The Widow's Son

by Thomas Shawver

  “Anything else we should know about?” Josie asked.

  She looked at us strangely. “Only that there will be a full moon tonight. You’d best not linger too long because the gate closes at dusk.”

  With that, she nodded a brisk farewell and continued her futile search for candy wrappers.

  A dusty mile and a half later I drove up a steep incline to park in a small visitors’ lot surrounded by oak and thorny locust trees. We got out of the Jeep and walked along a dark, winding trail flanked by overgrown thickets until arriving at a triangular-shaped grove. A plaque confirmed it to be the top of Tower Hill, where in 1832 Joseph Smith urged his followers to build a temple. A dozen flat stones of varying bulk lay scattered as if dropped haphazardly by a giant. At the far end of the spot was a bluff above the verdant Grand River Valley.

  With the last rays of the sun christening the clouds in pink and gold, I followed Josie to the overlook’s edge. To say that either one of us was religious is like saying Porky Pig is articulate, but I can’t deny being touched at that moment by something spiritual, something that felt immensely greater than either of us.

  Even if the site didn’t seem as plausible as somewhere along the Euphrates, I couldn’t help but feel the presence of the father and mother of us all; those ancient stand-ins for all our sins and hopes who were cast from Eden into a dreary world of sorrow, pain, lust, hunger, and constant striving, only to have their miserable existence culminate in death.

  The place certainly wasn’t the supposed paradise from which they’d been driven, but it wasn’t exactly Death Valley. On the edge of the mowed grass were thistles, thorn trees, dead and broken branches. Sweat bees swarmed around us. I pulled two ticks from Josie’s neck and swatted at chiggers gnawing my ankles. Then I saw another path, this one leading down the bluff a hundred yards or so to a flat boulder, much larger than the stones behind us. Beyond it was a heavily rutted dirt service road, and a shallow meadow and the beginning of more forest. To the north lay a broad swath of cultivated bottomland.

  We started down the trail in the increasing darkness, tripping over loose rocks and pushing aside brambles and low-hanging branches until we came to the oblong boulder that must have been what the Mormon girl called Preacher Rock. The thing looked as if it had broken off from a meteor. It was gray-black, fifteen feet long, ten feet wide at its center, and nearly three feet thick. Flat as an aircraft carrier, it lay perfectly balanced upon another slightly less massive white stone.

  The velvet night had descended upon us, cloaking us in its cold arms, making our surroundings seem haunted and desolate.

  Josie ran her hands along the side of the stone. She looked over her shoulder at me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say this really was once an altar.”

  “For prayer or sacrifice?”

  With a shrug, Josie pulled out the pamphlet, turned on her penlight, and read:

  “ ‘Smith’s surveyors discovered a large stone. When Joseph examined it he said it was the remains of an altar built by Father Adam and upon which he had offered sacrifices. When the angel of the Lord asked Adam why he offered sacrifice, Adam replied that the Lord had commanded him to do it and that blood of bulls and goats and lambs should be spilt upon the altar to symbolize the great and last sacrifice which should be offered up for the sins of the world…’ ”

  She looked up. “Sure sounds like—”

  But before she could finish, I flung her to the ground and we scrambled on our bellies to hide behind a pair of thornbushes.

  Chapter 27

  The approaching lights reached the top of the dirt road in front of us before sweeping on.

  “That’s got to be them,” I said, jumping to my feet. But by then Josie had already started running after the zigzagging red taillights.

  I soon caught up with her, grabbing her elbow to keep us out of sight of the rearview mirrors. Periodic “No Trespassing” postings indicated we had entered an area beyond the official Adam-ondi-Ahman public access road. The potholes kept the SUV’s pace slow enough for us to maintain surveillance for a couple of miles, but when the vehicle headed up a steep hill we lost contact. Gasping for breath at the top, we searched ahead in vain for the lights.

  “We’re close,” Josie said. “This road is too much of a mess to connect to the outside. It must end soon.”

