Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

sweetie is Sister Jennifer. I was goin’ to name her Susan, after my mother, but Brother Jim, that’s her father, he said no, that he wants all his kids named with a J. Ain’t that just the smartest thing?” She beamed, thrilled to be married to a genius.
    “Brilliant.” I edged toward the door. “Upstairs, you say?”
    “You can’t go up there without special permission.”
    I stopped. “Does Hanna have permission?”
    “Oh, yeah. She’s up there all the time.” She began cooing at her baby, already forgetting I was there.
    After closing the door behind me, I took a deep breath. The behavior of the young mother troubled me, but I didn’t have time to examine it. The women’s voices at the end of the hall rose in laughter, and I heard the rattle of dishes being stacked, the clink of cheap flatware. Soon they’d leave the lunchroom, making my escape with the baby difficult, if not impossible.
    I needed to hurry.
    The stairs were steep, but I noted with surprise that unlike the hallway and rooms below, they were thickly carpeted in a deep, industrial gray tweed. To keep down the sound? The same dense carpeting stretched down the hall of the clinic’s second floor. I noted fewer doors here, probably denoting larger rooms, but in contrast to the doors downstairs, most of these appeared to have locks. Then I remembered. The Circle of Elders met up here, right next to the armory.
    I squared my shoulders and opened the first door on the building’s west side, only to find a long, bare room running almost the entire length of the building. It didn’t contain one stick of furniture, not a diaper, nor scrap of paper. The walls and ceiling, however, had been covered with expensive soundproofing tiles. A chemical smell signaled that the room had been recently refurbished.
    The next room, also soundproofed, proved smaller, but it contained several bunks, cribs, and chests. A bank of mattresses of varying sizes lay stacked against the far wall. The entire setup baffled me until I remembered the large number of pregnant women I’d seen since coming to Purity. The compound expected one heck of a population explosion, and soon.
    It made sense. How many men lived in Purity? One hundred? Two hundred? If each man had three pregnant wives—a conservative figure—then within the next couple of months, at least three hundred to four hundred babies would be born at the clinic. Still, why did the room contain cribs, not bassinets? Surely the babies went home with their mothers within days. Although the cribs and chests looked like Salvation Army rejects, they still represented considerable expenditure.
    Shaking my head in perplexity, I crossed the hall. Upon opening the first door, I knew I’d found the Circle of Elders’ lair. A long, broad table with ten mismatched chairs took up the center of the room, but I hardly gave it notice. What fascinated me were the locked gun cabinets filled with shotguns and rifles, as well as a sprinkling of single-action revolvers and several small automatics. But along with those run-of-the-mill weapons so many Arizonans tote openly, stood a lethal arsenal of Berettas, Ingrams, Fabriques, Galis, Heckler and Kochs, even a few Kalashnikovs, Steyrs, and M14 Clones.
    Nobody used those babies on rabbits.
    Not wanting to be caught here under any circumstances, I left the room and closed the door firmly behind me. Just what the hell were the polygamists planning, an armed insurrection? Or were they just the usual Western gun nuts? Then I remembered Jacob Waldman and his call for blood atonement. I remembered the murders committed by a famous polygamist clan now serving time in prison. And I remembered Waco.
    But then a door opened from one of the soundproofed rooms down the hall, allowing the babbling voices of children to drift my way. I scurried back into the armory, leaving the door slightly ajar so that I could peek out.
    Two granny-dressed women exited the room, one elderly, the other a teenager. The teen sobbed hysterically, and if it hadn’t been for the supporting arms around her waist, she would probably have fallen. As the older woman helped the teen down the stairs, snatches of their conversation floated back to me.
    “…God’s will.”
    “…can’t stand it…”
    “Pray with the Circle, they’ll…”
    “…too weak.”
    In her focus on the distraught teenager, the older woman didn’t pull the door completely shut, and my hopes began to rise. Could Hanna be in there?