Her Final Prayer: A totally gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 2)

by Kathryn Casey

  “Jeff Mullins?” Max asked, hoping the deputy meant someone else, not Alber PD’s veteran officer. “The detective?”

  “Yeah,” the deputy said. “That Jeff Mullins.”

  Max’s stomach churned thinking that someone would have to call Mullins. That wasn’t a call he wanted to make and no one wanted to receive. But first they needed to take care of the man bleeding on the kitchen floor. Max tapped his shoulder mic. “Send in the EMTs. We have two additional vics inside, one alive, one dead. Tell the paramedics that their patient is on the first floor, the kitchen, throat cut. The house is clear. We’re on our way downstairs.”

  To the two deputies who’d searched the house with him, Max said, “Go outside. Help the others clear the barn and any outbuildings. Additional backup is on the way. Tell headquarters to dispatch the CSI unit and the ME.”

  The deputies sprinted off, following orders.

  Alone in the room, Max took another look at Laurel Johansson, thinking again about the painful moment Jeff Mullins would face when he heard his daughter was dead. Max focused on the angry red slit across Laurel’s neck, ear to ear, and thought about Jacob on the kitchen floor, still alive but his throat cut as well. It struck Max as nearly biblical to kill in such a fashion.

  In contrast, from the look of it, the woman and children under the sheet had all been shot.

  As Max walked down the stairs, he realized that the sheer carnage rivaled anything he’d witnessed in all his years in law enforcement, the bulk of it spent not working for a rural sheriff’s office but Salt Lake PD. As a big-city cop, Max had investigated gang killings and been part of major drug busts. Despite its squeaky-clean image, Salt Lake shared the problems common to all cities: robberies, sex crimes, gun violence and murders. Yet never had Max walked into such a shocking scene. The bodies of the woman and two children under the sheet sickened him. And Max had a hard time wrapping his mind around the scene in the upstairs bedroom.

  Two EMTs rushed in nearly simultaneously as Max reached the first floor. “Did you assess the victims outside?” he asked. “Under the sheet.”

  “All three dead,” an EMT confirmed as they hurtled toward the kitchen.

  Max walked outside to check on Naomi in the car and saw that she’d disobeyed him and gotten out. She still held the baby, but now she talked to a new arrival. Naomi appeared deep in conversation, bouncing the baby nervously on her hip. He approached, his eyes fixed on the newcomer’s black hair, pulled into a familiar bun at the nape of her neck.

  When Clara turned toward him, Max looked into her wide, dark eyes, the deep brown of strong coffee. He noticed her mud-caked jeans, her dirt-covered boots and immediately understood where she had been—out digging, looking for bodies in the woods. Once again, he thought about how this was a woman who didn’t understand the concept of ever giving up.

  “Chief Jefferies,” Max said. He thought about how eager he’d been to see her again, but not this way. Never this way. “You got our message?”

  “I did.” All business, she asked, “What do we know?”

  Four

  Mother Naomi jumped out of Max’s squad car and came running toward me the moment I climbed out of the black Suburban. I put my hand on her shoulder, hoping to calm her. The baby let loose a torrent of screams from within his blue blanket, I thought perhaps picking up on Naomi’s agitation as she fidgeted while she tried to quiet him. “You’re frightening the child,” I said, trying to be as soothing as I could. “Mother Naomi, you need to calm down and tell me what’s happened.”

  Our family lost one mother, Constance, years earlier to breast cancer. Of my three surviving mothers, Naomi had always been the most excitable. During prayer service, she was the one who more often than not shouted praise to the heavens as her face glowed with an exuberant love. Emotions rarely bottled up inside her, since she so enjoyed releasing them out into the world. When she didn’t stop juddering the child, I put my hand on her cheek and looked into her eyes as I ordered, “Stop bouncing. Please.”

  Gradually, she reined her emotions in. The terror drained from her face and she stilled. As she did, the baby quieted. “That’s better,” I said. “Now tell me, what’s going on here?”

  “Someone’s killed them all,” Naomi said, each word drawn out like a full sentence.

  “Killed who?”

