The Blessed and the Damned (Righteous Series #4) Read online

  “I’m looking for someone. I think you know who, and I think you know where.”

  The woman didn’t answer. The engine of his car ticked behind them. The sun was climbing in the sky, and as soon as the wind died it would be a hot day.

  “Sister Charity,” Eliza said gently. “You’ve seen it. Maybe those boys weren’t your kids, but you lived in the same house. You know what they were like, and you know how they turned out. Is it fair to those women and children to abandon them to him?”

  “Very well,” Charity said. “Let’s talk about those women and children. What happens when you get your way? You’re going to leave them to fend for themselves, is that it?”

  “I’m going to offer them what I offered you,” Jacob said. “What I’m still offering you. Nobody will expect you to grovel. Nobody will demand that you swear eternal allegiance. All we’re offering is a family and a home. Is that so bad that you’d rather suffer in the desert, alone?”

  For a moment he thought she’d break. It couldn’t be easy living out here in a broken-down motor home, isolated from her friends and family. Even her own children, grown though they were. The loneliness must be crippling, so why was she so stubborn?

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said at last. “Those boys belong to my husband. So do I. Don’t ask me to betray my covenants.”

  “I’m not asking you to do that, Sister. I’m asking you to honor your covenants. You also covenanted to obey the prophet.”

  “The prophet doesn’t speak to me. And he doesn’t want me to come back.”

  There was some history between Charity and his father. Jacob’s mother claimed that Charity had been engaged to his father when they were both teenagers. To be his first wife. Father’s choice. She must have been different then. Age and years of crushing responsibility had turned her into a disappointed shell of a woman, had hardened a sour expression onto her face.

  Jacob was running out of options, except for the hard one.

  “This is the will of the prophet,” he said.

  “Is that right?” she demanded. “Then where is Brother Abraham? He can tell me himself.”

  “He sent me instead.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Jacob Christianson. I’m a pathetic old lady, but I’m not an idiot. He didn’t send you—he’d never do that. But I’ll tell you what, if your father wants my help, I’ll do it. How about that? I’ll tell you how to find Taylor Junior and his camp. I’ll even come back to Blister Creek if Abraham speaks as a prophet and tells me that’s the Lord’s will. But until then, my responsibility is to obey my husband.”

  Jacob hardened his voice. “Tell me how to find Taylor Junior.”

  “No.” She thrust out her chin. “You can beat me if you like, threaten to kill me. I don’t care, I’m not telling you anything.”

  “Then you leave me no choice.” Slowly, reluctantly, he turned and gave Eliza a nod. His sister’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She doesn’t understand,” Eliza said.

  Charity turned with a frown and cocked her head. “Understand what, Eliza?”

  “Or maybe she does,” Jacob said, “but she’s hardened her heart.”

  “No, I can’t believe that,” Eliza said. “She may be stubborn, but if she knew you’d been called by the Lord, she’d help. Sister Charity has always listened to the Spirit.”

  Charity snorted. “Oh, that’s what we need, another self-proclaimed prophet.” But a hint of doubt scratched through in her voice.

  “You see,” Jacob said. “She has hardened her heart. I have no choice.”

  He turned without warning and grabbed Charity by the shoulders. He dragged her to her feet and kicked away the chair. She felt light, frail. Her wrist bones creaked beneath his grip. A twist and they would snap like dead branches. She cried out and struggled, but he gave her a savage shake. She moaned in terror.

  “Charity Kimball! In the name of Jesus Christ, thou art rebuked before God, angels, and these witnesses.”

  “No, please! Don’t do it, please, no!”

  Is this what Father does?

  Did he bully people? Threaten them with damnation, lord his priesthood over his followers when they didn’t obey their prophet? Did his blood pulse with righteous anger as his enemies cowered before him?

  Charity’s feet collapsed and he gripped the fabric of her dress with his left hand to hold her upright. He raised the other hand to the square and she let out a whimper, eyes widening in dread.

  “The Lord is displeased, Charity. Thou hast hardened thy heart against his servants.”

  “I’m sorry. Please!”

