by R. R. Irvine
The moment the bishop turned his back, one of the skins made an obscene gesture. Two others joined in, causing a gap in defense that led to an easy lay-up.
“Many’s the time I’ve argued with Orson. ‘What good are you doing hiding yourselves away in the mountains?’ I’ve asked him over and over. ‘You can’t spread the word that way.’ You know what he said? ‘No one wants to listen.’ Those were his very words. If he’d been selling polygamy, young bucks would be standing in line to join. But oh, no. The battle cry of the SLDs is no marriage, no progeny. When my daughter heard that Heber had joined them, she was devastated. I tried to tell her that it would pass, that he was too young for that kind of thinking. ‘He‘ll get tired of living with old men,’ I said. Old being the key word. For them the world is ending. So it’s no wonder they see abstinence as a way of taking everyone else with them.”
Farnsworth stopped talking to concentrate on floor play that was threatening to get out of hand. He was about to blow his whistle again when Traveler said, “I’d like to talk to the young man for myself.”
The bishop dropped the whistle. “ ‘Keep after him,’ I told her. ‘He‘ll weaken.’ When I was his age polygamy would have seemed like a dream come true.” He tried to grin but produced something closer to a grimace. “Who knows what would have become of me if I’d been able to find enough willing women.”
The man’s eyes turned inward. Whatever it was he was seeing made him smile. “I’ve done what I can. Suzanne took my advice. She went off to meet him last night after he called. She wasn’t home this morning, so as far as I’m concerned he’ll have to marry her now. If the SLDs don’t like it, too bad.”
“Where did she go?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Did you talk to him yourself?”
“Yes, I answered the phone.”
“And?”
“What do you want from me? I didn’t know she was going to spend the night with him, did I?”
“I spoke with Ephraim Moyle yesterday.”
Farnsworth caught his breath. Fear competed with the awe in his eyes.
“I’m working for him now,” Traveler said, though the words tasted sour in his mouth. “He ordered me to find Heber Armstrong.”
The bishop swallowed hard enough to threaten his Adam’s apple. “Jack’s a good boy.”
Traveler grabbed hold of Farnsworth’s arm. “Why did you call him Jack?”
“He hates being called Heeb. That’s why Suzy nicknamed him Jack Armstrong. Like on old-time radio.”
34
TRAVELER CALLED church headquarters from the nearest pay phone and was put right through to Tanner. “Punch up Heber Armstrong on your computer, Willis.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
The clicking sound coming down the line was so loud Traveler suspected that Willis was holding his phone next to the keyboard. “All right, Mo. Now what?”
“Read me what you’ve got.”
“Impossible. That’s confidential information.”
“I’m working for one of the Twelve Apostles, or have you forgotten?”
“I’ll put you on hold.”
Before Traveler had time to object the line buzzed momentarily before giving way to a recording of the Tabernacle Choir. One song ended and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was beginning when Tanner got back to him. “Exactly what is it you want to know?”
Traveler paused to think that over. Having Jack as a nickname was hardly a motive for murder. On the other hand it was a nasty coincidence.
“I’m not sure. Just start reading.”
Biographical data came first. Age, place of birth, date of confirmation as a deacon, church ward, school attendance, both secular and religious, and so on. Nothing took hold in Traveler’s mind.
When Tanner paused in his recitation to take a breath, Traveler broke in. “My hunch is that whatever I’m looking for has to be recent. Probably something to do with his mission. What do you have on that?”
“The best person to talk to would be his mission leader. A man named Frederick Samuels.”
“Where can I reach him?”
Tanner supplied a London telephone number.
“I’ll need your credit card number, Willis.”
“You’re working for us now. Put it with your expense sheet.”
“I’m in a phone booth, for God’s sake.”
“Don’t swear on this line.”
“Are you telling me that you’re being recorded, Willis?”
“I’m giving you my AT&T number, what else do you want?”
Traveler wrote down the information.
“Wait a couple of minutes before you call, Mo. I’ll use our satellite connection to clear you with the London mission.”
Three minutes later Samuels was on a line that was clear enough to have been coming from next door. Traveler introduced himself.
“Yes, sir. I was told to stand by. What can I do for you?”
“I’m trying to locate Heber Armstrong.”
“I have his file in front of me.”
“Why don’t we start with your impressions of him first?”
Samuels’s sigh was clearly audible. Obviously he would have preferred to confine himself to written facts.
“What comes to mind immediately is that he was a hard worker. A self-starter.”
“Were there any problems?”
Another sigh. “One man’s problem is another man’s religion.”
“You know who I’m working for, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’d like you to be more specific.”
“I thought of Jack as my friend. Of course, I try to be a friend to all our young men. So when they . . . when the disappearance occurred I did a lot of soul searching. I kept asking myself if I’d been to blame in any way.”
“What are you trying to say, Mr. Samuels?”
“A local man, a man named John Sidney, filed a complaint against him. Both Jack and the church, for that matter. Mr. Sidney even went to the police, though God is out of their jurisdiction I’m thankful to say.”
“What was the nature of the complaint?”
