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

by Kathryn Casey

  “Chief,” Stef said. “I’ve got it. And this is odd…”

  When I pulled up at the ward house, the parking lot looked nearly full, and the squad car I had guarding Jeremy was parked out front. I was relieved to see Conroy behind the wheel. He looked surprised to see me, but I didn’t take time to explain. “Come with me,” I said. “We’re going inside.”

  “What are we—” he started to ask.

  “Just follow my lead,” I ordered.

  It turned out that I was arriving with the guests attending the wedding, not truly dressed for the event in my black jeans and white shirt, my parka over the top. No one appeared to notice me, however, and I worked my way through the small crowd with Conroy trailing behind me.

  I spotted her easily, in the center of the hive of women tittering around her. Mother Naomi looked lovely in an off-white dress with lace ruffles at the neckline. I wondered if it was the same dress she’d worn to marry my father, or if she’d made it for the occasion. Naomi always had been exceptionally talented with a sewing machine, and she’d covered the buttons that ran down the front. Holding Jeremy, she bounced him to keep him quiet, as she had that day at the ranch while she told me what she’d found when she arrived. It had only been a few days since he’d started on formula, but he looked as if he’d picked up a little weight. I had the fleeting thought that Laurel would be pleased. When Naomi saw me, she stormed toward me, still holding the infant to her chest.

  “Clara, it is nice of you to want to attend the wedding, but you’re not supposed to be here,” she said. “You know that only members of Elijah’s People in good standing are allowed at the ceremony.”

  “Oh, no worries. I’m not staying,” I said, flashing her a smile. “I just wanted to give my congratulations to the groom, tell him how lucky he is to marry you.” I looked around the room. “Where is Jacob?”

  Naomi seemed taken aback by that. She glanced around. “Well, that’s nice, I suppose. But again, you aren’t supposed to be here,” she said. Moving closer to me, she whispered as if we were conspiring: “You’d better make it fast. Your mother should be arriving soon, and she won’t be as even-tempered as I am.”

  I gave Naomi a smile that said not to worry. “I’ll only be here for a moment. Again, where’s Jacob? He’s not chickening out, is he?”

  “Of course not! We’re both so excited,” she said, but then she cast her eyes down, as if she realized it could be construed as unfitting at such a time. “I mean, he’s still grieving, of course. Poor Anna and Laurel, those two beautiful children.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Poor Anna and Laurel, Benjamin and Sybille. Such a terrible loss.”

  “Of course.” She leaned close and whispered, “Clara, do you suppose it’s too soon? Are people talking?”

  I wondered how she couldn’t know, if Mother and Mother Sariah hadn’t told her that all of Alber was abuzz about the hurried nuptials. “I don’t know, Mother Naomi. I’m an apostate,” I said. “You know that no one talks to me.”

  At that, she put her hand to her lips. “Oh, of course,” she said with a brisk nod. Then she seemed to remember why I was there. She pointed toward the far corner of the room, where Jacob stood surrounded by a group of dour-looking men. His second day out of the hospital, he looked remarkably well. “There’s my husband-to-be,” she said, bustling with pride. “Right over there. Say what you want quickly, and leave. The sealing ceremony will start soon.”

  At that moment, I saw my mother walk in the door with Mother Sariah. The two women spotted me almost immediately, and mother barreled toward me like a train picking up steam on a track. Intent on reaching me, she wove through those gathered. Conroy followed me as I moved away from Mother, toward the corner, and when Jacob saw me, he beamed as if he couldn’t have been happier.

  “Gentlemen, I need to talk to this lady,” he said, his voice gravelly and barely above a whisper. Some of the bandage had been removed, but he had a gauze pad taped over the stitches. “Without Chief Jefferies, the tragedy that befell my family never would have been solved.”

  The men scowled at me, unmoved by his testimonial, but they stepped back, and I walked through. As surreptitiously as possible, in one smooth movement, I pulled a pair of handcuffs out of my pocket. Before Jacob understood what was happening, I had him cuffed.

