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

  “I loved Jacob’s idea, I wanted it to work. But Taylor Junior never showed. Either he knew it was a trick, or he doesn’t care if you’re dead or alive.”

  “So try again.”

  “We’re a team of two. Against that, Fayer and I are tracking three dozen different cults and sects, and that number grows by one to two groups per week.”

  “Really?” Eliza asked with a frown. Three dozen?

  “Most of them are a family or two. Ten, fifteen people. A few are bigger like Blister Creek or Colorado City. Point is, I’ve got a lot of people to keep track of.”

  “But Gideon Kimball murdered two people, and Caleb Kimball just pulled off one of the biggest suicide pacts in years.”

  “And they’re both dead. Meanwhile, there are a zillion self-proclaimed prophets out there, doing all sorts of funky religious stuff. When Taylor Junior goes off and the bullets start to fly, then yeah, they’ll give me all the helicopters and SWAT teams I want. Until then, I’ve got to turn in every meal, flight, and hotel receipt. It sucks, but there you go.”

  Eliza fell silent.

  “Look, I’m in LA at the moment,” he continued. “There’s this—well, I can’t say too much, but it has to do with child sexual abuse—but when I’m done, we’ll sit down with that bottle of sparkling grape juice. And we can look over maps and share information. If you and Jacob keep an eye on Taylor Junior, you’ll be doing me a huge favor. And if things turn bad, I’ll call in the cavalry.”

  “All right. We’ll deal with it ourselves.”

  “Don’t deal with anything. Don’t turn a blind eye, but keep your distance from those guys.”

  Her irritation was rising. “Taylor Junior is either a threat or he’s not. If he’s a threat, you should be doing something about it. If he’s not, then why would you worry?”

  “That’s not fair, Eliza, and you know it. I’m not a lone gunman who can just show up, guns blazing, to take out the bad guys.”

  “You’ve got a boss, I get it. Well, it was good talking to you. I understand, I really do.”

  And with that, they said their awkward good-byes and she made her way back to the car, where she relayed to Jacob what Krantz had said. “So, no Krantz and Fayer.”

  Jacob checked his phone, then started up the car and pulled out of the gas station. “Maybe it’s for the best. I know you like Krantz—I do, too—but these aren’t his people. Maybe it’s best if the FBI doesn’t go searching through Dark Canyon. Who knows how many followers Taylor Junior has amassed. Bullied into following him. They could get caught in the crossfire.”

  “So we’ll do it alone.”

  “We have to. Something is going to pop. We can’t sit back and wait for it to happen.”

  “We need supplies,” Eliza said. “Food, maps, camping gear. We’ll go back to Zarahemla. I’ll call in sick to work tomorrow and—”

  “I want you back in Salt Lake,” he said. “You don’t need another confrontation with the Kimball boys. Time to abandon the fake death idea. It was a long shot anyway. Wait, does your boss think you’re dead?”

  “No, I use my mother’s maiden name at work. I told them I was going to a funeral, neglected to mention that it was my own. If I go back, I’ll be right on time.” She shook her head. “But never mind that. I’m not sending you in there alone. Fernie would kill me.”

  “Who said anything about alone? I know my limitations. This is surveillance stuff, and I don’t know anything about that. But it occurs to me that we don’t need the FBI. We’ve got our own agent, and she’s just as tough as Fayer or Krantz.”

  Eliza nodded. “You mean Sister Miriam.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jacob watched from a safe distance while the couple took target practice at the range. The sound vibrated through his earmuffs, and after twenty minutes he felt a low-grade headache coming on.

  The woman wore a prairie dress. She had long hair in braids and a young, innocent look about her face. Or would have, if her brow hadn’t been fixed in concentration, her mouth a pair of lines. She wore goggles and earmuffs, a gun gripped in her hands. A target rolled across the wire, a picture of a zombie, and she plugged it calmly as it approached. By the time it stopped, a neat pattern of bullet holes pocked its chest.

