The Circle of Blood Read online

  Her mouth moved, but her words were only a whisper. “I do.”

  Cameryn felt elation until she heard what came next: “I know exactly who killed her. But I will never, ever tell.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  THEY SAT STARING at each other. Cameryn counted the seconds as they ticked away on the kitchen clock. They baby began to wiggle in Ruth’s arms, but she held her tight. “Just so you understand,” Ruth said, “I’ll deny everything I just told you. I can’t help you, Cameryn. I wish I could but I can’t.” She set the baby down on a brightly quilted blanket that had been tucked inside a playpen. Then she gathered up the photographs of Esther and shoved them into the folder. “I want you to leave my house.”

  “You know who killed this girl and you won’t tell?” Cameryn cried.

  “I know who killed this girl and I can’t tell. Because they said they’d kill me. Me and my family.” The voice edged on panic.

  Cameryn rose to her feet. Her blood rocketed as she cried, “But they’re accusing my mother! ”

  Ruth’s fingernails dug so hard against the edge of the table they looked bloodless. “I converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints years ago. I have a good life now. That nightmare is over for me.”

  “And my mother’s in a jail cell in Silverton! She’s in a nightmare!” Cameryn practically screamed the words, her hands gesticulating wildly. Suddenly, Ruth grabbed Cameryn’s left wrist in her hand. Her grip was like iron as she turned Cameryn’s palm up. “What’s that?” she shrilled, pointing to the digits written on her skin. “That’s the Childses’ number. Did you call them?” Her eyes narrowed. “Did you ask them about me?”

  “Yes—I—”

  “Did you mention me by name? Did you mention me by name?”

  “I might have. I . . . I was trying to figure things out. I said I was with the sheriff’s office and—”

  “When! How long ago?” Ruth jerked Cameryn so hard her feet almost left the floor. She was solid, tall, and deceptively strong. Her nostrils flared as she cried, “When did you make that call?”

  “An hour ago. Maybe an hour and a half . . .”

  “You don’t know what you’ve done!” Ruth released her and Cameryn staggered back. “I have to get out of here!” she cried, her face contorted, her expression frantic, wild. “The drive is only three hours from Placement. I still have time.”

  “If you’re worried, then call the police!” Cameryn told her.

  “No!” Ruth’s pale eyes flashed. “You have no idea who these people are.” She rushed to the refrigerator, yanking out item after item—milk, cheese, fruit, a bag of salad, a jug of orange juice—and shoving them all helter-skelter into a garbage bag. “I can’t do anything until my kids are safe.”

  “Safe. Safe from what?”

  “They warned me once. I helped smuggle girls out of polygamy, and they warned me. When Esther came here, I sent her away. They found her and they killed her and cut off her braid. It’s what they do, the way they take a girl’s beauty, the way they leave their mark. So the blood is on my head. The circle of blood has come back to me.”

  Leaving the bag of food on the counter, Ruth grabbed two more garbage bags and raced upstairs. Cameryn followed, not knowing what else to do. “Leave,” Ruth cried, turning on her. “I want you out of my house!”

  “If you’re scared, there are safe houses!”

  Ruth laughed harshly. “You don’t understand. These people find you no matter where you hide. Why do you think I sleep with a gun?”

  “But—”

  “Just go!” Ruth stormed into a room and Cameryn trailed behind, arguing, begging, but Ruth refused to listen. The room was pink and white with a rosebud paper border, like a wedding cake. Stuffed animals were strewn everywhere. The beds, though, cheerful beneath matching quilts, had been neatly made. Helpless, she watched the woman rake through drawers and shove things into a plastic bag before rushing past Cameryn to the next room, this one painted blue. Once again, Ruth stuffed clothes and shoes into a bag until it bulged.

  “I know of a place that’s far away,” Ruth huffed. “Far enough, I pray God, that they’ll never find us.” She hoisted the bags, one in each hand. Her body bent beneath the weight as she hurried down the hall toward the steps.

  “But what about my mom! ”

  Ruth paused. “I’ll do this: once we’re safe, I’ll call your sheriff in Silverton. We have to be safe first.”

  “How do I know you won’t just disappear?” Cameryn demanded.

