Before He Harms

Thompson looked at them, confused. It took him a moment to understand what was happening and then he gave them an apologetic look. “Damn. I’m sorry. If you were here asking about the IDs and a dead woman, I figured you probably already knew. The IDs I make are for women that manage to escape that crazy-farm on the other side of Fellsburg.”

“What crazy-farm?” Mackenzie asked.

This question made Thompson look genuinely worried for the first time since they had knocked on his door. He made a slight grimace and shook his head softly. “I don’t feel right talking about it. Too much power up there, you know?”

“No, we don’t know.” Though she did remember McGrath stating that there was some sort of religious community in the area, which was one of the reasons the local agents were jumping at the case.

“Well, Mr. Thompson, I hate to play it this way,” Ellington said, “but you already fessed up to making fake IDs. If we wanted, we could arrest you for that and make sure you spend at least six months in a federal prison. Depending on who you sold them to, it could be worse than that. However, if you can let us know about the women these IDs are for and it helps us with this case, then we can sort of wave that away. We’d insist that you stop creating fake documents at a government facility like the DMV, but that would be it.”

Thompson looked a little embarrassed that he had even fallen into such a trap. The pained look on his face dissolved into a defeated grin. “Any way you can keep my name out of it?”

“Unless there are extenuating circumstances, I don’t see why not,” Mackenzie said. “Are you afraid someone may seek some kind of revenge?”

“With these people, I just don’t know.” When he saw that the agents still had no clear idea of what he was talking about, he sighed again and went on. “This woman comes in and buys the IDs. She gets them for women that are trying to escape the Community. They use them to get back on their feet—just some small thing they can possess that helps them start a new life. A normal life.”

“What’s the Community?” Ellington asked.

“A religious commune about fifteen miles on the other side of Fellsburg—about forty minutes away from here. A lot of people know about it, but no one really talks about it. When they do, it’s either in a joking way or in a spooky campfire sort of way.”

“Any idea why women that join this Community would need to escape it?”

Thompson shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. And that’s the truth. Honestly, I don’t know much more about the place than anyone else you’d pull off the street. I just make and sell those IDs.”

“You know nothing about what they practice?”

“Rumor has it that it’s some sort of polygamist cult. Some of the men are supposed to have like three or four wives. They’re supposed to very religious—very Old Testament wrath-type stuff.”

“And what about this woman that buys the IDs from you? What do you know about her?”

“Not too much. When she came in and asked if I wanted the side gig, one of the things she said was that I couldn’t ask questions. I thought it was bullshit but then she slid me five hundred bucks. And look…I’m damn near sixty and still in debt. I can’t pass up that kind of money.”

“You don’t even know her name?” Ellington asked.

“No. Sorry.”

“Can you describe her?”

“She’s on the younger side. Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty if I had to guess. Attractive. Brown hair, wears reading glasses.”

“Anything else you can think of?” Mackenzie asked. “Anything at all.”

“I caught a glimpse of her car one time. She’d only been in three times. The second time, I hurried out to the front lobby a few seconds behind her. I watched her leave through the front glass. She hurried across the parking lot and got in her car. An old red one, a sedan, I think.”

“Does she schedule her meetings with you?” Ellington asked.

“Nope.”

They continued talking, but Mackenzie only heard parts of it. She was still hung up on something Thompson had said. An old red one, a sedan, I think.

There had been an older-model red car in Amy Campbell’s driveway. A Pontiac. Typically, Mackenzie would call it nothing more than a coincidence. But Amy had been acting strange—scared and suspicious. It was certainly worth paying her another visit.

“Mr. Thompson, thank you very much for your time,” Mackenzie said. “We’ll let the IDs slide, but you have to stop making them.”

“You said a girl is dead, right? And she had one of my IDs?”

“It seems that way.”

“Then I’m done. There’s no amount of money worth getting involved in something like that.”

