White Heat (8 page)

An elderly woman with white hair piled on top of her head and turquoise teardrop earrings smiled when she noticed them waiting. “Hello. Two for breakfast?” she asked, scooping up menus.

Rachel smoothed her pink cotton blouse and—thanks to the dust—ill-advised white shorts as Nathan nodded. Resting a hand at the base of her spine, he guided her to a booth along the perimeter. There were ten tables in the restaurant, but only one was occupied—with two ranchers, judging by their cowboy hats and weather-beaten faces.

Once they were seated, the hostess presented them with menus. Glancing out the window, Rachel could see heat rising from the earth in shimmering waves. The temperature here was exactly as Nate had described it—white-hot, hot enough to bleach anything. But with wood paneling and deep awnings, the restaurant provided a cool, shady respite. An oasis.

Thank God.

Of course, they'd have to contend with the heat later on. But in the meantime she accepted a glass of ice water from a young girl of about twelve.

“Thank you.” Rachel tried to catch the girl's eye so
she could get a clearer glimpse of her delicate features, but the child ducked her head and scurried away.

“Abby's deaf,” the hostess explained. “She can't hear and she can't talk, but she's the sweetest thing in the whole world.”

“Is she any relation to you?” Rachel asked.

The deep wrinkles on the woman's face easily accommodated a smile. “She's my grandchild. Unfortunately, her daddy isn't up to much, so I take care of her every summer. I'd keep her over the winter, too, but she goes to a special school.”

Rachel guessed that the girl was part American Indian. Her bronze-colored, dewy skin was especially beautiful. “Maybe when she gets older.”

“Maybe.” The woman straightened their flatware. “This your first time in Portal?”

Rachel held her menu at the ready but didn't open it. “Yes.”

“Where you headin'?”

Expecting Nate to enter the conversation, Rachel hesitated—but he was already perusing the list of entrées and didn't seem to be paying attention.

“Nowhere,” she replied. “At least, not anytime soon. We're renting the Spitzer place about three miles from here.”

“You've moved in? You're new?” she asked in surprise.

“Yes. We plan to be here for a while. My, um, husband—” she stumbled over the word but made an effort to cover her gaffe by hurrying on “—is a wildlife photographer.”

“Really! Well, you've come to the right corner of the
earth. We have one of the most biologically diverse areas in America here.”

They were sure hiding it well. So far, Rachel had seen nothing diverse about it. Hot and dry, more hot and dry, and desert scrub mixed with a few other plants that looked about the same. That was it. But she pretended to agree. “So we hear,” she said, and kicked Nate.

Lifting his head, he set his menu aside. “From what I've read, you've got more than eighty species of mammals.”

“I wouldn't doubt it,” the woman responded. “I hear people talk about the wildlife all the time—hooded skunks, mountain lions, black bears, javelinas, raccoons. We even have quite a few different kinds of bats. One of 'em has these really big ears,” she said with a laugh.

“You have a lot of snakes, too, don't you?” The expression on Nate's face suggested the question was in earnest, but Rachel knew him too well. He was needling her.

“Oh, yes. Lots of snakes and lizards.”

“What about spiders?” he asked. “I'd really like to photograph a tarantula—a tarantula crawling out of an old outhouse would be a great photo.”

Suppressing a shudder of revulsion at the thought of such a creature living in
their
outhouse, Rachel kicked him again. “If you want to get started today, we should probably order,
honey,
” she reminded him.

The woman took the hint gracefully. “Heavens, yes. Don't let me hold you up. I'm a talker. It's because of living in such a small community.” She laughed again. “I'll be back after you've had a few minutes to look over the menu.”

“
Sure
you want to photograph a tarantula coming out of an old outhouse,” Rachel muttered when she was gone.

“I'd rather capture a snake slithering across a woman's bare stomach, but I only have one woman at hand, and I doubt my trusty assistant would cooperate.”

“Damn right.”

He chuckled under his breath.

“You could've jumped into that conversation a little sooner,” she whispered.

