by Moriah Jovan
Stopped sleeping.
Exhaustion hit me like a brick and I stayed with Giselle for the two months I was investigated. Sleeping. Helping out in the store. Maisy asked me to rearrange her stock room and take inventory; Coco had me chop about six hundred pounds of nuts and mind her ovens; Giselle made me vacuum the floor and clean the windows and sweep the sidewalk and shelve books. I liked being put to work. I didn’t have to think. The girls worked me hard enough I could drop into bed and get some decent sleep.
I didn’t dare turn on the TV—
—then learned that ignorance is not bliss. My stake president called to inform me that Parley’s murder had made national news, and that the press never failed to mention my association to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Prophet and his apostles were not pleased.
I drove up to Chouteau City on a Tuesday evening in early August, parked in the church parking lot, and walked into the building I hadn’t been in in two months because I’d gone to Giselle’s ward with her.
Summoned.
I never knew anybody who’d been summoned.
I’d always liked my bishop, admired him greatly. He was a pragmatic gentleman, not given to displays of emotion other than cheer. He had a good job and he’d raised a good family. His wife always had intelligent things to say in Gospel Doctrine; his kids were smart and kind to their peers. I wanted a family like that, had gone to BYU to find a wife like his and build a family like his, the one I hadn’t had, though my extended family tried their best. His oldest daughter, Loralee, was going to BYU early on a scholarship. A math scholarship. His twin sons had just earned their Eagles. At fifteen. His youngest son had a bit of a wild streak, but Sister Hooper had a gentle way with him that I had noticed and envied; would that my mother had been like that. I envied the Hooper family, their odd mix of strength and gentility and humility.
Such a good man.
I’d betrayed my bishop, betrayed my goal of somehow acquiring the kind of family he had, so I dreaded and feared his judgment.
Bishop Hooper greeted me with a lame smile and a firm handshake once he’d opened his office door and welcomed me in. I watched him carefully to see what I could read in his body language, but I didn’t always do that very well. I relied too much on my memory, Sebastian said, and I needed to start being more observant and paying attention to how people moved and what they did, not what they said.
He sat in his chair and leaned back.
His smile faded.
He didn’t look at me.
“Brother Hilliard, I—” He sighed. Scratched the side of his nose. Ran his tongue over his teeth. “You’re being investigated for murder.”
No use denying that and my gut clenched. “Yes.”
He did look at me then. “Did you do it?”
I hadn’t expected a point-blank question, but of course, I hadn’t expected to be summoned, either.
I wouldn’t lie, but I wasn’t going to admit to it, particularly since I could tell which way the wind was blowing and I then understood. He had about seven layers of priesthood to account to. He was at the bottom of the food chain. The messenger.
I sat silent, looking at Bishop Hooper trying to keep my face stone still, not give anything away.
It took a moment for him to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to speak.
“All right, then.” He looked down at the paper in front of him. I watched tears fall from his face to the paper and splash there. “What a waste,” he whispered. “Oh, what a shame.”
I wanted to curl up and die right then.
“I’ll resign my membership,” I said, but the words didn’t really come out right. More of a croak than speech.
“No. Salt Lake wants you excommunicated. This has been a PR nightmare and the church needs to distance itself from you. Bishop’s court— I don’t even know why they’re making me do this, but . . . Come back Saturday night at eight.”
I slumped in my chair, sick to my stomach.
“No,” I finally muttered. “Do it without me.”
There was nothing left to be said, so I stood and turned. Put my hand on the doorknob.
But Bishop Hooper shot out of his chair and around his desk, jerked me around by my arm and smothered me in a bear hug. He buried his face in my shoulder and began to sob.
“Thank you,” he wept. “Thank you, Knox.”
He knew.
9. Loralee Hooper – 17 – Chouteau HS trk & fld Mormon HOT prob. virgin
I don’t know how he knew, but he did and I embraced him tight.
“You’re welcome,” I whispered.
You did the right thing.
