Blessed be the Wicked Page 2

  But by six o’clock in the evening, everything in the Taylor household was orderly again. No smudges of leftover brownies, no remnants of borscht. Family dinners were in the dining room, with cloth napkins and classical music playing softly in the background. Professor Taylor controlled the conversation like a conductor. With the wave of his invisible baton, each child was called on to present informed and well-reasoned opinions. There had been no room for emotional conversations or silliness with Professor Taylor. There still wasn’t.

  Abbie took a long drink from her glass, then another. Then she dialed.

  “Hello, Abish.” No one but her father called her by her given name.

  “Hi, Dad. I’m glad I caught you. I was hoping you could help me out with some historical research.”

  “Of course. I understand you’re heading up an investigation into a death that is, well, curious in its appearance.”

  “Pleasant View news has made it down to Provo already?” Abbie asked.

  “This is not the sort of thing anyone wants to become common knowledge. Surely you can understand that,” her father said. “I’d like you to be careful with this investigation. Don’t rush to judgment. It would not be advantageous for the details of the death to make it into any of the papers, particularly The Salt Lake Tribune.” The Trib, as most people in Salt Lake called it, still maintained its reputation as a non-Church-run newspaper, even though its parent company was now the same as the Deseret News, which was proudly run by the LDS Church.

  Abbie wasn’t really surprised her father had already heard about the case. He was extraordinarily well connected. This death had all the hallmarks of the macabre ritual some argued Brigham Young and other leaders had supported during the early days of the Church. It was exactly the sort of thing an active member of the Church would think should be reported to the appropriate leader.

  “What do you know about the case?” Abbie asked.

  “I don’t think we should discuss that. Suffice it to say I’m familiar with the religious significance of the details surrounding the death.”

  “Who told you about it? We haven’t released any details,” Abbie said.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Abbie’s father said. His tone indicated she was being impertinent by asking.

  “Not at liberty to discuss that? Really?” Abbie could hear her voice getting loud. She was angry, and she knew her father would stoically tell her to calm down and then hang up the phone, feeling smugly superior because he kept his own temper on such a tight leash. She took another sip of her wine and a deep breath.

  “Okay, then, can I ask you your opinion about the legacy of the blood oaths? I know it’s been decades since they’ve been part of the temple ceremony, but there are a lot of people alive today who drew their thumbs across their necks or stomachs—”

  “Let me interrupt you. I don’t need to remind you what President Hinckley said before the changes were made, do I? He reminded us of our absolute obligation not to discuss that which occurs within the temple walls. All sacred matters deserve sacred consideration.”

  “I’m not asking about the temple ceremony itself. I’m interested in how members responded to the change. I’m not asking you to divulge anything sacred. I just want to know if there are active members in the Church who might miss the more orthodox ceremony.”

  Abbie knew her father was one of a few chosen men who had been consulted when the presidency of the Church first began discussing the possibility of changing the temple ceremony. He had been included in meetings between Church leaders and several PR firms concerning the Church’s “perception problem” among non-Mormons as well as new converts. The temple ceremony was particularly offensive to people who had not grown up in the Church and were not inured to its idiosyncrasies.

  “Abish, you know I support the Prophet. When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done. When they propose a plan—it’s God’s plan. When they point the way, there is no other which is safe. When they give direction, it should mark the end of controversy.”

  Really? Abbie thought. Was her dad going to quote worn-out Church propaganda to her? She remembered this particular dictum about “all thinking being done” from Sunday school. She wasn’t sure how long priesthood leaders had been trotting out this maxim to shut down dissent, but it didn’t sound any less grating to her adult ears than it had to her ears as a child.

  “I’m not asking you for an independent opinion on the changes to the temple ceremony,” Abbie reiterated. She knew she was beginning to sound frustrated because, well, she was frustrated. Was her father capable of giving her a straight answer when it came to questions about Church doctrine? “I’m just asking if you think there might be people out there who believe the changes were wrong. You know this topic. If there’s anyone who’s an expert in this area, it’s you. I’m just asking for your private academic opinion. No one from the SCMC will ever know.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Abbie knew she’d gone one step too far. The Strengthening Church Members Committee, the SCMC, was something Abbie and her father both abhorred—perhaps for different reasons, but abhorred nonetheless. The committee had been set up at some point in the mid-1980s to monitor speeches and writings—and later blogs and podcasts—of members of the Church, particularly anyone suspected of apostasy. Mormons could forward complaints about fellow members of the Church to the committee. The committee would then pass information on to relevant Church officials, who could begin disciplinary proceedings if they felt it was warranted. However much her father supported the Church, he harbored no illusions about the SCMC, an organization that one might argue resembled the old East German Stasi a little too closely for comfort.

  Finally, Abbie’s father spoke, slowly and deliberately. “Many members were unhappy about what they saw as watering down the gospel. They saw no need to make the temple ceremony more appealing to recent converts, or to a younger generation. I count myself among that more traditional group.”

