Destroying Angel

by Michael Wallace

  “On the other hand, I don’t like these other places either. A toxic uranium mine might have buildings enough for all those people, but if the groundwater is poisoned…”

  “I think the FBI checked the mine early on, anyway. Not that Kimball’s cult might not have moved in later.” He finished the last of his chips, and she caught him eying the second half of her sandwich.

  “Go ahead. I’ve had enough.”

  He crunched down. “It was toast. Now it’s more like a crouton sandwich.” He wasn’t really complaining, though. Two more bites and the thing was gone. “And you don’t like the Anasazi-ruin idea?”

  “No, I don’t.” She traced Indian Creek with her finger. “I’ve been there before. Remote, but not wilderness. Smaller than Dark Canyon, with more hikers. If there are ruins big enough to house thirty people, someone discovered them a hundred years ago.”

  “Then we’re stuck. Again.” He took a swig from his water bottle.

  “Can Fayer do some digging, maybe give us something more to work with?”

  “I’ll try her, but I doubt it. There’s something weird going on with the FBI. She said they’re mothballing the Blanding field office.”

  “What does that mean for the investigation?”

  “It means they’re packing it in.”

  Eliza stared at him. “Forty-seven dead not enough to hold their interest? I don’t believe it.”

  “I know. I’m baffled. It’s not totally shut down, but it’s on life support. Fayer still has the case file. She and some guy named Perez are holding down the fort.”

  “Perez?” Eliza asked. She felt a twinge. “His first name is Eduardo?”

  “That’s right. You know the guy?”

  “Not really, no. I met him once or twice. He was Manuel Cardoza’s partner, right?”

  “Oh, right. Perez and Cardoza arrested Kimball the first time around. Cardoza is back in Washington. Perez is a decent guy, though.”

  Krantz filled her in on what he knew. With the weather crisis, the Bureau was reassigning most of its field agents. There was a major grain-theft and smuggling operation in the Midwest that had sprung from seemingly nowhere. Other agents focused on an antifederal militia movement in the Dakotas. Once the crisis passed, they would restaff Fayer’s anticult task team.

  Eliza barely listened. She was thinking about Eduardo Perez. Six years since the two FBI agents infiltrated Blister Creek, posing as casual laborers. He’d be, what, thirty by now? No doubt as handsome as ever. She wondered if he remembered their flirtation.

  She didn’t regret what she’d done. A few kisses, that’s all. A professional lapse for Eduardo, but let him worry about that. Eliza may have been seventeen and sexually inexperienced, but she’d known what she was doing that night she came to Eduardo’s trailer.

  So what had changed in six years? Here she was, twenty-three, and hadn’t kissed another man since. Krantz bent over the map, and Eliza studied his strong jaw and intense eyes. What was taking him so long? She thought he liked her but had no real idea how a man showed interest in the real world. In Blister Creek an interested man stampeded his herd through your vegetable garden or bragged about the size of his compound. Maybe if he was really keen, he’d tell a girl she had a nice pelvis for pushing out babies.

  “Question is,” Krantz said, “do we go after him? That didn’t work out so well last time.”

  “Neither did sitting around waiting for Taylor Junior to come to us.”

  “No.”

  “You want to go, don’t you?” Eliza asked.

  “I didn’t join the FBI so I could sit around waiting for the bad guys to show up.” He sighed. “But I’m a small-town cop now. Maybe we’re better off with cameras and surveillance. Wait for the FBI to get back in the fight.” He folded the map. “And I don’t have a vehicle that can make it over that terrain, anyway.”

  “My father inherited a pair of ATVs when he took over the Kimball house,” she said. “Elder Kimball and his sons used them to get around the ranch. Father preferred a horse for his off-roading. Got to ration gasoline in the apocalypse, you know. But he fired up the ATVs a couple of times a year and changed the oil. They’re under tarps in the shed. I bet Jacob would let us take them for a spin.”

  Krantz raised an eyebrow. “Eliza Christianson, you’re playing me. I’m like a dog and you’re holding a strip of bacon over my nose.”

