“Does she look like the sketch?” Max asked.
“A sketch?” Justine asked.
“Yeah. She does, but it’s hard to tell,” Crawford said, holding his wife’s eyes in his own, as if he talked only to her. “I tried the computer program to match up the skull to a picture of her, and they were close, real close. So I gave Doc Wiley my DNA to check. I asked him not to tell anyone. I didn’t want anyone else to know. Someone always leaks these things, and I promised her parents I wouldn’t take it public. They think if we do and she sees it, she’ll never come home. And I wanted to spare Justine the heartache, if it turns out not to be our granddaughter.”
“You should have told us,” Max said, his anger building. “Clara sensed something was off. She diverted a lot of energy looking at you instead of for whoever is responsible. That was irresponsible, Ash. You know better.”
Rather than apologize, Crawford set his jaw and shook his head. “I had to do what’s best for my family. We can’t go through this over and over again. It nearly killed Justine with that girl in Nevada.”
Max heaved a sigh. As sorry as he felt for the Crawfords, he wanted to shout at the man for wasting their time.
“If the chief’s not here, she’s…” Max’s voice trailed off. He fought back a building dread as he considered how long it had been since anyone had heard from Clara.
Forty-Three
“What’s wrong with her?” Clyde shouted. “Damn it, Lori, you’re going to kill this girl, too.”
I heard a lot of commotion inside the cellar room, voices, shouting; the girl, Violet, screamed more often, only a minute or two apart, and the pain, she must have been in tremendous pain.
“We shouldn’t have rushed it with the medicine, Clyde. I think the baby’s breech. It wasn’t ready yet, turned the right way in the womb to be born,” Lori shouted back. “But I’m not a doctor. I’m a nursing assistant. All they trained me for was to hand out pills and serve meals, tote bedpans. To help the midwife.”
“What do you do at the home when girls have babies that come breech?” he demanded.
“They call a doctor. We should take Violet to the hospital, Clyde. Get the baby out. Save it, so you can sell it to those people. We can’t have another dead one.”
A dead mother? A dead baby? Again I thought of the girl’s bones found on the mountainside. I had to strain to hear his reply. He dropped his voice low and hissed: “You know there’s no way in hell we can take this girl to a hospital.”
This time Rachel spoke, her voice timid: “What are we going to do?”
Listening to their voices, I could almost picture the scene unfolding in the room. I would have been willing to bet a month’s wages that Clyde stomped over to Rachel and stared down at her. “We’re going to let nature take its course. Nothing more.”
The only translation was that he intended to let Violet and her baby die, just as they had the girl and her baby whose bones were spread out on the autopsy table at the morgue. My heart hurt, and I closed my eyes picturing the grave, knowing that could be Violet, and I was powerless to stop it.
At that, Clyde marched out of the room, and I heard his heavy boots again on the stairs. Moments passed, ones punctuated by more screams. I waited for Rachel to return. My only hope was that she’d finish what she’d begun and untie me. Then, Violet’s cries for help waned. She was losing strength. The baby wasn’t coming, and she no longer had the energy to fight. I rustled in the chair, tugged as I had since I’d awoken with the bindings on my wrists, but whoever had tied me hadn’t made any mistakes.
That rope wasn’t budging.
In the distance the girl softly sobbed, as if she’d lost all hope. And in the cellar, behind the shelves, I felt the same despair; perhaps nothing could save us. At that moment, when I had nearly given up, Rachel rushed toward me. She appeared frightened and worried. In my ear she whispered, “If I help you, can you protect me and my children?”
“Yes.” That didn’t seem to be enough. I wondered what to tell her, what to say. “My friend, Hannah Jessop, do you know Hannah?”
Rachel shook her head.
“She runs a shelter in Alber. Women and their children live there to be safe from their husbands, or some just because they have nowhere else to go.”
“Hannah Jessop?” She whispered the name with a sense of wonder, as if surprised that there could be such a woman.
“Hannah will take you in. And I’ll put Clyde and Lori in prison, so they can’t hurt you. So they can’t hurt your children.”
