Her words didn’t reflect Vernon’s anymore. They reflected Tiner’s. She and Vernon had had no plan for her to enter the eternal spring of heaven.
She closed her eyes. That was the routine. Only this time she didn’t need to close them. Her efforts hadn’t wiped out any energy she had. She was still smiling.
Tiner’s voice came over the serene shot of her lying there so contentedly, arms folded in a cross over her chest, her tiny hands relaxed. He said, “Our CHRIST AND SAVIOR knows that capture will soon be upon us. The LORD GOD has told me this. We will soon be TRAPPED within our GETHSEMANE. Until that time, the Daughter God has SENT TO US will continue to preach. Her followers INCREASE each day, a hundredfold. It is the WORD of the LORD!”
The video went black.
The clerk said, “My, my, my.”
I said, “You’re not on the Internet, are you?”
“Me? Nearest computer is in Laredo. Unless you want to go to the temple and ask the crazies if you can use theirs.”
Nope. “Is there a phone in my room?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I went upstairs. The room was small, the ceiling almost too low for me to stand up, and the floor was tilted. The little window looked down onto the river, the banks only a few feet apart, much narrower and slower-moving than it had been in Laredo. I called the shrink, seeing as how he didn’t trace his calls. I told him I needed a favor, needed him to find out the server of the Rona Leigh tape, the newest one. Told him I didn’t have the facilities.
He’d seen the tape. “She’s looking a bit stronger, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on, Poppy.”
I heard him clicking around. He came back to me.
“Webtunes dot com.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“As always, the pleasure is mine. Closing in, Poppy?”
“Maybe.”
He was still clicking and then he stopped. “Poppy, Webtunes dot com is now off the Internet. You people don’t waste any time.”
My man Auerbach was watching. The FBI had shut it down and I’d gotten my answer from the shrink in the nick of time.
I hung up. I thought a shower before my sandwich would be nice. There was only a bathtub, though. I’ve forgotten how to take a bath. I washed my face instead.
I went back downstairs for my sandwich.
The clerk wasn’t behind the counter; she was outside sitting at the table on the porch having a sandwich of her own. Mine was there too, with a napkin over it. I sat down.
I said, “Is there a store here that sells clothes?”
She looked me up and down. “Nope. Laredo. Jesse’s feed store sells work clothes out at the opposite end of Main from the temple.” She pointed. “That’s all we got.”
The sandwich and the beer fortified me. I got in the pickup and drove to Jesse’s. I was officially accepting the no-walking philosophy of Texas.
Jesse sold me a short-sleeved jumpsuit, plus socks and work boots. He threw in a John Deere cap. I said, “Do you mind telling me if there’s been any unusual action at the temple lately?”
He scrutinized me. He decided to answer, liked to talk. “I stay clear a them, ma’am. I’m a Christian, and I sure as hell don’t know what the hell they’re about. Won’t do business with them people. Not that they need my business. Everything they need they order on their computers. Deliveries all the time, stuff goin’ in every day.”
“So nothing especially out of the ordinary has happened?”
Scrutinized me again. “Who wants to know?”
“I do. I’ve been hired by a fellow to talk them into giving him his daughter back.”
He started to clean his nails with a screwdriver. “Won’t be the first time someone tried to do that. Daughter, huh? Usually somebody’s here lookin’ for his wife. If the daughter’s over eighteen they’ll tell you the daughter’s got free will. They’ll tell you that real friendly. Then they’ll order you off the property. Call the authorities. Sheriff’ll come down and tell you same thing they told you. Way it is.”
“The man who hired me is willing to pay a lot of money to have his daughter returned.”
“Your man’s a fool, then. Ought to hire a few cowboys, go in there with their weapons drawn, grab her.”
“Are the people inside heavily armed?”
“Ain’t armed at all. Be easy as lickin’ butter off a knife. Fact, tell your man to pay me. I’ll do it.”
