“But how? There are people in the house. Two of the boys are painting the hallway in that wing. I’ve seen Taylor Junior coming and going, and my husband is supposed to be back within the hour.”
“The prophet sent me to investigate Amanda’s death. I don’t need permission to inspect the dead woman’s room.”
“Sounds great, Jacob. I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you waltz into Amanda’s room and dig around. And when they see you with that envelope they’ll be sure to give you a pat on the back for a job well-done.”
“I’ll be careful.”
#
“You don’t have the baby.” It was not a question, but a statement of fact. It dangled in the air, like the axe of an executioner over the neck of the condemned.
Enoch swallowed hard. He held the phone to his ear and wondered how Elder Kimball would look on the other end. Angry? Disappointed? Vengeful?
“How did you know?”
“The angel told me, Brother Christianson.”
Maybe true. Maybe a lie.
Enoch had stood at the doorway of the Gold house, fully intending to follow through with the plan. And then Jennifer Gold had answered the door. A young woman with curly hair and glasses and pregnant. He had tied the hands of the terrified woman with her own shoelaces, then returned from the car with the filleting knife. He’d forced her to the ground and stood over her with knife in hand.
Enoch had been a pre-med student, too, like his older brother, and knew how to sever the unborn child from its mother’s living uterus. It would be a butcher’s job, but the child would survive. Ten minutes to do the job, ten more to leave evidence to throw the police off the trail.
A baby. A girl. The daughter of scientists. She would be brought to Blister Creek and raised in the Church of the Anointing.
Jennifer Gold gasped for mercy when she could get words out through her terror. Self-loathing washed over Enoch. Only a monster could do what he’d intended.
And so instead, he had kept his promise to Jennifer Gold, meant as a lie, and robbed the house. It was a half-hearted attempt, and he’d ditched the watches, costume jewelry, and petty cash as he fled east. He’d left the pregnant woman unharmed.
Enoch entered Nevada via Reno. He would call Jacob, then return to Blister Creek. He had to unburden himself, no matter what punishment awaited. He was driving east on I-80 when the call came from Elder Kimball.
“I’m sorry, Elder Kimball,” Enoch spoke into the phone. “I couldn’t do it. Nobody told me that Jennifer Gold hadn’t yet—”
Elder Kimball cut him off. “No details. I don’t know and I don’t care. If you have questions, talk to my son. You know that. Enoch, what’s important is that you covenanted to obey my counsel. By rights, your life is forfeit.”
Your counsel, old man? Or Gideon’s?
And if Elder Kimball refused to involve himself in the details of his plans, how could he expect Enoch to follow them blindly?
“However, the Lord is merciful, is he not?” Elder Kimball continued. “You are young, you succumbed to cowardice. We all make mistakes, and with righteous contrition, the Lord has promised that He will forgive us. I will plead with Him on your behalf.”
The only mistake he had made, Enoch decided, was to listen to Elder Kimball in the first place. Whatever return to glory awaited him in this life or the next, it would not erase the memory of Jennifer Gold lying on the floor, begging for her life.
And yet he had covenanted. Elder Kimball had taken him through the endowment where he had covenanted to obey the Law of Sacrifice. To sacrifice all that he possessed, even his own life, if necessary, to defend the Kingdom of God. To obey Elder Kimball as the emissary of the Lord.
A man could lose more than his life by breaking a covenant. His soul could be cast into Outer Darkness. There was only one way to undo this, and that was to return to the temple where he had made his covenants, and that meant buying time.
“What should I do?”
“Your botched attempt means the police will be watching the Gold house. Probably the woman’s work as well. But what about her shopping habits? Does she visit her parents on weekends? What other habits does she have? Gideon will know. Go back to Oakland and wait. I’ll have more information by morning.”
“Thou sayest.”
He hung up but did not get off the freeway to turn around. Instead of returning to California, he continued east, toward Utah. At Winnemucca, Enoch stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch. He picked up the phone and dialed Jacob’s number.