  “You can’t know,” she answered. “That’s just the thing, isn’t it? You didn’t know when you made that call that I’d have to go into hiding. You’re trying to protect your mom, I’m trying to protect my kids, and we all go round and round. You opened a Pandora’s box. These people are—”

  Ruth didn’t finish her thought because at that moment Adriel screamed a loud, high-pitched wail. Cameryn watched Ruth go white. “Oh, no . . .” The bags made a thud as she dropped them. “Stay here,” she hissed. She stumbled down the stairs, taking them two at a time, rounding the corner out of sight. Cameryn’s mind, which had been spinning frenetically, froze as she tried to comprehend.

  “Put her down!” Ruth screamed.

  Below, Cameryn heard a loud thud and a crunching sound, a muffled cry and a soft groan. Heavy footsteps preceded a man’s voice, deep and low. It rumbled like a train through a tunnel. Cameryn shrank back against the wall as she heard him proclaim, “God’s wrath is visited upon you and your children. You had your chance, Ruth Gilbert. You were warned. But you tossed aside our mercy. We’ve extended you charity time and again, and yet you spit in our face.”

  “No,” Ruth cried, “I didn’t—”

  “You betrayed us,” claimed a second voice. “Nephi told you our laws were not their laws. You’ve aided our women when they scorned the Principal. You, who have left the truth for a lie. You’ve brought the eye of the Gentiles to our community, and now they will descend upon us. What did you tell the sheriff in Silverton? ”

  "Nothing!”

  “You lie!” Cameryn heard what sounded like skin hitting skin. “She said your name. What did you tell them? ”

  “I—I only told them who Esther was. So my sister could have her daughter. But nothing more! I swear!”

  “Liar! You have brought this upon yourself.”

  Cameryn’s heart pumped against her ribs. Quickly, quietly, she made her way down the hall to where she assumed the master bedroom would be. The guess was correct. A picture of a shining building hung over the large bed, with lights illuminating granite like strobes. The floor creaked beneath her feet as she punched 911 into her phone, and she prayed they wouldn’t hear.

  “This is 911. What is your emergency?” a female voice asked.

  “I’m at 404 Sixth Street at the home of Ruth Gilbert,” Cameryn whispered into her BlackBerry. “There’s been a break-in. She’s being attacked! Send help—please! I think the men are armed.”

  Cameryn heard a loud crunch and a scream.

  “You say there are intruders—”

  Ruth screamed again and Cameryn felt her blood run cold. “Hurry,” she pleaded. “I have to go.” As the operator began to argue, Cameryn hung up her phone and turned it off. Up here, she was hidden and safe. But she knew it took on average five minutes for the police to come to a crime scene. Horrible things could happen in that amount of time. She heard a slap against skin and the wail of the baby’s cry.

  The rough voice rang out again, “I got a call on my cell from the sheriff’s office askin’ about a Ruth Gilbert. That means you talked. Lucky for us we was already on our way here to pick up Esther’s body.” A riddled mass of nerves ran tight beneath Cameryn’s skin. She’d made this happen to Ruth!

  “It wasn’t me!” Ruth wailed. Her voice sounded thick. The denial was followed by another horrible thud.

  “Who, then!” the voice demanded.

  “No, Nephi—! ”

  Another thump. “
Who?”

  “I don’t know! ”

  A bang, this one like a blow from a hammer. “Give me a name if it wasn’t you.”

  A choking sound, and then, “No one.”

  “Liar. You was packin’ to leave. Do you think we’re stupid? Is that what you think? Your soul will be consigned to outer darkness. You are an agent of Satan.” This voice belonged to the second man. It was higher, thin and cold.

  Cameryn heard whimpering and another horrible crash.

  She almost jumped out of her skin when the phone rang, over and over, and she thought, The police. What if the dispatcher was calling back to make sure the case was real? What if, when there was no answer, they decided it was a hoax?

  They were beating Ruth to death while Cameryn stood like stone. There was no time to wait. She would have to act.

  “I’m begging you,” Ruth gasped.

  “You Jezebel! You harlot! ” Nephi raged. A sound of flesh on skin, another pain-filled cry as Ruth began to weep.

  “My—children! ”

  “Are as filthy rags. You have left the life of truth. Now you will surely pay.”

