Jude Devine Mystery Series (17 page)

It struck Jude that in many ways religious extremists had a similar mindset. They, too, seemed strangely narcissistic and determinedly blind to any fact that could undermine their beliefs. They, too, avoided taking responsibility for their behavior by assigning it to forces over which they had no control.

Was it any wonder that child sexual abuse was widespread in their community? Their lifestyle created the ideal environment for it. Children were brainwashed from birth to obey adults without question, and women were subservient baby-making machines who were not even supposed to laugh. From what Jude had read, they never saw a television or read a newspaper and most had virtually no education. Added to the mix was a fundamentalist version of Mormonism that held that all men were gods in the making and their prophet’s declarations, however banal and self-serving, came direct from the Almighty.

A cult like the FLDS would be a magnet not just for men who wanted multiple wives, but also for would-be child molesters. Talk about hog heaven. Just thinking about it got her so aggravated her skin felt scratchy. What kind of idiot system allowed a bunch of men to get away with crimes any ordinary person would be serving jail time for, all because they called themselves a church and blamed their conduct on God? What was the difference between them and some creep who said “voices” made him do it? Worse still, these fundamentalist wackos received millions of dollars in handouts from the government they despised. It was just plain crazy.

Burning to arrest someone, Jude stared out the window at a tobacco tinted cloud haze looming ahead. A highway sign announced Colorado City & Hildale. The indistinguishable twin towns were sandwiched in a valley between the vast chasm of the Grand Canyon to the south and the towering cliffs of Utah to the north. A barren plateau stretched out on either side, etched starkly against a lapis sky. It was a remarkable backdrop for one of the ugliest towns Jude had ever seen.

Colorado City was a scab on the raw majesty of its surroundings. The place reeked of cow shit, decay, and the acrid smell of chemical smoke. Roaming cattle wandered between abandoned cars and piles of junk, trash blew along unpaved streets, and a grim, heavily polluted stream drifted torpidly through the center. The town had originally been named after this sorry tributary—Short Creek—and it had a sordid history.

For more than a century, the Arizona Strip had sheltered hard-line polygamists, whose numbers swelled when the mainstream Mormon church buckled to government pressure and disavowed plural wives in 1890, claiming God had revealed celestial marriage could no longer be practiced on earth. Although this about-face ensured statehood for the besieged territory of Utah, it contradicted previous doctrine that enshrined polygamy as a “Sacred Principle.” The fundamentalists weren’t buying the new revelation, which they saw as convenient flip-flop and an attempt to mainstream the church. They also wanted the right to keep on marrying their wives’ twelve-year-old sisters. So, they abandoned Salt Lake City and retreated by the hundreds to the boonies where they thought they would be left alone.

For a time they were. Then, in the 1950s, Arizona got fed up with the welfare burden of the isolated community, and cattlemen weren’t happy that their grazing fees were being used to pay for polygamist schools. Expecting to receive public acclamation for taking a stand against child brides and welfare scams, the then governor of Arizona, Howard Pyle, ordered a massive police raid. This appeared in the state budget under “grasshopper control.”

The outcome was a public relations disaster. Howls of outrage greeted front-page pictures of weeping children torn from their mothers’ arms, and the Arizona authorities found themselves accused of religious persecution. Eventually all the arrested polygamists were reunited with their families and thanks to the backlash, the state turned a blind eye to the community for the next fifty years. There were now some forty thousand of them, twelve thousand living in Colorado City and Hildale.

“I was thinking about those bite marks,” Tulley said as he slowed the car to a crawl.

Jude had to think twice before she made the mental leap back to the Huntsberger autopsy. “Did you pack that model?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He stopped the car, reached behind her seat, and produced a plastic bag containing a set of mock teeth the forensic dentist had worked up for them. “You wouldn’t forget if you saw teeth like these when someone smiled.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

Zach had assured them old man Epperson wasn’t the proud owner of the exotic fangs. The kid had never seen teeth like them, in fact. Jude couldn’t imagine a woman inflicting those bites, so even if Mrs. Epperson had murdered Darlene someone else had to be involved, someone who needed serious dental work. If it wasn’t her husband, it had to be a relative. Women in her situation didn’t come into contact with the public, so it wasn’t like she could rustle up some lowlife to help her out.

There was also the matter of the body dump. Would a woman be capable of lifting a heavily pregnant woman in and out of a vehicle alone? Highly unlikely, Jude decided. If Mrs. Epperson had managed to slit Darlene’s throat, she had not disposed of the body without help.

“We going direct to Rapture?” Tulley asked.

“Yep. Sounds like the new Mohave County transplants are the only cops ’round here that missed joining the prophet’s fan club.”

She stared out the window at a mountain of junk piled on an empty lot and got irritated thinking about the contents of Darlene’s stomach again. So far, not a word from Mercy, and Jude had been procrastinating over the follow-up call she needed to make. How long did it take some lab technician to glue a few bits of paper together and look at them under a microscope? Jude located her cell phone and dialed the medical examiner’s office while Tulley studied a map of Colorado City. A secretary answered the phone and put Jude through to Mercy, who sounded surprised to hear from her.

