Downwinders: Blood Oath, Blood River Part 18

Leaving early, Deem thought. Sounds like one of the kids threw a tantrum and she had to take them out.

It seemed to take forever for the woman to finish packing in all the kids. One of the children kept screaming at the top of their lungs the entire time.

Finally Deem heard the sliding door of the minivan close. Instantly the screaming m.u.f.fled. The woman walked around to the driver's side. She paused at the door and sighed before she opened it, releasing the sound of the tantrum once again into the parking lot. She slid into the vehicle and closed the door.

I'll never have kids, Deem thought to herself.

The minivan roared to life and slowly backed out of the parking s.p.a.ce. Deem slid a little more to the side opposite, hoping the woman wouldn't be able to see under the BMW when she had the minivan pulled all the way back.

She probably is too busy dealing with the kids to notice anyway, Deem thought.

The minivan pulled away and the parking lot returned to normal. She heard Winn say, "All clear!"

Deem slid out of the BMW and stood up. She walked over to Winn's Jeep and jumped back into the pa.s.senger side. The moment she closed the door to the Jeep, the doors of the church opened and a stream of people began to emerge.

"Just in time," Winn said, watching as men in white shirts and ties emerged. Some of them tugged at their ties the moment they stepped out of the building, loosening them and unb.u.t.toning the top of their shirts. Women emerged with them, all in knee length dresses. Children swarmed around both, and as family after family emerged it became impossible to tell whose kids belonged to whom.

"Jesus Christ, that's a lot of kids," Winn said. "Do you think Dayton will be coming out? There's too many people behind my car right now for me to back out. Too many kids, I'm afraid I might hit one."

"No," Deem said, "he'll be one of the last ones out."

As the words came out of her mouth, Deem saw Dayton walk through the door and into the sunlight. She shrunk down in her seat.

"That's him!" she said to Winn.

"Who?" Winn asked, looking at the crowd.

"The guy in the suit!"

"They're all in suits!" Winn replied.

"Brown suit, red tie, balding," Deem said.

"That narrows it down by half," Winn said. He watched to see which of the men would walk to the BMW.

"s.h.i.t!" Deem said.

"What?"

"The duct tape! I must have left it under the car!"

"Are you sure?" Winn asked.

"That woman with the kids distracted me," Deem said. "I think I set it down and I forgot to take it with me when I slid out."

"Let's hope he doesn't notice it when he backs out," Winn said. "He's started his car. He can't really leave yet, too many people walking behind it. He seems to be in a hurry."

Winn watched as Dayton tried to pull out. People moved away from his car as it slowly slid from the parking s.p.a.ce. Parents wrangled their children, taking them by the hand so that they wouldn't dart into the path of the slowly moving car.

As Winn watched, a family began to load into the car that was parked on the other side of the BMW. A boy of about twelve noticed the duct tape on the ground. He bent to pick it up.

"d.a.m.n," Winn said. "A kid found the tape."

The child looked up at the BMW, which had finished backing out and was starting to move forward down the parking lot.

"President Dayton!" the boy yelled, holding up the duct tape.

The BMW continued to pull away, moving through the crowd. People in front of the car stepped aside to let the BMW through, most of them recognizing the occupant and deferring to authority.

The boy ran behind the BMW, desperately trying to return the duct tape, calling "President Dayton! President Dayton!"

The boy's father yelled for him to come back, and the kid stopped in his tracks, turning to look back at his father.

"Get in this car!" the father called.

"President Dayton forgot this!" the boy said to his dad, returning to the family vehicle. The BMW was now on the other side of the parking lot, nearing the exit.

"You can give it to him the next time you see him," the father said. "Get inside."

The boy got into the backseat of the car, and the father got into the driver's seat and began backing out.

"Crisis averted," Winn said. "The kid has the duct tape. Dayton is gone."

Deem sat back up in her seat and turned on the flat panel. She watched as the blue dot moved on the screen.

"Half the people can't get out of the parking lot fast enough," Winn observed. "The other half are standing around shaking each other's hands like they have nowhere to go."

"That's what they do," Deem said.

"Is it working?" Winn asked, trying to see the screen Deem was holding.

"Seems to," Deem said. "It looks like he's headed home."

"Let's find out," Winn said. There were fewer people walking in the lot now, and he carefully backed out of his parking spot. They exited the lot and drove back to Dayton's home, Winn asking Deem for directions a couple of times once they entered the subdivision. As they neared the house, they both observed the BMW in the driveway.

"Yay, it works," Deem said. "Thank you, Awan!"

"What now?" Winn asked.

"We wait," Deem said. "I have no idea what time the meeting will be."

"Are you hungry?" Winn asked. "I could use something."

"7-11 first," Deem said. "I'm dry."

As Winn turned the Jeep around and left the subdivision, Deem kept her eyes on the blue dot. For the first time she began to think she might actually be able to locate her father's journals. It seemed within reach. Until now, it had just been an idea. This little blue dot is going to lead me to them, she thought. I might have them today. Tonight.

She watched the blue dot remain stationary at Dayton's home as they moved throughout the town, picking up her Big Gulp and then going through a fast-food drive thru.

"He's still there?" Winn asked.

