Righteous02 - Mighty and Strong (21 page)

“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard that argument,” Jacob said. “When I was just a medical student, church leaders called me to look into a suspicious death in Blister Creek. I should have known better, but I couldn’t keep away. And you know, if we’d just gone to the police in the first place we could have avoided a whole lot of ugliness. By the time it was over, we’d turned up every dark secret in town.”

“This isn’t like that, it’s different.”

“It’s always different, that’s what people always believe.”

“I don’t know what happened in Blister Creek, but this isn’t like that. Satan has infiltrated the church and is doing his best to stop the work from going forward, that’s what this is about.”

“And here I thought you’d fooled me,” Jacob said. “I thought you really were on the case and just didn’t trust me. But no, you actually believe it all.”

“Of course I believe, you jerk. And are you really that blind? Can’t you see how good these people are, how sincere?”

“I don’t have time for this crap. There’s a dead body buried here. Where’s the sincere in that? So what if most of them are good?
Someone
isn’t, and he’s using the church as cover to murder people.”

“Just shut up for a minute and let me explain,” Miriam said.

“You don’t have to explain. You think the prophet can walk on water—and that’s not a metaphor. You think this is the Lord’s only true church. So there couldn’t possibly be anything rotten inside.”

“Obviously, there’s something rotten. That’s not what I mean. Just help me exhume the body and tell me how she died and how long ago.”

“You’ll lose your job for this.”

“I already quit, remember?” she said. She returned to her knees and dug around the edges of the body. Going at it all wrong, of course.

“Okay, then,
I’ll
lose my job. Wait, I already lost mine, too. Oh, shit.”

“Please watch the profane language.”

“Profane language? Are you out of your mind? Your last job you were giving a blow job to a drug lord when your buddies came in with drawn weapons. So please, enough with the lectures already.”

“That was someone else. That was not me.”

“Whatever.”

“You would never understand because you—oh, never mind. Are you going to help me?”

“Fine, I’ll help. But stop what you’re doing, just don’t touch it anymore.” He picked up the second trowel. “If we’re going to do this, let’s at least do it right.”

Chapter Twenty-two:

The conspirators came together one at a time outside the capitol building. From here you could see down to Temple Square and in the early days of the plot—way back in early March, when snow stood in mounds at the edges of the parking lots, rotting under the weight of the spring sun and the gunk the city threw down to keep the pavement from freezing—they had met here to plan their assault on the apostate church’s illicit control of holy ground.

Fear-Not came first, strolling across the grass in front of the domed building that seemed massive, permanent, but would soon lie in ruins. Zeal came next, his eyes narrow, hard.

“What is it?” Fear-Not asked. “What is that look?”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Why, have you?”

“The Lord’s ways are not always easy.”

That one sentence held more depth than Fear-Not expected of the young man. “Tell me again, did you kill someone?”

Vigilant was approaching now and the two others turned, shook his hand.

“That’s between me and the Lord,” Zeal continued.

Fear-Not hardened his voice. “Listen to me. The Lord’s house is a house of order.”

Vigilant looked between the two of them with a frown. “What is it, what’s the matter? Did something happen?”

Fear-Not said, “Zeal has killed someone, or is thinking about killing someone.”

“Aren’t we all?” Vigilant said. “That’s what this is about. Killing. Lots and lots of killing.”

“Not randomly. It needs to be under my direction, not when someone feels the whim.”

“You have that backwards,” Vigilant said, surprising him. “It’s the
Lord
who decides who lives and dies.”

Fear-Not glanced over the man’s shoulder at a police cruiser that circled the Capital Building before heading harmlessly down the hill into the city. “Are you afraid? Is that it?”

Vigilant lifted bushy gray eyebrows. “Who is in charge, you or the prophet?”

“I’m Brother Timothy’s agent.”

“Are you? Are you sure?” Vigilant asked.

“Fear and doubt are Satan’s plan,” Fear-Not said. “They do not bring about the Lord’s righteous purpose. Do you remember the day we retired to the hills and formed a prayer circle? There was a divine presence in our meeting that day, my brothers. It was clear what we had to do.”

“Right, but we thought we were going after this senator and his brother. Enemies of the church.”

