Jude Devine Mystery Series (35 page)

They flattened out along the rise and waited for the command. Farrell was pulling out the stops. He had a chopper overhead, drawing fire away from the two approaching vehicles, black SUVs with the windows tinted. Gunfire flashed from the house. They were aiming at the chopper. Jude wondered if they knew there were more civilians out back. It didn’t look like it.

“Go!” Farrell commanded.

Jude stopped thinking and started running just as the two SUVs screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust, providing a workable screen between the white minivan and the house. As the plygs unloaded into the vehicles, their occupants bailed fast and ran to the back of the house spraying fire along the white stucco.

“We have about twenty seconds to get out of here,” Jude said. By now, the plygs had to be on their way to the rear of the dwelling. She tapped two of the guys and pointed into the empty room behind them. “Stay here and pin them down if they come through that door.”

The rest of the team picked up a child each, leaving the biggest to run alongside. A young teenage girl had a Downs Syndrome child in her arms. He was the only one not weeping.

The woman with the group clutched the infant she was carrying to one shoulder and seized Jude’s arm. “Her baby’s coming out the wrong way.”

“Don’t worry. We have doctors standing by,” Jude told her. Addressing Kelly, she asked, “Can you carry her?”

“Sure.” He lifted Summer into his arms and called, “Go!”

The first SUV was ten feet away and they made it without incident. The firing had stopped. Even these people were not going to kill innocent women and children. An electronic buzz hurt Jude’s eardrums and Nathaniel Epperson’s voice boomed out.

“And the Lord sayeth, I shall bring a scourge upon my people to purge the ungodly from among you. And those that are righteous shall suffer with the wicked.”

Jude signaled the agents at the front of their group, waving them on. One at a time, they ran to the next SUV. Smoke was rising from the vehicle, creating useful cover. But Jude was uneasy. The thing could go up in flames at any moment. She met Kelly’s eyes and knew he was thinking exactly the same thing.

The litany continued. “And those transgressors who seek forgiveness shall beg their brethren to spill their blood in atonement for their sins, as ye would so do now if only the wrath that is kindled against ye were known.”

As Epperson poured down hate, they shuffled out from behind the first vehicle, crossing five or six yards to the next. The two agents at the head of their little band were already at the white minivan, about to run the final stretch to safety, when a light flashed from the house.

Jude shouted, “Grenade! Run! Take cover.”

She and Kelly didn’t get far enough from the SUV targeted by the plygs. The blast threw them off their feet, well clear of the vehicles. Ears ringing, she lifted her head. Kelly and Summer lay inert a few feet away. Next to them, the teenage girl with the Downs Syndrome child was trying to crawl, blood streaming down her face from a head wound. They were completely exposed, too far away from the vehicles to use them as cover. The plygs opened fire at random through the haze of smoke, smashing the boards off the nearest window so they could find better sightlines.

“Engage,” Farrell commanded. “Shoot to kill.” A swarm of FBI agents cleared the ridge, grouping at the white minivan in an offensive formation.

Jude could hear gunfire but it was as if her ears were under water. She scrambled toward the girl with the head injury and realized that Kelly was hit and unconscious. Yelling for support to bring Summer and the small boy in, she grabbed the girl around the middle, hooked Kelly beneath one arm, and dragged them both toward the minivan. She had barely made six paces when several agents reached them and three more ran by, exchanging heavy fire with the men shooting from the windows.

Handing Kelly and the girl over, Jude turned automatically to go back. But even as she willed her feet to move, her body froze. It was too late. Out in the open, unprotected, the little boy hunkered next to Summer, his hands over his face. The image froze in Jude’s mind as bullets rained down on the helpless pair before they could be rescued. Their bodies bounced, blood sprayed, and dust rose in a dense cloud.

Someone yanked her into a run and she hurtled toward the minivan. She could hear Farrell giving orders but could not make out the words, her ears still ringing from the explosion. The gunfire seemed far away and was becoming sporadic. Agents ran toward the rear of the house, joining the two already positioned there. Jude was familiar with the drill. They would capture any subject trying to exit. The fact that they had left Summer and the child unattended could mean only one thing.

As the dust settled, Jude felt tears crawls down her face. All that was left of the lives that might have been were two rag dolls in a crimson pool.

*

After the shooting stopped, a dark silence descended. In that time, Elias Rockwell arrived under escort. He was not at all what Jude had expected. Early thirties, no sign of the genetic traits that would make walking through a crowd of Colorado City polygamists a déjà vu experience. He wore an expensive three-piece suit, aviator sunglasses, and designer loafers. His hair was blond and fashionably cut to disguise the thinning around his temples. When he wasn’t marrying schoolgirls, Jude had the impression he was probably on a yacht or playing golf.

Farrell showed him the scene. They were watched by Rockwell’s retinue, six rent-a-goons in cheaper versions of his suit. A few genetic similarities were evident in their ranks.

“This is a shocking tragedy,” Rockwell said, as if the unfolding events had nothing to do with him. “These actions are the actions of a few deeply confused individuals, and in no way reflect the philosophy and aims of the new FLDS.” He walked a few paces away and got on his cell phone, speaking in an undertone.

Moments later weapons were dropped from windows and a white flag appeared. On closer inspection, it was a pair of long underpants.

