Joanna thought about what George Winfield had told her about his autopsy findings.
“They’d been damaged all right,” Joanna put in. “Dr. Winfield, the medical examiner, told me that he thought a complete hysterectomy was performed on Carol right along with the cesarean.”
‘A hysterectomy?” Edith Mossman gasped. “Carol never mentioned that.”
“Maybe she didn’t know,” Joanna suggested.
“They did that to her at age fourteen? That’s criminal.”
“Yes,” Joanna said quietly. “I couldn’t agree more, but go on. What happened then?”
“Carol said Eddie left her alone after that. She always 262
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thought it was because the scar made her too ugly-because the other girls were prettier than she was. I think it’s because my son is a pervert, Sheriff Brady. Fifteen was too old for him. He went right on down the line-from Carol to Andrea, and from Andrea to Stella.”
‘And Kelly?”
“I suppose he abused her, too. I don’t know for sure because I’ve never talked to her about it.”
‘And she’s still there,” Joanna said. “In Mexico.”
Edith nodded. “I believe Eddie married her off to one of his middle-aged Brethren buddies. She couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen at the time.”
“I know you told me the other day, but I don’t remember. How old was Carol when she finally ran away?”
“Twenty.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“You mean, after ten years of living in hell, what finally provoked her to leave?”
Joanna nodded. “Something like that.”
“She heard her father making arrangements to marry her off. To someone up in northern Arizona.”
“In one of the bigamist communities on the Arizona Strip?”
It was Edith Mossman’s turn to nod. “Somewhere up there,” she agreed. “I don’t know exactly, but that’s the thing. People like my son treat their wives and children-especially their daughters-like chattel. They make all the decisions and no one else is allowed any input. They marry them off to men twice and three times their age, and the girls have no say whatsoever.”
“You said wives?” Joanna interjected. “As in plural?”
Again, Edith nodded.
“And your son has more than one?”
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“He had three the last I heard, but that was a long time ago. He could have more by now. The last one I knew about was thirty years younger than he is.”
“The same age as Kelly?” Joanna asked.
“Younger,” Edith answered. ‘And that’s what he was going to do to Carol-marry her off to an old buzzard in his sixties who already had four or five wives and a whole raft of children. Eddie told the guy Carol was good at looking after other people’s kids. Somehow Carol overheard the conversation. She must have been eavesdropping.
That’s when she wrote and asked for my help. Not just for herself, but for her sisters, too. She was afraid her father would send her away and the three younger girls would be left completely unprotected-as much as she could protect them, that is.”
“So you made arrangements for the girls to come live with you.”
“That’s right. I managed to wire money to her. She bought train tickets and away they came with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.”
“But Kelly wouldn’t leave,” Joanna added.
Edith nodded. “Kelly was the baby and she truly was spoiled. She refused to come along, and it broke Carol’s heart. I don’t believe she ever forgave herself for going off and leaving Kelly there alone.”
Daisy delivered their plates of food. “Sorry it took so long,” she said. “The kitchen was a little backed up.”
In fact, Joanna and Edith had been so deep in conversation that they hadn’t noticed the passage of time. And, considering the subject under discussion, the arriving food no longer seemed nearly as appetizing as it had appeared on the menu.
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“Tell me about those other two dead women,” Edith said at last “You say they were going to interview Carol and put it on television?”
“That’s what we believe,” Joanna returned. “One of my investigators is checking on that right now.”
‘And they were going to pay her for doing this interview, whatever it was?”
Joanna nodded. “That’s right. They had brought along a check for five thousand dollars.”
“Carol must have known that payday was coming,” Edith mused. “That’s why she no longer needed my help.”
Joanna nodded again. “But I don’t think the interview ever took place, or, if it did, the money never changed hands. Pamela Davis and Carmen Ortega left California with a company check payable to Carol Mossman in their possession, but no such check has been found-not at your granddaughter’s mobile home and not at the crime scene in New Mexico, either.”
“But who were they?” Edith asked. “What did they want with Carol?”
“Before they came here, they had been in northern Arizona looking into The Brethren,”
Joanna said.
“Oh,” Edith Mossman said.
“Diego Ortega, Carmen’s brother, said something about a group called God’s Angels.
Have you ever heard of them?”
“Oh, yes,” Edith said. “Of course, I know about them. They’re wonderful.”
“What do they do?”
“They’re a support group, sort of like the old Underground Railroad. When women run away from those situations …”
“From their bigamist husbands,” Joanna supplied.
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“… they leave with nothing. They have no money, no job skills, nowhere to go. They’ve left everything familiar behind-their families, their homes, and often their own children.”
“Their religion?” Joanna asked.
“That, too,” Edith agreed. “And they need a lot of help as they start over. For one thing, they’ve led terribly sheltered and mostly isolated lives, so they don’t know much about the outside world. That’s where God’s Angels come in. They have programs for fleeing wives and for fleeing children, too. I believe that’s the one Andrea is most involved with-the one for children.”
“Your granddaughter is part of this group?”
‘Andrea has always been the smart one in the family. She has a full-time job and goes to school part-time. But on the side, she volunteers as a God’s Angels sponsor.
That means she counsels individual women and whatever children they may have brought with them when they ran away. She tries to help the women gain a toehold on life away from their former lifestyle. Otherwise they’re in danger of going back.”
“They’re like refugees,” Joanna observed.
“Pretty much,” Edith agreed.
There was a short pause in the conversation during which both women concentrated on their food. Joanna moved her sandwich around on the plate rather than eating much of it.
“If Andrea is part of that group,” Joanna began, “what about Stella?”
“Oh, no. Not Stella. She found herself a husband-a very nice husband, by the way.
She’s always been the strong one. She’s not big on support groups, either. Once she made up her mind to, she put all that other business behind her. I think Andrea tried 267
to get her to help out with some of the God’s Angels programs, but Stella wasn’t interested. She said she was over it, and she wanted to stay that way.”
Joanna decided to switch subjects. “What did your son do for Phelps Dodge when he worked there?” she asked.
“Drove a truck,” Edith answered at once. “Those big dump trucks they used to haul waste from the pit out to the tailings dump.”
“He never worked in the General Office?”
“Oh, no. Are you kidding? Eddie Mossman never had an office job in his life. He didn’t have the education for a desk job, to say nothing of the mindset.”
“What about your daughter-in-law?”