Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned (8 page)

Red rock and sand covered the approach, and as they gained elevation, the sagebrush and prickly pear cactus began to share the terrain with juniper trees, their trunks like braided rope and their crowns a mass of twisted, half-dead branches. They stopped the car when they saw the Toyota 4x4, parked where a dry wash cut the road in two. Upon climbing out, Jacob had scanned the canyons, looking for a likely way in, and so it had taken him a moment to notice, with a shock, that he recognized the truck.

He squatted and ran his hand around one of the tires, looked back at the tracks faintly visible in the hard-packed, sandy soil, and
then asked Miriam, “How long has this been here? What’s your best guess?”

She walked along the tracks, feeling them with her hand. “Not long. Maybe this morning, but no more than a day or two.” She straightened. “It’s a good sign.”

“It’s a terrible sign,” Jacob said. “What’s my father doing up here?”

“Even if he still owns the truck, it might not be him,” she said. “Could be one of your brothers, or even one of his wives. Someone working for Taylor Junior who needed four-wheel drive to get close enough to hike in.”

“So a traitor. Even worse.”

“But if you’re sure this is his truck, then we’re in the right place. It’s no coincidence, that’s for sure.”

“Look, there’s some kind of a trail here,” David said.

Shoe and boot prints marked the sand in a path toward the cliffs. There was no official trailhead or cairns of stone to mark the trail as Jacob would have expected had they belonged to backpackers setting off into the wilderness area.

“Looks like we’ve got our trail,” Jacob said.

It took some time to make sure water, sleeping bags, and cook gear had been secured to the backpack frames, to slather on sunblock, and finally to consult compasses and maps, but soon they were off. Jacob adjusted his hat against the baking sun. Felt like it was already into the nineties, and it would only grow hotter. A trickle of sweat worked its way down his side, then rolled in drops down his temples and finally soaked his chest and back.

Ant mounds punctuated the desert floor, surrounded by bare patches, denuded of every plant or twig. Just outside one colony,
a horned lizard sat in the shade of sagebrush, lapping up the ants that came too close. It lay motionless as the hikers approached, camouflaged like a stone against the sand, and if Jacob hadn’t seen that quick movement for ants, he might have missed it.

“You okay?” Miriam asked David when he started to flag thirty or forty minutes later. She’d shed her prairie dress for jeans, hiking boots, and a long-sleeved shirt. She wore a scarf over her head.

“I’m fine,” he grunted.

“How is your headache? Need some aspirin?”

“I’ll be okay.”

Nevertheless, he fell farther and farther behind until they reached the end of a stretch of slickrock where Jacob had kept his focus on the trail, studying the occasional patch of sand to see if he could see footprints. He turned to see David downhill, just starting onto the bare sandstone, his head bent away from the sun, his pace sluggish. Jacob and Miriam waited in the shade of a rocky fin that extended from the mountain to rise some twenty feet high on their left side. From here, the burnt red sandstone looked almost orange.

“We should have left him home,” Jacob said. “He’s in no shape for this kind of hiking.”

Miriam had slid out of her backpack. She lowered the water bottle from her mouth and shook her head. “No way. I can’t take that risk.”

“He wouldn’t have been alone. There are plenty of women at Zarahemla who could keep an eye on him while he regains his strength.”

“He’s an addict. If he wants to backslide, he’d find a way to lose them.”

“He could lose you, too,” Jacob said as he shrugged out of his own backpack.

“Not out here he couldn’t.”

David arrived at last, panting and unbuckling his pack. Jacob, already rested from waiting, had been ready to keep moving and waited reluctantly while his brother gulped at a water bottle.

“That’s one way to reduce pack weight,” Jacob said. “But we might not find more water until evening, so take it easy.”

David guzzled away.

Miriam had a pair of binoculars to her eyes, looking down at the two trucks, still depressingly close, and said, “I’ll share mine if he runs out.”

Jacob pulled his map from a side pocket on the pack. There was something called Poison Springs ahead, which didn’t sound promising. Probably one of those alkaloid things that killed cattle. But at least a couple of the side canyons looked to have creeks that would still be running this early in the summer.

