At that, Max thanked the physician and turned to where Carl had walked, intent on striking up a conversation. Yet when he gazed down the hallway, Max saw only a solitary nurse pushing a medicine cart.
Carl was gone.
Twenty-Four
The assembly of protesters in front of my office had grown while I worked on the case. As I drove out of the parking lot, I counted eleven. A few men but mainly women with homemade signs hefted high over their heads, calling out to passersby. As I watched, a car pulled over and rolled down a window, the family inside apparently asking what the hubbub was about. I wondered what the demonstrators said, what they thought they knew about me that made them decide that I was unfit to be the town’s police chief.
A short drive, and I arrived at the MRJ ranch. As I climbed out of the Suburban, a male bison lumbered toward me. Its massive body ground to a halt at the fence. I walked over, curious, and stared into its dark, blank eyes, wondering what it knew, what it saw. As if it could read my thoughts, the bull threw its massive head back and released a long, deep bellow that vibrated the air surrounding me and sent a shiver through my body.
Outside the house, little remained that hinted at the horror that had transpired there.
The evidence markers had all been removed, the bloody sheet, every telltale sign gone. The vultures had moved on, undoubtedly looking for other carrion. I thought of the scene the day before, the blood spatter on the clothes hanging on the line, the bloody holes the birds pecked in the sheet that covered the bodies. If Mother Naomi hadn’t come… I willed myself not to finish the thought.
“Chief Jefferies,” someone called out, and Lieutenant Mueller trudged out of the barn. “You dropping in to check on us?”
“I’m hoping I can help,” I said. “Max said no luck so far, unless you’ve had a recent discovery?”
“No. Can’t say that we have, although we’re continuing to search,” he said. Mueller looked as worn out as I felt, and we weren’t even a day and a half out from the killings.
“Tell me where you’ve looked,” I suggested.
“All through the house,” he said. “We’re checking out the barn now.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to nose around inside, see if anything occurs to me.”
“I hope it does,” Mueller said. “If not, we’re out of here when we’re done with the barn, without finding those letters you’re after.”
I signaled that I understood and then started off for the house. At the door, I turned and looked back at the yard again, where Anna’s and the children’s bodies had been. Sadness washed over me. I pushed it back and went inside.
In the kitchen, two floor tiles had been removed, those that had the bloody footprint. They should have arrived at the state crime lab along with the knife, the gun, everything the CSI unit had collected at the ranch the day before, and the boot we’d found at the cabin.
Sooty fingerprint dust soiled the cabinets, their doors gaping open. The techs had pulled out utensils and pots and pans, plates and glasses and piled them on the table. From the looks of it, it was a thorough search. I doubted that I’d find anything they’d missed in the kitchen, so I moved on. I stopped and scouted around the living room, lifted the couch cushions and found nothing. In the dining room, I looked through the china cabinet, then at the long table ringed by chairs, a high chair on one side for little Jeremy. I wondered if he was big enough to sit in it yet. I didn’t think so. I thought how sad that Laurel would never see her son crawl or walk, hear him say his first words.
At the bottom of the steps I inspected the ceiling, wondering about the heating ducts, ultimately deciding Laurel would never have stashed the letters where they’d be dried out and destroyed by the heat over the winter. Examining the walls with each step I took, I moved upstairs. The most likely location had to be Laurel’s room. If I were her, with something to hide, that would be the only place I wouldn’t be seen taking the letters out to read or putting them away. Yet in Laurel’s room, too, Mueller’s unit had done a thorough search. All her long prairie dresses, her cotton nightclothes, were out of the closet. The drawers were empty, and they’d been turned upside down and checked for false bottoms. The bedsheets were gone, sent to the crime lab to check for fibers and hairs. I inspected the spindled headboard, looked under the mattress, and then lay on my back and slid under the box spring and examined the bottom, hoping to find the letters taped beneath.
Nothing.
I rolled up the rugs and checked the floor, board by board. Slow going, it began to feel fruitless. But she must have kept them, I thought. They were too precious to throw away.
Frustrated, I sat on the edge of the bed. It appeared such a normal room. How could something so horrific have happened here? Where are the letters?
