The Righteous (14 page)

“Hello, little brother.”

He winced. “After all this time, I’m back to being a brother?”

“Why not? You’re my brother in the eyes of God and in the records of the church.” Irony tinged her voice.

Fernie’s father had apostatized and run off with a gentile woman. Her mother had remarried Abraham Christianson. Later, Fernie’s mother had given birth to Eliza. That made Fernie Eliza’s half-sister but no blood relation to Jacob. A crucial difference.

“Here, make yourself useful.” She handed him a basket. “We’re taking produce into Cedar City for the farmers market. I’ll pick for the market, you focus on the canning tomatoes.” Those would be the misshapen, the sun burned, and the undersized.

He took the basket and started to pick. The sun had come up and it grew warm quickly. Mud stuck to the bottom of his shoes, coagulating into thick, second soles.

“How is he?” Jacob asked.

“How is who?”

“Your husband, Fernie. Elder Kimball. What kind of man is he? Not like Taylor Junior, I hope.”

“No, not like that.” She shrugged. “As a father he’s indifferent. To be expected when you’ve got twenty-nine children and counting. As a husband, well, no more domineering than anyone else in these parts. I honor and sustain his priesthood and he doesn’t cause me trouble.”

Is that what Fernie aspired for in a husband?
he wondered bitterly. Someone who wouldn’t cause her trouble? She deserved more.

“And that’s what happened to Amanda?” Jacob asked. “She didn’t sustain Elder Kimball’s priesthood?”

“Eliza already asked these questions. She was persistent.”

“Yes, but she didn’t get any answers. I kept thinking that you might know something. You and Amanda are both in your mid-twenties. And you’re her cousin. Weren’t you close?”

“Yes, we were.”

“And what was Amanda’s relationship with her husband? Did they love each other? Did they argue?”

Fernie plucked a caterpillar from one of the plants and squashed it underfoot. She turned and looked Jacob in the eye. “A woman has to know her place. Isn’t that right?”

“So they say.” He met her gaze until she turned away. “As does a man. It just happens to be convenient for some that a man’s place is to dominate women.”

She gave him a hard look. “Such a cynical view, Jacob. You misheard my answer if that’s what you think I was saying. Every person has his or her role in the eternal scheme of things. I have found mine. When will you discover yours?”

He sighed. They had once been close, closer even than the relationship that he enjoyed with Eliza, because there had been a frisson, a chemistry between them that went well beyond the bond one enjoyed with one’s sister.

Time to focus on the matter at hand. He set down the basket of tomatoes. He took out a sheet of paper cut from the book from Enoch’s apartment and showed it to Fernie. “Do you know what this is?”

She looked down at it, but didn’t answer.

“It’s important, Fernie. Unless what you meant by a woman knowing her place is that Amanda’s murderers don’t deserve to answer for their crimes.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Of course I do, but it seems to me that you need reminding,” he responded. He was pushing her now, like he had pushed Enoch, like he had rebuked his would be assassins, and he knew her well enough to know that she would also yield to pressure. It was what separated her from Eliza, and why she had married Elder Kimball, though her desires had been elsewhere.

He fixed her with a stare and didn’t let his gaze falter. She met his eyes and didn’t pull away this time. He said, “Having been commissioned of the prophet and of the blood of Amanda Kimball, which cries up from earth for justice, thou shalt not thwart my purpose, Fernie Kimball.”

She bowed her head and Jacob knew he had won. “Thou sayest.”

“You know something. Something that you didn’t tell Eliza. What?”

When Fernie looked up again there were tears in her eyes. “Yes, I’ve seen the Jupiter Medallion before. My husband wears one on a chain against his breast, beneath his temple garments. I’ve seen it when he comes to me at night.”

Jacob pictured the old, wrinkled man—a man he had once revered as one of the Lord’s apostles, but was now convinced was a murderer or a murderer’s accomplice—making love to Fernie. An ugly picture.

“You’re sure. A medallion just like this?”

She nodded. “Exactly. Silver or silver plated. About the size of an old silver dollar.”

The mark of the conspirators, then. Who else wore one besides Elder Kimball and Enoch? Gideon, certainly, and Taylor Junior. Anyone else? And why?

