“The crazy girl. I think her name was Ruth.” She raises her gaze to mine. “Did you save her, Katie?”

“We did.”

“There was another girl, too. Leah.” She slurs the name, and I realize the sedative is pulling her down. “But she never woke up, and they took her away.”

I think of the body I stumbled over, and I wonder if that’s the girl Bonnie is speaking of. Perhaps she succumbed to the physical and psychological stress and fell ill. I wonder if Mast dragged her aside like a bag of garbage and left her to rot in the cold and dark. . . .

“Did you see Mast’s wife, Irene, at any point?” I ask.

“The old lady. She brought us food. Scrapple, mostly. And bread. She’s not unkind, but my mamm is a better cook.”

I smile. “Did you ever see a young man?”

Her brows knit. “No, but I heard male voices sometimes.”

“Did Deacon Mast tell you why you were there?” I ask. “Did he ever say why you’d been taken into the tunnel?”

“He said we were there to pay penance and confess our sins. He said he was going to save our souls.” She stares at me, her expression stricken, as if she can’t quite believe the words she has just uttered. “I think he was crazy,” she whispers.

“I think you’re right. I close my notebook and slide it into my pocket. “Get some rest.”

“Mast used the car to make contact. He used it as a weapon or to stage an accident. Then he shot them up with some kind of drug to subdue them, threw them into the trunk, and took them to the tunnel.”

Tomasetti, Deputy Tannin, and I are standing outside Noah Mast’s hospital room, preparing to go inside for his statement.

“To save their souls.” Tannin makes a sound of disgust.

Tomasetti narrows his gaze on me, poses a question that’s been eating at me since the beginning. “But how did Mast know about these teenagers? How did he find out they were troubled?” he asks. “These kidnappings are fifty to one hundred miles apart. The Amish generally don’t use phones. How did he find out about these so-called troubled kids?”

“He was a deacon,” I tell them.

Tannin nods. “I knew he was some kind of elder.”

“Is that relevant?” Tomasetti’s gaze is sharp on mine.

“Deacons are usually the ones who convey messages of excommunication,” I tell them. “The bishop sends them into the church district to find out who the transgressors are.”

“Because of his position within the church district,” Tomasetti says, “he was able to find out who was breaking the rules. He considered these kids transgressors.”

“Even though they weren’t baptized,” I tell them.

“Being the insane son of a bitch he was, maybe Mast decided that didn’t matter. He took it upon himself to save their souls, the rules be damned.”