Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

maneuver.”
    Esther had told me that when she had seen the police car pull up in front of her rented house, she’d sent Rebecca out the back door with her roommate. The roommate had taken the girl to a friend’s house, but warned that the arrangement could only be temporary. Another place had to be found for Rebecca or she’d wind up with Child Protective Services.
    Esther shook her head. “The legal system in Beehive County is a mess, Lena. Abel filed a motion there last week, and since I didn’t respond to the summons the court served on me, the judge actually awarded him custody by default!”
    I hid my alarm. The whole thing flew in the face of the Uniform Child Custody Agreement recognized by every state, but weirder things have happened. Rebecca was in trouble, all right.
    “Lena, I don’t have money for bail or to drag this extradition thing out like you told me to over the phone. They’ll probably send me back to Utah right away where you know I’ll never get a fair trial. The polygamists
own
the courts there. And Rebecca, now that Solomon’s dead, she’s already half-forgotten how bad it was at the compound. She keeps talking about how many friends she made in just the short time she was there. I’m afraid…”
    She chewed her lip so hard that a bright spot of blood appeared. “Lena, I’m afraid they’re going to get to her.”
    “Get to her? What do you mean?”
    Esther’s eyes, which despite her distress had been dry, now teared up. “The men in Purity, even the women, they have their ways. They talk to you, they tell you things, they confuse you. They did it to me when I was growing up. They convinced me that marrying the man they ordained was God’s will and that if I resisted, I’d go to Hell. I saw grown women so afraid of that threat that they married men they couldn’t stand. Oh, Lena! Rebecca’s just a child!”
    I remembered Rebecca’s face when we discovered Prophet Solomon’s body. The man who’d been about to rape her was dead, and yet she reacted with an odd mixture of grief and guilt. Had the brainwashing Esther described already taken hold?
    It wouldn’t help Esther to know that I shared her fears, so I kept my worries to myself. “Look, first thing we do, we’ll hire a good attorney. You’ll need one here in order to stop the extradition process.”
    Frustration crossed Esther’s face. “I don’t have any money left. I used everything I had for the custody case.”
    No surprise there. Esther’s had been yet another pro bono case for Desert Investigations. In fact, I worked so many pro bonos that Jimmy was in danger of being our company’s only moneymaker. Not that it mattered. Unlike most detective agencies, we had an angel. Desert Investigations existed due to the financial goodwill of Albert Grabel, the Scottsdale computer magnate whose innocent son I had managed to get out of prison while I’d still worked for the Scottsdale Police Department. When Grabel heard I’d opened my own agency, he promised to finance the cases of others I believed were unjustly accused.
    Grabel’s largess didn’t necessarily extend to exorbitant attorney’s fees, though. If we left Esther’s extradition case to a public defender, she would be Utah-bound in a heartbeat. Fortunately, Grabel was not the only person in Scottsdale who owed me.
    But first, I had to get my client to tell me the truth for a change. “Esther, what kind of case do the Utah authorities have against you?”
    “Nothing but lies.” She lowered her eyes and pretended to find something of interest on the cell floor.
    I waved her own lie away. “When Rebecca and I got back to the motel, I noticed that your car was covered in dust. You drove out to the compound, didn’t you?”
    She shook her head, but kept her eyes lowered.
    I grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look at me. “Esther, I’m on your side, remember? But I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything. That includes your movements while Jimmy and I were waiting outside the compound.”
    Her eyes filled with tears again. “All right, all right. Yes. I drove out there.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing.” She jerked her chin away. “What did you expect me to do, Lena? You’d been gone for days and I was desperate to see my daughter!”
    “When was this?”
    She looked away. “The same day you brought her to the motel. Around dinner time.”
    I tried not to groan. “Tell me exactly what you did and what you saw.”
    She met