Husband and Wives Read online

  ‘Oh, sweet Lord Jesus!’ the woman said. ‘Mary’s dead?’ The woman began to shake, and I grabbed her by the elbow to steady her. She thrust Little Mark into my arms. ‘No, oh, Lord, no.’

  ‘Ma’am, I’m so sorry,’ I said, trying to hold her up while holding the baby. ‘Lynnie!’ I called out. She came to me. ‘Take Mark,’ I said, which she did. I moved the woman carefully to my car so she could sit down.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ I said, once I’d gotten her settled. ‘But I’ve got to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘That it’s Mary? That she’s dead?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I’m real sorry.’

  She shook her head and began to sob. I let her go for a couple of minutes, waving off the security chief as he walked towards my car. Finally I said, ‘Lynnie said she tried to call her daddy but she’s only been able to leave messages—’

  She rolled down the window and called out, ‘Rene, call Jerry! On his cell!’ She turned to me. ‘The children aren’t supposed to call him on his cell,’ she said, pulling a small pack of tissues out of her purse and blowing her nose.

  ‘Could you tell me the name of the lady of that house? And her husband’s name as well?’ I asked.

  ‘Mary Hudson, and her husband is Jerry Hudson. We all just moved here from the west coast. Well, two years ago, but still . . .’

  I smiled. ‘I got the felling y’all are family,’ I said.

  She nodded, tears pooling in her eyes.

  ‘And you are?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Carol Anne.’

  ‘Carol Anne . . .?’

  ‘Carol Anne Hudson.’

  I wrote the name down. ‘Your husband and Mary’s husband are brothers?’

  ‘My husband will explain it to you when he gets home,’ she said. ‘I need to be with the children.’ She got out of my Jeep and walked over to Mary Hudson’s children, pulling as many as possible to her side.

  At that point, I got out of the Jeep myself and found Maynard Ritchie, the head of security for The Branches. He was maybe a couple inches shy of my five feet ten, and maybe a few pounds heavier. His hair was that weird color red turns when it wants to go gray, kinda pink. He had on a brown uniform with a jacket that had real live epaulets, I swear to God. When he introduced himself, he said he preferred to be called ‘Captain,’ which I was disinclined to do.

  I filled him in on the tragedy at 1803 Magnolia Way, and asked him what he knew about Mr and Mrs Jerry Hudson.

  ‘Not much,’ he said. Then he waved his arms, encompassing the cul-de-sac. ‘See these three houses?’ I nodded. ‘Mr Hudson bought all three. Well, I guess you can’t say bought,’ Maynard Ritchie said. ‘Stole would be a better word.’

  ‘Pardon?’ I asked, and if I could raise just one eyebrow like my wife, I woulda done it for sure.

  ‘The builder who bought this little section here, and that one over there,’ he said, pointing to the cul-de-sac one over, ‘went belly-up last year after he built all six houses. Total bankruptcy. Mr Hudson got these three houses, and those over there were bought by individual buyers.’ He snorted. ‘Until that happened, this was a real nice place.’

  ‘You saying you had some trouble with the Hudsons?’ I asked.

  He scratched his head. ‘No, not really. Although they got some teenaged boys, and usually that means trouble, but these kids are pretty quiet. Some kind of weird church thing, I think. Now on the other side over there,’ he said, pointing to the other cul-de-sac and, leaning in, he half-whispered, ‘Mexicans.’

  I pulled back from him. ‘You don’t say?’ I said.

  ‘Hell, man, I do say!’

  ‘Trouble?’ I asked.

  ‘Any day now,’ he answered.

  The ME, the ambulance, my wife, and the victim’s husband all arrived at the same time, or pretty close to it. The husband was the first one to get out of his car, and everybody, and I mean everybody – kids and neighbor ladies – all ran up to him and it was the group hug to end all group hugs. He was a tall, thin man with light brown hair turning gray. He wore polyester slacks and a polyester short-sleeved shirt, no tie. His shoes were well-worn loafers. The ducklings – the four boys who’d been following Carol Anne – were all yelling ‘Daddy’ at the top of their lungs. This confused me, but that’s not an uncommon occurrence for me, so I let it slide.