  “Thy soul is at the edge of a precipice. One wrong word, one misstep, one note of defiance and thou shalt spend eternity in outer darkness with Lucifer and his angels. I shall condemn thee and cast thee down to hell.”

  “Have mercy!”

  “Obey me, Charity Kimball. Obey me and thou shalt live.”

  She was trembling violently and her voice shook as she said, “Thou sayest. Thou sayest!”

  Her concession left him feeling ill, stomaching roiling with guilt. He’d bullied her into compliance with spiritual threats—penetrating, he knew, where a threat of physical violence would have failed. It was the same disgusting tactic that forced teenage girls to marry old men, that drove surplus boys from the community. The same tactic that had destroyed one of his brothers and left the other a drug-addicted husk.

  Jacob relaxed his grip and lowered his voice. “Now tell me. Where is Taylor Junior hiding?”

  “Dark Canyon.”

  “By Blanding?”

  “Yes, the wilderness area. They’ve got a secret camp high in the mountains.”

  He’d driven past, but never entered. Just one of dozens of places to hide in the vast swath of land in southeastern Utah—he didn’t have time to search them all. It was an official wilderness area, maybe a hundred square miles without towns or roads. Hundreds more square miles of desolation surrounded the area. It was a good place to hide, and it fit with several other clues: a bearded man buying a dozen axes at a hardware store in Blanding. Two men in a new Ford F-150 truck hauling propane canisters and tents through Hanksville. They’d started a fight with a man at a gas station in Hanksville, then sped south on Highway 95 when someone called the highway patrol. The state troopers came, but the men had disappeared somewhere before the junction with 276.

  “How do you find the camp?” he asked. Eliza retrieved the chair, and they helped her down.

  “I don’t know. Taylor Junior sent two men—Aaron Young and Eric Froud—to get me. I threatened them with the gun, just like I did to you that time. They said something about Dark Canyon, but that’s all I know.”

  “When was this?”

  “Six months ago. I haven’t seen them since.”

  Six months. So they might have moved. Except he didn’t think so. His last clue had come from a Navajo family selling turquoise and silver jewelry at a rest stop not far from the turnoff into Natural Bridges National Monument, and that was only two days ago. One of the Navajo women said she’d seen a traditionally dressed polygamist family—Last Dazers, the woman called them—loading sacks of rice into a pickup truck. They were dirty, like they’d been somewhere without running water.

  “How many people are there?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Some men. Also women and children. Please, Jacob. That’s all I know.”

  He believed her. His awful work done, he said, “I’m sorry, Sister Charity. That’s not me, you have to know that. I wanted you to tell me without threats.”

  “What are you saying, that it wasn’t real? You made those things up?”

  Jacob looked away, unable to face the look on Charity’s face, the growing sense of betrayal. He turned to Eliza. “Let’s go.”

  “Of course,” Charity said. “You got what you came for. All the rest of it was a lie. Get in your car, drive home. You did your duty. Who cares if I rot ou
t here?”

  Jacob and Eliza went back to the car and popped the trunk. They returned carrying boxes.

  Charity stared. “What are you doing? Don’t bring that in here. I don’t want it, whatever it is.”

  He opened the box and removed two canned hams, then showed her that the second box was full of apples. They returned to the trunk, and this time brought back powdered milk, dried and canned beans, and jars of peaches, green beans, and tomatoes.

  “Your father sent this?” Charity asked, incredulous.

  “It’s not from Blister Creek,” Eliza said. “You can thank your brothers and sisters in Zarahemla.”

  “Zarahemla? Why would they do that? I’ve never even been there.”

  “One word from Jacob and they threw open their larders.”

  Jacob said, “I told you, we take care of our own. We don’t abandon our lost sheep for the wolves.”

  Charity watched in silence.

  Jacob and Eliza hefted down a fresh propane tank and set it next to her grill. They brought blankets and clean clothing. Eliza stopped to set a neatly-folded, handmade quilt on Charity’s lap. The woman reached out a finger and ran it along the seam, twisted the yarn tassel between her fingers. When she looked up, her face was anguished. “Why are you doing this? Can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Come home with us,” Eliza said. She reached out a hand, but the woman brushed it away.

