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

by Kathryn Casey

  That didn’t, however, get Jim off my radar. I wondered about him. I thought again about the coincidence that all the missing girls lived in houses that backed up to the cornfield he managed. I thought about him skulking around, hidden in the field. “Jim, Rebecca, what do you two know about Delilah?”

  Their eyes met, a caution passed between them, and Rebecca shook her head at him.

  “I need to know,” I said.

  “I’m under orders,” Jim said, his voice as no-nonsense as it had been throughout the conversation. “I can’t tell you anything. If you want to know anything about Delilah, you need to ask your mother.”

  “My mother’s not talking,” I said. “Delilah is in danger. I’m certain of it. I need to know what you know.”

  “It’s not that we don’t want to, but we can’t tell you anything. It’s not ours to tell,” Rebecca said. “Like Jim said, we have orders. You need to talk to your family.”

  “Where were you Thursday evening, Jim?” I asked.

  For the first time, he looked vaguely interested. He answered as if it were a curiosity. “You think I took Delilah?”

  I stared at him, such a strange man. “Interesting that you know that was the night Delilah was abducted.”

  To this, Jim Daniels said nothing.

  “I think maybe you’re picking up on the fact that my husband is a little different, Clara. That’s why you suspect him.” Rebecca looked over at him, questioning, and he gave her a casual nod as if agreeing that she continue. “Jim has… he has a hard time connecting with people. He can seem rather standoffish. But my husband’s a good man. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. We love Delilah. She’s Karyn’s sister, and that makes her family.”

  “Then help me find her. You need to tell me what you know,” I demanded, my voice rising, indignant. “A young woman’s already dead, her body left to rot behind the cornfield. This isn’t a game.”

  Daniels looked like he might say something, but his wife placed her hand gently on his arm and said, “Jim and I aren’t free to discuss Delilah’s disappearance. Ask your mother.”

  “So you admit she’s missing,” I pounced.

  Rebecca stuttered, “I-I didn’t mean to say—”

  I wasn’t willing to hear anything more. “I am putting you both on notice—if something happens to Delilah while all of you are playing games, you will regret it,” I warned. Looking the man dead in the eyes, I said, “As for you, Mr. Daniels, if you’re involved in Delilah’s disappearance, now’s the time to speak up. Get ahead of this while you can, before I find out on my own that you aren’t being honest. Then, I promise, you will get no mercy.”

  Jim Daniels’ expression remained calm. He showed no emotion when he said, “Clara, you need to leave. There’s no help for you here.”

  Twenty-Eight

  On the way to the trailer park to talk to the Heaton and Coombs families, Max mulled over his latest encounter with Clara. He’d had such mixed feelings since the previous afternoon, when he’d looked up and seen her standing in his office. At times, he blamed her for what happened to him in the past and for putting his job in jeopardy. Yet he couldn’t deny that he still felt the deep connection they’d shared as teenagers.

  Something about Clara had never stopped touching his heart.

  Max had thought about her often over the years, wanted to see her. Every time he asked Hannah about Clara, he’d been disappointed to find out that they’d lost contact. Now Clara was back, and they’d done little but argue.

  Clara didn’t seem to care.

  Then he reconsidered. That wasn’t fair. After all, Clara worried about Delilah, not unlike the way he worried about Brooke. He thought about what Clara had said, that later they’d have time to discuss it all. But what would he say? How could he make her understand?

  What she’s seen is that I’m a coward afraid to contradict my boss.

  When he thought about it, though, sometimes it wasn’t easy to know what to do. Should he have backed Clara? After all, Gerard investigated Eliza’s and Jayme’s disappearances, and both families insisted that they weren’t worried about their daughters. That should have put any concern about the girls to rest.

  Of course, the dead body in the field brought everything into question. What if it turned out to be the Heaton or Coombs girl?

  “Damn,” Max muttered. What if he’d sat back and done nothing while all along those girls were in trouble?

