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

by Kathryn Casey

  “I’m sure.” I picked up the folder with the photos of the dead girl’s dress to bring with me. “This time, I’m going alone. And I’m not leaving that trailer until I find out what happened to Delilah.”

  Thirty-Three

  The man walked in before Delilah heard him. The light had softened and filtered in around the boarded-up window. Late afternoon leaning toward evening, she decided. Still a long time before night.

  “You have a good nap?” he asked.

  At the sight of him, Delilah’s heart pitched so high she thought it might lodge in her throat.

  “I sleep a lot,” she said. “I wish I could move around.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “You think if I unchain you, you’ll keep settled down?”

  “Yes.” Delilah said, hopeful. “I promise.”

  Out of his back pocket he pulled a small ring with two keys. “Turn around,” he said. Delilah did, and the man leaned toward her. She thought he’d reach for her wrists, but he paused to take her hair in his hand, feeling the weight of it. “I’ve always loved the look of a redhead. That’s why you caught my attention.”

  Delilah shivered.

  “You cold?” he asked.

  “Maybe a little,” she said.

  “Come on. We’re going downstairs,” he said.

  The old house looked a mess, with boxes and newspapers scattered across the floor and furniture. Dirty clothes heaped in piles. “This way,” he said, leading her into a short hall. A door opened into a bathroom, the tub filled with water. “Git in.”

  Delilah moved forward, and then turned to close the door.

  The man put out his hand to stop her and pointed at a chair in the hallway. “Leave it an inch open. I’m gonna sit here. I want to hear what you’re doing.”

  “Okay,” she answered.

  Although uneasy with the man so close behind the door, Delilah dropped her clothes on the floor. As she sank into the water, relief flooded through her. The warmth soothed the bruises the chains had left on her sore ankles and wrists and felt better than any bath she’d ever taken. She eased her head under the water, and then came back up, her hair streaming wet down her back.

  She worked shampoo into her hair and lathered it into her scalp, then grabbed a bar of soap and a well-worn washcloth. Delilah scrubbed as if she hadn’t had a bath in years, scouring her skin. She wanted to wash the last four days away, the soiled mattress, the dim locked room, and the shame she felt when the man looked at her.

  “Better finish up,” he ordered.

  “Just one more minute,” Delilah shouted. She closed her eyes and leaned back to rinse her hair.

  Without warning, the door opened. The man’s heavy hand came at her and pushed her under the water. She kicked and flailed her arms, gasped for breath. The back of her head struck the smooth surface of the tub with a thunk.

  Helpless, her mind flashed on her mother, the sister-wives, her brothers and sisters, as if saying goodbye to each one. She felt her father’s presence and wondered if he had come to pull back the curtain and welcome her into heaven.

  At the moment she gave in to the inevitability of death, the man let go.

  Delilah broke through the water’s surface, splashing waves across the tub. Her starved lungs sucked in air. Ragged coughing, a violent lurch deep within her, and she vomited filthy bathwater.

  Shaking, she looked over at the man, who stared at her with cold, dead eyes. “Listen, little girl,” he hissed. “Don’t you ever cross me. You understand?”

  “I-I-I…” her naked body trembled so violently that she couldn’t get the words out.

  “You give me any reason to doubt you? I’ll kill you. Count on that,” he shouted as he grabbed a towel off the door and threw it at her.

  Thirty-Four

  It appeared that the family meeting Jim Daniels had mentioned was still in session. The street in front of my family’s trailer was lined with cars when I arrived. I knocked on the door, and someone looked out the window on my right. The door didn’t open. I knocked again. Harder. Still nothing.

  “Mother,” I said, pounding on the screen door with my fist. It rattled, making a loud, tinny racket. “Open this door now!”

  The lock clicked. The door opened a few inches, and a man stood behind it.

  “Aaron,” I said. “Thank you. Now please let me inside. I need to talk to all of you about Delilah.”

