The Righteous (18 page)

She was angry with herself for not following up on what she had learned earlier. Eduardo had spoken perfect English. His excuse had not rung true. She should have known that he was not in Blister Creek to work. Neither was Manuel. Could they be involved in the murder after all? And what did that say about Stephen Paul?

Eliza looked at the truck. What had Stephen Paul given them?

She made the sudden decision to get that envelope and have a look before they came back. She shut the window and hurried from the bedroom.

#

Fernie left the greenhouse from the far end. She would go to the house and cycle through as if on meaningless errands. In reality, she would keep vigil while Jacob searched Amanda’s room. If she spotted either her husband or Taylor Junior she would call Jacob on his cell.

Jacob left through the opposite side. The air was cooler outside, and drier. Sweat was streaming down his sides and plastered his hair to his forehead. He made straight for the house.

He reached the wing where Fernie had directed him. A different hallway than where Eliza had slept. Two boys, maybe ten and eleven, painted the railing leading up the stairs.

“Hot out there,” he said as he maneuvered past them. “You’re lucky to be working inside where there’s AC.”

They stopped their painting and watched him go up the stairs. The boys might tell their father that they’d seen him, but by then he’d have what he needed.

Jacob hurried down the hallway to Amanda’s old room. It was the second door on the left, according to Fernie. He stood outside the closed door for a moment, listening for sounds. He heard nothing.

He could have sent Fernie to search Amanda’s room. She would have aroused less suspicion. But Fernie was terrified. And he feared for her safety. They had butchered Amanda; they would do the same to Fernie.

He opened the door and let out his breath when he saw the room was empty.

Children had already moved in to bunk with Sophie Marie now that the girl’s mother was gone. One wall held a framed picture of Jesus with children, another a poster of math facts next to a world map. A cork board held drawings, spelling work, and math worksheets. Two bunk beds sat in one corner, but a queen-sized bed still sat in the middle of the room, with an adult-sized dresser to one side. That had to be Amanda’s.

He put his hand between the mattress of the queen-sized bed and the box springs and ran it along the side of the bed from the headboard down to the foot. Nothing on this side. He went to the other side and did the same. He felt nothing unusual.

Frowning, he lifted the mattress as far as he could before it started to fold over on itself. Something caught his eye near the middle. He pushed the mattress halfway off the bed and stretched out his free hand. It came back with a manila envelope. Inside, papers.

The envelope held clippings from newspapers and magazines. He looked at the first, a photocopy of the San Francisco Chronicle with a four-year-old date. It was about the murder in San Francisco that had drawn the nation’s attention—the one to which they were comparing the more recent kidnapping in New Mexico. The second was a similar article from the Los Angeles Times, together with a grainy photo of the murder scene. He glanced at the articles with some impatience. What did this have to do with anything? And then he came to the third and final clip. Amanda had cut it neatly from a glossy magazine like
Time
or
Newsweek.
The headline read, “A Satanic Cult Stalks California’s Intellectual Elite.”

The picture was color, not newsprint, and large enough to see details. A bedroom, with a body on the floor. An editor had blurred the body, deeming the details too horrific to print. But not the wall behind the body.

Occult-like symbols, written in blood, streaked and coagulated against the wall.

Jacob read the article. The body was that of a top scientist at a Silicon Valley firm. They’d found her husband—himself an academic at Stanford—dumped in San Francisco Bay, strangled. They’d killed the woman and painted the walls with her blood. There was no sign of the couple’s baby.

Two days after the murder, the killer had sent a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. Referencing details known only to the killer, he had claimed to belong to a Satanic cult. The cult had taken the baby as sacrifice for Lucifer. They had consumed its flesh in a black mass in a convent near Santa Rosa that had burned down a few years earlier. Police had found fresh blood in the ruins and similar occult-like markings, but no body.

It was the second crime claimed by the cult. In the first, the cult had stolen a baby from the neonatal unit of a hospital in Los Angeles. That baby’s father had been a world-class brain researcher at UCLA. Authorities now believed the first baby had met the same grizzly fate.