  “The Johanssons. All dead, I think, except Jeremy and maybe Jacob.”

  I remembered Jacob, the oldest of Michael and Reba Johansson’s sons, from my childhood. I’d lost touch with everyone during the ten years I lived in Dallas, where I trained to become a cop, eventually working homicides. But I’d heard that Jacob had left Alber not long after I did and only returned about a year earlier to take over the bison ranch so his father could retire. Once Jacob and his family moved onto the ranch, the elder Johanssons had taken up residence in a house not far off Main Street in the center of town. The other person Naomi referred to I didn’t know. “Jeremy?”

  “This is Jeremy,” Naomi said, looking down at the infant, a tiny one with a sparse fringe of light blond hair and bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks. Naomi looked up from her small charge, took a deep breath and pointed at something white spread out across the ground. “There’s blood, Clara. On that sheet over there, on the face of the dead boy under it, and all around Jacob on the floor.”

  “Did you see how it happened?” I asked. Naomi shook her head. “Why are you here?” I asked.

  At that moment, her attention shifted to something or someone over my shoulder. I turned and saw Max trudging toward us. I felt uneasy about my physical response, the way my pulse kicked up at the sight of him. I thought of the way my body reacted when he touched my shoulder just two nights ago. He walked over and his eyes settled on my muddy jeans. I knew he guessed what I’d been up to. I’d confessed my obsession and my morning forays with my shovel over dinner a few weeks earlier. When I looked at his face, though, I realized that Naomi’s description must not have been an exaggeration. This was a bad scene, I knew, simply from the dour look Max wore as he came to a stop beside me.

  When I asked what he knew, Max gave me a rundown. “The men are still checking the outbuildings, but the count so far is four dead, two women and two children,” he said. Beside us, Naomi gasped, as if starved for air. At that, Max appeared upset with himself for talking in front of her, and he sighed. “Naomi, we need answers.” Then he asked the question I had just moments earlier, “First off, what brought you here this morning?”

  “That,” Naomi said, pointing at a clear plastic bag with something inside made out of white plastic, shiny metal, and plastic tubing. It lay on the ground not far from where we stood. “I was delivering that breast pump to Laurel for Jeremy. I promised her and Jacob that I would when we talked at services yesterday.”

  “Did you see anyone when you arrived?” I asked, and Naomi shook her head. “But you went inside?”

  “I went in the house to find a phone after I saw the little boy, Benjamin, dead under the sheet. I needed to call nine-one-one.” Naomi shrugged as if slightly embarrassed. “We only have one cell phone at the trailer, Clara, and I forgot it when I left to go to the hives this morning. I had to go inside the Johanssons’ house to call for help.”

  “Laurel was expecting you?” Max asked.

  “Yes,” Naomi said. “She and Jacob both were. But I was running maybe half an hour late, a little bit more. There was a lot of commotion at the trailer getting the young ones off to school this morning, and I didn’t get out the door as early as I planned.”

  “When you saw Jacob, did he say anything?” Max asked.

  Naomi shook her head. “Nothing. He was awake when I walked in, his eyes open. I had the feeling he felt relieved to see me. As soon as he did, his eyes closed. It was like he drifted off and went to sleep.”

  Max looked at me, and I shot him a glance that signaled agreement. We both knew where this was going. “Mother Naomi, we need you to go to police headquarters,” I said. “I’m going
to have one of the deputies drive you there, and I’ll ask Detective Mullins to take your statement.”

  I noticed that Max grimaced when I mentioned Jeff Mullins. I wondered why and was just about to question him on it when Naomi interrupted me.

  “Oh, I can’t give an official statement. I can’t do that,” she protested. A fundamentalist Mormon town that adhered to the principle of plural marriage, Alber had an uncomfortable relationship with civil authorities. Hence cooperation wasn’t always easy for those of us in law enforcement to get, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at Naomi’s reaction. Plus there was my frigid relationship with my family, which despite my best attempts hadn’t thawed. Still, there were four dead bodies on the property and a man who, according to Naomi, appeared to be dying. I’d hoped she’d step up. “I just told you everything I know,” she said. “There’s no reason for more. I’ll just get some things for Jeremy, clothes and such, and take him home and care for him. Clara, you and Max can go off and solve this. You don’t need me.”