  Max shook his head and made a vow: From that point forward he’d stop worrying about losing his job and concentrate on doing it, whatever that entailed. And someday when he had the opportunity, he’d tell Clara everything—that Miriam’s death and Brooke’s injuries were his fault. He’d been responsible, and the guilt had nearly killed him.

  He didn’t know if Clara would understand, but he had to tell her.

  At that, he pulled up in front of the Heaton house. A pack of little girls were running circles around the trailer, and Alma Heaton sat on a garden swing, idly pushing back and forth, enjoying the view. When she saw Max walk toward her, Alma’s smile melted and her face transformed, the frown lines circling her mouth deepening. He stood over her, waiting.

  Alma squinted up at him and asked, “Why are you here?”

  Twenty-Nine

  Driving away from the Daniels house, I still had two suspects, Evan Barstow and Jim Daniels. I hadn’t eliminated or focused on either one. About the only thing I had accomplished was that I’d finally gotten clear confirmation that I hadn’t misjudged the situation. That came with Rebecca’s words: “Jim and I aren’t free to discuss Delilah’s disappearance.”

  Yet that validation hadn’t changed the situation. My instincts had told me all along that Delilah was taken. The questions remained: by whom, and how do I find her?

  On my way back to the sheriff’s office, I thought about the business card the Alber PD dispatcher palmed me that morning. I fished around in my pocket and found it. I looked at the phone number scratched on the back and wondered why she gave it to me. I steered with one hand and punched in her number with the other. “Clara Jefferies here, Stephanie. Why did you slip me your card?”

  “Give me a minute,” she whispered. “A couple of the officers are here. I’ll walk outside.”

  I did, and when she got back on, I asked again, “Tell me why you gave me your card.”

  “I thought maybe you could call me if you needed help,” she stammered. “Maybe I could, you know, pitch in.”

  “How could you help?” The secretive way she handed me the card needled at me. I sensed that she had something she wanted to tell me.

  “I thought maybe you’d need someone local to assist you. That’s all,” she said.

  “I think it’s more than that. What do you know that could help me?”

  “Nothing, I—”

  “Again, and this time please answer my question, why did you give it to me?”

  “Because,” she blurted out, “around here, things aren’t always what they seem.”

  “And there’s something in particular about what’s going on in this town that may not be clear to me?” I asked. “What?”

  The silence dragged, but I waited. I’ve learned that keeping my mouth shut often works better than talking when I want someone to open up. The quiet lingered, until she said, “There are a lot of secrets in this part of the world, Detective.”

  “For instance?” I asked. “Let’s focus on the current situation.”

  “For instance, there’s a lot that never makes it to official reports,” she said, her voice lower, quieter. “For instance, sometimes doing a computer search doesn’t access the really important records. Because sometimes stuff isn’t entered into the databases.”

  “Where’s it kept?” I asked.

  “I’d show you if I could,” she said. “But I can’t. That’s a private room. It’s not open—”

  “Stephanie, we found a body earlier today. A young woman left to rot under a pile of rocks,” I said. “I can’t p
romise you that helping me won’t get you in trouble. You might lose your job. I understand that. But I can promise you that helping me figure out what’s going on is the right thing to do.”

  I asked a lot. I knew that. I didn’t have a choice. Someone had to come out from the shadows, pull back the curtains and let in the daylight. If I was right, lives depended on it. Delilah’s life depended on it.

  “I’ll… Well… Jeez, this isn’t going to be good,” she said. Again, I kept mum. I heard the reluctance in her voice when she said, “Come on over to the station. The chief’s not here right now. I’ll do what I can.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  As soon as I hung up with Stephanie, I called Max. “Where are you?”

  “I just got back to the office. I’ve got the Heaton and Coombs women in the waiting area. They’re eyeing each other, I guess wondering why I brought the others in. They heard about the girl in the field, so they’re worried, wondering what we want. I think they’ll cooperate. I’ve been waiting on you to press the issue.”

