If Ben wanted help writing Keith Richardson’s life story, he should have asked someone who’d actually managed to sleep last night. Jade filled in the details she could remember, but half an hour later, the sketch was still far from complete. She didn’t even remember what Elder Keith had done for a living.
After Ben checked to make sure her phone was still set to record incoming and outgoing calls, Jade tried calling the number Elder Keith used to text her, but it went immediately to a generic message stating that his voice mailbox was full. She texted him back. Once. Twice. What did he know about Dez?
Then came more of Ben’s questions. “Was Keith Richardson ever violent?”
Jade shook her head. “No. He was Pastor Mitch’s right-hand guy, a yes man. He never wanted to rock the boat or do anything besides what Pastor Mitch specifically told him.” Jade hated the way that even after she’d freed herself from Morning Glory’s authoritative presence in her life she still referred to its leaders by their titles. It was as if she were still a little twelve-year-old girl being told that to disrespect her pastor, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, would be as sinful as spitting in the face of Jesus himself.
“You said Keith was angry with your dad about exposing the abuse.”
Jade nodded. “Yeah. They got into quite a few fights. Just yelling though.”
“Never violent?” Ben pressed.
“No. Not that I ever saw.” In truth, it was her father who had the temper, her father who would raise his voice. Her father who had attacked Pastor Mitch with a baseball bat. Who had died trying to protect his daughter from being manhandled by a white cop.
What did Ben think? Did he side with the Palmer police captain? Just two days after her father’s murder prompted an internal investigation, the cop who shot him was reinstated. As far as Jade knew, he was still serving on the police force. The policeman went on record claiming he’d been afraid for his life, and nobody thought to second-guess him. Nobody questioned why six armed men were entitled to use deadly force on a father trying to shield his child. The unspoken consensus was that her father deserved to die, shot point-blank in front of his wife and the pregnant daughter he was trying to defend.
“What can you tell me about Elder Keith’s family?” Ben asked.
Jade was grateful for the chance to distract herself from memories of her father’s murder. “He had a daughter in the same grade as me and a son who was already grown and out of the house.”
“What about his wife?”
Jade shrugged. “She was the church receptionist. Pretty quiet and mousey.” Just like all the women at Morning Glory were taught to be. “Mrs. Richardson was good friends with Pastor Mitch’s wife. In fact, I think they were related, cousins or something like that.” Jade hardly ever thought about her pastor’s wife, but now a picture of Lady Sapphire popped into her head uninvited, the cold hardness in her eyes, the feel of her sharp fingernails pinching her skin. The sound of her hiss as she accosted Jade in the bathroom and whispered, “If you bring charges against my husband, I fear for your soul in the afterlife.”
Jade could still remember the hint of wintergreen on Lady Sapphire’s breath before she plastered on her fake smile and stepped out the bathroom like a queen presiding over her subjects. Which, in terms of the Morning Glory hierarchy, was exactly what she was. Pastor Mitch was the ruling dictator, and Lady Sapphire was his beloved confidante, the hauntingly beautiful reigning figurehead, whose words of exhortation were elevated to as high a level as her husband’s.
Lady Sapphire was known for her vivid dreams, which all members of Morning Glory were taught to uphold as infallible as the Scriptures themselves. The story of Lady Sapphire’s dream the night before she married Pastor Mitch took on the role of both legend and prophesy, the promise of a child who could carry on Pastor Mitch’s apostolic ministry in the state of Alaska. Years later the medical community pronounced Lady Sapphire infertile, but she persisted in believing in that miracle offspring, the fulfillment of God’s promise given decades earlier.
But Ben wasn’t asking Jade about the pastor’s wife. He was asking about Elder Keith, and Jade took pains to answer each question methodically even though her brain was screaming from exhaustion. Elder Keith was, for the moment, the force’s primary person of interest. Jade didn’t understand why he would have bothered texting her if he was the guilty one, but Ben explained that the best possible outcome would be if Elder Keith claimed responsibility and made a demand for ransom.
If Elder Keith wanted money in exchange for Dez’s return, he had incentive to keep her safe.
The teams were continuing to search outside, waiting for daybreak when a new round of local volunteers could be called in. Jade was grateful the troopers and police and everyone else involved in the search and rescue were being so thorough, but the more she thought about her past at Morning Glory, the more she had to admit that Dez’s disappearance was almost certainly an abduction.
It made sense. The warning letter, the texts from Elder Keith.
Jade wondered when she’d hear back from the police sent to question him in Palmer.
She didn’t think she had the energy to withstand even another five minutes of this torturous waiting.