  ‘Mr Hudson?’ I said, breaking up the huddle.

  ‘Sheriff! My wife?’ he said, face blanched white, hair disheveled, eyes red.

  ‘Inside, sir,’ I said, and led him and the ME into the house.

  Once in the kitchen I held up my hand to stop the ME and the ambulance guys, while the husband knelt next to his wife. ‘Try not to touch anything, sir,’ I said.

  He nodded his head, and put his hands behind his back, like a little kid. Finally he looked up at me, tears streaming down his face. ‘Who did this?’ he asked, his voice choked.

  ‘We’re not sure yet, sir,’ I said. ‘Can we go in the living room while I ask you some questions?’

  He nodded and stood up, leading me into the sparkling living room. There was a cross over the mantel and nicely framed prints of Norman Rockwell paintings in a grouping over the couch. The outside wall of the room held double windows with professional portraits of all eight children, four on one side of the windows, four on the other. The room was furnished in old-fashioned ‘early American’ furniture covered in the kinds of prints I haven’t seen since my mama passed away and I gave her furniture to Good Will. Which was a good thirty years ago.

  Jerry Hudson took the large armchair with the ottoman (obviously his) while I sat on the couch. ‘Sir, I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, but it’s important that I get as much information as possible as soon as possible if we’re going to find whoever is responsible for this,’ I told him.

  He nodded, leaning his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together as if in prayer. ‘Whatever you need, Sheriff,’ he said.

  ‘Do you or your wife have any enemies?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Not at all. Mary was well loved by everyone who knew her. And I – well, as far as I know I don’t. There’s a guy at work who doesn’t like me, but that’s because I got a project he wanted. I doubt he’d kill my wife for revenge.’

  ‘Sir, you just never know,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you give me his name and number?’

  He jumped up from his chair, his hands in his hair as he moved around. ‘This is ridiculous! No one would kill Mary! Everybody loved her! This could not have happened!’

  ‘Mr Hudson, I need you to sit down. This did happen, and sir, your children witnessed the carnage.’

  Hudson fell back into his chair, a sob escaping him. ‘Oh my God! My poor Lynnie.’

  ‘Your neighbor said y’all moved here from the west coast a while back. Do you think some trouble there may have followed you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Everything was fine there. I just got this job with Telecom International, offering twice as much as I was making in Oregon, so we decided to move.’ Again, he jumped up. ‘Oh my God, if I hadn’t taken this job, Mary would be alive right now!’

  I got him settled back down in his chair and decided to ask some easier questions. ‘Who all lives in this house?’

  ‘My wife . . . Mary did, with eight of my children.’

  ‘Sir?’

  He looked up, his formerly white face taking on color fast. ‘Ah, Sheriff, I might as well tell you upfront, my family is breaking the law here, or at least I am. We’re a plural family.’

  I nodded my head. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘What’s a plural family?’

  Jerry Hudson halfway smiled at me. ‘The two ladies out front are also my wives. All the children out front are mine.’

  I nodded my head. Who’d a thought this guy was a glutton for punishment?

  Jean McDonnell – Monday

  There is a list used by both the county sheriff’s department and the Longbranch police department of psychiatrists
on call. There are two names on it. Mine has been on top since Dr Leonard got fed up and refused to take any more cases about six months ago. I’ve been called by the police department four times in that six months. I’ve never been called by the sheriff’s department. Trying to be honest with my feelings on this subject, I do believe it has more to do with the fact that Milt doesn’t want to overwork me than the fact that he feels I’m incompetent. Any feelings of incompetence, I’m sure, belong to me alone. I have told my husband repeatedly that my caseload at the hospital is slim and I’d welcome a call from him if the occasion ever arose. In six months it has not.

  So color me surprised when I received a call Monday afternoon from Holly, the new dispatcher at the sheriff’s department, asking me to meet Milt at a house in Bishop for a consult. As I had no one in my office and my time was being consumed by hospital busy-work, I dropped everything and headed to my car.

