The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (The Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mysteries) (32 page)

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “Hold up. What’s going
on with Rachel?”

“Oh, that’s right, dear. You’ve been out of touch,
so you don’t know what’s going on,” Jala said. “Well, listen—”

“Nobody knows what’s going on,” Talitha jumped in.
“That’s the whole point.” Turning to me, she continued, “Father’s got her in
seclusion. They’re saying she’s sick, but—”

“House arrest, I call it,” Jala said. “And nobody’s
able to go in or out, except, of course, Dathan. And every time we ask him if
we can give a hand, he just—”

“Well, it’s not like he can’t see through that,
Jala. Nobody said he was stupid. He’s just following Father’s orders.”

“Of course, he is. I didn’t say—”

“Rachel
is
sick,” Baara spoke up. She
tipped over her glass of water and flooded her end of the long, Formica prep
table.

“Oh, gosh. Look at that.” Jala grabbed a roll of
cheap paper towels and tossed them to Baara. Looking as though she were about
to cry, Baara pulled sheets and sheets off the roll and wadded them up in a
huge mound to soak up the water.

“Goodness, Baara! That’s plenty.” In an effort to
distract her, Jala pushed a bowl of freshly washed carrots in front of the
other woman. “Here, why don’t you help out with the delicious salad? These need
to be grated.”

“I work in the laundry. I’m not supposed to do
kitchen stuff.” Baara crossed her arms.

The metal grater Jala offered looked like a
medieval torture device. I knew from experience how easy it was to sheer a
knuckle off. Probably best not to have Baara work with it, anyway.

“I’ll do it,” I said. I crossed over to the sink
and washed my hands.

Behind me, the door opened and the women hushed. I
turned, hands still dripping, and froze.

Moses had come in. He stood directly across the
room from me, only the prep table a barrier between us. His eyes were bloodshot
and ringed black. His nose had swollen three times its normal size, but someone
had straightened the kink out. Of the nose, that is. I fumbled for the paper
towels, but after Baara’s wiping spree only one sheet remained on the roll.

Moses avoided looking directly at me, but my
crawling skin told a different story.

Jala cleared her throat. “Um, can I get you
something, Moses?”

He swung his gaze to her, but didn’t answer.
Instead, he grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and went to sit at the small
table where I’d first seen him and Eli eating breakfast a few short days ago.

Talitha abruptly abandoned us, disappearing into
the walk-in cooler. The dishwasher lady bailed too.

My heart thumped dully against my breastbone, but
I refused to let Moses know how badly his presence bothered me. More than
pride, self-preservation told me I needed to keep up an air of confidence. I
got busy scraping carrots down the jagged edges of the grater, letting the
bright orange shavings fall onto the plate beneath.

Jala cleared her throat a second time and cast off
on another topic. “So, um, Letty—”

Moses glanced at her sharply.

“I mean, Leona, of course.” Then she brightened at
the reminder of what would normally have been a safe topic. “How do you like
your new name?”

Of course, mentioning my newly assigned name only
served to remind us all of the all-hell-breaking-loose craziness that blew up
when I got it. I started to answer, then stuttered to a stop. Jala turned
bright red, and her hand fluttered up to cover her mouth.

“Oh, dear,” she whispered.

“I like it,” Baara said, blithely unaware of the
thick atmosphere. “Father told me it’s like a lion. I wish I could have a lion
name. But I like my name too.”

“You do?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my
voice, but again, Baara didn’t pick up on it.

“Uh-huh. It means ‘Flame of God.’ Like, burning
and fire. Isn’t that neat?” Baara’s face had lit up from within, almost as
though she were reflecting her name’s meaning. I felt a vague sense of unease.

“That is cool,” I lied. “How about you, Jala? Your
name’s from the Bible, right?”

Jala nodded absently; she, too, looked distracted
and worried. “Father does usually assign names from the Bible. Not always,
though. Mine means ‘Servant of God.”

Of course it did.

Jala and I were both pretending we hadn’t already
had this conversation the first night I’d come to Megiddo. Agitation made me
careless. Instead of dropping the nub of carrot I was grating when it got too
small, I’d hung on, scraping and whittling it down as far as I could. Too far.
Sure enough, I nicked the top of my middle finger knuckle.

