Last Writes (26 page)

“Let’s not go there, Erin,” Kelly said in a warning tone. “Do you not see me lying on my back with a mondo headache? That’s thanks to being drugged by those
nut jobs
—your friends. I may never know what they planted in my head. Hell, I could be a Manchurian candidate and never know it.”

“That’s totally ridiculous,” Erin protested hotly. “I don’t believe it for a second. Brother Stedman would never do something like that. He’s the most decent, kindest man alive. Why would he want to do that?”

“To get me to hand over my bank account and move in?”

“How can you say that?” Erin sputtered, outraged.

Then Claudia noticed she had her bag under her arm. “Are you going somewhere, Erin?”

“You’d better believe I am. I’m not going to stay here another minute and listen to you two bad-mouth my spiritual family.”

Kelly launched herself off the couch and for an uncomfortable moment Claudia readied herself to intervene in a physical confrontation between the sisters.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Kelly shouted. “Are you saying we’re lying about the drugs and hypnosis? Thirty seconds ago you were thanking us for finding Kylie. What the fuck’s going on here, Erin?”

Erin Powers rushed over to the front door and wrenched open the screen. “I
know
Brother Stedman wouldn’t do such a thing. And that means either you’re lying or you’re just plain wrong! I told you, Kelly, I’m thankful to you for finding out where Kylie is, but that doesn’t mean you can talk about Brother Stedman that way.”

The screen banged shut behind her. Claudia went to the door and watched her race down the footpath and along the sidewalk. She remembered that Kelly had told her Erin had a car parked around the corner.

“Well, that was more than a little weird.” Kelly flopped back down on the couch and let out a frustrated sigh. “I think I’ve had about enough of being a big sister.”

“You gave her what she wanted—Rodney and Kylie’s whereabouts.” Claudia checked her watch. Jovanic had called back to confirm the meeting at her house with the FBI agent. She would have to hurry if she was to be on time. “Tabitha’s not a common name and now we have her last name: Barton. If it’s not listed on Google, Joel should be able to get it. I’d like to make sure there’s no problem in case Erin shows up over there, demanding Kylie.”

Kelly agreed. “Can you think of any other reason than what I said—why the TBL people would do what they did to me?”

Claudia could, but she wasn’t yet ready to share her theory. She closed the screen behind her, looked back inside at Kelly. “I’d really like to see Erin’s handwriting. Look for notes or anything she might have written while she was here. If you find something, fax it to me.”

 

She was merging from the 101-west to the 405-south when her mobile phone rang. It wasn’t one of the special ring tones she had assigned to friends. A quick glance at the screen showed her Unknown Caller. She tapped her Bluetooth and answered.

An unfamiliar male voice said, “Is this Claudia Rose?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“My name is Rodney Powers. I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

 

 

 

Asshole!
She wanted to shout at him:
Where the hell are you? What do you think you’re doing?

Rodney Powers was the cause of everything bad that had happened this week, and here he was, just phoning to say, “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

But shouting wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she pushed the anger down into a hard ball in her gut. “Yes, Rodney, I have been looking for you. I found your note last night in my briefcase.”

He was silent for a long moment but she could hear him breathing, so she waited him out. Finally, he said, “I don’t know whether I can trust you, but when I heard you were asking about me, I decided I had to take the risk and try to contact you. I have nowhere to turn.”

Even through the phone Claudia could sense the desperation rolling off him in waves. She felt her own tension rising in response. “So, why put the note in my bag? Why not just talk to me last night?”

“I wanted to, but . . . Why have you been asking the brothers and sisters about Kylie?”

He hadn’t mentioned Kelly, and she could not reveal her connection to Erin. If he found out that she knew his wife, he would assume she was working against him—as essentially she had been. She said, “My only motive is to make sure Kylie is safe.” That much was true anyway.

“But why? What’s your involvement?”

“Rodney, could we please do this in person? I’m on my way to Playa de la Reina, right now, but I’ll be glad to turn around and meet you anywhere you like.”

