Mighty and Strong (The Righteous) Read online

  Utah hadn't been his first choice. He respected the LDS agents. Like Fayer, they were honest, sharp, and worked their asses off. But he'd put in for Vegas, where you could blow off some steam at a casino after work, and get a drink without submitting a fingerprint, two forms of ID, and a criminal background check.

  But what really chapped him was the lack of boundaries. Perfect strangers felt free to ask his religion. He must have been offered a Book of Mormon half a dozen times. He begged them off by saying, “You know, religion just isn't my thing.”

  The one benefit of growing up Catholic was it had inoculated him against other strains of religious nonsense. Inoculated against, or made him allergic to, depending on your point of view. People started preaching and it was like those old Peanuts cartoons. All he heard was, “Wa wa, wa wa wa.”

  He'd thought it would blow over, but it never did. Take Fayer. Ninety-nine percent of the time she was so logical he thought she'd have made a good prosecutor. But every once in a while, she'd get some religious epiphany and would bring up Joseph Smith and his gold plates. Oh, and did Krantz want a free copy of the Book of Mormon?

  After about the fifth time, he said, “Jeez, Fayer. When are you going to give it a rest? I'm not interested in Joe Smith's gold bible.”

  “Why are you so damn sensitive?” she'd asked.

  “'Cause religion's a private matter. You don't bring up church with your coworkers.”

  “So it's inappropriate, is that it? What about last week, when you went on about how the doctor lanced that boil on your ass? That's the sort of thing you mention in polite company? Or the garlic farts conversation, remember that?”

  He gave her a sheepish smile. “Okay, you got me there.”

  “Tell you what. I'll nod and listen when you talk about your bodily functions, and you can nod and listen when I mention my church.”

  “Or we can both shut up about it.”

  “Or that.”

  That was two months ago. So far, they'd each kept their promise. No more religion, no more bodily functions.

  But the way she fawned over this church guy, good chance he'd have to listen to Book of Mormon talk as soon as they left. Fayer had explained to him the importance of the Quorum of the Twelve on the way up, how they were “set apart” as prophets, seers, and revelators.

  “What's a seer, anyway?” he'd asked. “They like, see stuff?” He remembered a South Park episode he'd seen once. “Like magic rocks in hats?”

  She told him to shut the hell up, then explained how when the prophet of the church died, one of these guys would step into his place. He could receive revelation for the whole church. These men would actually communicate with God.

  He forced himself to listen and nod, but what he really wanted was for that polygamist guy, Jacob Christianson, to come up to the church office tower with them. He'd have put up a good argument, Krantz bet, and would know enough to cut them down to size.

  And if that makes me a religious bigot, you can sue me, he thought. No, that's not what they did to scoffers, not these days. They invented an imaginary hell for people like him.

  The thought made him smile and he heard Fayer clear her throat. He looked up to see that she'd already sat down across from Elder Peterson, who watched him with a frown.

  He took a hasty seat.

  “So we don't know the threat level at this point,” Fayer said. She'd been talking and Krantz had missed some of it. “High enough to commit resources. We're going to station a panel truck on the north side of Temple Square. It'll look like a furniture delivery van or something, but stuffed with surveillance equipment.”

  “We have surveillance around the temple grounds already.”

  “This is an extra layer,” she said. “Krantz and I will be passing through regularly, so we'll need to meet with your security.”

  “Of course, we are happy to cooperate in an way,” Peterson said. “And thank you for the warning. But there's the question of blending in on Temple Square to consider.” He glanced at Krantz.

  Krantz looked down at his clothing. Jeans, light jacket to conceal his firearm. “I can wear a suit, if you need me to.”

  “I'm thinking more about the issue of tobacco consumption.”

  “What? Oh, don't worry. I won't smoke on church property.”

  “But there's an odor hanging around your clothes.” Peterson shook his head. “It's not the sort of thing you smell around here very often. And sometimes with non-members there's the problem of coarse language to worry about, as well.”

