Feast Day of Fools hh-10 Page 29

  When Hackberry went inside the church, the intensity of the heat was like someone kicking open the door on a blast furnace. The walls were blackening and starting to buckle where they were not already burning, the sap in the cathedral beams igniting and dripping in flaming beads onto the pews below. Hackberry could hardly breathe in the smoke. Anton Ling went down the main aisle toward the stage, the fire extinguisher raised in front of her. Through the smoke, Hackberry could see a man crucified on a large wooden cross at the rear of the stage, his face and skin and bloodied feet lit by stage curtains that had turned into candles.

  Hackberry caught up with Anton Ling, his arm raised in front of his face to protect his eyes from the heat. “Give it to me,” he said.

  “Take your hand off me,” she said.

  “Your dress is on fire, for God’s sake,” he said.

  He tore the fire extinguisher from her hands and pulled the pin from the release lever and sprayed foam on her clothing. Then he mounted the stairs at the foot of the stage, the heat blistering his skin and cooking his head even though he was wearing his Stetson. He sprayed the area around the man on the cross while the volunteer firemen, all of them wearing ventilators, sprayed the walls with their backpacks and other firemen pulling a hose came through the front door and horse-tailed the ceiling with a pressurized jet of water pumped from the truck.

  “Let’s get the cross down on the stage and carry it through the door,” Hackberry said. “He’s going to die in this smoke.”

  But when Hackberry grabbed the shaft of the cross, he recoiled from the heat in the wood.

  “Sheriff?” R.C. said.

  “What?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “No, the wounds aren’t mortal.”

  “Look above his rib cage. Somebody wanted to make sure he was dead. Somebody shot nails into his heart,” R.C. said.

  The flashlights of the firemen jittered and cut angles through the darkness and smoke, the rain spinning down through the hole in the ceiling. “Nobody from around here could do something like this,” one of the firemen said.

  “Not a chance, huh?” Hackberry said.

  “No, this kind of thing don’t happen here,” the fireman said. “It took somebody doped out of his mind to do this. Like some of those smugglers coming through Miss Ling’s place every night.”

  “Shut up,” Anton Ling said.

  “If they didn’t do it, who did? ’Cause it wasn’t nobody from around here,” the fireman said.

  “Give us a hand on this, bud. We need to get Reverend Daniels off these nails and onto a gurney. You with me on that?” Hackberry said to the fireman.

  Outside, fifteen minutes later, Hackberry watched two paramedics zip a black body bag over Cody Daniels’s face. The coroner, Darl Wingate, was standing two feet away. The rain had almost quit, and Darl was smoking a cigarette in a holder, his face thoughtful, his smoke mixing in the mist blowing up from the valley.

  “How do you read it?” Hackberry said.

  “If it’s any consolation, the victim was probably dead when the nails were fired into his rib cage. Death probably occurred from cardiac arrest. The main reason crucifixion was practiced throughout the ancient world was that it was not only painful and humiliating but the tendons would tighten across the lungs and slowly asphyxiate the victim. The only way he could prolong his life was to lift himself on the nails that had been driven through his feet or ankles. Of course, this caused him to increase his own torment a hundredfold. It would be hard to invent a more agonizing death.”

  “I’d like to believe this poor devil didn’t go through all that, that he died early,” Hackberry said.

  “Maybe that’s the way it went down, Hack,” Darl said, his eyes averted. “Did you know I got a degree in psychology before I went to med school?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I wanted to be a forensic psychologist. Know why I went into medicine instead?”

  “No, I don’t,” Hackberry said, his attention starting to wander.

  “Because I don’t like to put myself into the minds of people who do things like this. I don’t believe this was done by a group. I think it was ordered by one guy and a bunch of other guys did what they were told,” Darl said.

  “Go on.”

  “The guy behind this feels compelled to smear his shit on a wall.”

  “Are you thinking about Krill?”

  “No. The perp on this one has a hard-on about religion.”

  “How about Temple Dowling?”

  “Stop it. You don’t believe that yourself.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dowling is inside the system. He’s not a criminal.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “No, the problem is the way you think, Hack. You’d rather turn the key on a slumlord than a guy who boosts banks. You’ve also got a grudge against Dowling’s father.”

  “Say that again about religion.”

  “I have to give you an audiovisual presentation? We’re talking about a murder inside a church, on a cross. It was done by a believer.”

  “A believer?”

  “Yeah, and he’s really pissed.”

  “How about Jack Collins?”

  “Collins is a messianic killer, not a sadist.”

