The Righteous (27 page)

“My brother will stop you.”

Gideon smiled as he drew back. Was that uncertainty behind that smile? The man nodded to Israel and the grip tightened once more about his throat.

“And now, Enoch Christianson,” Gideon said in a low voice, “Having violated thine covenants, thy breast shall be cut open and thine heart and vitals shall be torn from thy body and given to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. May thy soul speed rapidly unto its final reward. Or, in this case, its eternal punishment.”

#

Jacob drew in his breath as the pieces fell into place.

He’d read about the murdered woman, but the gruesome details and the occult-like symbols of the Jupiter Medallion painted on the wall had distracted him. Made him believe, as had the police, that the killers had consumed the woman’s baby in a black mass.

They had not killed the baby. That had been misdirection, and an effective one, aided by the gruesome murder of the baby’s mother. Of course the police would take the note at face value. He had.

But the truth was, the baby had never died. Jacob would consult the article, but certainly the child had been a girl. As would have been the other two children. They had kidnapped the children and brought them to Zion to improve the breeding stock. Instead of adopting the children of drug addicts and prostitutes—as his father had put it—they had kidnapped the daughters of academics and scientists.

He remembered what Fernie had told him. Amanda had disappeared to Denver six months into her pregnancy, just when she’d have started to show through the loose-fitting, ankle-length dresses the women of the church wore. Premature labor, supposedly, requiring bed rest out of sight of her sister wives. And then she’d come back from Denver with a baby.

It was so obvious, now. Sophie Marie didn’t look like a Kimball. Dark, curly hair, a different complexion. They’d said she looked like Amanda’s brother, killed as a child. The human mind searched for patterns and found them where they did not exist. In truth, she was not related to Amanda Kimball in any way.

But how had they convinced Amanda to take the baby? Maybe Elder Kimball had scorned her for being infertile, had threatened her if she didn’t go along with the plan. Or maybe he had told her this was a gift from God. An abandoned child. Infant Moses, found among the bulrushes in a basket.

Whatever the reason, she hadn’t known the horrific truth. Until one day, perhaps when she was in Cedar City with her sister wives, she had seen something on television or caught a glimpse of a magazine. Maybe she had seen the Jupiter Medallion, its symbols marked on the walls of Sophie Marie’s murdered parents’ house. She had thought of her unexpected gift, and the pendant worn around her husband’s neck. Amanda Kimball had done her research.

And there had been similar cases in New Mexico and Los Angeles. Prominent academics who had lost their lives and their infant or unborn daughters. Jacob thought about their names, “Stein, Feldman, Rosenberg.”

Jewish names. That would be no coincidence. The Church of the Anointing was a covenant people, chosen by God and set apart, as He had set apart the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And so each member of the church must be adopted into the House of Israel to receive his or her inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom. In the church, this usually meant the House of Ephraim or the House of Manassah. Outside the church, only the House of Judah had the same claim on the Lord.

That they were scientists, high IQ individuals, both mother and father, was similarly no mistake. What better way to improve the intellectual foundations of the church than to adopt—if butchery and kidnapping merited the word adoption—females from a proven genetic heritage?

Jacob knew what they had done. All he needed from Enoch was names.

The time came to present Eliza to the veil. They had to shift their robes from the left to the right side preparatory to receiving the signs and tokens of the Melchizedek Priesthood. They had to form a prayer circle, and then approach the veil to be admitted into the Celestial Room and the symbolic presence of the Lord.

The veil was a sheet that hung between the ceiling and the floor and divided the Terrestial Room from the Celestial. It had holes placed to perform handshakes and other tokens through the veil; these holes matched the signs of the compass and square on the temple garment itself.

Jacob wore a robe that draped over his right shoulder, a sash around his waist and a hat on his head that looked something like a baker’s cap. Everything was white except for the green apron embroidered to look like a cloak of leaves; it represented the apron worn to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness as the Lord drove them from the Garden of Eden.

He stopped Stephen Paul as they made their way to the veil. The man was about to slip through the veil to play the part of the Lord. “I know what I told you,” Jacob said in a low voice. “But I need you to present me at the veil first.”

