Doc Coblentz crosses to the nearest gurney and pulls down the sheet. Mary Plank’s body looms into view. She’s lying supine. A slender-limbed girl who had once been pretty. Her face is gray now. My gaze drifts to her mouth. It’s slack and partially open, exposing straight, white teeth. Her left hand hangs limp over the side of the gurney.

I force my gaze to the rest of her body. The Y-incision is ghastly beneath the bright lights, the dark stitches running like tiny railroad tracks over pale flesh.

I move closer to the gurney. “Cause of death?”

“She bled to death.” Using a long, cotton-tipped swab, Doc Coblenz indicates the wound on her lower abdomen. “Her uterus was removed.”

Shock tears through me, like fabric being torn violently in half. “He cut it out?”

“Hacked is a better term. Cutting was extremely primitive. There was severe internal bleeding. She went into shock and ultimately expired from cardiac arrest.”

“Why would he do that?”

Doc Coblentz looks at me over the tops of his glasses, and I sense he’s about to fling something terrible my way. “Upon internal examination, we noticed what was left of the cervix was bluish in color, which is a sign of pregnancy, so we ran a few routine blood tests,” he says. “This girl was pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Shock rattles through me, a punch that hits close to home and sinks in deep. Mary Plank was fifteen years old. She was Amish and unmarried. Premarital sex is rare among Amish teens, but it happens. They’re human beings; they make mistakes. They keep secrets. I know this secret would have borne a terrible weight.

My own past sweeps unbidden through my mind, a rogue wave churning with murky silt and debris. I know intimately what it’s like to be young and Amish and different. I remember the isolation and loneliness and the crushing weight of shame secrets can bring down on young shoulders. And I know that in the weeks before Mary’s death, she would have suffered great emotional stress.

For a moment I’m so profoundly stricken, I can’t speak. All I can think is poor, poor child.

“Kate?”

Giving myself a mental shake, I force my mind back to the matter at hand. I recall Bishop Troyer telling me that Bonnie Plank had wanted to speak to him about Mary. Had Bonnie known about her daughter’s pregnancy? No one I spoke to remembered a boyfriend. Who fathered the child? Did Mary have a lover? Was she raped and never reported it? Even to her family or bishop?

“How far along was she?” I ask.

“Without the fetus, there’s no way to tell.”

“Did anyone find the missing uterus?”