The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (A Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery Book 4)

by Donna White Glaser

  Three buildings—a trailer home and two dilapidated sheds, one on each side of the trailer. The ATVs had been parked near one of the sheds and were covered with tarps. Although the area between the woods and the buildings had been cleared and mowed at some point in the past, probably to keep the mosquitoes at bay last summer, it wouldn’t be winning any prizes from the DIY channel for curb appeal. Whoever the occupants were seemed to favor the just-throw-it-out-the-door method of garbage disposal. Piles of tattered black garbage bags had been piled along the side of the trailer. Raccoons or bears had split them open, leaving empty beer and pop cans, used plastic milk jugs, industrial cleanser jugs, and two-liter plastic pop bottles strewn across the yard.

  Beth tapped my shoulder. When I looked over, she held her nose and waved her hand in front of it. I nodded. A thick, acrid chemical smell drifted from the buildings. If they had put up a sign announcing METH FOR SALE, it couldn’t have been more obvious. No wonder Father kept the morons hidden.

  Beth leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Now, what?”

  I shrugged. “We wait?”

  She rolled her eyes but didn’t come up with a better idea.

  We settled down to wait. Despite a variety of experimental adjustments, it proved completely impossible to find a comfortable position. Squatting for more than eighteen seconds caused my thighs to send a series of frantic alarms to my brain, threatening to self-destruct if the position was held longer than seven seconds. Sitting meant attempted sexual assault from the stubs sticking out of the ground. Kneeling was never an option. My jeans cut the circulation off at my knees whenever I tried that.

  Beth’s grumbling and shifting told me she was experiencing the same level of pain and discomfort I was.

  “We’ve been here long enough,” I whispered. “If anyone was going to come out, they would have by now.”

  Beth glanced at her watch. “We’ve been here twelve minutes.”

  Huh.

  The cabin door flung open, and we both jumped, causing our hiding place to convulse with rattling leaves. Justus glanced over. I closed my eyes and sent telepathic “squirrel sex” messages. Beth grabbed my wrist, and I almost wet myself. She pointed at Justus, and then made a gun out of her finger, squeezing off a couple of rounds. Did she want us to shoot him? That seemed kind of drastic.

  But no. She was only alerting me to the fact that Justus was armed. Armed? What the hell?

  Justus walked around the side of the cabin in the direction of the ATVs and shed. Although he looked them over, he didn’t stop but walked the perimeter. Thankfully, he moved in the opposite direction from our bush. He circled the trailer and strolled to the remaining building. I hadn’t noticed, but a padlock dangled from a latch on the door. He tugged it, making sure it was solid. We heard thumping from inside the shed. Justus said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and pounded on the door three times in response.

  Wide eyed, Beth and I stared at each other. Someone was…

  Gabriel emerged from the trailer. Eyebrows pinched in a knot that was sure to cause a headache, he joined Justus at a spot midway between the cabin and the shed. Gabriel glanced at the locked shed before turning to the younger man. He said something to Justus, who shrugged and seemed about to answer when the door opened yet again, and the barrel-chested dude came out holding a bowl and jug of water. Gabriel shushed Justus with a hand signal. Barrel Chest made a sour face and pointedly ignored them as he walked past.

  He stopped in front of the padlocked shed and tossed a “Well? I’m waiting…” look at Justus. Justus sauntered over and pulled out a key.

  The calf muscles in my right leg start to bunch. I hissed. Not now. Not now, not now, not now! Beth shot a worried look at me and I mouthed “cramp.” Her eyebrows practically merged with her hairline.

  “Not now.” Her whisper was a soft as a breath, but I could tell she was secretly yelling.

  I squinched my eyes at her and tried to straighten my leg. I had to swivel and lean on my left side, easing my leg out of the back of the bush. I slowly rotated my foot, trying to keep the muscle loose. Losing my balance, I slid sideways, making the bush rattle. We froze. Moving my head so slowly my neck creaked, I peeked out.

