Desert Lost (9781615952229) (13 page)

“What's that you just put in your shirt pocket?” I asked.

“Heather's phone number. We're going out tonight.”

“Oh, for god's sake.”

“She's from Chicago.”

“And she's probably bat-shit crazy.”

“Because she's from Chicago?”

“Because all the women you've ever been attracted to are nuts. Jimmy, you are so predictable.”

“Am not.” To the waitress, who'd just arrived and who also seemed smitten with his dark good looks, he said, “I'll have my usual, the Spicy Basil Tofu.”

Point proved, I switched my own order from lettuce wraps to Evil Jungle Princess, whatever that was. Chicken, as it turned out, in a coconut cream-based sauce, topped with straw mushrooms and mint. Thanks to Warren's and Madeline's broadening influences, I'd become quite the gourmet as long as I didn't have to cook. Lunch would have been more enjoyable if Jimmy hadn't kept up his insistence that he accompany me to Kachina Storage that night and my fence-side meeting with Darnelle. Finally, more to shut him up than anything else, I relented.

“You'll have to stay inside the storage locker. Darnelle's probably paranoid about adult males, especially the dark-skinned kind.” White supremacy remained a core tenet of polygamy culture, and from the alarmed look I'd seen Darnelle give Hispanic shoppers at Frugal Foods, I doubted she'd escaped the brain-washing. “I'll rig the camera so you can monitor our meeting. If she tries to strangle me through the fence, you can run out and rescue me.”

I smiled.

He didn't.

***

My irritation with Jimmy grew when, just after sundown, he showed up at my apartment wearing a holster. Through the side slits I saw the dull gleam of metal. “What the hell's that?”

“Glock 29, ten-round magazine.”

“Are you insane?”

“Just used to working with you. Speaking of pots calling kettles black, that's no water pistol in your vest pocket, either.”

“Thirty-eight revolver, big deal. Besides, I know how to use a handgun. You don't.”

“That's what you think.”

Madeline, who'd been listening to this exchange while sifting through her slides in preparation for tomorrow's gallery appointments, said with alarm, “I can't believe you're both walking around with guns.”

I tried to reassure her. “Everybody's packing in Arizona, don't you remember?”

“Not really.”

Sensing another argument on its way, I turned to Jimmy. “You ready, cowboy?”

He slapped his holster. “As always.”

We didn't talk much during the next couple of hours while we waited inside the storage unit for Darnelle to make her appearance. Around us, the Katchina activity continued as if the sun hadn't yet set. The potter peddled her foot-powered wheel and the garage band clanged away, as hopelessly out of tune as ever. The pregnant woman returned, and after spending half an hour shuffling through boxes in her unit, emerged with an armful of baby clothes.

I'd rigged up the camera and mike again, this time taking care they didn't protrude by so much as a hair into the compound. While I was reasonably certain that Darnelle wouldn't chance the meeting until everyone inside the house was fast asleep, I wanted to be prepared for anything. Maybe the camera would catch Ezra doing something he shouldn't, even though he knew spying eyes could be upon him; he was that arrogant.

The last light in the house flicked off around midnight, long after the Kachina activity had died down. Darnelle didn't make her appearance on the monitor until after almost two, but the full moon lit her image well enough for me to see her clearly. She clutched a tattered robe around her, which couldn't quite hide her lush figure; her unrestrained dark hair flowed almost to her waist. Before constant child-bearing had taken its toll on her body, she might even have been beautiful. Now the hint of a shadow at her jaw line made me wonder if Ezra liked his sex rough or if Opal's fists had been busy again. Relieved that Rosella and her daughter had escaped the strictures of compound life, I left a grumbling Jimmy to monitor the action and tiptoed over to the fence.

A soft breeze swept the compound yard, rattling through the oleander leaves. The family must have eaten a late dinner, because as I knelt down, I smelled hot grease and fried meat, a combination that clashed badly with the lingering taste of Malee's Evil Jungle Princess. Pushing aside the oleander stalks, I whispered, “Darnelle. Over here.”

When she approached the fence, the silvery moonlight revealed tears on her bruised face. A new scent floated over to me. Sex. One of the men had recently used her.

