“Lisa?”
“His wife.”
“Your mother mentioned that they tried to interfere with their relationship, but she didn’t go into any details.”
“He didn’t tell Mom everything. He’s a little more comfortable talking about it with me. See, what happened had to do with the courtship process.”
“The courtship process?”
“It’s the way the Colony approaches dating and marriage,” Heather explained. “In the Colony, young men and women of marriageable age are encouraged to interact only in large groups at first. Then, the young man meets with an elder in the community and submits a list of the young women he’d like to date. The elder looks over the list. He decides which of the girls on the list would be a good match for the young man and approves them for courtship. The elder then approaches one of the female elders, and the two of them approve of a supervised, chaperoned dating plan. Then the young man repeats the process with the other girls on his list. Once he’s spent time with all of them, he zeroes in on one in particular. After a few more dates, he’s encouraged to propose.”
“And the girls? Do they have any say in this?” Dawn asked.
“Not much. Tremendous pressure is applied to them to yield to the wisdom of the elders and go along with their plans.”
“So, I take it that the courtship plan for Lincoln went awry?”
“Yes. You see, he was really interested in only one girl, Lisa. But the elders crossed her off his list. They insisted she was too headstrong and rebellious to be a good match for him; she had to develop a more pliant, docile nature before they would approve her to date any of the young men.”
“Wow. That sounds really medieval.”
“You’re telling me. Anyway, Linc went along at first and tried dating a few other girls. When he told the elders that he really wasn’t attracted to any of them, they scolded him, insisting that attraction was not necessary in order to make a good marriage. They picked out one of the girls and kept pressuring him to propose to her.
“But that was a mistake. Lincoln purely hates to be pushed. Then he found out through the grapevine of the young adult group he belonged to that Lisa was miserable and wanted to leave Mexico and return to the United States. She was over twenty-one, and the decision should have been up to her, but the leaders of the group had forbidden her to leave. They were even holding her passport so that she couldn’t cross the border.
“When Linc heard about that, he decided he’d had enough. He had something Lisa didn’t – a car. He found out where they were keeping Lisa’s passport, got his hands on it, and made all the other necessary preparations. After he had all his ducks lined up, he arranged to meet Lisa at a rendezvous point – he never told me where – one night after everyone else had gone to bed. When the two of them met up, Lincoln bundled Lisa into his car and just started driving north. He didn’t stop until they were across the border in Texas.”
“And they are still together, I understand,” Dawn said.
“Yes. And they have two beautiful children.”
“But your brother formed his own group,” Rick interjected. “Why would he do that, if he disagreed so much with the ideals of the Colony?”
“Well, some of the other young men and women who weren’t happy with the Colony joined him and Lisa later. They had rejected the Colony and its philosophy, but they weren’t real keen about joining the mainstream society in the U.S. either. So they bought some land west of here in Clear Creek County and formed their own group. It’s more like a league or a club, from what Lincoln tells me. All the members are free to come and go as they please, men and women are respected as equals, and there are no elders or any formal leadership structure. They’ve just made an agreement to live a simple life together, far away from the influence of big government, big business, and what they view as the toxic baggage both institutions carry along with them.”
When Dawn and Rick exchanged skeptical glances, Heather said, “I know. It’s still too much like the Colony for me, but Lincoln, Lisa, and their children seem to be thriving, and we can see them whenever we please.”
“You go and visit them sometimes?”
“Yes, and they come here as well. Not very frequently, I’ll admit, but they do come.”
Heather rose from her seat and said, “Look, I’ll call Lincoln now and ask him if he’ll agree to meet with you. If he does, you’ll probably need my mother to show you the way. The place where he and his family live over in Clear Creek County isn’t easy to find.”
Chapter 25
Somewhat to everyone’s surprise, after speaking to Heather and also to his mother, Lincoln agreed to meet with Dawn and Rick. He arranged to meet them at the gates that barred the private road that led to the property where he and his followers had established their group. Because of the remoteness of the location and also to smooth their way with her son, Leslie agreed to lead them to the rendezvous point.
After bidding Heather goodbye and thanking her for her assistance, Dawn and Rick returned to the car and waited for Leslie. She exited the house shortly after they did, and soon they were on their way.
A truck was waiting for them at the entrance to the property. Two men sat inside. As they approached, the driver opened his door and exited the truck. The other man, a big bear of a man with a long black beard, remained in the truck, a shotgun cradled in his arms.
The driver, a tall, lanky man with sandy colored hair and steely blue eyes, approached Leslie’s vehicle. He proceeded to open the driver’s side door and help her out of the vehicle.
“Mom,” he said, embracing her. “It’s good to see you.” But all the while, even while he was hugging his mother, his eyes were on the other car, obviously scanning the two police officers inside.
Dawn and Rick emerged from Rick’s car and walked up to Leslie and her son.
“Linc,” Leslie said, disengaging himself from Lincoln’s embrace, “these are the police officers I told you about. Detective Cimarron and Special Agent Rikovsky.”
