Righteous - 01 - The Righteous

by Michael Wallace

  “Okay, maybe choice is the wrong word. But we can take her opinion into consideration. There’s no harm in that.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced. “That is, until she fixes on the idea that it’s all up to her.”

  “Liz knows better than that,” Jacob said. “Listen, how about this? She comes with me tomorrow to Utah. She can meet the other two men and see how they stack up to Elder Johnson.”

  “I don’t know. I can imagine the foolish questions. Not to mention that she’s bound to get in the way of the murder investigation.”

  Murder? Eliza was still dealing with the excitement of leaving Canada and going to Utah to meet two potential future husbands when the word murder hit her like a brush with an electric fence.

  Jacob shook his head. “You can’t claim both that Liz is mature enough to get married and that she’s a naïve, giggly girl who is going to make a fool of herself.”

  “Why not? Why can’t she be both mature and immature? Ready to get married. Not ready to navigate the minefield waiting in Blister Creek.”

  “You might have that exactly backwards, Dad. But seriously, don’t underestimate Liz. She won’t get in the way. And she needs a chance to know all three men before we decide.”

  Father was silent for a long moment. His hand returned to his beard. At last he nodded. “Okay, Jacob, but be careful. This murder is an ugly business. And I don’t trust the Kimballs. Oh, and could you try not to infect Eliza with your cynicism? It won’t help matters.” He rose to his feet and Jacob reached for his textbooks.

  Eliza scrambled upstairs before her father could see her. Lying in her bed, she had no more lustful thoughts. Instead, she thought about leaving Harmony, driving from Alberta and south to Utah. To perhaps meet her future husband.

  And a murder, she remembered. She would accompany her brother while he tried to solve the crime. She couldn’t help but be frightened by the prospect. And excited.

  #

  “God hates women,” Jacob told Eliza. “It’s a pity, because women have always been His most devoted followers.”

  Eliza, sitting next to him in the Toyota Corolla sixteen hours into a twenty hour drive between Harmony, Alberta, and Blister Creek, Utah, was dry-eyed and cramped. She’d drifted in and out of sleep all night as they’d passed through Salt Lake City and Provo. They were on I-15, somewhere south of Nephi, where trees gave way to sage brush and puddles of illusory water glimmered on the blacktop as the summer sun lifted in a ball of fire over the desert.

  “Are you going somewhere with this?” she asked, gathering her wits. “Or are you trying to goad me?” Always hard to tell with Jacob.

  “Every father wants a son. Most mothers, too. A daughter is a disappointment. A boy grows up, he’s stimulated and challenged. A girl, ignored until puberty, then guarded like a bitch in heat.”

  Eliza knew Jacob wanted the argument, if only because debating with himself would be boring. Fine, she’d play along. “And what about the boys? What’s our brother up to these days? Still coked out in Las Vegas, living with a transsexual stripper?”

  “Wouldn’t be a surprise. They drove Enoch from town like a mad dog.” Jacob was fond of oscillating between crass, almost crude language, and an archaic style. He made one such switch right now. “Alone, he succumbed to the wiles of the adversary. Debauchery is the mistress of temptation.” A shrug. “So, perhaps it’s not easy being one of God’s chosen people. Man or woman.” He stared straight ahead. “But sadly for your sex, it’s not a man lying in a pool of his own blood, but Amanda Kimball.”

  Eliza had questioned him about the murder as soon as they’d left Harmony. He’d told her about Amanda Kimball and the whole matter had become suddenly real. Amanda was her cousin.

  During that year that Eliza had spent in Blister Creek, Amanda had been like a cool, tomboyish older sister. She’d known the best places to look for arrowheads, and had once taken Eliza to an Anasazi ruin she had discovered in one of the canyons. They’d climbed to the ruin via six-hundred-year-old handholds carved into the sandstone wall. They had found a crumbling two-room house with baskets and a broken pot lying in one corner. The house was perfectly preserved by the desert air; there were still dried corn cobs in one of the baskets.

  And now her cousin was dead. Murdered.

  “So God really hates women?”

  “Of course not, Liz. God loves and cherishes women. You know that.”

