“In an hour?”
“On snowshoes, in deep snow, I’d say we’re making good time.” She retied the strings of her wool stocking cap under her chin and stood up. “Come on, let’s get moving before the sweat starts to freeze.”
After a second hour of hiking came a second break. There had been no decisions about their course. The snow-covered path was clear, winding its way steadily upward through the pines. Martha brushed a loose strand of hair off her cheek.
“Whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back,” Trammell said, reaching out and brushing the snow off her hair, letting his hand linger on her face.
“A raven?” she said. “Really? Not particularly flattering.”
“Shakespeare,” Trammell said, kissing her. “Romeo and Juliet.”
His lips were cold, and she took it upon herself to warm them.
Her task complete, she checked the GPS coordinates against the latitude and longitude numbers from Hewitt.
“We’re almost there,” she announced. A breeze feathered her hair against her cheek. She glanced up and saw a thin cloud layer now covered the sky. “Let’s keep moving in case the weather turns.”
They were almost upon the cabin before they saw it. They rounded a switchback and paused to catch their breath. The path continued upward, but Martha realized after three or four heavy breaths that she could see the outline of a cabin tucked back into the shadows of the trees. The GPS coordinates matched. In anticipation, Martha glanced at the roof, half expecting to see smoke curling up from the rock chimney. Nothing. No tracks disturbed the snow that lay all around the cabin. Two windows on the front were shuttered and a porch roof heavy with snow was all that kept the front door from being half buried. Two chairs and a bench made from roughhewn boards sat undisturbed on one side of the porch. The cabin, made of the same roughhewn planks and aged to a silver-gray from the harsh mountain weather, was deserted.
All of Hewitt’s clues had led her here. Only now she realized she had expected to find him hiding in this isolated mountain retreat. Was this another dead end? If not here, where? Was he really dead? She slumped against a rock; her heart sank with despair.
As if reading her mind, Trammell said, “I’m sorry. Come, let’s see why Hewitt brought us here.”
They walked straight across the snow onto the porch, where they unstrapped their snowshoes and stomped snow off their boots. Above the door was a hand-carved board that read “4 Ebenezer Lane.”
Trammell leaned his snowshoes against the side of the cabin and asked, “Where do you suppose he keeps the key?”
Martha placed her snowshoes beside his and grasped the door latch. The door creaked as it swung inward.
“How’d you know that?”
“You’re such a city boy,” she replied. “Besides, there’s no lock. Probably only locks from the inside.”
Martha stood in the doorway for a moment to let her eyes adjust. She figured the whole cabin might be twenty by twenty feet, all in one open room, with a couple of curtained doorways in the back wall. To her right, under one of the front windows, was a wooden bench with shoes, slippers, and a pair of boots tucked underneath. Beyond that, an old sofa and a couple of Mission style chairs circled a rock fireplace. A blue cowboy coffeepot rested on a stone hearth. Other than the chimney, the entire wall was one extended bookshelf, full. An Indian rug hid more of the roughhewn planks that made up the floor.
On the opposite side, centered under the other front window, was a small table with four chairs neatly tucked underneath. From there, the kitchen ran back against the side wall. A shuttered window was centered over a stainless steel basin on the countertop. All its storage, both above and below a waist-high counter, was open shelves that appeared nearly full. A small wood-burning stove occupied the back wall.
Trammell stood beside the table. He angled a sheet of paper to catch the light coming from the front door and read, “‘Dear Visitors. Welcome to our mountain home. We hope it provides you with a safe haven from a winter storm or shelter from a summer squall. Please treat it with the respect and courtesy with which you would like someone to treat your home. The Owners.’”
“Where do you suppose Hewitt keeps the firewood?” Trammell said, putting the paper down.
“Probably out that back door.”
Trammell disappeared, and she continued her search. She opened one of the books, an autographed first edition of Zane Grey. A second book was also an autographed first edition Zane Grey. Dozens of Zane Grey books lined one section of the bookcase. No doubt all were autographed first editions.
