As if he heard my thoughts, Gerard speculated, “Maybe whoever wrote the note didn’t know Delilah had the trip planned. Or the kid played a prank. Not sure, but the bottom line is everything’s fine.”
I looked over at Hannah, who’d gotten out of the car and stood a few feet behind Barstow. She shrugged, as if uncertain.
“I’m having a hard time believing this, Chief,” I said. “The reaction I got from Lily today at the trailer, the note. I wouldn’t be candid if I didn’t say I’m still worried about Delilah.”
“You can stop now. She’s most likely enjoying Salt Lake, seeing the big city,” Gerard said. “You know what it’s like growing up in this Podunk town. You get outside it, and there’s a big world out there.”
“There is,” I said.
Everything Gerard Barstow said made sense, but as eager as I was to get back to Dallas, I couldn’t shake the belief that Delilah was in danger. Chief Barstow’s vague assurances weren’t cutting it. I needed to be absolutely sure nothing was amiss. To do that, I had to talk to the Heatons, Jayme Coombs’ family, and eventually my family, whether my mother wanted to see me or not. I thought again about the locked gate.
“Gerard, I appreciate all you’ve done. I understand that my mother’s not happy that I’m here, but I don’t know when I’ll be in Alber again. I’d like to see if I can patch things up with her before I leave in the morning,” I said. I reached over and pulled on the handle, rattling the gate in its frame. “I would appreciate it if you’d unlock this for me.”
The police chief glanced at his watch and his smile faded. His voice dropped an octave. “It’s nearly ten, Clara. Everybody inside there’s dreaming dreams by now. You know how our folk go to bed early. Up at dawn to greet the day.”
“Surely you can—”
His smile melted into the slightest frown. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. I’d advise you to stay away, Clara. Like I said, your family doesn’t want to see you. Ardeth and the others were crystal about that. If you knock on their door, they’ll send you away.”
I stared at him for a minute. Too much seemed odd. I wasn’t ready to chalk it all up to a mistake and leave town. “I don’t understand why this gate is locked.”
Gerard shrugged. “It’s only at night. There have been some problems in town after dark. One assault and a few burglaries.”
“Isn’t this a bit drastic?”
“I agree. It’s not something I was in favor of. But the folks in the trailer park came up with the idea. They have keys to get in and out if they need to. This way no one bothers them.”
I thought of the trailer park behind us with its run-down homes, no indoor plumbing. Little to steal. “Seems strange to lock things up all the way out here,” I said. “So you had one assault in town? A few burglaries? And they locked the gate?”
“That’s pretty much it.” He turned off the flashlight that had been dangling in his hand, throwing a spot of light onto the barren, rocky ground.
“Gerard, what would it hurt to let me in?” I tried again. “It would mean a lot to me.”
The police chief’s lips curled up into a smile, but the rest of his face looked cold, wooden. “Clara, I know you’re a cop and all, a detective I hear, but I’m gonna say no. Those folks in there, they put that lock on that gate to keep out strangers. I respect their wishes.”
“I’m not a stranger,” I started, and then I saw the look on his face. He didn’t have to answer. In Alber, in my family, that was what I’d become. “You’re convinced Delilah’s safe? You’re not planning to look for her? To follow up on this?”
Gerard Barstow looked me square in the eyes. “Your mother and the rest of your family tell me that Delilah is fine. I believe them. You should too.”
Eleven
The phone woke Max a few minutes after eleven. For the sixth night in a row, he’d fallen asleep on the living room lounge chair. Ever since Miriam died, he didn’t like sleeping in a bed. Too many memories.
If he was honest, the whole house made him sad. A different house in a different city than the one they’d shared, but Miriam had picked out everything they owned, from the furniture to the potholders. Max had never been one for domestic concerns, and that suited Miriam. She thrived on it. Of course, the way he grew up, six mothers in the house, there’d never been a need for him to worry about making beds, washing dirty laundry or cooking dinner. This past week, he’d thought often of the peach tree in the backyard. The thing was heavy with ripe fruit. He’d wondered if he should try to figure out how to can at least some of it. The prospect had made him tired.
