They were almost in the door to Grace’s room when the officer stopped them. “Agent Eames, Heath.” Her words were soft but not lacking in strength for the tone. “I just wanted to update you on something.”
Stopping, Eleri nodded at her. “Of course.” And if it gave her a moment to get herself together before she had to go in and face another emotional firing squad in the form of Grace’s testimony, that was only a good thing. “What is it?”
Officer Pleasant—according to her tag, which made Eleri smile—looked each way down the hall and kept her voice low. “Updike and I are the two primaries on this watch, with occasional relief from Traynor.”
Eleri nodded again, not sure where this was going. Unsolicited information was always a crapshoot, which was why the FBI had tip lines. Here Eleri and Donovan were their own front line. She waited.
“So he was relieving Updike late this morning before I came on. Tells me to watch out for this stupid nurse who tried to walk into the room, just like Grace was his patient.” When Eleri’s eyebrows shot up, Pleasant jumped in. “Don’t worry. We’re good. Traynor stopped him. This nurse guy says he has the chart and he’s supposed to check on the woman, but Traynor says no.”
It sounded like a routine error to Eleri. It was her understanding that the nurses rotated patients, and that this situation—with the guard posted and only two nurses allowed to enter—was the unusual one.
But Pleasant nodded again. The small coils of hair escaping her tight braids had to be planned. “Anyway, I had the same thing happen to me. Nurse says he’s supposed to check on this one—” she pointed a thumb over toward Grace’s room, “—but when I tell him no, he mutters something and wanders off.” She patted at her hair, but it was more a nervous gesture than anything. “So, I called Updike and ask if he’s had this. And he has. And it’s a man, too.” Now Pleasant was into it. “Not that many ‘murses’ in Texas, you know?” Eleri nodded, even though she thought a murse was a man’s purse, but she didn’t want to interrupt.
“It’s all the same guy we’re describing. Since turning him away, we’ve each seen him at the end of the hall, he sees us and heads the other way. So I check in with the nurses’ station. There’s no male nurse by that description in this ward. There is in pediatrics, but Traynor and I check his ID photo and it’s not our guy.”
Holy shit. Despite the tall-tale method of delivery, Officer Pleasant had done her due diligence and was uncovering something very concerning. Eleri nodded again, thinking she was better off not talking and just letting Pleasant unravel the whole thing for them.
“Well, we haven’t had a chance to look through all the personnel files—well, I did, but that’s because I’m on right now and the nurses here brought them to me—but I didn’t find this guy in any of the ID photos. I don’t think he’s a nurse here. Traynor and Updike have to look, but they aren’t on shift ‘til later.” She still looked a little nervous, like maybe she’d overstepped her bounds. Eleri hated that officers thought that of the FBI, but she understood there were situations that generated it.
This time, Eleri spoke. “That’s amazing. And really good work.”
“I’m telling you now, as it’s only about two hours since shift change, since Traynor first told me, and I realized I’d had the same thing happen.” She shrugged. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. He wasn’t pushy, but he did look in the windows of the room.”
Now, when Eleri was nodding, it was because she was processing information. The most sinister explanation was that it was Baxter himself, coming to check on his escaped wards. “Does he have brown hair? Cut about here?” She motioned to where Jonah’s drawing had indicated.
This time it was Pleasant shaking her head. “Short blond hair. Blue eyes.”
Eleri turned to look at Donovan, who was ready to jump in. While he did, she shook off her own illogical leaps. Lots of people had blue eyes, it didn’t mean Joseph himself had come. If he was smart, he stayed holed up in his City and sent his people out to peddle the wares he had stashed in his mobile barns.
Donovan was pulling Pleasant’s attention away, and the officer was grinning at him, a smile of appreciation for a handsome man. For a moment Eleri fought off the shock. Then again, just because he was her partner didn’t mean he didn’t strike others as good-looking. Interesting.
“Can you write down a full description? And can you tell us what days and times you saw him?” Donovan almost flirted back.
