Desert Wives (9781615952267) (13 page)

“How does the Great Mother earn her title, Sylvia?” the teacher asked.

“By giving birth to as many souls as possible,” little Sylvia answered. With her blond hair, big blue eyes, and almost albino-pale skin, she could have been the clone of at least ninety percent of her schoolmates.

The teacher's smile took in the entire room. “Excellent, Sylvia. I am certain all you little girls will grow up to become Great Mother, assuring your places in Highest Heaven. Remember the law of God: no children, no Heaven. And you boys, you must do your part to enable these little ladies to enter Highest Heaven, because without your seed, Satan will find them and carry them away to the Underworld, where they'll burn forever in the Eternal Fire with all the other sinful, childless women.”

Seed? Eternal Fire? Sinful, childless women? Holy literal shit!

“Boys, will you do your part?” the teacher asked again.

The boys responded enthusiastically. They yelled “Yes, ma'am!” and stomped their feet. Suddenly, the schoolroom full of innocents sounded like a troop ship nearing some sleazy third-world port. My stomach lurched. Those children were too young to truly understand what they were being taught but they weren't too young to be brainwashed.

My original idea had been to jog along the dirt road that led north through the fields, but after what I'd just heard I wanted cover. So I left the road and headed into the canyon as fast as I could, and didn't relax until its high walls rose above me, effectively shutting Purity out.

The rough path Rebecca and I had taken during our escape lay to the southeast, paralleling the dirt road to Zion City. When the compound had originally built the road, they had merely dumped the debris of rocks, boulders and dirt down into the canyon. The litter there made running difficult, but the northern branch of the canyon remained relatively smooth. As I walked along, the terrain flattened enough so that I could hitch up my long skirts and break into a slow jog.

The canyon was a separate eco-system from the compound's arid expanse, and was vivid with red Indian paintbrush and yellow daisies. Set beside the sage green of the shrubs and backed by the soft red of sandstone walls, the blooms provided vibrant contrast to the pastel palette around them. I heard the musical trickle of water, the tiny click-click-click of lush buffalo grasses waving in the breeze. Almost paradise. But, reminding me that the law of nature was kill or be killed, a red-tailed hawk rode the thermal overhead, searching for prey.

The tension fell away from me as I jogged past clumps of prickly pear cactus and gold-flecked creosote. Lizards scurried out of my way, prairie dogs popped back into their holes, and here and there, jackrabbits fled from me as if they feared
Fricassé de Lapin
topped my evening menu. I knew coyotes lived nearby, but since they were nocturnal, they were probably bedded down in one of the many caverns pock-marked into the canyon's walls.

Thanks to Davis's appropriation of the compound's rifles, I didn't have to worry about dodging bullets, and I had the canyon to myself.

I jogged for an hour, marveling at the length of the canyon. The Arizona Strip was laced with these long canyons, some leading south all the way to the Grand Canyon. Fortunately, they were broader and safer than the slot canyons found in the eastern part of the state, those steep, sheer-walled canyons which became death traps after a thunderstorm. I was in no danger now. It hadn't rained for days and the walls of Paiute Canyon sloped gently. Well-worn paths led up its sides and onto the desert floor above.

Finally winded, I slowed to a walk and turned around, lowering my skirts as I did so. Even the spectacular beauty of the canyon hadn't chased away the memory of the grotesque lesson I'd heard in the classroom. Part of me wanted to go back and slap the teacher upside the head, while the other part counseled restraint. Restraint won. Even if Miss Teacher didn't brainwash her charges, the job would still be accomplished by their fathers and mothers.

Mothers.

I touched the scar on my forehead, remembering the woman who looked like me, the woman who shot me at point blank range and left me for dead. Oh, yes, I knew that mothers could damage their children, too, not just fathers and prophets and teachers in crack-brained cults. In my career as a police officer, I had seen grisly injuries inflicted upon children by their mothers.

