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

by Kathryn Casey

  “Did he ever threaten her? Did he ever do anything to actually hurt her?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of.” Mullins shook his head. “And I didn’t dream that… I didn’t ever think it would go this far.”

  “Maybe it’s time to talk to the judge, get a warrant for Carl’s trailer?” Max said, looking over at me. “There might be clothes, maybe shoes linking him to the scene? We have that one print.”

  “Sure, when we’re done here, you can go talk to Judge Crockett,” I agreed.

  After the briefest silence, Mullins said, “I need to go home.” He looked over at me, as if asking permission. I’d been thinking about his family, his two wives and more than a dozen other children. He had devastating news for them. “I’ve gotta tell everyone about Laurel,” he said. “This is gonna break their hearts.”

  As he got up, I noticed his shoulders slump. He looked beaten when he turned back and said, “Oh, you know, what I forgot to mention is what I’ve heard about those folks in Mexico. The reason right away when I heard about the killings, I knew it had to be Carl.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “In El Pueblo de Elijah, they believe in Old Testament vengeance, including blood atonement.”

  As soon as Mullins said it, I remembered hearing rumors about the Mexican branch over the years, that they were more likely to settle disputes with violence. In blood atonement, believers professed that God alone didn’t have the right to punish sinners. Instead, men were entitled to spill blood as reparations for misdeeds.

  “That fits with Laurel’s and Jacob’s… injuries,” I said, not going into specifics to shield Mullins from the gory details.

  It quickly became apparent, however, that my caution wasn’t necessary. Laurel’s father had obviously already heard the horror of her death. “Yeah. Exactly.” Mullins stared at me, as if determined to make his point. “That’s the way blood atonement is usually done. Cutting a throat.”

  Eleven

  Max left to talk to the judge about the search warrant, and I peeked in on Mother Naomi and Jeremy. The morning must have been exhausting for her, because she had her head on the table, her glasses off and her eyes closed. A nearly drained baby’s bottle with a smattering of formula ringing the bottom sat next to her elbow. She didn’t stir when I walked in, and I realized she’d fallen asleep. She looked peaceful, and beautiful. All my mothers were attractive women, but Naomi had the classic features of a cameo and her hair, just beginning to gray at the temples, spilled out in soft, light brown curls from her topknot. Someone had brought her a large file box, and she’d lined it with Jeremy’s blanket. Napping as tranquilly as his babysitter, the little guy was curled up contentedly in a ball inside his cardboard cradle, his eyes closed and his lips sucking on an imaginary pacifier.

  “You are a sweet one.” Pausing for just a moment, I watched him, thinking about his innocence and that he had no idea of the tragedy that had befallen him. I rubbed the back of my fingers against his satiny cheek, and I whispered, “Jeremy, I will find out who murdered your mothers, your brother and sister, who tried to kill your father. Whatever it takes. I promise.”

  A short distance down the hall, I stood outside the interview room with a big numeral one on the outside. I glimpsed Carl through the one-way window, sprawled in a chair beside a metal table, his chin propped up on his right fist. He looked miserable and angry. I pressed the button that started the video equipment rolling and popped the door open. He jumped up. “It’s about time,” he charged. “You gonna keep me here all day, with my amigo dying maybe, and his family dead? What the—”

  “You need to sit down,” I ordered. “We’re going to keep you here as long as we need you.”

  “Need me for what?” he challenged. “So that damn detective of yours can—”

  “Need you to answer questions,” I explained as I sat down and waited. He hesitated but then plopped down across from me. Once he did, I suggested, “First, let’s rewind to yesterday. Tell me what you did. Where you went.”

  Carl gave me a perturbed headshake and a frown so deep it furrowed his cheeks. “It was just a normal day,” he said. “I hung around the trailer in the morning, split some tree trunks for firewood and cut up fallen branches to burn this winter. When I finished, I threw it all on the woodpile out back.”

  “What else did you do?” I asked.