In Jeremy’s nursery, I inspected each corner, hoping to find something, anything that looked odd or out of place. They weren’t stashed under the crib, or in the small dresser. I didn’t find them concealed in the wicker changing stand. The closet still had Jeremy’s tiny clothes hanging inside. Hand-me-downs, lightly worn and carefully kept, intermingled with a scattering of newer things: a tiny set of coveralls, a blue cardigan with a hood, and onesies with trains and airplanes. I’d sent a bag of the baby’s things with him the day before, but I thought perhaps I should take more, so Jacob’s family could have them for him. I grabbed a plaid vinyl bag off a closet shelf and stuffed the rest of the clothes inside.
The bag slung over my shoulder, I peeked in the other rooms. They all appeared to have been searched. Anna’s clothes, those of her children, still hung in their closets. Nothing stood out. Nothing suggested the location of the letters.
Before I abandoned the upstairs, I stood in the doorway to Laurel’s room one last time. I envisioned her body on the bed. I thought about Mullins at the office that morning, explaining to me that old man Barstow had to be obeyed, and that Laurel’s life wasn’t her own to live. Then, just as I contemplated admitting defeat, something caught my attention: the drapes. The fabric matched the pale blue duvet we’d found over Laurel’s body, but the drapes were lined, opaque, and it seemed to me that they hung a touch askew.
I felt around the bottom. Nothing seemed odd until I pulled one panel away from the window and noticed a thread line about ten inches from the top. Neat, tidy stitches, done by hand, like those used to hem a skirt, they didn’t show from the front. They were so small, so precise, they were nearly invisible. I slipped my phone from my pocket and called Lieutenant Mueller.
“I’m in Laurel’s room. Bring up a stepladder,” I said.
“Find something?”
“Not sure.”
Moments later, Mueller and one of his men walked in with a folded aluminum ladder off the CSI trailer. “Over here, the curtains,” I said. They positioned the ladder in front of the window, and I climbed up. The house old, the windows high, I had to stand on the second rung from the top. I touched the curtain near the top, and I felt something crinkle inside. I pulled the curtains’ edges back and gathered all the fabric on the rod. Then I popped the wooden rod up, freeing it from the wall. Heavy, it momentarily threw me off balance, and I wobbled.
“You want help with that?” Mueller asked, reaching up to hold the ladder steady.
“No, I’m okay. Just take this.” I dropped the curtains on the rod down to Mueller. Once he had it, I clambered off the ladder. We laid the curtains out on the bed, and Mueller and I pulled out the rod. Immediately, I noticed pockets gaping near the top, slight openings between the fabric and the thick lining above the row of stitches.
Mueller must have noticed them too. “I think you’ve got them,” he said.
He handed me a pair of latex evidence gloves. Once I had them on, I slipped my hand inside the opening and felt something thin and papery. One after another, I pulled out envelopes, twenty-four in all, with TO MY LOVE hand-printed on the front.
Mueller bumped one of his techs on his radio: “Bring evidence folders to the victi
m’s bedroom, second floor. We’ve got what we came for.”
I gave them room, and Mueller and his tech took over the task of processing the evidence. Two more CSI officers rushed in, and I went downstairs.
I waited in the kitchen to talk to Mueller when they finished. Meanwhile, I stared down at the removed tiles, thinking about the boots we found at Thompkins’ cabin, convinced they would be a match, and wondering: Why am I so unsure of his guilt? Then I noticed a calendar hanging on the wall. Open to November, it had a photograph of dried leaves and pumpkins in a field. Someone had scrawled reminders of activities for the two older children. I felt a particular sadness when I saw the notation of a dinner scheduled for the coming week with Mullins and the rest of Laurel’s family.
On each day next to the date, someone had alternated writing in a capital ‘A’ or an ‘L.’ Having grown up in a polygamous house, I understood what I was looking at; it was Jacob’s schedule, the one that kept track of which nights he slept with which of his two wives. When the date had an ‘A’ he slept with Anna. On those marked ‘L’ he slept in Laurel’s bed. I checked the previous Sunday, and that date was marked with an ‘A’.
