White Heat

7

The woman who’d seated them also waited on them through breakfast, eventually introducing herself as Thelma Lassiter. Abby, her grandchild, came around once or twice to fill their water glasses.

After the ranchers left, Nate and Rachel were the only patrons in the restaurant. But they weren’t the only people in the building. Voices drifted over from the store section, Thelma’s chief among them as she greeted her customers like the old friends they probably were.

It wasn’t until they’d finished eating and Thelma had come to get their plates that Rachel brought up the Covenanters. “We’ve been hearing about a cult that’s moved into the area. Do you know anything about them?”

Losing some of her cheerfulness, she frowned. “A little. They live about five miles from here and have occasional meetings where they invite folks in to see the place. But they’re very unfriendly if you show up any other time. Even if you attend the Introduction, you get the feeling you’re just seeing what they want you to see and hearing only what they want you to hear.”

“So you’ve been there? You’ve been to an Introduction Meeting?” Rachel asked.

Thelma cast a serreptitious glance over her shoulder as if she was afraid she’d be overheard. But she couldn’t be worried about Abby. Was there someone else who wouldn’t like her talking about the people of Paradise? “I took Abby about six weeks ago. That Ethan fellow who claims to be a prophet saw her in the store one day and told me he could heal her—that he could make it so she can hear.”

Nate leaned back in the booth. “That’s quite a claim.”

“Chaske—my husband—was skeptical, too. He still is.”

Chaske was obviously the person in back, the one she didn’t want overhearing the conversation. Maybe he was the cook.

“He thought I was crazy for hoping,” she went on. “But…I believe in miracles. There’s got to be more to this life than the tangible things we deal with every day. I thought maybe one reason God sent the Covenanters here was to help Abby.”

Kicking off his flip-flops, Nate found Rachel’s feet under the table and began to play footsie with her. Under the guise of their cover, he could get away with goading her in any number of ways, and messing with her made this assignment a lot more fun. “Did they? Help her, I mean?”

He suppressed a chuckle at the sharp stop it glance he received from Rachel as Thelma shook her head. “No. Once I got out to the commune, Ethan told me I’d have to leave her there if I wanted him to heal her.”

“Leave her for how long?” Rachel kept trying to move her feet out of reach, but he wouldn’t let her. Although he knew he’d pay for it later, he was enjoying getting her riled up.

“A few weeks, at least. But…I couldn’t do that. As far as I was concerned, there was no one to look after her. No one I trusted, anyway.”

Nate thought Thelma’s practical side had served her better than her spiritual side. “So you took her and left.”

“Yes, but…I’ve gone back once since then.”

Pointedly clearing her throat, Rachel moved her feet again. “What happened?”

“They wouldn’t even let me in until I mentioned Ethan’s offer to heal Abby. Then they checked with him, and he gave me an audience. But he told me the same thing as before. We couldn’t come for brief visits. I’d have to trust him, have complete faith, or he could do nothing.”

He was tempted to tell Thelma about Ethan’s correspondence with Charles Manson. Nate also knew a little about Ethan’s mental health or lack thereof—tidbits his father had shared with Milt. But as much as Nate longed to convey the danger, he couldn’t reveal his true interest in Paradise. The best way to protect Abby and Thelma, and everyone else, was to get inside that compound and figure out what was really going on. And that required him to be judicious. “You can’t leave a child in the keeping of someone you don’t know,” he said. “You made the right decision.”

Thelma cast another glance over her shoulder. “It was my only choice. Chaske would’ve gone up there with a shotgun if I’d left Abby. He says there’s no way he’ll ever let her fall into the hands of a cult.”

Rachel finally resorted to pulling her feet up and tucking them under her, effectively ending Nate’s game. “You considered leaving her?”

“More so the second time,” Thelma admitted. “I wish Chaske had been there with me. The Holy One—that’s what Ethan’s worshippers call him—introduced me to several people who say he’s done miraculous things. One said she had cancer until he cured her. Another was in a wheelchair, suffering from multiple sclerosis. Three members of that man’s family told me he couldn’t even feed himself when he first met Ethan. You should see him now.”

