Jude Devine Mystery Series (20 page)

Gossett made a noncommittal sound. “You have to get a hold of her first. How would you feel about going in alone? You might get further if I’m not tagging along.”

“Sure, if you’re fine with that.”

“I’m fine with anything that’ll put that jerk-off behind bars where he belongs.”

“I want Jeffs, too,” Jude said.

The sergeant barked a guffaw. “I want box seats at the next Superbowl. No one’s gonna find that shitweasel.”

The phone rang and he picked it up. A few moments into the call, he flicked it onto speaker so they could hear the discussion.

A woman said, “There’s a search party out there now.”

“Who’s the girl?” Gossett asked.

“The sister of one of his wives. Fourteen years old. She was supposed to be sealed to him on the weekend, but they’re saying she ran off with one of his sons.”

“How old is the boy?”

“No idea. Could be Daniel, the one they chased off a while back. He’s maybe thirteen.”

“Okay. Thanks for the call, Brenda.”

He replaced the phone and stood up, straightening his overloaded belt. “We caught a break. Epperson’s wife-to-be ran out on him.”

“She was being forced into the marriage?” Jude asked.

“Round here they’re not big on long engagements, or female consent,” he replied dryly. “The prophet orders a marriage and it happens right away. It’s not like they’re legal marriages. They don’t have to obtain a license or anything.”

“Makes marrying underage girls a whole lot easier. How are these so-called marriages performed?”

“Basically the prophet says a few words and it’s a done deal. They call it a sealing.”

“So what’s happening at the moment--are any of these sealings taking place?”

“In theory they’re on hold because Jeffs is still officially the prophet and president of the church and he’s the only guy who can perform them. But Rockwell isn’t wasting any time. He was supposed to be sealing Epperson and his latest victim.”

“Which would make him an accessory to child molestation.”

“Hey, don’t get me started. The guy has thirty-something wives. Some of them were only twelve when he married them.”

“You have proof of this?”

“Only hearsay. The lady who called—Brenda Barlow—she was forced to marry her uncle when she was thirteen. Got fed up with her situation after eight kids. Nowadays she lives outside the town and helps us out with information.”

“Her uncle,” Tulley noted with distaste.

“Are you in a position to bring charges if I collar Rockwell?” Jude asked.

“We’d need at least one of those underage wives to testify against him. If you can find one, the state attorney would be all over it.”

Jude could imagine how difficult it would be to persuade a brainwashed, terrified, uneducated girl to testify in court. “Well, this runaway bride is underage. So, at least we can detain Epperson on suspicion of attempted child molestation.”

“He’ll claim he wasn’t going to marry her until she turned sixteen, and you won’t get a statement from anyone disputing that.”

“Not even the girl’s sister?”

Gossett’s shrug said it all. If they wanted Epperson, they would have to persuade his wife to implicate him.

“What’s the situation out there?” Jude asked. “Do you know the place?”

“Big compound. Fifty acres. The menfolk will be out searching for her when you show up.”

“Excellent. I take it they’re all armed.”

Gossett laughed. “Oh, yeah. The plygs have been shipping weaponry and ammo into this place by the truckload for the past twenty years.”

Jude unholstered her Glock .22 and inspected it. “Can you let us have a few extra rounds?”

“You got it.” Gossett unlocked his firearms cabinet and took out a box full of .40 S&W magazines. “That all you’re carrying?”

From the tone of the question, Jude surmised they were probably crazy to be going to the Gathering for Zion Ranch short of a SWAT team. On the other hand, they had the element of surprise in their favor.

She said, “I have a backup snubbie and a Model 19 in the vehicle.”

