Desert Wives (9781615952267) (27 page)

I opened the door only to be faced with a steep staircase. Ignoring that for now, I walked down a long hallway lined with narrow, unpainted doors, even though the rough wood provided a sticky playground for dozens of tiny fingerprints. In keeping with the compound's cheapjack construction, none of the doors had locks. So much for privacy. No carpet, no tile, covered the clinic's bare floorboards, either, and the odor of Lysol in the air did little to mask the sour smell of urine.

I was surprised to hear the voices of so many babies and children. They didn't sound especially sick, but what did I know? Then I remembered the great size of the clinic. The building didn't function simply as a maternity ward, but as a hospital for all manner of ills. Perhaps these children suffered from something communicable, such as chicken pox or measles. The dead prophet hadn't believed in modern medicine, just the power of prayer, so the compound's children had probably not been inoculated against the diseases that ravaged their ancestors. Perhaps these were children who were being kept isolated until they were no longer infectious.

Still, the fact that the Prophet and his followers would allow their children to risk the more serious side effects of measles—deafness, blindness, and the mental retardation that already existed in Purity—made me grind my teeth. Why couldn't I hear God grinding His? However, uninoculated children weren't my problem at the moment. My immediate task was to find Hanna and her baby. What if the baby appeared to be in danger?

I had no choice. Even though my job here was to find out who murdered Prophet Solomon and not to rescue babies, I couldn't let the little creature meet the same fate as had the others in the cemetery. If I had to figure out another way to help Rebecca, then so be it.

As I crept along the hallway, my wet shoes making squishing noises on the bare boards, I wondered which of the many doors hid Hanna. Forcing myself to focus, I stopped and listened for an infant's cries above the happy babble of older children. Nothing. Either I was too late, or the baby merely slept. I prayed it was only the latter.

Then I heard it, coming from toward the front of the building.
There.
A thin wail. Weak, but proof Hanna's baby was still alive.

Vowing to keep it that way, I followed its cries.

I had almost made it to the door behind which I'd guessed Hanna lay when I heard another baby in the room next to it. Then another baby from the room on the opposite side. Oh, hell. The place was crawling with infants. It made sense that, with all the pregnant women I'd seen walking around the compound, several had given birth more or less at the same time. The chances of my homing in on the right room had begun to lessen, but if I walked in on someone, I'd just tell them I was dying to see Hanna's sweet little baby.

My lie prepared, I opened the first door. The room contained little furniture except for a large chest and the row of high-sided bassinets lined up against one of the unpainted walls. The bassinets, some with pink ribbons attached to them, others with blue, appeared empty, and I had almost closed the door to continue on to the next room when I heard a small sound coming from one of the blue-draped bassinets. A baby, doing baby-type things. Alone. I remembered the different eating “shifts” at Ermaline's. Some of the mothers hadn't finished eating, which meant that their babies wouldn't be brought to them until later. A stroke of luck for me. Still, I would have thought the babies would stay with their mothers all the time, but perhaps Solomon, the clinic's designer, felt some separation gave the mothers more rest.

Come to think of it, though, such a compassionate idea didn't sound like the Solomon described by his wives. Still, perhaps this baby was Hanna's. Perhaps she lay in a room down the hall, dreaming of ways to end its tiny life.

I tiptoed over to the bassinet and peered in.

It found it hard to believe something so tiny could live, but the little white-haired creature appeared brimming with health and energy, thrusting his fists out from his blue blanket as if boxing the air. Entranced, I cooed softly at him, but he ignored my presence and kept jabbing at empty space.

As I leaned over to make sure he was all right, I frowned. Something didn't look right.

Then I saw.

The baby hadn't been making a fist, as I'd first believed: he'd been born without fingers.

I bit my lip to suppress a moan and stepped away from the bassinet. This was probably Hanna's baby, then, the baby described as “sickly” a frequently employed euphemism for birth defects.