“But MS is a strange disease,” Nate said. “It can advance and recede. Maybe his miraculous improvement had nothing to do with Ethan.”

“Then how do you explain the woman with cancer?”

Nate had heard the peddlers of various health tonics claim they had the answer to a whole list of incurable maladies. That didn’t mean it was true. It just meant they had a vested interest in making others believe, and it might be the same here. “There could be a lot of explanations,” he said, “a flat-out lie being the most obvious.”

“Why would they lie?” she countered.

“Because they want to believe what Ethan is telling them, and it builds the group’s credibility to outsiders.”

Rachel frowned. “Did it seem to bother Ethan that you wouldn’t leave Abby?”

“Of course. He told me he could give her a much better life.” Tears filled Thelma’s eyes. “That’s all I want for her—that she’ll be okay when I’m gone. He was disappointed, maybe even a little disgusted, that I wouldn’t trust him.” She blinked several times. “But there are all those rumors about their sexual practices….”

“What rumors?”

“He has some very…liberal ideas. People say orgies go on up there. But who knows? That might be a witch hunt. Most folks around here don’t like him much. The Covenanters are all I’ve heard about since they moved in, and none of it’s been good.”

“Maybe they are having orgies,” Nate said.

“If so, he certainly didn’t talk about it at the Introduction Meeting. And he denied it when I told him that was why I couldn’t leave Abby. According to him, it’s just superstitious folks bein’ scared and talkin’ about things they know nothing of. He said that sex and drugs aren’t part of the religion, freedom and acceptance are. But—” she sighed “—my husband is one of those superstitious people.”

Nate saw Abby going between the restaurant and the store. “Did Abby know he wanted her to stay?”

Thelma straightened her apron. “Oh, yes. She’s very smart. But she wouldn’t have any of it. She clung to me and kept signing that she was fine and wanted to go home to Grandpa.”

Hoping to add a little support to what her husband believed, Nate spoke up again. “Someone else told us about a woman who left the commune. Sounds as if she had it pretty rough when she was with them. Have you heard about her?”

The dishes clinked as she stacked them. “Oh, yes. Her name’s Martha Wilson. She’s not from around here. She came with Ethan from back east somewhere—like most of the Covenanters. Chaske’s mentioned her several times. So has everyone else who hates the church. I think she’s the source of most of the rumors. But who knows if she’s being truthful?”

Nate turned his water glass around and around. “Has she been seen in Portal lately?”

“No. I guess Martha went straight to the police. She’s staying in Willcox now. From what I hear, she’s getting a lawyer so she can fight for custody of her son.”

Nate considered that good information. Maybe they could have a talk with Martha….

“You think she’s lying?” Rachel asked.

Thelma pulled their dirty plates toward her. “I can’t say one way or another. I only know that everyone I saw in the commune looked busy and peaceful. There was no hint of violence or sexual impropriety. Ethan preaches Christian values. He told me so.”

Rachel shoved the salt and pepper and sugar packets against the wall. “Hard to imagine a Christian preacher, at least in this day and age, ordering a person stoned.”

“Chaske doesn’t think it’s so hard to imagine. He keeps saying that what Ethan shows the world and what he does behind those closed gates could be two different things.”

“That’s true,” Nate agreed. But she didn’t seem to be convinced. The dream of fixing her granddaughter held too much allure.

“But he’s never been up there,” she argued, “never seen it for himself. And the police looked into the matter. If Martha was telling the truth, they would’ve done something about it, wouldn’t they? The sheriff and his deputies came in here for lunch not long ago. I asked them about Martha’s accusations and they said they couldn’t prove a darn thing.”

Nate knew police work from the other side. “Investigations rarely occur overnight. There’s the truth. And then there’s proof of the truth. Truth without proof won’t build a case.”