  Due to early childhood polio, I don’t move at a rapid pace on my crutches, but once I’m in my car I can, excuse the expression, haul ass. And since I got my name on that list, the police department gave me one of those light/siren things that adhere to the top of the car. I turned it on and put the pedal to the metal.

  I made the twenty-minute drive to Bishop in ten. It’s the little victories that keep us sane. I got to the cul-de-sac the same time as the ME and the ambulance, and one other car. The cul-de-sac itself looked like a scene from Dante’s Inferno, the level of hell he didn’t write, about wailing children – what seemed like thousands of them – all blond-headed, all wearing almost the same thing. The boys in jeans and printed shirts, the girls in long, shapeless printed dresses, hair streaming long down their backs. Or it could have been the set of a movie about cults in the nineteenth century.

  The man who drove in the same time as me jumped out of his car first and ran into the gang of children and babies, which I finally saw included two adult women. As I got out of my car and adjusted my crutches, I saw my husband neatly divide the man from the herd and lead him into the house. The wailing resumed with the two women ineffectually trying to calm the children. All I knew at this point was what Holly had told me: a woman, a mother of several children, had been murdered and one child – presumably a baby – was still in the house. But since two of the women were holding babies, with a third older baby attached to one’s leg, and Milt had just led what I assumed to be the father into the house, I could only deduce that the baby was now safely in the arms of one of the women.

  My cell phone rang and I saw that it was Milt. I said, ‘Yes, Sheriff?’

  ‘Hey, babe, glad you could make it.’

  ‘What do you need me to do?’ I asked.

  ‘You know what a plural family is?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes, a polygamist – usually, almost always male – with multiple wives.’

  ‘Yep. Well, that’s what we got here,’ he said. ‘The two women out there on the street are the two surviving wives, and all the children are this man’s kids. Can you take them into one of the other houses and get what you can out of ’em?’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, although I’d rather have a go at the husband. I knew very little about plural families, but had my own feelings on the subject. Subservient women, domineering men, and children raised to continue the tradition, if one wanted to call such behavior a ‘tradition.’

  I walked up to the group, working my way up to the two women holding babies. ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ I said. ‘I’m Dr McDonnell, a consultant with the sheriff’s department. The sheriff has asked me to talk to the two of you. Would it be possible for all of us, including the children, to move into one of the other houses?’

  ‘Of course,’ the older of the two women said. She held out the hand that wasn’t holding a baby. ‘I’m Carol Anne Hudson, and this,’ she said, indicating the younger woman, ‘is Rene Hudson. These,’ she said, spreading her arm to indicate all the children, ‘are our children.’

  At that declaration, the oldest of the girls ran up to her and latched on, hugging her tight. Carol Anne pulled the girl to her. ‘It’s all right, Lynnie. It’s all right.’ She turned to the younger wife. ‘Rene, why don’t we take everybody into my house?’

  Rene nodded. Of the two, Carol Anne stood out. She was tall and slender, her strawberry-blonde hair shining in the sunlight of an autumn day. Her face, devoid of make-up, was lovely and so pale you could actually see blue veins beneath the skin of her throat. Her eyes were a piercing blue and her mouth wide with generous lips. And even in the shapeless housedress she was wearing, you could almost see a perfect body beneath.

  Rene, on the other hand, appeared to be lacking in all categories while standing beside her fellow wife. She had mousy brown hair and was short and somewhat pudgy. Nothing stood out about Rene. She was just there. Theirs would be an interesting dichotomy.

  The house Carol Anne led us to – the one she declared to be hers – was on the right as you entered the cul-de-sac. It was a large, two-story house, all gray-blue with white trim and shutters and a bright red front door. The driveway that led to a detached garage was littered with bikes, skateboards, scooters, and other boy-stuff, including a basketball hoop attached to the front of the garage.