Sad, but not tragic. I'd simply find Hanna and tell her that she didn't have to kill him, that the government offered a bevy of no-cost programs to the families of such children. Prostheses would even help him lead a normal life. He could grow. He could be happy. Hanna would understand. Like all mothers, she'd want to help her child in any way possible.

Like all mothers?
I remembered my own mother raising a gun, aiming it me, screaming “I'll kill her! I'll kill her!”

No. Not like all mothers.

Hanna could be a good mother, of that I was certain. She had what it took, the patience, the compassion. I'd seen her with other children in the compound, bending over them, cooing at them as foolishly as I had, holding them tenderly, speaking to them with love.

Please, God, let her not be a child killer.

I reached out and touched the baby's cheek. He turned, latched onto my fingers with his mouth and began to suck.

“I'll save you, little one,” I whispered. “I promise.”

I froze. Why did those words sound so familiar? After a few moments, they swam up from my deeply buried memories, the memories of an uncomprehending, four-year-old child.

I heard my mother's voice.

I'll save you, little one, I promise,
she'd cried.

No! Impossible! My mother was a killer!

Brushing away the memory, if indeed the words were memory, I withdrew my fingers from the baby's mouth.

He wailed crossly as I left the room. I'd find Hanna, talk to her, tell her about the help the baby could receive, tell her to reconsider. And then I'd watch her eyes. If I saw a shadow there, any warning sign, I'd come back for the baby and sneak him to Saul's. Then we'd drive him to Zion City and…

And what? Turn the baby over to Sheriff Benson?

Better to worry about the details later. For now, I needed to find Hanna.

I looked down the long hallway, at all the doors. Heard women's low, murmuring voices, the tiny cries of infants. The clinic bustled with brand-new motherhood.

Deciding to start directly across the hall, I opened the door upon a bed-lined room, only to see a solitary blond girl of around fifteen—not Hanna—nursing a pink-blanketed infant. The girl looked at me in surprise.

I forced my voice to sound casual. “Hi. I'm looking for Hanna.”

“Hanna. What'd I hear…?” As she looked down at her baby, the blanket slipped and I saw white hair. Another albino? Or just another blond? The baby had all her fingers, so I exhaled in relief.

After kissing the top of the infant's head, the girl frowned at me. “Somebody said somethin' about her at lunch but I wasn't payin' much attention. She had some kinda problem with her baby, I think.” The frown faded, replaced by a smile. Hanna's woes forgotten already. “Ain't my baby pretty?”

“Adorable.”

She frowned again, as if it hurt her to think. “Oh, yeah! Somebody said Hanna went upstairs, that's where she is! I'm Sister Kathy. And this little sweetie is Sister Jennifer. I was goin' to name her Susan, after my mother, but Brother Jim, that's her father, he said no, that he wants all his kids named with a J. Ain't that just the smartest thing?” She beamed, thrilled to be married to a genius.

“Brilliant.” I edged toward the door. “Upstairs, you say?”

“You can't go up there without special permission.”

I stopped. “Does Hanna have permission?”

“Oh, yeah. She's up there all the time.” She began cooing at her baby, already forgetting I was there.

After closing the door behind me, I took a deep breath. The behavior of the young mother troubled me, but I didn't have time to examine it. The women's voices at the end of the hall rose in laughter, and I heard the rattle of dishes being stacked, the clink of cheap flatware. Soon they'd leave the lunchroom, making my escape with the baby difficult, if not impossible.

I needed to hurry.

The stairs were steep, but I noted with surprise that unlike the hallway and rooms below, they were thickly carpeted in a deep, industrial gray tweed. To keep down the sound? The same dense carpeting stretched down the hall of the clinic's second floor. I noted fewer doors here, probably denoting larger rooms, but in contrast to the doors downstairs, most of these appeared to have locks. Then I remembered. The Circle of Elders met up here, right next to the armory.

