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

by Kathryn Casey

  The flashlight landed on the gray rock wall above the mattress. The man stopped it there, lighting up something that glinted. Something metallic.

  “Over there,” he ordered.

  Delilah did as told. She marched twenty feet or so into the cave, her head crunched down to her shoulders, fearing an onslaught of bats. As she got closer, she realized the object in the wall was a metal loop, another anchor like the one she’d been shackled to above the pad in the room. “You don’t have to chain us up, mister,” she pleaded. “We’ll be really good. We will.”

  “Yeah,” Jayme said. “If you don’t chain us, we can help you. We’ll set the sleeping bags up. Warm up some dinner.”

  “I’m not gonna have to worry about you girls running off,” he said. “Stand on the mattress, close enough so I can lock this chain to the wall.”

  “But, please, mister. Jayme’s right. We could help,” Delilah insisted.

  “Do as you’re told,” he ordered.

  Delilah edged forward, stood on the mattress and waited, Jayme beside her. The man strung the chain through the anchor’s loop, then retrieved a padlock out of his pocket, pushed the shackle through two links and clicked it shut.

  Out of a dark corner, the man pulled two lanterns and switched them on, sending a warm glow through the chilly cave. He put them down, one near the girls and the other in the center of the cavern. “I’m getting the supplies. Don’t try anything. I’ll be right back.”

  Drained from the hike, Delilah sat down on the mattress. “You think he’ll unchain us when he’s done bringing in the supplies?”

  Jayme’s frown sunk lower as she eased down next to her. “Not likely.”

  They watched warily as the man carried in bread and fruit. In the corner, he had a cooler he slipped the perishables into, including a half-gallon of milk. Delilah saw water bottles and twelve-packs of beer stacked beside canned goods. She spotted blankets next to the mattress. “We’re cold,” she said. “Is it okay if we use these?”

  “Sure.” He walked over, grabbed a blanket and threw it at them. “We’re gonna be really cozy here.”

  “How long are we staying?” Jayme asked.

  “Long as we need to,” he replied.

  Once he had the supplies unloaded, Gerard led the stallion in and tied it off to an anchor on the opposite side of the grotto, just inside the opening. “They’ll have the helicopters with the heat equipment out. Can’t have the horse visible,” Gerard said. “See, girls, I know what they’ll do. I know how to hide out until they give up and go home. Even that damn sister of yours, Delilah.”

  “That’s good,” Delilah said, as if pleased. All she could think of was what she and Jayme talked about when they made their plan. They had to convince the man to trust them, so he’d unchain them. Only then could they find a way to escape. “We could make you some dinner.”

  The man sized up both the girls, as if unsure. “Nah, I’ll cook. I got some canned chili I’ll heat up. Give you girls a treat.”

  “Jayme, how’s your elbow?” Delilah asked, loud enough so she was sure the man would hear.

  “Swollen,” she said. “I think it’s broken.”

  He walked over toward them. “Bad, huh?”

  Jayme grimaced. “Mister, it’s real bad. Did you bring anything for pain?”

  “No. Never thought of it. Just some Band-Aids and stuff.” He pushed her right sleeve up on her reed-thin arm. Delilah nearly gasped, seeing how near-starvation made the older girl’s bones stand out. Right below her elbow, Jayme had a bruised lump the size of a quail egg. The man rotated her arm, and Jayme let out a shrill cry.

  “That really might be broken,” he mumbled.

  “I could help,” Delilah whispered. Gerard looked over at her, questioning. “I can make a poultice of mashed herbs, especially comfrey if I can find any,” she explained. “Mother Ardeth always used it to stop the pain and help things heal. We can wrap it on Jayme’s arm and find a piece of wood for a brace.”

  Gerard stared down at her. “You know how to do that?”

  “I watched our mother Ardeth make poultices. She’s like a doctor,” Delilah said. “She taught me.”

  “OOOOWWWWWW,” Jayme cried again, her eyes filling with tears. “It hurts bad.”

  “Shit.” Gerard stared down at Delilah. “I’ll think about it. Maybe, if you two behave, in the morning we’ll look for those herbs and stuff. Too dark out there now.”

