Ties That Bind (33 page)

No one wanted to believe their father was a cold-blooded murderer. Even if they had seen the evidence firsthand.

“Sam, put the gun away. You don’t want to hurt me.” He stood with a rope in his hands. There were plenty of trees in the cemetery, one of them undoubtedly marked with her name. At least in his mind.

“But you want to hurt me, Dad. You’ve already tried. Running me off the road when I was jogging. That was you. In a car that could belong to anyone. You wanted me confused, looking everywhere but the place where I should have looked.
My own backyard!
”

Her father winced and Sam realized she was yelling. Something inside of her cringed. She’d only felt love and pity for her father for so many years. He’d seemed so gentle and loving. How had she missed all the clues? How could he be this monster?

“I’m doing the Lord’s work, Sammy. That isn’t always a pleasant thing to have to do. Sometimes, the Lord requires vengeance. I am that vengeance.”

His voice was shaky, making her wonder if he was as terrified as she was—did he wonder if his favorite daughter would kill him? “Vengeance,” written across her white wall, in bloodred paint. A warning. But he hadn’t killed her. He’d tried to warn her off. Maybe Amy had been right. Maybe Sam was the favorite and her father had been trying to … to what? Save her from his wrath?

“You, Dad, are a killer.” Sam didn’t feel the calm her voice portrayed as she said those words. The gun wavered for a minute, but she kept it trained on his chest, her eyes hard and her soul weeping. “And I have an advantage the other kids didn’t have. They didn’t know it. They regarded you as a kindly old man, didn’t they? Just the nice man who cleaned the seminary building. You weren’t a threat, because they didn’t know. But I do.”

You have to shoot him, Sam.

“Put the gun down, Sam. You don’t want to hurt me.”

“You
tried
to kill me.”

“It would have been out of mercy, Sam. Some sins can only be atoned for by the letting of blood. And if I’d really wanted you dead, I would have done it. I just wanted you back. Back to God’s word. Back to me, to what you know is right.”

“Sins? What sins? What did I do that made you want to murder me, Dad?”

“Having sexual relations outside of marriage is a grave sin, Sammy. I saw you leave that Gage’s house late at night. I know you got pregnant in high school. I know because Paul came to me and confessed, and I told him to atone for it. To confess and go on a mission.”

“You encouraged him to leave me alone. To deal with a baby on my own.”

“Of course I did. God has a plan for our young people, and it is not fornicating like dogs. All young men should go on missions. Girls should not want to marry anyone but a returned missionary. I told him this again, too. I told him he had done the right thing. But you—how did you forget these lessons?”

“Maybe I didn’t forget them. Maybe they were crap.” Her father hadn’t been ignoring her all those years. She hadn’t slipped under the radar.

He moved toward her then, quicker than she would have believed, for he had moved slower and slower for so many years—all a charade.

“Don’t fucking move. Don’t take one more step.”

“Then don’t talk about the Lord’s work as crap. That is blasphemy, Sam. The Gospel is all there is. It’s all there’s ever been.”

“You’re sick, Dad. You’re sick, you made Mom sick, you made Amy sick, and
you hanged my sister from a tree
!”

“I did what I had to do. I had to teach you girls right from wrong. I caught her. I saw her fornicating.”

“It wasn’t Callie. It was Amy. And you never even knew. You killed an innocent child.”

Her father’s eyes furrowed, anger on his face. “What are you talking about? What the hell do you mean it was Amy?”

“It was Amy. She was with D-Ray, and Callie stepped in to keep you from hurting her. She pretended it was her. And you killed her. You killed an innocent, sad, lonely teenage girl.”

“You’re lying. I never should have saved you. I should have done the same thing to you as I did to Callie. I should have known that you weren’t worth saving the day you went to Salt Lake City and let those people murder the baby you made with Paul. God talks to me, and He told me to do what I did. But He didn’t tell me about you. Why didn’t He tell me about you?”

Sam winced as the truth of her actions, the guilt inside of her she had been trying to vomit up for so many years, came out. She hadn’t lost her baby “spontaneously.” She had gone to a clinic, all by herself, and paid $250 for a woman to scrape it out of her, to make it go away. Only it never went away. It built inside her until it practically ate her alive.

