13. Under the Radar Page 3

  Before Pearl climbed into the driver’s seat of the bus, she took one last look at the dead driver and blessed herself. She hated leaving a body alone and unattended, but she had no other choice. She took another few minutes to think back over what she’d done when she’d rescued the young girls. What had she touched? Had she wiped everything clean? She thought she had. Well, she couldn’t worry about that. She had to get all her passengers safely to the welcoming barn, a mere twenty-two miles due east.

  Pearl turned on the ignition and listened to the engine purr to life. She loved the big old bus. Really and truly loved it. It had carried hundreds of women and children to safety.

  As the bus lumbered down the road, Pearl’s thoughts were all over the map. She knew very little about the polygamous sect that these children belonged to. She should have known. She was a judge, for God’s sake. She defended her lack of knowledge by trying to convince herself she’d never had to deal with polygamy. Men with a dozen wives were too obscene even to think about under normal conditions.

  What she’d found really strange was how quiet the young girls were. Even though they were scared out of their wits, they didn’t part with any information. With the exception of the one named Emily, a truly chatty youngster, who had told Pearl about the polygamous sect and indicated that she’d miscarried in her fourth month. Mentally, Pearl agreed with her earlier assessment, she had fourteen young girls but only thirteen pregnant ones. It had taken only three minutes for her to come to the conclusion that the youngster named Emily was the talkative one of the group. And even she had not really given up much other than that they were all being moved from a compound in Nevada to Utah. If Emily knew or understood why, she hadn’t divulged that information.

  Pearl risked a glance in the rearview mirror. Everyone was either dozing or sound asleep. She wanted to cry for all of them.

  Such a dark night, she thought, out there virtually in the middle of nowhere with a crisis on her special bus. And no one knew anything about this situation except for the Sisters on the mountain, Lizzie Fox, and Nellie. All she had to do was be patient and wait.

  The cell phone Pearl had removed from the girls’ bus, when they weren’t looking, vibrated in the pocket of her shirt. She’d also helped herself to the driver’s wallet just to make it marginally more difficult for the authorities to identify him. She was tempted to answer the vibrating phone but thought better of the idea. Wherever the bus carrying the girls was headed, surely someone must have alerted someone else that it hadn’t arrived. The girl named Emily said they had been sitting in the ditch for almost three hours. Five now since Pearl had gotten back on the road. Yes, it was time for the people at the girls’ final destination to get worried. Nellie and the others would have to deal with that end of things.

  God in heaven, what was she going to do with the girls? Sooner or later, without a doubt, someone would try to charge her with kidnapping. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, she thought grimly.

  “C’mon, c’mon, someone call me. Like now would be a good time,” Pearl muttered over and over under her breath. When nothing happened, she continued driving. With any luck she’d hit the barn just as the sun came up. At best she had fifteen minutes to go.

  A rickety pickup passed her going the other way. The driver tootled his horn, something the people in Utah did out of habit. Pearl tootled back, a cheerful sound in the very early morning. She wondered if the driver of the pickup would be the one to call the Highway Patrol about the bus in the ditch. Then, of course, he would mention seeing the other bus, and the hunt would be on.

  It probably wouldn’t be a problem since she had magnetic signs and extra license plates to switch out, all compliments of Charles and his network. Also, thanks to Charles, she had several sets of new identities. This driver’s license she was carrying said she was Harriet Woonsocket and lived in Burlington, Vermont. She even owned a small Cape Cod house there, where she paid taxes yearly and got junk mail delivered. The other identities were available in case of need.

  In the back of the bus under the last row of seats she had boxes and boxes of books, including Bibles, and other reading material that she passed out to churches and youth groups.

  Pearl Barnes, aka Justice Pearl Barnes (Ret), also known as Harriet Woonsocket, alias Missy something or other, was a woman of many names and talents.