“But nobody is on the other side.”

“Actually, yes, someone is. My brother. Enoch.”

An immediate frown. “The Lost Boy?” He kept his voice low, but it was angry. “You let an
apostate
into the temple?”

“He let
himself
in.” Jacob decided to take a risk. “It’s about Amanda Kimball.”

Stephen Paul’s frown deepened. He’d have heard the same rumors of her murder as everyone else. “Go on.”

The others watched from a few paces back, Aaron Young and Charity with their own frowns.
Jacob whispered, “That’s the real reason I’m in Blister Creek. Brother Joseph himself wanted me. Eliza’s marriage is secondary. And Enoch knows something. He’s going to play the part of the Lord and when we’re inside, he’s going to tell me who killed her. It was the only way he’d cooperate.”

Stephen Paul stared for a long moment. “You should have told me.”

“I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Well, let’s get going then. And you’d better not be lying.”

Jacob approached the veil. He saw nothing moving through the thin fabric. There was nobody on the other side. Had Enoch changed his mind? And then a shadow moved behind the sheet. Stephen Paul approached the veil and gave three raps with a mallet against a carved wooden post.

A muffled voice from the other side: “What is wanted?”

Stephen Paul hesitated, then said, “Adam, having been true and faithful in all things, desires further light and knowledge by conversing with the Lord through the veil.”

“Present him at the veil and his request shall be granted.” His brother spoke so softly that Jacob had to lean forward to hear.

The Lord’s hand—or Enoch’s, in this case—reached through the veil to receive the First Token of the Aaronic Priesthood. Jacob took the offered hand and gave the appropriate sign and its name.

But his mind was racing. The hand presented to him was not Enoch’s.

The light was dim, and had it been the left hand presented to him, or even just a normal handshake, he might not have noticed it. But the first Token of the Aaronic Priesthood involved placing the thumb just so on the recipient’s knuckle. Enoch had broken the thumb on his right hand fly fishing as a boy and the thumb had never been entirely straight ever since. This man’s thumb had no such deformity.

Who was it, then?

They reached the Second Token of the Melchizedek Priesthood, where Jacob reached through the veil to put his left hand on the man’s right shoulder while the man on the other side did the same through an opposite hole. With their right hands, they gripped in a handshake with little fingers interlocked. “Health in the navel, marrow in the bones, strength in the loins and in the sinews,” the man began. Jacob and the other man stood inches apart, locked in this intimate embrace but separated by the fabric of the veil.

It was a vulnerable moment. A strong grip on hand and shoulder. No hands free for movement. For either of them. But supposing the other man weren’t alone. The man on the other side of the veil shifted on his feet but didn’t break his grip.

Jacob glanced down and saw something dark move toward him at waist level. The grip on his hand and shoulder tightened. He couldn’t break it. Instead, he lurched to one side. A knife thrust through the mark at the level of his navel.

“Jacob!” Stephen Paul warned. He put his hands on Jacob’s shoulders and jerked him backward.

The blade withdrew. It glistened with blood. Jacob reached a hand to his gut, but it came away clean and he felt no pain. The blood on the blade was not his own.

Moving shadows and muffled shouts came from the other side of the veil. Running feet. Heedless of his own safety, Jacob pushed aside the veil. Stephen Paul followed him into the Celestial Room. It was bright on the other side, and it took a second for Jacob’s eyes to adjust.

The Celestial Room was a small room with a few plush armchairs for quiet contemplation. A chandelier of cut crystal lit the room. The floor was a thick carpet and the walls were marble. A door slammed on the far side of the room.

Enoch lay on his back in the middle of the room. The carpet around his feet was a butcher’s block of blood and guts. His temple robes lay in bloody shreds, centered around a gaping hole in his middle.

Stephen Paul stood at Jacob’s side. “Oh, sweet Jesus Christ.” The man turned and was sick.

Jacob could not look away. A single, strangled word came from his mouth. “Enoch.”

They hadn’t had enough time to crack Enoch’s chest and take the heart, but they had done a fair job of the vitals. Severed intestines and other innards lay half-spilled onto the floor. A bloody trail led across the floor in the direction of the slammed door on the far side of the Celestial Room.

