“How did you get on the floor?”
“Uh … no idea.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
Grasping my biceps, he rises and pulls me to my feet. The room does a single sickening spin and then tilts left. My quadriceps feel weak. I’m nauseous, and my head pounds like some bad rock song.
“I told you to lay off the booze,” he says, but there’s no reprimand in his voice.
“It was pretty good advice.”
“Easy to give when you’re on the outside looking in, I guess.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Putting his arm around me, he helps me into the bathroom. He flips up the seat on the commode. I slide to my knees and throw up twice. I set my hands on the floor, but my arms are shaking. A flash of heat rushes over me and a cold sweat breaks out on my neck and face. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he replies softly. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
That brings me back to the reason behind all this misery. Thinking of Mose and Salome, I struggle to my feet. “Did you talk to Salome?”
Tomasetti helps me to the sink and lets me lean against him while I splash water on my face and rinse my mouth. “Rasmussen and I took her statement.”
Leaning heavily against the sink, I turn to him, ask the question I’ve been dreading. “Did Mose kill the parents?”
His gaze searches mine, then he nods. “She thinks he might’ve done it.”
Even through the haze of my drunkenness, the news hits me like a punch. I didn’t want Mose to be guilty of that. It’s not how I want to remember him. “That must have been awful for her.”
Tomasetti nods. “She’s pretty broken up.”
“How are Ike and Samuel?”
“They’re going to be fine.” When I continue to stare at him, he sighs, knowing I want more. “The doctor at the emergency room says they were both suffering from hypothermia.”
“Hypothermia?”
“Evidently, they’d been in the manure pit for quite some time when we found them.”
“But how did they survive the methane gas?”
“Well, we drained the pit after the parents were found. Whoever pushed the boys in refilled it with water, in the hope they’d either suffocate or drown. But because of the added water, the muck was diluted and the methane wasn’t as concentrated.”
For the first time, I remember seeing the child’s ball floating on the surface. “They clung to the ball,” I murmur.
He nods. “Salome thought Mose might try to harm the boys, so she tossed the ball into the pit.”
“She saved their lives.”
“Looks that way.”
I nod, trying to digest the cold-bloodedness of Mose’s actions. “My God, Tomasetti, he tried to kill his little brothers.”
“Yeah.”
“Is Salome substantiating that?”
“She didn’t actually witness it, but she was obviously concerned about her brothers’ well-being.”
“How is she?”
“Sedated. But she’s going to be okay.”
All I can do is shake my head.
“Get this,” he says. “The day we found Mose beaten?”
“What about it?”
“It never happened. Mose gave Salome a buggy whip and forced her to mark him up.” She used a shoe on his face so she wouldn’t leave marks on her knuckles.
Recalling the extent of Mose’s injuries, I shudder. “Why?”
“Who knows. Maybe he’d heard about the hate crimes and decided he might be able to divert our attention from the Slabaugh murders. Make himself look like a victim. Garner our collective sympathies.”
“Jesus,” I say, reeling. “It almost worked.”
Tomasetti looks away in an uncharacteristic manner, which snags my attention despite the fact that I’m looped. “If it’s any consolation, Kate, I didn’t see this coming, either,” he admits. “Not this.” His tone reveals that bothers him a lot. “None of us did. It was staring us right in the face. Here we are, seasoned cops, and we didn’t even consider him a suspect.”
“Some things are almost too damn disturbing to consider,” I tell him.
“Yeah.”
I wish I could clear my head, wish I could think. But my mind is fogged. My thoughts are still circling around Mose and Salome and everything that’s happened. “Where is Salome?”
“Children Services placed her back with Adam Slabaugh for now.”
“Probably the best place for her.” But I sigh. “Samuel and Ike, too?”
He nods.
Relief swamps me that the three siblings are together. “Amish brothers and sisters are close. I’m glad.”
I feel Tomasetti’s eyes on me as I walk back to the living room. My balance is skewed, but I do my best to hide it. When he tries to help me, I shake off his hands. Twice I have to lean against the wall before making it to the kitchen. At the sink, I fill a glass with water and drink it down. A breeze wafts through the window, and I revel in the cold air on my face.
Tomasetti pauses at the doorway, his arms crossed, watching me in a way that makes me feel self- conscious.
Setting the glass in the sink, I face him. “I really am okay now.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Then stop looking at me as if I’m going to fall apart. And don’t bother lecturing me about the booze.”
He takes my tone in stride, doesn’t even bother looking away. “I’m the last person to lecture, Kate. You know that.”
I do, but the knowledge doesn’t help. Drinking myself into a stupor was not only self-destructive but counterproductive. I’m stumbling drunk, but far from numb. The pain is still there, like an arrow sticking out of my back.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks after a moment.
“No.” I raise my gaze to his. “Thank you, but I really don’t.”
He crosses to the table, pulls out a chair, and sits down. After a moment, I join him. I can’t look at him, so I put my face in my hands.
“I think you had a lot of emotions tied up in this case,” he says. “Too many. And not just with Salome. You were getting close to Mose, too.”
The words hurt, as if he reached out and twisted the arrow, drove it in a little deeper. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I can’t talk about this right now.”
“We don’t have to talk about it tonight. You don’t even have to talk to me about it. But at some point you’ll need to talk to someone.”
For the span of several minutes, the only sounds come from the rain pattering the windows, the water dripping off the eaves outside, the hiss of wind through the screen.
After a while, I raise my gaze to his. “I should have let him go.”
“You could have done that. Of course, if you had, Mose might’ve killed you. He might’ve killed Salome and her baby. He might’ve taken off in that truck and killed some family out for a drive, too.”
The logic behind his words should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. We fall silent. Even through the booze, I feel the tension in the room rise. “He was only seventeen years old,” I say in a small voice.
“That didn’t make him any less dangerous.”
“He was Amish. I can’t reconcile myself to that. He’ll never get the chance to live his life. Because of me, he’ll
