by Mg Gardiner
Back in Danisha’s truck, she headed south through town.
“That was our street,” Zoe said.
“We’re not going home right now.”
“Where are we going?”
“On a trip.”
“I knew it.”
Sarah looked in the rearview mirror. “You did, huh?”
“The big trip. The one you’re always packing for.”
Sarah felt uneasy. “We’ll see how big it is.”
She put on her blinker and accelerated onto I-35.
11
At the entrance to the Oklahoma City Police Department’s Will Rogers station, Curtis Harker paused, appraising the noise and motion inside. The station was humming with energy and apprehension. A big case buzz.
The desk officer straightened at the sight of Harker’s charcoal suit, the white shirt and thin black tie, his Mad Men haircut. And a face that looked like it had been hit with a frying pan—and shattered the pan. He always went Full Metal Fed.
He held up his badge wallet. “FBI.”
Ninety seconds later, Detective Fred Dos Santos arrived. Harker shook his hand and said, “Let’s talk about Zoe Keller.”
When the station’s detectives gathered around a conference table, Harker leaned on his fingertips like a sprinter in the blocks.
“Everything you think you know about this case is wrong,” he said.
Dos Santos said, “We know that Sarah Keller climbed out a bathroom window at St. Anthony, a few minutes after the child she’s been calling her daughter walked out of the ER. We know Keller’s Oklahoma driver’s license lists a home address that’s an empty office at a strip mall on the north side. Is that wrong?”
Another detective, a woman named Bonnie Bukin, said, “What’s the Bureau’s interest in this matter?”
Harker straightened. “Aside from kidnapping and murder?” Nobody responded. “Before this morning, Sarah Keller was last seen five years ago, driving to her sister’s house in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco.”
Dos Santos said, “Bethany Keller was found dead in the burned-out house. We know.”
“Bethany Keller didn’t die in the fire. She was killed by a stab wound to the chest, administered with a tactical knife.”
The detectives stopped fidgeting.
“From the position in which her body was found, she died trying to reach the phone and call for help. She never made it.”
“And the child?” said Bukin.
“Zoe Keller is the daughter of Nolan Worthe.” Harker eyed each of the detectives in turn. “That name should make you pay attention.”
Bukin crossed her arms. It gave her the glowering air of a bison. “You’ve got our attention. What else have you got?”
Harker opened a manila folder and pulled out a photo. The mug shot showed a man in his sixties. Behind his stubble and grandfatherly glasses he looked impatient and implacable. His hair flared into wings along the sides of his head.
“Eldrick Worthe,” Harker said.
Dos Santos stirred.
Harker said, “Currently a resident of the United States Penitentiary, Florence ADX, south of Colorado Springs. He’s serving thirty years for meth trafficking, mail fraud, and RICO violations.”
“And?” Bukin said.
“He’s Nolan Worthe’s father.”
“So he’s a con. A career criminal.”
“No,” Harker said. “He’s a prophet.”
12
Sarah rolled south through Oklahoma City. The interstate was a stripe of bright concrete slicing the endless prairie. Above, cumulus clouds marched across the horizon. She checked her speed: at the limit. Checked the mirror: no cops.
In the back seat, Zoe played with Mousie. Sarah’s gaze lingered on her.
She looked so much like Beth. Zoe had the Keller eyes and wiry frame, and Sarah’s own overdose of attitude. But Zoe had much more, and Sarah wondered if it came from the others, from her father’s people. Strange things, the kind of things rational people whispered about, things that seemed both inherited and otherworldly.
She thought of Zoe’s father, Nolan. For a brief hour he thought he could repudiate the family by telling them no. By telling them good-bye. He thought he could escape to California, build houses, and play guitar in a bar band. But to the Worthes, no and good-bye were booby traps, code red, words that sent a silent alarm to the heart of the clan and triggered a ruthless response.
That family’s a freak show. Scary bad. The Worthes cooked meth and inhaled their own private brand of hellfire. And more: “They’re polygamists,” Beth had said. “Fucking, Big Love polygamists.”
