Eliza and Jacob swapped cell phones. “It only cost twenty bucks,” he said, “so you can ditch it without a second thought. And there’s nothing on the phone to identify you. Fernie and I have the number, plus Sister Miriam and Allison Caliari. Nobody else.”
She tucked it into her pocket. “Thanks.”
“Call me when you get there and every day after that.”
“I’ll call you when I get there, if I can. But these guys sleep in dumpsters and eat trash. They don’t carry cell phones and if I’m going to blend in, I can’t either.”
“You need to check in, Liz. You know I can’t let you go if you don’t.”
“I’ll find a place to stash it. Let’s say twice a week until I’m out.”
He frowned.
Eliza put a hand on his arm. “You’ve got to trust me. I’ll find a way to let you know I’m okay, but it’s not going to be every twenty-four hours.”
At last, he nodded. “I’m just worried,” he said as another dodgy-looking kid made his way past them and onto the bus. “I wish I could tell you not to be afraid, that there’s nothing to worry about, no real danger. But that would be a lie.”
“I’ll sit up front by the driver.”
No smile. She was surprised at how nervous he looked. “You know what I’m talking about. Those guys on the bus are about show, about looking like they mean business. The people you’re trying to find don’t need to show anything, but they’re ten times as dangerous. People have died in there, Liz.”
“Thanks, that’s comforting.”
“My point is, only idiots aren’t afraid of danger and you’re not an idiot. So you’ll be afraid. You can deal with that.”
“I’m waiting for the part where you say something encouraging,” she said. “As in, ’you can do it, Liz!’ or something like that.”
“Of course you can do it. But you already know that. Listen to me. Being brave is about
acting
brave, that’s all. Like you did with Father. You looked him in the eye and you acted like you weren’t intimidated. But I knew your heart was pounding and you didn’t want to lift your hands because you were afraid they’d tremble.”
Just then, the bus driver leaned out, and said, “You ready? We’re rolling in two.”
“Coming,” Eliza said. She turned back to Jacob after the man disappeared back inside. “You’re right, I was nervous. But anyway, that’s different, Father is…difficult. These people are nuts. And Caleb Kimball…he scares me. I’ll bet he’s nuts, too.”
“You don’t know that, you don’t know anything about them.”
“Of course they’re nuts. Look at what they’re doing.”
“We’re nuts too, to anyone who isn’t from a polygamist family,” Jacob said. “You don’t know if they’re crazy or sane, sincere or cynical, so be prepared for anything. But what you do know is that you’re stronger than anyone you’re going to meet in there. Even Caleb Kimball.”
“Am I?”
“Of course you are. If I didn’t think that, there’s no way I could send you to Vegas, let you track down David on your own, find this group and infiltrate it, knowing they might try to kill you. I can only do that because I know you’re stronger and smarter and more resourceful.”
“There we go,” she said. “That’s what I was looking for. Maybe you should have started with that part.”
“And let you get cocky? I don’t think so.” He gave her a hug. “Get David, get the girl. Then get out.”
“I won’t stay one minute longer than I have to.”
She had watched him staring at the bus as it pulled out of the station, then pulled out the cell phone Jacob had given her and called Allison Caliari. “I just wanted you to know that I’m on my way to Las Vegas to find your daughter.”
“Oh, thank god. Thank you. When you see her, tell her I love her. If she can just come home, we can figure this out.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Eliza, be careful.”
There had been something odd in her voice in that last part. A concern apart from the worries about her daughter. Eliza had the distinct impression she’d been watching a play and now heard the actress behind the curtain, talking to someone as she exited the stage. It was odd and she didn’t know what to make of it. In any event, she had other worries at the moment.
Now, standing alone in the Las Vegas bus station, Eliza gathered her courage, put a confident expression on her face and hailed a taxi. Now came the hard part.
#
David was in such pain and needing something to kill that pain that he didn’t notice that someone had broken into his house. A cast immobilized his right arm past the elbow, he had stitches on his forehead and his ribs ached with every movement. Angry bruises covered his shoulder and chest and his face was puffy and yellow-black. His left eye still wouldn’t open fully.
Steve at Yost Deliveries had taken one look at him when he’d shown up at work two days after the attack and said, “I knew it, you rolled the truck, didn’t you. Jeez, dude, you couldn’t bother to call?”
