I waved and kept my position. I had to leave, but I wanted those brief moments to enjoy, watching my sisters walk arm in arm. The door slammed behind them, and I lingered ever so briefly. No matter what else took place this day, something good had happened.
When I turned back to the dispatch desk, Kellie assessed me with sympathy, as if she sensed how hard it had been for me to say goodbye to the girls. I took a deep breath, composed myself, certain Kellie saw more on my face than I’d intended to reveal.
“So we have a grave,” I said.
“We have remains. I called it a grave, but I’m not sure exactly what it is. Although I guess so. Sounds like some girl was buried up there. Should I tell them you’re on your way?”
“Absolutely, but first, where’s Mullins?” I’d scanned the office and all of my crew’s desks were empty. This time of day, that’s the way they were supposed to be, everyone out on patrol or taking care of business.
“He’s taking a report,” Kellie said. “Sylvie Barr called nine-one-one upset because the Reingolds’ cows broke through the fence and laid down to sun on the road. She couldn’t get out of her driveway to pick up the kids after school. Mr. Barr wasn’t home, and Sylvie’s sister-wife had to push one cow to get it to move. It kicked her. “
“Is she hurt?”
“Not bad. But Sylvie was fuming.”
“I bet.” I thought of Sylvie Barr’s staunch manner and carefully coifed hairdos and considered that she wasn’t known in town for having an even temper. “Well, let’s not disturb Detective Mullins, then. I think he probably has enough to deal with. Who else is around? I have something I need to have checked on.”
“No one, really,” Kellie said. “They’re all on patrol. One officer is helping the crossing guard over at the school. They’ve had a problem with folks not heeding the stop sign. Do you want me to bump one of the others for you?”
I considered the options. “No. But when Stef gets back to the station, tell her to call me,” I said, referring to Stephanie Jonas, who’d moved up from dispatcher to rookie cop over the past months. She was finishing an associate’s degree in forensic sciences at the community college in Pine City. Two days a week I gave her afternoons off to wrap up her classes. “I have something for her to do.”
“Sure, Chief,” Kellie said.
“And give her this folder.” I handed Kellie the Danny Benson paperwork.
“Got it.” With that, Kellie handed me a map she’d printed of the location where the construction crew had unearthed the remains. “The medical examiner and CSI folks have been dispatched?” I assumed they had but wanted to be certain.
“Doc Wiley and Lieutenant Mueller and his team are on their way. And Deputy Chief Anderson will meet you there.”
I sized up the map and made a mental note of the best roads to take, then turned to leave. As I did, I considered where my route up the mountain would take me: past a place I’d avoided since my return to Alber, one that held the most painful of memories.
Three
As Max slid into the squad, he glanced at the backseat and realized that he’d forgotten to throw his canvas bag in the trunk. The sight of it brought a smile as he recalled the days before. He and Clara had met at the mountain cabin his friend loaned them off and on. Max thought briefly that someone might see the duffle and wonder where he’d been, and he considered stowing it in the trunk. Then he decided he didn’t care. He wasn’t the one who was keeping it secret. How much longer, he wondered, before we let everyone know that we’re together?
He’d brought it up over dinner that first evening at the cabin. She’d simmered a thick marinara and poured it over pasta and Italian sausage. It surprised him that Clara was a good cook; it wasn’t something he would have expected. She’d been blunt about the fact that she’d never been much of a housekeeper. When Clara hadn’t responded to his suggestion that they stop being so secretive, he’d added, “I’d like to talk to Brooke about us. I’m worried that she’ll find out somehow, from someone else.”
At that, Clara twirled a long strand of pasta on her fork and, to his deep disappointment, shook her head. Max couldn’t understand why. He knew that Brooke, his nine-year-old daughter, adored Clara. And from everything Max saw, he felt sure that Clara returned Brooke’s affection. When they were together, Clara chuckled like a teenager. The two of them had taken to pulling practical jokes on him, like the day they hid his tennis shoes when he and Clara were going on a run; Max had spent half an hour searching and found them on the second-floor balcony.