At that, Rachel leaned behind me and tugged at the rope restraining my hands. The knots tight, she fumbled, but the bindings loosened and gave way. Once the rope fell to the floor, she knelt to work on the one around my ankles. My hands numb, I turned the rope around my waist until the knots were on my lap. I had one undone and one to go when Lori peered around the shelves. Her face flared red with rage when she saw that I was nearly free.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted.
Rachel shot straight up and focused on Lori, terrified.
I kept working on the rope around my waist, but it wasn’t giving.
“Tie up her hands,” Lori shouted to Rachel. “Now, before Clyde finds out. Or you’ll have hell to pay.”
Frightened, Rachel stood frozen, as if unable to move. In the room, Violet had gone quiet, and I wondered whether, if I did get free, it would be too late to save her. I kept pulling at that last knot, but then Lori rushed at me. I grabbed her arms. Still tied to the chair, I wrestled with her, until she pulled a hand free and came at me with her fist. I ducked, but she punched me on the side of my face. My head spun, and I tasted something metallic. Blood. I yanked on the rope, but I was still trapped.
“Help me,” I pleaded. “Rachel, please, help me!”
“Clyde will kill you for this, Rachel,” Lori muttered as she grabbed the rope that had been around my ankles. “You’re a dead woman.”
Still not a sound out of Violet’s room.
Lori seized my right arm while I tried to fight her off with my left. She jerked it behind me and cinched the rope. I thrashed at her with my other hand, but I couldn’t catch her. One hand tied, she grabbed for my free hand. I kept swinging at her, grasping at whatever part of her I could reach. In the chaos, I’d lost track of Rachel, but suddenly she stood over us, holding a gallon-size jar of green beans. I ducked and braced for the blow.
The jar came down hard on Lori’s head with a thud.
Forty-Four
Stef called headquarters. No one had heard from the chief. Kellie had left multiple messages asking Clara to call in, without an answer. “Do you think something’s wrong?” she asked Max over the phone. “Should I let Mullins and the others know?”
“No. It’s probably fine. But Stef and I are on the way to Clyde Benson’s place to check on her,” Max said. “The chief told Stef she was going there. She probably just got tied up with the women, maybe taking a statement. It has something to do with an old case, I guess.”
This time, Stef had taken the lead. Since she’d been to Clyde’s place before, she knew the route. Back on the highway, they picked up speed and Stef came on the radio. “It was a pretty rough case—child abuse. The pictures were pretty bad.”
Max wondered why Clara hadn’t told him she was investigating Clyde Benson. They both bought their gas at his station, had their cars repaired there. Max thought that she would have brought it up. But there’d been so much going on, maybe it wasn’t surprising that she was distracted. “So Clyde Benson, the one who owns the station, abused one of his kids?”
“Maybe multiple kids, and bad,” Stef said over the radio. “He’s a violent guy, Chief Deputy Anderson.”
Max felt slightly uneasy. “And the chief went out there alone?”
“To see the wives. The chief wasn’t worried because Clyde’s at the body shop, working, pumping gas. She wanted to talk to the wives, woman to woman, see if they’d open up.”
“That make
s sense, I guess,” Max mused. “But I wish she’d taken someone with her. It’s not always the best idea…”
On the highway ahead, he saw the sign for Benson’s Body Shop with the missing “B.” Something looked odd about it. Not long after five, the afternoon was transitioning to evening. This was the time when Clyde was usually the busiest, pumping gas for the after-work crowd before he headed home himself. The repair shop should have been open, but all Max saw were the abandoned clunkers that had been there for years parked in the weeds.
“Stef, do you see Clyde Benson’s truck in the parking lot? He’s still there, right?”
Silence for just a moment, then she said, the edges of her voice frayed with worry: “The truck’s not there. It’s gone. And the ‘OPEN’ sign is turned off.”
“Shit. Stef, drive faster. Something’s wrong.”
Forty-Five
“Where’s my phone and my gun?” I massaged my wrists, and my feet and legs ached from the rope, but I was finally free of the chair. I winced when I touched the lump on the back of my head. From the size of it, it was no wonder that I’d blacked out.
“Lori gave them to Clyde,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay. Any idea where he put them?”
“He’s got the gun in his belt.”
