“Yes,” he answered simply, then explained the purposes of the locket and tattoo and the ages of the recipients.
“They married off twelve-year-olds?” Erin asked, visibly repulsed.
“No. Only twelve-year-old girls.” Gideon proceeded carefully. There were too many personal details he didn’t wish to share. “Boys became men at thirteen. They took on more responsibility in the community and entered . . . special training.” The words stuck in his throat and he had to force them out. Special training. It had sounded so amazing. And for some of the boys it must have been, because they’d continued to smile and joke. Or maybe those boys had just been better able to shove the truth down where no one could see.
“Special training?” Rafe asked, as if he was afraid of the answer.
“In the church,” Gideon said and it came out far more curtly than he’d intended. God, he hated this. Hated exhuming this vile pus. “They’d study the scriptures and the church policies. Thirteen was also the start of apprenticeships.” Apprenticeships. His stomach threatened to heave at the memory. “There was a smithy, a tanner, a cobbler . . .”
“Like a TV western,” Cindy murmured.
More like a horror movie. “Thirteen was also the start of inclusion in the hunting trips. It was a self-sustaining agricultural community. They kept chickens, pigs, a few head of cattle for beef, and a few dairy cows. And there was venison when hunting was successful.”
“Electricity?” Cindy asked.
“Only in certain areas. Specifically the church office and the homes of the pastor and a few of the higher-ups. They had generators.”
Erin was frowning. “So when did the boys marry?”
“When they’d built a house of their own. Boys started building when they were eighteen. It was done in their spare time, after their normal chores and daily work. Some finished sooner, especially if their apprenticeships were construction-based.”
Erin studied him. “What was your apprenticeship?”
Gideon’s lips curved bitterly. “Metalsmithing. I was to make the lockets, among other things.”
“You were?” Cindy asked. “What happened?”
“I escaped.”
“Lucky you,” Cindy breathed.
Yeah. Lucky. I’m so sorry, Mama.
Erin leaned in. “How?”
“I hid in the bed of a truck that was going to town. Slipped out and hid behind a bus terminal.” Almost true. Gideon drew a breath and let it out. Just stay chill. You’ve done nothing wrong. Well, other than kill a man. “I was thirteen.” And one day.
“And then?” Cindy asked, her eyes soft with compassion.
“I was sucked into the foster system.” And that was all he planned to share about himself. He tapped the photo of the girl. Of Miriam. Eileen. “She was in my class at school in the compound. We were friends. She turned twelve a few months before I did. She was married to him.” He pointed to the enlarged wedding photo. “His name was Edward McPhearson. Or that’s how I knew him. Names were kind of fluid in the community. She dropped out of school on her twelfth birthday. All the girls did. They were to be wives, not scholars.” He said that last part mockingly, remembering Eileen’s tears when she realized she would have to quit school. “Eileen loved learning. She was so smart.”
“Eileen?” Rafe interrupted.
“That was her birth name. The name she preferred to be called.” But only by those she trusted. Her mother. And me. “‘Miriam’ was the name given to her by the community. We had a lot of Miriams.”
“You said she was so smart,” Erin said. “Why ‘was’?”
Because the Eileen he’d known died the day she’d been forced to marry Edward McPhearson. She’d become a shell, her eyes vacant. “I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. That this locket was around another man’s throat means she’s either dead or has escaped and the locket somehow left her possession.”
Rafe chimed in. “Gideon told me earlier that this chain was not the original, that the original would have been heavy and welded to her so that she would have had to cut it off.”
“My God,” Erin murmured. “Like a slave.”
Gideon only nodded. Exactly like a slave.
“The locket’s silver,” Cindy said. “She could have pawned it. If she escaped.”
“Maybe.” Gideon stared at the locket, McPhearson’s handiwork. It would have been one of the last lockets the bastard made. “I guess it depends on how long it took her to get out. If she was there a long time, the locket would have been difficult for her to part with. It’s hard to explain. For the women, the locket became a charm. Kept them safe. Kept them spiritually connected to the rest of the body. That’s what the community called itself, the body.”
“That’s creepy,” Erin said.
Gideon shrugged again, not sure how else to describe the locket’s importance. “Of course it is. But that’s how it was. Like the rabbit’s foot you happen to carry and then one day you’re in a car accident. You’re okay and part of you attributes that to the rabbit’s foot. You’re afraid that if you take it off, the next accident will kill you.”
“I had a necklace like that,” Cindy admitted. “It belonged to my grandmother. She always said it was her talisman and left it to me when she died, saying it would keep me safe. I wore it through my entire adolescence.” She smiled fondly. “Then the leather cord snapped one day and I lost it. I searched everywhere. Never found it. I kept expecting something terrible to happen. It took weeks before the fear passed. I was seventeen at the time. I can see how a person could build that kind of attachment, especially if that connection is underscored by authority figures.”
Gideon nodded. “Thank you. That’s exactly what it was like.”
She put another evidence bag on the table. “What about this?”
The shredded fragments of the second photo. “After her first husband died, Eileen—or Miriam as she was called by everyone else—would have been given to another one of the men.” Gideon pointed to the paper bits. “That would have been the second wedding photo. If she did escape, it’s possible that she cut it up herself. Especially if he was abusive.”
Not all of the men were violent. But enough were.
Gideon cleared his throat. “If you can manage to put this back together, I’ll try to identify the second husband.”
“What about this compound?” Erin asked. “Where is it?”
Gideon glanced across the table at Rafe and found his oldest friend studying him sadly, understanding in his dark eyes.
“I don’t know where it is,” Gideon admitted. “I looked, after I escaped.” And recovered. “But I never found it.”
“We went together,” Rafe added. “I never knew what we’d gone looking for, just that taking those car trips up to Mt. Shasta were important to Gid. He didn’t have a car, but I did, so I drove. I eventually figured out that it had to do with his family in some way, but . . .” He sighed. “We should have looked harder.”
Gideon shook his head. “It was pretty hopeless. Like a needle in a fucking haystack.” Back then and every time he’d searched since. He’d never stopped searching.
“What landmarks can you remember?” Erin asked, clearly primed to solve the mystery of the missing community. If it were only so simple.
“Mt. Shasta,” he told her. “I remember seeing it in the distance.”
“Then we have a general idea of where to start,” Erin said with a certainty that seemed like common sense, but that really was not.
Gideon prepared himself to explain, once again. “It might, except that they move.”
Cindy’s eyes widened. “The whole community? They just move?”
“Yes. They moved twice when I was younger. Each time, I could still see Mt. Shasta, just different views. My mother said it was because the land no longer produced enough vegetables, which was what she’d been told. I was only six at the time of the first move, but I was eight at the time of the second and remember hearing whispers among some of the women that the land was ‘cursed,’ that we were being punished.”
“For what?” Rafe asked, frowning.
“I don’t remember anything about the first move, but the second one happened the day after a man was accused of stealing from the food stores. Whether he did or not, I have no idea, but looking back, I’m thinking it’s more likely that he tried to escape. The man who’d ‘stolen’ was brought before the community, all beaten up. He might have been unconscious, but definitely was unable to speak. They announced his crime and that he was being ‘banished.’ I remember the audible gasp from the adults. Several of them cried—but silently. He was dragged through the gate and into the forest. Nobody ever saw him again. The next morning we woke up to find the community garden was dead. The leaders claimed it was punishment for the man’s theft, but it was probably weed killer of some kind.”