That means that the night of Laurel’s killing, Jacob was in bed with Anna. Laurel slept alone, I thought. And Carl would have known that because he was at the ranch that evening, and it’s documented right here out in the open on this calendar.
I took out my phone and snapped a few photos of the calendar, just as Mueller walked into the kitchen. “Great find, Chief,” he said. “I don’t know how you spotted these, but I’m glad you did.”
“When can I have copies?” I asked. “I need to read them.”
“Give me ninety minutes, and I’ll have them at your office,” he said. “I’ll send one of the guys right over with them.”
“You’ve got it,” I said. “And log this calendar into evidence, too, okay?”
“Sure,” Mueller said. He looked as relieved as I felt that we were done at the scene and had found what we’d come for.
As I turned to leave, my cell rang. My heart immediately sped up a bit when I saw Max’s name on the screen, and I made a conscious effort to slow it down. “Hey, what have you got for me?”
“Good news,” he said.
Max explained that Jacob had come out of the coma and was in surgery, that he’d be out in a couple of hours, and that the doctor thought we might be able to communicate with him late that afternoon.
“That’s great news,” I said, hopeful that we might have a big break in the case. “And they think he’ll recover well?”
“The doctor says he thinks so,” Max said. “Thinks he’ll be able to talk and breathe normally again. Said the same thing the paramedic did, that Jacob was lucky.”
“I still have a hard time seeing him that way,” I admitted. “But good news here, too. We found the letters. I’ll have copies in an hour and a half. Want to meet me at the office so we can read through them?”
“You bet,” Max said. “How about we grab lunch and then head to your office? I’ll buy.”
I hesitated, wondering if that was a good idea. Dinner at his house the evening before, now lunch? We were spending a lot of time together. Yet I couldn’t deny that I wanted to see him. An hour off to talk about the case, but more than that, to just talk, was appealing.
“Okay,” I said. “Lunch and then we’ll head over to my office to read the letters.”
We agreed to meet at the diner, but then Max said something, and our plans changed. “You know, Clara, what’s really peculiar is that Naomi was at the hospital again.”
“She was?”
“Yup. As a matter of fact, she was in the room with Jacob when he woke up. She hit the call button for the doctor,” Max said. “And what seemed even odder, at one point, she was holding Jacob’s hand.”
For a moment, I was silent. I thought about what I’d overheard at the shelter, the woman who said that even before the killings Naomi appeared interested in Jacob. Then I considered that brief moment the previous day when she’d been in the room alone with Jacob and I thought I saw her talking to him. I wondered what was going on. I’d never known her to be secretive, but I wondered if she was hiding something. If Naomi wouldn’t tell me the truth about their relationship, who would?
Then I knew. It was a long shot that she’d cooperate, but maybe I could convince her?
“Max, I can’t make lunch. I’ll meet you at the station, but I’m going out to the trailer first,” I said. “I need to have a talk with my mother.”
Twenty-Five
Three months in Alber, and after I finished the case that brought me home, I’d only driven to my family’s trailer once. A few weeks after I signed on as police chief, I had tried just dropping in. I’d knocked on the door on a Sunday afternoon and one of my half-sisters, twelve-year-old Delilah of the auburn hair and freckled nose, spotted me. She’d screamed my name and run to me. “Clara! Clara! I was hoping that you’d come.” Jabbering so fast I could barely understand her, she’d said, “I ask my mom all the time if I can see you, but she won’t let me!” Delilah giggled, excited and happy, and I’d laughed and wrapped my arms around her.
“I wanted to see you so much.” Delilah scrunched up her nose. “And now you’re here.”
The news of my arrival had spread and the other children swarmed me. I’d thought my heart might burst. This is what I’d wanted more than anything: to spend time with my family, to get to know my brothers and sisters. But before I’d said more than hello, Mother Sariah rushed over and gathered Delilah up, pulled my arms from around her waist and walked her off. In a split second, Mother Naomi had corralled the rest of the children and had whisked them away.
