Her Final Prayer: A totally gripping and heart-stopping crime thriller (Detective Clara Jefferies Book 2)

by Kathryn Casey

  “Fingerprints?” Max asked.

  “Nada,” the tech said. “Like the gun, the knife handle has been wiped clean.”

  “What about Jacob’s wound?” I asked. “Does it match that, too?”

  “Not sure yet,” the tech said. “We’re waiting on photos and X-rays from the hospital to compare. We should have that for you soon.”

  “Okay, and the bloody print and the boot, anything there yet?” Max asked.

  “Not sure. I’ll check and email it over when it’s ready,” the tech said. “I know they’re working on it. I saw a colleague scanning the print into the system.”

  “We’d appreciate that,” I said as I plopped down in the chair, thinking.

  “We’ll watch for it,” Max said. “And thanks again for turning all this around so fast.”

  As we hung up, Kellie walked in with the copies of the letters I’d found sewn into Laurel’s curtains. Max took a stack and I grabbed the rest. We started shuffling, the earliest letters top left on the conference room table, the most recent bottom right. We had three rows, twenty-one letters in all. Unlike Laurel’s letters, which were sent religiously once a week, Myles sometimes skipped a week, even two. While hers were written on Sundays, Myles dated his on Wednesdays. None of his was terribly long, just a page or two, a couple at the most three pages, and we read them in order, starting with one that was written shortly after Laurel was promised to Jacob. At the top, he addressed each TO THE WOMAN I LOVE.

  WHY WOULD THE PROPHET DO THIS TO US? Myles wrote. The letters were block printed in a precise hand. DOESN’T HE UNDERSTAND LOVE? HOW CAN THIS BE A REVELATION FROM GOD, WHEN GOD IS LOVE? HE WOULD KNOW THAT WE AREN’T TO BE SEPARATED, WOULDN’T HE? I CAN’T ENVISION A GOD WHO WOULD DENY OUR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER.

  The letters were heartfelt and kind. Myles inquired about Laurel’s health and urged her to stop her hunger strike and eat:

  I WANT YOU ALIVE MORE THAN WITH ME. I WANT YOU TO LIVE, LAUREL, MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE. IF YOU DIE, I WILL, TOO. FOR HOW COULD I LIVE WITHOUT YOU IN THIS WORLD? THAT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE.

  Laurel had written little about Jacob in her letters to Myles, and he ignored him as well, rarely calling him by name. At times, when Myles had to, he referred to Jacob as “your husband.”

  YOUR HUSBAND SHOULD NOT MAKE YOU DO SUCH HARD WORK, LAUREL, he wrote a few months after she married. DOESN’T HE HAVE WORKERS TO FEED THE BISON? THEY’RE POWERFUL ANIMALS, AND UNPREDICTABLE. IT WORRIES ME THAT HE SENDS YOU OUT INTO THE FIELDS WITH THEM. WHAT IF ONE WERE TO CHARGE YOU?

  I turned to Max. “Just a minute,” I said. “I’m going to get the copies of Laurel’s letters.”

  I hurried to my office and claimed them off my desk, whisked them back to the conference room and we laid them out also based on date, intermingling them with Jacob’s letters. When we read them in succession, we quickly realized that they rarely flowed one to the other. Laurel and Myles weren’t answering each other’s questions or concerns from the previous letter in their own. “Look at this,” I said to Max. “There’s nothing in Laurel’s letter before this about feeding the bison.”

  “So, he didn’t get that out of a letter?” Max inquired. “Then how?”

  “In two of the letters, Laurel mentions that they met. Maybe they did this often, or whenever they could.” I then mentioned what had occurred to me earlier, when I’d first read Laurel’s letters. “That time that Scotty said he saw them at the river, maybe that was their meeting place.”

  “It could be. Or they may have been talking on the phone,” Max pointed out. “Jacob might not have been able to tell. The house phone is a landline, a wall phone, one of the old Trimline models without caller ID.”

  “So, Jacob wouldn’t have known,” I said.

  “Probably not,” Max said. “Maybe she called Myles while Jacob was in town or out in the fields, when he was somewhere with Anna and the children.”

  “Or late at night, when Jacob was in Anna’s bed, not hers,” I said.

  Max sighed. “Not a lot of answers here.”

  “That could be true. They may have been able to hide the phone calls. Unless there’s a detail on the phone bills.” I picked up the phone. “Let me check something.”

