I chuckled. Max shrugged and said, “Looks like I’m outnumbered.”
We ate our dinner at the kitchen table. The chili was a heavy, spicy mixture served with bread to cut the burn. Max offered to open a bottle of wine, but I reminded him that I had work to do before the day ended. Watching Brooke, I thought about my four years as an elementary school teacher in Alber, the children I’d known. Since I’d returned, I’d run into a few off and on, now all teenagers. Some turned away, mindful that as an apostate I was to be spurned. But once in a while, one stopped to talk, and when that happened, I remembered the softness of young hands in mine, the joy of seeing an idea take hold, a first word read, an addition problem solved. Throughout those terrible years, ones when I constantly feared for my life, the children I taught sustained me. I thought about how my world had changed and how my work had become so much darker.
Yet I no longer felt owned, like a possession.
While we ate, Brooke chatted happily, describing her paperweight collection. “My mom had it,” she said. “And now it’s mine. And sometimes Dad and me go to rummage sales and antique stores and find more.”
“I’d love to see it,” I said.
After dinner, Max insisted he didn’t need help with the dishes, and Brooke and I went to her room. The paperweights were displayed on shelves lining one wall, dozens of them: heavy glass with flowers, ships, abstract designs and figures inside. The only one on the ground floor, the room must have been intended to be the main bedroom. Max undoubtedly gave it to Brooke to make it easier with her chair. A charming blue-lavender, it smelled of fresh paint. When I said I liked the color, Brooke explained, “I copied it from the flowers in the book.”
“What book?” I asked, and she dug around in her nightstand drawer and pulled out the volume of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility I’d given her a few months earlier, the first time we met. She opened it and pointed at the label with the printed name of the girl who’d once owned it, surrounded by forget-me-nots. The paint in the room matched the flowers perfectly.
“Remember how Dad said these were my mom’s favorite?” Brooke asked.
“I do remember,” I said. I looked around the room at the framed pictures of unicorns and princesses, and I wished Max’s late wife, Miriam, had been able to see it, to tuck her daughter into bed each night. “I bet your mom would love that you painted your room this beautiful color.”
“I think so, too,” she said.
Brooke wheeling beside me, Max was drying the chili pot when we reached the kitchen. “I need to go. I have that stop at the hospital to make,” I said.
Although Max looked disappointed, he didn’t argue, just dried his hands on the towel and turned to Brooke. “I’ll escort Clara out.”
I hugged Brooke goodnight, and as we walked out, she wheeled over to sit in front of the television. Remote in hand, she began surfing through the stations. “Homework?” Max asked.
“Just a little,” she answered.
“Better get to it,” he warned. “Bedtime in an hour.”
Max walked me to my vehicle, both of us hidden in the shadows. “I think she likes you,” he said.
“You’re trying too hard,” I countered, and he shrugged.
“I’m glad you came. It meant a lot to… both of us,” he said.
“I enjoyed it,” I admitted. “Brooke’s a great kid.”
“Yeah, I think so, too,” he said. For a moment, we were quiet, and then Max said, “I’ll put in a call to Doc Wiley and the lab first thing in the morning. Anything I can do tonight, for the case?”
There was something I’d been considering: “Max, do you think there are records in the secret files that might help?” While working my first case in Alber, I’d found a locked room at the station filled with file cabinets bulging with paperwork. The cases went back decades, and had everything from assaults, missing persons and domestic violence, to thefts and allegations of harassment. It appeared none of them had ever been investigated or cleared—all swept under the carpet by my predecessor to protect prominent members of the sect. I’d been working my way through them gradually, organizing and figuring out which ones to pursue. I didn’t remember seeing anything on Myles, Carl, or anyone involved, but I wasn’t halfway through them yet, and I worried that I might have missed something.
“Maybe,” Max said. “Why don’t you ask a couple of the nightshift guys to sift through and double-check?”