Lincoln nodded to them, his gaze hard and stony.
“They’re the ones looking into what happened to Samantha?”
“Yes. Would you talk with them, please?”
Lincoln paused for a long moment before answering. “Just one of them,” he said. Indicating Dawn, he said, “You can get out and come along with us.” He stared at Rick and said, “You can stay in the car.”
Turning back to his mother, he said, “Bring the detective along. Let’s go for a walk.”
He turned and led the way up a path to a small hill. At the top, he stopped and waited for the other two to catch up. Bracing one foot upon a large rock, he considered Dawn, who returned his gaze steadily.
“Mom and Heather tell me that you think someone from the Colony had something to do with Samantha’s disappearance,” Lincoln said eventually.
“Yes. I wonder if you would mind answering some questions?”
“I’m not real big on answering questions from the police, but in this case, I’ll make an exception. So ask away. I’ll answer if I can.”
“Okay – first I want to ask you about Shawn Weirsman.”
“Shawn? What about him?”
“We understand that he made threats against Samantha.”
“Yeah, but that was all just talk.”
“What makes you so sure about that?”
“That’s the way Shawn is. He’ll shoot his mouth off and talk big, but he’s a wuss at heart. He was always saying how we should get a group together and go back to the States secretly and get rid of Samantha.”
“You didn’t take him seriously?”
“No. When he said we, he really meant someone else. And nobody else was really interested.”
“He couldn’t have slipped off and gone by himself to do it?”
“Hardly. Shawn just doesn’t have the guts. On top of that, if Shawn had slipped off for any amount of time and then mysteriously reappeared, trust me – I would have known about i
t. He didn’t.”
“Okay. Next, I have a sketch I’d like to show you. Would you mind taking a look at it, see if you can identify the man in the sketch?”
“You think it may be Shawn?”
“It’s possible.”
“Hand it over. I’ll take a look.”
Dawn passed the sketch to him. He took one look at it and immediately said, “That’s not Shawn. That’s Marc.”
“Marc? Who’s Marc?”
“Jed Foxe’s son.”
Chapter 26
He was filled with a warm glow of satisfaction. The couple in the car had been subdued without a hitch. The man was now in the trunk, tied up with some of the twine he had stolen from the camper that first day. The woman was at the wheel of the powerful car. He was seated beside her, the gun jammed into her side. With his other hand, he was eating a sandwich from the lunch the couple had packed in their cooler.
Every moment, he was getting closer to his destination.
Finishing his sandwich, he took a long drink of water from a bottle lying in the cup holder between the two seats. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he studied the woman at the wheel of the car.
Maybe he would keep her, he thought. With her dusky brown hair and tan, trim body, she was appealing, in her own way. She also seemed compliant enough to meet his needs. He had chatted with her for a while as he ate, and she had listened attentively. He liked that in a woman.
“What’s your name?” he asked her presently.
“Kayla,” she replied.
“And your boyfriend?”
“His name is Mitchell, and he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my husband,” she answered, in a soft, rather husky voice.
“Really?” he asked skeptically. “Then why aren’t you wearing a wedding ring?”
“We only got married a few days ago. Rather than buying rings for each other, we decided to save the money and use it for our honeymoon,” Kayla responded.
“Interesting. Where were you headed?”
“California.”
“Where did you get married?”
“Indiana. We’ve been driving west ever since.”
“So you must have a marriage certificate, right? Where is it?”
“In the glove compartment.” Removing one hand from the wheel, she started to gesture toward it.
“Keep both hands on the wheel!” he barked. Once she had complied, without removing the gun from her side, he reached over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out a bunch of papers. Owners manual. Vehicle registration. Auto insurance information. And underneath, sure enough, a marriage license.
So he wouldn’t be able to keep her. Married women were off limits to him. Or – on second thought – maybe not. Married women might be off limits, but what if she was no longer married? There was nothing in the rules that forbade him from coupling with a widow…
*****
“The guy in the sketch is Jed Foxe’s son?” Dawn repeated. “Where are you getting Marc from? I thought his name was Damon.”
“Damon is his first name,” Lincoln replied. “His middle name is Marcus, and he always goes by Marc.” He looked at her. “Do you really think that Marc could have had something to do with what happened to Samantha?”
“Yes. The sketch was made of a suspect in another case that connects with Samantha’s. Would it surprise you to find out that Marc is capable of violence?”
“Not really.”
Dawn waited for him to elaborate, but he maintained a stubborn silence.
“Linc?” his mother prodded gently. “Why doesn’t it surprise you? He always seemed like such a sweet little boy to me, and so fond of Samantha. I can’t imagine him ever wanting to harm her.”
Lincoln responded, “We were friends when we were kids. But after the police came and raided the Colony, I didn’t see him for years. Then he turned up in Mexico.”
“When, Lincoln?” Dawn asked. “Can you tell me when?”
“About three years ago. Shortly after Samantha disappeared, as a matter of fact.”
