Desert Lost (9781615952229) (21 page)

“To atone for what his daddy done. You know, Prophet Jeremiah.”

I felt more bewildered than ever. “What did Jeremiah do?”

“Causing all them people to get sick, you know. Babies died. And the men, after they got sick, some of them couldn't give their wives any new babies. Surely you heard about that.”

It all came back to me then. After emerging from one of his many seizures, Prophet Jeremiah had called an emergency meeting of everyone at Second Zion. He said God had revealed to him that the U.S. government was using tainted medicine to wipe out of people of Second Zion. That was the reason so many of the children were sickly, because they were the issue of mothers and fathers who had held out their arms to clinic needles and gave their babies any medicine handed them by the Satan-influenced medical establishment. Jeremiah then ordered his followers to bury all their medications, even their aspirin, to stay away from the county health clinics, but most importantly, to stop having their children vaccinated.

If a child fell ill, Prophet Jeremiah promised, God would provide the cure.

Nothing serious happened for several months, but eventually German measles swept through the compound, followed by an outbreak of mumps. When children started dying, Prophet Jeremiah mysteriously disappeared. His followers claimed he'd ascended into Heaven, but the polygamy grapevine muttered that he'd been shot to death by a grieving father. Whatever the truth, Prophet Hiram Shupe ascended the throne. Hiram, more intelligent—if not more sane—rescinded his father's No Inoculation Commandment, but not before a total of twelve children had died and an undisclosed number of men had been rendered sterile.

Suspicion nudged at me. “How old is Ezra's youngest child?”

I could almost hear the gears grinding away in Clayton's uneducated brain. “Lemme see. Mark is almost thirteen. No, Eleanor just turned twelve and she's his youngest. Brother Ezra sent her up to Second Zion a couple months ago because she was about ready to, well, you know.”

Because she was almost ready to be bred. “If Eleanor is Ezra's youngest child, who's the father of all those young children I saw at the compound?”

“They're kids who were reassigned to Brother Ezra. Four of them are Fawn Burr's children. Prophet Shupe's punishing her for tryin' to run away from her husband, and he said with Brother Ezra not being able to make any more babies, there was plenty of room for them.”

Poor Fawn. “It's interesting what you said about Ezra not being able to have any more children, because Celeste was pregnant when she was killed.”

“A miracle from God!” His face shone with religious fervor.

Miracle wasn't the word I'd use. “You're certain that none of those other children belong to Ezra?”

At my sharpened tone, his face closed up. “Wait a minute. Miss, you ain't thinking that, uh…” Clayton was no rocket scientist, but he was a long way from being dumb.

“That Celeste was having sex with another man? It's a possibility.”

“She stayed sweet!”

If I heard that phrase again, I'd throw up. “Well, they do say that God works in mysterious ways.”

“He sure does!” Clayton nodded furiously, apparently unable to believe the obvious truth.

“Did you like Celeste?”

He threw me a wary look. “She was okay, I guess. Like I said, I didn't know her that much.”

“Did you two ever have a personal conversation?”

A line appeared between his eyebrows, but at least his ears didn't catch fire again. “Personal? Like what?”

“Did she ever tell you how she felt about Ezra, say, or Prophet Shupe?”

“Jeepers! Why would a woman talk to me about something like that?”

Because a woman liked to share her sorrows, and an innocent young boy about to get kicked out of the compound might be considered a safe confidant. “Maybe I should rephrase the question. Did you ever hear Celeste complain about anyone?”

“Just about Opal. She didn't like her.”

Who did? “When did she tell you this?”

“She never told me, Miss. I overheard it.”

“When?”

“One night I was out in the yard chasing crickets, I heard her on the porch whispering to my mom. I don't think they knew I was out there.”

“Did Darnelle and Celeste have a close relationship?”

“Sister-wives are always close, ain't they? And they tell each other things. Anyway, lots of times I heard them talking.”

I was beginning to suspect that Clayton spent many evenings ‘chasing crickets' but I knew better than to accuse him of snooping. “What kinds of things did they talk about?”

He darted a glance around the small office, as if afraid someone might be listening. Then he leaned forward and whispered, “Mainly 'bout Opal and Ezra. But…but one night I heard Celeste whispering that she was thinking 'bout runnin' off, that she had a friend who would help get her set up, somebody on the outside.”

