“Can you do this?” Somers said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I mean without being an asshole and ruining our case.”

  “I said I’m fine, didn’t I?”

  Somers crossed his arms. The breeze swept through the house, and the old smoke and timber smell was stronger, and the tarps snapped against the rope.

  “Look, I should have kept my mouth shut,” Hazard said. “I get that. It’s just—they get under my skin. All of this does.”

  “What you said at the end. The truth will set you free. That sounds like Bible talk.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is it?”

  “I was in that goddamn conversion center for months, Somers.”

  “So think about this: instead of letting your natural charisma take over, why don’t you use some of that Bible-thumping to help us out?”

  Somers didn’t wait for a response, and he clapped Clyde on the shoulder and ushered him out into the sunlight.

  “They’re all fucking nuts,” Hazard muttered as he followed.

  Somers, without looking back, replied, “This from a guy who watches documentaries on German cheesemaking.”

  “It was cheesecloth.”

  Somers, for some inscrutable reason, found that hilarious.

  SISTER CLAUDIA AND SISTER ANNA WERE SHOVELING MANURE. The sisters—their shared biology evident in their blocky frames, their lumpy features, and their mousy hair—had tied their robes up at the waist and wore denim and work boots. They both stood in the bed of a truck, launching shovelfuls into a wheelbarrow. The smell reminded Somers of horses, but not in any nostalgic way.

  “Excuse me. Could we talk to you?”

  Both sisters had tied bandanas over their mouths and noses, and they shared a glance over the red-checked cloth.

  “We need a few minutes of your time.”

  After another shared look, the sisters went back to shoveling.

  “Drop those shovels and get down here,” Hazard barked. “Right now.”

  The sisters’ eyes met again, and this time one of them leaned her shovel against the truck’s cab and waddled to the tailgate. She tugged the bandana under her chin, where the red cloth cut into the thick waddle. “Brother Jesse told us we don’t have to talk to you. And sister and I have work to do.”

  “I don’t care if Brother Jesse told you his prick would take you straight to heaven,” Hazard said, “we’ve got questions and you can damn well make time for some answers.”

  “There’s that charisma again,” Somers said.

  Hazard glowered at him, but he clamped his jaw shut.

  “We don’t like it when people talk to us like that. Good Christian men don’t talk like that.” She sniffed and hooked a finger under the bandana, ready to end their conversation.

  “I bet you never caught Sister Sarah and Sister Hagar doing a job like this,” Somers said.

  Sister Claudia—or was it Sister Anna?—toyed with the bandana.

  Flashing a small smile, Somers said, “It’s got to be hard work out here, especially once the heat sets in. I bet most of your friends can’t keep up with it. Do you have to fertilize the fields by hand?”

  The woman’s hand crept to her cheek, the gesture surprisingly girlish. Her fingers left manure stains over her flush. “This is just for the garden. The fields, we rented a machine for that. Brother Paul takes care of it. He’s just wonderful; he knows all about things like that.”

  “He looks like a hard worker.”

  “Oh, he is. Sister and I both think so. And he’s very polite.” At this, she scowled at Hazard again.

  “I don’t see your younger sisters out here, though. I understand Sister Naomi is much too old for this kind of work—”

  The other sister, the one digging her shovel deep into the muck, snorted a laugh, and the one perched on the tailgate smiled. “Sister Naomi won’t be too old for work until the day she dies, and even then they’ll have to nail the coffin shut. Otherwise she’d probably get up and sweep the chapel after everyone left.”

  “I believe it. She does seem tough. Not like that other one—blond. I can’t remember her name, but she—well, I hope you won’t think I’m being rude, but she wasn’t exactly proper when we were talking.”

  Hazard’s eyebrows shot up at this, and Somers hoped the big man would have enough sense not to call him out on the lie.

  “Sister Sapphira.”

  At this name, the one with the shovel got carried away by emotion, and the shovel shrieked along the truck bed.