  They stopped for lunch at a greasy spoon in Cedar City. Polygamists were fairly common through Central and Southern Utah, but they still drew looks. The Mormons—those who followed the fallen prophets in Salt Lake City, that is—dressed like gentiles, while a daughter of God like Eliza wore no makeup, kept her hair waist-length, and wore a dress that fell to her ankles with a high collar and sleeves to her wrists. In Montana, someone had asked if they were Mennonites. Nobody made that mistake in Utah.

  “They’re ashamed of us.” Jacob said when they reached the car.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The Salt Lake Mormons can’t forget that they were once like us. They were the polygamists who fled into the desert. It’s why they’re so eager to appear normal to the world. All the Osmonds, Marriotts, Steve Youngs, and Mitt Romneys were just like we are. It’s why they’ve rushed so fully into the embrace of Babylon and why they look at us like that. They’re ashamed, and they blame us for their embarrassment.”

  “You see embarrassment, I see pity,” Eliza replied. “Poor, simple-minded girl, brainwashed into a fundamentalist cult. Bet she can barely write her own name.”

  Jacob chuckled at this.

  But she’d meant it only half-jokingly. She’d never noticed the stares until a few years ago; now she was conscious of every glance and whisper. The snickers of teenage boys were especially irritating.

  They passed the last gentile outpost thirty miles east of Cedar City. The land was stark and beautiful. There were red cliffs streaked black with desert varnish. The road turned gravelly and then became a dirt road. The air conditioning blasted full force; it cut the heat but did not fully filter the road dust.

  It had been three years since Eliza had seen Blister Creek and it was fresh to her eyes. The setting was spectacular. The town sat at the base of the Ghost Cliffs, which soared vertically two thousand feet above the Blister Creek Valley. The cliffs glowed in the late afternoon sun. Irrigated green fields made a quilt across the valley floor.

  The houses were much like back home: large farm houses with extra wings and outbuildings to hold wives and a multitude of children. The houses, the school, the town office, the mini-mart, and the town store were all made of red brick.

  The exception was the temple. A white fortress in the desert, perched on a hill in the center of town. The golden figure of the Angel Moroni crowned the single spire. It was here that the Saints performed their sacred rituals: baptism for the dead, washings and anointings, the endowment, eternal marriage, and the second anointing.

  The sight of the temple always sent a chill down her spine. It was here that Christ would reign in the Millennium.

  Her great-grandfather, Henry B. Young, had ordered its construction. The Church of the Anointing were those who had fled to the desert after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had renounced polygamy and fallen into apostasy. In the early years Brother Henry had believed that the mainstream Mormons would eventually come around. They hadn’t. Only a remnant had remained true and faithful to the eternal principle of plural marriage.

  Two women with waist-length hair, four children in tow, looked at their car as they passed, no doubt noting its Alberta plates. A young man and his son, unloading two-by-fours from a pickup, stopped their work and frowned. Faces appeared in windows.

  “Into the belly of the beast,” Jacob murmured. It was a phrase usually reserved for a foray into the towns and cities of the gentiles. They continued down Main Street. He turned to Eliza. “Don’t forget that we’re here to investigate a murder.”

>   “We?” She felt a mixture of excitement and dread.

  “Absolutely, we. That business about checking out potential husbands is Dad’s reason, not mine.” He shrugged. “Okay, so we can’t forget that entirely. But the murder is your top priority. I need eyes and ears among the women. They might tell you things they wouldn’t tell a man.”

  “I thought we already knew the identity of the murderers.” According to Jacob, the prophet and Elder Kimball thought that Mexican day laborers had raped and murdered Amanda. Brother Joseph wanted Jacob to figure out which one before deciding how to administer justice.

  “Do we?”

  #

  Elder Kimball resembled a bald, sweating Pillsbury Doughboy, well on his way to baking to a golden, flaky consistency in the brilliant sun. Jacob let himself run with the imagery for a moment. He needed to see Kimball not as an elder of Israel, but as a suspect.

  Jacob and Eliza had parked the Corolla next to the temple and stepped from the chilled interior of the car into the suffocatingly hot, dry air of the desert. He had brought his bag from the trunk.

