I had a hard time listening to Max. I didn’t care what the sheriff thought. I knew without question that my sister was in grave danger. The entreaty in Lily’s eyes when she begged Mother to tell us the truth was enough for me. “Delilah’s in trouble. I’m certain of it,” I said. “We need to issue an Amber Alert. List her as missing on NCIC. Get the word out to the media and start people looking.”
Max shook his head. “Clara, I need to talk to the sheriff. He’s not going to like—”
“We need to go door to door in the trailer park, find someone who saw something,” I insisted. “Maybe we can find someone with information we can use to get a search warrant, to bring my mother and the rest of the family in for questioning.”
Max stared straight ahead, the muscles on the right side of his jaw working. I needed Max. This wasn’t Dallas, not even Texas. In Alber, in Utah, I had no authority to force anyone to do anything. He had to take the lead. “We’re going to do all that, right?”
Max raised an eyebrow. “You know as well as I do that the Amber Alert system won’t take any action without solid proof a child has been abducted and is in danger. Clara, you’re a cop. You know they don’t accept unsubstantiated reports. They want facts. The whole system is set up to block questionable reports.”
“I know, but—”
“No buts,” Max said, his patience fraying. “The system won’t take a vague report like this one, and you know it. We haven’t got a missing person report, no information on how or where Delilah was abducted. Not even when. All of that’s mandatory.”
I sat back and stared out the window. Max was right. The Amber Alert system was set up to only take concrete cases, not suspicions. It required information on how, where, and when abductions occurred. We didn’t even have solid evidence of a crime. “Okay, but we can list Delilah as a missing person on NCIC,” I said. Those guidelines were looser. It would only go out to law enforcement, but it was a place to start. “That’s possible.”
“How much interest are you going to get without even a photo of her or a description of how she disappeared?” he questioned.
“Max, you brought me here because your gut told you something is wrong. I agree. You’re right. And we have to do something,” I said.
“Clara, we can’t—”
“Any chance you know a friendly judge who might be willing to give us a search warrant? If we could get into the trailer, maybe talk to Lily…”
Max scoffed. “Is that the way you do it in Dallas? Judges sign warrants without probable cause? We don’t have enough to justify a warrant.”
“We have the note. We have Lily worried about Delilah. We need to do something. Delilah could be…” I saw the boy from Dallas again, his face in the photo his mother gave me, and I pictured his mutilated body. That couldn’t happen to Delilah. I couldn’t let it.
“I know. I’m worried about her, too.” As resistant as Max sounded, he didn’t disagree with anything I’d said. “Give me a couple of hours. I’ll find the sheriff and talk to him. I’ll do my best to get him on board.”
Two hours. That could be forever with Delilah in trouble.
“Max, I—”
“I can’t go off half-cocked on this, Clara,” Max snapped. “I went out on a limb to bring you here. Don’t make me regret it.”
The sun setting after a long day, the car filled with an uncomfortable silence, while outside Alber passed by. We reached the highway, and I thought about the photos of the woman and little girl in Max’s office. “You must have a family to get home to,” I said.
Max focused on the road, and his voice changed, growing suddenly weary. “My wife, Miriam, passed away a couple of years ago. Car accident.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I replied.
“No way you could have.”
“You have children?” I asked.
“I have a daughter. Brooke is eight. My sister Alice watches over her.”
I noticed Max’s jaw tighten, and I had the sense that he wanted to say more but held back. We were childhood friends, and once there’d been the promise we might be much more, but time had made us strangers.
I thought of Max’s daughter. I thought again of Delilah. “Max, if it were Brooke missing, you would…”
“Move heaven and earth,” he admitted. “But this decision isn’t mine. I need the sheriff to agree. I’ll work hard to get that done. I promise.”
I sensed he meant it. “Okay. I’ll wait.”
“Thank you,” he said.
