I make a pot of coffee, lingering longer than I should in the hope he’ll return. When I dump yesterday’s grounds in the trash, I find the empty bottle of Crown Royal along with a half a dozen cigarette butts. Neither are a good sign.
I tell myself not to worry and remind myself that Tomasetti is a strong man with a good head on his shoulders. Chances are, he went to his office at the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation in Richfield because he couldn’t sleep and wanted to get a jump on his day. But I am worried. I know Tomasetti. He’s come a long way in the three years since his family was killed. But I’m ever aware that he has a dark side. An unpredictable side that, in the past, has been triggered by pain and injustice and all those gnarly emotions in between.
I’m the only person in the world who knows what he did in the months following the deaths of his wife and children. I know he turned to pills and alcohol—and spent some time at a mental health facility. I also know he took the law into his own hands and the killers paid hard for what they’d done. The knowledge isn’t a burden; I’m glad he trusted me enough to share it, but this morning it’s at the forefront of my mind. Right or wrong—moral or not—I’ve learned to live with what he did. Maybe because I understand his motives. Because I know he’s a good man, and like him, I see the world in stark black-and-white.
The need to call him is powerful, but some inner voice advises me to wait. A call from me now would be seen by him as evidence of my lack of trust, an admission of my fear that he’s going to fall off some emotional cliff. But the truth of the matter is that I don’t fully trust him.
I arrive at the police station at 7 A.M. to find my third-shift dispatcher, Mona Kurtz, sitting cross-legged on the floor near her desk, several files spread out in front of her. She’s wearing her headset and tapping her foot against the floor to Florence and the Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over.” She looks up when I enter and grins sheepishly. “Hey, Chief.”
“Morning.” I pull a stack of message slips from my slot.
“You’re in early this morning.”
“Murder makes for a busy day.” I glance through my messages. “Anything else come back on Dale Michaels?”
“Guy didn’t even have a speeding ticket.” Rising, she reaches for a manila folder next to the switchboard and passes it to me. “I started a file, but there’s not much there.”
“What about the Hochstetler file?”
“Jodie couldn’t find it. She thinks it’s locked up in your office.”
Tucking the file under my arm, I stop at the coffee station to fill my cup and then head to my office. I’m doing my utmost not to think about Tomasetti, but even with an unsolved homicide on my hands, I’m not doing a very good job of it.
At my desk, I open the file and find Glock’s report along with a couple of dozen photos of the scene. I read the report twice and then take a few minutes to look at each photo. Of the body. The scene. And the mysterious Amish peg doll, including a shot of the name inscribed on the base. HOCHSTETLER. And I know this is one of those cases that won’t give up its secrets easily.
I go to the file cabinet, kneel, and tug open the bottom drawer. At the rear, where several cold case files are collecting dust, I find the Hochstetler file and take it back to my desk. It’s a thick folder containing dozens of reports from several law enforcement agencies. The Holmes County Sheriff’s Department. The Ohio State Highway Patrol. The Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. And, of course, the Painters Mill PD. Ronald Mackey had been chief back in 1979. Homicide investigative procedures have improved since, but he did a good job with documentation and included several dozen Polaroid photos of the victims—what was left of them—and the scene.
I read the reports first. Forty-two-year-old Willis Hochstetler owned Hochstetler Amish Furniture, which he ran out of the home he shared with his wife, Wanetta, and five children. In the early morning hours of March 8, one or more individuals went into the home, probably looking for cash. In the course of the robbery, Willis Hochstetler sustained a fatal gunshot wound. At some point thereafter, the house caught fire—possibly from a lantern. Four of the children perished in the fire. According to the sole survivor, fourteen-year-old William, there were at least three men in the house, possibly more. They were armed with handguns and covered their faces so he was unable to identify them. When they left, they took his mother, thirty-four-year-old Wanetta, with them. The Amish woman was never seen or heard from again.