“Damn!” I grabbed for the roll of paper towels,
but I’d used the last when I’d washed my hands. A fragment the size of a
playing card still clung to the cardboard, so I tugged it off while Jala ran
for a fresh roll. Red splotches immediately bloomed through the paper fibers.

Baara screamed and covered her face. “The blood…
The blood…” Her gaze was fixed on the blood dotting the white Formica tabletop.

Jala snapped, “Baara, calm down. It’s just a cut.”
She dug through a cabinet under the sink. An opened container of cleanser
tipped out and spilled on the floor at her feet. Powder puffed a cloud over her
tennis shoes. She shook it off and shifted her hunt to the next cabinet over.

Talitha popped out of the cooler. “What on
earth…?”

“How about napkins?” I suggested.

Talitha, no stranger to kitchen injuries, nodded
and took off for the dining hall.

Despite Jala’s reassurance, Baara was working
herself up to full hysteria. She was breathing so hard and fast she was sure to
start hyperventilating any second.

“Baara,” I said. “I’m okay. It’s no big deal.
Look.” I pulled the now-sodden snippet of toweling off and showed her the cut.
A tiny half-moon had been carved out of my knuckle, and though it bled like a
stuck pig, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Didn’t help. Baara clamped her eyes shut and
started rocking so fast I thought she’d tip over from dizziness. She started
chanting in a thin, reedy voice, so unlike her own. I could only understand
fragments, but what I heard scared the crap out of me.

“The life of the flesh is in the blood… the altar
of atonement… the blood is the way… the way to righteousness. God bless our
sacrifice and keep us pure.”

Jala whipped around. “Baara! Baara, it’s okay.”
She ran to Baara’s side, putting her arm around the younger woman.

I wrapped my hand in my shirt. “It’s the blood.
Some people react that way.”

Talitha crashed through the swing door, holding up
a handful of paper napkins. “Here we go.” And then she let loose a banshee
shriek that bounced off the tiled walls and put Baara’s wailing to shame.
Screams ripped from Talitha’s throat; her eyes grew so big and round they
looked like they were going to pop out of her head from the pressure. And she
was pointing. Not to Baara, but to the breakfast table. To the floor, actually.

Where Moses knelt, working silently away at
gouging out his own right eye.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I
flung myself
over the prep table, landing full out on top of Moses. Both Baara and Talitha
fled the kitchen, the sounds of their screaming fading as they ran away. I had Moses’ss
right arm wrapped in my own to keep it away from his face. We writhed on the
floor, battling for possession of it. His hands were slippery with his own
blood, and he almost slid out of my grip several times. We were both grunting
and breathing heavily, and as I levered my body between his hand and face, I
ended up sitting in his lap. This was
not
my happy place. Thankfully, he
was too far gone in his psychotic break for it to become his. At some point,
Moses must have realized that his left hand would serve equally well as an eye
removal system as his right. When he abruptly stopped fighting me, I almost
face-planted on the tile floor.

Seeing his intentions, Jala screamed and
dive-bombed his other arm, and now we were a particularly macabre ménage à
trois.

The side door burst open and Casper bolted
through. He took one look and puked. Gabriel and Dathan charged through
immediately after and joined the floor show. Once the two men had a solid grip,
Jala grabbed the wad of napkins and pressed them against Moses’s eye.

Everyone was yelling something, making it
impossible to understand anything. Moses had grabbed my hair, forcing me to
remain ensconced on his lap, unable to untangle myself.

By now Moses had given up fighting but had taken
to alternating between howling and bellowing scriptures in my ear. Something
about committing adultery by lusting and plucking out offending eyes. No
surprise there.

I finally yanked my hair out from his grip and
crawled a few feet away, heading in the opposite direction of Casper’s vomit
puddle. He cowered in the corner, retching and unable to look away or do
anything useful.

Gabriel’s voice rose up over the din. “Call 9-1-1,
Letty! Go call 9-1-1.”

Right.