  But she was wrong, because after jogging another half mile we came to an open gate beyond which was nothing to indicate it was LDS territory anymore. We kept moving until we got on an asphalt lane that led us into the sad little town of Garmason.

  The faded welcome sign proclaimed it to have a population of forty-five, but that seemed an overstatement for a place where tarpaper sheds and mostly abandoned houses lined the unlit, disintegrating streets. City Hall was a tiny cinder block building that sat across from Duly’s Garage, a boarded-up gas station that likely hadn’t serviced a car since the Vietnam War. A Lions Club banner hung lopsidedly on one hinge, blocking half the Future Farmers of America emblem beneath it.

  At the edge of the village someone had converted a shipping container into a home. A mangy dog sprawled in front of it. Chained to a stake, the pitiful thing stared at us balefully, too worn-out or distrustful of humans to even bother barking. The village was almost completely dark except for two or three dwellings where the flashing glare of television sets illuminated the otherwise darkened rooms. The only structure that showed any signs of care was the First Baptist Church.

  “There,” Josie said, pointing to the beams of a vehicle slowly winding up tight curves on a forested hill in the distance. We kept moving, getting on a gravel road that rose out of town. Surrounded by the foliage, we could no longer see the SUV, but it didn’t matter because twenty minutes later our instincts told us we had arrived.

  The approach to the house was little more than a rock-strewn series of muddy ruts that branched off the road and wended toward a stand of tall cottonwoods. Behind the trees a yellow gleam flickered between the leaves like a beacon to our destination. We walked ahead with caution, following tire tread marks that twisted and turned over fallen logs, saplings, and discarded appliances. Overgrown thornbushes clung to a rotted fence post.

  Finally we came within sight of a narrow, two-story weather-beaten farmhouse straight out of Psycho. The windows through which the light shown were exaggeratedly vertical, indicating high ceilings within. Moving to the cover of the trees, we advanced to a point adjacent to the small clearing in front of the house. In the grass behind the structure was a tractor that hadn’t worked a field for half a century. Parked haphazardly near it were four mud-splattered vehicles. The Chevrolet Monte Carlo carried Kansas tags, but the two pickups and the SUV had been registered in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona respectively.

  “I’m going for a closer look,” I said to Josie. “Keep calling Buford. He’s the only one who can convince the police what’s happening and that we’ll need reinforcements.”

  “Even if I contact him he won’t be able to find us in this area.”

  “His GPS will get him to Koala Road. Meet him at the entrance and guide them here.”

  It meant she would have to jog four or five miles in the dark to reach the Jeep and drive back to the main entrance, but there were no other options. I headed for the house without waiting to see if Buford answered his phone.

  The night being warm and humid, I found the first window open and peered in. A lit Coleman propane lantern hung on a hook from the ceiling. Its eerie yellow glow showed a hoary-bearded Methuselah with a deeply lined face sitting at a plain wooden table. He wore a checkered lumberjack shirt through which a few limp hairs poked. Filthy woolen trousers hung on him like burlap sacks.

  He bent his head over an open book as if in prayer. Next to the book was a long steel knife with a bone handle. A Smith & Wesson revolver rested in a leather shoulder holster under his left arm.

  Even before I noticed the cylindrical oxygen tank leaning upright by his chair, I could see that he was desperately i
ll. As if to further confirm this, he was suddenly seized by a horrible, racking cough.

  Lamar Stagg, I realized. The patriarch madman in the flesh.

  Two other men, mid-thirties maybe, one long and lean with a freckled fox face, the other short and chunky with thick blue jowls. The latter seemed the more dangerous of the two; the kind of charmer who if he shook your hand, you’d want to count your fingers. They stood in front of an empty fireplace speaking in muted voices so as not to disturb the elder Stagg. What looked to be a semiautomatic AR-15 Bushmaster lay on the mantel between them. Hanging above the weapon was a calendar featuring a photograph of the Angel Moroni atop a temple. The head, neck, and upper chest of the holy messenger were framed by a full moon.