“M…Miss Jones, p…please h…help my son.” Her quaking voice was almost unintelligible.

“Who did that to you? Ezra? Or Opal?”

“P…Prophet Shupe.”

I was so surprised it took me a moment to respond. “Hiram Shupe is here? In
Scottsdale
?” To my knowledge, the Prophet seldom came to the Phoenix area, preferring to confine his globe-trotting to his more isolated satellites, which were many. His private jet, supported by state money because of its supposed “educational purposes,” allowed him to oversee his various satellites' finances and fertilize his dozens of wives.

“Answer me, Darnelle. Why is Prophet Shupe in Scottsdale?”

“I don't want to talk about him, just my son. Please. You gotta help my Clayton. He ain't got nowhere to go and he can't take care of himself and I've heard what happens to the boys who got to leave and…”

“Tell me about Prophet Shupe, Darnelle.” But it was like telling the night to roll back.

“…make it on their own, terrible things happen to them boys, terrible things, oh I'd die if somethin' like that happened to him oh you got to help him I can't live without my sweet boy he's so helpless he won't last a week oh please…”

I let her continue her litany until she'd run down, but as soon as she'd exhausted herself, I tried again. “Help me help him, then. I can't do that unless…”

“All my boys are gone now except for Clayton he's all I got left oh Miss I'd…I'd…I'd die for my little Clayton.”

“We'll talk about Clayton in a moment, but first, tell me why Hiram is here.”

She gave me a stunned look. “Why d'you care about anythin' the Prophet does?”

Because I knew enough about Hiram Shupe to know that he wouldn't bother personally about the fate of one seventeen-going-on-eighteen-year-old boy. He'd make Ezra, the leader of his God Squad, take care of that problem. Something much bigger had to be happening in Scottsdale, something that Hiram Shupe believed needed his personal oversight.

“You tell me about Shupe and I'll help your boy. Deal?” I would help Clayton regardless, but she had no way of knowing that. “Now again, why is he here?”

“The Prophet…he…” She swallowed. “He says he's reassigning me and Josie again. That's why I got to get help for my boy
now
. Before I'm sent away!”

Reassignment
. One of the more unsettling of polygamy practices. Since the women and girls were the property of whatever prophet happened to be reigning over them, they were used as barter. When a man pleased his prophet, he was rewarded with the prettiest women, even if they were already “married” to another man and had children by him. The practice operated in reverse when a man displeased the prophet; his wives and children were taken away and reassigned to the current prophet-pleaser. As always, the women's wishes were irrelevant; the same for their children, who were never allowed to speak to their biological fathers again.

“Was Opal reassigned?”

Darnelle shook her head. “She's stayin' with Brother Ezra.”

The fact that Ezra was losing the two more attractive women and keeping only the sixty-something harridan, meant that he was being punished. Because he'd murdered Celeste? That made no sense. Beating a wife into submission was an accepted practice on the compounds, and if a man “corrected his wife too strenuously”—as beating deaths were defined—the woman was blamed, not the man. After all, if she'd been an obedient wife, the husband wouldn't have been forced to “correct” her in the first place.

For the first time, it occurred to me that Darnelle might not know that Celeste was dead.

“What's Ezra being punished for?”

Darnelle shook her head. “The men don't tell me nothing.”

“You must have some idea.”

“Maybe it had something to do with Celeste 'cause as I was washin' dishes I heard Prophet Shupe in the other room yellin' at Brother Ezra about something in the newspaper and he was blaming him for not controllin' his people and now we gotta do somethin' fast about Clayton 'cause…”

“That ‘something in the paper.' Do you know what it was?”

“I ain't got time to read.”

“Let me ask you this: when's the last time you saw Celeste?”

“A week ago? She musta got reassigned.”

“Was anybody mad at her?”

“Opal was, 'cause she took her car keys away. Mine, too.”

I'd already known that only Second Zion's most trusted sister-wives would have made the move to Scottsdale. It also followed that any woman thus trusted would have access to car keys, if only for shopping purposes. Rosella had never been that trusted; when she escaped Second Zion, she'd done it on foot.