  “Are you drooling yet?”

  An enigmatic smile played across his lips, that could have meant…well, anything. “A little bit, yes.”

  “You didn’t join the FBI to wait for the bad guys to show up. And I didn’t sign on as your deputy to catch shoplifters at Kevin’s Kwikstop. I joined up to nail Taylor Junior to the wall.”

  “I thought it was the chance to carry a gun.”

  “I like handling big guns, yes.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Then he looked away, a split second sooner than she would have liked. She was sure he’d been on the verge of saying something else. She blushed as she realized the innuendo in what she’d said. Gosh, that was silly.

  “You’re right. I’m calling Fayer about those abandoned bases.”

  “Good. I’ll ask Jacob about the ATVs. We can drive them in and then hike the last few miles so nobody hears us coming. What about Sister Miriam?”

  “What about her?” he asked.

  “We could use the backup.”

  Krantz looked hesitant. Eliza knew he still didn’t trust Miriam, even though, ironically, the two of them had something in common, each one having followed an unlikely path from FBI agent to resident of Blister Creek.

  “Okay, you’re right,” he said at last, his voice a low rumble. “But you make the call. She’ll make me beg, and I’m not so good at that.”

  The warring air masses brought another storm into the desert, this time in the form of torrential rains instead of snow. Jacob sat in the window seat built by his great-grandfather, reading by an oil lamp his great-great-grandmother had brought into Blister Creek and listening to the rain patter against the stained-glass window built by his great-uncle Joseph. And thinking about his father. Those four were dead, their generations gone or fading. But as he opened Grandma Cowley’s diary, Jacob’s soul felt suddenly old, almost stretched. Son to father, to uncle, to grandmother, to great-grandfather, to great-great-grandmother.

  “How much left?” Fernie asked from the bed.

  He looked up, surprised. He’d put her through a workout earlier, trying to get muscle tone in the left leg, the one that wasn’t completely paralyzed, and he didn’t realize she was still awake.

  “What?”

  “How much left to read in the diary?”

  “Fifteen, twenty more pages. She took a big break in the middle to write down all her worries about what the men will do when they finally show up at Blister Creek. It’s late October when she’s writing, and she expects they’ll come before winter. Oh, and they saw another federal marshal and they don’t know if he’s looking for the one they killed.”

  Jacob said all this in a low voice, to keep from waking Daniel, who snored in a sleeping bag on the floor. And of course Nephi had complained when he heard that his big brother got to sleep with Mom and Dad, so he lay in his own sleeping bag on the opposite side of the bed. With Jake sleeping in the crib, it was almost like being back in their cozy quarters in Zarahemla.

  “But what about the first marshal?” she asked. “You know how he died?”

  “Not yet. And there’s not much room left. Grandma Cowley wrote all this detail about splitting rails, about fighting wolves and mountain lions, about the medicinal value of desert plants, even how they got tallow for candles. It’s interesting enough, and you’ve got to hand it to her. Grandma Cowley was tough and resourceful.”

  “But that’s not why you’re reading it.”

  “No, it’s not. Why did she kill the marshal? What happened when their husbands arrived?”

  She patted the bed. “Come
over here. Bring the lamp and the book.”

  He came over and she took the diary, told him to put the lamp by her side and prop her with the pillows. And then she read from the diary in her smooth, calming voice with its trace of a rural Utah twang, like a cream sauce with a hint of cayenne. She read about how Grandma Cowley turned a pair of wagon wheels and some yucca-fiber rope into a pulley to lift sandstone blocks for the foundation of the chapel.

  And then Fernie flipped the page and hesitated. When she started reading again, her tone changed.

  I should have written this when it happened. But I had blood on my hands, and guilt tormented my soul. I would do it again if I had to, but three months have passed and I still see the man’s dead eyes when I lie awake at night.

  The marshal’s name was Frederick van Slooten. He was a strongly built man with a clean-shaven face that would have been handsome if not for the white scar that ran from his right ear to his chin.

