Читать книгу Under the Radar - Fern Michaels - Страница 9

Pearl Barnes looked like anything but what she was: a retired Supreme Court justice. She was dressed in baggy cargo pants, a sweat-stained oversized T-shirt, and combat boots laced up to her ankles. Her iron-gray hair was cut short and slicked back. These days her skin was bronzed, dry, and wrinkled. And she could smell her own body odor. A far cry from the way she looked when she was in court: immaculate, coiffed, and perfumed in her judicial robes.

She’d been driving for hours in a special bus with a special engine that promised never to give out on her. It looked like her, old and decrepit, but that was what she wanted, part of her MO so that she didn’t draw attention to her illegal activities.

The people she worked with—“volunteered” was a better word, and more to her liking—didn’t call her judge because they didn’t know about that other life. They called her many names, like Savior, Angel, and Mama. The name that stuck more than any other was Missy. Not Missy something or other, just Missy. But for the most part she answered to just about anything including, Hey Lady!

Pearl looked at the passengers in her bus and winced. She had thirteen pregnant young girls, and if she was any judge, none was older than fourteen. An unlucky number no matter how you looked at it. Then she looked at her two novice volunteers, who looked scared out of their wits, the same way the three other women and their seven children looked scared out of theirs.

They were all looking at her expectantly, wondering what magic she was going to unleash. Her destination was a small rural town called Sienna, where she planned to drop off the women and children, where they would wait in a very special barn until the next relay team surfaced. Now she had fourteen girls and one dead bus driver. The driver she had to forget about for now because when you were dead you were dead, and there was nothing one could do about that. Sooner or later, the Highway Patrol would come along and take the man to the county morgue.

Before Pearl climbed into the driver’s seat of the bus, she took one last look at the dead driver and blessed herself. She hated leaving a body alone and unattended, but she had no other choice. She took another few minutes to think back over what she’d done when she’d rescued the young girls. What had she touched? Had she wiped everything clean? She thought she had. Well, she couldn’t worry about that. She had to get all her passengers safely to the welcoming barn, a mere twenty-two miles due east.

Pearl turned on the ignition and listened to the engine purr to life. She loved the big old bus. Really and truly loved it. It had carried hundreds of women and children to safety.

As the bus lumbered down the road, Pearl’s thoughts were all over the map. She knew very little about the polygamous sect that these children belonged to. She should have known. She was a judge, for God’s sake. She defended her lack of knowledge by trying to convince herself she’d never had to deal with polygamy. Men with a dozen wives were too obscene even to think about under normal conditions.

What she’d found really strange was how quiet the young girls were. Even though they were scared out of their wits, they didn’t part with any information. With the exception of the one named Emily, a truly chatty youngster, who had told Pearl about the polygamous sect and indicated that she’d miscarried in her fourth month. Mentally, Pearl agreed with her earlier assessment, she had fourteen young girls but only thirteen pregnant ones. It had taken only three minutes for her to come to the conclusion that the youngster named Emily was the talkative one of the group. And even she had not really given up much other than that they were all being moved from a compound in Nevada to Utah. If Emily knew or understood why, she hadn’t divulged that information.

Pearl risked a glance in the rearview mirror. Everyone was either dozing or sound asleep. She wanted to cry for all of them.

Such a dark night, she thought, out there virtually in the middle of nowhere with a crisis on her special bus. And no one knew anything about this situation except for the Sisters on the mountain, Lizzie Fox, and Nellie. All she had to do was be patient and wait.

The cell phone Pearl had removed from the girls’ bus, when they weren’t looking, vibrated in the pocket of her shirt. She’d also helped herself to the driver’s wallet just to make it marginally more difficult for the authorities to identify him. She was tempted to answer the vibrating phone but thought better of the idea. Wherever the bus carrying the girls was headed, surely someone must have alerted someone else that it hadn’t arrived. The girl named Emily said they had been sitting in the ditch for almost three hours. Five now since Pearl had gotten back on the road. Yes, it was time for the people at the girls’ final destination to get worried. Nellie and the others would have to deal with that end of things.

