“Okay, let’s not get carried away. She still managed nine children. Why did you come, what do you want?”
“I want you to call back the Lost Boys,” she said.
“What? You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious. I want you to send word that they’re forgiven and they can come back. This is their home and we are their family and if we can’t support them, we have no business calling ourselves saints.”
“Impossible. I can’t even believe you’d ask. You don’t know me at all if you think that I would even consider it. And it’s against the will of the Lord in any case.” He turned to Jacob. “Tell her, explain. It’s impossible. Especially after Gideon attacked the church, there is no way. And wives for all of these men? Where would they come from? Tell her.”
Jacob shook his head. “Talk to Liz, Father, not me.”
“Eliza, it’s out of the question,” he said. “You’ll never get that. Never.”
She was prepared for his refusal. Eliza and Jacob had discussed it at great length during the drive from Zarahemla to Blister Creek and agreed that he’d balk. But, Jacob suggested, it would open an important door, as well as serve as a wedge for getting what they really wanted.
“Okay, then. Call back one of the Lost Boys.”
“Anyone in particular, or should I just draw names from a hat?”
“David. Call him back.”
A moment of silence. “David wandered into the mists of darkness years ago. There’s nothing I can do for him.”
“You can remove your edict. Send word to Las Vegas that he’s no longer banned from Blister Creek or Harmony. That you want the prodigal son to return and you will kill the fatted calf when he does.”
“That won’t put him back on the straight and narrow. He’s got bigger problems than my anger.”
“Nothing that can’t be resolved.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Eliza.”
“We know about the drugs,” she said. “But if you welcome him, it will make David think. When he sees you’ve softened your heart, he’ll soften his own. And then I can talk to him and maybe he’ll listen this time. And Jacob can help, too. Fernie, Sister Miriam, the whole community at Zarahemla. He won’t even need to set foot in Blister Creek, not at first.”
Father looked at Jacob. “And you agree with this?”
“Yes, of course,” Jacob said. “It’s a reasonable request and you would show that you can be merciful as well as just. You’ll gain more with this one act than any number of punitive reactions could hope to accomplish.”
He said nothing in response, but pulled on the end of his beard. From the kitchen, the gentle murmur of voices and the sound of a pot being placed on the stove, a rolling pin on the board. “All right,” he said at last. “David Christianson is forgiven. Nobody else.”
Eliza got up and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you, Father. You’ll be blessed for this kindness.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I have to warn you, it won’t do any good. You have no hope of pulling David out of his spiral into hell.”
“Why not?” Eliza asked.
“Because David Christianson is already doomed. An evil spirit has marked him for destruction. I’ve seen it in my dreams. Only a miracle would save him.”
Chapter Seven:
Eliza and Jacob met Fernie and Sister Miriam at a hotdog and creemie stand in Cedar City, an hour north of St. George. It was a clear, warm day and none of them wanted to get up from the outdoor picnic tables and get on with the unpleasant task of sending Eliza into the belly of the beast, Las Vegas. At last Jacob finished his root beer and went off to find a prepaid cell phone for her to use. Eliza got up to use the restroom and came back to find Fernie and Miriam engaged in an intense discussion.
“Of course I don’t want to share him,” Fernie said. “Why would I?”
“Then why not keep your mouth shut?” Miriam asked. “He’ll never get there on his own.”
They fell silent as Eliza approached. “No need to stop,” she said. “Count me with Sister Miriam. Jacob doesn’t want anything to do with plural marriage. I’m not sure why you do, Fernie.”
“Who says I do? Who says any woman does?”
“I know plenty of women who claim they love it. They love their sister wives, the idea of sharing the parenting and the household chores. And they say they’re never jealous.”
“Silk slippers on a cow,” Fernie said. “You can dress it up fancy, but it still smells like manure.”
“What?” Eliza asked, blinking. She turned to Miriam. “Have you seen my sister? I left her here five minutes ago, but she seems to have wandered off.”