I squared my shoulders and opened the first door on the building's west side, only to find a long, bare room running almost the entire length of the building. It didn't contain one stick of furniture, not a diaper, nor scrap of paper. The walls and ceiling, however, had been covered with expensive soundproofing tiles. A chemical smell signaled that the room had been recently refurbished.

The next room, also soundproofed, proved smaller, but it contained several bunks, cribs, and chests. A bank of mattresses of varying sizes lay stacked against the far wall. The entire setup baffled me until I remembered the large number of pregnant women I'd seen since coming to Purity. The compound expected one heck of a population explosion, and soon.

It made sense. How many men lived in Purity? One hundred? Two hundred? If each man had three pregnant wives—a conservative figure—then within the next couple of months, at least three hundred to four hundred babies would be born at the clinic. Still, why did the room contain cribs, not bassinets? Surely the babies went home with their mothers within days. Although the cribs and chests looked like Salvation Army rejects, they still represented considerable expenditure.

Shaking my head in perplexity, I crossed the hall. Upon opening the first door, I knew I'd found the Circle of Elders' lair. A long, broad table with ten mismatched chairs took up the center of the room, but I hardly gave it notice. What fascinated me were the locked gun cabinets filled with shotguns and rifles, as well as a sprinkling of single-action revolvers and several small automatics. But along with those run-of-the-mill weapons so many Arizonans tote openly, stood a lethal arsenal of Berettas, Ingrams, Fabriques, Galis, Heckler and Kochs, even a few Kalashnikovs, Steyrs, and M14 Clones.

Nobody used those babies on rabbits.

Not wanting to be caught here under any circumstances, I left the room and closed the door firmly behind me. Just what the hell were the polygamists planning, an armed insurrection? Or were they just the usual Western gun nuts? Then I remembered Jacob Waldman and his call for blood atonement. I remembered the murders committed by a famous polygamist clan now serving time in prison. And I remembered Waco.

But then a door opened from one of the soundproofed rooms down the hall, allowing the babbling voices of children to drift my way. I scurried back into the armory, leaving the door slightly ajar so that I could peek out.

Two granny-dressed women exited the room, one elderly, the other a teenager. The teen sobbed hysterically, and if it hadn't been for the supporting arms around her waist, she would probably have fallen. As the older woman helped the teen down the stairs, snatches of their conversation floated back to me.

“…God's will.”

“…can't stand it…”

“Pray with the Circle, they'll…”

“…too weak.”

In her focus on the distraught teenager, the older woman didn't pull the door completely shut, and my hopes began to rise. Could Hanna be in there? If so, she had plenty of company. I hadn't heard such a racket since serving breakfast at Ermaline's. No wonder the clinic's top floor had been soundproofed. I hurried down the hall to the room, hoping to find Hanna before either of the women returned.

When I pulled the door back, I froze on the threshold, stunned at the sight before me. The room, every bit as large as the one across the hall, swarmed with children of all ages, from toddlers to teens. Something terrible was wrong with every one of them.

Many of the children had been born without eyes. They lay in their beds, their faces lifted, uncomprehending, to the white-tiled ceiling. Others, tethered by leather straps to iron rings set in the reinforced wall, jerked spastically. A few, born with heads too small for their bodies, drooped on the edge of their bunks, their faces as vacant as their microcephalic brains.

Hanna sat in one of the room's many rocking chairs, holding a microcephalic boy tenderly in her arms. Like any good mother, she sang to her child.

Hushabye, don't you cry,

Go to sleep you little baby,

When you wake you will see

All the pretty little horses.

This child was no baby, though. He had to be at least ten. No wonder Hanna cried all the time.

I backed out of the room before I, like the teenager, began sobbing, and as I fled down the stairs, I wondered which child had been hers.

Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid! Why hadn't I figured all this out before? With the incest rampant in the compound, the generations of uncle marrying niece, grandfather marrying granddaughter, sister marrying brother, the chances of congenital defects had to be at least double the rate of the rest of the population.

The people of Purity were genetic train wrecks.

