The Fallen Girls: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 1)

by Kathryn Casey

  We had an open-and-shut case, no doubt about it. But the DA’s office always appreciated not only a wrapped package but one with a well-fluffed bow. I wanted to tie the guy up with a confession on the wall-mounted video camera focused on his face. I also had a rep in the department for being able to draw confessions out of perps. As serious as the cases were, and this one certainly was, I saw it as something of a chess game. I enjoyed the challenge of working angles to convince the bad guys to talk.

  In particular, I wanted no wiggle room for this one. He was going down.

  “Damn it. I told you. I didn’t kill those people,” he said. Not a bad-looking guy—he had a mop of curly blond hair and a beard to match, deep-set smoky brown eyes and a muscular neck that spread into well-developed shoulders. I figured he worked out. He’d have a lot of time to firm up his pecs in a prison cell.

  “You have someone else we should investigate for the killings? You were the only one there. Just you and the four victims in the bar,” I told him. “And we have you on camera, holding up your guns like Rambo.”

  At that, he twisted his mouth far to the side, digesting my words.

  “I don’t remember nothin’ about shootin’ no one. I didn’t do it.”

  “You want to see the video again?” I offered. “Happy to cue it up on my iPad. We can even order in some popcorn.”

  At that, the guy’s eyes turned to suspicious slits. “Videos can be doctored. I see it all the time on the Internet.”

  I let loose a long sigh and leaned across the table toward him. He looked uncertain, but I smiled like he was my new best friend. “I really think you need to get in front of this,” I advised, dropping my voice low to pull him in. “I mean, you killed those folks, and it’s memorialized on a video. You’re not walking out of here.”

  The guy scooted back, putting distance between us. “I didn’t—”

  “Don’t give me that!” I brought my hand down flat with a bang. The table shook. The guy jumped, eyeing me like I was the crazy one.

  “Lady,” he said. “I don’t—”

  “Detective,” I corrected him. “Detective Clara Jefferies.”

  “Detective Jefferies, I…”

  He stopped talking, I figured unsure of what to say. I waited a bit, let him stew, and then I offered, “Let’s figure out your best option.” I sat back in the chair, appearing to relax. “Like I said, my bet is that the booze made you do it.”

  The guy thought about that. “Well, I guess…”

  Almost have him, I thought. Almost there.

  “If you hadn’t been drinking, you wouldn’t have killed those folks, right?”

  At first nothing, but then, just as hope faded, he nodded.

  Got him.

  The prosecutor, judge and jury wouldn’t care that he was drunk. It wasn’t an excuse. But if he thought it might give him any advantage, he might open up.

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  The guy blew out a raspy breath. I smelled sour booze and stale cigarettes. “Well, I—”

  “All I want is the truth.”

  The guy bobbed his head. “Okay, well, I had a fight with my old lady about our kids. She got riled up, and when she’s like that, you can’t argue with her.”

  To keep him talking, I made my face sympathetic.

  “I decided I’d leave and let the bitch cool down. I was at the bar for a couple of hours. No problems. But then the bartender pissed me off, told me I couldn’t have another drink.” The guy’s voice rose, still angry at the bartender’s audacity. “I wasn’t done drinking, you know?”

  “I understand,” I assured him. “You needed another one. The bartender really didn’t have a reason to—”

  “That’s what I told that asswipe!” the guy shouted, grinning at me as if grateful that I understood. “I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t need a damn cab.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I go outside. I’m thinking I’ll go home. But then I remember that the wife was pissed. Probably still is. Probably waiting to holler at me some more. I could picture her there, sitting in a chair, mad as a loon, hoping I’d come home so she could let loose.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I opened the car door.”

  “And?”

  “I remembered the guns were in the trunk.”