“Already done.” Pleasant earned her moniker, looking back and forth between the two of them, a softly satisfied smile on her lips. “I’m waiting on Traynor and Updike to email theirs into me. I can forward it to you when I get them. What’s your email?”
That last line was smiled up directly at Donovan.
Eleri, trying to keep her own smirk to herself, left him to make that connection. She was stepping away when she remembered the collection of drawings in her bag. Waving at Grace through the partially cracked shades on the glass room wall, Eleri reached into the bag and pulled out the drawings. “Officer Pleasant? Can you look through these and see if any are the man you saw as the nurse?”
One by one she sorted through the drawings, removing the women and children, handing over the men and even some of the older boys. Officer Pleasant shook her head at each one, every answer a no. Eleri was getting discouraged, but she was one away from the end when the officer stopped.
“This one, I think. The hair was shorter, much closer cropped.” She used one hand to block out the hair, a common technique since length, style and color could drastically change a person’s look. “This one.” Her voice became more confident.
Eleri nodded and took note of the name on the back. Abraham. Yet another player in a game that was getting increasingly tangled. But it confirmed her worst fears—the City of God was out and they were watching. Donovan was close, listening. “Please keep that and show it to your other officers. You may want to keep a batch of the pictures so you can recognize any of the others if they come by.”
Eleri handed over the entire set of drawings for the men and older boys; she didn’t include the whole City because memorizing a batch of faces from drawings was hard enough. Eleri was hedging her bets. “This confirms that the City of God people not only know that at least one of these women is here but that they are trying to keep tabs on her.”
“Grace.” Pleasant offered up when Eleri looked at her oddly. “They at least know about Grace. This man came by and tried to get into her room two days ago. It was before Mercy was here.”
Shit.
Just then her phone rang, so Eleri stepped to the side and put away her hard feelings about the case. “Hello, Mrs. Baxter.”
“Oh! Um. . . . hello.” The woman clearly wasn’t familiar with the technology that allowed a personal answer to most phone calls. But she gathered herself relatively quickly. “We’re in town. We’re staying at the Comfort Inn.”
Eleri frowned. She didn’t remember a Comfort Inn in Brownwood.
At the pause, Lilly Baxter filled her in. “We’re in Zephyr, or outside it in Early.”
“Oh.” Only about ten or so minutes away. “Do you have everything you need? Have you practiced?”
“I’m nervous. But yes, we practiced the whole car ride down. We’re as ready as we can be.” Her voice wasn’t as steady as the first time Eleri had met the woman. Then, she had been sitting in her own living room in her hometown and the past was almost entirely behind her. Now it was clear she was concerned about what she might learn. Maybe concerned that she might run into her son.
As of yet there was no evidence that JHB even left the compound at all, though clearly some of his men ran errands relatively often. Eleri couldn’t say that, but she did try to soothe the woman. “Then take a nap and get settled in for today.”
Eleri had considered sending them out with Jonah’s drawing, but that wouldn’t match the cover story of two parents looking for their missing son. The story had the added benefit of
being true—something she thought the Baxters needed. They didn’t seem the type to be able to lie well or maybe even at all. So she had them arm themselves with the last picture of Joseph from before he ran away. At sixteen, he had been mostly grown, already greatly resembling Jonah’s sketch. The old photo should be enough for anyone who had seen him to recognize him. She wished the couple luck and turned back to Donovan who was struggling to end the conversation with the overly interested officer.
“I can’t thank you enough for your information. Please detain this man and call us if you see him again.”
“You have a warrant?”
“I’ll have one.” Eleri lied smoothly and opened the door to the other woman’s room.
Grace looked up and smiled broadly. Probably she was bored out of her mind. Television sucked if you weren’t used to watching it.
From the bones Eleri had seen, and the dead girl they had dug up more recently, all the stories corroborated: these people worked and worked hard. They turned earth, grew food, and built houses. Sitting in a hospital room—especially after she was mostly healthy—had to be near torture.
