White Heat

“Sure you want to photograph a tarantula coming out of an old outhouse,” Rachel muttered when she was gone.

“I’d rather capture a snake slithering across a woman’s bare stomach, but I only have one woman at hand, and I doubt my trusty assistant would cooperate.”

“Damn right.”

He chuckled under his breath.

“You could’ve jumped into that conversation a little sooner,” she whispered.

“Why? You were doing just fine. No need to overact. As long as what we say makes sense and appears to be true, the less detail, the better.”

“There’s nothing wrong with making friends and opening up, Nate.”

“Except that we’re lying, right?”

He had her there. “Except for that,” she reluctantly agreed.

“So…are you going to ask this woman about the Covenanters, or should I?”

“I will.”

“When?”

Her stomach growled. “After we eat.”

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?”