Tomasetti shakes his head, gives me a reproachful look. “You couldn’t have saved her, Kate.”

“If we’d figured this out sooner, we might have—”

“Cut it out.” He softens the words with a smile. “Those three girls are alive because of you. Because of what you did. You listened to your gut and you went into a dangerous situation. A lot of cops wouldn’t have done that, so stop beating yourself up.”

The television above the bar changes to a newscast, and the bartender reaches for the remote and turns up the volume. Neither of us looks at the TV, but we listen.

According to the Lake County sheriff’s office, a local Amish man shot and killed his wife this afternoon and then turned the gun on himself. The sheriff’s office isn’t releasing details, but according to reports, a number of hostages were being held in an underground room. The hostages, several of whom have been missing for quite some time, are recovering at a hospital in Cleveland. No names have been released. . . .

Tomasetti sets down his mug and walks over to the jukebox, digs change from his pocket, and makes a selection. A few seconds later, Red Rider’s “Lunatic Fringe” rattles from the speakers, drowning out the newscaster’s voice.

Neither of us wants to talk about the case. But it’s part of the decompression process. I sense the weight of it between us.

Tomasetti breaks the silence. “I heard from the CSU earlier,” he tells me. “They found more remains. Bones. In the hog pens.”

The hog pens. The meaning behind the words creep over me like a snake slithering around my neck. “Have any of them been identified?”

“I don’t know if the lab will be able to extract DNA from the bones. We’re going through cold missing-person cases, but I think identification is going to take a while.”

I nod, thinking about the Masts, what might have driven them to commit such horrific deeds. “We talked to them, Tomasetti. Why the hell didn’t we know something was wrong with them?”

“Insanity isn’t always obvious.”

“How did it get to this point?”

He shrugs. “Taking into consideration everything we know, I suspect it started when their daughter committed suicide.”

“They snapped,” I say, venturing a guess. “Went off the deep end.”

“Or maybe they were just a couple of fucking lunatics. Fed off of each other.”

Bitterness resonates in his voice, and for the first time I grasp fully the ironies of the case. This is about kids, our most precious resource, and the way we treat them. How out of touch parents—even good parents—can be. But this case is mostly about the lost ones who fall through the cracks, both Amish and English. Some of the children were loved; some were ignored. Others were looked upon by their parents or society with a sort of detached disdain.