Chapter Fourteen:
Eliza had remained at the Stephen Paul Young house on Thursday morning and happened to be looking out the window when Manuel and Eduardo pulled up in their Ford F-150.
The house sat on a swelling of sandstone in the midst of the wilderness, and she could see for miles from her second story room. A furnace-red landscape stretched beyond, with buttes rising above the desert floor, framed by a blue sky without a single cloud.
The entirety of the Colorado Plateau, an area roughly the size of Maine, had a population of about thirty thousand people, and the bulk of them clustered in towns on the region’s periphery. There was no better place for God’s chosen people to gather and build His kingdom than its desolate center.
Eliza had not been happy to remain at the Young house. She wrestled with an unexpected feeling of humiliation. Stephen Paul had rejected her. Affection, or lack thereof aside, he had been her salvation from the other two suitors. Make that one, now that Elder Johnson was out of the picture.
It was Eliza’s duty to pitch in with the chores, but she otherwise avoided Carol and Sarah. Instead she retreated to the guest room on the top floor to stare out the window. If her goal had been to gain the Young women as allies, she had no doubt failed.
The truck looked like a dust devil approaching across the desert floor as it followed the road snaking its way toward the house. The road followed dry washes and skirted eroded sandstone bluffs. She only recognized the truck when it was within a hundred yards of the house.
What would draw the Mexicans so far from town? A little side work for the Youngs?
A spur led from the road to the house, and then to a poured concrete slab of a driveway just below Eliza’s window. The truck pulled up and stopped. A haze of dust hung in the air around the truck and all the way down the road for miles. The doors opened. Two men stepped out.
Eduardo and Manuel. They were dressed like Mexican laborers, in long sleeves now to protect against the sun, and with hats to shield their faces. Shovels, toolboxes, and other tools sat in the back of the truck and the two men had gloves tucked into their front breast pockets.
And yet there was something about the way that they held themselves that wasn’t right. They had a certain confidence and certainty of purpose. They did not carry themselves like illegal aliens.
They spoke to each other as they approached the door, which was right under her window. She flipped the latch on the window. She eased it open, wincing at the squeak.
To her further surprise, Eduardo and Manuel spoke in English, even though they were by themselves. “So this guy is good?” Eduardo asked.
“Depends on what you mean by good. I wouldn’t trust any of them. However, given the circumstances—”
The front door opened and Manuel stopped mid-sentence. She couldn’t see Stephen Paul, standing as he was inside the threshold, but heard him say, “Good morning.”
“Have you got it?” Manuel asked.
“I do, but let’s be clear. My participation is contingent upon the conditions we agreed upon earlier. Contingent and limited in scope.”
“Understood,” Manuel said. He took something from Stephen Paul, then passed it along to Eduardo, who returned to the truck. Eduardo’s body shielded whatever it was that Stephen Paul had given them. Eliza shrank back from the window as Eduardo tossed the object into the truck’s cab and turned around.
“That’s all we need,” Manuel said. “But we’ll have to kick around here for a few ho
urs so the others will think we’ve been working. We’re supposedly up here on a side job.”
“I’ve got a guest,” Stephen Paul said, apparently not knowing that his wives had put said guest right above where he now stood. “So it might be better if you were actually seen working rather than sipping lemonade on the porch. You up for that?”
“Yeah, I guess.” No enthusiasm in the voice. “What have you got?”
Stephen Paul said something about a fence in need of repair, and the three men walked around the side of the house.
Eliza watched them leave with some confusion. At first glance of Eduardo she had felt an aftershock of the desire that had gripped her the other night. But there was no question now. He was involved in something underhanded.
She was angry with herself for not following up on what she had learned earlier. Eduardo had spoken perfect English. His excuse had not rung true. She should have known that he was not in Blister Creek to work. Neither was Manuel. Could they be involved in the murder after all? And what did that say about Stephen Paul?
