Righteous - 01 - The Righteous

by Michael Wallace

  Eliza watched Jacob for his reaction. He just nodded as he took the badge, examined it, then handed it back. “Thank you, Mr. Cardoza. I guessed FBI. But I thought it might be the state. Or even the IRS. I thought they had their own investigative unit.”

  “The IRS will come in after we’re done and perform a full audit. They’re the ones who tipped us off. Seems Mr. Kimball was careless with a few of his bank accounts. But we’re the main guys. Given the scope of the fraud, it will be big. Money laundering, tax evasion, welfare fraud, illegal transfer of funds, you name it.”

  “How much are we talking about here?” Jacob asked.

  “Well, I can’t give numbers, but you’ve seen their house,” Manuel said, “New wing, new vehicles. All those greenhouses and the farm. New tractors, irrigation equipment, that grain silo. None of that comes cheap.”

  “Sure, but Elder Kimball sells produce all throughout the Southwest,” Jacob said. “My family runs a similar business, albeit smaller. There’s a lot of money in agriculture, if you know what you’re doing.”

  “Yes, but that’s not what Kimball claims,” Manuel said. “According to his taxes, he’s just struggling to get by. But like I said, we’re not the IRS. We’re looking mainly at fraud and money laundering. All those wives file as single mothers with lots of dependants and very little income. And where does all the money go anyway?”

  “Well then, Mr. Cardoza. You’d better explain your bugs.”

  Manuel opened the briefcase to reveal what looked like the bargain bin at Radio Shack. He spent a few minutes going through each kind of bug and where it should be placed. The most important, he said, was the phone bug, followed by the bug in Kimball’s office. Jacob listened and asked a few pointed questions.

  “The Mexicans—the ones from south of the border, that is,” Manuel added with a half-smile, “are bringing back a van loaded with carpet and linoleum. We’ve got some work at the Jameson Young house tomorrow, but after that, I’m going to send them to Kanab for a week to work on a job there. Get them out of the way. Meanwhile, Eduardo and I will equip the van with some additional gear. We’ll be ready to go by tomorrow night. Think you can get the place bugged by then?”

  “I’ll give it a start,” Jacob said. “It might take a couple of days to get everything placed. As I said, the house is never empty.” He nodded at Eliza. “My sister can help, of course.”

  #

  “Now we’re in a bind,” Jacob said as he and Eliza made their way back to the car. He held the briefcase as if he wanted nothing more than to fling it into the darkness. “We can’t plant these bugs.”

  “It won’t just turn up fraud.”

  “No, not if we’re right about the Kimballs. Much as I’d like to plant those bugs and listen in myself, if we’re right, everything will come to pieces. This murder, together with what happened in California will be like the Lafferty Murders, Elizabeth Smart, and Jon Benet Ramsey all wrapped up in one. There will be so many media descending on this place…well, let’s not go there. It can’t happen.”

  “They’d have to move the whole community to Harmony.”

  He shook his head. “The days are long gone when you can run to the other side of the border.”

  “But why did you agree?” Eliza asked. “Why not just say sorry, but we’re not getting involved?”

  They reached the car and Jacob unlocked the door for her. He fixed her with a sideways glance. “It’s too late for that Liz. They know we’re snooping around already. And the last thing we need is them checking up on us.”

  “So what’s the deal with those papers I found in their truck?” Eliza asked.

  “Guess they’re trying to track money. Elder Kimball claims he’s barely in the black, but then why all these salaries? Stephen Paul does business with the Kimballs from time to time. He must have got hold of some sensitive files and passed them on to Manuel and Eduardo. In any event, the fact that Elder Kimball is paying salaries to Gideon and Enoch is pretty good evidence for us that he’s involved with whatever the Lost Boys are up to.”

  It made sense. “But what are we going to do about the FBI?”

  “I don’t know, stall for time?”

  “How are we going to manage that?” she asked.

  “Surely we can put off a couple of FBI agents for a day or two. We meet with Enoch at the temple tomorrow. After that, everything will resolve itself in a hurry. One way or the other.”