I think Porter Rockwell would have been very proud of you.
Thank you, Knox.
I walked out of the church, leaving my guilt and my need to confess behind.
JOHN 3:16
April 1999
The call came at three o’clock in the morning.
“Mama...”
Her grip on the telephone receiver tightened and her heart thundered. “What, baby? What's wrong?”
“I’m in a lot of trouble, Mama.”
She took a deep breath and released it over a trembling lip. “Where are you?”
“Chouteau City, Missouri.”
She licked her suddenly dry lips. “Give me an address.”
“I don’t know it. Just call the sheriff when you get here. I gotta go.”
“Rachel, wait—”
But the phone only clicked and when the dial tone took the place of silence, she turned the thing off and threw it against the wall. The plastic held, but the clip that held the battery in fell off and clattered onto the hardwood floor.
Leah Wincott sat up in her bed alone, unable to cry though she knew she should. She wanted to. She took another long, shuddering breath and released it slowly.
She might as well start packing. Sleep usually eluded her and had since the day McLean died three years before.
Leah went to the bathroom first, determined not to think about it, not to deal with it until she had to, not hypothesize about what trouble Rachel was in. She brushed her teeth, made her bed, threw some clothes in a sports bag, found a map. She had no idea where Chouteau City, Missouri was.
No thoughts entered her mind as she drove north in the darkness, listening to sad country songs, crying for no reason.
At three o’clock the next afternoon, she stopped at a Phillips station on the south side of Kansas City for gas and a burrito. She didn’t feel like eating, but she thought she must. Caffeine. She needed caffeine—so she bought a liter of Mountain Dew.
“Afternoon, ma’am. Gorgeous day, ain’t it? Will this be all for you? You had the premium unleaded on six? On the card, okay. It’ll be just a second. If you could sign right there, uh hunh. Whereya headed?”
“Chouteau City,” Leah muttered as she stuffed the receipt in her jeans pocket and the food in the sack the cashier had given her. “How much farther?”
“Tops—coupla hours ’cause you gotta go all the way through town an’ rush hour’s started. Whatcha goin’ there for? It’s a nothin’ place—right in the middle o’ farm country, y’know. Might as well be a hunnerd miles from Kansas City ’stead o’ ten for all the civilization they got up there.”
“Business,” she muttered curtly. Giving the cashier a watery smile, she turned to go, her head down to escape the glances of the other customers.
She bumped into someone and looked up to apologize, but the words froze in her throat as she peered into the face of a very handsome man. Her stomach flipped over when the corner of his mouth turned up at her.
Shocked, ashamed, that she found a total stranger so very attractive, she mumbled, “Excuse me,” and slipped past him but his voice stopped her.
“You headin’ to Chouteau City?”
Leah looked over her shoulder at him. Tall, with an early afternoon blond shadow, he was quite a bit younger than she by at least a decade. His ice blue eyes m
ade a shiver pass through her, but that didn’t lessen the pang of—desire?—she felt. She swallowed a lump of shame.
“Yes,” she finally said. “Why?”
He ignored her ersatz rude tone and answered politely enough, “Chouteau City’s a tough town, ma’am. No place for a lady. Lotsa kooks up there.”
“I have business in Chouteau City,” she answered coolly, her sense of fairness and decency disallowing any kind of blatant setdown.
Leah stared at him until his mouth pursed and his eyebrows rose. Finally, he tipped an imaginary hat to her and said, “Ma’am.” She turned on her boot heel. She heard the beginnings of the cashier’s comments to the man about her behavior. She didn’t hear the man’s reply.
The radio came on when the engine did.
“...teau City today, thirty-one-year-old Joe Walker was charged with first degree murder for the brutal slaying of a gas station attendant during a robbery attempt. Chouteau County prosecutor Knox Hilliard is expected to charge Block’s accomplice, eighteen-year-old Rachel Wincott, with murder one tomorrow morning...”
