Righteous02 - Mighty and Strong (19 page)

“What’s going on?”

“Hmm? Oh, we’re gathering the Quorum. Almost out from under this debt, but the church trust lost a bundle in the stock market—what else is new? I’ve got a chance to pick up six thousand acres with water rights, up along the Escalante. I want to gather the leadership, figure out how to make it happen.”

“You sure this is a good time to expand?” Jacob asked. “We had to lose—what?—two hundred members since the trials. Doesn’t seem we need extra land.”

“We will. Men keep marrying, women keep having babies. And the Millennium will be here before you know it.”

Not that again. He was sick of end of the world talk. Besides, when the Millennium came, wouldn’t land be free for the taking? After all, the Lord would burn the wicked to a crisp, and if you listened to his father, that meant just about everyone. You wouldn’t need six thousand acres of windswept desert plateau, not when California would be practically next door, and not a soul in sight.

“Never mind all that,” Jacob said. “I’ve got a problem. Have you heard from Fernie?”

“No, what’s wrong?”

“I’m out of town on business and the Attorney General started bullying our landlord. Polygamy stuff, of course. Stupid landlord evicted them. The phone is out, and I can’t find her. I thought she might have called one of her former sister wives, or asked you for help.”

“Haven’t heard a thing, but I’m happy to come up and help you look.”

“I’m sure to track her down before you could get here but just in case, stay near the phone and keep the car gassed up. And if Fernie shows up with the kids, tell her to stay put. I’ll call back later.”

“No problem. I’ll put her name on the prayer rolls of the temple, and take it to the Lord myself. We’ll find her.”

“Good, thanks.”

“Take care, Jacob. And don’t stay away too long from Zion. You need it and it needs you.”

Jacob hung up the phone, but his hand wasn’t even off the receiver before it started to ring. He glanced around, surprised. Nobody in the parking lot but a couple of girls coming out of the gas station holding big cups of pop, and a woman pumping gas.

“Hello?”

“Who is this?” It was Krantz’s gravelly voice.

“Jacob Christianson, who were you expecting?”

“Good, I was hoping you’d still be by the phone. You said you’re in Carbon County? How far is that from Manti, an hour?”

“About that, but I’m not going back to the compound, just going to take Route 6 over Soldier’s Summit, then down into Utah County and get on the freeway.”

“You’ve got to go back, and the sooner the better. Before it looks suspicious you’ve been gone too long.”

Jacob’s grip tightened on the phone. “You’re not listening to me, Krantz. I’m not going back, not to Manti, and not to the compound. My only worry right now is to find my wife and kids.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’ve found her.”

“Oh, thank goodness. Where is she?”

“I told you we were on it. Agent Fayer made some calls, figured out someone with your wife’s description, with three children in tow, booked a ticket with a bus service called Latter-day Express.”

“Never heard of it. Where does it go?”

“It’s a tour bus. Round trips from Salt Lake and Provo to Mormon history sites in Cove Fort, the Logan temple, and, in this case, Manti.”

“No. Please tell me you’re not serious.”

“I’m afraid so. It was the early bus, for people who wanted to go to the temple before the pageant. Arrived in Manti about an hour ago. We called local law enforcement, but it seems Fernie and the kids dropped out of the group as soon as the bus arrived in town. Nobody has seen her.”

Jacob groaned. “Oh, why would she do that? Why?”

“Kicked out of her house, you gone. Her stuff is still on the curb and the landlord is threatening to yard sale it if she doesn’t show up. Don’t be hard on her, she must have been desperate.”

“But why Manti?”

“Zarahemla. She went looking for you.”

Chapter Twenty:

Miriam’s trained eye noticed the shallow grave the instant she stumbled into the clearing. Oddly colored from damp sand dug up and not yet fully dried. Rocks lying at angles instead of settled into the sediment. Bits of broken vegetable matter where someone had hacked through the root of a sage brush.

She looked for footprints in and out of the gulch. There were several, and from more than one pair of shoes. A pair of boots, maybe size ten or ten and a half. And sneakers. Who might be wearing sneakers? Someone who left the compound often or someone who had recently arrived.