  She saw the huge yellow sign proclaiming that Snuffy’s was the best bar and grill in the state of Utah. She turned off onto a gravel road, drove two miles, and there was the barn straight ahead. She was grateful George was waiting and had lowered the spikes across the road that otherwise would have shredded the tires of her bus into a hundred pieces. The doors were opening as she slowed and drove right into the cavernous space. The doors closed almost immediately.

  “You cut it pretty close, Missy,” the big, bald-headed man said cheerfully. “Got some hot breakfast ready for everyone, and the hot water is running full blast for anyone who wants to take a shower. Full load this time, I see. Gonna have to have Irma fix some more eggs. She’ll love that. That woman just loves to cook for a crowd.”

  Two volunteers stepped into the crowd and shuffled half the women and children to the kitchen in back of the barn and the other half to the showers on the other side.

  “Something happen along the way, Missy?” George Ellis asked, concern furrowing his brow when he saw the pregnant young girls.

  Pearl swiped at the sweat forming on her brow. “You could say that. Listen, we’re going to have to stay a little longer than I planned or like.” She quickly related the night’s events. George soaked it all in like a sponge. “Driver was dead, you say?”

  “Very dead. I tried for a pulse. I took his cell phone and wallet so they aren’t going to know who he is, at least right away they won’t. I did pass that pickup like I told you. I’m sure the Highway Patrol is there as we speak.”

  “These girls, what are they saying?”

  “Nothing. The one who isn’t pregnant is the only one really talking and, beyond telling me who they are, she isn’t saying all that much. She did volunteer, quite cheerfully, that she miscarried in her fourth month. There must be some kind of law about this, George. You live here, what do the authorities do about something like this? Those girls are babies themselves, and they’re going to give birth to babies. Where are the damn parents?”

  “Polygamy is a whole other world, Missy. The authorities pretty much look the other way. Those people out there in that big compound have some pretty powerful lawyers, and they go at it. Just easier to do nothing. I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s the way it is.”

  “Not for long,” Pearl said. “Things are going to change pretty quick, I’m thinking. In the meantime, we have to keep them here until…until I can get some help.”

  “I hear you, Missy. Now, how about some of Irma’s pancakes? By now she’s probably run out of eggs, so she’s switching to pancakes. Our own fresh sausage is always a big hit. You game?”

  “George, I am starved, and I admit it. You don’t think anyone will come around here asking questions, do you?”

  “Doubt it. This acreage is set two miles back. Course, they know I’m here, but they’d call first to ask if I’ve seen anything. No one wants to take a chance on those spikes in my road, that kind of thing. Most people around here go on trust, and that goes for the Highway Patrol. ’Sides, me and Irma are honorary members. You look dead on your feet, Missy.”

  “I am, George. Do you mind if I pass on breakfast and try to get a few hours’ sleep? Wake me if…well, just wake me if you need to, okay?”

  “I will, Missy. Your room is all ready, just head on back to it. Irma laid out some clean clothes and towels for you.”

  Pearl hugged the old man, looked into his eyes, then hugged him again.

  George and Irma Ellis had a daughter who had tried to get away from her abusive husband too many times to count. By the time the couple contacted Pearl, who acted on the information immed
iately, it was too late for the Ellises’ daughter. She was found dead in her garage an hour before Pearl could rescue her and her twin babies.

  From that day on George and Irma Ellis were Pearl’s staunchest supporters and did everything and anything they could to aid her underground railroad, making sure no one else met the same fate as their daughter and their grandbabies.

  George looked around the barn and felt his eyes fill up. He and Irma had used all their savings plus their daughter’s insurance money to convert the barn into living quarters that no one in Sienna knew about. They’d installed two huge bathrooms with four showers each and two dormitory bedrooms that could sleep twenty-two comfortably. In the back of the barn, George himself had built a kitchen with a huge brick oven you could roast an ox in. All of this had been done on the sneak by Irma and George without building inspectors prying into what they considered their private business. They’d driven miles and miles out of their way to buy fixtures and wiring just so the local shop owners wouldn’t know what they were up to.

