Black Widows

by Cate Quinn

  I feel the wind knocked out of me. I’d been nurturing a small, stupid hope that somehow it wasn’t him. But deep down, I knew the truth. I notice Brewer is still speaking.

  “So-o…” She lays out documents. “We have the results of the autopsy back.” She looks down at the papers. “The official verdict is now murder.”

  A cold feeling washes through me.

  “Best guess from forensics,” she continues, “is someone came up behind Blake, struck him on the head with something, then strangled him with his belt.”

  She says it so matter-of-factly that I want to hit her.

  “Mystery part,” she continues, “is how could he not hear someone sneak up behind him? He’s out in the wilderness. Nothing but june bugs and crickets. Blake must have heard his attacker crunching across that sandy desert long before they got close enough to take him unaware. So how does that person manage to land a blow that fractures his skull?”

  I don’t answer.

  “No evidence he put up much of a fight. No chips to the fingernails, bruising to the legs, which you’d expect if he’d clawed at someone, kicked out at ’em. Our guys in the lab hypothesize that the killer was likely known to the victim, which I guess we all knew already.”

  Her eyes meet mine again.

  “Officers have combed the immediate area,” she concludes, “but been unable to find the weapon or the missing body parts. However, the river has a strong current. We’re searching further downstream. Maybe something washed up.”

  I sit, stony silent.

  “Why don’t we find out a little more about you?” suggests Brewer. “By my understanding, you undertook missionary work after college. That usual for a female? Banging on doors, preachin’ Jesus?”

  “More so nowadays,” I say, “but women only serve for a year.”

  “You were particularly good, right?” Malone is speaking now, shuffling his long body forward slightly. “The best, so say your fellow missionaries. Over twenty baptisms, when most kids get none in two years. What was your secret?”

  I have no idea why they’re asking me this, but there seems no harm in telling them.

  “Um…” I roll the coffee cup in my hands. “Well, I got an easy assignment. I was working in a New York community with a lot of single moms. I just did things for them, I guess. I was always raised to be helpful. I did the laundry, dishes, cleaning. Sometimes caring for the children. If something was broken, I’d try to get it fixed.”

  I’m enjoying the memory. If Blake hadn’t insisted I give the work up, I would have carried on. But my husband didn’t want a wife who was out-of-doors all day.

  “You didn’t preach the Book of Mormon?” asks Brewer, breaking into my thoughts.

  I shake my head. “No, ma’am. Not unless you want to get turned right outta the door. People say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Well, I can tell you, when a woman has a family, the way to her heart is through her dirty dishes. It’s not easy to let God in when you’ve got a bunch of rug rats who need feeding and a trash can full of diapers.”

  Malone beams, enjoying the sound bite.

  “Mrs. Nelson,” says Brewer, “we went to the ranch because we wanted to be sure there were no other wives there.”

  I don’t like the way she says wives. I fold my hands around the coffee cup, drawing it against my body.

  “There are some large outbuildings and so forth,” she adds. “It was important to assure ourselves no one was being held against their will.”

  My body flashes hot, then cold.

  “Why would you think that?” I sip the Postum, but the taste doesn’t register.

  Brewer only gives me a long look.

  “I think you know the answer to that, Mrs. Nelson.”

  Brewer looks me in the eye.

  “You know,” she says softly, “I thought there was something familiar about you. It was a long time ago, and I only saw pictures. This isn’t the first time you’ve been in this police station, is it?”

  “No… But…”

  “Mrs. Nelson. Why didn’t you tell us you were raised in a cult?”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tina, Sister-Wife

  Whoa. I mean. Whoaaaa!

  Can you believe it? Little crazy Emily gets up during Momma Nelson’s big bullshit speech ’bout what a perfect guy her boy was.

  Adelaide Nelson is droning on about her great son Blake, and this little voice cuts through all of it.

  “That didn’t happen,” Emily says, just like that. A ripple of shock travels around the church. I try to pull her back down, but she pulls free of my grip with a lot more strength than I would have credited her with.

  Emily stands, tiny in her little black funeral dress, and turns to face the audience.

  “First of all,” she says, “Blake wasn’t working in some special duty at the temple. He was a janitor. And it wasn’t some holy calling. He took a second job ’cause we were real bad in debt. Blake wasn’t making enough sales at Survive Well.”

  Shocked murmurs pass around the rows of seated mourners. Mrs. Nelson’s face is all hard-looking.

  “Second, she hasn’t even mentioned us,” says Emily, looking around at all the faces that have turned to look at her. “We were his wives. We had to go to bed with him.”

  I glance at Mrs. Nelson Senior. She’s white with shock. Pity bubbles up.

  “Emily,” I hiss out of the corner of my mouth. “Sit down.”

  “But why should she say stuff that isn’t right?” hisses Emily, looking at me. “I mean, he was our husband!”

  My eyes travel back to Mrs. Nelson. Tears of grief and humiliation are brimming in her eyes. Sympathy for her gains the upper ground. I take Emily’s arm. I sigh.

  “Why is she allowed to lie?” Emily insists.

