For the first time, emotion flickers in her eyes. Hatred? Satisfaction? “I killed them because they deserved it. Because they got to live their lives. They were happy, with spouses and families. They got to have all the things they took away from her.” She tilts her head, her eyes gleaming with a cunning that raises the hairs on my arms. “Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

“You could have gone to the police.” I nod toward Rasmussen and Jessup. “Myself and these other police officers would have worked around the clock to find them and bring them to justice. We would have done it for you. And for your mother.”

“The Englischer police?” Her laugh is a musical sound that defies any emotion. “Do you know what they did to her, Chief Burkholder? That night? After they killed her husband and children?”

“I want you to tell me.”

She leans forward, the cuffs at her wrists clanging softly against the tabletop, her eyes intent on mine. “There are no words to describe the things she endured. No words to convey the horror and agony and unbearable grief of that night.” Her voice falters. “She wasn’t a person to them. She was nothing. A rag to be used and tossed aside. Those men—those boys who had everything—they used her. For hours. They did things that broke her mind. Her body. Her faith. The spirit that lived inside her. They made her want to die.”

“Your mother told you this?”

“She told me everything. Every sordid, violent detail of how they used her. On the ground. In the mud. They beat her and kicked her. Spit on her. Urinated on her. Do you have any idea what that does to a person?” She tosses her head to get the hair out of her eyes. “They put her in the trunk and drove her to Pennsylvania. They strangled her. She played dead. But she was still conscious when they threw her into the well.”

Despite my efforts not to, I feel something for this woman. I feel more for Wanetta Hochstetler. Compassion. Pity. Empathy. A sense of outrage at what had been done.

I think of Blue Branson sitting in the jail cell, and I loathe him. “Why did you kill Jules Rutledge?” I ask. “The woman?”