Ties That Bind (2 page)

He passed his study, the door just slightly ajar.

Of course. The reason the lawn was not mown and trimmed was in this room—the computer where Jeremiah spent hours doing who knows what. Mark and Lydia had put on trackers, content monitors, and parental controls, and yet somehow he knew his son had managed to get past them all. There was no proof Jeremiah was doing anything wrong. And every time Mark tried to see what his son
was
doing, he’d found him innocently chatting on a messenger program with some of his friends. But there were too many hours spent there, too much time unaccounted for. And a few times Jeremiah had cringed a bit and looked nervous when his father came into the room unexpectedly, but he could never find anything. Nothing incriminating, anyway. And the police never came to his door. The teachers at school did not complain. The only person who seemed genuinely concerned about Jeremiah’s behavior was his father. Lydia had long since given up the ability to think rationally, the fears taking over her mind until she was incapable of doing the one thing she had always worried the most about: protecting her son from the world.

Maybe the only reason Mark Malone was so worried was because of the sheer loathing his son oozed in his direction.

Or maybe it was the knowledge that all males had vices. But everyone said to build trust. He had no proof. How could he take away Jeremiah’s computer privileges when he had nothing concrete, nothing but a feeling that the boy had done something wrong? And yet the thought of the young father from the night before, and his crying wife, made President Malone’s stomach churn. His whole life had been based on a feeling, his testimony of the truthfulness of the Mormon Church. He’d built everything he did around that, so maybe it was time to listen to the still small voice telling him something was up with Jeremiah.

Mark decided to surprise his son, and maybe finally catch him at something. He swiftly pushed open the door and headed into the room—

Then stilled. The water glass slipped from his hand and fell to the floor, hitting the hard pine and shattering into tiny pieces, much like his life was doing right now.

On the floor, in front of him, lay his beloved son, a blue silk tie coiled tightly around his neck, his face a matching blue, his body lifeless.

TWO

“Are you gonna eat that?”

“No, D-Ray, I bought it so that I could stare at it for a few minutes, and then hand it over to you,” said Detective Sam Montgomery, irritation tingeing her voice.

“Just asking,” Detective Ray Jones said, a mischievous grin on his dark-skinned, handsome face.

“Yeah, just asking, like you always do, just to annoy me.” Sam grimaced, put the hamburger to her mouth, took a bite, and chewed. As always, it didn’t taste as good as it looked. In fact, it tasted like dust, even topped with a generous amount of cheese and ketchup. After two more small bites, Sam gave up and put the burger on D-Ray’s plate. She brushed a piece of her shoulder-length, carefully groomed blond hair back behind her shoulder. “You know, if you would just be patient, you would get the hamburger regardless.”

“Yeah, but it’s so much fun to do it this way,” he said, pushing the bowl of soup he had ordered in her direction. “I’m all about the ritual, you know?”

“How about good old-fashioned manners? You eat your food, and I eat mine.”

But it
was
their ritual. It made life bearable. Two bites of hamburger meant the past—and one memory in particular—didn’t get to destroy Sam. Even if she literally choked them down.

Samantha “Sam” Rose Montgomery was the first woman detective in the history of Kanesville, Utah, a bedroom community nestled in the green foothills of northern Utah’s Wasatch mountain range and located just twenty miles outside Salt Lake City. Like most of Utah, the town was surreptitiously controlled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Salt Lake City, despite its reputation as the headquarters of Mormonism, was actually one of the most liberal cities in the state. Of course, since “liberal” and “Mormon” were generally oxymorons, that wasn’t saying much.

Being the first woman detective in Kanesville’s history was quite a feat for 2011, Sam always thought. A feat for her and a sad narrative on the nature of sexism. Kanesville was a throwback to twenty years prior, and thus Detective Ray “D-Ray” Jones, an old school and neighborhood friend and onetime beau of her sister Amy, was Sam’s only ally on the force. The rest, all men, treated her like they did every other woman in their life: superficially and with sexual prejudice.