  “Because she’s a straight-up crazy bitch, Emily,” I say quietly. “But she’s his mom, and she can say what she likes at her son’s funeral. So sit your ass down and show some respect.”

  Emily flops down like a puppet with her strings cut. Mrs. Nelson tries to carry on, but you can see she’s mentally editing out a lot of material. I guess anything else she feels might not pass Emily’s truth radar. Which by the short length of her speech is a fair amount.

  The other mourners are all facing firmly forward now. Like they don’t dare sneak a glance back, ’cause it will confirm what just happened.

  After she’s finished, Adelaide goes back to sit with Mr. Nelson. He puts a hand on her arm, half sympathy, half restraining. Like he’s frightened she’ll embarrass everyone a second time with another awful lurching funeral speech. Some awkward clapping starts up in one part of the church, then stops.

  Bishop Young is taking the pulpit now. I lean back, ready to be bored out of my mind for the next hour. But it doesn’t turn out that way.

  Someone I don’t recognize sorta scuttles up to Bishop Young and whispers in his ear, stealing glances at me.

  He looks at me with shock at first, then rage. I feel myself growing hotter. Like I want to shrink into my chair. All I can think is, he knows. He knows what happened between me and Braxton in that back room. I didn’t think about it at the time, but maybe sound travels in that little room. It’s connected onto a little kitchen at the back, which I assumed was empty.

  Bishop Young walks toward me, far more quickly than I might have thought possible for a fat man. He closes in kinda shaking with anger. A few people turn to watch him, confused, like maybe this is part of the show.

  “Miss Keidis,” he says low enough that only I can hear. “You are no longer welcome in this community.”

  “What?” I try to pull an innocent smile.

  Emily is looking back and forth between us, like she’s at a soccer game where she doesn’t understand the rules.

  “I know what you did in that back ro
om,” the bishop says, furious. “You were overheard. I’m not about to shout about it in a house of God. But I’d like you to leave. Leave and don’t come back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rachel, First Wife

  Brewer nods at Malone, and he pulls a brown file from a stack of other papers. Considering the size and nature of his document pile, it strikes me as impressive he’s laid ahold of it so fast. Brewer’s expression suggests she’s thinking likewise.

  Brewer opens the file to reveal a yellow cover page I haven’t seen in ten years. Longer. Even now, the sight of it makes me break out in a cold sweat.

  Brewer is looking at me carefully.

  “As you know, we’re now treating this as a murder inquiry,” she says.

  Malone takes another loud slurp of his cream drink. “Should we call you a lawyer?”

  I shake my head. “No,” I say firmly. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  Brewer and Malone exchange glances.

  “You didn’t think it relevant to tell us,” continues Brewer, “about your being raised in a cult?”

  My lower lip is quivering.

  “It wasn’t a cult.” I say it very quietly. “It was a religious community.”

  “The Sunshine Homestead,” she says. “Twelve years ago, they were raided and the founder prosecuted. Lemme see here.” She licks a thumb, flicks. “Underage marriage, rape of minors, child abuse, child neglect. Fifteen counts and twelve indictments. Seems your daddy was a very bad man.”

  I’m hit by a lurching sense of shame. My father was known to his followers as “the Prophet” and had over sixty wives at the time of his arrest. His favorite few lived in luxury in a big house, while the rest of us scraped and starved, crammed ten to a mouse-infested bed.

  “They told us it would be a fresh start,” I say miserably. “No one was to know. Not even police.” I make a strange choking sob.

  Brewer lifts a box of Kleenex from the table and proffers it. I draw one out, and she leans back after I take it, her glossy ponytail swinging.

  “Yeah, well.” She taps the page with a neatly cut fingernail. “Some things are always kept on record. Even if they’re no longer on your official file.”

  “You ran away, is that right?” asks Malone.

  I nod, feeling my face redden with the shame of it all. I’ve been hiding out as normal for so long that I almost convinced myself my past didn’t matter. But of course it would come chasing after me. Isn’t that what my father told me all along?

  God will find you out. There’s no running from family.

  “The police report says you were found, aged fifteen, wandering Salt Lake City late at night with injuries to your face. Told them you were running from an arranged marriage?”

  There’s a long pause. I realize I’ve been shredding the tissue they gave me and ball the ragged pieces into my fist.

  No hiding it now, I guess. Might as well tell them what they already know.

  “My father had promised me to one of the leaders,” I say, taking a breath. “This”—I wince at the memory—“disgusting old man with bad breath. All the girls were terrified we’d end up as his wife.”

  Brewer nods, listening.

  “I said I didn’t care to marry him. That wasn’t very common at the Homestead.”

  Brewer returns my smile.

  “So…” I begin shredding the tissue again, looking down. “My uncle drove me out to a barn on the edge of town. He hit me with a belt and punched me. I lost count how many times. Broke my nose,” I say, “split my lip. I knew it wasn’t right. I knew that God was a kind father. It wasn’t right to do that to girls. In the face.”

  Malone’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly. I realize my phrasing is strange to him. I guess where he grew up, it wasn’t right to hit women at all.

  “So you ran away?”

  “I let him drive me home,” I say. “My mother received me as if nothing at all was wrong. Promised my uncle I would behave as God willed. She put me to bed as though I was sick and tucked the covers right up to my chin.”

