Desert Wives (9781615952267) (29 page)

Meade kicked at a rock. It bounced off an infant's grave. The movement had turned him into the sun, which now illuminated his face. He didn't look so angelic anymore.

“You're an unbeliever, Sister Lena, and a wicked woman. But I guess you can't be blamed. Women are weak vessels, always open to the wiles of Satan. But Satan can be cast out! Let's pray together. I'll lead you from the road to perdition and put you straight on the road to salvation.”

“Thanks anyway, Meade, but I happen to like the road to perdition. The scenery's better.”

His scowl make him look like a typical teen. “That's sacrilegious!”

“And blood atonement isn't?”

He looked shocked. “Blood atonement is one of the tools God gives men to right wrongs, Sister Lena.”

I motioned to the tiny graves. “What wrongs had those babies committed when your mother killed them?”

His eyes flickered. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Yes you do. Your mother couldn't stand raising any more babies, could she? So how'd she do it? Suffocate them? Or did she drown them like kittens nobody wants?”

For a moment I didn't think he was going to answer, but after heaving a deep sigh, he said, “I don't know how. All I know is that after Father caught her at it one night, he barred her from Highest Heaven. He could do that, you know. He was still God's chosen prophet, at least he was until he turned against me.”

I could imagine the scene. Martha, leaning over the tiny body, Solomon discovering her. The curses, the tears. But no matter how deep his rage, Purity's prophet would never have turned the demented woman over to the authorities, not when he believed he had the power to separate her from the rest of her children throughout Eternity.

“Your father told the Circle of Elders what she'd done, didn't he? That's why after he died, they sent her to live in that trailer with Brother Vernon. She was being punished.”

Meade nodded miserably. “Sister Esther figured it out, too, and before she left Purity, she threatened to tell the sheriff if it ever happened again. But it didn't happen again. My father banished Mother from his bed.”

Another piece of the puzzle slid into place. “You hated Esther for that, didn't you? So you didn't mind when she was accused of your father's murder.”

“Sister Esther had no right to tell anybody on the Outside anything about Purity!” he cried. “'Specially not after my father took care of Mother's problem!”

But Esther didn't take it to the Outside. Purity's habit of secrecy proved too ingrained, and she never told anyone, not even me. Would it have made any difference if she had?

“Meade, those babies were your own brothers and sisters. Don't you want some sort of justice for them?”

He began kicking rocks again, throwing hate-filled glances at me. As if shifting position, I stretched my hand to the side and patted my spread-out skirts, feeling for the comforting contours of my .38.

Meade didn't notice. “You think I'd tell the sheriff on my own mother? What for? Women are prone to sin, but their sins can be forgiven as long as they remain obedient plural wives. I'm going to fix it so Mother can ascend to Highest Heaven, right along with me and my brides and all my children.”

And what a nice family reunion that would be.

Since Meade was obviously in a talking mood, I asked him about something else that had been bothering me. “Tell me about your uncle Jacob,” I said, curious about Esther's father. “Did he kill one of his daughters when she refused to marry some guy he picked for her?”

Meade stopped his pacing. This subject didn't make him half as nervous. “Yeah. She'd been reading some stuff over at that public school in Zion City we used to go to, some stuff about genes or something. She said marrying her uncle wouldn't be right.”

Receiving confirmation of my suspicions would probably prove irrelevant in the end. So much time had passed that the chances of bringing Jacob Waldman up on murder charges weren't good, especially considering his condition. Same with Martha Royal. Yet I'd been proven wrong before. Perhaps with the right prosecuting attorney…

First things first.

“Meade, you know we need to do something about all this, don't you?”

I didn't like the sly look that crept across his face. “Don't be silly. I told you all this stuff because no one around here will take your word for anything, especially after all those crazy charges you made against Davis yesterday.”

“You heard about that, did you?”

“The Circle of Elders tells me everything.”

Of course they did. After all, Earl Graff and his henchmen believed that Meade was God's chosen prophet, not Davis.