At this bombshell, it was a struggle to keep my voice level, but somehow I managed it. “A friend on the outside? How'd she meet this person?”

“Don't know, Miss. Maybe they talked through the fence, like you did with my mom.”

Someone at the Kachina, then? “Did you ever hear her friend's name?”

He frowned. “Yeah, but I can't remember it. But it was a man's name, maybe a nickname. For sure, not from the Bible.”

I cast my mind back to the renters at Kachina 24-Hour Storage and tried to come up with a likely prospect. The elderly man with the
Arizona Highways
magazines? A member of the rock band? Someone I'd not yet seen?

“Try to remember, Clayton. It's important.” To jog his memory, I offered several currently popular, non-Biblical names. “Chad? Dennis? Keith? Brian? Maury? Harry? Scott? Charlie? Art? Ian? Eric?”

Suddenly he beamed. “I got it!”

“Which one?”

“You said ‘Eric.' But that's not exactly what she called him.”

“What, then?”

“It was when you said ‘Eric' that I was able to remember.”

I wanted to strangle him for drawing it out so long, but he was relishing his moment in the spotlight, and in his brief life, he'd been given so few chances to shine. “I knew you could do it, Clayton. You're a bright boy.”

Now he positively glowed. “Thank you, Miss.”

“So give me his name.”

With a sigh of satisfaction, he relinquished his moment.

“She called him ‘Little Rick.'”

Chapter Twenty-six

The interesting thing about life is that just when you think you've got it all figured out, you realize you don't know jack shit. Who had recognized Celeste from the picture I'd shown him? Little Rick. Who had pointed me toward Frugal Foods? Little Rick.

But who, in retrospect, seemed the least likely of all possible Romeos? Little Rick.

One of the first things any good law enforcement officer learns is to not judge people by their appearance. The handsome, well-spoken Ted Bundy had been a vicious serial killer with a more-than-passing interest in necrophilia. Wyatt Earp might have paid undue attention to his wardrobe, but he'd won the shoot-out at the OK Corral. And Little Rick? Just because a man was married, middle-aged, badly overweight, and squinted at the world through Coke-bottle glasses didn't mean he couldn't fall in love. Or that someone couldn't fall in love with him.

After bidding Clayton and Jonah farewell for now, I hopped back into my Jeep and drove down to Little Rick's You-Store-It. This time I was greeted by an elderly woman in a wheelchair who sat behind the front desk. As she checked the application just completed by two young men wearing ASU tee shirts, I noticed how thin her arms were.

“Third lane on the right, fifteenth unit down,” she told them “If you have trouble finding it, just ask my husband Rick for directions. Can't miss him. Real big guy, cleaning an empty unit right behind the office.”

When the young men stepped outside, she looked up at me through eyes milky with cataracts. From the door, she'd appeared to be at least twenty years older than Little Rick, but close up, I noticed taut skin and lack of age spots. Her small, sharply-defined features hinted that she'd probably been pretty before disease had taken its toll.

“Looking for a storage unit?” A young woman's smile in a ravaged face.

I flashed my I.D. “I just want a word with your husband.”

The smile disappeared. “About what?”

With a merciful lie, I said I'd been hired to look into a series of burglaries at a nearby self-storage company and was checking other places to see if they'd had trouble, too.

Her pale eyes narrowed, then raked my face and body. Was she, perhaps based on past incidents, sizing up the competition? “The only problem I've heard about was over at the RV storage place, and that was nothing but taggers. Kids with too much time on their hands.”

Just as I started to soothe her with another lie, the back door opened and Little Rick thudded in. Although the day was unseasonably cool, his plump face shone with sweat. “Annie, did you…?” Catching sight of me, he stopped.

I repeated my original lie, then added, “Maybe we could talk outside?”

He swallowed. “Good idea.” Hooking a beefy arm around mine, he hustled me out the door before his wife could object.

The layout of the storage facility was identical to that at Kachina, with approximately ten paved lanes comprised of facing units, which ranged from tiny to room-sized. Out of habit, I turned toward the right, where at Kachina my own unit would be located, but was checked by Little Rick, who hauled me to the left.

