“I think the dresses will fit you, and there are undergarments in the dresser.” Lori switched on a dehumidifier that hummed away, then a small electric heater. She opened another door that led to a cubbyhole bathroom with a shower.
“That’s a hospital bed.” Higher than a regular bed, it had guardrails on the sides. Violet pointed at an IV pole in the corner “Why do you have that in your house?”
“You don’t think you’re the first girl I’ve helped, do you? We’ve delivered other babies.”
Violet hadn’t been sure how to answer. “You have?”
“Of course. I consider it my calling.”
When the sun rose the next morning, the first rays filtered in through the room’s only two windows, high rectangles just above ground level. In the daylight, the room looked even more depressing, dusty and forgotten.
After a shower, Violet slipped on a yellow prairie dress that hung loose on her slight shoulders. Hungry for breakfast, she scurried up the steps and grabbed the knob. It wouldn’t turn. She tried again. It wouldn’t budge. Panic washed through her, anxiety that surged like a flood of adrenaline. “Lori!” she called out, pulling on the handle. No one answered. She pounded and shouted again. Nothing. Inside her womb, Josh kicked hard. “Lori!”
The sound of a lock turning, and the door opened. A man peered at her, a man so big, he filled the doorway. “You must be our new house guest. We were wondering when you’d get up.”
Violet walked into the kitchen and found Lori frying bacon and another woman washing dishes. At the home, Violet had always seen Lori in scrubs, and she’d assumed that Lori and her family were Gentiles. But both women wore long prairie dresses, and Violet realized that the other woman, Rachel, had to be Lori’s sister-wife.
“Good morning,” Lori said. “Take a seat and I’ll get your breakfast.”
“Why was the door locked?”
“We didn’t want you to be disturbed,” the man said, as he stared down at her, hard. “You need to stay downstairs in the mornings until the children leave for school. We don’t want them to see you. It’s safer if you’re our little secret.”
From that first day, something about the man had given Violet a disquieted feeling. Seated at a table next to the window, she’d looked out at cattle in a pasture. “Where is this place?”
Lori’s husband had narrowed his eyes at Violet and said, “It’s the end of the earth. No place anyone ever comes.”
Thirty-Four
I started with the chicken ranch farthest from Alber, closest to the mountains. An elderly man, Mr. Everett Johnston, and his two wives lived there, folks I’d known as a girl. A double-wide on cement blocks, a deck on the front with some old beige folding chairs, the vinyl seats torn and the legs pocked with rust. The coops sat a short walk from the house, run-down wooden structures that looked fragile enough to be leveled by a stiff breeze. The chickens clucked and walked in circles scratching the dirt in search of feed, surrounded by an eight-foot-high cyclone fence to keep out wolves and a screen mesh cover so the hawks couldn’t swoop in and grab them.
Old Mr. Johnston rustled out of the trailer, obviously not happy to see me, since he had a rifle in his hands.
“What’re you doing here?” he demanded. “Didn’t you see the ‘no trespassing’ sign?”
I shot him a broad grin, the kind that I reserved for settling down folks who I worry have a fairly loose hold on reality or a jumpy trigger finger. “I just need to ask a couple of questions. Nothing to worry about.”
“That’s what cops always say, and then, boom!” His hands shook, and I worried more about that rifle pointed in my direction. His face flushed, clearly agitated, he said, “Cops tell you everything’s okay, and then they’re carting you off in handcuffs.”
Maybe Max had been right. I probably should have run background checks on all the folks who lived in these remote ranches before I made the decision to drop in on them unannounced and alone. Mr. Johnston had obviously had some rather unpleasant dealings with police in the past. And with my past, my reputation in town, I wasn’t always greeted warmly when I knocked on doors.
“I’m only here to ask you and the wives to look at a sketch of a young woman. I’d like to know if you recognize her.”
That seemed to give him pause. “That girl on the TV? The pregnant one? The dead one?”
“Yes, that one.” At that, he lowered the rifle but I still didn’t feel completely safe. “I’d appreciate it if you’d put the weapon away.”
He appeared to think it through, unsure what to do, perhaps. A moment’s hesitation and he leaned the rifle across one of the chairs as he shouted, “Wives, come out here and talk to this cop so we can get her on her way.” Instantly, two women, one thin and straight as a post, the other so round I doubted she could bend to tie her shoes, tramped out of the trailer and onto the deck. They followed their husband down the wooden steps.
“Who is that girl?” Mr. Johnston shouted, as they approached me. “You think we know her? That’s why you’re here?”
“We don’t know who she is. But her bones were found up where they’re building the ski resort, so it’s kind of in your neck of the woods.”
“The girl on television? The one they showed the drawing of?” the skinny Mrs. Johnston asked. She had one of those faces so heavily wrinkled that it looked like a dried-up apple core. I nodded, and she said, “We’ve been talking about her all day.”
At that, I took a second look at the trailer, this time noticing a satellite dish on the top. Like when I was a kid, most of the folks in Alber still didn’t watch regular television, but it appeared that Mr. Johnston had loosened up on following the prophet’s edicts to eschew such earthly temptations. Of course, the Johnstons were also breaking rank by talking to me, an apostate. I gathered that Mr. Johnston had become something of a rebel in his old age. I found that rather surprising, and a touch admirable.