The Smith & Wesson was an old favorite her father had passed on to her when she’d graduated from the Academy. Even now, she seldom went anywhere without it; she preferred it to her Glock, the peace officers’ duty weapon of choice in Montezuma County. The Model 19 handled like a dream and always seemed to lock effortlessly on target. Jude loved the lethal elegance of the six-gun with its four-inch barrel, classic nickel plating, and smooth wood grip. She loved the serrated trigger and the very slight stack at the end of the pull-through, just enough so you could measure each shot. The 19’s action was like buttered silk, and the earsplitting reports would scare most criminals shitless.

Beau Gossett must have caught her small sigh. “Now that’s a real handgun. None of your polymer and titanium crapola.”

They shared a moment’s silence, aficionados contemplating the passing of an era. Was there anything finer than seeing the sky shimmer across your barrel and hearing that magical kiss as the case heads went flush with the cylinder?

Tulley said, “I’m in the market for a Sig P220.”

Gossett considered this. “I could see you with a 1911, a Les Baer maybe.”

“Nice, but they cost,” Jude said. “I looked at a Kimber Tactical a while back. Pretty good and half the price.”

Tulley frowned. “Isn’t the 1911 kind of…old fashioned?”

“If you mean it comes from the days when they designed sidearms to win fights, not avoid product liability lawsuits, sure it’s old fashioned,” Jude responded.

Gossett said, “No kidding. We’re out there with popguns and they lift the ban on assault rifles. Put those morons on Capitol Hill in a peace officer’s uniform for a week in Washington Heights and see if they can keep their pants dry.”

Jude was a little surprised to hear this good ol’ boy criticizing the government. On the other hand, he was surrounded by wackos who carried shotguns in the main street.

“Maybe I’ll try a 1911 on the shooting range before I make my decision,” Tulley said.

“Good plan.” Jude returned her Glock to its holster. “I mean, how often do you buy a sidearm? Might as well be the right one.”

“Are we going to go look for those kids?” Tulley asked.

“Kind of hard to do that officially when they haven’t been reported missing,” Gossett replied. “How about I swear you both in and you go take care of Mrs. Epperson? Then we’ll see about the search.”

“I knew we should have brought Smoke’m along,” Tulley said.

“He’s a K-9 handler,” Jude told Gossett.

“No kidding? What kind of dog you working with?”

Tulley whipped out a photo of Smoke’m. “He’s not top of his class in agility, but he’s one heck of a sniffer hound, sir.”

“I’ll bet he is. Man, those are some jowls.” Gossett examined the picture with the air of a man who knew the real McCoy when he saw it. “We run a few K-9 units ourselves. German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois.”

Tulley slid the picture back into his breast pocket. “Smoke’m could find those kids, no problem.”

Jude said, “Guess you’ll be bringing your own dogs in once the search is official, Sergeant.”

“If we get that far. The plygs used to report their runaway wives to the marshall, and he’d go find them and bring them right on back to the compound. Nowadays they’re supposed to report missing person cases to me. Fat chance.”

Jude gathered up the spare ammo, suddenly impatient with the talking. “We need to be moving along.”

After they were sworn in, the sergeant walked them to their car. “Any trouble, you know where to find me.”

“There’s a house full of bored-shitless women out here who’ve never seen a movie and are married to an ugly old fart,” Jude declared as she and Tulley bounced along the narrow, potholed road to the Epperson ranch. “All we need is to entice one of them to agree, and we can take a look around.”

Tulley listened earnestly, but wasn’t getting it.

Jude clarified, “That’s your job, Mr. Smooth Talker.”

A rosy glow illuminated his ears and he hastily moved the discussion along. “You want me looking for the crime scene. Right?”

“Right. I doubt she was murdered this far from the body dump site, but anything’s possible. We’re looking for blood, a hammer, more of those tree spikes, a knife, and the owner of the attractive teeth, of course. We also need to check all vehicles and collect trace.”

“I packed extra latex gloves.”

“Good.” Jude was starting to wish she’d packed an assault rifle.

