Desert Lost (9781615952229) (5 page)

At Fredonia we gassed up the SUV again and turned west on the narrow blacktop paralleling the Vermillion Cliffs, a border-hugging stretch of red rock that had become home to the California condors released by wildlife sanctuaries. But more dangerous creatures than the near-extinct birds lived in the cliffs' shadows.

The last time I'd been in polygamy country was to help a woman accused of murder and rescue her thirteen-year-old daughter from a forced marriage to a sixty-eight-year-old man. By disguising myself as the second “wife” of a disillusioned polygamist, I had been able to experience the lifestyle's sins firsthand: arrogant prophets, young girls battered into submission, genetically-damaged babies, and—unbelievably—the collusion of women who served as capos for their masters.

A shadow, perhaps of a condor flying between us and the dimming sun, passed over the Santa Fe.

“Lena, haven't you been listenin'?”

I started. “Huh?”

“You were a million miles away.” Rosella flashed a sympathetic smile. “I was tellin' you about Celeste and all she did for me.”

Giving her my full attention, I said, “Back in Phoenix you said she'd helped you escape the compound. Why would she do that? What would have been her motivation?”

“She just wanted to help, that's all.”

“Are you sure she didn't have an ulterior motive?” If so, it probably wouldn't have been jealousy. The few photographs taken of Prophet Hiram Shupe showed a near-anorexic scarecrow with the height of a basketball player but none of the grace. His cavernous face was devoid of any hint of compassion. His pale eyes, which his followers believed could look straight through the clouds to God himself, revealed madness. Just thinking about him gave me the willies; heaven only knew how he'd terrified the young Rosella. Or for that matter, poor, murdered Celeste.

“She knew I was miserable so she helped me escape, and yeah, she did it out of the goodness of her heart. Stop bein' so damned cynical.”

“You actually confided in a sister-wife?” A dangerous thing to do in the compounds, where information could be used as ammunition.

“Celeste was the kind of person you could tell anything to. Maybe she was only two years older than me, but she was real motherly. More than Prophet Shupe's other wives, anyway. The morning after, um, after my wedding night, she helped clean me up. When I stopped crying, she told me it would get better, to stop trying to fight him off because that kind of thing just made him rougher. She promised that as soon as I got pregnant, he'd start leavin' me alone.”

I thought about that for a minute, one woman counseling another to lie back and submit to repeated rape. “How long did it take for you to get pregnant?”

A trembly sigh. “Almost a year. But I stopped fightin', and she was right. He wasn't so rough after that, and at least he was quick. After a while I learned to think of other stuff while he was…Well, it got almost bearable.”

“Almost?”

The hard edge returned to her voice. “Prophet Shupe was a pig.
Is
a pig. If it hadn't been for Celeste, I don't know how I woulda survived. Celeste had a way of, oh, I don't know, making me see the lighter side of things.”

The lighter side of rape?

“I helped her take care of her babies, and when KariAnn was born, she helped me, too. And the both of us, we helped with all the other kids. I never saw a woman who loved children more than Celeste did, so it wasn't all bad. We had ourselves some laughs, me and her.”

Just one big, happy, dysfunctional family.

“Prophet Shupe really liked her,” Rosella continued. “Not me, so much. It took me too long to get pregnant.”

I remembered Celeste's dead face. She'd been pretty enough, although not as pretty as Rosella. But physical attractiveness wasn't the most prized quality on a polygamy compound. Fertility was what really mattered.

Brushing a stray hair from my black wig out of my face, I said, “You said she was two years older than you. She already had several kids when you left?”

“Four, includin' a set of twins. And she was pregnant again.”

Celeste would have been sixteen, which meant that she'd begun having children at the age of twelve or thirteen.

“She was lucky in another way, too. Most of her kids was girls.”

Bouncing baby boys grew into adult problems on polygamy compounds. When they entered their mid-teens, the boys learned the flip side of polygamy: if one man had ten wives, nine men would go without. The few young men chosen by the prophet to receive multiple wives were among the lucky minority. The prophet ordered the others—almost always undefended by their mothers—bussed out of the compounds no later than their eighteenth birthdays, when they were no longer eligible for welfare payments and their use to the community was at its end. Undereducated and unfit for modern life, boys as young as sixteen were dumped in Salt Lake City, Flagstaff, even Phoenix. A few were lucky enough to make their way to rescue missions; the majority endured short and brutal lives on the street.