“Less crowded over here,” he explained, between gasps for breath. “More long-timers. And not many's doing business there right now.”

I complied with all this hustling and hauling until we reached a quiet area between lanes seven and eight, then planted my feet. “Okay, Little Rick, this is far enough. Time to come clean about your relationship with Celeste King.”

The only people around were a depressed looking middle-aged couple at the far end of the row loading what appeared to be a household full of furniture out of a U-Haul trailer and into their unit. Victims of foreclosure? Or a mere redecorating job? Whatever the reason, their proximity made me feel secure.

Little Rick's voice came as little more than a whisper. “What relationship are you talking about?”

If the subject hadn't been so serious, I would have laughed in his face. “Celeste was pregnant when she was murdered.”

He pretended to watch the couple, who were now dragging a worn sofa into their unit. Foreclosure, probably. When you're redecorating, you don't save junk.

Eventually Little Rick looked back at me, making a feeble attempt to seem unconcerned. “I read in the paper that she was one of those polygamists. Those women get pregnant all the time, don't they? That's their job.”

Nice parry, but it didn't work. “I've acquired information that casts doubt on the possibility of her husband being the father. You need to know that during the autopsy, the medical examiner took DNA samples from the fetus, a boy. The results should be back any day now. Want me to give Scottsdale PD a call, tell them to come over here with a swab kit for a possible match? Or would you prefer to answer my questions?”

“Why should I be worried about some DNA test?”

“Because you're the father.”

“You're crazy.” His voice carried no conviction.

I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and flipped it open. “I know I've got Scottsdale PD somewhere in here,” I muttered.

Before I could punch up the menu, he yelled “Stop!” so loudly that the U-Haul couple turned around in astonishment. Little Rick ignored them. “Why is this any business of yours?”

I closed my cell but didn't put it away. “Because her son's about to be charged in her murder.”

“Oh, God.” He hung his head. “She…She was so beautiful.”

And, unlike his wife, healthy. “Did you first meet at Frugal Foods? Or somewhere else?”

“She was loading groceries into a van and dropped a bag. I helped her gather everything up. She…I've never seen eyes that blue.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that Celeste was alone?”

“They used to let her do the grocery shopping all by herself. That was before…”

“Before what?”

“Before that Opal bitch started getting suspicious.”

Funny how Opal's name kept popping up. “Just go ahead and tell me everything, how your relationship started and what you planned to do about it. If I have to keep asking questions like this, we could be here all day. Myself, I have plenty of time, but I'm figuring your wife's a bit on the suspicious side.”

Guilt swept across his face. “Don't judge me.”

“If I used up my energy judging everyone, I'd be too tired to get out of bed in the morning.”

“You promise not to say anything to my wife?”

“Seems to me she already has enough trouble. Now start talking.”

He took a deep breath, then let it out in a long sigh. “I love Annie. I always have. But I loved Celeste, too, and I wanted to help her. She was…” He trailed off.

“She was what?”

Another sigh. “Desperate.” He clenched his big fists and fell silent.

I reached for my cell again. “Boy, I really hate to do this.”

“Okay, okay. But let's go sit over there, 'cause this'll take a while and my feet are killing me.” He walked toward a picnic table set up under a mesquite tree at the end of the row. Since it remained in the sightline of the U-Haul couple, I followed. He'd been too full of surprises for me to take his seeming harmlessness for granted.

We settled ourselves under the mesquite, frightening away a group of sparrows that had been singing from its branches. Judging from the bird droppings on the table, the serenade had been a long one. I lay my cell on the table, but made a mental note to scrub it with alcohol as soon as I got back to the office.

Rick eyed the cell. “You won't need that. Like I said, I met Celeste at Frugal Foods about four months ago. After I helped her put the groceries in the van, we started talking. At first she was kinda shy, but after meeting a few times, she loosened up and told me about her life, all about the polygamy thing, how it was beginning to wear her down. She was only thirty-six, but she'd had twelve kids already. Not all of them lived, though.”

“The ones that died. Were they boys?” Baby boys had a strangely high death rate in polygamy compounds.

“How'd you guess?”

I waved the question away. “Continue.”