“I guess.” She jingled the change in her pocket. “Chaske keeps talking about Jim Jones and David Koresh and what they got away with. He thinks Ethan’s no better.”

Abby approached with a pitcher of water, distracting Thelma. She touched the child’s face with such love, Nate worried that Thelma’s desire to see Abby healed would eventually overtake her good sense.

“You’re a wonderful child. Aren’t you, Abby?” she said.

The girl smiled up at her grandmother, then refilled their water glasses.

“I’d heard Paradise was a ghost town,” Nate said. “Before we learned about the Covenanters, I was planning to go up that way, take a look around, maybe get some shots.”

“They won’t like you taking pictures,” Thelma said. “They’re very private. They know what other people are saying about them. When I was there, they definitely seemed a bit…defensive.”

Abby, who’d refused to look at him or Rachel since they’d come in, was watching them both closely. Gone was the shyness and reluctance he’d witnessed in her mannerisms and bearing so far. Not only was she staring at him directly, she was shaking her head.

“You don’t like it up there, Abby?” Rachel asked.

She shook her head again, even more adamantly.

“She doesn’t want you to go to Paradise,” Thelma said. “She thinks her grandfather is right, that Ethan is dangerous.”

Nate leaned toward the child to let her know he was talking to her. “As long as we don’t bother him, we should be okay taking a few pictures, don’t you think?”

The child’s eyes widened and she jerked her head again.

“Don’t listen to her,” Thelma said. “She can read lips better than you can imagine and picks up on far too much. Richard and Lynne Sinclair have scared her, that’s all.”

Rachel placed her napkin on the table. “Who’re Richard and Lynne?”

“They own a ranch between here and Rodeo. They’ve been stopping in almost every day, spouting all kinds of accusations against the Covenanters.”

“Like?” Rachel prompted.

Abby didn’t leave. She tapped her grandmother’s arm to get her to turn so that she could see her lips; she seemed to be closely monitoring the conversation.

“Courtney, their teenage daughter, went missing last month,” Thelma said. “They swear up and down she’s been kidnapped by the Covenanters.”

“You don’t believe it,” Nate said.

“No. That girl was always a handful. Cutting herself and thumbing rides with anyone who came through town. She dressed in that gothic garb. You know, the black pants and black T-shirts with black boots. She even wore black nail polish and lipstick. They actually caught her propositioning a couple of old birders! She’d gone out to their campsite to trade you-know-what for the chance to ‘get out of this dump’ as she put it.” She waved a hand in apparent disgust. “She musta run off. She’s done it before.”

Nate rubbed the condensation on his glass. “What makes her parents believe otherwise?”

“She went to one of the Covenant meetings a week or two before she disappeared and came home gushing about Ethan. She thought he was—” she made quotation marks with her fingers “—‘hot.’ That’s all. It’s not much to go on, which is why the police haven’t been able to help. They can’t force the Covenanters to let them search without some evidence that she might be in the compound.”

Rachel took a sip of water. “No one’s seen her since?”

“No one.”

“How many Covenanters attend the Introduction Meetings?” Nate asked.

“Quite a few. Fifteen or twenty. Ethan usually officiates—him or one of the Spiritual Guides.”

“Aren’t there any women in the leadership?” Rachel asked.

“No, the men hold all the power.”

Nate could almost hear Rachel’s spine snapping straight with indignation. She’d come from a church with a strict patriarchal order where that power had been abused. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“Isn’t that the way it usually is?”

Nate cut in before the conversation could drift away from what he was interested in learning. “So once people join the commune, can they maintain relationships with their former friends and family?” If so, it might be possible to gain more information from those on the outside. That was his hope in asking, but Thelma’s answer didn’t surprise him.

“They’re not allowed to see them again, unless Ethan sends them on the Errand of God.”

“I take it the Errand of God isn’t just getting supplies.”

“No, the Spiritual Guides get all the supplies. Right after a convert is baptized, he’s sent to warn his family that they’re risking God’s wrath by rejecting the truth. That’s the Errand of God.”