One day, when I had harped too loud and long about my own mother's sins, Jimmy had shut me up with an article he found in
National Geographic.
It described various tribes in Egypt, Kenya and Somalia, where mothers, in order to earn higher dowries for their little girls, cut off their daughters' sexual organs. These “operations,” carried out by amateurs with no medical training using rusty tin can lids as knives, were not circumcisions. No, the article described the complete removal of all reachable sexual organs, clitoris
and
labia, performed without anesthesia. Many of the little girls bled to death during the procedures, but apparently their mothers believed death was a risk well worth taking. After all, a “cut wife” brought a higher dowry—even when the cut wife was numb from the waist down.

So in a way it was almost unjust for me to confine my rage to the males of Purity. Yes, the men held all the cards, all the power, but they could not maintain their illegal lifestyle without the women's collusion. So in the end, what kind of monsters wouldn't protect their own daughters? I touched the scar on my forehead again. Sometimes monsters were called mothers.

The singing of a cactus wren freed me from my dark visions. I could do little to help all of Purity's children, but at least I could save Rebecca.

Good investigators know that the solution to the crime of murder is to be found in studying the victim, so it was imperative that I begin interviewing Solomon's widows and children, not to mention his friends and business associates. Unfortunately, secrecy reigned in Utah's polygamy communities. There was a good chance, too, that many of my suspects might be moving soon. As I had learned in the community meeting at Prophet Davis's house, Solomon's wives and children would soon be parceled out to new homes, perhaps even to other compounds far from Purity. Somehow I would have to find a chance to talk to them before they dispersed.

A sharp movement caught my eye and I looked up again to see the red-tailed hawk plummeting toward the ground, its wings folded close to its body. As it dove into the canyon, I lost sight of it for a second, but then I heard a shriek, followed by sounds of a struggle behind a creosote bush. The hawk rose again, a bleeding prairie dog struggling in its claws.

My own quest felt as hopeless as the prairie dog's struggles. Given the difficulty of my task, there was a good chance that I might fail for the first time since opening Desert Investigations. But then I remembered Esther, the good mother, sitting in her cell while her daughter was in danger of being returned to the compound. Prophet Solomon might be dead, but I had no doubt that Abel Corbett, in exchange for some favor or other, would eventually hand her over to another old man. No matter how bleak my chances looked here, I couldn't give up. I had to save Rebecca, and if possible, do something to help the other little girls in the compound.

I was so deep in thought that I almost walked into Meade Royal.

“Sister Lena?”

My shriek sounded like the prairie dog's as I jumped back from the concerned-looking teenage boy in front of me.

“Sister Lena, are you all right?” In close up, Meade Royal's blue eyes were even more startling, the resemblance to his beautiful mother more stunning. He had a small rifle nestled in his arms, but since I'd heard no shots, I guessed he had just begun his hunt. Good. I'd already seen enough blood for one day.

I checked my dress quickly to make certain my skirts were all the way down and my buttons buttoned. Meade may have been little more than a child, but as I had seen, they started early here.

“Just daydreaming, Brother Meade. By the way, I thought Prophet Davis locked up all the guns.”

He tried to form a look of disapproval on his angelic face, but it didn't work. Try as he might, he still looked like a Renaissance angel, albeit a disapproving one.

“I told him I wanted to hunt some rabbits so he let me have this. Regardless of what the other people think, my brother's a reasonable man. But what are
you
doing in the canyon? Have you no duties at home?”

The real Lena Jones would have smarted off to him, metaphorically spanking his uppity butt, but I reminded myself that the real Lena Jones was on hiatus. I forced a subservient smile.

“I finished the cleaning and cooking,” I lied. “But the dust…I needed some fresh air. I, uh, suffer from asthma.”

The disapproval vanished from his sweet face, and the concern returned. “I'll tell the Circle of Elders to pray for you. But the canyon's a dangerous place for a woman to be alone in, and I don't want you walking around down here by yourself. Come, let me take you home.”

Before I could protest, he shifted his rifle onto his left arm, hooked my arm with his other, and began marching me back to the compound. Bemused, I allowed myself to be led. After all, this presented another interview opportunity. “Meade, why should it be dangerous now? Isn't your father's killer in custody?”

He gripped my arm even tighter. “You're not safe. There are, ah, other people about.”

