“These are the children of our community,” Doak said. He gestured to the faces. Then he pointed to the two blank easels. “And these are someone else’s children, but they were killed and buried right along with ours, and we must pray for them, too.”

One picture was the stern one boys always take for their high school football picture. The scowling boy, looking so very tough…I’d seen him in his grave, beaten and cut, tortured beyond his endurance, every vestige of manhood stripped from him. Suddenly the tragedy of it seemed unbearable, and as Doak Garland’s voice rose in his sermon, tears flowed out of my eyes. Tolliver fished some Kleenex from his pocket and patted my face. He looked a little bewildered. I’d never reacted like this to a previous case, no matter how horrific.

We sang a hymn or two, we prayed long and loud, and one woman fainted and was helped out into the vestibule. I floated through the service on a cloud of pain medication, every now and then weeping with the emotion that could not be contained. When the usher—the hospital administrator, Barney Simpson—came by with the plate to pass for further donations toward the burials, a man two pews ahead of me turned his head as he handed his neighbor the collection plate, and I saw to my amazement that Tom Almand had come to the service. He had brought his son with him, and that hit me wrong. The counselor should have stayed home with the boy. Chuck was laboring under such a terrible burden, he shouldn’t be in a place where the atmosphere was sheer grief and horror. Or did he need to be reminded that other problems were worse than his? I was no counselor. Maybe his dad knew best.

I reached across myself to squeeze Tolliver with my good hand. He looked at me inquiringly. He was restless, and I could tell he wanted to be anywhere but here. I nodded my head to indicate Tom Almand and Chuck, and after scanning the crowd with a blank face, Tolliver gave me a significant look to let me know he’d spotted them. As if he could feel our gazes, Almand turned a bit and looked straight at us. I thought he would look disgusted, or angry, or anguished. What does the father of such a child feel? I didn’t have a clue, but I was fairly sure it would be a painful mixture of emotions.

Tom Almand looked blank. I couldn’t even be sure he recognized me.

Okay, that was freaky. I would have added forty more dollars to the collection plate if I could have heard what Almand was thinking.

“Huh,” Tolliver said, which put it in a nutshell.

Then the collection was over, and everyone settled back into receptive silence. But a stir went through the crowd when a stubby man in a bad suit rose from the front pew and went to the lectern.