Page 4 of Only Girl Alive

“I’ve got it,” she assured him softly so their communication wasn’t caught on Collin’s sound-recording.

Her camera continued its click, click, click as they walked into a large gathering area usually referred to by outsiders as a living room. This was where the man of the house would summon his family for their twice-daily prayer sessions. Two large black couches made an L shape. Each could sit at least five women who would listen to their husband while holding the smaller children in their laps.

Eve’s polygamist family had four couches that held twice that number. It was their respite for sore knees.

Her childhood home, like this one, had no carpets, only bare wooden floors that were swept and mopped daily. She remembered singing hymns to God along with the church lessons. Looking around now, she saw little in the way of ornamentation on the walls. Aaron had told her how many victims were inside and that number said this husband held little power or was young by church standards. Older men were awarded more wives as long as they gave their wealth to the prophet and obeyed the other strict laws set before them.

Gentiles, and non-fundamentalist Mormons, never got this far into the inner sanctum and would be chased away from even entering the outside courtyard. Secrecy, like the bare walls, was key to the polygamist lifestyle.

A large table with ten chairs separated the main room from the women’s center of the home, also known as the kitchen. It was large with white cabinets and bare countertops. Unlike the bare walls of the living areas, these were filled with hanging cooking utensils: measuring cups, ladles, items that would not fit in the cupboards or drawers. Above the oversized, six-burner stove were pots and pans in various sizes. Gingham blue-and-white homemade hand towels matched the thin curtains hung over heavy vinyl roller blinds designed to keep out inquisitive eyes. The shadowed inside area held a history of secrets and those secrets were not for non-believers such as Eve and her team.

There was a half bathroom off the kitchen. Approximately five-by-five feet, a toilet, sink, and towel rack with a single white towel hanging from it. No rug or fluffy toilet cover. One at a time they entered then backed out. A large pantry with minimal food also stood off the kitchen. Unlike Mormon food storage where separate households retained enough food for two years, the fundamentalist church kept the coffers in a warehouse for the community and divvied it to the members when they thought it warranted. Eve remembered hunger during her childhood and quashed the thought quickly.

Bina’s, Ray’s, and Clyde’s hands remained in their pockets as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.

They wore soft blue shoe coverings that only slightly diminished the light clunk sounds they made as they went up the wooden steps. A single, one-by-one-foot uncovered window on the landing wall slashed the steps with light that merged with the shadows. The stairwell walls were completely bare, the white paint without a smudge.

She rounded the second set of stairs and the faint smell of death entered her nostrils for the first time. By her calculations, it had been six hours since the bodies were discovered and they didn’t know the exact time of death. The cool weather helped keep the odor at bay but not for much longer. The bodies were breaking down and the sooner they could be processed and removed, the better for everyone.

Family members would be clamoring for their loved ones soon. It was hard to explain to civilians why it was important to keep a body’s integrity but Eve would try. She also knew they couldn’t legally rush her. Each crime scene she investigated within the polygamist community had the same modus operandi. The church, represented by her stepbrother for the most part, would fight her at every turn. The community leaders also wanted them out of the area as soon as possible.

Over a year ago, after a judge ordered oversight of all law enforcement in the polygamist community giving equal justice to all who lived here, not just men, she had had her first confrontation with her stepbrother. He had a dead body removed before calling her. She made it clear nothing would be taken from her crime scene, even a body, and managed to make the statement before the oversight judge. Aaron, who knew better, couldn’t argue.

“Master bedroom first,” Eve said, directing her team.

She wanted to see the father’s body before the others. It always made sense for the killer to take out the biggest threat first and he would be the natural choice. For now she couldn’t say this for certain, but investigators based their assumptions on prior experience, and they were usually right. She knew her team’s brains were in overdrive looking at details and lining up the puzzle pieces. This walk-through was like putting together the edges of the jigsaw, with the rest of the picture still to be clicked into place.

They passed six doorways, three on either side of the hall, one a bathroom and one a small linen closet. They walked around small dark drops on the wooden floor and barely glanced into the open rooms. Blood had dripped off someone or something, was her guess as she looked down. Eve took photos of the probable blood while the team waited for her at the end of the hallway at the master bedroom entrance. When she reached them, they entered just enough so they could all step inside.