  “Thank you, mister,” Jayme said, and she smiled up at him.

  “Right now, after dinner, bed,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll have a big day.”

  “How come?” Jayme asked.

  He grinned. “My dad, the great prophet, never trusted me with a wife. Now he’s in prison, and I don’t need his permission. I got the two of you without him.”

  “But what’s happening tomorrow?” Delilah wondered if she really wanted to know.

  “Tomorrow, you and me are getting hitched, little one. You’ll become my wife in every way. And we’ll be sealed for eternity.” Gerard smirked at her, and Delilah felt nauseous. “I’ll teach you what it means to be a wife.”

  Forty-Seven

  The helicopters flew to St. George to refuel about 4 a.m. They’d return in the morning. We’d had a few more false alarms, but no more sightings. Not long after, we tied off the horses on the trail to rest and wait for sunrise. The dogs had apparently lost the scent. Somehow, we must have gone past where Gerard left the trail. In the daylight we’d be able to look for clues. We had a few hours to go, and an overwhelming fatigue plagued all of us. It had been a grueling day and as taxing a night. I felt like I’d aged decades since the previous morning. My bones and joints ached as if we’d hiked to Salt Lake and back. The men slumped in their saddles. I thought of Delilah and feared stopping, but we couldn’t go on.

  “The dogs are confused. We exposed them to Evan’s scent, but now we’re after Gerard,” one of the trainers explained. “I’m surprised they could trail him without being given anything of his to smell. The only thing I can come up with is that they’ve been picking up the scent of his horse.”

  In our hours together, I’d learned that Officer Conroy was a pragmatic kid, one who had a tendency to see through it all and get to the bottom line. Maybe he’d inherited the tendency, since both his parents were cops. “It doesn’t really matter why the dogs lost the scent, or whose scent they were following. We just need to find the chief,” he said.

  The horses dozed, the dogs slept, and we threw out ideas. Mullins and Max had their rifles out, keeping watch. We wondered who Gerard had with him, mentioning again the two mattress pads in the bedrooms and the two petite sets of tracks Rodgers found. I reassured myself that Delilah, the most recently kidnapped, was probably one of the girls, but who was the other? Could it be Jayme Coombs?

  As we talked, I took deep breaths, in, out, in again. Calm. Be calm. I felt sure that Gerard had Delilah somewhere on the mountain, not terribly far away. Yet I could do nothing to save her. Although unavoidable, I resented the delay, and I felt helpless.

  “Gerard doesn’t seem to be moving all that fast. I think our assumption is right and the hostages are slowing him down,” Max said, giving some comfort that all wasn’t lost. “We’re getting fairly high, and the trees will start thinning soon. It’ll make it harder for him to find cover. My guess is that wherever he’s hiding isn’t much farther up than we are now.”

  “Most likely that cave,” I mused. “If we only knew where it was.”

  We talked it through. As we got closer, I worried about the dogs tipping Gerard off by barking. Mullins suggested that once we found the spot where Gerard and the girls left the trail, we let Rodgers take over the tracking. The decision made, we agreed that from that point on we’d leave the dogs back with their trainers on the trail and forge on without them. If we needed them, we could radio and have them rejoin us.

  “The choppers make a lot of noise, too. Could make it tough to take the chief by surprise, right
?” A rhetorical question; none of us responded to Conroy. “Maybe we shouldn’t use them?”

  “What do you think?” Max glanced over at me and asked.

  “Yeah, they’re noisy. But do we have another option?” I asked. The men shrugged, and offered no opinions. “I think we’re stuck with the helicopters. We need the thermal imaging to find Gerard. What else can we use?”

  “Even the choppers won’t help us if Gerard has the girls hidden in a cave,” Max pointed out. “If they’re inside layers of rock, the equipment is useless.”

  No one said anything, but we all knew Max was right. From here on out, the choppers could hurt more than help. But I still didn’t see that we had a choice.

  “What about the horses? They’re pretty noisy, too,” Conroy mentioned. A brief discussion and we agreed to hike the final trek up the mountain.

