The Remnant (34 page)

"Of course."

"Have you ever met one?"

The man surprised Trace by nodding. "A couple
of times."

"You’re serious."

"If you didn’t think I would give you a
serious answer why did you ask?"

"What did they look like?"

"Like you and me. They dressed pretty well, I
might add. One would hardly expect an angel in our day and age to
show up in the robes of a shepherd, would one?"

When Trace didn’t reply the Prophet leaned
his head back against the rest but continued to stare. "I have been
gifted in my life, Mister Wentworth, with wealth, power, fame,
adoration even. I have a loving family which now includes my first
great-grandson. I have been fortunate to preside over the greatest
expansion in the history of my faith. But none of these things are
my greatest gift."

"What do you mean?" asked Trace.

"Over the decades I have been privileged to
help people. To guide them. And I have also been privileged to have
been helped myself. By those angels. I have seen visions, and I
have had revelations, and I have come to have a sixth sense
sometimes about people. Angels have strange dark eyes, Mister
Wentworth. Eyes that glint with an inner gleam that is not light. A
gleam that seems to reach right down into a man’s soul. I see by
your face that you have encountered a being not of this world. Am I
wrong?"

Trace shook his head, spellbound.

"It was not an angel, though, was it?"

"I honestly don’t know."

"And it shall come to pass," quoted the
Prophet, "that I, the Lord God, will send one, mighty and strong,
holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a
covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his
bowels shall be the fountain of truth, to set in order the house of
God."

"That’s from the
Doctrine and
Covenants
," said Trace.

"Yes," said Jedadiah, waving his hand toward
the casket at his feet. "Is this your scepter of power? Is this
truth
your covering of light?"

Trace blinked. "You’re comparing me to the
One Mighty and Strong?"

The Prophet shook his head. "I do not know,
Mister Wentworth. As yet we have not ascertained that your scepter
is true. But the house of God needs setting in order and has for
some time."

"You mean the NLDS?"

"Yes. Their
Prophet
is an abomination,
as are his teachings."

"The LDS has never really repudiated
polygamy. It simply teaches that it is not now time for it on
earth."

"I speak not of polygamy but of child and
wife abuse and pedophilia. Do you know how many boys ages twelve
and older have been run out of California City over the past ten
years? How many are now housed either with good Mormon families in
Salt Lake, Provo, or elsewhere?"

Trace nodded. "A lot."

"Over four hundred. But... unfortunately not
all
are housed. Many are homeless, and we do not know how
many are on the road."

"A society based upon polygamy can only stand
so many bulls in the field."

The Prophet frowned. "Crude, but true. At
least in an imperfect world, which is all we have to deal with
here. But we were speaking of angels."

"I thought we were speaking of One Mighty and
Strong."

"The two are not mutually exclusive."

"I’m no angel."

The Prophet laughed again. "Neither am I. But
dark times call for dark answers."

Trace frowned. "That sounds a little like
Brigham Young’s excuse for murder."

"You refer to his doctrine of blood
penance."

Trace nodded.

"I hope it does not come to that," said the
Prophet.

The clanging of the key in the cell door
awakened Ashley.

She fought to shake off the exhaustion that
clung to her, trying to figure how long she had been in the cage,
but her mind wasn’t working. When the door swung wide she wasn’t
surprised to see her father blocking it.

"I brought you a visitor," he said, stepping
aside.

Ashley gasped. There stood Ruth, looking even
more decrepit than the last time Ashley had seen her. She wore the
same type of stock black, ankle-length dress of all of Rendt’s
wives.
The impossible notion that her father might have
miraculously brought the girl back from the dead raced through
Ashley’s mind, but it only took one glance into the woman’s eyes to
see that if she was alive her brain was not.

Rendt shrugged. "Apparently she survived her
punishment. Agatha discovered after I left that she was still
breathing and took her to another home where she was kept in
seclusion from me for some time. But her mind, as you can see,
never recovered. God does not look lightly upon those who would
disobey him."