Time to play my hand. “Meade, I know that my word doesn't count for much around here, me being a woman and all. That's why I taped this entire conversation.” When I opened the front of my dress and pulled down my bra, it was a tossup as to which horrified Meade the most, finding out our conversation had been taped, or seeing so much bare womanly flesh.

Meade shrank from me as if I'd turned into Satan himself. Then he recovered and held out his hand. “Hand that tape over, Sister Lena. I command you.”

Poor little Meade. He still didn't get it. I wasn't one of Purity's subservient women. I never had been.

“The tape stays with me, kid, but here's what I'll do. I'll go with you to the county attorney. When you talk to him, leave your own feelings for Cora out of it, just tell him you were so overcome by revulsion that your father wanted to marry his own daughter that you just kind of lost your mind for a minute.”

“Give me that tape!”

Meade stepped closer to me and drew back his fist. I forced myself to remain seated on the rock, betting that as disturbed as he was—and he was plenty disturbed—he was no Earl Graff. Meade didn't respect women, but he wasn't incapable of feelings for them. A nice moral conundrum, that.

“You're not going to hit me, Meade. I'm just a poor, weak woman, remember?”

I'd pegged my man. Or boy. Meade backed away and lowered his fist. “You can't use that tape in court, anyway. I saw it on a cop show once before Daddy locked the television up.”

I smiled up at him. “Oh, sure, Arizona takes a dim view of this sort of thing, but Utah has allowed this sort of confession to be entered into evidence on various occasions. You screwed up when you killed Prophet Solomon on the Utah side of the state line.”

Actually, I knew no such thing about the admissibility of taped evidence in Utah, but I was betting that Meade didn't, either. The whole idea of my little trick was to get Meade to come with me to the county attorney's office and
then
make a taped confession which would stand up in court.

I hammered my point home. “Bear in mind, Meade, for this to work you have to bypass Benson, because as you said, he's one of your own. But if you go to the county attorney with me and tell the truth, I'm betting you'll get off with just a short stint in Juvenile Hall or even some nice mental health facility. You'll be back out in no time.”

It made sense to me. What were a few months compared to the length of the average life? If the worse happened and Meade wound up in Juvie until he turned eighteen, well, he could live with that.

But I'd forgotten that even a week looks like forever to a teenager.

When I saw the expression on his face, I knew I'd miscalculated. “You want me to live on the Outside? Never! I'd rather die!” With that, he turned on his heel and took off for the flooded canyon as fast as he could run.

I sat in shock for a brief second, then dropped the tape recorder and hitched up my skirts. But as I raced after Meade, the skirts fell down again to my ankles, tripping me. By the time I recovered and caught up with him, Meade had already reached the canyon's rim, where he stood looking down at the torrent.

Frightened for the first time, but not for myself, I grabbed him around the waist. “Don't, Meade.”

The boy was no taller than me and painfully thin, but having lived most of his life on Purity's hardscrabble land, he proved stronger than he looked. He twisted in my arms and hit me on the forearm with his elbow. Although I didn't release my grip, the movement ripped the thin fabric of his shirt, and I found myself holding nothing but a ragged piece of red flannel.

As I snatched at him again, he began running along the edge of the canyon, looking down as if rethinking his original intent. This slowed him enough for me to come close to grabbing distance again after only a few yards. I dared a quick glance down. This part of the canyon was less steep than other areas, and its sides sloped gently toward the current, creating an almost navigable bank. Almost, but not quite. The thing was still a death trap.

Meade threw me an odd look, almost one of cunning. Then, just as I reached for him, he scrambled down the rocky side of the canyon toward the deadly water.

“Don't, Meade!” I screamed, as I slid down the slope after him. But the water roared so loudly that I could hardly hear myself. All I could do was keep stumbling after him, hoping that he wouldn't trip, wouldn't fall—or jump—into the maelstrom before I could grab him again.