She could sense him thinking hard, but in the end he said, “I have no reason to trust you until I know why you’re interested in my family.”

“But you already know my name, and you know what I do. Obviously you’ve got my phone number, and you trusted me enough to call me. You put that note in my briefcase, for heaven’s sake. Why?”

“I’m desperate,” Rodney said. “But I heard you’re working for Brother Stedman.” He gave a bitter laugh. “One thing you can count on, nothing stays secret for long at the Ark, which is why I can’t be there right now.”

Something wasn’t adding up. Listening to what Rodney was saying and what he wasn’t saying, Claudia tried to figure out what was missing. “I’ve been told there’s surveillance everywhere there. Harold Stedman seems pretty paranoid.”

Rodney ignored that. “What were you doing in my office at the Ark?”

“I can’t talk to you about that, it’s confidential. But I assure you, the work I did for Stedman has nothing to do with you or Kylie.”

“What did you tell him about my note?”

She had a strong feeling that the way she answered this question would be crucial. “Not a word. I found it after I’d returned to the Ark from the university, and I had plenty of opportunity to show it to him, but I didn’t.”

“Who did you tell?”

“I told James about it.” She flipped on the turn signal for the Venice Boulevard off-ramp and drove west, toward the beach. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him anything about the FBI. “When James told me who Tabby was, I realized that must have been you sitting next to her last night.”

Rodney Powers gave a nervous laugh. “I was afraid someone would see me and think I was
stealing
from your briefcase. But Tabby kept you looking the other way until I had dropped the note inside. Nobody noticed.”

“Yes, she did a good job. James seemed concerned about you staying with her.”

“Poor James. I’ve worn out my welcome there.” His voice held the profound sadness of one who knew he had lost a lifelong friend, thanks to the TBL rules. “I can’t ask him for anything more. After he told me about you, I needed to see who you were. I wanted to get your attention; thought you might be able to help.”

“You certainly did get my attention. What did your note mean about the evildoing, and that things aren’t the way they seem?”

Instead of answering her question, he asked her another of his own. “What have you been told about the reason why I took my daughter?”

That was a tricky question and would require some fancy footwork to keep Erin’s name out of it. “I heard at the Ark that you and Kylie are very close. That she’s even closer to you than to her mother. Look, Rod, I think I understand now how much of a privilege you believe it is to enroll your little girl in Jephthah’s Daughters, but how can you send her there, knowing you’ll never see her again?”

“But I’m not!”

“What do you mean, you’re not? That’s why you ran with her, isn’t it? So you can make sure she’s ready to leave on her birthday?”

“Remember, I wrote that things aren’t the way they seem.”

“Then why don’t you tell me how they really are?”

“It’s my wife who still believes our daughter should go into the program, not me. I changed my mind. I couldn’t do it.”

Rodney’s words and his apparent sincerity lent credence to the suspicion that Claudia had been harboring for a couple of days now. He went on, “Erin is completely devoted to Brother Stedman. He’s been like a father to her; he practically raised her. She’s always been a favorite of his; she would do anything he wanted her to. He’s told us ever since Kylie’s birth that the Lord had big plans for her, that she’s the Chosen One. At first when he said she would be the next Jephthah’s Daughter, we could hardly believe it. It was the thrill of a lifetime.” Rodney’s voice shook with emotion. “But then, after we got to the mountains, the reality of what it meant set in and I knew there was no possible way I could go through with it. Kylie means everything to me. I could never let her go.”

As she listened to what he was telling her, Claudia remembered the strange look in Harold Stedman’s eyes when he’d spoken about the new blood of the lamb, and she shivered.

In the background, she heard a child begin to wail. Relief poured over her. It was only then she realized that she’d secretly feared Rodney had gone over the brink of sanity and the child had met with some horrible fate. “Is that Kylie? Is she okay?”

