The Summit (29 page)

“So what is it about this church that Priscilla didn't approve?” Ben asked.

The young man glanced around, but the area was quiet, not even a car on the distant road. “They practice plural marriage. According to the Brethren, they're just following the Lord's plan, leastwise to their way of thinkin'.”

“I can't believe it,” Autumn said. “Plural marriage is illegal in this country.”

“Maybe so, but no one's ever been able to stop 'em.

The Brethren legally marry one wife, then take the others to wife in private ceremonies that aren't recorded. There's no law against living with more than one woman.”

“I've read about this happening up in Utah and down in Arizona,” Ben said. “Fanatics who claim God gave them the right to marry more than one woman.”

“That's what their leader says. He's the head of the inner circle, the high mucky-mucks in the church. They call themselves the Brotherhood of Lazarus. Some of the members claim they can personally talk to God.”

“What's their leader's name?” Autumn asked, still trying to digest the fact that the men in the church had multiple wives.

“Samuel Beecher. His family founded Beecherville back in the late 1880s.”

“From what I've read,” Ben said, “the men marry very young girls and incest is often involved.”

“Like I said, no one's been able to stop it from happening. The women are raised to accept their lot and that's what they do. Priscilla Vreeland never had a chance. Those women weren't about to change the way they live. That's just the way it is.”

“So two of the Brethren murdered Priscilla to keep her from trying to persuade their women they didn't have to go along with the status quo.”

“Could be.” Deputy Cobb glanced back at the house. “No matter how bad it looks, people in these parts are mostly law-abiding citizens. They don't like violence and they don't cotton to murder. We find the men who did it, they'll go to jail. Odds are, in time we will.”

Ben stepped back and extended a hand. “Thank you, Deputy. You've been a real help.”

Cobb accepted the handshake. “You want to file a report on what happened at the motel?”

“Not today,” Ben said. “Maybe some other time.”

They left the deputy in front of the house. Autumn let Ben help her into the pickup, then waited for him to climb in. As they drove back down the gravel driveway, his jaw looked as hard as the face of Angel's Peak, looming over the canyon in the distance.

Ben's gaze caught hers. “Tell me you don't think Molly was taken to become some religious nut's wife.”

“I don't know. But it seems…”

“It seems what?”

“You mentioned Elizabeth Smart. Well, that's what happened to her.”

“Elizabeth was in her teens. Molly was only six when she was taken.”

Autumn looked over to where Ben sat rigidly behind the wheel. “You're right. It probably has nothing to do with Molly.”

But she didn't think he believed it and neither did she.

As soon as they reached an area where Ben's cell phone worked, he pulled onto the shoulder of the road and dialed Pete Rossi's number.

“Pete, it's Ben. I need everything you can find out about a group called the Brotherhood of Lazarus. They're connected with the Community Brethren Church. They're into plural marriage, Pete. Their leader is a guy named Samuel Beecher. Find out about him too.”

Ben hung up the phone and pulled back onto the road. “If he's touched her, I'm going to kill him.”

A
utumn lay next to Ben, staring up at the canopy over the bed in her condo. Ben was asleep. He was exhausted and terrified for his daughter. He hadn't heard back from Pete Rossi. There hadn't been enough time.

She turned her head on the pillow so that she could see his face. Such a handsome face, beautiful, masculine.

Every day that face grew a little more dear to her, a little more beloved. She had never felt about a man the way she felt about Ben, had never let a man get this close. Not even Steven Elliot.

Her heart pinched. She was falling deeper and deeper in love with him. She had known she was in very grave trouble the moment she had awakened at the motel and seen the men in the room, one of them pointing a gun at Ben's head. As frightened as she had been, she was even more frightened for Ben. She was falling head over heels and it was exactly the wrong thing to do.

She told herself to lock away her feelings, that she didn't have time to deal with whatever she felt for Ben. That would have to wait until after they found Molly.

And they
would
find her, she vowed. They hadn't come this far to fail. She would give Ben back his daughter no matter what price she might have to pay.

She lay back against the pillow, her eyelids drooping, her body heavy with fatigue. As tired as she was, she was afraid to fall asleep, afraid of what she would see in her dreams. The muscles in her neck and shoulders ached from her struggle with the man in the motel room and her eyes felt gritty. Still, she fought to stay awake for even a little while longer. Maybe if she was tired enough, she wouldn't have the dream.

It was a little after midnight when she lost her battle with exhaustion and finally fell asleep.

At half-past-two, she began to dream.

