She appeared disappointed, but said nothing.
Something still bothered me. “One question,” I said, and her eyes locked on mine. “That orange flashlight we took into evidence. When did Evan bring it home?”
“He didn’t,” she said. “Gerard stopped in one afternoon. He gave it to Evan. My husband seemed surprised. It wasn’t his birthday. I remember him being happy about it, that Gerard had shown him respect by bringing him an unexpected gift.”
On my drive back to Alber, I wondered why Gerard had given the flashlight to Evan. That one piece of evidence started everything. Perhaps it was what Evan thought—Gerard’s grateful gift to a brother who kept his secrets. Or could Gerard have been trying to offer his brother up as a suspect? If so, he succeeded.
A few hours after I visited Jessica, my family buried my sister Sadie. The sky turned overcast that afternoon, and we felt a whiff of moisture in the air. Halfway through the ceremony at the gravesite, the clouds opened and heaven cried as Sadie was finally laid to rest in a proper grave, not the stone mound where Gerard Barstow hoped she’d spend eternity.
I wasn’t officially invited to the service, so I stood under an umbrella near the rear with Max and the sheriff, watching as Naomi placed a bouquet of lavender on her oldest child’s casket. I thought of the sister I’d left behind and would never see again. I had her diary in my suitcase. Mother hadn’t asked for it back, and I hadn’t offered it. I counted our siblings in attendance. Father had twenty-one children at the gravesite that day, and it appeared seven grandchildren. None of the others looked my way except for Lily and Delilah, who snuck peeks at me until Mother put her hands on their faces and turned them back toward the grave.
Still, it wasn’t completely over.
The story made for sensational headlines. Two girls murdered, two more abducted by a police chief in a polygamous enclave in the mountains of Utah. It had what the media calls legs, enduring interest, and the Internet carried it everywhere. I got requests for interviews from reporters all over the world, and I turned them all down.
That didn’t stop the coverage. Here and there people talked to reporters: one of the dog trainers, Jessica Barstow, and one of Gerard and Evan’s brothers. Coming and going from the Smith County Courthouse, photographers snapped my picture. Before long, my face stared back at me from front pages, the evening news.
Ten days after I arrived in Alber, I packed my suitcase in my room on the second floor of Heaven’s Mercy Shelter. Chief Thompson had understood my absence, but he had a case he wanted me to take over in Dallas, a series of burglaries of high-end jewelry stores. He thought I needed a break from murder investigations.
“Give yourself a few weeks to put this behind you,” he’d said on the phone.
“Thanks,” I’d replied. “That sounds good.”
The chief never mentioned the press coverage, but he’d said, “That little town, Alber, is your home? You grew up in a polygamous family?”
“Four moms, but Mother Constance died years back. My father is gone, too,” I’d told him. “I’m not sure how many siblings, but there are a bunch.”
He’d paused. “Well, you know, Clara, we all come from somewhere. But this is pretty complicated.”
I chuckled. “If you only knew.”
“We don’t care where you came from,” he’d said. “You’re one of us. Come home.”
I thought about the word home.
I had my sleeves pushed up, and I looked down at my eagle tattoo. I thought about how the majestic birds build their nests high in trees, on cliffs, far away from humans, to protect their young. I’d read once that Native Americans considered bald eagles spiritual envoys who carried messages to and from God. I thought about that moment in the woods, when I prayed for the first time in many years. I asked God to keep Delilah safe, and to help me find her. Moments after I sent off my plea, an eagle cried out.
In the end, God must have heard me. He granted both my prayers.
“You all packed?” Hannah stood in the open doorway looking wistful at my imminent departure.
“Yup,” I said. “I’m stopping at the police station on my way out. Alma Heaton is dropping in. She wants to talk to me. And Max is coming to say goodbye. Then I’ll head to Vegas to hop on a plane home.”
Hannah appeared interested. “Max, huh? You two have any plans?”
I turned away to slip the final items into my suitcase. If I’d been truthful, I would have said that I felt drawn to Max. We had such history. I could still close my eyes and remember how his lips felt against mine that day at the river. But life hadn’t been kind to either one of us, and we both came with heavy baggage. I sensed Max held more secrets beyond what he had said about his daughter. Ones as painful as mine. “I don’t know, Hannah. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what’s ahead.”
I thought she might push, but instead she asked, “How’s Jayme?”
“Still in the hospital in St. George, but improving. They’ve set her arm, but they’re building her back up before they release her. She’s skin and bones. I asked Max to investigate the allegations Jayme made about the abuse before they send her home.”
“Good.” Then Hannah sighed, the kind of sigh that starts deep in the soul. “I wish you weren’t leaving, Clara. I will miss you. Whether you realize it or not, we need you here.”
“I’m not wanted here,” I reminded her. “You’ll have to come visit me in Dallas. I’ll take you to restaurants, plays, and show you what the rest of the world is like.”