  He eyed my jeans and my old shirt, dirty from my morning’s dig. “Well, I looked pretty much like you do now when I finished, a real mess, sweaty and dirty,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I went inside, showered and got dressed. It being Sunday, all the stores were closed in Alber. So, I drove over to Pine City to pick up supplies at the grocery and a few things I needed at the hardware store.”

  “What time was all that?” I had a pad on the table between us and I made notes.

  “Got up about six, maybe seven, finished work and showered at eleven or so, then went right into town. I think I got home from the hardware store about three. Jacob had invited me over for dinner, so I was back in the truck at five driving to the bison ranch.”

  “When did he invite you?”

  “The day before,” Carl said. “He called me in the afternoon, said he wanted to have a little talk.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Carl said with a shrug. “Jacob and I talked a lot. He just said he had something to discuss. Not sure what, but I assumed something to do with the family or the ranch. He liked to run things by me, get my opinion on things. We were close that way. He knew that I looked out for him.”

  “Didn’t you make it to the house?”

  “Yeah, but I was there maybe ten minutes when all hell broke loose between Jacob, Anna and Laurel over the noise the kids were making, running around playing. There was a lot of shouting going on, and the baby, Jeremy, kept crying. It was louder than a train station. Jacob told me there was no sense in my staying, that it was too loud to hear ourselves think. He said he’d call me and we’d have to talk another time. I didn’t even get dinner. Although Anna packed up a piece of pie and a loaf of homemade bread for me to take.”

  “You’re telling me that you have no idea what Jacob had on his mind?”

  “Not really. Probably just normal stuff. He wanted to complain about having to work so hard at the ranch, or the wives were upsetting him. Normal married people stuff.” Something about Carl pricked at me: the constant challenge in his eyes, as if he wasn’t offering anything I didn’t specifically ask. Four dead, women and children, a best friend perhaps mortally wounded, and I had the sense that he considered it my job, not his to figure this out. He wasn’t acting as if he cared to help.

  “So, everything was fine, and then Jacob became angry over the children making too much noise?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Jacob and me talked a little while, the women were cooking, but then it got loud and I left,” Carl spread apart his lips, revealing a gap in his front teeth where he’d lost one. “Maybe they were a little tense when I got there. Laurel seemed out of sorts. She gave me a nasty look when I walked in the door.”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked.

  Carl squirmed in the chair, sat up from his sprawl and leaned toward me. “I think she was just in a foul mood. Laurel could get moody like that.” I didn’t say anything, just fixed my eyes on him and stared. Pretty soon he shrugged and relaxed back into his original position, putting some distance between us while he mumbled, “It wasn’t like anyone told me something was wrong. I just picked up on the vibes.”

  I stared at him a minute and didn’t talk, waited to see if he’d jump in and fill the silence. He seemed content to stare off into space. “What’s this I hear about Anna and Laurel not liking you all that much?” I asked, watching him carefully for his reaction. I thought he’d be insulted, but he shrugged it off as if it were unrelated and unimportant.

  “Shit, who told you that?” he asked. “That hillbilly detective, I bet. Why he
—”

  “Just give me your version of events, why your best friend’s wives would complain about you.”

  “I guess you could say I’m playful.” A smile spread across Carl’s lean face, and I thought how odd it was that he’d be amused talking about two women who hours earlier had been brutally murdered. Max had apparently filled him in on a little bit of what we’d found at the ranch on the drive into town, so he knew Jacob was at the hospital in tough shape, that he might not pull through. I wondered why Carl wasn’t pushing me for more information on his pal’s condition. Instead, Carl seemed a bit proud when he said, “People, especially women, don’t always know how to take me.”

  “Why do you think that is?” I asked.

  “No clue. I think I’m a pretty amusing kind of guy,” he said. “Anna and Laurel never really got my brand of humor.”

  I gave him a sympathetic nod, then suggested, “So you knew that they’d talked to Jacob about you, asked that you be told not to come to the house when Jacob wasn’t home. Maybe that explains the tension when you were invited for dinner? Maybe it wasn’t about the noise the kids were making? Maybe it was about having you as a dinner guest?”