  “So you…”

  “I popped the trunk, grabbed the guns, checked to make sure they were loaded, and then I walked back inside the bar…”

  Hours later, I left the interrogation room rubbing the back of my sore neck. The chief and one of the assistant district attorneys waited. They’d been watching on a monitor. “Thanks,” the prosecutor said. A short guy in a pinstripe suit, he had a red silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. Around the cop shop he was known as Dandy. In the courtroom he put on quite a show, and juries loved him. “Great confession. When he said he checked to make sure the guns were loaded? Clear evidence of premeditation. You got everything on tape? Including reading him his rights?”

  “It’s all on the video, including Miranda,” I said. I ran my hand through my hair. A few black strands had worked their way out of the tight bun at my nape. I tucked the stragglers in. “Do you need anything else?”

  “Nah,” Chief Nevil Thompson said. A wiry man with shoulders habitually pulled up to his ears and a long, narrow face, he’d ruled over Dallas PD for my entire nine years with the department. I started as a dispatcher and got my criminal justice degree in night school. I admired the chief. He’d been good to me, promoting me up the chain. Sure I worked hard and gave it my all, but it meant a lot that he noticed. Usually he’d be home on a Saturday, but the media was all over the bar shooting. “Good work, Detective.”

  “Thanks, Chief.” I’d been in the interview room so long my morning Egg McMuffin had worn off. Emphasizing the point, my stomach growled. “Since we’re all set, I’m going to grab a late lunch before I type this up.”

  “Make it dinner,” the chief advised. When I shot him a questioning glance, he explained, “Check the time.”

  I looked at my watch, the brown leather strap cracked and creased. The scratched face distorted the dial, but it looked like 7 p.m. “Guess you’re right.”

  The chief shot me a sympathetic glance. “Clara, go home. We’ve got the video of the confession. Someone else can write the warrant. You can file your full report on Monday.”

  “I’ve got to—”

  “You’ve done enough. Get out of here. Unwind. Make yourself some kind of a life away from this place.”

  I had to admit I was tired, but nothing waited for me at home. Actually, I didn’t think of my studio apartment in those terms. The space was barely furnished, my refrigerator embarrassingly empty. I’d been meaning to go grocery shopping, swear off fast food and take up cooking. Somehow that never happened. “I could put in a few more hours, finish my report and hang around. Saturday nights get busy, and—”

  “We have a full shift on. They’ll do just fine. Go home,” the chief repeated. “That’s an order.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll leave. But first I’m going to type up my report.”

  The chief’s eyebrows bunched together. “I give up. File your report.”

  “Thanks, Chief, I—”

  “But then get the hell out of here and go somewhere. Home. A restaurant. A bar. A movie. Visit friends, if you have any,” he growled.

  “Chief, I—”

  “Clara, tomorrow’s your day off. Take it!”

  My cubicle had a view of Dallas’s glass-and-granite skyline, with the Chase Tower in the distance. As I finished my report on the bar killings, the city lights came on. I stood at the window and peered down at the streets. Folks drove by on their way to a Saturday night out. On the sidewalks, couples walked arm in arm. The city looked peaceful, and I considered how most people just wanted to live their lives with a bit of happiness and a minimum of pain. I thought about the small but dangerous minority who wouldn’t let that ha
ppen, the ones who had no second thoughts about taking what belonged to someone else, even a life.

  My neck was still sore, my lower back felt tight. At thirty-four that shouldn’t happen. For the most part, I was in good shape, and I was too young for aches and pains. I considered the fine wrinkles webbing my eyes. One of my fellow detectives described them as laugh lines, but then noted that he’d never actually seen me crack a smile.

  “Probably stress,” I muttered. I considered the next day, Sunday, and decided I would listen to the chief and try to sleep in. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had an entire day to myself. I grabbed my suit jacket and slipped it on over my white cotton shirt. I unpinned the leather sash with my badge from my belt, stuffed it in my old black bag, the leather scratched and the strap frayed. Maybe I should go shopping and buy a new one, I thought. I entertained the idea for mere seconds before I decided, Nah. This one’s fine.