A slight shake of her head, and I knew that would never happen. “This is my world. I belong in this house with these women and children. They need me.”
“Of course,” I said. “Then there will be phone calls.”
“And letters,” Hannah agreed. “I enjoy receiving letters.”
I gave her a last hard look and considered the beauty of a woman content in her world, someone who understood where she belonged. That would never be me. For the rest of my life, I would be an outsider.
Stef buzzed me in at Alber PD. Alma Heaton waited inside.
“I wanted you to have this.” She held a copy of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. “Hannah told me that you and Eliza both loved this writer. My daughter had this next to her bed the day she disappeared.”
I held the book in my hands and felt the weight of it. I ran my hand over the title, stamped in gold on the rough cloth cover. Inside, I found a bookplate. Under a spray of delicate blue flowers, Eliza had signed her name. Alma Heaton reached out and embraced me. “Thank you for bringing my daughter home so I can bury her,” she whispered. “Without you, we might never have found her.”
After Alma left, Mullins popped in the door and asked, “You still here?”
“I’m waiting for Max.”
“Well, me and Conroy are heading out to a call. Probably won’t see you again.” He extended his hand. I shook it. He looked a bit embarrassed. He nodded, turned and left.
I’d brought the secret files back, and I carried them in from the SUV and gave them to Stef when we were alone. “Someone should really go through all those files back there,” I said. “No telling what they’d find.”
“Yeah, but we both know that won’t happen,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. This wasn’t something she held any doubt about. “I haven’t been here long, but I figure this isn’t a town where folks put much stock in rocking the boat.”
I let out a short huff in agreement. “That’s true.”
At that, the door opened, and Max looked in. “Sorry I’m late.” He turned and kept the door open with his back while he pulled in a wheelchair holding a young girl with long strawberry-blond hair, the one whose picture I’d noticed on his desk my first day in Alber.
“Alice couldn’t stay with Brooke. She had something she had to do today, so I brought her along.” The girl’s legs twitched a bit with some kind of spasm. A beautiful child, she had inquisitive hazel eyes that locked onto me.
“So this
is Brooke.” I reached down and took her right hand and shook it. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Dad says you’re a Dallas police officer.” Grinning up at me, she added, “And Dad told me you came here and really shook things up.”
I laughed. “I guess I did. I know he hasn’t been home much lately. Thanks for lending your dad to me. I couldn’t have done it without him.”
“That’s funny,” Brooke said. When she smiled, dimples creased her cheeks.
“What is?”
“Dad told me he couldn’t have done it without you.”
Max shrugged and flashed me a smile. “I think Clara needs to go now, Brooke. She has a plane to catch in Las Vegas.”
“I’m going to go there someday,” Brooke said. “And Dallas, too. When I walk again, I’m going to see the world.”
“I bet you will see the world. Maybe, one day, your dad will bring you to Dallas to visit me. I’d like that.” I picked up Eliza’s book and handed it to Brooke. Some things are meant to be shared. “In the meantime, it might be a little early, but keep this. When the time comes, you will find a world inside its covers.”
Brooke put the book on her lap and opened it. “These are really pretty flowers,” she said, running her hand over the bookplate. “What are they?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
Max’s voice tinged with melancholy, he said, “Those were your mother’s favorites, Brooke. They’re forget-me-nots.”
We stood quiet, lost to our own thoughts. I watched the way Max looked at Brooke, the love in his eyes, and I wondered if I’d been unfair to him. In hindsight, Max had been right about much of it, especially that I was stepping over the line, but I hadn’t been in a place where I was willing to listen. I looked at my watch, and considered the departure time for my flight. That talk would have to wait. I had to drive to Vegas and check in the Pathfinder at the rental counter. “I need to go,” I said.
“Is it okay if you wait here with Stef while I walk Clara out?” Max asked Brooke.
Brooke looked at Max, as if uncertain.
A grin stretching its way across her face, Stef emerged from behind her desk. She placed her hands on the wheelchair’s arms and looked down at the girl. “How about we play some wheelchair tag?”
Brooke shouted, “You’re it!”
Giggling followed us out the door, as Stef tried to touch Brooke, who swiveled her chair to get away.
Max held the door for me, and we took our time rounding the corner to where I had the SUV parked. “Clara, thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for calling me,” I said. “If you hadn’t…”
“Delilah and Jayme may never have been found. We wouldn’t have known what happened to Eliza and Sadie. And Gerard may have never been stopped. There would have been more victims.” He held out his hand and I took it. Then he released it, leaned close and whispered, “Again, I’m sorry. When you needed me, I should have backed you up.”
He was thinking back to the day he’d sided with the others and told me to go home. At the time, I didn’t understand why Max worried so about losing his job. I thought about Brooke waiting inside, and all he’d told me about her, losing her mother, the accident, that she might never fully recover. Without medical insurance to pay for her care, she had no hope.
