“But that doesn’t make sense. What does she need a few hundred bucks for? Things are tight, but I have a job and a decent paycheck.”
“We canvassed the neighborhood. A neighbor said Fernie was coming back to the house from a walk when she discovered the landlord moving her stuff out. There was a confrontation, maybe she felt the money was the best thing of a bad situation.”
“I don’t care who called Hoover, or what they told him,” Jacob said. “That jerk can’t kick her out of her own home.”
“I don’t know rental laws,” Krantz said, “but I wouldn’t think so. Look, whatever happened, I don’t want you to worry. Doesn’t seem she’s in danger. I’m going to bust my balls until I find her, I swear.”
He sounded genuinely concerned, or maybe just guilty. Never mind, Jacob was angry. “You said you’d protect her. We had a deal.”
“I’m sorry. It happened so quickly. We were in the process of arranging round-the-clock surveillance of the house. I guess if we’d moved faster, we’d have been on top of this, but we didn’t think she was in danger. She wasn’t, but…look, I’m sorry. We’ll find her. We checked with your sister, we’re calling local shelters. Fayer has a few other ideas.” He paused. “So, uhm…”
“You want to know about Agent Kite. Of course you do. Yeah, she’s alive.”
“Thank god.“ A big exhale on the other end of the line. “Did they find her out? Are they holding her hostage or what?”
“No, none of that. It’s not what you think.”
Jacob gave a blow-by-blow of his conversation with Sister Miriam. Krantz listened without comment until he finished.
“So she’s still undercover,” Krantz said. “And for some reason she didn’t trust you, thought you were setting her up. Hell of a story to improvise, but that’s why she’s the best.”
“You can tell yourself that, if it makes you feel better. I might believe it too, except she found it easy enough to get away long enough to argue with me. If she could do that, she could have found a way to call and tell you she was all right. And tell you what she’d discovered about the Zarahemla compound.”
Krantz was quiet.
“Agent Krantz, I’m afraid she’s gone Patty Hearst and joined the other side.”
“This isn’t a rich young heiress we’re talking about,” Krantz said. “This is a trained FBI agent and a damn good one. She’s not going to join some whacked-out cult because she spent a few weeks listening to crazy talk.”
“A lot of outsiders have joined this so-called whacked-out cult. No, none of them are so much an outsider as your agent, but there’s something appealing about this guy or people wouldn’t keep signing up for the End of the World.”
“I don’t believe it. Kite’s not even religious. No way they’d brainwash her.”
“They didn’t,” Jacob said. “She brainwashed herself. Someone like Kite has to be convincing. Has to act, think, speak the role. These true believers, who think the world is coming to an end and are waiting to see it happen, maybe they’ve got more layers than, say, a drug dealer. I don’t know. Could be she kept burrowing down and pretty soon she was so far down the hole she couldn’t get out.”
Jacob had come to that point before. As his father once told him after Jacob confessed his doubts, ‘Act like you have a testimony, share that testimony with other people, and pretty soon you really will believe.’
Sometimes he had to follow the advice. If you wanted to survive in a world of believers, you had to keep your doubts to yourself. The longer he followed that path, the more he started to wonder if maybe the facts weren’t so important, that maybe feelings were all that mattered.
“You know, some crazy shit went down at Kite’s last job,” Krantz said in a slower voice. “When we burst into the room to take down this scumbag of a drug dealer, she was giving the guy a blow job. And she knew we were coming. So in a way, I can see this happening. Crazy stuff, but maybe…”
“Looks like you’ve got two choices,” Jacob said. “First, you forget about her. Maybe she comes back, maybe not.”
“We can’t do that.”
“Then you’ll have to kidnap her. I’d say call the police now, except she was expecting it. She might be hiding already. So you can wait until the next time she leaves the compound, or you can bust in there with guns drawn and try to get her out without starting a big shootout.”
“Sounds like you’re telling me how to do my job,” Krantz said.
“Not at all. Just doesn’t seem you’re going to talk her into leaving. I tried that. She’s not coming.”
