Chapter 14
Ruby sat in the same plastic chair she'd sat in two days ago when she'd come in with bruises on her arm.
The office was quieter now, most of the officers out in the field, the overhead lights casting their pale hum across empty desks and half-finished paperwork.
Callie set a series of photographs on the desk in front of her, face down, and pulled a chair around to sit beside her.
"Before I show you these, I need you to understand that what you see stays in this room."
Ruby nodded.
Callie turned the photographs over.
Ruby's face changed. Not shock exactly, but something close to it, a tightening around her eyes and a slow intake of breath that she held longer than was natural.
She picked up the first photo and brought it closer.
Fiona in lingerie, reclined, the lighting low and warm.
The second was more explicit. The third had Garrett Finch in the frame beside her.
Ruby set them all down and pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose.
"We also have this one." Callie placed the fourth photograph in front of her. The wider shot. The tattooed arm reaching into the frame.
Ruby stared at it. "You expect me to know who that is any more than you do?"
"You were her friend," Callie said. "Did she tell you about doing this kind of thing?"
"No." Ruby's voice was flat. Controlled. "As far as I knew she had only done a few modeling shoots. Regular ones. Headshots, catalog stuff. But she said she needed the money for college. She figured she could do enough of it to cover her first semester."
She picked up the fourth photograph again and held it at arm's length, tilting it under the overhead light.
Her eyes moved past Fiona, past the tattooed arm, to the background.
Something in the upper left corner of the frame, partially obscured by the angle and the low light but visible if you knew what you were seeing.
"But one thing is for sure." Ruby tapped the photograph. "This wasn't taken at Finch's studio."
Noah leaned forward from where he stood against the far desk.
"This was taken at the Three Pillar Community farm."
"How do you know?" Callie asked.
"That windmill in the background." Ruby tapped the upper corner of the photo.
Noah and Callie both moved closer. It was hard to make out, but through what appeared to be a loft window or opening in a wall, the outline of a windmill was visible against a slightly lighter sky.
An old one, wooden-vaned, common on farms across the region but was distinctive enough if you'd seen it before.
"Fiona drove past the place one time and pointed it out to me. Said when she wasn't working at the Deli, she would sometimes hang out there at the barn with the others."
"Did you go there with her?"
"No. I suggested she show me but she just said another time." Ruby paused. "Now I know why."
Noah straightened and caught Callie's eye. She was already standing.
"I'll get a warrant," she said.
The convoy moved north on Route 86 with lights pulsating red and blue against the wet pavement.
Three Adirondack County Sheriff cruisers in front, two High Peaks Police Department vehicles behind them, and an unmarked sedan carrying Noah and Callie at the center of the line.
A light rain had started falling in the last twenty minutes, a fine steady drizzle that turned windshields into smeared glass and made the night feel closer than it was.
The turnoff came up fast. A gravel road marked by a wooden sign that read Three Pillars Community, All Welcome in hand-carved letters.
The driveway was long, a quarter mile at least, bordered on both sides by split-rail fencing and open pasture that disappeared into the dark beyond the reach of the headlights.
Horses stood motionless in the field to the left, their coats slick with rain, their heads turned to watch the procession of vehicles pass like a parade.
The property opened up at the end of the drive into a compound of sorts.
A large farmhouse with a wraparound porch and lights burning in the downstairs windows.
A smaller house behind it, single-story, connected by a covered walkway.
Three barns, one red, one gray, one newer with metal siding.
Outbuildings scattered around the edges.
A chicken coop. A workshop with its rolling door half open.
And off to the right, visible against the low clouds, the windmill.
Wooden vanes turning slowly in the drizzle.
The cruisers fanned out across the gravel yard and officers began stepping out before the engines had fully stopped. Noah climbed out of the sedan and felt the rain on his face.
The farmhouse door opened before anyone reached it. Tabitha Smith stood on the porch in the same long dress she'd worn at the deli, her headscarf slightly askew, her face tight with an anger that she was working hard to hold below the surface.
Behind the convoy, the rear door of a cruiser opened and Derek Hollis stepped out.
They'd picked him up from the deli on the way, gave him no option but to ride along and provide access to the property.
He was tall, mid-forties, with a trimmed beard.
He wore dark work clothes and had his hands raised slightly, palms out.
Water ran down his face. He didn't meet Tabitha's eyes.
“Tabitha, I tried to call.” He raised his hands. “They gave me no choice.”
"You have no right to be here." Tabitha addressed Callie, who was climbing the porch steps.
Callie held up the warrant. "That we do."
Tabitha took the document and unfolded it, reading it in the light from the house while rain dripped off the roof overhang around her.
The man beside her put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in to read along.
Other figures were appearing now, coming from the smaller house, from one of the barns, drawn by the lights and the sirens.
Men and women in plain, practical clothing.
Some carrying lanterns. Some with children clinging to their legs. All of them watching.
"Now," Noah said, stepping up beside Callie. "You want to tell us if Fiona Spence is here?"
Tabitha looked up from the warrant. "Who?"
The same answer she'd given about Brooke Danvers at the deli. The same denial, delivered with the same calm certainty. Noah held her gaze and said nothing. He didn't need to. The warrant said everything.
Officers fanned out across the compound.
Two teams to the houses. One to the outbuildings.
McKenzie took a pair of deputies toward the metal-sided barn.
The property was large and the rain was picking up, flashlight beams cutting through the drizzle in long white streaks that swept back and forth like searchlights.
Callie tapped Noah's arm. "Noah, look." She pointed past the farmhouse toward the red barn.