Gossett’s flip remarks about plygs and their weaponry had come as no surprise. She was already uneasy about the whole scenario. Two officers alone on the property of a group of paranoid lawbreakers who think they are God’s chosen and have the weapons to defend themselves—definitely not a walk in the park. She could see the sense in making a low-key approach, and she could see why Gossett thought they might be better off going in without him. But this was a volatile situation. No question.

They had two big advantages and she didn’t want to squander them. The first was surprise, the second was the search for the missing teenager, which hopefully meant only women and children would be present on the ranch. They would only catch the Epperson clan off guard once, and they needed to capitalize on that. Her primary objective was simple—Naoma Epperson in custody. A thorough search for evidence could happen later if became unwise to proceed this morning.

“I wouldn’t want to be those kids.” Tulley had his window down a notch and a hand out, testing the breeze or lack thereof. “It’s gotta be a hundred out there.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll join the search as soon as we have Mrs. Epperson in a holding cell. They can’t have gotten far on foot. They’re probably sheltering somewhere to stay out of the sun.”

“We could get one of the other deputies to fly down with Smoke’m.”

“Rapture’s maybe not the best place for dogs,” Jude said. “Sounds like they shoot first and ask questions later.”

Tulley blanched. “I’d kill anyone that hurt a hair on my dog’s head.”

“An incident with Utah—Sheriff Pratt would be thrilled.”

Tulley huffed.

“Any more thoughts on that number they found in her stomach?” she asked.

They’d tried phoning it. There was no such number. What else had ten digits? She’d worked her way through all the usual suspects. Bank deposit box—when would Darlene have been able to get to a bank, living out here in the middle of nowhere? Floor safe—most did not have ten-digit codes. Computer password—did these people have computers? The Universal Product Code and Standard Book Numbers had ten digits. Ciphering—if the numbers related to letters of the alphabet, they spelled out: BCBIAEIIAI. Jude had gotten nowhere treating this as an anagram and had so far resisted the urge to phone her boss and hand it over to the cryptologists. She figured she’d take that liberty only if she didn’t get a break on the case by arresting the Eppersons.

Tulley consulted a slip of paper he kept in his pocket. With the measured deliberation of a monk reciting a Gregorian chant, he read, “2329159919.”

They reflected in silence.

“Amazing she could remember that whole string,” Jude said.

“It must have meant something to her.”

“No kidding.” It was bound to end up being something blindingly obvious. In the meantime, they could waste hours gnashing their teeth on a fruitless quest for the esoteric. “We need to put ourselves in her shoes if we’re going to decode this. It has to be linked somehow to her environment.”

“Maybe it’s birthdays,” Tulley suggested. “Important dates.”

Jude hit the brakes. Directly ahead, a huge sign proclaimed
Gathering for Zion Ranch
in lime green lettering. This was emblazoned above a montage in sunrise hues, which depicted what Jude took to be the faithful assembled for the lift-off to heaven. Puzzled by some odd black blotches on the canvas, she got out of the vehicle for a closer look. Seven of the radiant, upturned faces had been painted out. It also seemed new figures had been added periodically; some looked fresher and brighter than the others.

“Check it out,” she said. “I have a feeling this is meant to be the Epperson family.”

Tulley joined her, camera in his hand, and took several photographs of the painting. “That’s a big family.”

They both counted.

“Looks like fourteen wives and forty-seven kids and that’s not counting the blacked out ones.” Jude was troubled by the faceless few standing among the awestruck throng. “I wonder what’s up with that.”

“Dead people maybe? Or excommunicated like Zach.”

Crossed off the list for the celestial kingdom? “Good theory,” she said. “The question is, how many of them ended up like Darlene?”

“Three of them are women.” Tulley moved closer. “This could be Darlene.”

He pointed to a woman whose hair was silvery blond. Most of the others had hair the same shade of reddish gold Jude had noticed on the woman back in Colorado City. Bummer that the faces were concealed. She studied the other two female figures, trying to discern a likeness to Poppy Dolores in either. It was impossible to say.