Celeste had been pregnant with a boy when she'd been murdered, which made me wonder how many boys she'd previously produced. I started to ask, but my question was cut short when Rosella veered the Santa Fe so sharply onto a gravel road that I had to brace myself against the dashboard.

“Just about two miles down here is where we're supposed to pick the girl up,” Rosella said. “At that deserted mining camp up against the cliffs.”

By now it had grown so dark I couldn't see her face. “I thought you said the call came from St. George? We haven't crossed the Utah border yet.”

“We can't make the pickup at her house 'cause the caller's got kids of her own and doesn't want to endanger them. She said she'd be waitin' with the girl at the camp. No problemo, because that's the same place I just picked up those two runaways, Patience and True, on Tuesday night. Maybe it ain't the greatest location, but at least it's not one of the canyons. Those things scare the crap out of me.”

When I'd rescued a runaway from one of the area's steep-sided canyons, it had necessitated picking my way between boulders and rattlesnakes, so I understood her fear. Nodding my agreement, I settled back against the seat. The sky was inky, and now that Rosella was using running lights only, the gravel road barely visible.

“You sure you can see where you're going?”

“I was raised here, remember? Second Zion is three miles north. As the crow flies.”

“No crows out tonight,” I observed, steeling myself for yet another jerk as she steered the Santa Fe through a washout. “For God's sake, Rosella, slow down. One more bump like that and I'll lose a filling.”

“Whiner.”

But she eased off on the gas pedal and we sat in companionable silence until we reached the camp, a ragtag collection of falling-down buildings and rusted machinery that loomed like ghosts against the night. When she turned off the Santa Fe's running lights, I saw no car, no nervous woman, no runaway. Just the flitting shadows of bats diving at insects.

“You sure this is the place?”

“It ain't quite seven, and I told the woman I'd get here sometime between seven and eight.”

I have nothing against bats, but the idea of spending another hour in their company didn't thrill me. Especially not with Prophet Shupe's armed-to-the-teeth God Squad headquartered so close by. Plus, up here in the higher desert, the temperature was probably in the low thirties, and my vest wasn't doing a very good job of keeping me warm. But I sat back against the seat, prepared to wait it out.

“Wanna stretch your legs?” Rosella smiled at me through the dark, her long wig draped around her face like a blood-red shawl. But she still looked like Rosella, as pretty as she was tough.

“No. And you shouldn't either. You don't know what's out there. We need to stay in the car until they show up.”

Ignoring my advice, Rosella opened the car door and stepped out, her breath misting white against the night. “Come on, Lena. The air's great. Fresh. Not like that Phoenix sludge. Up here you can really smell the desert.”

The note of sadness in her voice revealed that she sometimes missed her former life, the wide open spaces speckled with wildflowers and sage, the Vermillion Cliffs marching across the state line, the eagles, the condors. To me, all that beauty had been irrevocably stained by vicious prophets and their brainwashed followers.

“Get back in the car, Rosella.”

A low laugh, caught by the wind and carried toward the Utah border. “Nothing out here but the night. I'm walkin' over to that shed. I used to play here with my brothers. It looks like somebody's boarded it up, but not real good. C'mon. Come see.”

Uncomfortable with her wandering off alone, I hopped down from the SUV, but only after patting my vest pocket to make double-certain my .38 revolver was still there. The night, although cold, was stunning. Out here, miles from any city lights, the stars blazed, and the Milky Way created a speckled white sky road. As I gazed in admiration, a meteor dove toward the horizon, then disappeared into the badlands. Would it smash into the earth near us, or was it still hundreds of thousands of miles away, fooling our eyes as it passed on the other side of the Vermillion Cliffs?

I pulled my vest closer, not that it did much good. The wind was brisk, making the mining camp's old boards creak and clatter. Usually this far from civilization, coyotes would be calling to one another, but not tonight. It seemed as if they themselves had declared the area off limits.

Which was odd, because coyotes loved to sniff and paw through ruins like this, where mice and other small prey could hide. So why…?

“Rosella,” I whispered. “We need to get back to the car.”

She either didn't hear me or pretended not to, just kept walking toward the rickety shed that blocked the mine's entrance.

