Faithless

  “He went to school with me?” Sara asked, skeptical. Redheads tended to notice each other, what with sticking out from the general population like a sore thumb. Sara knew for a fact that she had been the only child with red hair her entire tenure at Cady Stanton Elementary School. She had the scars to prove it. “What’s his name?”

  “Lev Ward.”

  “There wasn’t a Lev Ward at Stanton.”

  “It was Sunday school,” Tessa clarified. “He’s got some funny stories about you.”

  “About me?” Sara repeated, her curiosity getting the better of her.

  “And,” Tessa added, as if this were more enticement, “he’s got the most adorable five-year-old son you’ve ever seen.”

  She saw through the ruse. “I meet some pretty adorable five-year-olds at the clinic.”

  “Just think about going. You don’t have to answer now.” Tessa looked at her watch. “I need to get back before it gets dark.”

  “You want me to drive you?”

  “No, thanks.” Tessa kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

  Sara wiped Cheeto dust off her sister’s face. “Be careful.”

  Tessa started to leave, then stopped. “It’s not just the sex.”

  “What?”

  “With Jeffrey,” she explained. “It’s not just the sexual chemistry. When things get bad, y’all always get stronger. You always have.” She reached down to scratch Billy, then Bob, behind the ears. “Every time in your life that you’ve reached out for him, he’s been there. A lot of men would just run the other way.”

  Tessa finished with the dogs and left, pulling the door gently closed behind her.

  Sara put up the Cheetos, contemplating finishing the bag even though the open zipper on her skirt was cutting into her flesh. She wanted to call her mother and find out what was wrong. She wanted to call Jeffrey and yell at him, then call him back and tell him to come over and watch an old movie on television with her.

  What she did instead was return to the couch with another glass of wine, trying to push everything from her mind. Of course, the more she tried not to think about things, the more they came to the surface. Soon, she was flashing through images of the girl in the woods to leukemia-stricken Jimmy Powell to Jeffrey in the hospital with end-stage liver failure.

  Finally, she made herself focus back on the autopsy. She had stood behind a thick glass wall while the procedure was performed, but even that had seemed too close for Sara’s comfort. The girl’s physical results were unremarkable but for the cyanide salts found in her stomach. Sara shivered again as she thought about the plume of smoke rising from her gut as the state coroner cut into her stomach. The fetus had been unremarkable; a healthy child who would have eventually led a full life.

  There was a knock at the front door, tentative at first, then more insistent when Sara didn’t answer. Finally, she yelled, “Come in!”

  “Sara?” Jeffrey asked. He looked around the room, obviously surprised to see her on the couch. “You okay?”

  “Stomachache,” she told him, and in fact her stomach was hurting. Maybe her mother had been right about not eating dessert for dinner.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.”

  “It’s okay,” she told him, though it wasn’t really. “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” he said, his disappointment evident. “I spent the whole fucking afternoon at the college, going from department to department looking for someone who could tell me what poisons they keep around there.”

  “No cyanide?”

  “Everything but,” he told her.

  “What about the family?”

  “They didn’t offer much. I sent out a credit check on the farm. It should be back tomorrow. Frank’s been calling all the shelters, trying to get the story on what exactly happens on these missions.” He shrugged. “We spent the rest of the day going through the laptop computer. It was pretty clean.”

  “Did you check instant messages?”

  “Brad cracked that first off. There were a couple back and forth with the aunt who lives on the farm, but mostly those were about Bible studies, work schedules, what time she was going to come over, who was going to fix chicken one night, who was going to peel carrots the next. It’s hard to tell which were from Abby and which were from Rebecca.”

  “Was there anything during the ten days after the family left?”

  “One file was opened the day they went to Atlanta,” Jeffrey told her. “Around ten fifteen that morning. The parents would’ve been gone by then. It was a résumé for Abigail Ruth Bennett.”

  “For a job?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “You think she was trying to leave?”

  “The parents wanted her to go to college, but she’d said no.”

  “Nice to have an option,” Sara mumbled. Cathy had practically poked her girls with a stick. “What kind of job was she looking for?”

  “No idea,” he said. “She mostly listed office and accounting skills. She did a lot of stuff on the farm. I guess it’d look well-rounded to a potential employer.”

  “She was homeschooled?” Sara asked. She knew this wasn’t true everywhere, but in her experience, people tended to homeschool for two reasons: to keep their white children away from minorities or to make sure their kids weren’t taught anything other than creationism and abstinence.

  “Most of the family are, apparently.” Jeffrey loosened his tie. “I’ve got to change.” Then, as if he felt the need for an explanation, he added, “All my jeans are over here.”

  “Change for what?”

  “I’m going to talk to Dale Stanley, then Lena and I are going to the Pink Kitty.”

  “The titty bar on Sixteen?”

  He scowled. “Why is it okay for women to call it that, but men get kicked in the nuts for it?”

  “Because women don’t have nuts.” She sat up, feeling her stomach lurch. Thank God she hadn’t eaten any Cheetos. “Why are you going? Or is this your way of punishing me?”

