Blessed be the Wicked

by D. A. Bartley

  Who was the young Mrs. Smith?

  Abbie sat at her kitchen counter sipping her second cup of coffee. It had been late by the time Clarke and she had made it back from Bountiful. Abbie crawled directly into bed, but tossed and turned all night until her alarm went off the next morning. She was hoping the coffee would give her some energy. She hadn’t slept through the night since they’d found the body. She’d worked in homicide in New York, so she was very comfortable with death, even gruesome death. Something about this case, though, was getting to her. Even though the list of possible suspects was long and seemed to be growing, Abbie knew that the person who killed Steve Smith had done so because he needed to atone for his sin. What was the sin? That Abbie couldn’t figure out. She was dealing with a person who had an unwavering faith in the way the world worked—the way God worked—that Abbie had once found comforting herself. This was a person who was certain they knew right from wrong. This was a person who had no doubt.

  Abbie swallowed the last bit of coffee in her mug. She wasn’t shocked by Smith’s apparent infidelity, but she felt disappointed because of it. She hadn’t known the dead man, but she’d seen the wife who’d devoted her life to him and their family. Even if Melinda Smith was not the most endearing of characters, she was a woman who had lived for her husband and children, just as she was supposed to do. Despite all her skepticism, Abbie was fond of the idea of a happy Mormon family. “Family is forever.” If you followed the rules, your family would endure eternally.

  Abbie pictured Smith in his temple clothes. If he was having an affair, he was certainly not honoring those covenants he’d made in the temple.

  Sexual sin was an abomination; that’s what the Church taught. Thoughts of her first “chastity night” drifted into her mind. A disapproving, middle-aged woman had greeted the group of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds from Abbie’s ward. Before saying anything, the woman took two pieces of bubblegum out of her bag. She unwrapped one piece and handed it to a teenage girl seated in the front row at one side of the room. She handed the second piece—still in its original wrapper—to a girl in the second row on the other side of the room. She then asked the girls to pass the gum to the person sitting at the other end of the row. A boy sitting in the first row ended up with the unwrapped piece of gum. In the second row, another boy got the gum still in its original wrapper.

  “Go ahead and chew your gum,” their teacher instructed the two teenage boys. The boy with the unwrapped gum refused. He tossed his gum into a trash can in the corner of the room. The other boy happily unwrapped his piece of gum and popped it into his mouth and chewed.

  What a lesson about virginity.

  Abbie could still feel the heat in her cheeks from discussing heavy petting with stern-looking adults in a church classroom. Remaining morally clean was an important aspect of being an LDS teenager. Abbie, like a lot of her friends, had worn a CTR ring to remind her to “Choose the Right.” The ring was the LDS equivalent of the WWJD rings other Christians wore to remind them to ask “What would Jesus do?” when faced with a moral dilemma.

  Abbie’s phone buzzed, bringing her out of her memories and back into the present, the present where she still didn’t have a lead suspect in Smith’s murder.

  “Do you have a minute to talk?” Clarke asked.

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “Segura just emailed me a picture of Steve Smith and the person he was calling Mrs. Smith—”

  “Really? That’s great!” Abbie interrupted Clarke, but she couldn’t contain her excitement. “Can you start checking the picture against our databases? Maybe also check out pictures of students at Weber State and Utah State? I’m on my way in right now.”

  “Taylor,” Clarke said slowly with sadness in his voice, “we don’t need to do any of that. I know her. Her name is Jessica Grant. She’s in the singles ward with me. She was head cheerleader at Weber High, I think. She just finished up her degree at Weber State.”

  Abbie heard Clarke’s disappointment. Someone he knew was not living up to the LDS code he himself lived by. Abbie didn’t for one instant doubt that Clarke was worthy of his temple recommend. She was certain he started and ended each day kneeling in prayer.

  “You know we need to talk to her as soon as we can,” Abbie said.

  “Yeah, I know. I was thinking about that. She lives at home with her parents. I think it would be best to talk to her someplace other than her family’s living room. I don’t think we want to bring her to the station. That’ll scare her. I was thinking I could call her and ask her to meet us at Nielson’s. We could sit outside.”

