“I might have if we’d had a phone. But we didn’t. I was hysterical. There was blood everywhere.” A breath shudders out of me. “My sister came home. She saw the body on the floor and ran out screaming. She ran for over a mile and got Jacob.”
“No one called the police?”
I shake my head.
“What about your parents?”
“It was dark by the time they got home. Jacob explained to Datt what happened. I think if Lapp had been English, Datt would have called the police. But Daniel was one of us. My father told us this was an Amish matter and would be dealt with his way.” I take another breath, but I can’t get enough air. “He and Jacob wrapped the body in burlap feed bags and put it in the buggy. They drove to the grain elevator and buried it.” I look at Tomasetti. “When they came home, Datt told us never to speak of it.”
“Didn’t people wonder what happened to Lapp?” he asks.
“His parents spent weeks looking for him. But after a while most of the Amish came to believe he’d fled because he could not abide by the Ordnung. Eventually, his parents believed it, too.”
“So the crime was never reported,” he says.
“No.”
“Tough thing for a fourteen-year-old kid to handle.”
“You mean the rape or the fact that I killed a man?”
“Both.” He grimaces. “And the fact that you could never talk about it.”
“I started acting out after that. I hooked up with some English kids. I started smoking, drinking. Got into trouble a few times. I suppose it was my way of dealing with it. The murders stopped after that. Until tonight, I thought Lapp might be the killer.”
“So when the first body showed up, you thought what? That he’d survived?”
I stare down at my hands, find them shaking, so I clasp them together. “Yes.”
Silence ensues. My mind scrolls through the repercussions of what I’ve done. I have no idea how Tomasetti will react. One thing I’m certain of is that my law enforcement career is over. But that’s a best-case scenario. If the media gets wind of this, they’ll descend like vultures and rip me apart as if I were carrion.
“Evidently, Lapp isn’t our man,” he says after a moment.
“I killed the wrong man.”
“He was a rapist,” he says.
“But not a serial murderer.”
“He had a weapon. You acted in self-defense.”
“Taking a life is against God’s laws.”
“So is raping a minor child.”
“Covering up a murder is against our laws.”
“You were fourteen years old. You trusted your father to do the right thing.”
“I was old enough to know killing a man is wrong.” I force myself to look at him. The house is so quiet I hear snow pinging against the window. The hum of the refrigerator. The hiss of heated air through the vents. “Now that you know my deep, dark secret, what are you going to do about it?”
“If you confess publicly, you can kiss it all good-bye. Your career. Your reputation. Whatever financial security you’ve got. Not to mention peace of mind.”
“Haven’t had much of that, anyway.”
“Look, Kate, I’ve done some things that aren’t exactly aboveboard.” He shrugs. “I’m in no position to judge you.”
“Aside from my family, you’re the only one who knows.”
He refills our glasses. I don’t want any more; the vodka is fuzzing up my head. But I pick up the glass anyway. “I don’t understand why the murders stopped after that day.”
“Maybe what Lapp did to you is completely separate from the murders.”
I know sixty to seventy percent of sexual assaults go unreported. I suspect that percentage is higher in the Amish community. For the first time, I wonder if I was Lapp’s only victim.
“Kate, this leaves us with a big fucking problem.”
“You mean me, don’t you?”
John leans forward. “Your fate as a cop aside, let’s say we get this guy and the case goes to trial. If someone finds out you were involved in a crime that was covered up, some hotshot defense attorney could use that to discredit both of us and blow the case to hell and back. Maybe even put this guy back on the street.”
“No one has to find out about Lapp,” I say.
He gives a harsh laugh. “Who else knows?”
“My brother, Jacob. My sister, Sarah.”
“What if they decide to talk?”
“They’re Amish. They won’t.”
“Who sent the note to the bishop?”
“My sister.” My laugh is dry. “She thought I should share that with my counterparts.”
“How are you going to explain it?”
“An obvious hoax.”
He picks up his glass and downs the drink. I do the same, and we set our glasses down simultaneously. He gives me a grim, unhappy look. “I don’t know you very well, but I think you’re a good cop. I think you care. That alone makes you a better cop than me. But you know as well as I do secrets have a way of getting exposed.”
“Kind of like old bones.” I stare hard at him. “Unless you bury them really deep.”
“If I found out, someone else can.”