God in heaven, what was she going to do with the girls? Sooner or later, without a doubt, someone would try to charge her with kidnapping. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, she thought grimly.

“C’mon, c’mon, someone call me. Like now would be a good time,” Pearl muttered over and over under her breath. When nothing happened, she continued driving. With any luck she’d hit the barn just as the sun came up. At best she had fifteen minutes to go.

A rickety pickup passed her going the other way. The driver tootled his horn, something the people in Utah did out of habit. Pearl tootled back, a cheerful sound in the very early morning. She wondered if the driver of the pickup would be the one to call the Highway Patrol about the bus in the ditch. Then, of course, he would mention seeing the other bus, and the hunt would be on.

It probably wouldn’t be a problem since she had magnetic signs and extra license plates to switch out, all compliments of Charles and his network. Also, thanks to Charles, she had several sets of new identities. This driver’s license she was carrying said she was Harriet Woonsocket and lived in Burlington, Vermont. She even owned a small Cape Cod house there, where she paid taxes yearly and got junk mail delivered. The other identities were available in case of need.

In the back of the bus under the last row of seats she had boxes and boxes of books, including Bibles, and other reading material that she passed out to churches and youth groups.

Pearl Barnes, aka Justice Pearl Barnes (Ret), also known as Harriet Woonsocket, alias Missy something or other, was a woman of many names and talents.

She saw the huge yellow sign proclaiming that Snuffy’s was the best bar and grill in the state of Utah. She turned off onto a gravel road, drove two miles, and there was the barn straight ahead. She was grateful George was waiting and had lowered the spikes across the road that otherwise would have shredded the tires of her bus into a hundred pieces. The doors were opening as she slowed and drove right into the cavernous space. The doors closed almost immediately.

“You cut it pretty close, Missy,” the big, bald-headed man said cheerfully. “Got some hot breakfast ready for everyone, and the hot water is running full blast for anyone who wants to take a shower. Full load this time, I see. Gonna have to have Irma fix some more eggs. She’ll love that. That woman just loves to cook for a crowd.”

Two volunteers stepped into the crowd and shuffled half the women and children to the kitchen in back of the barn and the other half to the showers on the other side.

“Something happen along the way, Missy?” George Ellis asked, concern furrowing his brow when he saw the pregnant young girls.

Pearl swiped at the sweat forming on her brow. “You could say that. Listen, we’re going to have to stay a little longer than I planned or like.” She quickly related the night’s events. George soaked it all in like a sponge. “Driver was dead, you say?”

“Very dead. I tried for a pulse. I took his cell phone and wallet so they aren’t going to know who he is, at least right away they won’t. I did pass that pickup like I told you. I’m sure the Highway Patrol is there as we speak.”

“These girls, what are they saying?”

“Nothing. The one who isn’t pregnant is the only one really talking and, beyond telling me who they are, she isn’t saying all that much. She did volunteer, quite cheerfully, that she miscarried in her fourth month. There must be some kind of law about this, George. You live here, what do the authorities do about something like this? Those girls are babies themselves, and they’re going to give birth to babies. Where are the damn parents?”

“Polygamy is a whole other world, Missy. The authorities pretty much look the other way. Those people out there in that big compound have some pretty powerful lawyers, and they go at it. Just easier to do nothing. I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s the way it is.”

“Not for long,” Pearl said. “Things are going to change pretty quick, I’m thinking. In the meantime, we have to keep them here until…until I can get some help.”

“I hear you, Missy. Now, how about some of Irma’s pancakes? By now she’s probably run out of eggs, so she’s switching to pancakes. Our own fresh sausage is always a big hit. You game?”

“George, I am starved, and I admit it. You don’t think anyone will come around here asking questions, do you?”

“Doubt it. This acreage is set two miles back. Course, they know I’m here, but they’d call first to ask if I’ve seen anything. No one wants to take a chance on those spikes in my road, that kind of thing. Most people around here go on trust, and that goes for the Highway Patrol. ’Sides, me and Irma are honorary members. You look dead on your feet, Missy.”