  Chapter Sixteen:

  The conspirators met in the Holy of Holies, deep in the bowels of the temple. This room, where the prophet was said to commune with the Lord, was off-limits to all but the Quorum of the Twelve and the prophet, but Elder Kimball owned a complete set of temple keys. It was easy enough to gain entry. Almost as simple to smuggle in the others.

  The Holy of Holies was a windowless room with a lofty ceiling, built beneath the temple’s spire. A brass chandelier hung overhead; it was said to have been taken from the temple built by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois and later burned by a mob when the Saints were driven west. Wooden benches ringed the room. Varnished wainscoting covered the lower half of the wall.

  In the center of the room sat an aged cedar chest some four feet high. Winged cherubim perched on both ends of the chest, wood overlaid with gold. The chest itself was carved with all manner of symbols: all-seeing eyes, the sign of the compass and square, a moon with a face. In the chest, it was said, lay the Urim and Thummim—used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon from the Gold Plates—and the sword and breastplate of Laban. The chest was not locked, but Gideon had never seen anyone touch it.

  Gideon had shivered with terror the first time he’d entered the room. He’d come as a fugitive. Excommunicate, banned from the temple. To enter the Holy of Holies was sacrilege of the highest order. The Lord would strike him down. His father had assured him otherwise. Some of the Lost Boys had been through the temple before their excommunication, and Elder Kimball had refellowshipped these men first before employing them to initiate the others during secret, late night endowment sessions. They had taken oaths and covenants, and repeated the ceremony until every man knew the endowment by heart.

  Later, as Gideon had come to know the secrets of Holy of Holies and turn them to his own purpose, he had come alone with the intent of opening the chest. Inside he had found a white stone of a curious, polished appearance. And the Jupiter Medallion. He had taken to wearing it and later had hired a metalworker in Las Vegas to make copies.

  Elder Kimball had not yet arrived. Gideon assessed the other men in the room. Some were allies, others strivers who would stab him in the back if they got the chance. Several shared Enoch’s temperament. Weak in the mind. Cowards.

  Most were outcasts. The others, younger brothers and unloved sons, could already see that their futures would play out in the same way.

  Won’t it be a delicious revenge, Gideon thought, when we become the rulers. And he, the biggest outsider of all, would rule them all. He thought of the role of Satan in the temple endowment—and wasn’t that the only interesting character?—when he had been expelled by the power of the priesthood. Now is the great day of my power, Satan had railed against his oppressors. I reign from the rivers to the ends of the earth. There is none who dares to molest or make afraid.

  Satan, Gideon decided, was the true hero of the Lord’s plan. Jesus suffered in Gethsemane and on the cross. They said his suffering was eternal. But it had ended after three days, after which God lifted Jesus to his right hand, where He ruled over the universe and shared in Heavenly Father’s glory. How was that eternal?

  But what of Lucifer, the younger brother of Jesus? What of his sacrifice? To be despised, driven from God’s presence. There must be opposition in all things, the scriptures taught. And in the end, when all men had received their judgment, what would become of this hated brother? They would cast him into Outer Darkness.

  And that was a fate with which Gideon could sympathize. Only he had been supplanted by a younger, more be
loved brother. Worse, by the memory of a brother. The boy had never reached adulthood and it was the memory, the thought of what he might have become that was Gideon’s true enemy. Taylor Junior could be fought. Not so Parley, who was forever two years old.

  Gideon hadn’t meant to kill his younger brother. Gideon had been too young to swim after Parley, or even be responsible enough to fetch grownups. He hadn’t even pushed the little shit into the water, though goodness knows he’d had the opportunity.

  There had been a heavy rainfall. The irrigation canals ran deep and swift. Gideon had been only four years old. But he remembered seeing Crafton Peterson’s apple tree ripped from the ground and deposited on a raft of tree limbs. It had floated past the Kimball house, upright, apples red and ready to pick, and looking for all the world as if it had grown on that island of sticks.

