Page 35 of Only Girl Alive

Her large eyes held tears and her hands shook as she nervously fluffed her dress. Her gaze darted to Kathryn and Sheila again. She looked younger than twenty, her round face very unlike Sheila’s. She had strawberry-blonde hair and green eyes. Her front teeth were slightly crooked.

“I need your help,” said Eve calmly.

“My help?” Candace finally asked, her attention fully turning to Eve.

“You were removed from the Tanner home and I need to know why.”

Candace stared at her as she decided what to say. Eve had interviewed too many women from the polygamist community not to see the signs. She wanted to talk but church rules were getting in the way. She did not have her husband’s permission to speak with Eve.

“I desperately need your help, please,” she implored.

Candace’s expression changed slightly. “The church reassigned me and several of my former sisters. Our children too. God knew what was best for us.”

“Why were you reassigned?”

Candace stared at her for a long moment then dropped her eyes to her lap. “One of my sisters complained to the bishop,” she finally said.

Keep sweet ran through Eve’s head. Women accepted what God gave them to bear. It didn’t matter what Bart Tanner had done.

“What did she complain about?” Eve pushed.

Candace shook her head without looking up.

“We will need fingerprints and DNA swabs from you to compare with what we found in the attic.”

Candace panicked and for a second, Eve thought she would leave the car. Instead, she pulled her dress up to her mouth and screamed into the material. It was a sound Eve would never forget. Fundamentalist women were taught to never show emotion. The attic was a terrible memory and this young woman had suffered unimaginable horrors in that room.

Candace stopped screaming and pulled her legs up, curling her body inward, rocking within the confines of the seat.

“Candace?” Eve asked softly. “Do you know who killed the Tanners?”

She continued rocking, Eve’s words not getting past her misery.

“I should have killed him. I hated him,” she finally said.

Husbands held the priesthood and only they could attain heaven. A wife must be pulled up by her father until she was of age and then the decision went to the man she married. Candace’s admission showed the horror Bart’s wives suffered.

“Were you there when he died?” Eve asked.

Candace shook her head.

“Where were you the night he was killed?” Eve needed to establish if Candace had an alibi.

She didn’t answer.

“Four people died. Two were your sister wives. Elijah was a child. I need your help but I need to know where you were the night they were murdered.”

“I was home,” she whispered, her body still moving back and forth.

“Do you have someone who can confirm that?”

“Yes.”

“Was everyone accounted for on the night of the murders?”

Candace stopped rocking and turned her face slightly toward Eve.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

---