Six months into this job Sam was already considering reapplying for a job in Salt Lake City, where she had gone to work right out of the police academy. She had left Kanesville all those years ago desperate to escape her suffocating hometown and the dark memories that clung there, like mist to the hills—and she had never looked back. Until now. She probably already would have gone back to Salt Lake, if it weren’t for the fact that
he
still worked there—her ex–almost flame, best forgotten.

In Kanesville, “Equal Opportunity” meant that everybody had a chance to get to the urinal first. Since Sam didn’t have the right equipment to use a urinal, she would never win that fight. Add to it all the troubling “suicides” of two teen girls that had recently shaken the entire small town in its foundation and it made for a tense stew of politics, religion, and sexism—where men played the roles of breadwinners and LDS priesthood holders and women served as their “helpmates.”

“Look at it this way,” D-Ray said, forcing Sam back into the moment. “I’m keeping you from having to discover that you just plain don’t like food.” A wide grin split his face.

“Yeah, but for once, I’d like the opportunity to discover that on my own.”

D-Ray opened his mouth to retort but stopped suddenly when the radio Sam had hooked onto her belt squawked to life, making her jump. She removed it and put it to her ear, listening as the dispatcher sent uniforms to a possible suicide, victim
echo
. Sam felt the hair rise on her arms. Another one.

D-Ray dropped the soupspoon, letting it clatter dully on the wood table, pulled some bills out of his wallet, and dropped them on the table. Sam pulled money out of her pocket and did the same. They slid out of the table benches and headed swiftly to the door, listening to the dispatcher on the radio.

With Sam driving through the one-lane streets, they would reach the home of President Mark Malone in about three minutes, D-Ray holding tight to the seat as she rounded each corner with skill and—of course—excessive speed. The title of “President” referred to Malone’s office as a stake president, guardian of a group of wards in his area. It didn’t take much explanation around this area. If someone was introduced as “Bishop” or “President” you knew exactly what was meant. And these people were treated accordingly.

No matter what the Utah state officials might pretend, the LDS Church ran the state and everyone knew it. That made this call more important than most, at least to the other cops on the force.

Sam would treat it no differently than any other call. Everyone deserved the same respect, no matter their standing in the Church. Or what their clothes looked like. Or how many secrets were buried in their family’s past.

THREE

Night or day, flashing police lights call out to people: a beacon that something has gone horribly awry. Four patrol cars sat in front of the Malone residence, two officers standing guard as neighbors began to gather outside their homes and in front of the house, some of them brave enough to wander up and ask what had happened to the president’s family. These people called each other brother and sister. One big family. Undoubtedly, they thought they had the right to ask.

The officers were not inclined to share.

It was a hot August Saturday afternoon, and a light, sultry breeze served only to make the atmosphere even more uncomfortable and stultifying. The fires of Hell. It would make the death scene ahead that much harder to deal with. “Echo” meant “dead.” Sam thought of President Malone’s wife, who rarely left the house and had that vacant but terrified look in the edges of her eyes that screamed madness. Sam knew madness. It had been her uneasy acquaintance for years, in the form of her mother.

Did Lydia Malone finally give in to the demons and kill herself?

Sam and D-Ray whipped through the gathering crowd and into the home.

The incessant screaming from the back of the large, stately rambling house served as a beacon, calling them back to the scene of the tragedy and alerting Sam to Lydia’s still-living presence.

Sam rounded the corner and headed down the hallway, following the keening of grief into a room where she saw the body of a teenage boy on the floor, paramedics doing CPR, as his father stood behind them, waving a small glass vial. Next to him stood the mother, screaming and wringing her hands, tears of anguish coating her face. She wore a frumpy housecoat, and mascara trailed down her cheeks.

A pang filled Sam’s heart. She knew this look. Grief, shock, and something even more terrifying—a weird acceptance.

Next to the body was a dark blue satin tie, coiled in an S pattern. A snake, waiting to strike, and more than a little out of place. Especially considering the boy wore gym shorts and a DC T-shirt. Nothing else seemed terribly suspicious—unless you considered a dead teenage boy suspicious.