“But how do you know they’re not armed?”
“Been inside. See, at first they come to me. Till I decided they was just a little too cuckoo. Give me the heebie-jeebies. Only weapons they got in there are hoes. Nice hoes. Forged them right there inside the temple. They don’t hunt. They’re mostly vegetarians. Eat a chicken or make a lamb stew once in a while. They got no guns for huntin’.
“People tolerate ’em ’cause once a week they hold a market outside the gate. Best produce you ever seen. Cheap. People come from miles around. Couple a Believers drive a truck up to the Laredo border into Mexico and donate the food. Do-gooders.”
He wiped the screwdriver on his pants.
“But now that you mention it, they stopped havin’ their market not so long ago. People keep comin’ around, but the Believers tell ’em they don’t know when they’ll hold the next one.”
“Nothing else?”
“Well, I’ll have to think. I’m more than happy if I can help you get the girl back. Those people ain’t healthy. Don’t believe in the sex life. Husband and wife join up there, they got to agree to separate sleeping quarters. So, hey, at least that daddy a yours don’t have to worry about his gal gettin’ knocked up.”
He laughed and coughed and took out a grimy little can, opened it, and plugged up his cheek with what looked like a wad of tar.
“Now I consider it, there’s been two unusual things. One, closin’ up the market like I said and, two, a police van went in there couple weeks ago, dead a night. Don’t know what that was about. Musta shook ’em up. Those people go to bed when the sun sets and get up at dawn. My brother seen the van. He lives down that end a Main. He’s border patrol, works third shift.”
“Did he see the car leave?”
“Not that he said. I imagine it left. ’Less some cop decided to give up fightin’ crime so’s he can grow his own beans and do without women. I doubt that.”
“So do I.”
I thanked him for the clothes and the help.
I drove down Main. A curtain hung from every front window in San Yglesia, and every window framed a person holding the curtain back.
I passed the hotel and stopped at the drive that led to the mission. The barbed wire was up. The tapes had to be worth a fortune. It isn’t often you find live video of God’s Daughter. I guessed Tiner would order his followers to fight the law or why the barbed wire? And he meanwhile would take off with the tapes, abandoning all of them to a pitched battle. It was about money. Which meant they might not have been armed previously, but they were now.
Rona Leigh and the New Shakers were about to be thrown to the wolves. If Tiner ended up in Venezuela a rich man—well, there are worse things. But if Rona Leigh and the Believers ended up dead, there would be renewed sanity status for all the right-wing militias refusing to disappear. Tiner had to be convinced his safest course of action would be to turn Rona Leigh over to the authorities, and my deal would be to give him a twenty-four-hour head start to disappear with his tapes.
And there would be no storming of the Alamo if everyone knew I was in there with them. They’d know I was in there as soon as the FBI interviewed my hostess at the hotel and Jesse at the feed store. I’d registered in my own name. As soon as they went into my room and found all my stuff. Far as I could see, I was the only authority who might arrange such a deal with Tiner. The idea would be to have Rona Leigh in custody before the mission was located, which would be very soon because, when Delby realized I didn’t pass the information she’d given me to our director, she would d
o it. Goes with integrity.
What I needed was a policeman. I didn’t want to just bring her into the local station. I had to feel out Scraggs. If he didn’t see my point, I’d do it without a policeman.
I drove north to Laredo and used the phone in La Posada. I had a hard time reaching him. He was up the road somewhere in San Antonio. Where my trail got cold. I left my name and waited for my cell phone to ring. It did five minutes later.
He said, “Where are you?”
“Laredo.”
“Laredo. I’m not the only one trying to keep tabs on you, Poppy. Your director is looking for you and losing his mind in the process. You found her, didn’t you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then what the hell are you up to?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Talk.”
“I need to see you.”
“Why?”
“I want to compare notes.”
“Poppy, tell me. Where is she?”
“Max, I need a good cop I can trust.”
