She rounds her desk. “This way, please.”
With Tomasetti and I behind her and the two Amish men trailing, she takes us around the corner. We pass by a windowless gray door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Above the door, a sign printed in an Old English font reads MORTUI VIVIS PRAECIPIANT. It’s not the first time I’ve seen those words. I don’t read Latin, but I know the translation by heart: “Let the dead teach the living.”
The hall opens to a small, starkly furnished room painted an eye-pleasing beige. A sofa table holds a small lamp and a box of tissues. Above the table, a cheap southwestern print in an oak frame is hung a few inches too high. A ceiling-to-floor curtain drapes the fourth wall. Next to it, a small round speaker with a red button is set into a niche. Behind the curtain, I know, is the viewing window.
“I’ll let them know you’re here,” the woman tells us.
Bishop Hertzler and Levi King stand near the sofa table, looking out of place, not making eye contact with Tomasetti or me. Neither man acknowledges the curtain, as if pretending it isn’t there will make whatever’s on the other side disappear.
The urge to move, to pace the confines of the small space, is strong. I stand there waiting, impotent.
“Never doubt in the dark what God has shown you in the light,” the bishop says. “He will take care of His children.”
No one responds. No one knows what to say. Those of us in law enforcement know that sometimes God sits back and lets Fate have her way. We know sometimes God’s children die before their time.
Levi shoves his hands into his pockets and looks down at the floor. A few feet away, Tomasetti stands near the curtain, looking as if he might tear it aside himself if it doesn’t open soon.
“Agent Tomasetti? Are you ready?” A male voice crackles from the speaker set into the wall.
Tomasetti looks at Levi. The Amish man nods. Tomasetti turns back to the speaker and depresses the red button. “Let’s do this.”
An instant later, a motor hums and the curtain glides open. Levi King leans forward, his eyes seeking. I’m standing slightly behind him. I make eye contact briefly with Tomasetti. He looks as grim and tense as I feel.
I see a small rectangular room tiled completely in white. Stark light rains down on a stainless-steel gurney covered with a light blue sheet. I can just make out the shape of the body beneath. A young technician in green scrubs stands at the head of the table, looking out at us. He peels away the sheet. I see brown hair combed away from a slack, pale face, blue lips that are partially open, slender shoulders with blue-white skin.
The sight of the dead is always a terrible thing. But knowing the promising life of a young woman was cut short by violence is worse. Sometimes the senselessness and injustice of that is almost too much to bear.
Next to me, Levi King makes a noise. A quick intake of breath. From where I stand, I can see his mouth quivering. His shoulders begin to shake. Bishop Hertzler reaches out and squeezes his arm, but Levi doesn’t seem to notice, and I know there will be no comforting.
In the Amish culture, grief is a private thing. Levi King doesn’t have that option. The sound that erupts from him is so unsettling, the hairs at the nape of my neck stand up. His cry of grief cuts through me like a blade. In the periphery of my vision, I see Tomasetti turn away. The bishop wraps his arm around the other man’s shoulders. “She is with God,” the bishop says. But the words aren’t convincing.
I glance at Tomasetti. He’s standing a few feet away from the window, staring through the glass at the dead girl. His expression is dark and inscrutable. “Is it your daughter?” he asks.
Levi King turns his face to Tomasetti, jerks his head once. Tears stream down his face and run unchecked onto his shirt.
It is a scene in which I’ve participated a dozen times in the course of my career. When I was rookie, I always believed it was my inexperience that made it so damn hard. The truth of the matter is, it never gets easier. You don’t get tougher or harder or colder, at least not in any way that counts. Every time, bearing witness to another person’s grief cuts out a piece of you.
“Who could do this terrible thing?” the Amish man whispers.
No one answers.
CHAPTER 12
Two hours later Tomasetti and I are back in the Tahoe, on our way to see local photographer and winner of the Ohio Photographic Arts Award, Stacy Karns. We haven’t spoken much since dropping Bishop Hertzler and Levi King at their respective farms. We’ve fallen back into cop mode, a role we both find infinitely more comfortable than the white elephant of the scene back at the morgue.
“What do you know about Karns?” I ask.
“Forty-four years old. Self-employed. Convicted four years ago. Did six months at Lake Erie Correctional Institution. Five-thousand-dollar fine. Five years probation.” He rattles off the information from memory, which tells me he stayed up late reading the file.