“This is the same thing. It will provoke the confrontation we need.”

Vigilant shook his head. “I’ve seen them, I’ve watched them. If we go after the FBI we might not survive. These agents are smart, dangerous.”

“Did you expect Satan to send someone stupid and weak?”

“This whole conversation is stupid, that’s what,” Zeal said. “Standing around talking, when we know what we have to do. Let’s get down there and do it. If they kill us, they kill us. Then we’ll know, won’t we? And we’ll be in the Celestial Kingdom, so it won’t matter.”

Fear-Not ignored the younger man. “I’ll tell you what’s worrying you,” he said to Vigilant. “You’re not afraid of the FBI, because you know the Lord is on our side and who can stand against the Lord? You’re worried about your own strength. Well don’t.” Fear-Not put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Trust yourself, brother.”

“Could we talk to the prophet first?”

“This isn’t Brother Timothy’s responsibility, it’s ours. I’m like Aaron in the court of Pharaoh. Moses was the prophet, but Aaron stretched out the rod that turned into the serpent. It was Aaron who lifted Moses’s arm in battle when it weakened.”

“And Aaron who made the Golden Calf while Moses was on the mountain,” Vigilant said. “Who led the people into idolatry.”

“There’s that cop car again,” Zeal interrupted. “We stand here any longer and they’re going to send someone over and ask what we’re doing. And if they search us, find what we’re carrying, it’s all over.”

“There’s plenty of other people walking around,” Vigilant said. “They’re not going to bother us.”

“Unless they’re looking for three men in a group,” Fear-Not said. “He’s right. We’ve got to make up our mind and do it. What if the FBI van drives off before we get there?”

“Come on,” Zeal urged. “Let’s just do it.”

“Make your decision,” Fear-Not said. “But we’re going whether you come or not.”

At last Vigilant nodded his head. “Thou sayest.”

#

It was only luck that kept Krantz from being in the van when the attack came. He’d been craving a coffee and a smoke all morning and the last place to do that was standing outside the walls of Temple Square and certainly not in the van with Agent Fayer and Jacob Christianson’s younger sister, Eliza, the Mormon missionary.

Eliza had become another set of eyes on Temple Square. Bright girl, that one. She spent hours greeting visitors at the gates or in the visitor centers and cataloged the suspicious types. The agents had moved their interviews to the van so as not to attract comments and stares from the other missionaries.

“More discrete that way,” he had told her.

“Long as you get rid of my companion,” Eliza said. “We’re not supposed to be apart.”

“Yeah, two by two, I know.”

Fortunately, Elder Peterson had made a call on their behalf and that little rule proved rather flexible.

This particular interview wasn’t producing much. She hadn’t seen their suspects for a few days and after Agent Fayer and Agent Chambers’s failed tail through Liberty Park and the aviary, it became clear that the cult members were no longer reconnoitering Temple Square. Had they given up?

“You want me to ask around?” Eliza asked. “See if anyone else has seen anything?”

“Hmm,” Fayer said. “Not sure there’s any point.”

Eliza straightened her name tag, unself-consciously touched at her hair. In spite of her conservative dress and mannerisms, there was something sensual about the way Eliza carried herself, although Krantz might be imagining it. Perhaps subconsciously hoping that beneath that prudish exterior there was a lustful spark that the right words would inflame.

What if she’d undone that top button, so he could see the swell of her breasts? He imagined his hands on her bare hips, his mouth on one of those breasts. She had lovely lips and he imagined them at his neck, breathing heavily in his ear, overcome with lust.

Not that he didn’t know better. Look at Fayer, the prude. Take that same Mormon suspicion of sexuality, throw in a fundamentalist childhood and the way religion in general screwed with you and you weren’t likely to find a libido under those layers. And even if you did, what would a girl like Eliza find in a lapsed Catholic smoker?

Which reminded him he really needed a smoke. He was down to three cigarettes a day, but damn, did he need one of them right now.

“I’ll be back in a second. Just going to grab a coffee and a croissant.”

Fayer gave him a disapproving frown. “Well, hurry back. And try to stand upwind when you smoke, will you?”

