Circle of Blood (Forensic Mystery)

“I have to go.” As the operator began to argue, Cameryn hung up her phone and turned it off. Up here, she was hidden and safe. But she knew it took on average five minutes for the police to come to a crime scene. Horrible things could happen in that amount of time. She heard a slap against skin and the wail of the baby’s cry.
    The rough voice rang out again, “I got a call on my cell from the sheriff’s office askin’ about a Ruth Gilbert. That means you talked. Lucky for us we was already on our way here to pick up Esther’s body.” A riddled mass of nerves ran tight beneath Cameryn’s skin. She’d made this happen to Ruth!
    “It wasn’t me!” Ruth wailed. Her voice sounded thick. The denial was followed by another horrible thud.
    “Who, then!” the voice demanded.
    “No, Nephi—! ”
    Another thump. “Who?”
    “I don’t know! ”
    A bang, this one like a blow from a hammer. “Give me a name if it wasn’t you.”
    A choking sound, and then, “No one.”
    “Liar. You was packin’ to leave. Do you think we’re stupid? Is that what you think? Your soul will be consigned to outer darkness. You are an agent of Satan.” This voice belonged to the second man. It was higher, thin and cold.
    Cameryn heard whimpering and another horrible crash.
    She almost jumped out of her skin when the phone rang, over and over, and she thought, The police. What if the dispatcher was calling back to make sure the case was real? What if, when there was no answer, they decided it was a hoax?
    They were beating Ruth to death while Cameryn stood like stone. There was no time to wait. She would have to act.
    “I’m begging you,” Ruth gasped.
    “You Jezebel! You harlot! ” Nephi raged. A sound of flesh on skin, another pain-filled cry as Ruth began to weep.
    “My—children! ”
    “Are as filthy rags. You have left the life of truth. Now you will surely pay.”
    No time left. Cameryn knew she had to move. “Why do you think I sleep with a gun?” Ruth had asked. Running her hands beneath the covers, she found nothing there. The floor squeaked again beneath her feet as she turned toward the nightstand. Ruth had left a reading lamp on, and in that light she gently, quietly, pulled open the drawer. Inside was a blue box marked COV-BAR .357 MAGNUM AMMO. And behind it was—the gun. When she raised it up, it felt as big as her arm, long and unwieldy. She laid it on the bed and then pulled out the box of bullets. Her hands were shaking so hard it was almost impossible to open it.
    More pounding and a scream from below. Cameryn, yanking at the cardboard lid, felt the box fly out from her fingers. Bullets rolled everywhere, like pennies from a broken roll, bouncing hard on the wooden floor. Swearing at herself, she squatted, opened the gun’s chamber, and loaded a single pointed copper bullet into a cylinder. She could tell they had stopped talking. One of them asked, “Is someone else here? Seth—you check the upstairs.”
    Out of time! One bullet was all she’d loaded, but there was no time left. Staggering to her feet, she ran down the hall, not caring if they could hear her footsteps as she pounded down the stairs. “ Stop!” she screamed as she rounded the corner.
    One man held Ruth by the hair, her blonde locks coiled around his wrist like a rope. Ruth’s face was covered in blood and a pool of it stained the kitchen tabletop, a deep red blot the size of a dinner plate. Her eyes were so wide Cameryn could see the white all around, but it was the man she had to keep locked in her gaze. His hand clutched a gun, not yet fully raised. He stared at Cameryn, his face grizzled, his lip curled.
    “I said stop!” she cried. “Drop your gun!”
    “You’re just a girl,” the man said with disdain. He unwound his hand from Ruth’s hair and gave her a shove. “You see that, Seth? Another Jezebel in this house of defilement.” Nephi wasn’t tall, but he looked strong, his arms thick with muscle. His buzzed gray hair topped a sunburnt face, seamed as elephant hide. A plaid cowboy shirt, the kind with piping and buttons that looked like pearls, gapped over his ample belly.
    “I see her.” Seth’s blue cap with a stiff bill cast a shadow across his own weathered features. Both men wore boots, cowboy boots that came to a sharp point.
    “Drop your gun!” Cameryn demanded again, her own gun so heavy she had to hold it with both hands. It shook in her grip.
    “You know, Seth, I don’t think she’s got it