  Moments later, Mueller picked up. “Lieutenant, did you happen to find any bills at the crime scene at the ranch, especially phone bills?” I asked.

  “Yes, we did,” he answered. “I’m pretty sure they’re in the desk in the downstairs study. I could probably find them. Do you want me to swing out there and get them, log them in and bring them to you? It shouldn’t take long.”

  “That would be great,” I said.

  When I hung up, Max said, “What if Laurel had a cell phone?”

  “Good thought.” I nodded. This time I called Mullins. When he answered, his voice sounded subdued and hoarse, thick with sadness. “How’re you doing, Jeff?” I asked.

  “Best we can,” he answered. “Have you found Myles yet?”

  “No, but we have Conroy back out at the cabin watching for him, a BOLO out to law enforcement, and it should be on the news tonight,” I said. “And I don’t want you to fret about Jeremy. We have a squad watching Jacob’s sister’s house, where he’s being kept, just in case whoever did this isn’t finished.”

  “I wondered about that,” Mullins said. “Almost called you and asked about it.”

  “We’re covering it all, Jeff. Try not to worry,” I said.

  “Shit, Chief, I really think you and Max are wrong about Myles,” he said. “And it frosts me because you’re wasting time. Have you looked any more into Carl?”

  “We’re following that lead, too,” I said. “But right now, the evidence is pointing at Myles.”

  “Hell,” Mullins groused. “If it’s him, I’m going to be flat-out stunned. I just don’t believe it.”

  “Jeff, listen, did Laurel have a cell phone while she was married to Jacob? Do you know?” I asked.

  “No cell, just the house phone. I asked him a couple of times to get her one, didn’t like her not having one to call if she had a flat tire and such, but he never would. Said she didn’t need it,” he answered. “Why?”

  “Just trying to piece some things together,” I answered. “Gotta go. We’re working. We’ll be in touch soon.”

  “No cell,” I relayed to Max.

  At that, Max’s phone rang. He talked to someone, then hung up. “The lab says it appears the knife found on the scene is consistent with the one used to cut Jacob’s throat.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s one more question answered.”

  While we waited for the phone bills, we returned to the letters. In many of them, Myles tried to comfort Laurel. She must have complained about her husband’s sexual attentions, for Myles told her to try to train her mind to think of other things until it was over:

  YOU CAN’T REBUFF HIM. LAUREL, HE WILL COMPLAIN TO THE PROPHET AND THE MESSAGE WILL COME DOWN THAT YOU ARE DISOBEDIENT. IT’S BETTER TO TOLERATE HIM. YOU SAY WHEN YOU ARE WITH HIM YOU THINK OF ME. I THINK OF YOU EVERY NIGHT. PERHAPS OUR MINDS CAN CONNECT ON SOME OTHER PLANE, IN A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN BE WITH ME IN SPIRIT ALTHOUGH NOT IN BODY.

  At no time did Myles grumble. It seemed that he understood, perhaps better than Laurel did, that this wasn’t a war they could win. At one point, Laurel must have suggested they run away together, for Myles advised her to forget such thoughts:

  LAUREL, YOUR HUSBAND WOULD COME FOR YOU. HE WOULDN’T JUST LET YOU LEAVE. AND WE WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO LIVE IN PEACE. I CAN’T ASK YOU TO SPEND YOUR LIFE IN FEAR.

  An hour after we began, we were reading the most recent of the letters. In them, Myles talked of Jeremy. Laurel must have brought the baby to meet Myles:

  I HOPED ONE DAY YOU WOULD BEAR MY CHILD, MY LOVE. BUT THAT ISN’T TO BE. STILL, IT FILLS MY HEART WITH SUCH HAPPINESS TO SEE YOU WITH JEREMY. YOU HAVE A SON, LAUREL. A SON, WHO WILL BRING YOU JOY.

  The final letter was only a week old, dated the Wednesday before the murders, and i
t ended with the only hint of anything unusual happening:

  I’M DISMAYED BY WHAT YOU SO RECENTLY TOLD ME, AND I AM FEARFUL FOR YOU. WE MUST TALK SOON. VERY SOON. I WILL NOT HAVE YOU SUFFER. LAUREL, I WILL ALWAYS PROTECT YOU.

  Max read that paragraph twice out loud and then asked, “What do you make of that?”

