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

by Kathryn Casey

  “This was a waste of time,” Mother scoffed.

  When I turned around, she stood across the table from me, flipping through the stack of photos I’d left out. “Then explain why Evan has Delilah’s flashlight, Mother,” I challenged, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  Mother ignored my question. When she reached the end of the stack, she started at the beginning again, this time pulling a handful out and laying them end to end. Her brow knit in worry. “What are these?” she asked.

  “Those are of the girl we found in the field,” I explained. “Her dress and jewelry.”

  Mother’s face grew long, and she whispered, “Sariah, Naomi, come look at these pictures.”

  My mothers gathered in a line. I said nothing, just watched them. Minutes passed, and tears formed in my mother’s eyes. Sariah put her hand on Naomi’s shoulder. “It can’t be,” Sariah whispered. “It can’t be.”

  Naomi lowered her body into a chair. Her face frozen in agony, she cried out, “Lord, please help us!”

  Lily didn’t appear to understand what upset them any more than I did but watched intently. I moved closer and skimmed over the images my mother had chosen, photos of the dress where it was unstained, of the buttons on the bodice, and a close-up of the ring.

  At that instant my mother focused on me, and I felt as if she truly looked at me for the first time since my return. “Clara, tell me again. Is this the dress from the girl found in the field?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Why?”

  “The girl they found dead today?” Sariah asked.

  When I again said yes, Mother screamed, such a scream as I had never heard in my life, a shattering, torturous cry that threatened to strangle my heart. I ran and held her, wrapped my arms around her. In her agony, she didn’t push me away. “Who is it, Mother?” I whispered. “Who is that girl?”

  “The ring, too? That was on the dead girl?” Naomi asked, choking out each word.

  I whispered, “Yes,” and my mothers nestled together, held one another and wept. Again I asked, “Who is it?”

  “I made this dress,” Naomi said in a voice so wrought with emotion it came out as a hiss. “I sewed those buttons.”

  Lily examined the photos, as if trying to decide what so troubled our mothers.

  “I need to know what you all know,” I said. “Tell me!”

  “I bought the fabric in St. George. And I took the buttons off an old dress of my own. See the last one near the waist?” Naomi asked.

  I picked up a photo that showed the front of the dress, the placket with the buttons. I looked at it carefully. At first, I didn’t see anything unusual. Then I noticed that the last button didn’t match the others. Slightly larger than the rest, it looked more beige than ivory.

  “I was short one button,” Naomi said. “So I reused one from an old dress.”

  “The girl in the field isn’t Delilah,” I said. “It can’t be.”

  “No,” Mother whispered. “It’s not.”

  “But it is one of my sisters, isn’t it?” I said.

  Lily turned to our mother, her face stricken. “Is this Sadie?”

  Forty

  While the man was gone, Delilah and Jayme tried to come up with a plan that they believed had a chance, the only option they thought might work. One girl couldn’t tackle the man alone, but maybe two could. “We have to convince him to let us room together,” Jayme said. “Then we’ll hide behind the door and jump him when he walks in.”

  “Maybe it would be better if we both took off in opposite directions,” Delilah said. “He can’t chase both of us.”

  “He might kill the one he gets his hands on,” Jayme said.

  “I don’t think so,” Delilah reasoned. “I think he’ll tie her up and try to get the other one. He wants both of us.”

  “He wanted the other girls, too, but when he got mad, he got rid of them,” Jayme said.

  Delilah thought about that. “I don’t care if he kills me. I won’t let him do whatever he wants to me. I’m not going to give in and let him hurt me.”

  Jayme didn’t respond at first but then, her voice thick with remorse, said, “I felt the same way, but I gave in. I’m scared.”

  “I am, too,” Delilah admitted.

  So they waited, hoping to work on the man to get him to do what they wanted. Instead, when the man returned, everything changed. He went to Delilah’s room first, and when he opened the door, he held the chain and handcuffs.

  “You said I wouldn’t have to wear those anymore, not unless I was bad,” she said. “I didn’t do anything. Nothing at all.”