Eliza looked at the truck. What had Stephen Paul given them?
She made the sudden decision to get that envelope and have a look before they came back. She shut the window and hurried from the bedroom.
#
Fernie left the greenhouse from the far end. She would go to the house and cycle through as if on meaningless errands. In reality, she would keep vigil while Jacob searched Amanda’s room. If she spotted either her husband or Taylor Junior she would call Jacob on his cell.
Jacob left through the opposite side. The air was cooler outside, and drier. Sweat was streaming down his sides and plastered his hair to his forehead. He made straight for the house.
He reached the wing where Fernie had directed him. A different hallway than where Eliza had slept. Two boys, maybe ten and eleven, painted the railing leading up the stairs.
“Hot out there,” he said as he maneuvered past them. “You’re lucky to be working inside where there’s AC.”
They stopped their painting and watched him go up the stairs. The boys might tell their father that they’d seen him, but by then he’d have what he needed.
Jacob hurried down the hallway to Amanda’s old room. It was the second door on the left, according to Fernie. He stood outside the closed door for a moment, listening for sounds. He heard nothing.
He could have sent Fernie to search Amanda’s room. She would have aroused less suspicion. But Fernie was terrified. And he feared for her safety. They had butchered Amanda; they would do the same to Fernie.
He opened the door and let out his breath when he saw the room was empty.
Children had already moved in to bunk with Sophie Marie now that the girl’s mother was gone. One wall held a framed picture of Jesus with children, another a poster of math facts next to a world map. A cork board held drawings, spelling work, and math worksheets. Two bunk beds sat in one corner, but a queen-sized bed still sat in the middle of the room, with an adult-sized dresser to one side. That had to be Amanda’s.
He put his hand between the mattress of the queen-sized bed and the box springs and ran it along the side of the bed from the headboard down to the foot. Nothing on this side. He went to the other side and did the same. He felt nothing unusual.
Frowning, he lifted the mattress as far as he could before it started to fold over on itself. Something caught his eye near the middle. He pushed the mattress halfway off the bed and stretched out his free hand. It came back with a manila envelope. Inside, papers.
The envelope held clippings from newspapers and magazines. He looked at the first, a photocopy of the San Francisco Chronicle with a four-year-old date. It was about the murder in San Francisco that had drawn the nation’s attention—the one to which they were comparing the more recent kidnapping in New Mexico. The second was a similar article from the Los Angeles Times, together with a grainy photo of the murder scene. He glanced at the articles with some impatience. What did this have to do with anything? And then he came to the third and final clip. Amanda had cut it neatly from a glossy magazine like Time or Newsweek. The headline read, “A Satanic Cult Stalks California’s Intellectual Elite.”
The picture was color, not newsprint, and large enough to see details. A bedroom, with a body on the floor. An editor had blurred the body, deeming the details too horrific to print. But not the wall behind the body.
Occult-like symbols, written in blood, streaked and coagulated against the wall.
Jacob read the article. The body was that of a top scientist at a Silicon Valley firm. They’d found her husband—himself an academic at Stanford—dumped in San Francisco Bay, strangled. They’d killed the woman and painted the walls with her blood. There was no sign of the couple’s baby.
Two days after the murder, the killer had sent a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. Referencing details known only to the killer, he had claimed to belong to a Satanic cult. The cult had taken the baby as sacrifice for Lucifer. They had consumed its flesh in a black mass in a convent near Santa Rosa that had burned down a few years earlier. Police had found fresh blood in the ruins and similar occult-like markings, but no body.
It was the second crime claimed by the cult. In the first, the cult had stolen a baby from the neonatal unit of a hospital in Los Angeles. That baby’s father had been a world-class brain researcher at UCLA. Authorities now believed the first baby had met the same grizzly fate.