“You don’t need to show us that picture. We’ve been seeing it on the news,” Mr. Johnston said. “We don’t know her.”
“Have you heard anything about any girls disappearing? Any talk at all?”
They looked one to the other and shook their heads nearly in unison. “Nah,” the old man declared. “You’re wasting your time with us.”
I circulated from one lonely ranch to another. Most of the folks didn’t have television and hadn’t seen the girl’s face, and all the others greeted me, if not happily, then without brandishing firearms. Some of those mindful of my status in the faith refused to talk to me directly, but when I held up the sketch they looked it over, then shook their heads. All the visits went quickly. Since I was getting no information, I had no reason to tarry.
“Where are you?” I asked Max. I called him as the sun dropped low in the sky. Another half an hour and it would be dark.
“I’ll be at the last house in a few minutes. No luck so far.”
“Same here. After the Second Coming Ranch, I’ll be done,” I said.
Max sighed. “Clara, why are you doing this? You don’t have to. I can drive over there and talk to them. There’s no reason for you to maybe run into—”
“I do need to.” I hadn’t had time, with so much going on, to tell Max about the Benson case. So I hadn’t confided in him about Lynlee and Danny and how their words had touched me. That they’d worked so hard to gain control of their lives made me realize that I’d let others have too much influence on my own. I’d been thinking about it all day, ever since the drive home from St. George. And I’d come to the conclusion that until I confronted my past, I couldn’t truly move on.
Eight months earlier, I’d returned to Alber. I’d faced down the folks in town who shunned me. I’d done what a good cop does and taken on the work. But until I stood up to those who’d tormented me, they had the power to haunt me. I understood Max’s concerns, but I didn’t really have a choice.
“I wish you wouldn’t go to the Second Coming. I’m sure you have your reasons, but—”
&nbs
p; “Max, this is my call. I’m doing this because I’m a cop and it’s my job. And I need to prove to myself that he doesn’t control me any longer.”
We were both silent. “If there’s a problem, anything goes wrong…” Max said.
“It won’t.”
My pulse quickened the closer I drove to the Second Coming. I’d worried about how to get through the electronic gate, but it yawned open when I drove up. The sun ever lower in the sky, I considered for a moment that I should have made the ranch my first stop, not my last, but that couldn’t be changed. Nothing was to be done. I swung onto the long driveway. Blue cypress, unusual in the mountains, bordered it. The first time I drove onto the property, when I was a seventeen-year-old bride, my husband, who was in his sixties, had patted my hand and bragged about how he’d had the trees shipped from Italy after a trip to Tuscany with four of his wives.
“Someday I’ll take you on trips to exotic places. Would you like that?”
“Yes, husband.” My voice had sounded weak, even to me.
There would never be such trips, or any evidence of love, just disappointment, heartache and pain.
As I drove past, the horses grazed in the fenced pastures, slender Arabians with long faces and intelligent eyes. They had been my godsend when I lived on the ranch, their stable my refuge. I’d spent hours brushing them down, talking to them softly and telling them my troubles. Once, on a night when a bruise had covered my jaw and my face ached, I’d slept on a bench outside one of the stalls.
I parked near the front steps and peered up at the three-story fortress. The family would be getting ready for dinner, the wives collected in the kitchen in the main house, cooking. A few watching the smaller children as they played in the toy room. How grand the house looked from the outside; how dark and foreboding it had always felt inside.
I’d only made it up to the third step when the door creaked open.
“I knew when I heard you were back that you’d return. And here you are on my very own porch.”
Sebastian Barstow’s appearance had changed little from the way I remembered him. Sixty-nine when I fled, he had to be closing in on eighty, but he remained a formidable man. His shoulders wide, his hands thick, he stood determinedly erect, as if daring age to bow him. His white hair had thinned, and he combed it straight back. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt tucked into black trousers and a pair of black shoes with rubber soles. I remembered how those shoes of his sounded as he walked down the hallway toward my bedroom.
I’d told myself that seeing him wouldn’t affect me, couldn’t affect me. Ten years, and I was immune to his influence. He had no power. Yet my heart squeezed into a fist.
I stared at the cane he rested on, a lion’s head at the grip. Despite his strength, his money, he wasn’t immune to age. It was taking its toll. But then my eyes tracked up to his crumpled face. The decades had faded but not erased the angry glint in his blue eyes, the visible disdain he held for me.
“Sebastian, I’m here on official business. I’m canvassing all the houses in the area.” As hard as I fought it, I heard traces of my rising emotions in my voice, and he recognized it as well, his mouth curling up in scorn.
“Is that why you’re here? No other reason?”
“No other reason,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you, your wives, to have you look at a sketch of a teenage girl who was—”
“Clara Jefferies Barstow, you are one of my wives. Sealed by the prophet,” he shouted. “You may have turned your back on Elijah’s People, my brother’s teachings, but you can’t escape them. Remember: I have the ultimate power. It is up to me to decide if you enter the celestial kingdom at the end of your days.”