It was hard to notice anything other than the two bodies but Eve made herself wait while she looked at the room. There was one queen-sized bed with a large chest of drawers against the closet wall opposite the foot of the bed. One wooden nightstand was on the man’s side with a single lamp on top of it. She noticed a common pamphlet of fundamentalist scripture lying on the floor spattered by blood. She snapped the first picture in the room and allowed her training to take over as she put the bodies in the background of her mind and captured more images.

During her childhood, she couldn’t sleep with her mom when it was her mother’s time alone with Father. Young Eve didn’t understand the reason, she just knew it was hard when she felt little love from the siblings she shared a room with. Seeing this wife in bed with her husband reminded her of those isolated nights. Her deep inhale to evade the memory only enforced the smell and taste of death. She silently counted to five. After she gained control of her emotions, she lowered the camera.

The room was as pristine and orderly as downstairs, if you didn’t count the blood or bodies.

Eve lifted the camera and the shutter clicked, the noise calming her. Through the lens, deaths were not as vivid, though the pictures would hold each detail. No matter the images she recorded, they were never as gruesome as the actual murder scene.

“Jesus,” Ray exclaimed, which made Eve jump.

Collin shot him a dirty look. They needed to remain silent because of the video camera. The exclamation could even come up in court. Ray wasn’t chagrined and offered Collin his middle finger after the video camera changed direction. Collin gave him an elbow in the ribs for his trouble. Their tussle was a way for them to process the brutality in their minds. Most didn’t understand but when you saw things like this, you had to find a way to relieve the horror.

Clyde, in pure investigative mode, ignored them and stepped to the opposite side of the bed where the woman was laying with her head on a bloodied pillow. It had once been white. He glanced away and took a slow, even breath, trying to distill the taste of death. His tough exterior was a well-honed mask. Women and children brought out his protective instincts and he was a papa bear when they were harmed. Clyde’s commitment to justice would help find those responsible for what happened to this family.

Eve adjusted her lens to zoom in on the man. He appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties. She then walked to the other side, making sure she didn’t step in blood. Clyde nudged her shoulder when she was close and pointed between the bodies. The woman’s hand lay beneath the man’s. It was highly unlikely they purposely joined hands in death. Eve nodded so Clyde knew she saw what he did. She captured the image with her camera and continued clicking more photos of the bodies from the new angle.

Steady breathing. Inhale, exhale, don’t think of their deaths, only the scene that held the answers to discovering who did this. She cleared her mind, lowered her camera, and looked at the room again without her shield.

Eve always thought in multiple perpetrators until the investigation determined otherwise. The area surrounding the bed was a bloodbath. The covers on top of the man and woman, the same. Her gaze kept returning to the joined hands. The killer made it personal and from her experience that usually meant a single suspect. Maybe someone else had killed the others that they had yet to see. After she forced herself to study the room and the bodies, she pulled the camera back to her eye.

She caught the woman’s death in separate frames as she slowly moved around the bed again. She had died exactly as her husband did, the slice to her throat almost identical. Collin stepped closer with the video camera as Eve zeroed in on the wounds.

Blood marked the walls at the head of the bed and because it dripped to the carpet, they couldn’t get closer to the bodies and had to stand a foot back on both sides. They would all mentally process this grotesque, surreal scene for many days if not weeks.

A closet door stood open and they looked briefly inside. Suits were on one side, work clothes on the other. Five pairs of shoes in total. The women didn’t use this space. After Eve took pictures, she backed out so the others could look inside.

The man and woman in bed together suggested possible marital relations. Had the church removed other wives due to this perceived sin?

Since the fall of the prophet, the rules he dictated from prison had become stricter. Sex between husbands and wives was forbidden. Only a select few chosen men could copulate and father children so pure bloodlines remained intact. These men were known as seed bearers. Just thinking of that term sent a chill through Eve. The evil that permeated this community was the history that she unsuccessfully tried to escape.

---