I raised my eyebrows. Did he mean whoever was gunning for Davis? “Oh?”

I was wrong.

“Indians,” he said.

Purity's casual racism had been apparent from the beginning. Many of the Arizona Strip's polygamy compounds received an surge in population when the official Mormon Church changed its policy to admit African-American males to the priesthood, and Purity had been no exception. I wondered how Meade would feel if he knew that my partner and closest friend in the world was a full-blooded Pima Indian.

“What Indians?” I asked.

“Paiute. They're not friendly.”

I tried not to laugh. Most Native Americans were friendly enough once you took the trouble to know them, but they were very protective of children. I doubted they bore any more love for the polygamists than the polygamists did them.

I gave Meade a grateful smile. “Thank you for the warning. I feel so safe with you! Perhaps you could tell me exactly where they live so I'll be extra careful not to go near them?”

He eased the pressure on my arm and slowed his step. “If you take the road northeast past the graveyard, and follow it for another four miles, you'll eventually see their village. They're in the canyon a lot.”

“Hiking?”

He looked baffled. “Hiking? No, they hunt, just like I was doing when I ran into you. Other times they come down here to practice those pagan rituals of theirs. They went to court once to get the canyon taken away from us, saying that it was part of their holy ground, or some such nonsense.”

I forwent the comment that Indians' holy ground always seemed nonsensical to certain Anglos. The proximity of the Paiute village to the compound sounded promising. Maybe one of them had seen something. For now, I pretended to be guided by a boy so innocent of the world that he didn't realize how many Indians wore Nikes, carried cell phones, and went to Christian churches on Sundays.

“Thank you for warning me about their pagan ways, Brother Meade. I certainly wouldn't want to fall into the hands of the ungodly.”

As we walked back to the compound, I peppered him with questions, and for a while he even answered them. Yes, his sister Cynthia was unhappy, but conforming to God's wishes brought the only true happiness, not chasing after individual dreams. No, he wasn't aware of any major falling out between Prophet Davis and the Circle of Elders. At least not until this morning's announcement.

“Prophet Davis is a godly man,” he assured me.

Then I remembered that Meade and Davis shared the same father. I asked him about that.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I'm the youngest son and he's the eldest, but we had different mothers.”

“Was Prophet Davis's mother at the meeting?”

“Sister Lucy died many years ago. I never knew her.”

“Did she get sick? Or was it an accident of some sort?”

“From what I hear, she died a few days after he was born, so our sister mothers raised him.”

“Sister mothers?”

“Father prophet's other wives.”

That was one good point about polygamy, at least. Their children seldom wound up in foster homes; they were just sent on down the line to new mothers. But I wanted more details about what medical care, if any, Sister Lucy had received. As we climbed the path out of the canyon and started through the mesquite grove that led past Davis's house, I asked a question I already knew the answer to. “Did she go to the hospital?”

“Of course not,” Meade answered. “The Circle of Elders prayed over her, but God called her home…”

“To the Highest Heaven,” I finished for him.

He shook his head. “Oh, no, not to the Highest. Davis was only her first child so she didn't have time to bear more children. Only Great Mothers achieve Highest Heaven.”

Which the old crone in the classroom had made so clear. Before I could censor my words, I blurted, “That doesn't sound right, Meade. It's not fair that the poor woman didn't get her proper heavenly reward just because she died before she could throw a whole litter.”

Meade gasped. “That's a wicked thing to say, Sister Lena! A good woman is an obedient woman. She doesn't question God's ways.”

And a good woman should be slightly south of smart, I wanted to respond, but by then, I'd gained control over my mouth.

As we crossed Prophet's Park, a woman emerged from the clinic. In another environment, I'd have put her at thirty, but I'd learned the constant pregnancies the women endured made them appear older than they were. The woman's dishwater-blond hair, pulled tightly into a bun, did little to flatter her blunt features, but her rounded belly was proof that her husband, at least, found her desirable. As she hurried away from the clinic, I noticed something else. One of her legs was noticeably shorter than the other, making her gait resemble a series of ungainly hops.