“Is there anything else that you know?” he asked. “Anything that might shed light on this murder? A motive? An overheard conversation? Anything?”

“I’ll tell you what I know. About two weeks ago, late at night, I was walking past Amanda’s room when I heard her crying. Sophie Marie was asleep and Amanda sat at her daughter’s bedside. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

“ ‘Nobody could love a child more than I love my daughter,’ she said, ‘but I just can’t do it anymore.’

“I didn’t know what she was talking about. Sophie Marie is three and a half, and not very much trouble, truth be told. But maybe she was talking about the next child, not Sophie Marie.”

“The next child? How do you mean?”

Fernie said, “You know, Amanda had a hard time getting pregnant. Two miscarriages, then, nothing. Finally, when she was pregnant with Sophie Marie, she started feeling contractions at six months. Taylor took her to a specialist in Denver and she stayed there on bed rest until the baby was born. But one child is never enough, you know.” She hesitated. “It’s not like it was all Amanda’s fault.”

“Go on,” Jacob urged when it looked as though she might stop.

“Taylor, you know, is not one of those men who can sleep with one wife before breakfast, take a quickie at lunch, and finish off with a third woman before bedtime. Most of us see him about once a month. It matters more to some women than others. Tess, I swear, can get pregnant after washing a load of Taylor’s underwear. Most of us have to watch our periods, and take our opportunities very carefully. Makes it tough for someone like Amanda.

“So anyway, I didn’t give much thought to the incident until the funeral. It was Eliza’s questions that got me thinking. I remembered the look Amanda had given her daughter that night.”

“And did you draw a conclusion?”

Fernie looked more uncertain now. “Perhaps that Amanda’s inability to have more children led to her death.”

Only that didn’t fit with the facts. Some men, it was true, thought it a mark of dishonor when a wife failed to conceive. But Amanda had already done so, albeit only once, and with a difficult pregnancy. That didn’t square with a throat cut from ear to ear and a tongue torn out by the roots. Barrenness was not a crime meriting that particular punishment. That would be reserved for betrayal.

Jacob looked back toward the house and then toward the greenhouses and out to the fields. Still none of the Kimball men in view.

“Fernie,” he said impulsively. “Are you happy here?”

“Every life has its joys and its sorrows.”

“Stop talking like that for a moment, please.”

“Why, because I sound too much like you? Always dancing around issues? You’re a man with an opinion about everything who doesn’t know what he believes about anything.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Jacob asked.

“Because, Jacob, I want to stop you before you get into whatever it is that you’re moving toward. Think about it for a moment. Are you trying to get me to say that I would rather be living a different life? And what then? When I have betrayed my faith and my family, at least in words, when you have convinced me to tell you that yes, I do love you and yes, I would rather live with you and have you love me and me alone, what then? Isn’t that the point at which you say, ‘Ah, Fernie, it’s a tough lot we have, being God’s chosen people. In a different world, you and I might have been together, Fernie, but alas, we are not in that different world.’ And then, you will leave, as you must, and I will remain in my life here with its joys and its hardships. Only the joys will suddenly seem dry as dust, and the hardships will weigh on my shoulders with the weight of eternal expectations. So what would be the point of such a conversation?”

Jacob opened his mouth with a glib, self-defensive reply. He only just managed to bite it back. Instead, he only stared at Fernie, his heart aching to see who she had become and realize he could never breach the wall that her marriage to Elder Kimball had erected between them.

You do like girls, don’t you?
his mother had asked.

Yes. One, at least. One he liked very, very much.

He turned away. He had nothing more to accomplish here.

Enoch had no trouble until the final fertility clinic. In Las Vegas, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Riverside he had handed over the cooler and the envelope of cash. More money would be forthcoming next year, contingent on compliance with the plan. The men and women had accepted the money and the vials of frozen semen with little comment.

Enoch thought about those vials. Sperm from men of the Church of the Anointing.