  “Shut up and come here,” he said. “Now!”

  Delilah’s hands shook when she held her arms in front of her. He jerked them together, so rough it hurt her sore shoulders. “Please, don’t make them tight,” she whimpered. “Please, don’t do that to me again.”

  The man didn’t listen. The heavy chains pulled on her arms and wrists, and the handcuffs cinched so snug her little fingers went numb. She started to sit down on the mattress, assuming he’d again cuff her legs and chain her to the wall.

  “Get up,” he said. “You need to walk.”

  The man held the end of the chain and trailed her down the stairs. “This way,” he ordered, and he took her to a door. He pulled out a key and unlocked it. A girl Delilah assumed had to be Jayme sat off to the side, so far into a corner she appeared to be trying to disappear inside it. The two girls exchanged wary looks, fighting to understand what was happening.

  Delilah wondered if the man had tricked them, if he’d come back to the house on foot, hid and heard them plotting.

  “We’re going to be good, mister. You don’t have to do that to us,” Jayme pleaded. “We won’t try to run away.”

  “Over here, girl,” the man said. From his pocket, he pulled a second set of handcuffs. Jayme edged forward, cautious and frightened. When she reached him, he grabbed her left arm, tightened one cuff around it and ratcheted it in place. He then twisted the chain that held the cuffs together around the longer chain, the one he’d handcuffed Delilah to. Finally, he cinched the second cuff around Jayme’s right wrist.

  “That’ll hold you two,” he said, looking pleased. “We’re taking a hike. I don’t want any whining. I’ve got a place for us and no one knows it’s there.”

  “In the mountains?” Jayme asked. “Why are we—”

  “Don’t complain to me, it’s that woman’s fault. She’s behind all this.” The man turned to Delilah. “That damn sister of yours should have stayed in Dallas. Clara Jefferies thinks she can find you? She gets close, anywhere near me, and it won’t be pretty for you girls.”

  “We’ve done everything you said,” Delilah protested. “Why would you hurt us?”

  “Not ’cause I want to,” the man said. “But if that sister of yours gets close, any of them gets wise and comes after us, I won’t have a choice. You two will have to disappear.”

  At that, he grabbed the long end of the chain. “Let’s go. Outside. Now!”

  As she followed orders, Delilah thought about how the man said that she and Jayme might have to disappear. She tried not to cry. She didn’t want the man to see how frightened she was. She walked slowly, dreading every step. It was the first time she’d seen Jayme, and she looked different than Delilah expected. The older girl had long dark blond hair held in a single rubber band at her nape, and wore a dress that bagged on her bony frame. Her cheekbones jutted out, making her gray-flecked blue eyes appear big and round.

  Not long before sunset, in the west the sun had begun to dip in the sky. Jayme followed Delilah, and the man paced behind them, holding the chain. Delilah felt a slight breeze on her cheeks as they approached a dilapidated barn and corral not far from the house.

  “Over there,” the man said.

  A horse waited tied up at the corral gate. As they approached the barn, an overpowering odor engulfed them, heavy and rancid, stomach-churning. It felt thick and solid, like it perm
eated the air with fine particles. Jayme coughed, and Delilah felt as if it seeped through her nostrils into her throat. She thought about the time a squirrel fell between the walls in the big house in town they used to live in. It took months to rot away, and the whole house reeked until it did.

  The aged, dapple gray mare had a blanket thrown over its bony hips, and over the blanket a yellowed sheet knotted to form pockets that bulged with something heavy. A rifle in a long tan case was slung on one side, and a leather bag hung from the rear of the saddle. The man climbed onto the horse and wrapped the end of the chain around the saddle horn.

  As they set off toward the pine forest and the mountains, Delilah glanced back at the house. It was as she’d pictured it, a ramshackle old place. Everything looked in need of repair, from the roof tiles the wind had blown askew to sections of the log fence that had fallen. As much as she hated the room inside the house, the prison she’d been locked in for four days, she feared what waited for them on the mountain even more.

