Desert Cut

by Betty Webb

  But I hadn’t broken in to do a design make-over, so I began my search, attempting to leave everything the way I found it. Revered Hall’s secrets slowly revealed themselves, and they weren’t pretty. His Bible was marked up with Sharpies, and not for the usual reasons. The New Testament passages that dealt with forgiveness and mercy were crossed out in thick, black strokes, but in the well-thumbed Book of Revelations, I saw no crossing-out, merely pages and pages of underlining. Of particular note was the passage about the Whore of Babylon, which he’d double-underlined in red.

  Olivia, perhaps?

  In the bottom drawer of his dresser, I found a whip two feet long, made entirely of black leather, its many tails studded with small metal knobs, some dotted with a dark red substance. Curious, I peeled back Hall’s bedspread and checked the sheets. No blood.

  The closet revealed what I’d expected: vain clothing for a vain man. Three cassocks, nine suits—three cashmeres for winter, six silks for summer—and more than a dozen pair of shoes, including one pair in alligator. Quite the dandy, the good reverend.

  After finding nothing more of interest, I headed for the next room, which turned out to be Nicole’s. Except for a small window from which she’d orchestrated her escape, the room was bare as a monk’s cell but without benefit of even a crucifix for decoration.

  I saw no stuffed animals, no books, no magazines, no TV, no iPod. A ragged quilt covered the bed, but no rug softened the hard wooden floor. Three dresses hung in the closet, all poorly made, all shapeless. I saw only one pair of shoes, cracked brown brogans that could have belonged to a man. My search of the six-drawer dresser turned up nothing more than two tattered bras and three pairs of ragged panties. The other five drawers were empty, which pretty much defined Nicole’s life.

  As I stood there, enraged by her parents’ self-righteous neglect, the wind grew even stronger. From the grove of cottonwoods behind the parsonage, I heard a loud splitting sound, then a crash as a tree sacrificed a branch to the oncoming storm. Thunder clapped again, much nearer this time, reminding me to hurry. When the rain came, it would arrive as a torrent.

  I left Nicole’s sad bedroom and continued down the hall, where at last I found Olivia Hall’s room at the rear of the house. Not quite as bare as her daughter’s, Olivia’s bed at least had a cheap white chenille coverlet, but when I pulled it away, I found tiny spots of blood on the tattered sheet where her back and shoulders rested.

  The Whore of Babylon, getting what she had coming to her.

  Piled on the dresser were the books with which she home-schooled her daughter, all outdated. Her own closet mirrored the bareness of Nicole’s, except for a long, white robe. I was about to slide the closet door shut when a small draft turned the robe to the side. Embroidered across the bodice was the letter “A.”

  You didn’t have to be a student of American lit to know what that meant. A for adultery. But whereas Hester Prynne, in The Scarlet Letter, defiantly turned the stigma into decoration by embroidering her dress with an Old English illuminated flourish, Olivia had stitched a plain, sans serif letter.

  Had the good reverend made her wear this travesty in church?

  I was still studying the scarlet letter when I heard a woman’s voice behind me.

  “Looking for this?”

  I spun around to face Olivia Hall. The wind had been so loud that I hadn’t been able to hear her come in, now here she was, holding a butcher knife aloft. The thing was more than a foot long, with a wickedly sharp blade.

  Then I noticed the carving on the portion of the ivory handle not covered by her hand: Arabic.

  “Like it?” she asked. “It cuts through a girl with ease.”

  The moment I saw the Cutter’s body, I guessed Olivia’s guilt. The sheriff had been right about one thing: Dekah had to die, otherwise she would have confessed everything in order to save herself. The confession would have contained the appalling fact that when her own hands became incapable of performing amputations, she had taken on a student.

  Olivia Hall.

  Overwhelmed by an equal mix of pity and horror, I could only whisper, “Oh, Olivia. How could you?”

  She cocked her head. “How could I what?”

  “Mutilate those children.”

  A proud smile. “Because Dekah had to retire! You saw her hands.”