A couple of times, Clara had even stepped in for Max’s sister, Alice, who cared for Brooke while he worked. On a day when Alice had a sick kid of her own to watch over, Clara picked Brooke up from school and took her to physical therapy. Max had arrived home to find the two of them on the living room floor, Clara guiding Brooke’s exercises, designed to build her upper-body strength and help her get in and out of her wheelchair.
Still, even in front of Brooke—especially in front of her—Clara insisted that she and Max act like friends, nothing more.
“Why are we hiding?” he had asked that evening at the cabin over dinner.
“Because folks will gossip. They already consider me an outcast. I don’t want them tittering about my personal life.”
“Why would they titter? We’re both single. We’re free to do as we please, aren’t we?”
“Not necessarily in Alber.” Clara had sighed, appearing troubled.
“I know, but—” Max abruptly stopped talking. Anything he said, he worried, might sound selfish. He knew her situation in town hadn’t been good. She’d tried to act as if the previous fall’s protests didn’t worry her, but he knew otherwise. He’d seen the discord in her family firsthand, the pain it caused Clara that her mothers kept her at arm’s length. And she’d confided enough so that he had no doubt that the marriage her father and mother had forced her into—the one that left her fleeing for her life—had been a nightmare. But while he empathized with her situation, he’d hoped that they could move past it.
Worry lines creased Max’s brow as Clara shook her head again, this time as if trying to dislodge a bad memory. Her voice had sounded raspy, strong emotions tearing at the edges. “Max, people talk. People in Alber can be judgmental and…”
Clara hesitated, and Max finished her sentence. “Cruel.”
Clara had nodded, then put her head down and stabbed a piece of sausage and cut off a thin slice. She’d stopped the fork halfway to her mouth and heaved a sigh. “I hadn’t wanted to say anything, but I’m still getting those notes. The ones telling me to leave.”
Looking at Clara, he could see how that troubled her. It worried him, too, but it did no good to admit that. It would only make her more anxious. Max chewed on a forkful of pasta and again thought of the protesters, the tension in Alber, the candles flickering the night they surrounded the police station and the hateful signs they carried. He thought of the notes she’d shown him a few months earlier, with their veiled threats. “I think it’ll probably go away,” he’d said, only half believing his own words. “They’ve been coming for a long time now, and no one has done anything. Whoever is sending them will eventually give up.”
“How can you be sure?” she’d asked, and he didn’t have an answer. He had no way of being certain, or of knowing who the person was, although he’d been investigating without telling her. A week earlier, Max had talked a clerk at the Pine City post office into letting him view surveillance tapes. He hadn’t told Clara, but he thought he saw someone mail an envelope like those that contained the notes. From the pink stationery and the vanilla scent, they’d presumed it would be a woman, and it was, but she didn’t look as he’d expected. He and Clara had talked of it often, and they’d felt certain it was a local, someone from Alber, one of the followers of Elijah’s People. But instead of a prairie dress, this woman wore jeans and tennis shoes, a hoodie that she’d let fall over her forehead then tied up to her chin, and sunglasses. He couldn’
t see enough of her face to identify her.
“Are you still submitting them to the crime lab for fingerprinting?”
“Not the last few,” Clara admitted. “Whoever is behind this is careful. No prints on the ones I did send. I saw no reason to keep it up.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to try. Maybe they’ll slip up.” Clara nodded rather half-heartedly and returned to her pasta, and he’d felt unsure that she’d follow through. From the beginning, he thought she’d had rather a strange reaction to the notes, as if they were somehow destined to come and couldn’t be stopped. No matter what he said to her, he’d been unable to change her mind. All he could do was be reassuring. “Whoever is sending them will have to give up, because you’re not leaving. You’ve come home, and you’re staying.”
Clara didn’t respond beyond a shrug.