  Clarke hadn’t taken this kind of initiative before, but he’d clearly thought this through. He was probably right about how to approach what undoubtedly would be an uncomfortable situation.

  “Sure. I think you’re right. Go ahead and give her a call.” Abbie thought she could hear a little pride in Clarke’s tone as he said good-bye. She probably didn’t tell him he was doing a good job often enough. The fact was, he had been doing a good job, even when doing his job was uncomfortable for him. She made a mental note to try to give him more positive feedback.

  A few hours later, Abbie and Clarke were sitting at a table out in the sunshine at Nielson’s—a place known for its frozen custard and thick made-to-order shakes. Clarke was devouring his German chocolate shake studded with pecans and large flakes of coconut and swirled with thick ribbons of caramel. Abbie had a bottle of water. Jessica Grant was ten minutes late. Then Clarke waved. Abbie turned her head and saw a young woman walking toward them.

  She looked as if she’d walked straight out of central casting for the role of sexy girl next door: five foot six with long, blonde hair messily pulled into a ponytail. She was wearing skinny jeans and a fitted turtleneck. Despite being modestly dressed—technically not an inch of skin was showing—Jessica Grant managed to draw every male gaze in visibility range to the shape beneath her tight jeans and formfitting sweater.

  “Hi, Jessica,” Clarke began. “I’m so sorry we’ve got to talk to you like this, but you probably know Steve Smith has been killed. We need to speak to everyone who knew him well.”

  “Killed? I didn’t know … I thought. Oh, that’s awful.” For a moment Jessica looked distraught. Then she smiled again and her face lit up. “Jim, please call me Jess. I don’t think anyone’s called me Jessica since kindergarten.” She giggled a little nervously.

  Kindergarten wasn’t that long ago, Abbie thought, looking at the girl, who was evidently in her early twenties. Without the eye makeup and lipstick, Jessica could easily have passed for eighteen, maybe even seventeen.

  “Okay, Jess.” Clarke smiled. “I think you know I’m a police officer. This is Abbie Taylor. She’s the detective for the Pleasant View police.” Abbie still hadn’t gotten used to being “the detective.” In New York, she’d been one of a veritable army of investigators. If there was ever something you were unsure of, there were plenty of people to ask for advice. Someone had always seen something before. Here, the truth was, Abbie was “the detective.” With a population of less than ten thousand and a low crime rate, Pleasant View needed only one person to investigate wrongdoing.

  “Jessica,” Abbie said in a voice she hoped sounded both empathetic and authoritative at the same time, “we’ve been told that you knew Steve quite well. Is that true?”

  Jessica looked at the ground. She didn’t say anything, but tears started rolling down her cheeks. She dabbed underneath her eyes with a tissue she’d pulled out of her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag. A gift from Smith? Abbie wondered. Abbie watched the young woman regain her composure. Something about Jessica looked very familiar to Abbie, but she couldn’t place what it was. Why did this girl look so familiar?

  “Yeah. I knew Steve,” Jessica said.

  Abbie caught Clarke’s eye and nodded her head almost imperceptibly. Abbie had told Clarke on the drive over that he should take the lead in this interview if it seemed Jessica was uncomfortable. Clarke understoo
d Abbie’s signal. He scooted a little closer to Jessica on the bench around the table.

  “Jess, I know this is going to be really hard, but I think you can help us find out what happened.” Clarke sounded like he was talking to a frightened child. Maybe he was.

  Jessica looked into his eyes and nodded.

  “Let’s start at the beginning. When did you meet Steve?” Clarke asked.

  “Steve gave a talk at Sacrament Meeting about a year and a half ago. He was such an amazing speaker. I don’t know if you were there that Sunday, Jim, but it was so inspiring. He spoke about how his mission had changed him. How he knew the gospel changed people’s lives. He was so close to our Heavenly Father. It was … it was … just so powerful. I was prompted by the Holy Ghost to go up and thank him for coming. I never do things like that, but I did that Sunday.”

