Black Widows

by Cate Quinn

  I recognize the voice now. It’s the Prophet. If he’s taken time to try to heal me, I know I should be grateful. But all I can think is I need the hands to stop. They’re burning me. I try to tune out the heat.

  Somewhere between the unbearable warmth and the monotone blessing, the Prophet vanishes.

  Through my slitted eyes, I see a woman arriving at the clinic door. One of the older ones, sagging under the stress of all the babies they’ve produced. Hard-faced with a ground-in tiredness, dark circles etched on dark circles. Her dress is frayed at the ankle-length hem, and her lace-up boots are held together with duct tape.

  There is a baby in her arms, wrapped in a dirty-looking blanket, but it isn’t moving right and is making deep wheezing noises. Like it is struggling for air. A bluish-colored leg dangles free.

  “It’s like the other one,” she is telling Aunt Meg. “You helped me before.” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, and suddenly her face turned very red. “Because I can’t,” she said. “I just can’t. We got a new wife last week, and there are twenty children in that room, Meg. Half of those are in diapers. The storehouse is empty most days, and I’m feedin’ ’em nothing but rice when I can. The small ones are too hungry to sleep. With this one, I’m awake all night anyhow…” She glanced to the unmoving child in her arms.

  “This child is a blessing,” says Aunt Meg. “You know that. A test of your fortitude.” Her eye twitches in the corner.

  The baby starts choking.

  “Shh-shh,” says the woman. She tilts the bundle and issues a volley of sharp pats to the baby’s back. The choking stops, replaced by a weedy wailing.

  Aunt Meg’s expression is stony, a faraway look in her eyes. She nods, says, “Give her to me,” and moves to take the baby.

  “She needs specialist equipment.” The woman begins babbling as the baby is lifted from her. “Something to keep her lungs clear. A machine or something. You have that here?”

  “She’ll be taken care of,” says Aunt Meg.

  “And she doesn’t like cornmeal grits.” The woman wipes her eyes. “Spits ’em straight up. Only takes the oat kind.” She kissed the baby’s face as Aunt Meg adjusted her stance to bear the weight.

  They look at each other then, and they are both so sad it is unbearable. The mother looks away first.

  “Wait there,” Aunt Meg tells her. She walks across to the door that leads to the basement and disappears through it. When she comes back, she isn’t holding the baby. Instead, she clutches a package of cookies.

  “Here.” She lowers her voice. “These are from the Prophet’s groceries. Don’t tell anyone I gave them to you.”

  The woman nods, wiping tears. She looks rapturously at the cookies, tucks them inside her dress.

  “Thank you,” she says, her voice light with relief. “I can’t tell you, Megan…” She touches the contraband cookies. A bell sounds.

  “You’d better go,” says Aunt Meg, her voice hard. “Don’t want to miss the midmorning prayer.”

  She turns to the wider room, claps her hands.

  “Get up, girls,” she says shrilly. “You of all people need to ask God’s forgiveness.”

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Tina, Sister-Wife

  I’ve left Temple Square with its wide green spaces long behind me now. Tell the truth, I’m lost, though I can’t see how. Salt Lake City is like a square box crossed over with straight lines for roads. I’m tryin’ to stay angry at Rachel, but it’s slippin’ away from me, and now the other stuff is crashing in.

  Idiot Tina. You fucking idiot.

  The rehab lady always told us, first rule of rehab, don’t fall in love. When you finish the program, you’re suggestable, see. Susceptible to the first smooth-talkin’ son of a gun who comes along. You’ve turned your whole life around, and it’s tempting to keep going. And silly ol’ me. I fell head over heels before I even left rehab. As my dear old mom woulda said, that is just classic Tina. Someone tells you no, and you’ve done it before they even finish talkin’.

  I recognize a storefront, and I’m fairly certain I can only be a block or so from Rio Grande. I stick my hand in my purse like I always used to back in Vegas, turning the dollar bills, reassuring myself. I’ve got maybe thirty bucks in bills. Enough.