The slope, covered with rocks slicked down after two days of rain, proved treacherous. At one point, I had to grab onto the low branches of a scrub oak in order to keep my footing. Meade wasn't as cautious. I saw his mouth open in a shout as he tripped, then fell, only inches from the water. Screaming for him to hold still, I let go of the scrub oak and edged toward him, intending to help him toward the flatter portion of the bank.

It almost worked. I grabbed him by his thick leather belt. When he smiled up at me I thought I'd succeeded.

Then he kicked me in the face.

Shocked, I let go of him and began sliding down the bank on my belly. Just before I fell into the water, though, I twisted onto my side and grabbed at a drooping mesquite. Both hands connected with a low-lying branch, but even as I wrapped my fingers around it, my legs continued into the water, where the current sucked at my skirts and threatened to sweep me away.

“Help me!” I screamed toward Meade, who looked down at me from a safer height.

His smile told me that he wouldn't, and I realized how badly I'd misjudged him. Meade was no impulsive teenager. He was a prophet, and prophets planned everything—including murder. He'd never intended to commit suicide at all. No, he'd faked his despair in order to lure me to my death.

Solomon's last hunting party had probably been Meade's idea, not his own.

Something, a log, probably, banged into my legs, snagged against my skirts. When it finally skated away on the surface of the current, it took my skirts with it.

Leering, Meade crawled down the bank toward me, shoving his muddy face close to me so that I could hear his every spiteful word. “Nice legs, Sister Lena. Not that I care. You're a soiled vessel and not worthy of me.” Then he got to his knees, reached up, and began to uncurl my fingers from the tree limb.

But Meade didn't know how strong all those hours in the Scottsdale gyms had made me. After taking a deep breath, I hauled my bare legs out of the water and kicked the little monster in the balls. With a surprised grunt, he began to roll toward the water. Just before the torrent swept him to his death, I released my left hand from the tree limb, leaned over, and grabbed his belt.

“Hold still, Meade!” I yelled, but the fool kid kept struggling, not truly realizing that escape from my grasp meant certain death. If I let go, he would either drown or get his brains bashed out against the canyon walls. By the time the water spit him out, there wouldn't be enough left for his own mother to identify. Gritting my teeth, I managed to drag him closer to shore.

Yet still he fought against me, and attempted to paddle out into the current. “Let me go!” he screamed, his voice a high tenor against the current's deep-throated rumble. “God will save me! I'm his Chosen One.”

And I was the Queen of Romania.

The harder Meade struggled, the tighter I held on. But as his denims became waterlogged, the drag on my arms increased. The fingers of my right hand, still wrapped in a death grip around the mesquite branch, began to cramp. My left arm, the only thing that anchored Meade to life, developed a tremor.

How long could I hold on? How long could I dangle here, suspended over the water, clinging to this crazy, struggling boy? I wasn't Wonder Woman, just a burned-out ex-cop with a bullet in her hip, a woman neither as young or courageous as she used to be. What difference did it make, anyway? If I let Meade go, I wouldn't have to come back to Utah, give my testimony at some long, protracted trial. Just think of how much money Meade's death would save the taxpayers! Meade was no good to the world, anyway. He'd already committed one murder and attempted another. What was to keep him from coming back to Purity, after his release from his vacation in Juvie, and starting a blood atonement massacre against all his foes?

Then, the darkest of all temptations slithered into my heart. Given Meade's genetic makeup, how many deformed children would he sire upon his sisters and cousins before he was through?

How many more Coras would he create?

The tone of the current grew louder, deeper, and I turned my head upstream to see what had created the difference. A felled cottonwood tree, its trunk at least two feet in diameter, as yet unbroken by its journey. Headed straight for Meade.

I tugged at him, but my strength was gone, and even though he'd swallowed enough water to slow his struggles, I could barely maintain my grip on his belt. There was a good chance he'd already lost consciousness. Maybe he wouldn't even feel the tree as it slammed through his brain.

Then I could let go.

But no. I couldn't.

It made no sense, but I refused to let him go while he still breathed. I wouldn't consign the living Meade to the flood's rough justice. If the cottonwood wanted to take him, it would have to take us both.