“Agent Tomasetti? Are you ready?” A male voice crackles from the speaker set into the wall.

Tomasetti looks at Levi. The Amish man nods. Tomasetti turns back to the speaker and depresses the red button. “Let’s do this.”

An instant later, a motor hums and the curtain glides open. Levi King leans forward, his eyes seeking. I’m standing slightly behind him. I make eye contact briefly with Tomasetti. He looks as grim and tense as I feel.

I see a small rectangular room tiled completely in white. Stark light rains down on a stainless-steel gurney covered with a light blue sheet. I can just make out the shape of the body beneath. A young technician in green scrubs stands at the head of the table, looking out at us. He peels away the sheet. I see brown hair combed away from a slack, pale face, blue lips that are partially open, slender shoulders with blue-white skin.

The sight of the dead is always a terrible thing. But knowing the promising life of a young woman was cut short by violence is worse. Sometimes the senselessness and injustice of that is almost too much to bear.

Next to me, Levi King makes a noise. A quick intake of breath. From where I stand, I can see his mouth quivering. His shoulders begin to shake. Bishop Hertzler reaches out and squeezes his arm, but Levi doesn’t seem to notice, and I know there will be no comforting.

In the Amish culture, grief is a private thing. Levi King doesn’t have that option. The sound that erupts from him is so unsettling, the hairs at the nape of my neck stand up. His cry of grief cuts through me like a blade. In the periphery of my vision, I see Tomasetti turn away. The bishop wraps his arm around the other man’s shoulders. “She is with God,” the bishop says. But the words aren’t convincing.

I glance at Tomasetti. He’s standing a few feet away from the window, staring through the glass at the dead girl. His expression is dark and inscrutable. “Is it your daughter?” he asks.

Levi King turns his face to Tomasetti, jerks his head once. Tears stream down his face and run unchecked onto his shirt.

It is a scene in which I’ve participated a dozen times in the course of my career. When I was rookie, I always believed it was my inexperience that made it so damn hard. The truth of the matter is, it never gets easier. You don’t get tougher or harder or colder, at least not in any way that counts. Every time, bearing witness to another person’s grief cuts out a piece of you.

“Who could do this terrible thing?” the Amish man whispers.

No one answers.

CHAPTER 12