  Shopping malls and grocery stores made me nervous. I had a hard time with big buildings and crammed aisles. Too many options and I felt paralyzed. Maybe because I’d grown up in a world where I was never allowed to choose anything for myself.

  I’d taken four steps from my chair on my way to the elevator when my desk phone rang. I stopped and looked at it. The phone kept ringing. For once, I considered not answering.

  “Detective Jefferies here,” I said into the receiver a moment later.

  Silence.

  “This is Detective Jefferies, Dallas PD. Who’s calling?”

  On the other end, someone cleared his throat. In a low, deep voice, he said, “Clara, it’s Max.”

  “Max?”

  “Max Anderson. From Alber.”

  “Alber…” It felt like a lifetime ago. It felt like someone else’s life.

  “Clara, it’s me,” the man said. “Max, from home. I need your help.”

  Two

  “Clara. A detective. Working homicides, no less. I’ve seen your name in the newspapers. You’ve handled some big cases.” Max had recounted the condensed version of his own story: how he’d been a cop, worked his way up to major crimes in Salt Lake City, before he hired on as chief deputy at the sheriff’s department in Smith County, Utah, where we grew up. I remembered his soft laugh from when we were kids. “Heck of a coincidence, both of us in law enforcement. Don’t you think?”

  At first, I did. But then I reconsidered.

  “With the way we grew up, maybe we just want to bring a little sanity to the world,” I said, conjuring up an image of him from long ago, a shy, lanky teenager with a thatch of hair the light brown of hay, hazel eyes that nip down in the corners.

  Silent at first, as if mulling over my theory, he said, “Could be.”

  Our shared history aside, this wasn’t a social call, and Max quickly got to the point. “Clara, I need you in Alber for a day or two.”

  The strength of my reaction surprised me. I reared back, and said louder than I’d intended, “No. I can’t.”

  I blamed it on work. I had obligations. Yet I sensed that Max understood the real reason. The prospect of returning to Alber flooded me with dread. I’d left a life behind there, painful memories that haunted me. A decade ago, I promised myself that I’d never return. And the day I left, I knew that I’d never be welcomed back.

  “Let me tell you about the case,” he said. In that morning’s mail, Max’s boss, Sheriff Virgil Holmes, had received an anonymous note that claimed a young girl had disappeared two nights earlier. “I tried to talk to the family. They refused to cooperate. The Alber police chief gave it a shot after I did and he got the same result. We’re making no ground.”

  The day ended without a lead, without any confirmation that the note was genuine. “I need someone the family will talk to, Clara. To find out the truth. That’s you. You’re the only one.”

  “Me? Why would they talk to me?”

  “Clara, because—”

  “I’m not part of that world anymore. I’m an outsider,” I pointed out, my voice high and strained. “Max, I’m sorry. I’d like to help you, but…” I lowered my voice and tried to regain control. “You can’t ask me to go back there. You just can’t.”

  For a moment, he was silent. Then Max said, “Clara, the missing girl is Delilah.”

  In a whirl, my memory played a reel from my past, snippets of little girls in prairie dresses running through the fields. One had red-gold hair and a smile that tugged at my heart. “Delilah?”

  “Yes.”

  I pictured her, little more than a toddler when I’d left Alber, jumping on still-bowed legs when she tried to play hopscotch with the older children, her bulky skirt bunching around her knees when she barreled head-first down the slide. The family Max had gone to see, the one that turned him away, was my own.

  Delilah Jefferies was my half-sister, the oldest daughter of Sariah, my father’s fourth wife.

  “Delilah must be a teenager now.”

  “Almost. She’s twelve,” Max said.

  “You think she’s been taken?”

  “No one has filed a missing person report,” Max admitted. “But yes, I do.”

  I didn’t ask any more questions. “I’m on my way.”

  Three

  Max stared at his cell phone for a moment before he placed it on his desk. He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window. His small corner office overlooked the field behind the courthouse, the mountains in the distance. It was dusk, and the sun’s last rays painted the sky rose gold as it dipped in the west.