  It had been Irma’s idea, once they got under way, to lay down the spiked hump at the entrance to their property. It worked like a charm, and no one came to visit after news got around about the first six or seven accidents. The message was loud and clear: the Ellis family didn’t want company. They were probably a bit tetched in the head because of the loss of their daughter and grandchildren.

  George trundled his big body back to the kitchen area, where Irma was doing her best to chat up the pregnant young teenagers. She shrugged to show him she was not getting any useful information. He mouthed the word “polygamy” for his wife’s benefit. She nodded but gave no other indication she knew what was going on.

  George walked around the old milk barn, which was big enough to hold all the people currently in it plus five or six more busloads. He went outside and walked the two miles down the lane to his mailbox. Sienna’s one and only police cruiser sailed past, slowed, stopped, and backed up to where George was standing, a pile of catalogs and the newspaper in his hands.

  “Morning, Deputy Clyde. Where you going in such a hurry?” George asked.

  “Down the road a piece. Bus went off the road, the driver’s dead. No identification on him a’tall. No passengers. The bus is a rental, we think. You see anyone around here, maybe walking, looking for help, George? You still got them spikes in the road that tear up a person’s tires?”

  “I do for a fact, Deputy Clyde, and, no, I haven’t seen a soul. Heck, it’s a two-mile road to the house. If there were people in the bus, I’d think they’d head right into Sienna. Maybe the guy was deadheading somewhere. You know, dropped off his passengers and was returning to wherever he was headed. Sorry I can’t help you. I’ll watch the local news at noon to see how it’s all going. If you need me for anything like a search party, just give me a call.”

  The deputy nodded and got back into the cruiser. George watched until the black and white cruiser was just a speck on the road before he turned and started on the two-mile walk back to the barn. Walking to the mailbox was George’s only exercise, and he was proud of the fact that he did it, day in and day out, rain, snow, or sunshine. Just like the United States mail carriers.

  A knot settled itself between his shoulder blades. Clyde might act like a hick, but he was sharp as a tack. And Clyde did not take kindly to any kind of wrongdoing on his watch, which was twenty-four/seven. He’d be back sooner or later. Probably sooner than George would like. He had to make preparations for his guests before that happened.

  The knot turned into an itch as he walked along in the bright sunshine. How long before the people at the compound—assuming that’s where his guests were headed—would call the authorities? Or would this be something they handled with their own people? He had to admit he didn’t know. Nor did he want to find out.

  George picked up his pace and broke into a trot. Time, he felt, was his, Irma’s, and Missy’s enemy. Yet time was all they had.

  Chapter 4

  If she had been wearing jodhpurs and knee-high polished boots, Annie de Silva could have passed for General George Patton, ready to announce that it was time to go into battle as she waved Charles’s pointer at the huge seventy-six-inch television monitor on which Lady Justice stood, balancing the scales of justice.

  It was always a moving moment for the Sisters as they contemplated their past, the present, and whatever the future was going to hold for them. Breaking the law, serving up justice Sisterhood style, had its upside and its downside. This was always the moment when each of them knew they could bow out or forge ahead. The question was never a verbal one, but it was hanging there like an invisible thread, and they all knew it. One by one they would nod to show they were on board for whatever was to come.

  The huge clocks on the wall showed various times around the world. It was ten minutes to twelve, Eastern Standard Time. Almost seven hours since their world had turned topsy-turvy, with Charles and Myra’s departure on the British helicopter and Pearl Barnes’s latest crisis.

  Annie stepped down and stood behind her chair at the round table. “Listen up, ladies. We are on a short leash, timewise. Pearl needs us, and she needs us now. We’ve spent the last hour watching video of those strange people out there in Utah. I personally take offense at any man who claims he has the right to take as many wives as he wants. Like this man,” she said, pressing a button to show a middle-aged man, dressed to the nines, on the screen. “He has one legal marriage and says he has thirty-seven spiritual—or celestial, if you like that word better—wives. Which doesn’t say much for those dumb women. That makes thirty-eight wives. The legal wife and the thirty-seven spiritual/celestial wives have given him seventy-eight children. All under the age of seventeen. The man’s name is Harold Evanrod, and he is called ‘the Prophet’ of the HOE sect. It’s a splinter group of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints—the FLDS. The HOE stands for ‘Heaven on Earth.’”

