The Fallen Girls: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 1)

by Kathryn Casey

  “That so?” I commented, looking over at Max. A moment earlier, he’d been my only supporter. But this time – no help. Instead Max focused on his phone, and he appeared to be reading something that wasn’t making him particularly happy. In fact, he looked upset. Gerard cleared his throat and reclaimed my attention, and I noticed his lips were pinched in distaste.

  “Clara, it’s time for you to go home to Dallas,” he said. “You don’t belong here. This is our town. We’re in charge.”

  I shook my head. “You told me last night during our little talk at the trailer park gate that this isn’t the old Alber.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I’m counting on that being true, and that this isn’t the same police department that used to run young boys, including you and Max, out of town. The same police force that harassed the girls.”

  “It’s not, but—” Gerard started.

  I didn’t wait for him to finish. “I know one thing for sure. I’m not the same woman who fled from Alber frightened for her life.”

  “Clara, stop,” Max interrupted. Off his phone, he appeared troubled. Where before he’d backed me, he walked over and stood next to Gerard. “The chief is right. Like the sheriff said, you have no jurisdiction here. You know that. You might as well leave and—”

  “You, too, Max? Telling me what to do?” He seemed confused about what to say, so I picked up where I left off. I intended to leave no room for any misunderstanding. “Gentlemen, this you can believe: I’m not leaving Alber until I’m sure my sister is safe.”

  As I turned to go, Evan Barstow glowered at me, his eyes filled with hate. I thought about the rumors Hannah recounted, that he favored young girls. Maybe it wasn’t a fluke that he’d chosen this particular morning to drop in to visit his younger brother, the police chief.

  I couldn’t know how much, if anything, Stephanie Jonas had heard, but she was standing at the end of the hallway when I walked out. The men were quiet behind me; I assumed they were waiting for me to clear the area before dissecting my performance.

  As I brushed past the dispatcher, she whispered, “Detective Jefferies?”

  I turned and looked at her.

  “If you need anything,” she said, and slipped me a card. I took it. I heard something and turned back toward the conference room. Evan Barstow stood in the doorway watching us, his eyes bristling with rage.

  “Thanks,” I whispered to Jonas.

  When I got outside, I glanced at the card. Jonas had written her cell phone number on the back. I slid it into my pocket.

  In the car, I called Hannah.

  “If you’re still willing to go with me to talk to the Heatons, I’ll pick you up on the way.”

  Fifteen

  Hannah ran out and got in the car when I stopped in front of the shelter. The gates to the trailer compound stood open when we arrived, but we still couldn’t get inside. An aging red tractor pitted with rust and pulling a dilapidated wagon lumbered ahead of us. I assumed it must have been heading to the cornfield at the back of the settlement to start the harvest. Unfortunately, two-thirds of the way through the gate, the arch caught on the tractor. The fence rustled and groaned as the driver tried to push through. When I got a good look, I realized it was Jim Daniels, the guy Max almost ran over coming out of the cornfield the day before.

  I waited anxiously as Daniels revved the engine, only to have the fence jangle forward and lean precariously, threatening to crash to the ground. Complicating the situation, the gate’s ornament, the horn-blowing angel, had somehow been dislodged, dangled down and wedged onto the tractor’s antenna. I pulled off the road and Hannah and I watched as four industrious-looking men scrambled onto the tractor, intent on freeing it.

  Daniels glanced at me, and then hastily back to the task at hand. I thought about how odd the man had seemed the day before, the way he burst out of the cornfield. Max had said he’d always struck him as a bit strange.

  “Tell me about that guy driving the tractor.”

  “Jim Daniels?” Hannah asked.

  “Yeah. That guy.” By then Daniels straddled the tractor seat, personally tugging on the angel.

  “I don’t know much,” she said. “He’s been here a while. His family came from a neighboring town. Someone told me that he has an agriculture degree from someplace in Iowa. Maybe five or six years back, the town co-op hired him to manage the community fields, the corn and alfalfa. Sometimes he works on private gardens. Gives advice, helps if there’s a bug or a blight problem.”