Chapter 20

As I left the clinic by the same door I had entered, I reassessed my suspicions. No wholesale murder of children was taking place in Purity, just the kind of inbreeding that doomed them to early deaths—if they were fortunate enough to live past infancy.

I thought back to the blind girl I'd seen at Ermaline's house. Judy hadn't been abandoned in this warehouse for the deformed. Why not?

The answer was obvious. Judy was a girl, and a girl, no matter how serious her congenital defects, could still be bred. All she had to do was lie there while her sixty-year-old husband sowed his seed. Besides, with Purity's adherence to polygamy, the compound needed more girls than boys. This was probably the main reason the compound had put up with my poorly disguised independence and bad temper. Although I was—according to Purity standards—well on my way to cronehood, I could still pop out a few babies before my ovaries gave up, thus contributing fresh genes to the compound's badly damaged gene pool.

But the little boys, ah, they were a different story.

It hadn't passed my notice that most of the children in that room had been boys, and I thought I knew why. To take a wife, to breed, to add money to Purity's coffers, to ascend to Highest Heaven, a man had to be mobile. Because of their complete inability to take up a polygamist man's duties, those little boys I'd seen with the most serious congenital birth defects—microcephaly, spina bifida, profound retardation and cerebral palsy—were warehoused from birth. While their fathers collected extra government benefits.

What a life. I leaned against an outbuilding and tried not to throw up.

Hanna's son. What would happen to him? Would he, like so many of Purity's damaged little boys, live out his life in one room?

I decided to confront Davis. With all his flaws, he wasn't as bad as the rest of the men in Purity. He had a heart. He'd rescued Cynthia, carried her in his own arms back to her fool of a mother. I knew I could make him see reason, possibly even put a halt to the institutionalized incest that doomed so many children to brief, miserable lives.

Not wanting to waste another second, I hitched up my skirts and hurried through the rain to his house. I didn't even bother knocking, just rushed in. “Brother Davis?” I yelled. “I need to see you!”

Sissy came out of the kitchen. She took one look at me and gasped. Then I remembered my raised skirts. My, my. How easily polygamists became shocked over normal things like a woman's legs. To spare her blushes, I lowered them. “Sissy, where's Brother Davis?”

She shook her head. “I'm afraid he's in his den counseling someone. He can't see you now.”

I shoved past her. “I don't care if he's counseling the Pope. I'm going in.”

“No! Counseling is a very private time, a spiritual time.” She clutched at my dress and attempted to drag me back.

I batted her hand away and kept moving. “Get your hands off me, Sissy, before I slap you silly.”

“Sister Lena, I wish you wouldn't…”

But I was already at the den, already opening the door. What I saw there shocked me even more, if possible, than the scene at the clinic.

Brother Davis Royal, the Reform Prophet of Purity, was counseling someone all right, if you call running your hand up a seven-year-old girl's thigh
counseling.
I recognized those moves from my own experience with him the day before. He'd go for her blouse next.

I didn't bother keeping the outrage from my voice. “What the fuck do you think you're
doing?
”

The little girl gave a frightened squeak, jumped up, and headed out the open door, blond hair and long skirts flying. Sissy, whose face had become as white as Prophet Davis's perfect teeth, grabbed her and hustled her away.

Davis turned to face me, his face flushed. With passion? For a child? Or with anger because I'd interrupted his good time? “Sister Lena! Such language!”

“Don't criticize my language, you miserable child molester!” For a moment my hand itched for my revolver, but he wasn't worth going to jail over. Especially not in Utah.

His mouth attempted a half-smile. It failed. “I can explain.”

“There's nothing to explain. I thought you had some kind of decency, but you're no better than the rest of the Circle.”

He shook his head as if under attack by bees. “No, no, you've got me all wrong. I'm no rapist, and I'm certainly no child molester. Being new to our ways, you've simply misinterpreted what you've seen.”

Did the fool think he could make me question the evidence of my own eyes? Then I remembered: Davis was his father's son, and therefore no stranger to manipulation. He probably thought if it worked for Daddy, why not for him?

