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

THE BLOOD WE SPILL

BY DONNA WHITE GLASER

Book Four in the Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery series.

Still suffering recurring panic attacks following
the murder of a close friend just months ago, psychotherapist and recovering
alcoholic Letty Whittaker is struggling to bring her life back to normal. She’s
getting there. But when her best friend disappears into the depths of a
religious cult, Letty is forced to cut ties with her safe life and plunge into
a world of fanaticism, hypocrisy, and danger.

What Letty discovers is a community in upheaval.
The cult's second-in-command has disappeared without a trace. As its members
vie for dominance in the power vacuum, the leader's demands for his “children”
to reject worldly evils and commit their lives—and money and properties, of
course—to purity and sacrifice grow increasingly bizarre.  Determined to not
give up the hunt for her own strangely elusive friend, Letty digs into the
legion of dark secrets hidden within the community and unearths more than she
may have bargained for.

ALSO BY DONNA WHITE GLASER

THE LETTY WHITTAKER 12 STEP MYSTERIES:

THE
ENEMY WE KNOW

THE
ONE WE LOVE

THE
SECRETS WE KEEP

THE BLOOD WE SPILL

COMING SOON: THE LIES WE TELL

STEP SIX

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these
defects of character.

STEP SEVEN

Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.

Chapter One

I
n the short
time I had known Reggie, I’d already come to understand that her youngest
daughter was a sore subject. Through the disjointed bits and pieces that she’d
dropped, I had gathered that Maggie had left college one semester shy of
graduating with a degree in chemistry and was living in Eau Claire. Of course,
it was possible—likely even, given the nature of A.A. sponsor
relationships—that she had been more candid when talking with Beth, the third
member of our little gathering. Up until now, however, any time the
conversation had veered even slightly toward her daughter, Reggie had directed
it away. So when she abruptly started talking about Maggie before the cookie
plate had even hit Beth’s kitchen table, I didn’t need my fancy therapist
skills to clue in that something was up.

After that initial admission of worry, Reggie
stalled and seemed at a loss about how to continue.

“Is she in trouble?” I asked.

“Not according to the police,” Reggie said. “But,
Letty, those freaks she’s been living with won’t let me talk to her.”

Now the conversational menu had expanded to
include the police
and
freaks. Difficult choice. I went with the freaks.

“It’s this group that calls itself ‘The Elect of
the Returning King,’” Reggie explained. “Maggie hooked up with them about nine
or ten months ago. She moved in with them, sold her car, dropped out of
college. She just pissed her whole life away. Just like that.”

“Are we talking about a cult here?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to call it. She got involved
with them right after her fiancé broke it off with her. I thought it was a good
thing. I mean, it’s God stuff. How could that be bad?

“They have a leader,” Reggie continued. “But I’ve
never met the bastard. Maggie calls him ‘Dr. Abe,’ but I never heard a last
name. A few times she slipped and called him “Father.” That started one of our
fights. I just don’t understand how Maggie got involved in all this. She’s an
intelligent girl and has so much going for her.”

There was a pause. Reggie’s eyes shifted from a
pleading directness to unfocused. Her attention turned in to herself. This felt
like the moment in therapy when my clients finally decide to lay it all out.
It’s a tricky time; the best response is silence.

Beth, never one for subtlety, blew it. Turning to
me, she said, “Have you ever heard of them?” Her voice sounded strange.
Tighter, somehow. Excited?

I practiced psychotherapy in the small community
of Chippewa Falls, but I was in no way an expert on religious communities. When
I shook my head, Beth turned back to our friend. “You’re going to have to tell
her everything.”

Reggie took a deep, shaky breath. “I think she’s
been kidnapped,” she admitted.

Her statement pushed me further into therapist
mode. My face muscles relaxed into a neutral position and I continued to keep
silent.

Beth took one look and bounced a wadded-up paper
napkin off my nose. “Quit that. She’s not crazy.”

“I didn’t say she was.”

Beth was irritating when she was right. Reggie
wasn’t a client. Like Beth, she was my friend. “Why do you think she’s been
kidnapped? Is that why the police are involved?”

Together, Reggie and Beth filled me in on the
details of Maggie’s involvement with the group. A year ago, Maggie and her
then-fiancé, Peter, went through a particularly nasty breakup. After catching
Peter shooting off his fireworks with another woman over Labor Day weekend,
Maggie kicked him out and tried to finish her last year at UW-Eau Claire. Her
fall semester was a shambles. In addition to a twenty-credit workload, Maggie
had to deal with the knowledge that her ex was frolicking around on an Alaskan
cruise with his new love and planning a June wedding. Maggie fell apart.

“I wasn’t there for her,” Reggie admitted. “I was
drinkin’ hard, you know. And she never really asked for help. We’ve never been
close. She’s what you might call high-maintenance.” Reggie’s voice trailed away
as she halfheartedly made the excuse.

This time Beth kept quiet and let Reggie come to
terms with herself. After a few moments spent struggling with tears and her
past, Reggie squared her shoulders and met our eyes.

“My drinking kept us from being close,” she said
firmly. “My drinking
made
her high-maintenance. She had a lot to put up
with, growing up. Anyway, she must have been feeling pretty alone, pretty
awful. That’s when she went to that meeting.”

According to Reggie, the meeting had turned into a
two-hour-long lecture on stress given by the Elect’s founder, Abraham Reynolds.
It seemed innocent enough at the time.

“Maggie told me it helped her understand the
stress she was under. He supposedly explained the physical and psychological
effects of living with today’s stress. Then he slid into the spiritual stuff.
Then boom. Three weeks later, she moved in with the weirdos.