  I’ve reached Rio Grande now, and right away, my eyes light on a little huddle of people who I just know will help me out. I start turning the bills again…not long now.

  All of a sudden, a young man in a dark suit steps right out in front of me. Before I can yell or react, he beams this wide smile.

  “’Scuse me, ma’am. May I have a minute of your time to talk about the word of Jesus?”

  I want to laugh. If it isn’t a goddamn missionary, all neat in his black jacket and tie.

  “Um, are you okay, ma’am?” He’s staring at me, real concerned, like he genuinely gives a shit.

  “Yeah.” I fight back tears that rush up. “Um, I’m already a member of the Church,” I add, trying for a smile. “You’re too late.”

  He nods in a serious way. “Do you need a ride?” he asks. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but this is a dangerous part of town to be walking alone in, for a lady.”

  My eyes glide over to the little pack of dealers, hunched on the curb fifty feet away. Blake was always telling me about revelations. Signs from God. That was how he won me over. He was so goddamn sure we were meant to be together. God had told him. I shake my head a little, smiling.

  “Sure,” I say. “A ride would be good. Could you take me someplace where I could rent a car?”

  I’m not actually sure how I might go about that, since I’ve got a burned-out credit card and zero ID, but if God is really giving me a message, I figure it’s time to try him out.

  If you’re really tryin’ to save me from myself, then get me a car, and I’ll drive on home and apologize to Rachel.

  The missionary shakes his head slowly.

  Ha! Guess meth beats miracles.

  “You won’t get a good rate if you rent on the day,” he says, shaking his head again. “Tell you what,” he adds, the smile coming back. “Why don’t you borrow my car?”

  “Um. What?” I look at him like Are you shitting me?

  He puts a hand on my shoulder, and somehow I don’t mind.

  “You’re a member of the Church,” he says, “and you look real upset, if you don’t mind me saying, and you need a car. God moves in mysterious ways. Maybe he put me here to help you. In any case, ma’am, so long as you don’t mind driving a beat-up ride, you can borrow my car. I’m staying at a mission house nearby; I don’t need it right now.”

  “Thanks,” I tell him. “But I can’t borrow your car.”

  “Why don’t you see it like you’re doing me a favor?” he insists, all warm smiles. “I haven’t got any conversions yet. Not in four months. At least let me do a good deed for the day. We’re all family in the Church of Latter-day Saints. Just bring it back in one piece on Monday.”

  I swallow hard, because not even I can stoop to doin’ drugs in this nice young man’s car. If I accept his offer, I stay clean.

  I give him a long look. “Do you believe that God sends angels to intervene, just when a person is at their lowest?” I glance longingly at the dealers.

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. That’s why I work this district.” He holds out his keys. “My car is over there.”

  I roll my eyes up to the heavens and shake my head. You motherfucker.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Emily, Sister-Wife

  “I appreciate you’re of a mind to go before a firing squad,” says Detective Carlson as we sit at a plastic table in the visitors’ room. “But I’ve got some bad news on that score. Or maybe some good news, depending on how you see it.”

  He nods to Brewer, who opens a laptop, turning it so I can see. “Turns out Kir
ker’s Diner does have security cameras,” she says, “and pretty good coverage at that. Took us a while, but we found your husband there with his mysterious lady friend.”

  “Who was it?” I’m leaning forward in anticipation.

  Brewer checks the screen, frowns, then fast-forwards. Two people walk really fast to a table and sit. Brewer hits the Play button.

  “Did Blake make a habit of meeting his mom for lunch?” asks Brewer.

  “Uh-huh,” I nod. “Every second Tuesday. They met at the pancake house on the road into Tucknott. Mrs. Nelson liked the fresh fruit stack.”

  “Looks like this Tuesday, they made an exception,” she says.

  It’s only then I make out the people on the laptop. One of them is obviously Blake. Even in the black and white, you can tell he has red hair. The other has very poufy blond hair, styled high.