“Try again.”
“No, I’m done,” Jacob said. “She threatened me, as good as threatened my family. I’ve done my job, and I’m out of here. And my wife and kids are missing, which is the only thing that matters right now. I’ve got to get back and find them.”
“Fine, can we at least debrief you when you get back to Salt Lake?”
“You can’t do anything until I’m with my family. You find them and we’ll sit down, you can pick my brain. Whatever you want.”
“Fair enough. Look, don’t worry. We’ll find your wife and kids.”
He hoped so, but he wasn’t going to sit around, waiting for them to turn up on their own.
#
Jacob called his father. He tried the cell first, but one of the wives picked up. She gave him a new number. Jacob plugged in his calling card number again.
“Abraham Christianson. Who is this?”
“It’s me, Jacob.”
“Hey, I was going to call you this weekend. Been meaning to for awhile, but I’ve been castrating sheep, and then we lost a couple of ewes to a mountain lion.”
“What’s going on?”
“Hmm? Oh, we’re gathering the Quorum. Almost out from under this debt, but the church trust lost a bundle in the stock market—what else is new? I’ve got a chance to pick up six thousand acres with water rights, up along the Escalante. I want to gather the leadership, figure out how to make it happen.”
“You sure this is a good time to expand?” Jacob asked. “We had to lose—what?—two hundred members since the trials. Doesn’t seem we need extra land.”
“We will. Men keep marrying, women keep having babies. And the Millennium will be here before you know it.”
Not that again. He was sick of end of the world talk. Besides, when the Millennium came, wouldn’t land be free for the taking? After all, the Lord would burn the wicked to a crisp, and if you listened to his father, that meant just about everyone. You wouldn’t need six thousand acres of windswept desert plateau, not when California would be practically next door, and not a soul in sight.
“Never mind all that,” Jacob said. “I’ve got a problem. Have you heard from Fernie?”
“No, what’s wrong?”
“I’m out of town on business and the Attorney General started bullying our landlord. Polygamy stuff, of course. Stupid landlord evicted them. The phone is out, and I can’t find her. I thought she might have called one of her former sister wives, or asked you for help.”
“Haven’t heard a thing, but I’m happy to come up and help you look.”
“I’m sure to track her down before you could get here but just in case, stay near the phone and keep the car gassed up. And if Fernie shows up with the kids, tell her to stay put. I’ll call back later.”
“No problem. I’ll put her name on the prayer rolls of the temple, and take it to the Lord myself. We’ll find her.”
“Good, thanks.”
“Take care, Jacob. And don’t stay away too long from Zion. You need it and it needs you.”
Jacob hung up the phone, but his hand wasn’t even off the receiver before it started to ring. He glanced around, surprised. Nobody in the parking lot but a couple of girls coming out of the gas station holding big cups of pop, and a woman pumping gas.
“Hello?”
“Who is this?” It was Krantz’s gravelly voice.
“Jacob Christianson, who w
ere you expecting?”
“Good, I was hoping you’d still be by the phone. You said you’re in Carbon County? How far is that from Manti, an hour?”
“About that, but I’m not going back to the compound, just going to take Route 6 over Soldier’s Summit, then down into Utah County and get on the freeway.”
“You’ve got to go back, and the sooner the better. Before it looks suspicious you’ve been gone too long.”
Jacob’s grip tightened on the phone. “You’re not listening to me, Krantz. I’m not going back, not to Manti, and not to the compound. My only worry right now is to find my wife and kids.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’ve found her.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Where is she?”
“I told you we were on it. Agent Fayer made some calls, figured out someone with your wife’s description, with three children in tow, booked a ticket with a bus service called Latter-day Express.”
“Never heard of it. Where does it go?”
“It’s a tour bus. Round trips from Salt Lake and Provo to Mormon history sites in Cove Fort, the Logan temple, and, in this case, Manti.”
“No. Please tell me you’re not serious.”