Still, I couldn’t just sit back with Delilah in danger. “While you track down the sheriff, I’ll go through the case file. Maybe there’s something in there you missed. You must have looked at similar cases in the area, abductions, sexual assaults of minors. I can get a handle on—”
Max didn’t wait for me to finish. “I wish there was a file to consider. There’s nothing in there but the note. That’s all we have.”
“Why didn’t you run reports?”
“I tried, but there aren’t any. No reports of sexual assaults showed up in the Alber area in the past five years.” Max sounded defensive. “Clara, you of all people know how private the town has always been, how little ever gets reported to anyone in authority.”
Everything Max said was true. From an early age, we were taught that our religious leaders handled what happened in the town. They held all the power, not secular institutions. I thought of what Mother had said, spitting out the words like an indictment: “We take care of our own.”
I turned to Max. “Of course. I should have realized we would have that complication. So there’s nothing there? Nothing to look at?”
“No. No reports. Nothing about any missing girls or sex crime convictions, even accusations against any of the locals. Nothing I could find.”
As we approached his office, I realized that Max looked drained. I would have felt sorry for him, if I wasn’t so worried about Delilah. “Clara, go to the shelter and I’ll call you as soon as I talk to the sheriff, okay?”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
“Remember what I said about being careful. You shouldn’t drive around Alber alone at night. Get in the car and drive directly to Hannah’s. Wait there for me to call.”
“Max, that’s silly. No one would bother me.”
Max frowned. “As I said, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed around here, and you’re not an insider anymore. Once you get your car, head over to Hannah’s. Stay there. I’ll call as soon as I’m able to talk with the sheriff.”
Everything Max said made sense, but I couldn’t stomach the idea that we would do nothing. “I hate to let this go until then,” I said. “What if—”
“Clara, I explained. I need to talk to the sheriff,” he said, his voice worn as thin as his patience. “This is my job. I need to follow protocol.”
“I know,” I said. “But—”
“As soon as I know anything, you’ll be my first call.”
I’d never been inside the gates of the Barstow compound, never set foot in the sprawling three-story mansion. When the front entry opened into an expansive hallway and Hannah Jessop, the woman who’d once saved me, waited arms outstretched, I fell into them, and for the first time that day, I felt as if I’d come home.
“Welcome, Clara,” she whispered.
When I had to leave everything and everyone I loved behind, Hannah showed me a way.
I hugged her, not wanting to let go.
“What’s it like being back here?” she asked.
“It feels… I feel foreign. I thought I’d come to terms with this place. I thought I’d worked it all through. But now, I don’t know that I have.”
Hannah released me, but wrapped an arm around my waist. “You’re asking too much of yourself. You can’t figure all this out. There’s enough here to wrestle with for a lifetime.”
I pulled back to look at her.
Hannah was in her late forties, thirteen years older than me, a slender woman with faded denim-blue eye
s feathered with a pale brown. Wearing jeans and a pale pink T-shirt, she was sockless in moccasins, letting her ankles show, a provocative choice in these parts.
Hair is a big deal in fundamentalist Mormon teachings. My mother and I, all the women and girls I knew, grew our hair to our waists or longer. We tied it into poufy buns, looped it into braids, and shaped it in pompadour-type crowns around our faces. This wasn’t a style choice but a mandate. Our leaders called a woman’s hair her crowning glory and taught that we must keep it long in preparation for the hereafter. In heaven, we were told, we would use our hair to wash Christ’s feet.
Hannah visited my home often when I was a child, our fathers close friends. As a teenager, she wore long, rope-like dark blond braids. At sixteen, the prophet married her off to a church elder with a harem of wives. For a while, I didn’t see Hannah. Then one day I walked to school with Mother Constance and my brothers and sisters. Hannah marched past in her prairie dress leading a flock of children. She’d chopped her hair off just below her earlobes. I waved to her. Mother Constance pulled my hand down and hustled us away.
