Silas pointed to Mr. Goatee. “This man is a security guard licensed by the state of Texas. He is attempting to stop a felony in progress, the kidnapping of a minor.”
Throckmorton said, “You want to help me out here, Baines? The man has something of a point.”
Everybody looked at me.
“The girl’s parents aren’t on the premises. And there’s evidence of sexual abuse.” I paused. “Not just her. There’re more inside in the same condition.”
Stunned expressions on the faces of the troopers behind Aloysius. Followed by anger.
Mr. Goatee continued to aim at me.
Aloysius looked like he was about to say something, but Silas cut him off.
“The girl is under my guardianship,” he said. “Any accusations of abuse are absurd.”
“Yet your security man is aiming a gun at her,” Aloysius said. “I’d be inclined to believe your concern for her well-being if he’d put down his weapon.”
The anger coming off Mr. Goatee was palpable. He was shaking, his face red, lips a tight frown.
“He is trying to protect an innocent child,” Silas said. “Perhaps a little too vigorously.”
“Why don’t we just let Child Protective Services sort everything out?” I asked.
Gasps from the crowd. A woman shouted for the Apostle to save them.
“That’s a good idea.” Aloysius nodded. “Taking care of kids. That’s their job.”
“Absolutely not,” Silas said. “The church does not recognize the right of the state to interfere with the upbringing of our children.”
“The girl says she’s married,” I said. “So technically is she still a child?”
“Married?” Throckmorton lowered his gun slightly. “How can someone that young be married?”
Silas hesitated. Then he said, “Our religious traditions allow for this type of, uh, arrangement.”
“There’s a bunch of babies inside, too,” I said. “They need doctors and food.”
The crowd murmured. Several people suggested that Mr. Goatee shoot me. Silas waved them quiet.
“The church’s attorney, a state legislator, will be here within the next two hours.” He glared at Throckmorton. “If you remove this child from the premises, then you are violating our First Amendment rights, and there will be severe consequences.”
“Tell your boy to lower his gun,” Throckmorton said. “And then we can talk about severe consequences.”
“I will not.” Silas shook his head. “He is within his rights to protect our sacred ground as well as members of our flock.”
“Last chance,” Throckmorton said. “Put down the gun and let Arlo leave with the girl.”
Silas shook his head. Mr. Goatee grinned at me, fingers white on the grip.
Throckmorton shrugged. Then he aimed his Colt and fired.
Only a few feet away, it was hard to miss.
The bullet tore into one side of Mr. Goatee’s thigh. A stream of blood erupted. Goatee screamed and dropped his gun. After a moment, he fell to the ground.
“C’mon out, Arlo.” Throckmorton kept his weapon aimed at Silas. “Guess we better call an ambulance, too.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
From the compound side, a gray pickup now blocked the entrance. A group of church members formed a half circle around the truck, facing the highway. They held hands and sang hymns.
Behind the singers was a number of men in Stetsons, all of them armed with long guns—rifles and shotguns, several AR-style weapons.
Aloysius Throckmorton had moved his Suburban backward about ten feet so that the SUV sat in the middle of the road, its nose pointed at the entrance to the compound.
More state police vehicles had arrived, bringing the total to ten, eleven if you counted Throckmorton’s Suburban. The squad cars were flanked out on either side of the Suburban, officers crouched behind open doors, their weapons drawn.
Throckmorton had offered medical attention to the wounded man, but Silas had refused. Other guards had taken Mr. Goatee inside the old prison. Silas had disappeared into one of the houses on the hill.
Throckmorton and I were standing at the back of the Suburban, away from the entrance, trying to find a little shade. Anna was in the squad car immediately to the right of the SUV, being tended to by a female state trooper.
It was a little after noon, and the temperature was pushing ninety-five.
“Where’s Hannah Byrne?” I asked.
“Is it my day to watch her?” Throckmorton fanned himself with his hat.
I’d already spent fifteen minutes giving him the rundown of the situation inside the compound, at least as much as I’d seen. Now, I was eating a PowerBar and drinking a bottle of water that one of the troopers gave me. As I ate, Throckmorton called the commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services and told her that we needed as many CPS caseworkers as they could find, pronto.
“Hannah was with the news crew,” I said. “Two guys from the BBC.”
“Awesome. The media is here, too.” He rubbed his eyes. “Just what we need.”
“What made you show up, anyway?”
“That high school gym,” he said. “It was a crime scene, like you described.”
“Why were there DPS units here beforehand, then?” I asked.
Across the road, the singers began a new tune—“Rock of Ages.”
“Not everybody thinks these Zion people are on the up and up,” Throckmorton said.