“Either of you want anything?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Fayer said. She turned to Eliza. “You?”

“A Danish sounds great,” Eliza said sweetly, “so long as you’re offering. I don’t have any money, though. Can I owe you?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. My treat.”

“You’re so sweet. Can you get me the kind with cherry filling? I love those.”

Mmm, cherry filling. Now
that
made him hungry.

He’d found a place with some decent coffee two blocks from the caffeine-free zone of Temple Square. No need to dilute it with milk or sugar it up, it could stand on its own. He left the van and walked there now. The day was turning hot. He loosened his tie.

Krantz pulled out the pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and tapped one out. Three a day. That wasn’t the most horrible thing in the world, was it? His father had once given him grief about taking up the habit. Dad had only smoked one cigarette in his life, or so he claimed. Made him sick. The friend who’d offered Dad the cigarette told him, “Yeah, made me sick too at first, but if you keep up with it, pretty soon you’ll like it.”

“And you know what,” Dad had told him. “I figured that was a lot of work to pick up a disgusting habit. Think about it.”

Great, except that Krantz had already been smoking for two years when Dad gave him that little speech—not seriously, as he’d already been offered a scholarship to throw shot at USC by then—and the truth was, he’d enjoyed every drag from his first puff to the cigarette he’d been smoking on the back porch when Dad came home early from work and caught him.

This one was no different. Maybe better than average, knowing he’d cut his rations to the bone. When he finished, he went in for the coffee, the croissant, and Eliza’s Danish. Sniffed his shirt on the way out to see how bad it smelled. He couldn’t tell, exactly.

The walk had given him the chance to wonder what those men from the cult were up to. If these fundamentalists were really targeting the senator, why were they nowhere to be seen? Scared off? Not likely.

Because that’s who they were, right? True believers. You had to be confident of your faith to crash airliners into lower Manhattan, or to stage a fiery, suicidal shootout at your Waco compound. These assholes were no different. Why they were targeting the senator, he wasn’t sure—something to do with the man’s polygamist ancestors, no doubt. But he didn’t think they’d give up simply because the FBI was on their tail. Driven underground, more like it.

So were they watching from a different vantage point? You could see into Temple Square from some of the office buildings in downtown Salt Lake. He and Fayer had looked into that, but nothing suspicious turned up. Somewhere on the hill with a telescope? Could you get the right angle?

Maybe it was the nicotine that made him unusually alert as he rounded Temple Square or maybe it was the growing suspicion he was missing something. He took in the cars parked along the block and saw at once that something was wrong. An extended-cab pickup truck parked at an awkward angle to the curb; the side doors of the FBI surveillance van hung open.

His pulse quickened as he broke into a run. The badly parked truck sat empty and idling. The van rocked and shouts came from inside. Krantz grabbed his gun as he reached the vehicle.

Bodies flailed and grappled inside. Some guy pummeled Fayer, while Eliza tried to pull him off. A second man grabbed Eliza’s hair and yanked her backward. Krantz had no shot, not without hitting one of the women. He shoved his gun in its holster, seized the first man and ripped him free. He tossed him to the side and grabbed for the second, younger man, who was punching Fayer in the face.

This second man was wiry, but more than a match for Fayer, who was trying to get her legs under her to push him away while protecting her face with her arms. His eyes gleamed with an intense light as he rained blows.

Krantz had the man by the shoulders when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. There was a third man—how had he missed it?—and he swung a baseball bat as Krantz turned. It cracked him on the skull. His vision blackened and he fell to the floor. A second crack to the head. Someone kicking him.

“No, leave him!” a voice shouted. “Come on.”

“Krantz!” Fayer’s voice screamed. It sounded distant.

He could see them now, dragging away his partner. But he couldn’t get his arms or legs to work. His head was spinning and his hand sticky against his temple. A truck door slammed.

Krantz regained his balance, staggered from the van while pulling out his gun. Fayer was crammed into the extended cab of the truck, still being beaten into submission by a man in the back seat. Two more men sat in the cab.

He lifted his gun. A man in the passenger side pointed a rifle at him through the open window. Krantz shot, so did the man in the truck. And then the truck was racing east. It turned the corner of the block and was gone.