Josh kicked Violet, and she put her hand over the spot while the voices continued. “That woman who came doesn’t know Violet is here. No one knows anything,” Lori insisted. “There’s no danger.”
“That could change. Fast!” Then Lori’s husband said something that sent a shiver through Violet: “I don’t want to lose the ten grand they’re paying for the baby any more than you do, but I’m not going to prison for this. We need that girl out of here.”
Lori had lied. She and her husband were selling Violet’s baby, just like the home.
Fighting back panic, Violet crawled back downstairs and dressed, then again listened at the door. Once sure everyone had gone to bed, she tried the knob. Locked. She pushed against the door, but it wouldn’t give.
Back in the cellar, she searched, hoping to find something, anything she could use to force the door open. She found nothing.
Intent on escaping, she focused on the two windows above the utility sink. To reach them, she stacked the gallon-size jars from the shelves in the sink. One after another, she carried over jars of carrots and peaches, corn and green beans. Finally, she boosted onto the clothes dryer, then stepped onto the highest jars. They swayed, and she grabbed the ledge to regain her balance. She turned the handle and popped the window. Crisp night air rushed in at her.
Breathing in the prospect of freedom, Violet thrust her head through the narrow window, then her shoulders. All went well until her baby bump stopped her. She didn’t fit.
All hope lost, Violet crawled back down, tears streaming from her eyes. She returned the jars to the shelves, changed into her nightgown and sobbed herself to sleep.
What felt like minutes later, the sun shone in through the windows and Lori stood at the foot of the bed, glaring at her. “You tried to escape.”
“No, I—”
“The jars are on the wrong shelves, the carrots where I keep the beans. And the window over the sink is unlatched.”
Violet had never seen Lori so angry. The teenager gulped back strands of sour phlegm caught in her throat. “I didn’t—”
Her face a mask of rage, Lori had stalked off. At the base of the stairs, she’d shouted, “Husband, come here, now. We are taking this baby!”
Thirty-Six
When Max woke, he reached over and felt the other side of the bed, intending to nudge closer to Clara. He sighed, disappointed, hurt. The sheets were cold. Empty.
She’d arrived unexpectedly the previous night, upset, looking weary and beaten, yet on edge and angry. He’d urged her to talk about what had transpired at the ranch, but she’d refused. “I can’t,” she’d whispered. “You wouldn’t understand.”
That had hurt him, and he’d told her so. He reminded her that he had his own painful past, his own unresolved issues with his father. The old man had abandoned Max on a city street on his seventeenth birthday, two hundred dollars in his pocket and no prospect of a place to go or anyone to help him.
“Of course, Max. I’m sorry. If anyone would understand, you would.” Then, finally, she’d opened up, whispering about what had happened that evening at the ranch, how the old man had glared at her and claimed her as his wife. Clara had talked, and Max had quietly listened, until she finally confided, “It didn’t go as I’d hoped. But I needed to do it.”
Max wasn’t sure, but he took her in his arms and didn’t argue.
An hour after he’d woken up alone in bed, Max was dressed in his uniform and grabbing a hard-boiled egg out of the refrigerator. A note from Clara lay on the table:
Thank you for being there.
Max took out his wallet, folded the note and slipped it inside.
Maybe Clara didn’t realize, he thought, that she never had to thank him. He wanted to be beside her on the tough days as well as the good ones. He thought back to their time at the cabin, how he’d tried to explain, how he wanted her to believe as he did that the world couldn’t judge them if they didn’t let it. All they needed to do was to live their lives on their own terms. But Clara had pulled away, just as she had that morning. As grateful as she was, she’d left him alone.
If Clara had asked what he thought, Max would have admitted that he worried about her. She’d claimed that yesterday had made her stronger, that seeing her ex-husband, her ex-stepson, had shaken her but set her free. Max didn’t see it that way. As far as he could tell, it had only resurrected terrible memories. After they’d fallen asleep, he awoke to her thrashing on the bed. The top sheet balled up in her hands, she’d screamed, “No. Stop. Leave me alone.”
