by Andrew Hunt
“Maybe I’ll shoot you and bury you out there where nobody will find you,” he said. “How does that strike you?”
“My partner is waiting outside, and he’s got an itchy trigger finger. Don’t give him a reason to use it, son.”
“I ain’t your son!”
“That thing can go off accidentally,” I said. “If that happens, I’m dead, and you’ve committed a capital offense.”
“I’m a kid,” he said. “I won’t get the firing squad.”
“Do you really want to put your legal expertise to the test?” I asked. “Lay the gun down. Let’s talk.”
Without warning, three other boys with Lehi Roller Mills flour bags covering their heads came charging into the room, all carrying the same type of long revolvers as the first fellow on the scene. With four guns pointed at me, I can tell you right now that the old stomach started doing backflips. Any jittery fingers would have sent me off to the great glory beyond. They were as nervous as I was, staring out through those holes in the canvas. Each hand trembled, and that didn’t make me feel any better about the spot I was in.
“Freeze!” shouted one.
“Hands in the air!” cried another.
The kid who arrived first on the scene shook his head. “He’s doing it already! I gave the orders!”
“Oh.”
“It doesn’t hurt to say it twice.”
“Keep your hands in the air!”
“I told him that!”
“Oh.”
“What are we going to do with him?”
“I say we shoot him like the mangy varmint he is!”
“We can’t,” said the first one.
“Why?”
“Because he’s a policeman,” the first one explained. “If we shoot him, the police will come here and get us. We might even get executed.”
“They can’t do that to us. We’re kids.”
“I ain’t gonna chance it,” said the first one. “He says he wants to help us.”
“And you’re taking his word for it?”
“What choice do we have?”
“I say we shoot him in the balls!” hollered a masked kid in the back. “I can blow ’em clean off from here.”
“I say we hear what he’s got to say,” reasoned the first one. “What’ve we got to lose?”
One of the boys standing off to the side, near a window, tossed his gun on the floor. “They ain’t loaded, no how.”
“You’re not supposed to say that, Garth!” shouted the zealous one in back.
“Freeze!”
Roscoe stood behind the boys with my gun trained on them.
“Drop ’em, fellas. Now!”
One by one, the other three boys began dropping their guns on the floor. Each revolver made loud clacking noises when hitting wood. The first lad in the room removed his mask. I recognized him as the boy I glimpsed for a fraction of a second at Claudia Jeppson’s house. Wavy brown shoulder-length hair. Blue eyes. Maybe thirteen. He was the assailant who’d hit me in the head and knocked me out cold. I almost said something to him about it, but I left it alone. Seeing him in the light, I then connected his face to the photographs I’d seen of a young Boyd Johnston. I knew right then that I was face-to-face with LeGrand Johnston’s son.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” I asked.
“Right this way,” he said.
* * *
We’d all gathered around a long table in the commissary, with light spilling in through the open door. The other boys introduced themselves as Garth Christensen, a paunchy kid with tousled black hair and freckles; Franklin Boggs, a handsome boy with short brown hair, beady eyes, and a kind smile; and Chester Hammond, the tough talker from upstairs, a redhead, who turned out to be an awkward and shy young man without the mask on. Using big wooden spoons, we ate cans of beans they kept stored in the back room. The water we drank out of tin cups came from the pump out back and tasted metallic, but the boys assured me it was safe.
They were honest and open about the heist and filled Roscoe and me in on all of the details, right down to Ferron Steed supplying the guns, courtesy of Eldon Black, and showing Boyd how to drive a truck. The foursome had been hiding out here ever since the robbery, visited mostly by Claudia and Jared. One or the other of them—or both—would drop by once a week, occasionally more often, with supplies.
Boyd confirmed that Nelpha had visited here last week, which is where she was when I thought she had returned to Dixie City. He also apologized for putting the money in my basement. That wasn’t his original plan, he insisted, but when he drove Nelpha back to my house and saw that nobody was home, the trunk that held the money was still in the back of the truck and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
When I told the boys about Claudia being abducted by the Kunz brothers and Ferron Steed, all four went wide-eyed and Chester began to wipe tears from his face. I informed them that Nelpha, too, was missing, which did not seem to carry quite the same weight as the news about Claudia.