The last part of that sentence made my stomach churn again. I hadn’t noticed the gun when I saw Clyde, but that made sense. While we whispered, Rachel and I tied Lori’s wrists and ankles. Unconscious, she was breathing well, and we had no way of telling when she’d come out of it. “We need a gag.”
“I’ll get it.” Rachel ran off and returned a moment later with a baby’s onesie.
As I tied it around Lori’s mouth, I asked, “How’s the girl?”
Rachel shrugged, unsure. “Asleep?”
We dragged Lori farther behind the shelves, where I hoped Clyde wouldn’t see her. Then we walked warily around the shelves toward the room where the screaming had come from. I stationed Rachel at the door, to watch for Clyde. As Rachel had said, the girl appeared to be sleeping. Her skin was pale, tinged with gray. The liquid in the IV bag kept dripping. I thought about the Pitocin. That had to be it. I clamped the tube and unplugged it from the bag, then put my fingers on the pulse point in her neck.
“Is she dead?” Rachel asked. She’d walked into the room and stood inside the door, still looking out.
“Not yet, but she needs help. Quick. We need a phone.” Violet’s heartbeat felt thready and weak.
“We have one in the kitchen.”
“Clyde doesn’t know what’s going on yet, that you’re helping me. Before he figures it out, you could sneak up there and make a call to nine-one-one?”
“Me?”
“Please, Rachel. This girl needs medical attention, and they’ll send backup. They’ll help us with Clyde.”
All the color drained from Rachel’s face as she shook her head. “He’ll catch me.” Her hands had that slight shake again, and she didn’t try to hide how afraid she was of her own husband. I thought back to a time in my life when the sight of my husband put every nerve in my body on edge.
Then we heard Clyde’s boots slapping hard on the aged wooden steps. I pointed at the armoire and mouthed, “Hide.”
Rachel slipped quietly over and stood against the wall, behind the armoire’s open door. It covered everything but her feet. I searched the room, looking for something to use as a weapon. All I could find was a hypodermic needle, the one that Lori must have used to inject the Pitocin into the IV cartridge. I grabbed it out of the garbage and slipped over and hid next to the open door. Clomp. Clomp. He came closer. My heart pounded with each footfall.
“Lori, is that baby born yet?” he called out as he drew near. “I just got off the phone with the couple buying it. They’ll be here in the morn—”
One thick brown boot entered the room, then the other. Clyde stared at Violet in the bed, then glanced around the room. He must have seen Rachel’s boots because he took a sharp turn toward the armoire. “Rachel, you back there? Where’s Lori?”
Distracted, he didn’t see me when I rushed out, the needle in my hand, my thumb on the flat end. I had to jump up to plunge the needle into his neck. I hit him on the side, and the thick muscle resisted as I stuck it in. I knew it wouldn’t bring him down, only act as a distraction.
He let out a shriek and brought his hand up to the needle and tore it out, looked at it as if surprised. Rachel peeked out from around the armoire door, while I grabbed at his belt, pulled on his pants, looking for my gun. In a single motion, he swung his massive arm toward me and punched me hard across my already throbbing jaw. I fell flat on my back, blood gushing from a split lip. He came at me in a rage. When he got close enough, I snapped my legs up and kicked him smack in his groin. Clyde clutched himself, screamed and cursed. I barreled toward him and knocked him as hard as I could with my shoulder. As he fell, something black skidded out from underneath him.
My Colt Pocketlite .380.
It slid across the tile floor and came to rest at Rachel’s feet. Her face blank, she picked it up.
“Give it to me,” I shouted, rushing toward her, but Rachel held the gun not on Clyde but with the barrel pointing at me, aimed at my heart. “No, Rachel, no. Give me the gun.”
“Yeah, give it to her! Give her a bullet right through that damn brain of hers.” Clyde scrambled back onto his feet, and he wore a grin that spread so wide I saw the empty gaps left by his missing molars. “Shoot her, Rachel. Wife of mine, you do as I tell you, shoot her!”