  I squeezed my eyes nearly shut, lowered my head and gave her a firm headshake. “Mother Naomi, you are going to the police station. Once there, you’ll give a full and complete statement to Detective Mullins,” I repeated. Again, Max bristled at the mention of Mullins’ name. This time he signaled me that we needed to talk. I nodded but first wanted to finish with Naomi. “Right now, you’re going to sit in my vehicle and wait to be transported into town,” I told her. “I’ll collect a few things for Jeremy, to take with you.”

  “Clara, as one of your mothers, I must protest and point out that—”

  “Naomi Jefferies, I said get in the Suburban,” I ordered. “Chief Deputy Anderson and I don’t have time for this. We need to check on Jacob.”

  Used to having motherly sway over me, Naomi crumpled her mouth into a peeved bow the way I remember her doing when I was a child and I or one of my siblings disappointed her. Once upon a time, that look would have sent me straight to my room. But I wasn’t a child any longer. Instead, I wore a badge, this was a murder scene, and Naomi needed to listen to me. Perhaps she understood that, because she didn’t argue. “You’ll get some of Jeremy’s things for me to take, though?”

  “I will,” I said.

  Reluctantly, she slunk over to my Suburban and Max raised his hand to one of the deputies from a squad that had just pulled in with more backup. “Stay with her,” he told her. “I’m going to give Chief Jefferies a walk-through.”

  As we turned toward the house, the CSI’s mobile unit, converted out of an old horse trailer, pulled into the driveway. Max acknowledged the driver, then turned back to me. “We need to talk about Mullins. He can’t work this case.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “He’s my lead detective. He’s got the most experience of—”

  “Clara, Mullins is related to one of the victims,” Max blurted out. I gave him a questioning glance and he explained. “He’s the father of the woman upstairs, Laurel Johansson, one of Jacob’s two wives.”

  “And she’s…?” I knew, but, on some level, I needed to hear it.

  “Dead,” Max said. “Her throat’s cut.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. The grisly scene suddenly felt even more tragic.

  The CSI unit began their work, focusing on the bodies under the sheet. Before we entered the house, Max and I stood for just a moment and watched while they photographed the sheet and the uncovered boy’s body. The child looked perfect, like he’d gone out to play and lay down on the grass. But this child would never get up. He’d never start school, never play softball or soccer, never have a first date or hold his first-born child. I felt sickened by the raw exit wound above his eyebrow.

  Once they had him documented, CSI officers got on all sides and raised the bedsheet. They walked away from the bodies, holding the sheet high, and then folded it into two rectangles, into quarters, then eighths. They laid the bloody sheet on top of a paper evidence wrapper, folded the paper over it, secured it and dated it, wrote the case number assigned to this outrage across it.

  As they worked, Max and I examined what we could of the bodies. Max had learned the victims’ names from a deputy who knew the family, and he said the dark-haired woman was Anna, Jacob’s first wife. She looked as if she’d tripped and fallen face down in the yellowed winter grass. I could only see her long dark hair and her back, the soles of her slippers. I couldn’t walk closer and risk contaminating the evidence field, so I stood back, but it was easy to see the bloody holes that stood out on the white terry cloth. The laundry basket sat nearby, and it appeared as if she’d been outside hanging clothes when someone came up behind and shot her. It bothered me that Anna had her robe on. Why hadn’t she changed before coming outside? I wondered. She must have been cold wearing that. It’s chilly out here.

  The children’s motionless bodies punched a fist into my heart. The little girl, Sybille, age six, lay in a fetal position on her left side, her dark hair half fallen out of a loose ponytail. Like her brother, she had so much ahead of her that she would miss: reading her first book, learning how to add and subtract, picnics and playdays. She’d never marry or have children, and never grow old and hold her grandchildren on her lap. The girl’s jacket was bunched up around her, and I wondered if she’d been sitting when someone fired a bullet into her head. She looked as if she might have been and tipped over.