  The first thing he did was urinate in the cistern. Then he gathered the women at gunpoint and made us sit shoulder to shoulder in front of the fire, told us who he was and why he’d come, then questioned and threatened. When the women said we had no idea where our men were, he started in on the children. After another hour of bullying, the women began arguing back, but he shouted us into silence.

  “Now listen up,” he said at length. He paced back and forth with his rifle cradled in his arms and an unlit cigar chomped in his jaw. “You polygs thought you was real clever hiding out here in the desert, didn’t you? But I ain’t no fool. I can see with my own eyes what’s going on. Now where are they?”

  “We told you,” Laura said in her English accent that sounded so proper and civilized next to this brute of a man. “We haven’t seen them in two weeks.”

  “Is that so?” Van Slooten tapped her forehead with the muzzle of his rifle, and she shut her eyes and trembled. “And who dug them ditches? Who cut the stones?”

  “We did,” I said.

  “Was I talking to you?”

  “No, but you should be.”

  He strolled over, bent down, and pressed his cigar into my face. “Oh, and why is that?”

  “Because I’m in charge.”

  “You?” His smile turned into a grin. “All these wagons, this camp you’re turning into a town. And you’re giving orders.”

  I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to fade into the background. Maybe he’d threaten and bully for a spell and then leave us alone. If I kept my mouth shut, he wouldn’t single me out for special abuse. But it would get out anyway, when one of the more timid women talked. And maybe I could relieve the pressure from the others. It sounds foolish to write it now, but I wasn’t afraid—not like the others, at least. Every one of them was terrified, I could see. I was angry. This was more of the same persecution that drove us into the wilderness in the first place. This man, stinking of sweat and tobacco, was every man in every mob that had tormented the saints since the days of Joseph Smith. I refused to be intimidated.

  And so I gave him my name and told him who my husband was, and about the other leaders, and explained how they had left me in charge.

  He sat on the ground while I talked, elbow propped against his saddle. His expression turned smug when I finished, and he lit the end of his cigar in the coals at the edge of the fire. “So you’re married to Brigham Young’s nephew? Why, looks like I hit the mother lode of polyg hideouts here. Where are they now?”

  “We told you already. They haven’t come yet.”

  “And I told you,” he said, voice hard, “that I ain’t no idiot.”

  “We did this ourselves. It matters not a whit if you believe me or not. And I know what you’re about. You have no commission to arrest women and children. So I suggest you leave our camp before we take up arms and drive you off like a wild animal.”

  He stared. His mouth opened and the cigar dangled at the corner. For a moment I dared hope. He would decide we were more trouble than we were worth, would saddle his horse and ride off to look for our husbands in other parts. But then his expression hardened and he shook his head. “No, I think I’ll stay right here. You say you ladies built all this yourself? This I’d like to see.”

  I rose angrily to my feet to demand that he leave. But he lifted his rifle and shook his head. “Sit down or I will put a ball in your g—d—head. Good. Now, you all listen up. I ain’t just the lawman in this camp. I am the judge and I am the executioner. If any of you steps out of line, I will put you in your place. Do you hear?”

  For the next hour, he made his demands. We tended his horse. We cleaned his saddle. We did his mending and his wash. We set up his canvas tent and swept it clean. We fixed him supper, and he ate our last piece of beef. When he finished, he pulled out a flask of whiskey. My stomach turned in circles. Sober, van Slooten was a brute of a man. Drunk, what would he do?

  But he took two sips, and then he was turning the flask upside down in his mouth. He spent the next few minutes rummaging through his saddlebags, cursing and blaspheming. At last he returned to the center of the camp, where he sank down to stare morosely at the fire. “D—Mormons.” He rubbed the scar on his face.

  The rest of us continued about our work. The women were shivering and distracted, their children, fed on stories of polygamist hunters and other nasty gentile types, even more terrified. I did my best to focus their attention on their tasks, not only for their own sake but because I couldn’t waste a single evening.

  For the next three days it appeared that van Slooten would let us be. We fixed his meals and cared for his horse, and he sat in the shade of his tent, watching us work. Occasionally he saddled his horse and rode around the valley, searching for the men’s hideout he was certain must exist.