  I struggled to hear what the two men were saying and heard snippets about its being about time to get on with things. Upstairs a radio played Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings.” Someone in a back room sneezed. I moved along the east side of the house to the next window, where I saw Porter Grint sitting in a cane chair with his back to me. His shoulders were slumped forward as if he was asleep.

  I kept moving until reaching a window in the middle section of the house. Peering in, I saw that the long horizontal room was dark except for a wedge of light seeping under the closed door. It was enough to detect the outline of Claire dressed in her school uniform. She lay facedown on the steel springs of a mattress. Her wrists were tied to the vertical bars of the cast-iron frame behind her head so that her arms extended back and upward. Because her face was turned toward the wall I couldn’t tell if her eyes were open, but her chest seemed to rise and fall at a faster than normal rate. A dingy cloth gag that might have been a T-shirt was wrapped around her mouth.

  I tried to open the window, but it was either locked or jammed. Claire’s head moved slightly at the noise. I tapped lightly on the glass. She reacted again. I repressed the urge to call to her.

  A wise decision, because the door suddenly opened to reveal Grint standing in the door frame with a flashlight. He glanced over his shoulder before shutting the door behind him. He approached the bed, stopped at the head of it, and shone the beam up and down the length of the girl, slowly.

  Sprinting to the rear of the house, I found the back door was locked, but not the window. I raised it and crawled into a storage room filled with garden tools, pots, and burlap bags stinking of fertilizer. A Dutch door separated it from the area where Claire was. I opened the top an inch or two. Grint had moved so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He leaned over Claire, the stubbles of his beard brushing her forehead. I could hear her panting.

  “You’d best be nice to me, cutie,” I heard him say. “ ’Cuz I’m the only reason you’re still alive.”

  He prodded the girl’s hip with the flashlight while his other hand reached for the bottom of her skirt. He slowly began to lift it.

  I grabbed a rusted sickle hanging on the wall next to me, fully intending to slide stealthily into the room to dispatch the would-be molester or die in the attempt.

  It didn’t work out that way.

  For one thing, the metal part of the sickle fell onto my foot, leaving me clutching a rotted wooden handle. For another, the bottom half of the door was locked from the other side and wouldn’t open.

  Finally, any heroics on my part—at least for the moment—proved unnecessary when the opposite door to Claire’s room crashed open to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered figure filling the portal.

  “That’s enough,” the quiet voice commanded. “Step away from her. Now.”

  I couldn’t see his features. The light from the hallway cast him in shadow, but soon despair and hope, certainty and doubt, warred within me even as Grint withered before the next blast of words.

  “When I give an order it’s to be done as I say. Do you understand?”

  Grint rose from the bed slowly, reluctantly.

  “But Lamar has promised to seal her to me,” he whined.

  The other man took three brisk steps forward, smacked Grint across the face with his left hand, and growled, “Only after the atonement is satisfied. You will not defile our holy mission before.”

  Grint rubbed his cheek, made a very slight movement behind his back, and drew out a snub-nosed pistol.

  “I ain’t takin’ no more orders from you. I was the chosen one.”

  “You forfeited that right a long time ago in Wyoming,” the tall man replied calmly. He paused to readjust Claire’s skirt. “Now, put that away. We’ve got important work to do. Each of us.”

  Grint didn’t move. Then in a voice as flat as western Kansas, he asked, “You ever hear things?”

  “Things?”

  “You know, voices. Like in your head.”

  “From the Holy Spirit?”

  “No,” he said. “Most definitely not that.”

  “Can’t say I have, Port.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  The other man laughed ironically. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “You shouldn’t have hit me,” Grint muttered.

  “It was necessary to bring you to your senses. The girl has bewitched you.”

  “I ain’t loved nobody before.”

  “Get a grip on yourself. When we finish our work you can have her for all eternity.”