  Her hands. That was what Precious Doe’s ghost had been trying to tell me. She hadn’t meant the woman who cut her. She’d meant the woman who hadn’t done it, the woman whose shaking hands rendered her incapable of maiming children, and so had passed on the job to her apprentice.

  “You killed them, Olivia!”

  “Them? No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. Dekah was the one who let Tujin Rafik die. Her hands shook so badly she couldn’t cut correctly.” She shrugged. “These little mistakes happen. Even the best surgeons slip up once in a while.”

  Little mistakes? I thought of those trembling hands with a butcher knife…“So Dekah trained you to take her place.”

  Another proud smile. “We’ve always been close, like mother and daughter.”

  Outside, the wind pushed against the house, and I felt it shudder. Maybe the shaking emanated from me, because my next question was truly fearful. “Were you the one who cut Nicole?”

  If anything, her smile grew wider. “Of course! By then Dekah could hardly dress herself, let alone carry out a proper cutting, but she helped me by holding the girls down. Numerous times.”

  I felt sick. Nicole had heard Dekah’s accent and, blindfolded, thought the African woman had been her cutter. She’d been wrong. The real butcher was her own mother.

  “Your daughter could have died!”

  She shrugged again. “It would have been her own fault.”

  “Her fault?” Even the wind outside seemed shocked, pausing for a moment before it resumed its assault on the house.

  Annoyed, she repeated, “Yes, her fault. Just like that other girl, Sahra Hassan, the stupid child they’ve been calling Precious Doe. I told that little brat not to move, but no, she had to scream and fight. Damned little precious about her, I tell you! Afterward, I spoke quite harshly to her mother for not raising her better. But I got my money anyway. A cutter learns to always get her money up front, just in case. Dekah taught me that. She’s always been a good business woman.”

  Eighty-five dollars plus bandages.

  Controlling my disgust, I asked, “If you and Dekah were like mother and daughter, why did you kill her?” But I already knew the answer. I just wanted to keep Olivia talking, to keep that knife away from my throat. Like most killers, she enjoyed parading her brilliance in front of a captive audience.

  “When the sheriff picked Dekah up, she was so frightened of him that she almost blurted out everything then, but she managed to hang on. Still, I knew that it was just a matter of time. No one in America understands the good work we cutters do, the harmony we bring to families. If my mother had cared enough for my father or for me, things would have been different.”

  Her expression went distant, but before I could make a grab for the knife, she recovered herself. “Let’s just say the home I grew up in was…what’s the word Daniel always used? Disharmonious. Yes, that’s it. Disharmonious. Mother was…”

  Her voice faded again, but she recovered herself quickly. “Let’s just say Mother was given to temptation. The cutting Dekah and I do, it removes temptation and restores order. Harmony. If I’d cut Nicole earlier like Dekah suggested, she wouldn’t have fallen for that awful boy. No baby, no adoption, nothing but harmony.”

  Her logic escaped me, but sane people always have trouble understanding the insane. “Did getting cut bring you harmony, Olivia?”

  She considered that, then shook her head. “I was cut too late. By then, the sin of lust had already destroyed my marriage. But Daniel didn’t turn me out, as most righteous men would have. He kept me, sheltered me, took care of me.”

  “After you’d consented to the cutting, right?”

 
“He was compassionate, not stupid. What if I sinned again?”

  And disrupted all that lovely harmony in your home? “Speaking of your husband, Olivia, why did you kill him?” I had already figured out the motive, but I needed to hear her say it. That shot to his face revealed immense rage.

  Some of that rage now showed in her face. “He told me he’d tried to hold the marriage together, but it wasn’t working. He said he needed someone who had never been defiled, a virgin, not an adulteress.”

  I cast my mind back to the white-clad Women For Freedom and the pretty redhead named Elaine. “He was leaving you for Elaine?”

  “After all I’d done for her! I cut her myself, to make certain nothing bad happened.”

  “You cut Elaine?” I had to stop and take a breath before asking the next question. “Olivia, did you cut all those women?”