  Our plan set, all we could do was wait for morning. I knew I’d never sleep so I took over the watch. The others napped but with my mind on Delilah, I couldn’t quiet it enough for even a moment’s peace. It was then that I remembered Sadie’s diary in the saddlebag on my horse.

  “These mountains that surround us confine us,” my sister wrote in a precise hand. “They keep out those who disagree with the way we live, but they keep us locked in, too. I wish I could fly over the mountains, or down the highway and escape. Somewhere there is another world.”

  It turned out that Sadie was a chronicler, and something of an artist. Unhappy with her regimented life, journaling apparently gave her an outlet to reveal her feelings and thoughts. I wondered if there were other such books hidden in the trailer, for this volume covered only her final two years. In the margins she’d drawn playful caricatures of our family. My tension eased enough that I chuckled at one of my mother. It bore a striking resemblance to the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz.

  On other pages, Sadie sketched her mother’s beehives, the boxes surrounded by buzzing bees, the drawers filled with intricate building blocks of honeycomb. She excelled at drawing their small occupants, honeybees colored in with black and yellow markers. Her bees had whimsical faces and playfully positioned antennae, drooping in sadness, straight up in anger, and stretched out sideways in surprise. She fashioned detailed drawings of cardinals and bluebirds, vultures, warblers, swifts and sparrows. On one page, she drew an eagle. I pushed up my sleeve and compared it to my tattoo. They could have been siblings, as we were.

  “When I stand alone outside the bee shack, I see the birds on high branches, preening their feathers and watching me,” Sadie wrote. “What do they think of a girl who dreams of escape?”

  Two dozen pages in, I noticed my name. “Could I find Clara? Does she remember me? Would she help me if I ran away?”

  “Yes, I would have,” I whispered, a tear forming in my eye. “Oh, dear Sadie, if you had only come to me.”

  What did our mothers think when they read Sadie’s words? On page after page she expressed disdain for our family’s way of life, especially the church hierarchy, who assigned women as property. “I’ll never marry an old man with a harem, to live my life only for his pleasure,” she swore. “Whatever I have to do, I will find a way to avoid such an existence.”

  I skimmed through the book, looking for anything that might help. In an entry dated a few months before Sadie disappeared, she wrote that a man drove up to the bee shack in a pickup truck. As Sariah had said, the description offered few clues. “He’s tall and big. Why would he seek out me? His family has money and influence. At first, I worried. I didn’t understand why he’d come. What he intended. But he brought me presents, flowers and perfume, and he stayed and talked.”

  I understood why my mothers saw no hints to the man’s identity when they read the diary, but in hindsight, Sadie’s descriptions fit Gerard Barstow. She talked of his position in town, that he had the ability to keep her safe. As the prophet’s son, as the police chief, he could have done that. Instead, he buried her in a rock-covered grave.

  “I don’t love him, but he touches me and something deep inside me moves. And he says he loves me. We’ll live on his brother’s ranch at the foot of the mountains. I’ll join him there, and we’ll rebuild the old house. One day, it will be a good home to raise our children. I do want children. On their walls I’ll draw princesses and pirates.”

  So Gerard lived at the ranch where the girls were held. One answer fell in place. I felt a devastating rush of disappointment, questioning again how I could have zeroed in on Evan Barstow and never considered his brother. I’d been fooled.

  I wished I had time to read the entire diary. When I fled, I’d lost so many years with Sadie, time I could never get back. Her words brought her to me. But the day would break soon, so I concentrated on mentions of Gerard, anything that might help.

  In the very last entry, dated a day before Sadie disappeared, I found it.

  Forty-Eight

  Sunlight crept through the darkness and day arrived. The woods transformed slowly, channeling light between the trees. I woke the men. I handed out energy bars and water, and told them what I had planned. “We’re going to ground the helicopters and find Gerard on our own.”

  “How?” Mullins asked.

