He was zipping up when a distant sound snagged his attention. At first he thought maybe a calf was bawling for its cow. Or maybe a dog had been hit by a car. But when the sound came again, he realized it wasn’t either of those things. It was a man’s scream. Looking out across the cornfield, he felt the hairs on his nape stand straight up.

Skid rested his hand on the .38 strapped to his hip. He scanned the field beyond where the corn whispered and sighed. Another scream sent a chill scraping up his spine. “What the hell?”

Yanking open the door of the cruiser, he leaned in and flicked on the strobes, then pulsed the siren a couple of times. He hit his lapel mike. “Mona, I’m out here at the Plank farm. I’ve got a 10-88.” They used the ten-code radio system at the Painters Mill PD; 10-88 was the code for suspicious activity.

“What’s going on?”

“Some crazy shit’s screaming his head off.”

“Well that’s strange.” She went silent for a moment. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s coming from the house. I’m going to check it out.”

“Roger that.”

Back in his cruiser, Skid turned into the long gravel lane that would take him to the house. The Planks were Amish. Generally, the Amish were quiet and kept to themselves. Most were up before the sun and in bed before most folks finished their suppers. Skid couldn’t imagine one of them out this time of night, raising hell. Either some teenager on rumspringa—their “running around” time before joining the church—was drunk out of his head, or there’d been an accident.

He was midway down the lane when a figure rushed from the shadows. Skid braked hard. The cruiser slid sideways, missing a man by inches. “Holy shit!”

The man scrambled around the front of the cruiser, hands on the hood, eyes as big as baseballs. Skid didn’t recognize him, but the full beard and flat-brimmed hat told him the guy was Amish. Setting his hand on his .38, Skid rammed the shifter into Park and got out of the cruiser. “What the hell are you doing? I almost hit you.”

The man was breathing hard, shaking harder. In the moonlight, Skid saw sweat glistening on his cheeks, despite the October chill, and he wondered if the guy was high on drugs. “Mein Gott!”

Skid didn’t understand Pennsylvania Dutch, the Amish dialect, but he didn’t need to be fluent to know the guy was terrified. He didn’t know what he’d walked into. The one thing he was certain of was that he wasn’t going to let this cagey-looking sumbitch get any closer. As far as he knew, the guy was on crack and armed with a machete. “Stop right there, partner. Keep your hands where I can see them.”