  “Punishing you for what?” he asked as she followed him back to the bedroom.

  “Just ignore me,” she told him, not really sure why she had said that. “I’ve had a really, really bad day.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “No.”

  He opened a box, “We found a book of matches in the girl’s room. They’re from the Pink Kitty. Why would I punish you?”

  Sara sat on the bed, watching him root through boxes to find his jeans. “She didn’t strike me as the Pink Kitty type.”

  “The whole family isn’t the type,” he told her, finally finding the right box. He looked up at her as he unzipped his pants and kicked them off. “Are you still mad at me?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  He pulled off his socks and threw them in the laundry basket. “I do, too.”

  Sara looked out the bedroom windows at the lake. She seldom closed the curtains because the view was one of the most beautiful in the city. She often lay in bed at night, watching the moon move across the sky as she drifted off to sleep. How many times last week had she looked out these same windows, not knowing that just across the water lay Abigail Bennett, alone, probably freezing cold, certainly terrified. Had Sara lain in bed, warm and content, while under cover of darkness, Abby’s killer had poisoned her?

  “Sara?” Jeffrey stood in his underwear, staring at her. “What’s going on?”

  She didn’t want to answer. “Tell me more about Abigail’s family.”

  He hesitated a second before returning to his clothes. “They’re really weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  He pulled out a pair of socks and sat on the bed to put them on. “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve seen too many people using some sick religious justification for their sexual attraction to teenage girls.”

  “Did they seem shocked when you told them she was dead?”

  “They’d heard rumors about what we found. I don’t know how since that farm s
ounds hermetically sealed. One of the uncles gets out a bit. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about him I don’t trust.”

  “Maybe you’ve got a thing against uncles.”

  “Maybe.” He rubbed his eyes with his hands. “The mother was pretty upset.”

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like to hear that kind of news.”

  “She really got to me.”

  “How so?”

  “She begged me to find out who did this,” he said. “She might not like it when I do.”

  “You really think her family is involved?”

  “I don’t know.” He stood to finish dressing, all the while giving Sara a more detailed impression of the group. One uncle was overbearing and seemed to have a lot more power over the family than Jeffrey thought was normal. The husband was old enough to be his wife’s grandfather. Sara sat with her back against the headboard, arms folded across her chest as she listened. The more he told her, the more warning bells she heard.

  “The women are very . . . old-fashioned,” he said. “They let the men do all the talking. They defer to the husbands and the brothers.”

  “That’s typical of most conservative religions,” Sara pointed out. “In theory, at least, the man is supposed to be in charge of the family.” She waited for him to make a wistful comment, but when he didn’t, she asked, “Did you get anything from the sister?”

  “Rebecca,” he supplied. “Nothing, and there’s no way they’ll let me talk to her again. I have a feeling the uncle would string me up by the short hairs if he knew I talked to her in Abby’s room.”

  “Do you think you’d get anything from her anyway?”

  “Who knows?” he asked. “I couldn’t tell if she was hiding something or if she was just sad.”

  “It’s a hard thing to go through,” Sara said. “She’s probably not thinking right now.”

  “Lena got from the mother that Rebecca has run away before.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t find out.”

  “Well, that could be something.”

  “It could be just that she’s a teenage girl,” he pointed out, as if Sara needed to be reminded that one out of every seven children ran away at least once before the age of eighteen. “She’s pretty young for her age.”

  “I imagine it’s hard to be worldly growing up in that environment.” She added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with trying to keep your kids away from the world in general.” Without thinking, she said, “If it was my kid . . .” She caught herself. “I mean, some of the kids I see at the clinic . . . I can understand why their parents want to keep them as sheltered as they can.”

  He had stopped dressing, staring at her with his lips slightly parted as if he wanted to say something.

  “So,” she said, trying to clear the lump in her throat. “The family is pretty wrapped up in the church?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his pause letting her know he was aware of what she was doing. He continued, “I don’t know about the girl, though. I got this sense from her even before Lena told me she’d run away. She seemed kind of rebellious. When I questioned her, she sort of defied her uncle.”

  “How?”

  “He’s a lawyer. He didn’t want her to answer any questions. She did anyway.” He was nodding to himself as if he admired her courage. “I don’t guess that kind of independence fits into the family dynamic, especially considering it’s coming from a girl.”

  “Younger children tend to be more assertive,” Sara said. “Tessa was always getting into trouble. I don’t know if that was because Daddy was harder on her or because she acted up more.”

  He couldn’t hide his appreciative grin. He had always admired Tessa’s free spirit. Men often did. “She’s a little wild.”

  “And I’m not,” Sara said, trying to keep the regret out of her voice. Tessa had always been the risk-taker while Sara’s biggest childhood infractions were usually education-related: staying too late at the library so that she could study, sneaking a flashlight into her bed so that she could read past bedtime.

  She asked, “Do you think you’ll get anything out of the interviews Wednesday?”