“Anyway, she told me her youngest, a girl named Eleanor, had just been shipped off to get married in some compound up by the Canadian border, and what with all her kids gone now, there was no reason to stay on, so she was thinking about making a new life for herself. She hated her husband. Said he was mean, real mean.”

That sounded like Ezra, all right. “Did she ever talk about Jonah?”

“Who's that?”

“One of her sons. He was thrown out of the compound last year, when he turned eighteen.”

“Really? She never mentioned him.”

“Never talked about Jonah at all?”

“No.”

“She didn't seem worried about him?”

“I told you, no.”

The woman described as “maternal” by Rosella, “the kindest and sweetest” by her throwaway son, and “unhappy” by Little Rick, had long ago stopped thinking about anyone other than herself. Maybe she never had. Maybe she'd just been a good actress, willing to assume any role that helped her survive an increasingly unhappy life.

A sweet whistle made me look up. The sparrows had begun drifting back to the mesquite, and Little Rick made a big show out of watching them sidle next to each other on the tree's branches.

I was less entranced. Instead, I was wondering why men couldn't see through manipulative women. “Sounds like your relationship was developing like a house afire.”

“You don't need to sound so cynical, Miss Jones. What's the matter? Don't you believe in love?”

“We're not talking about my love life, just yours.” I tapped my fingers on my cell phone.

“All right. Somewhere along the line, Celeste and I fell in love. To give us more time to be together, I started helping her do the grocery shopping. She'd give me half of her list and I'd run around, grabbing things off the shelves. Afterward, we'd carry the groceries out to the van and sit there and talk for awhile. One thing led to another, and…” His face pinked up. “And, well, the van was big enough to, well, you know.”

“How often?”

He shifted his great bulk in discomfort, and wiped a beefy hand across his eyes. “I don't see why…” Seeing my hand reach for the cell again, he continued. “Every week for about two months. Then that bitch Opal must've started getting suspicious, because she stopped letting Celeste shop by herself anymore. But she'd always leave a note for me underneath the apples, telling me when I could meet her over by the construction yard fence, you know, Ten Spot Construction. They all lived at that house in the back. We never had long to talk, and of course we couldn't, uh, get together. So we began making plans to change that.”

“What kind of plans?”

Although the day wasn't that warm, he began sweating even harder. “I found her a small apartment over in Phoenix and put some furniture in it that I'd salvaged from an abandoned storage unit. And I was going to hire her to do some work here, just easy filing and stuff. Maybe cleaning out empty units. She was stronger than she looked.”

“You didn't worry that your wife might get suspicious?”

“Annie's been feeling worse lately, MS, you know, and I told her it might help if she took some time off. Until she felt better.” From the tone in his voice, he knew Annie was never going to feel better.

“Were you going to leave Annie for Celeste?”

He looked shocked. “Why would I do something like that? Annie needs me!”

Men and their so-called loyalties. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief. “Did Celeste know you were married?”

“Of course. And she didn't mind.”

Hardly surprising, since any woman raised in a polygamy compound was used to sharing her man. “Exactly how long after you started having sex did Celeste ask you to help her get set up on the outside?”

“Why does it matter?”

Because gullibility, thy name is man. “Answer the question.”

“I know what you're thinking, that she was taking advantage of me, but that's not it! She never asked me to do anything for her, I just offered! But I guess it was about after the second time we, uh, had sex, maybe even the first time. Hell, I wanted to help her because she was so desperate.”

And manipulative. “So you rented her a Phoenix apartment and offered her a job. How was she supposed to get to work? Surely you weren't going to shuttle her back and forth.”

“I'm not stupid, you know. She told me she'd always dreamed of having a blue car to match her eyes, so I was going to buy her one, a blue Mazda or Hyundai.”

What a sap. Then again, love made fools of us all. “Getting back to basics, Little Rick, when did Celeste tell you she was pregnant? Or did she ever?”

“I didn't know.” He mumbled something I didn't quite hear. Even after I asked him to repeat it, I still had to lean close enough to feel his breath to hear his reply. That's when I saw the tears in his eyes.

“I…I was going to have a son.” His broken voice was filled with love, longing, and regret.

One man's throwaway was another man's treasure.