Ardeth, my biological mother, then suggested she and I talk outside. She’d taken my arm and explained that she was grateful for what I’d done, that I’d helped reunite the family. As she’d talked, she’d kept guiding me toward the road. When we reached my Suburban, she’d smiled at me and said, “Clara, as I have explained to you before, you aren’t welcome here. We can’t have you influence the children.”
In my mid-thirties, I wasn’t a child, and cops get pretty good at hiding their feelings, but I’d felt crestfallen. I’d fought the tears that threatened to spill from my eyes. Maybe I should have expected this reception. Maybe I had. But the disappointment felt like a slap across the face. “Why? Are you afraid that by seeing me they’ll realize that there’s another life and a big world out there? That they’ll want the freedom to choose their own futures?”
Mother had assessed me as if I were a spoiled bowl of milk.
“Clara, I’m worried that you’ll put false ideas in their heads, ones that will make them question their faith and our ways.” With that, Mother had dropped her hand from my arm, and I’d thought I’d seen sadness in her eyes. I was, after all, still her daughter. Perhaps she hadn’t completely forgotten that? “In another world, it might be possible for you to visit. But not in this one. Not when you’re a deserter who has turned your back on our faith, all our beliefs,” she’d said. “This very moment, by talking with you, I am disobeying our prophet and committing a grave sin.”
I had no argument to counter that. As a child, much of what mother taught me revolved around the faith of Elijah’s People, about the importance of adhering to our strict ways. I’ve understood for nearly all of my life that her religious beliefs ruled Mother’s world. That they were more important to her than my father or any of us children. Despite it all, I loved her. On that afternoon, I’d leaned forward, and before she could stop me, given her a peck on the cheek. While Mother had looked surprised, she didn’t pull back. Then, I did as she had asked; I’d left and never gone back.
As I drove through town, I passed the police station again, and the protesters had multiplied. I noticed the crowd had become predominantly men, with only a half dozen or so women, in all counting maybe thirty or more, most carrying some kind of poster-board sign. The women had started it, but it di
dn’t surprise me that the men had taken over. As a wife who’d defied her husband and run away, I was a threat to the men more than to the women. The sight of them milling about in their heavy coats reminded me of a meeting of the faithful from my childhood, when I’d seen groups of men congregate intent on a common cause. Usually it involved driving someone from the community—a wayward woman, a teenage boy, a man who they judged as not living up to the standards of the faith. I stopped reading the placards after the first: Outsider Go Home!
My pulse sped up, and I cleared my throat. It felt as if something had lodged there. Then I put my head down and kept driving. I willed myself not to consider the men with their bitter signs. Not now. Later would be time enough. More to prove to myself that I wasn’t rattled than because I was hungry, I stopped at the diner and grabbed a ham and cheese sandwich to go. I ate it behind the wheel as I drove past the big, two-story house I’d grown up in. The sun not yet high, it still had frost on the roof. I thought about how I’d come home, but not really home. That might never happen. Maybe I should leave, but was that the answer? At least I understood Alber. Strange to the rest of the world, no doubt, the town and its way of life were familiar to me. For the first twenty-four years of my life, until I fled, it was my normal.
I kept driving toward the mountains, heading to the trailer park that lay at the foot of Samuel’s Peak. I passed under the gate with a horn-blowing angel at the top and turned to the right on the final road, the one that backed up to the cornfield. The stalks had been cut down and hauled away, and it lay plowed under for the winter. At the weatherworn double-wide, I got out of the Suburban and wrapped my parka tighter to ward off the bitter cold.
I trudged toward the back, passed the outhouse, and then turned toward the door. I still found it hard to believe that my three mothers and more than a dozen of my siblings lived in such close quarters. After father’s death, everything had become hard for the family. I scurried up the cement steps to the screen door. A Tuesday, all the children should have been in school, but before I could knock, my fourteen-year-old sister, Lily, opened the door, her cheeks flushed and her dark hair, so like mine, pulled back into a loose ponytail. “Clara!” She lowered her voice, I assumed fearful that Mother might hear. “Are you supposed to be here?”
Her Final Prayer: A totally gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 2) Page 18