Righteous - 01 - The Righteous

by Michael Wallace

  Chapter Three:

  Amanda’s eyes stared forward, dry and glassy. The skin on her face was pale, like wax paper. She wore a yawning gash beneath her chin that stretched from ear to ear like a second mouth. Blood caked with sand to stick to her flesh.

  And the smell. Like pork that has gone rancid. Eliza swallowed hard and turned away, then swallowed hard again. Her stomach roiled and she stripped off the surgical mask to get more air.

  Jacob handed her the camera, but it was a moment before her head cleared and she could take it with trembling hands. “What’s wrong with the camera?” she asked.

  “Absolutely nothing. Just take some pictures. I wanted to talk to you. Now let me tell you what’s obvious. And don’t throw up.”

  She nodded. The lightheadedness was passing. “What do you know?” She was surprised he had already gathered information while she had been fighting to stay on her feet.

  “Just the basic stuff. First, she wasn’t killed here. Not enough blood.”

  He sounded very calm…too calm, she thought. She could tell that he wasn’t altogether well, but only because she knew him so well.

  Eliza felt ready to look at Amanda again. She turned slowly, ready to look away if it proved too much. Blood soaked Amanda’s dress. “Looks like a lot of blood to me.”

  “With her throat cut like that? I know it looks like a lot, but there’s maybe a half pint on her clothes, is all. If she’d bled out here, she’d be swimming in blood. The sand would be clumped all around her, and not dry. A woman her size has roughly eight or nine pints of blood. It made a terrible mess, wherever it happened. I’ve slaughtered enough pigs at the farm that I knew it right away.” He turned to look at her. “It helps, you know, if you try to think of her like a slaughtered pig.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, thinking that she must have misheard him. She was growing lightheaded again. “A pig?”

  “Just for the moment. An image of an animal slaughtered. You’ve seen that before; you can stomach it. Later, this body can be Amanda again. For now, it’s meat.”

  “I see.” She turned to look at the body again, trying to take his advice.

  He nodded, then continued. “Two, I don’t think she was raped. We’ll scrape for sperm—don’t look at me like that Liz, I’m training to be a doctor—but look, her temple garments are in place.” Amanda’s dress rode up her thigh and Eliza could see that he was right as Jacob bent to brush away more of the sand around her legs.

  Temple garments were the underwear, complete with covenant marks, that Mormons wore after taking out their endowment in the temple. The Salt Lake Mormons wore garments that went to the knee and just off the shoulder, but true garments went to the ankle and wrist. Eliza had not yet taken out her endowment—women did so at marriage, men when they received the Melchizedek Priesthood—but she’d done plenty of laundry in her life and knew almost everything about them except what the marks signified. People did not discuss such details outside of the temple.

  “The camera,” he reminded her. “Hold it up. They’re watching. So could a Mexican have figured out how to take off her garments, then put them on properly once he was done raping her?” Jacob asked. “And why bother? No, she wasn’t raped.”

  She didn’t know what to make of this information. If not rape, then what had been the motive? But before she could voice this question, Jacob glanced over his shoulder at Elder Kimball and said in a low voice, “What of him? Strange emotions, yes? You’d think he’d lost a horse, not one of his wives.”

  Eliza followed his gaze. Elder Kimball was stewing. “You know what I think?” she asked in an even lower voice. “He’s not here out of any sorrow. Maybe a sense of duty?”

  Jacob pulled down his mask and took a step back. “Duty? Maybe. Or maybe he’s here to frame the crime scene for our benefit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He knows that some people will blame him when they learn that Amanda was murdered. Even if people find out it was the Mexicans, they’ll say he should have kept an eye on her.” Jacob bent over the body. “What an idiot, thinking he could burn them to death while they slept. Not to mention barbaric. A servant of the Lord should do better. You know what I can’t figure out?” he asked abruptly. “Why the throat? Yes,” He repeated. “Why the throat? Such a deliberate cut.”