Thirty-Seven
I started the day weary after a bad night’s sleep. Staring down the old man at the ranch the evening before hadn’t proved as liberating as I’d hoped. Standing up to Sebastian, seeing his son Trench, had left me uneasy, jumpy. Being with Max had helped, but not enough to find any real peace. I pulled into the parking lot at the station and met Stef on the walk to the door.
“How’s it going, Chief?”
I smiled and said, “Okay here.” Looking at her, I thought again of the Benson case, and I wondered if Lynlee had had any second thoughts about pursuing it. Still waiting for the DNA analysis on our Jane Doe and her baby to come in, I had time to kill. I hadn’t given up on holding Clyde accountable. “What’s on your calendar today?”
“I’m helping Conroy with a safety program at the high school, and then we’re setting up a trap on the highway. We’re getting complaints that the truckers are speeding again. One woman claimed an eighteen-wheeler stormed past her, going at least a hundred.”
“Well, probably not a hundred, but—”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so either.”
While we talked, the seeds of a plan came to me. I started to pull together an idea, a tactic for pursuing Clyde Benson. I considered changing Stef’s plans, having her help me. But mulling it over, I tabled the thought. It was a delicate situation, and having a rookie shadow me could be a distraction. “Stef, I’m going to check back with Lynlee and Danny today, give them one last chance to file charges. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to drop in at the Benson farm and talk to Clyde’s wives while he’s at work, find out what I can from them about the safety of the other kids.”
“His other kids?”
“Lynlee mentioned something to me, that her father abused different kids at different times. I’d been worried about that. Some abusers are like that, picking out one child to torment. I may not be able to get justice for what Clyde did to Danny, but I’m sure as hell not going to leave another kid in that house to be used as a punching bag.”
“Sounds like a good plan.” Then Stef muttered as she held the door for me, “I’d still like to slip cuffs on that POS.”
“Wouldn’t we both,” I agreed.
At my desk, I made two calls: One to Doc to find out the status of the DNA. He offered to check on it and get back with me. The second was to Lynlee. She didn’t pick up, and I left a message: “Please call ASAP. I need to talk to you today.”
The station was busy, our usual Friday-morning meeting, and my staff, all six of our officers, waited for me in the conference room along with Gladys, who delayed her departure. We went through their questions and comments, talked about two minor robbery cases they were working, and I brought them up to date on the bone case.
When it ended, Max called and asked me to meet him at Danny’s Diner for lunch. Before I agreed, I checked my messages. One was from Doc: DNA expected late afternoon.
I skimmed through the rest and found no call from Lynlee.
Max was seated at a window table looking through the menu when I walked in. “I understand the pot roast with dill sauce is quite good.”
He peered up at me and chuckled. “A favorite of yours?”
“It’s what I ordered for my first dinner here. It’s not on the menu, but Danny’s wife makes it off and on. Not sure if they’ll have it today.”
“I may go for a barbecue sandwich,” he said. “That is on the menu.”
“Go
od choice.”
At that, my phone rang: Lynlee, returning the call I’d left hours earlier. “Gotta take this.”
For privacy, I stepped out of the diner and onto the sidewalk. Leaning up against the building, after making sure no one was within earshot, I said, “Thanks for calling. I’m checking to see if there’s anything I can say to convince you to tell me what happened with your father.”
In the silence, I heard her steady breathing, and I felt the tension even though we were many miles apart. I wondered if she’d simply hang up. I wouldn’t have blamed her. “I know what you want,” she finally said. “But I’m not going to give it to you. It’s not that it didn’t happen, but I don’t want the world to know. My husband and our friends.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ve thought long and hard about this. If I tell you and you use it to arrest my father, I’ll have to testify in a courtroom and everyone will know what he did to me. I won’t do that.”