  “Good…” I looked at the clock again, wishing I could be in two places at once. “Separate them by family in a couple of interview rooms and let them stew. Tell them I’m on my way. I won’t be long.”

  “Okay. You have something for me to do while I’m waiting?”

  “Check in with Doc on the autopsy,” I asked. “Find out what he knows so far.”

  “Will do,” Max said.

  I was relieved not to see Gerard Barstow’s black Suburban parked outside his office when I pulled up. The station looked quiet, a couple of cars parked on the side, but not much going on. I walked in and Stephanie looked up from behind the glass partition and buzzed me in.

  In the main room, all the desks were empty. “Stephanie, hey, where is the chief? You expect him soon?”

  “Call me Stef. Everyone does,” she said. “I don’t know. Chief Barstow left about twenty minutes ago, right before you called. Didn’t say where he was going.”

  “The chief often take off like this during the day?”

  “Not usually. He left ticked off about you, the investigation. I heard him call his brother Evan. There was a lot of shouting.”

  “Where’s everyone else?”

  “It’s three thirty. Day shift’s still out on patrol, and the evening shift hasn’t come in. Detective Mullins made a scene. He’s taking a robbery report on a stolen bicycle. At the moment, I’m the only one here.”

  “Good. So what have you got for me?”

  “Are you going to tell the chief about this?” she asked. The lids on her eyes shuttered, and her lips compressed into a straight line. “This could really get in the way of my plans. I’m taking forensic science classes at the community college in St. George. There aren’t a lot of law enforcement jobs in the area. I was lucky to get this one. If I get fired, I may not find another.”

  “I can’t promise we can keep it from him, but I’ll do my best.”

  Stef didn’t look happy, but appeared resigned. “This way.”

  We walked through the main room toward the back, and then took a turn into the hallway. Ten feet past Gerard’s office, she stopped at an unmarked door on the left. Stef pulled a single key on a red lanyard from her pocket. “I found this about six months after I started working here. I worked nights back then. One night, I ran out of printer paper. I thought this had to be the stockroom. The door’s kept locked. I found the key on a hook behind the chief’s desk. Let myself in.”

  “It’s not a storeroom, I take it?”

  “No.” She opened the door. “Take a look.”

  All manner of filing cabinets covered the walls of the windowless room, at least thirty feet wide by twenty feet long. Some of the metal cabinets were painted black and pocked with bits of rust, covered in thick coats of dust. They looked decades old. Others appeared brand new.

  “What’s in these?” I asked.

  “An alternate set of records,” Stef said. “I come in here sometimes, when it’s quiet, and I have nothing to do. The best I can tell, pretty much forever Alber PD has kept two sets of records, public ones and private ones. These are the private ones.”

  “What types of cases?”

  “Violent crimes, assaults, rapes and murders. Thefts. I’ve tried to crossmatch some with the computer. As far as I can tell, none of these are in the system,” she said.

  I went to the cabinets and took a look. Each of the drawers had a year inked on an index card slipped into a metal frame on the front. “Organized by date, I gather.”

  “Yup,” she said. “Inside, they’re divided by type of crime.”

  I pulled the most recent cabinet open and rifled through it. The tabs on the dividers read: MISSING PERSONS, SEXUAL ASSAULTS, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, and HOMICIDES. I thought about what this meant, what it might mean, and how it could fit into the missing girls.

  “We’re going to pull all the sex crimes and missing persons, any homicides,” I said. “I’m going to take them with me. I’ll bring them back as soon as I can.”

  Visibly alarmed as I began taking files, Stef protested, “But if the chief finds out…”

  “Then he finds out. I’ll protect you as much as I can,” I said.

  Stef hesitated, but then rushed to help me. We stacked the files on a long table, an old dark pine one like the kind in libraries that sat in the center of the room. There were six chairs around it, and as I worked I wondered who came in this room, what kind of secret meetings took place here. I started with the current year and worked my way back. I thought about stopping at five years, but I went back ten. In the end, Stef and I had two stacks of files, each about two feet high.

