“I think it’s more than that,” I say, keeping my voice soft. “Isn’t it?”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Samuel proclaims.
“We didn’t,” Ike chimes in. “Please don’t send us to the jail for bad kids. We didn’t do anything!”
“No one’s sending you anywhere,” I say, trying to calm them. “I know you didn’t do anything wrong. But I heard what you guys were talking about.”
For an instant, I think Samuel is going to throw up. Ike looks like he’s going to run back to the hay fort and hide. But neither boy moves a muscle, two little soldiers standing tall, waiting for the firing squad to cut them down.
“We didn’t say nothing.” Samuel tries to lie, but his trembling voice reveals his ineptness. “We were just playacting. Making up stories.”
I reach out and run the backs of my knuckles over his soft cheek. “Honey, I’m not mad. Okay? And you’re not in any trouble. But you need to tell me what happened. I’m the chief of police, so you can tell me the truth. I’ll protect you and keep you safe.”
“You’ll send us to jail for bad kids!” Ike blurts. “Salome said so!”
Samuel elbows his brother hard enough to make him grunt.
Realizing what he said, Ike slaps his hand over his mouth, stares at me over the tops of his fingers.
I divide my attention between both boys. “Listen to me. You’re not going to jail. And you’re not in any trouble. Do you understand?”
Tomasetti appears at the barn door. I glance over, watch his expression as he takes in the scene and walks over to us. “Hi, boys,” he says. “Everything okay?”
The kids look at the ground and mutter a greeting.
I scoot over and Tomasetti sits on the step next to me. “Where’s Salome?” I ask.
“Inside with Adam.”
I nod toward the boys. “Samuel and Ike have some things to tell us,” I say.
Tomasetti sets his elbows on his knees and folds his hands. “All right.”
I turn my attention to Samuel, holding my breath because I’m afraid the boys will clam up now that Tomasetti is here. Or maybe they’ll deny what I heard so clearly just minutes before. I turn my attention to Ike. “Tell Agent Tomasetti who put you and your brother in the pit.”
“Mose did it,” Samuel says quickly.
I turn my attention to the younger boy. “Ike, who put you in the pit?”
The little boy begins to cry. “Mose.”
Reminding myself of the horror and trauma these two boys have been subjected to, I rein in my impatience. “That’s not what I heard you say a moment ago.”
Neither boy can meet my gaze. They’re not very good at lying, and I’m certain Tomasetti sees that as clearly as I do. Up until now, no one had even considered the possibility they had been threatened—or worse.
“Ike?” I press. “Who put you into the manure pit?”
“No one.” But he looks at his older brother. I see an apology in his eyes, and I know he’s going to come clean.
“Someone put you there,” I say. “You didn’t get down there by yourself.”
After a moment, Ike wipes his nose on his coat sleeve. “She told us not to tell,” he says between sniffles.
“
I ignore the older boy. I sense Tomasetti’s attention zeroing in on Ike. “Who told you not to tell?” I ask.
He hesitates for so long, I think he’s not going to answer. I’m in the process of formulating my next question when he whispers, “Salome.”
A profound silence sweeps over us. Abruptly, I’m aware of the high-pitched hiss of drizzle falling on the tin roof, the two dogs snuffling over by the water trough, the cows in the rear part of the barn.
“Salome pushed you in the pit?” Tomasetti asks.
Ike gives a giant nod. “Don’t tell! She made us promise not to tell. She’ll be really mad.”
Next to him, Samuel screws up his face and begins to cry. “Now we’re going to go to the jail for bad kids!” he cries. “They do stuff to Amish kids!” He looks at his younger brother. “You ruined everything!”
“No one’s going to jail,” Tomasetti says.
I’m not so sure. Someone’s going to go to jail. But it won’t be these two little boys.
CHAPTER 20
I’ve never been good at sitting on the sidelines. That’s especially true when it comes to my job. This morning, the fact that I’ve been effectively locked out of the investigation is excruciating. Two hours have passed since Tomasetti, Ike, Samuel, and I sat in the barn and the boys shocked us with the revelation that Salome was complicit in the attempt on their lives.
I’m still reeling inside. Hurting, if I want to be honest. But most of all, I’m angry. Angry because I was lied to and manipulated by someone I trusted, someone I cared about. But I’m angriest with myself. Because I allowed this to happen on my watch. Because I so willingly believed the lies I was spoon-fed. I stood by while two little boys were brutalized by their older siblings. Worse, I felt sympathy for their would-be murderer.
I’m at the police station, feeling out of place because I’m not in uniform, pacing the hall outside the interview room, pissed because the goddamn door is closed. Tomasetti, Adam Slabaugh, Sheriff Rasmussen, and a young attorney who doesn’t look old enough to have graduated from law school are inside, questioning Salome. The need to know what’s happening is like a bamboo sliver being slowly wedged beneath my fingernail.
I’ve just reached the end of the hall, and I’m staring, unseeing, into the reception area when the door clicks open. I spin and see Rasmussen emerge, looking like he’s just been roused from a nap. His hair is mussed, as if he’s been running his fingers through it. “I figured you’d have a path worn in that floor by now,” he says.
Trying to turn down my intensity, I cross to him. “No budget for new flooring.”
He’s looking at me a little too closely, the way people do when they know something isn’t quite right about you. “How are you holding up?”
I’m so focused on learning the outcome of the interview with Salome, it takes me a moment to realize he’s asking about the shooting. “I’m fine.” I say the words with a little too much attitude. But no cop is going to admit she’s spent the last twenty-four hours bouncing off the walls. That would be the ultimate bad form after a shooting. You can drink and you can fight, but you can’t admit it’s messing with your head.
“Good to hear.”
I don’t waste any time getting to the point. “What did Salome have to say?”
“Jesus, Kate. That kid’s been through hell, that’s for sure.”
That isn’t what I expected to hear. “Did she incriminate herself?”
“Every time she started to talk, that fuckin’ attorney shut her down.” He sighs tiredly, gives me a grim look. “She claims her dad was molesting her. Going into her bedroom at night and raping her since she was twelve. She confided in Mose about it. She thinks Mose confronted their father and they might have gotten into an argument the morning Slabaugh ended up in that pit.”
“That doesn’t explain why her brothers told Tomasetti and me that she’s the one who pushed them into the pit. It doesn’t explain how the uncle got into the pit. Or why she started having sex with Mose.”
He looks at me as if I should have a little more compassion for a girl who’s been through so much, and I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “She says she doesn’t know how any of them got in the pit. She hinted around that maybe the uncle went in to rescue Solly and that Mose couldn’t get him out. That’s how it usually happens. One person goes in, the would-be rescuers succumb to the lack of oxygen and follow suit. An unconscious man would be very difficult for a seventeen-year-old boy to extract from that pit.” He shrugs. “If Mose had gone in after them, he probably would have ended up dead, too.”
“Do you believe that?”
“It’s hard to know what happened, since everyone is dead.”
“Not everyone.” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “How did the two little boys end up in the pit?”
“Salome says Mose did it. She was afraid he might, so she threw in the ball for them to use as a floatation
