by Sara Blaedel
“Why did she stay after he was thrown out, back when he was young?”
“Like I said, the cult doesn’t let people walk out.” He stared into space for a moment. “But you have to remember, it’s the only life these people know. I’ve talked to several women who escaped, and almost every one of them said they felt bound to Isiah Burnes, despite the incest and abuse. It’s impossible for us on the outside to understand.”
“They’re brainwashed.”
He nodded. “And the God Squad keeps an eye on everybody. Burnes calls it a peace force, but it’s nothing more than a bunch of goons, a gang, and they’ll kill without batting an eye. And not only the people in the cult. They come down hard on anybody who sets up against them. Against the family. The brotherhood. Prisons can be many things. The God Squad are executioners, but the most terrifying part of it all is that most of the members stay loyal to their guru. I talked to one woman who believes that all the good Burnes has done outweighs the misery he’s caused. Misery to the children of the cult, is what she meant.”
Ilka squirmed in her chair. This was beyond anything she’d ever imagined. “Where does the money come from to keep the cult going?”
“The leaders make sure new cult members give up everything they own. They put on revivals, free-spirit seminars. And once they get their claws into people, the new members give it all up gladly.”
The more Ilka asked questions, the more she got answers she really didn’t want to hear.
“Another cult leader was arrested in Utah not so long ago. He has sixty wives and they say he’s fathered several hundred children. He’s been charged with murder, kidnapping, rape, and statutory rape. The police in Texas will drop the charges against Lydia if she’ll come in and testify against Isiah Burnes. It’s estimated that God’s Will has between four and five thousand members, but it could be more, lots more.”
“I don’t know where she is,” Ilka said. “I’m afraid the Rodriguez brothers found her.”
Jennings raised his eyebrows. “What makes you think that?”
Ilka told him about Lydia hiding in Artie’s house. “But when I got there, all I found was her empty bag. They had taken the money and her brother’s records.”
He nodded. “The money. There was a rumor going around that she got away with quite a bit of the drug money.”
“It was a mistake. She didn’t know what was in the bag when they threw it in the car, and the records were hidden in her nephew’s baby carrier. She didn’t find them until later on, after she’d gotten away. And she couldn’t go back and return them, could she.”
“The nephew.” He leaned forward. “We never found Ben’s son. The Rodriguez boys claimed that Lydia killed him and used his corpse to smuggle drugs.”
Ilka shook her head. “Ethan’s alive.” She told him how Lydia had rescued the boy and the nanny from her brother’s house and taken them with her.
Jennings looked surprised. “Are you sure about this?”
Ilka nodded. “I met him,” she said, but didn’t tell him where. “How could you let her take the blame? Why didn’t you do anything to help her?”
“I am doing something, I’m here now. And the last time I saw you, you weren’t much for helping me find her.”
“I didn’t know you were asking about Lydia. And now she’s gone.”
He glanced out the window, and for a moment he gazed out at the tall masts of the yachts in the harbor. His eyes sank deeper into his face as he frowned. “I don’t think the Rodriguez boys took her,” he finally said, in a slow drawl. “They’re not interested in the reward. They just want their money back, without drawing any attention to the old case. Javi Rodriguez got off easy, twelve years in the pen, and the only reason they didn’t try to get him out before he finished his sentence was all the money he was making inside. The prison drug business was too good. Besides, back then they had this verbal agreement with the sheriff: He gave them free rein and they did the same with him. It’s not like that nowadays.”
“But still, I don’t know where she is,” Ilka said. She wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or not.
“If anyone’s got Lydia, I’m thinking it’s the God Squad, and that’s not good. It might mean they’ve tracked down the underground railroad.”
“And?”
“And that means we might never see her again. Promise me you’ll contact me the second you get any sign she’s alive.”
He pulled a card out of his pocket and gave it to Ilka. It was the same one he’d left in the doorway of Lydia’s apartment. “We need to find her; it’s important.”
She watched as he left, then kept staring after he was gone. Now she understood; Lydia knew it wasn’t only the Rodriguez brothers looking for her. Ilka had seen the fear in her eyes. All this time she’d known she had more to lose than the bag, more to be afraid of than ending up on death row.
She tossed her crumpled-up napkin aside. Her fingers hurt from squeezing it.
25
The moment Ilka stepped into the funeral home, she knew; she saw it on everyone’s faces. Her mother and Jette had told her father that she hadn’t paid Artie’s health insurance, and that Artie now had very serious money problems because of her.
He turned to Ilka in anger. “How could this happen? Why in the world did you go through my mail? Something as important as—”
“Hold on just a minute, Paul!” Jette said. “You were dead. Somebody had to take care of things. And it’s also true, like Ilka says, that you should have used a payment service to make sure important bills like that were taken care of. What if the postal service had lost the letter? It happens all the time in Denmark. And we consider ourselves lucky if a bill reaches us before it’s due. You can’t count on anything with the mail, and you certainly can’t blame your daughter.”
“If she hadn’t interfered, Sister Eileen would have taken care of it. And this wouldn’t have happened.”