  The man in the booth next to her fired too, but his shots were ragged, uneven in pacing. “Ah, crap. How did I miss that?” He popped off the final two shots.

  They removed their earmuffs. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the air. Sister Miriam and Jacob’s brother David set down their guns at the same time Jacob stepped over the safety line to take a closer look at their shooting.

  Jacob said, “Nice shooting, but everyone knows you’re supposed to shoot a zombie in the head. Those chest shots won’t even slow them down.”

  David tore off his target, which was some sort of alien with an octopus head. “Look, I hit every one of its tentacles.”

  Miriam glanced over. “Are you shooting for tentacles?”

  “I’m just hoping to hit paper.” David turned to Jacob. “Sure you don’t want to give it a try?”

  “Like I said, guns aren’t really my thing.”

  “Not my thing either, but it’s kind of fun, actually.”

  “I could tell, the way you were yelling at yourself.”

  “You need the practice, David,” Miriam said. She held out her gun to Jacob. “Here, take mine.”

  “My hand is killing me,” David said. “I’m about done anyway.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” Jacob said. “Besides, there’s a shooting range at Zarahemla, too. You don’t have to drive into Manti.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I prefer this setup, more like the Academy. Although I wish they’d just put up silhouette bodies with concentric circles. Call me old-fashioned, but shooting zombies, clowns, Arab terrorists, and Nazis is juvenile, like it’s a video game.”

  “It’s supposed to make it fun,” David said.

  “If I want fun, I’ll take up Irish step dancing. This is serious business.”

  “For you,” Jacob said. “Most people who come here don’t expect to shoot a real person.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Miriam said. “They don’t. I know better, so it’s not.”

  “What are you expecting, the end of the world?”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but we’ve got plenty of enemies. You can bet they know how to shoot, and when they do, I, for one, plan to be ready.” She held out the gun. “You sure you don’t want to go a couple of rounds? I’ll give you a few pointers.”

  He didn’t take the gun. “I know how to shoot a gun. It’s carrying one that’s the problem. As soon as I pick up a gun, a whole lot of situations start looking like shootouts.”

  Miriam gave him a curious look, then nodded. “Fair enough. All right, let’s clean up and go.”

  David squinted when they got into the sunlight. He pulled out sunglasses and put a hand to his temple as if it were throbbing, but didn’t say anything. Miriam’s disapproval had no doubt cured him of the routine complaints. She was a little like Abraham Christianson in her suck-it-up attitude toward life. On the other hand, David looked better than last time Jacob had seen him, not so pale and sick, and it was the middle of the day, too. Jacob’s brother had been living like some sort of zombie or undead creature himself, preferring nighttime and dark, cool places.

  “Do you want to stop for a bottle of water?” Jacob asked when they were in the car. “Something to eat, maybe?”

  “I’m good,” David said. He stretched across the backseat without bothering with the seat belt.

  Miriam sat up front with Jacob. She must have guessed what he was thinking. “He’s better, though. Fighting it one day at a time. I’m proud of him. It’s not an easy thing. Nine times out of ten, people backslide, but David’s hanging tough.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” David said. “I can hear you, you know. And if I have to choose, I’ll take the drill sergeant over the coddling.”

  �
��She can’t use a stick all the time,” Jacob said.

  “Nothing against carrots, but how about some ice cream?” he asked. “That sounds good right about now.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t hungry.”

  “Do it, Jacob,” Miriam urged. “He’s not eating enough. Stop at the creemie stand. We’ll get him something.”

  A few minutes later they leaned against the car outside the creemie stand, eating the soft-serve ice cream. “Eliza says you found our guy,” Miriam said.

  “Maybe, maybe not.” He explained what Charity had told him, then his and Eliza’s thoughts about how they could search for the man and his followers.

  “And you’ve ruled out the FBI?”

  “More accurately, they’ve ruled us out. Krantz gave us the brush-off.”

  Miriam shrugged. “It’s none of their business, anyway.”

  David sighed. “I wish you’d forget about Taylor Junior. I’ve had enough of the Kimballs for one lifetime.”