“Where is she?”
“I need your help.”
“Okay.”
“I’m in the hotel on the plaza. La Posada. Max, I need you to be on your own.”
“Fine. Hour and a half. That means no stops along the way.”
He hung up.
I left the hotel and went into the plaza and sat under a tree on a bench. In daylight the cathedral looked gray and scruffy. Whoever power-washed the hotel needed to do the same for the church. For an hour and a half, I contemplated my life while I ate coconut ice cream and watched Mexican Americans stroll or play dominoes. Me and the bench were at a defining juncture, I knew.
Scraggs found a parking spot just past the hotel. He was alone, and he didn’t speak into his radio before he got out of the car.
I called out, “Max.”
He turned and spotted me. I waved.
He wasn’t just stiff the way he’d been in Washington. He was limping. When he reached me, I said, “I’m the one who’s supposed to be limping. What’s your problem?”
“It only looks like a limp. Doc just unwrapped my cracked ribs. If I walk this way it hurts less.”
“You didn’t look like a man with cracked ribs when they pulled you out of the car.”
“I was being brave for you.”
I liked this Scraggs, I really did.
I told him, “So sit down here on the bench and I’ll go buy you an ice-cream cone.”
He sat. I got the cone and brought it back.
He licked it. Three times. Then his head turned toward me and he said, “Where is she?”
“She’s in a restored mission.”
“We’ve checked every mission in the state.”
“You missed this one. That’s because it’s a temple. Restored by the man who influenced Vernon when he was a student at a Bible college. He’s founded a new religious order. An offshoot of the Shakers.”
“The Shakers?”
“The chair people.”
“I know who they are. This Bible school guy is really the one who got her out?”
“I’d say so.”
“I’m not goin’ to ask you how, Poppy. Just where. For Christ’s sake, tell me.”
“I’m getting to that part. But I want to do something that I know no one else will go along with. Except maybe you. Will you listen?”
“Fine. But while I’m listenin’, I hope she’s not runnin’ out the back door.”
“I don’t think Tiner’s letting her out of his sight. Scraggs, what if we just go up to the door of the mission? With a warrant for Rona Leigh’s arrest. She didn’t cross a border, so Texas has jurisdiction. The people in the mission probably aren’t armed. If the FBI finds her first, they’ll say there are illegal weapons in the mission and call in the ATF. What makes sense to me is to avoid that.
“So Scraggs, let’s just go get her. Me and you. We might have a little negotiating to do with them, but—”
“What do you mean, these people probably aren’t armed?”
“I checked with someone who would know.”
“How the hell long…?”
“Max. Just since this morning.”
“Okay, so what’s the next step after these people tell us she’s not there?”
“She might not be. They might have moved her. And if she’s not there and the FBI or the Rangers storm the place and kill a bunch of peaceful farmers or whatever they are, then—”
“Peaceful farmers? Poppy, are you in the middle of a nervous breakdown? C’mon. It’s still that letter, isn’t it? From the daughter who showed you her father didn’t rape anyone.”
“No, Max. That letter drove me to taking action where none was being taken. Rona Leigh is just a small part of that action. She happened to be next in line, that’s all.” I picked up a shopping bag next to the bench. “I have something to show you.”
I reached into the bag, took a roll of paper, and spread it out across my lap. Max decided to humor me, waited for me to tell him what I was doing.
“An architect designed the present layout of the mission. The temple. This is the blueprint.”
“I almost don’t want to know. But I’ll ask anyway. Where’d you get this?”
“From a Web-site server.”
“You didn’t need much of a threat, right?”
“Didn’t need anything except to identify myself and my job.”
“I don’t want to remember what investigations were like before computers.”
“Me neither.”