The sharp tang of hope in her voice solidified that idea. With the City people coming around to check on her, it was clear they needed to get Grace to a safe house as fast as possible.
“Agent Eames! It’s good to see you again.”
“Hi, Grace.” Donovan offered the woman a smile. Though Grace wasn’t as worldly or as forward as Officer Pleasant, Donovan’s smile for her was real.
“Hi, Agent Heath.” She grinned back, obviously in much better spirits today.
Eleri was afraid they’d have to dash those hopes. Despite the lack of free time, she chatted aimlessly with Grace for a few moments before getting down to what she needed. Eleri went through the usual steps of starting the recording and stating the pertinent information.
Grace—as always—cooperated, answering every question Eleri and Donovan posed to the best of her ability. Her words came through strong, clear, and certain. She corroborated Mercy’s information about Abraham’s broken finger. They hadn’t told her about the forensic evidence they had located from the photos, but her information as well as Mercy’s matched what they had seen.
Eleri followed that up by asking about Zeke’s first wife. Grace’s information mostly agreed with Mercy’s but added that the woman before Mercy—Tabitha—had been his second wife. His first, Joy, had died under City law. She had been caught with another man and had been put to death.
This time Eleri knew to follow up. No, Grace had not seen Joy with the other man. In fact, she didn’t know anyone who claimed to have seen it. She only knew that Zeke reported it to be true. She also said that Joy was about as pious as they came, and everyone had a hard time believing the woman would have done what her husband claimed and an even harder time believing that she then lied about it.
Eleri asked more and more questions, every answer supporting exactly what the other escapees stated, which in turn supported one of two possibilities: either the City of God people were truly believers in faith and honesty or else the whole thing was an elaborate ruse, with ingrained practice and carefully planned stories. The second possibility got more remote with each piece of information she heard.
Next, Donovan asked several questions about Grace’s older memories from her early childhood.
She was becoming more comfortable talking to a strange man, but the two of them had decided that these questions might cause her some pain and that was better coming from Donovan. They decided that Eleri’s tie to Grace, the trust the woman had put in her, was best undisturbed.
Still Donovan handled it with compassion and patience, surprising even himself it seemed. Before he was done, Grace had called up some details that gave them a direction to get started—she had been taken from a park in the summertime. She didn’t remember anything after traipsing into her family church to use the restroom. Though she believed she lived in Michigan, she wasn’t sure. In the end, the young woman even agreed to be fingerprinted and swabbed for DNA.
Eleri resisted the urge to jump up and down for joy.
Because the questions were going well and the hard topic had actually seemed to have opposite the expected effect and endear Donovan to the woman, Eleri stayed back and let them continue as they had been going.
Inside of five minutes, Donovan had garnered some stunning revelations.
Baxter was not the first father of the City of God. Grace remembered when Joseph and his wife arrived with a tiny baby in tow. She had adored the baby though it had been rapidly shuttled off to wherever babies went, and she hadn’t seen it much after that.
Eleri wondered if that baby had been Jonah—Grace’s time frame was sketchy since the City residents didn’t celebrate birthdays or regular holidays. Forcing her attention away from her nebulous math and back to what Donovan and Grace were talking about, she learned the other leader had been Isaac. Isaac had been a hard man with few words for the children. His wife was even more strict, and both believed that God put man on earth to suffer.
Isaac believed that he rescued the children from evil and put them to work in God’s care. Grace had hated him. She had loved her first family, and Isaac and the others schooled her not to speak of the demons that had birthed and raised her. She had been scolded, isolated and eventually beaten until she learned to keep those thoughts to herself and become a pious worker.
She believed three summers had passed from when she arrived in the City until the year of “the event.”
Isaac had told them all that it was time to meet God. Originally, the residents had been happy, thinking there would be a celebration. It turned out the celebration was to be a month of worship and no food.
