Last Writes

by Lowe, Sheila

  “I don’t see the Mustang,” she said as they made a pass by Tabby’s address. “Thank God she’s not here yet.” Lights shone through the undraped front windows of the house. In the Inland Empire, the evening was still warm enough for front doors to be left open. A gray primed sedan with a crumpled hood sat in the driveway on blocks in front of a closed garage.

  “We’ll drive around the block,” Jovanic said. “Check out the neighborhood before we go in.”

  “I wonder what Erin was driving. It was a car from the Ark.”

  Jovanic parked halfway down the block from Tabby’s house. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.” He checked the pancake holster he’d worn inside his pants, concealed by an unbuttoned shirt over his tee. “Stay behind me.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” Claudia couldn’t help feeling relieved that she hadn’t had to do this on her own. They climbed out of the Jaguar and walked along the sidewalk past an old dresser someone had discarded at the end of a driveway; past a freestanding basketball hoop in the street.

  Tabitha Barton’s small rental house was in the middle of the block at the end of a cracked cement driveway. Jovanic double-checked the name on the mailbox out front on the sidewalk, satisfying himself that they were at the right place. He walked up the driveway, his arms slightly away from his body, staying loose. Claudia followed a few steps behind, making a right on the path, then a left that led to the front porch.

  Jovanic mounted the two steps to the front door. Claudia waited below. From where she stood she could see part of the small living room through the screen. The room appeared unoccupied. There was a sofa with slouchy cushions set at right angles to a soot-blackened brick fireplace. A round, low wooden table held a Fisher-Price doll’s house and some children’s books.

  He stood to the side of the door, rapped on the metal screen with his knuckles, and called out, “Tabitha Barton?”

  “Did you hear that?” Claudia said quietly. “I think I heard something.”

  “Shhh.” He put his ear near the screen and listened. Then he knocked again and called out, louder this time. “Tabitha Barton. Police officer.” He stepped off the porch; Claudia backed up behind him.

  She counted to thirty while he waited for a response. When none came he told her to stay where she was and moved quietly to the front window and peeked inside. He eased around the side of the house, then returned a few moments later, shaking his head. Coming close to Claudia he said in her ear, “Shades are down in the back, but all the lights are on. I’d feel better about this if we had backup.”

  He went back up on the porch and pushed open the screen. She hadn’t seen him unholster his weapon, but there was the Beretta in his hand, next to his leg, pointed at the floor. He moved silently inside.

  With a few quick strides across the room Jovanic disappeared down a hallway. Claudia slipped inside and waited by the door. The interior smelled like an ashtray.

  A second later, Jovanic called her to come. The urgency in his voice sent her rushing to the back bedroom.

  A man lay prone on the carpet, gagged with duct tape. He’d been hog-tied, hands and feet bound behind his back, and he was struggling against his bonds. On the other side of a double bed that took up most of the space in the small room, a cot had been set up. A new-looking baby doll had been discarded on the rumpled blanket.

  “No sign of Kylie.” Jovanic holstered his weapon and was kneeling on the floor, peeling away the duct tape that had been used to silence the man. He worked slowly to avoid tearing the skin around his mouth, but the man cried out as the last of it came off.

  Jovanic set the tape carefully aside, piece by piece. Claudia knew he wouldn’t want to contaminate it and ruin any latent prints that might have been left behind. He took a penknife from his pocket and began to cut the cord restraining the man’s arms and feet behind his back. The knots could be evidence, so he would leave them tied.

  She backed out of the room and hurried into the other bedroom, not wanting to accept what Jovanic had said about not finding Kylie.

  As she went, Jovanic’s deep voice carried through the tiny house: “What’s your name, buddy?”

  She could hear the shaky answer: “Powers, my name’s Rod Powers. Cut me loose. Hurry, please, hurry!” Rodney Powers’s voice rose, close to hysteria. “They took my little girl. Oh my God; they took her.”

  Knowing in her heart the futility, Claudia checked the bathroom. Nothing there.

  Jovanic: “Okay, Mr. Powers, if you want me to cut you loose, you’ll need to calm down. I understand that you’re upset, but we’re here to help you.”

