Jesus Freaks Read Free Page A

Stopping to hide the bloody evidence might attract more attention than going with the flow and taking his chances. None of the cars in the open lanes were being checked. Ricky eased down on the brakes and slowed the four-door sedan into the unmanned gate, stopping just long enough to reada sign telling him there was “No Inspection Today” and to “Proceed with Caution.”
    It was too late for that—too late for caution. Ricky had already begun his crusade. Earlier that evening, back in Tucson, he’d slashed the throat of his first victim, Sue Kauten, who as a young woman had helped raise the Prophet Prince and was one of several adult women who engaged in sex play with the young boy.
    That was decades ago. On this night, Ricky was just a few weeks shy of his thirtieth birthday. He’d been out of the cult for four years, but he couldn’t shake his past—the sexual abuse, pressure to be perfect, and all the twisted prophecies of his messianic fate. No one but he could find his mother and bring her to justice. No one but he could make her pay for all the lives she and that other monster, David Brandt Berg, had destroyed over the past three decades. The hard part was finding his mother. Her whereabouts were the most closely guarded secret in The Family. There were recent rumors that his mother was back in the states—hiding out somewhere in New Mexico, or maybe California.
    His mother, Karen Elva Zerby, grew up in Tucson and had been back to Arizona a couple times to visit her aging parents. In the past, in her role as his mother’s personal secretary, Sue was part of an advance team sent ahead to make sure it was safe for Zerby to visit. Ricky knew his mother would be back someday, so he moved to the Arizona desert to wait for that day. His break came on Christmas Day 2004, when Ricky learned Sue would be visiting Tucson the first weekend in January. Sue would surely know how to find his mother, and Ricky was ready to do whatever it took to extract that information.
    Crossing the border into California, Ricky glanced again at the bloodied pants on the floor of his car. It had been harder than he thought to kill another human being. It had been three hours since he left Sue Kauten’s body on the floor of his Tucson apartment and ran out to his car. His mind was still racing, but his body was giving out. At least he’d made it to California. It was time to stop, time to polish off that case of Heineken and get up the courage to make his next move.
    Proceeding west on the darkened freeway, Ricky saw that the next exit was “Lovekin Blvd/Blythe.” From the highway, Blythe looks likeany other pit stop on the way into southern California. There’s a rise in the roadway just before the Lovekin Boulevard off-ramp, a gentle crest that reveals a new horizon. Filling the night sky above the town are the golden arches of McDonald’s, the blue and yellow sphere of Motel 6, the red and yellow rectangle of Denny’s, the orange and black Union-76 ball, a rotating bucket of the Colonel’s chicken, and the latest logo to join this crowded field of corporate totems—the green goddess of Starbucks. These familiar symbols are stuck atop poles five stories tall, two to three times higher than any building in Blythe, a struggling farm town in the Palo Verde Valley, a patch of green on the edge of the Mojave Desert.
    All Ricky wanted was a bath and those beers. He took the Lovekin Boulevard off-ramp and pulled into the Holiday Inn Express, which offered an indoor pool and free HBO.
    Ricky loved movies, especially action flicks and martial arts films. His favorite movie was Boondock Saints , a notorious box office flop and cult favorite. Ricky’s boss back in Tucson had recommended the film but had no idea how Ricky would take its violent, messianic message to heart.
    Boondock Saints is the story of Connor and Murphy McManus, two Irish brothers living in a tough South