  Gabriel stared straight at us. Next to me, Beth’s breathing quickened into short, blessedly quiet, pants. I had an atavistic fear of looking too closely at Gabriel’s eyes, but I couldn’t look away, either. If I don’t see him, maybe he won’t see me. I settled for staring at his cheek. Hands on hips, he squinted at our bush.

  Squirrel sex, I thought. Oh, please, squirrel sex.

  Justus chose that time to walk back. He said something, then turned to stare at the spot that so fascinated Gabriel. Gabriel shook his head as though clearing it. Then he placed his hand on Justus’ shoulder and steered him over to the ATVs. Father’s newly appointed second-in-command appeared to be giving orders, pointing at different vehicles while keeping his hand on his sentry’s shoulder. In fact, Father’s second-in-command appeared to be creating a diversion.

  We took it.

  When we got back to Megiddo, Beth went to lie down. I knew I would never be able to settle down, but I didn’t want to hang around the office in case I ran into Maliah. Instead, I headed for the comfort of the kitchen, hoping Jala was working. I wanted to soak in her straightforward cheerfulness. Talitha was there, too, working on a pasta hot-dish of some kind, and a woman I didn’t recognize was running dishes from the breakfast rush through the dishwasher. Having gotten up at dawn, I was startled to realize it wasn’t even lunch yet.

  A choir of squeals greeted me as I walked in the side door. I’d meant to just slip in and hang in the background, but the excitement of the Naming Ceremony and the fight made that a ridiculous thought. Baara heard the chattering and came trotting over from the laundry area. She brought the crisp aroma of bleach, her hands damp and reddened.

  A brief verbal wrangle ensued while each woman sought to steer the conversation to her juicy topic of choice—Moses and Eli, Eli and me, or Rachel.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Hold up. What’s going on with Rachel?”

  “Oh, that’s right, dear. You’ve been out of touch, so you don’t know what’s going on,” Jala said. “Well, listen—”

  “Nobody knows what’s going on,” Talitha jumped in. “That’s the whole point.” Turning to me, she continued, “Father’s got her in seclusion. They’re saying she’s sick, but—”

  “House arrest, I call it,” Jala said. “And nobody’s able to go in or out, except, of course, Dathan. And every time we ask him if we can give a hand, he just—”

  “Well, it’s not like he can’t see through that, Jala. Nobody said he was stupid. He’s just following Father’s orders.”

  “Of course, he is. I didn’t say—”

  “Rachel is sick,” Baara spoke up. She tipped over her glass of water and flooded her end of the long, Formica prep table.

  “Oh, gosh. Look at that.” Jala grabbed a roll of cheap paper towels and tossed them to Baara. Looking as though she were about to cry, Baara pulled sheets and sheets off the roll and wadded them up in a huge mound to soak up the water.

  “Goodness, Baara! That’s plenty.” In an effort to distract her, Jala pushed a bowl of freshly washed carrots in front of the other woman. “Here, why don’t you help out with the delicious salad? These need to be grated.”

  “I work in the laundry. I’m not supposed to do kitchen stuff.” Baara crossed her arms.

  The metal grater Jala offered looked like a medieval torture device. I knew from experience how easy it was to sheer a knuckle off. Probably best not to have Baara work with it, anyway.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. I crossed over to the sink and washed my hands.

  Behind me, the door opened and the women hushed. I turned, hands still dripping, and froze.

  Moses had come in. He stood directly across the room from me, only the prep table a barrier between us. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed black. His nose had swollen three tim
es its normal size, but someone had straightened the kink out. Of the nose, that is. I fumbled for the paper towels, but after Baara’s wiping spree only one sheet remained on the roll.

  Moses avoided looking directly at me, but my crawling skin told a different story.

  Jala cleared her throat. “Um, can I get you something, Moses?”

  He swung his gaze to her, but didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and went to sit at the small table where I’d first seen him and Eli eating breakfast a few short days ago.

  Talitha abruptly abandoned us, disappearing into the walk-in cooler. The dishwasher lady bailed too.