Mackenzie and Ellington made their way to his door. Ellington gave Thompson one of his business cards with instructions to contact them if he saw that woman again or if she tried to get in touch with him somehow. They left him looking slightly upset, perhaps mulling over the fact that the only item on the dead woman had been one of the fake IDs he’d made.

“So what did you realize?” Ellington said as they hurried back to their car. “You ended the conversation quickly and had that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“The one you have on your face right now—like a kid that has just spotted one more present hiding away under the Christmas tree.”

“His description of the car. An older red sedan. There was one parked in the driveway of one of the houses I visited. Amy Campbell…and she was nervous. Very suspicious and didn’t even hint at inviting me in.”

“Looks like we might have our first lead.”

“Maybe,” Mackenzie said.

It felt right, but given the nature of the case and the way Amy had been behaving, she thought they might need to take a few extra precautions to make sure it wasn’t just a coincidence. She hated to waste time in such a way, but in the back of her head she also reminded herself that there was a chance the Community could be involved.

Though she had never experienced it herself, she had read case studies and reports of other cases where the introduction of a religious group into the case made the entire thing a ticking time bomb. And if she could avoid that, Mackenzie was more than willing to take some extra time-consuming steps.

CHAPTER NINE

They headed back to the Fellsburg police station, where the small bullpen area was alive with officers swapping shifts. It was nearing eight o’clock on a Saturday night, a busy time for any police department, no matter where they were located. Burke was nowhere to be found, so they headed to their workspace near the back of the building. It was tempting to simply find a motel and call it a night, but they both knew they’d have faster access to records and other information while at the station.

The first thing they did was look on the police database for any information on Amy Campbell. Her record was stellar, with not even a single parking ticket. Seeing that there was clearly not going to be any help there, Ellington placed a call to the resource offices in DC, putting in a request for a background check on Amy Campbell of Fellsburg, Utah.

That done, they turned their attention to the mysterious religious commune known as the Community. It wasn’t hard to find information on it, as a simple Google search turned up plenty of hits. The only problem was that the multiple hits were all redundant. All they could tell for sure was there was a religious community tucked away in the forests between Fellsburg and the smaller town of Hoyt.

It was believed that there were anywhere between 1,200 and 1,500 people living in the community. They occupied a small tract of land in the woods that consisted of small shack-like dwellings and little foot-path avenues that connected all of the homes, the church, and the other buildings.

“Check this out,” Ellington said, tapping at his laptop.

He had gone into the police database and found two photos. One was an aerial view, taken from a low-flying plane. It showed the entire ground of the community. It reminded Mackenzie of what she had seen of Amish or Mennonite communities. There were a few cornfields on the far right side of the grounds, and a pasture of what she thought were goats (it was hard to tell from the distance) on the other side.

The second picture was black and white, and rather blurry. It had clearly been taken by someone in hiding, having snuck up on the grounds through the forest. The pictures showed two buildings Mackenzie assumed to be homes, and four people: two children and two women. The women were dressed quite plainly in basic dresses, their hair done up in ponytails.

Mackenzie went back to digging up more information on the place, but there wasn’t much more to be found. The Community had existed since the late 1970s and had laid low, never showing up in the news outside of a few local headlines. Aside from some likely overzealous religious beliefs, they seemed to be a standard run-of-the mill isolated religious people. The fact that they practiced polygamy made it a little darker, but Mackenzie knew better than to assume it automatically opened them up to closer scrutiny. Agents far more skilled and experienced than her had fallen into that nasty trap.

As she looked for more information on the Community, her cell phone buzzed on the table beside her. She recognized the DC area code, but not the number. “This is Agent White,” she answered.

“Agent White, this is Assistant Chief Manning at the Marshals office. We had that photo scanned and looked over. There was an angle from her left side that gave us a pretty good shot. We ran it through the WITSEC database but there was nothing. There’s a ninety-nine percent chance your woman wasn’t in witness protection.”