by Rose Beecham
“What do you mean, they’re brought back?”
“It is forbidden to speak of this.” Summer picked up one of the shovels propped against the side of the small barn and unfastened the latch. “Bring the wheelbarrow, Addy.”
The pungent odor of chicken manure made her gag as they stepped into the barn. Summer trampled a path through deep hay on the floor and began shoveling litter from beneath the perches. She moved awkwardly. Tasks like this made her back ache.
Adeline took the shovel from her. “I’ll do that. You shouldn’t be doing heavy work.”
“I must keep strong so I can have a healthy baby.” She massaged her lower back. Sister Naoma wanted her to pray for a Downs, like Fawn Dew’s son, and Summer felt guilty that she hadn’t. But one of the other sister-wives had given birth to a dwarf not long ago. Surely Naoma could be content with that.
Adeline continued to talk nonsense as she dumped shovel-loads into the wheelbarrow, finally declaring, “Aunt Chastity says women shouldn’t have babies until they are in their twenties.”
“Mrs. Young is apostate,” Summer stated the obvious. “You should not heed anything she says. She is influenced by the devil.”
Adeline leaned on her shovel and stared incredulously at Summer. “Boy, are you ever brainwashed.”
“No. It is you who has been corrupted,” Summer cried. “You must pass through the refiner’s fire so you are worthy of the celestial kingdom. Please, Addy. Humble yourself. Remember, it is the husband who introduces a woman to Christ. You have to marry or you will not find salvation. This is the path God has chosen for you and—”
“That’s such crap!” Adeline tossed her shovel aside. “I seriously doubt that God thinks any of this is a good idea. I’m leaving this place before old man Epperson gets back here, and you’re not stopping me.”
Summer had barely formed a reply, when a voice boomed from the doorway.
“But I am.” Sister Naoma advanced into the barn carrying the thick belt-strap she kept handy for discipline.
“Just try it, you fat cow.” Adeline quickly stooped and reached for the shovel.
Terrified, Summer did what she knew she had to do. She stamped down hard on her sister’s hand, making her drop the tool. Naoma grabbed Adeline by her hair and dragged her a few feet.
“Leave us, Summer,” the head wife said.
For a moment Summer considered falling on her knees, begging for mercy for her sister, but she knew the look on Naoma’s face. All that would happen if she made such a plea was that she would be beaten also, and she was too frightened for her baby to take that risk.
She lowered her head and said, “Yes, Sister Naoma. Thank you.”
As she hurried away from the barn, she could hear Adeline’s screams. Her sister was a fighter but she was no match for the head wife. Naoma easily weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and she knew exactly how to inflict punishment with her boots and her belt. Summer had only had to suffer one of those beatings and she had kept herself sweet ever since. Only a foolish wife defied Naoma. It was best Adeline learned that now.
*
Jude poured herself a glass of Glenmorangie and added a splash of water. The setting sun flooded her living room with ruby light, making her blown-glass bowls and vases pulsate color as if lit from within. She sank back into her favorite burgundy leather chair at the window and contemplated the fierce beauty of her environment. The jagged violet of the Uncompahgre Plateau stretched along the horizon beneath an artist’s sky awash with crimson, pink, and flaming orange. She never got used to this view. It changed every day, and each season revealed it differently.
Dragging her gaze away, she opened the file on her knee and reflected on the contents of Darlene Huntsberger’s stomach. The M.E.’s report listed “mucus material without particulate matter”—not exactly a bonanza of useful data. However, the proximal portion of her small intestine had contained shreds of paper and a key. Mercy said these would have been swallowed about six hours before Darlene died. She was supposed to be getting back to Jude if they managed to reconstruct the paper shreds.
Darlene’s death had not come easy. From the autopsy, Jude had been able to reconstruct a scenario for her colleagues at the briefing earlier that day. Darlene had been the subject of repeated physical abuse over a period of two years, presumably at the hands of the individual or individuals who’d abducted her. Multiple, differently aged posterior rib and scapular fractures, broken teeth, and patterned burns were textbook indicators of domestic battery.
