“No. I’m sure that’s not her.” I’d been in such a rush that I hadn’t yet called him to tell him what I had discovered. “But Naomi, one of my mothers, gave us a DNA sample. It’s at the office. I didn’t have time to have it sent to the lab before we ran out to come here.”
“Why did you get a sample from her?”
“We need to compare it to the girl from the field.”
“Why would we do that?” Doc looked confused. “Why would you—”
“Doc, I’m pretty sure the girl in the field is my half-sister Sadie – Mother Naomi’s daughter.”
“Oh, Clara, I—”
He looked stricken and moved forward as if he might embrace me. I appreciated the kindness, but I couldn’t bear to see the sympathy in his eyes. “I can’t talk about this now, Doc,” I said, holding up a hand. “I just can’t.”
He appeared to understand, nodded and walked off.
When I saw Max approach with his cell phone to his ear, I got in his squad car for the drive to the sheriff’s office. I couldn’t wait to confront Evan, to push and prod, to manipulate and use everything I’d learned as a cop to get him to confess. Whatever it took, I would find my sister. And I would tie Evan Barstow up so tightly that no defense attorney would ever free him.
I knew immediately when Max slipped into the car beside me that he had bad news. “They found Delilah?” I asked. “She’s dead?”
“No, not that, but this isn’t good.”
“Just tell me,” I said.
“Okay.” Max closed his eyes just a second. “When our deputies circled the house to make the arrest, Evan wasn’t at the ranch.”
“But we had surveillance,” I said. “How is that possible?”
“His wives say Evan left the ranch not long after we did. He snuck out the back way, on a horse.”
I smiled. Max looked at me, wondering. “Don’t you see?” I said. “That makes it more likely that Delilah’s alive. Evan had time to come here and take her.”
Max looked worried. “That’s possible, sure. But we can’t be sure that’s what he did.” His eyes focused hard on me. “Clara, you can’t pin your hopes on what’s no more than speculation.”
“I understand that,” I said, a lump of anxiety lodged in my throat that made it difficult to speak. “But you’re not understanding.” I took a deep breath, and then confessed, “I have to believe we can save her.”
Max nodded.
I paused, struggling to collect my thoughts. “Okay, so what we need to do is find Evan. And to do that, we need to find Gerard,” I said. “No one knows Evan better than his brother. If what Evan told my mother is right—that he told Gerard about Delilah—then there’s the real possibility that Gerard has first-hand information that might be useful. But one way or the other, Gerard is our best bet.”
“How do we find him?” Max asked. “I know this sounds crazy, but no one seems to know where he lives. He had an address in St. George a couple of years ago, but nothing listed in or near Alber. I had officers check out the St. George apartment, and someone else lives there now. The dispatcher has called his cell, I’ve called, and Gerard’s not answering.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “Why would Gerard suddenly disappear now? At this precise time? Unless…”
I walked over to where Mullins and his young partner, Officer Conroy, sat at a beat-up picnic table talking to the sheriff, who’d just arrived. “I still can hardly believe it, though I saw it with my own eyes,” Mullins said. “If this ain’t the damnedest thing, I don’t know what—”
“Did you warn him?” I blurted out.
“What?” Mullins sputtered. “You don’t think I—”
“Gerard Barstow has disappeared, nowhere to be found, at the precise moment that we need to ask him questions. I’m willing to bet someone gave him a heads-up.”
Mullins looked like I’d slapped him, and I noticed the scar on his cheek had turned a dark shade of purple, as if his heart rate climbed.
Officer Conroy glanced from his partner to me. “Detective Jefferies, I was with Detective Mullins when he got the call to bring you and Max out here,” the kid said. He was skinny as a scarecrow, straw-colored hair but dark brown eyes, and he looked scared. He scratched his right wrist, like his nerves were getting to him. “I didn’t see him make any phone calls, not until he called for the sheriff and the doc.”
Not yet ready to give the possibility up, I said, “I don’t know, Mullins. Maybe you didn’t, but if I find out you warned that piece of—”
“Clara, not now. Now we need to work together. And you’re right, we need help to find Gerard,” Max said as he turned to the others. “Mullins, you know him better than any of us. Where would the chief have gone?”
Mullins bit his lip and stared at me, furious. Then he turned to Max. “I heard that the chief left the station in a huff, upset about Detective Jefferies heading up the investigation. Sometimes when he’s in a bad mood, he talks about going to Salt Lake. He has family there.”
Sheriff Holmes sat on the opposite side of the table from Mullins, and I turned to the sheriff and asked, “Can you look into that? Find out where his family lives and get Salt Lake PD to send someone out. If he doesn’t accompany them willingly, they can bring him in as a material witness.”
“Got it,” the sheriff said, and he walked off to make the call.
While he checked on the Salt Lake connection, I turned to the others. “In the meantime, we need to move ahead. Any ideas?”
Mullins shrugged, uneasy, and Conroy looked at me as if unsure what to say.
“Clara, they couldn’t have gone too far,” Max said. “Evan’s squad and
