“The gardener keeps asking for me to let him trim the palm trees,” Bishop Gillespie said, “and I keep saying no. All those dead palm fronds provide a lot of habitat for doves, especially, and they also provide a lot of shade.”
He gestured toward an oak and leather Morris chair that matched his. The lumpy leather cushions were burnished with long use and cracked with age. Ali guessed that the chairs were probably about the same age as the bishop.
“Come and sit,” he suggested. “Coffee?” He raised the cup and saucer that had been perched on the broad flat arm of his chair in Ali’s direction.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m completely coffeed at the moment. Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”
Ali had called earlier that morning, a little after eight, asking for an appointment. She expected it would take a day or two to gain access. When she was told eleven that morning was the only time available, she made tracks to be there.
“What have you and Sister Anselm got up to now?” Bishop Gillespie asked, beaming at her. “I assume that’s why you’re here.”
He listened to Ali’s story in silence until she reached the point where Gordon Tower had nearly decked Sister Anselm. At that point the bishop laughed out loud.
“It sounds like she deliberately provoked him.”
Ali nodded. “She did, and since the cops were right there, they were only too happy to cuff him, arrest him, and haul him away.”
“It’s not the first time,” Bishop Gillespie observed. “That’s one of the tools Sister uses when she’s dealing with bullies. That way someone else locks the guy up, and she doesn’t have to mess with him. It only works, though, if she has cops on hand to witness the assault.”
Ali had known Sister Anselm for years, but Bishop Gillespie’s revelation was news to her.
The bishop fell silent again and stayed that way until Ali finished telling him the rest of her story. In doing so, she told the bishop about sending DNA samples from Enid and her baby to Banshee Group while neglecting to say exactly how those samples had been obtained—a sin of omission. She ended with the hope that Bishop Gillespie would be able to convince Sheriff Alvarado to reopen the Jane Doe case.
“You’re thinking that a reexamination of the DNA involved in the Kingman cases will lead back to a perpetrator who’s a member of the group you just mentioned, The Family or whatever—the one Gordon Tower is part of?”
“Yes, I do,” Ali answered.
Bishop Gillespie considered for a time before he spoke. “My connection to the Kingman case is tenuous at best, but I know that this case in particular is one that has haunted Sister Anselm through the years. However, your assumptions about the connections between the two cases may well be correct. My asking might provide the necessary impetus to get the case back in the spotlight. I suspect, however, that the added expense of the DNA lab work may turn out to be a sticking point as far as Sheriff Alvarado is concerned.”
“High Noon will cover that,” Ali declared.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
Ali nodded. “I’m sure.”
A long silence settled over the room. Bishop Gillespie was the one who broke it. “On the one hand, reopening this case—if it does lead back to The Family—might suggest the authorities are indulging in a certain level of religious persecution. On the other hand, the extreme youth of the two pregnant female victims—Jane Doe and Enid Tower—is indicative of a history of sexual abuse, something of which the Catholic church is hardly blameless.
“So, yes, I’ll make that call to Sheriff Alvarado,” he continued. “Since you are far more conversant with the details of the current investigation and how it leads back to the Kingman homicide investigation, I’ll suggest that he contact you directly. In the meantime, I’d like to know more about The Family. I’d like to know if they’re part of that splinter fundamentalist group that still refers to itself as LDS or whether this is something else entirely.”
“You’re asking me to look into it?” Ali asked.
“Yes, I am,” Bishop Gillespie answered. “I’m familiar, of course, with what happened there years ago—the Short Creek incident you mentioned earlier. That was a complete travesty. I certainly don’t want to be responsible for bringing that kind of overreaction down on the heads of folks who may be innocent of any wrongdoing. On the other hand, we have two young women, twelve years apart, risking life, limb, and their children’s lives in desperate attempts to escape. That would suggest that something is seriously wrong as far as The Family is concerned. I want to know what’s really going on up there.”
“All right,” Ali agreed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
That was an easy commitment to make since she was way ahead of Bishop Gillespie in terms of searching out information concerning The Family. On her way down from Sedona, she had called Stu. Since she had struck out in locating any online information on The Family, she asked him to see if he could find any information on Gordon Tower.
“I’m busy working the Bemidji angle,” Stu had said. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll turn this over to Cami.”
There was a discreet knock at the door to the library and the bishop’s assistant stepped back inside. “Excuse me, Bishop Gillespie,” he said. “Your next appointment is here.”
Taking the hint, Ali rose to leave, but Bishop Gillespie wagged an admonishing finger in her direction. “Remember,” he said with a smile, “I expect both you and that bully-baiting friend of yours to stay in touch and out of trouble. I’m sure Mr. Simpson has my cell number, but I’ll ask my assistant to give it to you as well.”
Ali left the bishop’s residence with his direct number added to her phone’s list of contacts. On the way back to I-17, she stopped off at a FedEx office to drop off the envelope bound for Banshee Group. She was back in the car and headed north when her phone rang with a call from Cami.
“Making any progress?” Ali asked.
“Some. I started by searching county and state databases for Gordon Tower. Both his driver’s license and his voter’s registration list him as living on Tower Road in unincorporated Mohave County. Then I got a satellite photo of Tower Road. There’s only one house on it, a massive-looking place, and several outbuildings—a barn, some Quonset-hut-looking things, and a few others. I found a driver’s license listing at that address for someone named Edith Tower, but there’s no voter registration listing for her.
“I figured if Gordon Tower lived on Tower Road, I’d check out some of the other roads as well, and I struck paydirt. When I went looking through voter registrations for a Johnson living on Johnson Road, I found one—a guy named Wendell Johnson Jr. at 114 Johnson Road. A search of the driver’s-license database for that address shows two licenses, one for Wendell Jr. and one for Anita, but no voter’s registration for Anita. There’s another set of Johnsons in the area, a Wendell Sr. and Vera, but their home address is actually in Colorado City.”
“Let me guess,” Ali interjected. “Vera drives but doesn’t vote.”
“Right you are. That’s true for the entire enclave—two driver’s licenses per household—one for a man and one for a woman, but there are no voter registration listings for any of the women. At all.”
“What enclave are you talking about?” Ali asked.
“That information came from the property records. A little under fifty years ago, a guy named Angus Lowell showed up and purchased three thousand acres of unincorporated land in that part of unincorporated Mohave County. He bought that acreage from the FLDS church. He must have paid cash for the whole shebang because there’s no record of anyone ever carrying a mortgage. The entire property is still deeded over to the Lowell Family Trust.”
“That’s it,” Ali breathed. “That’s probably why they call it ‘The Family.’ Are you saying that none of the individuals you just named actually own the properties where they live?”