Ilka knew her father felt helpless, and that he was deeply unhappy about Artie’s situation. But she whirled around to face him and exploded.
“I have heard enough out of you! I tried to take care of your business while you’ve been gone, and I could have done better, I admit it. But don’t fucking stand there and accuse me of interfering, because believe me, I did not want to interfere, it’s the last thing I wanted to do.”
Tufts of the white hair surrounding his head seemed to bristle as her father rose furiously from the table to shout back at her, but Ilka cut him off.
“If we’d found Lydia, all these problems would have been solved. She has enough money to cover Artie’s hospital expenses, and I’m absolutely sure she would do it. But I don’t know where she is. And us standing here yelling at each other isn’t going to help.”
“But I thought she was here,” her mother said. “Wasn’t that why you had us move to the hotel?”
The four of them stood looking at each other, but Ilka didn’t at all feel like explaining. All she could think about was what Jennings had said about the God Squad, how he was scared they’d never see Lydia again.
She started to turn and walk away, but her father cleared his throat and calmly said, “I know where she is.”
It took only one second, one step for Ilka to be in his face. “Where?”
“I’ll take you there.”
Ilka summarized what Calvin Jennings had told her while they drove. Her father shook his head at Isiah Burnes and the “peace force” he sent after people who broke the rules of his religious regime.
“Did you ever have the feeling she was hiding people in the apartment?” Ilka was thinking about the rollaway bed folded up under the window. “Or did she borrow your car, maybe?”
Her father stared out the passenger window a few seconds. “Once in a while she wanted to borrow the hearse, and of course I let her if we weren’t using it. I assumed it had something to do with her parish. And you always want to help if you can.”
“But she didn’t belong to any parish.”
“No, she didn’t, as it turns out.”
Quite a while went by before the towering chimney came into sight and Ilka realized where her father was taking her. She glanced at him. They hadn’t spoken about his relationship to Dorothy, though Ilka had the feeling the two of them had been in contact after he’d returned from Key West.
She turned into the driveway leading to the old farm and crematorium. “How long has Lydia been here?”
“Since yesterday. She called me and said she’d asked Dorothy to come get her at Artie’s house.”
“Called? So you knew Lydia was around? Why didn’t you say something about it?”
“Because you’d already left. And I haven’t seen you until now.”
“So that was where you and Leslie were last night?”
She parked in front of Dorothy’s front door, and he turned to her. “Do you think Lydia can help Artie?” he said, ignoring her question.
Ilka nodded, but before he could ask anything else, she stepped out of the car.
Dorothy came out of the old crematorium and walked their way.
“Ilka wants to talk to Lydia,” her father said. “They parted under difficult circumstances, I think you could say, back when she drove down to Key West to get me.”
That’s putting it diplomatically, Ilka thought. She could still hear Lydia spitting words in her face, saying she hoped for Ilka’s sake that they’d never see each other again. As they walked to the door, Dorothy reached over and put her arm around Ilka. A type of intimacy had formed between them on the evening Ilka sat on Dorothy’s sofa and listened to her explain how Fletcher had forced her father to not contact Ilka. That night convinced her that Dorothy loved her father, which was a comfort to know; by then she’d realized how lonely her father had been in Racine.
On the front doorstep, she stopped; she could see Lydia in the living room window. An indescribable sense of relief washed over her, knowing the tiny woman was safe inside the house, yet at the same time Ilka was angry to find out she’d been so close by. The feeling vanished, though, when Lydia opened the door and stepped aside to let them in. Ilka saw none of the woman’s desperation and rage that had frightened her at the rest stop, where the bleeding man lay on the ground.
“You found the bag,” Ilka said. She explained that she’d left it at the hospital with Artie because she’d been afraid the Rodriguez brothers would return.
“I guessed as much,” Lydia said.
There was a look in her eye Ilka had never seen before, a determination. She’d made up her mind.
“Thank you,” she said, so quietly that only Ilka heard her. “For helping me.”
Ilka nodded at her, silently accepting that the way they’d last parted was history, something they wouldn’t ever discuss.
Lydia stood by the coffee table as Ilka sat on the sofa. “Someone wanted me to tell you hello—Calvin Jennings. He’s the one who came around asking for Lydia Rogers, that day you found out you’d been recognized.”
Lydia nodded. “I know who he is.”
“He can help you.” Ilka shivered, even though the door to the back room and stairway was closed.
She described how Jennings had sought her out at the hotel. “He was the one you talked to when you called in about the shooting at your brother’s house, is how I understand it.”
Something shifted in Lydia’s eyes.
“Fernanda told us what happened that day,” Ilka said.
Lydia nodded again and waited.
“He wants you to go back to Texas with him, to act as a witness against Isiah Burnes.”
That clearly startled Lydia, but still she said nothing.
“He can get the charges against you dropped. He can prove the cult planted the evidence.”
“They did it?” Lydia slowly walked over to the easy chair and sat down with her hands folded in her lap.
Ilka told her how Jennings had left the police and was now a private investigator. “But he still has connections to the police in San Antonio. I think he’s determined to stop God’s Will and clear your name. A great injustice against you, is how he put it. He also told me you and Alice Payne work with the underground railroad that helps women and children get away from the cult.”