“Did he say anything about Samantha’s disappearance?”
“Only that he never believed her story. He always thought Sam was lying about what she said his dad did to her. He was pretty emphatic about it, as a matter of fact.”
“When Samantha disappeared, did it occur to you that Marc might have had something to do with it?”
“No. I thought the boyfriend did it. That’s what the police thought, right?”
“That was one theory, yes. But now we’re looking at other angles.”
“And Marc is one of them?”
“It’s beginning to look like it. Lincoln, I’d like to pick your brain a little. While he was with you in Mexico, what did Marc talk about? Any information you could give us would help.”
Lincoln dropped his foot from the rock he had been leaning on and straightened up. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he scanned the view in the distance before settling his gaze on Dawn once again and answering her question.
“What did Marc talk about? Mostly about ‘re-establishing right order’.”
“What did he mean by that?” Dawn coaxed.
“He wanted to turn the clock back, for everything to be just the way it used to be. To his way of thinking, it was his rightful place to be in charge of everything, just the way his father once was. But the elders wouldn’t go along with that. They weren’t about to hand all that power over to him. They kept putting him off, saying that maybe it could happen in the future, but Marc would have to wait until he was older and more mature.”
“And how did Marc respond to that?”
“He flew into a rage. He said he had been with Jed just before he died, and that his father had ‘wrapped the mantle of authority around his shoulders’.”
“I’m guessing that the elders didn’t buy that argument?”
“You’d be guessing right.”
“What happened after that?”
“Like I said, I was friends with Marc when we were kids, so the elders asked me to take him over to my house, talk to him, calm him down. So I did just that.”
“And then?”
“We talked. Talked all night, as a matter of fact. About how wonderful our childhood had been. About how we missed those days.”
Lincoln shot an apologetic glance at his mother, who had been standing by silently the whole time. “In the Colony, it was different for us boys. We never had to deal with any kind of abuse. Not like the girls did. Life was like one long camping trip. We spent our days hunting, fishing, hiking, swimming, and learning survival skills. In the winter, it was all skiing, ice skating, playing ice hockey, and spending evenings in front of the fireplace.
“It was hard for me to adjust to life outside the Colony, I admit. Going to school, doing my share of the family chores, helping out around the house – I wasn’t keen on any of it. That’s why I left right after high school and joined the others in Mexico. I wanted it back, my old life,” Lincoln admitted.
“And Marc? Did he feel the same way?” Dawn wanted to know.
“That was the surprising thing,” Lincoln said. “Marc adjusted really well to life outside the Colony at first. It helped that the cousins who adopted him had a lot of money and bought him anything he asked for. He enjoyed watching movies and television, playing video games, using a computer. His adopted parents also took him on a lot of trips to different places. He spent time in France, Spain, Italy, Greece – he traveled all over Europe, as a matter of fact.”
“So, what made him change his mind and rejoin the group in Mexico?” Dawn asked.
“I wanted to know that too, so I asked him. Marc said everything changed when he got married. He said everything went wrong, pretty much from the start.”
“Did he go into the details?”
“A little. From what I gathered, the problem was that after they got married, he expected to be the head of the family, the one who made all the decisions – just like it was
in the Colony. But his wife, who, according to him, had been deferential and accommodating before the marriage, suddenly changed after it. She butted heads with him on everything and laughed at him when he told her that he was the head of the household and she was supposed to be humble and obedient to him.”
Leslie said something under her breath, and commented, “I feel like I’m going to gag.”
Lincoln reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know it brings back bad memories for you,” he said.
Turning back to Dawn, Lincoln resumed his account.
“When I asked Marc how he handled the situation, he told me that he naturally had to punish his wife.”
“That means he hit her,” Leslie translated.
“Yes,” Lincoln conceded. “He was shocked by her reaction. She left him immediately and filed for divorce. She had two children from a previous marriage, and she took them with her. She forbade Marc from seeing them ever again. Since she had never allowed Marc to adopt them, he had no parental rights. That’s one of the first things they fought about, apparently.”
“What happened to her first husband?” Dawn inquired.
“He died. He was killed in a car accident, from what I understand. Anyway, Marc was shocked by his ex-wife’s behavior, especially when she got married again, took the children, and moved away not long after the divorce decree. He got really angry then. He said that it was the second time it had happened to him.”
“The second time what happened to him?” Dawn pumped him.
“That a woman he thought was the love of his life had left him. He told me that the same thing had happened to him in college. He’d met a girl and fallen in love. They had been together for a while, and he wanted to marry her. But she broken up with him and married someone else.
“When it happened to him again, he said that he started to question the whole way he had lived his life since he had left the Colony. He hadn’t been in touch with his father at all since then, he told me. After his marriage broke up, however, he decided that he wanted to go and see Jed, visit him in prison. He was bitter about the fact that he only had a short time with his father before he died.”
When the Wolf Prowls: A Cimarron/Melbourne Thriller - Book Three Page 17