Some five or six months prior to her death, she had lost her tongue in a criminal assault almost certainly conducted by the same persons responsible for her long-term battery, and in all likelihood her murder.
The killing itself could be classified as a ritual killing involving sexual sadism. Jude had brought in a criminal psychologist Mercy recommended, Stamer Knutson. His profile of the man they were seeking had even made Pratt sit up. She leafed through the transcript of his presentation, marveling again at the way competent profilers analyzed the psychological fingerprints left by a killer.
Knutson believed that the long-term abuse made it unlikely that the killer was a stranger. Darlene, he stated, was an atypical victim of intimate partner abuse. Find the partner and they would find their killer. Yet there was one problem with that theory. He was convinced that the biter was not the same man who’d been abusing Darlene since her abduction and probably not the killer. There was no evidence of old bites inflicted before the date of her death, and given the depth and intensity of the dentition, there would have been scarring.
Knutson found that the bites were consistent with “a disorganized individual carrying out a frenzied attack on the victim. Whereas elements of control and planning were present in the single, deep throat wound, the spike through the heart, and the method of body disposal. This could indicate partners in the killing.” They were looking for “an older white male who exercises dominance over a younger, more overtly unbalanced companion.” And, Knutson asserted, “The sacrificial aspect to the case indicates that one or both may be extremely religious.”
His profile had been submitted to VICAP, and if the analysts at the FBI’s academy in Quantico found any similarities with other homicides in their databases, Jude would be notified.
She thought about Poppy Dolores, missing her tongue and suffering profound psychological problems. The clothing she’d been wearing when House picked her up was like nothing Jude had ever seen, home sewn and designed to cover the wearer from head to foot. Long sleeves, a large boat collar that seemed more appropriate for a toddler’s outfit than a grown woman’s dress, white knee-high socks…who wore anything like this in twenty-first-century America? Only members of a few religious sects.
Had Poppy Dolores been a victim of Darlene’s kidnapper? Jude wondered how many others like her there were, and where they were now. Was Poppy the only one who had ever escaped?
A familiar, crushing helplessness stifled her breathing and trapped a mouthful of Scotch in her throat. Coughing, Jude dropped the file onto the coffee table and reached for the pitcher of water. No matter what she did, where she went, how far away she got, and how much time passed, she realized she would never escape this despair. Bleakly, she removed her boots, reclined the chair, and forced herself to relax into the deep cushioning.
She knew she couldn’t allow herself to think that way. If ever there was a place where she could make a fresh start, it was this. All she had to do was give herself permission.
*
“Is it nighttime?” Adeline mumbled the question. It hurt to speak. One of the head wife’s blows had cut her bottom lip badly.
“Almost,” Summer whispered. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
“You have to let me out.” Adeline pointed at the bolt that secured the cage she’d been thrown into. It was shielded by a sheet of tin and she couldn’t reach it through the heavy steel mesh.
“I can’t. She’d know it was me. You have no idea
what it’s like.”
“I get beat half to death and now I’m locked in a dog cage. You think I don’t know what it’s like!”
“You should be thankful it’s not worse,” Summer retorted.
“What about him? What did he do to end up in here?” Adeline gestured toward a second cage a few yards away. In it a young boy was hunched in one corner. She’d been trying to talk to him, but he wouldn’t speak.
“He is expelled but he keeps trying to come back. We have to keep him here until the master comes home.”
“Why?”
“He might fraternize.”
“What do you mean?”
“With our daughters. That’s why he was cast out. We are not allowed to speak to him.” Summer kept her back to the other cage, not once turning to see the child it housed. In a panicked voice, she begged, “Please don’t listen to the devil’s voice inside of you, Addy. Fight temptation!”
“There’s no devil’s voice inside me,” Adeline scoffed, amazed that her sister still believed everything she was told.