  Forty-One

  “Sadie left almost a year ago, soon after Father died,” Naomi said. Mother held her hand, and Lily had her arms around Sariah. All four had tears spilling from their eyes, none bothering to wipe them away. I did as well. I didn’t care. For this moment, I wasn’t a big-city cop. I was a woman with one sister missing and one sister murdered.

  Strangled, Doc had said. My sister Sadie had been strangled.

  Naomi’s oldest, Sadie celebrated her nineteenth birthday just days before she disappeared. When I left Alber, she was a nine-year-old with long dark brown hair, who collected insects in jars. She came by the hobby naturally. Like Mother’s career as an herbalist, Naomi had a home business. She raised bees in hives she kept on a field outside of town and sold their honey to neighbors. A beekeeper since before she joined the family, she’d inherited the hives from her grandmother.

  “Explain what you mean by ‘Sadie left,’” I said.

  “Well…” Sariah said, “it wasn’t like Delilah. Sadie didn’t disappear. She’d been seeing someone. We all picked up on the signs. She would be gone in the afternoons, come back for dinner. Aaron tried to follow her once, but she lost him. Sadie was always a tomboy, but then she changed. She started wearing perfume.”

  “I found a small bottle in the bathroom cabinet taped behind the extra rolls of toilet paper after she left,” Naomi said. “Ardeth was the one who found—”

  “Sadie’s diary, where she talked about some man,” Mother explained. “Sadie described him as older than she was. She said his family had money. He lived somewhere outside of town.”

  “She didn’t name him?” I asked.

  “No, and that description could fit many men in Alber,” Naomi said. “After she left, we held a family meeting and questioned the children. All of them denied knowing anything about the man or Sadie’s plans.”

  “So she didn’t tell anyone who…” I looked over at Lily, who stared at the photos on the table with a look of incredible sadness, but something else too—regret.

  “Lily, did you know anything about the man?” She shook her head, but I pushed. “If you do, now is the time to tell me.”

  Lily squeezed out an uncomfortable half-smile and shrugged, like she’d been caught. “I didn’t know his name. But Sadie told me what they planned. Like that he said he’d remodel the house he lived in for her, and that she’d be his only wife. Sadie didn’t want…” At that, Lily stopped and looked at our mothers.

  “Go ahead, girl,” Mother said. “Your mothers have read Sadie’s diary. We know she turned her back on the Divine Principle.”

  Despite Mother’s assurances, Lily turned her back on our mothers and spoke as if only to me. “Sadie didn’t want to share a husband, Clara. She said it shouldn’t be that way, to have one man with so many wives and children. Sadie said, ‘Lily, the man I marry will love only me and our children.’”

  I thought about that. “So this was a man who didn’t have any wives? He wasn’t already married?”

  “I guess not,” Lily said.

  Mother looked up at me. “It couldn’t be Evan Barstow then, Clara. He has wives.”

  “Maybe Sadie didn’t know he was married,” I pointed out. “Evan lives far enough outside of Alber that Sadie might not have known about his wives.”

  Mother didn’t voice any agreement, but she didn’t contradict me either.

  “And Sadie said this man came from a family with money?” I questioned them. “As Evan does?”

  “Yes, a wealthy or powerful family. Something like that,” Mother said. It hurt to see the incredible pain etched on her thin face. I wondered if she considered the possibility that her actions contributed to Sadie’s death. The house enforcer, Mother would have been the one Sadie feared most, the main reason she hid her relationship. Mother glanced at me, her voice laced with sadness and resignation. “Clara, it’s been a while since we read Sadie’s diary. There may be more in there that we’ve forgotten. We could get it for you, if it would help.”

  “Call Aaron and ask him to bring it,” I suggested. Sariah stood up and slipped a cell phone out of her dress pocket. She turned her back to us and walked a short distance away to talk. Hoping for more information, I asked the others, “Did Sadie give any physical description of this man?”

  “Only that he was a big man,” Naomi said. “Oh, and Sadie wrote that when they left, they planned to hike up the mountain to look down on Alber.”