  Michael and Reba walked over just in time to hear me say, “Jacob Johansson, you are under arrest for the murders of Anna, Benjamin, Sybille and Laurel Johansson. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court…”

  As I finished reciting Miranda to Jacob, his mother shouted, “Lord, woman, have you lost your mind!”

  From the center of the room, Naomi let loose the type of scream that warns of impending catastrophe. “Clara, no!” she bellowed. “I am one of your mothers, and I order you to stop this right now.”

  For his part, Jacob appeared stunned. “What is this?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “The charges are four counts of murder and one charge of conspiracy to commit murder, because you killed your family,” I explained. “And you had your best friend murder Myles Thompkins.”

  Jacob’s eyes widened. He looked at me in wonder and shook his head. “I can’t… why would you think… this isn’t possible. Stop her, Father,” he said, turning to Michael. “Tell this woman that it’s not true.”

  The old man’s frown dripped down both sides of his face nearly to the edge of his chin, and his eyebrows collapsed one into the other, but he didn’t utter a word of objection. I looked at him and shook my head. Now that’s a surprise. I thought about how Jacob’s father had supported Myles when his wife brought up his name, how he never offered any theories on the killings, and a thought formed: Michael Johansson suspected his son all along.

  When his father didn’t jump to his defense, Jacob started to say something. “I didn’t—” Then he abruptly stopped.

  “Didn’t what? Murder two women you were supposed to love, two children who loved and trusted you as their father.” I pointed at Jeremy clutched in Naomi’s arms. “If that baby had been old enough to talk and tell what happened, you would have murdered him, too.”

  Jacob shook his head. “This is ridiculous.”

  At that, I shouted, “Everyone back. We need to get through to the door!”

  For a brief moment, no one moved, but then Conroy walked in front of me and the crowd split wide. When we passed my mother, she looked at me as if I were a stranger and then turned away.

  Thirty-Nine

  “What is this all about?” Jacob asked. He winced when he spoke. We were at the police station in interrogation room three, the farthest from the dispatch desk and waiting area, but, every once in a while, I heard Reba shouting, other times Naomi. I wasn’t sure which one was more upset about Jacob’s arrest, his mother or his bride-to-be. Noticeably absent was the voice of Jacob’s father.

  “You want to tell me what you did, Jacob? Lay it all out there. I bet it would be a relief to get it off your chest. I’m here to listen,” I said. “Confession is good for the soul, you know.”

  “I haven’t got anything to confess.” At the table, he fanned his hands out, palms up, as if pleading with me to be reasonable. “I don’t know what you think you know, but there’s nothing to know.”

  “Well, that’s not true,” I countered. “Is it?”

  “Chief Jefferies, you solved this case, all four murders, the attempt on my life,” he argued. “I heard about all the demonstrators in town, demanding you leave. Instead of riling people up, why not take credit for your hard work? You’ve earned it. If you do, maybe folks won’t hate you anymore.”

  I crumpled my lips and frowned. “I’m not feeling much like listening to praise I don’t deserve,” I said. “Because we didn’t get it right, did we?”

  “You did,” he said, his voice thin with strain. “And my family will vouch for you, tell everyone how you figured out who murdered my wives and children. They’ll b
elieve us, because they know us. We’re of them, in high standing in the community.”

  “I solved your case, did I?” I asked, leaning back in the chair and staring at him.

  “Yes, absolutely,” he said, with a slight grin, the kind that’s meant to be reassuring. “You got Carl. You proved that he massacred my family.”

  I considered the man seated across from me. “Carl was your best friend, wasn’t he?”

  “I thought he was,” Jacob replied with an irritated shrug.

  “Then why did you agree so quickly that he was the one behind it? As soon as we said Carl did it, you embraced it. You never put up an argument that it couldn’t have been him.”

  “You had evidence,” he said, his voice rising, incredulous. “You explained what you knew.”

  “And you accepted it without question,” I said.

  “Well, I, I meant to talk to you about that. You see, I haven’t been totally honest with you.” He focused on me, his eyes centered on mine but timid, as if reluctantly confiding about a great transgression.