I shot him a cold glance, one I used in interview rooms. He didn’t react. Staring up at him, I noticed the faint mark on his cheek, the one left by a cut I gave him the night I threw a hand mirror at him as he had stomped toward me in a rage. After it hit him and drew blood, the mirror had fallen to the floor and shattered, sending shards across the floor. That night, Sebastian had grabbed me by the hair and pulled me to him, and he’d made me kneel on the broken glass. I remembered the sharp pains the glass shards sent up my thighs, the rivers of blood on my legs when I finally stood.
I sucked in a healthy dose of oxygen to calm my nerves. “I’m here for one reason, to show you the photo of a teenage girl whose bones were found near where the ski lift is being built. I’d like you and your wives—”
“Again, Clara. You are my wife. We are married in the eyes of God for eternity.” His voice softened, and I remembered this tactic, this other Sebastian, the one that attempted to reason with me, to prove to me that what I knew, saw, felt and suffered, wasn’t real. “Come inside and we will talk.”
“I am not, and I have never been your legal wife,” I said, my voice sandpaper. “You were never my husband.”
The man who’d once had the power to do whatever he wanted to me, the man who still tormented my dreams, glowered down at me. He made no move to call the others, or to walk down the steps toward me. I held the sketch up so he could see it. “This is the girl. She’s approximately five feet two, brown hair, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen years old. Do you know who she is? Have you seen her?”
Instead of examining the drawing, Sebastian focused on me. From behind him, another man emerged, taller, massively built. “Father, is this woman bothering you?”
At the sight of Trench Barstow, my ex-husband’s oldest son, my throat squeezed so tight I could barely breathe. Trench had to be in his mid-fifties, and his dark hair had turned a steel gray. The cruelty in that man’s eyes hadn’t faded.
“Hello, Trench. I was just showing your father this drawing of a teenage girl whose remains were found—”
“You always did bore me,” Sebastian sneered, his voice dripping in contempt as he shook his head. “Come inside, Trench. Let this woman be gone.”
His face devoid of expression, Trench stared down at me as he held the door open until his aging father disappeared inside the grand house, a building I knew every room in, one where I’d lived for seven years, if what I’d endured could be described as life.
The heavy wooden doors slammed behind them, and I stood statue-like for a moment, the sketch in my hand, considering what to do. I took out a pen and printed on the margin:
PLEASE CALL ALBER PD IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THIS TEENAGE GIRL
My knees rubber, I climbed the remaining steps. At the top, I slipped the sketch between the door and the frame, then I inhaled a deep breath, turned and marched away. At the Suburban, I took one last look back toward the house. Trench stood inside at a window, staring out at me.
As calmly and slowly as I could muster, I slid into the driver’s seat, turned on the engine, and began down the driveway. I was nearly out when the electronic gates shuddered and began to close. My pulse kicked up as I pressed harder on the gas pedal. I’d barely turned onto the road when the heavy gates slammed shut behind me.
Thirty-Five
Violet kept her eyes closed as someone walked past her bed. She didn’t know if it was the man or one of his wives, but she didn’t dare open her eyes and risk that it might be him. From the beginning, she’d feared him. Yet he’d done nothing to justify her trepidation, not until the argument. Recalling that evening, she thought again about how that was when she first understood what she’d stumbled into.
By eight most mornings, the children had left for school and Lori and her husband had driven off to work. That meant only Lori’s sister-wife, Rachel, remained at home. A placid-looking woman who rarely smiled, she had the body of a man, heavy-boned and thick, strong shoulders. It served her well as she spent much of each day in the fields, tending to the farm.
To hide from the children, Violet ate most of her meals in her cellar room. The first week passed, and Saturday came, and Lori carried a breakfast down to the cellar. “We’ll keep the door at the top of the stairs locked over the weekend. We can’t have the children s
ee you.”
Violet nodded, but she had a disquieted feeling. Little things had continued to bother her, like the day Lori had arrived home from work carrying a small white paper bag. From it, she’d taken pill bottles and vials of a clear liquid she stacked in the cellar room’s armoire.
“What’s that for?” Violet had asked.
Although she couldn’t have explained why, she felt a wave of fear when Lori said, “Medicine, to help you deliver your baby.”
“Oh.” Violet had said nothing, and later she’d chastised herself for her worries. After all, Lori had done nothing but help her.
Then came the afternoon a car pulled onto the driveway. Lori waved at Violet to hide and then called Rachel over. The two women talked to whoever got out of the car, while Violet watched from the kitchen. She couldn’t see the person well enough to tell if it was a man or a woman.
As soon as the car left, Violet walked back outside.
Lori slogged toward her, appearing upset. “We’re going to have to be careful.”
“Who was that?”
Violet’s nerves bristled when Lori said, “Nurse Gantt reported you missing. They’re trying to find you.”
The rest of that day, Violet felt on edge, but all was calm until late the next evening, when she heard angry voices. She edged quietly up the steps to listen at the door and heard Lori pleading: “The baby isn’t ready. If we take it too early, we’ll lose it. Why would we—”
“That picture is all over the television,” her husband seethed. “We need to get that baby out and get the girl out of the house before it all goes bad.”
The Blessed Bones Page 21