His voice grew oily as he reached for my hands. “Sister Lena, you saw how badly the situation with Earl Graff and Cynthia turned out. She never had the chance to get used to his touch, so on her wedding night, when he attempted certain things, she panicked. Don't you agree with me that such an event could seriously scar a woman's soul? Of course it could! That's why a man who really cares for a woman's happiness begins preparing her while she's still a young and impressionable girl. Take Sissy, for example. If I'd waited until she was thirteen, it might have been too late! She could have turned her very healthy sexual nature toward another man. But by preparing her the same way I had just started preparing that other little girl, Sissy fixated on me. Don't you see the compassion in my method, Sister Lena?”

“Sister Lena thinks you're a freak.” With that, I jerked my hands away and gave him the same karate chop I'd delivered to Earl Graff.

Leaving Davis writhing on the floor, and a horrified Sissy leaning against the wall, I rushed back across Prophet's Park to Saul's house. The mud-spattered truck parked in front of it told me he'd returned from court.

“I'm calling the cops!” I yelled, as I jerked open the front door. “And then I'm getting the hell out of here!”

Saul sat on the sofa, his face immobile. Next to him, Ruby had been crying.

“Yeah, you sure are getting the hell out of here, Lena,” he said, quietly. “We all are. I lost in court this morning, and I've been given forty-eight hours to remove my clothes and furniture from this house.”

With an effort, I put my rage on hold. “They only gave you forty-eight hours?”

“Yeah. After that, the Circle of Elders impounds everything else. You gonna help me pack?”

I shook my head and told him about what I'd seen at Prophet Davis's house. Then, while Saul beat his fist against his palm in rage, I called Sheriff Benson and told him everything, too.

“You want to press formal charges?” Benson asked when I finished. The anger in his voice weighed more toward me and what he dismissed as my “foolish undercover crusade” than at Prophet Davis's actions.

“My god, man, I interrupted an incident of child molestation in progress! Of course I want to file charges.”

“Then I'll come right out.”

Somewhat gratified, I put down the phone.

My feeling of gratification vanished two hours later, however, when Sheriff Benson came back to Saul's after interviewing everyone involved.

“The girl denied your entire story, Ms. Jones,” Benson said, his face rigid with dislike. He wouldn't even sit in the chair I pulled out for him. “The girl's mother denied it and so did Prophet Davis. You're the only person who says it happened. In fact, Prophet Davis is thinking about filing a complaint against
you.
”

I jumped out of my own chair. “Complaint? Complaint for what?”

“Assault. False accusations. Oh, if you're found guilty you probably won't go to jail, but you'll be liable for a hefty financial judgment. It's happened before.” Was I wrong, or did I hear satisfaction in his voice?

“That's insane!”

He shrugged. “If I remember correctly, you used to be a police officer, so you should know that when you start throwing around charges like you're doing now, you'd better have witnesses. That's how the law protects innocent parties from the accusations of people who have an agenda, such as yourself.”

Saul stepped forward, his face hard. “Sheriff, are you hinting that Lena is lying?”

Benson flashed a big smile. Considering the circumstances, it appeared wildly inappropriate. “Now, I didn't say that, did I? But I'll tell you this, Mr. Berkhauser. Prophet Davis said Ms. Jones has been out to get him ever since she proposed to him and he declined.”

“Declined, my ass! I'll have you know he couldn't wait to get his hands on me!”

Benson's smile didn't budge. “Frankly, I think Prophet Davis's story makes more sense than yours. My years in law enforcement have taught me that a rejected woman frequently takes her revenge by making accusations against the man who rejected her. There are other things I've noticed about you, Ms. Jones, that call your credibility into question. When I first met you down in Scottsdale, you seemed much too willing to take the part of an obviously hysterical woman who had her own ax to grind. The next time I see you, here you are, living in the very community she ran away from, chasing after Prophet Davis, telling me stories about rape, child molestation, and who knows what all. Now, I have one final question. You seem to be a deeply troubled woman, Ms. Jones. Have you ever considered therapy?”