Summer had always been a goody two-shoes, desperate to please their daddy, like he even remembered their names. She was always the one who read an extra hour of scripture and rushed to tell their parents if any of the other kids were disobedient.
“Hush! Listen to me. If you don’t humble yourself, I don’t know what will happen.” Summer clutched the mesh. She was crying. “They will wait for me to have my baby, then I know I’ll be punished. I don’t want to lose my baby.”
“What are you saying? You think they’ll hurt your baby?”
“They could take him from me and give him to someone else. Unfit mothers are punished.”
“Then come with me,” Adeline urged. “Tonight. Let’s get out of here and never come back.”
“Where would we go?”
“I don’t know. We’d hide.”
A small voice piped up. “They’ll find you. Runaway wives never get out.”
Adeline squinted at the bony boy in the cage a few yards away. “Oh yeah?”
Summer shook her arm. “Don’t speak to him. It’s forbidden.”
“Who says? That cretin you call a prophet? Guess what, Summer—he’s a big phony. They all are.”
The boy rattled his cage door. “If you let me out I can take you to a place.”
“What kind of place?” Adeline asked.
“We can hide there for a few days. It’s up Seeds of Cain mountain. No one knows about it.”
“If it’s such a great place, how come you’re back here living in a dog cage?”
“I came to see my mom. I thought she would help me.”
“Your mother is one of the wives?”
Adeline felt sick knowing that this kid’s own mother had allowed him to be locked up in a cage with nothing but a few crusts of bread and a dog bowl filled with water. If that could happen, anything could happen. Was everyone in this place totally insane? She hadn’t believed some of the things Aunt Chastity said about the prophet and his followers, but she knew better now.
The boy said, “She’s the eighth wife. Heavensent.”
Summer’s expression shifted from fearful to completely frantic at the sound of her name. To Adeline, she babbled, “She’s a poofer and it’s his fault, and if they catch me talking to you I’ll be a poofer too.” She cried some more.
“Shush,” Adeline said. “If you keep bawling like that someone will hear you and you will be a poofer, whatever that is.”
“It’s when someone vanishes. She was here, then she was gone. As in, poof!”
“Dead?” Adeline could hear how squeaky her own voice was.
“I don’t know. Sister Naoma says they sent her to Canada to another husband.”
“My mother’s gone?” The boys’ question was more like a strangled wail.
Even Summer turned around. “Yes,” she hissed. “So there’s no point you keeping on coming back. You’re in mighty big trouble, all for nothing.”
“Please, Summer, let us go,” Adeline begged. “ I’ll take him with me and we’ll never come back, I promise.”
Summer hesitated, rocking back and forth on her heels, one hand clutching the small of her back. In the deep shadows of the barn her face was hard to read, but Adeline could sense she was weakening. She reached for the bolt then wavered and fell back.
“I can’t,” she said. “The devil is speaking through you. I cannot be tempted.”
“No, it’s not the devil, it’s me!” Adeline fell onto her knees. “Please. It’s me. Your sister.”
But something hardened in Summer’s face, and Adeline knew in that moment that her big sister was lost to her.
Chapter Five
When Jude got into work the next morning, Bobby Lee Parker was slouched against his fancy truck in the parking area. He wore black jeans, red shirt, and a black Santa Fe hat. This was angled down like he was sleeping standing up.
She pulled up alongside, wondering what could possibly have prompted this visit. Convicted felons did not usually pay social calls on law enforcement. She glanced past him into his lovingly waxed Silverado. The driver’s door was open and Bobby Lee had company. A small fair-haired figure sat hunched in the passenger seat. Twelve years old, maybe. He was asleep.
Jarred by the sight, Jude had to shake herself. Like all slight, fair-haired twelve-year-old boys, this one made her skip a breath or two. Refocusing, she gathered up her satchel and food supplies, climbed out of the Dakota, and locked the doors, aware all the while of Bobby Lee’s gaze sliding over her.
