CLOUDS WITHOUT RAIN

       1

      Monday, August 7

      4:15 P.M.

      PROFESSOR Michael Branden, driving a black Amish buggy, worked his horse at a walk along Walnut Creek Township Lane T-414, just north of Indian Trail Creek in Holmes County, Ohio, on a sweltering Monday afternoon early in August. Coming up to one of the short stretches of blacktop laid in front of a house to cut the dust, he slowed the horse and rolled gently onto the pavement. The buggy rocked and swayed from side to side on its light oval springs, and the iron wheels cut sharp lines through the tar blisters in the blacktop. The horse’s hooves gave hollow plopping sounds that switched back to a lighter clicking in the dust and gravel after the blacktop played out beyond the house. The sky was cloudless, the sun hot, and beyond the thin line of trees that bordered the lane, the fields seemed withered and spent, the crops stricken with thirst.

      Branden was dressed to outward appearance as an Amishman. The Amish clothes and broad-brimmed straw hat with a flat crown were his own, bought two summers before, when he had worked on a kidnapping case involving an Amish child. He was wearing shiny blue denim trousers over leather work boots, a dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a black cloth vest, unfastened in front.

      Under his vest, he had hooked a deputy sheriff’s wallet badge over the belt he wore instead of the traditional suspenders, a concession to English style so that the heavy badge and three pairs of handcuffs would ride securely at his waist. The belt also held a beeper, though locating a phone in those parts of the county would be a task.

      The professor brought the rig to a stop, took off his straw hat, poured a little water from a plastic bottle over his wavy brown hair, and rubbed at it vigorously. Then he laid his hat on the seat, and while he dried his tanned face and neck with a red bandanna, he straightened the rest of the gear riding beside him.

      There was a black radio handset from the sheriff’s department, turned off for the task at hand. A Holmes County map from the county engineer’s office, folded to the square of Walnut Creek Township. An elaborate Contax RTS III SLR camera with a long Zeiss lens, tucked securely into the corner of the buggy seat. On the floorboards under the seat, a Smith and Wesson Model 60 .357 Magnum revolver in a black leather holster.

      With a light slap of the reins, Branden started the horse again. About a hundred yards further up the lane, he pulled into the drive of a new two-story Amish house and stepped the horse to a stone watering trough. A door on the upper floor opened as he stopped. Lydia Shetler, dressed in a plain, dark-blue dress and black bonnet, came out onto the top porch of the house and asked, “Any luck, already?” with the classic Dutch accent of the region.

      The professor shook his head and said, “Mind if I water the horse?”

      Lydia intoned, “If it suits you,” and leaned over with her elbows on the porch rail to watch.

      The porch, set on tall posts, was level with the second floor of the house. The area under this high porch was latticed in front with a rose arbor, which made a shady breezeway at ground level. The family’s laundry was hung out for the day, drying on clotheslines in the breezeway.

      Branden climbed out, and as the horse snorted and drank water, Lydia asked, “How much longer do you figure to make these rides, yet, Herr Professor?”

      “Till we get them,” Branden said and laughed. He slapped his hat at the dust on his ankles and added, “Or until the sheriff gets bored with the idea.”

      Lydia nodded as if to say that she understood the sheriff’s impulsiveness well enough, and asked, “Are you sure only our two families know about your business?”

      “Why? Have you heard anything on the gossip mill?”

      “Not a word.”

      “Then I suppose I’ll still keep riding. As long as nobody at either end lets it slip.”

      “I haven’t heard any mention,” Lydia repeated, and went back inside. Branden mounted into the buggy, swung around on the wide gravel lane, and walked her out to T-414 again, continuing east toward the little burg of Trail.

      This was his fifth afternoon drive in two weeks, traveling the northern edges of Walnut Creek Township on the center-east edge of Holmes County. His assignment was to be the decoy in Sheriff Bruce Robertson’s strategy to catch the two Amish-clad teenagers who were making a reputation for themselves that summer by robbing the Peaceful Ones. Disguised in rubber goat’s-head masks, they rode up to the slow-moving buggies on their mountain bikes and demanded money. Surprisingly large sums had been involved, and Sheriff Robertson now had his decoy in place. Professor Michael Branden, Civil War History, Millersburg College, a duly sworn reserve deputy, with a buggy, a costume of Amish clothes, a radio, an ample supply of handcuffs, and a very expensive camera. Also a revolver, just in case.

      As the professor rattled along slowly in his buggy, a pickup shot by in the opposing lane. In the cloud of dust left in its wake, two Amish teenagers passed from behind on mountain bikes. Branden took up his camera and fired off several frames on motor drive.

      Branden tensed a bit, wondering what he would actually do if the young bandits ever did approach him demanding money. He wasn’t at all certain that the sheriff was right about this one. Amish or English, they wouldn’t be that easy to apprehend. “They’re Amish, Mike,” Robertson had said. “They’ll just stand there when you show them your badge.” And if he took their picture or stepped down from the buggy to confront them? What then? They’d take off on their bikes.

      That’d be it, Branden thought dourly. They’d scatter, and he wouldn’t have a chance of chasing them down in the heat. The professor shook his head, laughed halfheartedly, and wondered about the ribbing he’d take from the regular deputies if the sheriff’s little game should play out as he suspected it might, with him giving chase through fields or over hills, losing them both.

      Chagrined, Branden rode the rest of his shift haphazardly back and forth along T-414, radio off so as not to give him away. As the supper hour approached, he headed south on T-412 to return the buggy to its owner. As he brought the buggy into the Hershbergers’ drive, one of the middle sons, Ben, stepped out of a woodshop