  She started to say something, but he shushed her and straightened. He let out a low breath, then reached for his bag. Jacob had just finished his second year of medical school. Eliza suspected that the University of Calgary would have expelled him had they known the scope of Jacob’s medical experience. He had set bones, administered vaccines and eye exams, performed autopsies, even performed hernia operations and extracted wisdom teeth. None of that made him a coroner or forensic anthropologist, but he was the closest to one who would ever look at Amanda’s body.

  He removed a screwdriver, which he inserted between her teeth and used to pry open her jaw. Jacob stuck his gloved fingers into her mouth, poked around for a moment and then removed a thick, blackish something which he held between his thumb and forefinger. It was Amanda’s tongue.

  Eliza turned away with a moan. She desperately needed to be sick.

  “Do not throw up,” he told her again. “That will bring Elder Kimball right over.”

  Her stomach heaved twice, but she fought it down. A bitter taste came into her mouth. Jacob put a hand against her back, which helped steady her legs. A moment later her eyes cleared and the static subsided from her ears.

  “Good, now take some pictures,” he told her. “I want the tongue and the open mouth.”

  She obeyed, trying not to look straight on as she lifted the camera to her eyes. “I don’t understand. What…why?”

  When she finished, Jacob pushed the tongue back into Amanda’s mouth. He put away the screwdriver and forced her rigid jaws closed. “It’s simple enough to understand. Someone cut out her tongue. Or, more accurately, they tore it out by the roots.”

  Eliza was determined not to show any more signs of weakness. “Yes, but how did you know to check her mouth?”

  A moment of hesitation. “I can’t tell you.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t tell me? Something told you to check her mouth. That’s got to be important.”

  “Yes, of course it’s important,” Jacob said. “But I can’t tell you. It’s something we don’t talk about. Not here, not with someone who hasn’t yet….” His voice trailed off as he waited for her to draw her own conclusions.

  “With someone who hasn’t gone through the temple yet. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Exactly.”

  Meaning that there was something in the temple rituals, something about the cut throat that had told him to look in Amanda’s mouth.

  Jacob pulled the tarp over Amanda’s body. “No rape. Murdered in a certain way known only to certain people. It wasn’t the Mexicans, that’s for sure. No, it was a church member.” He raised his eyebrows, looking at Elder Kimball and his sons, who had lost patience and trudged through the sand toward them. “We know where to start looking, don’t we?”

  Eliza followed his gaze. Elder Kimball? Was it possible that one of the Lord’s Anointed was involved in the murder of his own wife? The mother of his child?

  #

  Charity Kimball, senior wife of Elder Kimball, eyed Eliza with thinly-veiled hostility. Jacob had dropped Eliza and the luggage at the Kimball house. Charity had sent two boys upstairs with their bags, then called Eliza into the kitchen, where the other wives prepared dinner for forty people. Women shucked corn, rolled dough, chopped potatoes, and cut watermelon and tomatoes.

  As she had graduated into the ranks of the young women, Eliza had grown accustomed to the animosity of the older women. Some were open about it, like Charity, while others were sickly sweet to her face, then spread rumors behind her back. The burdens of plural marriage were borne on the shoulders of the earlier wives. A typical man might marry one girl at twenty-five, maybe a
nother at forty, and a third at forty-eight, each new bride a teenager.

  And how could an older woman compete against the freshness of a sixteen-year-old girl, to say nothing of all the wives between the youngest and wherever she sat in the hierarchy? Her solace was that she could command the younger wives as she saw fit.

  “Two months since my husband deflowered his latest wife and already he’s ensnared fresh meat,” said Charity. She removed the cloth from a large bowl of rising bread dough. Her hands punched down the dough as if it were Eliza’s head. “Are you one of the Ernie Young girls?”

  “No, Sister Kimball, I’m Eliza Christianson.”

  Her face softened. “Ah, Abraham’s daughter. It’s been a few years, hasn’t it? I’ve heard you’re more than a handful, girl. But look at you. Grown up and looking for a husband, are you?”

  “Not looking, no. I’d rather take my time.”