Martha pulled back the curtain leading to a back bedroom. There was just enough room for bunk beds, a knotty pine dresser, and a few open shelves. A lantern sat on one of the shelves and a second hung on the wall beside the bed. The second room was another bedroom, this one with a high double bed, a few more open shelves, and another lantern. The bed was made, topped with a hand-embroidered quilt of brown and green and yellow diamonds, an autumn quilt. Both bedrooms were maybe ten feet square. The height of the bed seemed odd to Martha, until she realized it would be easier for the post-stroke Hewitt to crawl in and out of a higher bed. Then she remembered the trail leading to the cabin. There was no way he would have managed the hike in, even if he only came in summer. She lifted up the quilt and saw the bedposts had been raised about six inches on wooden blocks.
She also saw a Brinkman L70 safe.
When Trammell returned, he poked his head through the curtain and found Martha sitting on the floor in the bedroom. He carried an armload of wood. Snow clung to his boots and pants. She had found matches and the soft yellow glow of one of the kerosene lanterns emanated from the floor beside her.
“I’m going to start a fire to warm this place up,” he said. “I also found the outhouse. Frozen solid, by the way. And an outbuilding with an ATV in it. Nice little rig. If we stay until the snow melts, we could ride right out of here. There’s enough wood in the shed to last the winter. And when you go to town for supplies, you can use the snowshoes that look like they were made for Brigham Young himself. What’re you doing?”
“I found the safe. The key fits.”
“Holy shit. Finally.” He set the wood down and knelt beside her.
Martha glanced over at him, nodding. “The ATV, that’s how Hewitt got up and down the hill. But who hiked out the last time?” She exhaled in a deep sigh. “The key fits, but I still don’t have the code.”
“It’s your zip code.”
She rolled her eyes, and said, “What else did you find out there, some of Hewitt’s pot?”
“No, serious. Try your zip code. Hewitt gave you the lat and long and a five-digit number that’s not the zip for Tropic, Utah. He was giving you the number to the safe.”
Martha punched in 9-8-1-1-7 and the safe gave a beep followed by an audible click. She twisted the handle, and the door opened.
“And you thought I was just along for my brawn.” Trammell stood up. “I’ll get that fire started. It looks like we might be staying for a while.”
TWENTY-NINE
Martha adjusted the lantern wick until it gave off a steady yellow glow. On top of a stack of papers and books in the safe was an envelope addressed to her in Hewitt’s familiar scrawl. Taking a deep breath, she opened it, leaned back against the bed, and stretched her legs out. The letter was dated late September, nearly five months earlier. Before the snow began to bury the mountain cabin, long before June Povich was murdered. She began to read:
My Dear Martha:
If you are in possession of this letter, it means the worst has happened. Either I’m unable to communicate with you or, more likely, I am dead. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. I suppose it doesn’t really matter how, though I have often dreamt that death would visit me at night, right after I’ve fallen asleep in the arms of someone I love. I suspect, however, that’s not what happened.
You see, my dear, I have been going down an increasingly dangerous path these past several years. If, o
n my death bed, I’ve had a chance to relay all of this to you in person, please show patience to an old man. More likely, however, I never had the chance to tell you what it is that I pursue—and more importantly, that growing to know and love you as the daughter I never had has been one of the pure joys of my long life.
Since I retired, I’ve continued my interest in history and archeology through a new avenue of study—my own life and the lives of my immediate family. This line of inquiry has led to startling revelations about my family, revelations that have grown increasingly dark the deeper I’ve pursued them.
But first, a little background, some of which you may know, much of which you don’t. I was born Hewitt Wilcox Chappell into a Mormon family from southern Utah. I was the youngest child of my father’s fourth wife, Mary, nee Wilcox. With four wives, all with fertile loins, my father, Ebenezer Chappell, spread his seed abundantly. I won’t bore you with the entire family tree, but suffice to say at one time Chappells populated much of the valley.