Max grabbed the phone before the second ring, hoping it wouldn’t wake Brooke. She’d been antsy that evening, and he’d let her stay up until past nine, her summer bedtime. She needed the sleep, but he gave in easily, happy for the extra time with her.
“Gerard here,” Barstow said. “Did I wake you?”
“Not a problem, Chief,” Max answered mid-yawn. “What’s up?”
“I thought I should bring you up to date, in case you see Clara Jefferies in the morning before we have a chance to chat.”
“Oh.” Hearing Clara’s name, Max became instantly apprehensive. He’d brought her back to Alber knowing not everyone would be happy to see her. The sheriff had been furious with him that afternoon, irate about how Clara was stirring up trouble. Max felt responsible, and he’d begun to regret that he’d called her. He’d been looking forward to seeing her again, but they weren’t the same people they’d been in high school. Everything was different, including that he had a daughter to care for, and to do that he needed to keep his job. After Miriam died, he’d failed Brooke. He couldn’t do that again. It wasn’t an option.
“Is everything all right? Did Clara cause any…”
“Trouble? No. I just wanted you to know that I found her trying to get into the trailer park tonight. She wanted me to unlock the gate. Said she wanted to talk to her family,” Gerard said, his voice friendly. “I told her she didn’t need to do that. I explained that her family didn’t want to see her, and that the matter of Delilah’s whereabouts was settled.”
Fully awake, Max focused on the phone call. He plopped the recliner’s footrest down and sat up straight. He’d never liked the way Gerard talked around things, not really getting to the important points first. Sometimes Max wondered if the police chief did it on purpose, to confuse matters. But then, Gerard was a vast improvement over Evan Barstow. That man had been cruel. Twisted. Gerard had his faults, but Max thought he cared about the town, that he did his best. “You got news about Delilah?”
“Yeah, good news,” Barstow said. “Like I explained to Clara, I found out everything’s fine. No reason to worry.”
“How do you know that?”
“I went back out to the trailer, like Sheriff Holmes asked me to. This time Ardeth was home and she opened the door. She says Delilah’s in Salt Lake. She’s staying with a family there while she does a mission.”
“Isn’t she awfully young for a mission?”
“Clara mentioned that, too, when I told her. A little, yeah, but Ardeth said the girl wanted to do it. She’s staying with a family friend.”
Max thought he remembered a couple of the boys who went on missions in junior high, thirteen-year-olds. It wasn’t unheard of. Maybe that was all there was to it? “Ardeth is sure nothing bad has happened to Delilah? She knows where the girl is? That she’s safe?”
“That’s what she says.”
Max digested the information, considered what to do. Something still needled at him about the note, about the circumstances. “Chief, I don’t want to make you do any extra work on this, but I’d feel better if you went back out to the Jefferies trailer in the morning. Ask Ardeth for a phone number for the folks Delilah is staying with in Salt Lake. Let’s confirm that the girl’s okay before we close the case.”
Max heard Barstow’s reluctant sigh over the phone, a long drawing-in of air expelled in a huff. “Listen, Max, I understand you
r concern. I know Clara’s worried, too. That’s understandable. But my pull with these families only goes so far. If I push too hard, they clam up. We both know how closed-off these folks are.”
“Sure. Of course,” Max conceded, but the sense of foreboding he’d felt since the note arrived hadn’t left him. Over his years as a cop, he’d learned to pay attention to the clues his intuition gave him. “I understand what you’re saying, Gerard, but I’d feel a whole lot better if one of us talked to Delilah or at least the family hosting her.”
“Max, why would Ardeth lie to me? She says the girl’s fine. If Delilah was missing, why wouldn’t Ardeth tell me? I can’t think of a single reason. Can you?” Gerard asked.