It felt as if a door had slammed shut, and I reminded myself that it wasn’t one I had the right to reopen. This wasn’t my call. It wasn’t my pain. Lynlee, as her therapist had urged, was taking control of her own life. Everyone deserved that, to make their own decisions about what they’d confront and what they’d leave buried. I’d done that just the night before at the ranch.
“Okay. If that’s your decision, I respect it.”
“I do worry about my brothers and sisters, but I just can’t…” she started, but then her voice dropped off.
“Lynlee, it’s okay. Remember what I told you?” She didn’t respond, so I reminded her. “That no matter what course you chose to take, it would be the right decision.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” I was about to hang up, when she said, “Chief Jefferies, if there’s anything you can do to check on my brothers and sisters, make sure they’re okay, I would appreciate it. I’ve lost track, being gone, of how many kids our dad has, but some may still be pretty young. That house? Living there? It was hell.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I confided. “I’ll follow up on it. I don’t intend to just drop this. I promise.”
She thanked me and the phone went dead.
Walking back through the diner’s door, I glanced at my watch. Twelve fifteen. Every time I’d driven by Benson’s Body Shop during the past week, I’d watched to see if Clyde left for lunch. Every day, his truck was there. I had hours at my disposal before the DNA report was expected, and I had just made Lynlee a pledge I intended to keep.
“Max, I have to go. A case I need to follow up on,” I told him. “Sorry about lunch.”
Disappointment rutted his forehead. “You sure it can’t wait?”
“I need…” I hesitated, reconsidered, then forged ahead. “I need to do this.” Max nodded, and I asked, “Before I take off, anything new on the Pitocin subpoenas?”
“Nothing yet, but I’ll check back with the companies after lunch.” The diner’s owner, Danny Bannion, shuffled to our table with his order pad open and pen poised. Max returned his attention to the menu and said, “Get me a roast beef sandwich to go.”
“Anything for you, Chief?” Danny asked.
I considered my promise to Hannah, to be better about working in a meal at least once a day. “Turkey on rye with a water.”
“Got it.”
On the highway, I munched on my sandwich and called Stef to find out where Clyde and his family lived. She gave me an address, but explained that it didn’t work in her navigation system, so she described the route and the house, mentioned a few landmarks. “You sure you don’t want me to go with you? Since I’ve met the wives before, I could help.”
“No. I’ll be fine. You go work with Conroy.” As I passed the repair shop, I saw Clyde’s truck parked outside of one of the open overhead doors. He wouldn’t be closing the shop and heading home for hours, so I didn’t have to worry about him interrupting. “I may be a while. I might not make it back to the station today. When I finish at the Benson place, I’m going to drop in on Ash Crawford. I want to push him, see if I can talk to his wife. That guy worries me. There’s something wrong there. Ask Kellie to let me know if she hears from Doc. We’re still waiting on the DNA on the bones.”
“You’ve got it, Chief.”
With Clyde out of the way at the body shop, I followed Stef’s directions. The course took me past the turnoff to the mountain, the way that I’d taken the previous evening to do the canvass. I continued on, then turned onto a second road, one I hadn’t driven in years. I didn’t know any of the folks who lived on this end of town, but I passed a few modest homes as I watched for a driveway with two big oak trees, one on either side, and a green mailbox. The road became increasingly desolate and appeared to dead-end ahead. I worried that I’d missed the Benson farm, when I saw what I was looking for, exactly as Stef had described it. I glanced at my watch. One thirty, a good time to drop in. The children would be at school.
I parked near a two-story house, a modest, careworn place. The west side of the house was buffered from the summer sun by a stand of pines mixed with oaks. I got out of the Suburban, walked up to the back stoop and knocked on a rickety aluminum storm door. No one answered.
I scanned the area. No cars. No trucks. No vehicles. I sighed. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe both the wives worked outside the house? Or maybe they were grocery shopping or running errands. I considered leaving and trying another day, but then decided to have a look around.
