Linda Castillo - Pray for Silence

Several law enforcement agencies, including the Painters Mill PD, the sheriff’s office, and BCI, conducted a search that produced dozens of disks, drives, computers, a laptop and hundreds of photographs. I’ve seen a lot in the nine years I’ve been a cop, but the outrages inflicted upon Mary Plank top all of it.

Because Glenda Patterson alibied Barbereaux, Glock and Pickles brought her to the station for questioning. Handcuffed and surrounded by cops, she spilled her guts. She claimed no knowledge of Barbereaux’s involvement in the murders, going so far as to suggest he drugged her, left the house, and then sneaked back before she regained consciousness the next morning. We’re still trying to decide whether to put her before a grand jury. She wouldn’t be the first woman to lie to protect her lover.

Mary Plank’s journal continues to haunt me. Throughout all of this, I worried I would never be able to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that Barbereaux was the man she wrote about. The man she loved. Just this morning, I learned that the DNA from the sperm found inside Mary’s body was matched to DNA taken from Barbereaux. Evidently, he didn’t know human sperm could live for up to three days.

Since the fetus and placenta were never found, there was no way to extract paternal DNA from the child Mary Plank was carrying, making it impossible to ascertain the identity of the father. But I know in my heart it was Barbereaux’s.

T.J., Pickles and Mona spent two days in the woods surrounding Miller’s Pond before finding the tree where Mary Plank carved her and her lover’s initials. M.P. loves S.B. forever. Next to it, she’d carved a heart pierced with an arrow. While it didn’t mean much in terms of evidence, it meant the world to me on a personal level. I had my proof.

I’ve spent the last couple of days piecing together a theory. I believe Scott Barbereaux delivered gourmet coffees to the shop where Mary worked. He also fancied himself an amateur photographer and did a few wedding and family reunion–type shoots at the store. I believe he met her there, charmed her, pursued her and seduced her. Unaccustomed to that kind of attention from an attractive male, Mary was swept off her feet. In the following weeks, he bought her gifts that seemed lavish to a naïve Amish girl. English clothes. Lingerie. Jewelry. He introduced her to music, sex and drugs. Once her judgment was skewed—either by her feelings for Barbereaux or the drugs—he began drugging her with dangerous barbiturates and sedatives, such as Rohypnol. At that point, he began photographing and videotaping her in pornographic situations, using his friends Todd Long and Jack Warner as actors.

There’s no doubt in my mind that in some way, Mary loved Barbereaux. She wanted to marry him, have his child and lead a normal life. She was malleable; she wanted to please him. Her naïveté brought out something vicious in Barbereaux. He was a classic sociopath. He knew he could push her and he just kept on pushing. The power of that must have been heady. Toward the end—after he’d raped her body, mind and soul—it wasn’t even a problem for him.

But what was the impetus for murdering the entire Plank family? I have a theory on that, too. After Mary confessed her sins to her parents—telling them about her relationship with Barbereaux, the drugs, the porn and the child she was carrying—her parents broke Amish protocol and decided to take the information to the English police. But they never got the chance to follow through. Somehow Barbereaux found out what they were going to do and decided to eliminate the entire family. But he didn’t stop with just murder. They filmed the killings and sold the video on the black market as a sort of snuff film.

Mary Plank was not the first young woman the three men had exploited. Evidence discovered at Barbereaux’s home proved there were others, ranging from fifteen to twenty-two years of age. We also discovered a bank account in the Cayman Islands. Records indicated Barbereaux was raking in a lot of foreign cash. In the last six years, he’d earned over five hundred thousand dollars from the sale of pornographic videos. Mixed in with the sex, were several snuff-like productions. The bulk of the money came from the Philippines, China, Nigeria and Ukraine. Since international borders were crossed, the feds stepped in. For the first time in the course of my career, I was glad to relinquish control of a case.

It wasn’t until I’d arrived at the hospital that I learned Skid was still alive. During the storm, Barbereaux and Warner ambushed him in the barn. Skid’s no rookie, but he didn’t even have a chance to draw his revolver. They shot him in the back first. As in my case, the Kevlar vest protected him. But when the two men realized he wasn’t dead, they shot him in the head.

Headshots are almost always fatal. In Skid’s case, however, the bullet struck his forehead at an angle that caused the .25 caliber bullet to ricochet off his skull without penetrating the cranium. The impact knocked him unconscious. He sustained a concussion. The wound required seven stitches to repair. He’s not complaining. Adhering to their usual bad cop humor, the guys are already giving him a hard time about the thickness of his skull. I’ve laughed about that a few times myself.

After three days in the hospital, I checked out against the advice of my doctor. Tomasetti was there to drive me home. On the way, I asked him to swing by Barbereaux’s house. He balked, of course, but I guilted him into letting me have my way. By that time, Barbereaux’s home had already been thoroughly searched by my team as well as BCI and the feds. I didn’t care. It took me two hours, a double dose of Vicodin, and a physical confrontation with Tomasetti, but I tore the place apart. If it hadn’t been for Tomasetti, I would have continued my mindless tirade until I collapsed. Despite my name-calling and cursing, he took me home.

Our relationship is complicated, but I’m thankful to have Tomasetti in my life. I’m thankful for this town. For the people I’ve surrounded myself with. I’m thankful for my job. It gives me purpose. It reminds me why God put me on this earth.

I’m not supposed to report back to work for a few more days. I’m not even supposed to be driving. I have four broken ribs and a broken ulna that required surgery and the insertion of a titanium pin to repair. But I’ve never been very good at following orders. I pull into my usual spot and kill the engine. I see Glock’s cruiser parked curbside. Mona’s Escort. As usual, Lois is early. Rain beads on her red Cadillac, and I know her husband spent half the weekend waxing it. Farther down, I see Pickles’s old Corvette and T.J.’s brand-new Mustang. Taking a moment to gather myself, I head inside.

Lois and Mona stand at the dispatch station, bent over the switchboard, solving some new problem that’s cropped up with our antiquated phone system. They look up when I walk inside. “Chief!” Mona’s eyes widen as she takes in my cast and sling. My face still bears scabs from the pellets I took.

“It looks worse than it is,” I begin.

Lois comes around the dispatch station. “I didn’t think you were coming in for a couple more days.”

“I’m not.” I walk toward them. “Officially, anyway. I just wanted to check messages and make sure you guys aren’t having too much fun.”

Mona snorts. “Only fun thing around here is all the jokes about Skid’s head.”

“Emergency room doctor shaved the whole front,” Lois adds. “Poor guy won’t take off his cap.” She looks at my cast and sobers. “How are you feeling?”

“Cast is a pain in the ass.”

“Some graffiti might help that,” comes a male voice from somewhere behind me.

I glance over to see Glock, T.J., Pickles and Skid emerge from their cubicles, staring at me as if I’m some mental patient that’s escaped the psycho ward and wandered into the police station. Skid wears his Painters Mill PD cap. I see the edge of a bandage sticking out at his right temple. A black eye. Residual bruising on his right cheekbone. I withhold a smile . . . barely.