  Claudia couldn’t hear the response. Check the kitchen. Nothing.

  Out of rooms to check and no sign of Kylie. Or Erin. Or Kelly. Where are they?

  For a moment she stayed where she was, fists clenched, trying to hold in check the fear that threatened to consume her. Jovanic didn’t need two hysterical people to deal with. When she was feeling more in control of her emotions, she returned to the bedroom.

  Rodney Powers was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head lowered. He was taking deep breaths and seemed to be fighting hyperventilation. His breathing got steadier and he began to rub his wrists, stretching his arms and legs; grimacing as the circulation began to return to his extremities. He looked up as Claudia came into the doorway and she saw blood trickling from a cut on his lip. His left eye was swollen nearly shut, though she could see the recognition dawn on his face.

  “Do you need medical attention, Mr. Powers?” Jovanic asked. He had his badge out so Rodney could see he was legitimate. “Do you want an ambulance?”

  Rodney waved the suggestion away. “No, no, I’m fine. Just get me out of here.”

  “We should call the local sheriff’s office, file a complaint—”

  “I don’t care about that. We have to stop them. We have to—”

  Jovanic broke in. “Look, if you don’t care, we don’t care. No sheriff. Now, you said ‘they.’ Who tied you up?”

  Rodney met Claudia’s eyes and she could see the agitation and the fear. “Please,” he implored. “You’ve got to help me. Brother Stedman is planning to kill my daughter.”

  Chapter 25

  “Kill your daughter?” Claudia stared back at him, hoping she had misheard, knowing that she hadn’t. “You mean at the Jephthah’s Daughters ceremony? But that’s a symbolic . . .”

  “No—yes; you don’t understand.”

  “You’ve got that right! How about explaining it to us.”

  “We have to go.” Rodney struggled to stand, but when he started to put pressure on his leg he collapsed back on the bed, biting off a cry of pain.

  “What did they do to you?” Claudia asked.

  “Foot,” he gasped. He pushed himself up again, started across the room. Fell to his knees at her feet, sobbing gibberish. “Broken. Broken. Kylie. Don’t know what—”

  “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

  “No! The Ark. Gotta get to the Ark. Tabby’s at work. No other way—Please, you’ve got to help me.” He grabbed her hands, almost babbling, his words running together as if he couldn’t get them out fast enough.

  Claudia looked down at the gaunt, desperate face; at the pallor where bruising hadn’t yet had time to bloom. He probably hadn’t eaten in days. She glanced over at Joel, who nodded. She said, “Okay, Rod, pull it together. We’ll take you to the Ark.”

  Jovanic grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. “Let’s go. You can tell us about it on the way.”

  Before they left Tabby’s house, Claudia returned to the kitchen and dug through the drawers until she found a plastic sandwich bag. She loaded it with ice and wrapped it in a dishcloth for Rodney to use as a compress on his face.

  Claudia told Rodney to sit up front and then climbed into the backseat. She pulled up the Ark’s address information on the GPS and summarized their route for Jovanic. Hemet was thirty miles southeast of Tabitha Barton’s house, the Temple of Brighter Light compound a farther t
en miles south.

  Jovanic fired up the Jag and pulled away from the curb. “So, you look like shit, Rod. Who did the tap dance on your face?”

  “The biggest brother at the Ark—Jermaine Johnson.” Rodney switched the makeshift ice pack from his lip to his eye. He seemed calmer now that they were actually in the car and in pursuit of his wife and daughter. “We always call him the gentle giant, but before he joined the temple he was a street thug and—hey, wait! Stop!”

  They had turned the corner and Rodney was pointing at an older-model Toyota parked at the curb in the middle of the block. “That’s the car Erin and I took to the mountains. She must have driven it here and now she’s gone back to the Ark with Jermaine in the car he was driving.”

  “How do you know it’s the one?” Jovanic asked.

  “The license plate: ARK004. We keep several cars at the Ark for members to use when they need them. Jermaine got here first and Erin showed up a little later. ”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment; then Jovanic said, “Seems your wife had things planned out pretty carefully.”