And how much did it matter where the sperm had come from? Elder Kimball thought a good deal. They had raised a seed, culled it, pruned it, like a farmer seeking greater yields from his crops. Every generation that seed grew stronger and more numerous until someday it would dominate its surroundings. And now Elder Kimball would mix that seed with the gentiles, taking on an especially potent hybrid vigor. There would be thousands of these children. Some girls would be called back to Zion. The boys, left to grow, would remain a force to be called on when the Lord arrived in His glory.

Or so went Elder Kimball’s theories. Enoch didn’t know precisely how Elder Kimball meant to recall the girls, but wouldn’t the boys be like any other gentile, living their lives in spiritual blindness?

After Riverside, he drove north along the California coast. It was beautiful, sunny weather but not hot. The drive offered views of the oceans and coastal hills, and was quieter than Southern California. He had never seen this part of California and would have enjoyed it immensely under other circumstances. The final clinic was in the foothills above Santa Cruz, a semi-rural area covered with secondary-growth redwood forest.

It was a small, non-descript building tucked among the trees with a sign that read, “Santa Cruz County Medical Institute.” He looked at the clock as he pulled into the parking lot. Ten minutes after three. Just a little bit late. There was a man standing in the lot, waiting. Enoch opened the side of the van and peeled off the envelope with the name Chen on it from its cooler, tucked it under his arm, then hefted out the cooler itself. It was the last.

The man held out a hand. “Name is Ron Chen. Are you Ishmael?”

Enoch set the cooler at the man’s feet, but declined to take the man’s hand. “That’s right.” He didn’t know where the name Ishmael came from, but it didn’t matter. In Arizona he’d been Hosea, in Los Angeles, Solomon.

“You’ve got everything?” Chen asked, meaning, presumably, the money, not the cooler of frozen semen.

He took out the envelope. It bulged with cash. He handed it over.

Chen took the envelope, and to Enoch’s surprise, did not immediately open it to count the money as had all the others. Instead, he waved the envelope with an indifferent look. “How much, exactly?”

“Eighty thousand.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. And eighty grand is a nice sum, don’t get me wrong. But have you seen the price of real estate around here?” He waved the envelope. “This would barely even make a down payment on a house. And let me tell you, my job pays pretty well already. I’d hate to lose that.”

“You make $62,500 per year,” Enoch replied. “This is eighty thousand, tax free. All you have to do is throw out a few vials of semen and replace them with these. They’re already labeled according to the list you gave us. All we need back from you are the names, addresses, and genders of the children produced by this sperm. Nothing could be easier. Next year, we give you more samples and more money.”

“Sounds like a lot of money, sure.” A scheming tone had entered Chen’s voice that Enoch didn’t care for. “But not for the risk I’m taking. You heard about that case a couple of years ago where the doctor was sticking all his own stuff inside his patients, telling them it belonged to Nobel Prize winners and shit. They sent him to jail.”

Enoch refused to show anger, just said calmly, “But your DNA isn’t involved, Mr. Chen. There’s no way to track this back to you. Unlike the doctor in your anecdote, you’ll have left no DNA as a clue.”

“Yeah, well whose DNA is it anyway? Whatever rich man you work for must be an egomaniac to want his genes spread all through California. We might have a thousand babies inside this cooler, you know that?”

“Take your money, Mr. Chen. Spend it carefully. Your greatest risk is not exchanging the vials of semen, but drawing undue attention to yourself with the money.”

“Yes, but that’s just it.” That calculating look again. “I think I sold myself short. It was an initial offer, but carelessly made. You follow?”

Yes, he followed. “You want more money.”

“Not a lot. I’m not greedy. An extra forty thousand should cover my risks. I’m sure that would be no great hardship to whoever you work for.”

The man was bluffing. He could see it. Just trying to shake down Enoch. They could have paid it, of course. The woman at the big clinic in Los Angeles had taken a hundred-and-fifty thousand before agreeing to the plan.

But Chen, should he be indulged, would grow ever greedier. Enoch had seen it a million times at Caesar’s Palace. A guy takes a gamble, gets lucky, and doesn’t know when to stop. Better to nip the gambling impulse in the bud.

“Just one moment, please.” He left the man holding the money.

Enoch returned to the van. He had discovered the briefcase tucked in among the coolers last night. It had not been necessary to use before now. He returned with a second envelope which he opened in front of Chen.