“The same as it always is. That’s why I didn’t give it much credence then, or now. Mr. Sidney claimed that Jack, that we had stolen his son away from the Church of England. He said we’d all burn in hell for that. He said he’d make sure of it himself. But it was only talk.”
35
JOHN SIDNEY was only too happy to talk. “The boys have gone missing, I understand. Turned their backs on that God of theirs and walked away.” His laughter sounded as jarring as his English accent. “I take full credit for it. I’m the one who sent them to hell.”
Jesus Christ, Traveler thought. What a dummy he’d been, missing the obvious all along. He hadn’t even caught on when he heard the mission leader’s slip of the tongue a couple of minutes ago. They, he’d said, indicating more than one. And now Sidney was talking about them.
Traveler kept his voice neutral, half afraid the man might hang up. “How did you manage that?”
“I did it for my son. I had to show him that Mormons aren’t the saints they pretend to be. Them and their baseball, and their laying on of hands, and their ten percent tithe to God, as if you could buy your way into heaven.
“And all the time they travel around in pairs, like nuns. ‘We have been called on two- year missions for God,’ they say. ‘No women. No impure thoughts.’ Bugger that, I say, which is probably what those bloody missionaries do to one another when they can’t get women.”
“Um-hum,” Traveler prompted.
“I hired a whore, paid her in advance, the filthiest one I could find. She smelled something awful when I found her, like she’d had a thousand men and never taken a bath.”
Sidney made a grunting sound that was half disgust, half glee. “I took her into my own home and cleaned her up, dressed her like a school girl, and told her to go and watch baseball at t
he mission and get herself converted. Saints, the Mormons call themselves. Saint Armstrong and Saint Moyle. They took my bait.”
Traveler’s mouth dropped open.
“They gave her the Word of Wisdom—the same foolishness that my son kept trying to pass onto me—and she went down on her knees and prayed with them. Then she was baptized and told them that she’d fallen in love with the men who’d saved her. The next time she went down on her knees it wasn’t to pray. You can bet on that.”
A burst of satellite static interrupted.
“Are you still there?” Sidney asked as soon as the line cleared.
“I’m listening,” Traveler reassured.
“It turned out I was right about those missionaries. They do everything in pairs, by God. My whore taped everything. I could play it into the phone, if you’d like?”
“I think I’ll skip the pornography.”
“There’s hours of it, an entire night. But that’s not what I want you to hear.”
The man’s demented cackle would have made him a prime suspect had he been in Utah. “Comes the dawn,” he said. “That’s the part I like best. When our saints woke up as sinners. Of course, she’d slipped them a little something in their Mormon tea. To prime the pump, so to speak.”
The high-pitched sound of fast-forwarding tape made Traveler wince.
“Here it is,” Sidney said after a moment. “This is what she told them the next morning.”
“It’s time to pay for your fun, lover boys. The all-night rate is one hundred American dollars apiece. That’s a bargain. Otherwise I’d have to charge you by the item. Straight fucks are fifty and you each had two, plus French at twenty-five. I charge both ways no matter who’s doing the sucking, so that’s another fifty. But bloody hell, I’m sentimental. You two add up to my hundredth fuck this week, so I’ll give you a break. One-fifty for the night and we’re even.”
The tape gave way to maniacal laughter. “The clap she gave them for free.”
36
TRAVELER HUNG up the phone without saying what he was thinking, that John Sidney had created a monster. It wouldn’t have done any good. Judging by the sound of the man, he was consumed by his revenge. Easy revenge at that. Hormones ruled young men of Heber’s age. Even the church recognized biological urges. The Missionary’s Hand Book warned, “Immorality is the most subtle means Satan has to cover a missionary with failure and shame. Missionaries should be on constant guard against familiarity with the opposite sex. Suggestions to protect missionaries from falling into the snares of immorality have been formulated as follows: 1. Never be alone with a woman. 2. Never call a woman by her first name. 3. Do not touch a woman except to shake hands with her.”
But that didn’t take into account a man like Sidney. Or whores either, for that matter.
Traveler called church headquarters.
“Tell me about Armstrong’s mission partner,” Traveler demanded the moment Willis Tanner came on the line.
“It’s Heber we want you to find.”
“Maybe I could do that if you’d be honest with me. Missionaries travel in pairs. Partners become friends. It’s inevitable. So my best chance of finding Heber would be to talk to his partner, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
“Then again, maybe you didn’t want me coming up with the name Moyle.”
Tanner caught his breath.
“Talk to me, goddamn it.”
“All right,” Tanner said after a moment. “His name is Hyrum Moyle. You can find him with the Saints of the Last Day. When you do, maybe you can talk some sense into him. We can’t, that’s for sure. He refuses to talk to anybody from the church.”
“Cut the theology and tell me how he’s related to Ephraim Moyle.”
“He isn’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Not technically anyway. The apostle has declared his son to be dead.”
“No more bullshit, Willis.”
The sound of rapid breathing came down the phone line. “From the day Hyrum Moyle became a deacon of the church, he was a marked man, high strung but a brilliant scholar. He was to be the next philosopher of Mormonism. And why not? Many of us feel that his father is the likely successor to Elton Woolley.”