“Rosella! Now!”

I hurried forward and grabbed her by the arm, prepared to force her into the SUV. As I spun her around, the door to the shack exploded outwards, followed immediately by the stench of sulfur, the sound of a shotgun blast.

Rosella pitched forward.

Chapter Six

Men's voices raised in triumph. More than one. Two, maybe three.

“Got the bitch!”

“Don't let that other one get away!”

“God's will be done!”

Ignoring the rapidly-approaching shadows, I dove toward Rosella. Her wig had fallen off and lay sprawled near her outstretched hand. Not bothering to check out the extent of her injuries, I grabbed her by the collar and began dragging her toward the Santa Fe. She wasn't a small woman, so the trip, peppered with the blasts of shotguns and rifles, seemed to take forever. When a streak of fire raced across my arm I knew I'd been hit, but there was no time to cry out in pain, no time to do anything other than switch hands and get her to the shelter of the bulky vehicle.

Fortunately, I'd left the passenger door open, and strengthened by an adrenaline rush, tumbled Rosella inside. I pulled the door shut, then climbed over her into the driver's compartment, where I saw she'd left the keys dangling in the ignition. Head low, I started up the Santa Fe and slammed it into reverse, desperate to put as much distance between us and the gunmen before I needed to stop and turn around. The continued twang of gunshot against metal alerted me that the car was being hit, but the average vehicle can endure a lot of firepower before a lucky hit ruptured the gas tank. Even then, a car might not blow.

Then again, it just might.

When I'd reversed far enough away, I shifted into drive and spun around. I hadn't yet heard a car, but common sense told me that our attackers hadn't hoofed it from Second Zion to the mine. With all need for secrecy gone, I flipped on the Santa Fe's brights, spewed a hailstorm of gravel, and barreled back down the road the same way we'd come. With Rosella hurt, even the most reckless speed meant relative safety. I had to get her to a doctor. The hospital at St. George was her best bet, and it had the added benefit of lying in the opposite direction of Second Zion. And maybe, just maybe, on the way we might encounter a patrolling DPS officer who would see me driving like an idiot and pull us over.

Prophet Shupe's God Squad hated real cops, but they were too cowardly to pull their guns on one.

Just as I began to think we might make it to the highway without further incident, a pair of headlights appeared in our rearview mirror. Then another pair. Two vehicles. The God Squad, gaining fast. I pressed harder on the accelerator only to be rewarded by a fishtail spin as the Santa Fe left the road. While we bumped over a scattering of rocks and brush, I forced myself to ease up enough to straighten the car out, then steered it, one-armed, back onto gravel.

How far was that damned highway?

Distance is easy to gauge in the city. At night, stoplights mark off intersections, and the reflected glow from store windows makes even the darkest asphalt glimmer. It's different in the badlands, where the only light comes from the moon and stars. Every now and then a creosote bush, caught by our headlights, appeared to move toward us, but it was merely an optical illusion. What
was
moving toward us—and fast—were the headlights in our rear view mirror.

“Rosella? Speak to me.”

Nothing. A quick glance to the side proved that she remained in the same position I'd dumped her in. Was she still alive? I bit back a sob. If necessary, there would be time for tears later, but for now I had to reach that hospital. Then…

Well, then whatever would happen would happen.

I drove on into the darkness, thinking about Rosella, about KariAnn, about all the terrified girls who'd fled Second Zion on foot hoping to elude their pursuers. Some had made it. Some hadn't.

“Rosella?”

Still nothing.

Just as I was about to call to her again, the highway abruptly appeared at the top of a rise less than a hundred yards ahead, lit by a slow-moving sedan. I blasted onto the blacktop, horn wailing, and hooked a hard left around the car. Too focused to make the call myself, I flashed my headlights on and off, hoping the driver would grab his cell phone and alert 9-1-1 that some crazy was loose on the road.

As the car's headlights dwindled behind us, I tried rousing Rosella again. “Speak to me, woman!”

Finally, a groan. She was still alive.

Almost gibbering with glee, I said, “We're headed to the hospital at St. George, so hang in there.” I couldn't see any blood, but that meant nothing; the Santa Fe's interior was too dark. My brief flicker of happiness disappeared even further when another check in the rearview mirror revealed two pair of headlights careening around the sedan. Our attackers remained in full pursuit.