  No time left. Cameryn knew she had to move. “Why do you think I sleep with a gun?” Ruth had asked. Running her hands beneath the covers, she found nothing there. The floor squeaked again beneath her feet as she turned toward the nightstand. Ruth had left a reading lamp on, and in that light she gently, quietly, pulled open the drawer. Inside was a blue box marked COV-BAR .357 MAGNUM AMMO. And behind it was—the gun. When she raised it up, it felt as big as her arm, long and unwieldy. She laid it on the bed and then pulled out the box of bullets. Her hands were shaking so hard it was almost impossible to open it.

  More pounding and a scream from below. Cameryn, yanking at the cardboard lid, felt the box fly out from her fingers. Bullets rolled everywhere, like pennies from a broken roll, bouncing hard on the wooden floor. Swearing at herself, she squatted, opened the gun’s chamber, and loaded a single pointed copper bullet into a cylinder. She could tell they had stopped talking. One of them asked, “Is someone else here? Seth—you check the upstairs.”

  Out of time! One bullet was all she’d loaded, but there was no time left. Staggering to her feet, she ran down the hall, not caring if they could hear her footsteps as she pounded down the stairs. “Stop!” she screamed as she rounded the corner.

  One man held Ruth by the hair, her blonde locks coiled around his wrist like a rope. Ruth’s face was covered in blood and a pool of it stained the kitchen tabletop, a deep red blot the size of a dinner plate. Her eyes were so wide Cameryn could see the white all around, but it was the man she had to keep locked in her gaze. His hand clutched a gun, not yet fully raised. He stared at Cameryn, his face grizzled, his lip curled.

  “I said stop!” she cried. “Drop your gun!”

  “You’re just a girl,” the man said with disdain. He unwound his hand from Ruth’s hair and gave her a shove. “You see that, Seth? Another Jezebel in this house of defilement.” Nephi wasn’t tall, but he looked strong, his arms thick with muscle. His buzzed gray hair topped a sunburnt face, seamed as elephant hide. A plaid cowboy shirt, the kind with piping and buttons that looked like pearls, gapped over his ample belly.

  “I see her.” Seth’s blue cap with a stiff bill cast a shadow across his own weathered features. Both men wore boots, cowboy boots that came to a sharp point.

  “Drop your gun!” Cameryn demanded again, her own gun so heavy she had to hold it with both hands. It shook in her grip.

  “You know, Seth, I don’t think she’s got it in her,” said Nephi, his voice suddenly cool. “Look at her shakin’ like a baby.” His own gun had begun to inch up, millimeter by millimeter. He was staring at her. Cameryn knew he was calculating his odds.

  Her voice unnaturally high, she cried, “I know how to shoot.”

  “Do it, then. You’re just a female. You think you’re gonna shoot me? Then shoot me. But you’ve never killed, have you?” He grinned. “It takes a man to do that sort of thing.”

  Cameryn could barely breathe. She watched as Nephi’s gun moved higher still. He was calling her out, his small eyes hard, challenging her.

  She cocked the hammer and told him, “I’m warning you—”

  “And I’m warnin’ you right back,” Nephi said. “You drop that gun, little girl. Drop it, and we’ll go. No one will get hurt.”

  “Don’t believe him! ” Ruth cried.

  Suddenly Nephi’s arm jerked up and in the same second Cameryn squeezed the trigger of her Magnum. As the deafening blast burst through the air like a sonic boom, she felt a recoil so sharp she almost lost her footing. A blue lamp, inches away from Seth’s head, exploded into thousands of tiny pieces, leaving bits of ceramic scattered across the carpet like mosaic tiles. Adriel let out a loud shriek and both Seth and Nephi jumped. She could sense shock and fury burning behind their immobile faces.

  She’d used her one and only bullet. But they don’t know that, she told herself. Hold it together or we die.

  The men stared at her, wide-eyed.

  “Put your gun on the floor and kick it to me,” she commanded. “I’m serious. Kick it to me or I’ll blow your freakin’ heads off.”

  It was surreal. Cameryn, who didn’t even like violent movies, was talking like she was in an old Clint Eastwood film. Neither one of them moved, so she said, “I’m not a girl, I’m a woman. And this is a Magnum. Do you really want to mess with a Magnum?”

  Nephi’s gun clattered to the linoleum. It was Seth who kicked it to her, the revolver spinning like a whirligig until it was stopped by a table leg.