  “Using this.” I held up Sadie’s diary. “There’s a notation that could refer to the location of a cave.” I opened to the page and read it to them. “He whispered his plans to me at the bee shack. When he came to me, he said that I should be his wife, his only wife for eternity. I again confessed that I don’t love him. Sometimes I see things in him that frighten me, but then I have never known a man in this way. Perhaps that’s why I am afraid. I know he wants me. I see it in his eyes.

  “I am to tell no one of our plans. We will meet where we have before. From high on the mountain, halfway between Samuel’s Peak and the hump, we’ll look down on the world we’ve known. By the time our families discover we’re gone, we will be man and wife.”

  For a moment, the men remained quiet. Then Max asked, “Samuel’s Peak and the hump, she’s talking about the camel’s hump on the east, the one closest to the peak, right?”

  “I think so,” I said. “In our family, Father told the legend every Christmas Eve, explaining how the two lesser mountaintops resemble humps and Samuel’s Peak the head of a camel. We’d stand out in the cold while he traced the mountains with his hand. He said one of the three wise men, Balthazar, carved his camel there for us to see.”

  “Halfway between,” Conroy mused. “You think…” He paused and raised his hand up and pointed east of where we stood. Most of the mountaintops were obscured by the trees; we could barely see the ridges. “Right about there?”

  “It’s too hard to plot a course from here,” I said. “I’ll cancel the choppers but ask them to stand by in case we need them. If the dogs are able to lock onto the point where Gerard took the girls into the woods, we’ll be able to call Stef and get our bearings based on our position and the mountain.”

  My nerves on edge, fearful I’d misread the clues and we’d squander more time, I took some comfort from the men. They all seemed more hopeful as we hiked back down the trail, the dogs and Rodgers in the lead. About twenty minutes later, one dog appeared to pick up the scent on a narrow dirt path. The other kept ambling down the trail.

  “I don’t know,” one of the trainers said. “When it’s a sure thing, they both lock on. Not happening here.”

  Max and I scanned the waking forest with binoculars, while Rodgers ventured a few dozen feet into the woods. He walked back to whisper to us, not risking a shout. “Looks like this might be it, but I’m not one hundred percent. Lots of rock. The ground’s hard as cement from the drought, and I can’t see human footprints, but there are broken branches and a handful of indentations that may be horse prints. Since the one dog likes this, I’d say it might be right.”

  I looked at Max, who shrugged and said, “Clara, this is your call.”

  The others waited for me to decide. I got on the radio. “Stef, can you see us on the c
omputer screen?”

  “Yup. I’ve got you.”

  “Figure out what direction we need to hike from here to get to the upper tree line at a point where we’ll be halfway between the peak and the closest hump, the one farthest east.”

  “Hump?” Stef questioned. I’d forgotten that she’d just moved to Alber a year earlier.

  “Ask someone, maybe the deputies who grew up around Alber. They can show you where the camel’s humps are. We need to set a course that’ll end up approximately halfway between the eastern hump and Samuel’s Peak.”

  For a while, silence. Then Stef clicked back on. “I’ve never heard of this camel thing, but I found someone who did. It looks like you want to hike so that you end up about twenty-five degrees east of your location. The sheriff’s looked it over, too. He agrees.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said. “Monitor us and let us know if we wander off course, or if it looks like we’re heading in the right direction to hit our mark.”

  “You’ve got it,” she said.

  We tied the horses’ reins on trees and said goodbye to the trainers and the dogs. “Keep your guns handy. We don’t know where this guy is,” I warned them. “And listen in on the radio, in case we need you.”

  Then I asked Rodgers if he would continue on with us. “We need you to keep looking for signs indicating what direction Gerard took. We know that you’re not a cop. If you’d rather not, we understand.”

  Our tracker put his hand on his side and patted his firearm. “I’m coming.”

  The opening in the woods slender, we formed a line. The trees spread out around us. We carried our rifles at our sides, and more soft morning light filtered through as the sun rose higher. Off and on Rodgers made us retrace our steps, readjusting. “I’m not seeing much, but I think this is right,” he said. “A few broken branches, and where the ground is soft enough some partial prints that could be from the horse. I don’t have a clue how old they are though. What if it’s not them?”