  “Help me get these in my car,” I said. Apparently again having second thoughts, Stef hesitated. “Now, before someone comes into the station,” I ordered. As I walked out carrying the first, she grabbed the second pile.

  We hurried through the police station toward the front door, but I had misgivings. “Is there a back door?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Show me.” We trailed down a hallway and piled the files up next to a solid steel door. “I’ll drive around.”

  In minutes, we had the files loaded in the Pathfinder, and Stef rushed back inside the station to the reception desk. I drove out of the lot, just as Jeff Mullins pulled in. When I glanced in my rearview mirror, he strolled toward the back door. His eyes focused on the road, he watched me leave.

  Thirty

  “Doc says the girl was strangled. There’s perimortem bruising around the neck, and the hyoid bone is fractured,” Max said when I walked through the door at the sheriff’s office. “He can’t tell how long she’s been dead, but estimates that it had to be more than a couple of months. He hasn’t seen a case like this before, and it’s beyond his expertise. So Doc’s called the ME in Salt Lake to get a consult. Doc will get back with more info as soon as he has it, but that could be a few days.”

  “Shoot. So will DNA. We can’t wait on any of it,” I said, frustrated that with limited resources everything took so long. “Did Doc have any more information on our victim? Age range? Is her hair really brown?”

  “Doc says she has all her wisdom teeth, but they’re not fully out. He’s guessing she’s late teens to early twenties,” Max said. “After he inspected for fibers and such, he washed a small section of her hair. It didn’t lighten. Looks like a very dark brown. He emailed us more photos of the clothes, the body, and the washed hair. They’re in a file on the conference room—I mean, your office table.”

  “Thanks. I have files out in my car we need to bring in. I could use some help.”

  A few minutes later, we had the secret Alber PD files on the conference room table as well. “What is all this?” Max asked.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said. “Where are the Heatons?”

  “In interview room number three. The Coombs women are in room one.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “So thing
s have changed,” I said to Alma, Grace, and Savannah Heaton, the three sister-wives. “You’ve heard, I know, that we have a body. Doc says it’s female, a teenager, perhaps up to early twenties, long brown hair.”

  Alma Heaton gasped, and Savannah, a thickly built woman with her hair in a messy brown bun, reached over to comfort her. “Anything else about the dead girl you can tell us, Clara?” Savannah asked.

  In my prior life, I’d known Savannah Heaton. A decade earlier, when I had a desk in the town’s cinder block schoolhouse, Savannah’s children were my students. She stopped in my classroom to pick up one of her girls a month before I fled. She’d seen my bruises. “Who gave you that black eye?” she’d asked. I told her what I’d said to everyone else, that I’d walked into a door. Back then I was young, ashamed, and good at making excuses. Savannah gave me a knowing look, and I saw that she didn’t believe me.

  In my conference room office, Alma reclaimed her resolve and turned to her sister-wives for reassurance. “Savannah, Grace, we don’t belong here. That’s not our girl’s body. Eliza ran away. We know that.”

  “How?” I asked.

  Alma hesitated. She looked at the others. “We’re not supposed to talk of Eliza. She’s an apostate, like you are. Clara, you know what the prophet says about people who leave the faith. We’re to shun—”

  “These are exceptional circumstances,” I pointed out. “Alma, you need to tell me.”

  Her eyes darkened and clouded over, like the mountaintops when a storm blows in. “We went on a picnic, and Eliza didn’t want to come. We, she and I, had words. When we came back, the house was empty. Grace found a note, in Eliza’s hand.”

  I stared at Grace. “Tell me what it said.”

  The woman who earlier had chastised me and ordered me from her yard sighed hard and shrugged. “It was short, but it left no room for misunderstanding. It said, ‘I’ve gone to the city. I can’t live here anymore. Don’t try to find me.’ Eliza signed it.”