Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

that I could hitch up my long skirts and break into a slow jog.
    The canyon was a separate eco-system from the compound’s arid expanse, and was vivid with red Indian paintbrush and yellow daisies. Set beside the sage green of the shrubs and backed by the soft red of sandstone walls, the blooms provided vibrant contrast to the pastel palette around them. I heard the musical trickle of water, the tiny click-click-click of lush buffalo grasses waving in the breeze. Almost paradise. But, reminding me that the law of nature was kill or be killed, a red-tailed hawk rode the thermal overhead, searching for prey.
    The tension fell away from me as I jogged past clumps of prickly pear cactus and gold-flecked creosote. Lizards scurried out of my way, prairie dogs popped back into their holes, and here and there, jackrabbits fled from me as if they feared
Fricassé de Lapin
topped my evening menu. I knew coyotes lived nearby, but since they were nocturnal, they were probably bedded down in one of the many caverns pock-marked into the canyon’s walls.
    Thanks to Davis’s appropriation of the compound’s rifles, I didn’t have to worry about dodging bullets, and I had the canyon to myself.
    I jogged for an hour, marveling at the length of the canyon. The Arizona Strip was laced with these long canyons, some leading south all the way to the Grand Canyon. Fortunately, they were broader and safer than the slot canyons found in the eastern part of the state, those steep, sheer-walled canyons which became death traps after a thunderstorm. I was in no danger now. It hadn’t rained for days and the walls of Paiute Canyon sloped gently. Well-worn paths led up its sides and onto the desert floor above.
    Finally winded, I slowed to a walk and turned around, lowering my skirts as I did so. Even the spectacular beauty of the canyon hadn’t chased away the memory of the grotesque lesson I’d heard in the classroom. Part of me wanted to go back and slap the teacher upside the head, while the other part counseled restraint. Restraint won. Even if Miss Teacher didn’t brainwash her charges, the job would still be accomplished by their fathers and mothers.
    Mothers.
    I touched the scar on my forehead, remembering the woman who looked like me, the woman who shot me at point blank range and left me for dead. Oh, yes, I knew that mothers could damage their children, too, not just fathers and prophets and teachers in crack-brained cults. In my career as a police officer, I had seen grisly injuries inflicted upon children by their mothers.
    One day, when I had harped too loud and long about my own mother’s sins, Jimmy had shut me up with an article he found in
National Geographic.
It described various tribes in Egypt, Kenya and Somalia, where mothers, in order to earn higher dowries for their little girls, cut off their daughters’ sexual organs. These “operations,” carried out by amateurs with no medical training using rusty tin can lids as knives, were not circumcisions. No, the article described the complete removal of all reachable sexual organs, clitoris
and
labia, performed without anesthesia. Many of the little girls bled to death during the procedures, but apparently their mothers believed death was a risk well worth taking. After all, a “cut wife” brought a higher dowry—even when the cut wife was numb from the waist down.
    So in a way it was almost unjust for me to confine my rage to the males of Purity. Yes, the men held all the cards, all the power, but they could not maintain their illegal lifestyle without the women’s collusion. So in the end, what kind of monsters wouldn’t protect their own daughters? I touched the scar on my forehead again. Sometimes monsters were called mothers.
    The singing of a cactus wren freed me from my dark visions. I could do little to help all of Purity’s children, but at least I could save Rebecca.
    Good investigators know that the solution to the crime of murder is to be found in studying the victim, so it was imperative that I begin interviewing Solomon’s widows and children, not to mention his friends and business associates. Unfortunately, secrecy reigned in Utah’s polygamy communities. There was a good chance, too, that many of my suspects might be moving soon. As I had learned in the community meeting at Prophet Davis’s house, Solomon’s wives and children would soon be parceled out to new homes, perhaps even to other compounds far from Purity. Somehow I would have to