“I need the names of their hair stylists,” a woman had said, running her hand over her highlighted bob. “My husband would love that look. Early cavewoman.”
I never volunteered that I once looked like the women they jeered at, that I’d once been one of them. I wasn’t sure why I did, but I turned to the others and said, “In their own way, I think they’re beautiful.”
I’m sure none of them suspected why I’d said what I did. A decade in Dallas, and I’d never confided in anyone, never admitted where I came from. I told no one about my roots. As a child, I grew up in a crowd. As an adult, I lived a solitary life. From the day I entered the outside world, I fought to remain disconnected. If anyone got close, I pulled back. I feared making friends. What if, in a weak moment, I confessed? Could any outsider understand where I came from?
My comment had hung in the air, making the atmosphere awkward. The others focused hard on me, appearing surprised. “I suppose they are,” one detective eventually said. Before long, we wandered off to our desks.
As often as I scanned the news articles, watched the TV reports, I’d sought for but never found Alber mentioned. Standing across from him, I looked at Max and wondered what he could be talking about. “The feds came here?”
“Alber, too,” Max explained. “Arrests were made. The Barstows have lost much of their control over the town. Families left. Some of the men, fearing arrest, ran off, leaving the women and children to fend for themselves. Others have moved in. Apostates like you are returning. Lost boys like me. Outsiders not living the principle are buying up foreclosed houses cheap.”
The Barstows were Alber’s most powerful family. For generations, no one built a home or married without their permission. The principle, or the Divine Principle as it’s formally known, was the catchphrase for polygamy, the doctrine of plural marriage. For more than a century and a half, only those who believed in the sanctity of the Divine Principle were allowed to live in Alber. In my family, the practice of polygamy went back five generations.
I didn’t know what to think. I’d envisioned Alber as a constant. I changed, the world changed, but in this secluded mountain town inhabited by Elijah’s People, I thought nothing would ever change.
“The families we grew up with are gone?”
“Many are still here, most trying to live the old ways,” Max said. “But everything around them is shifting. Clara, we have a women’s shelter in town. Hannah runs it.”
“Hannah?” I said, and my lips edged up at the corners. “Hannah runs a shelter?”
“In the Barstow mansion, right in the center of town.”
I shook my head, disbelieving.
“I arranged for you to stay with her while you’re here,” Max said. “She’s excited to see you.”
“And my family? How have they fared?”
I thought Max might answer, but instead he said, “I really need to show you. Too much has happened to explain it all.”
That seemed reasonable, but first I wanted more information on the reason I’d come. “What about Delilah? Do you know anything more than when we talked on the phone? Are you certain that she’s missing?”
“That depends how you define certain. Officially, I have no concrete evidence,” Max admitted. “But my belief is that the note’s legit, that Delilah’s in trouble.”
“If you have no evidence, why do you think—”
“Call it gut instinct. Clara, you know how secretive Alber can be, how suspicious of anyone in authority from outside the community. Like I said, among the faithful, a lot hasn’t changed.”
“But surely, if Delilah were missing, my family would reach out for help,” I insisted.
“I’m not sure,” Max said. “You know what it’s like in Alber. It’s not unusual for no one to report a crime. All too often, the first we hear is when they have a dead body.”
I winced at that, and Max apologized. “Sorry to be so blunt, but—”
“No. No. I know you’re right.” For generations, when secular authorities showed up in Alber, doors closed and folks became mum. “I would just hope in this instance… when we’re talking about the welfare of a child, it would be different.”
“Let me get the note.” He grabbed a case folder off his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper protected by a plastic evidence sleeve. “The sheriff got this yesterday morning. After he did, like I told you on the phone, I went to talk to your family. Ardeth refused to open the door.”
“So Mother wouldn’t talk to you, but did you go to the mill and ask for Father?”
At that, Max appeared stunned. “I thought you knew,” he said.
“Knew what?”
Max hesitated, and I considered what he’d so dread telling me. Then I realized what it had to be. “When did it happen?”
“Clara, your father died of cancer a little more than a year ago. I can’t believe no one told you.”
I considered that, and I realized it could have been no other way. “There’s no reason they should have. When I left Alber, I abandoned the family.” I thought of Father, that I would never see him again, that I’d never have the opportunity to explain why I left. But then, I guessed he knew. After all, he wasn’t blameless. He may not have known everything, but he’d been involved in much of it.
“Max, I’m here to do whatever I can for Delilah, but remember that I’m even more of an outsider than you are,” I said. “You know what they’re like to folks who turn their backs on the faith and leave.”
Max stayed silent, perhaps thinking of his own situation. He wore a badge that said he was the law, but when he had a lead on a case, my mother, who he’d known all of his life, refused to talk to him.
“Let’s see that letter,” I said. “We need to figure out what’s happened to Delilah.”
Max handed me a single page of white paper with handwriting across it in a looping script. It looked like something a young girl might have written.
DELILAH JEFFERIES DISAPPEARED THURSDAY NIGHT.