  “She must have called Stedman as soon as Kelly told her where she could find you and Kyle,” Claudia offered. “She was in the bedroom for a few minutes after we got to Kelly’s place. There’s a phone she could have used.”

  “Who’s Kelly?” Rodney sounded confused.

  “Erin’s half-sister. After you left with Kylie, Erin came to Kelly looking for help finding you. And because Erin brought a note that she claimed was from you, Kelly asked me to come over and look at the handwriting. I expect that gave Erin a jolt. But, of course, I hadn’t seen her handwriting or yours, so I had no idea she wasn’t telling us the truth. We went to the Ark to see if we could get any information about where you might be. Then Kelly got suckered into going to a class; they drugged her and, well, it’s kind of a long story.”

  Rodney stared through the windshield for about a minute before he said anything. “Please don’t think badly of my wife; she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Brother Stedman and the elders are—”

  “I know.” Claudia did not want to hear him defend the TBL leaders. “Independent thinking is a dangerous thing, yada-yada-yada. Honestly, Rodney, I can’t comprehend someone believing in a religion where the members are expected to blindly follow what they’re told, even if it means casting aside their close family members. Or worse, in this case, doing something that’s going to harm a child. Are you sure about—”

  Rodney twisted in his seat, turning an agonized gaze toward her, and pointed at his already swollen face. “Do you think Jermaine Johnson would have done this to me if they were just going to send Kylie to Colorado? I forgive him for what he did; I know he didn’t want to hurt me. My brothers and sisters are a peace-loving people. We don’t join in wars, even if it means going to prison for our faith. Jermaine was only doing what he’d been instructed to do. This isn’t the way we handle things.”

  “Apparently it is now.” The man was suffering and Claudia knew she shouldn’t add to his pain, but her anger suddenly flared like a volcanic eruption. “How stupid can you people be?”

  She caught the look Jovanic flicked her in the rearview mirror, but all he said was, “We’re gonna need some backup. Claudia, get Hemet PD on the phone for me.”

  Claudia got the police department’s phone number from Information and punched it in for him, then handed Jovanic the phone as someone came on the line. He identified himself as a detective with LAPD. He told them in cop-speak about the assault on Rodney and the potential danger to Kylie—and requested patrol cars to meet them at the TBL compound.

  Jovanic listened for a couple of minutes. He rang off and tossed the phone back to her. “They’re not coming.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not coming’?”

  “They’ve already got a bad situation. Gang members crashed a party; a rival gang. Multiple gunshot victims. The desk sergeant already deployed everyone he could spare to the scene, which is on the other side of town from where we’re going. It’s a small department and there’s no one available for us until they get this thing wrapped up.”

  “But you told them there could be a child’s life at stake.”

  Jovanic caught Claudia’s outraged eyes in the mirror. “They’ll send someone out as soon as they can, but right now, we’re on our own.”

  In Moreno Valley the 60 Freeway connected the communities east of Riverside. This segment of highway was reduced to only four lanes and was far less traveled than any other route they might have taken. Jovanic punched it, switching to high beams so he could see the dark, twisty road ahead; lowering them when a vehicle traveling west flashed headlights back at them.

  He made another call, this time to Agent Jesse Oziel, an effort that ended as fruitless as the call to Hemet PD. The outgoing voicemail message on Oziel’s direct number indicated that he was unavailable, which Jovanic said probably meant he had already left for the operation in Colorado.

  As they drove, Claudia encouraged Rodney to continue his story.

  “He showed up while I was on the phone with you, Claudia.” He struggled to keep his emotions in check. “Brother Johnson. He’s—”

  “Huge,” she interjected. She had remembered the name from the badge of the man who had met her at the classroom door the first time she’d attempted to get Kelly to leave the Ark.

  “So, this Johnson guy showed up and then your wife,” Jovanic prompted. “What happened?”

