“E-mail it to me.”

“Will do.”

Half an hour later, I’m in my office on my second cup of coffee, staring at the grainy photo on my twenty-one-inch monitor. I hit the Print key and the printer spits out a not-so-great black-and-white reproduction. Grabbing it out of the tray, I leave my office, and head to the jail cell located in the basement.

Skid is sitting in the chair with his feet on the desk, playing with his iPad. “Oh. Hey.” His fleet slide from the desk. “Didn’t realize you were here.”

I glance at the cell, where Blue Branson lies on his cot, watching me. “Get up,” I tell him, crossing to the cell door.

The big man rolls and gets to his feet. His hair is mussed. His face pushed slightly aside. His typically crisp white shirt is wilted. Somehow he looks older than last time I saw him. He looks at me with eyes shot with red as he pulls his black jacket over his shoulders.

“I need you to look at a photo,” I tell him.

“All right.” He approaches me.

When he’s close enough, I produce the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch photo. “Do you recognize this woman?”

He fumbles for his reading glasses, shoves them onto his nose, and takes a good look at the photo. When he raises his eyes to mine, his face is white all the way down to his lips. “Where did you get this?” he asks.

“Who is she?”

“That’s Wanetta Hochstetler.”

“It can’t be.” I tap the photo with my thumb. “The photo is eight years old. The woman is too young to be Wanetta Hochstetler.”

“I reckon I ought to know, Chief Burkholder. It’s her.”

I lower the photo, not sure if he’s telling the truth or trying to muddy the water. “You had better not be yanking my chain.”

“With God as my witness, that’s Wanetta Hochstetler.”

I leave without thanking him. As I go through the door, he calls out my name, but I don’t look back.

On the way back to my office, I peek my head into the reception area. “Mona, call Pickles and tell him I want him in my office ASAP.”

*   *   *

It takes Pickles fifteen minutes to appear at my office door.

“How is it out there?” I ask, referring to the weather.

“Bad.” He shuffles to the visitor chair adjacent my desk and settles into it. “Never seen it rain like this.”

“I need an ID on this woman.” I slide the printed photograph toward him. “Do you know who she is?”

He pulls his reading glasses from his uniform pocket and tilts his head back to look at the photo through the bifocals. “Damn, Chief, she kind of looks like Wanetta Hochstetler.”

“The photo was taken eight years ago. It can’t be Wanetta. Pickles, I think it’s her daughter.”

“Daughter? I didn’t realize she had a—”

“She does.” Sighing because I didn’t intend to snap, I tell him about my trip to Pennsylvania.”

“Well, damn.” He squints at the photo again. “Photo is kind of grainy. But the features are similar. Looks like she might have blond hair beneath that bonnet.”

I turn to my computer and pull up the image. “The resolution is a little better here.”

He rises to come around my desk and look at the monitor. We stare at it, not speaking.

“Huh.” Pickles rubs his chin.

“What?”

He points at the woman’s face, his finger hovering an inch from the screen. “You put dark hair on her, and she kind of looks like Hoch Yoder’s wife.”

“I don’t see it.” I study the photo, trying to imagine Hoch’s wife with brown hair. All the while, something niggles at the back of my mind.

“So we may have an ID on the killer,” he says. “You want me to add that to the BOLO?”

I can’t stop staring at the photo. You put dark hair on her, and she kind of looks like Hoch Yoder’s wife. Tunnel vision narrows my sight until all I can see is her face. Everything around me fades away. I can feel my heart thudding against my breast, my pulse roaring in my ears. From somewhere in the backwaters of my mind, I recall my conversation with the CSU technician about a hair found at the scene of the Michaels murder. This was a long hair. Blond that was dyed brown. I remember that because it’s unusual for a woman with naturally blond hair to dye it brown.

Unless she’s trying to hide something …

A cold realization augments inside me. I almost can’t believe what I’m thinking, because the possibility makes me sick to my stomach. “Oh my God.” I stand so quickly, my chair rolls back.

“Chief?”

I jab my finger against the photo. “That’s Weaver. I thought she and her mother were living off the grid because they were Swartzentruber. But the real reason is so much more insidious. Pickles, I think Wanetta Hochstetler devoted her life to instilling her hatred into her daughter so that Ruth would come back to Painters Mill and kill the men who’d murdered her family—her children—and destroyed her life.”

His rheumy eyes sharpen on mine. “Jesus, Chief, what kind of parent does that?”

“An insane one.” I look at him, my mind reeling, still trying to put all the jagged pieces together. The picture that emerges is almost too ugly to consider. “I think Wanetta became pregnant from multiple rapes that night. I think that sent her over the edge. She had the baby, but … there was a part of her that hated her daughter. Hated her because of what she represented.”

“Son of a bitch. How do you hate a little girl?”

“Pickles, this is so twisted, I can barely get my mind around it. But you mentioned the woman in that photo looks like Hoch Yoder’s wife.” I swallow something bitter at the back of my throat. “Do you think it could be Hannah Yoder?

He stares at me, shocked by my words and the story they paint. “But that would mean … You think she married her half brother?”

“I don’t know if I’m right, but it fits.” I recall my last conversation with Hoch, and another piece of the puzzle snaps into place. “Hoch told me that a few days before the home invasion, he’d bragged about his datt keeping a lot of money at the house. That’s why he’s always blamed himself for what happened.”

Pickles thinks about that a moment. “It sounds like he wasn’t the only one who blamed himself. Maybe his mama blamed him, too.”

“I can’t fathom how her daughter would know about what happened. Or how a mother could hold her fourteen-year-old son responsible.”

He shrugs. “Maybe one of the men told her. Salt on the wound kind of thing. If you look at what they did to her. Rape is about violence and pain and degradation. What better way to destroy this woman than to tell her that her own son was the one who set everything into motion?”

“Chief!”

I look up at the sound of Mona’s voice to see her standing at the door to my office. “I just took a 911 from a driver out on Township Road 1. She drove through some standing water and her car got swept into the creek. She has a bunch of kids with her, and now they’re on the roof.”

Across from me, Pickles stirs, as if from habit he’s ready to go. “Get Skid out there,” I tell her. “Call the sheriff’s office and fire department, too.”

“Got it.”

Pickles shifts restlessly. “Damn people never learn about driving through water,” he grumbles.

“I’ve got to get out to Yoder’s place.” I start to rise.

“Chief. Wait.” He leans across the desk, and he reaches out, his eyes filled with determination. “Look, I know I’m a little past my prime, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go out there by yourself.”

“The sheriff’s department—”

“With all this flooding, every agency between here and Cleveland is going to have their hands full, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“Pickles—”

“I can handle it.” He growls the word with a good bit of attitude, and for a moment I see him as the cocky young police officer he’d once been. The adrenaline-addicted cop who’d spent months working undercover and risked his life to do it.