  Sister Annabelle turned into a simpering, overly helpful servant. She brought van Slooten corn bread with honey butter and offered to resole his worn boots. The rest of us called him Mr. van Slooten, but she called him Frederick. At first, this behavior seemed treasonous, but then I noticed van Slooten softening. He stopped yelling at her, and then stopped insulting Annabelle’s sister wives, and at length stopped sneering at the rest of us. Except for one incident where he threw a rock at a child who failed to bring his horse quickly enough, van Slooten became more an irritant than an enemy.

  But on the third day van Slooten discovered Annabelle’s medicinal liquor, and we saw the monster.

  Fernie stopped reading. She thumbed through the pages with a frown.

  “You’re not skipping ahead, are you?” Jacob asked.

  “No, that’s all there is.”

  “Can’t be all. What happens next?” He reached for the book.

  “Nothing happens. Look.”

  It was true, he saw. There were more pages, but they didn’t continue the story. Instead, Grandma Cowley had sketched a map of the valley on two pages—remarkably accurate, from the look of it, even though she must have done so without a level, measuring tape, or theodolite. The next two pages were notes about her construction of a flour mill and how she dug a millrace to power the waterwheel. Several pages had sketches of desert flowers or animals—a gopher snake, a desert spiny lizard, a Mormon cricket, a jackrabbit so detailed you could see the veins in its ears. Another page had a profile of a young Indian—perhaps the Paiute she’d seen the first day.

  On the last page she’d written the quote later inscribed on her tombstone: Lay Me Up One Thousand Bushels of Wheat. And then nothing.

  “Why did she do that?” he said.

  “Who, Grandma Cowley?”

  “No, Rebecca. She gave me the diary, told me it explained what she was doing at Grandma Cowley’s cabin. It doesn’t say anything of the sort. Doesn’t even finish telling what happened with the federal marshal.”

  “There has to be more.” She took back the diary. “Look at it. It starts three months after they arrived, like she needed to get it all down.”

  “Maybe their husbands showed up the next day. Maybe that’s why she never finished.�
��

  “I don’t think so,” Fernie said. “She wrote all this stuff in the back and then started back at the beginning with the journal. Look at the dates. She ran out of room, that’s all. There’s got to be another diary. Maybe Rebecca doesn’t have it and she’s hoping you do.”

  “Or maybe she does. And she wants me to ask.”

  Daniel moaned in his sleep. Jacob and Fernie fell silent, waited to see if he’d cry out. But then he rolled over and the snores returned.

  Jacob tucked the diary into the nightstand and retrieved the reader he’d found in Grandma Cowley’s cellar all those years ago. He opened it to page sixty-four, where Grandma had underlined a passage.

  There’s a monster at first seems an angel of light

  And he flies on beautiful wings

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jacob pulled back on the reins when he saw the woman holding a rifle. He maneuvered his horse to keep the boys behind him and approached slowly. The woman shaded her eyes with one hand, then appeared to relax when they got closer.

  “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Who were you expecting?” Jacob asked. He climbed down from the saddle and then helped Daniel and Diego off the second horse.

  “Nobody. That was the problem.” Rebecca tucked the rifle discreetly inside the front door and pulled the door shut.

  The highlights had faded from her hair as it had grown out. Its natural color was a shade of auburn. Even without makeup she was an attractive woman, still relatively young—perhaps a few years older than Jacob—and he supposed it was a good idea for her to keep a gun at hand if she insisted on living so far out here by herself.

  Something bulky and machinelike sat on the porch beneath a tarp and drew his attention. She followed his gaze but didn’t address his curiosity.

  “Out for a ride with the boys?” she asked.

  “Target shooting with the rifles. Besides, the house is a construction site and they were getting underfoot.” Jacob tousled Daniel’s hair. He was sweaty and dusty from the ride. “Lead the horses down to the creek and let them graze. You boys can take a swim. I’ll be a few minutes.” When they’d taken the horses away, he said, “A kid who is with Dad can’t get in trouble. Idle hands and all that.”