Miriam thought she’d left every scrap of her former life the moment she stepped into Timothy’s truck and drove with him to Zarahemla. She didn’t even think of herself as Haley Kite anymore; that person was like a good friend, or a sister—close, but someone else. But you couldn’t unlearn trained behavior. Blindfold her, put a gun in her hand and she could tell a Glock 17 from a Beretta M9. Walk by a suspicious plot of disturbed soil and she’d pick out the contours of an unmarked grave.

A forensic team would find a body a few inches below the surface. How long had it been there, a day, two days?

Probably nothing, just forget about it.

People got old, they died. They needed to be buried somewhere. Maybe it was Brother Payton, who had to be pushing ninety, or Sister Grace Ellen, who suffered from a heart condition.

Right, and one of them died of natural causes and then was dumped in a hasty grave beyond the fringes of camp, with no ritual dressing in temple gowns, no ceremony, and no marker.

Okay, then, an animal. Someone’s diseased sheep, unfit for consumption, but buried so as not to attract coyotes. That made more sense.

Miriam took stock of her surroundings. She’d followed a dry irrigation ditch, crawled through a culvert that ducked under the security fence, then passed the reservoir, into the hot, dusty canyons that overlooked the compound.

She’d needed to get away. Never mind dinner, she’d skip it if necessary. She needed a quiet place to pray.
Heavenly Father, what should I do about Jacob Christianson?

Just forget him? Tell Brother Timothy and Brother Clarence what she’d learned? It would mean outing herself. She could plead, make promises, but there was a chance they’d discover the truth, then what? It would be over. They’d denounce her, rebuke her, excommunicate her.

In retrospect, she should have expected Satan to tempt her faith. Everything had gone so smoothly. Too smoothly. So Satan had sent Brother Jacob.

Jacob was smug, self-righteous, skeptical. What did her husband see in him? He brought nothing, added nothing. A man like that could only weaken Zion. They needed to be pulling in one direction, single-minded, to do what needed to be done before the great and terrible day of the coming of the Lord. They did not need Jacob Christianson sowing seeds of doubt. That’s how the elect fell away. The scriptures were clear.

The thing was, Jacob didn’t hide his doubts. And he’d come right out and admitted he worked for the FBI.

You hate him because you’re afraid of him.

She’d heard that niggling voice almost as soon as he’d walked away from the farmers market, daring her to meet him. As soon, that is, as she realized how angry he made her. How dare he?

Miriam thought she’d moved past secrets and subterfuge as soon as she shed the name of Haley Kite and became Sister Miriam. As soon, that is, as she’d first spoken soul-to-soul with Brother Timothy, as he’d told her she would be his wife, his eternal companion. And she’d prayed that night and for the first time she knew—not believed—
knew,
that he was the true prophet of God. All her life to this point had been to lead her to the truth by the strangest route imaginable.

She would forget everything, actually become the person she’d pretended to be. It was the most natural thing in the world, and left her absolutely confident and at peace.

Until Jacob Christianson showed up and sank his skeptical claws into her. He dug, scratched, gouged, intent on finding Agent Haley Kite down there and exposing her.

Miriam had almost pushed Jacob from her mind by the time she found the quiet gulch out of view of the compound. It was a flat, sandy stretch where the water pooled in the spring before running down the hillside to join the wash. Dry now.

Perfect for praying. Or stashing a body.

Let it be a sheep. Please, let it be a dead animal.

She squatted, scooped at the disturbed earth. The sandy soil came away easily. Still damp. This was ground that had been buried deeper until recently. Her hand brushed something.

She grabbed it, tugged, pulled an edge of blue fabric from the ground. It was attached to something bigger, more deeply buried.

Miriam drew her hand back. She stared at the fabric, heart pounding. A woman’s dress. There would be a body attached to that dress. She could feel the weight of it as she tugged.

An accident. That was the answer. A woman or girl had died in a fall, and rather than call the police and deal with hostile authorities, her family decided to bury her quietly. Later, they would come with a marker.

