Pray for Silence Read Free Page A

in, but the small space is empty. I go to the bed, drop to my knees and look beneath it.
    “No one here,” Skid says.
    “Let’s check the upstairs.”
    “There a cellar?” he asks.
    “I don’t know. Probably.”
    It takes us ten minutes to clear the rest of the house, which includes thebasement, the second-level bedrooms and the small attic. I’m comfortable working with Skid; I trust his instincts as a cop, and we work well as a team. In the end, our efforts are in vain. The house is vacant.
    We end up in the living room. For a moment, neither of us speaks. We don’t look at the bodies, and I get the sense that we’re both struggling to comprehend the cold brutality of the crime.
    “What do you think happened?” Skid asks after a moment.
    “Hard to say.” I glance down at the dead boy at my feet. So young and innocent. I look at the father and for the first time it strikes me that his hands aren’t bound. As a cop, I know things aren’t always as they appear at first glance. Preconceived notions are a dangerous thing when you walk into a crime scene, so I strive to avoid making snap judgments. But as I stare down at the dead man, all I can think is,
Why aren’t your hands bound, too?
    “You find a weapon?” I ask.
    “Handgun there.”
    My eyes follow his beam. Sure enough, protruding from beneath the man’s right hand is the blue barrel of a semiautomatic handgun. “Looks like a Beretta.”
    “I didn’t know the Amish kept handguns.”
    “They don’t, usually, especially a semiauto,” I reply. “Rifles for hunting.”
    “His hands aren’t tied,” Skid comments.
    “That wound at the back of his head looks like an exit.”
    Skid’s gaze meets mine. “You think he did this?”
    I don’t want to acknowledge the ugly suspicions knocking at my brain. That this man snapped, murdered his two sons and then turned the gun on himself. The scenario goes against every conviction most Amish hold dear. I know it’s a generalization. But murder is extremely rare in Amish society. Suicide is almost as uncommon.
It is the one sin for which there is no redemption.
    “I don’t know.” I look around. “Any sign of the mother?”
    “No.”
    “I think they have more kids,” I say. “Girls.” I recall the bloody handprint on the back porch, and I’m disheartened by the possibilities crowding my brain. “Let’s check the yard and outbuildings.”
    Best-case scenario, we’ll find Mom and the girls hiding and frightened, but alive. The knot in my gut tells me that hope is optimistic.
    Without holstering our weapons, we pass through the kitchen and go out through the back door. We glance briefly at the bloody print.
    “Could be a woman’s,” Skid says.
    “Or a teenager’s.” If my memory serves me, the two girls are in their teens.
    His beam illuminates droplets of blood and a single bloody footprint on the concrete. “Looks like someone ran out of the house.”
    “Toward the barn.”
    After being inside the house, the moonlight seems inordinately bright. My shadow keeps pace with me as I move down the sidewalk. We’ve gone about ten yards when I spot the body. A mature female wearing a plain dress, an apron and white
kapp
lies facedown in the grass. But it is the sight of the dead infant in her arms that rocks me.
    “Jesus Christ.” Skid scrapes a hand over his face. “A fuckin’ baby.”
    The gray skin and glazed eyes tell me both mother and child are deceased. Blood clings to the grass like a spill of motor oil. I see a hole the size of a dime in the fabric between the woman’s shoulder blades. “Looks like the bullet went right through her and into the baby.”
    “Shot her in the back.”
    “While she was running away.”
    “Chief, who the hell would do something like this?”
    “A monster.” Hoping the look I give him doesn’t reveal the dark emotions thrashing inside me, I motion toward the barn. “Let’s hope he left someone alive to tell us.”
    The barn is a massive