  He eased the door open a bit farther. My oldest brother had changed over the years. His shoulders were broader than I remembered and he looked heavy and solid, his forehead wide and his chin set. He scowled at me with Father’s dark eyes. “Clara, Mother doesn’t want you here. She wants you to leave.”

  I shook my head and stared right back at him. “No. Not this time. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You need to get off her property,” he said. “You have no right to be here.”

  I held the file with the photos in my hand, and I slipped it under my right arm so that I could open my jacket to show him my badge. “Aaron, I’ve been sworn in by the sheriff. I’m now Deputy Clara Jefferies with the Smith County Sheriff’s Office. Please remind Mother that she’s squatting on public property. Mother has no ownership rights to this land, and I have every right to be here. So open the door. I’m coming in.”

  “Just a minute.” He started to close the screen door, but I stuck my foot in to stop him.

  “We’re going to leave this open,” I said. “You’ve got two minutes.”

  I heard murmuring inside. It didn’t take long. The door swung wide, and I entered a room filled with familiar faces—Mother, Sariah and Naomi, my older brothers and sisters, including Karyn, who I’d missed at her home a couple of hours earlier, and younger ones who looked at me, eyes wide. Wondering who I was, I guessed. For a moment, it took my breath away. I’d been on my own for a decade, and the familiarity felt both welcomed and strained.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’d like to talk to each one of you individually, but there’s no time. Which one of you is going to tell me what happened to Delilah?”

  Alarmed, all three of our mothers stood and rushed about, nudging the youngest children out of the room, pushing them to other parts of the trailer.

  “Go play,” Naomi urged an eight- or nine-year-old with her slender nose and light brown hair.

  “This isn’t a place for little ones,” Mother said. “Be good, and we’ll call you when dinner is ready.”

  Once the evacuation ended, the women reclaimed their places on the couch. Even with the children gone, the room felt claustrophobic. I wondered how so many lived in such tight quarters. But then, they didn’t have a choice. I noticed Lily in the center of a group of teenagers, leaning against the opposite wall. She looked upset, her face flushed and one hand cradling her forehead as if she had a terrible headache.

  “I asked a question,” I said. “What happened to Delilah?”

  Everyone in the room turned and looked at my mother, who had her head down, staring at her hands on her lap. “Clara, I asked you to leave. What you are doing is not acceptable. You need to go now. Staying here won’t help Delilah. It will hurt her.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Mother.” She can’t even bear to look at me, I thought. “And why would you say that? Why would my staying affect Delilah in any way?”

  “There are things I can’t discuss,” she said. “But the situation is being handled. You need to leave.”

  “Mother, this is ridiculous. No announcement has been released about Delilah. The police aren’t looking for her. I don’t know who you think is going to save her, but she needs help, and you shutting down like this? Refusing to help me? You will get Delilah killed.”

  Beside Mother, Sariah let out a moan, like an animal in pain.

  “Clara!” Mother shouted, glancing at Sariah and giving her a stern look. “Stop this. I told you, it’s being taken care of.”

  “By who?” I couldn’t accept their unwillingness to hear the truth
any longer. I had to lay it out so there could be no misunderstanding. “Did you see that girl’s body today? The one found in the field?”

  Mother looked up at me. “I did, but—”

  “Is that what you want to happen to Delilah?”

  Sariah let out a sob. At that same moment, from her perch against the wall, Lily released a sharp breath that sounded almost like a muffled scream. Aaron went over to Lily and slipped his arm protectively around her shoulders. He whispered in Lily’s ear. She nodded. I thought I heard her mumble, “I’ll try.”

  “What is being handled?” I asked not just my mother but the others in the room. “That something needs handling means that Delilah is in trouble. You’re not denying that now, I take it?” None of them answered, their eyes settling on either me or Mother. A few of my sisters appeared to have been crying and I saw a brother I didn’t recognize, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, with his hands up to his head. He turned away, not to face us.

  I walked over to him, stepping around those seated on the floor. I put my hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? I bet you know.”