“There’s one other thing,” I said, spooning the last of my beans into my mouth. “Jared Weeks is on his way down to Rulon Black’s compound as we speak. He’s got a lot of guns, and much blood will be spilled, including probably his, if we don’t do something to stop him. Problem is, I don’t know where Rulon’s place is located. I need someone who knows the lay of the land to help me find it. I won’t put any of you in harm’s way. Whoever helps me will be kept a safe distance from Rulon’s. Can any of you help me find it?”
“We all know where it is,” said Franklin. “But there’s only one of us that’s actually been in it and knows where everything is.”
“Frankie,” said Boyd, shaking his head.
“We should tell him,” said Franklin. “It’ll make him feel better, knowing she’s here.”
“You talk too much, Frankie,” said Boyd.
“Who’s here?” I asked.
“I told you to stay put!” said Boyd.
I turned around in my chair to see Nelpha emerging from the kitchen, like a ghostly pioneer hovering across the battered wooden floor. She smiled when she saw me, and in her hand she carried a handheld chalkboard—black slate framed in oak—along with a piece of chalk and a strip of cloth. She came over to where I was sitting, wrote something down on the board, and showed it to me.
HELLO ART
“So you can write,” I said.
She nodded and erased the words with her strip of cloth and began writing something else. She turned the board toward me.
SORRY IF I GAVE YOU A FRIGHT
“You scared Clara and me,” I said. “We care about you—very much. We want you to be safe. That’s all.”
More erasing. More writing. She turned the slate my way.
SO SORRY
“How did you get down here anyway?”
Under SO SORRY, she wrote: THUMBED IT.
“You hitchhiked?” I asked, my voice full of disapproval. “That’s not safe.”
She wiped the board and wrote more.
I CAN SHOW YOU WHERE RULON LIVES
“I won’t put you at risk,” I said. “I was hoping one of the boys could show me.”
“He’s right,” said Boyd, stepping out of the dimness. “I’ll go.”
She rubbed the cloth on the slate and the chalk moved quickly.
She showed me her message: THEY DO NOT KNOW IT LIKE I KNOW IT.
“It’s no place for a girl,” said Boyd. “Take me instead.”
Another came seconds later.
PLEASE
She wiped that one and wrote a longer note.
JARED AND CLAUDIA ARE MY FAMILY—LET ME HELP YOU
I looked at Roscoe. He gave me a solitary nod. I turned back to Nelpha.
“I’m sure I’ll regret this,” I said. “All right, listen, when I give you orders, you mind me. Whatever you do, don’t wander off. Understand?”
She pulled the chalk away from the board and showed me, smiling.
YES
&nbs
p; Boyd approached her. They faced each other. “I won’t let you do it.”
She wrote something on the board and showed him. I couldn’t see it, and I figured whatever it said, it was between the two of them.
I sensed Boyd getting choked up. “Then I want to go, too. I’m coming with!”
More clacking of chalk on slate. She held up the board.
“Okay,” he said, with a solitary tear running down his cheek. “But please be careful.”
I looked away while the two embraced.
“We best get going,” said Roscoe.
We said our farewells after having spent a good hour at Camp Floyd. Outside, on our way across the grassy expanse to the Ford, the boys tagged along with Roscoe and Nelpha and me. It surprised all of us to come upon another car, identical to the one we drove here, parking alongside ours. The driver, topped with a black fedora, stepped out, slammed the door, and faced us. Myron Adler was his usual deadpan self, only this time he came prepared with a pair of loaded shoulder holsters.
“I thought I asked you to stay behind and hold the fort,” I said.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Arrest me?”
Roscoe laughed heartily and turned to me.
“You know something?” he said. “I think I’m starting to like this guy.”