The windmill rose behind it, its vanes barely visible in the dark, but the angle was right.
The barn's upper level had a wide opening, a hay door, that faced the windmill.
From inside that loft, the windmill would be visible exactly as it appeared in the photograph.
They made a beeline for the red barn. Behind them, Tabitha came off the porch.
"You can't just go through our property. This is a house of worship. These buildings are sacred."
A deputy stepped in front of her. "Ma'am, I need you to stay here."
"This is persecution. You are persecuting a religious community."
"Ma'am."
The bearded man moved to intervene, stepping toward the deputy with his hands raised.
Two more community members approached from the smaller house, a man and a woman, both in their twenties, both with the same resistance in their faces.
They weren't threatening. They didn't have to be.
They were a wall of bodies and conviction, a passive obstruction that was hard to counter without creating a scene.
"Stand down." The deputy's voice cut through the noise. "All of you. Back on the porch. Now."
They didn't move. Tabitha was still talking, her voice rising, citing rights, citing religious freedom, citing the constitution.
The rain was falling harder now and the red and blue lights from the cruisers turned the scene into something that pulsed and shifted, faces appearing and disappearing in the strobe.
McKenzie appeared from the side of the gray barn and read the situation in a second.
He walked straight into the cluster of community members with his badge held high and his voice low enough that only the people directly in front of him could hear what he said.
Whatever it was, it worked. The group parted.
The bearded man stepped back. Tabitha went quiet, though her face said the conversation was far from over.
Noah and Callie reached the red barn. The main door was a sliding panel on a rusted track. Noah pulled it open and the smell hit them first: hay, animal sweat, old wood, and something else underneath it. Something stale and human.
The ground floor was a working space. Stalls along both sides, some with horses, some empty. Tack hung on the walls. Bales of hay were stacked in a row near the entrance. A single bulb on a cord hung from the center beam, casting a yellow circle that didn't reach the corners.
"Up there." Callie nodded toward a wooden ladder that led to the loft.
Noah went first. The ladder creaked under his weight and the rungs were worn smooth from years of hands and boots. He pulled himself up over the edge and into the loft and stopped.
The space was not what belonged in a loft.
Hay bales were scattered around the perimeter but the center had been cleared and furnished.
Two couches, their fabric stained and sagging, faced each other across a low wooden table covered in bottles.
Wine, whiskey, cheaper stuff. Glasses. An ashtray.
Against the far wall, a mattress lay on the floor with rumpled sheets.
A standing lamp with a red shade was plugged into an extension cord that snaked across the floor and down through a gap in the boards.
And from the open hay door at the far end, the windmill was framed perfectly against the sky.
"Jackpot," Noah said, holding up the photograph. The angle matched. The loft, the window, the windmill in the background. This was the room.
Callie climbed up beside him and surveyed the space. She pulled on a pair of gloves and began photographing.
"Hey, you might want to come take a look at this," McKenzie called from below.
They came down the ladder and found him standing at the entrance to one of the horse stalls. He pointed inside. A large steel trough sat against the back wall, the kind used for watering livestock. It was full. But not with water.
The liquid inside was dark. Thick. The surface had a dull sheen under the single bulb. The smell coming off it was unmistakable, the copper tang that anyone who had ever been around a trauma scene would recognize and never forget. Blood. The trough was full of it.
Callie stared at it. McKenzie stared at it. Noah felt something cold settle in the center of his chest and stay there.
"Get forensics in here." Callie's voice was quiet.
Before anyone could respond, a deputy's voice crackled over the radio. "We've got something in the gray barn. East side. Need you over here."
They crossed the yard in the rain. The gray barn was older than the red one, its boards weathered and warped.
Inside, a deputy stood in the center aisle pointing at the floor.
A section of boards had been pried up, revealing a trapdoor set into the earth beneath.
It was open. A set of crude wooden steps descended into darkness.
Noah took a flashlight from his belt and went down first. The steps were steep and narrow, the walls on either side packed earth reinforced with old timbers. The air was cool and damp and carried the smell of soil and sweat and something chemical, something that had been used to clean.
The corridor at the bottom ran the full length of the structure above. It was narrow, maybe four feet wide, with a low ceiling that forced Noah to duck. The flashlight beam swept across the space and he stopped walking.
On either side of the corridor, set into the earthen walls, were stalls.
Not horse stalls. These were smaller. Each one held a cot, a thin mattress, a bucket.
Some had blankets wadded at the foot of the bed.
Some had personal items, a hairbrush, a book, a pair of shoes placed neatly beside the cot.
The stalls had no doors, just openings, but the walls between them were solid and the corridor was the only way in or out.
Callie came down behind him, her flashlight joining his.
The two beams moved in silence along the row.
Seven stalls on each side. Fourteen total.
Some had been used recently, the bedding disturbed, the buckets emptied but not cleaned.
Others looked like they hadn't been occupied in a long time, the mattresses stiff and stained, cobwebs in the corners.
On a shelf at the end of the corridor, lined up with deliberate care, were boxes of condoms, bottles of lubricant, and a collection of items that Callie photographed without comment.
"What is hidden will be revealed," McKenzie muttered, standing behind them at the base of the stairs. "Isn't that what they say in the good book?"
Nobody answered. Noah stood in the corridor and let the flashlight move from stall to stall. Fourteen beds. Underground. Beneath a religious compound in the Adirondack mountains, on a property run by a woman who had denied knowing a dead girl's name.
The rain drummed on the roof above them, muffled by the earth, turned into a low rumble that sounded like something breathing.