And her father had known. “So if you knew that, why didn’t you kill me?”

“I thought there was hope for you. God told me He still knew you had a job to do here. He wasn’t ready for you to leave yet. But He was wrong.”

“I thought God didn’t make mistakes.”

Her father took another step toward her, confusion on his face. Then it cleared up.

“No, the truth was, I wasn’t listening clearly, swayed by my own emotions. You were my youngest daughter. My baby. And I was weak. I didn’t follow through with God’s plans. That’s probably why your mother had to die. He took her away from me because I wasn’t faithful.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you weren’t talking to God, that you were listening to your own sick mind?”

“That is not the way you talk to me, Samantha Montgomery. I am your father, your priesthood holder, and your patriarch, and God does not appreciate those who do not follow His teachings.”

“Dad? You’re sick, and Mom knew it. She tried to tell me before she died. That’s why you killed her. And you did kill her, didn’t you?”

“Ruthie was perfect the way she was. The other way, the questioning and the arguing and the stupid mindless games … That wasn’t God’s plan. She was meant to be the way she was. And then it changed. I had no choice.

“And you were getting too close to me. To my mission. God told me that you might stop me from doing it, and the Lord’s work must always go on. Always.”

Sam felt her head spin and whirl as she considered her father’s words.

“Why did you kill them, Dad? Why did you try to kill your own niece?”

“Because I saw them. It was my job. I followed Whitney, and I saw what she and those other girls and boys were doing, and it was wrong. Sinful. Against God’s plan.”

“You tried to kill Bethany tonight, didn’t you?”

“The gentile girl? Yes, she would have been next, but somehow the police were alerted. I had to leave. I’ve followed you quite a bit, so I knew there was a chance you’d be here. And if not, I’d be safe among God’s spirits.

“And then I realized that it was all meant to be. Maybe that girl has another purpose, a mission left to do. Maybe living here, she will join the Church, become a part of the Gospel.”

Sam shivered as she watched him spin his deluded tale, a wisp of fog gathering around his face and shoulders, distorting his features. It thickened and roiled, and she stepped forward, as her father cocked his head at her. She took another step forward, wanting to reach out and touch the mist, to feel it.

“Callie?” she asked softly, her heart thumping inside her chest. She knew it was all in her mind, but suddenly she felt less alone.

“Callie’s dead,” her father said, his voice a gentle monotone.

He thinks he’s vengeance. But you are. You will be my vengeance. You have to shoot him.

“Callie’s here,” Sam said, her ears filled with the pounding of her heart, a rush of blood making her feel light headed and dizzy. She didn’t care if it was true or not; she wanted him scared. She wanted him confused, just like she had been all these years.

The fog thickened and swirled even more, and her father’s laugh sent puffs of it away from his face, clearing the view for a minute so she could see him clearly: for the very first time.

And she saw it on his face, the religious insanity. The craziness that was her father. Lines and furrows gave his face character, made him look kindly, benevolent. Harmless. He was anything but. He was insane, and apparently, this type of psychosis was catching, for he had given it to her mother and maybe a little bit to her sister Susanna, who clung so tightly to her childhood faith while fighting the desire to keep her kids alive and well.

And maybe he had given a little bit of it to Sam, too.

A little bit crazy. Listening to a voice inside her head, a voice she believed belonged to her dead sister. Yet Callie had been dead so many years, how would Sam even remember her voice?

“You’re a little bit crazy, Samantha Montgomery,” Gage had whispered to her just nights before, after they finally made love and lay satiated and spent in his large bed.

A little bit crazy.

“Sam, put the gun down. You’re fighting a battle you won’t win. I’ve been given my job, and I’m following through on it. When the Lord speaks, you listen.”

“You killed Callie.”

“I helped Callie to understand the error of her ways.”

“You
killed
your own daughter,” Sam said, her voice louder but not nearly as loud as the roaring of anger in her head. “And three other kids. And you tried to kill your granddaughter.”