  “Ruth,” Cameryn cried, “are you okay?”

  Ruth nodded. Blood oozed out her nose, but she wiped it away. Her lip was cut and one eye had begun to swell. Leaning over, she picked up the gun. Ruth wobbled as she stood, but when she raised her arm, her aim seemed deadly. In a steady arc, the barrel moved from Nephi to Seth. Adriel sat crying in her playpen as Ruth said, “Hush, baby. It’s okay now. Mommy’s okay.” When Ruth spoke, Cameryn saw that her teeth were coated in red. “Cameryn, can you call the police?”

  A siren wailed in the distance. “I already did. That’s them now.”

  Ruth croaked a single word. “Good.” She swayed for a moment before righting herself. Keeping the gun pointed at the men, she walked past Cameryn to the front door, and throwing it open, she let in the light.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “. . . AND SO YOU’RE saying that’s when you shot the lamp,” the corporal continued as he jotted down her words. “I’m sure those two have never seen spunk like that from a girl. You must have been quite a surprise.”

  “It was more of an accident than anything else,” Cameryn said. “I’ve never shot a gun that powerful before. The kickback about knocked my arm out of its socket.”

  “It was enough to stop them.”

  She sat in a small interview room in the Durango Police Station, an older building cattycorner to the La Plata County Courthouse. Corporal Dunlop wore a regulation deep navy blue uniform, and he had a regulation haircut, too, buzzed flat on the top of his head. In the sparsely furnished room—just a metal table and two chairs—a small wall-mounted camera recorded everything she said, both audibly and visually. What the corporal wrote down, he told her, would be for his own files.

  “Well, after two hours, I think I can safely say we’re just about done,” he announced, leaning back and stretching. “I’m sure you’d like to get out of here. Plus, I’ve got a truck-load of people coming. The FBI is getting involved, and Social Services. That town over there in Four Corners was run lock, stock, and barrel by this Childs group. When your deputy . . . What’s his name?”

  “Crowley. Deputy Justin Crowley.”

  “Oh, yeah. When Crowley talked to the sheriff in Placement, he had no idea that the man he spoke with was actually their Prophet. Crowley obviously didn’t get a straight story from the guy.”

  Cameryn twisted her hair around her finger like a r
ing. “I just don’t get it—how could the rest of the state not know?”

  “Don’t be too hard on Arizona,” the corporal told her. “That group lived in a closed community, way out on hardscrabble land. Their children were born without doctors. No birth certificates, no death certificates. Makes them hard to track. According to Ruth Gilbert, dissenters were executed and buried in the Childses private cemetery. The FBI will be in Placement tomorrow, searching for graves. And you,” he said, smiling from behind his desk, “were the one who put it all together. Why don’t you forget about forensics? We lawmen could use someone like you.”

  He stood, signaling they were done. Cameryn, relieved, shook his hand and went down the stairs into the December sunshine. She was shocked to see Lyric and her boyfriend Adam leaning against her Jeep. Lyric laughed out loud as Cameryn halted, openmouthed.

  "Surprise!” Lyric cried, running forward to hug her. “Justin called and told me what happened. Your dad’s in Grand Junction—”

  “Yeah.” Cameryn hugged her friend back, hard. “Dad told me he’s already turned his car around and is on his way home. I think I may be in for it.”

  “Well, I know someone who isn’t mad. After all you’ve been through, Justin didn’t want you to drive home alone. So Justin sent me. And Adam.”

  Grinning, Adam waved.

  Lyric went on, “Justin called your dad who called the principal and we got a note. We are excused absences,” said Lyric. “That boy has got it for you good, even when you treat him bad.”

  Lyric wore a lime-green parka with fuchsia trim, and a pair of striped knit gloves in green and yellow. A long-tailed ski hat with bells, bright pink, hung down her back. Locking arms with Cameryn, she said, “We’re taking you to one of Adam’s favorite spots. Stoners.”

  Adam finally spoke. “I think you’ll like it,” he said. Always dressed in some version of black, today he wore black jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, no doubt sporting a skull or a headstone obscured by his dark, ankle-length coat. His hair, parted in the middle, hung in dark sheets, but his eyes were surprisingly warm. “It’s close, right off of Main. It’s got a good vibe.”