by Diane Kelly
Jackson introduced us. “Officer Luz, this is Luke. He’s the baby’s father.”
Just as I’d suspected.
Luke released Juliette’s hand and the two stood from their seats.
Juliette grabbed my hand in both of hers and raised it to her heart. “Thank you!” she cried. “Thank you for saving us from that awful place!”
“No problem.” I gave her a smile and a nod.
When she released my hand, Luke took it. “We owe you everything, Officer Luz. You and your partner.”
I shook my head. “We were just doing our jobs.”
Jackson scoffed but cut me a smile. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
Maybe so, but I’d only done what seemed right. I whipped out my cell phone and pulled up my camera roll, swiping through it until I found the picture I’d taken of their baby the night she’d been dropped. “I took a photo of your baby the night she was left at the fire station. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes!” Juliette clapped her hands and jumped up and down.
Luke nodded, a big grin on his face.
I held up the screen to show them.
Juliette’s hands went to her cheeks as tears flooded her eyes. “There she is!” Instinctively, she reached toward the screen as if to touch her baby. I handed her the phone, and Juliette clutched it as if hanging on to her baby for dear life.
Luke grinned at the screen, a proud papa, before turning to Juliette. “She’s just as beautiful as you said she was.”
“You never got to see her?” I asked.
Luke’s face clouded. “No. Father Emmanuel wouldn’t let me near the infirmary. He took the baby away right after the midwife delivered her.”
Juliette affirmed Luke’s words with a nod and looked up from the screen, her eyes going from me to Jackson. “I know y’all need to ask us questions, and I know our baby is safe, but is there any way we can go see Skye now?”
“Skye?” I asked. “Is that what you named her?”
She nodded. “The sky was the only thing we could see of the outside world from the church grounds. Looking up at the sky gave us hope.”
“It’s the perfect name for her,” I agreed, “especially since she looks like a little angel.” As much as I hated to interrupt her admiring the photo of her baby, I’d need my phone to call the foster parents. I held out my hand. “If you’ll hand me my phone, I’ll check with the couple who’s caring for her, see how soon we can get a visit.”
She handed the device to me, and I scrolled through my contacts until I found the number for the O’Neills. It was two in the morning, but after meeting the foster mother earlier and learning what a sweet woman she was, I had no doubt she’d forgive us for the late-night call.
The woman’s voice was groggy when she answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mrs. O’Neill,” I said. “It’s Officer Megan Luz. Sorry to call you so late, but we’ve got some new information on the baby girl you’ve been fostering.”
“What is it?” She sounded wide awake now.
“The baby had been kidnapped.”
The woman gasped. “Oh my gosh!”
“The man who dropped her off wasn’t her father. We found her real parents only a few hours ago, and they’d love to see her as soon as possible.”
“Of course!” she said. “Come as soon as you can.”
I gave the couple a thumbs-up so they’d know she’d agreed to the late-night visit. “We’re on our way.”
Luke and Juliette gathered up their meager belongings and we piled into Jackson’s unmarked car. Luke and Juliette sat in the back, while I sat up front and navigated.
On the drive, the detective filled me in on what happened at the compound after I left in the ambulance with Brigit. “Summer kept watch over Father Emmanuel until another ambulance arrived and took him to John Peter Smith,” she said, referring to Fort Worth’s primary public hospital. “I interviewed Juliette on-site. You were right about her being the baby’s mother, obviously. A year ago, Juliette and Luke asked Father Emmanuel for permission to marry, but he refused to let them wed and did his best to keep them apart afterward. He told them if they left the compound, they’d never be allowed back to see their families. He’d make sure they couldn’t even communicate with each other, either.”
Juliette and Luke interjected as the detective went along, describing Father Emmanuel as a control freak who expected complete and unconditional loyalty, and wouldn’t tolerate anyone questioning his teachings or methods. Neither Juliette nor Luke toed the party line to his satisfaction, and Father Emmanuel was intent on breaking them, molding them to his will. When he found out the two had somehow managed to get time alone together and that Juliette was pregnant, he was furious.
“He called me a whore,” Juliette said. “He told me I’d rot in hell for having a baby out of wedlock. But Luke and I had already committed ourselves to each other, before God, without Father Emmanuel’s blessing. As far as we were concerned, we were married. Our baby wasn’t a sin. She was a sign of God’s love, a gift.”
“A blessing,” Luke added.
Father Emmanuel felt differently, of course. He considered the baby a sign of their disobedience, a challenge to his authority. After Juliette gave birth, when he told her he was taking the baby for her newborn shots and eye drops, he ordered Zeke to drop the baby at the fire station to punish the young couple.
Juliette’s fists balled involuntarily. “I begged Father Emmanuel to let me go with them to the hospital, but he wouldn’t let me. He said I needed to rest. I had a really bad feeling about things, but there was nothing I could do to stop them. When they were walking off with Skye, I realized how cold the night was. I asked them to let me get the blanket I’d made for her. While they waited outside the door to the infirmary, I got the idea to sew the message in the blanket. I only had a few seconds to get it done. I wasn’t sure it would do any good, that anyone would see it.” She gulped back a fresh sob of emotion, and when she spoke again her voice was tight. “Thank God you did.” She grabbed my shoulder and gave it a grateful squeeze.