  “That’s right. She’s the one. Where’s she at? I thought she’d be helping you.”

  The one with the bandana snorted again.

  “No,” the other one said. “Sister Sapphira’s not out here working.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Brother Jeshua says she’s like Tamar.”

  Somers shook his head and glanced at Hazard.

  “Robed in unrighteousness to bring about God’s purpose,” Hazard said, and he managed to keep the words polite even though he looked like he was sucking a lemon.

  “That’s right. Yes, that’s exactly it. She—she handles all the money. And she’s—well, you’re a man. You can see. She’s beautiful.”

  The other sister, the one with the shovel, gave the manure another vicious whack.

  “Brother Jesse and Brother Dan, they’ve got eyes for her.”

  “I imagine some of the men,” Somers said with another of those slow-boil smiles, “recognize real ladies when they meet them.”

  The woman on the tailgate blushed, scrubbed at her face, and left a fresh streak of manure across her nose. “Some of them, I guess.”

  “Brother Paul.”

  “He’s a good man.” But the blush was brighter than her bandana now.

  “And Brother Jeshua.”

  “Oh, he’s above all that, you know? He transcends the flesh. That’s what it means. The Word.”

  “And the Word was made flesh,” Hazard said.

  “Yes, that’s it.” She studied him. “You know the Word. Why were you talking with such a foul tongue earlier?”

  “I’m so angry about Brother Jeshua’s murder.”

  Somers fought to keep his eyes from rolling out of his head. Emery Hazard was good at a lot of things. Lying wasn’t one of them.

  Fortunately, Sister Claudia and Sister Anna didn’t seem to notice. They both nodded. The one with the shovel paused to wipe her eyes. The one with her bandana pulled down let her chin sink to her chest. It looked like the bandana was strangling her.

  “Could you tell us where you were Saturday afternoon?”

  “Driving the van. We had to pick up some more stuff from the farm and take it to the consignment shop.”

  “Together?”

  “We always work together.”

  “Can you give me the names of anyone you spoke to? The times you were driving?”

  “Brother Paul put in GPS.”

  “What?” Hazard said.

  “He put in GPS. In the van. It keeps a record of where we’ve been.”

  Without a word, the one with the bandana still up jumped out of the truck bed and stumped away. When she returned, she held out an after-factory GPS unit, and Hazard tapped the screen a few times. Then he held it out to Somers. It was easy enough to follow their route from Saturday, and the van hadn’t gone anywhere near Wahredua proper.

  “The girls,” the one with her bandana lowered said. “You think they did this?”

  “Do you?”

  For a moment neither sister said anything. Their eyes met and roved away and met again. “No.”

  They weren’t much better liars than Hazard.

  “What are they like?”

  “Bitches,” said the one with the shovel. It was her first word, and she drove it home by clanging the shovel against the bed.

  “Anna,” said the other in reproach, which made the speaker Claudia. “You’ve got to forgive her. Anna’s the fiery one. That’s what our granddaddy always said.”

  The fiery one didn’t look like she had enough spark to get gasoline going, but Somers decided not to comment on that. Instead, he asked, “Why don’t you tell us about them?”

  “Well, Sister Hagar is trouble. She pretends like she isn’t, but she’s always got her nose in the air. Walks around like her feet don’t touch the ground most days. Expects me and sister here to pick up for her. You might not believe it, but that girl doesn’t know how to do a stitch of real work. Nothing.”

  Somers nodded. “Sounds like a hard person to get along with.”

  “We love each other. No, sister, don’t shake your head. We do. We’re a family. You have a family?”

  Somers nodded.

  “You like some people more than others, don’t you? You love them all, but you like some of them better. That’s how it is in families.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “Sister Hagar likes to make things hard for the rest of us. That’s what she likes. She has a good heart; that’s what Brother Jeshua always says.” She paused and wiped at her eyes again. “Always said. But that doesn’t make her easy to get along with.”