Rachel stared at me down the gun’s barrel, and I could almost hear the debate going on inside her head. Should she shoot me and save herself with Clyde? She hated him, that I knew. I just had to remind her. “He’ll beat your babies, abuse them, Rachel. He won’t stop unless you stop him. You’re their mother. You need to protect your children.”
“Rachel’s my wife. Bound to obey me by the prophet himself. She wouldn’t…” He turned toward her, put his hand out. “Give me the gun, Rachel. You know the teachings: you must do as I say.”
He edged closer to her, that hand ready to take what he wanted.
“He’s going to grab the gun,” I shouted. “Rachel, don’t let him!”
She swiveled away from me, and pointed the barrel at Clyde, about halfway up his chest to the spot his heart would have been, if he’d been born with one. The fierceness in her words surprised me when she murmured out of nearly closed lips, “Step back, husband. No closer.”
“Why you— Put that damn gun in my hand,” he ordered, his face flushed with anger, a sneer so evil it could have represented every seed of rage planted in his soul throughout his miserable life. “You are not to disobey your husband, Rachel. You are to do as you are told and never question.”
“Keep the gun on him, Rachel. Don’t let him fool you. He won’t change. He’ll abuse you, your children. For as long as you live, he’ll take advantage of you, dishonor you.”
“Mouth shut!” Clyde shouted at me. He took a step toward her. “Rachel, give me the damn gun!”
I didn’t see her finger compress the trigger, but later I thought I saw the bullet leave the barrel and enter Clyde Benson’s forehead, the skin tearing open, the membrane parting, cratering through the skull into the brain. Shot one hit him square between the eyes. Shot two went into his open mouth and came out the back of his neck, sending brain and blood spatter across the room. I felt it hit my face, a shower of warm red liquid. Clyde fell with shot three, crumpled in a pile of dying bones, muscles, tendons, and organs. He’d stopped breathing before he hit the ground.
For a moment, we froze. Rachel had a look of surprise, of not understanding quite what she had done. I couldn’t wait for her to put it all together. Violet needed help. Rachel didn’t fight me when I took the gun from her. “Run upstairs and call nine-one-one. Tell them where we are and that we need an ambulance and backup, a crime scene unit. Tell them I’m here. And tell them to rush
!”
I ran over to the bed where the girl lay still, and I began untying the bindings on her arms then her legs. I glanced over at Rachel. Her face drained of blood, looking as if she were in shock, she hadn’t moved.
“Now, Rachel! Upstairs! Call for help!” I shouted as I searched for a pulse and found a reedy one on the girl’s wrist. “Tell them we need an ambulance, now! This girl still has a chance. She’s still breathing.”
That somehow hit home, and Rachel ran. I heard her boots pounding up the staircase.
Violet’s hand felt cold, too cold. I put my palm on her abdomen, and I felt a flutter. I couldn’t think of what to do, what I should do, if there were anything that I might be able to do to save the girl and her child.
“Please, hang on!”
Later, I would try to make sense of it all. It seemed as if she’d gone into a trance and labor had paused, and then restarted, for suddenly she let loose a harrowing scream, a cry that God must have heard in the Heavens. My mother would have described such a scream as one that would raise the dead.
Perhaps it did, for the girl’s eyes shot open, and she stared at me. Her irises were such an unusual color, nearly purple, and I suddenly realized why she’d said, “They call me Violet.”
Something else: she looked familiar. “What’s your real name?”
“Eden,” she whispered.
“You’re Eden Young.”
“How did you…” she started to ask, but then she grabbed the side rails and shouted: “It’s coming. My baby is coming!”
“Okay. It’s okay,” I fought hard not to sound as panicked as I felt. “We’re calling an ambulance. I’m Clara, and until it gets here, I’ll help you. We’re going to get through this together.”
“That terrible man and Lori, will they…”
“They can’t hurt you. Just stay calm.” I considered the location of the house, the distance the paramedics had to drive. I would have given a year’s wages for one of the medical helicopters we had in Dallas, the ones that swooped in and ferried the injured to hospitals. Not here. Not rural Utah. Not on my beat. I had to handle this. I brought her legs up and parted them, and I saw flesh. I wondered if Lori was right, if the baby was coming breech. If that was the case, I had no training to help her, no idea of what to do.
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