“They’re ready to surrender,” Rockwell informed Farrell and they proceeded to the front of the house.

The plygs emerged, their hands on their heads, and walked quietly down the front steps to assemble in the yard. Jude scanned the faces, seeking Epperson’s. She moved to Farrell’s side and said, “I have an arrest warrant for Nathaniel Epperson on charges of kidnapping and criminal homicide.”

“He’s ours,” Farrell said. “We can quibble over jurisdictional matters later.”

Nauseous, Jude walked around the side of the house once more.

Over the ridge, agents were processing the women and children who had filed from the house, patting them down for weapons and taking their details. The small party rescued under fire were seated under a makeshift canopy, being examined by a doctor. Beyond the white minivan and the smoking wreck of the SUV, the two bodies lay uncovered as yet. Kneeling over them was a slightly built teenage boy in overalls. As Jude approached, he looked up, tears rolling down his face.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Jude said. “If you go down to the officers, they’ll take your information and give you something to eat and drink.”

The boy didn’t move.

Jude extended a hand. “Come on. I’ll walk down with you.” This was not a sight for a child.

He shook his head and bent low over Summer. Gently, he lifted her head onto his lap. “She never liked her hair this way,” he said, and began unfastening her braids.

Jude watched the tender ritual in silence and understood what she was seeing. After a time, she asked, “Adeline?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I’m very sorry.”

A pair of eyes as dark as Chastity Young’s met hers. “Why did they do this to her?”

Jude’s throat hurt and she blinked away tears. “In life, some things make no sense at all. This is one of them.”

Adeline smoothed her sister’s snow blond hair and leaned over, placing a kiss on her cheek. “I wanted her to come with me but she wouldn’t.”

Jude removed her bulletproof vest and stripped off her shirt, folding it to make a pillow. She handed this to Adeline, who eased her sister’s head onto it and stroked her eyes closed. They did not move the little boy, who had his face resting on Summer’s nightgown.

“Your aunt is looking for you,” Jude said.

“She’s here?” Adeline got to her feet.

Jude pointed toward the mountain. “She went over that way on her bike.”

Adeline wiped her eyes and picked up a makeshift backpack. Out of this she took the lid of a tin can. “I need to signal her,” she explained.

They walked to the edge of the rise and Adeline bounced sunlight off the lid.

“Do you know her cell phone number?” Jude asked after a minute or two.

“Why do I always forget about phones?” Adeline gave a ragged little grin.

Jude handed hers over. “Do you know how it works?”

“Aunt Chastity says I might as well super glue mine to my ear.” She dialed and waited. Then her face lit up and she said, “It’s me.”

Jude took a few steps away and stared out across the merciless plateau as Adeline cried into the phone. She should go get someone to take the bodies, she thought. But she didn’t move. Numbly, she watched an eagle soar high above, riding a thermal. She imagined herself up there, floating in the cool tranquility, divorced from the tragedy below, hearing nothing but the wind rushing through feathers and her own mournful cries.

“She’s coming.” Adeline returned the phone and thanked her. “I told her where Daniel is and she’s going to go pick him up first. ”

“That’s great. Would you like me to wait with you?”

“Do you have time?”

“Absolutely.”

“Got any water?”

“No, but I can get some. Come on.” Jude offered a hand and Adeline took it.

A month later, Jude sat on the front porch of the Epperson house and watched the FBI forensic team load the last of their gear into the backs of a fleet of vans. They’d owned the place since the shootout, and Jude had stayed well clear. Pratt had given permission for her to return for a walk-through once they received the okay from the FBI crime lab. This was supposedly aimed at straightening out a few details missing from her account of the shooting. Jude had a feeling he knew she just needed to come back.

She’d been unsettled since that day, and not just because people had died needlessly. There was so much they would never know; she almost regretted that the Huntsberger case had all but solved itself once Zach walked into the Paradox station. On investigations where clues came slowly and detectives had to create their own luck, there was time to accumulate knowledge and develop theories. The work was methodical, detail oriented, and detached. There was order. And a sense of satisfaction when months of effort led to a good arrest.

By contrast, Jude felt like she’d been swept into a situation that went completely out of her control almost before she could process exactly what was going on. With the benefit of hindsight, she thought she could have made some better decisions. She tried not to feel that she had shortchanged Darlene, and Poppy Dolores—all of Epperson’s victims.

Sheriff Pratt was riding high. Shaking hands, kissing babies, appearing in photo opportunities with the Huntsbergers. He’d told the media justice had been done and he truly seemed to believe it, as did most of Cortez. Jude wanted to go after Jeffs and Rockwell, but Pratt said they’d bought themselves enough trouble and her FBI masters said it was someone else’s fight. Jude needed to wrap up the final paperwork and get on with her life.

“Done?” she asked a bored-looking technician who emerged from the house.

“Help yourself.” The guy strode away like a man who’d been waiting two weeks for a cold beer.

Jude got up and stepped indoors. The place was whitewashed inside and out, consistent with the way the case had been handled in the press. A pack of religious nuts opens fire on women and children trying to flee for their lives. The FBI had everything on video, so there couldn’t be sticky questions left unanswered. Jude had seen the footage they released a hundred times over, trying to make certain she was unrecognizable. They’d done a good job of blurring her features and it was comforting to see herself anonymously referred to as a “Denver detective at the scene on an unrelated investigation.”