Desert Wives (9781615952267) (17 page)

“That, coming from you? Come on, Lena. You of all people should know that women can be battered half to death and still go back to their abusers. Have you forgotten the Clarice Kobe case already? But whatever was going on in Karen Berkhauser's mind, whatever she suspected, it became irrelevant pretty soon. She was dead within the year.”

My stomach started doing the herkey-jerkey. “What did she die from?”

“Death certificate says heart attack. At home. Saul was the only one there when it happened.”

People die from heart attacks all the time, nothing suspicious in that. What made me uncomfortable, though, was that many different modes of death—not all of them natural—could mimic a heart attack. Poisoning, for instance. Smothering.

“Was there an autopsy?”

“I didn't find any record of one. But listen, that's not all I've found, Lena. Virginia Lawler? Not that I think you're in any danger from her, but it seems that she once had a fourteen-year-old daughter who married a guy in the compound. Guess who?”

I felt overwhelmed by the onslaught of bad news. “You're going to tell me Virginia's daughter married Prophet Solomon, aren't you?”

“Right on, Sister Lena.”

I remembered the dinner conversation at West Wind Ranch, when Saul had mentioned that the Lawlers had a “dead child.” At the time, I'd thought he meant a
little
child, not a marriage-age woman. Although come to think of it, those words were frequently synonymous in Purity.

“What happened?”

“Her name was Alice and she died ten years ago. Her death certificate says she died due to a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.”

Ectopic pregnancy, when the egg became fertilized while still in the Fallopian tube. The only way to save a woman who'd developed such a condition was immediate surgery, but as I'd seen, Prophet Solomon didn't believe in doctors.

“Lena, that's not all I have to tell you about Virginia.”

“It can't get any worse.”

“Wanna bet? When Solomon Royal married Alice, he was already married to Virginia! Solomon was Virginia's second husband, Lena. Her first husband, Alice's father, died in an accident.”

If the situation hadn't been so sick, it would have been funny. Not only had Virginia been Solomon's wife, she'd been his mother-in-law at the same time! What was that old country song, “I'm My Own Grandpa?” No wonder Virginia didn't like discussing her dead child.

“Oh, crap, Jimmy.”

He began listing the Purity men with child molest convictions in other states, and I recognized several names from the community meeting. None surprised me. Raise a boy believing a thirteen-year-old girl is a viable sexual partner and what could anybody expect? With such child molestation supposedly sanctioned by God, over the years Purity had become a virtual sanctuary for child molesters. No wonder the men turned over all their money to the prophet without a whimper. It was
protection
money.

“Any more?” I asked, after I'd taken down the final name.

“One piece of good news. You asked me to hunt around and see if any of my folks down here on the Pima Reservation knows any Paiutes up there. My great-uncle Arnold used to be good buddies with a guy named Tony Lomahguahu. He's one of the old-timers but he's still got all his marbles. Anyway, we called the rez and Mr. Lomahguahu is willing to meet you around nine o'clock tomorrow at the Purity Cemetery. You know where that is?”

“Yeah, it's not too far from where I used to camp while waiting to grab Rebecca.”

“Mr. Lomahguahu seemed real interested when we told him about you. He's no fan of the Purity crowd.”

“Tell him I'll be there. Now, anything more?”

“Murder, fraud, animal dismemberment, child molest. Nah, that's all.”

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, or some such damned thing. That's what my Baptist foster parents used to tell me, anyway. We chatted some more, then just before I hung up, I asked about Miles Alder and learned that yet another fire had broken out at the tire storage facility.

“This may be the beginning of the end of Miles' arson career, though,” Jimmy said. “They caught him at the scene with second degree burns on his hands, reeking of gasoline. The police booked him into the Madison Street Jail.”

I smiled for the first time that day. “Being kept out of temptation's way may save his life. It was just a matter of time before the kid went up in flames himself.”

“Then I'm sorry to tell you his dad bonded him out.”