But I knew this highway well. Clear blacktop to the Utah border, over the ridge, then a smooth descent into St. George and at the edge of town, the Dixie Regional Medical Center with its fully-staffed and well-guarded emergency room. Even Prophet Shupe's God Squad wasn't crazy enough to follow us there. Praying that no coyote or antelope would wander onto the blacktop ahead of us, I hit the accelerator again until we topped ninety and the old Santa Fe began to vibrate. The sedan's headlights dropped back, but our pursuers stayed with us as we crossed the Arizona/Utah border. Mere yards on the Utah side, I saw a flash, then heard another shotgun blast.

The Santa Fe's rear window shattered and a snowstorm of powdered safety glass brushed my face.

Not bothering to look back, I stomped on the gas pedal again until my foot could go no further and, despite the Santa Fe's shuddering, the speedometer nudged past one hundred. Our speed remained constant until, at the top of a hill, we went airborne. I muttered a prayer the tires wouldn't blow when we landed, but somehow they held. After a brief hesitation, the Santa Fe lurched forward again, miraculously still facing into the general direction of St. George. I steadied the steering wheel and finally chanced a look in the rear view mirror. Our pursuers still dogged us but the Santa Fe couldn't go any faster.

Almost as much for my comfort as hers, I started talking to Rosella again, even though I doubted she could hear me above the road noise and wind. “Just another couple of miles, girlfriend, and we'll be there. A cakewalk. Hey, I see lights! Houses! A gas station. More cars. Maybe
real
cops!”

Rosella groaned again. “Uhn, Lena?”

“Present and accounted for,” I gabbled.
Was the God Squad gaining?

More groaning. Then a curse scalded my ears. Ignoring the headlights in my rear view mirror, I chanced another glance at Rosella. She was trying to sit up.

“Jesus, what happened?”

“We got shot. And Shupe's God Squad is right on our ass, so get the hell back down.”

No dummy, she ducked her head. “Was that…? Yeah. I heard a noise and then I remember fallin'. If you're taking me to the doctor, don't bother. Nothing wrong with me that an aspirin can't cure.”

“The whole rescue operation was a set-up, Rosella. Prophet Shupe's God Squad was waiting for us, with guns.” Another look in the mirror showed me that our pursuers were gaining. No point in telling her, though. “We're making good time, no doubt about that. Flying. Literally.” I stifled a giggle, because the Santa Fe
had
flown for a moment. But it wasn't built for this kind of rough riding, and I was pushing the old heap far beyond its capacity.

I slowed to take a turn, hoping the other vehicles would slow, too. They didn't, and the space between us closed dramatically.

“We're almost there. I can even see the hospital in the valley. Big, bright parking lot. Ambulances. People.”

“Hospital? Are you nuts? Like I told you, I got me one hell of a headache, but that's all. I must've bumped my head when I fell.”

“I took a bullet in the arm.”

“And you're
drivin'!
?” As alarmed as she sounded, she didn't try to sit up again, just stayed hunched over. “For God's sake, how bad is it? You need me to fix a tourniquet? Here, I got a belt…”

I looked down at my left arm. No rivulets of red, just a few spatters against my beige vest. My wound probably wasn't serious. “Not necessary.”

“But
shot?
Damn, Lena!”

“I've experienced worse.” I still carried that bullet in my hip, courtesy of the drug raid that ended my career as a police officer.

Our pursuers drew closer, then just as it appeared they planned to chase us down the hill right into town, the headlights dropped back and disappeared. Had they turned on one of the many side roads that led back to Second Zion? Or had the men switched off their lights and were running in the dark, waiting to sneak up on us if we slowed down? I took no chances. Never allowing the Santa Fe to drop below ninety, I sped all the way down the hill to the St. George city limits before easing up on the accelerator. As it was, I blew through a red light—narrowly avoiding getting T-boned by a Volkswagen—and took the next intersection on two wheels.

“You're gonna kill us both,” Rosella muttered, scrunching even further down into her seat. “Then we'll need an undertaker, not a doctor.”

“Think positive.” Slowing even further, but not so fast as to propel her through the windshield, I rocketed into the hospital's parking lot.