Nolan had rejected all that, but never broke free. When he left, the Worthes shunned him—but expected him to come crawling back. And he had. After Zoe was born, he told Beth he wanted to make peace with his family. He convinced Beth to bundle up the baby and go with him to visit them in Arizona.
The visit finished off Beth and Nolan’s shaky relationship. When they got back to California, she told him to move out.
At the time, Sarah had felt relieved. Now, she knew that by breaking it off, Beth had painted a bull’s-eye on her chest.
That day she had reached the cabin to find the lock on the front door splintered. The house was trashed, Beth’s paintings torn off the walls. She found Beth in the kitchen, inside the pantry. The shelves had collapsed, as though from a fight. Beth lay crumpled on the floor, covered in blood.
“Oh God.” Sarah dropped to her side. “What happened?”
“Nolan …”
The room seemed to tilt sideways. Blood was chugging from a stab wound in Beth’s chest.
“Did he do this?”
Beth’s chest rose and fell irregularly. “Worthes. Came.”
A stab wound, gaping and ugly, a thing that happened in movies or back streets. Right there. Sarah pawed through the mess on the pantry floor, found a dish towel and jammed it against the wound. Beth moaned at the pain.
“Where are they?” Sarah said.
“Gone.”
“You sure?”
Beth hesitated. No. She wasn’t sure.
Sarah’s heart beat like a sewing machine. “Nolan?”
“He was in the driveway when they drove up, he …”
“Nolan brought them here?”
“Don’t know.”
Sarah fumbled her phone from her pocket. No signal. She started to rise but saw the phone in the kitchen ripped from the wall.
“Where’s your nearest neighbor?” she said.
“Too far.”
“I’ll get the truck.” She took Beth’s hand. It was cold.
Beth said, “They thought they killed me. Left because they thought I was dead.”
“You’re going to be okay. Where’s Nolan?”
“Gone. He got here just before they drove up. I looked outside, he was trying to calm Grissom down, but …” She started to cry. “Grissom and those girls, they …”
A cold gust of fear passed over Sarah. “The baby.”
“They wanted her,” Beth said. “That’s why they came.”
Now, Sarah felt the heat of the sun through the window of the pickup truck. In the fast lane an eighteen-wheeler rolled past, loud and close, startling her. She hadn’t seen it coming in the mirror.
Gotta stop that, she thought. Situational awareness, Keller. She had to be alert and oriented times five. She was the only one available to stand watch now. She sat straighter behind the wheel. Downtown skyscrapers flashed past.
Oklahoma City sat like a belly button in the center of the United States. Freeways crisscrossed it like the bow on a Christmas present. It was a great American road trip just waiting to be opened. East lay Arkansas and the Deep South. North lay a thousand miles of plains, Chicago, and Canada. South was the Mexican border. And in all directions, for days at top speed, it was wide open, a horizon that ever beckoned. A country she’d been hiding in, a strange land.
She left the freeway and pulled into a Love’s Trave
l Stop. At the pump she stuck the nozzle in and surveyed nearby vehicles. Half a dozen eighteen-wheelers and twenty cars and pickups were filling up or parked in front of the minimart.
She topped off the tank and grabbed her messenger bag. She found an old cowboy hat in the back seat and popped a sun hat on Zoe.
“Come on.”
They headed into the crowded store. The aisles were stocked with candy and beef jerky, deli sandwiches and Thunder T-shirts. Sarah loaded a basket with food and counted CCTV cameras. One covered the pumps, another the door, a third the cash registers. The hats were a half-assed disguise—like putting sunglasses on Sasquatch.
In a corner was an ATM. Sarah withdrew the maximum, $300, with one of the prepaid cards.
Prepaid cards could be purchased without a credit check. They weren’t connected to her bank account. And because funds were front-loaded onto the card, her transactions were never reported to credit agencies.
It wasn’t foolproof. If someone found out that she owned a particular card, they could try to burrow into her account and track her through her purchases. But doing that took power or money. It took the government or a wealthy stalker.
