He shakes his head. “Don’t know yet.”
“What do you think about Ricky Coulter?”
“I think someone wants us to think he took the rifle and the money and murdered the Slabaughs.”
“You think the killer is trying to frame him?”
“Only he didn’t realize you saw that rifle.”
“Makes sense.” I don’t want to say aloud the next logical question, but I know it’s one that must be asked. “Do you think Mose is capable of killing two people who practically raised him?”
“I don’t know, Kate. Kids…” Shrugging, he lets the word trail. “This business with Salome … if he can sleep with his own sister, what else is he capable of?” Tomasetti’s gaze sharpens on mine. “Does he know she’s pregnant?”
“She says no.”
He considers for a moment, and I know he’s still thinking about Mose. “Sometimes even a good kid can do really bad things if his back’s against the wall.”
“But why kill them?” I say. “Why not just steal some money and run away?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want to leave.” Another shrug. “Maybe he wanted the farm.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll check out Mose’s story on the adoption. See if everything lines up.”
Nodding, he reaches for the shot, raises it, and downs it in a single gulp. “Who else do we have?”
“Coulter,” I say. “I don’t think he did it.”
“Or else he’s a pretty convincing liar. I don’t think we should rule him out.”
I think about Coulter for a moment. The vehemence with which he defended himself. The tears. His wife and children. “It’s getting harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”
Tomasetti stares into his empty glass. “Something like twenty-five percent of the population are sociopaths. People who don’t have a conscience. Lying is second nature to them.”
“That’s a scary thought.”
“Keeps us in business.”
“True.” But all the jagged elements of the case are running through my head. “There’s also the hate-crime angle.”
He twirls the shot glass between his fingers. “Maybe we just need to find the connection.”
The jukebox spits out an old Nirvana rocker. I can feel the alcohol working its dark magic on my brain now, smoothing down the rough edges. I don’t need booze to think, but sometimes it helps me cut through the clutter that accumulates in the course of a day like today.
“Maybe it’s like you said,” I tell him. “The murders were secondary. Someone went into the Slabaugh barn with a hate crime in mind. They went in to rob or vandalize, or both.”
“Or kill the livestock,” Tomasetti puts in.
“They know the Amish won’t go to the police or identify them.” The theory gains momentum in my mind, and I run with it. “So these haters are in the barn. Slabaugh and his brother show up. There’s a scuffle. Things get out of control. The intruder shoves one of them into the pit.”
“Or one of them falls during the confrontation.”
“The second brother goes into the pit to help the first, succumbs to the gas.”
“Or the second brother gets close to the edge of the pit and the intruder shoves him in.”
“That would explain Slabaugh’s head wound.”
Tomasetti considers that for a moment. “What about the wife?”
“Accidental. Rachael comes out a few minutes later with the kids and finds the two men in the pit. She succumbs to the gas while trying to help them and falls in herself.”
“Kids’ stories back that up?”
I nod, trying to put all the disjointed pieces together. “It’s a viable theory.”
He swigs beer, eyeing me over the top of the bottle. “Let’s go back to Coulter a sec.” He looks down at his beer, and I know he’s trying to work through the details of it, just as I am. “Takes a lot of effort to frame someone.”
“He’s the perfect candidate. He’s worked for Slabaugh. He’s been to the house.” I shrug. “He’s an ex-con. All of that is pretty much common knowledge in a small town.”
“That makes him vulnerable. They plant the rifle, knowing we’ll follow up on the connection.”
“How’d they plant the rifle in Coulter’s house?”
“Maybe they broke in. Hell, maybe the Coulters don’t lock their doors. Some folks don’t around here. The killer went in through an unlocked door or window. I’ll check with the wife to see if she remembers anything.”
We fall silent. But it’s a comfortable silence. We sip our beers, thinking, listening to the music. After a while, Tomasetti says, “How are you holding up, Chief?”
“I’m fine.” The words come out a little too fast, and we both notice. I’m not very good at talking about myself, even worse about discussing my feelings. Maybe it’s because over the years I’ve honed my ability to keep secrets, raised it to an art form.
“Cases like this can take a toll on a cop,” he says. “Especially if you care.” He pauses. “You care, Kate.”
“That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“When we first met, I was the one who had my shit together. You were pretty much a walking disaster.”
“An attractive walking disaster.”
That makes me smile, and I’m thankful I have Tomasetti to help me keep things in perspective.
His gaze sharpens on mine. “So talk to me.”
I’m careful about the information I reveal to other people. I don’t like anyone knowing too much about what’s inside my head. Or, God forbid, in all those deeper, darker recesses. But Tomasetti isn’t just other people. He’s a friend. My lover. I trust him. I know about his past, he knows most of mine, and we’ve been through a lot together. But old habits die hard, and I find myself wanting to close the lid on the can he’s trying to open.
“I’ve guess I’ve sort of put these kids on a pedestal,” I admit. “Because they’re Amish. All of it’s gotten kind of tangled up inside me.”
“Hmmm. Sounds like you might be human. Have you had that checked?”
That makes me smile, because I know he feels a lot more than he lets on. He smiles back, far too comfortable with all this, and leans back in the booth to watch me squirm.
McNarie brings two more beers. Tomasetti passes him a couple of bills and slides a Killian’s across the table to me.
“You came down pretty hard on Mose tonight,” I say.
“He deserved it.”
“You lost your temper with a kid. That’s not like you.”
“That’s exactly like me.” He tips the bottle and takes a drink. “I wanted to knock his fucking block off.”
“Maybe I’m not the only one who has some emotional stake in this case.”
Something flashes in his eyes, some dark emotion I can’t quite identify. A warning, telling me not to go there. “My kids were girls,” he says after a moment. “Younger, but still…”
The statement shocks me. In all the months I’ve known Tomasetti, he’s never broached the subject of his family. What little I know, I’ve had to pry out of him. It happened back when he was with the Cleveland Division of Police. There was a home invasion. His wife and two young daughters were raped, murdered, and then burned when the house was torched—all this the result of a career criminal seeking revenge. I know Tomasetti spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, but he got through it. He holds his emotional cards close to his chest. Keeps the rest of it locked down tight, off-limits even to those he trusts.
What happened to his family is always in the backwaters of my mind. Only now do I realize that dealing with these Amish kids has brought that part of his past to the forefront, too. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “I know that. I didn’t mean to dredge—”
“You didn’t,” he says easily. “It’s bound to come up from time to time.”
I don’t know what to say. Copping out, I take another drink of beer, look down at the bottle in my hands.
“Donna would have been eleven this year. Kelly would have been ten.” He shrugs. “When I saw Mose in the