In that moment, I forgave him. “It’s okay, Max. We all have our priorities. Brooke has to be yours. I understand.”
“But I shouldn’t have let that get in the way of my work when a life could be at risk,” he said. “I was wrong. I won’t do that again.”
“I know you won’t,” I said, meaning it.
Moments passed, before he said, “Clara, I have missed you.”
I didn’t know how to respond. He moved toward me and wrapped his arms around me. At first, I didn’t react. Then, slowly, I slipped my arms around him, and I laid my cheek on his chest, where I could hear his heart beating. We held each other for mere moments, but it felt like a lifetime. For that brief instance, we were teenagers again, and he was my first love. When we parted, I ran my fingers down his cheek, letting them come to rest on his lips. He put his hand gently over mine and lightly kissed my fingertips.
I reclaimed my hand and stepped back, turning toward the Pathfinder.
“You know, you don’t have to go.” I felt his eyes on mine, traveling deep inside of me to places I’d buried long ago. I realized it would take every bit of determination I had to get inside the SUV, especially when he said, “I don’t want you to leave.”
“I have a job in Dallas. My chief has a case waiting.”
“You have a job here, if you want it,” Max said. I shot him a curious glance. “Alber needs a new police chief. I talked to the mayor today. The job’s yours if you want it.”
“No. I need to…” I started to object.
Max smiled at me, questioning, waiting for an answer.
From him, my eyes traveled down the familiar street, the sidewalk I’d taken as a young girl. The buildings I’d passed as a child. And I wondered what lay ahead.
Gripped by Clara's story? Want to read more twisty crime thrillers in the series? Get Her Final Prayer and you won't be able to stop turning the pages as she unravels another unputdownable mystery.
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Her Final Prayer
Her pulse pounded in her ears as she scanned the house. Her eyes traveled over the porch where three empty chairs lazily rocked in the breeze, surrounded by scattered children’s toys. In the yard, there were mounds of earth. Graves. Only big enough for children…
When Detective Clara Jefferies is called to a family ranch just outside of Alber, Utah, she’s horrified to find two innocent young children murdered alongside their mothers. But she arrives at the scene quickly enough to rush their father, Jacob Johansson, to hospital where he begins fighting for his life, and to save his two-month-old son Jeremy, left untouched in his crib.
As Clara begins to investigate, nothing she finds out makes sense. Though she uncovers photos of one of Jacob’s wives in his best friend’s trailer, her flower necklace underneath his bed, there are rumors that she was in love with a different man altogether. And as the close-knit community comes together to support Jacob, Clara’s own family shut her out of the investigation…
But Clara won’t give up. With the killer still at large, baby Jeremy is at risk, and every moment her family are helping Jacob they are also in danger. To earn her family’s trust, Clara finally has to face the past, but can she do it before it’s too late?
Impossible to put down, Her Final Prayer is perfect for readers of Lisa Regan, Melinda Leigh and Kendra Elliot. You’ll race through the pages until the final heart-pounding twist.
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Books by Kathryn Casey
Detective Clara Jefferies Series
The Fallen Girls
Her Final Prayer
The Sarah Armstrong Mystery Series
Singularity
Blood Lines
The Killing Storm
The Buried
True Crime
Evil Beside Her
She Wanted It All
A Warrant to Kill
Die, My Love
Shattered
A Descent Into Hell
Deadly Little Secrets
Murder, I Write
Possessed
Deliver Us
In Plain Sight
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The Fallen Girls (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from Kathryn
I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read The Fallen Girls. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be sh
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Now, I’d like to tell you a bit about the inspiration for the Clara Jefferies series.
As Clara has in the book, I have a history in a polygamous town, albeit admittedly a very brief one. Many years ago, as a magazine writer, I covered an adoption case involving a polygamous family. For that piece, I interviewed people who lived in Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. Those towns lay in what’s known as the Short Creek area, and, as in the fictional Alber, many of the residents belonged to a fundamentalist Mormon sect that practiced polygamy.
I found my time there fascinating. High in the mountains, I saw huge houses where men had many wives, some dozens, and more than a hundred children. The people I talked to seemed very open about their unusual lifestyles. Some avowed a deep faith and expressed satisfaction with their lives. Others described a stifling culture where young women were married off to old men and teenage boys were driven away.
That experience never left me.
I’ve thought of it often, especially in the past decade when polygamous enclaves made international headlines. Their leaders were taken away, some imprisoned. Videos of the women in prairie dresses surrounded by scores of children became fodder for the nightly news. The Fallen Girls and the Clara Jefferies books to come are pure fiction. None of the characters are depictions of anyone I met during my time in the mountains. Alber is a fictional town not found on any map. None of these events are based on any events that actually took place. Yet the books are inspired by my travels to a world very different from my own.
The Fallen Girls: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 1) Page 29