  Witch’s Warts stretched in a jagged, bumpy scar from just beyond the temple halfway to the Ghost Cliffs. It was a collection of sandstone fins and hoodoos, interrupted by dry washes, natural arches and sand dunes. A hell of a place to lose a cow, as they said.

  Or a body. A boy had found Amanda just inside. Wild animals had uncovered it from a shallow, sandy grave.

  Kimball waited at the murder site with his two sons. One was about twenty, the other, Taylor Kimball Junior, a few years older, closer to Jacob’s age. Taylor Junior was one of Eliza’s suitors, although Jacob hadn’t yet told her as much.

  Elder Kimball eyed him with irritation as they approached. “You said ten o’clock. It’s a quarter to eleven already.”

  “I said about ten,” Jacob corrected. “We’ve been driving all night. I had no way to know exactly when we’d arrive.” He looked around. “So it’s just you and your sons?”

  “I don’t see anyone else, do you?” A rough edge to his voice. “Brother Joseph said to keep it quiet until you came. So I did.”

  He was grateful for that, but Elder Kimball and his two sons were still three people too many for his taste. Jacob could see the body some thirty feet further into the maze of stone; it had been covered by a plastic tarp. Footprints mucked up the sand around it.

  He turned back to Elder Kimball. “I was sorry to hear about your wife. Hopefully, we’ll get to the bottom of this soon.”

  Elder Kimball said, “I don’t see the point of this, frankly. It’s been almost two days since we discovered the body. We know the culprit. We should act at once. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

  “Believe me, I hope we can figure this out quickly,” Jacob said. He forced himself to remain patient. Sweat trickled down his neck and along his ribs. “Nothing would make me happier than swift justice. But we’ve got to be very sure before we act. Besides, we don’t know which Mexican might be responsible.”

  “Does it matter? The other two are accomplices at the least. And justice is simple. Burn their trailer in the middle of the night. It would be a righteous judgment.”

  “Not a good idea.”

  “How so? They’re illegal aliens. Nobody will know or care that they are gone.”

  “Right,” Jacob said. “No illegal alien ever had a mother in Guadalajara, or a wife who received Western Union payments and twice-weekly calls from El Norte. Not to mention friends in Los Angeles, cousins in Phoenix, and so on. They may seem like vagabonds to you, but each of those men has about thirty friends or relatives who’ll come looking for him if he disappears.” He shook his head. “That kind of attention is the one thing that my father and Brother Joseph insist must not happen.” He looked back to the tarp. “Can you stay here, please, while I take a look?”

  Elder Kimball said, “You’re wasting your time. It’s obvious what happened here. The only thing to be gained by your so-called investigation is to desecrate the body of my wife.”

  “And I’m very sorry. But I’ve got to have a look for myself. It’s the only way to answer my questions. I’ll treat the remains with complete respect.”

  “I told you. I’m not going to let you bother her.”

  Jacob met the man’s glare without looking away. “Elder Kimball, I’m not backing down.”

  The muscles on Elder Kimball’s jaw tightened. His two sons glowered from over his shoulder. “Are you defying me, boy?”

  Jacob fought down his anger. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”

  “And you are who, exactly? Someone important, perhaps?” It was a rhetorical question. Elder Kimball knew every detail of Jacob’s family to the third generation. He knew exactly who Jacob was or was not. But it wasn’t Jacob’s lineage that was at question, but his standing in the community. “No, I didn’t think so. You are a young man, unmarried. I am a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, since your tone of voice indicates that you need reminding.”

  “And my father is the senior member of the Quorum, since you need reminding. The prophet called my father and asked if I could come. And if I fail,” Jacob added, “and word reaches the outside world, everything we work for would be in jeopardy. Which is why Brother Joseph insists that you allow me to continue.”

  “Does he?”

  Again, Elder Kimball knew the answer, but Jacob would have to force the issue or the investigation would be a sloppy affair, followed by a rush to judgment. Which was, no doubt, Kimball’s intention. Jacob took out his cell phone. “Should we call him?”

