STONY PLAIN, Alta. - The families of four murdered Mounties get one final chance Friday to seek answers in a fatality inquiry which has shown that the smallest of indignities can grow into gaping emotional wounds.

"Why did you separate him from the others?" Grace Johnston, mother of Const. Leo Johnston, asked the head of an RCMP tactical team during his testimony at the Mayerthorpe fatality inquiry.

She was referring to a crime scene photo taken after the bodies were recovered from gunman James Roszko's Quonset hut on March 3, 2005.

Tactical team members had carried out three of the officers on the off chance they could be saved.

They couldn't.

The bodies of Peter Schiemann and Anthony Gordon were together under tarps in the mud and late-winter snow. Johnston was a short distance away, also under a tarp, by himself.

Brock Myrol, who had been shot in the head, was left inside.

"It was just a rescue reaction," Supt. Brian McLeod, the tactical team leader, told Johnston.

"There was no specific reason (to separate them).

"I'm sorry."

Family members of all four constables have been attending the inquiry, which began almost a month ago. They have not spoken to the media but say they will after Friday's final submissions.

All have had standing to ask questions and have come to hear testimony as their travel and other commitments have allowed.

Grace Johnston and Don Schiemann, Peter's father, have been there every day, in the front row.

Johnston has broken down briefly while asking questions. She has cried at the breaks and in the foyer. At one point, as she left the courtroom, she was so overcome by emotion she couldn't get through the second of two doors. Yet each time she composed herself and walked back in.

The officers were shot by Roszko while they investigated and guarded a marijuana grow-op and stolen car parts "chop shop" in the Quonset on his farm near Mayerthorpe, northwest of Edmonton.

Roszko had fled the scene a day earlier but, after getting a ride from accomplices, he had returned to the scene in the middle of the night. He snuck back into the giant metal hut and ambushed the officers with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle when they walked in that morning.

Johnston's questions have focused on her son. The 32-year-old officer from Lac La Biche, Alta., was shot through the spine and heart by Roszko, yet still managed to get off a shot before dying.

She sought reassurance from the coroner that her son had died quickly and didn't suffer.

And she worried that he may have let his fellow officers down. Johnston and Gordon were guarding the sprawling property overnight, when Roszko may have managed to slip into the Quonset.

Is it possible, she asked Sgt. Jim Martin -- the man in charge that day -- that Roszko could have made it inside when other officers were removing marijuana plants?

"It's possible, but not realistic," Martin told her. "I don't want you to think for a second your son or Const. Gordon were remiss in their duties.

"They guarded that scene to the best of their abilities."

Don Schiemann has come to court every day with stacks of evidence books and reports, delivering his questions in a quiet, even tone, carrying himself like a man who has already made an uneasy, unhappy peace with what happened.

In his questions, the Lutheran minister has focused on healing the troubled souls of the officers involved, many of whom lost their composure when testifying.

Schiemann reassured them that proper steps had been taken to protect the four from Roszko, but that no one could have foreseen the gunman's return.

"In your 20 years of service have you ever attended a crime scene where the perpetrator returned to the scene with the intent of inflicting harm?" Schiemann asked Martin.

"No," he said.

Ever seen a perpetrator come back? he asked drug officer Lorne Adamtiz.

"No."

Ever aware of a situation like this in Canada? he asked McLeod.

"Never."

In a day of gross injustices, the Schiemanns may lay claim to being the most aggrieved of all.

Peter, who was 25, was not even on duty the day he died.

He was in a shirt, jeans, sneakers and a jacket and was going to Edmonton to buy supplies. But when Myrol lost his ride up to the farm, Schiemann gave him a lift.

He was defenceless when Roszko began firing. His body, shot through the chest, was found near Johnston's in the middle of the Quonset.

That weighs on Martin, the boss who could not have foreseen it, but ultimately allowed Don Schiemann's son to walk unarmed into a gunfight.

"We've already spoken about it at length," Martin told Schiemann from the witness stand. "(But) I'm sorry I allowed that to happen or didn't stop it from happening."

It was something Martin alone needed to address.

Don Schiemann never brought it up.