“No, but—”
“The sheriff asked me to look into the girl’s whereabouts and I did,” Gerard said.
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m sorry that note got everyone riled up. But this has obviously all been a mistake,” Gerard said. “Let’s face it: we’ve got no reason not to believe Delilah’s family. It makes no sense that they’d lie. I’m not going to bother them again. As far as I’m concerned, this investigation is over.”
Twelve
The room was cool, the summer’s heat not yet building, and Delilah lay on her side, as she had for a very long time, awake and trying to decide what to do. She needed to find a way to escape. She wondered where the man had taken her, how far from home. When she thought it through, it seemed most logical that they were in one of the houses perched on the edge of the valley, at the foot of the mountains. The night that he snatched her, the man carried her blindfolded and bound for what seemed like a long time. His breathing became ragged, and she thought she felt him walking up, as if scaling a slope.
Yet she knew nothing for sure. Everything that had happened in the past few days defied understanding. Delilah felt sure of only one thing—that the man had no plans to release her. When she begged him, his voice sounded gruff and unmoved.
Then she thought about the soft hands, the gentleness of the woman who helped her. Who was she? If Delilah attempted an escape, would she help?
Maybe. But Delilah decided that she couldn’t count on anyone else. She could only rely on herself, and she needed a plan.
So far, as hard as she tried, she had none.
The chain kept her anchored to the wall. The man was strong. She remembered the force of him coming at her in the cornfield, the way his arms encircled her as if she were a baby doll. He’d picked her up as if she weighed nothing. She thought about the creaking and complaining the old wood floor made under the force of his boots. She’d chided herself for not fighting back when he grabbed her, but even if she had she wouldn’t have been able to fight him off. She had to get free of the chains and find a way to slip past him. Or find a way to escape while he was gone. But how?
If she did, if she managed somehow to escape, then what?
Would he come after her and kill her? She decided that even that would be better than living as a prisoner. But then she considered the rest of his threat, that he would murder her entire family. Her mothers, her brothers and sisters, even her baby brother Jayden, only two and still in diapers.
Could the man really do that?
When she thought about how easily he’d taken her, plucked her up not far from her own back door with her whole family inside the house unaware, she feared that he could.
I have to protect my family. I just have to.
Yet being confined to the room, chained to the wall, was torture.
Off and on she’d wondered about the sister the man told her about, the one who’d come all the way from Dallas to look for her. He’d said her name was Clara, but Delilah didn’t know of a sister with that name. Who could she be?
She couldn’t think about those things, she decided. More than anything, Delilah hated the blindfold. No matter what he did to her, she needed to get it off. Her dried tears saturated it and made it rough against her skin. She tried to turn her face and angle her right shoulder up to push it, but she couldn’t reach far enough to make any progress.
Despite the awful smell of the cushion beneath her, Delilah pushed her face into the rough fabric, bringing her nose down toward her chest. At first, nothing. But she kept at it, even though it scraped her skin. After four such attempts, the blindfold budged. Not a lot, maybe half an inch. But it moved.
Resting on her knees, she reasoned that to nudge the blindfold farther, she needed something to hook it on. Over the time she’d been held captive, Delilah had sometimes felt something round like a button attached to the cushion beneath her, something that dug into her skin.
Delilah scrunched forward and used her cheek to hunt for it, but felt nothing. She shimmied to the right, searched and again failed to find anything that might help. Finally, on her sixth attempt, it happened. Something hard pressed into her cheek.
Delilah sat back and thought for a moment, then crouched. Pushing as hard as she could, she ground her face into the unforgiving fabric toward the button. On the third try, the lower edge of the blindfold latched on just above her right cheek. Once she had it secure, she rolled her chin toward her chest. As she prayed it would, the blindfold edged up. A few attempts and she had her right eye uncovered.