Emotion gripped my vocal chords now, and all I could do was nod. It would have been so easy to overlook the threads, to miss Juliette’s critical message. I could only wonder how many other cryptic cries for help were overlooked each day.
Jackson eyed Juliette in the rearview mirror. “Sewing that message was a clever thing to do.”
“I suppose it was divine inspiration.” Juliette offered a small smile before continuing. “When Father Emmanuel came back, he told me our baby had died at the hospital. I was upset and thought he might be lying to me and I tried to fight back. That’s when he threw me into the silo. He knew nobody would find me there or hear me call for help.” She shuddered. “It was so dark inside. I lost all track of time. I had no idea how long he kept me there.”
My mind recalled the towering, leaning structure on the adjacent farmland, how I’d seen a man climbing down the ladder on its side. Had Juliette been inside at the time? And what kind of sick creep throws a new mother—one whose baby has just been torn from her—into that kind of solitary confinement? It was torture, pure and simple.
Jackson let out a loud breath. “It’s amazing you didn’t go crazy in there.”
“I nearly did,” Juliette said. “But I kept telling myself to stay calm, that I’d be no good to myself or my baby if I lost my mind. And I didn’t want to let Father Emmanuel win.” Her eyes narrowed and she gritted her teeth in determination before continuing. “When he let me out of the silo, I asked to see Skye’s body. He told me she’d already been cremated. At that point, I was starting to believe him. I thought maybe I just didn’t want to face the truth, that I’d really lost my baby. But a few days later he came to me and asked ‘Does your baby have a birthmark on her bottom?’ He talked about her like she was still alive, and it made me wonder again if he’d lied to me. She doesn’t have a birthmark, but it seemed like the right answer to give him was ‘yes,’
so that’s what I said.”
I explained to her that the pretend birthmark was my doing. “We knew from the description the firefighters gave us that Zeke was the one who’d dropped Skye at the station, but we had serious doubts about whether he was the baby’s father. A father would know whether his baby has a birthmark. The question was my way of determining if the baby really belonged to Zeke.”
Jackson chimed in again. “When Zeke gave the wrong answer, we knew for certain something strange was going on.”
“I’d seen you through my binoculars from the rise in the road,” I told Juliette. “You were in the garden with an older woman, sprinkling something on the lantana.”
Juliette exhaled sharply. “Father Emmanuel gave me a vase filled with what he said were my baby’s ashes. The garden was my favorite spot, the place where Luke and I used to meet and talk, so I decided to spread Skye’s remains there. Emmanuel wouldn’t let Luke come with me. He wouldn’t let me do it alone, either. After we asked Father Emmanuel for permission to leave, they kept us apart and always made sure another woman was with me and another man was with Luke. We were under constant watch.” She wiped a fresh tear from her eye. “Of course, I know now that those ashes weren’t Skye. They’d smelled of cedar. I bet Father Emmanuel just collected them from the fireplace in the manna hall.”
What kind of sick, twisted person would do such a thing? Tell a young mother her baby had passed and provide her with fake ashes? A person who belongs in prison for the rest of his life, that’s what kind.
“When I saw you,” I said, “it struck me that you had the same dark hair and the same blue knit cap as your baby. I figured you were likely the baby’s mother. But when we searched the place we couldn’t find you. We had no idea where you’d gone.”
Realization dawned in her eyes. “That must have been when they put me and Luke in the silo together. We didn’t know why. But Jeb came and got me from the garden and hurried me to the back wall. They had a ladder and made me climb over and rushed me to the silo.”
The ladder was probably the same one Father Emmanuel had used to scale the wall earlier.
“It was the same for me,” Luke said. “After Zeke grabbed me, he forced me into the silo, too.” He cast a loving glance at Juliette. “When I saw that Juliette was in there, I was so happy. At first, anyway. Then Jeb pulled out a gun and said if either of us said a single word, he’d put an end to us both.”
“Luckily,” Juliette added, “they only kept us there for a few hours that time.”
I pointed to Detective Jackson. “You’ve got her to thank for that. She convinced Zeke and Father Emmanuel that we believed their story, that the baby’s mother had abandoned her and left the compound.”
Jackson shrugged. “My gut told me we should play along.”
Juliette looked from me to the detective. “Whose idea was it to send me the message on the quilt?”
Jackson pointed to me now. “Megan gets all the credit for that maneuver.”
I humbly raised my palms. “I was only following your lead, Juliette. I’d come across your bluebonnet blankets at the country store down the road. When I noticed that the blanket was so similar to the one the baby had been wrapped in, I asked the sales clerk where the store got their blankets from. She told me they were made by women in the People of Peace compound. That told me we were on the right track.”
She clasped her hands to her chest and choked up when she tried to speak. “You’ll never know what it meant to me when the quilt came back and I saw the words on it, offering to help me. For the first time, I had real hope I might get out of that hell, that Luke and I could start a normal life on the outside with our baby.”
“Speaking of Luke.” Jackson turned her focus to the young man and gestured to his black eye. “How did that come about?”