“When did this happen? The business with the keys.”

An exasperated sound. She was becoming impatient with this line of questioning. “'Couple a months ago. We used to take turns doin' the shopping, but Opal decided we were taking too long. Especially Celeste. So now Opal's the only one of us sister-wives allowed to drive the van. Why do you care?”

“Because someone beat Celeste to death.”

A gasp. “I don't believe you!”

“I found the body, Darnelle.”

She began to weep again, but not with the same urgency as the tears she'd cried over her son.

“Darnelle, do you think Ezra killed Celeste?”

“Don't know don't know don't know but she's dead and Clayton's gonna be too if they run him off so please…”

Her fingers reached through the chain link fence in supplication. Moved, I covered them with my own. Hers were cold. “Tell Clayton I'll help. That I'll…” I thought fast. “That I'll find a place where he'll be safe.”

“When? Prophet Shupe says Josie and me got to go up with him to Second Zion next Monday and that's…that's the day before Clayton turns eighteen and if you can't do something before then…” Her voice rose to a wail.

I tried to shush her, but Darnelle was beyond caution. As her wails continued, frightened nightbirds took flight. It wouldn't be long before she woke the people in the house.

“Lower your voice,” I cautioned. “I'll pick Clayton up tomorrow at the work site. What does he look like?”

“Dark-haired like me. And he…he's the smallest of them in the work gang, smaller even than those two fourteen-year olds.”

“Tell him what I look like and to be on the alert for me, and to do whatever I say. And tell him, if he can, to be either the first or the last person to come out of the van when it gets to the work site. That'll give me the best chance of getting his attention without anyone noticing. Have him look for a white Toyota pickup. And I'll be wearing…” I thought for a moment. The polygamists had seen me as a blonde, and also in my mouse-brown wig. “I'll wear a red wig.”

At this assurance, some vestige of sense crept back into Darnelle's panicked eyes and her sobs diminished. “But I don't know where Clayton's gonna be working. Like I was tellin' you, the men don't tell me nothing.”

“I'll follow the work van.”

In a sensible world, no one would mind if I took custody of a boy who was due to be dumped onto the streets, anyway, but the polygamists' world wasn't a sensible world; they were all about control. Sometimes there was a good reason for such control, too. Boys dumped too close to the compounds might find their way back. Look at what had happened to Jonah. Living in a city so near his mother had led to him being a murder suspect. Not that the polygamists cared about a lost boy's welfare, but Prophet Shupe probably cared plenty about the attention Celeste's death had garnered. It hit me then that Shupe was punishing Ezra because he'd been foolish enough to expel Jonah only a few miles from the Scottsdale compound instead of driving him up to Flagstaff or down to Tucson.

Ezra wouldn't make that mistake again. Clayton was probably destined for Flagstaff, or maybe even Salt Lake City. In the meantime, Prophet Shupe would pocket yet another paycheck for the boy's illegal labors.

My promise to save Clayton calmed Darnelle further, so I pressed her again about Ezra's possible role in Celeste's murder. “Did she do anything to anger Ezra? Besides the slow shopping problems?”

“I don't know.”

But Rosella had told me that Celeste had frequently taken her side against the all-powerful Prophet so why would the woman act less rebellious against the less powerful Ezra? When I mentioned my doubts, Darnelle shook her head.

“Celeste always did everything Brother Ezra told her to do. Even that shopping thing, she said she didn't realize how long she was taking, that she'd just got caught up reading all those different labels. And that she was sorry. The only person who stayed mad over it was Opal.”

I wasn't ready yet to narrow the suspects to Opal. “Is it possible something was going on between Celeste and Ezra that you didn't see?”

“Them walls is pretty thin, Miss Jones. If there was a fight, I'd know it. Besides, nobody fights with Brother Ezra. Not if they don't want to get beat up.”

“It didn't have to be an actual fight, just something that might make Ezra lose his temper and maybe hit her harder than he usually did.” According to Rosella, Celeste had been so sympathetic to her sister-wives she'd helped a few escape from Second Zion. A possibility occurred to me. “Did you confide your worries about Clayton to Celeste?”