  Grint started to respond, but a sudden, startling sob engulfed him. He lowered the weapon and knelt beside the bed.

  A minute passed before the other man placed his hand on Grint’s trembling shoulder.

  “Come away, Port,” he said gently.

  And with that, Grint dutifully rose to follow his cousin from the room.

  —

  I stored the shock of seeing Dennis Dietz’s upright appearance into the cabinet of my brain that handles such things. A brighter sleuth who knew about biomechatronic limbs might have foreseen his ability when it would have made a difference. I had no excuse, having been told by Detective Fletcher what his old patrol partner had attempted after losing both legs.

  Where Officer Carter had eventually given up, a man like Dietz would have succeeded. Perhaps Denny was mentally tougher than the cop who had killed himself. But the Marine not only had the superior expertise of military doctors, he also enjoyed the all-important psychological support of other severely injured peers. None of them would have laughed at the progressive use of “shorties.”

  There were other hints I had missed that would disqualify me from being confused with Monsieur Poirot—and please, don’t all you smarty pants mention the name of the company on Dietz’s calling card. Biomechatronic Solutions, indeed.

  For instance, when I telephoned Dietz from Detective Fletcher’s office he sounded groggy, as if I’d awakened him. But while it was around midnight in Kansas City, it was merely ten P.M. in the Golden State, where no one over eight years old hits the hay until after the first half of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Furthermore, all that traveling by air and renting a van would have been extremely difficult for him, particularly given the time frame. He’d never left the Midwest after arriving in Lawrence.

  Brilliant deductions, Bevan—except they only came to mind after the cows had left the proverbial barn.

  But I digress.

  Now there was work to do. I reached through the upper half of the door to unlock the lower one. After picking up the blade of the rusty sickle, I crept into the room, raised one of the windows for an avenue of escape, and moved to the bed.

  Claire’s eyes were wide open and staring, terrified and unsure who this new intruder in the dark might be.

  I leaned over so that she could see my face.

  “Keep still,” I whispered as I untied the gag covering her mouth. “After I cut the ropes, head into the woods and keep going until you get to the highway. Josie should be near the entrance of the park. And don’t worry about your mother. I’m not leaving without her.”

  She was a tough kid. Her only response was to nod.

  Moving behind the head of the iron bedstead, I began to draw the curve
d blade back and forth on the inch-and-a-half-thick knotted climbing rope that bound her wrists. It was slow work. Five minutes poured into ten. Twice I heard footsteps in the hall. Once I heard two men arguing about who would take the kid for a bathroom break. I kept sawing. Claire kept quiet despite the blade nicking her wrists. Couldn’t be helped.

  At last the cord broke.

  “Go, Claire,” I hissed, “and Godspeed to you.”

  She disappeared through the opened window while I headed in the opposite direction for the hallway and a very uncertain future.

  Chapter 28

  I cracked open the door a few inches, twisted my head sideways, and peered down an empty hall. Voices could be heard coming from the living room. I started to step out when I heard a toilet flush. I closed the door and waited until the steps retreated. Without bothering to look this time, I entered the hall and glided past two rooms on the right until coming to what looked like a closet.

  It was about four feet wide and two feet deep inside. Old cardboard boxes stuffed with cotton dresses and men’s work clothes covered half the floor. A rusty double-barreled shotgun leaned in a corner. Good news, if it was functional. There was a box of shells sitting next to it. But the shells contained No. 9 birdshot—good for killing birds, but not effective for stopping a determined foe beyond fifteen feet.

  I loaded the gun and was about to look for a better vantage point when I noticed the outline of a trapdoor on the ceiling. A frayed rope hung from it.

  I set the gun down, shoved the clothes boxes aside to allow more room, and tugged on the cord. The ladder unfolded easily enough, but the steps were treacherously rotted. Keeping my insteps wedged against the sides, however, I made it up to a small attic space. Its sole purpose was to accommodate a huge house fan, circa 1920. Light and sound from the living room below filtered through its thick mesh screen.