He sighed impatiently and stepped forward. Sam automatically stepped back—though with his thin frame, stooped shoulders, and sparse gray hair her father hardly seemed menacing. He never had.

“Don’t come closer,” she said, warning him by waving the gun slightly. “I know you killed her. I was there. Somehow I pushed it all away, in the back of my mind,
but I saw you.
”

“I didn’t kill her, Sam. God did. It was His plan.”

“She loved you. You were our father. And you betrayed her.”

His face hardened. “I love those who deserve my love. God’s army is strong and mighty. The weak have no place there.”

“You tried to kill me, too.” Sam’s heart sank as she said the words aloud. It made them real. They couldn’t be taken back now or stored away in some unforgotten chest never to see the light of day. And yet that was what he had done with Callie and with her mother. Stored them away.

“I was just doing my job.”

Sam looked down at her gun and realized she had lowered it as the shock waves hit her, as she pondered her father’s words and actions. As she tried to digest the fact that this gentle man was nothing like he seemed. Not gentle. Oh no. He was Vengeance. Had sent her a very threatening note, painted on her wall in the color of blood. Her own father wanted her dead.

She raised the gun again, wishing it were steady, wishing she wasn’t here, forced to make this decision.

“Sammy, put the gun down. It won’t make things better at this point.”

“And what will? Hanging me from a tree? Atoning with my spent blood? Did that spent blood get Callie into the Celestial Kingdom, Dad? Was it that important? Did it work? And what about Mom? You killed her, too. She tried to warn me, and you killed her? Where is she now?”

“You act like I’m some kind of animal, instead of a simple man doing the Lord’s work. That tells me you just don’t get it.”

“That tells me you just don’t get it, either, Dad. It’s a little thing called murder. Maybe you’ve heard of it before?”

He took another step toward her. He’d bridged the gap from twelve feet to six feet, and she still hadn’t fired. She knew she could shoot to kill. She never thought she would have to shoot her father.

“Don’t! Don’t move closer, or I will shoot you. This has become life or death. When you tried to run me off the road, you cemented our relationship. One of us is going to have to die, and it’s
not going to be me.
”

Her father’s voice was gentle when he spoke. “I would die for you, Sammy, if it would make a difference. I would gladly go in your place. But that’s not the way it works. That’s not the way God wants it.”

He took another step.

“Don’t move!”
Sam screamed.

One more step.

Kill him, Sam. Stop him now, before anyone else dies. Before you die. Before I die again.

She fired, the roar of the .38 filling her ears. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled her nose, and she looked down at her hand, which didn’t shake. Not even a little bit. It was a powerful gun, enough to stop someone cold. It had a pink handle. Innocuous, girlie, and yet it could do so much damage. Just like life. She squeezed her eyes shut as her father fell to the ground, only three feet from her, writhing in pain.

But her survival instincts were strong, and she only kept them closed for a moment. Because she had been taught how to shoot to kill. That was her job. It was her or him. And she wasn’t about to die. She still had too many wrongs to right. Tears fought for release and poured down her cheeks as she watched him, moving, squirming, whimpering in pain. She fought back the instinct to go to him, to ease his pain.

Then his body stilled. Now he was nothing more than a resident of this burial ground. He belonged here.

She pulled her phone from her jacket pocket and dialed 911. It was after nine, so the emergency calls were all being routed from the Kanesville office to the Smithland County sheriff’s dispatch center. The dispatcher who answered sounded busy and bored. Sam didn’t care. “This is Detective Sam Montgomery. I’m in the Kanesville City Cemetery. I need a bus, and I need some officers. There’s been a shooting.”

“Are you hurt?” the female dispatcher immediately asked.

“No. But my father is. I believe he’s dead.”

“Who shot him?”

“I did,” Sam said, and disconnected the phone. She stuck it back in her pocket and watched the blood seep from her father’s chest and watched him gasp his last breaths.

I am no different than he is. I killed my own father.

You had to kill him, Sam. He would have killed you. He killed those three other kids. He would have kept going. You did the right thing. You are a savior.

“Fuck no!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
I’m no one’s savior. I’m just a cop. I’m not the same as him. I’m not a killer.