Today she had to count on both coming after her.
A young mother with a baby and a squirming toddler walked past her into the women’s room. Sarah took Zoe’s hand and followed the woman in.
The mother slung her diaper bag onto the counter and ushered her little boy into a stall, saying, “Hold on, hold on.”
Sarah told Zoe, “You go.”
When Zoe locked the stall door, Sarah turned to the diaper bag. She had only a few seconds. She took out her phone, set the ringer to silent, and activated its GPS.
The diaper bag was stuffed with the complete baby field kit. She stuck her phone inside and covered it with spit-up rags and toys.
Thinking: Apologies, honey. But kids come first.
Zoe finished up, washed her hands, and they hurried out. Sarah paid for their gas and food with cash. Outside, she told Zoe: “Hop in and buckle up.”
From her go-bag Sarah got a roll of duct tape. She removed the portable satnav from the dashboard. It was registered to the network and would be linked back to her, though officially it was the property of DHL Attorney Services.
She surreptitiously checked the big rigs parked at the diesel pumps. She picked one with Minnesota plates.
Casually she walked to the rear of the rig. Nobody was watching. She pulled off a long strip of duct tape, tore it with her teeth, and ducked beneath the rig. Underneath, it was hot and cramped and smelled of oil. The axle was coated with greasy dirt. She reluctantly wiped it with one hand. She set the satnav on top and wound the duct tape around and around the axle, sealing it like a larva in a chrysalis.
She scuttled out from under the trailer and hopped back in the truck.
“You buckled up?” she said to Zoe.
“What were you doing, Mommy?”
Sarah dug for a grease rag on the floor. She wiped her hands. “Playing a game.”
It was called Sorry, and would be played by all. With luck, it would be played two thousand miles from here, in all the wrong directions. She started the engine and pulled away from the pumps. Behind her the city rose out of the prairie, shining in the sun. She checked the rearview mirror and kissed it all good-bye. She pulled onto I-40 and headed west.
13
Special Agent Curtis Harker held up the mug shot so the OKCPD detectives got a clear view.
“Eldrick Worthe is the head of a criminal family that extends across four Western states. He has enthusiastically practiced stealing, bearing false witness, coveting his neighbor’s wife, and killing—strangers, rivals, and his own flesh and blood whom he thinks have betrayed him. He is the patriarch and self-proclaimed prophet of the Fiery Branch of the New Covenant.”
Detective Dos Santos said, “I’ve heard about Worthe. The Holy Spirit descended on him while he was smoking crank and cleaning his shotguns. After that his every order became divine revelation. Great way to keep his family in line.”
“He demands their complete obedience,” Harker said. “People who opposed him became ‘obstacles to the work of the Lord.’ So he removed them. His vendettas became ‘blood atonement.’ His prophecies read like a cross between the King James Bible, Hallmark Mother’s Day cards, and slasher lit.”
Harker held up another photo: Worthe in court, in an orange jumpsuit. His hair was a gray tangle of Last Judgment proportions, rising above his skull like flames. He appeared to be shouting.
“This was at his sentencing. He called the judge a man-whoring tapeworm whom God will strike dead with lightning to the skull.”
“Charming,” said Detective Bukin.
“Judge Partyka has been guarded by a protective detail from the U.S. Marshals Service for the past six years.”
Dos Santos said, “What does this have to do with Zoe Keller?”
“She’s the patriarch’s grandchild. The daughter of an apostate. The clan will want to bring her into the fold.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps so they can marry her to one of Worthe’s lieutenants when she turns twelve. Perhaps so they can sacrifice her to atone for her father’s betrayal.”
“They’d kill her?”
“They’d slit her throat and let the blood run across the floor,” Harker said.
The detectives around the desk went quiet.
“The Worthes are white trash mafia who got a bad dose of God. They’re the twenty-first-century’s version of moonshiners, but more violent and egomaniacal. They think it’s them and the Seraphim against the Man—and the Man is you and me and anybody who participates in government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Harker slid a new photo onto the table. The detectives shifted and one looked away.