  “He seems okay?”

  Hannah looked stunned. “I never thought about it. Jim’s kind of standoffish, maybe. But he’s so quiet, he’s always just blended into the background.”

  “Never any talk about him?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Just wondering.” I pointed at the gate, the men still trying to jerk the arch off the tractor. “This could be a problem.”

  “They’ll get it,” Hannah dismissed. “You know, Jim’s family of yours.”

  I shot her a curious look and she explained, “His second wife is your younger sister Karyn. Well, half-sister. Constance’s youngest.”

  I thought about Karyn, all the others. My family, people I hardly knew.

  The clock ticking, my nervous energy built as I worried about Delilah. “Let’s walk around the tractor.”

  “The Heatons live on a far back lot on the west,” Hannah protested. “It doesn’t make sense to leave the car here. We would have to walk back and get it to drive to the other end of the trailer park, to the Coombs’ house.”

  “Shoot,” I said.

  “Patience,” she urged.

  “Does this happen often?”

  “No, but we had a lot of wind last Thursday, came with that morning rain. It must have loosened the arch.”

  Moments later, Daniels, a man I now knew was my brother-in-law, sprung the antenna free and pushed the arch back up, righting the angel. The men cheered and threw victory punches toward the sky. As the tractor lurched forward, the wagon rattled behind it like a burlap bag of loose bolts.

  Hannah and I followed in the Pathfinder, passing rows of trailers. Crumpled cardboard boxes, abandoned tools, old furniture and worn-out children’s playground gear cluttered the yards. When we reached the cornfield, the tractor veered to the right toward my family’s double-wide, but Hannah instructed me to keep driving straight back on the field’s western edge, heading toward the mountains.

  “There it is,” she said a short time later, pointing at a single-wide with a small camper beside it. The blue-sided trailer looked decades old, but it was clean and well-tended. It faced the road, and the cornfield spread out behind it.

  I parked a bit down the road.

  “That was the Heaton place back there,” Hannah said.

  “I don’t want to telegraph that we’re here. This gives us a few minutes to walk around unnoticed,” I explained. I grabbed my bag, and Hannah and I swung the Pathfinder’s doors open. “Let’s go.”

  As we approached the trailer, I motioned for Hannah to continue on toward the back. Hidden behind the single-wide sat a rickety, three-door outhouse, and off to the side in addition to the camper stood a half-dozen good-size tents, large enough for three or four people to sleep in, bordering the cornfield.

  “For the older kids,” Hannah whispered. “This isn’t unusual. Not enough room inside for beds. The camper is their quilting shop, where they keep the sewing machines.”

  A lean-to on one side had an opening to store hay beneath a corrugated tin roof, and a frail-looking bay greeted us, shaking its head and ruffling its mane. The horse was tied up next to a water trough. Most of the families in Alber had horses when I lived there, and I suddenly realized this was the first one I’d noticed since my return. “Where did the horses go? Why haven’t I seen more of them?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Most had to be sold. The women can barely feed their kids, much less a horse or two. Looks like the Heatons managed to k
eep one.”

  A small tribe of goats in a pen elbowed to get past one other, attempting to greet us, kicking up dust and bleating as we walked by. A black-and-white one with short horns threw his head back and let out a throaty call as something rustled past us overhead. I looked up and saw three young girls trampling across the trailer’s flat roof as if playing a game of chase, the metal quaking under each step.

  I couldn’t help laughing, and one apparently heard me. Six or seven, she shook her head in surprise, no doubt unaccustomed to intruding strangers. She jerked back and pointed at us, while the other two rumbled to stops beside her.

  The tallest girl, perhaps ten, looked warily from Hannah to me and yanked the other two back. In seconds, they’d vanished. I assumed they must have scurried down a ladder on the trailer’s rear, when one of the girls rounded the corner and ran past us to hide a dozen feet away, behind an ancient oak. The other two copied her, and before long all three peeked out at us from around the tree’s thick black trunk.

