John Sandford: Bad blood

"But how did that fit with the idea of a church?" Virgil asked.

"You can read the Bible any way you want, and they did," Alma said.

"No, no, no," Einstadt said impatiently. "It's all there, what they did, the patriarchs, and it went unpunished, because it wasn't wrong. Look at Lot. It's beautiful. The World of Law says it's all right to go to Iraq and kill a hundred thousand people, but it's wrong to have sex with people close to you? Does that sound even a little bit reasonable? What we did was all right-"

"What you did was probably the most fucked-up crime in the history of the state of Minnesota," Virgil said. "Pardon the language. And to tell the truth, I'm not all that happy with the war in Iraq, but there are arguments for and against it, greater evil versus lesser evil, and unless you're a simpleminded moron, you can't make the kind of comparison you just did."

"We didn't live in your World of Law," Einstadt said. "We lived in the World of Spirit, and it was better. It is better, and it'll be better again. We'll make some changes-"

"You won't be making any changes; you're going to be in prison," Virgil said.

"It's a religion," Einstadt said. "You're going to persecute us because of our religion?"

"Damn straight," Virgil said.

Alma had been staring at her father, and now she turned to look at Virgil, her dark eyes glittering in the light from the muted television. She said, "Not everybody in the church were involved. Some pulled back, and some left the church entirely and moved away, so it's not all the church. It's people in the church."

Virgil said, "But if people knew what was going on, even if they didn't take part, then they're to blame, too. You have to go to the law."

"We went to the Spirit," Einstadt said. "The Spirit says there's nothing wrong with a proper sexual attachment between-"

"We're not talking about sex," Virgil said. "There's nothing wrong with sex, but this isn't about sex. This is about slavery. The children don't have a proper choice. They can't say no. We've got photographs taken by Karl Rouse, hundreds of them, and they don't show sex: they show humiliation, bondage, slavery, desperate children being used by old men for their own enjoyment. I honest-to-God want to get you into a proper court, but I don't understand how human beings could do what you people did. You're monsters in this day and age; throwbacks to the days of slavery, and the slaves were your own children. I'm disgusted just looking at you."

"Disgusted by physical love-"

"Bullshit," Virgil said. "I talked to one of the victims-Karl Rouse's daughter. The language she uses isn't love language, it's language right out of a porno film. I'm a cop, I've seen some of everything, and she shocked the hell out of me. And she doesn't even know-"

Alma said to her father, picking up on Virgil: "You remember what you did the first time you took me up to the bedroom? You remember Mother down crying in the kitchen, and you hit her? How many times did you hit her, Father? She had blood in her mouth, and then you took me up to the bedroom. You remember what you made me do? I didn't even understand. I didn't know what happened. One day I get my monthlies, and as soon as they stop, you stopped being my father and started to be the man who came to rape me every week."

"It wasn't like that," Einstadt said. "You liked it. You remember taking my hand? You remember-"

"I was hoping you wouldn't hurt me."

Virgil said, "Whoa. Alma, I've heard enough here. You've got to let me have him. Believe me."

"So you can put this all out in a trial? So we can all talk about it? You think I want to get up there and talk about it? I don't. That's why we're having this here trial."

She said to the girls: "And he did the same to you. Did you take his hand?"

The two girls shook their heads, and the older one, Edna, said, "I don't remember so much when Father took me up, or Grandfather took me up, as when they took Helen up. I thought that all the awful things were coming to her now. I thought even that my night dreams would go away, because Helen would have them instead. I thought maybe they wouldn't service me anymore. I prayed to the Lord Jesus that they wouldn't come anymore, that they'd only service Helen."

Helen said, "I got the night dreams from you, but not about Father and Grandfather. I had night dreams about Mr. Mueller, after you told me about going in the pool. But I was hoping that I wouldn't have to go in the pool. Mr. Mueller would look at me during Spirit worship. I know what he was thinking… At least I didn't go in the pool."

Alma said to Virgil, "After World of Spirit, some girls were taken in a pool to be serviced by the men who wanted to service them."

"Is that what happened to Kelly Baker?" Virgil asked. "A pool?"

"No. That was… something different. Some of the girls went a little crazy, and they asked for it. Kathleen Spooner-what have you done with Kathleen Spooner?"

"She's in custody. We ran a trap for her, and some of the other men," Virgil said. "They went up to talk to Birdy and gave themselves away. We were recording everything. They left Kathleen behind to kill Birdy. Kathleen's… agreed to help us."

Einstadt said, "She's made a deal? She's the devil's own daughter, Kathleen is. She's worse than anyone here. She killed Jim Crocker-"

"We knew that," Virgil said.

"And she would have killed anyone else who got close to her, if you gave her the chance. She had guns and she always wanted to use them."

"Good for her," Alma said. "She kept the worst of you away from her."

Virgil: "What happened to Kelly Baker?"

Alma said, "She was like Kathleen Spooner-I got sidetracked there. Kathleen liked being serviced. So did Kelly. And she liked other things: we heard that she had whip marks on her legs. Father might know more details, but as I understand it, my dead brother, Junior, my husband, Jacob, Jim Crocker, and John Baker took her out to the Baker barn and had their own little pool. She choked on Jacob's thing and they couldn't get her to breathe again. They knew what would happen with the World of Law, so they took her car to town, and put her in the cemetery."

"They washed her body before they did that," Virgil said. "Was that some kind of religious death thing?"

Alma said, "They were talking about this DNA thing. They say they live outside the World of Law, but they know all about it. You think we got one hundred years of this thing, if Father is right, without keeping an eye on the World of Law?"

"Was Jim Crocker in on that? Keeping an eye on the law."

"Of course he was," Alma said. "He wasn't any regular church member-you wouldn't see him praying-but he was sure there when it came time to service the girls."

"Your dead brother, Junior. Is he the one who was laid out in your father's house?"

"He was. He was shot," Alma said. "Everybody who was shot and killed was laid out, and the houses burned, because somebody said that the fires would get so hot that nobody could prove they was shot, and so the World of Law couldn't take the farms away. The houses weren't worth so much; it's the land that's worth a lot."

Helen said, "I'm glad Junior's dead."

Edna: "So am I. I'd service him, but he was just mean. Mean, and he never washed."

Virgil asked the girls: "How many men were you involved with… over the years?"

The younger one said, "I was only with family, because I wasn't in the pool yet."

The older one said, "I don't know. Most of the men who were still in our part of the church. How many is that?"

Alma said, "Many."

Alma said, "We're getting close to a verdict, seems to me. Mr. Flowers, you've been asking questions, but you haven't been putting up a defense." She said it as "dee-fence."

Virgil said, "Miz Flood, I'll tell you the honest-to-God truth, and that's that I don't care much about what happens to your father. I came out here to arrest him, and put him in jail for the rest of his natural life. And while I don't believe in hell, I understand that you folks do, and I suspect that if there is, he's going to be burning there forever after. So, from my point of view, your father's taken care of. He might as well be dead.