  “If he’d leave us alone, we’d leave him alone,” Jacob said. “And what about the other people in his cult?”

  “If you don’t want to be ruled by a religious nut, don’t join his church,” David said.

  “Or choose to be born into it, I guess.”

  “Well—” David started.

  “Forget whether they chose it or not. Half those people are out there because Father drove them from Blister Creek.”

  “And there you go again,” David said. “Let the old man clean up his own messes.”

  Miriam frowned. “We can’t all clean up our own messes.”

  Jacob didn’t know if Miriam meant it that way—she was probably talking about her own life before coming to Zarahemla, when she’d been floundering spiritually—but David was frowning. He’d been killing himself with meth and heroin—one of those same messes.

  Miriam didn’t ride David like she had the first couple of days after that strange (some said miraculous) blessing Jacob had given his brother, but she’d asked Jacob to give David a room near hers in the compound. Let people gossip about the unmarried couple living too close to each other—she wanted to keep an eye on him. No doubt she worried every time he got up at night, afraid that instead of going out to the bathroom, he was on his way to shoot up from some hidden stash.

  David looked at his half-eaten ice cream and sighed. “It sounded good, but my appetite is shot.” He tossed it in the garbage, before turning to face Miriam and Jacob again. “Okay, fine. Go after this guy. But I don’t like it. I wish we could just live our lives, let them live theirs.”

  “Who else is coming?” Miriam asked Jacob.

  “Coming?”

  “That’s what this is about, right? You don’t want to go to the FBI, so I’m the next best thing.”

  “You’re good.” Jacob finished his ice cream. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Not that good,” Miriam said once he’d pulled onto the road. “You didn’t drive us to the range so you could watch us play with firearms. Once you said you weren’t going to shoot, I started wondering what you were up to. It wasn’t testing my aim.”

  “No,” Jacob said. “I already knew about your aim. I was trying to gauge your mood. And I didn’t want to talk about it at Zarahemla.”

  “Well, then what do you want?”

  “Your help scoping out Taylor Junior’s hideout.”

  “Good, I could use a break from pickling cucumbers and knitting and talking about babies.”

  “Now look what you’ve done,” David said. “Barely two weeks since the fire at the dump and she’s ready to go hunting Kimballs again.”

  “I want you, too,” Jacob said.

  “Me? Why?”

  “Three people is safer, in case someone gets injured and someone else needs to go for help.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at his brother, then turned back to Miriam. “Is he up to it?”

  “Yes. He is.”

  “Again,” David said, “let me point out that I’m right here. You can hear me, right?”

  “There’s no missing you,” Jacob said. “So. Are you up to it?”

  “No, not really,” David said. “But I’m not up to staying in Zarahemla, either. Not without Miriam to keep me on the straight and narrow. I know you gave me a blessing and all that, but…”

  “It was a blessing, not magic,” Jacob said. “It’ll take awhile. Good, then we’re settled. We’ll leave in the morning.”

  “But why now?” Miriam asked. “Fernie is thirty-nine weeks pregnant. Dark Canyon is how many hours by car? Plus however many hours on foot. No cell phone service for a hundred miles.”

  “Something is moving,” Jacob said. “People are disappearing. My cousin Elmo Griggs was living with two wives in a trailer park in Grand Junction. He’d been there four years—left Blister Creek after the murders.”

  “Sounds suspicious,” David said. “You think he was part of the Lost Boy conspiracy?”

  “Could be. A bunch of people left, and plenty of them had nothing to do with Gideon Kimball or our brother’s death. Elmo swore he had nothing to do with it. Still, when I drove through Grand Junction a few days ago to see if he’d heard anything from Taylor Junior, he was gone. Wives, kids too. The front door was unlocked, food on the table, dishes in the sink. Clothes pulled out of the drawers and scattered, like someone was packing in a hurry.”

  “And you think he ran off with Taylor Junior?” Miriam asked.

  “Could have been Dad,” David said. “Elmo heard the prophet was coming for him and he hightailed it out of there.”