  The red door led us into a home as outstanding as Carol Anne. The foyer was tiled in white ceramic, the walls painted a dark blue, and the stair rails and doorframes were a brilliant white. A great deal of the dark blue wall space was taken up with exquisite black and white close-up photos of the four boys. On the right of the foyer was a large dining room with a table that sat ten. The table was old and trestle style, while each ladder-back chair was individually painted in bright primary colors to depict different scenes. The walls were painted a bright red and covered in colorful tropical-looking paintings. On the left of the foyer was the living room. It housed the largest flat-screen TV I’ve ever seen, and the furniture consisted of several old and slightly decrepit recliners and futons, all covered with bright-colored throws. The walls, painted a bright yellow, were filled with photos and paintings and objets d’art.

  ‘Ben,’ Carol Anne said to one of the boys, ‘please take everyone upstairs, OK?’

  Three of the older girls grabbed the babies and trudged up the stairs behind the others.

  ‘You have a lovely home, Mrs Hudson,’ I said as I took a seat on a futon.

  ‘Please, call me Carol Anne.’ She grinned. ‘There are too many Mrs Hudsons.’ Her face fell and tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Oh, dear Lord, I don’t believe I said that.’

  Rene came over and sat next to Carol Anne on the other futon. The women hugged, holding on to each other for what seemed an inordinate length of time.

  Finally they broke apart and Carol Anne said, ‘What can we tell you, Dr McDonnell?’

  I had an overwhelming urge to tell her to call me Jean, but didn’t give in to it. I needed to control the situation as much as I could, and keeping myself in the role of authority figure would help me do that. ‘To start with, I don’t know a lot about plural families. Could you tell me the origin of yours?’

  ‘The origin? Well, it goes back to the origins of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. Monogamy is new to the Church. Rene and I were both raised in plural families. My mother was my father’s second wife out of three, and Rene, your mom . . .?’

  ‘She was Daddy’s fourth, and last,’ she said with pride, ‘wife. But this was after his first wife had died, and her children, my brothers and sisters, were all adults by then.’

  ‘And your husband and Mary?’ I asked.

  ‘Jerry’s mom was a second wife, but it didn’t work out and there was a divorce. She raised Jerry all by herself, but in a plural community, so he saw how well it could work,’ Carol Anne said. ‘Mary was from a single family with several siblings. She and Jerry met in high school and were married right after graduation. They both went on to college. Mary got her teaching degree, and Jerry got his masters in electrical engineering.’

  ‘And Mary had three of her babies
while she was still in college!’ Rene said proudly, then welled up, realizing she was talking about her deceased friend, or whatever you’d call that relationship.

  ‘At what point did you join their family, Carol Anne?’ I asked.

  ‘When I was seventeen. Right after I graduated high school. I knew them both quite well from church, and Jerry had been quite attentive to me, and he and Mary came together to ask my parents, since I was technically underage, but they agreed. It was right after Jerry and Mary both graduated from college. Mary worked for several years as a teacher while Jerry was getting his masters, and I was the homemaker, taking care of Mary’s three and then having three of my own pretty quickly,’ she said with a smile. ‘It was a very good time. We all lived in one house, and then when Jerry got his masters we were going to continue with the two incomes, but then Mary got pregnant with Nathaniel . . .’

  Rene laughed. ‘And then you got pregnant with Oscar . . .’

  Carol Anne laughed back. ‘My fourth son. And then Mary got pregnant with Candice, and then Nell and then Margaret, so it just seemed better for both Mary and me to stay at home with our children. There were too many children for just one house, so Jerry built Mary a really nice house on the same property as the original house back in Oregon, and then the eight of them – Mary and her seven children, moved into that house, and my four boys and I stayed in the older house. Which, believe me, was plenty big enough!’

  ‘I take it Little Mark wasn’t born until you moved here?’

  ‘Right. He’s only fourteen months,’ Carol Anne said.

  ‘Didn’t you resent Mary getting the new house?’ I asked.

  For a second Carol Anne looked genuinely confused. Then she smiled. ‘Oh! I guess some people would,’ she said, ‘but that’s not how we work.’ She smiled at me and, to my amazement, I believed her. Was it just because of the beautiful smile, the lilting voice? Was I getting a girl-crush on beautiful Carol Anne?

  Rene spoke up. ‘Jerry told both of us – Carol Anne and me – that Mary was his soulmate. She would always come first, but that they both had love enough in their hearts for more.’