When would parents learn? I hung up the phone, feeling sick for more reasons than one.

“Bad news?” I hadn't heard Virginia come back into the office, and now she stood over me, a concerned look on her face. How long had she been standing there?

I made sure she'd closed the office door behind her. “Virginia, why didn't you tell me that your daughter was one of Prophet Solomon's wives? And that you were, too? Considering everything, I find that an interesting omission.”

She paled, and sat down heavily on the sofa. I didn't join her. Given what I now knew, I wanted as much distance between us as possible.

“I'm dying to hear your side of the story,” I said, my voice sounding dangerous even to me.

She sighed. Or was it a sob? “I was
raised
in Purity!”

“That's your excuse for sending an innocent fourteen-year-old into the bed of a convicted child molester?” My hands shook so badly I dropped the pencil I'd been clutching.

Her lower lip quivered. “You don't know what it's like, livin' the way I did, being raised up like that. Your life's been too different from mine.”

Right, just one party after another. “Then why don't you explain it all to me.” I wanted to rip her eyeballs out and shoot pool with them.

She winced, as if she could read my mind. “Life at Purity was normal life to me, so I didn't think nothing about what was going on. Dale married me when I was thirteen and I had Alice the followin' year. I thought it was what God wanted me to do.”

“When did Solomon enter the picture?”

“When a tractor rolled over on Dale and killed him. I was fifteen by then and Alice wasn't quite one year old. The Circle of Elders gave me to Solomon because Dale owed him some money and I turned out to be part of the repayment package. I didn't know about his problem with kids, I swear! When Alice turned thirteen and he told me he wanted to make us an even closer family, it just didn't sound all that strange to me. Not then, anyway.”

She paused a moment, then added, “Lena, when everybody's told you all your life what's right and what's wrong, you never learn how to figure it out for yourself.”

The office door opened and Leo came in, carrying a stack of papers. He took one look at our faces, and said, “Who died?”

Virginia gave him a despairing look. “Lena found out about Alice.”

Leo threw the papers down on the desk and joined his wife on the sofa, putting his arm around her. “So what? You were a different person then.” To me, he said, “You know what the Paiute say: walk a few miles in somebody's moccasins before you judge them.”

I snorted. “You don't have to be a bull to know bullshit when it stinks.”

He gave me a hard look. “When I met Virginia she'd been living in that hell hole all her life, hadn't read much other than her schoolbooks and that lunatic Solomon's ravings. She hardly knew up from down. But since then she's done what she could to make up for her mistakes. You wouldn't even be here if it weren't for Virginia.”

Urged by her husband, Virginia told me the rest of the short, ugly story.

After three months of marriage, Alice became pregnant. Two months later she was dead. Half-crazed from grief, Virginia left Solomon's house one night and began walking up the dirt road. The next day, dehydrated and filthy, she reached the gas station at the highway junction, where Leo had just finished filling up his truck. He knew by her clothes where she had come from, so he drove her into Zion City and left her at the battered women's shelter run by a local church.

“She was so sad, so pathetic, I couldn't get her out of my mind,” he said. “When I ran into her again a year later, it was like meeting a different person.”

As soon as I trusted my voice, I said, “Virginia, you had one hell of a motive for killing Solomon Royal.”

She looked me straight in the eye. “I never killed that man.”

That's what all murderers say, isn't it?

I tried to act normal on the ride back to Purity but from the looks Saul threw in my direction, I knew I'd failed.

“You're awful quiet,” he said, after we'd covered more than ten miles in silence. “Your partner tell you anything interesting?”

“Not much.”

“C'mon, Lena. You haven't been yourself since we left Virginia's. I've heard more conversation from rocks.”