  Jessica’s eyes were starting to tear up again. She pressed a tissue underneath them, careful not to smear her makeup. Clarke waited and then asked, “Did you see him after that?”

  “Yes.” A brief smiled flitted across the girl’s lips. She looked down at the table. “He came to one of our volleyball games. I’m pretty good, and we won. He came up afterwards and congratulated me. He offered to give me a ride home. I was planning to walk, but it was a little cold that night.”

  “And after that?” Clarke asked.

  “At first I thought it was just a coincidence. We kept bumping into each other at different things at church. I know he’s in the bishopric, so I wasn’t surprised to see him at stake conference, but there were other times, too. After a while, it seemed like more than just chance. It seemed like we were meant to see each other.”

  Jessica hesitated. Clarke put his arm around her like a big brother would. “Jess, I know this is hard, but we need to know everything.” In New York, Abbie doubted this scene could ever have happened, but this was a small town in Utah. Clarke wasn’t doing anything more than putting a person at ease, a person who was very close to the case. Not only had she probably been sleeping with the victim, but she was involved with Celestial Times Shares in Costa Rica. If there was a center in the intersecting circles of the Venn diagram of this case, Jessica Grant was definitely right in the middle of it.

  Clarke’s instincts were on the money. Jessica started speaking, and this time the words tumbled out.

  “Steve was so in tune with the spirit, you know? He was in the bishopric and everything. I felt so safe with him. When he asked me to help him with his work in Costa Rica, I knew it was what Heavenly Father wanted me to do. Steve thought I would be wonderful as the public-relations director for Celestial Time Shares. Since the project was just getting off the ground, he didn’t want me to talk about it. He told me that I should just tell my family and friends I was going to Costa Rica as a Church volunteer to help teach English. He bought me a ticket and I left in the beginning of March last year. Steve was already there. He had this beautiful villa on the beach. We spent the entire spring there together. It was magical. He treated me like a queen. It was so hard to come back and pretend none of it happened.”

  “Did you know…” Clarke hesitated briefly before finishing the question. “… that Steve was married?”

  “Of course.” Jessica nodded. “I’ve known Steve my whole life—our families are friends. I knew him and his family. He told me Melinda wanted a divorce. Things hadn’t been good between them for years, but they were staying together until their youngest kids were a little older. They had prayed about it. Steve wanted to make sure he could take good care of his family and his wife, but he felt prompted by Heavenly Father that I was supposed to be his new wife and we were supposed to start a family. It was important to me—to both of us—to get married in the temple. I didn’t care if Steve didn’t get a temple divorce. Melinda didn’t want one. I understand that. It’d be important to me, too, if I were in Melinda’s shoes. I mean, it makes sense to want to stay sealed to the man who’s the father of your children. Being married for eternity and sealed with your family after you pass through the veil, well, that’s the most important thing in the world to me. Steve knew I couldn’t wait forever though; you know, I’m already twenty-two. We needed to get married soon.” Jessica sighed. Her shoulders drooped. Being a twenty-two-year-old unmarried LDS woman in Utah was awfully close to being an old maid. As strange as it sounded to outsiders, that’s the way a lot of young women felt.

  “Were you going to meet Steve in Costa Rica again this year?” Clarke asked.

  “Yeah,” Jessica said. “He said he’d call when everything was ready. He wanted to get Celestial Time Shares up and running this year.”

  “Jess, did you ever see Steve here in Pleasant View?” Clarke asked.

  “Well, we saw each other at stake conference. We bumped into each other once at one of my sister’s barbecues. She entertains a lot and she’s worried I’m not meeting enough eligible LDS men, so she invites me to everything where there are single RMs.”

  Abbie knew all about the desire to marry a Returned Missionary. Having gone on a mission signaled a certain degree of worthiness. When Abbie had married Phillip, her parents had finally had to acknowledge she wasn’t coming back to the Church. Her mom had always been more open to Phillip than her dad had been. She’d actually liked him. Her father had begrudgingly admitted he was a good man, but once they were married, he’d never missed an opportunity to point out that her union with Phillip would end at death. Sooner than anyone had expected, it turned out.

