Jude Devine Mystery Series (36 page)

She entered the northeast-facing bedroom that had had the windows knocked out on the day. The bloodstains were still tagged. The splatter on the wall to her right belonged to Nathaniel Epperson, who had died of chest wounds at the scene, robbing them of answers to countless questions, but making his wife Naoma a happy woman, perhaps for the first time.

Jude wanted to spit in his face, but she wouldn’t have that satisfaction and spitting on a man’s grave was not her style. Feeling cheated, she wandered through the rest of the house. It wasn’t like they didn’t know what had happened. A fairly clear picture had emerged from the statements given by those of the other wives who were willing to talk, Thankful in particular. Encouraged by a community of former plural wives living in Colorado, she had decided to make the state her home.

After being condemned by Nathaniel Epperson, for reasons unclear to all, Darlene had been taken to her first husband, Hyrum, and told to seek his forgiveness as part of her purification. He had flown into a rage as he sometimes did and mauled her like a dog. Eventually Nathaniel and several of the older sons had managed to drag him off. One of them, Thankful’s oldest boy, had told his mother everything, even though they were sworn to secrecy. No one knew exactly what had happened after that, except that Naoma and Nathaniel had been heard shouting at each other, then Fawn Dew and Nathaniel drove off with Darlene and returned without her eight days later.

Jude had been trying to interview Fawn Dew ever since, but she was holed up in Rockwell’s compound and it appeared the new prophet had struck a deal with Utah and Arizona. He had agreed to a gradual “modernization” of his flock, including public school education, in exchange for an injection of government funding to tidy up the twin towns and fund community development. His daughter was “unavailable for comment” and Jude had been referred to his attorneys.

Adeline’s story had made headlines, and she and Chastity had appeared on a few television talk shows, putting a face to the countless women whose lives were destroyed by the so-called “sacred principle” of plural marriage. Jude had seen them again at Summer’s funeral in Salt Lake City. The Flemings had wanted to avoid publicity, so they’d allowed their daughter to be buried with her grandparents. They’d also signed over guardianship. Chastity said she’d paid her brother-in-law twenty thousand dollars for this. Child Protection Services had placed Daniel Epperson in a foster home where another of the “Lost Boys” of Utah was thriving, and it sounded like he was doing fine.

Jude paused opposite a small plaque on the wall of what was once Naoma Epperson’s bedroom.
Keep Sweet, No Matter What.
Just reading it made her feel depressed and overwhelmed. Thankful had talked about being brought up in a home where crying was forbidden and children who did were badly beaten.

Something she’d said played again and again in Jude’s mind. “I had to learn to be silent. It was the only way I would survive.”

She’d been embarrassed talking about her past, as if she should have known better.

Jude returned to the front porch and gazed out at the barns and the scraggly junipers, trying to imagine how the women living here must have felt. It had been too much for Poppy and somehow she had gotten away. Most of the wives admitted she’d been one of them, but seemed afraid to talk about her. Thankful said she was the ninth wife and that her real name was Valerie. She claimed to know nothing about her and Jude could sense that she was uncomfortable. Valerie had been a poofer, she said. There one day, gone the next. Everyone thought she was probably in Canada. Naoma was equally unhelpful. Valerie was one subject she was not willing to discuss and her plea bargain did not require her to do so.

Jude took a plastic bag from her pocket and examined the key and ten-digit code. In their extensive search of the premises and outbuildings, the FBI had found nothing the small key would fit. The number made no sense to anyone. 2329159919. Jude reminded herself to look for the obvious. Living here, staring out at the surroundings, yearning to escape, what must Darlene have been thinking? What secret did the numbers represent? Why had she been singled out by Nathaniel for torture and murder? According to Naoma, God said Darlene had “betrayed” them. Clearly, this was Nathaniel’s opinion dressed up as a message from the Almighty.

Jude paced back and forth in the shade, trying to put herself in Darlene’s shoes. Pregnant. Helpless. Desperate to contact someone from the outside world and let them know who she was. Had she stolen money and concealed it somewhere, imagining she could get to a town and buy a ticket out? There had to be a reason why Nathaniel lost his temper that day. He must have discovered something. If Darlene had physically hidden money or some other item, it had to be within walking distance of the house. There was nowhere else she could go.

Jude studied the digits again and remembered something she had seen in Darlene’s room. A note pinned to her mirror that instructed her younger sister “leave my lipstick alone.” Every
L
in the note had been written
l
and in Darlene’s hand, the letter was stunted. To a lab tech in Quantico who thought he was dealing with a phone number, it would be easy to mistake the letter for the number one.

In her mind’s eye, she replaced the ones with an L, and for a moment the revised code still didn’t make any sense, then she knew exactly what she was looking at. It was dead simple. Jude began counting her paces from the doorstep, walking in as straight a line as she could.

Half an hour and two left turns later, she was staring at smooth boulder with a small trowel jammed deeply into the earth next to it. Jude dug her way around the boulder until the tip of the trowel struck something metallic. Scraping the dirt away, she eased a small locked metal box from the ground.

The key slid into the lock and turned. Inside the box, a notebook was wedged on top of a pile of papers. Jude lifted it out and opened it at the first page. The owner had drawn a flower. Beneath this was written in a child’s hand, “My Story by Valerie Epperson.”

