“Ah, I see.”
“I told him I was eighteen,” Eliza said. “He doesn’t know that I’m seventeen. You know what I mean?”
She could see Jacob thinking, weighing the ramifications. “Yes, I see. Seventeen year-old girl. FBI agent seducing a naïve polygamist girl. For sex or to further the investigation, who cares? We’d tell the media and it would explode. The threat of it, I think, might make these two back off.”
It was along the lines of what she’d been thinking, but she didn’t like hearing it voiced. It felt wrong. “Should we do it?”
Jacob said, “Liz, Father’s right. This story will be huge. It has everything to attract the media sharks. Pregnant women murdered. Secret eugenics programs. A polygamist sect and its secrets. It might be better for the church if we covered it up.”
Only he didn’t sound like he thought it would be better. He sounded like he thought it would be worse. “Unless…?”
“Unless we’re going to do the right thing. That’s what it comes down to, Liz.” “It might be the end of the church if we tell the truth,” Eliza said.
“Maybe. Hopefully, we’ll be strong enough to weather the storm.”
“Then we have to do it. We have to tell the truth. And go against Father.”
“He’ll get over it.”
She hesitated. “Okay, I’m ready, if you are.”
They returned to their room and took their seats. Jacob looked right at Manuel. “Here’s our proposal.”
“Jacob?” Father said. “What are you doing?”
“We’ll cooperate with the murder investigation. And the fraud investigation. All we ask are a few small conditions.”
The mood among the men in the room shifted at once. Manuel and Eduardo looked pleasantly surprised and instantly more relaxed. Abraham Christianson looked just as startled, but almost as quickly grew visibly angry. And Brother Joseph? Eliza couldn’t read his expression.
“What are you talking about, Jacob?” Father asked. “What possible reason do we have for cooperating?”
“Most simply, because we should tell the truth.”
Father said, “The truth? Yes, for those who are ready to hear it. But in cases like this, not everything that is true is useful.”
“A morally bankrupt point of view, Dad.”
Father asked, “Didn’t you hear what I said? The media frenzy will eat us alive. There will be gentiles living on our doorstep. Media, law-enforcement. All manner of unsavory individuals. They’ll come to White Valley and Harmony, too. Not just Blister Creek.”
“And then what?” Jacob asked.
“Apostates will appear on TV to air their grievances. Church members will doubt. Finger pointing. Gentiles will mock our sacred rituals and claim we’re abusing our people.”
“And then what?”
“Many saints will fall away.”
“Some, but not all,” Jacob conceded. “Is that all?”
“Is that all? Are you insane, Jacob?” In spite of his words, a subtle change had taken place between the two men. It was Father pleading with his son, not the other way around. “That is everything.”
Eliza said, “Father, even the worst trials come to an end.”
“And we don’t have a choice,” Jacob said. “You want to pick a fight with the Federal Government? There’s no way to win that fight. And I guarantee you, even if we could get away with it, we can’t just pretend this never happened. Then it will never go away. But above all, Dad, it’s the right thing to do and every person in this room knows it.”
Abraham Christianson looked angry enough to burst, but Brother Joseph put a hand on his arm and said a few soothing words.
The prophet said, “If we do this, Jacob, will you be our representative? Will you speak to the media and direct our efforts with law enforcement?”
“Of course, Brother Joseph.”
Brother Joseph turned back to Abraham Christianson. “My dear friend, your son is right.” He shook his head. “It’s the honest thing to do. And the best way to put these terrible events behind us.”
Father still didn’t agree. Eliza could see that on his face and knew this was a fight they would have to win later. He had not surrendered, but he had retreated from the battlefield.
“What are your conditions?” Manuel asked. It was the first that either of the FBI agents had spoken during this exchange. He still sounded suspicious.
Eduardo was looking at Eliza again and she could see new respect in the man’s eyes. That look gave her a twinge of guilt. He didn’t know how close she had come to turning her back on him. If Jacob had pushed, she would have poisoned everything by claiming that Eduardo had taken advantage of her.