  When Elder Kimball said nothing, Jacob moderated his tone. “Look, I know you’re not happy I’m here. Of course you just want to take your wife and give her a proper burial. But this is terrible, unprecedented.” He shook his head. “Brother Joseph needs to be sure. As a medical student, I’ve seen a lot of cadavers and the prophet thought I might help.

  “And Elder Kimball, if the gentile authorities show up, you know who they’ll question first. The first suspect is always the woman’s husband.” He held up a hand to fend off the sputtering retort. “I know. It’s preposterous. They wouldn’t understand your special calling as a servant of the Lord.”

  Elder Kimball’s response balanced on the edge of a knife for a long moment before Eliza stepped in. She took Elder Kimball by the arm. “I’m so sorry, Elder Kimball. We were all shocked to hear the news. I hope my brother finds the man responsible. That’s all he wants.”

  His face softened. “Ah, Eliza Christianson. I didn’t recognize you at first. It’s been a few years. You’ve grown into a lovely young woman. These are my sons, Taylor Junior and Ammon.”

  Elder Kimball’s sons fixed her with a hungry gaze like a praying mantis about to snatch a grasshopper from a leaf. She smiled chastely.

  Eliza had proven her worth already. Jacob took advantage of the break in tension to approach the tarp. It was cooler within the sandstone fins, especially here, where they narrowed and stretched overhead to partially block the sun.

  Behind him, her voice echoed through the sandstone, Eliza said, “Thank you, Elder Kimball. I’m still just a girl, though.”

  “Nonsense. Why, three of my wives were younger than you when we got married.”

  Jacob stood in front of the tarp. It bulged. The dead body. Faced with the unpleasant task, he hesitated.

  “Your poor wife,” Eliza continued. “And the mother of your daughter Sophie Marie. You must be devastated.”

  “I’ve been very anxious to get your brother here and resolve matters.” An abrupt reversal. Nevertheless, he actually sounded sorry for the first time. “Terrible business what these Lamanites have done. The old curse still holds, I’m afraid.”

  Navajo and Paiute were always Lamanites—so called because they were descended from the tribe of the same name in the Book of Mormon who had been cursed with dark skin for rebelling against God—but some people called Mexicans Lamanites as well, as they were partly of the same heritage.r />
  “When is the funeral?” Eliza asked.

  “As soon as possible. Maybe tomorrow, maybe Monday.”

  “It must be tough for you and your family.”

  Meanwhile, Jacob removed the stones weighing down the corners of the tarp one by one. He took out a pair of surgical gloves from his bag and put them on, then pulled a surgical mask over his face.

  It’s just meat, he told himself. Like a slaughtered animal. It was what he told himself before dissecting a cadaver at school. He loved to study human anatomy, to see how muscle, tendon, bone all came together to form the machine that was the human body. Even better was pathology, to see a clogged artery or an enlarged kidney. How quickly such an elegant machine broke down from one diseased member. But he’d had to train himself to cut into the waxy flesh of a cadaver.

  Even now, he couldn’t think of Amanda’s body as human. Just meat. Think of it as a human, a poor woman murdered in a moment of terror and pain, and he would never be able to go through with this.

  He looked back to Eliza, standing next to Elder Kimball some thirty feet back and made a sudden decision.

  “I need my sister for a moment,” he called back. “She knows how to use this silly Japanese camera.” He held out a hand to stop Elder Kimball and his sons. “No, please, stay there. You’ll block the light and confuse the situation. I need to think clearly. Please, I insist. Liz.”

  She approached with a squeamish expression. It was a cruel to make her look. The emotional burden, if nothing else, rested more heavily on her shoulders than his. Eliza had spent a good deal of time with her cousin’s family as a child and had been unusually close to Amanda.

  “Come on, Liz,” he encouraged in a voice meant only for her ears. He handed her a surgical mask. “We only have a few minutes.”

  And then he could see, as she stepped forward, that it wasn’t just the momentum of the situation that carried her forward, it was curiosity.

  “Brace yourself,” he told her when she stood by his side. He swallowed hard, then peeled back the tarp to reveal the murdered body of Amanda Kimball. Eliza let out a gasp.