  Agent Fayer's voice tightened. “With all due respect, Agent Krantz is the best at what he does. He'll be professional, you can count on that.”

  Krantz could tell that it was difficult for Fayer to contradict her church leader. He appreciated the support and figured he'd better give some ground, too. “I'll stay away from the cigarettes any time I'm going to be on Temple Square. Wouldn't kill me to cut back. And I'll watch the language.”

  “Actually, I was worried about both of you,” Elder Peterson said. “We have plenty of women on Temple Square, but not generally in security, and none of them wear pant suits. Tourists, of course, might wear more casual attire, but if you're the only woman without a dress, you're going to look out of place.”

  Fayer looked like she wanted to be anywhere else. Anyone else told her to wear a dress, she'd have jumped down his throat. “I can wear something more appropriate.”

  “Appropriate?” Krantz asked, stunned. “Like what?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe a skirt.”

  “Are you out of your fuc—” He caught himself. “Out of your mind? You can't work a field job in a skirt.” He turned to Elder Peterson. “Something happens, you don't want her running around in a dress and high heels.”

  “You should be the one running,” Peterson suggested. “Being a man, I imagine you're faster, and you look a lot stronger when it comes to fighting a suspect.” He turned to Fayer. “No offense, Sister Fayer.” She just stared back, as if unable to deal with that in any way.

  “Look, here's the deal,” Krantz said. “We'll do our best to blend in, but frankly, I don't give a damn if people get their undies in a wad about seeing a woman in pants.”

  “What if we dress like tourists?” Fayer asked. “Nothing too crazy, but jeans and long-sleeved shirts. That way Krantz can keep his sideburns, too.”

  “Don't tell me you guys don't like sideburns, either,” Krantz said.

  Peterson ignored him. He nodded. “That might work. I don't mean to offend you, agents. I've told our head of security to cooperate in every way, and that goes for anyone else, including me. Now, let's get down to business.”

  The church leader was gracious for the balance of their interview, and readily agreed to do everything that Fayer and Krantz suggested. It wasn't the first time Krantz had worked with powerful men and women and there was a certain type who found it difficult to cede control.

  But now that they'd moved past that point, Peterson's demeanor changed to friendly, humorous, and helpful. He reminded Krantz a bit of his favorite uncle, the one who used to take him fly fishing in Yosemite as a boy.

  See, if Peterson had just started off that way, instead of puffed up with that Erik T. Peterson crap, he wouldn't have left a bad taste in Krantz's mouth.

  #

  Cult members had cased Temple Square, but it took Krantz and Fayer most of the afternoon until they found someone alert enough to have noticed it.

  The FBI agents started with Temple Square security, then moved to custodial staff, groundskeepers and even interviewed the director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the organist who was playing some thunderous piece on the massive pipe organ when they entered the silver-domed Tabernacle.

  Fayer stopped him at the outer pews. “Bach. Toccata and Fugue.”

  Classical wasn't his thing and the music sounded menacing and overwhelmingly loud, but he sat patiently with Fayer while she heard it out. A couple of dozen tourists sprinkled across the pews
of the large, empty interior. Even Krantz recognized the famous pipe organs. Too bad the organist didn't know anything. Nobody, it seemed, knew anything whatsoever.

  Later that afternoon, they interviewed the sister missionaries in an office of the North visitor's center. It was a last gasp. These were women of twenty-one or twenty-two who'd volunteered eighteen months to teach visitors about their church. They were a variety of nationalities and ethnicities, but invariably pretty. He supposed the church sent the ugly girls somewhere less visible, say Indiana or Guatemala. Some were bright, observant, others quite dull, and useless for what they needed. Without exception, they were cooperative to a fault.

  “Like Stepford Wives in training,” he grumbled after the fifth or sixth girl.

  “You'd rather interview the Girls Gone Wild contingent? Because they're about the same age.”

  “It's creepy, is all.”

  “You find happy, cooperative young people creepy?”

  “When they're all happy in the exact same way, yeah.”

  “What you see as creepy, most people would call a refreshing change.”