“No, that’s not what happened.” He’d carefully worked out what to say next. “I was on the sidewalk downtown, standing too close to the curb. Some drunk clipped me with his bumper and dragged me half a block.”
“What? Really? Then the truck is fine?”
“Thanks for caring, man.”
Steve had backtracked, asked about his health and all that. And then still fired him. Never mind that David had been in the hospital, unable to call, fighting for his life against internal bleeding. No, what mattered were the irate customers, thousands of dollars worth of produce baking in the back of the truck, and that David would be busted up and unable to drive for two weeks.
And so David took a taxi home from the yard, slumped in the back seat, his head pounding, body aching in a dozen places, and shakes working through his hands. As the taxi pulled away, he dragged himself from the curb, squinted against the sun, then staggered into the house. He had to get to the bathroom, see if he could find something.
They’d given him Oxycontin at the hospital, but he’d gone through a week of pills in the first twenty-four hours. He needed something stronger, something to hammer down the pain. He thought about his meth guy, and the other stuff he carried. The brown stuff, the kind you delivered with syringes. That was just the thing to knock down the pain. But he’d told himself he wasn’t going to do it again.
Hands shaking, he emptied the bottle of aspirin in the sink, trying to find a little green pill hidden at the bottom. Nothing. Also nothing at the back of the lower drawers, not even an old joint. He put a hand to his temple and leaned over the sink, thinking he was going to be sick. He’d call Meth Guy, see about the heavy stuff. What choice did he have?
The bathroom door opened behind him. He turned in a panic. The sudden movement hit him with a blackening wave of vertigo and he fell, grabbing at the edge of the sink at the last moment to keep from cracking his skull on the side of the tub. His arm with the cast whacked painfully against the floor. The intruder was already on top of him. He lifted his good arm to shield his face.
“No, David, no. It’s only me.”
Gentle hands on his. He looked up to see his sister Eliza standing over him and he was so overwhelmed with relief that he let out a sob.
“Oh, no,” she said as her face fell. “What happened to you?”
“I was mugged for some lettuce.”
“Lettuce? What? Is that slang for some kind of drug? No, never mind. Come on, let’s get you out of here. Can you stand up?”
She helped him into his bedroom. He fell back on the bed while she pulled off his shoes. “I’m sorry for scaring you like that. I got tired of standing around in the heat, waiting for you to get back, so I broke in. One of the windows in the basement wasn’t latched down and I forced it open.”
“But how did you find me?”
“It wasn’t hard. Once Father gave us your fake name, Jacob found the address in about twenty minutes digging around on the internet.”
“Father? Why would he help?” He couldn’t muster any anger.
“He’s removed his edict. You’re not banned from Blister Creek anymore.”
“Really? Is he here? Jacob, too?”
“No, just me. Get under the covers. I’ll be right back.”
She returned with a glass of water and some pills. “I cleaned up the aspirin in the bathroom and I found some Tylenol. That will work better. Here, take these.”
He stared at the white tablets in her outstretched hand. The Tylenol looked about as helpful as Tic-Tacs.
“It’s okay, don’t worry. I know the bottle says take two, but I figure a third won’t hurt this once. You look like you could use something extra.”
How about three bullets to the head instead? That ought to do the trick.
But he took the Tylenol and washed them down with water. His empty stomach clenched when they went down and he bent over, feeling ill. Eliza ran to the kitchen and brought back a big bowl, but the moment passed. As he sank into the pillows, she returned with a hot washcloth, which she dabbed against his forehead. She found the bag he’d brought from the hospital and changed the bloody gauze above his eye. David wanted to cry.
A deep aching loneliness had seeped into his bones since seeing Eliza at the Girlz Club in Mesquite. What was he doing? Did he want to live like this? And now he had this demon with its claws into him, this demon whispering that maybe heroin was the answer.
It’s okay,
it whispered.
You’re busted up. Just for now, just to help with the pain. You’ll just dip and dab a little, give it up once you feel better.
Except he wouldn’t give it up. As broken down as he was, once would be enough. And then the demon wouldn’t just have its claws in him, it would climb into his veins and he’d never get it out. And in spite of knowing that, David also knew that if Eliza were to leave now, and Meth Guy were to show up with the hard stuff, he would happily take that first hit.