  It’s Adelaide Nelson. My heart sinks.

  “Guess he took her to Kirker’s,” I say dejectedly. “One of the busybodies from the ward must have seen them from a distance. Blake and a blond lady. Took two and two and made five.”

  If it wasn’t all so serious, I’d laugh. The Mormon community is so gossipy and bored. This dumb rumor ran halfway around town, that Blake was having some kind of affair. Maybe Blake even got killed because of it. When the truth was it couldn’t have been more innocent.

  I try to work out what it means. Tina and Rachel have been chasing wild geese, a mysterious blond who doesn’t exist.

  “I’m sorry,” says Detective Carlson. “Really I am. You girls had us going there. Guess I’m a sucker for a tall story just like anyone else. But it’s like I’ve been tryin’ to tell Tina all along. There is no big mystery here. No secret meeting, no conspiracy.”

  I look closer. You can make out Mrs. Nelson’s made-up face, her fork poking at something on her plate. She’s probably mad about missing her favorite pancakes. Blake always was a momma’s boy, looking for her approval. Guess he never got it.

  “If they met up out of town,” I say, “maybe they didn’t want to be overheard.”

  “I agree,” says Brewer. “See there? That looks to me like land documents. I’m guessing Blake was trying to convince Mom to ask Dad to loan him the deposit for the Homestead. Didn’t want anyone who might snitch back to Mr. Nelson listening in.”

  I look closer, and she’s right. Blake has a mess of official-looking papers in front of him. Mrs. Nelson has her Book of Mormon open, like she’s begging him to listen to the word of God.

  “We also looked into Blake’s GPS,” says Carlson. “Tina had a notion someone coulda used it to track his car,” he adds, seeing my blank expression. “No one hacked it, and your husband barely even used it. Guess he knew all his work journeys by heart.”

  I’m feeling it all slide away. All the intrigue, the investigation. This is real life after all.

  Man, oh man.

  “However.” Carlson leans back a little on his chair. “We got number-plate recognition all over the state. So we were able to ascertain that Rachel Nelson drove out toward the Homestead about a half hour ago. Shortly after breaking into a lawyer’s office in Vegas and Blake’s locker in the Holy Temple. We’ve sent cops over to bring her in within the hour.”

  An icy feeling edges around my brain.

  “My guess is Rachel has been trying to cover up evidence, which fits just fine with me, since forensics have just confirmed your innocence.”

  “What?”

  “Yup. We got some clever fellas who done some math with your height and the way the victim was hung on that tree. Turns out you couldn’t possibly have murdered your husband. So…pending a charge of wasting police time and obstruction of justice, you’re free to go.”

  “No, wait.” I close my eyes. “You’ve got it wrong,” I tell him.

  “Save it.”

  “Just… Can I use your computer?” I ask Brewer. “I need to show you something.”

  She looks sorta weary.

  “Just hear me out,” I say. “If this Aunt Meg did things in that clinic,” I say, “she could be trying to cover it up, right? I mean, she could be a suspect, even if she wasn’t the person who met with Blake for lunch.”

  “She could have a motive,” agrees Brewer, glancing at Carlson. “Problem with your theory is the Prophet’s wives all vanished. Just faded away.”

  “Uh-uh,” I shake my head. “Aunt Meg has a blog. I saw it right before my internet time ran out.”

  Carlson and Brewer look at each other. He makes a little head movement. Brewer hesitates, sighs deeply, then turns the laptop toward me.

  “Better make it quick.” Carlson checks his watch. “Won’t be long before they bring in Rachel.”

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Rachel, First Wife

  The gates are huge—longer than I even remember. White iron posts, swelling in an arc that I guess was someone’s idea of homey. Marred only by the spiked tops and stout black sign declaring NO TRESPASSERS.

  I find myself wondering where the gates were purchased. An image of my father visiting some Vegas store for outsize ironwork swims into my mind.