  Meanwhile, Jacob hauled out plastic five-gallon jugs of drinking water and stacked them next to the motor home. He covered them with a plastic tarp, which he weighted down with stones.

  Against Charity’s protests, they entered her Winnebago. It smelled stale, like unwashed clothing and body odor. They spent a few minutes collecting rubbish, then took out the dirty and torn clothing in armfuls. After they’d loaded it into the trunk of the car, they returned.

  “Is there anything else you need?”

  “You’re a fool, Jacob Christianson. You know that?”

  “Maybe I am. What else can we do for you?”

  She looked down at her hands, still rubbing the edge of the quilt. Then abruptly, she stood, set it on the chair, and went into the motor home. The door banged shut behind her.

  Jacob and Eliza walked back to the car, which had been baking under the sun. Jacob turned the AC up to full blast, and Eliza and Jacob stood outside while the car cooled down.

  “So. Dark Canyon?” Eliza asked.

  “It fits the axes. A lot of wood chopping, somewhere high on the plateau, probably above six or seven thousand feet, where the forests grow.”

  “That’s still a big chunk of land,” she said.

  “Not as big as what we had a few minutes ago.”

  “Is it even worth it, that’s what I keep asking myself.”

  “I’m not giving up on those people,” Jacob said. “And I’m not sitting around to wait for him to attack us, either. We’ve got a lead—let’s go after it before he gets wind that we’re looking for him and finds a new hiding place.”

  He turned over the map of this stretch of Utah in his mind, from the eastern shores of Lake Powell to Blanding and beyond, then down to the Arizona border and the northern limits of the Navajo reservation. It was several thousand square miles, an area the size of Massachusetts, but with a population of only a few thousand people. It was no wonder they hadn’t made any progress.

  Dark Canyon was official wilderness, with no roads. Deep, narrow canyons, and pine and fir in the higher mountains. There would be fresh water and plenty of places to hide. A hundred square miles, and a couple hundred more of semi-primitive land surrounding and buffering the region. He wondered how they got their supplies in. Maybe they had horses.

  “It’s a great place to hide,” he said. “Some of those canyons have never been properly explored. They could go years without seeing a single hiker. They’re still discovering Anasazi ruins in the cliffs.”

  “And what if we find the guy?” she asked. “Do we threaten him, call him out in front of his followers? I tried that once with his brother, and it didn’t work out so well.”

  He thought of the people burning alive in the trailer outside Las Vegas, a horror that was still fresh. Caleb Kimball had been willing to sacrifice his followers rather than lose them. “No, it didn’t. Any other ideas?”

  “We could drop it, let the pros handle it.”

  “You mean Agent Krantz and Agent Fayer?”

  “Why not?” she asked. “It’s a job for the FBI, not a couple of amateurs. They still want Taylor Junior on fraud charges. His father got five to ten, but Taylor Junior has been on the run. Don’t you think they’d hit him harder? Once he’s arrested, we’ll save the rest. And Taylor Kimball can rot in prison.”

  Jacob shook his head. “The FBI doesn’t have a good track record here. It could be another Zarahemla raid. Can you imagine the helicopters swooping in, the screaming women and children, the followers grabbing guns? Or maybe they’ll burn themselves alive like Caleb’s cult.” He shook his head. “I don’t care if Taylor Junior goes down in a blaze of glory, but we’ve got a chance at those other people.” He thought about it a moment longer. “Do you think Krantz and Fayer would let us tag along? They can take Taylor Junior. Aaron and Eric, too, and any other fugitive Lost Boys.”

  “And we can help the rest of them.” She nodded. “Let me call Krantz. He’ll listen to me.”

  They climbed in the car. As Jacob backed out, he saw Charity Kimball coming out of the motor home to take her seat again on the plastic chair.

  She had a pair of scissors and a hand mirror and was cutting off her hair, which fell in gray clumps to the ground.