“Mornin’, ma’am.” He sidled around his truck and tipped his hat with ostentatious gallantry. “Allow me to help you with those.”
“There’s no need.” Jude tried not to move too sharply as she unhooked the station key ring from her belt. All she needed now was to drop the lot, proving herself a girl. “What can I do for you, Mr. Parker?”
“That’s a question I could answer a whole different way in different circumstances.” Bobby Lee grinned like this was a toothpaste commercial.
Jude said, “Get to the point.”
Only slightly crestfallen, he pointed to his passenger. “I knew you’d want to see this kid, Detective Devine.” He said it like Dee-Vine. “Picked him up hitching out of Dove Creek. He’s got some information for you.”
“About?”
Bobby Lee extracted a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. It was one of the Information Wanted posters the MCSO had plastered up everywhere, seeking leads in the Huntsberger case.
With patent satisfaction, Bobby Lee announced, “He had contact with the girl.”
“So did half of Cortez.”
“Yeah, but not recently.” He paused for effect. “The kid saw her a couple of months ago.”
Jude peered at him over her sunglasses.
“It’s the God’s honest truth. Least that’s what he says. Figured you’d want to talk to him.”
“I do.” Jude headed for the station. “Bring him in.”
She unlocked the front door and the internal security door, and dumped her stuff on her desk. Through the window she could see Bobby Lee trying to drag the kid toward the station. After a minute or so, she went back outdoors.
“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Parker?”
“He’s real nervous of the police, ma’am. Minute he saw the sheriff badge on your sign, he made a run for it.”
“A feeling I am sure you can relate to,” Jude said dryly.
“If you’re referring to my past, that’s all over now.” Bobby Lee’s tone suggested he was hurt by the implication.
“Son, what’s your name?” Jude asked the boy.
Silence.
“He goes by Zach.” Bobby Lee shook the kid’s shoulder. “Hey. Wake up, pal. There’s a burger and fries when you’re done telling the detective what you told me.”
Jude could almost see the boy drool. He looked starved, bony arms and ankles protruding from filthy overalls a few sizes too small. The
flies couldn’t get enough of him either. She could hardly wait to have him cooped up indoors exuding the stench of unwashed body and cat piss.
“Zach, nothing bad is going to happen to you,” she said. “And if you’re hungry, I can rustle up some breakfast in the station.”
Huge, limpid blue eyes stared up at her from a gaunt face. “Please don’t make me go back.”
“Back where?”
He lowered his head and mumbled something.
Bobby Lee removed his hat and swished it to disperse the flies. “He’s real afraid of being sent back to his hometown on account of people there who beat on him.”
Jude was cautious about making promises to a runaway. She would have to take this kid to child services once she’d interviewed him. If family back home were looking for him, he would be returned unless there was proof of abuse and neglect. And it would not be up to Colorado Social Services to make that decision. The first thing they would do is hand his case over to Utah.
“While you’re here with me, no one will hurt you,” she said. “Now come on indoors.”
The fight seemed to go out of him then, and he sagged against Bobby Lee, who uttered a startled yelp and recoiled in dismay, propping him at arm’s length. “Shit,” he told Jude, “he’s fucking unconscious.”
They carried him into the station and put him on the bunk bed in the holding cell. He weighed almost nothing. Maybe eighty pounds.
Jude got a glass of water and gently slapped the boy’s cheeks a couple of times. “Drink this,” she said as he came around.
“Oh, man. Disgusting.” Bobby Lee was sniffing his own hands. “That smell…it transferred itself.”
“You can go,” Jude told him. “Thanks for bringing him in.”
“At your service, ma’am.” The Romeo of Cortez produced a slip of paper from his jeans and handed it to her. “That’s my number if you need me for anything else.”
“Appreciate that.” Jude kept her attention on the task of reviving her smelly visitor. “How about you leave the door open on your way out. We could use some fresh air.”