  “Who else? With Dekah sick, I was the best cutter around.” Her laughter came in high, excited peals. “The only cutter, now!”

  Only a couple of pieces left to finish the puzzle. “The gun, the .38. Where did you get it? A local gun shop?”

  “Daniel bought it from a farmer in Kenya, saying he needed it to protect us because the border was a very dangerous place.”

  So was the Hall household. “You tried to kill me, too, didn’t you? How did you know I liked to walk by the river?”

  A giggle. “I didn’t. I was down there searching for Nicole when I heard you stomping around. It was too good an opportunity to miss.”

  I would have asked her why she carried a handgun while searching for her runaway daughter, but I didn’t want to hear the answer. She knew that Nicole, in order to protect Aziza, was ready to tell the sheriff everything. Olivia might have decided that it was better to have a dead daughter than a talkative one.

  A tone of self-pity leaked into her voice. “What am I supposed to do now? The way I am…” she looked down, “…no man will want me. No American man, anyway. They expect passion from their wives, not submission.”A tear rolled down her cheek.

  As she continued to mutter about her ruined future, I saw a chance to escape from the house before she took that obscene knife to me. I wouldn’t have time to open Nicole’s tiny window, only five feet away, but smashing through it held its own dangers since glass could cut more viciously than a blade. Instead, I would have to try for the front door, even though a knife-wielding madwoman barred the bedroom’s only exit.

  So I rushed her.

  If Olivia had stood an inch more to the left or right, my tactic might have worked, but she was in the middle of the doorway. To get by her, I chanced the knife.

  I almost made it.

  As I raised my right arm to knock her out of the way, the knife connected. The pain in my forearm slowed my forward progress just enough that she was able to raise the knife and brought it down again.

  Instead of trying to run, I feinted right, then grabbed her cutting arm with my good left hand and jerked her forward and down. Once she was off-balance, I brought up my right knee, smashing her in the face. Then I karate-chopped the side of her neck.

  The knife fell with her, rolling under the bed.

  There was no time to retrieve it. The blow I had given her with my left hand wasn’t my strongest, and I was spurting blood, which meant a nicked artery. In the split second that I stood there trying to figure out my next move, she slipped her hand under the bed and scrabbled for the knife.

  Holding my slashed right arm tight to stem the blood loss as much as possible, I staggered into the parlor and headed for the front door, only to confront the deadbolt. With only one hand working, and that one slippery with blood, my attempts at turning the lock were clumsy. The lock didn’t budge. Behind me I heard footsteps.

  Olivia had almost caught up to me.

  “I’ll kill you for that!”she screamed.

  I dared a glance behind and saw her raising the knife again.

  Remembering that open kitchen door, I spun away from the lock and ran for my life. But I hadn’t noticed the shopping bags in the middle of the floor. At the last moment I tired to veer around them but in my rush hit the corner of the coffee table and knocked the coffee server and photographs to the floor.

  “No!” Olivia screamed. “No!”

  Barreling through the passageway leading into the kitchen, I glanced over my shoulder. Pursuit forgotten, Olivia fell to her knees and slapped at the candle’s flames as they licked at Reverend Hall’s photographs.

  Then, to my shock, she dropped the knife and picked up a burning picture, the one that showed Hall standing open-armed on the steps of Freedom Temple.

  “Oh, Daniel! Why?” she whimpered, ignoring the flames that inched toward her sleeve.

  Jesus, she still loved him. In my pity, I called, “Olivia! Drop it! Get away from there!” I didn’t want her dead, just in prison.

  When I turned toward her to pull her away from the flames, she lifted her head and glared. As her sleeve began to smolder, she picked up the knife again.

  As far as I was concerned, that changed everything.

  She was crazy, I was bleeding, and I was getting the hell out of there.

  Battling through the howling wind to my Jeep, I somehow managed to shift it into gear with my left hand. As soon as I pulled onto the highway, I steered with my knees toward Los Perdidos while I reached over and pulled my cell out of my carry-all. Within seconds I was telling Sheriff Avery what had just happened, was still happening.