  My heart thumped dully against my breastbone, but I refused to let Moses know how badly his presence bothered me. More than pride, self-preservation told me I needed to keep up an air of confidence. I got busy scraping carrots down the jagged edges of the grater, letting the bright orange shavings fall onto the plate beneath.

  Jala cleared her throat a second time and cast off on another topic. “So, um, Letty—”

  Moses glanced at her sharply.

  “I mean, Leona, of course.” Then she brightened at the reminder of what would normally have been a safe topic. “How do you like your new name?”

  Of course, mentioning my newly assigned name only served to remind us all of the all-hell-breaking-loose craziness that blew up when I got it. I started to answer, then stuttered to a stop. Jala turned bright red, and her hand fluttered up to cover her mouth.

  “Oh, dear,” she whispered.

  “I like it,” Baara said, blithely unaware of the thick atmosphere. “Father told me it’s like a lion. I wish I could have a lion name. But I like my name too.”

  “You do?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice, but again, Baara didn’t pick up on it.

  “Uh-huh. It means ‘Flame of God.’ Like, burning and fire. Isn’t that neat?” Baara’s face had lit up from within, almost as though she were reflecting her name’s meaning. I felt a vague sense of unease.

  “That is cool,” I lied. “How about you, Jala? Your name’s from the Bible, right?”

  Jala nodded absently; she, too, looked distracted and worried. “Father does usually assign names from the Bible. Not always, though. Mine means ‘Servant of God.”

  Of course it did.

  Jala and I were both pretending we hadn’t already had this conversation the first night I’d come to Megiddo. Agitation made me careless. Instead of dropping the nub of carrot I was grating when it got too small, I’d hung on, scraping and whittling it down as far as I could. Too far. Sure enough, I nicked the top of my middle finger knuckle.

  “Damn!” I grabbed for the roll of paper towels, but I’d used the last when I’d washed my hands. A fragment the size of a playing card still clung to the cardboard, so I tugged it off while Jala ran for a fresh roll. Red splotches immediately bloomed through the paper fibers.

  Baara screamed and covered her face. “The blood… The blood…” Her gaze was fixed on the blood dotting the white Formica tabletop.

  Jala snapped, “Baara, calm down. It’s just a cut.” She dug through a cabinet under the sink. An opened container of cleanser tipped out and spilled on the floor at her feet. Powder puffed a cloud over her tennis shoes. She shook it off and shifted her hunt to the next cabinet over.

  Talitha popped out of the cooler. “What on earth…?”

  “How about napkins?” I suggested.

  Talitha, no stranger to kitchen injuries, nodded and took off for the dining hall.

  Despite Jala’s reassurance, Baara was working herself up to full hysteria. She was breathing so hard and fast she was sure to start hyperventilating any second.

  “Baara,” I said. “I’m okay. It’s no big deal. Look.” I pulled the now-sodden snippet of toweling off and showed her the cut. A tiny half-moon had been carved out of my knuckle, and though it bled like a stuck pig, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

  Didn’t help. Baara clamped her eyes shut and started rocking so fast I thought she’d tip over from dizziness. She started chanting in a thin, reedy voice, so unlike her own. I could only understand fragments, but what I heard scared the crap out of me.

  “The life of the flesh is in the blood… the altar of atonement… the blood is the way… the way to righteousness. God bless our sacrifice and keep us pure.”

  Jala whipped around. “Baara! Baara, it’s okay.” She ran to Baara’s side, putting her arm around the younger woman.

  I wrapped my hand in my shirt. “It’s the blood. Some people react that way.”

  Talitha crashed through the swing door, holding up a handful of paper napkins. “Here we go.” And then she let loose a banshee shriek that bounced off the tiled walls and put Baara’s wailing to shame. Screams ripped from Talitha’s throat; her eyes grew so big and round they looked like they were going to pop out of her head from the pressure. And she was pointing. Not to Baara, but to the breakfast table. To the floor, actually.

