“You still want to call your sister?”
“Yes, please,” I said. “I’m just so worried. I need to get there fast. But yes, I need to call. I’m sure she’s frantic.”
“Follow me,” Jessica said.
We walked into the kitchen.
“It’s right there,” Jessica said, pointing at an old-fashioned wall phone.
I picked up the handset. She watched while I listened for a dial tone and punched in a Salt Lake area code, 801. Then I turned my back and pushed random keys. I pressed the hang-up button to disconnect. “It’s me. I got lost and my phone’s out of power,” I said into the dead phone. “But a wonderful woman helped me. I’ll leave her house in a minute. I’m about…”
I looked at Jessica and mouthed “an hour?” She held up two fingers.
“I’m about two hours from your house. I know it’ll be tight, but please don’t worry. I’ll be there soon.” I acted as if I listened to someone else talk, and then said goodbye and hung up the phone.
“Thank you again,” I said to Jessica. To stall, I asked, “I’m so dry. May I trouble you for one more thing? A little water?”
“Of course.” Jessica grabbed a glass and filled it out of the faucet. She handed it to me, and I sipped slowly, buying time, while I looked around the kitchen. More children’s books were stacked on the kitchen table, and on the wall hung a whiteboard with simple math problems, addition and subtraction.
As I emptied the glass, I noticed a flashlight on the counter—long, heavy, and neon-orange. The color reminded me of the warning cones I put out at car accidents during my early years as a cop when I worked patrol.
“All set now?” she asked, as I handed her the empty glass. Jessica had been kind, patient with me, but she wanted me to leave.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Once inside the car, I looked back at the house. Jessica stood on the porch, arms folded across her chest. I saw no one else, but in nearly every window curtains were pulled back. Hidden behind them, the sister-wives and their children waited for me to leave. Did anyone else watch? Could Delilah be looking out from behind one of those windows as I pulled away?
“If you’re there, help me find you,” I whispered, as I continued down the driveway. I glanced back one more time in the rearview mirror, but I saw nothing to justify my suspicions. Frustrated, I realized that my quest had been a waste of time. Half a mile up the road, I turned my phone back on. As soon as it booted, a text message popped up from Max.
Clara, come to the sheriff’s office ASAP.
Twenty-Two
The monotony wore on Delilah, leaving her feeling disconnected and weary. She wished he’d unchain her arms. Her legs and chest itched, and it was torture not to be able to scratch. She’d counted four days since he’d taken her, and all she wanted was to be home with her family. When the panic built inside her, she envisioned her mother’s face. That became her safe place, the memory she called on to blunt her terror.
“I’m here. Can you hear me?”
Although Delilah had hoped to hear it again, when the voice floated up the vent into her room, it startled her.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I can hear you. Where are you?”
Delilah worried that she’d been right and it was all a trick, that the man would come screaming into the room to rebuke and punish her. The prickly lumps her mom called goosebumps erupted on her arms. Delilah waited, dreading the sound of his boots on the floorboards. She tried to think of an excuse to use, so he wouldn’t be mad.
Time passed. Nothing happened. He didn’t come.
“Where are you?” Delilah asked, this time louder.
“Downstairs, locked in the room below you.”
“Who are you?”
“That girl who fed you. I came with the man.”
“Thank you, I—”
“Did he take you?” the downstairs girl asked.
“Yes, I—”
“He grabbed me when I was outside working. My mom had me picking through rags, finding ones to sew into rugs. She sells them.”
“I was outside, too, waiting for my sister by the outhouse.”
“Oh,” the girl said.
“I think he watched me from the cornfield,” Delilah said.
“He watched me, too.”
Delilah thought about that, how they’d both been abducted so close to their homes.
“I’m Delilah. What’s your name?”
The girl didn’t answer. Instead, the next thing Delilah heard came in a whisper.
“He’s coming.”
Twenty-Three
I made good time on the drive to the sheriff’s department until I passed Alber and got stuck behind two trucks, their beds stacked five high with bags of silage. The harvest must have been going well. They’d accomplished a lot in less than half a day, snapping off the cobs, cutting and chopping the stalks. For some reason, an unusual amount of traffic clogged the road. After three attempts, I passed the trucks and sped up.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at the Smith County Courthouse. I felt a pang of concern when I saw Gerard’s black Suburban parked crooked out front, taking up two spaces. It looked like the chief arrived in a hurry and hadn’t paid attention. Of course, he probably didn’t worry that anyone would write him a ticket.
At a quarter past eleven on a Monday morning, the sheriff’s department buzzed with activity, every desk taken. Deputies milled about, and two women worked the phones. I started back toward Max’s office, but one of the women rushed to stop me. Grandmotherly with a silver-gray French twist, she had the manner of an agitated canary. She introduced herself as Helen Jamison, the sheriff’s personal secretary.
“This way, Detective,” she said.
“Isn’t Chief Deputy Anderson’s office over there?” I said, pointing in the opposite direction.
“The sheriff wants to talk to you,” she said.
It felt like a replay of my meeting at the police station. Perhaps I would have to get