SHE WAS THERE, AND THEN SHE WAS GONE. VANISHED.
I THINK A BAD MAN TOOK HER. PLEASE HELP!!!!
I held it close, and fought to keep my hands from trembling. I kept seeing the corpse of the boy in Dallas, the one who never returned from a bike ride.
Five
Delilah tried to guess how long she’d been there. A scratchy blindfold cinched across her eyes, she saw only a slender thread of light through a gap where it straddled her freckled nose. It had to have been days, but how many? Her tears and sweat soaked the blindfold, the salt making it stiff and coarse. She tried not to cry. If she lay still enough, she thought she might sleep. At times, she did doze off, but then the nightmares came. Always her dreams sent her back to the cornfield, to that moment when she first saw him.
I should have kicked and hit him with my fists. I should have found a way to fight him.
She’d been so stunned, she never fought back. Now she had no recourse. Her hands were pinned behind her. When she twisted her wrists and tried to free them, metal cut into her skin. A chain attached to her handcuffs trailed the length of her body, to where a set of leg irons encircled her ankles. They were so tight that they made her toes tingle.
Delilah felt caged, caught in a steel web. The chain was somehow anchored to the wall behind her, and she could move only a dozen feet or so before it pulled taut.
At times her horror, her panic, built until it threatened to explode. She had no choice other than to scream—high-pitched, wounded animal cries.
In response there was only silence. No one came.
The thin lumpy pad beneath her smelled of urine and worse. Unable to see the room around her, she listened for clues. Old pipes groaned. At times, she heard scratching, like rats scampering across the room or a squirrel foraging in the attic. An old house, she thought. But where? Nowhere the man worried that someone would hear her.
“Help! Please, help me!” she shouted. “Someone come! I need help!”
Off and on, a lock c
licked and she heard a door open. The man entered. Most of the time, he came alone. Delilah felt queasy as she sensed him standing a few feet away, staring at her, silent.
“I want to go home,” she pleaded. “Please, let me go.”
He said nothing.
Other times, he brought someone to feed her. While the man paced the room, a woman with a soft voice whispered, “Open up.”
Delilah felt a straw on her chapped lips. The cool water soothed her dry throat. The gruel the woman fed her was thin and tasteless, but Delilah greedily sucked it down.
In the background, the man encouraged Delilah. “Now, that’s good, isn’t it? Eat up.”
She wanted to refuse the food, but her stomach cramped in emptiness.
“Please, mister. I have to go home. My mom is really worried about me,” she’d told him, doing her best to hide her terror. “My family is looking for me. If I don’t get home quick, my mom will send my brothers. Once the men in town find out, they’ll search for me. They’ll call the police, and they’ll be looking for me, too.”
The man had said nothing but, “Eat.”
Another spoonful of the gooey mush had touched her lips, and she took it. When Delilah finished, the woman had gently wiped her lips with something soft.
The bowl empty, they left.
Once again alone, Delilah rolled on the mattress as far as the chains allowed. She searched with her fingertips, her legs, felt for something, anything that might be of use. When she lay on her side and stretched out as far as she could, her bare feet brushed over a rough wooden floor.
Delilah considered the temperature. Three times she’d felt the room cool, stay cool for a long time, before the heat gradually built. Those must have been nights, she decided. That meant she’d been in the room for three nights.
He took me on Thursday night. This must be Sunday.
How could nearly three days have passed and no one had come to rescue her? “Momma must be so worried about me,” she whispered.
As Delilah had the evening she was taken, she fought to stay calm by singing church hymns and lullabies. “God, watch over me and keep me safe / Keep me sweet and help me to obey,” she began, her voice trembling. “Lord, guide me to salvation.”
Her parents had taught her that if she followed God’s law she’d be rewarded. Delilah questioned what she had done to deserve such punishment. Where am I? How long will he keep me here?
One thought above all others couldn’t be silenced. What will he do to me?
Six
My hands felt clammy even in the heat, as we set out to talk to my family. When Max pulled into Alber, I stared out the windows at the town where I’d been born and spent the first twenty-four years of my life. On the surface, Alber didn’t look markedly different. A wave of emotion flowed through me when we passed the familiar faded sign outside my family’s sawmill, sensations so confusing I couldn’t parse them out.
JEFFERIES LUMBERYARD
OPENS SUNUP
CLOSES SUNDOWN
“With Father gone, who’s in charge?” I asked Max.
“Your brother Aaron,” Max said. “The ones who continue to live the principle keep to the prophets’ teachings. Oldest male inherits.”
“I would have hoped, with the leaders gone, that maybe they wouldn’t be holding on so tightly to the past,” I said.
“In some ways, they’ve closed in tighter.” Max hesitated for a moment, then tried to explain. “Clara, these people saw their way of life attacked, their leaders arrested, put on trial and sent to prison. The lesson they learned is that the prophets were right. Outsiders, all nonbelievers, are enemies to be feared.”