I hope you can imagine the difficulties of being a gay man born into a devout Mormon clan in the first half of the 20th century. The Elders and Saints didn’t have room for us in their pathway to heaven nor on this earth. For years, I knew that I was different; I didn’t know what it was that made me different nor what my soul ached for.
My early education and the blossoming of my life came in the arms of a young itinerant farmworker. Enter the magical world of love. Some might call it nothing more than newly discovered lust. But it changed everything—and me—forever. His name was Eric Wain, or Eric the Red, as I called him, for his flowing red hair. He appeared on the farm one autumn day offering to help with the harvest, having hitchhiked up from Oklahoma.
So, she’d been right. The young man with flowing hair in the grainy old photo—Eric Wain, Eric the Red—was Hewitt’s Romeo.
Tall and handsome, with the grace of a willow tree in the breeze, Eric the Red initiated me with tenderness, passion, and an uncontrollable hunger. But we lacked the discretion that common sense demanded in a Mormon community in the 1940s. An older sister from my father’s second wife stumbled upon us one afternoon in the barn in, shall we say, flagrante delicto.
My father whipped me within an inch of my life. Eric wasn’t so lucky. My cousin, Judd Wilcox, was summoned, and within hours, Eric disappeared from my life forever. There had always been rumors about cousin Judd. It seemed when the church needed something unpleasant done, Judd would disappear for a while. Only later did I come to understand how Judd Wilcox was just the latest member of my family to function in this capacity.
Within days, at sixteen, with infected scabs still crisscrossing my back and buttocks, I ran away from home, lied about my age to join the Navy, and sailed off to fight the Japanese—never to return to these brown hills scattered with Moron ancestors and relatives. Or so I thought. But, decades later, I was drawn back to the land of my forefathers. In part, because I inherited this small family cabin in the mountains, a place that held fond memories of my mother and my older sister and brother; but more importantly, because I had to find out what had occurred the day Eric Wain disappeared.
Romeo had lost his Romeo. Martha wondered if Eric the Red had been beaten and dropped at the edge of town, told to never return. Or if something more sinister had transpired. Either way, for Hewitt, his first love had been snatched away. His first love had become his first loss, his first broken heart. It had also told him who he was—a gay man with the capacity for love. Had that memory festered all those years like the scabs across his back? Martha read on.
I believe that cousin Judd was a member of an elite and ultra-secret vigilante group in the Mormon church. They’re sometimes referred to as the Death Angels, but in the past they have gone by many names—the Danites, the Army of Israel, Young’s Avenging Angels. Fear and terror are their main weapons, but death is one of the commodities in which they deal.
I found Eric’s body a couple of days later by following the vultures. He had been thrown down a ravine like yesterday’s garbage, left as carrion for the wolves, beaten senseless, his face unrecognizable. Only the flowing red hair told me it was Eric. Such pain and suffering for such a gentle soul. All because of me! Because of ME!
In the middle of the night, I buried him in the meadow beside the pool in the creek where we first made love. That meadow was his final resting place, and the place where I buried part of my soul. I washed his face and his hair as best I could, wrapped him in one of my mother’s finest sheets, and dug his grave deep so the wolves would not dig him back up. I did all that I could to ease his journey onward. But it was never enough—not for me.
You passed Eric’s grave on your way in, my dear, if you followed the creek bed. I call it Eric’s Meadow. Each spring when the wild flowers bloom, I know he is smiling at me, forgiving me. If only I had been able to forgive myself.
Martha let the long letter fall into her lap. Hewitt had written this letter to keep his promise that someday he would tell her the story and to seal their connection. Brutal past to brutal past. How do you get beyond it? Someday was upon her, and she couldn’t reach out to him in comfort and shared grief. She forced herself to keep reading.