A quick glance to Donovan revealed that he was thinking the same as she was: a month of serious fasting would kill them all. Was that the leader’s intention?
But Grace’s next information was even more disturbing.
Ten days into the “celebration” Joseph confronted Isaac. They fought verbally. The next day, a badly bruised Joseph declared himself the new leader. The people of the City—hungry and tired of their forced austerity—hailed him as the new leader. Isaac and his wife were never seen again.
38
Donovan sat in the direct beam of sunlight, unwilling to close the curtain and suffer the artificial light. The AC was cranked as high as it would go and chugged away from its spot under the window as though it could really do more than just take the edge off.
His legs were warm but he stayed seated there in the hotel room—Eleri’s hotel room—crammed next to her at the small desk. Given that they were both trying to fit equipment there and see each other’s screens, they wound up scrunched side by side, Donovan sitting in the chair he had dragged from the other room. It was all too crowded to be comfortable, but the information was coming in a deluge and comfort was not a concern.
“Look at this, Eleri.” Annie Kinnard had sent updates on the Colliers to him directly, since he was the one who responded to her initial outreach. The agent had uploaded telescopic lens shots of Carolyn Collier and the woman he and Eleri now had as much confirmation as possible was Tabitha—Zeke’s previous wife.
Donovan was checking pictures of the two women shopping, Tabitha still in her uniform of jeans and plain T-shirt. “If there was anything legal about Zeke’s wedding to Tabitha, then he would be committing bigamy with Mercy.”
“Grace said he was married before Tabitha. So he may already be a bigamist.”
Agent Annie had uploaded a ton of pictures for him to sort through. The woman missed her calling, she should have been in the paparazzi. He was checking photo after photo, noting Tabitha’s consistent braid or bun, that the Colliers ate with her at the dinner table, that she had become one of the family. It was so rapid and—from the photos—seemed so complete, that he was curious if they had known her before this escape.
Eleri’s computer dinged, but he ignored it, engrossed in the photos, unt
il she used the back of her hand to tap his arm. It was easy to do; they were so close she barely had to move. Pointing to her own screen, she said, “Bingo!”
“What?” He almost couldn’t look away from the pictures. Was Tabitha pregnant? It was hard to tell.
“I rushed the DNA tests for the Baxters and Jonah.” She grinned at him. “It’s a match.”
His breath sucked in on a sudden surge and Donovan was surprised just how much he cared about the results. He’d hidden his anxiety about it even from himself. Only the two of them even knew the test had been run, and only they knew what the results meant. The participants had been informed they were just checking DNA and ruling out suspects. The Baxters may have been suspicious, but their lack of technological skills didn’t put that square into the “definitely” category for him. “Should we tell them tonight?”
She closed her eyes, squeezed them shut, the decision obviously harder than a simple yes or no. Her answer confirmed what was written all over her face. “Let’s think on it for a while. I mean, what if there’s a reason not to? It doesn’t change that he’ll get to go home with them when this is all over.”
If they took JHB out of the equation. Anything shy of that and the sociopath would get back custody of Jonah or at least send them all into a protracted court case to free the kid. At fourteen he wasn’t yet ready to be an emancipated minor.
Donovan stood up and walked over to the bed. Eleri had made it herself this morning so they could spread out what they had. On one corner sat the portable printer. All morning it chugged, turning out screen shots from Donovan’s trek, latitude and longitude now marked for each of the grave sites. They also scanned satellite photos, Donovan digging through archives and trying to remember what he smelled at each gravesite. He could sense different levels of decay; though he wasn’t a cadaver dog, he had worked with corpses a good portion of his adult life and he tried to rank the scents.
He combed through thousands of backlogged aerial photos and managed to find one set of pictures. Since they were overhead photos, it was hard to identify the men in them, but the jeans and plain colored T-shirts were clear. The satellite had taken a series of stills as it passed over. If he zoomed in on the earliest shot he could find, Donovan thought he could see them just emerging from the woods.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1) Page 29