Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (22 page)

“Now that we’re all reacquainted,” Fayer said, dryly, “is there anything new since we set off on our late-night sightseeing tour of the Great Basin?”

“No. By the time I got back to Blister Creek, they’d already left.”

“That was quick,” Fayer said.

“Too quick,” Krantz said. “You don’t set off into the wilderness without gear.”

Eliza said, “We’re always prepared around here. Have to be ready for the end of the world, you know. Still, he’d have to consult maps, figure out a plan of attack.” She shook her head. “My father had already thought this through.”

“Problem is, we can’t set off that quickly,” Fayer said.

“Actually, we can. I put together three packs—cook gear, a camp stove, sleeping bags, food, canteens, everything else we’ll need. I even got a hunting rifle with a scope and scrounged up extra clothing. We can leave right away.”

Krantz gave her a look. “Nice work. Of course, we’re already ten hours behind.”

“Maybe Jacob is in charge,” Eliza said. “He’ll be cautious, will want to scope things out for a while before he moves. We can make up time.”

But that presumed they’d be able to find the entrance into Dark Canyon, and she worried that would prove difficult. They drove out of Blister Creek, stopping some time later in Hanksville to grab prewrapped sandwiches from a convenience store that was cut into the side of the mountain. Krantz bought gas and two Styrofoam cups of coffee while Fayer and Eliza sorted through the maps of southeastern Utah. They set off a few minutes later and within an hour had reached the outskirts of the Dark Canyon Primitive Area.

The problem was that there were numerous ways into Dark Canyon, including ranch roads, hiking trails, and several paths that didn’t make the maps. Deer trails, mostly. They discarded most of these as unsuitable approaches to penetrate the wilderness area—presuming Taylor Junior’s sect would need to haul in supplies from time to time—but each of the other roads took twenty minutes to an hour to search, and they couldn’t spot either trucks from Blister Creek or Taylor Junior’s new Ford F-150. In fact, they saw only one vehicle, a jeep with Colorado plates, a mountain bike rack, and bumper stickers from Snowbird, Sun Valley, and several other ski resorts. Just hikers. They kept looking.

Back on the highway for the third time, Krantz drained his second coffee, surely cold by now, while Fayer fidgeted with the maps and glanced at her watch. “We could drive into Blanding,” she told him. “See if we can call in a chopper from St. George.”

“And get my ass chewed out? No thanks. Besides, there’s nowhere to land up there. We could spot them, but then we’d have to turn this into another major operation. There are about twenty reasons why that’s a bad idea.”

“Most of them referencing our assault on the Zarahemla compound,” Fayer said.

“Exactly.”

“We can’t give up,” Eliza said from the rear seat. “People are going to die.”

“We don’t know that,” Krantz said.

Eliza leaned forward, her hands clenching at the vinyl seat in front of her. “Actually we do. You know it and I know it. We’ve got to keep looking.”

“Watch out,” Fayer said. “Hitchhiker.”

“Sorry, buddy, we don’t have time,” Krantz said and veered into the center as they bore down on the hitchhiker, who held out a hand for them to stop.

Eliza turned her head as they flew past. It wasn’t a man, but a woman in a prairie dress with a shawl wrapped around her head that had looked like a hat from a distance. “Slow down, stop!”

Krantz pulled over, then backed up along the shoulder after Eliza explained what she’d seen.

It was Charity Kimball. Krantz stopped the car, and Eliza got out. Charity turned her sunburned face up, and if she was surprised it didn’t show through the exhaustion on her sweat-streaked face.

“What are you doing?” Eliza asked.

“Do you have water?”

They gave her a water bottle and got her into the air-conditioning of the car. She smelled of stale sweat and campfire smoke and seemed to know it. She edged to the far side of the backseat and looked down at her hands.

“What are you doing out here?” Eliza asked.

Charity looked pointedly at the two FBI agents in the front seat.

“They’re here to help,” Eliza said. “You can talk in front of them.”

But Charity didn’t say anything, and eventually Agent Fayer said, “Charity Kimball, right? You’re married to the guy they just paroled. Are you going to cooperate, or should we arrest you and take you in for questioning? And we’ll send Kimball back to prison, too.”