The night I buried Eric Wain, I knew I could never worship nor believe in a God who would allow such a gentle soul be so brutally slain, all in the pursuit of love. But with each spade of dirt, with each scab on my back that reopened and bled, I became convinced that such a God could not exist, that these were just the actions of evil men who hid behind words of faith and the ignorance of the faithful to justify their evil deeds. You’d think I might have felt guilt, given my upbringing, but instead, I embraced my homosexuality.
By dawn, I was gone from Bryce Canyon, leaving my first love, my family, my faith, my name behind. And a good piece of my heart. A long-distance trucker headed to Seattle brought me to my new life. The Navy, anthropology, the University, and eventually you, my dear, awaited me on the end of that long truck ride. It was only after hearing your story about how you overcame fear and faced your abuser that I found the courage to revisit this heinous crime from my past. While I share your need for justice, I do not share your skills. So I used my own well-developed abilities: forensic anthropology. I vowed to expose this long line of horrible people for the deaths of Eric Wain and all the other innocent victims they have claimed through the years. And there have been many.
I studied the public records and nearly everything that’s ever been written about this secret society within a very secretive church. I was firmly convinced of its existence, but needed proof that would withstand public and peer scrutiny. After my sister died and left me the cabin, I brought my research back to Bryce Valley. I found old family diaries and long-forgotten letters.
At first, I kept my research quiet. I was just Hewitt Wilcox, an eccentric old professor digging up family histories. The Mormons love their history, so people were willing to talk to one of their own, sharing stories and letters and old family Bibles. Hewie Chappell and Eric Wain had long been forgotten in Bryce Valley.
But the more I researched, the more I felt like Luke Skywalker. The dark force is strong in my family. John D. Lee and Eli Pace, my cousin Judd, and my grandfather Harry Chappell—all of whom populated my family tree—have direct connections to this secret group of Moron vigilantes. Could I bring balance back to the family? Could I avenge the death of an innocent man? Could I bring light to the dark side? You showed me how these things might be possible.
I shall not bore you with all the details, my dear. Suffice to say, if you research the Mountain Meadow Massacre and the fate of the three explorers from the John Wesley Powell Grand Canyon expedition, you will begin to see what men with blackened hearts will do when commanded to deliver the vengeance of God. And to this list you can add a young itinerant farmhand named Eric Wain.
As I get close to going public with it, I’m afraid my research is drawing unwanted attention and may be becoming known to the Church Elders. Over the years,
I sold documents to the Church for which I had no use, but which were of interest to their archives. It provided a little working capital to continue my research and rewarded my colleagues who have been my eyes and ears in the community. I realize now that it was a mistake. If you’re reading this, you’ll know that someone must have ascertained the direction I was headed.
I had hoped to have everything ready for my weapon of choice—publication—by next summer. For verification as to the authenticity of these documents, I called on Dr. June Povich, a forensic anthropologist from Arizona State University, and Dr. Maxine Martoni, a University of Washington anthropologist. Their credentials, I believe, are above reproach. I have leads on a few more documents that will substantially strengthen my case, and Drs. Povich and Martoni have documents that they need to finish authenticating. I dismissed the notion of a scholarly publication—I’m well beyond that phase of my life—in favor of a more populist venue. I plan to offer a former student of mine, Lance Trammell, publisher of the Ballard Gazette, first option on the story.
I have kept my colleagues in the dark about my intent to publish my findings and believe they might be resistant to the idea of depriving them of financial reward for selling the documents to the Mormons. But I believe that publication is the only way to expose this dark chapter of the LDS, and I cannot justify betraying Eric’s ultimate sacrifice in return for 30 pieces of silver.
If you are reading this at 4 Ebenezer Lane, it likely means that my hypothesis on the existence of the Mormon Death Angels has proven correct. Either I am their latest victim or am afraid I will be and have gone into hiding. If you are reading this, then I must have found a way to communicate with you. I also hope to have had time to protect you from their attention, but you are hardly the coward I have so often been and if they threatened you, I have faith that with your strength and intelligence you will know what to do.
Out of the Cold Dark Sea Page 26