While we barreled along the highway the arid landscape slid by with all the charm of the surface of the moon. I wondered how I'd ever found it beautiful. This was truly a no-man's land, filled with nothing but dried brush, sand, and rocks. Here and there, the desperate green of a prickly pear cactus added some color to the vegetation, but other than that, everything was beige, beige, and more beige. If the sky hadn't been blue and the nearby cliffs a fiery scarlet, I could have believed the hand of God had reached down and sucked all the color out of the land in Divine retribution. I was just thinking that my Baptist foster parents might have been right when they told me God punished the world for its sins when Saul pulled the truck over to the shoulder and stopped.

“What's wrong?”

I searched for a usable lie, but for once, came up empty-handed.

Saul settled back in the seat. “You found out about Micah and Karen, didn't you? And you've already tried and convicted me. Funny. I expected better from you.”

I could probably have bluffed my way out of it, but what would be the point? If we were going to have a physical confrontation over this, I'd rather have it near the highway. Saul was no spring chicken and I figured I could handle him unless he was armed, and I'd never seen him carry a gun.

“My partner ran an Internet search on everyone in the compound and, yes, your name came up.”

He didn't say anything for a few seconds, then burst out, “Goddamn computers are going to be the death of us all!”

A Dodge van passed us, going in the opposite direction. Just the knowledge that we were still on a public highway comforted me. That and my .38 strapped to my thigh under my dress. “Saul, is that all you have to say?” I figured it would take no more than two seconds to lift up my skirt, unsnap my holster, and pull my gun. Yeah, I could handle him.

After taking a few deep breaths, he said in a tight voice, “I didn't kill Micah, Lena. The Salt Lake police believe an old business associate of his killed him in retribution for a deal gone bad.”

I took a few deep breaths of my own. “Then why didn't they arrest him?”

“Because he was killed in a head-on collision on I-80 before they could.”

“How convenient.”

The smile he attempted didn't quite come off. “I can't help that, Lena. And as for my wife, we'd been having some trouble, I'll not deny that. Yeah, she had an affair with Micah, but I didn't hold it against her. She'd finally become tired of my own running around and decided to show me how it felt. She was never in love with him.”

“She
left
you.”

His knuckles grew white as he clutched the steering wheel. Another van passed, a Japanese mini of some sort, followed closely by two pickups, both American-made. “Remember, she came back.”

“Only after Micah died.”

“She'd have come back anyway.”

“So you say.”

“Right. So I say.”

Only fools and self-servers pretended to know the probable actions of dead people, and Saul was no fool. “Did Karen show any previous symptoms before the heart attack that killed her?”

Saul shook his head. “She'd never been sick a day in her life.”

That gave me a brief moment of hope. If Saul had killed his wife, wouldn't he try to convince me that she'd been ailing for some time? Then again, maybe not. Maybe he believed it was more important right now to impress me with his “honesty.”

He tried again. “Lena, if I was a killer, do you think I'd be stupid enough you bring you to Purity and actually let you live at my house? Wouldn't I try to stay as far away from the police as possible?”

Staying far away from the police was exactly what Saul had done for years. He'd left Salt Lake and moved to Purity, where the populace had lived outside the law for more than one hundred years. He might have stayed there, too, except for the land grab Solomon Royal and the Circle of Elders made on his house. Maybe he thought my investigation could somehow prevent that, so was willing to take the chance.

Which raised another point. “Tell me something, Saul. Would the women's situation in Purity bother you half as much if the Circle of Elders wasn't trying to get your house?”

He didn't answer right away, but when he did, it wasn't convincing. “The one thing has nothing to do with the other. But the real question, Lena, is—do you still trust me enough to go back to Purity with me, or do you want me to turn around and drive you to Virginia's? Your wish is my command. It's all up to you.”

I didn't have to think about it. Another thing Jimmy told me before we hung up was that Esther's legal maneuvering had finally failed, and she was due to be extradited at the end of the week. Now that I'd seen firsthand how bad things really were for women in Purity, I couldn't take the chance that Rebecca would be brought back to the Arizona Strip, where her father would probably try to find her another husband.

“Take me to Purity,” I said.