Sounded more like Ethan’s errand. The more people he converted, the more it would increase his power and enrich his coffers. “Otherwise, they sacrifice all association with their friends and family?”

“Yep.”

“And you think that’s okay?”

“Not exactly okay, but I can understand why they do it. Ethan says Covenanters are in the world but not of the world. They offer spiritual peace and prosperity, and you can’t do that if you’re always looking at the person you used to be before being born again.”

So, like any good cult leader, Ethan made the most of isolation and alienation. Very convenient. “I see.”

A noise by the entrance distracted Thelma. A woman and two middle-grade boys had come in. “I’d better get to work,” she said. “It was great chatting with you. We’re happy to have new folks in town.”

“I’m sure you’ll be seeing a lot more of us,” Rachel said. “Breakfast was delicious.”

“I’m glad.” Taking their empty plates, she paused by the door on her way to the kitchen. “I’ll be right with you folks,” Nate heard her say. Abby followed her grandmother but returned a moment later with a sheet of paper she’d taken from a stack at the register. She thrust it at him, then stood resolutely beside the table as if she could communicate her thoughts simply by glaring at them.

Nate glanced at the sheet. It was a Missing flyer for the girl Thelma had been telling them about—Courtney Sinclair.

“Do you know where Courtney might be?” Rachel asked.

Shaking her head, the child made several darting hand signals.

“I’m sorry…I don’t sign.”

She made the same signals again, more slowly this time, then hurried off.

The flyer had a picture of a girl that reminded Nate of the character Lily on The Munsters. “What do you suppose that was all about?”

Rachel shrugged, so he took the flyer and tossed twenty dollars on the table to cover the bill plus a tip.

Thelma was busy seating her new patrons as they started across the restaurant, but a grizzled Indian with bowed legs and a black cowboy hat stood in the kitchen doorway, watching.

Rachel must have assumed he was Chaske, because she paused the moment she spotted him and mimicked the child’s motions. “What does this mean?”

“Bad people,” he answered, and turned away.

8

Bartholomew took one look at Ethan and quickly clasped his arm, then turned him around. His hair was mussed, his pupils dilated, and he smelled as though he’d walked out of a massage parlor. Ethan was doing too many drugs. Normally, Bartholomew didn’t mind. He believed in freedom of choice and expression as much as Ethan did and wasn’t opposed to running the compound when Ethan was indisposed. But Ethan needed to be coherent in times of trouble, and that meant now.

“You’re not well, Holy One,” he said when Ethan tried to yank his arm away.

“Didn’t you hear? Courtney’s mother is at the gate.”

“I know.” Bartholomew encouraged him to return to the Enlightenment Hall, but Ethan tried to shake him off again.

“I need to tell that bitch to get lost!”

“I doubt she’d react favorably to that. But don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

“What will you tell her?”

When Ethan stumbled over his own feet, Bartholomew had to keep him from falling facefirst in the dirt. “I’ll tell her what we agreed to say.”

They finally reached the Enlightenment Hall and walked through the front doors. “What was that?”

“You’ll remember when you can think straight.”

Sister Maxine stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Is everything okay?”

Bart waved her away and led Ethan toward the stairs. He didn’t want her or anyone else to see the Holy One in such a state. Despite his open acceptance of drug use, he had an image to uphold. He could not appear to be letting it get the best of him. “It’s fine. Go back to your dishes.”

“Maybe you should invite her in.” Ethan was still talking about Mrs. Sinclair. “Maybe if we give her an audience, we can convince her Courtney was never here.”

“No.” Bart wasn’t willing to even consider it.

Ethan’s voice dropped to a whisper. “We could take her to the pit, teach her to mind her own business.”

