“I was a little busy.”

“So where are we going?”

Only then do I remember I left my vehicle back at the Hochstetler farm. I look at him, trying not to feel like an idiot. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have good timing?”

The door swishes open, and he ushers me inside. “All the time.”

*   *   *

An hour later, Sheriff Mike Rasmussen, Detective Jessup Price with the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department, and I are sitting in an interview room at the sheriff’s office in Holmesville, Ohio, which is about fifteen minutes north of Painters Mill.

“How’s your officer?” Rasmussen asks as we wait for the corrections officer to bring in Ruth Weaver.

“Stable,” I tell him. “He was still in surgery when I left the hospital.”

He taps his temple. “You get that tattoo there in the wreck?”

I nod. “That’s two counts of attempted murder of a police officer.”

“The more the merrier.” He sighs. “She’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

“Has anyone talked to her yet?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Just ID info. She has not been Mirandized. We basically put her in a holding cell and waited for you.” He motions toward the small audio recorder. “When you’re ready, just hit the On button there, and you’re good to go.”

“I appreciate that, Mike.”

“This is your deal.”

The door opens. Ruth Weaver steps into the interview room. The last time I saw her, she looked like a hundred other Amish women I’d met over the years. Now she dons blue scrubs that are at least two sizes too large and flip-flops, the kind you might pick up at the local dollar store. Her hair is down and still damp from the rain. I see the blond roots peeking out at her scalp. Her hands are cuffed in front of her, for comfort during the interview.

Interestingly, she doesn’t look shaken; she hasn’t been crying. I don’t think she’s looking for anyone to feel sorry for her or help her. She was ready for this, she knows she’s on her own, and she’s completely at ease with both those things.

A trim female corrections officer has a firm grip on her biceps and motions toward the only vacant chair, opposite the table from me. “Sit down.”

When Weaver is settled into the chair, the corrections officer steps back and takes her place at the door. The sheriff and Detective Price scoot their chairs away from the table slightly, keeping their notebooks handy, and give me the floor. I lean forward, press the On button of the recorder, and recite the date and names and titles of everyone present.

I focus my attention on Weaver and recite the Miranda rights from memory. “Do you understand those rights?”

The detective tugs a laminated card from an inside pocket of his jacket and slides it across the table to her.

She nods without taking the card. “Perfectly.”

When I was a rookie patrol officer in Columbus, I was lucky enough to partner up with one of the best interrogators in the department. His name was Cooper aka “Coop” and he was a natural, charismatic and personable. Within minutes, he could have even the most hardened criminal believing they were destined to become best friends. But Coop was also the kind of cop who, once he had gained the trust of a suspect, could rip out his throat and never lose his smile in the process. During the short period of time we worked together, Coop gave me the best advice I’d ever received on interviewing: A suspect will never tell you anything they don’t want to. The key, he said, is to make them want to. I never forgot that gem of advice. And while I’ll never be the interrogator Coop was, because of him, I became a better cop.

“I don’t know whether to call you Hannah or Ruth,” I begin.

“You can call me Ruth.”

I look at her, searching for some semblance of Hannah Yoder, loving and supportive wife of Hoch Yoder. The Amish woman who’d comforted her husband and brought us cider and cookies. Tonight, there’s no trace of her. It’s as if in the last hours, she’s become another person. The familiar stranger I’ve never met. A stone-cold killer capable of marrying her own brother in order to carry out some twisted agenda.

“I know you murdered Dale Michaels,” I tell her. “I know you murdered the others, too. Jerrold McCullough and Jules Rutledge.”

She accepts my statement with a chilling calm and without defending herself. I hold her stare, and I realize that while she’s not foaming-at-the-mouth crazy, she is insane—and a sociopath. The lives she took—the suffering she caused—mean nothing to her. A mission to be achieved. An errand to be checked off her to-do list. There’s a vital part of her missing. The part that makes us human and sets us apart from the animals. Ruth Weaver isn’t human, at least not in any meaningful way. She’s an animal—the kind that kills and eats its young.

“We’ve got your DNA, Ruth. All the evidence we need to put you away for the rest of your life,” I tell her. “We’ve got you dead to rights on multiple charges. Do you understand that?”

I give the words time to sink in, but she doesn’t argue or deny or defend. She doesn’t try to make excuses. Her expression doesn’t alter. She doesn’t seem too concerned about any of it. “I understand.”

“Did you kill William, too?” I ask after a moment.

Her only reply is a cold stare and a slight curve of her mouth, and I can’t help but think that she’s enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame. This game that’s finally reached its climax. A lifetime of hatred come to fruition. Like a serial killer whose overriding desire is to get caught so she can confess her sins to the people who fully appreciate her special skill set.

“Why now?” I ask. “After all these years?”

“Because she died. It was time.”

“Your mother? Becky Weaver?”

“Yes.”

“How did you find them?”

“I kept tabs on them.” She shrugs. “I used the computer at the library. There were photos over the years. In the newspaper and such. The art gallery. The housing development. The church. It wasn’t easy, but I’m a patient woman and I had plenty of time.”

I nod. “Why did you kill them, Ruth? I’m trying to understand.”

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.”