I’m so taken aback, I lose my train of thought. With the others dead, he could have blamed them. Only he didn’t.

Time to face the music …

He continues, his voice flat and low, like a robot. “We put her in the trunk and just drove. Like I said, we were scared. We didn’t know what to do. Somehow we ended up in Pennsylvania. Found a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. We were going to leave her there. But she got her hands untied and pulled off Dale’s mask. She saw his face.”

Abruptly, he leans forward, puts his face in his hands, and rubs his eyes. “She got away. Ran into a cornfield. McCullough went after her. By the time I got there, he was on top of her. We raped her.”

I stare at him, sickened. “What else?”

He looks at the wall again, at the window that isn’t there, and I know he’s wishing he were out there, far away, in that imaginary place. “We argued. Figured we could intimidate her into keeping her mouth shut.”

“She saw your faces?”

He nods. “We couldn’t let her go.” He makes a sound, a sigh that ends with a moan. “Dale strangled her right there on the ground.”

“Did you try to stop him?”

A long pause. “No.”

“You thought she was dead?”

He nods.

“What did you do next?”

“Put her back in the trunk. Drove her to an abandoned farm and threw her into the well.”

He paints a scene so vivid, so horrific, I can feel the acid churn in my stomach, the bile climbing up my throat. I can hear Wanetta Hochstetler crying out for her children. Sense her terror and panic. I can hear her tumbling down that terrible shaft. Her body striking the stone walls on the way down. The splash of the final impact. The shocking cold of the water. Had she been conscious? In pain? How long had she lain there before someone found her? Hours? Days?

I look at Blue, and a wave of revulsion moves through me. I’m well aware that there are boundaries a cop can never cross. I know that once he does, there’s no going back. I feel myself venturing close to that line now. I’m keenly aware of my .38 pressing against my hip. Of how easy it would be to turn off the recorder, pull my firearm, and put a bullet between his eyes. I have a full confession. There’s no doubt in my mind I could come up with a believable story that he attacked me. I’m not the first cop to entertain such a dark fantasy.

I go to my next question. “Which one of you threw the lantern into the basement?”

He gives me a sharp look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”