  He looked up at me, his eyes red. I dropped my hand, and he ran out of the room, terrified.

  “What are you all afraid of?” I shouted. “Mother? She can’t hurt you. And I promise you, someone here is going to answer my questions. I’m not leaving until I know the truth!”

  “Ardeth, maybe Clara is right. Maybe she can help,” Sariah whispered. She held a baby’s pacifier in her hand, kneading it. Her hand trembled.

  “Sariah, shush,” Mother said. “I make the decisions for the family. I—”

  “You know that dead girl we found behind the cornfield today? Maybe her family sat by and did nothing when she disappeared. I saw some of you there. You looked worried. Were you thinking it might be Delilah?”

  Murmurs ran through the group as if some of those in the room agreed with me, but mother yelled over them, “No! We don’t have to tell you anything, and we won’t. I am protecting Delilah, whether you know that or not.”

  At that, Sariah brought her hands up to her face. She wept, as Naomi turned and held her. “Ardeth, please,” Naomi begged. “Please, let’s tell Clara. Maybe she can help us. Please.”

  “No!” Mother shouted. “Don’t you remember what they’ve done to us? Clara is one of them. The ones who came and ruined us. She can’t be trusted.”

  At that, Lily’s voice rang through the room, “Tell her!”

  Everyone else in the room went silent.

  Her arms thrust down at her sides, ending in fists so tight that veins bulged on the backs of her hands, Lily broke away from Aaron and stood in the center of the room. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her face had turned a faint, blood-spatter red around the eyes from rubbing. As if no one else existed, she stared at our mother. Her voice softening, Lily begged, “Mother, please tell Clara what happened to Delilah. Please.”

  Aaron tried to again grab Lily by the shoulders, but this time she swiveled her body and wrestled away. “Mother Sariah, how can you not tell Clara, so she can help us find your daughter? Find my sister? Please, we need to find Delilah!”

  Sariah cried harder, her chest quaking.

  “Tell Lily, Mother,” I demanded. “Explain to her why you’re not helping me find our sister.”

  “It is being handled,” Mother said, her voice breaking with emotion but stern. “But not by you. You can’t help us.”

  At this, Sariah stood, her face a mask of rage and trepidation. I’d never remembered any of the sister-wives defying my mother. No one dared. Glancing from Mother to me, Sariah focused across the room on Lily, whose sobs shook her like tremors.

  At that moment, something changed.

  Sariah stared down at Mother, who still had her hands folded on her lap, refusing to look up at us. “Lily,” Sariah said, her words measured. “You and I will go outside with Clara, where the small children can’t hear us. And we’re going to tell Clara everything we know about the night Delilah disappeared.”

  Mother looked up at Sariah, as if she’d been betrayed.

  Lily’s tortured face pulled tight, as she attempted to harness her tears. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, we will.”

  “You didn’t see anything or anyone? Nothing unusual that night?”

  Lily, Sariah and I sat on faded metal chairs at the back of the lot. Behind us, the cornfield loomed, empty far off into the distance until it ended at those final rows still standing. It was now a crime scene, the harvest abandoned after the finding of the body. I had the folder with the photos on my lap. I thought about asking them to look at the dead girl’s dress, but I decided it served no purpose. I knew the body wasn’t Delilah’s.

  I reached over and held Lily’s hand. “Let’s go through it one more time. Make sure I know everything.”

  Lily described the prior Thursday’s evening prayers and following Delilah down the steps to the outhouse with the little ones. “She kept saying someone watched her from the field, but we shined our flashlights in and we couldn’t see anyone.”

  The cornfield, I thought yet again. What did it have to do with the cornfield?

  “I didn’t believe Delilah. I thought she was being silly,” Lily said. She teared up again, and covered her face with her hands. “Why didn’t I believe her? If I had…”

  Sariah wrapped her arms around Lily and held her, whispering, “I thought Delilah silly, too. We didn’t know. Lily, we couldn’t have known what would happen.”