They continued on their way, moving more slowly as the trail grew steeper. During the steepest part, it was almost like climbing stairs. David continued doggedly, without complaint, but at a creeping pace. Above the slickrock, the vegetation changed again. Juniper surrendered to scrub oak and ponderosa pine. Birds let out series of whistles, high calls, and lazy burring songs. At last, some shade. The desert released its infernal heat with the higher altitude, but Jacob knew this presaged a cold night.

Suddenly, Miriam grabbed Jacob’s arm, then turned to signal David to be quiet. Jacob didn’t hear anything at first but the sounds of the high desert, and was about to say something when a voice
caught his ear. He strained, and a moment later heard it again. A man’s voice.

“What is it, the enemy camp already?” David asked in a low voice when he arrived a few moments later, blowing like a spent horse. “I thought you said it—”

“Shh,” Miriam said. “I don’t think it’s the camp.”

“Me either,” Jacob said. “We’re still too close to the highway. They have to be deeper in.”

“They’re coming this way,” Miriam said. “Listen.”

Jacob heard a woman’s voice now, too. She said something in a commanding voice. “We need to get off the trail,” he said.

“Where?” David asked.

Jacob looked around. This part of the trail snugged against a rocky ledge on their left for at least fifty yards forward and back. The right side was a steep slope of loose scree and scrub, with the occasional pine clinging to a ledge as it descended into the valley.

“If we turn around, we’ve got to cross that meadow before you get back to the slickrock,” David said. “And even if we get past the meadow without being spotted, once we’re down on that slickrock, they’ll see us all the way back to the truck.”

Jacob came to a sudden decision. “Keep going. Might be something around the bend. A boulder or slot canyon or something.”

Miriam produced a gun from a side pocket of her pack. She pointed the gun down and away from the trail while she slid in the magazine. “I’ll go first.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

He decided not to argue. “Keep the gun down. Don’t make any sudden gestures, and whatever you do—”

She cut him off. “Let’s all stick to what we know. You negotiate, I’ll assess the threat. David, that means you stay out of the way. Come on, let’s make a run for it.”

They continued forward, to where the trail bent around the spur of the mountain into what increasingly looked like a canyon, based on what he could see rising above the current ledge. Jacob could no longer hear the voices, but they might have been muffled by his own wheezing and the clank of pans and other gear shifting around in his backpack. His legs throbbed.

And they came around the bend and found themselves face-to-face with two people, who drew up in surprise. One was a man about Jacob’s height, but with gym-built muscles, shoulders bulging out of a tank top, with a long-sleeved shirt tied around his waist. He wore shorts. The other was a woman, hair tied back, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Her hair was short, but he didn’t immediately take her for a gentile, like the man. Both wore backpacks, but smaller day packs, rather than the camping packs carried by the other three.

The two groups stood some twenty yards apart, neither making a move. The woman whispered in her companion’s ear and he nodded.

Miriam turned her head to face Jacob. She’d tucked the hand with the gun behind her back, underneath the backpack. “Look at the woman.”

His gaze turned back to her face. He blinked in surprise.

Sweat and dirt smudged her face, and she wasn’t wearing the tailored pantsuit, heels, and makeup that had given her such a glamorous appearance the day she’d appeared at Zarahemla, claiming
to be looking for a daughter who’d been lured into the cult of Caleb Kimball. But her hair was the same brown with highlights. Now that he looked at it, he wondered if her natural color might not be blonde or even auburn, based on her complexion.

“I have to admit, I’m surprised,” he said in a loud voice. He left his companions and crossed half the distance toward the other two people. “Allison Caliari. Do you still go by that name?”

Of course, this wasn’t the real Allison Caliari, the mother of the girl Eliza had rescued from a pit in the desert. Eliza had escaped with Madeline and the boy before Caleb Kimball could burn them alive with the rest of his followers. And then Madeline’s mother had shown up, the real Allison Caliari. She was not this woman.

The woman shrugged. “You can call me Rebecca.”

“Rebecca?” He rolled it over on his tongue. “That’s a good biblical name.”

“Maybe. So what?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t hear it before. I was distracted by your act. It was pretty good, almost as good as what Sister Miriam can do.”

Miriam snorted.

“Hear what?” Rebecca asked.

“Your accent. The real Allison Caliari was from New Jersey and you don’t hear that much around here. I started comparing it to how you speak. You’ve got a little Utah in your accent.”

