flabbergasted.
Today, however, it was raining, and so it was time to start on the museums. The subway was the easiest way to get there, of course, but it also had other perks. Whatever bothered her up at street level bothered her more in the cars. He wanted to fix it, but he also could not complain about the way she turned to press against him, face to face. He just put his arm around her gently, and she didn't complain at all.
He was, after all, a gentleman, not dead.
The platform was crowded. He took her hand to guide her toward the steps, looking back from time to time to make sure she was following. But, about halfway there something caught her eye. She turned, let go, and started pushing through the crowd, trying to get back to the outgoing train.
"Hannah!" He grabbed her, tried to keep her with him, but she jerked away. "Hannah!"
Just as she got back to the main platform, the doors of the train closed. She stopped, clearly upset as the train headed into the tunnel. "Hannah, what the hell?"
He'd never seen her so upset before. She silently made her feelings known, stomping her foot and angrily waving her arms. When he tried to grab her, pull her into an embrace, she actually smacked at him a little, pushing him away, clearly mad at him too. Finally she ended up at a bench, when she plopped down and ran her hand through her great mass of hair.
"Hannah?" All this came as a shock to him. Normally she was so calm, so gently easy with everything. She'd become his little oasis at the end of every crazy day. "What? What is it?"
She gestured toward where the train had gone, made the talk symbol by her mouth, and then pointed to herself.
"It talks you? It talks like you? You saw someone on that train who speaks your language?" He gestured with it, and got a very emphatic nod. Well no wonder she was pissed. He stood there and cursed a blue streak for a good five minutes. While he cursed he was wondering how the hell they would ever find that needle in the haystack of New York, when his eyes caught something.
"Hey, Hannah, look." He pointed toward the camera by the ceiling. "We can go see what they look like and maybe find them again. Come on." He took her hand, and headed for the lab.
Saturday
10:43 am
NYPD Crime Lab
Manhattan, NYC
It was a good thing Danny and Lindsey were on shift; Flack knew they would help them. "Hey Danno, we need some help. Hannah thinks she saw someone on the 81st Street platform who speaks her language. Can we see the security cams?"
"Sure thing, come on." They went into the computer room and accessed the files. "What time?"
"About twenty, thirty minutes ago," Flack told him exactly which camera.
"Got it," Danny flipped back through the images. "All right, there are the two of you getting off the train." Forward a few minutes. "Okay, Hannah, look there."
Hannah frowned at the moving pictures; she was still not very video compatible. After Danny played it a few times she finally pointed to a spot on the screen. Flack looked over her shoulder to see her pointing to two women in funny hats. "Must be the headgear, Danny muttered, "Maybe we can look it up."
"What headgear?" Lindsey walked in to see what the others were doing and her eyes went wide. "Oh my god, I am an idiot! Hannah…" She turned to face the other woman. "…are you Amish?"
An utterly relieved look came over Hannah's face, and she nodded.
"What the hell is Amish?" Flack felt like he'd been lost at the last left turn.
"Good question," Danny'd been left at the same turn.
"They're a religious group. They believe in plain, simple living. Um…" Lindsey had no idea how to put this in a way these two urban dwellers would understand. "Okay, very, very simplified version. You know the Hasidic Jewish communities up in Brooklyn, the ultra-orthodox ones that try not to have anything to do with outsiders?" Both men nodded. "Okay the Amish are kind of, sort of the same idea only Christian and rural."
Both men looked at each other, "Ohhhh."
"Remember when my parents came out for a visit a couple of years ago, and they wanted to see the country around here? We went upstate for a few days, and I remember stopping at a couple of Amish farm stands. I don't know why I didn't think of it before." Lindsey was typing as she spoke.
Flack was hiding his anger well. He had no clue what Amish was about, but he had a NY cop's working familiarity with the Jewish groups in Brooklyn. Good people, he knew, who made good neighbors. He knew their girls tended to be the very quiet, very modest, very innocent types. And he knew how much that would doubly hurt them if they ended up in a place like that factory. If Lindsey was even half right, the whole level of bad just got worse. "Okay, so how does that help us?"
"Well, most of the Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch as well as English. I'd bet that's her other language. Knowing that, we can find a translator."
"Yeah," Danny broke in. "But we tried all the translator groups, they all came up zero."
"Ahh, but that's because Pennsylvania Dutch isn't spoken outside the US. It's considered an American dialect, and so it wouldn't be covered by the international translator groups. Here we go," she put a page of contact information up on the screen. "Dr. Karen Silverman. She's an anthropologist who's written several books about the Amish, as well as the definitive text on their language. And she teaches right here at SUNY."
Now that had Flack grinning, "Outstanding Montana! That is just what we need." He pointed to the screen and made gestures at Hannah. "She, is gonna talk, to you." For that he not only got a grin, but she flew into his arms as well.
Saturday
1:15 pm
NYPD Crime Lab
Manhattan, NYC
It was like riding a roller coaster. They managed to reach Prof. Silverman's TA, who informed them that the professor and her husband had left last week for South America. Three months up the Amazon.
Flack started cursing again.
The TA said that she didn't know of any other speakers in the city, but she did know of one man, a Luke Yoder, who lived outside Utica. He had a unique background, she said, which might dispose him to be more of a help. But he didn't have a phone; he could only be contacted by mail. This could take weeks.
By now Mack had wandered in to see what was going on. "Get his address." He said. When they hung up with the TA he turned to Lindsey. "Contact the sheriff in that area and ask him to go explain the situation to this Mr. Yoder. Hannah is the only witness in a murder investigation; I'm not willing to wait for the mail."
Saturday
4:48 pm
NYPD Crime Lab
Manhattan, NYC
"Mack, I just heard back from Sheriff Williams." Lindsey caught up with the boss in the hallway, close to where Flack and Hannah waited, all thoughts of the museum gone. "He spoke to Mr. Yoder, who said he would come help us."
"Good," Mack was pleased. Flack felt like dancing.
"That was the good news. The bad news is that Mr. Yoder refuses to travel on a Sunday. He said he'd be out here first thing Monday morning. And the Sheriff spoke to the local bishop, the head of the Amish church in the area. He hadn't heard of any Amish girls going missing in the past five years."
Flack frowned. "We keep going three steps forward and two steps back."
"Yes, but we're gaining one." Mack was still pleased. "Bring Hannah back with you on Monday."
Note: I don't mean to offend anyone with my references to or descriptions of religious groups. I'm just trying to write the way I think the character would explain things.