Jacob said, “First, the kidnapped girls. Will you allow us to return the girls to their families before the media gets involved?”
Manuel nodded, but it looked like a nod of understanding, not agreement. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’d like to convince Elder Kimball to cooperate with the investigation. He’s one of the ringleaders, but I don’t believe he sanctioned the murders. Let him surrender and we can almost certainly find every single one of the conspirators.”
And Taylor Junior? Eliza wondered. Could he not be involved as well?
But it didn’t matter, did it? Elder Kimball was disgraced. His family, tragic as that may be for people like Fernie and Charity, was disgraced as well, from top to bottom. There would be no marriage (second marriage, if you could consider the horror with Gideon to be a first) with the Kimball family.
“If you can do that,” Jacob added, “I can almost guarantee that the Lost Boys will cooperate.”
“How will you do that?”
“Securing Elder Kimball’s cooperation is the key. He’ll command the others to obey. You’ll get prison terms for every man involved.”
“Can you give us a minute?” Manuel and Eduardo stood and retreated to a corner of the room where they conversed in low voices for several minutes in Spanish. At last they returned to the table.
“Here’s the deal,” Manuel said. “We contact the families. You can deliver the children. Meanwhile, we keep the investigation low-key.”
“Sounds fair,” Jacob said. “How long do we have?”
“Twenty-four hours. Provided you find Mr. Kimball and secure his cooperation. Otherwise, all bets are off.”
#
Elder Kimball’s head cleared as he fled through the halls of the temple. He had come late to the Holy of Holies and found that the Lost Boys had already taken most of the wine. He’d only consumed a few sips and had been less muddled than usual when they met. And so he hadn’t seen the angel, just a bright light.
He’d escaped in the commotion. And when Gideon and Israel Young ran past holding Eliza he had shrank against the wall.
My son is dead. If they haven’t killed him yet, they soon will.
The truth was, Gideon had been dying for some time. Suicide in slow motion.
And everything that Kimball had thought about Gideon was wrong. What he had taken for contrition had been a scheming obsequiousness. What he had taken for obedience, subterfuge. Gideon had intended nothing less than a complete takeover. Only a blind man would not have seen it.
Or a father.
All his work, carefully building the seeds for genetic domination within the church and ultimately, the world at large, had come to a grinding halt with Gideon’s overreach. Personal greed had destroyed everything.
And you brought Gideon in. You gave him power.
Elder Kimball made his way to the Celestial Room. And found Enoch.
The young man lay dead on the ground. Butchered in the most savage way. They had taken his entrails to feed to the birds and the beasts. His son had done this.
Elder Kimball buried his face in his hands.
“Taylor?” It was Charity. She had come up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. He tried to shield the body of Enoch, but she had already seen. She looked away with her face pale. But Charity wa
s a strong woman. She looked back at him a moment later.
He looked her in the eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I came to find you. To stop you from whatever it was you came to do. You’re not well.” She gave him a hard look. “In any sense of the word. The only thing for it now is to go back and face your responsibilities. You must think of the church and of your family.”
“The church? My family? What does that mean to me? Brother Joseph will excommunicate me. Yes, he will. And I deserve it.”
They both knew what that would mean. Excommunication would dissolve his sealings. His wives would be given to other, more faithful men. His children, sealed to new fathers. He should kill himself instead.
“It’s not over,” Charity said. She took his face in her hands and he saw real kindness there. It was something he didn’t deserve. “Will your children remember you as a coward? A man who refused to admit his errors, even as his people drove him from Zion?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it does. There’s still time to earn a small measure of redemption. Help them. Tell them everything you know. Settle Amanda’s death. Punish the guilty. Even if you number among them. Admit your sins and beg forgiveness.”
Kimball bowed his head in shame. “They’ll never forgive me.”
“You don’t know that. And it doesn’t matter. Because your family will see your example. I know that you don’t think much of your sons, but some of them are on the cusp of manhood. They could go either way, follow their sisters’ examples, or turn out like Gideon and Taylor Junior. You can still influence them.”