“Let us pass,” the woman said. “We don’t want trouble.”

“You don’t? Come on, Rebecca. Why would someone come hiking in this wilderness unless they were looking for trouble? What are you doing with my father’s truck?”

She opened her mouth as if she was going to deny it, but must have thought about how silly that would appear. “I needed a four-wheel drive. He let me take it. I didn’t tell him where I was going.”

“Sure, because my father would never ask questions. Anyone can walk in off the street and borrow whatever. Even gentiles. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Let’s go,” Rebecca said. She nudged her companion, and the man led the way down the trail toward the other three. The man’s face hardened as he sized up Jacob.

Miriam stepped forward. “I’d stop if I were you.”

They drew short, and without looking, Jacob could tell Miriam had taken out the gun.

“We’re armed, too,” Rebecca said. “Do you really want a shootout?”

“It wouldn’t be a shootout, because you’d never reach your guns,” Miriam said. “I’m former law enforcement and I know what I’m doing.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“You should also be aware that I’ve killed people before,” Miriam continued. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

“Come on,” Jacob said to Rebecca. “Let’s be reasonable. You step back and Miriam will lower her weapon. We’ll sit down and talk and you can tell me what you’re doing here, who is up there, and what you’re doing for my father.”

“No,” Rebecca said after a moment, her tone cool, her posture relaxed. Her companion didn’t look so certain. “But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do so there will be no mistake,” she added. “We’re going to walk past. If you step to the side of the
trail while we pass—over by that tree—we’ll be out of each other’s way. Nobody will make any sudden moves. Got it?”

“I can’t let you past,” Jacob said.

“It doesn’t matter, because we’re going. If anything happens to us, it will be murder. You’ll have to live with that on your conscience. Ready? We’re coming.”

And because there was nothing to do besides either offering weak threats or carrying them through—which was even more unthinkable—Jacob, Miriam, and David stepped to the side, by the tree, just as Rebecca had instructed. The other two approached with their hands out, nonthreatening. They edged sideways to get by on the trail.

Jacob clenched his jaw in frustration as they passed. When they’d disappeared around the next bend, Miriam slapped out the clip and checked the chamber of her gun, before putting it all back in her backpack with a scowl.

“Now what?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” David said. He was pale, but it looked more like exhaustion than fear. “Really, it doesn’t change anything. We were on our way up to spy out the Kimball camp. This doesn’t change that.”

Miriam got out the binoculars and scanned the mountainside ahead of them. “It might, if that woman is working with the Kimballs and there’s another way to get to the camp. She might go around, warn them that we’re snooping around. Wreck our truck while she’s down there so we have no way to get out. Then we’re cooked.”

“You saw that guy in the tank top and shorts,” David said. “He’s no Mormon. And she’s no polygamist, either, whether she’s
from Utah originally or not. Is Taylor Junior so hard up for henchmen that he’d bring in gentiles?”

“I’d agree,” Jacob said. “But the same argument goes for Father, too. Why wouldn’t he send Stephen Paul or Elder Smoot and his sons? But she’s driving Father’s truck. What are the odds that he didn’t know exactly where she was going and why?”

“So your father is working with the Kimballs now?” Miriam asked.

“That cunning bastard, what’s he up to?” David asked.

“No,” Jacob said after a moment of reflection. “Father is one of the most righteous men I know.”

“Righteous?” David said with a snort. “Guy wanted me to OD on heroin to prove a point.”

“I don’t mean he’s always
right
. Or that he never resorts to underhanded tactics. But he has a sense of right and wrong, and his actions have a certain internal consistency. He’d never work with the Kimballs.”

“Then how do you explain this?” Miriam asked.

“I don’t know,” Jacob admitted. “I need to ask him. And I want some answers about what happened to Eliza and how she ended up at the dump. I’ll bet he knows about that, too.”

Rebecca had pretended to be Madeline Caliari’s mother so that Eliza would go to Caleb Kimball’s desert compound. And if Father had been working with this woman, did that mean he’d known what would happen to Eliza? Caleb had tried to rape Eliza, had thrown her in a pit to starve. She’d almost
died
out there. Did Abraham Christianson know about that?