 

She was back in the house where Molly lived, in the steamy kitchen with the long wooden table and the old-fashioned lamp hanging over it. Molly was there, along with Rachael and the little girl the women called Mary. But the blond man wasn't with them and it wasn't dinner time, as it had always been before.

The hands on the old oak clock above the kitchen door read four in the afternoon. Autumn watched as Molly climbed up on a chair next to the table.

“I just need to mark the hem,” Rachael said, “then we'll be finished.”

Molly made no reply, just stood there staring down at her feet, encased in low-heeled sturdy leather shoes. She was wearing a high-waisted dress, her small breasts just beginning to bud beneath the fabric. The gown came to her ankles. White cotton with small pink flowers embroidered across the bodice and around the bottom of the skirt.

“We've only got a little time left,” Rachael said.

“I know.” Molly moved and Rachael tugged on the dress.

“You're fidgeting, Ruthie. I told you to stand still.” She folded the hem up and marked it with a pin. “You want to look pretty for him, don't you? You want him to be pleased?”

“I guess so.”

Sarah, the teenage girl, toyed with her dress, a printed cotton that came well below her knees. “I never please him, no matter what I do.”

“That isn't true.” Rachael jabbed another pin into the hem of Molly's dress.

“It is so true.” Next to the chair, Sarah turned and smoothed a hand over her stomach, and Autumn's heart began to hammer wildly.

She bit back a scream as she shot up in bed and Ben came awake beside her. She swallowed as he reached for her hand. She could still see the swollen outline of Sarah's body—the roundness of the baby she carried in her young belly.

 

Ben sat in his office.

After Autumn's latest dream, he'd made himself go to work. He had to get away, had to do something besides think of Molly. If he didn't, he was going to go crazy.

He spoke to his attorney, Marvin Steinberg; his vice president, Jerry Vincent; his financial officer, Bill Simpson; and also John Yates at Russell-Bingham, the small investment banking firm that had agreed to represent them. Russ Petrone had managed to lease, then sub-lease, the building near his store in the Pioneer Square district, stifling A-1 for a while, but it wasn't enough. He was tired of A-1's constant threats and determined to do something to stop them. He and his staff had been working hard to solve the problem.

Ben almost smiled. So far his ducks were lining up in a very nice row.

He had just finished talking to Yates when Pete Rossi phoned. Pete rattled off the info he'd managed to dig up on the Community Brethren Church and the Brotherhood of Lazarus, most of which Ben knew. Except that Samuel Beecher had been arrested on charges of sexual contact with a minor as well as conspiracy in an alleged forced marriage of a teenage girl. Both charges were dropped for insufficient evidence, Rossi said. No one would testify against him. And then the girl disappeared, probably packed up and shipped off to another plural family somewhere else.

But Beecher had fallen under the Washington State radar and at this time remained there.

Ben tried not to think what the information might mean for Molly.

“I haven't gotten into Beecher's personal life,” Pete continued. “I'll start digging and get back to you.”

“The sooner the better,” Ben said.

He left the office, his mind still on overload, went down to the climbing gym and spent a couple of hours on the wall. He'd been doing that fairly regularly since he had started Autumn's classes. He'd even taken a couple of private lessons from Jess Peters, a climber who worked at his downtown store. He and Jess had made a couple of afternoon trips up into the mountains to practice. Maybe he was hoping to impress Autumn, he wasn't completely sure. Whatever the reason, he was really coming to like climbing and he wanted to give it his all.

It was late in the day by the time he got back upstairs to his office. He started in on the stack of paperwork he'd been avoiding all week that now looked like a good way to keep his mind from straying to places he didn't want to go.

It was the call from Deputy Cobb that took him by surprise. Jenn buzzed him on the intercom and told him who was on the line. He steeled himself before he picked up the phone. Jenn knew the whole story now and as he should have expected, she was doing everything in her power to keep him sane and help him find his daughter.

“McKenzie.”

“It's Deputy Cobb. I figured you'd want to know as soon as possible. An arrest was made this afternoon in the Vreeland murder case.”

His chest tightened.

“It'll be big news when it hits the airways but the information hasn't yet been released.”

“Who was it?” Ben asked.

“The Beecher brothers—Samuel Beecher's sons, Joseph and Jedediah. They said they spoke to God and he told them to kill Priscilla Vreeland.”

Ben leaned forward in his chair, his mind spinning. “Where are they now?”

“In custody at the city jail in Warren.”

“I need to talk to them.”

“I don't think the authorities will let you.”

“I've got to try. Thanks, Deputy. I really appreciate the call.”