Jude flipped the page and found herself staring at a photograph of Naoma as a young woman. On her knee sat a prettily dressed little girl. The caption under the photo read, “Me with my Mom.”

Poppy Dolores was Naoma’s daughter. Nathaniel Epperson had taken his own child as his ninth wife. But that was not the ugliest secret Darlene had uncovered. Folded in the center of the notebook was a carefully drawn map in the distinctive turquoise ink Nathaniel Epperson used in his fountain pen. It showed the graves of seventeen people buried on the Epperson ranch. Each grave was numbered and a legend appeared on the back of the map. Beside each number was a name and next to that a brief statement of the individual’s sin and the method of “elimination.” The list was headed up “Atonement.”

Nathaniel Epperson was a mass murderer.

*

“That’s fascinating,” Mercy said, glancing around the restaurant as she sipped her wine. They were in Denver, but she was still paranoid. “She must have found the box somewhere on the property, seen the value it could have, and hidden it while she tried to figure out how she could use it.”

“I think she tried to blackmail him,” Jude speculated, mildly distracted by the outline of Mercy’s hard little nipples beneath her white shirt. “I think she told him that if he drove her back to Colorado, she would tell him where to find it. That’s why she had the note and the key. But then, at some point, she must have realized he was going to kill her, and she swallowed the information. Got the last word, in a sense.”

“You think Epperson and Fawn Dew planned it all along? Drove all the way to Colorado intending to kill her?”

“Probably. Then I think they buried the body somewhere, but had second thoughts. They were away for about eight days, according to Thankful.”

“They dug her up…yes, that figures with the decomposition rate. But why?”

“My guess is that they came up with a dopey plan to make it look like she’d been in Colorado all along. I think they found the stake when they were looking for a dump site and hammered it into her heart to try and make this look like the work of a psycho killer.”

“Which it was,” Mercy chipped in.

“They wanted her to be found and identified so we’d focus on locals in the investigation. Hence the social security card. They were just trying to hide the fact that she had been in Utah.”

“But she vanished two years earlier. Didn’t they realize we’d know she hadn’t been dead that long?”

“I doubt forensic science or even basic biology formed part of their education,” Jude said.

Mercy smiled. “Basic biology. Now that’s a topic we should discuss in private.” Her hand drifted across the table and her fingers lightly stroked the inside of Jude’s wrist. “Want to get a room?”

Jude did. In the worst way. But she was still bothered about Elspeth. “You already have a girlfriend.”

“She’s only here every few months. And we just sleep together for old time’s sake.”

“So the next time she comes, you’ll relive those happy memories again?”

Mercy shook her head, half laughing, half serious. “You’re being a Neanderthal about this.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.” Impatience seeped into Mercy’s voice. “It’s my business if I choose to have sex with Elspeth or not.”

Jude stared down at the table, wanting to agree and get out of the restaurant and escape to a hotel. “Okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s none of my business.”

“Jude,” Mercy said softly, “we can’t do this if we’re not on the same page. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m not hurt.”

“I don’t mind if you see other people.”

For some reason, that was no consolation. Jude said, “I know.”

That was exactly what she should do, she told herself. See other people. The fact that she only wanted to “see” Mercy was her problem. She signaled the waiter for the check and changed the subject.

“As I was leaving the place I went to the baby graveyard. One of the local women took me. She wants the FBI to investigate the place. There are about two hundred children buried there and in the big cemetery next to it. A lot of the graves are unmarked.”

She broke off when Mercy took her hand firmly and stared into her eyes. “Jude, you can’t dig up every dead child. It’s too late to save them.”

They left the restaurant and walked to Mercy’s car. In silence, they got in and put on their seat belts. Jude told herself to lighten up. She’d done nothing but talk about the case ever since Mercy picked her up from the airport. She’d had a feeling the whole time that Mercy had something on her mind she wanted to talk about. Not that she’d had the opportunity. They might as well have been sitting in her office talking shop. If Jude wanted Mercy as a girlfriend, she had to do better than this.

Before she could come up with an innocuous conversation starter, Mercy said, “I’m going to drop you at the hotel and go stay with friends in Boulder for a couple of days.”

Jude’s throat cramped. “Why?”

“Because this is getting too complicated for me.”

“No one saw us.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She lifted a caressing hand to Jude’s face. “I think you need more than I can give you right now.”

Jude covered Mercy’s hand with her own, then turned it over so she could kiss the palm. “You can’t imagine how much I want you.”

Mercy leaned into her, the flimsy silk of her shirt shifting across her breasts with every breath. Her mouth was against Jude’s ear. “That’s just the problem,” she murmured. “I can.”

Jude lowered her mouth to the base of Mercy’s throat and kissed a path down, unbuttoning Mercy’s shirt as she went. She wore a sheer camisole instead of a bra. Her nipples rose against the fine fabric, their dark peach color darker in the shadowed interior of the car.

“We can’t do this here,” she gasped as Jude bit down softly.

“I don’t want your Boulder friends listening while I fuck you,” Jude replied.

“You want me to check into a hotel like…this?” Mercy stared down at her camisole. It was glued wetly to her nipples where Jude’s mouth had been. She buttoned her shirt.