“No other incidents?”Harry asked.
Hutch shook his head.
“Not even a sighting?”Harry pushed.
Hutch again shook his head.
“Right, so it’s my prerogative to communicate any part of an investigation that I see fit to communicate, but even with that preamble, I’m going to tell you I want a tight circle on this.”
“I can keep my mouth shut, Harry.”
Harry looked to Rus, so Hutch turned to Rus.
“I’ll start by sharing we got roadblocks.Not easy to get warrants on stuff we want to see, bank accounts, utility bills, IRS filings, without giving some reason to have them.”
This wasn’t starting out great.
“So we went back to the beginning,” Rus said.“Lars Enstrom was born Amish.Pennsylvania.Rumspringa came around for him, and Cade did some research into this, and he shared it isn’t the wild free-for-all people think it is.”
Cade was Cade Bohannan, the retired FBI profiler Ray Andrews matched wits with several years ago, a game Cade didn’t want to play, but Ray ultimately lost.
Even so, everyone lost, particularly a couple of people, because Ray and his bud killed two girls during this bullshit.
One of them was eight years old.
“That said, Lars took it that way,” Rus continued.“Off the rails, off the hook and off the legal path.”
“Christ,” Hutch muttered.
“He was young, it wasn’t too serious, no priors, got off with a hand slap from the authorities.But that wasn’t what his community decided for him,” Rus said.
“He was shunned,” Hutch guessed.
Rus nodded.
“I thought Rumspringa was a no-questions-asked type of thing,” Hutch remarked.
“We’ve only got what Cade gave us.Though, Cade tends to be thorough.”
Hutch had no doubt.
“In this case, it’s that each community has their own rules,” Rus continued.“Some don’t even let the kids do it.But Cade thinks that what he got caught doing by the police was not what his fellow Rumspringa buds saw him doing.Whatever that was, it was reported.And whatever that was could not be countenanced by that community.”
“You’re thinking…bad,” Hutch said low.
“Cade thinks…yes,” Rus replied.
Shit.
Harry butted in.“After that, Enstrom bounced around, pretty much everywhere.Did odd jobs.Had brushes with the law.Can’t say entirely how he got hooked up being Mr.Flannery’s caretaker, but Mr.Flannery’s niece has a few ideas.”
“Those are?”
“Con artist is one.But she says her uncle had all his mental faculties until the day he died at eighty-three, and he might’ve gotten preliminarily hoodwinked, but he would’ve sniffed out a long con.”
“So?”Hutch prompted Harry.
“She thinks Enstrom scared the absolute crap out of her uncle.”