  “You haven’t?”

  “Well, no. I have been remembering some. Off and on, I’ve had flashbacks.” Jacob’s frown curved ever farther down. “I was having them all along, I guess, but after you told me about Carl, it became clear. With what you and Max told me, I understood what the flashbacks meant.”

  “What flashbacks?” I asked.

  Jacob hunched forward, his shelf of thick blond hair falling over his eyes, his smoothly shaven face slightly flushed. His eyes narrowed as he implored me to listen. “You understand, I’m sure, that this has been hard on me. Carl was my compadre. We were like that,” he said, holding up his right hand with the first two fingers entwined. I noticed the bandage was gone. The cut on his hand not deep, it had already begun to heal. “But sometimes I’ve seen Carl in nightmares and such, or just off and on in flickers of memories as it came back to me.”

  “And what happens in these nightmares, these flickers of memories?”

  “Someone comes at me from behind, and I feel the knife at my throat.”

  “And you think that was Carl?” I asked.

  “I know it was. It was hazy at first, but the memories get clearer all the time. In the last couple of days, I’ve seen his face,” he said, his words coming fast and urgent. “Sometimes I even feel a searing pain in my throat.” He reached up and put his cuffed hands to his neck, covering the bandage. “I remember falling to the floor, and when I looked up, Carl was standing over me, a look like a crazy man on his face, blood dripping from the knife.”

  I stared at him and said nothing. Jacob shifted in the metal chair, the aluminum seat squeaking as it rubbed a table leg. A cloud of Old Spice surrounded us, a favorite of the men in town. Jacob had applied it heavily, and I thought about how he’d fussed for his wedding, four days after his wives and children were murdered.

  Once he appeared sufficiently uncomfortable, I smiled at him. “I’m glad you’re getting your memory back. That will make it easier to clear all this up.” I glanced at the ceiling and verified that the red record light was lit on the camera mounted on the wall. I’d told Jacob that we were making a video of our conversation, but when people get tense, they tend to forget such warnings. The more they talk, the more they try to convince me, and pretty soon they forget that every word they utter can someday come back as nails in their coffins. “Do you remember anything else?” I asked.

  “Well, not much,” he said. “But I remember that vision of Carl standing over me with the knife and the blood dripping down.”

  Done saying his piece, he appeared unconcerned, I assumed convinced that he’d swayed me.

  “It’s odd,” I said, purposely keeping my expression blank.

  Jacob gave me a half-shrug and asked, “What is?”

  “When someone is standing like that, blood falls off the knife straight down in round drops, splats on the floor.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “So what?”

  “There weren’t any round drops anywhere near your body,” I said. “Actually, not on the entire kitchen floor.”

  Jacob squirmed ever so slightly in the chair. “Maybe they got smudged when I fell on them.”

  “Well, it’s all pretty strange,” I said, keeping my voice even, as matter-of-fact as I could manage. “I noticed it at the time, but it didn’t strike me as important until now, but there were no blood drops from anyone holding the knife high, like an assailant would have done if he stood over you. How do you explain that?”

  A slight flush crawled out of Jacob’s shirt collar, white to go with his dark gray suit. He had on a blue tie for the wedding.

  “I don’t know anything about things like that,” he said.

  “I don’t think you planned very well,” I said. “Despite that, it was rather convincing for a while.”

  Jacob scooted back just a bit in his chair, put some space between us. It didn’t worry me. The video camera covered the entire area.

  “The blood evidence actually suggests something else.” I waited for him to ask what, but his lips were tight, his jaw clenched. “There were smears on the floor, blood that rubbed off the knife’s handle and blade, between your body and where we found the knife, under the kitchen table.”

  This time he spit out the words. “So what?”

  “So, whoever threw the knife was low, close to the floor. I thought at the time that the killer was kneeling over you. But now I’m thinking that he was lying down.” I placed my arm across the rickety table between us. “It’s like my arm is your body, and the knife was flung out across the floor. Jacob, when I think about it, it’s like you threw it there while you lay bleeding.”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked, for the first time his brow lowering as if growing angry.