But I only knew of one telephone. I took off out
the door, running for the office. Father’s house was closer, and I was sure he
had a phone to himself, but I didn’t know where and I didn’t know if I could
get in his house. Two women, oblivious to the crisis as they walked in the
common area, squealed and grabbed each other as I, covered in his-and-her blood
spatter, barreled past.

Abigail and Maliah joined the chorus when I burst
through the office door.

I was out of breath, and my brain felt
simultaneously sluggish and scattered. “Phone,” I said. “There’s been a… Call
for an ambulance.”

“What’s wrong? What’s going on?” Like most control
freaks, Maliah thought she needed more information before following directions.
It pissed me off enough to jump-start my brain.

“Call 9-1-1.
Now
. There’s been an… accident
in the kitchen.”

Maliah shot a glance at Abigail, then stood up and
placed her hand on the telephone. “We have to get permi—”

I shoved her so hard she bounced off a file
cabinet and ricocheted into the wall. Snatching up the phone, I punched in 9-1-...
And then she grabbed me by the hair, hauling me backward. Instead of pulling
away, I went with it, adding my weight to her momentum, which caused us both to
go down. For the second time in just minutes, I ended up in someone’s lap. We
both screamed in rage. She scratched long furrows into my cheeks, narrowly
missing my own eyes.
Enough
. I twisted around, trying to push off and
get away, but by then she had my hair in both hands and was yanking so hard my
head whipped back and forth.

This ended when I rabbit punched her in the nose
three times. I don’t do girly fights.

She still had a thatch of my hair in her claws
when I clambered to my feet. When I saw it, I kicked her in the side, just
because it felt like a good thing to do.

I stumbled back to the phone, but Abigail had it
and was yelling for help.

I cocked my head, eyes narrowing into a glare. In
a voice like
The Exorcist
demon, I said, “That better be 9-1-1.”

She nodded frantically and, still nodding, recited
the church’s address into the phone. She paused to listen and a desperate look
came over her. “I don’t know! I just… There’s fight and—”

I snatched the receiver away from her. “Hello?
This is an emergency. We need an ambulance. One of the residents here has
injured himself badly. He tried…” I could barely say it. “He tried to put out
his own eye.”

Abigail gasped.

“We have guys holding him down, but he’s
completely out of control. He’s going to need medical assistance for his eye,
but then he’s also going to need a behavioral health stay.”

I shoved the receiver back into Abigail’s hand.
“Stay on the phone with them. I’m going back.”

Before I walked out the door, I remembered
something and turned back. Maliah was just getting to her feet and our eyes
locked for a split second. Instantly, she darted her eyes away. I nodded.

Damn straight
.

F
ather called a
meeting at Philadelphia House. Word had obviously gotten around that an
ambulance and three cop cars had descended on the church earlier that
afternoon. Before he left to follow the ambulance up to Miller-Dwan in Duluth,
I overheard Gabriel tell Casper to track down Baara and Talitha and confine
them to their rooms if need be. He also had made it clear to Jala and me that
we weren’t to talk about the incident to anybody. I reminded him that Maliah
and Abigail knew what had happened too, but he said they would know to keep
their mouths shut. So it’s a mystery how the news got around so fast. I only
told Beth.

Talitha must have pulled it together enough that
she was allowed to attend the meeting. She showed up looking wan and more than
a little jumpy. Not surprisingly, Baara was a no-show. I looked for Maggie’s
group and for Rachel, but neither were to be seen.

When we realized Baara wasn’t coming, Cozbi
hurried to light the candles. The Seven—only four left, actually—took their
places up front, but Casper had forgotten his staff, and in the absence of the
top three ranked men, they weren’t sure where to stand.

The changes in routine and structure seemed to
affect the crowd adversely. This time, the normal restlessness of a
congregation getting settled had an edge to it. Background chatter sounded
strained and awkward, with none of those “Good to see you” noises that people
make when they come together for a service.

The four men in the front began to glance
furtively at each other, their nervousness growing more apparent with each
passing moment. None of them could pull off the aura of leadership that Eli,
Gabriel, and even Moses commanded.