Thirty-three
Around five o’clock, crossing rough desert terrain near Rulon Black’s compound, we spotted a dusty green 1926 Nash Ajax parked in an arroyo. I pulled over, shut off the engine, and got out of the car for a closer look. I opened the passenger-side door. Registration in the glove box confirmed that the vehicle belonged to Claudia Jeppson. I swallowed hard at our find, and Nelpha sized up the car with a forlorn expression. I probed the interior thoroughly, but all I found was a lone, shiny cartridge that had rolled under the seat. Jared had been here. For all we knew, he’d breached the compound walls to exact his bloody vengeance. Behind me, Myron and Roscoe got out of their car and traversed the rocky surface to get down to this level ground, still muddy from a recent flood.
“Well?” asked Myron.
“He beat us here,” I said.
“He had a hell of a head start,” said Roscoe.
Myron said, “You don’t think he’d be crazy enough to…”
“In his state of mind, I wouldn’t put it past him,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We got back in our cars and drove off. Nelpha guided me to a spot with a prime view of Rulon Black’s compound. It made me feel uneasy being back here among the red cliffs and arid sweeps of southern Utah and northern Arizona. I couldn’t even be sure which state we were in right then. When we reached our destination, sunlight still lit the sky, yet shadows were long. I parked away from the cliff, got out of the car, and asked Nelpha to stay put. She sat down on the running board while I retrieved my binoculars from the backseat. Myron and Roscoe arrived, joining me over to the escarpment’s edge to survey the scene below.
The compound itself turned out to be more of a village than the solitary dwelling I was expecting. It was an orderly community of sapling-lined roads, houses, stables, a garage, a barn, and beyond those, an airstrip and a hangar. A paved road ran through the center of it, linked to a gated entrance. Enclosing the main grounds was a high brick wall topped with barbed wire. Beyond the walled city were grazing lands belonging to Rulon Black, fenced in by shorter wooden posts connected together by tight lines of barbed wire. What a relief to see living, breathing people outside, mostly women and children, going about their activities as afternoon turned to evening.
Roscoe appeared by my side, gazing below. I said, “Either he isn’t there or…”
“We could speculate until the end of time,” said Roscoe. “Got any bright ideas?”
“I’ve got to go in,” I said. “Reason with Rulon.”
“Do you hear what you’re saying?” asked Roscoe. “You wanna try talking sense to an insane recluse who thinks God speaks to him? He’ll probably order one of his thugs to cut your throat.”
“I’m open to suggestions, if you’ve got any,” I said.
“Let’s go home. We tried to head Jared off at the pass. We failed. That’s all there is to it.”
“There are children down there,” I said. “What if Jared shows up and there’s shooting? One of those kids might get caught in the crossfire. I can’t live with that.”
“So you plan to go up to the front gate and ask to be let in?” asked Roscoe, making a face. “What’ll you tell Rulon if they let you see him? ‘Can’t we all just put our differences aside and bury the hatchet?’”
“Have you got a better idea?” I asked.
Myron showed up by Roscoe’s side after listening in on us. “He’s right, Art. This isn’t your responsibility anymore. It’s out of your hands.”
“I’ve got to try,” I said. “I’ve got to be able to say I did everything I could.”
“To whom?” asked Myron.
“I’m not asking either of you to risk your lives by coming with me,” I said. “In fact, I’d prefer you stay here. Look after Nelpha.”
“I won’t let you do it,” said Roscoe, shaking his head.
“Still got my sidearm?” I asked.
“In my suit coat, in the car,” he said, jerking his head at the Ford. “What of it?”
“Give it to Nelpha,” I said. “Tell her to stay put in my Olds. She can leave the windows down, but I don’t want her wandering off.”
“You’re really going to do this, aren’t you?” Roscoe gave me a hard stare with a raised eyebrow. I nodded. He sighed. “All right, I’m coming with you.”
“Roscoe, I don’t need you…”
“Oh for hell’s sake,” said Roscoe. “Let’s get this over with.”
Roscoe went off and retrieved my .38 from his jacket in the backseat of the Ford, then headed over to my Oldsmobile to deliver it to Nelpha. A minute later, she was running toward me, almost tripping, clinging to that little slate chalkboard of hers, with Roscoe in pursuit. When she got to me, she fumbled for her piece of chalk, frantically wrote something down, and held the board up for me to read.