  Jessica continued, “I finally had to tell my family I was getting married in the temple soon, but I couldn’t talk about it yet,” Jessica said. She reached for another tissue from her bag and scooted a little away from him. Instead of looking at Clarke, she looked down at the table.

  “Steve and I tried to remain chaste. When we were in Costa Rica, it was different somehow. It was natural to express our love for each other because we were living in the same house like we will when we’re married in the temple for real.”

  Abbie noticed how Jessica had gone back in time to when there was a possibility that Steve Smith might actually divorce his wife and marry her. A scenario that probably had always been unlikely, but was now impossible.

  “Up here,” Jessica said, “well, his wife was here. Steve and I tried, we really tried, to wait until the divorce was final.” She took a deep breath. “We loved each other. We prayed about it together. Steve and I both heard the still small voice of the Holy Ghost letting us know it was okay for us to be together even before we could get married in the temple, because we were already spiritually married.”

  “Did anyone know about you and Steve?” Clarke asked.

  “Uh … no.” Jessica hesitated. “Steve hadn’t told his wife about me yet. He said it was like when Joseph Smith didn’t tell Emma right away that he’d already been sealed to other wives. Emma wasn’t ready. Melinda wasn’t ready; her heart wasn’t open yet. Steve was going to tell her when she was ready to hear that their union on this earth had come to an end. He thought she would be ready soon. He told me they hadn’t shared a bed, you know, really shared a bed, in years.”

  Abbie sensed Jessica was holding something back. Not about what Steve had told her about Melinda. Abbie assumed that either Steve had lied outright or Jessica had heard only what she wanted to hear. Abbie was picking up on something else in Jessica’s pause before she denied that anyone knew about their relationship. Jessica did not strike Abbie as an emotionally self-sufficient woman. This was a young woman who needed validation. She had girlfriends she relied on to tell her what she should wear and what she shouldn’t eat. Jessica Grant was not a person who would have been able to maintain an affair with a married man for over a year without confiding in someone. Abbie let that point go, though. It was not the time to interrupt. Clarke was doing a wonderful job keeping the conversation flowing.

  “When was the last time you saw Steve?” Clarke asked.

  “I saw him a few weeks ago. I was helping my sister with her kids.
” Jessica went on, “Steve was with his kids, so we couldn’t really talk.”

  “You didn’t see him at all after that?” Clarke asked.

  “I might have, but only a few times. He called me before he left for Costa Rica. He told me he loved me and couldn’t wait for us to be together again. He was super excited to do Heavenly Father’s work. We were both excited about starting our life together. We were going to start our family right away. Steve said I’d be a great mom.”

  Clarke waited a moment before asking one last question. “Jess, have you been through the temple? Not just for baptism for the dead, but have you had your endowments?”

  Jessica shook her head.

  Abbie knew she had a good poker face, and she relied on that skill now. She gave no indication of how impressed she was that Clarke had asked about temple endowments. Faithful Mormons would never divulge specific details of these temple rituals because they believed they were sacred. Without having had her own endowments, Jessica Grant wouldn’t have known how to properly dress Smith’s body in his temple clothes, unless she was the type to research temple rituals. Abbie looked at the former cheerleader in front of her. She didn’t think she was the kind of person who would spend spare time on research of any kind, let alone on Church rituals.

  Well played, Clarke.

  TWENTY-THREE

  After their conversation with Jessica Grant, there was no doubt they had to talk to Melinda Smith again. There was more to Steve Smith than the picture his widow had painted of the ever-loving husband, supportive father, and devout member of the Church.

  “Do you think Melinda knew about Jess?” Clarke asked as they opened the doors of the squad car to drive to the Smith house.

  “I don’t know,” Abbie said.

  “I know people have different sides of their personalities. Like, for me, I have my friends I play basketball with and different friends I like to talk to about books,” Clarke said. “I know you hear stories about people having secret lives, but I thought it was just the sort of thing that happened in movies or maybe if you lived in Hollywood. Not something that would happen here. I’ve known Jess for years. I never ever would’ve guessed. I thought there had to be some other explanation when I saw that picture Segura sent. It makes me feel kind of sick.”