  “Long nose,” Anna said.

  Claudia nodded. “She’s always looking down her nose. That’s the best way to say it. Looking down her nose at us, and that nose is a mile long.”

  “Any trouble? Fighting? Do you think she’s dangerous?”

  “Dangerous? Maybe if she were in high school. We had a girl like her. Muriel Dobbins. Muriel was queen bee. She cut Anna’s braids off once in class, and the teacher just laughed and said it made Anna look older. That’s what Sister Hagar would be like if she could.” Claudia bit her lip, worry crossing her face. “That’s what she would have been like, I mean. If she hadn’t found the word in her heart.”

  Having met Sister Hagar, Somers was glad Sister Hagar had found the word. If she hadn’t, she might have turned out to be a prime bitch. “What about Sister Sarah?”

  “Sister Sarah, she’s all right. Quiet, you know? And real humble. She isn’t much good for anything except praying, but she’ll do whatever you ask.”

  “Why’d Anna say that they are both bitches, then?”

  “Sister Sarah has been upset. She’s . . . I don’t know. Unhappy, I suppose.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. But she’s been crying a lot.”

  “That doesn’t make her a bitch.”

  Anna ripped the bandana down, revealing still-healing scratches along one cheek. “She did this, and that makes her a bitch.”

  “Anna,” Claudia said. “You don’t—”

  “Sister Hagar stole my Bible again,” Anna said, riding over her sister’s protests. “I went up to their room because Sister Hagar is dumb as rocks. She likes to think she’s clever, but she does the same tricks over and over again. You’d think a girl with that big a head would try a new hiding place every once in a while.”

  “I bet Sister Sarah didn’t scratch your face because you were looking for a Bible.”

  Anna scowled. “I found some papers. Letters.”

  “Where?”

  “Wrapped up in a trash bag.”

  “Where?”

  “In the room.”

  “I feel like you don’t want to tell me where they were. Maybe I’ll ask those girls where they kept the letters.”

  “Inside the lining of the mattress. Is that enough for you? Anyway, I thought that’s where she’d put my Bible.”

  Somers had his doubts about that. Sister Anna had a good story about trying to find the Bible, but Somers had his doubts about that too.

  “And?”

  “And that’s when she came in and screeched and pulled my hair and just about took out my eye.” One of Anna’s hands touched her scalp. “That’s all.”

  “She must have said something.”

  A breeze lifted the scent of manure, spreading it thick in the air, and somewhere to the west geese honked. Anna planted her hands on her hips. From her face, it was clear that she knew she was knee-deep in shit, and only some of it was literal.

  “She kept saying to get out. She was crazy. She couldn’t even get the words out right, she just kept screaming at me and trying to get me with her goddamn nails.”

  “What were the letters?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sister Claudia tucked her chin again, her mousy eyes focused intently on the manure.

  “Bullshit,” Hazard said.

  “I don’t!”

  “You must have seen something. A name. An address.” Somers softened his voice. “This could be important, Sister Anna. Sister Sarah is still missing. She might be hurt. Or she might be the one who—” He stopped, letting the implication hang in the air.

  Claudia touched her sister’s wrist, and Anna grimaced. Kicking clods of manure towards the tailgate, Anna picked up her shovel and bent back to work. “They were all to the same person. And that’s all I saw. And don’t go telling anybody about it either because I only saw them on accident.”

  “Who? Whose name was on the letters?”

  “Peyton Laflamme.”

  HAZARD BARELY HEARD SOMERS as the blond man wrapped up the conversation with the sisters. Most of what the women had told them aligned with Naomi’s account, but the last part, particularly about the letters, had been revealing. Clyde, for his part, just shivered inside his t-shirt, his cheeks ruddy in the breeze.

  “You want to add anything?” Hazard said as they walked away from the truck and the shit and the women.

  Clyde shrugged.