  Hannah shot me an amused glance, and then walked gingerly toward them, stopping a few feet from the tree. She bent closer to their heights and asked, “Well, hello. Are your mothers home?”

  At that moment, the screen door burst open, and a haggard-looking woman in a long beige dress appeared, drying her hands on a dishtowel. “You children stay on the ground and stop all that noise, you hear?” she shouted, searching the top of the trailer for the small offenders. “You’ll crack the roof and let the rain in, and this thing is all we’ve got to live in!”

  Suddenly noticing us, her feet stopped before her body did and she nearly fell forward. She looked from Hannah to me, and her face blanched. “Hannah Jessop, what’re you doing here?”

  “Grace… You remember Clara Jefferies,” Hannah replied.

  The woman turned to me. She took me in head to toe, questioning, and then appeared to piece it together. I didn’t know if she’d address me directly or not, but after she carefully assessed me, the woman said, “I heard you’d come back, Clara, but I couldn’t believe it. What nerve you have.”

  “Word gets out quickly,” I said, ignoring the barb.

  “Where’s your badge? A cop too, I hear.” Not giving me time to answer, her words tumbled out. “Another reason you’re not welcome.”

  I remembered a girl named Grace, a classmate of mine, plump with delicate features. In the eighth grade, we sang together in the school choir. I wondered if this could be the same girl, grown into a woman. I didn’t remember my friend having a jaw so hard set, the twin indentations between her eyes making her appear angry.

  Life had taken a heavy toll.

  Grace moved closer and scowled. “Those who descended on us, harassing our community, had badges, too. They worried our husband so, he had a heart attack and died.” She pointed at the Pathfinder a short distance down the road. I sensed her fury building. “You’re not one of us. Get back in your car. You don’t belong here.”

  I approached her slowly, calmly, shortening the distance between us. “Grace, I’m not here to cause any problems. I’m here to help you—”

  “We don’t need your help. You need to leave!” she commanded.

  “Please, let’s just talk,” I pleaded. I had no desire to linger any more than she wanted me to stay. I’d come for information. Then I’d be gone. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m—”

  “Get out!” Grace screamed, her face inflamed with a seething rage. “Leave now. Everything of value we had has already been taken from us.”

  Hannah stepped forward to intercede. “Grace, please, Clara came to help. I asked her to. I told her about my concerns, about Eliza.”

  At that moment, two other women emerged from the trailer wearing threadbare but clean, carefully pressed dresses and stern expressions. The older one I recognized as Alma Heaton, the family’s first wife. Her hair had turned a yellow-gray, one that matched her pallid complexion. A look of incredible sadness on her face, Alma took Grace gently by the arm and pointed her toward the trailer door. Then she called out to the little girls watching wide-eyed from behind the tree trunk.

  “Inside,” Alma ordered. When they didn’t immediately react, she demanded, “Children. Inside, now!”

  The others vanished inside the trailer, and left Hannah and I alone with Alma. A slight, frail woman, she had the look of someone who’d been chronically ill for a very long time. Turning to Hannah, she seethed, “You have no business bringing police here. I told you Eliza left of her own free will, abandoned us like all the others.”

  “Alma, please,” Hannah pleaded. “I’m worried that Eliza may not have left willingly.”

  “Eliza ran off, I tell you,” she hissed. “Can’t you leave us alone?”

  “That girl loved all of you.”

  Tears formed in Alma’s red-veined eyes. “We thought she did. We were wrong.”

  Hannah’s voice became soft, urging. “Eliza wouldn’t have left you. In your heart you know that, Alma. What can it hurt to answer some questions? I asked Clara to—”

  “My daughter is no longer one of us. I will not speak of her.” Alma ran the back of a hand gnarled by decades of hard work over her cheek to wipe away tears. “Making things worse, you bring a police officer to this house, after what the Gentile police did to our family and our town.”

  “How can you be sure that Eliza is safe?” I tried to redirect the conversation.