“I’m afraid so. It was the early bus, for people who wanted to go to the temple before the pageant. Arrived in Manti about an hour ago. We called local law enforcement, but it seems Fernie and the kids dropped out of the group as soon as the bus arrived in town. Nobody has seen her.”
Jacob groaned. “Oh, why would she do that? Why?”
“Kicked out of her house, you gone. Her stuff is still on the curb and the landlord is threatening to yard sale it if she doesn’t show up. Don’t be hard on her, she must have been desperate.”
“But why Manti?”
“Zarahemla. She went looking for you.”
Chapter Twenty:
Miriam’s trained eye noticed the shallow grave the instant she stumbled into the clearing. Oddly colored from damp sand dug up and not yet fully dried. Rocks lying at angles instead of settled into the sediment. Bits of broken vegetable matter where someone had hacked through the root of a sage brush.
She looked for footprints in and out of the gulch. There were several, and from more than one pair of shoes. A pair of boots, maybe size ten or ten and a half. And sneakers. Who might be wearing sneakers? Someone who left the compound often or someone who had recently arrived.
Miriam thought she’d left every scrap of her former life the moment she stepped into Timothy’s truck and drove with him to Zarahemla. She didn’t even think of herself as Haley Kite anymore; that person was like a good friend, or a sister—close, but someone else. But you couldn’t unlearn trained behavior. Blindfold her, put a gun in her hand and she could tell a Glock 17 from a Beretta M9. Walk by a suspicious plot of disturbed soil and she’d pick out the contours of an unmarked grave.
A forensic team would find a body a few inches below the surface. How long had it been there, a day, two days?
Probably nothing, just forget about it.
People got old, they died. They needed to be buried somewhere. Maybe it was Brother Payton, who had to be pushing ninety, or Sister Grace Ellen, who suffered from a heart condition.
Right, and one of them died of natural causes and then was dumped in a hasty grave beyond the fringes of camp, with no ritual dressing in temple gowns, no ceremony, and no marker.
Okay, then, an animal. Someone’s diseased sheep, unfit for consumption, but buried so as not to attract coyotes. That made more sense.
Miriam took stock of her surroundings. She’d followed a dry irrigation ditch, crawled through a culvert that ducked under the security fence, then passed the reservoir, into the hot, dusty canyons that overlooked the compound.
She’d needed to get away. Never mind dinner, she’d skip it if necessary. She needed a quiet place to pray. Heavenly Father, what should I do about Jacob Christianson?
Just forget him? Tell Brother Timothy and Brother Clarence what she’d learned? It would mean outing herself. She could plead, make promises, but there was a chance they’d discover the truth, then what? It would be over. They’d denounce her, rebuke her, excommunicate her.
In retrospect, she should have expected Satan to tempt her faith. Everything had gone so smoothly. Too smoothly. So Satan had sent Brother Jacob.
Jacob was smug, self-righteous, skeptical. What did her husband see in him? He brought nothing, added nothing. A man like that could only weaken Zion. They needed to be pulling in one direction, single-minded, to do what needed to be done before the great and terrible day of the coming of the Lord. They did not need Jacob Christianson sowing seeds of doubt. That’s how the elect fell away. The scriptures were clear.
The thing was, Jacob didn’t hide his doubts. And he’d come right out and admitted he worked for the FBI.
You hate him because you’re afraid of him.
She’d heard that niggling voice almost as soon as he’d walked away from the farmers market, daring her to meet him. As soon, that is, as she realized how angry he made her. How dare he?
Miriam thought she’d moved past secrets and subterfuge as soon as she shed the name of Haley Kite and became Sister Miriam. As soon, that is, as she’d first spoken soul-to-soul with Brother Timothy, as he’d told her she would be his wife, his eternal companion. And she’d prayed that night and for the first time she knew—not believed—knew, that he was the true prophet of God. All her life to this point had been to lead her to the truth by the strangest route imaginable.
She would forget everything, actually become the person she’d pretended to be. It was the most natural thing in the world, and left her absolutely confident and at peace.