  “Those letters,” Somers said.

  “The first question is whether or not Peyton ever got the letters. Or did Britney intercept them first.”

  “It seems like a safe guess that Britney intercepted them.”

  “Because the step-mom came all the way out here,” Hazard said, nodding. “If Peyton had gotten the letters, she probably would have contacted her step-mother earlier.”

  “We’re assuming the letters are about the death of Peyton’s mother and the inheritance.”

  “What else would they be about?”

  Somers shrugged and kicked a stone down the path. “That’s what I’d like to know. I’d also like to know why Britney took the letters and hid them.”

  “She was jealous,” Clyde said. He had tucked his arms inside the shirt. They needed to get him a jacket, Hazard realized. He shrugged off his own coat and held it out, and after a moment, Clyde accepted.

  “Everyone has told us the same things,” Somers said. “Sister Hagar was trouble. She liked to cause trouble. She thought she was better than the others.”

  “Sounds like a spoiled girl who ran away from home,” Hazard said.

  “Britney, on the other hand, was quiet, devout, and willing.”

  “She wasn’t good at nothing either,” Clyde said. The wind tugged at his ginger hair. “She was sweet but kind of simple.”

  “A girl who’s had a rough life,” Hazard said. “She finally has some security. She’s not the sharpest tool, but she’s committed to the cause. A real believer. That has its own dangers, it seems.”

  “What I don’t get,” Somers said, “is why Britney took the letters. That sounds like something Peyton would do.”

  “Jealous,” Clyde said again. Hazard’s coat had swallowed him up, but at least the boy had stopped shivering.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. She was crazy about Sister Hagar. Wanted to be like her. She followed her around everywhere.”

  “Peyton said they were close. Like sisters.”

  “Maybe. Maybe like Sister Sarah was a little sister. Real little. And Sister Hagar was letting her tag along.”

  “Britney didn’t have anything,” Somers said. “She didn’t have family. She didn’t have friends outside of Walden’s congregation. She didn’t have money or a home. And Peyton had everything: doting parents, a stable home, a semi-glamorous life.”

  “Money,” Hazard said. “So Britney was jealous. And maybe she was tired of being treated like the little sister. She knew Peyton’s life story; Peyton told us that they shared those kinds of details. So one day Britney is checking the mail, and she sees a letter to Peyton Laflamme, and she decides to take it. Why that letter?”

  “Maybe she would have taken anything with Peyton’s name on it. Or maybe she saw the return address, maybe she knew these letters were from home, and that was too hard to handle. Maybe she couldn’t stand the thought of Peyton having that kind of connection. As long as Peyton remained Sister Hagar, she belonged to Britney. But the outside world would separate them; Britney might have been slow, but she wasn’t stupid. She must have understood that if Peyton went back to her semi-glam life, there wouldn’t be a place for Britney.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes and mights.”

  “Clyde?”

  The boy cocked his head, shrugged into the jacket, and said, “Maybe.”

  Somers burst out laughing.

  Cheeks reddening, Clyde said, “I mean, what you’re saying could be true. Like I said, Britney,” the name sounded strange in his mouth, “was like Peyton’s little sister. Peyton talked down to her. Not mean, not really, but not real nice either. And if there was a boy around, Peyton didn’t have time for Britney. Not even a split second.”

  “What about you?” Hazard said. “You haven’t mentioned your relationship with the girls.”

  “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “You didn’t do anything.”

  “I swear to God.”

  “You were part of this tight-knit group for a long time. You were sleeping with Kelley Jane. What about the other women? Those sisters? The blonde, Sapphira? Britney and Peyton?”

  “I wasn’t allowed to.” He shrank inside the coat until his ginger thatch of hair barely showed.

  “What do you mean?” Somers said.

  “I wasn’t supposed to touch any of them. The sisters.”

  “Why?”

  “They belonged to him.”

  “Brother Jeshua?”