They had taken her husband away, and his screams echoed through the forest that night. She felt sadness for his pain, but she didn’t even shed a tear over the loss of their relationship. In the Sons of Jehovah women were chattel, used for a man’s pleasure and for procreating. She and Micah never had an emotional attachment.
Her daughter M was a different story. They had a bond, and it tore at her heart to think she might never see M again. But she hoped that was how it would be. The girl would pay a terrible price if they brought her back.
Deep in the woods, Billy Whistler toyed with his new prize. He would rather it had been a girl — in his primitive state, strange feelings stirred when he captured one. The men were just for play, and his twisted face broke into a grotesque grin every time he clawed Deacon Micah’s skin and heard him scream in pain.
He wanted to keep this going for as long as possible, but it always had to end. The elder made him return the bodies because he wanted to bury them, so tomorrow he’d drag Micah’s corpse back to New Asher.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Father Paul hadn’t spoken to his sister, Valerie, in several days. As always, he was worried until she confirmed Em was okay. They talked about other things a moment, and he asked to speak with the girl.
“Hello?” The voice was hesitant, as Father Paul remembered it from the day they met.
“Hi, Em. How are things going?”
“Tell me the password so I’m sure it’s you.” Scared. Shaky. Trusting no one, taking nothing for granted, not even a familiar voice.
“It’s me, Em. The password is chicory. We need to talk for a moment.”
“Oh God. Everything’s all right, isn’t it? Please, Father, tell me everything’s all right.”
“All good. Nothing’s changed. Stay calm. You’re safe.”
Her voice quivered. “If they find me, they’ll kill me for telling you what I did. They’ll kill you too.”
“Is Valerie taking good care of you?”
“Yes, but I can’t go outdoors. If I went out there, someone might recognize me. What if they’re already here, waiting for me —”
He stopped her with a gentle word. “She’s my sister, Em. I told you there’s no one on earth I trust more than Val, and you can trust her too.”
He saw that Em’s state of mind had not improved one iota since he’d taken her to New Orleans two weeks ago. He said he had good news — there was someone who might help her.
The tension was palpable. “Have you told them about me?”
“Of course not. I explained to you that a priest can’t reveal anything. I’m also your friend and I care about you. I’m on your side and you can trust me.”
She was wary. “How are you sure someone can help me if you didn’t tell?”
“Okay, let me explain. You left a voicemail at a TV station in New Orleans.”
“Crap. How did you find that out?”
“Because of the story you told me when we met at the church. A man who works at the TV station told me what was in the voicemail, and I knew it was you. Which brings up a question — how did you make a phone call, and how did you learn about TV? You said there’s nothing modern in New Asher.”
“Elder Johnson has a phone for emergencies; one of his daughters is my friend G. We snuck it out one time and we messed with it. He’d printed some numbers on the back. Nine-one-one. When we pressed those numbers, a woman began talking. I knew right then if something happened to me, I’d ask that woman for help.
“I found out about TV from my brother Jed. Sometimes he goes with the deacons to town to buy supplies. He told me about all the stuff we don’t have. He watched the news on a TV at the Walmart, and there were people helping a man who had been trapped. I was trapped too, ever since I was old enough for them to use me. I memorized the name of the TV place. Its name was Channel Nine in New Orleans. I used Elder Johnson’s phone when he was gone to town, the lady helped me talk to Channel Nine, and I left a message. That’s all I did, but now they found you! Father, I’m scared. Do they know where I am? If you tell anybody — anybody — Elder Johnson will find out!”
Father Paul tried to ease her anxiety. “The person I talked to helps people like the one your brother told you about.” He explained the convoluted way in which Landry Drake had connected the dots. Through a combination of good investigative reporting and luck, he had come to Abbeville, and now he wanted to talk to the person who left the voicemail.
“No, no, no, no, no! I never wanted them to find me! I wanted them to go see what was happening.”
“He’s done that. He’s been here more than once. Your message brought him here, but people threatened him. They told him to get out of town, and that made him want to help more. I think you should meet him. It can’t hurt you; he’s an honest man, and I believe he’ll do whatever you say. I’ll be there too if you wish.”
“Why do I have to meet him? I don’t want to!”
“You’ve been through enough, and that’s why this is so important. This has to stop. It took guts for you to leave a message, and it worked. Someone came to help, but only you can show him what to do.”
“You know what will happen to me if they find out.”
“They won’t, Em. I’ll protect you and so will he. Do you want to live in fear the rest of your life, always hiding and being afraid? When this is over, you’ll be free.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “You believe you can protect me, but you can’t. Whether I talk to the man or not, if they find me, I’m dead. And they will find me. I know they will. So I’ll talk to him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Cate called on Wednesday and asked what his weekend looked like. Catching up on chores he’d neglected while he was out of town, he replied, and when she offered to fly over after work on Friday, he was ecstatic.
“I’ll grab an Uber,” she said. “Let’s have a romantic weekend. I’ll stay until Monday to give us two full days.”