She daubed at his forehead again. “Tell me about Madeleine Caliari.”
He opened his good eye and squinted up at her. “Who?”
“Madeline Caliari. She’s twenty years old, from Oregon.”
“Never heard of her.”
“How about Benita Johnson? How do you know her?”
David opened both eyes this time and forgot his pounding head. “What? Who are these people and why do you want to know?”
“That one you do know. I can see it on your face.”
“Dammit, Liz.”
“Language, please.”
“Okay, language. Right. Gosh darn it all to heck. Jumping Judas on a pogo stick. What the flying fetch are you asking all these questions for? There, is that better?”
“Please, David. I need to know how you know Benita Johnson.”
“And here I thought this was a mercy mission.” He sighed. “Yeah, I know BJ. Met her at a party. She gave me meth. No big deal. We hung out for a while, then she disappeared. I thought she’d run off with some dealer, or maybe jumped in front of a bus. She’s got a nasty self-destructive streak. Yeah, worse than mine.”
“Are you really doing crystal meth? I thought it was just marijuana. Oh, David, how could you?”
“Easy, when you’ve got nothing to live for, you don’t care anymore. But yeah, it was the meth that got me beat to hell last time. Drug deal gone bad, a bit cliché, don’t you think?”
“And this time? Same thing?”
“No, that was BJ’s new friends. She’s found a new crowd to run with. No idea who, but they’re some mean SOBs. They robbed my truck, apparently just for the hell of it, then practically beat me to death. I have no idea why.”
“I do. It’s an eschatalogical religious sect.”
“Oh, yeah. End-of-the-world nutters. Well, that figures.”
He told her about the biblical verse on the side of the panel truck.
“Revelation 8:10,” Eliza said. “That’s the third angel, Wormwood burning from the sky, right?”
“More or less. Damn, I can’t figure out how BJ got caught up in that. I think she came from a hardcore Baptist family, but she didn’t seem religious to me. More like trying to destroy herself in bits and pieces.”
“Kind of like you, then.”
“Funny, I never thought of that before,” he said with a touch of sarcasm.
And yet, wasn’t it true? Wasn’t half his self-destructive behavior caused by this worm of doubt that he couldn’t cough up? A feeling of despair and failure, worry that he really had caused all the problems in his life, that if he’d only stayed faithful to the gospel he would have stayed in the church. Instead, he’d strayed, been thrust into the Lone and Dreary World as punishment. And it was his own fault. He was damned already, so what did it matter?
Eliza must have been reading his thoughts. She leaned over and put a hand on his cheek. It felt cool against his burning skin. “You can come back. You know that, right?”
“There’s no way, not with everything I’ve done.”
“There’s nothing you can’t repent of,” Eliza said, “and forgive yourself, too.”
“Really? Nothing? Let me tell you a few things, you’ll see. My first day in Nevada, I met a coked-out hooker. Neither of us had any condoms. I was only sixteen. She—”
“Please, it doesn’t matter. You made a mistake, you were young. I made mistakes when I was young, too.”
“Sure you did, Liz. What, you said a naughty word? Drank a Pepsi? Let me tell you what I’ve put in my body, then you’ll see.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” she said. “Neither does Jacob. He loves you, I love you, we’re your family. Whatever you’ve done, you can turn it around.”
“And Father? Does he love me, too?”
“Father doesn’t matter. Jacob confronted him and broke him down.”
“What?” David blinked. “How is that even possible? Is Father that weak now? He isn’t even that old.”
“It wasn’t Father, it was Jacob. You haven’t seen him lately or you’d know. Come back, David.”
“Liz, you have no idea where I am right now. Even if I wanted to, it’s too late, I’m too far gone.”
“It’s never too late.”
He didn’t have the energy to continue this argument. “Who is Madeline…whatever her name is?” he asked.
“Madeline Caliari. She’s been sucked into this religious group and I promised I’d get her out.”
Eliza explained about the girl’s mother and the other parents who had been searching for their kidnapped—or, rather, brainwashed—children. About the three kids who’d died already. And Eliza’s own plan to find the group. She had printed up a bunch of fundy Christian tracks from the internet and was going to stand on a corner near the UNLV campus, handing them out, until she drew someone’s attention.