There’s no doubt in my mind that in some way, Mary loved Barbereaux. She wanted to marry him, have his child and lead a normal life. She was malleable; she wanted to please him. Her naïveté brought out something vicious in Barbereaux. He was a classic sociopath. He knew he could push her and he just kept on pushing. The power of that must have been heady. Toward the end—after he’d raped her body, mind and soul—it wasn’t even a problem for him.

But what was the impetus for murdering the entire Plank family? I have a theory on that, too. After Mary confessed her sins to her parents—telling them about her relationship with Barbereaux, the drugs, the porn and the child she was carrying—her parents broke Amish protocol and decided to take the information to the English police. But they never got the chance to follow through. Somehow Barbereaux found out what they were going to do and decided to eliminate the entire family. But he didn’t stop with just murder. They filmed the killings and sold the video on the black market as a sort of snuff film.

Mary Plank was not the first young woman the three men had exploited. Evidence discovered at Barbereaux’s home proved there were others, ranging from fifteen to twenty-two years of age. We also discovered a bank account in the Cayman Islands. Records indicated Barbereaux was raking in a lot of foreign cash. In the last six years, he’d earned over five hundred thousand dollars from the sale of pornographic videos. Mixed in with the sex, were several snuff-like productions. The bulk of the money came from the Philippines, China, Nigeria and Ukraine. Since international borders were crossed, the feds stepped in. For the first time in the course of my career, I was glad to relinquish control of a case.

It wasn’t until I’d arrived at the hospital that I learned Skid was still alive. During the storm, Barbereaux and Warner ambushed him in the barn. Skid’s no rookie, but he didn’t even have a chance to draw his revolver. They shot him in the back first. As in my case, the Kevlar vest protected him. But when the two men realized he wasn’t dead, they shot him in the head.

Headshots are almost always fatal. In Skid’s case, however, the bullet struck his forehead at an angle that caused the .25 caliber bullet to ricochet off his skull without penetrating the cranium. The impact knocked him unconscious. He sustained a concussion. The wound required seven stitches to repair. He’s not complaining. Adhering to their usual bad cop humor, the guys are already giving him a hard time about the thickness of his skull. I’ve laughed about that a few times myself.