Although he didn’t say it, Max had thought: Clara, you can’t leave again. Not ever.
The two of them fit together in so many ways. He felt comfortable with her, safe. They shared a history. Considering her past, that she’d been married off as a teenager to a man old enough to be her grandfather, he couldn’t have blamed her if she’d been disinterested, even cold with him at times. But it turned out that while she’d never experienced physical love before their first night together, Clara craved the closeness, the excitement they shared when their bodies joined. Those hours when they held each other and talked in whispers came as close to being one person as two can ever be, left him breathless.
“Clara, I think if people saw us together, understood that we’re… well… dating… I mean, that we’re…” Max had stuttered, trying to decide how to say this without scaring her off. He feared that any talk of commitment might end the relationship. “Don’t you think folks would be happy for us? The ones who really count, at least?”
Her lips pursed, she’d admitted, “I don’t know, Max.”
He’d been wondering for the past few weeks if she was holding back, waiting for him to spell out his feelings. Maybe that would make a difference. As he’d torn off a hunk of bread, he’d decided that perhaps this was the right moment. Max put down his knife and left the bread unbuttered. “Clara,” he’d said, and she’d peered at him. He wasn’t sure how to read her face. “I… Well, the truth is that I…”
Clara’s face blanched, and Max had felt his heart thump. He couldn’t finish the sentence, not with her staring at him that way, as if this wasn’t a discussion she wanted to have.
“Max, it’s not that I don’t care for you. I do. But I need to take this one day at a time. I can’t promise more.”
Max had felt a pain so sharp that he thought it might be a bit of his heart breaking. He’d wanted to push her to understand, at least nudge her to see that they shouldn’t miss this opportunity, but instead he held back.
Recalling that emotional conversation as he drove toward the mountains, Max felt that pain anew. He squashed it down and thought about the bones that had been found. He thought of all those mornings and weekends, cool fall and winter evenings when Clara had dug up fields around Alber looking for Christina Bradshaw. Was it her? When he first heard about the discovery, Max had wondered if the construction workers had stumbled upon a Native American burial ground. That theory evaporated when the caller said the remains were partly covered by fabric, what appeared to have once been a prairie dress. That meant it was most likely a woman from Alber or one of the other polygamous towns scattered around the mountains.
As he considered the possibilities, Max approached the halfway mark, where he’d turn off the highway onto a narrow road, barely two lanes with no shoulders. Another route had better access, but it would have taken longer. In the far distance, Max saw his destination: the scars on the mountainside, the four wide rows of trees that had been toppled, where a consortium of investors headed by a Salt Lake company were constructing a ski lift and clearing three runs.
In the silent car, the dispatcher on duty at the sheriff’s office broke in on the radio. “Chief Deputy, we have a caller for you. Can we patch him through?”
“Who is it?” Max slowed down behind a pickup pulling a travel trailer. A tourist, he decided. From spring through fall they camped out in the woods. The trailer wide, the pickup veered toward the center, blocking both lanes. Max thought about switching on his siren to get past, but he decided to wait. This wasn’t a scene where he had to hurry: no active shooter; no one in immediate danger; no fleeing suspect. Based on the condition of her body, whatever had happened to the woman in the grave, she’d met her fate long ago.
“The caller is the construction foreman. A guy named Jerry Cummings,” the dispatcher said. “He’s the same guy who called nine-one-one.”
“Tell him I’m on my way. We can talk when I get there,” Max said. The pickup pulled to the right, and Max assumed the driver was making room. But when he tried to pass, the trailer swayed, and Max had to pull back. The entire rig didn’t look particularly steady, not stable enough to take a chance on passing.
“Chief Deputy, I explained that you’ll be there soon. But Mr. Cummings is insisting that he needs to talk to you. He says it’s important. What do you want me to tell him?”
Max sighed. “Put him through.”
With that, an unfamiliar voice, one that sounded stressed and tired, filled the squad. Max understood. Finding human remains tended to upend anyone’s day. “Chief Deputy Anderson? That you?”
