Page 1 of Only Girl Alive

Prologue

The Manifesto

Following a revelation to Joseph Smith, the practice of plural marriage was instituted among Latter-day Saints Church members in the early 1840s. For twenty years, the United States government passed laws to make this religious practice illegal. The US Supreme Court eventually upheld these laws. After receiving a revelation, Church President Wilford Woodruff issued a Manifesto banning polygamist marriages. This was accepted by the Church as authoritative and binding and led to the end of plural marriage.

The Fundamentalist Mormon leaders did not agree.

This story is the consequence.

One

Sliding in behind the man’s head while he slept took the killer several frustrating minutes. Trusting in God’s command was all that made the nearness bearable. The soft pillow, with its freshly washed case, cushioned the man’s head while the killer’s legs inched into position for the coming retribution.

According to scripture, to atone is to suffer a penalty for the act of sin, allowing the sinner to reconcile with God. “The man’s atonement will be his salvation.” These words vibrated within the person sent to deliver the penalty.

The killer lightly inhaled and exhaled into the silence, awaiting God’s next command. It came when the man involuntarily moved his leg several inches beneath the covers. Tightening the fingers of both hands, one in the hair at the side of the man’s head and the other around the knife, God’s judgment became clear.

The blade rose.

With each centimeter, God made the hand steadier.

Jabbing down firmly, the knife’s sharp tip punctured the skin below the man’s ear. His physical flesh offered no resistance. The body jerked and the killer immediately eased the pressure on the knife, almost releasing it. Unclear eyes opened slightly before gradually closing in peaceful acceptance. The knife slid swiftly through skin, muscle, and tissue, causing warm blood to spray both bed and killer.

Soft sounds came from the man as his spiritual death, caused by his unimaginable sins, gradually turned physical. His hands, rising in objection to his oxygen-starved brain, were easily batted away until they lay still.

Soft gurgles drowned out God’s voice for several minutes, the noise a symphony in the killer’s ears. The man didn’t thrash, and, as God proclaimed, his small jerking movements didn’t wake the woman beside him. His heart pumped until the blood stopped flowing and his muscles no longer twitched. Temporal death took him into God’s arms without resistance. The killer held the man until his celestial body left Earth and all he offered was dead weight upon the pillow.

Releasing his head, the killer’s steady eyes turned toward the woman beside him. She lay farther in the shadows, facing away from her husband, and hadn’t witnessed the fate that would also be hers.

The bloodied sheets gave no resistance and the dry spots eagerly awaited their next feeding. Inch by inch, the transfer was made. The woman’s soft hair brushed the killer’s arm, causing a sliver of doubt. God spoke again, the divine voice echoing loudly off the walls, jarring in the stillness of the room, his verdict in no doubt.

The knife entered her throat. She made no sound nor did she struggle. It was God’s salvation and the woman knew her husband, who had fully atoned for his sins, would lift her into heaven beside him to share God’s glory. It was the promise made to wives upon marriage. Those worthy would be pulled up to heaven by their husbands.

The minute hand on the bedside clock slowly moved as the woman’s blood joined the man’s. When the sheets were soaked and thick drops fell to the carpet, steady breathing again filled the room.

The killer left the bed and walked out of the room, glancing down at the blood dripping from the tip of the knife onto the carpet and then the wooden floor.

No regret.

No looking back.

No hesitancy.

Sinners waited for salvation in the next rooms.

Two

The overcast sky and cold wind were the subtle backdrop for death as Detective Sergeant Eve Bennet prepared herself for what lay inside the house. The urgent call to Utah’s special investigative squad gave her and her team a new assignment. The fast-moving storm simply added to the macabre circumstances of the homicides.

Dark clouds rolled over the high rock crests that bordered the northern rim of the Grand Canyon and surrounded the rural community, hundreds of miles from the nearest major city. It was the perfect location for isolation and following beliefs illegal in the state of Utah and the United States.

News of the four murders within the polygamist community hadn’t yet reached the media but Eve knew it would. Since the fall of their prophet, the leader of the Fundamentalist Mormon Church in Utah, outsiders couldn’t hear enough news about the men with multiple wives and their children. The women and young girls, living like homesteaders in their nineteenth-century-style prairie dresses and puffed hair piled high on their heads, only enhanced outside curiosity.

When federal law enforcement had finally raided the polygamist communities in Texas, Arizona, and Utah, journalists made their private lives available for TV, magazines, and blogs. Viewers around the world were fascinated. Those who didn’t live in the Midwest had no idea the polygamist community existed, much less that they lived a way of life that was astonishing as well as perplexing.

Justice was an uphill battle for every case Eve and her team handled. The integrity of law enforcement was compromised within the fundamentalist community and Eve took that personally. From the highest judge in the county to the lowest rookie officer, the entirely male hierarchy supported the fundamental polygamist lifestyle and upheld church dogma even when it didn’t coincide with state and US law. Women and children had no rights and nowhere to ask for help. Cut off from the rest of the state, local elections favored the deeply ingrained beliefs of the fundamentalist church, which had been designated as a cult many years prior. The church’s rhetoric and extreme doctrine toward any person of color also designated them as a hate group.

Local law enforcement bias was only one of the problems Eve and her specialized investigators faced. Discovering who murdered the man, his two wives, and their child would be difficult at best. Navigating the cold waters of church secrecy would be a nightmare, as it always was.

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