“Look, Liz, here’s how I see it,” Fernie continued. “We’re not getting rid of polygamy. It’s part of our culture. And I know in my heart that it comes from the Lord. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just His way to make our lives more difficult, who knows? But I also know that when you keep it secret, when you barter women like livestock, it turns out ugly. If you want to get rid of the manipulation, the underage brides, trouble with the law, you need to bring it into the open.” She hesitated. “I might need to set an example.”
“What about you, what do you think?” Eliza asked Miriam.
“I don’t have any emotional attachment to polygamy, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, then?”
She shrugged. “My family was moderately religious, but I never had any sort of spiritual experience until I came to Zarahemla.”
“It’s not like that turned out well,” Eliza said.
“I know, I’m still wrestling with that. But in spite of everything, I can’t deny what happened to me there. I know God led me to the truth, and I know I was promised I would be the wife of a great leader when the Last Days arrive.”
“Meaning Jacob?”
“I believe so, yes. In the Lord’s time.”
Eliza glanced at Fernie, who said nothing.
“But I don’t know for sure,” Miriam added. “Right now all I know is that Jacob isn’t acting to his full potential.”
“How do you know that?” Fernie asked, her voice strained.
Miriam looked surprised. “Don’t you think he is falling short of his calling?”
“What I think or don’t think is irrelevant. I don’t know how you could make a judgment, that’s all. Whether or not you’ll be married to him some day, you aren’t right now and you don’t have any more insight than anyone else in the church.”
“I think I do.”
“Right, because you were an FBI agent, you think you have a special insight,” Fernie said. “Some super exclusive ability to discover hidden motives.”
“I didn’t lose my skills when I quit the bureau. It’s why the Lord brought me here, so I could help Jacob reach his potential. I’m convinced of that. And I’ll do what it takes to make it happen.”
Eliza didn’t understand either woman. Fernie wasn’t jealous about sharing her husband’s body with Miriam, but sharing insight into his soul was another matter. And Miriam claimed she only wanted to obey the will of the Lord, but Eliza had heard enough claims to know that the will of the Lord matches one’s own desires with startling frequency.
Fernie opened her mouth to say something, but Eliza never found out what, because Jacob pulled up in the car, having secured the prepaid phone.
#
Eliza entered Las Vegas feeling confident. She knew the limitations of its power. She’d entered the first time as a naïve teenage girl, tagging along with her brother Jacob while he investigated a murder. The city was just as aggressive six years later, still dripping with sin and corruption, but it no longer had the power to frighten her.
It helped to picture the city naked.
There was no reason for Las Vegas to even exist. It didn’t have a port, wasn’t on a river. It wasn’t surrounded by rich croplands and hadn’t grown organically from some trade advantage. It wasn’t even the capital of the state. Instead, Vega
s was surrounded by dry, baking wilderness and survived only by upping the shock value from one year to the next. People came to gamble or be entertained, but these days you could do those things anywhere. What other places didn’t have was the continual growth of the lurid and obscene, the promise that every time you came back, there would be some sparkling new thing to catch the eye. A volcano! Pirate battles! The Eiffel Tower! Someday, that sparkle would fade and then the city would die. People would return to live in real towns and cities and leave Las Vegas to crumble in the desert until it became the biggest ghost town of all.
In the meanwhile, the city’s outward appearance was a hulking, intimidating monster, but Eliza knew the beast was toothless. What was it Jacob had told her once? “The real monsters live inside us.”
And so she fought down the neon, concrete shock, ignored the lurid, the obscene, and the aggressive and thought about her brother David. She stepped off at the Greyhound bus terminal, near the Strip, then stood on the curb with her suitcase in hand, while the buses huffed diesel fumes. Her eyes scanned the street for a taxi.