  Benjamin, age three, lay on his side, his face turned toward the ground. It appeared that someone had repositioned him, because the gunshot was barely visible, not more than an inch above ground level. It seemed an awkward position to fall into.

  The medical examiner was on his way, and the bodies wouldn’t be moved until he arrived, but the CSI folks were taking lots of photos and putting out numbered plastic tents to tag pieces of evidence. This would happen throughout the yard, the house, anywhere they found anything they thought should be collected. There were four bright yellow markers scattered in the yard when Max and I went inside to find out about the condition of the lone adult survivor.

  On the kitchen floor, EMTs worked on Jacob. The pool of blood on the floor next to him looked substantial.

  A small patch of it was smeared and I wondered if the medics had done that—they usually tried to avoid blood on a scene—or if Naomi might have. Earlier I’d noticed blood on her dress. She must have knelt close to Jacob, perhaps to try to help him. A short distance off, in the blood, I noticed what looked like a faint print from the toe or heel of a shoe. The print, just a few inches long, had enough detail to make out the sole’s pattern. It looked like it had deep grooves, perhaps from some kind of tennis shoe or a work boot. Someone had put a kitchen chair over it to keep anyone from stepping on it. I stared at it for a moment. The blood had an odd arrangement of small crosses inside a semicircle of what looked like bowling pins. I took out my cell phone and snapped a photo.

  “Does your office have access to a good shoe man?” I asked Max, pointing at it. In Dallas, we had experts in the lab on nearly every aspect of criminology, from blood pattern analysts to those who catalogued fiber sources and diagnosed insect evidence. When it came to shoe print tracing, we had a guy with access to a database like those used to compare fingerprints. The system matched sole designs to manufacturers and styles. Working in the sticks, specialists didn’t always fit into my slim budget.

  “That’s not someone we’ve used in my time here, so I don’t think so,” he said. “We can try to find someone. Unless you know anyone?”

  “I do,” I said.

  With that, I tapped on the photo I’d taken and attached it to a text and sent it to a friend in the lab in Dallas. Can you match this for me? A minute later, I got a response: No problem. Have it for you late today. I would have liked it sooner, but beggars can’t be choosers. The guy was doing me a favor. “Taken care of,” I told Max. “I’ll let you know when I have any info.”

  Although the EMTs had spent a substantial amount of time attempting to stabilize him, in truth there wasn’t m
uch they could do for Jacob on the scene. As long as he kept breathing through the opening in his throat, and so far he’d been able to do that, they wouldn’t try to bind it and bag him. His right hand had a gash that looked like a defensive wound, as if he’d attempted to grab the assailant’s knife away from him. A heart monitor beeped while a paramedic cleaned the blood off Jacob’s neck, assessing the wound. When a gauze pad filled with blood, he threw it to the side. Jacob’s eyes were closed, his body eerily still except for his struggle to breathe.

  “This is so weird,” the medic muttered.

  “What is?” Max asked.

  “This guy got really lucky,” he said. “Whoever did this was in a hurry. He didn’t stay around to make sure the guy died—he cut this guy’s trachea but he missed the carotids. If the attacker had sliced through one or both of the arteries, this guy would have bled out in no time.”

  “Can he talk to us?” I asked.

  “Unconscious,” the medic answered, then to my disappointment he added, “He was out cold when we got here. Hasn’t said a word. But even if he were awake, he wouldn’t be able to talk. Not with his throat in that condition.”

  “Why haven’t you moved him?” I asked.

  Even when patients are comatose, medical personnel are acutely aware that they may be able to hear, so we followed him into the mudroom to get out of earshot.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” the medic said. “We’re trying to administer fluids and stabilize him before we load him on the ambulance. Without that, it’s doubtful he’d survive the ride.”

  “Okay,” Max said. “Got it.”

  Jacob, of course, wouldn’t be able to get a transfusion until they got him to the hospital; ambulances didn’t carry blood because of its short shelf life, and the fact that it has to be warmed before being administered. Instead the EMTs were attempting to hook up a saline IV to replenish his lost fluids. The problem: heavy blood loss had dehydrated Jacob and constricted his veins; the medic in charge was having a hard time inserting a needle into his patient’s arm.