“Why? You were doing just fine. No need to overact. As long as what we say makes sense and appears to be true, the less detail, the better.”

“There's nothing wrong with making friends and opening up, Nate.”

“Except that we're lying, right?”

He had her there. “Except for that,” she reluctantly agreed.

“So…are you going to ask this woman about the Covenanters, or should I?”

“I will.”

“When?”

Her stomach growled. “After we eat.”

T
he woman who'd seated them also waited on them through breakfast, eventually introducing herself as Thelma Lassiter. Abby, her grandchild, came around once or twice to fill their water glasses.

After the ranchers left, Nate and Rachel were the only patrons in the restaurant. But they weren't the only people in the building. Voices drifted over from the store section, Thelma's chief among them as she greeted her customers like the old friends they probably were.

It wasn't until they'd finished eating and Thelma had come to get their plates that Rachel brought up the Covenanters. “We've been hearing about a cult that's moved into the area. Do you know anything about them?”

Losing some of her cheerfulness, she frowned. “A little. They live about five miles from here and have occasional meetings where they invite folks in to see the place. But they're very unfriendly if you show up any other time. Even if you attend the Introduction, you get the feeling you're just seeing what they want you to see and hearing only what they want you to hear.”

“So you've been there? You've been to an Introduction Meeting?” Rachel asked.

Thelma cast a serreptitious glance over her shoulder as if she was afraid she'd be overheard. But she couldn't be worried about Abby. Was there someone else who wouldn't like her talking about the people of Paradise? “I took Abby about six weeks ago. That Ethan fellow who claims to be a prophet saw her in the store one day and told me he could heal her—that he could make it so she can hear.”

Nate leaned back in the booth. “That's quite a claim.”

“Chaske—my husband—was skeptical, too. He still is.”

Chaske was obviously the person in back, the one she didn't want overhearing the conversation. Maybe he was the cook.

“He thought I was crazy for hoping,” she went on. “But…I believe in miracles. There's got to be more to this life than the tangible things we deal with every day. I thought maybe one reason God sent the Covenanters here was to help Abby.”

Kicking off his flip-flops, Nate found Rachel's feet under the table and began to play footsie with her. Under the guise of their cover, he could get away with goading her in any number of ways, and messing with her made this assignment a lot more fun. “Did they? Help her, I mean?”

He suppressed a chuckle at the sharp
stop it
glance he received from Rachel as Thelma shook her head. “No. Once I got out to the commune, Ethan told me I'd have to leave her there if I wanted him to heal her.”

“Leave her for how long?” Rachel kept trying to move her feet out of reach, but he wouldn't let her. Al
though he knew he'd pay for it later, he was enjoying getting her riled up.

“A few weeks, at least. But…I couldn't do that. As far as I was concerned, there was no one to look after her. No one I trusted, anyway.”

Nate thought Thelma's practical side had served her better than her spiritual side. “So you took her and left.”

“Yes, but…I've gone back once since then.”

Pointedly clearing her throat, Rachel moved her feet again. “What happened?”

“They wouldn't even let me in until I mentioned Ethan's offer to heal Abby. Then they checked with him, and he gave me an audience. But he told me the same thing as before. We couldn't come for brief visits. I'd have to trust him, have complete faith, or he could do nothing.”

He was tempted to tell Thelma about Ethan's correspondence with Charles Manson. Nate also knew a little about Ethan's mental health or lack thereof—tidbits his father had shared with Milt. But as much as Nate longed to convey the danger, he couldn't reveal his true interest in Paradise. The best way to protect Abby and Thelma, and everyone else, was to get inside that compound and figure out what was really going on. And that required him to be judicious. “You can't leave a child in the keeping of someone you don't know,” he said. “You made the right decision.”

Thelma cast another glance over her shoulder. “It was my
only
choice. Chaske would've gone up there with a shotgun if I'd left Abby. He says there's no way he'll ever let her fall into the hands of a cult.”

Rachel finally resorted to pulling her feet up and
tucking them under her, effectively ending Nate's game. “You
considered
leaving her?”