Only Sheriff Benson's uniform kept me from slapping that maddening smile off his face.

After Benson left, Ruby, who had been sitting quietly in the corner with her hands folded primly on her lap, finally spoke. “Don't look so shocked, Sister Lena. What he just said about you being crazy, that's what all these men in Purity say when their wives get upset, except for Brother Saul, of course. I'm bettin' Sheriff Benson says it to his own wives at least once a day.”

Saul and I both stood in the middle of the room, staring at her.

“
Wives
, did you say, Sister Ruby?” Saul asked.

“Wives. He's got three, at least he did last time I called over there. Two of them are my own daughters.”

“
What?
” Saul and I both shouted in chorus.

She leaned forward in her chair. “Neither's all that happy with him, but it's not a woman's job to be happy, is it? After all, he doesn't do…” She paused and blushed. “He doesn't do ugly things to them. Oh, they could have done a whole lot worse.”

“Benson's a polygamist,” I said.

“Of course he is, Sister Lena. Howard Benson's mother was Prophet Solomon's niece. He was raised right here in Purity.”

Saul groaned. “My God, if we'd known that…”

I shushed him with a gesture. I wanted her to continue.

Ruby didn't disappoint me. Now that she'd finally taken the plunge and started giving her opinions, she didn't want to stop. “I knew him when he was a little boy. I didn't like him much then, either.”

“But you let your daughters marry him.” I tried to keep my voice level.

“Let?
Let?
” Her voice rose to a decidedly unmeek level. Sister Ruby was pissed and she didn't care who knew it. “There was no
let,
Sister Lena. My husband fixed it up with Brother Howard's father years ago. I didn't have no say and neither did my girls.”

Saul put a hand to his forehead and groaned. “You knew all this but let Lena call him anyway?”

She stuck her chin out. “I heard what Sister Lena was saying about the little girl and Prophet Davis, and it made me mad! Touching a seven-year-old girl down
there
ain't right, even if you are the prophet. Sin is sin. Now, I know Brother Howard doesn't like Sister Lena much, but I thought he'd still do something about the little girl. Him saying Lena needed therapy, well, that was just pure nastiness. None of the men around here wouldn't ever let their females get that kind of help. They'd be too scared of what might come out.”

Whoever said still waters run deep had undoubtedly met Sister Ruby.

I sat down heavily. “I'll be damned. Not only do you believe me, you actually care.”

She looked at me with no more affection than before. “I think you're a terrible, pushy woman, Sister Lena, and you don't know your place. But you don't lie about anything important.”

That night I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what to do next. My cover was well and truly blown and I still didn't know who'd killed Prophet Solomon. Sheriff Benson, whose ties to Purity proved stronger than his ties to the law, had told Davis who I was and what I was doing in Purity. Not that it made any difference anymore. Before Benson had left, he'd said his deputy had called from Scottsdale, promising to return Esther in handcuffs the next day. As a parting shot, Benson told me her murder trial would probably begin before the first snowfall.

Rebecca was beyond help.

Just before dawn, I finally fell asleep.

A harsh light filled the bus, tinting my mother's face almost as yellow as her hair. The gun she pointed at my head looked to my four-year-old eyes the size of a cannon.

“I'll kill her!”
she cried.
“I'll kill her now!”

“No, Mommy!”
I screamed, just as her foot nudged me in the stomach. Then I heard the rattle of the bus's door opening. But why? We hadn't slowed down.

“See! I'm killing her! Right now!”

Someone grabbed my mother, moved the gun. There was a struggle.

Then the gun went off. With a scream, my mother kicked me in the stomach, sending me flying toward the open door.

Just before I lost consciousness on the street outside, I heard my mother scream again.

“I failed, God forgive me, I failed!”

I awoke screaming the same words.