  “So you say.”

  There was something familiar about the next young woman to enter the room. She wore a skirt with a dark green blouse that went all the way to the neck and covered the shoulders, but was tight enough to show an attractive figure. Her name badge read, “Sister Christianson, Calgary, Canada.”

  She eyed them alertly, then glanced at the walls behind them, which were covered with a variety of framed paintings, scriptural verses, and the like, little of which Krantz understood. The most prominent painting was a Caucasian-looking dude in armor on horseback who led a bunch of young, muscled warriors. The young warriors looked like Apaches, armed with spears.

  The caption read: “Helaman and His Stripling Warriors.”

  Krantz watched the woman as she took all of this in with a glance, then studied Agents Krantz and Fayer with a thoughtful expression, even while she pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the desk.

  “Are you police officers?” Sister Christianson asked.

  “We're here at the urging of the church,” Agent Fayer said.

  “I guess that means no. But you're not with church security, either. May I please ask for some identification?”

  Krantz shrugged and reached for his badge. This was what? The eighteenth, nineteenth person they'd interviewed so far on Temple Square. She was the first to ask for credentials.

  The woman looked them over, then handed them back. “FBI agents. I was wondering. But we haven't met before, have we?”

  Fayer frowned. “Does that mean you know other FBI agents?”

  “Well, yes. I thought you knew that already, and all those other interviews were cursory, that you were focused on me the entire time.”

  Agent Krantz looked at the young woman, at her name tag and suddenly things came together. “Wait, is your first name Eliza?”

  “That's right. I'm Eliza Christianson.”

  Agent Fayer raised her eyebrows.

  So this was Jacob Christianson's little sister, who they'd threatened to send to the compound. That had been ninety percent bluff. They'd known she was on a mission, but she could have been in Japan for all Krantz knew.

  “Is this about my father?” Eliza asked. “As far as I know, he's clean, but my brother would know more than I would. I'm just a girl, after all.”

  “Don't worry, it's not your father,” Fayer said. Her voice was warm. “And you're not in trouble in any way, so don't worry about that, either.”

  Krantz shot Fayer a look. She was giving him whiplash. She'd been plenty aggressive with Eliza's brother—but he'd been a fundy, not mainstream LDS—and then had fawned all over Elder Peterson in church headquarters. But then she'd been all business during the other interviews, so why the change in tone with Eliza Christianson?

  “I wasn't worried,” Eliza said. “It's tough to get in trouble as a missionary. Well, you can get in trouble with your mission president, if you don't follow mission rules, but real trouble? I've got an hour a day when I'm not either sleeping or doing missionary stuff and Sister Sanchez freaks out if she can't see me at all times. She's probably hyperventilating on the other side of that door.”

  Krantz remembered his promise to Jacob, not to involve his sister. Perhaps that was hasty. It would be great to have a missionary like Eliza Christianson to work with. Bright, observant, and better still, knowing something about polygamists. No, he'd promised.

  “Agent Fayer is right, we're not targeting you, just interviewing everyone who works at Temple Square. Answer a few questions, and you can go back to, uhm, talking about Jesus or whatever.”

  Fayer snapped open her briefcase and reached for the grainy security camera pictures they'd shown the others, without any success.

  “Tell us if you've seen either of these two men,” Krantz said. He took the photos and slid them across the table. He didn't have much hope; a man's mother would have a hard time picking him out of a lineup that included photos of such poor quality.

  As she reached for the pictures, Eliza asked, “These wouldn't happen to be the polygamists who've been slinking around Temple Square the last two weeks, would they?”

  Fayer froze with her hand still on the photos. Krantz leaned forward, eager, anxious. “What polygamists? What have you seen?”

  Eliza studied the photos, then shook her head. “I can't tell, this could be anyone.” She pushed them away. “But I'll tell you what I've seen. There are two men who come in twice a week. They change their style of dress. Sometimes they're together, other times not. Once there was a third guy, but he kept his distance from the other two.”

  “And what are they doing?” he asked.