He put his fingers to his face, as if he’d forgotten all about the bruise in his excitement to be freed. “When Emmanuel first told me the same story about our baby, that she’d had a bad reaction to a shot and passed on, I questioned him. He took my questions as defiance, and told Zeke and Jeb to discipline me.”
Though Luke said no more, it was clear the discipline resulted in the horrific bruise. Those two could add assault and battery to the charges they’d be facing.
I asked Juliette and Luke some questions that had been dogging me. “Have you two always lived in the compound?”
“No,” Juliette said. “My parents moved us there from Fort Worth when I was ten. They were poor and not well educated and struggled. My father lost his job when the bean factory closed.”
The closing of the iconic Ranch Style Beans factory had been a dark day for the city. Residents had grown accustomed to smelling the savory aroma of simmering beans, onions, and garlic when passing the factory. These days, the space served as the home of a whiskey distillery.
“When we were evicted from our apartment,” Juliette continued, “we went to a church for help. It was nighttime, and the church was dark and locked up. I’ll never forget that night. I could tell my parents were scared, that they didn’t know what to do. Father Emmanuel happened to come upon us there and offered help. To my parents, he seemed like a godsend, a savior. He offered them both steady work and a roof over our heads and three meals a day. My parents considered the refuge a paradise, but I didn’t like it there. I missed my friends and my school. I didn’t like that we couldn’t all live together as a family anymore. And I never liked Father Emmanuel. Something about him always seemed weird to me, but my parents wouldn’t listen. They thought I was just being a rebellious adolescent. Anytime I brought it up, they’d force me to kneel in the church and pray for hours. After a while, I realized they’d never listen to me. They were caught in Father Emmanuel’s web. I gave up even trying to convince them to leave.”
Poor Juliette. She was caught in Emmanuel’s web, too, though unwillingly.
When she finished, Luke turned his attention from her to me and shared his story. “I was fifteen when my mother took me to the settlement. She’d had drug problems and hadn’t been able to get clean. She saw the refuge as a place to get herself together.” He closed his eyes for a moment, as if in pain, before opening them again. “She got clean, but she got brainwashed, too. If Father Emmanuel told her to cut out her own heart, she’d happily do it.”
Were people so desperate for a savior they were willing to believe anything and anyone? While I could understand having faith in a higher power, I supposed I’d never understand that kind of blind devotion to another human being, a mere mortal. My mind simply didn’t work that way. I’d been born with a brain that wondered “what if?,” that insisted on examining things from every angle, that accepted little without proof and rarely took things at face value, that sought to discern the motives behind human behavior. Some might call me a cynic or skeptic, but I preferred to think of myself as a truth-seeker.
As we drove, Luke and Juliette leaned forward anxiously in their seats and watched intently out the windows, as if seeing civilization for the first time. I could hardly imagine being confined to a few acres and cut off from the outside when there was a whole world full of possibilities to explore. I hoped these two would make up for lost time and find a happy place for themselves out here.
“How much longer?” Juliette asked after we’d been driving only a short time.
I glanced at the screen of my phone. “Eight minutes.”
“That long?” The agonized look on her face said it could never be soon enough.
The detective and I exchanged glances. Though this situation technically didn’t constitute an emergency, we’d implicitly agreed in that glance that it was worth bending the rules. I reached into the console and pulled out the detective’s temporary beacon. After plugging the ten-foot cord into the cigarette lighter, I unrolled my window, activated the flasher, and slid the flashing light onto the roof of the car, where a strong magnet held it in place.
“Hang on tight!” Jackson called to the couple.
The car hadn’t even come to a complete stop before Juliette and Luke had thrown their doors open and leaped out. Detective Jackson cut the engine, and we opened our doors as they ran across the grass and up the steps.
“Skye!” Juliette cried. “Mommy and Daddy are here!” She burst into happy sobs as Mrs. O’Neill handed the baby over.
Luke wrapped his long arms around both the baby and his wife, enveloping them in a protective embrace. He, too, began to sob.
Lest the flashing light rouse the neighbors, I unplugged the beacon and removed it from the roof of the car, returning it to its place in the console. I walked up the front path, waving away a pesky moth that had flown in to powwow with his buddies around the porch light. After greeting the foster mother with a smile and nod, I extended my hand to her husband. “Hi, Mr. O’Neill. I’m Officer Megan Luz.”
Jackson introduced herself to the couple, as well. “Detective Audrey Jackson. Nice to meet you folks.”
After handshakes were exchanged, the four of us smiled at the couple oohing and aahing over the baby they’d missed so desperately. The little thing was only half awake, her eyes slowly blinking against the glare of the porch light. She was probably wondering why her sweet dreams had been interrupted.
“She’s such a good baby,” Mrs. O’Neill told Juliette and Luke. “Sleeps well, rarely fusses. Cute, too, as you can see.”
“She sure does eat a lot, though.” Mr. O’Neill patted his belly and jovially asked, “But who am I to judge?”
Mrs. O’Neill looked from the couple to me and the detective, her face slightly pained and pensive. “What’s the plan? Will they be taking the baby with them tonight?”