“I figured it might be…you know…something that could help you find your daughter. I'd be grateful if you'd keep my name out of it though. I'd sure like to keep my job.”

“Your name won't come up. You have my word.” Ben hung up the phone and sat there for several moments, digesting the deputy's information. Then he dialed Autumn.

“I'm going up to Warren. They just arrested the two men who murdered Priscilla Vreeland.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Joseph and Jedediah Beecher—Samuel Beecher's sons. I don't know how I'm going to convince the police to let me talk to them, but I've got to find a way. I'll call you when I get back.”

“No way. If you think you're going up there without me, you're crazy. I'm coming with you.”

“Not this time. You got hurt before. I'm not taking any chances something like that might happen again.”

“I'm going, Ben. Either I go with you or I drive up there by myself.”

He clamped down on his jaw. He knew her well enough to know she wasn't making an idle threat. “Dammit, Autumn—”

“I mean it, Ben.”

He sighed into the phone. “Fine. I'll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

“I'll be waiting in the lobby.” She hung up before he could say more. He should have known she would want to go. It just wasn't her way to sit on the sidelines.

For the first time that day, Ben actually smiled. That incredible grit of hers was only one of the reasons he had fallen crazy in love with her.

 

Ben was late. Since he was always on time, Autumn began to worry. Pacing back and forth across the narrow, tile-floored lobby of her apartment building, she looked out at the street. She didn't see Ben's truck and checked her watch for the umpteenth time. She was reaching for her cell phone to see where he was when it started to ring.

She recognized his number and flipped open the phone. “What's happened, Ben?”

“Damn truck won't start. I think I may have left the inside light on last night. Triple A's on the way but I don't have time to wait. We can take the Mercedes, but—”

“Let's take my car. Like you said, it's a lot less conspicuous. I'll pick you up in five minutes.”

She headed down to the parking garage, unlocked the car and tossed her overnight bag into the back, on top of the bag of climbing gear she always carried. A few minutes later, she pulled up in front of the ritzy Bay Towers, spotted Ben on the sidewalk and pulled over to the curb.

He leaned into the window on the passenger side. “Want me to drive?”

“It isn't that far. You can take over once we get there.”

Amazingly, he didn't argue, just got in and leaned back in the seat. The set of his shoulders and the tight line of his jaw betrayed the tension humming through him.

“I didn't think it would go down this way,” he said.

She pulled the car up onto the freeway. “You figured the law would cover for them.”

“After meeting Sheriff Crawford, I figured it could happen.”

She flicked him a glance. “I wonder if one of the brothers is the blond man.”

Ben sighed. “In a way I hope he is. In another way…”

“In another way, you don't want to wish that on Molly.”

He didn't answer, but she knew it was what he was thinking.

She merged her little SUV in with the traffic and headed north, out of the city.

“That last dream you had…” Ben said. “I've been thinking a lot about it.”

“So have I.”

“Sarah was pregnant.”

“That's right.”

“She was young, you said. No more than fifteen.”

“That would be my guess.”

“So he's sleeping with her and she's only a kid.”

“We don't know for certain the baby is his.”

“But you believe that's the way it is. You figure he's sleeping with Rachael, too.”

Autumn didn't reply. She thought exactly that. “There's something else, something that's been nagging me. Rachael said they only had a little time left. She said, ‘You want to look pretty for him, don't you? You want to please him?'”

“So?”

“I keep seeing the dress Molly was wearing.” She chanced a quick look at Ben. “You told me her birthday is August first. That's only a couple of days away.”

Ben straightened in his seat. “Go on.”

“Molly is going to be twelve years old. In some places that's old enough to be married.” She didn't want to say the rest out loud. She knew what it would do to Ben. But time was running out. “It looked like a wedding dress, Ben.”

“What?”

“Not the modern kind, but an old-fashioned dress like women wore in the past…like a lot of women in the church seem to wear.”

Ben's face went bone white. “Jesus,” he said.
“Jesus.”

“If he's planning to marry her on her birthday, we've still got time to stop it. All we have to do is get his name and then we can find him. And I think the Beecher brothers may very well know the answers to both of those questions.”

Ben made no reply but his features looked etched in stone. Autumn drove a little too fast all the way to the off-ramp then pulled onto the two-lane road heading east. The Warren County seat was in the small town of Warren, a ways south of Route 20, about fifteen miles east off Interstate 5.

As they pulled into town, she spotted the county courthouse, one of those old-fashioned buildings with a rotunda, sitting in the middle of a nice grassy square. The police station was next door, a modern structure that seemed out of place in the quaint old logging community.