Panic fills the house now. Screaming. Bonnie goes to her husband. Touches him. She gets blood on her hands. The baby crying. The killer points the gun at the baby. Shut him up! Bonnie scoops him into her arms and runs, leaving the bloody handprint on the back door. Death chases her. A bullet in her back. She falls in the grass and mother and child die as one.

Three down. Four to go.

Screams echo throughout the house. The killer wants the girls now. Two more shots and the boys are gone. The girls scream and cry. They know what’s next, only they don’t. Why did he take them to the barn? He didn’t. The girls break free. Run for their lives. Hands bound and barefooted, they can’t outrun him. The screaming scares the killer. If someone hears them . . .

The killer follows them to the barn. Where are his tools? In his vehicle. The tools are evidence of premeditation. He came here not only to kill, but to rape and torture. Live out his darkest fantasies.

He catches them in the barn. Bound and terrified, the girls are easy to overpower. He chooses the tack room because there are no windows. No one will hear them scream.

The images running through my head offend me. Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck. It’s a cop-out, but I can’t think about the rest, and I climb out of that fetid place, back into my own mind.

I’m still shaking when I traverse the kitchen and enter the living room. Crepuscular light slants in from the two windows. I can make out the silhouette of a wooden bench. A low table where a solitary lantern sits cold and dark. I sweep my beam around the room. Three pools of blood mar the floor like dull black mats. My heart skips a beat when I sense movement to my left. I jerk my beam toward it, but it’s only the curtains billowing in the wind. One of the technicians probably opened a window for fresh air.

I close and lock the window, then turn to face the room. I train my light on the pools of blood. I think of the dead children, and I know this house had once been full of light and chaos and life. Most Amish homes are welcoming, warm and loving; the family is a tightly knit unit. Of course, I didn’t know the Planks. I don’t know if their lives were happy or sad or someplace in between. The one thing I do know is that they didn’t deserve to die.