The crying grew louder and it was evident that Rodney was carrying the phone with him as he went to check on his daughter. Claudia heard him make soothing sounds and the crying quickly reduced to whimpers. He must have picked her up. Maybe she was crying for her mother, and for her stuffed bunny, Tickle. After all the praiseful things Claudia had heard about this child, the sound was somehow comforting—Kylie was a human little girl, after all.

“She’s tired,” Rodney said. He sounded exhausted himself.

“Does Tabby help you with her?” Claudia asked, doubtful that Goth Girl would show much interest in a toddler.

“She’s not a kid person. I’m just grateful she’s letting us stay here for a while. I don’t know for how much longer.”

Claudia gripped the wheel tighter. It was time to decide which one of Kylie’s parents was telling the truth. She said, “I need to ask you something important, Rod.”

“What is it?”

“Did you leave a note for your wife when you took Kylie away?”

He answered without stopping to think about it. “Of course I did. I wouldn’t just take off without saying anything.”

“Why did you write that there would be suffering?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. Would you please tell me what you wrote?”

Now he hesitated and she couldn’t blame him. There was no reason for him to reveal so much of his personal life to a stranger. But in the end, he did.

“I told her I loved her, but I had come to realize that I couldn’t part with our baby, even though Brother Stedman had said Kylie was the Chosen One, and even though taking her away might mean that I would be excommunicated. Why would you want to know about that?”

What he had just told her bore no resemblance to the text of the note that Erin had showed her and Kelly. If Rodney was telling the truth, and Claudia felt reasonably certain that he was, Erin was lying.

Why would she lie about something that so profoundly affected her family’s life and her child’s future?
“If you changed your mind about sending Kylie to the convent, couldn’t you have just told your wife?” Claudia asked. “I know TBL wives are expected to be submissive to their husbands, so wouldn’t she—”

“Erin will always obey Brother Stedman before me. That’s the way we’ve been taught—we follow the direction of our spiritual leaders without questioning their wisdom.”

“But
you
started questioning.”

“Yes. And now my family is torn apart because of it.” There was the bitterness again.

“Rodney, what happens to the little girls who go to Jephthah’s Daughters?”

He started to answer, but Kylie began to wail again. This time she was right next to the phone and was winding herself into a frenzy.

In the background, Claudia heard a muffled male voice.

Rodney said, “What are
you
doing here?”

Kylie started screaming. “No! No! Daddy, no!”

Claudia strained to hear what the man in the background was saying. She yelled into the phone, “Rod, what’s going on? What’s happening? Rodney?”

Rodney’s voice: “Wait, don’t do that!”

The line disconnected.

 

 

 

The sound of Kylie’s screams haunted Claudia as she drove past the wetlands and through the hamlet of Playa de la Reina. The child had sounded distraught. Whose voice had she heard in the background? She kept telling herself that Kylie was just having a tantrum, but deep down was the fear that something bad had happened at Tabitha Barton’s house.

She phoned Jovanic and told him what happened. He promised to do what he could to get Tabitha Barton’s address and request a welfare check from local law enforcement.

At Tyler’s coffeehouse she signaled a left turn. Customers had spilled onto the street and were sitting at sidewalk tables listening to the jazz combo playing inside. Claudia spared a pang of envy for those carefree couples enjoying the pink-and-purple canvas of sky over the Pacific Ocean only a block away.

After her debriefing with the FBI agent she promised herself that she would put the Powers family and their troubles behind her. She didn’t fool herself that it would be easy. She hadn’t met the child face-to-face, but now that she had heard her voice, Kylie seemed more real.

The nagging question returned: Why had Erin lied to her and Kelly? And the answer: Because she knew that if she’d been truthful, they would not have helped her find her daughter.

What would Kelly say when she heard Rod’s version of the story and knew she’d been lied to? She’d spent days cloistered in the blazing hot cult compound listening to propaganda; drugged and brainwashed to unwittingly help her half-sister sacrifice her child to a convent in the Rocky Mountains. Kelly would go ballistic.