Lydia looked up, her face pale now.
Quickly Ilka reached out across the table to her. “He’s on your side.”
“How can we be sure of that?”
Her father’s voice startled her, and Ilka turned and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Why should we trust him? He could just as well be working for the Rodriguez brothers.”
Lydia shook her head and looked down at her hands. “I think he’s here to help. When I saw him out in front of the funeral home, I got scared. I thought he’d come to tell me something had happened to Alice. Or that she’d sent him to warn me. That’s why I wanted to just get out of there.”
Her voice was husky, and Ilka realized that Lydia was touched, even relieved. Or maybe it was from knowing she was no longer alone, that someone believed her and wanted to help.
Her father wouldn’t let it go. “But can we trust him?”
Lydia nodded. “His own daughter joined God’s Will when she was seventeen or eighteen. She fell in love with a guy in the cult, but a year later she committed suicide. I didn’t know Jennings back then, or his daughter. She was several years older than me. But he was the one my brother contacted for help, back when he was planning on getting his family out of there. That’s why I called him. I wasn’t aware he knew Alice Payne, that she was helping women who wanted out. Alice and my brother helped me escape, and she supported me later on, too. It takes a long time to change your head when you’ve been raised a certain way all your life. Back then I lived with Alice and her husband.”
Ilka glanced into the kitchen.
“Dorothy knows all about this,” Lydia said.
“Jennings told me your parents were members of the cult,” Ilka said. “Are they still alive?”
Lydia shrugged. “I don’t know which one of the men was my father. Nobody cared about that, we were all children of Isiah Burnes. He could be the one—my mother claimed he was. But it could just as well have been any one of the others. I haven’t seen my mother since she sent Ben and me to Texas. She stayed in Utah with my two younger sisters. I was thirteen, my brother was fourteen. It was the year before he was excluded. He tried to find her once when he was in his mid-twenties, he wanted to get back at her for what she’d done to us. Ben had this enormous need for revenge and justice. We both wanted her to pay for the childhood she gave her children.”
Dorothy came in with coffee.
“Ben may have been thrown out of the cult, but he was never really free of it, of what it had done to him. It’s hard to understand, I realize that. And most of us don’t like talking about it. Boys were raped, just like the girls. It was just that we were worth more, because we were fruitful and could multiply, all that. I had a self-induced abortion when I was fourteen, and after that I couldn’t get pregnant. Now I think it saved me, even though I nearly died back then. The day after my brother turned fifteen, they took him away, to New Jersey. It’s a long drive from Texas, with two armed men in the car. I wasn’t told anything about it; one day he was just gone, and nobody would say anything when I asked.”
Lydia looked at Ilka’s father. “That’s when I first tried to run away, but they caught me, and after that they kept a close eye on me. I heard about Alice Payne when I was twenty-two, and I finally managed to escape—my brother had contacted her and asked her to help. He knew he wouldn’t be able to get in with a message for me, Burnes’s security people would find out.”
“The God Squad.”
Lydia looked at Ilka in surprise.
“Jennings told me about them,” Ilka explained.
“Nobody gets in without their approval. Alice is a gynecologist, and she gets called in when there are complications. Otherwise the cult has their own doctors and midwiv
es, so it’s only when something goes wrong that they get help from outside.”
“So you think Jennings can be trusted?” her father said.
Lydia nodded. “Definitely. Because of what happened with his daughter, he might be the person willing to go the farthest to stop Burnes. And if what happened down in Texas was their revenge on me for running away, if that’s true, well…”
Lydia was clearly shaken, as if that new piece of information had finally soaked in and sounded plausible to her. “I’d like to talk to him, but he’ll have to come out here. It’s too risky for me to go into town if the Rodriguez brothers are still looking for me.”
“I agree,” Ilka said. She handed Lydia her phone and the card Jennings had given her.
They all waited in silence as she made the call. Lydia stared down at the coffee table while she spoke with Jennings. From her short answers, Ilka concluded she was prepared to give testimony against Burnes, if the police managed to arrest him.
“And you’re sure the police will listen to me?” she asked for the second time.
Ilka pieced together that Jennings had told her about the new police chief in San Antonio, that things were much different now. And it sounded as if Jennings had the same records of drug deliveries as those that had been in the bag, including a list of people the drug ring had paid to cross the border with the dead babies.
Ilka thought about Javi Rodriguez. She realized that her own sense of justice had changed since learning what had happened earlier; she was much more willing now to accept that her father and Lydia had gotten rid of him.
“I can’t leave right at the moment,” Lydia told Jennings, her eyes still locked onto the table. “There’s something I have to take care of first.”
Dorothy looked uneasy, but Lydia hung up after promising to call again as soon as she was ready to meet him.
Ilka was worried too. What if the San Antonio police weren’t as willing to work out a deal with Lydia as Jennings believed they were? The minute she stepped into police headquarters, she risked being arrested and ending her days in one of the country’s most isolated prisons. Ilka had googled sentencing in Texas, and she knew how brave Lydia was to trust Jennings.
