“The hospital in Millersburg.”
“I want to bring her home.” A sob escapes him even as he struggles to square shoulders bowed beneath the weight of unbearable grief.
“Let me drive you to the hospital,” I say.
“No.”
“Ezra, Millersburg is nearly ten miles away.”
“No!” He shakes his head. “Bonnie and I will take the buggy.”
He is so immersed in grief, I doubt he realizes the round-trip will take hours. I look at Bonnie for help; she stares back. Unshed tears glitter in her eyes. She has her hand over her mouth as if trying to hold in the screams that echo inside her.
“It’s twenty degrees outside,” I say. “These are special circumstances, Ezra. Please, let me drive you.”
Bonnie rises abruptly. “We will go with you.”
“No!” The Amish man slams his fist down on the desktop. “We take the buggy!”
I’ve had plenty of bad days in my life. For the most part, I take the bad with the good and hold close the belief that in the end it all balances out. It’s going to take a lot of good days to zero out today.
I couldn’t convince Ezra to let me drive them to the morgue. So I did the only thing I could and followed them in the Explorer. The trip and the identification of Ellen’s body took over three hours. It’s after midnight now. I’m tired and discouraged and so cold I can’t imagine ever being warm again. I should go home and try to get some sleep, but my mind is wound tight. I have no desire to waste precious hours tossing and turning.
“Notifying next of kin is always the worst.”
I glance at Tomasetti in the passenger seat and frown.
He doesn’t notice. “When you see some dipshit gangbanger lying in pieces on a gurney, you think the world’s a better place. But something like this . . .”
“That’s cynical,” I reply.
“Yeah, but it’s the truth.”
“I don’t share your view.”
“You just haven’t been a cop long enough.”
Tomasetti has been my shadow tonight. A quiet presence I resent more than I should. The irony that I will be the one to bring him up to speed on the case doesn’t escape me.
“You going to follow them home, too?” he asks.
“The roads are bad. I don’t want them out on a night like this.”
He turns his attention back to the window where winter-dead cornfields crowd the road. The night is clear and still, with the temperature falling to near zero. The stars play peekaboo as high clouds skid across the sky.
I called David Troyers, the Augspurgers’ bishop, on the way to the hospital. One of the things I loved about being Amish was the support families receive from their neighbors, especially when tragedy strikes. It comforts me knowing there will be a family waiting for Ezra and Bonnie when they arrive home. Tomorrow, that family will assume the farm and household chores, feeding the livestock and cooking meals and helping to plan the funeral.
Ezra’s horse maintains a steady clip all the way to the Augspurger farm. When the buggy turns into the long lane, I flash my headlights in farewell and head toward town.
“Where to now, Chief?”
I glance over to see Tomasetti looking at me with those dark, intense eyes. Eyes that are difficult to meet, but once you do it’s even more difficult to look away. I see damage in those eyes, and I wonder briefly about its source. I wonder if mine reveal the same thing. It’s tough to be a cop without sustaining some kind of damage.
I’m certain I’ve never met him before tonight, but his face is familiar. “I can take you to your motel or back to the station,” I say. “Your choice.”
“The station’s fine.”
“You a night bird?”
His mouth twists. “Insomniac.”
I’m used to dealing with all sorts of people, but Tomasetti makes me vaguely uneasy. I want to think I’m immune to his weird thousand-yard stare, but I’m not. Not tonight, when my secrets are in the forefront of my mind.
“So who called you in?” I ask after a moment.
He answers with the nonchalance of a man discussing the weather on a sunny day. “Norm Johnston. The mayor. And the woman with the big mouth.”
Janine Fourman. I nearly smile at his apt description. “The Three Musketeers.”
“They gunning for your job?”
“They want the murders to go away.”
“Is that why they left you out of the loop?”
I cut him a hard look. “They left me out of the loop because they don’t want these murders scaring away the tourists.”
“I’m glad you cleared that up for me,” he says.
The sarcastic sneer in his voice pisses me off. I’ve known a lot of cops like him over the years. Veterans, usually. Older. They have experience, but they lack the humanity that would otherwise define them as good cops. The more they see, the less they feel. The less they care. They become cynical and bitter and apathetic. They give all cops a bad rap.
“So how long have you been chief?” he asks.
“Two years.”