I peered around the back of the Suburban and stared at the crowd.
Throckmorton stood next to me, arms crossed.
“We’ve got probable cause to go in,” he said. “But this has Branch Davidians 2.0 written all over it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Nobody wins if there’s a firefight,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“They’re raping children.”
“I get that. Believe me.” He paused. “We’ve got a call in to the AG. This needs to be handled delicately.”
Neither of us spoke. Across the street, the singing stopped as women from the old prison brought what looked like refreshments—bottles of water and sandwiches.
Throckmorton stuck his head in the back of the Suburban, returning with a map of the state. He unfolded the map and pointed to the southwest quadrant.
“This is about where their property ends.” He tapped a thin gray line, a county highway eight or ten miles south of where we were standing. Above that, there were no marked roads of any sort until you reached the highway where the main entrance was located.
“If somebody wanted to get away from here and not use the front gate,” he said, “he could go cross-country and hop on this road.”
“You’ve got to cover a lot of territory to get there,” I said. “Rough country.”
Throckmorton nodded. “But if you make it, then you’re on a paved road, and two hours later you can be in Del Rio.”
The implication was clear. Del Rio meant freedom, just across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña. Provided he had enough money, Silas McPherson could disappear into Mexico forever.
“I’m working on troopers out of San Antonio to patrol this section,” he said. “But there’s some damn music festival in Austin this weekend, and we’re a little short staffed.”
I studied the map and then looked down the road to the west.
The highway crested a small hill about three hundred yards away. Beyond that, the road was out of sight.
“The other side of that rise,” I said. “That’s right behind the cluster of houses on the hill, right?”
He opened a different map, one that was just t
his county. He looked at it for a moment and nodded.
“There’s a creek that runs behind those houses,” he said.
A creek meant trees, places to hide as you approached.
We stared at each other for a moment, neither speaking.
“Don’t even think about it,” Throckmorton said. “You need to stay put, wait for the investigators to get here and debrief you.”
I didn’t reply.
From the compound came the report of a rifle being fired, followed by the whine of a bullet ricocheting off something hard.
I ducked instinctively.
Throckmorton swore.
A barrage of gunfire crackled all around us.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Throckmorton grabbed a bullhorn instead of his weapon.
He aimed the speaker toward the compound and told everybody to calm the fuck down and quit shooting.
Miraculously, that worked.
All of the shots appeared to have come from the compound.
A group of untrained people with semiautomatic rifles, a tense situation. It was a wonder it had taken this long for someone’s finger to squeeze a little too tightly.
Throckmorton got on his radio and asked all the troopers to check in. Then he moved to the first squad car to the east and crouched at the rear of the vehicle, conferring with two officers. His back was to me, so I decided to take a little stroll.
First stop, the squad car on the west side of Throckmorton’s SUV to check on Anna. A female state trooper sat next to the child, her body forming a shield between the compound and the girl.
I knelt by the open door. “You doing OK?”
No response.
“That was pretty scary, wasn’t it, that shooting?” I said. “You sure are being brave.”
She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.
“Some people will be here soon to take you to see your parents,” I said.
Anna nodded, the hint of a smile on her lips.
“The houses on the hill,” I said. “Do you know what’s there?”
She frowned but didn’t speak.
“Have you ever been up to those houses?” I asked.
A moment passed. Then, her voice soft and timid: “That’s where the conjugals are.”
“That’s where you go to get, uh, married?”
Anna hesitated. She looked at the trooper and then back to me. She nodded.
“Who’s your husband?” I said.
“He’s dead.” Her voice was even softer, words hard to hear.
“Was Felix your husband?”
After a moment, she nodded, tears welling in her eyes.
The female trooper hugged the girl’s shoulders.
“The Apostle blessed us,” Anna said. “That’s why it was a special marriage.”
The trooper stared at me, a look of disgust on her face that no doubt mirrored my own.
“Anna, can you tell me who the Apostle is?” I asked.
“We don’t see him,” she said. “He’s behind the glass.”
The trooper spoke to me. “She shouldn’t talk about this anymore—not now, anyway.”
I nodded, patted the girl’s knee. “You take care, sweetheart. I’ll see you in a little bit.”
No more shots had been fired, but Throckmorton looked like he was still busy.
After making sure he couldn’t see me, I headed toward the last squad car to the west.
It was empty. Most of the troopers were now congregated around the back of Throckmorton’s SUV. The ones who were nearby paid me no mind.
I leaned inside the squad car and found a walkie-talkie. I grabbed the radio and then took off jogging toward the rise in the road west of the compound’s entrance.
