Before this morning, I haven’t smoked for nearly ten months. It’s a stupid, self-destructive habit. But as I watch Doc Coblentz examine the tortured body of a dead teenaged girl, I wish for a cigarette with the fervor of a heroin junkie craving a fix.
I’m standing in the tack room with Glock and Skid. No one’s talking. No one’s looking at the bodies. I wonder if I look as demoralized as my fellow officers do.
Officer Roland “Pickles” Shumaker arrived on the scene a few minutes ago. Wearing his trademark trench coat and pointy-toed cowboy boots, he looks like he’s just stepped off the set of some nuevo spaghetti western. He’s seventy-four years old, acts like he’s twenty-two, and doesn’t look a day over eighty. He moves a bit more slowly than the rest of my team, has lost a good bit of his eyesight and most of his hearing. But he has nearly fifty years of law enforcement experience under his belt. In my book, that alone makes him more valuable than some wet-behind-the-ears rookie who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.
“Looks like a goddamn massacre,” Pickles says, settling into his grumpy-old-man persona as he enters the tack room.
He’s right. The corpses are a macabre sight beneath the harsh glare of the work lights. This is the kind of scene that affects even the most hard-nosed of cops.
“We’re not dealing with a murder-suicide.” Looking from man to man, I tell them about the bruising on Amos Plank’s wrists. “This is murder, straight up.”
“Times seven,” Skid mutters.
Pickles looks around the room, grimacing. “So the son of bitch who butchered these girls is still out there.” It’s a statement, not a question.
I can tell by everyone’s expression that’s where they want to be, on the street, hunting the killer. But we all know the investigation starts here, with the evidence. “I briefed the sheriff’s office. They’ve stepped up patrols. T.J.’s been apprised; he’s out there, too.” I direct my attention to Glock, raising my voice to be heard above the drone of the generator. “Did you clear the outbuildings and silos?”
“Clear.”
I look at Skid. “Did you search the creek area behind the barn?”
He shakes his head. “No one there.”
“Tire tracks? Footprints?”
“If anyone was down there, he didn’t leave us squat.”
“We’ll go over every inch of this place again once the sun comes up. No one does this kind of crime without leaving something behind.”
Though the barn doors are open, the diesel exhaust from the generator is thick enough to choke a rhinoceros. No one’s complaining. I think I can speak for everyone in the room when I say the smell of exhaust is preferable to the stench of blood.
“As soon as we finish here,” I say, “we’ll start canvassing and talking to neighbors. Hopefully, someone saw something.”
“You going to call BCI?” asks Glock.
BCI is the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Identification out of Columbus, which is about a hundred miles west of here. It’s a state agency run by the attorney general’s office that offers a multitude of resources to local law enforcement, including a state-of-the-art lab, computer databases, crime scene technicians and field agents. The town council called the agency for assistance last year when a serial murderer stalked Painters Mill.
That’s how I met field agent John Tomasetti. He was instrumental in helping me close the Slaughterhouse Murders investigation ten months ago. The case was a nightmare, especially for me because of my personal connection to the killer. Tomasetti got me through it. He’s a good cop and an even better friend, and it’s him I think of this morning.
“I’m going to request a CSU to help process the scene.” I pull my cell phone from my pocket. “Maybe they’ll be able to pick up hair or fibers.”
The three cops nod in approval. But I know they’re feeling territorial about this case. The atrocities committed against this Amish family have angered and outraged them. While they appreciate any help, they don’t want some other agency encroaching on their turf.
“Chief Burkholder?”
I glance over to see Doc Coblentz standing next to one of the corpses. He looks grim and shaken, and I acknowledge that there is a small, selfish part of me that doesn’t want to go over there. Some crimes are simply too terrible for the eyes to behold, the mind to comprehend. But the part of me that is a cop knows information is my most powerful tool.
Dropping my cell back in my pocket, I force my legs to take me to him. “What do you have?”
For a moment the doctor stares down at the floor, his expression troubled. And I realize with some surprise this veteran man of medicine is so upset by what he’s seen that he can’t speak.