Yes, but when? And why hadn’t she heard about any accidents? Not to mention this was a terrible spot for a grave. A sandy wash. First flood and the body would break free like a rotting tree limb. Bones would spread down the hillside. It was a hasty, panicked job. Miriam could imagine what had happened. It had been dark last night, a sliver of moon. A man, no, two men, half carrying, half dragging a body. The killer and his associate. There was a flat spot there, where they’d set her down. Shovels, piling sand, the men working quickly to finish before dawn.
Hurry, shove it in the hole, bury it quick. We’ll figure out what to do later.

She wasn’t squeamish about the body; she’d seen worse, but if she dug it up, she’d only succeed in trashing the crime scene and would struggle to interpret the cause of death. She needed help. Staring at the edge of the blue dress, she could only think of one person. Not her husband, the prophet, not his counselor, not her sister wives. Only the smug, skeptical doctor. Jacob Christianson.

What if she escaped the compound and called the police? Or better, called Krantz and Fayer. Yeah, they’d be interested. No way to go back from that. If she were wrong, and there were an innocent explanation, she’d mess everything up. Jacob, on the other hand, was a doctor, he’d studied the human body, worked on cadavers, seen people die. He could tell her what had killed this woman, maybe even who. An accident, or murder?

Unless Jacob had left, as he’d threatened. But she believed he hadn’t. Timothy claimed Jacob’s wife and children would be joining them in Zarahemla. Timothy was the prophet. Jacob didn’t know the will of the Lord. He might think he was on his way back to Salt Lake, but if the Lord wanted him in Zarahemla, he wouldn’t get far.

#

It took several hours for Jacob to return to the compound. First, the prescriptions. He had a pad in the car and it would have been easy to scratch out something to fool Brother Timothy and fill it at the first pharmacy.

Ten minutes, maybe fifteen to get the drugs, then he’d zip through Manti, get to Zarahemla by two o’clock. Find his family, get the hell away.

But the fact was, Sister Grace Ellen really did need a diuretic to relieve the symptoms of her congestive heart failure. Without medication, she would continue to suffer in her sleep, waking in pain and terror again and again throughout the night.

The quickest way to get the diuretics was the hospital. And so he cut down Highway 89 to Sanpete County. He thought he’d get in and out, but he ran into Doctor Hess outside the pharmacy.

Hess drew up short, his eyes opening with alarm. “I thought I told you to stay away.”

“Excuse me?” Jacob said, confused. He’d slipped on a lab coat from his locker and now pushed the boxes and bottles of pills into his pockets. “I told
you
I was going to be gone for awhile.”

“You didn’t get the message from your wife?”

“What message?”

“You’ve been suspended without pay, pending the investigation.”

He was so blindsided he couldn’t think of a response.

Hess licked his lips. “You did talk to your wife, didn’t you?”

“No, I’ve been out of town. Stopped by here to—wait. What investigation? This isn’t that stupid incident with the polygamist girl is it? I can’t believe anyone—”

“No, the call from the Attorney General. Look, you need to get out of here, or you’re going to be in bigger trouble.”

“I’m not in any trouble, this is insane. I’ve got to go, but we need to sit down and talk this out. Whatever you heard, it’s wrong.”

“Fine, give it a couple weeks, three or four, no rush.” Dr. Hess edged backwards as he spoke, as if whatever Jacob had was contagious. “Soon as this settles down, we can talk, figure out what went wrong and maybe get you reinstated. For now, you’ve got to get out of here. Seriously, I’ll have to call security.”

And with that, he turned and left, not waiting to see if Jacob was actually planning to leave or not.

Jacob had pieced things together by the time he returned to his car. The Attorney General had leaned on Hess, who’d suspended Jacob without pay. Fernie would have been frantic to realize the pay check wasn’t coming, with rent due and money tight. And then, when Mr. Hoover took her stuff to the curb, fear turned to panic. No wonder she came looking for him.

Oh, Fernie. I’m so sorry I left you alone.

Chapter Twenty-one:

“Please don’t be angry. Please.” Fernie put a hand to his cheek. Lamplight reflected off her face.

“I’m not angry. I’m worried, that’s different.”

Daniel snored on a mat in the corner, and Leah muttered in her sleep from another corner. The baby slept in a wooden cradle. The room couldn’t have been more than twelve by twelve. It was beyond cozy.