  “My daughter abandoned us,” Alma hissed. “Like all the other teenagers, the ones who turned their backs on their families and faith. Like you did, Clara Jefferies.”

  Alma Heaton glowered at me, but addressed Hannah. “You have no right to bring her here.” She stalked toward Hannah, pointing at her face with one rigid finger. “This isn’t a grand palace, but it is our home. We say who is invited. She is not.”

  “Alma, please,” Hannah implored.

  “I want you, both of you, to leave, now.”

  “No, Alma,” Hannah whispered. “Talk to Clara. We only want to help Eliza. If you know where she is, tell us. Please, just tell us.”

  “No! I will not speak of Eliza. Never again!” Alma’s denial erupted from deep within her, carrying with it the grievances of a life gravely damaged.

  “What if she’s not?” I countered.

  Alma turned toward me. “What?”

  “What if Eliza isn’t safe?” I asked. “Would you turn your back on her suffering?”

  Ever so slowly, Alma Heaton shook her head, nearly imperceptible at first, then harder and stronger. Her breathing turned hoarse, her eyes stared sharp. “You question me, a mother, challenge my love for my child?” she taunted. “You, who have no children, a barren woman who rejected her people?”

  Her words hit their mark, a wound deep within me. I willed my face calm. I knew this world. Here a woman without children was an embarrassment, a failure, an empty shell. “This isn’t about me. It’s about your daughter. I’m asking how you can be so sure Eliza is safe.” My heart beat hard against my ribs. I was being judged again as I had years earlier. Discounted as less. Even though I knew I wasn’t that person any longer, that I didn’t need anyone’s acceptance except my own, it hurt. “If you are truly sure that Eliza is safe, tell us where she is. What can that hurt? Once you do, we will leave willingly.”

  Alma bit hard on her lower lip. Her eyelids became heavy, sagging over her eyes. She didn’t answer.

  Instead, she whispered one last command, “Leave!”

  With that, she walked back to the trailer, disappeared inside, and slammed the door behind her just as my own mother had the day before.

  Hannah and I tarried for a moment, frustrated that we’d been turned away.

  As we reluctantly left, I felt only regret, not any anger toward Alma. She was a good woman. My mother was a good woman. They lived by the rules they were taught as children. They lived lives they’d been assured would bring honor to their families, lives that guaranteed great rewards in heaven. Then the world invaded and changed th
e rules, and they lost much of what they held dear.

  Alma Heaton and my mother were left adrift in a town where they’d once belonged. As the world continued to intrude, they would increasingly become the strangers, the outsiders.

  And me? I had failed again. I knew no more than when I’d arrived in Alber. I had no grounding on what was truth, or what were lies.

  “What do we know now? Anything that can help us?” Hannah asked when I turned on the Pathfinder’s engine. “What are we going to do?”

  As sympathetic as I was toward my mother, toward Alma Heaton, toward all the women of Alber, I had no choice.

  “We’re going to drive to the Coombs’ house to ask about Jayme,” I said.

  “It’ll be the same.” Hannah sounded resigned. “Last time I was there, there was a terrible scene. Jayme’s mom screamed at me and told me never to return.”

  “If they send us away, we’ll drive back to the Heatons’ and try again. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll go back to the Coombs’ house. We’ll keep pushing until we wear someone down. I’m not leaving until we know where Eliza and Jayme are.”

  Hannah hesitated, and then asked, “Clara, what if Alma is telling the truth? Maybe my mind fashioned this terrible theory out of nothing but suspicion.”

  That was something I’d considered. “You have reasons to suspect there is something very wrong. If this is all an innocent mistake, why didn’t Alma simply tell us what she knows?”

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said. “But I worry that I’m wrong, and that we’re putting ourselves and them through all this for no reason.”

  “That’s the hope, isn’t it?” Hannah shot me a questioning glance, and I explained. “That would be the best possible outcome: that we’re wasting our time, because all three girls, Eliza, Jayme and Delilah, are safe.”

  “But you don’t think they are?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “There’s something very wrong here.”