“Sure,” I said. “Good idea.”
“Back to what I can do,” Max said. “Brooke will be in bed soon, and I’ll have time.”
“You can look up both Carl and Myles on NCIC, see what the feds have on file about them, any convictions or lawsuits,” I suggested. “I’ll give you a call when I leave the hospital to see what you’ve got and fill you in on Jacob’s condition.”
“Okay. I’ll also put some feelers out in Mexico, email a guy I know with the sect down there, see what I can find out about Carl and Jacob,” Max said.
“Good idea.” My phone buzzed, and I slipped it out of my pocket. A text.
“Something on the case?” Max asked.
“My friend in Dallas says that the shoe print in the kitchen came from a pair of boots made by the Wilderness Shoe Company. It’s a pair called the Steel Ranger.” I held the phone up so Max could see the photo. The boots were high-tops with laces, thick stitching across the toe.
“That should make it easier to track,” Max said. “They can’t sell too many of those around here. I’ll email the DA’s office and ask them to send a subpoena to Wilderness Shoe ordering them to turn over any information on anyone who has purchased those boots who lives in this part of Utah, local stores who stock them too.”
“They might have to work on that. It may take a while,” I groused. “It seems like corporate requests always take days or weeks, not hours.”
“Clara, it’s a start,” Max said. “We’ll find the killer. Wait and see.”
“Sure.” With that, I turned to open the door.
“Clara, I…” Max said, and then stopped talking.
I turned back toward him, and he brushed his hand across my cheek.
I hesitated, but Max moved slowly forward, and our lips met. His were warm and soft, the kiss both exciting and comforting. I breathed him in and felt my body respond. I drew closer, and he wrapped me in his arms. For a few brief moments, I had a place where I truly belonged.
I felt wanted.
Then the war inside me started anew, my mind warning me to be careful, not to open myself up to being hurt, while every instinct I had urged me to fold myself into Max and to hold on to him forever. Instead, I pulled away.
On the drive to the hospital, I mulled over that kiss, our first in nineteen years. Last time I’d been a teenage girl who knew what she wanted: him. This time I felt conflicted, confused, and worried. I thought about how disappointed Max looked when I turned to leave. At thirty-five, my life was unfolding and the road ahead looked lonely. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t let myself be happy? Why couldn’t I reach out to Max as he was reaching out to me? Somewhere deep inside me, my past had drawn a line, one that I didn’t know how to cross. Formed of my pain, of my fears, it separated me from any hope of love.
I could still feel the warmth of Max’s lips on mine when I walked into the ICU and tracked over to Jacob’s room. The drapes on the corridor window were pulled back, and the lights inside glared. I’d thought that perhaps I’d see Jacob’s parents waiting in the hallway, but Michael and Reba weren’t there. I assumed they were inside Jacob’s room, but when I looked in, I saw a woman standing on the far side of the bed. It took me a moment to realize that it was Naomi.
The scene unfolding inside the ICU room looked intimate, as if something very personal were transpiring. I stood and watched as Naomi stared down affectionately at Jacob. His face was turned toward her. I couldn’t be sure from where I stood, but I had the impression that he might be awake. Watching from outside the window, I felt lik
e an interloper.
Then Naomi looked up and saw me. She frowned, and her lips moved. I couldn’t hear her, but I thought she whispered, “Clara’s here.”
Thinking she was alerting Jacob to my arrival, I gave her a slight wave and entered the room. As I did, Jacob’s head rolled lazily back to the center of the pillow. “Is he awake?” I said, but he didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, his expression blank, and the only sounds were the beeping machines and his harsh breaths pulling through the slice in his throat.
“No, no,” Naomi said. “Why would you think that? He’s not conscious.”
“But you were just talking to him,” I said. “I saw you. You told him I was here.”
Naomi smiled at me, just a bit condescending. “Oh, Clara, no. I was talking, but he’s not awake. They say you should talk to those who are unconscious, to let them know that you are with them. I was telling him that I hoped he will wake soon, and that I pray for him.”