  “Do you think it’s more likely that, if there were somebody or a group of people who believed in blood atonement today, that person or persons went through the temple before the 1990 changes?” Abbie asked.

  “Yes, I imagine that people old enough to remember the older temple ceremony constitute the most likely demographic of those who see the value of blood atonement. Barring the possibility of someone who has a keen interest in Church history. As far as I’ve been informed about the body you found, even the robe was draped across the proper shoulder. There is, of course, also the likely alternative that the act was self-inflicted. If you understand the need for blood atonement, you may also understand that in today’s world it would be a lot to ask of someone else. It might be easier to do it yourself.”

  Abbie thought it was interesting her dad would bring up suicide, but said nothing about it. She wondered if he’d come up with the idea himself or had been instructed to pass on the theory to his daughter.

  “When you were in graduate school, did you ever come across evidence that blood atonement was actually carried out? I know there are anti-Mormon stories about non-Mormons or apostates being found in ditches with their throats slit, but do you know of any reliable source that indicated blood atonement was really practiced?” Abbie’s father had done his dissertation on the Church’s Reformation period, a time in the 1850s when Brigham Young and other Church leaders had spoken frequently of the ritual.

  Blood atonement was a touchy subject. After polygamy and anything to do with the temple, unvarnished LDS history was the least favorite topic of conversation for most active Mormons. Even her father, who had spent a good portion of his early academic career writing about the Reformation period, didn’t like talking about the early days of the Church beyond the officially sanctioned version taught in Sunday school. But if primary source material on the subject of blood atonement was available, Professor Taylor had read it.

  “Abish, I studied that a long time ago. I’m an old man and
my memory isn’t what it once was. Without going back and looking through my notes, the only thing I can tell you is that there were a number of leaders who spoke of sins that demanded blood atonement. Murder, of course, but there were rumors of anything from stealing cattle to breaking the Law of Chastity. I can’t imagine it has any relevance today. I would suggest you not pursue this line of investigation any further.”

  “What the…?” Abbie stopped herself before she said something she might regret, although at the moment she couldn’t imagine regretting putting her father in his place. Abbie couldn’t believe her dad was trying to tell her how to do her job. Did he think that now that she was in Utah, he had some sort of authority over her?

  “Abish, that’s enough. Good night.”

  Abbie stared at the phone in her hand. Had her father just hung up on her? She finished her wine and poured another glass. If her dad knew about the body, someone Abbie worked with had leaked very specific details of the crime scene. Even the wine couldn’t numb the unsettling feeling spreading through her chest.

  Abbie looked at her glass. She’d had too much wine on an empty stomach. She needed to eat something. She opened the fridge and stared inside. There was a single chicken breast along with some steamed green beans from a dinner she’d made two nights ago. If she toasted a few slices of almost-stale ciabatta, that would do for dinner. She picked at the leftover food and drank more wine. She couldn’t stop thinking about blood atonement. She opened her laptop and Googled the term. The first page had links to either official LDS websites or avowedly anti-Mormon ones. Neither was helpful. She needed a reliable source. The conversation with her dad had been far from enlightening. Then she remembered the boxes. How could she have forgotten?

  Abbie pulled down the stairs to her attic. There wasn’t much room up there, but it was big enough to store Christmas decorations, high school yearbooks, and a few boxes filled with her father’s old doctoral research. He had wanted her to follow in his footsteps when she was in college. For a while she’d thought she wanted to, too. She had even gone so far as to apply to graduate school in history—and she’d gotten into Yale just like her dad—before she dropped out in the first month. She’d been schlepping these boxes of her dad’s books and notes with her ever since. Returning them would force a discussion about why she’d dropped out and throwing them away seemed disrespectful.

  Her dad had sent them to her at the end of her junior year. They were precious. The books and copies were from a time before scanning and home printers. Abbie had decided to write her senior thesis on polygamy. Her dad’s dissertation research covered much of the period Abbie was looking into. She’d started out believing what she’d been taught in Sunday school, but the more she researched, the less the stories she’d been told at church matched up with the primary source material. Still, she’d wanted to believe. She spent her senior year fasting and praying. She read the scriptures. She even spoke to her Bishop, who told her that she might want to find a research topic that was uplifting and in line with the teachings of the Church. Abbie wrestled with that piece of advice: if the Church was true, then how could it hurt to research its history?

  Looking at the boxes now, she realized her father must have thought that supporting Abbie’s academic interest would strengthen her testimony of the gospel. In the end, studying the history of the Church had led father and daughter to very different places.

  Abbie carried the boxes down to the living room. They were heavy. The first box was full of Mormon hymnbooks and a few books in the phonetic English alphabet Brigham Young had created for the Saints living in the original State of Deseret. The alphabet had never really taken off, but Abbie still thought it was kind of cool that there had been an effort to help non-English-speaking converts integrate once they made it to Zion by adopting an almost entirely phonetic writing system.