We passed a big box of a house surrounded by a high picket fence. Through the slats, I saw women playing with their children. The day had turned into a sizzling one, but home-sewn dresses covered the women and girls neck to ankle. Long-sleeved shirts and trousers sheathed the boys. I recognized one of the women from my high school science class. We’d once blown up baking soda volcanos together. I raised my hand and waved, and there was a glint of recognition in her expression, but she didn’t acknowledge me. Not even a nod. Instead, she shooed the children inside.
In seconds, the yard yawned empty.
The streets we traveled cut a checkerboard through town, and Max’s car kicked up dust. I remembered how in hard rains the dirt roads flooded and transformed into fast-flowing drainage ditches. Much of Alber was pale brown and gray, matching the mountain ridge towering over it. A thick pine forest covered the lower mountainsides. In town, people had planted maples and oaks. Some, decades old, had grown massive. Branches dangled rope swings, and boughs held crudely built treehouses. Infrequent rains collected in cisterns watered the sparse grass, the corn and alfalfa fields, and the vegetable gardens. Locals reserved precious well water for drinking, cooking, washing clothes and bathing.
After years in Dallas, I appreciated how different Alber truly was from the outside world. The homes sprawled, large by the standards of most middle-class neighborhoods.
My memory unearthed a family dinner. I must have been six. Father at the head of the table, glowing with pride. “Today it’s been revealed to me through the prophet that I am to be given a third wife,” he’d announced. There were only eight of us children at that time, and we looked one to the other, questioning. My mother and Mother Constance rose and ran to our father, circling arms around him and shouting praise to the Lord for such good news. He undoubtedly saw the confusion on our young faces. “The prophet has chosen a new mother for our family, a woman named Naomi.”
Too young at the time to understand, years later I learned the grave importance of that announcement. Elijah’s People held that a man needed at least three wives to cross into heaven’s highest spheres. When Mother Naomi joined us, Father and his wives entered a blessed circle, the elite eligible to enjoy the afterlife’s greatest rewards.
So many wives. So many children.
Years passed. As a child of my father’s first wife, I lived in our six-bedroom house with my parents, Mother Constance, and my many brothers and sisters. Moments of solitude were rare and quiet a luxury. The house rang with the constant chaos of children, crying babies our jarring background music. At night I slept with my three oldest sisters.
When Mother Naomi arrived, our father purchased a used but well-kept double-wide and moved it onto the back property. Six years later, Mother Sariah joined her, and soon the trailer overflowed with their combined children. Most afternoons, our backyard resembled a schoolyard playground, children everywhere.
That was the setting of my last memory of Delilah. While the others played tag and ball, we had a book opened between us. Delilah and I shared a deep love of fanciful stories—tales of clever bunny rabbits, spider villains and silly pigs.
“Clara, when I’m growed, will you read to me?” she asked.
“Sis, you won’t need me. You’ll read yourself.” Her lower lip formed a heart-twisting shelf. “But I’ll always be with you. Sisters are forever friends.”
Two tender young arms encircled my neck, and Delilah rewarded me with a peck on my cheek.
A week later, I abandoned Delilah along with the rest of my family.
Where was she now?
Max drove past what had been the home of Emil Barstow, the president of Elijah’s People, the religion’s greatest living prophet. He’d wielded incredible authority in Alber. Based on his revelations, he gave men wives and property. And he took them away. If the prophet judged a man unfit, not a true practitioner of the faith, he had the power to reassign the man’s entire family, wives and children, to another. The town elders had families that made ours look small.
A red-brick colonial that marked the center of town, Barstow’s mansion had a command spelled in white brick on the side visible from the street: OBEY AND BE REDEEMED.
“What happened to old man Barstow?”
“In prison,” Max said. “Since he’s in his eighties, my guess is he’ll die ther
e.”
That’s when I noticed a sign nailed onto the wall beside the Barstow mansion’s front gate.
HEAVEN’S MERCY SHELTER
A HOME FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN
“It’s hard to believe that Hannah stayed through it all,” I said.
“She did go into hiding for a while,” Max said. “Clara, things got tense for Hannah after she helped you leave. Those in charge weren’t happy.”
“How tense?” I’d always wondered what consequences Hannah had suffered. I knew there were influential forces in Alber who wouldn’t ignore what we had done. There were so many times I’d wanted to contact Hannah, but I worried that would bring her more trouble. Instead, I cut all ties.
“I don’t know. And I don’t know that she’d tell even you. Hannah’s never been one to cower. At the same time, she understands what she has to do to live here, who she can piss off and who she can’t,” Max said, shooting me a sideways glance. “Things have changed in Alber, Clara, but not completely. Too many hold onto the past. Some hope to reclaim it. It’s good to keep that in mind. Hannah has to be careful. We all do.”
Max’s words weighed heavy.
We drove past the old meeting place, where religious ceremonies and weddings took place, and town affairs had been discussed. Now a sign hung over the door that read “Danny’s Diner.”
“The town has a restaurant?” I remarked.
“The food’s not bad,” Max said. “The Lawler house is a bed and breakfast.”
The Fallen Girls: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 1) Page 4