“More so the second time,” Thelma admitted. “I wish Chaske had been there with me. The Holy One—that's what Ethan's worshippers call him—introduced me to several people who say he's done miraculous things. One said she had cancer until he cured her. Another was in a wheelchair, suffering from multiple sclerosis. Three members of that man's family told me he couldn't even feed himself when he first met Ethan. You should see him now.”

“But MS is a strange disease,” Nate said. “It can advance and recede. Maybe his miraculous improvement had nothing to do with Ethan.”

“Then how do you explain the woman with cancer?”

Nate had heard the peddlers of various health tonics claim they had the answer to a whole list of incurable maladies. That didn't mean it was true. It just meant they had a vested interest in making others believe, and it might be the same here. “There could be a lot of explanations,” he said, “a flat-out lie being the most obvious.”

“Why would they lie?” she countered.

“Because they
want
to believe what Ethan is telling them, and it builds the group's credibility to outsiders.”

Rachel frowned. “Did it seem to bother Ethan that you wouldn't leave Abby?”

“Of course. He told me he could give her a much better life.” Tears filled Thelma's eyes. “That's all I want for her—that she'll be okay when I'm gone. He was disappointed, maybe even a little disgusted, that I wouldn't trust him.” She blinked several times.
“But there are all those rumors about their sexual practices….”

“What rumors?”

“He has some very…liberal ideas. People say orgies go on up there. But who knows? That might be a witch hunt. Most folks around here don't like him much. The Covenanters are all I've heard about since they moved in, and none of it's been good.”

“Maybe they
are
having orgies,” Nate said.

“If so, he certainly didn't talk about it at the Introduction Meeting. And he denied it when I told him that was why I couldn't leave Abby. According to him, it's just superstitious folks bein' scared and talkin' about things they know nothing of. He said that sex and drugs aren't part of the religion, freedom and acceptance are. But—” she sighed “—my husband is one of those superstitious people.”

Nate saw Abby going between the restaurant and the store. “Did Abby know he wanted her to stay?”

Thelma straightened her apron. “Oh, yes. She's very smart. But she wouldn't have any of it. She clung to me and kept signing that she was fine and wanted to go home to Grandpa.”

Hoping to add a little support to what her husband believed, Nate spoke up again. “Someone else told us about a woman who left the commune. Sounds as if she had it pretty rough when she was with them. Have you heard about her?”

The dishes clinked as she stacked them. “Oh, yes. Her name's Martha Wilson. She's not from around here. She came with Ethan from back east somewhere—like most of the Covenanters. Chaske's mentioned her several times. So has everyone else who
hates the church. I think she's the source of most of the rumors. But who knows if she's being truthful?”

Nate turned his water glass around and around. “Has she been seen in Portal lately?”

“No. I guess Martha went straight to the police. She's staying in Willcox now. From what I hear, she's getting a lawyer so she can fight for custody of her son.”

Nate considered that good information. Maybe they could have a talk with Martha….

“You think she's lying?” Rachel asked.

Thelma pulled their dirty plates toward her. “I can't say one way or another. I only know that everyone I saw in the commune looked busy and peaceful. There was no hint of violence or sexual impropriety. Ethan preaches Christian values. He told me so.”

Rachel shoved the salt and pepper and sugar packets against the wall. “Hard to imagine a Christian preacher, at least in this day and age, ordering a person stoned.”

“Chaske doesn't think it's so hard to imagine. He keeps saying that what Ethan shows the world and what he does behind those closed gates could be two different things.”

“That's true,” Nate agreed. But she didn't seem to be convinced. The dream of fixing her granddaughter held too much allure.

“But he's never been up there,” she argued, “never seen it for himself. And the police looked into the matter. If Martha was telling the truth, they would've done something about it, wouldn't they? The sheriff and his deputies came in here for lunch not long ago. I asked them about Martha's accusations and they said they couldn't prove a darn thing.”

Nate knew police work from the other side. “Investigations rarely occur overnight. There's the truth. And then there's proof of the truth. Truth without proof won't build a case.”