  The second box looked more promising. These were her father’s actual notes. Abbie set a thick binder titled “Reformation” onto the coffee table. It was dusty and faded. Over the years, the light-blue front cover had become detached from the rest of the binder. She carefully turned to the first yellowed page, where her father had neatly printed “Table of Contents.” The fifth tab was “Blood Atonement—History.”

  Abbie turned to the section, being careful not to damage the brittle paper. Her father’s handwritten notes—dense sentences of small, tightly spaced words—were in the margins everywhere. Abbie’s eyes darted up and down each page, searching for something that would help her understand what she’d seen in the McMansion’s basement closet.

  Finally, she found what she was looking for on a page with the purplish type of a ditto machine. These notes were from another era. Despite how annoyed she was with the man at the moment, she couldn’t help but smile at the thought of her father as a young graduate student making copies on some ancient duplicator. She was grateful he had. This was a copy of a page from A Discourse by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, February 8, 1857.

  Now take a person in this congregation who has knowledge with regard to being saved in the kingdom of our God and our Father, and being exalted, one who knows and understands the principles of eternal life, and sees the beauty and excellency of the eternities before him compared with the vain and foolish things of the world, and suppose that he is overtaken in a gross fault, that he has committed a sin that he knows will deprive him of that exaltation which he desires, and that he cannot attain to it without the shedding of his blood, and also knows that by having his blood shed he will atone for that sin, and be saved and exalted with the Gods, is there a man or woman in this house but what would say, “Shed my blood that I may be saved and exalted with the Gods”?

  Abbie’s stared at the faded words. Beneath the quote, her father had written in his characteristically neat cursive:

  Jedidiah Grant, JOD IV, 1856— I say that there are men and women that I would advise to go to the President immediately, and ask him to appoint a committee to attend to their case; and then let a place be selected, and let that committee shed their blood.

  Abbie vaguely recalled hearing the name before, but couldn’t for the life of her place him. He wasn’t in the LDS canon. Another Google search later and Abbie discovered that Jedidiah Grant had served in the First Presidency of Brigham Young. He was a chief proponent of the Mormon Reformation and famous for his unforgiving fire-and-brimstone sermons.

  The more Abbie thought about it, the more convinced she became that the body hadn’t been staged. It wasn’t window dressing; it was purposeful. The temple clothes, the bowie knife (a favorite of the Danites, a fraternal organization founded by the Church, later known for its vigilante efforts in the 1838 Mormon War), even the missing wedding band and wallet.

  Elder Doe, as Abbie had taken to calling the unidentified man to herself because, well, he had to be a Mormon elder, had been given his final chance to be exalted with the Gods. Had he come willingly?

  Abs, come on …

  Abbie could see Phillip roll his eyes at the proposition that a man would voluntarily choose such a gruesome end, but Phillip had never understood the power of faith. He had been an atheist like both his parents before him. When he did the right thing, he did the right thing not out of fear of divine retribution or to gain favor in the afterlife. That was something Abbie loved about him. Phillip was a good and honest man because it was the right way to live, not because he wanted to be perfect or feared judgment.

  Abbie had never been comfortable with the violent nature of the early Church. If she was being honest with herself, the ease with which everyone ignored this violence was one reason she had left. There had been so many instances of violence and so few honest explanations. Beyond the Danites, there was the Nauvoo Legion, the militia for the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, that had become a military force to be reckoned with until it had disbanded, not to mention the Mountain Meadows Massacre of a wagon train from Arkansas disguised to look like an attack by Southern P
aiutes. From the very beginning, violence had been part of Church history.

  Then there were the scriptures themselves. Killing glorified as an act of obedience to Heavenly Father. Before leaving Jerusalem for the New World, Nephi—one of the most virtuous characters in the Book of Mormon—was tasked with retrieving brass plates containing the history of his family and revelations of early prophets. After unsuccessful attempts to buy the plates from their wealthy owner, Laban, Nephi found the man in a state of drunken unconsciousness. Instead of simply stealing the plates, Nephi obeyed the command of the Holy Ghost to first kill Laban with the man’s own sword, then take the plates. Why Nephi could not simply take the plates from drunken Laban, Abbie had never understood.

  Just as she had never understood why Church members would reenact slitting their own throats in the temple. Symbolic or not, the ritual was disturbing. Abbie found it distinctly unsettling that LDS friends and neighbors had agreed, if only in theory, to willingly partake in such savagery in the name of protecting what was sacred.

  Abbie’s thoughts returned to the case. What had Elder Doe believed? What kind of man had he been? Had he thought he had committed a sin for which only this macabre ritual could make him worthy of exaltation? Or, had someone else thought he had?