I walked over and stood beside Naomi. “So, he hasn’t come to?”
“No,” she said. “There’s been no sign of that.”
“Why are you here again?” I asked.
“I’m covering for his parents while they have a little dinner and freshen up. Then I’ll go home.”
“Did they say if he woke up at any other point today?” I asked.
“If he did, they didn’t mention it, and as I said, he hasn’t shown any inclination toward waking while I’ve been here.”
I said nothing more, just stared at Naomi and thought about how something didn’t seem right. I had such an odd feeling, the sense that something was very wrong. I looked into the eyes of a woman who’d been one of my mothers since I was a young girl, a woman I grew up loving, part of my family, and I didn’t believe her. But why would she lie?
On my way out, I stopped at the nurses’ station. The woman on duty had only come on half an hour earlier, but she checked the file and said no one noted that Jacob had shown any signs of regaining consciousness. “Would you be able to tell from the monitors you have on him if he’s woken up at any point?” I asked.
“No, they’re just tracking his blood pressure, oxygen, and heart rate,” she said. “He’s not hooked up to anything that monitors brainwave activity.”
“And you didn’t see anything happening in the room, like Jacob interacting with Naomi Jefferies or his parents, that would suggest he’d come out of the coma?” I asked.
The woman looked frustrated, as if my questions were an annoyance. “No. I haven’t seen anything unusual in that room at all. No one has told me that he’s woken up.” She pulled out a file and looked over at me. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
“I would have sworn that Naomi was talking to him. And she was whispering, which seemed strange. Don’t you think that’s odd?” I told Max on the phone. I was driving back to Alber for the night from the hospital in Pine City. It had been a long day; I was tired and disappointed. I wanted to keep working the case, but I couldn’t think of anything to be done until the morning, and maybe nothing until the reports came in. We needed more information.
I guessed Max must have been considering what I’d told him, because for a few moments he said nothing. Then he said, “We both want Jacob to wake up. Maybe you just saw what you wanted to see, Clara. We do that sometimes. When you thought you saw Naomi talking to him, you assumed that your wish had come true.”
“I don’t…” I started, but then I didn’t go any further. Max had to be right. Naomi had no reason to hide anything from me. Why would she? “Well, maybe. I guess that could be. I don’t read lips or anything. It was just what I thought I saw.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Max said. “I don’t know of any reason Naomi wouldn’t tell you the truth. Maybe what’s going on here is that you’re being influenced by your trust issues with your family, your strained relationships with your mothers?”
That hit a nerve. Maybe Max was right. Rather than answer, I changed the subject and asked, “Anything interesting pop up on NCIC?”
“Just a couple of things,” Max said. “There’s a little more info on Carl’s stint in prison. Pretty much like he described it, a barroom altercation. But he really went off on the guy, nearly killed him. They supposedly put him through anger management group sessions in prison, but you know what those are like.”
“In Texas prisons, it was a group of inmates sitting around complaining about how they got a raw deal,” I said. “I’m assuming the same here?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “It’s one of those things you hope works but doesn’t seem to very often.”
“What about your contact in Mexico?”
“I sent the email but haven’t heard back yet,” he answered. “Probably won’t until the morning. I don’t have a working phone number for the guy. If he doesn’t get in touch, I’ll reach out to the local cops down there and ask them for any information they can rustle up.”
“What about Myles, his past?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he answered. “The guy’s invisible. No arrests, no problems. The only thing I noticed was that he hasn’t renewed his registration for the pickup and it expires in a few days.”
“That’s odd.”
“What is?” Max asked.
“Well, admittedly we just peeked in the windows, but it looked like Myles has his cabin and the barn organized, so well that the entire place could be a model home,” I said. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d wait until the last minute to get his registration renewed.”
“Hmm.” Max got quiet. Thinking, I guessed. “Well, no, he doesn’t.”