The smart play was to wait for the state troopers to make their move, but with shots being fired, that was liable to take a while.
Throckmorton was going to make sure all the boxes were checked before sending in the cavalry. The shadow of sieges gone bad loomed over the whole affair, the ghosts of Ruby Ridge and Mount Carmel swirling in the sky like dust devils.
I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to find Hannah and keep looking for Molly’s children. Get them all out of harm’s way before the bullets started flying.
It didn’t make sense that Hannah wasn’t around, especially since she was a reporter with a news crew, and a huge story was unfolding right in front of her. That meant she was probably still on the compound.
About a quarter of a mile later, sweat dripping from my face, I crested the small hill to the west of the entrance, and the line of squad cars behind me disappeared.
A few seconds later, I saw the navy-blue van, the one Ian and his camera guy had been driving.
The van was parked on the south shoulder of the two-lane highway, the compound side, a wide spot where there might have been a roadside stand at some point, a place to buy fireworks or beef jerky.
I started sprinting.
A creek ran north to south, passing through a culvert underneath the road. Trees lined the banks, cottonwoods and desert willows, the only growth of substance in the immediate area. There was an opening in the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the compound property and what looked like an old cattle trail running alongside the creek.
I stopped about thirty feet behind the van, panting.
The side door was open, facing away from the highway.
I pulled the Glock and approached the vehicle slowly, weapon aimed.
A swarm of flies buzzed in and out of the van, the first clue that things weren’t as they should be.
Ian and his camera guy were in the cargo area, dead. They’d both been shot in the back of the head.
Their video equipment appeared to be missing. Various duffel bags had been emptied, the contents strewn about. Sitting amid the gear was the backpack that Hannah always carried.
I grabbed the walkie-talkie, called for Throckmorton.
An instant later, his voice rang out: “Baines? What are you doing on this channel?”
“There’re two dead bodies in a blue van,” I said. “A quarter mile west of your location.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Where are you?”
“The BBC reporters I told you about. They’re both dead. Looks like Hannah’s been taken.”
Silence.
“I’ll call you on this frequency in ten minutes and let you know what the situation is.”
The radio crackled. Then, Throckmorton’s voice, low and gravelly: “Get back here now. Do not, repeat do not enter the comp—”
I turned off the walkie-talkie.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Nine Months Ago
After the car service dropped me where I’d left my pickup, I drove to the county lockup, Lew Sterrett Justice Center, to get my father-in-law.
Normally, with a federal charge like bank fraud, Frank would have been taken to the penitentiary in Seagoville, a suburb south of Dallas. Seagoville had holding cells and ran arrestees back and forth to the United States courts downtown every day. But the federal pen was full—a big RICO case involving several biker gangs—so the county was handling new arrests for now.
Frank was sitting on a metal bench at the rear of one of the intake areas, a large room with concrete floors and tile walls that smelled of bleach and sweat. Two counters, protected by bulletproof glass, were on the far wall. Normally staffed by sheriff department personnel, the counters were empty at the moment.
Frank’s attorney stood next to him, arguing with a deputy as to why his client was released from custody but forbidden to leave the building.
The deputy was an acquainta
nce who owed me several favors. He nodded hello when I entered and then walked away.
Frank’s attorney turned in my direction, an angry look on his face, rightly figuring that I was responsible for the holdup. He raised a finger like he was going to tell me how important his client was, that a man of Frank’s stature shouldn’t be held a second longer than necessary on these trumped-up charges, but I cut him off before he could speak.
“Save it for the jury. Right now, you need to give us some space.”
He glared at me but didn’t move.
“For your own good,” I said. “Take a walk.”
Frank told him it was OK, and the attorney stalked off to the other side of the room.
Frank’s clothes were rumpled, his face ashen. He looked like what he was, a rich man experiencing the gritty end of the legal system for the first time. The typical holding pen at Lew Sterrett was a lot different from the dressing room at the country club.
“What happened?” he said. “They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
The intake area was empty except for the deputy and the attorney, both standing in separate corners, out of earshot.
I slapped Frank across the face, hard.
Frank resituated himself on the bench. He touched his lip, wet with blood and spit.
The attorney started toward us, but the deputy stepped in front of him. The attorney protested until two more deputies entered the room. The three law enforcement officers formed a wall between the attorney and me and Frank. The cameras in this room had already been turned off, so there wouldn’t be any record of my encounter with my father-in-law.
I said, “They’re dead, Frank. All three of them.”
He stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. His brow furrowed. He blinked several times.
“My children and my wife.” I tried to keep my voice low, to control my fury. “Murdered. Because of you.”
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