Jacob had to stop reading. He put the articles down and shut his eyes. He had recognized the symbols written in blood at once. He had studied them several times over the previous few days. They were not the marks of a Satanic cult as the letter writer would have the police believe. They had been taken from the Jupiter Medallion.

Amanda had collected these articles. Perhaps she had threatened to share the information with police. Maybe she’d kept quiet but been discovered. Either way, someone had killed her to assure her silence.

The rest, he simply could not wrap his mind around. The church had no connection to these academics and scientists as far as he knew. Had they written something hostile to the church? Unlikely.

And the bit about the Satanic cult, surely that was meant to throw off the investigation. But why use symbols from the Jupiter Medallion? And what had motivated Amanda to get involved?

He returned to the clips. Nobody in Blister Creek would subscribe to these newspapers or magazines. The most likely source was the library at Southern Utah State University in Cedar City. Amanda would have passed by the place with her sister wives while they were selling vegetables for the co-op, and she’d found a way to get inside by herself.

Is that how they caught you?
He imagined them coming upon her, questioning her, maybe even torturing the information from her. She had confessed, and they had exacted their vengeance. Did they cut her tongue from her mouth first? What had she thought as they’d taken the knife to her throat?

But her secret had remained, both here and tucked into the pages of Amanda’s Book of Mormon. And now he knew.

Bastards.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. Two rings, then it stopped. The signal from Fernie. One of the Kimball men had come home. Time to get out.

He folded up the articles and stuffed them in his pocket, then pushed the mattress back into place. It looked rumpled, so he fiddled with the bedspread. Not quite right, but it would have to do. He turned to go.

Footsteps sounded in the doorway outside the room. He froze with his hand on the doorknob.

“Jacob!” Fernie whispered from the other side of the door.

He opened the door in relief. She stood in the hallway looking anxious. He said, “I told you not to come up. I got the call.”

“But you didn’t answer and I thought…never mind. It’s Taylor Junior. He’s asking about you. I told him I’d seen you out by the greenhouses. He went to look, but it won’t keep him long, I’m sure.”

They made their way outside without running into the little prick. Possibly murderous prick, Jacob thought.

“Did you get what you were looking for?” Fernie asked as she followed him back to his car.

“Yes, do you want to know?”

She studied his face. “I don’t know. Do I?”

He thought of Amanda, throat cut, buried in the sand. “No, you don’t. And I don’t want you any more involved. It could have been you. So unless you feel you must know, I’d rather not tell you. But thanks, Fernie. This helps a lot.”

Jacob wanted to stay and talk, to comfort her at least. Fernie was scared. But he’d already put her life at risk. He said goodbye and climbed into the Corolla.

The phone rang as he pulled away from the Kimball house. He picked it up and answered.

A familiar voice on the other end. “Hello, Jacob. It’s Enoch.”

It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Stephen Paul had given something to Manuel and Eduardo and they had put it into their unlocked truck. Jacob would have been down there at once to rifle through the papers and see if it had anything to do with their investigation. Eliza must do the same.

Deep breath. Must move quickly.

As she made her way down the stairs, she tried to concoct an alibi, something to say if they caught her in the act. She could think of nothing plausible.

Carol worked in the kitchen, kneading bread. She quizzed her son on spelling as she worked. Two more children sat at the kitchen table, working on schoolwork. Another sat at a computer, playing chess. He looked no older than seven.

Carol looked up when Eliza entered. “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“You look funny. Do you feel okay?”

“Yes, fine. Well, a little light-headed. I think I stood up too fast. Going to get a breath of fresh air.”

“Sure, well if you don’t feel better, let me know and I can get you some herb tea.”

Eliza stepped out the front door and leaned against the pillar as if steadying herself. It was already hot, but the brick remained cool to the touch. A breeze kicked off the desert and brought the scent of sage and dry sand. She shut the door and looked around. Nobody in sight. She heard voices from the far side of the house. The men would be in the shed now.

