“Did you kill William, too?” I ask after a moment.
Her only reply is a cold stare and a slight curve of her mouth, and I can’t help but think that she’s enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame. This game that’s finally reached its climax. A lifetime of hatred come to fruition. Like a serial killer whose overriding desire is to get caught so she can confess her sins to the people who fully appreciate her special skill set.
“Why now?” I ask. “After all these years?”
“Because she died. It was time.”
“Your mother? Becky Weaver?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find them?”
“I kept tabs on them.” She shrugs. “I used the computer at the library. There were photos over the years. In the newspaper and such. The art gallery. The housing development. The church. It wasn’t easy, but I’m a patient woman and I had plenty of time.”
I nod. “Why did you kill them, Ruth? I’m trying to understand.”
For the first time, emotion flickers in her eyes. Hatred? Satisfaction? “I killed them because they deserved it. Because they got to live their lives. They were happy, with spouses and families. They got to have all the things they took away from her.” She tilts her head, her eyes gleaming with a cunning that raises the hairs on my arms. “Why is that so hard for you to understand?”
“You could have gone to the police.” I nod toward Rasmussen and Jessup. “Myself and these other police officers would have worked around the clock to find them and bring them to justice. We would have done it for you. And for your mother.”
“The Englischer police?” Her laugh is a musical sound that defies any emotion. “Do you know what they did to her, Chief Burkholder? That night? After they killed her husband and children?”
“I want you to tell me.”
She leans forward, the cuffs at her wrists clanging softly against the tabletop, her eyes intent on mine. “There are no words to describe the things she endured. No words to convey the horror and agony and unbearable grief of that night.” Her voice falters. “She wasn’t a person to them. She was nothing. A rag to be used and tossed aside. Those men—those boys who had everything—they used her. For hours. They did things that broke her mind. Her body. Her faith. The spirit that lived inside her. They made her want to die.”
“Your mother told you this?”
“She told me everything. Every sordid, violent detail of how they used her. On the ground. In the mud. They beat her and kicked her. Spit on her. Urinated on her. Do you have any idea what that does to a person?” She tosses her head to get the hair out of her eyes. “They put her in the trunk and drove her to Pennsylvania. They strangled her. She played dead. But she was still conscious when they threw her into the well.”
Despite my efforts not to, I feel something for this woman. I feel more for Wanetta Hochstetler. Compassion. Pity. Empathy. A sense of outrage at what had been done.
I think of Blue Branson sitting in the jail cell, and I loathe him. “Why did you kill Jules Rutledge?” I ask. “The woman?”
“You think because she was a woman she isn’t guilty? Really, Chief Burkholder? Are you that na?ve? Let me tell you about Jules Rutledge. She stood by, watching and laughing as the men took turns brutalizing my mother. She was no different, no better. Worse, perhaps, because she was a woman.” Her gaze meets mine with such intensity that I have the sense of being sucked down into a bottomless black pit, a vortex, and I know something terrible awaits me at the end of it. “They deserved what I did to them. All of them. I have no regrets. My mother always said God would mete out their punishment and that punishment would be just. But she was Amish. I listened to her, but I never believed it. I knew that one day, I would be the one to make things right.”
I think of my own past—the things that happened to me and the things I did about it—and I struggle not to draw parallels, however thin.
“The fall into the well broke her spine,” she tells me. “She had no idea how long she lay there, hours or days. But it wasn’t her day to die. Eventually a local Swartzentruber family came by.” Her mouth curves again. “Sent by God, according to her.” But she waves off the notion. “The Amish family heard her cries and pulled her out. They took her to the midwife. Of course, word got around. Eventually the Englischer police were called, but my mother couldn’t remember who she was or what happened to her. She couldn’t even remember her name. The police assumed she was a local and eventually forgot about her.