  Where Moses knelt, working silently away at gouging out his own right eye.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I flung myself over the prep table, landing full out on top of Moses. Both Baara and Talitha fled the kitchen, the sounds of their screaming fading as they ran away. I had Moses’s right arm wrapped in my own to keep it away from his face. We writhed on the floor, battling for possession of it. His hands were slippery with his own blood, and he almost slid out of my grip several times. We were both grunting and breathing heavily, and as I levered my body between his hand and face, I ended up sitting in his lap. This was not my happy place. Thankfully, he was too far gone in his psychotic break for it to become his. At some point, Moses must have realized that his left hand would serve equally well as an eye removal system as his right. When he abruptly stopped fighting me, I almost face-planted on the tile floor.

  Seeing his intentions, Jala screamed and dive-bombed his other arm, and now we were a particularly macabre ménage à trois.

  The side door burst open and Casper bolted through. He took one look and puked. Gabriel and Dathan charged through immediately after and joined the floor show. Once the two men had a solid grip, Jala grabbed the wad of napkins and pressed them against Moses’s eye.

  Everyone was yelling something, making it impossible to understand anything. Moses had grabbed my hair, forcing me to remain ensconced on his lap, unable to untangle myself.

  By now Moses had given up fighting but had taken to alternating between howling and bellowing scriptures in my ear. Something about committing adultery by lusting and plucking out offending eyes. No surprise there.

  I finally yanked my hair out from his grip and crawled a few feet away, heading in the opposite direction of Casper’s vomit puddle. He cowered in the corner, retching and unable to look away or do anything useful.

  Gabriel’s voice rose up over the din. “Call 9-1-1, Letty! Go call 9-1-1.”

  Right.

  But I only knew of one telephone. I took off out the door, running for the office. Father’s house was closer, and I was sure he had a phone to himself, but I didn’t know where and I didn’t know if I could get in his house. Two women, oblivious to the crisis as they walked in the common area, squealed and grabbed each other as I, covered in his-and-her blood spatter, barreled past.

  Abigail and Maliah joined the chorus when I burst through the office door.

  I was out of breath, and my brain felt simultaneously sluggish and scattered. “Phone,” I said. “There’s been a… Call for an ambulance.”

  “What’s wrong? What’s going on?” Like most control freaks, Maliah thought she needed more information before following directions. It pissed me off enough to jump-start my brain.

  “Call 9-1-1. Now. There’s been an… accident in the kitchen.”

  Maliah shot a glance at Abigail, then stood up and placed her hand on the telephone. “We have to get permi—”

  I shoved her so hard she bounced off a file cabinet and ricocheted into the wall. Snatc
hing up the phone, I punched in 9-1-... And then she grabbed me by the hair, hauling me backward. Instead of pulling away, I went with it, adding my weight to her momentum, which caused us both to go down. For the second time in just minutes, I ended up in someone’s lap. We both screamed in rage. She scratched long furrows into my cheeks, narrowly missing my own eyes. Enough. I twisted around, trying to push off and get away, but by then she had my hair in both hands and was yanking so hard my head whipped back and forth.

  This ended when I rabbit punched her in the nose three times. I don’t do girly fights.

  She still had a thatch of my hair in her claws when I clambered to my feet. When I saw it, I kicked her in the side, just because it felt like a good thing to do.

  I stumbled back to the phone, but Abigail had it and was yelling for help.

  I cocked my head, eyes narrowing into a glare. In a voice like The Exorcist demon, I said, “That better be 9-1-1.”

  She nodded frantically and, still nodding, recited the church’s address into the phone. She paused to listen and a desperate look came over her. “I don’t know! I just… There’s fight and—”

  I snatched the receiver away from her. “Hello? This is an emergency. We need an ambulance. One of the residents here has injured himself badly. He tried…” I could barely say it. “He tried to put out his own eye.”

  Abigail gasped.

  “We have guys holding him down, but he’s completely out of control. He’s going to need medical assistance for his eye, but then he’s also going to need a behavioral health stay.”

  I shoved the receiver back into Abigail’s hand. “Stay on the phone with them. I’m going back.”

  Before I walked out the door, I remembered something and turned back. Maliah was just getting to her feet and our eyes locked for a split second. Instantly, she darted her eyes away. I nodded.