Jacob heard sounds at his back and remembered the women. “Quick,” he told Stephen Paul. “Don’t let the women through the veil. Especially not Eliza.” The man recovered enough of his wits to obey.

Enoch, Jacob was horrified to discover, was still alive. He clutched at the seeping guts, as if trying to push what was left of them back inside. Intestines squirted through his fingers.

Jacob stared, mouth agape.
I agree to have my breast cut open and my heart and vitals torn out from my body and given to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.
The penalty of the Second Token of the Aaronic Priesthood.

“Dear God,” Jacob said as he snapped from his stupor and hurried to his brother’s side. “No, Enoch. No.” He knelt. He reached for the wound, as if hands could close it again. All around him, bits of tissue and chunks of innards. Much of it was missing, taken away.

He must not lose control. It was only meat. Just meat in a butcher’s shop.

My brother.

“Oh, Enoch. What happened? Oh, God. Please, no.”

Enoch looked up at Jacob, his eyes semi-glazed. Blood foamed at his lips. “River of sperm,” he whispered. “A river.”

Jacob knew he had only seconds. “What do you mean?”

“The genes flow in two directions. River of sperm.”

Jacob had no idea what he was talking about. “Who did this to you?”

“Gid…”

“Gideon?” When Enoch gave a faint nod, he pressed. “And Taylor Junior? Was he involved, too?”

Too late. The light faded in his brother’s eyes. His soul left his body. And the body hung there, limp, lifeless. An empty glove. Dead.

Jacob lifted bloody hands to his face. He felt like he was going to pass out.

Stephen Paul came back, then. He wouldn’t look at the body. “I told my brother, but not the women. Eliza is okay. She doesn’t know what to make of the delay. Fernie and Charity will be asking questions any moment, though. We’d better come up with something, and quickly.”

Not yet. He needed more time. Jacob had to clear his mind and start thinking rationally. It was all he could do not to take his brother in his arms and weep. But he couldn’t afford that luxury.

“This is your brother?” Stephen Paul asked in a half-strangled voice. “Oh, Jacob. I’m sorry.” A silent moment. “Who would do such a thing? Who would desecrate the temple?”

The question snapped Jacob from his stupor. “Lost Boys. Gideon Kimball. Others.”
Taylor Junior. Bastard.
“There were at least two in here, one to hold me at the veil and the other with the knife.” He looked down at Enoch’s sprawling body, but had to look away in a hurry. He took two deep breaths. “My brother was a strong man. And we heard nothing while they cut him open, alive. At least three, then.”

“I saw someone running,” Stephen Paul said. “He went through that door.”

Jacob nodded. He stood up and wiped the blood from his hands onto his white temple clothes. It made an appalling mess. He ran his sleeve across his face. It came away red, too.

Jacob said, “I saw the same thing. But I didn’t see his face.”

“Neither did I. But he was wearing his robes and everything. I saw the green of his apron.”

Jacob had seen white, but not the green. So the murderer had dressed in his complete temple clothing in preparation for ordinances. Whatever for? Had they performed their own endowment session? Why? And if so, why had they waited until the last minute to kill Enoch, who must have been waiting behind the veil for some time?

Jacob’s mind was racing. The door on the right side of the room led to the changing rooms. The one on the left led to the sealing rooms. The murderers had fled to the left. He had assumed at first that they had taken that route because it led further in, past the Holy of Holies to the offices of the temple president. From there, one could take the back stairs and flee through a side door.

Even as he turned this over in his mind, he heard a woman’s scream from behind him. He turned, expecting to see that Fernie, Charity, or Eliza had come into the Celestial Room and seen Enoch’s butchered body. But the veil was still drawn and the women on the other side.

He turned back to the door where the murderers had fled. Fled in their temple clothes. Enoch’s attackers didn’t mean to leave the building. Their destination was the sealing rooms. It was there that a man would take a woman in celestial marriage.

Eliza. They’d come for his sister.

Eliza had known something was wrong even before Stephen Paul returned from the other side of the veil with his face ashen and wiping at his mouth.