  The weather had been unseasonably dry in the weeks leading up to the flood and this enabled the farmers to open the gates on their irrigation ditches and flood the fields. It dropped the river just enough to prevent widespread devastation. Gideon went to the fields when it had stopped raining, fascinated by the water surging through normally placid irrigation ditches.

  All sorts of interesting things floated by: a dead cat, a bicycle tire, a ski glove (odd, that, in the desert), and a child’s doll. Gideon hooked the dead cat with a stick and was hauling it onto shore when his younger brother found him.

  Parley was two, still in diapers, and shadowed the older boy. Gideon hated his brother. He could not remember when his brother had been born. But he remembered how Aunt Charity—his mother’s sister-wife—would pick up Parley when he would cry, even if it meant putting Gideon on the ground. He saw Father praise Parley, how he lifted the boy into his arms to share a laugh at Parley’s delighted smile. He saw how they gave Parley more ice cream, more juice, more crackers, more everything than they gave Gideon. He saw how his grandfather preferred Parley, how his own mother fed the boy his bedtime bottle as Aunt Charity grew pregnant with her second child, instead of singing Gideon to sleep as she had once done.

  Parley had squatted and leaned to look into the water. He still had the body of an overgrown baby, all bulging stomach and oversized head, and little balance. It would take just a nudge to send him into the water. The water would carry him away, and maybe he would never come back. The thought gave Gideon a thrill.

  But that would be wrong. He knew that. And no matter how close Parley leaned, even as he reached out for something shiny floating by, the boy kept his balance. Why wouldn’t he just fall and be done with it?

  And then Gideon looked upstream and saw how it would be done.

  The limb of a tree drifted down the irrigation ditch. It was too big for the channel and it caught on the edge before the water dislodged it again. One branch jutted several feet out of the water and as it approached, the tree limb rotated just so to where the branch would hit Parley. Gideon watched with fascination.

  At the last moment Parley stood and looked upstream and Gideon thought that he would move out of the way. But he just stared at the drifting branch, as if uncomprehending that something moving so slowly could be so dangerous. The branch gave Parley a nudge that knocked the boy from his feet.

  Parley fell without a sound. Just a plop and he was underwater. He stayed down for several seconds. But then his head bobbed to the surface and he grabbed hold of the branch, which had lodged itself against the side of the channel. Water rushed over and around the smaller boy, who somehow managed to hold on. And then, to Gideon’s surprise, his brother began to crawl hand over hand along the branch to the edge of the irrigation ditch. In a moment, he would reach the side and Gideon would have no choice but to pull him from the water.

  The tree limb held, even as the water piled behind it, pushing, urging it to float downstream. One tiny twig at the edge of one small branch had snagged the dirt at Gideon’s feet and it was this fingerhold that made the difference.

  Gideon never made the decision. He just moved as if his hands had decided for themselves what to do. He bent and snapped off the edge of the twig. The rest of the branch sprang back and the limb pulled free of the culvert. The limb began to move. Parley clung to his branch as it floated down the river.

  They came to Gideon that afternoon, reading a book in his room. Adults, frantic with worry. Had he seen Parley? No, he said. He didn’t look up from his book. They had left.

  They had found Parley’s body only after the floodwaters had subsided and the irrigation canals drained. The branches had pinned him in an underground culvert. Gideon had not felt bad. Why should he? He had not pushed Parley into the water. The tree limb had knocked him in. It had been an accident. And anyway, Gideon couldn’t swim. What could he have done?

  It was an odd memory to bubble to the surface. And why? Perhaps because if things had turned out a little different and Parley had not drowned so tragically all those years ago, Gideon would still be in Las Vegas, a Lost Boy, railing against the misfortunes of the world. Because Parley had been perfect, and no doubt that perfection would have stuck to him until he was an adult. Taylor Junior, on the other hand, anointed though he may have been, was an idiot. Taylor Junior was an adult, he’d been chosen by his father, an important member of the Quorum of the Twelve, yet he still had not managed to find a wife.

  Gideon would take better advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves. He told himself that as his father entered the Holy of Holies. Elder Kimball looked angry. Six other men, including Gideon, had arrived before him.