He looked down at Enoch’s body. He’d long wished for sons like Abraham Christianson’s, but in the end, Abraham’s son had fallen, too. Enoch had been corrupted by the same madness that had taken hold of the others.
At last he lifted his head and nodded. “Okay. I’ll go.”
Chapter Twenty-Six:
It was a terrible business, wrenching babies from the arms of their mother. The women had taken the girls without knowing their origins. They had been gifts from God, presented by Elder Kimball as rescued orphans from Romania. That they belonged to some other family, that they had been brutally acquired, did not ease the pain of losing those children.
Eliza’s heart broke for the women.
Tess, who everyone had assumed had either been one of Elder Kimball’s favorites, or had simply become pregnant very easily, lost two of her three children. One of the girls was almost five, and the other only eight months. Tess had begged and pleaded, had threatened to kill herself if they took her children, and had even tried to flee in the middle of the night for parts unknown.
Brother Joseph had spoken to her, given her a blessing, and told her that it was the Lord’s will that the girls be returned to their biological families. In the end, Tess had gone with Jacob and Eliza to New Mexico and California, and when the time came, had handed over the children herself.
Finally, there was Sophie Marie. She was four. Old enough to understand. Gideon had killed her mother, but the girl still loved her aunties, and her many siblings. It was the only life she had known.
Jacob, Eliza, and Fernie drove Sophie Marie to the Bay Area. It was a long, uneasy trip. They would spend the night in San Jose before rising the next day for the meeting with Sophie Marie’s biological aunt and her husband.
Something passed between Fernie and Jacob during the drive from Utah. Eliza had picked up on it less than five minutes from Blister Creek. They were awkward when they spoke to each other and always conscious of Eliza in the car with them.
“River of sperm,” Jacob said without warning somewhere in the middle of the sagebrush expanse that was Nevada.
“River of what?” Eliza asked from the back seat, where she took her turn sitting next to Sophie Marie.
Jacob turned off the radio. “A river of sperm. Enoch said that to me when I found him dying in the Celestial Room. I couldn’t figure it out. There was something else. He said the genes flowed in two directions.”
Fernie said slowly, “Maybe he’s talking about the Lost Boys? They kidnapped girls for Zion, but in turn were expelled themselves. Surely, some of them have fathered children with gentile women. River of sperm is just a metaphor.”
“Maybe.” Jacob didn’t sound convinced.
Eliza thought this was more about Jacob wrestling with the death of his brother than from any lingering mystery. He couldn’t let it go. She said, “He was dying, Jacob. You can’t expect a dying man to make sense.”
“Except that I do. He was trying to tell me something, and it wasn’t just a metaphor.” He reached over and turned the radio back on. “Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
That night, they took two rooms at a Motel Six. Eliza and Fernie turned on the television. They watched a show that starred a dozen women and a man living in a house together. The women degraded themselves on camera for the affections of the lone man. At the end of the series, the man would marry one of the women. While the women bickered, gossiped, and back-stabbed each other, the man stood aloof, feigning interest in each of the women, and sorrow when he had to send one of them home. The more vacuous the woman, the more artificial her appearance and manner, the more the man seemed interested.
“Here’s the solution,” Eliza said. “He can marry them all. Problem solved.”
Fernie sat on her bed with her head propped against the pillows. She turned with her mouth quirked into a half-smile. “Sister wives. I like it. That’ll put an end to the bickering, eh?”
Eliza laughed. She found that she liked her sister’s dry sense of humor. It reminded her of Mother.
“So you’ve narrowly avoided marriage,” Fernie said, turning off the television. “Elder Johnson dead, Stephen Paul Young uninterested, and Taylor Junior is nowhere to be found. What now?”