  “That’s not Dad’s style. He drives them out of town and forgets about them. They leave him alone, he’ll leave them alone.”

  “Still…”

  “I know, it doesn’t prove anything by itself.” Jacob pulled onto the ranch road that led to Zarahemla. “But he wasn’t the only one. The Pratt brothers are gone from Salt Lake. They were homeless, so who knows what that means, but it’s part of a pattern. And then, just the other day, Dad threw Brother Stanley out for abusing his wives and children. I went after him.”

  “Don’t tell me you went looking for a child abuser,” Miriam said.

  “I keep track of everyone. Some people we can save, others we can’t, but the hard cases cause trouble for the rest. Stanley has an adult daughter out of the church, and a son living in Salt Lake City, trying to go to college. A teacher. I called them both to warn them their father might come around. Turns out he already had. He showed up at his son’s house, arm in a cast—Dad’s doing, I guess—and waving a gun.”

  “What did he want?” she asked. “Money?”

  “An old copy of The Teachings of Brigham Young. He rummaged through the shelves until he found the book, then pulled out a sheet of paper. When I heard the story I wondered if it was bank account information. Now I’m thinking a map or some other information that told him how to find Taylor Junior. The son confronted him on the way out, and Stanley pistol-whipped him.”

  “What a bastard,” David said.

  “So why all this activity? Why now?” Jacob asked.

  His brother nodded. “Okay, I’m sold.”

  “Let’s say it’s a pattern,” Miriam said. “Let’s say Taylor Junior is moving, and we want to get to his followers as soon as possible, before they do something stupid. That doesn’t mean it has to be you. There’s still the baby.”

  “My wife comes from pioneer stock,” Jacob said. “One of her something-great-grandmas gave birth in a covered wagon while the caravan was under fire from a hostile tribe of Sioux. Twenty minutes after childbirth, the woman was up and firing a gun. Fernie will be fine.”

  “There is a midwife on hand,” Miriam said slowly. “And she’s smart enough to get herself to the hospital if things go wrong. As long as she’s good with it.”

  They crested the last hill, and Zarahemla came into view. The compound looked more fortress-like than ever. He’d ordered the doors reinforced with iron, and they’d completed the new wing, wh
ich had a bell tower. Jacob had meant it as a decorative touch, but it looked more like the inner keep of a castle. One night, after two bearded men showed up and started proclaiming the end of the world, he’d asked someone to keep a night watch. After a while, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and simply ordered the front doors locked and the night watch ended.

  Someone had put planters just outside the gates, built of mortared fieldstone, each one eight feet long and three feet high. Honeybees visited the rows of marigolds and bunched pansies. At least that looked welcoming, but people talked about the planters blocking a hypothetical government attack with tanks. It was ridiculous. What was next, a drawbridge? Snipers on the roof?

  They parked outside the gates, next to a four-ton Chevy truck and a field tractor. They entered the compound on foot, scattering chickens as they passed through the gates. It had rained the previous night, and a man swept puddles of water from the flagstones toward a drain in the corner of the courtyard. Two women tied tomato plants to a trellis, while a boy on the other side of the raised bed thinned carrots. The cheery sounds of hammering came from deeper in the compound.

  We can do this. We can build a real community here.

  But only if they were left in peace. And that meant confronting Taylor Junior before the man did something stupid.

  And then he thought about Fernie, Daniel, Leah, Nephi, and the thought of leaving his family again made his heart ache.

  Jacob stopped his brother and Sister Miriam beneath the arcade. “David and I know the desert stuff—Grandpa Griggs taught us maps, compasses, how to build a fire, anything we’ll need to survive up there. But I don’t have a clue about surveillance. Can you get some high-powered binoculars, whatever else you might need to spy on this place from a distance?”

  “Already got that stuff,” Miriam said. She caught his look and shrugged. “I like to take a look from the compound walls.”

  “That’s how people get paranoid,” he said. “You start looking for enemies, and pretty soon you find them.”