  Carl appeared to consider that. “Could be, but then I think Jacob would have told me if that was the problem. Silly thing for those women to feel like that.”

  “Did Jacob explain why the women were upset?”

  “Nah,” he said. “They had their own dramas going on is all I can think of.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  Carl gave me a conspiratorial look and leaned forward again, as if he planned to divulge the deepest of secrets. “Laurel never really wanted Jacob,” he said. “She’d promised herself to some guy she went to school with. If it hadn’t been for her father telling her she had to, Laurel most likely would have refused to follow the prophet’s orders.”

  “And you know all this because?”

  “Jacob told me,” he said.

  I let that sit for just a moment and thought it over. I had a timeline building in my notebook for Carl, one I could use to compare with what I’d learn from others.

  “Did anyone see you yesterday?” I asked. “Can anyone confirm your story?”

  “Lots of people at the grocery and hardware stores,” he said.

  “And what about this morning?” Thinking about the most likely time of the killings based on what Doc had said at the scene, I narrowed it down a bit. “From five this morning, until Detective Mullins knocked on your door.”

  “He didn’t knock,” Carl corrected. “That guy stood outside my trailer and shouted at me that I killed his daughter, demanded I come outside. I recognized his voice, knew he was Laurel’s dad and a cop, but he didn’t even ID himself. I dialed nine-one-one and—”

  I stopped him. “Just tell me where you were last night and this morning beginning at five a.m., and the names of anyone who can corroborate it.”

  Carl smirked, like I’d lost my senses. “I was in bed, alone. I live way the hell out in the woods in that trailer. Who’d see me?”

  At that, I tried an old investigator’s trick, rephrased a few questions to see if I could confuse him and get different answers. “So, explain to me why Laurel told her father that she was afraid of you.”

  His sneer still planted across his face, he seemed to relish what he said next. “Anna and Laurel were good-looking women. I enjoyed being around them. They were easy on the eye.”

  “I heard that recently you walked in on Laurel nursing Jeremy, and you refused to leave,” I said.

  “It was beautiful. She was beautiful,” Carl said, his voice defiant. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted to watch.”

  “What did Jacob have to say about that?”

  “You know, he never did seem to mind when I paid attention to his wives,” Carl said. “I think he enjoyed having me appreciate them. I think that made him proud.”

  “Did you kill Anna and Laurel, Sybille and Benjamin?”

  “I told you that already. I know nothing about the murders,” he said, sitting up straighter, bristling with contempt. “You said at the trailer that you were bringing me here to answer questions, not ’cause you suspect I did it.”

  “Did you kill them?” I asked again.

  “No.” He locked his eyes onto mine and didn’t back off.

  “Did you attack Jacob and cut his throat?”

  “No,” he said again. He hesitated and then added, “I admit I’m not the world’s best man, and it could be true that I cross lines off and on. But I didn’t kill those women, those little kids. And I love Jacob. I never would have done anything to hurt him.”

  Max was waiting outside the door when I walked out of the interview room. “Anything?” he asked.

  We stood at the window looking in at Carl and I shook my head. “Not really. Except that Anna, Laurel and Jacob argued the night before the killings. Carl says it was about the noise the kids were making,” I said. “Carl’s a strange guy.”

  “How so?” Max asked.

  “Odd reactions. He doesn’t respond emotionally the way you’d think he should.” Max nodded as if he’d seen it too, and I asked, “Did the judge give us the go-ahead?”

  Max held up the paperwork. “Yup. The search warrant is signed. I’ve got the forensic team heading out to Carl’s trailer now. We can meet them there.”

  I turned away from the window and said, “Good. Let’s go.”

  “What about talking to Jacob’s parents first?” Max asked. “Maybe they can weigh in on what they saw out at the ranch.”