  “Erin said she was taking our daughter with her. She was like a different person.” He reached up and pressed his left eye as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying and needed to make it real by touching the injured flesh. “I told her there was no way I’d give up Kylie and she started to argue with me. She had this rebellious attitude, completely unsubmissive. I’ve never seen her behave like that, even in the mountains when the whole issue started. Brother Johnson got between us and tried to persuade me to hand her over. Kylie was terrified. At first she’d been happy to see her mother, but she’s smart; she understood something bad was happening. Erin grabbed her out of my arms and ran. Thank God she took her outside before he started pounding on me. I didn’t stand a chance against him.”

  “The man’s the size of Paul Bunyan’s ox,” Claudia told Jovanic. She couldn’t help feeling glad that they hadn’t run into Johnson at Tabby’s. That would be a confrontation she would not welcome. “Rod, explain what you said before, about Stedman killing Kylie.”

  Rodney sucked in a deep breath and turned to face her. With his left eye almost shut, he had to adjust his seat belt and twist in his seat so he could see her. “Do you know the story of Jephthah’s daughter? Jephthah was a judge in the Bible who promised to sacrifice his daughter if the Lord gave him the victory.”

  “Yes, we’ve heard about the TBL program and the temple in Colorado where the little girls go.”

  He continued, “When a girl child is consecrated and she’s being prepared to enter into Jephthah’s Daughters, we always have a very special ceremony at the Ark, even if she wasn’t born there. Even if her family lives at a satellite facility, they bring her to the Ark for the big event. It’s truly a momentous occasion and it happens only rarely. Even though it’s something many parents aspire to for their daughters, it’s obviously not going to happen every year because it has to be on the third anniversary of her birth.”

  In the darkness, Claudia could see his eyes shining with zeal as he spoke about the program.

  “When a family is preparing for their daughter to go to the temple, the brothers at the Ark get together and build a ceremonial altar. It’s a really wonderful thing for a child to enter into the program. The women dress her up in a special gown and fix her hair with flowers. Then she’s taken to the altar, where she lies while Brother Stedman says prayers over her and symbolically offers her up to the Lord. After the ceremony we have a big party and then she’s taken away to the temple by one of the sisters who lives there, and she’s taught to serve the Lord
for the rest of her life.”

  Claudia thought of her conversation with Agent Oziel, and the raid the FBI was planning on the Colorado temple. She wondered when he would receive the urgent message Jovanic had left on his voicemail. It seemed a good time to ask Rodney a question that had been troubling her. “Are you telling us that the girls at the temple are—well, unharmed? There’s nothing illegal going on there?”

  He was indignant. “Of course they’re not harmed. I would never have considered sending Kylie there if I hadn’t believed it was the most precious thing we could do for her. Why would we want to harm little girls?”

  “Then why did you leave your wife in the mountains and run with Kylie?” Jovanic asked.

  “I took her and ran because something different is going on. James Miller called me while we were there, getting ourselves ready for Kylie’s consecration. James is like a literal brother to me as well as a spiritual one. He risked his eternal life to call me, but he was so troubled that he felt compelled to.” Rodney stopped for breath, as if he needed to consider what he was about to reveal. “James had gone upstairs to hand in a report. When he was outside the office door, James could hear Brother Stedman talking—the door was ajar. He said Brother was praying out loud. He was talking about the end of times—how imminent it is, and . . .”

  “Just how imminent is it, Rod?” Jovanic asked, flicking a glance at his passenger when he broke off what he was saying.

  In a voice that chilled Claudia to her core, Rodney Powers said, “It’s already here.”

  Chapter 26

  “What the hell are we getting ourselves into?” Jovanic muttered as Claudia leaned forward and grabbed Rodney’s shoulder. “What do you mean it’s already here? What else did Stedman say?”

  “James said he was talking about how he had prepared the perfect blood of the new lamb and he was getting ready to offer her up in sacrifice on her third birthday. He spoke about preparing the altar and the”—Rodney faltered over the word—“knife. Sharpening the ceremonial knife. There’s no knife. There’s never been a knife. It was always symbolic—a symbolic sacrifice. Tomorrow is Kylie’s birthday.” He was beginning to sound panicked again. “Erin doesn’t know what Brother is thinking, I know she doesn’t. She would never—”