IT IS TOO LATE! DO NOT GO! YOU CAN NOT SAVE JARED.
She was breathing hard, on the verge of tears, and her eyes were wide and penetrating.
“I’ll be back,” I said. “Then we can go home.”
She turned the board toward her, wiped it off with the corner of her hand, and scribbled for a minute or so. Then she flipped it around.
SCARED OF YOU GETTING HURT. SORRY I SHOWED YOU THE WAY HERE.
“Do this one thing for me,” I said. “Stay here, with Myron, until I return.”
She lowered the board. Her shoulders sagged. She knew she couldn’t change my mind. She returned to my Oldsmobile and sat down on the running board with her chalkboard and a morose expression.
Roscoe and I hiked to the bottom of the escarpment. Once at the base, we set off, journeying across that craggy landscape together without speaking most of the way. Being out here in this stark land of mesas rising hundreds of feet into the sky and all manner of unusual rock formations—the hoodoos and chimneys and deep slot canyons cut into the earth by thousands of years of erosion—it was hard not to become a little philosophical. Although this region was unsuitable for farming, it provided plenty of nourishment for thought. By coming here, I knew I was running the risk of robbing my children of a father. I thought about my own father, about how much I’d missed him over the years. I began to second-guess myself, wondering if I was doing the right thing. It’s not too late to turn around, I told myself. But I didn’t turn around. Neither did Roscoe. We kept going. Some deep inner compulsion kept me moving forward.
In a small wooden guard station in front of the compound wall, a pair of familiar hired muscles in suits, one swarthy and freshly shaven, the other with a beard that probably hadn’t been trimmed since 1908, got up out of their chairs and came over to me, armed with Thompson submachine guns. I remembered the swarthy one went by the name
Duke. They recognized us from our previous visit and shot each other glances on their way over.
I developed that nauseous feeling I sometimes get when I know I’ve committed myself to something big and I can’t turn back. Duke aimed his weapon at me while his partner came over and frisked me. He did the same to Roscoe. Not finding a firearm on either of us, he turned to Duke and simply said, “Clean.”
“How did you find this place?” asked Duke.
“It’s big,” I said. “Not like the proverbial needle in a haystack.”
“Why are you here?” asked the bearded one.
“You fellows are just so scintillating, we couldn’t stay away,” said Roscoe.
The bearded guard raised his Thompson and advanced menacingly. I sidled between the two men and gave Roscoe a fleeting, over-the-shoulder knock-it-off glare. “We’ve come to speak to Rulon Black,” I said. “We have reason to believe the inhabitants of this compound are in imminent danger. As you can see, we’ve come unarmed. Our sole purpose here is to protect lives.”
“It’s nothing these kittens can’t fix,” said Duke, patting his Tommy gun.
“If there’s a way of stopping him peacefully, isn’t that preferable?” I reasoned.
“Why don’t I just put a bullet in your head and we’ll forget you ever came,” snarled the bearded one. He eyed Roscoe. “You first. It’ll be a pleasure to take you out.”
He chuckled in a sinister way. I grinned, to show I wasn’t afraid, even though I secretly was. “That’s one option,” I said. “Not a good one, though. Even as we speak, there’s a detective in our squad awaiting our return, and if we don’t show up, he’ll go round up the authorities. A lot of folks up in Salt Lake City know we’re here, too. That includes my brother, who’s an FBI agent. The feds are searching for a justification to drop the iron heel on the polygamists. Kill us and you’ll be giving them an early Christmas present with a big red-and-green bow on top. When Rulon finds out you two are the reason he’s getting a life sentence in a federal prison, I don’t imagine the reprimand will be humane.”
They eyed each other for a second. Duke walked over to a metal box attached to the compound wall and used a tiny key to open it, revealing a telephone. He lifted the earpiece, turned a crank, and waited for someone to answer. He turned away from me, as if to guard his conversation, but I could hear him from here. “Hello, Mr. Black, it’s Duke.” Pause. “Yes, we have a visitor at the front gate.” Pause. “Detective Oveson, from Salt Lake City.” Pause. “He wishes to speak with the prophet, says it’s urgent.” Pause. “Yes, sir.”