Anger flashed in Charity’s eyes. “You think it’s so easy. You’re an apostate Mormon. That’s right, I know all about you and your gentile friend. I made covenants. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

Eliza kept her voice gentle. “You covenanted to obey him so long as he obeyed the Lord. Is he obeying the Lord?”

Charity looked so small and old and frightened—in spite of her defiant words—that Eliza had to remind herself she’d once been intimidated by this woman. When the Kimballs had lived in the big house in Blister Creek, Eliza had occasionally stayed with the family when she’d come down from Alberta for the summers.

At the time, it seemed as though Charity Kimball had everything she could want. She was the senior wife of a wealthy elder in
the Quorum of the Twelve. She hadn’t seemed to harbor any bad feelings toward Abraham Christianson, like her husband and his sons, but for some reason seemed to resent Eliza. She never yelled at Eliza, didn’t give her any more chores than any of the other girls in the house, and even turned a blind eye when Eliza escaped to play in the desert with her brothers. But she was cold and resentful. Why, Eliza still didn’t understand.

Eliza hesitated, then put a hand on Charity’s bony shoulder. The older woman tightened, but didn’t pull away. “We’re not going to hurt you. Fayer got a little carried away, that’s all. We’re jumpy because of what’s going on.” She addressed Krantz and Fayer. “Could you give me a moment? I know we’re pressed, but—well, I only need a few minutes.”

The agents got out of the car and walked along the shoulder of the road until they stood several yards away.

Eliza turned back to Charity. “Did you hear about Fernie?”

“I heard something. There was an accident. Is she okay? The kids?”

“The kids are fine. The baby, too. I don’t know if you know, but Fernie is nine months pregnant.”

“I heard.”

“Unfortunately, Fernie—” Eliza’s voice caught. Charity looked up, alarm spreading across her face, and Eliza reminded herself that Charity and Fernie had lived together for years as sister wives under Elder Kimball’s roof. “Fernie has a spinal injury. She’s paralyzed.”

Charity drew in her breath. “Oh no.”

Eliza glanced out the window to see that Fayer and Krantz were having an animated discussion with Fayer gesticulating and
Krantz throwing up his hands. Eliza took hold of Charity’s arm. “What’s going on, Sister? What were you doing hitchhiking all by yourself?”

“Some of the men are leading the women and children deeper into the wilderness. They say there’s another camp, a second sanctuary. We were traveling at night, and it was easy enough to drop behind. I waited until morning, and then I…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

“But you don’t have a pack,” Eliza said. “You were in the mountains. There’s still frost up there this time of year.”

“I was cold.”

“And what about food? And you didn’t even have a water bottle.”

“I’m used to fasting. That wasn’t so bad.”

Eliza handed back the water bottle, then stretched into the front seat to grab one of Fayer’s granola bars from the glove compartment. Charity took another long drink, then opened the granola bar. “Thank you.”

Eliza watched Charity eat with new appreciation for the woman’s bedraggled state. But she was a descendant of the women who had come into the Utah desert in wagons and on foot to found Blister Creek in the face of heat, cold, rattlesnakes, and a hostile band of Paiutes. There had been no men in that first expedition. Women like Charity Kimball had clawed an existence out of nothing.

“You said some of the men,” Eliza said. “Not all of them?”

“The men had a fight,” she said. “They were agitated over what had happened in Blister Creek. My husband and Brother Stanley were defending Taylor Junior from Aaron Young and
some of the others who claimed that Taylor Junior was a fallen prophet. Aaron wanted to anoint himself the new prophet, I suppose. He threatened Brother Stanley, then shot him in the shoulder. And then Taylor Junior came back, and he and Aaron and Eric Froud killed Stanley. They all followed Taylor Junior after that.”

“Wait, did you say killed Brother Stanley? I thought he was defending Taylor Junior.”

“I don’t understand what happened,” Charity said. “It was horrible. But they were all together after that. My husband, Eric, Aaron, and Taylor Junior stayed behind. The other men were supposed to take the rest of us to the second refuge. I had to get away. Tell someone. Whatever they used to kill Brother Stanley—” And here a shadow crossed over her face.

“What do you mean, ‘whatever they used’?”

“I don’t know. Poison or something. I couldn’t see, but they dumped it on his head. He screamed—it was awful. I think it was a test, a practice run. They think Blister Creek is full of apostates and has to be cleansed.”

“Are you sure?” Eliza asked in a sharp voice.