Jacob had to stop reading. He put the articles down and shut his eyes. He had recognized the symbols written in blood at once. He had studied them several times over the previous few days. They were not the marks of a Satanic cult as the letter writer would have the police believe. They had been taken from the Jupiter Medallion.
Amanda had collected these articles. Perhaps she had threatened to share the information with police. Maybe she’d kept quiet but been discovered. Either way, someone had killed her to assure her silence.
The rest, he simply could not wrap his mind around. The church had no connection to these academics and scientists as far as he knew. Had they written something hostile to the church? Unlikely.
And the bit about the Satanic cult, surely that was meant to throw off the investigation. But why use symbols from the Jupiter Medallion? And what had motivated Amanda to get involved?
He returned to the clips. Nobody in Blister Creek would subscribe to these newspapers or magazines. The most likely source was the library at Southern Utah State University in Cedar City. Amanda would have passed by the place with her sister wives while they were selling vegetables for the co-op, and she’d found a way to get inside by herself.
Is that how they caught you? He imagined them coming upon her, questioning her, maybe even torturing the information from her. She had confessed, and they had exacted their vengeance. Did they cut her tongue from her mouth first? What had she thought as they’d taken the knife to her throat?
But her secret had remained, both here and tucked into the pages of Amanda’s Book of Mormon. And now he knew.
Bastards.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Two rings, then it stopped. The signal from Fernie. One of the Kimball men had come home. Time to get out.
He folded up the articles and stuffed them in his pocket, then pushed the mattress back into place. It looked rumpled, so he fiddled with the bedspread. Not quite right, but it would have to do. He turned to go.
Footsteps sounded in the doorway outside the room. He froze with his hand on the doorknob.
“Jacob!” Fernie whispered from the other side of the door.
He opened the door in relief. She stood in the hallway looking anxious. He said, “I told you not to come up. I got the call.”
“But you didn’t answer and I thought…never mind. It’s Taylor Junior. He’s asking about you. I told him I’d seen you out by the greenhouses. He went to look, but it won’t keep him long, I’m sure.”
They made their way outside without running into the little prick.
Possibly murderous prick, Jacob thought.
“Did you get what you were looking for?” Fernie asked as she followed him back to his car.
“Yes, do you want to know?”
She studied his face. “I don’t know. Do I?”
He thought of Amanda, throat cut, buried in the sand. “No, you don’t. And I don’t want you any more involved. It could have been you. So unless you feel you must know, I’d rather not tell you. But thanks, Fernie. This helps a lot.”
Jacob wanted to stay and talk, to comfort her at least. Fernie was scared. But he’d already put her life at risk. He said goodbye and climbed into the Corolla.
The phone rang as he pulled away from the Kimball house. He picked it up and answered.
A familiar voice on the other end. “Hello, Jacob. It’s Enoch.”
Chapter Fifteen:
It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Stephen Paul had given something to Manuel and Eduardo and they had put it into their unlocked truck. Jacob would have been down there at once to rifle through the papers and see if it had anything to do with their investigation. Eliza must do the same.
Deep breath. Must move quickly.
As she made her way down the stairs, she tried to concoct an alibi, something to say if they caught her in the act. She could think of nothing plausible.
Carol worked in the kitchen, kneading bread. She quizzed her son on spelling as she worked. Two more children sat at the kitchen table, working on schoolwork. Another sat at a computer, playing chess. He looked no older than seven.
Carol looked up when Eliza entered. “Are you okay?”
“What?”
“You look funny. Do you feel okay?”
“Yes, fine. Well, a little light-headed. I think I stood up too fast. Going to get a breath of fresh air.”
“Sure, well if you don’t feel better, let me know and I can get you some herb tea.”
Eliza stepped out the front door and leaned against the pillar as if steadying herself. It was already hot, but the brick remained cool to the touch. A breeze kicked off the desert and brought the scent of sage and dry sand. She shut the door and looked around. Nobody in sight. She heard voices from the far side of the house. The men would be in the shed now.
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