“Yes, Mr. Cummings,” Max said, his patience wearing ever thinner as the pickup slowed and tried to pull over again, but this time a car came barreling in the opposite direction, blocking him from passing if he’d wanted to. Max tapped the brakes to bring his speed down and the squad car barely crawled. “What can I do for you? I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Less if we get off the phone.”
“I wanted to make sure you were on your way. We’ve got a situation up here.”
“I’ve heard about the skeleton. That’s why I’m coming. Is it something else?” A waste of time, Max thought.
“That’s the big thing, of course,” the construction foreman said. “But I’m calling because there’s a guy up here, and he’s asking a lot of questions and wants to see the body. So far, we’ve been keeping him back, but I’m not sure I can for much longer. What should we do?”
Max wondered if the others could have beat him to the scene. “If it’s Doc Wiley, the medical examiner, or if Lieutenant Mueller’s there with the Smith County Sheriff’s crime scene unit, you can let them in. They know not to disturb the scene until I get there. Is that who you’re talking about?”
“No, it’s some guy named Ash Crawford,” the foreman whispered into the phone, lowering his voice, presumably so those around him wouldn’t hear. “Big tall guy, I’d guess in his sixties. He says you know him. That true?”
“US Marshal Ash Crawford?” Max asked, surprised. “What’s he doing up there?”
“This guy’s a US Marshal? He’s some kind of a big-shot cop?” Sounding plainly put out, Cummings’ voice rose, indignant. “Hell, if he’d shown me some ID, I wouldn’t have been concerned. I wouldn’t have called you. All this guy said when I told him that you were on your way was that he knows you.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Max murmured.
“What do you want me to tell him? Is it okay if he takes a gander at the bones?”
“Shucks, I… Well…” Max wondered why Crawford hadn’t flashed his badge. What was he doing on a scene so far from Salt Lake City? As top cop in the marshal’s office, Crawford oversaw the entire state, but for the past decade or more he’d mainly functioned as an administrator. He sent his assistants out in the field. And showing up where a body had been found? That made no sense either. The US Marshals had defined responsibilities; they provided judicial security, searched for fugitives, and administered the federal government’s witness protection program. Max had never known them to interfere in criminal investigations.
The whole thing seemed strange.
The pickup ahead o
f him veered off onto a slender dirt road that led to a campground, and Max pressed down harder on the gas pedal and picked up speed. “Ask him to wait for me,” he told Cummings. “I’ll be there in ten minutes… less. I can see the lodge up ahead now.”
Four
There’s this thing that happens to a cop when she thinks that a long investigation may be coming to an end. Some of it is physical, a tingle of nervous expectation. But most of it is mental, a mix of conflicting emotions: a mild euphoria at the prospect that the work she’s done may have been worth it mingled with the worry that all might not come to pass.
As I drove in my black Suburban, “Alber PD” stenciled on the side along with “CALL 911” and the department’s seal, a checklist flicked through my mind. I considered everything I’d done to get to this point. Ever since I’d learned that Christina Bradshaw might not have left her family voluntarily, I’d believed that she’d fallen victim to a killer. The monster I had in mind buried his victims, hence all the holes I’d dug in the fields and woods outside of Alber looking for her remains. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d gotten my shovel out, but I guessed at least two dozen over the previous eight months.
None of it mattered. All that counted was that we might have found her. If we had, I hoped to have enough evidence to investigate and finally answer all the questions about her disappearance. As important, Christina’s family could say goodbye. Sadly, I’d learned that the families of murder victims rarely get true closure. What happened to their loved one imprints on their lives and changes them forever; yet there is some peace that comes with knowing. To have a missing child, a vanished husband or wife, that is an agony that never ends. If those were Christina’s bones waiting for me on the mountainside, at least her family would have a funeral, a grave with a headstone, the hope that their loved one would never be forgotten.
The Blessed Bones Page 3