Taylor Kimball, Junior, that pasty-white, raspy-voiced weasel, and the architect of his father’s fraudulent activities, had disappeared. He’d stolen money from the church, had filed fraudulent tax returns for his father’s wives, and had organized a string of dummy bank accounts, most of which the FBI had punctured, but not before Taylor Junior had cleared out several of them to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The FBI was looking for him, but since he’d apparently been uninvolved in the murders, he was not a high priority. More important was tracking down a handful of Lost Boys who’d fled for Las Vegas. With Elder Kimball’s assistance, authorities were arresting the remaining conspirators one by one.
“I don’t know,” Eliza said. “Jacob is a member of the Quorum now. Father is still simmering over what happened when we met the FBI agents, but I don’t think he can pressure Jacob anymore about marrying me off. I’ve got a few more years, anyway. Maybe I’ll go to college.” It was an exciting thought, albeit only half-formed.
“Sounds great. I wish I’d had that opportunity.” Fernie shrugged. “Maybe some day. Life, I’ve discovered, is a lot longer than you think it is when you’re a teenager.”
Eliza watched. She got the impression that her sister had something else she wanted to talk about.
“I need your advice, Liz.” Fernie had picked up on Jacob’s nickname for Eliza somewhere in Nevada. “You know my husband is going to prison. Could be ten years before he gets out on parole, according to Manuel Cardoza. Maybe longer.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“He’s lucky it’s not for life. They could have charged him with murder. Probably made it stick.” Fernie shrugged. “Question is, what do I do in the meanwhile?”
“You’re wondering if you should wait for your husband?”
“Well, you know that with his temple ordinances dissolved, he’s no longer technically my husband. I am currently the unmarried mother of three. But Brother Joseph said that if my husband returns humble from prison, he’ll be allowed back into the community.”
“Really? I’d think he’d go the way of the Lost Boys.”
“Oh, he’ll never be a leader
again,” Fernie said. “But he’s got children. And wives who are still faithful members. Charity is waiting for him. So are Clara Sue and Dolores. I don’t think the others will.” Fernie stroked the hair of Sophie Marie, who slept on her bed.
“And you?” Eliza asked.
She looked up and her eyes were shining. “Brother Joseph said I could choose a new husband. Can you believe that, choose? Would it be disloyal not to wait? I mean, that seems wrong. But then I thought that maybe the Lord is offering me the chance to be happy.”
Eliza studied Fernie. There was a flush on the woman’s face, and Eliza saw a new facet to her sister. She was not just an older sister, or a mother, or some man’s eighth wife. Fernie was a woman. Fernie was in love. And not with her husband. “Who is he?”
Fernie looked at her carefully. “You mean you don’t know?”
Eliza didn’t have to think very hard to piece it together. It explained so much about Jacob’s behavior, for one, as well as the strange vibes she’d picked up between Jacob and Fernie on the drive from Utah.
“Jacob.”
Fernie hesitated, and when she spoke again, she sounded anxious. “Would you be able to accept that? I mean, it’s weird from your perspective, having your brother and sister marry each other, even if they’re not related to each other by blood.”
It would bring Eliza’s relationship with her brother and her sister full circle in a way incomprehensible to the outside world. And Jacob was in the Quorum, now. How long before they pressed him to take a second wife, then a third? Fernie and Jacob’s moment of happiness might be just that, a moment.
Eliza came over to Fernie’s bed and gave her sister a hug. “So you’ll be both my sister and my sister-in-law. Yeah, that’s weird.” She hesitated. “But I’m okay with weird if you are.”
“Thanks, Liz.”
#
They rose early. Jacob drove through the streets of Berkeley while Fernie navigated with a map. They stopped the car at a park. Eliza and Fernie took Sophie Marie by the hand.
They dressed like gentiles, Jacob in slacks and a button-down shirt, Fernie and Eliza in jeans and long-sleeved blouses. The women had braided their hair, so that it wasn’t simply free-flowing to their waists and at least semi-modern in appearance. Eliza had never worn pants before; they felt uncomfortable and immodest. Eliza would have attracted more attention in her ankle-length, wrist-length dress. Still, she fought the sensation that she was walking through the park in her underwear.
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