"Yup," Deem said. "Hasn't moved."

"Want to double check it?" Winn asked.

"Yeah," Deem said. "Why not."

Winn drove back to the subdivision and past Dayton's house. The BMW was still there in the driveway.

"Can't be too sure," Deem said.

"It's not like we have anything else to do," Winn said.

"Let's find a place to park in the shade," Deem said. "And we'll wait him out."

"Where is he now?" Winn asked, speeding his Jeep through Snow Canyon. The red rock on either side of the road would occasionally break open into wide s.p.a.ces where small communities of homes were being developed, then enclose again.

"Ahead a couple of turns," Deem said.

"This road twists enough that he won't notice us if we stay back. But I don't want to lose him, so let me know if the distance increases."

"I wonder who that was he picked up in St. George?" Deem asked. Dayton had stopped at a house in the older part of St. George, near the college. An older gentleman in a suit and tie had come out of an extremely well maintained home and jumped into the pa.s.senger seat of Dayton's BMW.

"Probably another member of their secret council," Winn said. "Carpooling. I wonder how far away this meeting will be."

Deem kept her eyes glued to the blue dot pulsing on the screen. It slowly progressed up Highway 18, winding its way over hills and through small canyons. Soon they pa.s.sed the turn off to the Mountain Meadows monument.

"How appropriate," Winn said as they sped past it. "Some things never change."

"We don't know that this secret council was as bad as the people who committed that ma.s.sacre," Deem said.

"Giving them the benefit of the doubt?"

"My father was one of them, so yes, I'm trying to."

"But what if they were, Deem? What if they operate on the wrong side of the fence? Claude sure made it sound like they were formidable."

"Formidable doesn't mean evil," Deem said, watching as the blue dot on her screen moved slowly toward Enterprise. "There's every possibility that they use their gifts for good. They're leaders in the church, for G.o.d's sake."

"Then why all the secrecy?" Winn asked. "And don't you start defending the church all of a sudden. You're usually much harder on it than I am."

Deem sighed. "I guess I'm dreading what we might find. I don't want to discover that these people I've respected all my life are not what I thought they were."

"Your father included?" Winn asked.

"Yes," Deem said, "him too."

The significance of this seemed to soften Winn a little. "I hope you're right. I really do."

"But be prepared for the worst, right?" Deem asked.

"I've always found that to be a wise approach."

They slowed down through Enterprise and soon found themselves at the junction of Highway 56. The locals called it Beryl Junction.

"Take a left," Deem said. "He's headed back into Nevada."

"Not much out there," Winn said. "I wonder if they meet in a cave or a mine."

"In suits and ties?" Deem asked. "Not a chance."

A train mirrored their progress, travelling along the side of the road as they approached the Nevada border. After they crossed, the train split off southward.

"That line leads to Caliente, doesn't it?" Deem asked.

"Yeah, it does," Winn said. "Wouldn't it be funny if that's where they're meeting?"

"Why funny?" Deem asked.

"Just the whole fundamentalist thing," Winn said. "You know, the Warren Jeffs marriages."

"No, I don't know," Deem said.

"When they were trying Jeffs for marrying off underaged girls to fundamentalist Mormons, it came out that they held a lot of the secret marriages at a motel in Caliente."

"Ugh," Deem said. "Creepy."

"So, wouldn't it be interesting if this secret council meets in Caliente?"

"Doesn't mean anything," Deem said.

"Who was it said 'there are no coincidences'?"

"I don't see how they can be connected," Deem said.

"Maybe the secret council includes some fundamentalists?" Winn said. "Why not?"

"Because the regular LDS despise polygamists," Deem said. "They think they give the church a bad image. They root them out and excommunicate them, when they find them."

"You don't seriously consider this secret council to be regular LDS, do you? They're rogue."

Deem watched the blue dot speeding along on the screen. What Winn was saying was right, but she wasn't fully prepared to accept it. Being raised Mormon, it was hard to kick the patterns of thinking that had been drilled into her from a young age. And she didn't like thinking about what it meant so far as her father was concerned.

She remembered a time when she was fifteen, and she learned that friends of hers who she'd grown up with, the Halworth family, neighbors just down the street, kids she'd played with for years, were discovered to be polygamists. Her first reaction was that it didn't matter, but as she watched the family become ostracized from the rest of the community, she began to feel betrayed. How could the Halworths have lied to her all these years? She had sleepovers at their house when she was younger. She babysat for them on occasion. All the while, they'd been secretly practicing polygamy. Deem's mother was insistent that she cut off all communication with them, and her father, as stake president, was involved with excommunicating the family.

Then she began to feel annoyed, that the reaction to the discovery was overkill, and the public shunning was unjustified. She knew the family to be good people. They were the same kids she'd played with last year. They hadn't changed. But the community's reaction to their outing had been decisive and swift. They were ignored, no longer invited to functions. They were not welcome in other people's homes. The kids were teased endlessly at school. Deem remembered her mother making a point of purging all of the Halworth family contacts from her email lists. Deem felt it was wrong, and it began to feed her sense of rebellion against the way she'd been raised. Soon she was finding ways to skip church, and backing out of invitations she used to accept.