From that point on, Hannah became an outcast in Alber, a troublemaker who refused to comply with the teachings. Since the upheaval in town, in what I assumed was an even bolder act of defiance, Hannah had cropped her light hair close to her head.
“This shelter, how wonderful,” I said. “When you told me a decade ago that one day you would have a place like this for women and children in need, I didn’t believe you. And here you are, and it’s in the Barstow mansion. You’re a real stalwart of the community.”
“Ironic, isn’t it? I can’t say that I’m totally accepted, but I think they’ve come to tolerate me,” she chuckled and whispered as if we shared a secret. “Who would have thought that I’d ever live in the biggest house in town?”
All around us children played, running room to room. A group of women sat in a circle near the main room’s fireplace, sewing and talking. I heard high-pitched laughs, the sounds of happiness. Upstairs, on the second floor, a baby cried.
A woman slipped past us, chasing a tow-headed boy. “Zachary!” she shouted. “When I catch you…”
The house smelled of simmering soup, and the dining room chandelier cast a soft glow.
We walked toward the kitchen, teeming with Hannah’s residents, their ages spanning from infancy to elderly, all in clean but often tattered clothes, and I lowered my voice. “Everything here is so different, I can’t process it all. But Hannah, did Max talk to you about Delilah?”
“He did,” she said.
“Do you think she’s missing?”
Hannah took a deep breath, then hushed her voice to suggest, “Let’s go to the restaurant in town and have dinner. It’s never busy on Sunday evenings. We can talk there. I don’t want to discuss this where anyone can hear.”
Eight
Delilah grew weary. Her head throbbed, and she had a constant ball of fear in her chest. Her body ached. She rested her back against the wall for support, but that pinned her arms and hands behind her, hurting her shoulders. The filthy blindfold made her eyes itch.
When she drifted off, she dreamed she heard her mother call her. When she finally slumped to the side and slid down, she jerked awake with a start.
Trying to calm her fears, Delilah imagined her home, her family. She wondered what they were doing, if they were looking for her. She knew they’d be worried. She wondered if her brothers and sisters were frightened. The way the man came for Delilah reminded her of the stories their mothers told, the ones about the boogiemen who took bad children away.
Her mother would cry, of that Delilah felt certain. Mother and daughter had always been so close.
The day before the man took her, Delilah had helped Sariah comb through her long hair. “Yours is just like mine,” she’d said, holding a strand of Delilah’s and comparing it to the cascade of ginger curls flowing down her back. So many of the children, especially Lily, looked like their father, with his black hair and dark eyes. It made Delilah feel special that she resembled her mother, her blue eyes the color of the hydrangeas that bloomed in the early summer.
Lily. She particularly missed Lily. Delilah wondered what her sister thought of her disappearance. Delilah worried that Lily would be especially upset. I bet she feels bad that she didn’t believe me about someone watching me. But then, Delilah’s mother hadn’t believed her either.
The door creaked opened. The man and woman came with food, the same slushy mixture of milk and grain. She tried to make conversation, to get one of them to say something. She thought that if they talked, she might be able to convince them to release her. “I really want to go home,” she said. “When are you going to let me go home?”
Neither the man nor the woman answered. After the last spoonful, they left.
The hours dragged. Sometimes Delilah thought she heard muffled voices somewhere in the house. When she did, she listened hard, hoping to make out what they were saying, but the voices were too soft to understand and gradually fell silent.
The room cooled. Evening came. Another day had passed. If no one had arrived to rescue her, tomorrow would be her fourth day.
Delilah again tried to sleep. Just as she thought she might drift off, the lock clicked in the door. Someone pushed it open and walked in. From the heavy steps, like boots pounding against the floor, she knew the man had returned.
Frightened, she sat up and pressed her back to the wall. She waited for something, only she didn’t know what.