The pit was used for their most sacred, and secret, rituals. There was one key to the heavy metal door; Ethan held it. Only the Brethren, their wives and select Covenant members knew what went on there, and they’d all taken an oath not to divulge the smallest detail. It was part of the Covenant of Brotherly Love. So far, they’d been able to maintain absolute secrecy. Each person knew what would happen if he or she talked. But a greater deterrent than the threat of harm was the fact that they were all involved. Telling would incriminate the whistle-blower as much as the rest.

“That would just make the problem bigger,” he said, and helped Ethan up the stairs.

“She won’t leave us alone. She’ll keep coming.”

“No, she won’t.” Hoping to distract him, Bart changed the subject. “I’m afraid this isn’t any happier news, but I received notice from the investigator we hired a few weeks ago that Martha’s suing the church.”

Ethan stumbled again. “What? Where’s she getting the money to do that?”

Bart stabilized him until he could recover his balance. “Who knows? Donations, maybe. Or she’s made friends with some sympathetic and overzealous lawyer. She’s got the whole outside world feeling sorry for her.”

At last they reached the landing. “You told me you were going to bring her back!”

“I am.”

“When?”

“As soon as I can.”

Ethan seemed to lose direction until Bart gently guided him toward his room. “What does she hope to gain?”

“The return of her property.”

They hesitated outside the door to the suite where they each had a room. “She deserves to lose the small amount she gave up when she joined us,” Ethan said. “She’s the one who broke her covenants. She’s the one who disobeyed. That whore’s possessed by demons.”

“When we get her back, you can cast them out.” The idea of an exorcism excited Bart. He loved watching Ethan in action. It was a sight to behold. And, as the only woman who’d ever defied them and lived to tell about it, Martha was the perfect candidate for this painful and degrading process. It galled Bart to think she was in the outside world, walking around, saying anything she wanted, after the effort they’d exerted to keep their actions, thoughts and practices to themselves. Eighty percent of the compound didn’t know as much as she did. Besides taking the Covenant, she’d participated in some of the rituals in the pit.

Bart lowered his voice to a whisper. “You should know that several of the Brethren disagree with bringing her back here.”

“Who cares? I’m the only one who matters.”

Bart swung the door wide. Fortunately, the women were dressed and leaving. He waited until they were gone to continue. “You and I know that. But they might make trouble. And we can’t risk a division. Internal strife leads to self-destruction.”

“What do they expect me to do?”

“Nothing.” Bart pushed Ethan down onto the bed. “They prefer to let the scandal die.”

“The only way it will die is if she dies with it. What we’ve built is too good to allow Satan to destroy it. We’ll use the minds and hands God gave us to protect His work.”

“Of course you’re right, Holy One. I’ll see that it happens.”

Ethan had been whispering, too, but in his current state his whisper was loud enough that anyone within ten feet could hear. Sister Maxine was around. As a frequent visitor to the pit, she was almost as trustworthy as Bart, but this wasn’t something Bart wanted anyone to hear. Not yet.

Searching for the dope that was all too tempting for Ethan, he went through the dresser. When he found it, he shoved it in his pocket.

“What are you doing?” Ethan cried. “Why are you taking that?”

“So you can sober up. When your mind’s clear, we’ll call another meeting with the Brethren. They need to feel included. They’re getting upset thinking you’ve gone rogue.”

“I’m the Holy One. This is my church. I can do whatever I want.”

“We have to at least pretend to listen to their opinions. You’re the one who made them Guides, granted them a voice.”

“Half of them would’ve left if not for that.”

“And now we’ve got to consider their input, that’s all I’m saying. We’ll enlist their help and then we won’t have to worry about internal problems. About unity. We need unity more than ever.”

Ethan shook his head. “But we won’t be able to convince them to act. They’re too scared.”

“Now that she’s filed a suit, things will be different. This will rekindle their anger. They can’t afford to be dragged into court any more than we can.”

Ethan fumbled with the bedding as he tried to cover himself. “Martha will ruin us if we don’t do something.”

Maybe Ethan was thinking more clearly than Bart had assumed. It was amazing what he could do, even when he was high. “We’ll put a stop to her,” Bart said.