We looked at the layout. The entire first floor was labeled WORSHIP. An addition had been added to the back, a dining hall and kitchen. The loft where a choir was meant to sing hymns three hundred years ago had been expanded into an entire second floor with two dormitory wings on opposite sides. Males right, females left, big communal bathrooms for each group. In between, a tiny apartment for Tiner: sitting room, bedroom, office, and, next to him, a large guest room. Also a pharmacy and two infirmaries, one for the men, one for the women.
A second paper showed the layout of the outdoor grounds. Six outbuildings for animals and equipment, carpentry shop, business office, a garage. There were three gardens, labeled FEED, FOOD, and HERBS.
Scraggs studied it all.
I said, “Believe it or not, this is in keeping with documents portraying Shaker compounds that go back over two hundred years.”
He said, “So we’ve got around forty people plus Rona Leigh.”
“And Vernon.”
“We don’t know that.”
“I know that. I saw him.”
He swung around to face me, which made him wince. He said, “Then you’ve been seen, Poppy.”
“I don’t think so.”
He looked into my eyes. “Arrogance’ll get you killed. And considerin’ what you’re suggestin’, it could get me killed too.”
“I was careful. We’ll be careful.”
“Careful. Here’s what I think about careful. This bunch of people got a set of tapes worth a big load of money. They know we’re closin’ in. The guy in charge will bail out. Maybe already did. And that means—”
“See, Max. You’re thinking what I’m thinking. We’ve got to close in while he’s still there. We’ll make a deal with him. We’ll—”
“No. We have to follow the standard operation. Warn ’em to come out and tear-gas ’em if they resist arrest. If they really don’t have weapons, that’ll bring ’em out.”
“Maybe they’ll have masks.”
“Poppy, come with me to Austin. Now. We’ll fly up, be there in an hour. Tell the Rangers what you know. They don’t want to kill Rona Leigh. They want her alive. They know how important it is. With all the hullabaloo, the governor has no choice now but to reopen the case. He’ll do it, I promise you that.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Scraggs. No way. She’ll be taken right to Gatesville and executed. With you or without you, I’m not going to let that happen.”
“Then I feel it is my duty to protect you from getting yourself killed, thinkin’ you’re above the law. Let me tell you what you’re up against. A boss who thinks maybe it’s time to rein you in. And I would agree there. You got the boots, you got the hat, and you even got the right belt, but that doesn’t make you some kind of one-man posse. I’m not about to—”
“Scraggs, listen.”
“No, you listen. I’ve got a lot more to say. The governor’s wife told us you quoted the Bible to her when you were in her home, that you must be one of them. The warden at Gatesville claims you taunted him about the expiration dates on the chemicals. You even joked about springing Rona Leigh.”
“He joked, not me. And I taunted the governor’s wife, so what.”
“Here’s the kicker, Poppy. The night of the escape, a couple of Texas Rangers including myself didn’t see where the cement blocks came from that fell on us. We all figured they must have been tossed from the back of the ambulance. Now I surely do believe you when you say there were three people up on the overpass who dropped them, but the general thinkin’ is, you couldn’t have seen them either. General thinkin’ goes on to say you must have known they were going to fall because you knew where they were going to fall from.”
I said, “I was the one who came up with the nurse. Sterilizing Rona Leigh’s arm.”
“Yeah, you were. Interpreted as throwin’ suspicion off you. Real reason I came down here, Poppy, is because I had to find you before anyone else. A warrant for your arrest is bein’ put to press right now. The law says if I find you, I have to be the one to arrest you. Law also states I must protect myself, draw my weapon when I make an arrest. I’m sorry, Poppy, I have no choice here.”
He drew his gun. He aimed it at my heart just the way procedures require. He stood up, and when he did, he grimaced. The broken ribs.
My eyes went from his to the barrel of the gun. The gun wavered just a little bit; then he held it steady. “Just come back with me and tell us what you know. Say you’ll do that voluntarily. I’ll believe you. We’re friends, right? What we’ve been through … hell, Poppy, if you don’t, your life will be over. A fine and dedicated life that—”
Love Her Madly Page 25