The photo showed the aftermath of a courthouse bombing. It had been taken six years earlier when two pounds of dynamite and nails and ball bearings exploded outside the United States District Courthouse in Denver, where Eldrick Worthe was standing trial. The bomber had placed the device in a brown super-size fast-food bag, dropped it beside a bench in the plaza outside, and walked into the courthouse.
The glass front of the building was shattered. The plaza was blackened and pitted from the high-velocity impact of nails and shrapnel. Near the courthouse doors lay two splayed bodies.
“The bomb was remotely detonated by cell phone as Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Chavez and FBI Special Agent Campbell Robinson approached the courthouse,” Harker said. “It was a targeted assassination. The clan executed them and called it a cleansing act of retribution.”
Bukin said, “Christ.”
Harker held up a new photo. “This is the man we believe built the bomb. Grissom Briggs.”
Briggs was white—as white as it was possible to be without becoming invisible—with ropy muscles, drowsy eyes, and the buzz cut favored by men who cried Sieg heil in private.
“He’s the Worthe family’s shattering angel. A sword of righteous destruction, if you believe the tattoos. A sociopathic thug if you don’t.”
Harker brought out two more mug shots. “These girls are Briggs’s posse. Reavy and Felicity Worthe. They’re Eldrick’s granddaughters. Briggs calls them the angel’s wings.”
The girls had a wild light about them. Teenagers—one blond, one dark-haired—they glared at the camera with disdain and utter confidence. They looked like they wanted to fly at the police photographer and bite through his jugular.
Dos Santos said, “Why are you here, Special Agent Harker?”
“To warn you. After the courthouse bombing, the Worthes scattered to the hills. The bombers have not been apprehended. But if you splash Sarah Keller’s name across the news, the clan will crawl out of the woodwork to seize Zoe. You’ll find yourself facing a whirlwind, and you had better prepare for it.”
Bukin said, “You’re after the bombers.”
Never underestimate the ability of people
to think the obvious, Harker thought. And to say it out loud, undermining any tactical advantage they might have had.
He said, “Eldrick Worthe heads a family that includes 37 children, 112 grandchildren, and, at last estimate, 62 great-grandchildren. And at least 13 wives.”
Bukin tossed her pen on the table. “Polygamists. Isn’t that special.”
“If you’re Worthe or his sons or anointed goons,” he said. “Eldrick’s religious awakening was bred from drugs, mountain man paranoia, and narcissistic personality disorder. The point is, he has a large and dysfunctional family army that will go to war to carry out what they think are orders from Heaven.”
Dos Santos said, “What’s Sarah Keller’s part in all this? You saying she’s innocent?”
“Hardly. She left her sister dead of a stab wound in a burning house and ran off with the baby. And the moment her deception was exposed, did she ask for police protection from the Worthes? OKCPD had officers right there in the ER with her. All she had to do was say please. Instead she crawled out a window and fled. No, Sarah Keller is complicit.”
Bukin said, with a note of doubt, “Zoe Keller is not in the records of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”
Harker said, “Have you contacted the cops in California? I suspect they thought Zoe’s father had vamoosed with her. Or that they were both dead. But we now know that’s not the case,” he said. “Maybe they botched the investigation. Maybe they’re withholding evidence. Either way, they got it wrong. And you have the opportunity to put it right—if you get on it quickly, before Sarah Keller escapes your jurisdiction.”
He gathered the photos and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Tick-tock.”
Outside a minute later, walking to his car, he phoned the FBI’s travel office. “Am I set?”
“You have a seat on the one-thirty P.M. Frontier flight to Colorado Springs.”
“Excellent.”
He got in the car and pulled out. The OKC detectives would get it. The photos of the courthouse bombing would drive them to act. Especially in this city, the deaths of a U.S. attorney and an FBI agent would sink in, bruising them like a body blow. They were brother cops.
