“Don’t worry,” I say. “We will.”
Uncertainty dogs me as I walk back to the Explorer. I should feel better now that Long’s alibi has been verified. But something about my visit with Warner vaguely disturbs me. Maybe because I can tie him to the shop where Mary worked. I know it’s a small town and coincidences are more likely to occur. Still, it’s enough for me to add him as a person of interest.
I’ve been racing against the clock for almost three days now, and all I have are dead ends leading to dead ends. A cycle that makes me feel like a hamster running on a wheel.
In the back of my mind I know there’s no such thing as the perfect murder. Somewhere, someone left something behind. However small or seemingly inconsequential, it’s my job to find it. I owe that to the Plank family. I owe it to this town and the people I’ve sworn to serve and protect. Most of all, I owe it to myself.
Seventeen years ago, I didn’t get justice for a crime committed against me. But I’m a cop now. It’s within my power to see this through, and get justice for another young Amish girl who can’t do it herself.
The sun isn’t quite above the horizon when I pull into my parking space at the station the next morning. Beside me, Mona’s Ford Escort is covered with a diamond layer of frost. T.J.’s cruiser is parked farther down, and I know he’s come in early to finish up his Internet assignment before he goes on patrol.
Mona sits at the switchboard-dispatch station with her feet on the desk, a lollipop in her mouth and a college text open in front of her. Her feet slide off the desk the instant she sees me walk in. “Hey, Chief.”
“You look busy.”
She grins. “It’s been kinda quiet.”
“That’s the way we like it.”
T.J. peeks at me over the top of his cubicle. “You got a sec?”
I enter his cube to see he has both his desktop and a laptop computer running. A printer I’ve never seen before hums from atop a two-drawer file cabinet, and I realize he brought it from home. “Find anything interesting?”
Looking uncomfortable, T.J. slides behind his computer. “I hit a few uh . . . porn sites last night and this morning. I’ll tell you, there’s some weird shit out there.”
“Like murder weird or sex weird?”
“Both.” He face reddens. “We’re talking fetishes.”
“Violence?”
“Foot fetishes, mostly.”
“That is weird.”
He taps a couple of keys on the desktop keyboard. “We have man on man. Woman on woman. Animal on woman.” He looks at me. “You ever seen the size of a—”
“Just case stuff, T.J.,” I cut in before he can finish.
“Oh. Right.” Rolling his chair to the laptop, he types in a login and password. “I searched for anything Amish, and I was blown away by the number of porn Web sites into that sort of thing.”
“To each their own,” I mutter.
“I guess.” He hands me a sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of Web sites with IP addresses. I bought photo paper and printed some of the . . . uh . . . images. A lot of the female . . . uh . . . perpetrators don’t match Mary Plank’s description, but I went ahead and printed the ones that were even close. A lot of the . . . actors wear wigs and try to conceal their identity.”
“Let’s take a look.”
“I found about a dozen.” He hands me a manila folder with several eight-by-ten photos inside. “They’re kind of shocking, Chief.”
I take the folder and open it. He’s right. The photos are not only shocking, but disturbing. Outrage rises inside me at the sight of a young woman clad in traditional Amish garb. Plain dress. Gauzy kapp. No makeup. She’s Caucasian. Brown hair peeks out from beneath the kapp. The photo is relatively good quality, but her face is turned so that I can’t make out her facial features. She may or may not be Amish; there’s no way to tell, but it feels like sacrilege.
The woman and two men are on an antique-looking steel bed. I see rumpled white sheets. A windowless, white-walled room. Shadows raining down, giving the photo the stark ambience of an old film. The woman straddles a white male, who’s lying on his back. He’s in his late twenties or early thirties. Dark brown hair. Goatee. His head is angled so that I can’t see his face. A second white male is grasping her hips and pumping into the woman from behind. Again, his face is turned. He’s larger with a heavily muscled body. A weight lifter, probably. More body hair. Sideburns. No beard. No visible birthmarks.
I’m no prude, but this staggers me. I stare at the young woman’s profile. Her head is thrown back as if in ecstasy. Her dress is open in the front and her tiny breasts are bared. I can’t tell if it’s Mary Plank. She has pretty skin and a girlish figure. She looks very young. So skinny I can see her ribs. But she still has the chubby hands of a child.