  “To get the knife away from you after you cut your own throat,” I said.

  At that, Jacob curled back his lips, revealing a slice of teeth, and released a short burst of laughter, as if I’d just told the most amusing joke. When he did, he flinched again. His voice growing increasingly rough, he asked, “You think I cut my own throat?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “And I didn’t know this until today, but the doctor at the hospital thought you did, too. He hadn’t mentioned it to me because he assumed it was preposterous. But I contacted him on my way to your wedding. The doctor said that from the angle of the cut, that it curved up just a little, the entire time you were in the ICU, he wondered off and on if you’d done it to yourself.”

  “Oh, come on,” Jacob scoffed. “Why the hell? I almost died.”

  “At the house, the EMT told me that you were lucky,” I said. “But it was really that you were smart. You knew you could cut your windpipe and survive, as long as you didn’t sever any arteries.”

  “That’s crazy,” Jacob snickered. “How can you say that? I almost bled to death. Didn’t the doctor tell you that?”

  “Well, everything didn’t go as you planned it, did it?” I said. “Naomi promised you and Laurel at Sunday services that she’d come over first thing Monday morning, seven thirty at the latest. What you couldn’t know was that she’d be late. That was why you almost bled to death.”

  “Carl—”

  “Killed Myles for you, didn’t he?” I asked. “Then, when he realized it was all unraveling, that we’d figured out that Myles wasn’t the killer, he panicked and hung himself.”

  Jacob sucked in a deep breath, I supposed trying to calm the pounding in his chest.

  “I’m figuring that this whole thing started on Sunday when Carl told you about Laurel and Myles, that he saw them together on Saturday afternoon,” I said. “You were mad, felt betrayed, cuckolded. That’s why things were tense at the ranch that evening, why Carl didn’t stay for dinner. After he told you what he’d seen, you were angry.”

  “I wasn’t…” Jacob started but didn’t finish his denial.

  “According to the kitchen calendar, you slept with Anna that night, but around midnight, you
got up and killed Laurel, took that lipstick and branded her as a harlot.”

  “No! No! I didn’t,” he objected, his voice growing weaker, more strained. “I wouldn’t…”

  His words trailed off, and I said, “I should have figured this out earlier. There were clues all along. Like I couldn’t figure out why Carl would have murdered Anna and the children. It didn’t make sense.”

  I paused, and Jacob glared at me, so much hate in his eyes that I had no doubt that he wanted to lunge at me from across the table. But he was helpless, and he knew he was trapped like a rattler I once ran into up in the mountains. It was hiding under a rock and nearly bit me when I surprised it. That time, I backed off, retreated. That wasn’t my plan with Jacob. I felt my pulse hasten as I went in for the kill. “It didn’t make any sense for Carl to have murdered all of your family, to have cut your throat.”

  “But you think it makes sense for me to murder my family?” Jacob jeered, his hand pressing on the bandage, I guessed to try to ease the pain. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not if Anna knew what you’d done, walked in on you while you stood over Laurel’s body, or saw the body and knew you had to be responsible,” I said. “You would have worried that you didn’t have control of her. She probably said she wouldn’t tell anyone, but she might have eventually, if you’d let her live. And since you panicked and killed their mother in front of the children, you had to sacrifice Sybille and Benjamin.”

  Jacob turned in the chair and crossed his legs. “You don’t have any evidence for all this,” he said. I’d thought that maybe he’d cry and profess his innocence, but instead he smiled at me. “Not a lick of it.”

  “Well, there are your boots,” I said.

  The look on Jacob’s face transformed, and I saw the beginnings of fear. It crawled over his eyes and froze his mouth in a straight line.

  “You shouldn’t have used your own boots to make the print,” I said. “That must have been why you cut your hand. I figure you called Carl after you murdered Laurel, asked him to frame and murder Myles for you. By the time he got to your house that night, you had it all planned out. A bloody footprint on the kitchen floor to tie Myles to the crime scene. The boots that made the print found at his house with your blood on one. A fake suicide.”