“From then on, it was like she was a complete
stranger. She wouldn’t come home for Christmas. She dropped out of school. She
even started wearing those long “Little House on the Prairie” skirts and
sticking her hair up in a bun. I tried to find out what was going on, but she
clammed up. She even stopped taking my calls, and when I finally drove over to
that house, she refused to meet with me alone. Had to have a chaperone. Can you
believe that?”

“Was that her idea or theirs?” I asked.

Reggie thought for a bit before answering. “I
guess I don’t know. If it was their idea, I didn’t see any sign of her
objecting. And she was the one who cut the visit short when I started asking
her again about dropping out of college. Only one more semester and she would
have had her chemistry degree.

“After that, she wouldn’t talk to me at all. I
tried going back to the house, but they finally said she didn’t live there
anymore. They said she was in retreat but wouldn’t say where and wouldn’t even
take her a message from me.”

“So I went to the cops,” Reggie continued. “They
talked to the people, and then Maggie came in to the police station to talk to
a detective. She had two of the freaks with her, but the cops talked to her
alone. There was nothing they could do. She insisted she was fine and wanted to
be with them. She, um, refused to talk to me.” Reggie stopped talking and
stared out the window, tears finally streaking loose from her eyes.

“That was last April,” Reggie said when she could
continue. She fell silent again and a look I couldn’t interpret passed between
her and Beth. Running a knuckle under her reddened eyes to shore up the mascara
leaks, Reggie stood and announced she had to use the bathroom.

If not for the look, I wouldn’t have suspected a
thing. As it was, I eyed Beth warily while Reggie clomped out of the kitchen.

Beth was wearing her innocent face.

One reason why A.A. puts such stress on honesty is
because it’s such a foreign concept to most of us. Of course, Beth had
perfected the art of lying. Maintain good eye contact (not too intense), relax
the face and shoulder muscles, and smile (not too wide). If Beth could have
colored her own aura, it would have been pink and dewy fresh.

I slowly shook my head. “Don’t even try it. It’s
wasted on me.”

Scowling also came naturally to her. She propped
her chin on her hand and came clean.

“I want to help her,” Beth said.

“Well, sure.” I felt bad for Reggie, too.

“No. I mean really help her. I want to check out
that cult or whatever it is.”

“Okay,” I answered slowly. I didn’t see the problem.
“You mean like hire a PI?”

“No. I mean you and I can check it out.” She
answered just as slowly, enunciating each word.

I began to see where she was headed with this, but
I really didn’t want to believe it. I made one last attempt to shift her away
from the dangerous path she was aiming us toward.

“I can check around,” I said. My voice sounded
frantic even to my ears. “I can ask some colleagues if they’ve done any work
with former cult members. I guess you’d call them deserters…” I was nearly
babbling now, trying to keep Beth from stating her real motive—the one we both
knew but that I was too afraid to acknowledge. “I’ve never done that kind of
work before, so I’m not really an expert.”

Reggie came back in and made her away over to the
table. Again the look. Beth gave a tiny shake of her head. I could only pretend
I didn’t understand what she was asking me for so long. Gathering my purse, I
made good-bye noises and retraced Reggie’s path across the kitchen, and then I
was out the front door.

Fleeing to my car might have been a mistake. I had
recently had a very bad experience in my last one.
Very bad
. Gripping
the steering wheel until my joints ached, I relived the terror of being
trapped, sinking, nearly dying. Caught up in a wave—gasping, sweating, shaking.
The memory carried me along. My heart pounded so hard my ribs throbbed from the
inside out.  I couldn’t think over the echoes hammering in my ears.

I was having a heart attack.

Chapter Two

N
owhere in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—the therapists’ bible of psychological
disorders—is embarrassment listed as a symptom of panic attacks. It should be.
Almost everyone I had ever treated who suffered from them spent a great deal of
time dealing with the embarrassment caused by these seemingly irrational
behaviors. People tend to look at you funny when you begin clutching your chest
and gasping in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. They call the paramedics
too.

An additional element of shame creeps in when
you’re a therapist who suffers from them. To top it off, they aren’t even a
stand-alone disorder; they have to be coded with another, such as Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder or Generalized Anxiety. Two disorders for the price
of one, I guess.

So shame, yes. Even though it goes against
everything I say—and believe— when I counsel someone else with this problem.

After an eternity of minutes, the panic started to
subside and I felt safe starting the car. Impulsively, I pointed the car north
and headed up Highway 53 to Chetek. One of my biggest fears was that I would
have an attack on the road. Because of that, I had begun to avoid driving
except for the brief, necessary trips to work and back. I don’t know if my
other friends had noticed, but I was aware that Eli, my recently acquired
boyfriend, was no fool. 

My relationship with Eli, which resulted from the
events last summer, came with its own set of complications. The attraction
between us was as strong and scary as an undertow and, given my emotional
struggles of late, its progress had been choppy and turbulent.

In the past, I would’ve taken time to watch the
fields, check out the crops, study the changes in season. Not today. This time
the forty-minute trip passed by in a daze. As I turned into Eli’s half-mile-long
drive, it occurred to me he might not be home. My cell phone was stuffed deep
in my purse, but I didn’t bother with it. As soon as I rounded the curve in his
road, I spotted his truck and his brother EZ’s newer-model Camaro. Camaros run
in the family. Eli’s vintage model was sure to be tucked carefully in the
renovated outbuilding that doubled as a garage. For everyday use, he drove a
Ford pickup. Spotting EZ’s car reminded me that today was the Valentine
family’s annual “Moving Day.” The brothers would be in either the back garden
or the cellar. Choosing between a dark, stone-lined cellar and a vibrant,
harvest-hued floral sanctuary was easy.