  * * *

  They stopped to gas the car in Tropic, just outside Bryce Canyon. Eliza paced the parking lot looking for cell coverage. Jacob had been quiet on the drive from visiting Charity Kimball, and she could tell that he was deeply troubled by what he’d done. Not like they’d had a choice. Charity Kimball was a hard old woman who’d spent the last four years living by herself in the desert.

  Eliza’s phone eked out two bars by the picnic area. It was three picnic tables on a patch of well-watered grass, attended by a pair of fiberglass dinosaurs. One was a Tyrannosaurus rex, the other a Triceratops, locked in combat like in an old science textbook. She sat in the shade of the Tyrannosaurus, looked up Krantz’s number on the phone, and called.

  She felt a surprising tickle in her stomach when he answered the phone with that rumbling voice.

  “Hi, Steve. It’s Eliza.”

  “Eliza? Eliza who?” he asked. “Oh, I remember, the girl in the prairie dress. Utah, right? Or was that Colorado City?”

  “Actually, I gave all that up just last week. I’m out.”

  “You are?” The teasing tone vanished. “What happened?”

  “Whatever you do, don’t tell Jacob or my father, but I’m in Las Vegas, working on the Strip. It’s a respectable show. They don’t make me take off my clothes, just—”

  “No!” he said in a tone of faux shock. “Wow, when you polygamists leave, you really leave. How are you? It’s been awhile.”

  “Fine, I’m all right. I do have news, actually.” She hesitated for dramatic purposes. “I’m getting married tomorrow. It’s not so bad,” she added in a hasty tone. “I’m only the second wife, and he’s not even forty yet.”

  “What? Eliza!” And then he groaned as the joke caught up with him. “Okay, that time you got me. Uhm, it is a joke, right?”

  This time she laughed. “You deserve it after the prairie dress comment.”

  “I actually reached for a cigarette,” Krantz said. “Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any on my desk. Or anywhere, for that matter.”

  “Does that mean you went cold turkey?”

  “Very cold. The turkey has been decapitated, dressed, and frozen. I haven’t had a smoke in two weeks.”

  “Two weeks? That would make it about five minutes after I saw you last.”

  “About five minutes before, ac
tually. You said we’d celebrate once I gave them up for good. That was all the motivation I needed. I’m done, finished. Unless you give me another heart attack, that is, then all bets are off.”

  “I’ll pick up a bottle of sparkling grape juice,” she said. “When will I see you next?”

  “Soon, I hope. I’m in California—some new priorities from Washington—but plan to be back in Salt Lake in another week, maybe ten days, tops. How does that sound?”

  Jacob came out of the convenience store with two bottles of water and some premade deli sandwiches. He didn’t approach, but gave her a questioning shrug. She held up her hand to tell him to be patient. He went to move the car from where it blocked the gas pump.

  “Sounds great,” she said. “Look, Jacob is anxious to hit the road and go see his wife, so I’d better get to the point.”

  Briefly, she outlined their search of central and southern Utah and what they’d learned from Charity Kimball.

  “That does seem promising,” he said when she’d finished.

  “Then why don’t you sound excited?”

  “I’ve heard of this Dark Canyon. Hell of a place to lose a cow, as they say.”

  “You’re stealing our expressions. But look, it’s not that bad. You and Fayer can put together a team, send over some helicopters to search. Jacob and I will help when it comes time to negotiate. After you arrest Taylor Junior—”

  Krantz interrupted with a sigh. “Eliza. Wait.”

  “What’s the matter, Steve? Don’t you want to get this guy?”

  “Of course I do. He’s a wanted fugitive and he sexually assaulted you. And I want him because these Kimballs are murdering crazies, ready to bring about the end of the world every time they get spooked. The problem is he’s not wanted for murdering your brother.”

  “You know he was in on that. Enoch—”

  “I know what they did to your brother in the temple, and I’m sure Taylor Junior was a part of it. That doesn’t mean we could make the charges stick. The most we’ve got him for is a five-year-old fraud case. And I’m not sure that warrants a massive manhunt in the most desolate territory in the Lower Forty-Eight.”

  “But what about the fake funeral?” she asked. “It can’t be that stale or you wouldn’t have gone to so much effort pretending Caleb killed me at the dump.”