And the only thing Leah could do was choke back a sob and lay her forehead on the steering wheel, wondering what she had done to deserve such a child and why she still loved her.
* * * * *
“Here’s the deal, Miz Wincott. Your daughter’s as good as committed. Folks around here don’t put up with stuff like that and whether Rachel was helpin’ or not don’t make no difference.”
Leah gulped at the implications of the public defender’s words. His interest did not lie in defending Rachel, though Leah thought that might be sheer laziness on his part.
“But—what’s going to happen to her?”
The man leaned back in his chair, his steepled fingers playing with his chin. Leah didn’t like the way he looked at her and tried to ignore her disgust.
“She’s going to prison, ma’am. Can’t tell for how long.”
“Rachel just turned eighteen last week. Surely she’s—”
“Not a juvenile. It don’t make no difference when her eighteenth birthday was, Miz Wincott, as long as it happened afore she helped rob that store.”
“But she didn’t! She was in the car, waiting for him to come back with groceries.”
“Frankly, ma’am, it ain’t the first gas station that good ol’ boy’s knocked over. An’ it ain’t the first one Rachel’s been seen with him at.” He shrugged. “Sorry. She don’t have a chance. Murder one, murder two at the least.”
Leah’s eyes closed and hate flooded through her. Hatred for McLean for giving her such an ungrateful, wayward daughter; for Rachel for being so self-centered and manipulative; for Joe whats-his-name for taking Rachel away from her; for the man who should have defended Rachel but wouldn’t.
What would Jesus do, Leah? Think, think.
But the question whose answers had guided Leah all her life couldn’t be answered this time—at least not by her. She opened her eyes.
“Tell you what, Miz Wincott,” the defense attorney finally drawled, drawing his finger across his nose as he sniffed. “I’ll take you over to the prosecutor’s and you can see what kind of a deal you can make, okay?”
“That’s your job,” Leah pointed out.
He shrugged. “Well, if you don’t wanna go, ain’t nothin’ gonna get done.”
Leah rose, angrier than she remembered ever being in her entire life. “You’re fired,” she said calmly, looking down at him as he smirked, seeming for all the world like every redneck stereotype come to life.
“Okay. Go find yourself another attorney. Like to see what you can get in this town. And seein’ as how the prosecutor only deals with me, well...” He sat up to shuffle through the papers on his desk as if she were a bothersome insect he had just smashed. “Your daughter’s nothin’ but a two-bit whore anyway.”
Rage exploded in Leah’s heart.
What would Jesus do?
Rebuke him, but she wasn’t as clever as Christ, nor as strong, so she did nothing but turn and walk out.
* * * * *
Leah hugged Rachel tight, because she knew that was what she was supposed to do. It didn’t matter that she didn’t much like her daughter; what mattered was that Leah loved Rachel and would try to help her smooth out the wrinkles in the bed she had made. Leah hoped that one day, when Rachel grew up, she could come to like her, to love her even.
“Oh, honey,” Leah whispered, running her fingers through Rachel’s chemically damaged and bone-dry hair. It was a hideous cut and a hideous color, but she was still Rachel, still the daughter made and birthed in love. “I’ve missed you so much.” And it was true.
“Me, too, Mama. I’m sorry. So very sorry.” The girl’s voice broke.
“I love you, baby. Never forget that.”
“What’s gonna happen to me, Mama?”
“I don’t know, Rachel. This is something I don’t think I can rescue you from.”
“All rise.”
The imperious voice of the bailiff interrupted the reunion between mother and daughter. It was when the two drew apart that Leah saw the prosecutor for the first time, who instead of studying notes or watching the judge come in and settle himself, was watching her.
It was the man from the Phillips station in Grandview, the man whose cynical blue eyes had perused her from top to bottom and had made her body tingle.
She looked away from him and sat when the bailiff instructed the court to do so.
The attorney Leah had been forced to hire—because no one else would take the case—was late and created quite a stir when he came bumbling in, a confused old lush who had difficulty balancing his briefcases. Leah looked at the prosecutor, who met her gaze with a raised eyebrow and a wry grin.
