They stopped an hour later at a highway oasis with so many food choices Georgia couldn’t make up her mind. After her conversation with Jimmy, she’d lost her appetite. She wandered from the subs to the Chinese food to the pizza, eventually settling on a sandwich and a Diet Coke with lemon.
She grabbed a table near the exit and waited for Jimmy, who brought back a plate with two giant slices of pizza with mushrooms and extra cheese.
“I don’t know how you can eat after what you told me.”
“I eat when I’m upset. You don’t. We make it come out even.”
That got him a small smile. “Hey. You went upstairs with her to the second floor. Was that Benson’s room?”
“Yes.”
“So, what did you find?”
“Nothing. A Mormon Bible, a few books by Mormon authors. It was stripped down and clean as could be. You’d never think it belongs to a twenty-ish young guy. Strange. I took a few photos. Just in case.”
“I’d like to see them sometime. But I have another question.”
“Shoot.”
“How come you know so much about Mormons?”
Jimmy took a bite of pizza. He chewed slowly. Then he took a swig of his pop. “There’s a part of my family history I haven’t told you about. But this needs to stay between us. No one knows except the person involved and my mother. Even my aunt doesn’t know.”
“Of course.”
“You’ve heard us talk about my sister, Nancy, who you haven’t met?”
“The one who lives in California.”
“Well, I lost her for about six years. By the way, her name isn’t Nancy. It was Ellen. When she was sixteen she ran away from home. Next thing we know, she’d married a Fundamentalist Mormon in Southern Wisconsin.
“It wasn’t long after she got married and had a son that he started beating her. Started sleeping around. Never gave her money for Benny. Eventually he married a fourteen-year-old girl from another Mormon family and had three children in two years. My sister was basically ignored and isolated. The husband held a fairly powerful position in their ward. Which meant no one wanted to cross him.
“She finally called me from a gas station. I drove up. She told me everything and begged me to help her escape.” He looked over. “I did. But what I had to do so they couldn’t find her—how I got her out—well, most of it wasn’t legal.”
“What did you do?”
“I helped erase her entire identity. As a member of our family as well as her Fundamentalist life.”
“What about her son?”
“Him too. It took a while. You know, birth certificates, socials, all her school history. Benny’s too. We tried to move as fast as we could, but it was months before—”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“There’s an organization that helps abused Mormon women re-enter secular society. It’s called ‘HandMaids No more.’”
“Fitting.”
“It flies under the radar. But it was helpful. They were more advisers than anything else. They helped prepare Ellen psychologically for what was coming. It was a tricky situation.”
“Tricky how?” She watched as Jimmy took another bite of pizza.
“If a wife makes it known she wants to leave a Fundamentalist cult, and the Church can’t bring her back, they force her to leave her children behind. In fact, she’s not permitted to see anyone in the community again.”
“What mother would do that?”
“Exactly. So if the mother leaves with her kids, they’ll hunt her down, if only to get the children back. And with their history of violence—”
“What history of violence?”
“Throughout history, the Mormons have been involved in a lot of bloody events, insurrections, and wars. Fighting is the way they protect their religion. A lot of Mormons died that way. Including women.”
“But what about civil courts? Custody arrangements and things? Don’t they intervene?”
“Fundamentalists don’t care about the secular court system. For the most part, they try to ignore it. There’s also the problem of ‘snatch-backs.’”
“What are snatch-backs?”
“If a girl runs away, like I said, the Fundamentalists will try like hell to capture her and take her back.”
“Why would the girls go back to the hell they’ve just left?”
“Sometimes they find out life in secular society isn’t so easy. They aren’t well educated. They have no skills, and they’ve been taught to distrust everything that isn’t Mormon. So they go back. Or the men suddenly ‘find’ them. There are all sorts of stories of posses rounding up ‘lost’ Mormons.”
“You make it sound like the Wild West.” Now Georgia had completely lost her appetite. She pushed her plate away.
“In some ways it is.” He took another swig of soda. “But here’s the cruelest hypocrisy. While they might go to any lengths to bring back the girls, they actually kick out teenage boys from the community.” He ran his thumb and forefinger up and down his straw. “The Fundamentalists want to prevent young girls from getting attracted to boys their own age. So the elders make up excuses to banish the teen boys from the community. They literally drop them in the desert with nothing except the clothes on their backs. And of course, they’ve been raised to distrust the secular world too, so there they are with no education, no skills, and no hope of returning to their families. They’re called the Lost Boys.”
“Right. And then Peter Pan and Tinkerbell come to rescue them.”
He shot Georgia a glance. “If only. It’s just as bad as the Native American residential schools that snatched young Indian children and tore them away from the reservation. That’s another reason Nancy left with Benny. What kind of life could Benny expect if they’d stayed?”
“How did you get them out?”
“We kidnapped them in the middle of the night and drove like hell. The next morning, we gave them their new identities and helped them settle in Southern California.”
“And you haven’t seen her in…what…three years?”
“That’s right. I met you just after this all happened.”
“You’re a good man, Jimmy Saclarides.” Georgia reached out and brushed her fingers down his cheek. “I don’t tell you that enough.”
He covered her hand with his, brought it to his lips, and kissed it.
“I hope I get to meet Nancy and Benny one day.”
“I do, too.”
Georgia folded her arms. “So this Eden woman—did she take her kids?”
“The woman at the motel said no.”
“How does she know?”
“This is not a big town. Especially if you’re in the Fundamentalist Church. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.” He finished the first slice of pizza and started in on the other. “And you better believe she’s already called Eden’s husband—this Porter Christiansen—to tell him what I said.”
“Which was?”
“That they attacked the wrong woman and there’s an arrest warrant with Benson’s name on it. And if anything happens to you again, we’ll arrest him on conspiracy to commit a homicide.” Jimmy pulled out his cell. “In fact, hold on a minute.”
Georgia cut in. “But his crime happened on the North Shore. You’re in Lake Geneva.”
“I talked to O’Malley. He gave me the okay to say that.” He made a call. “Darlene. I want you to start a trace on a phone number.” He paused. “It’s a landline. The Nauvoo Motel.” Another pause. “Outgoing. I need to know exactly who they called today, between noon and one PM.” Another pause. “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
He tapped his cell on the table, then put it back in his shirt pocket. He looked over at Georgia, then picked up the second slice of pizza. “Sure you don’t want any of this?”