The official inquiry took a few days. We had three scenes to document: the cave, the location on the mountainside where we found Evan Barstow’s body, and the spread where Gerard kept the girls. During our investigation, we were able to determine that Evan had loaned his brother the ranch house to live in not long after Gerard returned to Alber.
On the kitchen table, we found an envelope addressed to the postmaster in El Paso, Texas. Inside was a stamped, sealed envelope addressed to Sariah and a note to the postmaster asking him to postmark the letter and put it in the mail for delivery. When we opened the inner envelope, we found a handwritten note from Delilah, telling our family that she’d run away.
As Doc predicted, the body in the barn turned out to be Eliza Heaton, and we had a DNA match on Sadie for the girl in the field.
The morning after the investigation officially ended, I drove out to tell Jessica Barstow of my belief that Christina was another of her brother-in-law’s victims. Too much was the same for it to have been a coincidence, most glaring her strange disappearance and the letter. Jessica cried in my arms and asked if I would look for Christina’s body. “I want to bury my sister,” she said.
“I have to go home to Dallas,” I told her. “But I’ll talk to Max Anderson and the others about it. Maybe they can try.”
She appeared disappointed, but said nothing.
Something still bothered me. “One question,” I said, and her eyes locked on mine. “That orange flashlight we took into evidence. When did Evan bring it home?”
“He didn’t,” she said. “Gerard stopped in one afternoon. He gave it to Evan. My husband seemed surprised. It wasn’t his birthday. I remember him being happy about it, that Gerard had shown him respect by bringing him an unexpected gift.”
On my drive back to Alber, I wondered why Gerard had given the flashlight to Evan. That one piece of evidence started everything. Perhaps it was what Evan thought—Gerard’s grateful gift to a brother who kept his secrets. Or could Gerard have been trying to offer his brother up as a suspect? If so, he succeeded.
A few hours after I visited Jessica, my family buried my sister Sadie. The sky turned overcast that afternoon, and we felt a whiff of moisture in the air. Halfway through the ceremony at the gravesite, the clouds opened and heaven cried as Sadie was finally laid to rest in a proper grave, not the stone mound where Gerard Barstow hoped she’d spend eternity.
I wasn’t officially invited to the service, so I stood under an umbrella near the rear with Max and the sheriff, watching as Naomi placed a bouquet of lavender on her oldest child’s casket. I thought of the sister I’d left behind and would never see again. I had her diary in my suitcase. Mother hadn’t asked for it back, and I hadn’t offered it. I counted our siblings in attendance. Father had twenty-one children at the gravesite that day, and it appeared seven grandchildren. None of the others looked my way except for Lily and Delilah, who snuck peeks at me until Mother put her hands on their faces and turned them back toward the grave.
Still, it wasn’t completely over.
The story made for sensational headlines. Two girls murdered, two more abducted by a police chief in a polygamous enclave in the mountains of Utah. It had what the media calls legs, enduring interest, and the Internet carried it everywhere. I got requests for interviews from reporters all over the world, and I turned them all down.
That didn’t stop the coverage. Here and there people talked to reporters: one of the dog trainers, Jessica Barstow, and one of Gerard and Evan’s brothers. Coming and going from the Smith County Courthouse, photographers snapped my picture. Before long, my face stared back at me from front pages, the evening news.
Ten days after I arrived in Alber, I packed my suitcase in my room on the second floor of Heaven’s Mercy Shelter. Chief Thompson had understood my absence, but he had a case he wanted me to take over in Dallas, a series of burglaries of high-end jewelry stores. He thought I needed a break from murder investigations.
“Give yourself a few weeks to put this behind you,” he’d said on the phone.
“Thanks,” I’d replied. “That sounds good.”
The chief never mentioned the press coverage, but he’d said, “That little town, Alber, is your home? You grew up in a polygamous family?”
“Four moms, but Mother Constance died years back. My father is gone, too,” I’d told him. “I’m not sure how many siblings, but there are a bunch.”
He’d paused. “Well, you know, Clara, we all come from somewhere. But this is pretty complicated.”
I chuckled. “If you only knew.”
“We don’t care where you came from,” he’d said. “You’re one of us. Come home.”
I thought about the word home.
I had my sleeves pushed up, and I looked down at my eagle tattoo. I thought about how the majestic birds build their nests high in trees, on cliffs, far away from humans, to protect their young. I’d read once that Native Americans considered bald eagles spiritual envoys who carried messages to and from God. I thought about that moment in the woods, when I prayed for the first time in many years. I asked God to keep Delilah safe, and to help me find her. Moments after I sent off my plea, an eagle cried out.
In the end, God must have heard me. He granted both my prayers.
“You all packed?” Hannah stood in the open doorway looking wistful at my imminent departure.
“Yup,” I said. “I’m stopping at the police station on my way out. Alma Heaton is dropping in. She wants to talk to me. And Max is coming to