"I pray with all my heart that is true,"
muttered Ashley, meeting her father’s withering gaze
fearlessly.

"Would you like to visit with her alone?"
asked Rendt, leering. "Occasionally she can still be almost
coherent."

Ashley made no move nor change of
expression.

Rendt shrugged, shoving Ruth into the cell
and slamming the door.

Ashley helped the poor woman to sit on the
edge of the bunk where she sat draped like a mannequin. Ruth stared
ahead with eyes as blank as the wall. Her dark hair was streaked
with premature gray, and her withered hand shook in Ashley’s. So
that was her father’s plan. Either remain here willingly or see the
girl tortured even more.

"I’m so sorry," whispered Ashley, leaning her
head against Ruth’s and wrapping her arm around her shoulder.

They sat there for long moments, staring at
the whitewashed wall together in silence. Ruth seemed so frail
Ashley was afraid the weight of her arm might snap the woman’s
collarbone. But she refused to move, to break the contact, because
they had nothing more to share.

"He’s going to kill you," Ruth muttered, in a
voice as dry and scratchy as fish hooks rattling in a can.

Ashley stared at Ruth’s face, but the eyes
were as dull and emotionless as ever. She shook her head.

"He probably will get around to that
eventually. First he means to
marry
me. I won’t be raped,
though. I’ll kill him or myself first."

Ruth shook her head, but her eyes held steady
on some invisible point on the wall as though she were reading
writing there that Ashley could not see.

"He’s going to kill you today," Ruth
insisted, flatly.

Ashley felt as though the ceiling had just
lowered a couple of feet. The wall, too, seemed nearer. "He said
he’s going to marry me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Why
would he lie about that?"

Finally Ruth turned to Ashley, and there was
confusion on her face, as though she had just awakened from a long,
deep sleep. Perhaps in a way she had.

"Because that’s what he does," she said.
"He’s been lying for so long for his
God
that he doesn’t
know the difference in lies and truth, anymore."

That
had the ring of truth to it. As
long as Ashley could remember she’d been catching her father in
lies. Lies about the church. Lies about God. Lies about boys who
suddenly disappeared from town. Lies about the Brethren. About
Ruth...

"You watched him do it, Ashley," whispered
Ruth, but there was no accusal in it. Just another flat statement
of fact.

"Yes," gasped Ashley.

"Why?" asked Ruth, cocking her head to study
Ashley’s face like a small child seeing an interesting beetle for
the first time. "Why did you come back to see my...
punishment?"

Ashley blinked. She wanted desperately to
leave her eyes closed. To deny that Ruth was here, now, dragging
her back to that horrid day. But her eyes reopened, and there was
Ruth’s placid face again, questioning.

"Honest to God, Ruth he lied to me, too," she
croaked. "He sent word to me in Mexachuli that if I came he would
release you into my care, and he would grant the Brethren amnesty.
He lied. I only escaped again thanks to Cole. It was right after
that that he sent the Angels to murder the Brethren."

Ruth nodded slowly. "Cole," she said, sighing
the name. "How is Cole?"

Ashley swallowed a large lump in her throat,
knowing that she could not lie to Ruth. Ruth had been lied to
enough for one life.

"He’s dead," she said. "Stan murdered him.
Stan was a traitor all the time."

Ruth’s eyes blinked shut, and she drew a long
deep breath.

"So much hate," she whispered.

"Yes," agreed Ashley.

"So much death."

Ashley could only nod.

"He said you were hardly ever coherent," she
said, at last.

"It is best not to be. If he knew I was
better..."

Ashley understood. As long as Ruth was a
vegetable she was no threat to Frederick Rendt, and no object of
desire, which could be just as bad.

"Why did you come back this time?" asked
Ruth.

Ashley gave her a brief rendition of the
Angel attack on the valley.