  I’d considered that. I knew Michael and Reba Johansson had already been told about the killings. Max’s boss, Sheriff Virgil Holmes, had offered to notify the next of kin. He’d have to track down Anna’s family in Mexico. Bad news coming from far away was going to be tough to deliver and, of course, even harder to take. Every violent death sent out shockwaves and ripples of sadness.

  “My guess is that the Johanssons are at the hospital with Jacob by now,” I said. “Let’s see what Carl has out at the trailer, find out if there’s any actual evidence tying him to all this, before we talk to Jacob’s parents.”

  “Since our prime suspect is their son’s best friend that’s probably a good idea. They may be relatively resistant if we have no evidence,” Max agreed.

  “We’re a long way from considering Carl our prime suspect,” I countered.

  Max shrugged. “True, but then we don’t really have a list either. At the moment, he’s our only suspect.”

  He had a point there.

  “What about Naomi?” Max asked. “You want to take her statement before we head to Carl’s?”

  “The social worker should be here any minute to take the baby,” I said. “Conroy will be back soon. Once that happens, he can drive Naomi out to the ranch to get the van. I’ll get with her and take her statement later, but not here. The more I’ve thought about this, as resistant as she is Naomi may talk more easily in a more familiar setting.”

  A plan in place, I stuck my head back in the interview room and Carl looked up at me. “You’re free to go,” I said. “But Judge Crockett signed a warrant to search your place. Want to see it?”

  Carl scowled. “Nah, I believe you.”

  “We’ll get you a copy to take with you. If you don’t want to be there, I suggest you take a few hours and do something else before you head home.”

  I watched for a reaction, wondering if he’d protest. “I’m pretty sure I left it unlocked when you dragged me down here,” he said, as if none of it worried him. “You have at it. I ain’t got a thing to hide.”

  “Good,” I said. “If we need anything else, I’ll be in touch. Don’t leave the county, okay?”

  “I’m not going anywhere except to head over to the hospital to check on Jacob.” With that, Carl stood and lumbered over to us. “Either one of you know any more about his condition?”

  “He’s unconscious,” Max said. “They’ve got him in the ICU.”
>
  Carl didn’t seem to react one way or the other to that, showing no alarm.

  “One last thing,” I said, and he gave me a quizzical look. “Show me the sole of one of your boots.”

  Carl blinked hard and gave his head an exasperated shake, but he picked up one leg and displayed his boot, the sole side up. I took my phone out and pulled up the photo I’d taken of the blood stain from the ranch. The patterns didn’t match. “Okay, like I said, don’t go far,” I reminded him.

  At that, Carl sauntered toward the reception area and the door.

  After he was out of earshot, I asked Max if Jacob had awakened at any point, if he’d said anything to the doctors or nurses. The news wasn’t good.

  “Not a word.”

  Twelve

  Officer Conroy drove the squad car, Naomi seated beside him. She hadn’t wanted to leave Jeremy at the police station, but the pushy blonde at the dispatch desk had refused to let her take him. Kellie promised that the social worker would be there any minute, and that one of Jacob’s sisters and her husband was on her way to pick up the baby. Naomi considered arguing the point. Since she’d been the one to rescue Jeremy, she thought she should be the one to watch over him. But then Naomi worried that Officer Conroy and that Kellie woman might think her insistence odd. Maybe odd enough to mention her strange behavior to Clara. Naomi didn’t want that. I just want Jacob to know I was there for him and his baby boy, she thought.

  As the car snaked through Alber, Naomi looked out the window at the sprawling houses where the townsfolk had lived before the big shake-up, when the feds came in and made arrests prompting many of the men to flee out of fear that they, too, might be arrested. Before that, Alber had been a good place to live; they had good lives. Naomi, when she allowed herself to think about it, held the prophet responsible for what had happened. It was considered a sin to criticize their religious leader. Emil Barstow ruled, by the teaching of Elijah’s People, through revelations from God. But Naomi suspected that the prophet had become too old and susceptible to manipulation. The men in town who coveted young, underage brides used their influence with him to get what they wanted, and it had ruined them all.