Righteous02 - Mighty and Strong by Michael Wallace

seen either of these two men,” Krantz said. He took the photos and slid them across the table. He didn’t have much hope; a man’s mother would have a hard time picking him out of a lineup that included photos of such poor quality.
    As she reached for the pictures, Eliza asked, “These wouldn’t happen to be the polygamists who’ve been slinking around Temple Square the last two weeks, would they?”
    Fayer froze with her hand still on the photos. Krantz leaned forward, eager, anxious. “What polygamists? What have you seen?”
    Eliza studied the photos, then shook her head. “I can’t tell, this could be anyone.” She pushed them away. “But I’ll tell you what I’ve seen. There are two men who come in twice a week. They change their style of dress. Sometimes they’re together, other times not. Once there was a third guy, but he kept his distance from the other two.”
    “And what are they doing?” he asked.
    “They take pictures, make notes, but they’re not tourists. I heard them talk once, and it scared me.”
    “How so?”
    “Sister Sanchez—she’s a sweet girl, but clueless, if you know what I mean—tried to talk to one of them about Joseph Smith. ‘Can I tell you about a remarkable young boy and what he saw?’ she said.
    “I’d been chatting with a couple of tourists from Argentina and it was going nowhere,” Eliza continued. “By the time I turned around and saw Sister Sanchez approaching the two guys, it was too late to warn her off. ‘Some day all this will be ours,’ the older man answered. My companion frowned. ‘All what?’”
    Eliza nodded and her eyes seemed to fix on something in the distance, beyond the walls of the room. “The man said, ‘Thou hast sold thy birthright for a mess of pottage. Thy kingdom shall lie in dust and the righteous shall inherit the Earth.” She turned back to the FBI agents. “And then the other man grabbed his arm, whispered in his ear, and the two walked away in a hurry, toward the south gates.”
    Krantz looked at Fayer. “Birthright? Kingdom in dust? What the hell does that mean?”
    But Agent Fayer looked equally confused. “The mess of pottage is from Essau in the Bible. That other stuff, I don’t know.”
    “Easy enough to read between the lines,” Eliza said. “They’re Millenialists.”
    “What, like they’re waiting for the end of the world?” Krantz asked.
    “Not just waiting,” she said. “People like this don’t wait for anything. They make it happen.”

Chapter Ten:
    Fernie locked herself in the bathroom and stared at the blue strip in dismay. Outside, the phone rang and rang.
    Daniel knocked on the door. “The phone is ringing, Mommy. Mommy?”
    “Just a minute, honey, I’ll be out in a second.”
    The phone continued to ring. And ring. But Fernie couldn’t rouse herself. Why now, when Jacob was gone? Why?
    Jacob had brought her birth control pills several months ago. They had a new baby, plus the two older kids. Time to get settled. Fernie hadn’t exactly told him she was taking them, but what else would he think if he opened the package and saw she was popping out the pills on schedule?
    It’s okay, she had told herself. It’s not really a lie.
    And besides, Fernie was trying to plan her children. She was still nursing, and she kept a close eye on her cycles. Jacob was right, it was too early for another and money was tight. She wanted to take care of her children, not pop them out every ten to twenty months until her uterus collapsed. And Fernie swore she wouldn’t be one of those mothers who let sister wives and older siblings raise her children.
    But birth control pills? Jacob had talked her down from several extreme positions since they left Blister Creek. In principle, she didn’t think that birth control pills would offend the Lord, so long as you weren’t remaining childless out of selfishness.
    In practice, she couldn’t do it. The first night Jacob brought home a prescription, she’d stood in