  At that, I thought of Christina Bradshaw, who’d disappeared nine years earlier. The way Sadie disappeared, on the pretense of running away with a lover, seemed eerily similar. I thought of the letter Christina’s family said they received from Chicago. “Did you ever hear from Sadie?”

  “Just once,” Mother said. My heart sank when she said, “A card that was postmarked Seattle. Sadie wrote she’d fallen in love and married. She told us not to look for her.”

  Two women allegedly ran away with lovers, and both sent letters home from faraway places. Now one was dead. Murdered.

  “But that must not have been true,” Lily said, looking from one of us to the next. The girl was smart. She’d thought the clues through in an instant. “Sadie never left the area, or she wouldn’t have been buried behind the cornfield, right?”

  “Maybe not,” Naomi said, her voice aching with pain.

  Off the phone, Sariah came back and sat with the others. All three of my mothers appeared shaken, but Mother looked nearly destroyed. Her shoulders sagged and her breathing sounded labored, as if she was forcing her body to take in oxygen. “Before you leave so I can get to work on this, I have one more question,” I said. As sorry as I felt for her, there were things I needed to know. “Mother, who did you tell about Delilah disappearing? Who did you think was looking for her?”

  My mother stared up at me, her face as I’d never seen it before. She looked haunted, remorseful. Mother rarely let her guard down, but I heard shame in her voice. “I did what I have always done, what we were told to do for generations in Alber. What my grandparents and parents did before me. The Barstows have always been the family the faithful turn to in times of trouble. When Delilah disappeared, I asked the prophet for help.”

  “But your prophet, old man Barstow, is in prison.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But the elders have a way of contacting him when something happens in the community.”

  Of course they would have found a contact within the prison who carries messages and keeps him involved. I should have known. I thought about what Hannah and Max had said, that little in Alber had truly changed. “What did the prophet tell you to do, Mother?”

  “Our prophet sent a message that I wasn’t to worry. He said his sons would look for Delilah.”

  My heart felt like butterfly wings fluttering within my chest, perhaps because I already suspected the answer when I asked, “Which sons?”

  Mother hung her head and murmured, “Evan and Gerard.”

  I plopped down in a chair across from her. Mother�
��s words hit me like a physical blow. My mother had trusted my prime suspect, Evan Barstow, to find Delilah. Livid, I ached to chastise her, to force her to accept responsibility for the folly of turning to men like the Barstows. But when I looked over at her, I lost any appetite for retribution. I saw that I couldn’t punish Mother any more than she punished herself. Her hands locked in a death grip on her lap, her chin trembled and her eyes reflected the terror of someone truly lost.

  I leaned toward her and asked, “So both of them, Evan and Gerard, were supposed to look for Delilah?”

  “Yes.” Mother examined my face, and I’m sure saw the disappointment there. “Clara, how could I have known? I mean, it made sense. They’re both policemen.”

  “Did you talk to either one of them personally about Delilah?” I asked.

  Her chest heaved with a swallowed anguish. “Only to Evan. He promised that he would explain the situation to Gerard and that they would work on this as a team, as their father ordered.”

  Only to Evan. I drew in a deep breath and tried to remain calm. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

  Mother wiped a tissue over her eyes, blotting tears. “Evan insisted we keep Delilah’s disappearance a secret. He promised me that he and Gerard wouldn’t tell anyone. And Evan said our family had to act as if nothing had happened, to protect Delilah.”

  “To protect Delilah?” I asked.

  “Yes, to protect Delilah.” Her voice dropped so low I could barely hear her when she swore, “I promise you, Clara, everything I did was to protect Delilah. She was my only concern.”

  Mother’s words chilled me to my core like a harsh winter wind. “I don’t understand. How did concealing the fact that Delilah had been abducted protect her?”

  “Clara, you know what Alber is like,” Mother said, as solemnly as I remembered she counseled me as a child. “In the eyes of the faithful, a girl despoiled by a man is ruined. No man wants a tainted woman as a wife.”

  “Mother, no.” I couldn’t bear to hear what I knew she would say. “Please, no.”