The Circle of Blood

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 ring. “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.”

“I could use a dose of that,” Cameryn said. “Mammaw’ll have to say a whole string of rosaries to keep me out of the flames.”

Lyric squeezed her close. “I don’t think they’re mad, Cammie. Just worried. But you’ve had enough tension for one day. You solved the case, your mom’s out of jail, so let’s celebrate!”

Stoners turned out to be an organic café. Customers grabbed their own personal mugs off a peg board before ordering chai or oolong tea. Overhead, tie-dyed batiks billowed from the walls. Cameryn picked a mug with a picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue. A worn couch had been set next to a coffee table displaying an assortment of eclectic literature on the afterlife, the Buddha, the truth about Roswell’s aliens, and vegan cooking. There was nothing in here she would possibly want to eat, Cameryn knew, but she didn’t care. As they waited to be seated, Lyric and Adam peppered her with questions about polygamy and Seth and Nephi, talking above each other as Cameryn answered all she could. A sudden warmth infused her. Lyric, with her kohl-rimmed eyes, and Adam, his skin Edward Scissorhands-white, had driven all the way to Durango to help her. Cameryn, who’d found a girl’s killer and freed her own mother from suspicion, could now relax in the company of her friends.

On the way back to Silverton-Lyric and Cameryn in the Jeep while Adam drove alone in his truck-Lyric admitted there was one more subject she’d been dying to talk about. “But not with Adam around,” she said. “I wanted to wait for some privacy, so here’s the thing. You and I-we’ve been friends forever, right?”

“Since grade school,” Cameryn agreed, downshifting as the hill rose steeper.

“And friends tell friends the truth.”

“Not if the friend of this friend has already had a really hard day.”

“Come on, let me say it. I think it’s really important.” Lyric tucked a strand of purple hair behind her ear. Just last week Cameryn’s grandmother had worried that Lyric’s ever-changing hair color was too intense. “God made a person’s hair the color that He wanted it to be, so it should be left at that,” she’d said.

“Tell that to your friend Margaret,” Cameryn had shot back. “It wasn’t God who turned her hair blue.”

“That was just a wee bit of a tint gone wrong. It’s not the same thing at all,” Mammaw had sniffed, but she’d said no more.

Now Cameryn sighed. She reset her mind in order to receive whatever it was Lyric was about to say. In her rearview mirror she saw the slash of Adam’s face as his truck chugged behind them. “What is it? Are you having a psychic moment? Is my aura out of whack?”

“As a matter of fact,” Lyric answered primly, “it is.”

“How is it out of whack?”

“You’re not seeing something that’s clearly in front of you.”

“Which is?”

“Justin.”

Cameryn’s hands tightened on the wheel.

“Justin really cares about you,” Lyric said, twisting in her seat. She’d pulled off her hat, and her hair, full of static, crackled toward the roof of Cameryn’s Jeep. “And stop rolling your eyes when I say his name. When Justin called me, he was panicked. Totally panicked. I thought he was going to have a meltdown because he couldn’t drive down and be with you.”

Instead of a negative feeling, a smile spread through Cameryn. “Really?”

“Really.”

Cameryn’s smile grew. Riding the day’s victory made anything seem possible, maybe even stepping out of her reserve. Opening up. With Hannah set free and taking her medication, who knew what lay in store?

“That’s a wicked grin, Cammie,” said Lyric. “Seriously wicked.”

It was a grin Cameryn wore all the way home.

Although it was only three o’clock in the afternoon, the lights from their Christmas tree were already on. Through the window Cameryn watched them blink on and off, casting small orbs of colored light against the living-room wall. She stood on the front stoop as if treading water, half afraid to go inside, but aware that she had no choice. Bracing herself, she opened the door, and almost immediately found herself in the arms of her mammaw.

“Good grief, child, what were you thinking? Going down to Durango like you were a spy.” Mammaw hugged her tight, her hands like knots against Cameryn’s back. Her grandmother smelled of cinnamon and cloves. “You could have been killed. And you cut school. You cut school and took off. That’ll land you in trouble.”

“I’m sorry, I was just trying to help.”

“Your father’ll be here any minute. Oh, don’t look so worried, girl. We’re both so relieved you’re all right that nothing else matters. Have you seen Hannah?”

“I tried to call but she hasn’t picked up. I thought maybe later I could go over to the Wingate and check on her.”

“Let’s see what your father has to say.”

Cameryn heard the tires crunch in their driveway, followed by the bang of the kitchen door. She could feel the coolness of the Silverton air waft through the room, although that wasn’t what made her shiver with goose bumps.

She saw him then, filling the doorway, but he didn’t pause. Engulfing her in a bear hug, he yanked her to her feet and up into his arms, so that her toes barely touched the floor. As he kissed the side of her head roughly, he said, “Cammie, Cammie, Cammie, thank God you’re safe.”

“I’m okay, Dad,” she murmured into his sweater. She could smell wet wool and the faint scent of his new after-shave, could hear the beating of his heart and feel the coarseness of his chin against her forehead.