Miriam and Fernie had returned to Zarahemla in the second car while Jacob drove Eliza to the bus stop in St. George, in the extreme southwest corner of Utah, just over the border from Arizona and Nevada. They had stood apart from the others as passengers shuffled onto the bus. Mostly older people, probably heading for Las Vegas for a weekend of gambling. But there were also a few shifty types, with drawn hoods and baggy pants or shaved heads and tattooed arms. One guy wore plugs in his ears and bristled with piercings.
Eliza and Jacob swapped cell phones. “It only cost twenty bucks,” he said, “so you can ditch it without a second thought. And there’s nothing on the phone to identify you. Fernie and I have the number, plus Sister Miriam and Allison Caliari. Nobody else.”
She tucked it into her pocket. “Thanks.”
“Call me when you get there and every day after that.”
“I’ll call you when I get there, if I can. But these guys sleep in dumpsters and eat trash. They don’t carry cell phones and if I’m going to blend in, I can’t either.”
“You need to check in, Liz. You know I can’t let you go if you don’t.”
“I’ll find a place to stash it. Let’s say twice a week until I’m out.”
He frowned.
Eliza put a hand on his arm. “You’ve got to trust me. I’ll find a way to let you know I’m okay, but it’s not going to be every twenty-four hours.”
At last, he nodded. “I’m just worried,” he said as another dodgy-looking kid made his way past them and onto the bus. “I wish I could tell you not to be afraid, that there’s nothing to worry about, no real danger. But that would be a lie.”
“I’ll sit up front by the driver.”
No smile. She was surprised at how nervous he looked. “You know what I’m talking about. Those guys on the bus are about show, about looking like they mean business. The people you’re trying to find don’t need to show anything, but they’re ten times as dangerous. People have died in there, Liz.”
“Thanks, that’s comforting.”
“My point is, only idiots aren’t afraid of danger and you’re not an idiot. So you’ll be afraid. You can deal with that.”
“I’m waiting for the part where you say something encouraging,” she said. “As in, ’you can do it, Liz!’ or something like that.”
“Of course you can do it. But you already know that. Listen to me. Being brave is about acting brave, that’s all. Like you did with Father. You looked him in the eye and you acted like you weren’t intimidated. But I knew your heart was pounding and you didn’t want to lift your hands because you were afraid they’d tremble.”
Just then, the bus driver leaned out, and said, “You ready? We’re rolling in two.”
“Coming,” Eliza said. She turned back to Jacob after the man disappeared back inside. “You’re right, I was nervous. But anyway, that’s different, Father is. . .difficult. These people are nuts. And Caleb Kimball. . .he scares me. I’ll bet he’s nuts, too.”
“You don’t know that, you don’t know anything about them.”
“Of course they’re nuts. Look at what they’re doing.”
“We’re nuts too, to anyone who isn’t from a polygamist family,” Jacob said. “You don’t know if they’re crazy or sane, sincere or cynical, so be prepared for anything. But what you do know is that you’re stronger than anyone you’re going to meet in there. Even Caleb Kimball.”
“Am I?”
“Of course you are. If I didn’t think that, there’s no way I could send you to Vegas, let you track down David on your own, find this group and infiltrate it, knowing they might try to kill you. I can only do that because I know you’re stronger and smarter and more resourceful.”
“There we go,” she said. “That’s what I was looking for. Maybe you should have started with that part.”
“And let you get cocky? I don’t think so.” He gave her a hug. “Get David, get the girl. Then get out.”
“I won’t stay one minute longer than I have to.”
She had watched him staring at the bus as it pulled out of the station, then pulled out the cell phone Jacob had given her and called Allison Caliari. “I just wanted you to know that I’m on my way to Las Vegas to find your daughter.”
“Oh, thank god. Thank you. When you see her, tell her I love her. If she can just come home, we can figure this out.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Eliza, be careful.”