  “Women stay sweet,” she urged me in a whisper as my brothers and sisters slept on in nearby beds. “It’s part of God’s plan. No more sassiness. You may not understand it all now, but you will.” She kissed my head. “I’ll have your father give you a blessing tomorrow,” she reassured me.

  I remember her as colorless. And never more so than that evening, promising godly intervention from the husband who kept her as a twentieth wife in a damp cellar. Perhaps it was that realization, more than anything, that made me get up quietly, slip on my hand-me-down shoes, and walk all the way to the nearest asphalt road.

  “I went looking for a church,” I say. “Two policemen found me wandering the streets with my face all busted. They took me in.”

  Officer Brewer is watching my face.

  “The police sent you back home,” she says quietly. “Is that right?”

  I nod slowly. “They took me to a hospital, fixed me up. Asked me a lot of questions. Drove me back to my family.”

  Brewer looks pained.

  “That must have been hard. You were very courageous. And you must know that your contact with the police drew attention to the Homestead. You were part of the reason it was eventually raided.”

  I nod. The familiar shame flares in my belly.

  They hate me now.

  “Are we to assume, Mrs. Nelson,” inquires Malone, “that the relatives you fought about with your husband on the night of his death are the same people you lived with at the Homestead?”

  “Yes.” I can barely hear my own voice.

  “You ever meet with your relatives?” asks Brewer. “Bump into ’em at weddings? Special occasions?”

  “Not since I went to college. They didn’t agree with…my lifestyle choices.”

  “They didn’t like your choice of husband?”

  “They didn’t want me educated.”

  “Your folks live out at Waynard’s Creek nowadays?”

  “Some of them. The Homestead was seized after the raid,” I explain.

  “A lotta those folk set up another community, that right? Refused to accept the so-called prophet’s incarceration was lawful?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I say, bristling at her use of language. “These are people with no social security, no education. People with strong beliefs. They can’t just slot back into society.”

  “The thing that strikes me,” says Brewer, “is this puts our earlier conversation in a different light, doesn’t it, Mrs. Nelson? Do you recall telling us how you and Blake fought because he’d been in contact with your relatives? Your husband tell you why that was?”

  Pain sears into my palms. I realize I’m bunching my fists. “Blake wasn’t in the habit of explaining himself to me.”

  “But you had some ideas, right?” Brewer pauses, taps her fingers. “Ever take a glance at your husband’s GPS, Mrs. Nelson? I noticed he had one in his car.”

  I shake my head. “I’m not sure what that is.”

  “It’s an electronic mapping system,” she says, “shows you how to get to where you want to go. Some companies give ’em to employees. Even Utah ones.” She smiles at her own joke. “Your husband had one. Nature of his job, on the road a lot. We took a look at Blake’s journeys. Guess what? He drove out to Waynard’s Creek recently.”

  My stomach lurches.

  “Mrs. Nelson, did your husband go out visiting with your relatives because he was shopping for a fourth wife?”

  Chapter Thirty

  Tina, Sister-Wife

  I walk right out to the parking lot fast. At the very back is our car, sitting in its regular spot. It’s a beat-up Chevy that Blake bought for a discounted discount from some friend out of town.

  God bless Rachel.

  If she hadn’t b
een playing Super-Wife, I’d be stranded out here with these freaks.

  My heart is pumping with what feels like relief. At last, I’m making a decision. I need one little fix is all. I can almost feel it now. That white-cold energy, clearing out my brain, making everything okay. If I can get out of my own head, just for now, I’ll deal with the rest later.

  Just as I near the car, in comes a memory of Blake, crashing, uninvited, like I’m having a physical fight with it. The good old days. That fluttery feeling when he showed up at the rehab meetings to read scripture.

  Even though he was godly, you could tell Blake wasn’t the least bit frightened of the nasty junkie guys who only showed up under court order. He reminded me of a cowboy in those Wild West films, all rugged and fearless and muscled under his plaid shirt. In any case, after a few meetings, I just had this sneaking suspicion he had come back for me. When we broke for the warm soda in red cups, Blake always poured mine for me, clasping my hands as he passed it, like not spilling that root beer was the most important thing in the world to him. Confusingly, he wore a wedding band. But confusing in a good way.

  One day, I looked him right in the eye and said, “What exactly is a guy like you doin’ here anyway? Are you making up for being a bad boy?”

  I was testing him, and just like I thought, there was a glimmer there. He smiled this truly sexy smile and was like, “Maybe I was hoping to meet someone like you.” I swear, it was like someone had passed a bolt of electricity right through me.

  I kinda laughed it off and was. like, “What does your wife think about that?”

  He smiled again, and his red eyebrows did this cute little waggle.

  “Actually, it’s my wives,” he said. “And I think they’d like you a lot.”

  Now I was plain perplexed. I actually thought maybe he was messing with me. Or my brain was rewiring after the withdrawal, ’cause they said that was a thing.

  He stepped a little closer. “Tina. What me and my wives have is a holy thing. We try and love as Jesus would love. And we listen real hard for God to tell us who will join our family next.”