  Clara’s coming, he thought.

  He pictured the girl he’d known. Tall, slender, the blackest hair, thick brows like her mother’s that arched up when surprised or annoyed. As a teenager, Clara had worn her feelings on her sleeve, as the old saying went, and he wondered if she was still so easily read. Then he shrugged off the thought. Time had passed. Clara was a different person. She was a detective, a cop, not the girl he knew.

  We all change. Life chews us up and spits us out. Stuff happens in an instant, and nothing’s ever the same.

  He wondered why Clara fled Alber.

  The teenage girl he remembered appeared content in their world. While many struggled under the tight constraints, she’d flourished. Something bad must have happened. Maybe, when we have time to really talk, I’ll ask. But then he shook his head. Too personal. We don’t really know each other anymore. It’s been too long.

  When he told her that he’d moved back to their hometown, Clara had sounded shocked. He wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t anything he could have predicted he’d do. Those like him, shunned and forced out, those like Clara who turned their backs on the faith and fled, rarely returned. If his life hadn’t taken such a painful turn, he would have stayed away as well.

  Back in Alber for a little more than a year, Max wondered every day if he’d made the right decision.

  Sixteen years living in Salt Lake, he’d built a life. He’d owned a brick bungalow just outside downtown with his wife, Miriam. Their daughter, Brooke, went to a good school. He’d turned his back on his past, done everything he could to put Alber behind him. In Salt Lake, his neighbors and friends were mainstream Mormons: members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, which had renounced polygamy in the 1800s. Those he met were good people who easily accepted him as one of their own. No one asked about his six mothers, dozens of brothers and sisters, or his father, who advised the children every morning to “Be right with God! For the End of Days is upon us!”

  Behind a locked door, he kept an arsenal of guns and rifles, enough to supply a small army.

  “Crazy old man,” Max muttered.

  To be fair, Max had to admit it wasn’t just his father’s teachings. When the world ended, the sect’s leaders preached that the good families in Alber would have to fight off hordes of sinners. In the end, only the virtuous members of Elijah’s People would repopulate the earth.

  “The End of Days is upon us, and we need to be judged worthy.” Max pictured his father, one of the church elde
rs, his disheveled stark-white hair and his wrinkled face snarled into a twisted frown. The old man raised an index finger, pointed at the sky and proclaimed, “On the day of reckoning, God will take retribution and condemn the sinners to hell.” When the old man prophesized a date on which the world as they knew it would end, Max, nerves on edge, had waited for the sky to open, to see God descend on a glowing cloud surrounded by the great prophets.

  “We weren’t worthy!” his father had shouted, when the appointed day passed without earthquakes, floods, or hurricanes. “God has found us lacking in faith and fortitude!”

  After each predicted Day of Atonement came and went, his father hibernated in seclusion. When he emerged, wild-eyed and scruffy, he whispered of revelations and announced the date of a new day of reckoning. Again, Max nervously waited for what felt inevitable but never came.

  Despite it all, Max was devoted to his father, and he believed the old man loved him, right up until the day Max became one of the lost boys, the young men forced out of Alber to change the ratio of men to women and free up the town’s girls to be married off as second, third, fourth, even sixteenth wives.

  Looking back, Max realized that he probably should have seen it coming.

  On Max’s seventeenth birthday, a town elder called his father and informed him that Max had to leave Alber. At home that night, the sister-wives all avoided him and Max saw his mother crying, but first thing the following morning, she threw his clothes into a duffel bag. The old man drove Max to St. George, took him to the center of town, handed him two hundred dollars, kissed him on the cheek, and left. Max stood, clutching the money in his hand, while he watched his father drive away. Nowhere to go. No one to help him.

  Years passed. He returned to Alber only once, for his father’s funeral.

  Good riddance, Max thought.

  Would he have returned without the accident? Miriam dead. And Brooke. Dear little Brooke. What happened to them was his fault, he judged, and it ate away at him every waking moment. Guilt stalked him at every turn.