There had been something odd in her voice in that last part. A concern apart from the worries about her daughter. Eliza had the distinct impression she’d been watching a play and now heard the actress behind the curtain, talking to someone as she exited the stage. It was odd and she didn’t know what to make of it. In any event, she had other worries at the moment.
Now, standing alone in the Las Vegas bus station, Eliza gathered her courage, put a confident expression on her face and hailed a taxi. Now came the hard part.
#
David was in such pain and needing something to kill that pain that he didn’t notice that someone had broken into his house. A cast immobilized his right arm past the elbow, he had stitches on his forehead and his ribs ached with every movement. Angry bruises covered his shoulder and chest and his face was puffy and yellow-black. His left eye still wouldn’t open fully.
Steve at Yost Deliveries had taken one look at him when he’d shown up at work two days after the attack and said, “I knew it, you rolled the truck, didn’t you. Jeez, dude, you couldn’t bother to call?”
“No, that’s not what happened.” He’d carefully worked out what to say next. “I was on the sidewalk downtown, standing too close to the curb. Some drunk clipped me with his bumper and dragged me half a block.”
“What? Really? Then the truck is fine?”
“Thanks for caring, man.”
Steve had backtracked, asked about his health and all that. And then still fired him. Never mind that David had been in the hospital, unable to call, fighting for his life against internal bleeding. No, what mattered were the irate customers, thousands of dollars worth of produce baking in the back of the truck, and that David would be busted up and unable to drive for two weeks.
And so David took a taxi home from the yard, slumped in the back seat, his head pounding, body aching in a dozen places, and shakes working through his hands. As the taxi pulled away, he dragged himself from the curb, squinted against the sun, then staggered into the house. He had to get to the bathroom, see if he could find something.
They’d given him Oxycontin at the hospital, but he’d gone through a week of pills in the first twenty-four hours. He needed something stronger, something to hammer down the pain. He thought about his meth guy, and the other stuff he carried. The brown stuff, the kind you delivered with syringes. That was just the thing to knock down the pain. But he’d told himself he wasn’t going to do it again.
Hands shaking,
he emptied the bottle of aspirin in the sink, trying to find a little green pill hidden at the bottom. Nothing. Also nothing at the back of the lower drawers, not even an old joint. He put a hand to his temple and leaned over the sink, thinking he was going to be sick. He’d call Meth Guy, see about the heavy stuff. What choice did he have?
The bathroom door opened behind him. He turned in a panic. The sudden movement hit him with a blackening wave of vertigo and he fell, grabbing at the edge of the sink at the last moment to keep from cracking his skull on the side of the tub. His arm with the cast whacked painfully against the floor. The intruder was already on top of him. He lifted his good arm to shield his face.
“No, David, no. It’s only me.”
Gentle hands on his. He looked up to see his sister Eliza standing over him and he was so overwhelmed with relief that he let out a sob.
“Oh, no,” she said as her face fell. “What happened to you?”
“I was mugged for some lettuce.”
“Lettuce? What? Is that slang for some kind of drug? No, never mind. Come on, let’s get you out of here. Can you stand up?”
She helped him into his bedroom. He fell back on the bed while she pulled off his shoes. “I’m sorry for scaring you like that. I got tired of standing around in the heat, waiting for you to get back, so I broke in. One of the windows in the basement wasn’t latched down and I forced it open.”
“But how did you find me?”
“It wasn’t hard. Once Father gave us your fake name, Jacob found the address in about twenty minutes digging around on the internet.”
“Father? Why would he help?” He couldn’t muster any anger.
“He’s removed his edict. You’re not banned from Blister Creek anymore.”
“Really? Is he here? Jacob, too?”
“No, just me. Get under the covers. I’ll be right back.”
She returned with a glass of water and some pills. “I cleaned up the aspirin in the bathroom and I found some Tylenol. That will work better. Here, take these.”
He stared at the white tablets in her outstretched hand. The Tylenol looked about as helpful as Tic-Tacs.
The Wicked (The Righteous) Page 6