  “That something was brewing,” I said. “But what?”

  “Who was Myles offering to protect her from?” Max asked. “Carl?”

  “It could be,” I said. “If Laurel knew Carl was stalking her, maybe even knew that he was taking the photos, she could have told Myles. But this is too sketchy. It could be something else. You know what’s odd?” Max shrugged, and I explained, “Myles doesn’t have a letter from Laurel dated this past Sunday. There should have been one, if they kept to their usual pattern.”

  “You’re right,” Max said. “But maybe she simply didn’t write that last Sunday.”

  “That would seem odd. She did every other week,” I said. “But then they’d met the day before, and Naomi said it appeared that they might have been arguing.”

  At that moment, Kellie popped the door open. “Lieutenant Mueller dropped this off for you,” she said, as she placed an envelope on the table.

  “The phone bills,” Max said. “Let’s have a look.”

  I opened them. No detail of the calls. Jacob used a small local phone company, one that didn’t supply itemized bills. “I’ll call the company,” I said. “Let’s find out if they can run a report that includes the phone numbers for us.”

  Minutes later, I had a billing clerk on the phone. “Don’t you need a subpoena?” she asked.

  “I can get one, but that’s going to take time,” I said. “We have five victims, four murdered and the fifth gravely injured. Time’s important here. We have a killer walking around free who might go after the two survivors, one a small infant. We have to move fast on this.”

  The woman went quiet for a minute. “I’d like to help, but is this going to get me fired?”

  I looked at Max. “We’ll get a subpoena to cover you. It’ll be in your office within the hour,” I said. “But meet us halfway and email what you have ASAP, okay?”

  A moment’s hesitation and she agreed.

  I hung up and turned to Max. “You want to track down Judge Crockett and get the subpoena while I wait here for the phone bills?”

  He agreed, and fifteen minutes later, I had print-outs of the itemized bills in front of me. There weren’t a lot, maybe thirty on each bill. What I was looking for were calls between Laurel and Myles. At this point, I drew a faint pencil line through all those to Mexico. If a lead popped up that suggested those should be looked into, we could do that later. The remaining phone numbers, I called.

  “Who’s this?” a woman asked.

  “Police Chief Clara Jefferies,” I said. “Who am I talking to?”

  That woman identified herself as a friend of Laurel’s from high school. We talked briefly, but she knew nothing that could help us. I continued down the list that way, confirming who had each number, until Max came in. The subpoena was on its way to the phone company, and I gave him the prior month’s bill and he started the same drill.

  In the end, more friends of Laurel’s, Jacob’s parents and other members of the Johansson family answered their phones. Carl’s voicemail picked up when we dialed his number. I didn’t leave a message but circled that one and went on. Mullins answered his home phone along with others in Laurel’s family.

  “All the numbers on this list are accounted for,” I said, when I finished.

  “I’m done, too,” Max said. “No calls to Myles.”

  “Which means that they weren’t communicating by phone,” I said.

  “No, they had to be meeting in person,” Max said.

  “At the river?”

  Max looked at me and smiled. “We do have a lot in common with these two, Clara,” he said.

  Suddenly self-conscious, I felt my face flush. I looked into his eyes and pictured him that day at the river. In many ways, he hadn’t changed. “We were so young, weren’t we?” I said.

  Max walked toward me, took my hands in his, and this time I gave in. I rested my head against his chest, and he held me close. I felt his lips on the center part of my dark hair, the warmth of his breath, and I listened to his strong, regular, dependable heart. I gave myself—gave us—that moment, then, without moving away, I said, “Max, you know, there’s just something really off here.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  Although I would have liked to remain as we were, I stood straight again, moved away, dropped his hands and said, “Reading these letters, how protective Myles was of Laurel, how could he be the one who murdered her, who so coldly shot Anna and the children?”

  “I don’t know Myles, so I can’t say,” Max responded. “But what you said yesterday about love sometimes turning violent is true. And we both know that people can have two sides. They’re not always who they pretend to be.”

  Could my instincts be that far off about Myles Thompkins? Maybe. Every investigator had a story about misjudging a suspect. In my first year as a cop, I wrote off a sixteen-year-old as the perp in a homicide, just couldn’t believe such a polite, smart kid would have raped the girl and beaten her to death. Turned out to be him, and I learned a valuable lesson, one I needed to remember while we wove our way through this case.