  There were a few chuckles, including one from Fernie Kimball, who was Eliza’s half-sister, but through her mother, unusually. Their mother had divorced after Fernie’s father had suffered a nervous breakdown and run off to California with some gentile woman. Mother had remarried Abraham Christianson. Eliza didn’t know Fernie very well; Fernie had been out of the house for several years.

  Eliza had already asked casually about her cousin. But the women said they didn’t know what had become of Amanda, only that she had disappeared the day before yesterday. She had not come down to breakfast, and Elder Kimball had told them that she’d gone to visit an elderly aunt for a couple of days. No knowledge of the murder, then.

  Children played, fought, bullied, and whined around the feet of the women, but were ignored until they misbehaved to the point of earning a swat. The older girls worked with their mothers in the kitchen and those just a few years younger than Eliza watched her more keenly than any.

  “Taking your time? Are they all so naïve in the Christianson household, Fernie?” one of the wives asked.

  “I certainly wasn’t,” Fernie said.

  Charity said, “You’ll be married by Christmas, Eliza.” Her tone was gentle. “Jacob needs a wife, and it’s always that first one that’s the hardest for a man. Wait too long and find himself among the Lost Boys. Nobody wants that. Not for Jacob. That means you must do your part.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “God only knows how you’ve remained a maiden as long as you have. Now here, we’ve got work to do,” she said as she stepped to the sink to wash the dough from her hands. “Make yourself useful and fold the crescent rolls. The first shift eats at six.”

  The men and older boys always ate first, followed by the women and children in subsequent waves. It was Saturday night, which meant the men had a priesthood meeting. Jacob would be back for dinner and then gone again.

  During Eliza’s last visit, she’d thought the Kimball women a grim lot, overly endowed with thin lips and sour expressions. Wives tended to reflect their husbands, and Elder Kimball was a stern, domineering man. The reality was more complex.

  With no men in the house, the women laughed and gossiped, told ribald jokes, and teased one of the wives about the red hair of her youngest child. “Where did that come from, anyway?” Charity asked with a sly smile. “The Kimballs don’t have any red heads and you’re blonde.” Two other women discussed the best curriculum for home schooling their children in trigonometry. Someone else talked about a Shakespeare reading group that she’d organized.

  The Church of the Anointing believed that, “The Glory of God is Intelligence,” as the first prophet of the Latter Days, Joseph Smith, had taught. Eliza had met members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ—one of those counterfeit churches always in the news for incest and marrying off twelve-year-old girls—and had also known a couple of girls from the True and Living Church, another polygamist sect based in Manti, Utah. She’d thought them mentally feeble. For whatever reason, be it native intelligence or the intellectual emphasis of their prophet, the company of her own people was superior.

  The men came to eat. There were three men and four priesthood-holding teenage boys, plus her brother Jacob, but they ate a mountain of food in about twenty minutes before they went to shower and dress for their meeting. Children poured into the dining room when they left. They cleaned up after the men and reset the table. As Eliza worked, she found Elder Kimball’s wives warming to her as she had already warmed to them.

  “Which one is Sophie Marie?” she asked her half-sister Fernie as the children ate.

  “The dark one with the curly hair,” Fernie said. “They say she looks like Amanda’s older brother who died in a fall as a child. She certainly has a different look to her. Something in the eyes.”

  Sophie Marie was a quiet eater in the midst of chaos.

  “She’s a bright one,” Fernie said. “Reminds me of my Daniel, already reading at four.” Fernie hiked her baby into a high chair and gave her older son a bowl of mashed potatoes and a few pieces of roll to feed the baby.

  “Is your brother coming back around?” Charity asked a few minutes later as the women settled into their own meal. Older children helped younger and cleared dishes.

  Eliza didn’t understand the question. “You mean, is he staying here tonight?”

  “I don’t mean Jacob, I’m talking about Enoch. My daughter saw him at the church house last Tuesday. Maybe he was talking to the bishop? I don’t know.”