He suggested they meet in the lobby bar of the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street. The dark, cozy venue had live music and great cocktails. It sounded perfect and she asked if they could go to GW Fins for dinner.
“Hard place to get into on a Friday night with two days’ notice,” he responded, but she shot back that she knew a famous television personality who could pull strings just by dropping his name.
He laughed because they’d been there a few times. She was aware Landry knew the maître d’, and reserving a quiet table for two would be easy for him.
“Seven p.m. at the Royal Sonesta,” she said. “Love you and can’t wait to see you.”
On Friday evening he saw her walking through the lobby. As she approached the table, he rose and gave her a hug and kiss. They raised their glasses, settled back, and talked quietly as the band set up. Just then Landry’s phone rang. He’d forgotten to mute it, and he started to turn it off, but he stopped when he saw it was Father Paul Broussard.
The priest called rarely, so he thought it had to be important. He apologized, stepped out, and returned the call. Five minutes later he was back and she sensed his excitement.
“What’s going on?”
“The girl I told you about — the one who left the voicemail — she’s agreed to talk to me. Father Paul set it up. He says I need to jump on this because if she has much time to think about it, she may back out.”
“Do you need to go now?”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow, but I won’t be gone long.”
“Can I come along?”
“I wouldn’t want to spook her, and so your being there might help. Another girl and that kind of thing. Yeah, let’s go together, but if she says you can’t stay —”
She grinned. “I’ll get the hint I’m not wanted. I’m your partner in crime; I wore the handcuffs to prove it. I’d like to meet her and hear her story.”
He called the priest back and got a time and an address. Father Paul added, “It’s my sister’s house. The girl doesn’t dare go outside
for fear the cult will find her.”
“I’d like to bring my friend Cate Adams; she works in a psychiatric practice. Maybe she can ease the girl’s concerns.”
Father Paul agreed but cautioned that Em might not like it.
“Emma? Is that her name?”
“It’s not Emma. It’s just the letter M. It’s sad, but the girls in the cult don’t get names.”
Sad, Cate agreed as Landry muted his phone. Tonight was for them: cocktails, music, and a great seafood meal capped by a night of quality time alone.
A noise woke Landry. He glanced at the clock on his nightstand. Four forty-three a.m. Cate was snoring beside him. He heard the noise again. Awake now, he realized it was his phone; he’d left it on mute. He looked at the screen; it was Father Paul again.
He closed the bedroom door, tiptoed to the living room, and took the call.
Usually calm and reassuring, the priest’s voice was shaky now. Landry felt the apprehension as he spoke two words.
“She’s gone.”
“Where are you?”
“Here in New Orleans at my sister’s place. I drove down last night after I spoke with you. I got here around ten thirty. Em was already asleep; my sister, Valerie, looked in on her, and everything was fine. We talked, and around midnight she went to her room, and I bedded down on the living room couch. A few minutes ago Val woke me up. There was a noise, and she got up to check. Em’s bedroom door was standing wide open, and she had disappeared.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The girl wandered from one street to another, keeping out of the light and ducking around corners if someone approached. She was cold; she didn’t own a coat, and the light dress Val had bought her was no match for the predawn chill. The air was heavy with moisture and she knew rain was coming soon.
She didn’t know where she was or where she would go. She’d left the security of Val’s home and gone into the scariest place imaginable — the outside world. Elder Johnson Lafont would be looking for her by now, and she believed he would find her. The elder had strange powers, or at least he made people think he did. Em was a believer; it wouldn’t be long before Elder Johnson deduced where she was. She was a long way from New Asher and the commune didn’t have cars, but that wouldn’t matter. They would find a way and she would be dead. But only after they made her suffer for her sins.
Why was she here on the street instead of in the safe place Father Paul had brought her? When she’d crept out into the living room and saw him sleeping on the couch, she almost changed her mind. He was her friend. He had protected her and he had done everything he said he would. So far. But instead of turning around, she had slipped out the front door without waking him.
Em had fled because she feared talking to that man from the TV station. She had left the message in hopes someone would come to New Asher and rescue her people. Now Father Paul wanted her to meet a man, look him in the eyes, and let him inside her heart and mind. She couldn’t do that.
In the short time she’d been away from the cult, she had learned that the real world was far different from her own. Everything moved fast — the way people talked and walked and drove cars, the strange computer that let you buy things today and get them tomorrow, and the stories she watched on Val’s TV. It was like a million things swirling in her head at once, and her mind couldn’t process it.
Every time she looked at the TV, she imagined her face there. What if she talked to the reporter and then he put her inside the TV? She knew in this crazy world it could happen, and then they would find her for sure. She was afraid to meet that man, but she didn’t want to disappoint Father Paul. As frightening as it was, she left.
By seven the sun was up and the humidity made the air thick and sticky. It was over eighty degrees and she was thirsty and hot. She had no money, no shoes, no idea where to go, and no way to read the signs, because Em was illiterate, as were all the girls in the cult.
Em wandered around, unwilling to cross the street because she didn’t understand the traffic signals. There was a woman in front of a house, using a garden hose to water flowers. The lady looked friendly, and because she was thirsty, Em took a chance.