Jude said, “Dr. Westmoreland. Thanks for taking my call.”

Mercy replied, “Are you in Utah already?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m calling.”

“Ah…the paper shreds from your legless victim. Didn’t one of my staff speak to you about that?”

Mercy had left the chore of phoning her to an underling. Terrific.

“No,” Jude said coldly.

“Would you hold a minute, Detective.” Paper rustled and Jude heard muffled voices. Then Mercy said, “Yes, we have something for you.”

“Bring it on.”

Unexpectedly, Mercy laughed and her tone oozed desire all of a sudden. “I wish.”

Jude figured whoever had been there with her must have left the room, and apparently Mercy thought it was okay to flirt even though her Brit pal was keeping her bed warm at home. Bothered by the images that leapt to mind, Jude said, “And?”

“We sent the materials to the QDU and they came back to us with a ten-digit number. Got a pen?”

Jude jotted down the number Mercy read, at the same time feeling embarrassed that she’d expected a level of amateurism from the small M.E.’s office. Mercy had sent the paper scraps to the FBI crime lab and the experts in the Questioned Documents Unit had come up with the goods.

“It could be a phone number,” Mercy said.

“I guess she ate it to prevent it being found.”

“Or someone tore it up and forced it down her throat. Can’t have been easy swallowing little shreds of paper without a tongue.”

“And you’re absolutely sure the tongue was cut out, not torn in an accident or something?”

“Yes. Did you turn up anything in the hospital records?”

“Not so far. We’re on it.” Jude transferred the digits into her laptop.

Mercy’s tone switched from crisp to sultry. “How long will you be away?”

“Two days.”

“Maybe we could get together when you come back.”

Jude wanted to sound chilly on that idea, but her breathing betrayed her and her voice came out husky. “Don’t you have company?”

“Ah. Elspeth said you’d called.”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for that, by the way. It was decent of you.” She said it like maybe that was out of character.

Bugged, and conscious of Tulley right next to her, Jude said, “What’s the deal?”

“About?” All innocence.

Jude was silent, signaling she was not at liberty to speak openly.

“Elspeth?” Mercy asked after a beat.

“Yes.”

“You can’t talk right now?”

“That’s correct,” Jude said.

“So, do you want to see me?”

As one of two sexual partners—was that what Mercy was asking? Jude supposed she could get all righteous and indignant, but who was she to tell Mercy how to live her life?

“Yes,” she said finally and was certain she detected a small sigh of relief.

“Good. I think we need to talk.”

“Probably.”

“And in case you were wondering, I do want to sleep with you again.”

“Okay.” Sharing was better than nothing, Jude told herself.

Mercy laughed. “Don’t sound so excited.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” Jude said stiffly. Tulley had the car in gear and was easing them out onto the potholed dustbowl that passed for the main street of Colorado City. “I need to go.”

“I know what you need,” Mercy said sweetly.

“I have no doubt.”

“If you’re good, maybe I’ll let you fist me.”

Jude dropped the phone. The very thought of Mercy gloved around her hand made her light-headed. She groped under her seat and retrieved the device. Mercy was still there.

Perspiring, Jude said, “Thanks for mentioning that, Doctor.”

“My pleasure.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t make me wait too long.”

Jude consciously elevated her mind and managed a casual farewell while she could still keep her voice even.

“Rapture?” Tulley asked, pointing at a highway sign.

Jude stifled a high-pitched giggle. Rapture was exactly what Mercy inspired in a poor, simple, sex-starved fool like her. She lowered her voice to one of coplike composure. “Yep. Let’s do it.”

They approached an intersection where several old washing machines almost prevented vehicles from passing through. Everywhere she looked, piles of rusting scrap metal and old appliances chocked the sidewalks. An odd sight was a mound of smashed televisions and satellite receivers in the middle of the road. Various minivans and SUVs jockeyed for position at high speed, as if the main street was an obstacle course built for their own version of NASCAR. Other than the transport, the place could have passed for a nineteenth-century movie set, with the women in pioneer garb and the men wearing plain shirts and long pants with suspenders.

Tulley halted at the stop sign. A woman with several small children stood at the side of the road, looking like she wanted to get across. Jude took in a round ruddy face beneath brass-toned blond hair, the bangs strangely waved so they bobbed high above her forehead. Tulley signaled to the woman to go ahead, but she remained rooted to the spot, glaring balefully at them, her children clutched to her bosom.

One of the youngsters broke away from his mother’s skirts to hurl a stone at their car, yelling, “Apostates.”

They were also attracting a more menacing audience. Several young males armed with shotguns emerged from behind a building and marched purposefully toward the vehicle.

“Think they’ve noticed we’re not from ’round here?” Jude said.

They both unsnapped their holsters.

“Looks like trouble.” Tulley seemed oddly pleased by the fact.

“We’re passing through,” Jude repeated the standard line they had discussed for this exact situation.

A hand thumped the car. Tulley lowered his window. A moon face occupied the gap.