Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

you now.”
    I shoved past her. “I don’t care if he’s counseling the Pope. I’m going in.”
    “No! Counseling is a very private time, a spiritual time.” She clutched at my dress and attempted to drag me back.
    I batted her hand away and kept moving. “Get your hands off me, Sissy, before I slap you silly.”
    “Sister Lena, I wish you wouldn’t…”
    But I was already at the den, already opening the door. What I saw there shocked me even more, if possible, than the scene at the clinic.
    Brother Davis Royal, the Reform Prophet of Purity, was counseling someone all right, if you call running your hand up a seven-year-old girl’s thigh
counseling.
I recognized those moves from my own experience with him the day before. He’d go for her blouse next.
    I didn’t bother keeping the outrage from my voice. “What the fuck do you think you’re
doing?
”
    The little girl gave a frightened squeak, jumped up, and headed out the open door, blond hair and long skirts flying. Sissy, whose face had become as white as Prophet Davis’s perfect teeth, grabbed her and hustled her away.
    Davis turned to face me, his face flushed. With passion? For a child? Or with anger because I’d interrupted his good time? “Sister Lena! Such language!”
    “Don’t criticize my language, you miserable child molester!” For a moment my hand itched for my revolver, but he wasn’t worth going to jail over. Especially not in Utah.
    His mouth attempted a half-smile. It failed. “I can explain.”
    “There’s nothing to explain. I thought you had some kind of decency, but you’re no better than the rest of the Circle.”
    He shook his head as if under attack by bees. “No, no, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m no rapist, and I’m certainly no child molester. Being new to our ways, you’ve simply misinterpreted what you’ve seen.”
    Did the fool think he could make me question the evidence of my own eyes? Then I remembered: Davis was his father’s son, and therefore no stranger to manipulation. He probably thought if it worked for Daddy, why not for him?
    His voice grew oily as he reached for my hands. “Sister Lena, you saw how badly the situation with Earl Graff and Cynthia turned out. She never had the chance to get used to his touch, so on her wedding night, when he attempted certain things, she panicked. Don’t you agree with me that such an event could seriously scar a woman’s soul? Of course it could! That’s why a man who really cares for a woman’s happiness begins preparing her while she’s still a young and impressionable girl. Take Sissy, for example. If I’d waited until she was thirteen, it might have been too late! She could have turned her very healthy sexual nature toward another man. But by preparing her the same way I had just started preparing that other little girl, Sissy fixated on me. Don’t you see the compassion in my method, Sister Lena?”
    “Sister Lena thinks you’re a freak.” With that, I jerked my hands away and gave him the same karate chop I’d delivered to Earl Graff.
    Leaving Davis writhing on the floor, and a horrified Sissy leaning against the wall, I rushed back across Prophet’s Park to Saul’s house. The mud-spattered truck parked in front of it told me he’d returned from court.
    “I’m calling the cops!” I yelled, as I jerked open the front door. “And then I’m getting the hell out of here!”
    Saul sat on the sofa, his face immobile. Next to him, Ruby had been crying.
    “Yeah, you sure are getting the hell out of here, Lena,” he said, quietly. “We all are. I lost in court this morning, and I’ve been given forty-eight hours to remove my clothes and furniture from this house.”
    With an effort, I put my rage on hold. “They only gave you forty-eight hours?”
    “Yeah. After that, the Circle of Elders impounds everything else. You gonna help me pack?”
    I shook my head and told him about what I’d seen at Prophet Davis’s house. Then, while Saul beat his fist against his palm in rage, I called Sheriff Benson and told him everything, too.
    “You want to press formal charges?” Benson asked when I finished. The anger in his voice weighed more toward me and what he dismissed as my “foolish undercover crusade” than at Prophet Davis’s actions.
    “My god, man, I interrupted an incident of child molestation in progress! Of course I want to file charges.”
    “Then I’ll come right out.”
    Somewhat gratified, I put down the phone.
    My feeling