***

As emergency rooms go, Dixie Regional's was relatively tame. A coughing child hovered over by a protective mother; a drunk with a bloody nose; a pregnant teen grimacing through either labor pains or a panic attack; and several people with assorted bumps and bruises, none seemingly serious. Amidst all this discomfort, nurses performed a relaxed triage, but when Rosella barreled through the door yelling, “My friend's been shot!” the tempo changed.

Two nurses rushed toward me at the same time a doctor stuck his head out of a green-curtained cubicle. “Put her in three!” he ordered.

Over my protests, the nurses hustled me down the hall and into another cubicle, Rosella following hard behind.

“This is nothing,” I said. “She's hurt worse than I am. Look at her head.”

The nurses ignored me. Before I could stop them, they hoisted me onto an examining table, slid off my vest, then cut away the bloodied remnants of my long-sleeved black tee shirt. After a brief look at my arm, the ER doc, an acne-scarred hulk who looked like he'd gone a few rounds with the pre-prison Mike Tyson, agreed with my own self-diagnosis.

“It's just a graze,” he proclaimed. “You lucked out, lady.”

He applied a topical anesthetic and some dressing, and the wound's fire died down. The scratches I'd received when the Santa Fe's rear window exploded inward weren't serious, either.

“Once those scratches heal, you'll still be prettier than me,” the doc said. “But it looks like you've been shot before. That scar on your forehead…” At my expression, he changed tacks. “Mind telling me who used you for target practice this time?”

“I have no idea.”

He gestured toward the opening in the curtains. “Maybe the deputies out there can jog your memory. In the meantime, a broken nose in the next cubicle is calling my name. But after that, I want to see your friend. These so-called ‘bumps' can be more serious than they first appear.”

With that, he pushed his way past two very large sheriff's deputies. Rosella, who had stayed by my side throughout the bandaging, cursed under her breath.

Here was the problem.

The law in Utah was pretty much the same as in Arizona: help a minor escape from one of the compounds and you were guilty of custodial interference and/or kidnapping. By driving to a Utah hospital, where the staff was mandated to report any gunshot wound to the authorities, I'd delivered Rosella into the lion's den. Although tonight we hadn't broken any Utah laws, after checking our Arizona I.D., the deputies might fax a copy of their report to Arizona. Given both states' animosity toward anyone who tried to help polygamy runaways, Rosella could find herself in big trouble.

ID check accomplished, the deputies began their interview.

At first I played dumb. The bright lights of the ER helped, as did the bustling of nurses, hurrying to wherever nurses hurry, doing whatever nurses do. But under the deputies' persistent questioning, the dumb act failed to work. So I began to lie.

After spinning a yarn that I hoped wasn't too outrageous, I finished, “Like I said, officers, we were just driving around sightseeing when some stupid hunter shot at us.”

The taller deputy looked at me skeptically from under the brim of his Smoky Bear hat. “Sightseeing. After dark.”

I shifted around on the examining table. Why did they make those things so uncomfortable? “Well, dark is when the bats come out. We love bats. The area's covered with them.”

“Would that be
leptonycteris curaasoae
or
antrozous pallidus
?” asked the shorter deputy.

“Uh, both.”

Deputy Tall's skepticism matched his partner's. “Did you have any teenage girls in your car when you and that Santa Fe outside got shot up by these so-called hunters?” He must have recognized Rosella's name, not that surprising a development, since she was infamous up here.

Rosella, whose relations with both Arizona and Utah officials had always been testy, spoke up in a tone that was snippier than was wise under the circumstances. “No we didn't have any underage passengers. Like my friend here told you, the whole shooting thing happened in Arizona, anyway,
not
in your jurisdiction. Why give us a hard time?”

Deputy Short looked irritated, but Deputy Tall's frown eased up. “Does that mean you don't want to lodge a formal complaint?”

Rosella opened her mouth to answer, but when I nudged her with my knee—hard—she closed her mouth again.

“That's right, officer.” My tone was more cordial. What could we testify to, anyway? That an unknown number of men fired an unknown number of rounds at us? And that, no, we couldn't identify our attackers?

Deputy Short put his notebook away. “We still have to file a report. Especially since we already checked out the Santa Fe and found a red wig on the floor. Your own black one's on crooked, by the way. Seeing as how it's not Halloween, it kinda looks like you two were in disguise. Any reason for that?”