“I know it does. It’s not easy taking another person’s life. But that’s part of the job sometimes.”
“I don’t know if I can handle that.”
“You can.”
I feel the burn of tears behind my eyes. The last thing I want to do is cry. Talk about bad form for a female cop. I swipe frantically at my eyes. “How are Ike and Samuel?”
“They’re going to be fine. Ambulance took them to the hospital. They’ll probably spend the night.”
When I close my eyes, I see their small bodies floating in the manure pit. “How could Mose do that to his little brothers?”
Tomasetti shakes his head. “That’s probably something we’ll never know.”
“I didn’t see this coming,” I tell him. “Why didn’t I see it coming?”
“Because you’re human.” He sighs. “None of us saw this.”
That’s not what I want to hear, but I let it go. “I want to talk to Salome.”
“Glock is with her.”
“I need to talk to her.” I start to move around him, but he stops me.
“Kate, paramedics are going to check you out, then I need to take you to the sheriff’s office. Rasmussen is obligated to talk to you.” He sighs. “So am I.”
Only then does it dawn on me just how difficult the next hours will be. There will be interviews and forms and a thousand questions. I don’t care about any of it. All I want to do is see the children, Ike and Samuel and Salome. I want to be the one to tell them what happened to their brother. At the very least, I want to be there when they get the news. But I know that won’t be the case. As of five minutes ago, I’m no longer a cop. Not until the shooting is fully investigated and I’m cleared of any wrongdoing.
I barely notice when the young paramedic crosses to where we stand. While Tomasetti looks on, he runs through the standard emergency medical protocol, taking my blood pressure and asking about any pain. My collarbone hurts plenty, but I don’t mention it. There’s no way I’m going to the hospital.
When he finishes, he looks at Tomasetti and proceeds to talk about me as if I’m not there. “She looks fine, but you might want to run by the ER before taking her home.”
“I’ll do that.”
I wait until the paramedic is out of earshot before saying, “I’m not going to the hospital.”
Tomasetti sighs. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I want to see the kids,” I say.
“I know. You can’t. Not right now.”
“I’m fine, damn it.”
“We need to talk to Rasmussen. File a report.”
When I don’t respond, Tomasetti motions toward his Tahoe, which is parked haphazardly twenty yards away. “Come on. I’ll drive you to the sheriff’s office.”
That’s the last place I want to be. Of course, I don’t have a choice. They’re going to take my badge, my weapon. Strip away my title. They’re going to pass my caseload to my subordinates. I know it’s temporary. But it doesn’t feel that way.
“I hate this,” I say.
“I hate it, too,” Tomasetti concurs. “But it’s going to be okay.”
As we walk toward his Tahoe, I glance over at Salome. She looks like a sad little ghost sitting in the passenger seat of Glock’s cruiser, a blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes meet mine, and I see a clutter of terrible emotions in their depths: grief, betrayal, hopelessness. But there are other emotions, too—thoughts and feelings I can’t even fathom—too many for me to sort through at the moment. For a crazy instant, I’m tempted to break free of Tomasetti, run to her, and tell her I didn’t have a choice.
Instead, I get into Tomasetti’s Tahoe, and we start toward the sheriff’s office.
CHAPTER 18
Killing someone changes you in ways most people can never understand. It stains your soul with an ineffaceable darkness. It burdens your psyche with a weight that will crush you if you let it. It adds a disconsolate component to your persona that shadows every facet of your life, like the total eclipse of a good sun by a bad moon, and you’re stuck in that darkness forever. And no matter how much good you do in an effort to make up for that black transgression, you know it will never be enough.
I’m standing alone in that darkness tonight. It’s unforgiving and covers my soul from end to end. That my victim was a child only deepens the black crevasse that’s split my mind right down the middle. The weight of it is slowly smothering me.
The degree of dysfunction a cop experiences after the use of deadly force depends on the cop. Some are capable of distancing themselves completely. Others can’t handle it and turn to alcohol or other vices. More than a few cops’ marriages end up in divorce. Others end up eating a bullet to end their misery. I’m one of the lucky ones; I fall somewhere in the middle. I don’t feel very lucky tonight.
The first night is always the worst, when you’re alone and tired and the images from the day are fresh in your mind. The instant you made the conscious decision to kill runs through your head over and over again, like some bad movie with a skip. That’s when the second-guessing begins, and you ask yourself, Could I have done something differently? The if onlys usually follow. If only I’d seen it coming. If only I’d waited a few more seconds. If fucking only. I can’t escape it. Mose is still dead, and his blood is still warm on my hands.
He isn’t the first person I’ve killed. When I was fourteen years old, an Amish man by the name of Daniel Lapp came into our farmhouse and raped me. I grabbed my datt’s rifle and shot him in the chest. It was a clear case of self-defense. Of course, when you’re fourteen and traumatized beyond anything you’ve ever imagined, it doesn’t matter. I had committed the consummate sin, and I would pay for my offense against God the rest of my life.
My datt covered up the crime, swore all of us to silence, and the entire incident was swept under the rug. I’ve learned to live with my demons, but it’s not a comfortable cohabitation. To this day, I can’t drive past the old grain elevator where Lapp’s bones are slowly turning to powder without remembering what he did. Without remembering what I did. What all of us did.
After the shooting this morning, Tomasetti drove me to the sheriff’s office in Millersburg. Rasmussen, Tomasetti, a representative from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and I spent four hours in an interview room, where they took my statement. Though the men did their best to reassure me that I hadn’t done anything wrong, I felt as tainted and guilty as a criminal. I had, after all, taken the life of a seventeen-year-old boy. The irony that he was Amish doesn’t elude me.
For four hours, I answered the same questions a hundred different ways, a hundred times over. I ranted and cursed and slammed my fist down on the tabletop. I did everything cops do in situations like this. Everything but cry, anyway. That’s the one thing I haven’t been able to do.
They stripped me of my gun and relegated me to administrative duty. With pay, of course. After the debriefing, Tomasetti drove me home. Wise to the ways of guilt, he did his best to keep me talking. I didn’t cooperate and fell into a black silence that echoed inside me like a scream. He wanted to stay with me. I wanted him to stay, too. More than I could admit, more than he could know. But the case had just busted wide open; we both knew he had to work.
The Slabaugh case now takes precedence over the hate crimes, though Tomasetti will work both with equal fervor. The cops will want to know if Mose killed his adoptive parents and uncle. They’ll want to know if Salome was involved. If she was, they’ll want to know to what extent. Good luck with all that, Tomasetti.