  A safe distance from Olivia and her knife, I coasted to the side of the road, and using the drawstring of my Phoenix Suns windbreaker, made a tourniquet to wrap around my injured arm. When the rain began, it was every bit the downpour I had expected. An even stronger wind blasted sheets of it through the Jeep’s window. The rush of adrenaline that kept me moving was wearing off, and I no longer had the strength to protect myself from rain or madwomen.

  Not knowing whether I would live or die, I rested my head on the steering wheel and let the darkness take me.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The ruins of the parsonage and church—despite the rain, the flames had engulfed it, too—no longer smoked when Warren drove me there the next day. He had flown in the night before, even beating Jimmy to the hospital, and had not left my side since. After seeing for himself that I was all right, Jimmy returned to Scottsdale, but Warren stayed on, pointing out that the seventy-six stitches in my arm necessitated a chauffeur.

  For once, I didn’t argue.

  The stench of burned wood and flesh permeated the air, reminding me of another burned building, another predator. As I exited the rental car, Warren remained behind, knowing that I needed to handle this alone.

  At the edge of the destruction, Sheriff Avery waited for me. “I wonder why she didn’t make it out,” he mused. “She could have escaped through the rear door, like you.”

  “She didn’t want to.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand any of it.”

  Neither did I, not really. Why would a woman willingly give up the right to her own body? Why would she, like a lamb led to the killing floor, just lie down and let someone cut her flesh away? Even worse, why would she inflict the same horror on her own daughter?

  But she was dead and couldn’t answer my questions.

  So I asked one of Avery, instead. “Where’s that item you called me about?”

  The day before, Olivia’s burned body had been removed. Since then, the firemen, aided by deputies, had been retrieving as much evidence from the ruins as they could.

  Among them was the cutting knife.

  Now the knife lay harmless in an evidence bag at the sheriff’s office, never again to be used to cripple little girls. But the knife wasn’t the reason I’d asked Warren to bring me to the scene of Olivia Hall’s crimes.

  “Over here,” the sheriff said, leading me to a small pile where his deputies had deposited some of the debris. Among the charred material was a color photograph. “Damnedest thing I ever saw, Lena. It
’s scorched around the edges, but you can see their faces.”

  Yes, I could see their faces.

  A group of people stood beside a white bus. Among them was a smiling couple holding hands with a little girl around four. The camera focus was so crisp you could read the slogan on the bus’ license plate: New Mexico. Land of Enchantment.

  Sheriff Avery sounded bewildered. “The woman looks a lot like you, but the clothes aren’t right.”

  With some difficulty, I kept my voice level. “That’s not me. As for the clothes, the picture was taken thirty years ago. Fashions change.”

  Yes, the woman’s resemblance to me ended at her blue eyes. I had inherited my green ones from the red-headed man beside her.

  Next to the smiling couple stood a young Daniel Hall, appearing to be no more than twenty. Even then, he looked crazy.

  This was why the picture wall at the parsonage had haunted me so. A part of me had recognized this scene, these people, but I had been so intent on finding out what had happened to Precious Doe that the truth of the photograph never registered on my conscious mind. But when Hall first saw me climbing the steps to his parsonage, he knew exactly who I was.

  I reached down.

  The sheriff’s hand shot out, grabbed mine. “You can’t touch that picture. It’s evidence.”

  “Yes. It is,” I said.

  Finally understanding, he released his grip.

  I picked up the photograph and pressed it to my heart.

  Then I took my parents home.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  By Friday I was well enough to attend the regular Desert Eagle production meeting in Los Angeles, but because of the traffic, I arrived even later than Hamilton “Ham” Speerstra. The chairs around the conference table were already taken by a gaggle of surgically-altered actors, their rapacious managers, the series director, and a few shame-faced writers, so I was forced to drag in an extra chair and sit beside the obnoxious child actor, Cory Keane. With the outside temperature a balmy seventy-five, he was dressed in his dark Armani suit.