  This was news to Eliza. She hadn’t believed the rumors about cocaine and strippers, but had believed the part about working in a casino. Probably drank and gambled, too. It had been two years since she’d seen him.

  Eliza had been in tears when she’d heard they were holding a church court to try Enoch in absentia. She’d found Father as he was leaving the house, grim-faced and wearing his nicest suit. In tears, she’d grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t let them do it,” she pleaded. “He’ll come back, I know he will.”

  “The master of the house gave talents of silver to his servants.” Father said. His grip was firm but gentle as he pried her hand free. “When he returned, he found that one servant had buried his talent in the ground. The master took the talent from the slothful servant and gave it to the faithful servant.”

  “Enoch’s not a parable from the Bible, Father. He’s my brother. Maybe I could talk to him. He’d listen to me.”

  “Eliza, you’re a smart girl. You see. Enoch made his choice. The rest—trial, excommunication, shunning—is just a formality. Enoch buried his talent in the ground.”

  They’d called Jacob as a witness and he’d later shared the details with Eliza. The first charge was violation of the Word of Wisdom, the health code that proscribed alcohol, tobacco, and hot drinks like coffee and tea. He’d been caught drinking beer.

  The second was immorality; by his own admission, Enoch had participated in “immoral acts” with a gentile girlfriend.

  Most serious was the charge of disobedience to a priesthood leader, in this case, his own father. His relationship with Father had been deteriorating for several years. First, he’d lost his scholarship, then he’d disappeared for several weeks; it later came out that he had gone to London, of all places, with a couple of gentile friends, including his girlfriend. Father had called him to repentance. They had argued.

  Enoch had ended the fight by making an obscene gesture at Father and his Grandpa Griggs as he’d climbed onto the back of a friend’s motorcycle and roared out of town. The next day, the court.

  Eliza had never expected to see Enoch again. Name stricken from the records of the church. Marked for damnation. Last she’d heard, he’d taken up with some Lost Boys in Las Vegas, including Gideon Kimball and Israel Young.

  And now he’d been seen in Blister Creek? Surely not.

  Charity Kimball must have read the skepticism on Eliza’s face. “The Lord is merciful, and the prophet is just. Perhaps your brother has repented. Like the Prodigal Son.”

  But Father had been right. Lost Boys did not simply rejoin Zi
on. It wasn’t a matter of faith, contrition, and repentance. Who would let Enoch take a wife, when there were so many men who had kept their covenants?

  So what had brought Enoch to Blister Creek?

  Chapter Four:

  It took a strong man to stand before the prophet and tell him that he was wrong. Jacob didn’t know if he was that man.

  Fake it till you make it.

  Jacob repeated those words to himself all through the Saturday night priesthood meeting. The meeting itself was more of the same: faith, obedience, and how to be a good husband and father. He’d never heard this particular lesson, but nevertheless knew its mind-numbing details by heart. Instead of listening, he repeated his refrain until he had half-convinced himself.

  When Jacob was twelve, and his father was interviewing him for worthiness to receive the Aaronic priesthood and be ordained a deacon, he had confessed his doubts. His testimony was weak, maybe even non-existent. If he applied the same standards to the gospel that he did to any other religion, then The Church of the Anointing would be found wanting.

  “Well, of course,” his father had said. “You don’t use logic to measure the truthfulness of the gospel; you rely on faith.”

  “But I don’t have any faith,” he had said. “That’s my whole problem.”

  “My advice is to fake it till you make it.”

  Father had explained. Pray, fast, study the scriptures. Behave, that is, as though he already had a testimony. State publicly his faith in the Lord and his willingness to obey the prophet. Over time, the testimony would come.

  It was an odd theory, and one that had never worked, not completely. But he did notice one curious thing in following his father’s advice. As soon as he “faked it,” so to speak, people treated him differently. They admired his knowledge of scripture and the strength of his testimony. Eloquence with words was assumed to be a mirror of one’s convictions.

  It was a lesson that had followed him to college and then to medical school. Act as if you know what you are talking about and people will assume that you do. Pretend you have no fear and you will appear confident to others.