The quiet grated on her. She felt his eyes on her. Her breath grew shallow, and her pulse fluttered. All the while, he said nothing. The waiting made Delilah’s nerves stiffen. “Why don’t you let me go home?” she asked, her eyes behind the blindfold again spilling over with tears. “My mom’s probably crying. My whole family is sad.” She paused, but he didn’t answer. “Sir, I want to go home now,” she said as nicely as she could. “I don’t think you should keep me here like this.”
A heavy stillness filled the room. She heard the man stand, a chair squeaking against the rough wood floor. His boots made a shuffling sound toward the door.
Delilah’s panic built. She didn’t want him there, but she didn’t want him to leave either. She needed to persuade him to let her go. Delilah struggled, uncertain what to say, how to convince him to release her. She thought of her father. If he’d been alive, the man wouldn’t have done this, of that she felt certain. What did the man want? “My father owned the sawmill.” Her tears soaked her eyelashes and puddled thick in her throat. “My brother Aaron runs it now, and he has some money. He would pay you to let me go.”
She waited. Hopeful.
The man approached the door. She heard the knob twist.
“Please let me go,” she begged. If she could just move her hands and arms, she’d at least be able to brush off the falling tears. “I’m a good girl. My mom… My family, they… I’m a good—”
“No one can help you, little one. No one knows where you are.” His voice reverberated in the room, low, hoarse, and gruff.
“My uncles and my brothers will be mad. They’ll—”
“Do nothing!” the man’s voice boomed. “None of you people do anything but pray. And that won’t bring you home.”
“They will—”
“No!” he said. Then his voice grew quiet. “They will look, but they won’t find you. I hear that your sister Clara has come all the way from Dallas. She’s a big-city cop, and she thinks that she’ll save you. But she won’t.”
“My sister?” Delilah asked. “I don’t have a sister named Clara.”
“You do.” His voice grew louder but he spoke as if only to himself. “She’s come to butt her nose into Alber’s affairs. She’ll be turned away.”
“A police officer? Clara? I don’t—”
“She has no idea what she’s up against,” the man said. “She has no idea who she’s up against.”
“Mister, I…” Delilah couldn’t go on. She didn’t
know what to say. Who was he talking about? What sister? She had many brothers and sisters, but none she knew of named Clara.
Delilah heard the man walk toward her. He stopped. She felt his rough hand under her chin. Her body shivered like it did when she stood outside on a frigid winter night. She smelled his stale breath as he tilted his face toward hers.
“No one has any idea where you are, girl, and they never will. You live here now,” he sneered. Then his voice grew so deep and harsh that her whole body trembled. “Remember this: If you try to escape, I’ll kill you. And then I’ll go to that run-down trailer your family lives in and, one by one, I’ll kill them all.”
Nine
Townsfolk had gathered in the Alber Meeting House for more than a century. The men met regularly in the white clapboard building to discuss town affairs and mete out punishment to anyone who violated our prophets’ rules. For the most part, their gatherings dealt with the pettiest of infractions, as on the day the Binghams’ sheep broke through their fence and trampled a corner of the Smiths’ vineyard. Then there was the uproar when Jim Call’s oldest son, Orson, was spotted drinking a forbidden iced tea.
The building looked the same, but as Danny’s Diner a chalkboard leaned against the outside wall touting the evening special—pot roast with a yogurt dill sauce. I felt as if I’d entered an alternate universe when Hannah suggested, “You need to come for breakfast and try the lattes. I always get mine with almond milk.”
Inside, the place looked like it had been transplanted from a Dallas suburb. Rectangular tables spread across the main room surrounded by trendy black metal chairs. On each tabletop, a clear glass vase held white daisies. At the far end, a cash register sat on a black granite counter. The blackboard menu hung on hooks behind it, and positioned there was a man who greeted Hannah warmly and introduced himself as Danny Bannion, the restaurant’s owner. I ordered the pot roast, and Hannah settled on a hamburger and a salad. We each asked for something else that until recently would have been unheard of in Alber – a glass of red wine.
The Fallen Girls: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 1) Page 6