After days of darkness behind the blindfold, it took a moment for Delilah’s eye to adjust to the dim light. When it did, she realized the cushion beneath her was about two inches thick, about the width of a twin mattress but shorter. It was filthy—dirt and grease were ground into the beige fabric. In one corner, a stain had cured a nasty-looking brown. Whatever caused it had dripped over the edge and onto the side.
Delilah sat back and stared at the stain. The color reminded her of a time when she sliced her right thumb while chopping onions. Mother Ardeth washed the wound with something that stung and then pressed a salve made of feathery yarrow leaves on it. That usually worked, but that time the cut wouldn’t stop bleeding. Mother Naomi retrieved the sewing kit and threaded a needle she dipped in alcohol. Holding back tears, Delilah held Sariah’s hand as Mother Ardeth pierced the soft, delicate skin and pulled the thread through, tugging the cut closed. Still the wound oozed. By morning, the white gauze bandage had cured that same ugly shade of brown.
“Blood?” Delilah murmured, staring at the stain. The air suddenly felt chill, as if someone had opened a refrigerator door. “That’s blood.”
A sinking feeling deep within her, she turned away from the cushion, not wanting to look any longer. Instead, she gazed about the room.
The walls, the floor—everything was a dull gray, dirty and bare. One wobbly-looking bent willow chair sat in the center of the room. That, a bucket the man had given her to use as a toilet, and the pad beneath her were the only contents. She turned her head to the right and saw the outline of a long narrow window, a sheet of plywood nailed to the frame to cover the glass. Daybreak seeped in around the edges.
As Delilah turned to her left, the blindfold threatened to slip back down over her eye. Hurriedly, she crouched back down. Again she hooked the cloth on the button and pulled. Once she had the right side fairly secure above her eyebrow, she swiveled her head and repeated the maneuver with the left side. Tighter and more difficult to maneuver, it eased up slowly. She had both eyes uncovered when the button’s thread snapped. Caught in the blindfold, the plastic button dug into her forehead. Delilah didn’t care.
For the first time in days, she could see.
Delilah sat up again and looked around. She stared at the door waiting for the man to return.
“Now I can see your face,” she whispered.
Thirteen
The inside of the house hazy, I didn’t recognize my childhood home until I saw the stone fireplace in the living room with my great-grandmother’s hand-quilted banner hanging above it. Against an abstract background of gold and blue stood a pair of disembodied silver wings. Mother, young the way I remember her when I was a girl, rested in the old brown high-backed rocker. I watched from the
floor beside her as she placed a wooden egg inside one of my father’s worn black socks. She positioned the fabric’s hole at the top, and began darning, one stitch through, another and then another.
“Clara, when you’re a wife, you’ll do this for your husband and children, so pay attention. Socks are expensive, and holes can be mended. You’ll want to take good care of your family.”
In my dream, I was Lily’s age, a young teenager, innocent and naive. That day, for some reason I didn’t understand, Mother had insisted I wear my best dress—pink and white plaid with bows at the neck and the wrists. I bunched the full skirt around my legs. My black hair so long it passed my waist, Mother had meticulously braided the crown and coiled it in a topknot.
Even then I’d been a matter-of-fact child. “I’d rather work with Father at the mill,” I said.
Eyebrows rising, Mother appeared impatient. “Clara, I’ve told you, that is man’s work. The mill is where the men work, to support our family. Women’s work is in the home. If you keep pure, God will bless you with a worthy husband and through you, your father and me with many grandchildren.”
“Mother, I—”
“Be sweet, Clara,” Mother cautioned. She put down her darning and leaned forward. She took my chin in her hand and tilted my face toward her until our eyes met. “If you give yourself over to God and obey the prophet, you’ll have great glory in the next world. The highest honor for a woman is to be married to a righteous man, like your father. Remember that, always.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said. She released me and picked up her work. I watched as Mother carefully repaired the damage wrought by wear and time.
As Mother darned, Father entered the room. Happy to see him, I jumped up and ran to him. He smiled down at me.
“Are you finished for the day?” I asked.
The Fallen Girls: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 1) Page 9