  “I shouldn’t have left her out there alone. I should have stayed to protect her,” Lily said. “Why did Kaylynn take so long in the outhouse? That girl always dilly-dallies. If she’d—”

  “Shush,” Sariah ordered. “Don’t ever say that. This isn’t Kaylynn’s fault any more than it’s yours. If anyone is to blame, I am. I should have listened to my daughter.”

  “None of you are to blame,” I said. “The person to blame is the one who took Delilah.”

  Sariah looked at me as if my words had given her the first solace she’d had in days. “Clara, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry Ardeth didn’t trust you. We should have—”

  “Please, let’s just talk about Delilah.” I had a notebook out, one I filled with the details. “Describe to me what Delilah wore that evening.”

  “She had on a blue dress with a white collar, a white sash belt around the waist. I remember thinking how pretty it looked with her red hair,” Sariah said. “Her sandals and white socks.”

  “And she had a white ribbon in her hair holding it up at the top,” Lily said. “A thin one tied in a bow.”

  “Anything else she said to you that could help me? Any description of anyone you saw around that time hanging out around the trailer, watching Delilah or any of the other girls?”

  “Nothing,” Sariah said.

  “If someone watched us, he did it hidden in the cornfield, as Delilah said. I didn’t see anyone,” Lily said.

  I thought again about Jim Daniels.

  “Is Karyn still inside?” I asked.

  Sariah looked concerned. “We heard you went to her house today, that you talked to Jim and Rebecca.”

  “I need to talk to Karyn,” I said. “Please ask her to come out.”

  “I’ll do it,” Lily said, jumping up. As she rushed off, she turned back to me. “Clara?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You won’t let him hurt Delilah, whoever took her, right?”

  That was a tough one. “I’ll do my best, Lily. And you are doing your best, I know. Keep thinking about that night. Anything you remember, whether it seems important or not, tell me. Let me decide if it is something that can help find our sister.”

  “I will,” she said.

  Lily disappeared inside the trailer, and Sariah put her hand on my arm. “Clara, Jim’s not a bad man. He’s not. I know you suspect him, but—”

  “If he didn’t do it, I need to rule him out,” I said, leaving no room fo
r argument. “Right now, I’m wondering about him. I need to find out more.”

  “Okay.” Sariah looked satisfied.

  “Maybe you should go inside, too,” I said. “So I can talk to Karyn alone.”

  Sariah appeared reluctant. “Clara, I need to help.”

  I took the hand that moments earlier Lily held. “Sariah, you have helped. You’ve told the truth. Now let me do my job.”

  Moments after Sariah left, Karyn walked down the concrete steps toward me. “It’s been so long, Clara. I’ve wondered about you often. Did you think about us when you were so far away?”

  I tried to decide how to answer, whether or not to admit that though I tried not to, my thoughts too often returned to Alber and my family. Instead, I redirected the conversation. “Karyn, I need your help. Do you know anything that could help me find Delilah?”

  Grave sadness darkened the hollows around Karyn’s eyes and she shook her head. “I wish so that I did. I’ve prayed that I would be able to help.”

  “I need you to tell me—”

  “Where Jim was that evening?” Karyn asked.

  I gave her a questioning glance. “How did you know I’d ask that?”

  “Everyone in the family knows you questioned Jim and Rebecca today. They all know about the time he spent in jail,” she explained. “Jim was with me that evening, with two of our children. We drove to St. George to pick up fertilizer. I have the receipt in my purse. I can get it and show you.”

  “Okay. Why didn’t he and Rebecca tell me that?”

  “I think Mother frightened them so about talking to you, they weren’t sure what they could or couldn’t say.” With that, Karyn stood. “I’ll go inside and get the receipt. I looked earlier and it has the time on it. Jim signed it.”

  “I’ll wait here,” I said.

  Karyn began to walk away, but turned back to me. “You know, when we go into the city, I see cameras all over. I bet they have them at the Walmart. You should be able to see us on camera.”