  “That’s an Ermenegildo Zegna suit he’s wearing,” Alexis said. “I know fashion, and that suit cost him bookoo bucks. Where does the money come from? And the guy drives a Bentley! I don’t get it.”

  “Good question, and you’re right, it is a Bentley,” Nikki said. “A lot of the families are receiving welfare payments from our government. That means everyone out there is footing the bill for the Bentley and the suit. It’s called taxes. Thirty-seven celestial wives collecting welfare checks every week. That’s a lot of money no matter how you look at it. And this is going to make your jaw drop: the Pentagon is helping out with huge contracts to those people. I don’t know how that works because I just plucked it off the Internet a while ago,” she added as she looked down at her notes.

  Isabelle waved a sheaf of papers in the air. “This is not only unbelievable, it is disgusting. I can’t wait to get there so we can”—she smiled—“take care of things. You are not going to believe what those creepy people do to their own, to the children. And no one does anything.”

  Yoko started to cry. “In a way it is what my evil father did to my mother and all those other young women he brought here to…satisfy those horrible pedophile friends of his. Just tell me what to do, and I will gladly do it.”

  Kathryn stomped her feet and stood up. “This little mission calls for everything we can throw at those people. I, for one, can’t wait to get out there, which raises the question, how are we going to do it?”

  “We need Charles’s password to get into his…his secret files. There is no way we can even think we can crack it on our own, which means one of us has to call him to demand it.” Nikki looked down at her watch. “He should be setting down right about now on British soil. Will he cooperate? I don’t know.”

  She had her special phone in her hand and was punching in a number. The others watched her, their expressions tense.

  They all flinched when they saw her square her shoulders. The grim set of her jaw told them some unpleasant words were going to pass through her clenched lips, and they
were right.

  Nikki didn’t bother with a greeting. “I need your pass code, Charles, and I need it now.” She listened a second or two, then the ugly words flew. “I really don’t give a good rat’s ass about your secrecy and our secrecy. I need it now. We have a crisis here that you left us to deal with, and since you aren’t here, we have to act independently. Are you going to give it to me or not? Really, Charles. I feel for you, but this is a life-and-death matter for hundreds of people, and the son you didn’t even know existed does not enter into what’s facing us. You are dealing with your crisis, and we need to deal with ours. I can’t help you with your guilt. We all are praying for your son and for you, too. So, your answer is no?”

  The other Sisters immediately started to jabber, their voices high-pitched, angry, and indignant. Nikki held up her hand for silence. Her voice turned warm in greeting. “Myra, Charles is not cooperating. I need the pass code. If you know it, give it to me, please. Hundreds of lives depend on it. HRM? Her Royal Majesty? I didn’t know there was such a title. Oh, Charles made it up. Okay. Are you sure, Myra? Thanks. Call us,” she said, and then hung up.

  “Okay, every operative Charles ever used, all his sources will be at our disposal as soon as I enter his pass code,” Nikki said.

  “But if he wouldn’t give it to you, why did Myra offer it up?” Yoko asked.

  Nikki sighed. “It wasn’t that he wouldn’t give it up. He couldn’t give it up. There is a difference according to Myra. It’s that covert, British espionage stuff. You know, like a cop never gives up his gun, that kind of thing. Right now it really doesn’t matter, and Myra wouldn’t lie to us. It’s splitting hairs, but what the heck; we have it now, and that’s all that matters. I’m going on the computer, the rest of you delve into all that polygamy stuff. Be sure you understand what we’re getting ourselves into and how we’re going to extricate ourselves. Someone needs to call Pearl and tell her we need at least thirty-six hours before we can be there. That’s providing everything works to our advantage, and I can get us the help we need.”