I peeked in the other rooms. They all appeared to have been searched. Anna’s clothes, those of her children, still hung in their closets. Nothing stood out. Nothing suggested the location of the letters.
Before I abandoned the upstairs, I stood in the doorway to Laurel’s room one last time. I envisioned her body on the bed. I thought about Mullins at the office that morning, explaining to me that old man Barstow had to be obeyed, and that Laurel’s life wasn’t her own to live. Then, just as I contemplated admitting defeat, something caught my attention: the drapes. The fabric matched the pale blue duvet we’d found over Laurel’s body, but the drapes were lined, opaque, and it seemed to me that they hung a touch askew.
I felt around the bottom. Nothing seemed odd until I pulled one panel away from the window and noticed a thread line about ten inches from the top. Neat, tidy stitches, done by hand, like those used to hem a skirt, they didn’t show from the front. They were so small, so precise, they were nearly invisible. I slipped my phone from my pocket and called Lieutenant Mueller.
“I’m in Laurel’s room. Bring up a stepladder,” I said.
“Find something?”
“Not sure.”
Moments later, Mueller and one of his men walked in with a folded aluminum ladder off the CSI trailer. “Over here, the curtains,” I said. They positioned the ladder in front of the window, and I climbed up. The house old, the windows high, I had to stand on the second rung from the top. I touched the curtain near the top, and I felt something crinkle inside. I pulled the curtains’ edges back and gathered all the fabric on the rod. Then I popped the wooden rod up, freeing it from the wall. Heavy, it momentarily threw me off balance, and I wobbled.
“You want help with that?” Mueller asked, reaching up to hold the ladder steady.
“No, I’m okay. Just take this.” I dropped the curtains on the rod down to Mueller. Once he had it, I clambered off the ladder. We laid the curtains out on the bed, and Mueller and I pulled out the rod. Immediately, I noticed pockets gaping near the top, slight openings between the fabric and the thick lining above the row of stitches.
Mueller must have noticed them too. “I think you’ve got them,” he said.
He handed me a pair of latex evidence gloves. Once I had them on, I slipped my hand inside the opening and felt something thin and papery. One after another, I pulled out envelopes, twenty-four in all, with TO MY LOVE hand-printed on the front.
Mueller bumped one of his techs on his radio: “Bring evidence folders to the victim’s bedroom, second floor. We’ve got what we came for.”
I gave them room, and Mueller and his tech took over the task of processing the evidence. Two more CSI officers rushed in, and I went downstairs.
I waited in the kitchen to talk to Mueller when they finished. Meanwhile, I stared down at the removed tiles, thinking about the boots we found at Thompkins’ cabin, convinced they would be a match, and wondering: Why am I so unsure of his guilt? Then I noticed a calendar hanging on the wall. Open to November, it had a photograph of dried leaves and pumpkins in a field. Someone had scrawled reminders of activities for the two older children. I felt a particular sadness when I saw the notation of a dinner scheduled for the coming week with Mullins and the rest of Laurel’s family.
On each day next to the date, someone had alternated writing in a capital ‘A’ or an ‘L.’ Having grown up in a polygamous house, I understood what I was looking at; it was Jacob’s schedule, the one that kept track of which nights he slept with which of his two wives. When the date had an ‘A’ he slept with Anna. On those marked ‘L’ he slept in Laurel’s bed. I checked the previous Sunday, and that date was marked with an ‘A’.
That means that the night of Laurel’s killing, Jacob was in bed with Anna. Laurel slept alone, I thought. And Carl would have known that because he was at the ranch that evening, and it’s documented right here out in the open on this calendar.
I took out my phone and snapped a few photos of the calendar, just as Mueller walked into the kitchen. “Great find, Chief,” he said. “I don’t know how you spotted