Sam Montgomery did.

The tie was definitely a red flag. Unfortunately, she had a feeling that it had been removed from the boy’s throat, probably by her least favorite paramedic, Lind Harris, the inept man working on the body right now. He was also a deputy sheriff, and he should have known better. He
did
know better, but he considered himself above it all. A PP, as D-Ray liked to call them. Priesthood Prick. Harsh, but true. Some Mormon males wielded their patriarchy like a lethal sword. And some held on to it for dear life, the only hope keeping them afloat in a crazy world.

“Please, you have to let me give him a blessing, please,” President Malone pleaded, looking back and forth at anyone who would listen. He was dressed in a polo shirt and sharply pressed khaki shorts, his blond hair rumpled and messy, as though he had run his hands through it numerous times. His face was a contorted mask.

It seemed as though every paramedic/deputy in Smithland County had come to this scene, along with the four on-duty Kanesville officers, the fire chief and four of his EMTs, and two county crime scene techs. It made the room seem small, claustrophic, everybody jockeying for a space at the horror show in front of them.

Other than Lind Harris, and another deputy who knelt by the body, the emergency responders seemed frozen.

There was no talking or bustling around, like one often saw at a scene. The silence was almost reverent, except for the keening of Lydia Malone. Two of the EMTs tried to attend to her, but she brushed them off, turning away, refusing to move from the room.

Mark Malone leaned down and tried to push the paramedic closest to him aside, waving his bottle and pleading for them to let him use prayer and his consecrated oil to bring life back into a body that would never, ever walk, talk, or play football again—let alone breathe.

Sam had seen more than one dead body, and President Malone’s son was definitely a goner. She also knew the “consecrated oil” was nothing more than olive oil that had been blessed by Mormon priesthood leaders. But like all desperate tricks, whether bathing in a “fountain of youth” or consuming an unproven and often deadly cure for cancer, the promise rested not in the bottle, liquid, or food itself but in the belief that God answered prayers and that sometimes nothing more than a miracle would work.

Jeremiah had probably been dead at least an hour, Sam guessed, from the color, the smell, and the position of the body. But the paramedics would try to resuscitate, both for the sake of the family and because they could charge for it. It was a cold, hard fact of life in the business.

“Let him bless the boy,” she said quietly to the paramedics.

“But…”

She just shook her head, and, to her surprise, Lind nodded.

He didn’t fight her, like he would have in just about any other case. It was probably out of deference to President Malone’s position as the local stake president of the Mormon Church. She knew it had nothing at all to do with her.

The two paramedic/deputies rose to their feet, stepped back and the boy’s father moved in. He knelt down, then looked around frantically. “I need … I need someone; I need someone with the priesthood.…”

Three of the Kanesville uniformed officers stepped forward, they all knelt and put their hands on the boy’s head, and tears came to Sam’s eyes as she listened to the father’s frantic words, flung toward a celestial being that had been ignoring her for years.

“Father in Heaven, we come before You today to ask You to heal Jeremiah, and restore him to health. He’s not dead. He can’t be. You need to…” He faltered as the words eluded him. This was probably a priesthood blessing unlike any other President Malone had ever given. Not only was the rote phrasing off, but there was no doubt that “You need to” had never come out of his mouth before while speaking to God. Proper Mormon prayer must be phrased as a request, Sam thought, memories of her childhood swirling through her mind. God required a certain decorum, and telling Him how to do things did not fit the requirements.

“Father, I … Father.” He began to sob uncontrollably, and one of the patrolmen took the small vial of consecrated oil out of President Malone’s shaking hands and opened it, dabbing it on the boy’s forehead and muttering a prayer laying all the power in God’s hands.

How convenient,
Sam thought. But no one else could do anything, so they might as well give the power—and maybe some of the blame—to God.

Jeremiah’s mother stood in the background, tears streaming down her face. Her screams had been quieted by the prayers, but her anguish had not abated—and perhaps never would. A suicide could turn a sound mind sour. To a sick mind, it was like the most caustic acid.