  “Doubtful. Maybe Dale Stanley will have something. They’re certain it’s cyanide salt?”

  “Yes.”

  “I checked around. He’s the only metal plater in the area. Something tells me this goes back to the farm. It’s too coincidental to me that they’ve got a bunch of convicts running around on that place and this girl turns up dead. Plus”—he looked up at her—“Dale Stanley’s house is a brisk hike from the Catoogah line.”

  “Do you think Dale Stanley put her in the box?”

  “I have no idea,” Jeffrey told her. “At this point, I’m not trusting anybody.”

  “Do you think there’s a religious connotation? Burying someone in the ground?”

  “And poisoning them?” he asked. “That’s where I get stuck. Lena’s certain there’s a religious connection, something to do with the family.”

  “She’s got a good excuse to be against anything that smacks of religion.”

  “Lena’s my best detective,” he told her. “I know she’s got . . . problems . . .” He seemed to understand this was a gross understatement, but continued anyway. “I don’t want her running off in one direction just because it fits with her view of the world.”

  “She has a narrow way of looking at things.”

  “Everybody does,” he told her, and though Sara agreed, she knew he thought he was an exception. “I’ll give her this, that place is weird. There was this guy we ran into early on. He was out there by the barn toting a Bible and preaching the Word.”

  “Hare’s father does the same thing at family reunions,” Sara pointed out, though her uncles’ two sisters tended to laugh in his face so hard when he began to proselytize that Uncle Roderick seldom made it past the first sentence.

  “It’s still suspicious.”

  She said, “This is the South, Jeffrey. People hold on to religion down here.”

  “You’re talking to the boy from central Alabama,” he reminded her. “And it’s not just the South. Go out to the Midwest or California or even upstate New York and you’ll find pockets of religious communities. We just get more press for it because we’ve got better preachers.”

  Sara didn’t argue with him. The farther you got from a major metropolitan city, the more religious people tended to be. Truth be told, it was one of the things she liked about small towns. While Sara wasn’t religious herself, she liked the idea of church, the philosophy behind loving your fellow man and turning the other cheek. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to find that dictum being upheld much lately.

  Jeffrey said, “So, let’s say Lena’s instincts are right and the whole family’s in on it. They’re this evil cult and they buried Abby for whatever reason.”

  “She was pregnant.”

  “So, they buried her because she was pregnant. Why poison her? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Sara had to agree. “For that matter, why would they bury her in the first place? Surely they’re pro-life?”

  “It just doesn’t hold up. There has to be some other reason.”

  “So,” Sara said, “it’s an outsider. Why would an outsider go to the trouble of burying her alive then killing her?”

  “Maybe he comes back and removes the body after she’s dead. Maybe we found her before he could finish doing whatever he does.”

  Sara hadn’t considered that, and the thought now sent a cold chill through her.

  “I sent samples of the wood to have it analyzed,” he said. “If there’s some DNA on it, we’ll find out.” He thought about it, then added, “Eventually.”

  Sara knew the test results would take weeks if not months to get back. The GBI crime lab was so behind it was a wonder any crimes in the state were ever solved. “Isn’t there a way for you to just go out to the farm and start talking to people?”

  “Not without cause. That
’s assuming I don’t catch hell from Sheriff Asshole for being out of my jurisdiction.”

  “How about Social Services?” Sara suggested. “From what you said, I’ve gathered there are children on the farm. Some of them could be runaways, underage.”

  “Good point,” he said, smiling. Jeffrey loved it when he found a way around an obstacle. “I’ll have to be careful. Something tells me this Lev guy knows his rights. I bet the farm keeps ten lawyers on retainer.”

  She sat up. “What?”

  “I said he’s probably got ten lawyers—”

  “No, his name.”

  “Lev, one of the uncles,” Jeffrey said. “It’s weird, but he kind of looks like you. Red hair.” He slipped on a T-shirt. “Pretty blue eyes.”

  “My eyes are green,” she said, aggravated by his old joke. “How does he look like me?”

  “Just like I said.” He shrugged, smoothing down his Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. “Do I look like a redneck who belongs in a strip club?”

  “Tell me about this guy, this Lev.”

  “Why are you so curious?”

  “I just want to know,” she said, then, “Tessa is going to that church.”

  He gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re kidding.”

  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Tessa? In a church? Without your mama standing behind her with a whip?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re just really . . . devout,” he said, combing back his hair with his fingers. He sat on the edge of the bed. “They don’t seem like Tess’s kind of people.”

  It was one thing for Sara to call Tessa loose, quite another for someone else to do it— even Jeffrey. “What are her kind of people?”

  He put his hand on her foot, obviously sensing a trap. “Sara—”

  “Just forget it,” she said, wondering why she kept trying to pick a fight.

  “I don’t want to forget it. Sara, what’s wrong with you?”

  She slid down the bed, curling herself away from him. “I’ve just had a really bad day.”

  He rubbed her back. “The autopsy?”

  She nodded.

  “You called me because you needed to talk about it,” he said. “I should’ve listened.”