The F-150 sat on the concrete slab. Its engine ticked as it cooled. They’d rolled down the windows so as not to turn the cab into an oven. It would be easy enough to step up and grab the folder without opening the door.

She walked to the car, so nervous that she almost opened the door without remembering her earlier observation. She froze a second time with her hand poised outside the window. If she stopped now, she could still deny everything. She’d noticed the truck and came outside, curious.

What would Jacob do?

He wouldn’t freeze in place like an idiot, for one. Quickly now, she reached in and grabbed the folder. She undid the clasp and pulled out the stack of papers.

At first she didn’t understand what she was looking at. All business stuff. There was a balance sheet and a bank statement. There were expense reports, credit card statements, and the lot. Eliza didn’t know what she’d been expecting—photographs of Taylor Junior murdering Amanda, perhaps?—but it hadn’t been this. She’d overheard their conversation and mistaken it for a part of the conspiracy.

And then she did catch the Kimball name, first Taylor Junior and Elder Kimball, and then Gideon Kimball. There was a list of salaries paid, $125,000 in the case of Elder Kimball and $65,000 apiece in the case of his two sons. Looking further, she saw that these papers pertained to the Blister Creek Co-Op, which was the company run by the Kimballs and the Youngs to sell everything from fruits and vegetables to pies and beef jerky in farmers markets and small grocery stores in Southern Utah. Her own family belonged to a similar operation in Harmony.

There was nothing suspicious about the papers, except for the bit about Gideon. He was an outcast. Why would he draw a salary? And then she saw something that made her even more surprised, someone with the initials E.N.C., also drawing a salary of $65,000. She recognized those initials at once, being as they belonged to her brother. Enoch Nephi Christianson. That he would draw a salary was even more surprising.

A voice from behind her. “What are you doing, Eliza?”

She turned with a startled gasp and dropped the papers. They scattered and the breeze turned them over. It was Eduardo.

He bent to grab at the papers now blowing across the driveway. “Don’t just stand there. Give me a hand.”

His words startled her into action and she bent to help. Eduardo put the papers back in the envelope. He returned the envelope to the truck, then turned with a sharp look.

“What the hell were you doing?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she said. “You’re no day laborer. And what was all that crap the other night about not wanting to speak English?” She was growing angry. “Yeah, what
are
you doing?”

He didn’t answer. “Frankly, it’s none of your business. I just can’t believe you grabbed a bunch of papers out of my truck.”

“Why are you trying to make this about me? You’re the one spying on us. I saw those papers. Talk about none of your business.” She was growing angrier now. “And the other night, what was that about? Some kind of game? Seduce the polygamist girl?”

“Hey,” he said. He looked angry. “That’s bullshit and you know it. I didn’t seduce you. You came over to my house. You found
me.
You practically threw yourself at me.”

That part was true enough, she thought guiltily. “Well, you could have said no. I was in way over my head. And I thought you liked me.”

“I do like you, Eliza. Maybe I shouldn’t have done anything, but believe me, it wasn’t an act. And I
did
say no, remember?”

Eliza softened. “Well, it was stupid.”

“Probably. But I didn’t do anything that you didn’t want.”

“Eduardo, what are you mixed up in? Do you have any idea how serious this is?” He didn’t reply. She glanced over his shoulder. Still no sign of Manuel and Stephen Paul. “Why did you come back to the truck, anyway?”

“Stephen Paul said he had a guest. Had no idea it was you. I thought it might be a good idea to lock the truck. You know, in case someone got nosy.” He gave her a pointed look.

She snorted. “Well, go ahead and lock up. But I’m serious that you’d better have a good explanation for what’s going on here. I already told my brother you were here,” she lied. “He’ll go straight to the prophet if he thinks you’re up to something weird, or if anything happens to me.”

Eduardo took her by the wrist, but it was not an aggressive gesture. “Eliza, you can’t tell anyone else. That goes for Jacob, too.”

“Eduardo, the more people who know, the better.”