“Not without a warrant.” Nardo was standing on the other side of the screen door. A fresh cigarette dangled from his lips. “There’s no imminent danger. The girl is dead. You can’t walk into any of these buildings without express permission. We have a reasonable expectation that our Fourth Amendment rights will be honored.”
Bible laughed. “You sound like somebody who knows enough lawyers to try to sound like he’s a lawyer.”
“Right.” Nardo pushed open the screen door, but didn’t come in. “Dean, I need your help in the barn. You pigs will either have to leave the property or keep to the area around the body.”
Wexler groaned as he pushed himself up from the chair. “That means now.”
Stilton and Bible made to leave. Andrea turned back to Star, but the woman was busy kneading her hands into dough. She was making bread. The pan was already oiled on the stove top.
“Smells good,” Andrea tried. “My grandmother used to make bread like that.”
Star didn’t look up. Maybe she could tell Andrea was lying. Or maybe she was terrified that Wexler or Nardo would punish her for speaking. She had not said one word beyond Dean since she’d entered the room.
“Out you go, old boys.” Nardo held open the door as the law enforcement contingent passed through.
Andrea was glad for the fresh air. The house had felt stifling. Bible didn’t head back toward the field, so neither did Andrea. He took his place in the chief’s cruiser. Andrea climbed into the back. She could see Stilton walking around the front of the car through the wire mesh divider.
Bible asked, “What’s that you had going on with Star?”
“She kept looking at—”
The door opened. Stilton got into the cruiser.
Andrea looked at her phone in case Star had somehow managed to do something while the screen was unlocked. She checked her email. Messages. Texts. Notes. Missed calls. Calendar. Thirty seconds wasn’t that long. She had looked down at the phone and seen it exactly where she had left it. Maybe Star had pushed it away as a kind of fuck off.
Stilton cranked the engine. He turned to Bible. “Told you so.”
“You sure did, Chief. That was a big waste of time.” Bible sounded agreeable, but Andrea knew better. “Now riddle me this, what’s the history with you three fellas? Seems like I caught some attitude between you and them.”
“We went to high school together.” Stilton seemed to think that was the end of it, but then he changed his mind. “They’re bad people.”
“That sounds accurate.”
“They lie and cheat, but they’re smart enough to never get caught. Nardo learned from his father. The guy spent five years in federal prison.”
Andrea felt a bell go off in her head. She had found a Reginald Fontaine of Delaware during one of her aimless internet searches. There was no mention of family, but the man had been arrested in the Savings and Loan Scandal. He’d spent five years at Club Fed. The timing was around the same time that Bernard Fontaine had become the Junior Bean King to his former high school PE teacher.
Bible said, “Chief, I’m gonna be real honest with you here. I feel like you left out some details about the hippie-dippie farm.”
Stilton swung the cruiser around the chicken coop.
Bible said, “We got some ladies wearing the same uniform, I guess you’d call it. All got the same long hair. All, and you’ll excuse me for saying this, my wife’s got me trained better than to comment on a woman’s figure, but they ain’t just skipped a few meals.”
“Nope,” Stilton said.
“They look like they’re being starved.”
“Yep,” Stilton said.
“You got a theory on this?”
“My theory is the same as yours,” Stilton said. “They’re running some kind of cult. But you know as well as I do, Marshal, that being in a cult isn’t against the law.”
Andrea had felt a shiver at the word cult. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Of course it was a cult. The signs were all there. A bunch of lost, hopeless young women looking for meaning. A couple of dirty old men willing to supply it at a cost.
“Well,” Bible said. “Can’t disagree with you there, Chief. Cult seems about the right way to describe it.”
Andrea unlocked her phone. She opened the photos. She found the close-ups she had taken of Alice Poulsen. The sharp bones. The bedsores. The chapped, split lips. The painfully tight ankle bracelet that had cut into her flesh.
Cult.
Alice had chosen to wear the yellow dress. She had chosen to grow out her hair. She had submitted, most likely, to the band being clamped around her ankle. She had starved herself nearly into oblivion.
And then she had walked into the field and swallowed a bunch of pills and died.
Bible told Stilton, “Seemed to me like you knew that girl in the house. Star, was it?”
Andrea looked up from the photos. She had totally missed this.
“Star Bonaire,” Stilton provided. “Her mother’s been trying for years to get her out.”
“And?”
“Does she look out to you?” Stilton finally sounded angry. “Tell me what to do, Marshal. They may look like girls, but they’re all adults. You can’t go in and kidnap a bunch of grown women. They want to be there.”
Bible asked, “Where does Star’s mom live?”
“Couple of miles from downtown. But she’s crazy,” Stilton warned. “She tried to abduct her daughter last year. Drove her Prius right up to the bunkhouse and dragged her out by her arm. Had a cult deprogrammer waiting at the motel.”
“And?” Bible asked.
“And next thing I know, I’m being called out to the farm to arrest her for trespassing and attempted kidnapping.” Stilton shook his head. “She ended up having to do community service, which is damn lucky because she could’ve wound up in prison. They’ve got a restraining order against her. She’s not allowed to attempt to contact or approach her daughter.”
“Shit,” Bible said. “That’s one tough mother.”
“Yeah, shit is right,” Stilton shot back. “As in batshit. You get tangled up with the mom, you’ll find out real quick how her daughter ended up at that place.”
Andrea wasn’t sure that qualified for batshit. If Andrea had gotten caught up in something like the farm, Laura would’ve tried the same thing. Except she would’ve succeeded.
Bible asked, “You ever had any other parents try to get their children out?”
“Not that I’ve heard of, and they’ve made it clear they don’t give a shit about working through me.” Stilton’s anger had given way to self-pity. “Trust me, Wexler’s got a shit ton of lawyers on speed dial. You don’t wanna mess with those people. I sure as hell don’t. They could bankrupt the town.”
Andrea couldn’t listen to his excuses anymore. She turned her attention back to the photos of Alice Poulsen. Alice had a mother, too. What would the woman do when she found out that her daughter had been driven to suicide? Because it was clear to anyone who saw Alice’s body that the girl had found her only means of escape. Each close-up offered insight into the agony that Alice had endured. What kind of motivation did it take to starve yourself like that? Alice had worked on a farm. She had been surrounded by food. The deprivation was almost unbelievable. Andrea couldn’t stop torturing herself with the photos. She swiped to the next one. Then the next.