She closed her eyes in despair as the judge reprimanded the man for his tardiness and the arraignment began.
“Mama, I don’t want to spend another night in jail! Can’t you post my bond?” Rachel cried through the Plexiglas that night after having waived the preliminary hearing and been held over for trial.
“Rachel, I don’t have that kind of money. Don’t you understand that your boyfriend could get the death sentence for what he did and that just by being there you helped murder that man?”
“No! I didn’t! I didn’t know he was going to do that. I thought we were just going to get gas and something to eat.”
Leah’s eyes narrowed then. Typical. “You thought he was just going to rob the store.”
“No, Mama!”
“You did, because it’s not the first time it’s happened.”
Rachel’s mouth tightened and she sat back, her arms crossed over her chest.
“You’re not a juvenile anymore, Rachel. Things start counting now.”
Rachel looked away. “I have never robbed anybody.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Leah informed her with alacrity. “You just didn’t mind hanging out with men who made their livings robbing people.”
“Don’t you think I’m being punished enough without getting a lecture too?”
“I certainly hope so. Maybe being charged with first degree murder will teach you something. Rachel, your father and I reared you to be a God-fearing, productive citizen of this country. We took you to church every Sunday, you got saved, you were baptized, you went to revival with us, you dedicated yourself to Jesus. We did what we were supposed to do, but you dropped the ball. Why?”
“I never believed all that stuff!”
“You’re lying,” Leah snapped, heartbroken. Angry. “You allowed yourself to be seduced by the wrong crowd because it was easier than standing up for what you knew was right. Now you’re paying for it. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy.”
“Are you happy, Mama?” Rachel asked, her voice filled with hate and ingratitude. “You go to church and to work and you do your little crafts and don’t go out much. Does that make you happy?”
Leah thought about that a moment, for the picture Rachel painted of her life did indeed s
eem bleak.
“Yes,” she said finally, decisively. “Because I do what’s right and I live in peace.”
“Time’s up,” boomed a large uniformed black woman above Leah. Leah nodded and turned back to her daughter.
“I do love you, Rachel, and I’ll do what I can.”
As Rachel was taken away into the bowels of the jail, Leah stood and glanced at her watch. “Thank you for the extra time,” she murmured to the guard.
“No problem.”
Leah was watching Letterman in her motel room that night when a knock sounded on her door. She threw on her thick robe and yanked the door open.
Oh, my God.
“You shouldn’t have opened the door like that without finding out who it was first.”
She cleared her throat. “I was expecting Mr. Nocek.”
The prosecutor snorted and rolled his eyes at the mention of her attorney. “You would’ve done better with the public defender.”
“He didn’t want to do his job.”
His mouth pursed. “May I come in? I’d like to talk to you about Rachel.”
Leah chewed on her bottom lip in indecision.
“Please,” he purred ominously, the request a command.
Once inside, the door closed behind him, he sat, causing his faded jeans to tighten over the muscles of his legs and his plain white tee shirt to stretch across his chest. Leah sat across from him, but she blinked in an effort to rid herself of unbidden and unwelcome attraction.
“What about Rachel?”
His gaze was speculative. “I’ll let Rachel off on one condition,” he said.
Leah drew back, wary. “What condition?”
“You spend a week in my bed.”
Thoroughly and unabashedly shocked, Leah’s hand went to her mouth and she leapt up from her chair, away from him. She backed herself against the wall, still staring wide-eyed at him.
“Get out!” she choked. “Now.”
He smiled in hard, triumphant amusement as he got to his feet. Shifting his jeans down his legs, he said, “I’ll let you think about that for a while, but when you decide that this is your best hope to get your daughter out of prison, you come see me.” He drew a card out of his back pocket and laid it on the table before opening the door. He turned to her before exiting and said in a most conversational tone of voice, “How did you get Nocek to take your case?”