“May I have a drink of water?”
The lady stared at her for a moment. “Sure, honey. Let me get you a glass.”
Em shook her head and drank from the hose. It tasted wonderful, and she ran a little on her hair to cool down.
“What’s wrong?” the woman asked. “Are you in trouble? Is someone bothering you?”
That scared her. She shouldn’t have talked to the lady. “No. I’m okay. I need to go now.” She backed away, turned and ran.
An NOPD cruiser was driving by and the lady flagged it down. She described the frail, half-dressed girl who had taken off running down Julia Street. “I can tell she’s scared; she was nervous as a cat. I think someone abused her, and she ran away.”
They located the girl and took her to the station. At first they thought she had mental problems. She didn’t seem to know what police were. She wouldn’t talk for a long time, and when a female sergeant coaxed words from her at last, she told them her name was Em and she was from New Asher. A quick search revealed no town by that name in Louisiana or its surrounding states.
When asked how old she was, she replied, “Old enough to breed,” which confounded them. She couldn’t answer what day or year it was, and she couldn’t read or write. The girl had been staying in a house near where they picked her up, but didn’t know the address. She knew just two names — a priest named Father Paul and his sister, Val, both adults. Val lived somewhere nearby, but the man lived somewhere else.
She went berserk when they said they would post her picture on the evening news. She bit, scratched, kicked and screamed, “No! No, don’t put my picture on the TV! They’ll kill me!”
Finally they were getting somewhere. She was running away from someone, probably the ones she had mentioned: Val and Father Paul.
Despite her protestations, they took her picture. The local stations ran public service ads asking for help to identify a confused girl named Em Savary who claimed to be from New Asher.
Landry saw the photo and called Father Paul. Thirty minutes later he was at the station. A relieved and exhausted Em hugged him tightly.
He explained that he and his sister were protecting her from abusive parents in Vermilion Parish and trying to get help for her. Em asked to go with him, and Father Paul gave them his driver’s license. After his church in Abbeville confirmed everything, the cops handed her over.
Two hours later Junior Conreco got a call from his dispatcher. New Orleans police had called as a courtesy, advising they had released a girl named Em who said she lived in New Asher. The girl left with a priest from Abbeville named Paul Broussard. The cops wanted to make sure the parish sheriff knew about the incident.
Junior had a current link to the Sons of Jehovah for the first time. Father Paul had a girl who was from New Asher, a name too close to the old town to be coincidence. This was alarming news, and it could create serious problems.
He called the chairman of the Conclave and told him everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Junior stopped at the entrance to the gated community and flashed his badge to a security guard.
“Good to see you, Sheriff. I saw your squad car coming, and I hoped there wasn’t any trouble inside. Gotta keep the folks happy, you know!”
Oh yeah, Conreco knew. The rich folks paid a fortune for privacy and security, and their money allowed them deferential treatment from everyone, cops included. His blood pressure always rose when he came here. He told himself to get over it, because things would never change. The rich got richer while the rest stayed the same. Besides, tonight’s meeting might be the most important ever.
He’d made this same trip three times over the past twenty years. It took an hour for him to come from Abbeville. The governor’s trip was longer, but he had a chauffeur.
He drove along a tre
e-lined avenue for over a mile, passing mansions set far back from the road and facing Vermilion Bay. Joel Morin called his place a cottage — his cozy nine-thousand-square-foot lake house on the water that didn’t make Junior as jealous as the man’s boathouse did.
The first time the Conclave met here, Joel had given everyone a tour of the grounds. Across a broad expanse of manicured lawn sat a low-slung ranch house with a monster yacht in a slip next to it. At first he thought someone else lived there, but Joel laughed and said it was a boathouse.
Just a boathouse. It was bigger than the one Junior lived in — maybe fifteen hundred square feet — and nicer. It had two bedrooms, a full bath, outdoor shower, and a fireplace for those cool winter evenings. The boat dock adjoined it, so this wasn’t even technically a boathouse, but Joel used that term because that’s what rich people did.
And what sat in the slip was no boat. It was a Ferretti eighty-seven footer, Joel said as they took a tour. Five bedrooms, furniture nicer than anything Junior ever owned, and a price tag of five mil new. Junior found that out from the internet.
Joel Morin owned a timber company his great-uncle had started. While touring the boat, Junior thought about how many logs it took to buy one of those babies. A dozen more boathouses sat around the lake, each with its own big-ass boat. He burned inside; he wanted what rich people had. Why couldn’t he take his family out on the lake in his five-million-dollar boat? Why? Because he made eighty-seven thousand a year, had a mortgage and bills and kids and everything else Joel Morin didn’t have.
He pulled to the front of the house and parked his squad car alongside David Hebert’s BMW. The governor’s limousine sat idling nearby, and the driver waved to him. Joel’s Bentley sat in a garage across the driveway.
Junior wondered why Joel didn’t have a man park the car and another one open the door, like up at the governor’s mansion. I would, he thought in another of his fat-cat fantasies.
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