As an adolescent, my brother Fred caught the eye of the local PD.
From a young age, his twin, Aaron, had earned the reputation of an obedient son, but although identical in appearance, Fred shared none of those attributes. Instead, Fred’s bicycle tires perpetually burst from popping curbs. He once smuggled a horned lizard he pulled from under a bush into school and released it in the girls’ lavatory, which resulted in high-pitched screams.
I admired Fred’s spirit, but my parents worried. They reprimanded him, tried to rein him in, all with little effect. By the time Fred became a teen, police monitored where he went and who he befriended. Twice that I know of, they complained to our father about Fred’s attitude. At seventeen, he disappeared from our home. We children heard no explanation, other than that Fred had moved away. For months, our family grieved, especially Aaron, who’d always considered his twin his other half. I told myself that Fred would one day return. He never did.
As I grew older and saw other boys forced out of Alber, I came to the conclusion that Fred must have been one of them. After I fled, I searched for him. I failed to find him, but I never gave up. When I had time, I still combed marriage, birth, death, arrest and property tax records, hoping to find Fred. So far, without luck.
I wondered how many of my father’s children, my dozens of siblings and half-siblings, had been driven off in the years since I’d left. Did any others flee as I had? And I wondered yet again where Delilah was. What was happening to her, while I was about to be tied up with a command performance at the local cop shop? I had a sister to find, and Gerard Barstow was wasting my time.
I parked the car around the corner from the station. The slots out front were taken by a line of squads, one of which looked like Max’s Smith County Sheriff’s car. A black-and-white from Hitchins PD parked near the front door also caught my eye – that was Evan Barstow’s department.
The sun had been up for barely an hour, but it promised to be another stifling day. I opened the door and walked into a dreary wood-paneled waiting room. Someone, perhaps one of the Barstows’ wives, had tried to cheer the place up by hanging curtains with yellow daisies on the only window. It didn’t help. The worn linoleum floor, the smell of institutional cleaners, the dark paneling and rickety pine furniture was beyond hope.
Behind a glassed-in reception area, a woman in her early twenties watched me enter. Her skin was a deep golden brown. The first three inches of her chin-length black hair were cornrowed, at which point it splayed out in all directions. She had dark almond-shaped eyes with thick silky lashes. She didn’t look like she belonged in Alber any more than I did; I’d grown up never seeing a black or Hispanic person. She pressed a button and talked into a chrome microphone. “Can I help you?”
“Detective Clara Jefferies to see Chief Barstow.”
The waiting room door buzzed, I grabbed the handle and walked through into the station proper. On the desk, a plaque read: STEPHANIE JONAS, DISPATCHER.
The open area around her housed a clutter of unattended desks. “Quiet around here,” I said.
“The day shift hasn’t started yet. Another hour and this place will be jumping. But there’s already a welcoming committee waiting for you down there,” she said, motioning toward a hallway. She raised her eyebrows and gave me a look that telegraphed: be careful. “The conference room is the third door on the right.”
“Thanks,” I said, and I started off toward the door. I heard voices, one a low, gravelly rumble, as soon as I turned the corner into the hall. I paused to listen.
“Damn it, Chief,” a man yelled. “What’s going on here, all these people moving in on us like this? Are we gonna let some cop from Dallas come in here and file false reports? This ain’t her department. She’s got no rights here.”
“Mullins, I’ve got this,” Gerard said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. But Max, you’ve gotta control that woman, she’s—”
“I didn’t bring Clara in to take over, just to talk to the family for us.” Max sounded weary, like he’d answered this attack before. “I didn’t think Clara would go off on her own and—”
“Well, she’s a problem now,” the first man, Mullins, said. “The family says the girl’s fine, and here’s this cop who thinks she has a role because Delilah is her half-sister, so she logs on to NCIC anyway? Files a report? There’s no common sense here.”
“Mullins,” Gerard said, “calm down. I had the report removed, and—”
“You had the report removed?” I walked into the room. All of the men looked up, startled to see me – including a fourth man who I hadn’t heard speak. “Why did you do that?”
“And good morning to you,” Gerard said, friendlier than I might have been in his situation. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Actually, it sounds like you started without me.” I turned to Mullins, the one railing about my intrusion, and held out my hand. “I’m Detective Clara Jefferies, and you are?”
“Mullins. Jeff Mullins. Chief detective here, Miss Jefferies.” He hung onto the “Miss” a bit long, emphasizing it. The guy was squat with rheumy hazel eyes and receding salt-and-pepper hair. He had a long scar that feathered at the ends and trailed down his right cheek.
“Good to meet you, Detective Mullins.” I nodded at Max, and then turned to the fourth man in the room, someone I dimly recognized. I thought of the squad car from Hitchins out front. This man was massive, and he had Gerard’s jaw, one that jutted forward and came to a point. Must