“It’s a guess. Nobody tells me anything, I’m just a woman. But I can read my husband—he was never good at hiding things. It scared me enough I needed to warn Abraham.” She looked out the window toward Fayer and Krantz. “You won’t tell them, right?”

“I have to, Charity, you know that. Now tell me more about how you got out of the mountains so quickly.”

As Charity spoke, Eliza worried about the volatile situation developing in the wilderness. Taylor Junior and three of his followers waiting in their hideout while Abraham, Stephen Paul, Jacob, David, and Miriam came in the other side. When Charity
finished, Eliza got out to share the new information with the two agents.

“There’s a chance we could get in there in time to stop it,” Eliza told them. “Charity found a quicker way out. She swiped Taylor Junior’s pickup truck and took it halfway down until she couldn’t get around a tree someone dragged across the road. She hiked the rest of the way out.”

“Can we trust her, that’s the question,” Fayer said.

Krantz said, “We could take her in and interrogate her, see if we can get some straight answers.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Eliza said. “We have to get up there before those two groups start shooting at each other.”

“Maybe Jacob will come to his senses,” Fayer said. “He’s got to see what a dumb idea this is. He’s a reasonable guy.”

“Whose wife will never walk again,” Krantz said. “I’m with Eliza. Let’s stop this thing. I don’t like the old lady any more than you do, but there’s no way she’d have known we’d be driving along this road. No way it’s a trap.”

They got back into the car.

“Please don’t kill him,” Charity said.

“Kill who?” Fayer asked.

“Don’t kill my husband. I know what he did and I know what they’re planning, but please—”

“Whoa, there,” Fayer said. “We’re not going to kill anyone. Get that through your head.”

She spoke with her typical demanding tone, and Charity shrank farther back into the seat.

Agent Krantz started to pull back onto the road, and Charity said, “No, go the other way. The way you were coming.”

He obeyed, and the two FBI agents had the good sense to remain quiet. Eliza put her hand on Charity’s arm, meaning to comfort her. The woman was hot and dry. At Eliza’s insistence, she drank some more water.

“You joined them in Dark Canyon, didn’t you?” Eliza asked. “After Jacob forced you to tell us how to find them, you went to warn Taylor Junior we were looking for him.”

“It wasn’t like that,” she protested. “They let my husband out of prison. I’d been waiting so long—you can’t understand what that was like. We wanted to go back to Blister Creek, but your father shook the dust off his feet and cast Taylor out. We had no choice.”

Father. He’d enforced his rule, punished Kimball for his defiance. Eliza wasn’t surprised, but she was disappointed. Couldn’t he have forgiven Charity, at least?

“There’s always a choice, Sister Charity. And you changed your mind, didn’t you? Why else are you hitchhiking on the highway?”

“I had to get out—I had to leave. Wait, pull in here.”

“What? That’s not a road,” Krantz said.

“It’s covered by tumbleweed. Try it, you’ll see.”

He and Fayer jumped out to clear the pile of tumbleweeds from what was, in fact, an old road, partially overgrown with brush and weeds. When they got back in, Krantz started up a rutted dirt road—more like a trail, really. The car inched along, jarring and scraping. They needed something with higher clearance. Sagebrush gave way to dry pines as they climbed into the hills.

“I don’t understand how this could happen,” Charity said to Eliza. “We’re all saints. Why are we fighting each other? Why
aren’t we gathering under one prophet to lead us through the Last Days?”

Fayer said without turning, “Maybe you’re following false prophets. Have you ever thought about that?”

Agent Fayer was mainstream LDS, and Eliza wanted to head off that conversation before Charity called her an apostate again and the two women derailed the urgent business at hand with a religious argument. She opened her mouth to deflect Charity’s answer, but Krantz beat her to it.

“Never mind that,” he said. “We’re trying to intercept Jacob and Abraham before they start a civil war. Where is the camp from here?”

“Keep going,” Charity said. “We’ve got a long way yet.”

He kept driving for another fifteen or twenty minutes before he stopped the car and grunted. Brush grew right in the middle of the road, and one of the ruts looked deep enough to swallow their tires halfway up the wheel wells.

“You can’t stop here,” Charity said. “Keep following the road until you see the fallen tree.”

“This isn’t a road,” Krantz said. “This is two ruts and some wishful thinking.”