  “They take pictures, make notes, but they're not tourists. I heard them talk once, and it scared me.”

  “How so?”

  “Sister Sanchez—she's a sweet girl, but clueless, if you know what I mean—tried to talk to one of them about Joseph Smith. 'Can I tell you about a remarkable young boy and what he saw?' she said.

  “I'd been chatting with a couple of tourists from Argentina and it was going nowhere,” Eliza continued. “By the time I turned around and saw Sister Sanchez approaching the two guys, it was too late to warn her off. 'Some day all this will be ours,' the older man answered. My companion frowned. 'All what?'”

  Eliza nodded and her eyes seemed to fix on something in the distance, beyond the walls of the room. “The man said, 'Thou hast sold thy birthright for a mess of pottage. Thy kingdom shall lie in dust and the righteous shall inherit the Earth.” She turned back to the FBI agents. “And then the other man grabbed his arm, whispered in his ear, and the two walked away in a hurry, toward the south gates.”

  Krantz looked at Fayer. “Birthright? Kingdom in dust? What the hell does that mean?”

  But Agent Fayer looked equally confused. “The mess of pottage is from Essau in the Bible. That other stuff, I don't know.”

  “Easy enough to read between the lines,” Eliza said. “They're Millenialists.”

  “What, like they're waiting for the end of the world?” Krantz asked.

  “Not just waiting,” she said. “People like this don't wait for anything. They make it happen.”

  Chapter Ten:

  Fernie locked herself in the bathroom and stared at the blue strip in dismay. Outside, the phone rang and rang.

  Daniel knocked on the door. “The phone is ringing, Mommy. Mommy?”

  “Just a minute, honey, I'll be out in a second.”

  The phone continued to ring. And ring. But Fernie couldn't rouse herself. Why now, when Jacob was gone? Why?

  Jacob had brought her birth control pills several months ago. They had a new baby, plus the two older kids. Time to get settled. Fernie hadn't exactly told him she was taking them, but what else would he think if he opened the package and saw she was popping out the pills on schedule?

  It's okay, she had told herself. It's not really a lie.
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  And besides, Fernie was trying to plan her children. She was still nursing, and she kept a close eye on her cycles. Jacob was right, it was too early for another and money was tight. She wanted to take care of her children, not pop them out every ten to twenty months until her uterus collapsed. And Fernie swore she wouldn't be one of those mothers who let sister wives and older siblings raise her children.

  But birth control pills? Jacob had talked her down from several extreme positions since they left Blister Creek. In principle, she didn't think that birth control pills would offend the Lord, so long as you weren't remaining childless out of selfishness.

  In practice, she couldn't do it. The first night Jacob brought home a prescription, she'd stood in front of the mirror with one of the pills in hand, fighting waves of guilt. At last she put it in her mouth and tried to swallow. Her throat constricted and she felt like she was going to throw up. Fernie spit it into the sink and washed it down the drain.

  Jacob would say that was conditioning. Brainwashing, even. Maybe so, but she needed more time. Just a few more months, and then she'd try again.

  Except time had run out. Fernie stared at the blue strip on the home pregnancy test. Why now? Why?

  The phone had stopped, but now it rang again.

  Fernie left the bathroom, made a guilty look into the kitchen, where Leah was spooning mashed banana into Nephi's mouth and then made her way to the front room. She hoped whoever it was would give up before she got there. No such luck.

  “Hello, Mrs. Christianson?” a man's voice asked on the other end. “This is Dr. Hess. Is Jacob in?”

  “No, he's not,” Fernie said. “He's on leave, didn't you know?”

  “Yes, yes, that was cleared ahead of time. I have no problem with what he's doing. We'll find a way to fill in while he's gone.” His words were light enough, but there was an unmistakable tension in his voice.

  Jacob said the other doctors and nurses called him Dr. Stress behind his back. He hadn't been happy to hear that Jacob would be taking off for some indefinite period of time. But when the FBI called you personally, it was hard to say no. As Fernie knew first hand.