A shed sat a hundred feet away up a hill, and I trudged over to see if anyone might be inside. The dirt felt slick under my feet, wet from a rain that had come through during the night, and the farm smelled of the barn up on the hill. A dozen head of cattle grazed in a pasture to my left, while off to the right the fields were half plowed for a spring planting.
Once I reached the metal shed, I stuck my head in. “Police. Anyone here?”
Ten by ten, it didn’t take me long to determine that no one was inside. I took a visual inventory: heavy chains for the tractor, an extra set of tires, a workbench with shelves covered with jars filled with nails, screws, bolts and the like. Saws. Hammers. And along the far wall, Clyde had lined up three large oil drums.
Well, this doesn’t help, I thought, although if asked, I wouldn’t have been able to say what I was looking for. I just wanted a feel for the place and the people who lived here. Turning to head back to the Suburban and again considering leaving, I glanced in a corner and noticed six jugs of bleach. That struck me as strange, but then I thought about how folks use bleach for all kinds of tasks. But what sat next to it surprised me even more: jugs of lye drain cleaner.
I turned back and looked at the house. Clyde obviously wasn’t using the lye to keep the drains flowing. Why would he need so much for such a modest-size house? Plus, this far out in the country, no town or city around it, the house wasn’t on a sewer system. I wondered how much bleach and lye were safe in a septic system. How odd.
Backing out of the shed, I saw someone, a woman, on a tractor tilling the field. I waved and shouted: “Mrs. Benson! Chief Jefferies from Alber!”
She kept plowing, and I realized she probably couldn’t hear me over the tractor’s engine. A moment later, she swung into a U-turn and headed toward me and I waved my arms and shouted, but again, she didn’t see me. I noticed a dirt path, one lane wide on the side of the cornfield, and I decided the best option was to drive up to her. Heading back to the Suburban, I thought about the lye again, how peculiar that seemed. I wondered about Clyde, his history of violence. I had no real reason to do it other than a gut instinct, but I decided not to throw away the opportunity to look around more while no one was home to stop me. I glanced back at the field and saw the woman plowing, and I felt sure that I hadn’t been seen.
The house was one of those with exposed cement-block cellar walls at the base, the wood siding starting a few feet above the soil line. The first-floor windows hung low enough that I could see inside the house, an
d it appeared to be a chaotic but normal household. A kitchen and dining area, a living room with a television set. A table off the kitchen was surrounded by chairs. Nothing I saw gave me any reason to be alarmed.
The cellar appeared dark. I hunched down to look through the basement windows. In the shadows, I saw the type of larder homes all over Alber had, filled with glass jars holding home-canned vegetables and fruit. No surprises. I glanced over at the field; the woman on the tractor had disappeared, I assumed at the far end of the cornfield. I decided that I should get in my SUV and drive out to talk to her.
I could have retraced my path to get to the Suburban, but instead circled the house, not for any particular reason. When I arrived at the far side, I noticed lights on in the cellar, two windows glowing softly. I looked back again at the field, still not seeing the woman on the tractor. I hesitated, wondering where she was. I walked toward the windows. Curious. Why not look?
I bent down, keeping my knee above the wet, muddy earth, trying not to get my uniform dirty. An old television on a stand stood in a corner of what appeared to be a room, a movie on the screen, some old Disney film I couldn’t remember the name of. Who’s down there?
The rest of the room not visible from that angle, I crouched all the way down. Against the far wall sat an old-fashioned armoire, its doors closed, and next to it a bed. I took in a tattered comforter, then stopped with a jolt when two eyes stared back at me. A woman, or a girl—she looked young—was in the bed, shouting something at me. Her lips moved, her face contorted in pain, or was it fear? I couldn’t make out what she was yelling through the glass. Then I noticed that the bed had railings. A hospital bed. Beside it, a clear bag hung from an IV pole with a thin tube running to her arm.
Her arms? My stomach clenched when I realized both of her arms were tied to the railings at the wrists and elbows. I scanned the railings and saw more bindings at her ankles. The girl’s belly formed a ball.
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