“I am, George. Do you mind if I pass on breakfast and try to get a few hours’ sleep? Wake me if…well, just wake me if you need to, okay?”

“I will, Missy. Your room is all ready, just head on back to it. Irma laid out some clean clothes and towels for you.”

Pearl hugged the old man, looked into his eyes, then hugged him again.

George and Irma Ellis had a daughter who had tried to get away from her abusive husband too many times to count. By the time the couple contacted Pearl, who acted on the information immediately, it was too late for the Ellises’ daughter. She was found dead in her garage an hour before Pearl could rescue her and her twin babies.

From that day on George and Irma Ellis were Pearl’s staunchest supporters and did everything and anything they could to aid her underground railroad, making sure no one else met the same fate as their daughter and their grandbabies.

George looked around the barn and felt his eyes fill up. He and Irma had used all their savings plus their daughter’s insurance money to convert the barn into living quarters that no one in Sienna knew about. They’d installed two huge bathrooms with four showers each and two dormitory bedrooms that could sleep twenty-two comfortably. In the back of the barn, George himself had built a kitchen with a huge brick oven you could roast an ox in. All of this had been done on the sneak by Irma and George without building inspectors prying into what they considered their private business. They’d driven miles and miles out of their way to buy fixtures and wiring just so the local shop owners wouldn’t know what they were up to.

It had been Irma’s idea, once they got under way, to lay down the spiked hump at the entrance to their property. It worked like a charm, and no one came to visit after news got around about the first six or seven accidents. The message was loud and clear: the Ellis family didn’t want company. They were probably a bit tetched in the head because of the loss of their daughter and grandchildren.

George trundled his big body back to the kitchen area, where Irma was doing her best to chat up the pregnant young teenagers. She shrugged to show him she was not getting any useful information. He mouthed the word “polygamy” for his wife’s benefit. She nodded but gave no other indication she knew what was going on.

George walked around the old milk barn, which was big enough to hold all the people currently in it plus five or six more busloads. He went outside and walked the two miles down the lane to his mailbox. Sienna’s one and only police cruiser sailed past, slowed, stopped, and backed up to where George was standing, a pile of catalogs and the newspaper in his hands.

“Morning, Deputy Clyde. Where you going in such a hurry?” George asked.

“Down the road a piece. Bus went off the road, the driver’s dead. No identification on him a’tall. No passengers. The bus is a rental, we think. You see anyone around here, maybe walking, looking for help, George? You still got them spikes in the road that tear up a person’s tires?”

“I do for a fact, Deputy Clyde, and, no, I haven’t seen a soul. Heck, it’s a two-mile road to the house. If there were people in the bus, I’d think they’d head right into Sienna. Maybe the guy was deadheading somewhere. You know, dropped off his passengers and was returning to wherever he was headed. Sorry I can’t help you. I’ll watch the local news at noon to see how it’s all going. If you need me for anything like a search party, just give me a call.”

The deputy nodded and got back into the cruiser. George watched until the black and white cruiser was just a speck on the road before he turned and started on the two-mile walk back to the barn. Walking to the mailbox was George’s only exercise, and he was proud of the fact that he did it, day in and day out, rain, snow, or sunshine. Just like the United States mail carriers.

A knot settled itself between his shoulder blades. Clyde might act like a hick, but he was sharp as a tack. And Clyde did not take kindly to any kind of wrongdoing on his watch, which was twenty-four/seven. He’d be back sooner or later. Probably sooner than George would like. He had to make preparations for his guests before that happened.

The knot turned into an itch as he walked along in the bright sunshine. How long before the people at the compound—assuming that’s where his guests were headed—would call the authorities? Or would this be something they handled with their own people? He had to admit he didn’t know. Nor did he want to find out.

George picked up his pace and broke into a trot. Time, he felt, was his, Irma’s, and Missy’s enemy. Yet time was all they had.