Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel

be contained, even by something as intrinsic as faith.
    Speaking in Pennsylvania Dutch, Mattie asks if this could be some kind of misunderstanding. If the Englischers had somehow gotten their information wrong. She asks if perhaps God made a mistake. I don’t respond, and the bishop doesn’t look at me as he assures her God doesn’t make mistakes and that it’s not her place to question Him, but to accept His will.
    Bishop Troyer knows how I feel about the tenet of acceptance. When I was Amish and fate was unjust, I raged against it. I still do; it’s the way I’m wired. My inability to accept without question was one of many reasons I didn’t fit in. Mattie’s life stands in sharp contrast to my own. We may have been raised Amish, but we’ve lived in different worlds most of our lives. In light of what happened tonight, I wouldn’t blame her if she railed against the unfairness of fate or cursed God for allowing it to happen. Of course, she doesn’t do either of those things.
    I didn’t reveal to her that the accident was a hit-and-run. She deserves to know, and I’ll fill her in once I have more information, hopefully before word gets around town—or the rumors start flying. But I don’t see any point in adding to her misery tonight, especially when I have so few details.
    By the time I’m ready to leave the hospital, Mattie has fallen silent. She sits quietly next to Bishop Troyer, her head bowed, staring at the floor, gripping a tissue as if it’s her lifeline to the world. I leave her like that.
    As I walk through the doors of the Emergency entrance and head toward my Explorer, the weight of my connection to Mattie presses down on me with an almost physical force. I know all too well that when you’re a cop, any personal connection to a case is almost always a bad thing. Emotions cloud perceptions and judgments and have no place in police work. But as chief in a small town where everyone knows everyone, I don’t have the luxury of passing the buck to someone else.
    And even as I vow not to let my past friendship with Mattie affect my job, I know I’m vulnerable to my own loyalties and a past I’ve never been able to escape.

 
    CHAPTER 3
    The house wasn’t anything special. In fact, it was probably one of the most unspectacular pieces of real estate John Tomasetti had ever laid eyes on. His Realtor had referred to it as a “Victorian fixer-upper, heavy on the fixer-upper.” He didn’t look very amused when Tomasetti had countered with “a broken down piece of shit, heavy on the shit.”
    The house, tumbling-down barn, and storm-damaged silo were located at the end of a quarter-mile-long gravel track. Set on six acres crowded with mature hardwood trees and a half-acre pond that had purportedly been stocked with catfish and bass, the three-bedroom farmhouse had just turned one hundred years old. It had looked peaceful and quaint in the brochure. All semblance of drive-up appeal ended the instant he saw the place up close and personal.
    The house looked as if it had earned each of those one hundred birthdays the hard way, weathering blizzards and hailstorms and blazing sun without the benefit of maintenance. The paint had long since weathered to gray and the siding had rotted completely through in places. Tomasetti was pretty sure those were yellow jackets swarming out of that two-inch gap near the foundation. The rest of the exterior, including the eaves and trim, would need to be scraped, sanded, primed, and painted—all of which wasn’t cheap.
    At one time the windows had been adorned with slatted wood shutters. All but two lay in pieces on the ground, forgotten and left to rot in the knee-high weeds. The remaining shutters hung from rusty hinges at cockeyed angles, creaking in the breeze and giving the house the unbalanced appearance of a listing ship. The wrap-around porch had once been a focal point, but the wood planks sagged now, so that the house seemed to grin when you came up the lane. Not the dazzling smile of some proud patriarch looking out over his domain, but the lopsided, toothless grin of an old drunk, heavy on the drunk.
    Tomasetti had almost turned around and left. But despite its state of disrepair, there was something appealing about the place. His Realtor had twittered on about the “astounding potential” and the “opportunity for investment” and reminded him that the place was “in foreclosure” and would go for a steal. Somehow, he’d persuaded