"That’s why he wants to kill you, now," said
Ruth. "He wishes it to be all over. A thing of the past. The men
and women here have always followed the Prophet in all things, even
sending their sons into exile without so much as a thought to their
welfare so that everything will always remain the same. There is no
one left to defy the new Prophet. No Cole. No Ashley."

That made sense. With the plates and evidence
all gone, with her gone, there was nothing to stand in the way of
her father’s Godhood. That was what he wanted, after all. To be a
God on earth. To hold the lives of every man, woman, and child in
California City within his grasping fists. To parcel out land,
houses, but most important, young girls as rewards to the faithful
old lechers who would obey his every command. And the young Angels
who were even worse, and who would grow old to become the new breed
of old lechers until finally some new prophet was raised up to take
Rendt’s place. It was a horror story right out of the Old
Testament.

And no one would come to her aid because this
was a
religious
problem. Sure, the government and the press
knew that Mormon fundamentalists were breaking the law by engaging
in polygamy. Sure, they knew that young boys were being forced into
homelessness, that girls under the age of consent were being
drafted against their wills into hellacious marriages with men old
enough to be their grandfathers. But as long as the NLDS could
claim that they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs
both liberals and evangelicals alike would rise up in righteous
wrath against government encroachment into their First Amendment
rights.
No one was coming.

She knew now that Ruth was correct. Her
father had never had any thought of marrying her. That had simply
been another of his ways of keeping her off balance, and he had
succeeded. He didn’t desire her sexually, or at least he had
elected to forgo that
pleasure
. He wanted to see her dead by
his own hand, and she knew where. Right down here in his God
forsaken temple. For Frederick Rendt that would be the ultimate
satisfaction, watching his willful, rebellious daughter pay the
supreme price for her defiance within the confines of the site that
exhibited his absolute power.

But she wasn’t going to die easily. She
stared at the heavy iron door, willing it to open.

"Ruth," she said, nudging the woman gently.
"I want you to sit over there on the floor in the corner.
Okay?"

Rendt dressed slowly and deliberately in a
dark pinstripe, Brooks Brothers suit. He slid Gucci loafers on over
silk socks and then seated himself at his father’s Louis the
Fourteenth dresser, straightening his narrow tie in the mirror.
Even his gold Patek Phillipe chronometer rested just so astride his
left wrist. Reaching onto the dresser, he removed a Spanish Bowie
from its handmade leather sheath.

The knife-manufactured by Hen and Rooster-had
a wide, nine-inch blade of 440 surgical-grade, high-carbon,
stainless-steel with a five inch European stag horn handle. It was
a heavy weapon, but perfectly balanced at the hilt, and running the
edge lightly up his forearm it sliced cleanly through the hairs. He
stroked it slowly several times across a broad leather strop before
sliding it back into the sheath. The sound of the door swooshing
across the carpet behind him alerted him to the butler’s
entrance.

"When do you expect the mourners to begin
arriving, sir?"

Rendt frowned, looking at the old man in the
mirror. "We may have to put off the funeral for a brief time. I
have just learned that there is some business that needs to be
taken care of first. I will keep you informed."

"Very good, sir."

Rendt had considered weaving a tale of the
Prophet’s being translated directly to Heaven-especially since he
had had Jefford’s remains dumped unceremoniously in the desert-but
upon reflection he had decided that the symbolism of the torch
passing directly here would be much more effective. Townspeople
already looked upon him as the Prophet’s right hand man just as his
father had been before him. Now they would see him as the rightful
successor, especially when he explained to them how the Prophet had
gone to Maine personally to offer the hand of forgiveness and
friendship and been most foully murdered by the Brethren. Along
with the other preparations Rendt had made, his ascent to
Prophethood would be doubly assured.

"Is the coffin prepared?" he asked just as
the butler was closing the door behind him.

The man stuck his head back into the bedroom
"Brother Evans at the funeral parlor says that all is as you
requested. The coffin now lies in state out front under the
rotunda."

"Thank you," said Rendt, chuckling under his
breath at the thought of what lay now in the casket.