  I raise my hand to the iron posts. The peeling paint is punctuated by shreds of bleached adhesive tape. It looks as though, at one time, they were stuck all over with papers.

  I remember now the night I left, the sound of them fluttering in the breeze. I had thought them demons—the last warning before I ventured out into hell.

  I notice a slip of paper remains, and I tear it free. It’s so old as to be almost illegible. But I can make out from the darker ink that it’s been posted by the State of Utah.

  From what I can see, it’s part of a court order, something about building safety notices that haven’t been submitted.

  I guess the Homestead was issued a bunch of these and ignored ’em.

  I put one foot halfway up one of the iron gates, at the side where the arc swoops low enough to climb over. Swinging my leg carefully over the spiked tops, I drop back inside. The exact opposite of what I did all those years ago.

  The moment my feet hit the sandy earth, the strangest feeling comes over me. As though I’ve come home. The ghosts of my past are folding me in their arms.

  I’m standing on a wide, stony road. Directly ahead of me is the guard tower. I had forgotten the guard tower.

  It’s a squat, hexagonal-shaped building, only two stories high, fifty yards or so from the main gate. The upper floor is encircled in panes of glass. The lower part is concrete with a battered old door. As children, we used to play games, running around it.

  Three times counterclockwise, and the devil’s got ya back!

  It never occurred to us to mind that men with rifles stood twenty feet above us. We knew they were there to protect us. To make sure no unrighteous came to tear up our way of life.

  There’s a searchlight attached to the top. I recall it sweeping at night.

  Stay in your bed, Rayne. Don’t make a sound!

  I approach the watchtower door and try the handle. It opens, releasing a smell of dry dust. I move inside. There’s nothing much on the ground floor. A ladder leads up to the sentry posts above. With everything on one level and Utah’s open desert for miles around, I guess there was no need for a tall lookout.

  I hoist myself up onto the second story. At one time, it had been lined by windows, but almost all are broken. The floor crunches with ground glass as I walk.

  There’s a tatty homespun pamphlet at my feet. I pick it up. Stroke dust from the cover.

  A large simple font announces it to be Little Helping Hands Coloring Book.

  This is the kind of self-bound thing we read as children. I never saw a published paperback until I left home. The dog-eared pages are bound with a flimsy plastic spiral. I remember the machine that popped holes for this in the printing room. My mother operated it, with some o
f the other wives.

  I turn the first page. A rush of memories assails me as I leaf through pictures of smiling young girls, their prairie-dress sleeves rolled up as they help with washing dishes and collecting chicken eggs. Below the images are instructions. “Keep sweet.” “Be quick to obey.”

  I close it back up and return my attention to my surroundings.

  From here, I can see the view over the whole compound. The decaying rooftops look unfamiliar. It’s been so long since I was here that my perspective has adjusted to the outside world. The scattering of outsize gingery-wood cabins better resemble a woodland vacation camp than a residential area. They are too large, too far apart, too devoid of variety. As though someone has put a giant mirror right along the center, reflecting everything back on itself.

  For all the appearance of space, the wide-open roads and generous buildings are deceptive. Those large internal rooms were packed solid, ringing with the hum of young life and wrung-out mothers. Hungry too, by the end, existing on whatever was left from the community storehouse after the Prophet and his bishops had their pick.

  I identify what could have been our family’s main living quarters. We shared it with thirty other mothers and their children. Beyond the group of family residences, a thick wall made from extra-white cement divides the regular residences from the Prophet’s enormous log-cabin house on the far side.

  It looks alien, like a place I’ve never been. I suppose I had been hoping for some sudden epiphany. Instead, I feel like an outsider, in a strange place. This makes me feel the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life.

  There are silos, dotted all around. I squint into the distance, attempting to match what I remember from my bedroom window. Was I nearer or farther from the grain storage?

  Our tall self-built temple is right in the middle, a vision in snowy concrete. It is vast—a great turreted castle with a huge boundary wall topped with white railings that stretches around the perimeter. Streets radiate out from it in a grid system.