“I guess.” She jingled the change in her pocket. “Chaske keeps talking about Jim Jones and David Koresh and what they got away with. He thinks Ethan's no better.”

Abby approached with a pitcher of water, distracting Thelma. She touched the child's face with such love, Nate worried that Thelma's desire to see Abby healed would eventually overtake her good sense.

“You're a wonderful child. Aren't you, Abby?” she said.

The girl smiled up at her grandmother, then refilled their water glasses.

“I'd heard Paradise was a ghost town,” Nate said. “Before we learned about the Covenanters, I was planning to go up that way, take a look around, maybe get some shots.”

“They won't like you taking pictures,” Thelma said. “They're very private. They know what other people are saying about them. When I was there, they definitely seemed a bit…defensive.”

Abby, who'd refused to look at him or Rachel since they'd come in, was watching them both closely. Gone was the shyness and reluctance he'd witnessed in her mannerisms and bearing so far. Not only was she staring at him directly, she was shaking her head.

“You don't like it up there, Abby?” Rachel asked.

She shook her head again, even more adamantly.

“She doesn't want you to go to Paradise,” Thelma
said. “She thinks her grandfather is right, that Ethan is dangerous.”

Nate leaned toward the child to let her know he was talking to her. “As long as we don't bother him, we should be okay taking a few pictures, don't you think?”

The child's eyes widened and she jerked her head again.

“Don't listen to her,” Thelma said. “She can read lips better than you can imagine and picks up on far too much. Richard and Lynne Sinclair have scared her, that's all.”

Rachel placed her napkin on the table. “Who're Richard and Lynne?”

“They own a ranch between here and Rodeo. They've been stopping in almost every day, spouting all kinds of accusations against the Covenanters.”

“Like?” Rachel prompted.

Abby didn't leave. She tapped her grandmother's arm to get her to turn so that she could see her lips; she seemed to be closely monitoring the conversation.

“Courtney, their teenage daughter, went missing last month,” Thelma said. “They swear up and down she's been kidnapped by the Covenanters.”

“You don't believe it,” Nate said.

“No. That girl was always a handful. Cutting herself and thumbing rides with anyone who came through town. She dressed in that gothic garb. You know, the black pants and black T-shirts with black boots. She even wore black nail polish and lipstick. They actually caught her propositioning a couple of old birders! She'd gone out to their campsite to trade you-know-what for the chance to ‘get out of this dump' as she put it.” She
waved a hand in apparent disgust. “She musta run off. She's done it before.”

Nate rubbed the condensation on his glass. “What makes her parents believe otherwise?”

“She went to one of the Covenant meetings a week or two before she disappeared and came home gushing about Ethan. She thought he was—” she made quotation marks with her fingers “—‘hot.' That's all. It's not much to go on, which is why the police haven't been able to help. They can't force the Covenanters to let them search without some evidence that she might be in the compound.”

Rachel took a sip of water. “No one's seen her since?”

“No one.”

“How many Covenanters attend the Introduction Meetings?” Nate asked.

“Quite a few. Fifteen or twenty. Ethan usually officiates—him or one of the Spiritual Guides.”

“Aren't there any women in the leadership?” Rachel asked.

“No, the men hold all the power.”

Nate could almost hear Rachel's spine snapping straight with indignation. She'd come from a church with a strict patriarchal order where that power had been abused. “That doesn't bother you?”

“Isn't that the way it usually is?”

Nate cut in before the conversation could drift away from what he was interested in learning. “So once people join the commune, can they maintain relationships with their former friends and family?” If so, it might be possible to gain more information from those on the
outside. That was his hope in asking, but Thelma's answer didn't surprise him.

“They're not allowed to see them again, unless Ethan sends them on the Errand of God.”

“I take it the Errand of God isn't just getting supplies.”

“No, the Spiritual Guides get all the supplies. Right after a convert is baptized, he's sent to warn his family that they're risking God's wrath by rejecting the truth. That's the Errand of God.”