“I’m going to drive out to Myles’s place, check in with Conroy,” I said. “I want to take another look around.”
“I’ll get Alice here for Brooke and meet you there,” Max offered.
“Not necessary. Stay home and enjoy your evening with her,” I said.
Then I brought up something that had occurred to me as we talked. “Max, I’ve been assuming that Jeremy wasn’t murdered like the rest of the family because he was too young to be a threat to the killer, unable to tell what happened,” I said. “But what if the killer didn’t know Jeremy was there? What if he knows now, and the baby is in danger?”
Max thought about that for a moment. “I guess it’s possible,” Max said. “Tell you what, just to be careful, I’ll make a few calls, find out who has the baby, and we’ll put surveillance on the house, keep watch.”
“No, I’ll put one of my men on that, too. This is our case, remember,” I said. “How worried do you think we have to be?”
“Not sure,” Max said. “We still have no idea why the others were murdered.”
Eighteen
Against the night sky, the mountains looked like deep waves of shadow. It was going on eight thirty as I approached Myles Thompkins’ place, and I started thinking that Conroy had put in a long, hard day. Maybe I was asking too much of the kid. I called dispatch. “Conroy’s still out at the Thompkins place, right?”
“Yup,” the night dispatcher said. “You want me to bump him on the radio for you?”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “You have someone relieving him soon?”
“Regular time, Chief. Within the hour.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m on my way out there, just to look around a bit. I’ll let him leave, and I’ll stand watch until the night shift arrives.”
“Got it,” she said.
The road to the cabin wound through the woods, and I worried about wolves, coyotes, bears, other animals barreling out in front of me from the darkness. I came upon a car ahead, a squad, and I pulled to the shoulder and parked behind it. “Conroy!” I shouted. “You there? It’s the chief.”
No answer.
Something felt off. I took my Colt out of my holster and kept walking toward the squad. I shined my flashlight inside. No sign of Conroy. The door was unlocked. I stuck my head in and grabbed the mic. The dispatcher answered. “Conroy’
s car is here, but I don’t see him. Have you heard from him?”
“No. Nothing. Should I send someone out there quick, or wait on his replacement?”
I hesitated, unsure. “Yes. Let’s do it. A backup squad. You know where we are?”
“I’ll trace it on Conroy’s GPS and give them the location.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m going to look around, try to find him.”
“Stay safe,” she said.
I closed the squad’s door and shined my flashlight into the woods, skimmed between the trees, seeing nothing out of place at first, but then something moved. In the distance, in the shadows, something paced. I stayed half-hidden behind the car, scanning between the tree trunks. I had my Colt in my right hand, braced on the top of the car, ready. I watched. Nothing. No one. Something flickered through the trees. I waited, trigger finger ready, and then it emerged from behind a stand of trees, my flashlight lighting up a dark eye.
“A deer,” I whispered. “Spooked by a deer.”
The animal stared at me, turned and ran. My thoughts returned to my young officer. Where was Conroy?
I left the road and walked down the winding driveway. The cabin lay a hundred feet or so ahead. I saw nothing unusual as I stepped onto the gravel, my boots making a grinding sound as I picked my way forward, my flashlight leading the way, my Colt ready.
The cabin’s front door was open, lights beaming from inside. I continued on, careful, watching, moving forward knowing that someone could come at me out of the darkness at any moment, from any direction. I heard the dogs barking, and I saw a horse tied up to a railing in front of the house. Then, off to the side, two men stood close together, talking, one of them dangling a flashlight at his side, throwing a splash of light onto the ground.
I walked faster, and as I approached, the man with the flashlight aimed the beam at me. Nearly blinded, I had my finger hovering over the trigger. I was ready. “Police Chief Clara Jefferies here. Who’s there?” I shouted. “Identify yourselves.”
Her Final Prayer: A totally gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 2) Page 13