“And if young Moyle’s heresy among the Saints of the Last Day comes out?”
“We’re praying that it doesn’t.”
“I talked to a man named John Sidney, Willis. I know what happened in England. Prayers won’t change that.”
“We spoke with him, too. It’s too late for Heber Armstrong, we know that. But with God’s help Hyrum may come back to us. Right now he is consumed by sin. But he’s young. Memory fades. With your help we’ll establish communication with Hyrum once again. We’ll reinstruct him in the gospel.”
“And Heber?”
“God may forgive his sins but we cannot.”
“It’s a good thing I know you, Willis. Otherwise, I might think you were crazy enough to believe everything you say.”
37
IT WAS noon by the time he reached the lodge in the High Uintas. The 10,000-foot climb had left his ears clogged. The siren coming from one of three parked sheriffs cars sounded as if it were being funneled down a long tube. He yawned to relieve the pressure and got out of the car.
A uniformed deputy, one hand on the butt of his revolver, came over to meet him. The man didn’t speak until the siren ran down. “Do you have business here, sir?”
Traveler handed him a card.
As soon as the deputy read it his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How’d you get here so fast?”
“I can’t answer that until you tell me what’s happened.”
“I think you’d better talk to the sheriff.” The officer stepped to one side, keeping a safe distance between himself and Traveler, and pointed toward the lodge. “You lead the way, sir.”
“Why the siren?” Traveler asked.
“It’s a signal to the men we have out searching the area.”
“What are they looking for?”
“That’s for Sheriff Newhouse to say.”
The sheriff met them in the doorway of the lodge. He was wearing a smile, Levi’s, and a heavy plaid shirt. He was tall and lanky, with a leathery face and neck and rough, strong hands that rustled when he rubbed them together. “Well, well. What do we have here, Ned?”
“A private detective.”
The smile disappeared. “Who sent for you?”
“I think it might be better if I spoke to you alone.”
“Do you now?” The sheriff winked at his deputy. “Back off a ways, Ned. But not too far.”
As soon as Ned was out of earshot Traveler spoke quietly. “I’m working for Ephraim Moyle.”
The name was better than a bribe. Newhouse’s face went through an abrupt metamorphoses, from surprise to awe in the blink of an eye.
“Can you prove it?”
Traveler gave him Willis Tanner’s telephone number.
“There’s no phone here. I’ll have to get myself patched through on the two-way radio.”
“Fine by me. But I’d be discreet if I were you.”
“Shit,” the sheriff said. “A week from now I would have been on vacation.” He stalked back toward the highway, using an angry jerk of his thumb to signal Ned to keep an eye on Traveler.
Five minutes later the sheriff returned wearing another smile. Only this one looked sad. “You’d better come on in and listen to what’s going on.”
Inside the lodge, the Saints of the Last Day were assembled on their log pews, all but Orson Pack and Brother Moab, who were standing slump-shouldered at the front of the room. They were being questioned by two men in dark suits. A third man, a uniformed deputy, was operating a tape recorder. The youngest of the Saints, the one who gathered power from the others to lay healing hands upon Martin, appeared to be missing.
Traveler’s entrance brought the conversation to a halt. The sheriff left him standing by the door to hold a whis
pered conference with the two men in suits, both of whom kept casting skeptical glances in Traveler’s direction. While that was going on, Pack and Moab stared at the floor. Finally one of the interrogators nodded and Newhouse came back to lean against the door jamb.
“All right,” said the man who’d nodded, “let’s go over it again from the beginning.”
Moab looked to Pack, whose shoulders slumped even more. When Pack spoke he sounded defeated. “We took in Brother Moyle when he came to us. Brother Armstrong, too. We did so against our better judgment.”
He paused to glance briefly at Traveler. “We hid Brother Armstrong from outsiders. That makes us guilty in God’s eyes. Guilty of deceit. And guilty of foolishness for believing their pledge. Disease had taught them the evil of fornication, they told us. We reject our bodies, our lusts. And so we welcomed them and prayed with them. We read to them from the good book. ‘Those who seek the lusts of the flesh and the things of the world, and do all manner of iniquity; yea, in fine, all those who belong to the kingdom of the devil are they who need fear, and tremble, and quake.’ ”
Pack fell to his knees and bowed his head. His outstretched hands grappled with one another. “They told us they were brothers. They had been born of a mother named desire and were now corrupted by her. They were sinners come to God. We welcomed them. We believed in their conversion. We raised them on high. We gave them our trust and power to lay on hands. We . . .”
Sheriff Newhouse leaned close and whispered in Traveler’s ear. “This Brother Moyle he’s talking about, is he a close relative of Ephraim Moyle?”
“Very.”
“Shit,” he mouthed.
Pack’s fingers writhed, opening and closing as if trying to catch hold of the air itself. “I am unclean. God has deserted me. I didn’t feel the evil among us until it was too late.”
One of the interrogators grunted. “Get to the killing, for God’s sake.”
“I am speaking for God’s sake.”
Brother Moab, First Disciple of the Saints of the Last Day, laid a gentle hand upon Pack’s shoulder. At the touch, Pack began to shake.