Until Jacob Christianson showed up and sank his skeptical claws into her. He dug, scratched, gouged, intent on finding Agent Haley Kite down there and exposing her.
Miriam had almost pushed Jacob from her mind by the time she found the quiet gulch out of view of the compound. It was a flat, sandy stretch where the water pooled in the spring before running down the hillside to join the wash. Dry now.
Perfect for praying. Or stashing a body.
Let it be a sheep. Please, let it be a dead animal.
She squatted, scooped at the disturbed earth. The sandy soil came away easily. Still damp. This was ground that had been buried deeper until recently. Her hand brushed something.
She grabbed it, tugged, pulled an edge of blue fabric from the ground. It was attached to something bigger, more deeply buried.
Miriam drew her hand back. She stared at the fabric, heart pounding. A woman’s dress. There would be a body attached to that dress. She could feel the weight of it as she tugged.
An accident. That was the answer. A woman or girl had died in a fall, and rather than call the police and deal with hostile authorities, her family decided to bury her quietly. Later, they would come with a marker.
Yes, but when? And why hadn’t she heard about any accidents? Not to mention this was a terrible spot for a grave. A sandy wash. First flood and the body would break free like a rotting tree limb. Bones would spread down the hillside. It was a hasty, panicked job. Miriam could imagine what had happened. It had been dark last night, a sliver of moon. A man, no, two men, half carrying, half dragging a body. The killer and his associate. There was a flat spot there, where they’d set her down. Shovels, piling sand, the men working quickly to finish before dawn. Hurry, shove it in the hole, bury it quick. We’ll figure out what to do later.
She wasn’t squeamish about the body; she’d seen worse, but if she dug it up, she’d only succeed in trashing the crime scene and would struggle to interpret the cause of death. She needed help. Staring at the edge of the blue dress, she could only think of one person. Not her husband, the prophet, not his counselor, not her sister wives. Only the smug, skeptical doctor. Jacob Christianson.
What if she escaped the compound and called the police? Or better, called Krantz and Fayer. Yeah, they’d be interested. No w
ay to go back from that. If she were wrong, and there were an innocent explanation, she’d mess everything up. Jacob, on the other hand, was a doctor, he’d studied the human body, worked on cadavers, seen people die. He could tell her what had killed this woman, maybe even who. An accident, or murder?
Unless Jacob had left, as he’d threatened. But she believed he hadn’t. Timothy claimed Jacob’s wife and children would be joining them in Zarahemla. Timothy was the prophet. Jacob didn’t know the will of the Lord. He might think he was on his way back to Salt Lake, but if the Lord wanted him in Zarahemla, he wouldn’t get far.
#
It took several hours for Jacob to return to the compound. First, the prescriptions. He had a pad in the car and it would have been easy to scratch out something to fool Brother Timothy and fill it at the first pharmacy.
Ten minutes, maybe fifteen to get the drugs, then he’d zip through Manti, get to Zarahemla by two o’clock. Find his family, get the hell away.
But the fact was, Sister Grace Ellen really did need a diuretic to relieve the symptoms of her congestive heart failure. Without medication, she would continue to suffer in her sleep, waking in pain and terror again and again throughout the night.
The quickest way to get the diuretics was the hospital. And so he cut down Highway 89 to Sanpete County. He thought he’d get in and out, but he ran into Doctor Hess outside the pharmacy.
Hess drew up short, his eyes opening with alarm. “I thought I told you to stay away.”
“Excuse me?” Jacob said, confused. He’d slipped on a lab coat from his locker and now pushed the boxes and bottles of pills into his pockets. “I told you I was going to be gone for awhile.”
“You didn’t get the message from your wife?”
“What message?”
“You’ve been suspended without pay, pending the investigation.”
He was so blindsided he couldn’t think of a response.
Hess licked his lips. “You did talk to your wife, didn’t you?”
“No, I’ve been out of town. Stopped by here to—wait. What investigation? This isn’t that stupid incident with the polygamist girl is it? I can’t believe anyone—”
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