  Elder Kimball turned to Gideon. “Let’s get one thing straight. I call these meetings, not you.”

  Gideon forced a smile. “Yes, of course, Father.” Soon, very soon. For now, however, the illusion must continue. “But I couldn’t reach you,” he lied. “It was critical that we gather at once in light of Enoch’s defection.”

  The other men had taken their seats around the edges of the room, and only Gideon stood. He rested his hand against one of the gold cherubim. This act in particular made the others squirm. He enjoyed the look on their faces and the relief when he finally removed his hand.

  “We don’t know that Enoch defected,” Elder Kimball said.

  “Then where is he?” Gideon asked. “If he’s truly repentant, as you claim, then why isn’t he here?”

  “He’ll come around. Just a little more persuading…”

  “That’s what you said last time, old man.”

  “Don’t underestimate Enoch’s importance,” Elder Kimball said. “We must have an ally among the Christiansons if we’re to succeed.”

  It was why, Gideon noted, looking around the room, that the others in the room represented the most powerful families within the church: Kimballs, Johnsons, Youngs, someone from the Wesley family, and a Pratt. Mostly Lost Boys salted with a couple of ambitious younger sons who had not yet been given their first wives. All of them eager. Gideon had groomed each young man to step in for a brother or father.

  Even so, taking over the Quorum would be messy. They were old men, yes, but some would fight. The rest could be bullied. The old man himself, Brother Joseph, would remain as a figurehead. Gideon’s father would stay on as senior member of the Quorum, but not for long.

  “As of now there’s no ally from the Christiansons,” Gideon said. “What’s more, you’ve made an enemy of Jacob Christianson and alienated his daughter, thus assuring the hostile opposition of Elder Christianson himself.”

  “Which was assured from the beginning, I promise you,” Elder Kimball said. “Elder Christianson has stood in opposition for years.” He shook his head. “Jacob is an even more certain adversary. Enoch is our best hope.”

  “Then what do you propose?” Gideon asked. The others stared and he wondered if now wasn’t the place to make his ascendance certain. No, not yet.

  “We call him back to Zion. When he comes, we chasten him. Perhaps severely. We’ll give him a second chance. Once he brings us the child, he’ll never doubt again.”

&
nbsp; Gideon listened with disgust. If Enoch had betrayed them before, he would betray them again. He had panicked when he had heard about the necessary killing of Amanda Kimball. He had balked when the moment had come to complete his assigned task in Oakland. And now, he was not communicating.

  “What does the angel say?” one of the other men asked. It was David Johnson, nephew of the recently deceased Elder Johnson.

  “Yes,” someone else said. “Call the angel.”

  “We must speak to the angel.”

  Only Elder Kimball himself looked uncertain, but they had come to rely on the angel for advice, and the man said nothing.

  “Yes, we must,” Gideon said, as if with great reluctance. “Let us call him.”

  In the early days it had taken great effort to call the angel. They would fast until weak, then pray fervently, then take a sacrament of wine—several times if necessary.

  Gideon had lived in Babylon. He knew more than one way to call an angel. A group of fasting men with wine was a good start. Better still was the powder that he mixed into the wine. He took only a small measure himself, just enough to join the spirit of the meeting but not so much as to dull his wits.

  He always gave the largest dosage to his father. Perhaps that explained the old man’s increasingly erratic behavior. It might also explain why the angel appeared to Elder Kimball at other, random moments. Flashbacks.

  Gideon had been a junior at the University of Utah, studying electrical engineering, when he’d been expelled from Zion. With no money, he’d drifted to St. George, where he’d found a job as an electrician’s apprentice. The knowledge gained on that job had come in handy when the time had come to rewire the lights in the Holy of Holies.

  He bent behind the cedar chest in the middle of the floor and retrieved a pre-opened bottle of wine and a silver communion cup pilfered from an Episcopal church in Salt Lake. The cup already held a few micrograms of LSD.

  Gideon poured wine into the cup, then held it up and prayed. “Oh, God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this wine for the souls of all those who partake of it.”