  “Any news from the hospital on Jacob’s condition?” I asked.

  “I heard from them a little while ago,” Max said. “He’s out of surgery but still in recovery. The surgeon said it went very well. It’ll be a couple more hours before we can try to communicate with him.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” I said. “And we still have Jeremy under surveillance, so that’s covered. We know he’s safe.”

  “What do we do while we’re waiting to talk to Jacob? What are you thinking?” Max asked.

  “We have the world on notice to watch for Myles, so I’d like another shot at Carl. Any idea where to find him?”

  “Ah, yeah, well, I was going to mention that. He disappeared from the hospital pretty quickly after Jacob woke up,” Max said. “Which, to be honest, I thought was strange at the time. While I talked to the doctor, Carl was standing in the hallway. A minute later, he was gone.”

  “You know, I got his voicemail when we were going through the phone numbers. He didn’t answer,” I said. “How about we drive out to his trailer? Let’s have another go at him.”

  Just then, Kellie stuck her head in the door. In her hand she had four sheets of paper stapled together. “From the state lab, about the boots,” she said. “I thought you’d want to see this.”

  She left, and Max and I skimmed the report. There was a scan of a photo of the boot’s sole and another of the print found on the kitchen floor. The ID specialist had inserted lines and numbered corresponding points on both. I read the conclusion out loud: “Twenty-three match points have been identified between the boot found at Myles Thompkins’ home and the bloody print found at the crime scene. It is the opinion of this analyst that the boot in question is the one that left the print at the crime scene.”

  “Things aren’t looking good for Myles.” Max grimaced. “Still think we should try to rustle up Carl? Even with this?”

  I hesitated, thinking it through. The report hadn’t changed anything really. We still couldn’t find Myles. My suspicions weren’t quieted when it came to Carl.

  “Yup,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Twenty-Seven

  We exited out the back door to avoid the crowd of demonstrators. As we walked to my car, we heard them chanting, “Go home! Go home!” Max paused to get a good look at the crowd. He had a frown that encompassed his entire face, his eyes locked on the signs and those carrying them. I did my best not to show any reaction, but their voices rang in my ears, and a fist of anger squeezed my chest. I hurried to the SUV, but Max took his time, a pensive expression on his face. We left the lot, and I took a s
ide street, heading toward the highway.

  As if choosing his words with great care, Max spoke slowly and deliberately. “Clara, this may be getting out of hand. I don’t like what’s happening in Alber. These protests. The signs. Maybe we need to do something to quiet things down.” I heard the worry in his voice, fear for me, I knew, but I shook my head, dismissing his concerns.

  “Just some disgruntled folks,” I said. “They’re upset about the murders, wondering if I’m up to the job. They’ll be okay, once we solve this.”

  “You think that’ll do it?” he asked, sounding dubious. We’d both grown up in Alber, and Max understood the town’s unshakable rules, that when I’d fled Elijah’s People, I’d become considered a pariah.

  I glanced over at him and shrugged. “If not, maybe this isn’t the right place for me.”

  At that, I felt Max tense in the seat beside me.

  “Maybe that’s part of the problem. You can’t have one foot here and one on the road out. Maybe these folks sense that you haven’t committed to the job or to the town,” Max complained. “Maybe they don’t trust you because they can see that your heart’s not here.”

  I had a suspicion that this conversation was more personal than Max portrayed it. “Is that really what we’re talking about? The protesters?” Looking over at him, I softened my voice but asked, “Max, is this only about the protesters, or is this about you and me? Is it that I haven’t committed to the town, or to you?”

  “Maybe both,” he admitted. For a moment, the SUV’s interior fell uncomfortably quiet. “Clara, when we embraced in your office, I…” Another pause, and when he spoke again, his throat was tight with emotion: “You know, you and I have history. And your roots are in Alber. These are your people.”

  We were picking our way across a field of emotional landmines. I didn’t want to hurt Max, but I knew I needed to be honest. Nothing good would come of promises that I couldn’t keep. “I’m not sure what’s ahead for me,” I confessed, fighting to keep my voice steady. “We both know that I’m not wanted here. Not by those people carrying their signs demanding I leave, or by my mother who has repeatedly ordered me to stay away from my family. And as for us, Max, sure I have feelings for you. I don’t deny that. But I’m… I’m not sure I can…”