In the Land of Milk and Honey by Jane Jensen

Author:Jane Jensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-07-11T11:02:40+00:00

CHAPTER 11

I had a black-and-white pick up the Stoltzfus family, and I rode back to the station with Glen. We drove into the city from the south, and as we approached the center of downtown, the traffic grew congested.

The heart of the city of Lancaster is Penn Square, where the Soldiers and Sailors Monument—impressive, gothic, and ornate—stands in a small circle in the middle of the square. A roundabout directs the flow of traffic around the statue to the four intersecting streets. Penn Square is ringed by quaint shops in old colonial buildings of brick, stone, and wood, and I always enjoyed passing through it.

But today, the traffic was jammed up blocks before Penn Square. I texted with Grady to fill him in and get the interview room lined up, so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention until Glen spoke up.

“Great. The governor will love this.”

I looked up and took in the crowds on either side of the street. A few signs clued me in on what I was looking at. Among the Saturday tourists and shoppers were protesters. There had to be a hundred pro-raw-milk protesters with their signs and slogans. On one corner of Penn Square, a smaller group in opposition shouted at passing cars. They carried signs that read: “Pasteurization—Good for Farmers, Good for You” and “Raw Milk HURTS Dairy Farmers!”

“Oh no,” I muttered. I was surprised by the number of people and surprised too by the passion I saw on the faces of those on both sides of the issue. “This is not good.”

“No,” Glen said tersely as the car crawled forward.

I already felt enormous pressure about this case. There was the meeting we’d had at the state capitol and the knowledge that the media and the state government were watching the case closely. But there was a greater stress that came from inside me, as if the walk-through I’d done at the Kinderman house was always lurking behind a thin veil in my mind. I’d do anything to prevent more children from dying, more Amish families from being poisoned on their own farms. I felt protective and fierce about the case, and I wanted to find whoever was responsible and make him pay.

However, the pressure the growing protests put on the police department was not at all helpful.

We rolled by a lovely brick building that I’d always admired. It was a real-estate office right on Penn Square, and it was across from a deli the police frequented. A man in white coveralls was in front of the brick wall with a bucket and scrub brush. Someone had defaced the building with graffiti in neon yellow. “Besnard,” it said. Had the graffiti artist been trying to spell “bastard”? I hated to see the defacement of such a prominent property.

If you have to be an asshole, at least learn how to spell.

Then Glen braked hard as a group of young teens passed in front of his sedan. They wore T-shirts that showed the back end of a cartoon cow with a huge udder and, under that, the words “Do It Raw.

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