“You’re my only child,” he told her, swaying her in his arms. “What would I do if something happened to you? What would I do then?”

Quietly, she answered, “I caught the killers.”

He pulled away and stared. “You could have been shot. Come here. Sit down.”

With his arm still around her, Patrick sank into the sofa, pulling her next to him. “I heard from Jacobs. He told me there’s a graveyard for Fundamentalist girls who try to run. So far, they’ve found three others buried in the sand. Esther would have been the fourth.”

Cameryn thought about this. She could hear a Christmas carol playing in the kitchen, soft and sweet. It was almost impossible to picture a life so different from her own. And yet, somewhere in Arizona there was a graveyard with young girls who had attempted to leave a life of forced marriage. Young, blonde slaves from the twenty-first century. She felt herself shiver again. “Why were they so angry with Ruth?”

“Because for a while she opened her home to the runaways. It was a safe house. That is, until Seth and Nephi found out and threatened her family. This time, when Esther showed up, Ruth gave her new clothes and a backpack, but she wouldn’t let her stay.”

“Oh, the poor woman,” said Mammaw. “That’s a lot of guilt she’ll be feeling.”

“If she hid the truth before, she’s not hiding it now. She’s in the hospital, recovering from a broken nose and shattered cheek. Remind me to send her flowers first thing in the morning.” Touching Cameryn’s cheek with his finger, her father said, “You should never have done what you did, and I could ground you forever-but you saved lives today.”

“Hannah’s life,” Cameryn added quietly. “I think I saved her life, too.”

“You very well could have. The case against her was circumstantial, but people have gone to prison on circumstantial evidence before.” He laced his fingers through hers. “Cammie, you ultimately got to the truth. But… because of your mother, you withheld evidence in a murder case. Last summer you sat in that kitchen and begged me to hire you as assistant to the coroner. Your grandmother hated the idea.”

"She still does.”

“I’m beginning to accept it,” her mammaw interjected. “Beginning,” she added when Cameryn shot her a look. Mammaw had dropped into the easy chair and picked up a large cloth Madame Alexander doll that needed a leg. With a hooked needle, she began to reattach a new limb, her hand moving as fluidly, Cameryn thought, as a surgeon’s.

“When I put you on the payroll, you agreed to work for me. Not just father and daughter,” he reminded her, “but employee and boss. Remember?”

She nodded.

“I want to talk to you now as your boss. You knew things about Esther’s death that could have been crucial, yet you withheld the facts. Cammie, that’s obstruction of justice. That’s a very, very serious mistake.”

“But it didn’t matter-it doesn’t matter. I was right, wasn’t I? Hannah didn’t do it. She didn’t have anything to do with Esther’s death.”

Her father rubbed his hand over his eyes. “That’s not the point. As a coroner, as medical examiners, our job is to reveal the facts. Reveal, Cammie, not conceal. There could have been legal ramifications for what you did.”

“You mean legal ramifications for finding the truth?”

“You are not listening. If you were anyone else, you’d be fired. Do you understand?” He shook his head as she pleaded justification. “There is none,” he said. “But we’ll put this behind us and move forward. Because now I want to talk about your mother.”

She knew where this was going, what he was about to say, but he surprised her. In a tender voice, he began, “Your mammaw and I talked, and we-I-Cammie, neither one of us has been fair to you. Or to Hannah.”

She looked at him, disbelieving. Mammaw nodded her head while keeping her eyes on her needle and murmuring agreement. Ever since Hannah had reentered her life, Cameryn had felt as though they’d been locked in battle. Her grandmother’s cantankerousness had equaled her father’s firmness, and she, Cameryn, had matched both in her own quiet, stubborn way. But now the rules seemed to be changing. They were lining up together again, on the same side, the same team.

Patrick’s heavy brows came together, creating a pleat between his eyes. “When your mother got… sick… I couldn’t take it. But you’ve stuck by her. I’m proud of you for that.”

“You have Amy Green now,” she told him. “And you have Mammaw. Hannah’s got no one but me.”

“That was a mistake. My mistake. Our mistake. So I called her.” His face contorted and his voice wavered as he said, “It’s the first time I’ve talked to Hannah in almost fourteen years.”

“It was the right thing to do,” agreed Mammaw. “I see it now. It will be hard for us, but your father and I will try. We’re going to try to make room for us all.”

Cameryn sat, too stunned to speak. The flames of the fireplace danced as she tried to comprehend.

“I asked her to come to the house and she said yes,” Patrick continued.

“Hannah? Here? When?”

“Any minute now. In fact, I think she’s here.”

Through the window Cameryn saw a figure make its way up the steps, heard the timid rap on the door. Leaping to her feet, she opened the door to see Hannah’s pale face.

“Is this okay?” Hannah asked, her voice cautious.

Cameryn’s eyes filled with tears as she threw the door wider. Light from the house brightened her mother’s curly hair. In Hannah’s outstretched hand she held a painting of an iris. “A gift,” she said, “for your house.”

And Cameryn, her throat so tight she could barely get out the words, answered, “Welcome to our home.”