  “You should have been a cop, Darl.”

  “That’s what I did in the army. It sucked then and sucks now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because arresting these bastards is a waste of time,” Darl said.

  Hackberry walked toward his cruiser, where Pam and R.C. were waiting. The hair was singed on the backs of his arms, and the side of his face was streaked with soot. The churchyard was filled with emergency vehicles, the red and blue and white flashers pulsing in the mist.

  “Wrap it up here,” he said to Pam.

  “You tried to save him, Hack. When you went inside, you didn’t know if the roof was coming down or not,” she said.

  “Call Ethan Riser.”

  “Riser is no help,” she said.

  “She’s right, Sheriff. Them FBI people wouldn’t take time to spit in our mouths if we were dying of thirst,” R.C. said.

  Hackberry opened his cell phone and found Riser’s number and punched it in, then walked off into the darkness and waited for the call to go to voice mail. Surprisingly, the agent picked up.

  “Ethan?” Hack said.

  “Yeah, who’d you expect?”

  Hackberry told him what had happened. “I need everything you can get me on Josef Sholokoff. I need it by noon tomorrow.”

  “Can’t do it, partner.”

  “Cut this crap out, Ethan. I’m not going to put up with it.”

  “There’re probably fifty agents in half a dozen agencies trying to shut down this guy. If you screw things up for the government, they’re going to drop a brick shithouse on your head.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the Glass Mountains.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “A friend or two.”

  “I think you’re trying to take on Collins by yourself.”

  “Collins is long overdue for retirement.”

  “You don’t know him. I do. Let me help you.”

  “I wish you’d been with me when we had bin Laden’s family on the tarmac. But this one is all mine,” Riser said.

  “That’s a dumb way to think.”

  “Did you ever hear of this black boxer who went up against an Australian who was called ‘the thinking man’s fighter’? The black guy scrambled his eggs. When a newsman asked how he did it, the black guy said, ‘While he was thinking, I was hitting him.’”

  “Don’t hang up.”

  “See you around, Hack. I’ve been wrong about almost everything in my life. Don’t make my mistakes.”

  Early the next morning, as Jack Collins listened to Noie Barnum talk at the breakfast table in the back of the cabin, he wondered if Noie suffered from a thinking disorder.

  “So repeat that
for me, will you? You met the hikers on the trail and you did what?” Jack said.

  “I wanted to try out that walking cane you gave me, and I made it down the hill just fine and along the edge of the creek out to the cottonwoods on the flat. That’s when my breath gave out and I had to sit down on a big rock and I saw the hikers. They were a very nice couple.”

  “I expect they were. But what was that about the Instamatic?”

  “At least I think it was an Instamatic. It was one of those cheap cameras tourists buy. They said they belonged to a bird-watching club and were taking pictures of birds along the hiking trail. They asked me to take a snapshot of them in front of the cottonwoods. It was right at sunset, and the wind was blowing and the leaves were flying in the air, and the sky was red all the way across the horizon. So I snapped a shot, and then they asked if they could take my picture, too.”

  “But you’ve left something out of the repeat, Noie.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The first time around, you mentioned this fellow’s line of work.”

  “He said he was a Parks and Wildlife man. He didn’t look to be over twenty-five, though. He said he and his wife were on their honeymoon. She had this warm glow in her face. They put me in mind of some folks I know back home.”

  “And where do they live?”

  “He said Austin. I think. Yeah, that was it. Austin.”

  “Austin. That’s interesting.”

  Jack got up from the table and lifted a coffeepot off the woodstove with a dishrag and poured into his cup. The coffee was scalding, but he drank it without noticing the heat, his eyes fastened on Noie. “You like those eggs and sausage?”

  “You know how to cook them,” Noie replied. “What my grandmother would call ‘gooder than grits.’”

  “You’re a card, Noie. So this fellow was from a law enforcement agency?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call Parks and Wildlife that.”

  “And he lives in the state capital?”

  “Yep, that’s what he said.”

  “And you let him take your photograph? Does that come right close to it?”

  Noie seemed to reflect upon Jack’s question. “Yeah, I’d say that was pretty much it.”

  In the early-morning shadows, Noie’s nose made Jack think of a banana lying in an empty gravy bowl. His long-sleeve plaid shirt was buttoned at the collar, even though it was too tight for him, and his suspenders were notched into the knobs of his shoulders like a farmer of years ago might have worn them. He was freshly shaved, his sideburns etched, his face happy, but his jug-shaped head and big ears would probably drive the bride of Frankenstein from his bed, Jack thought. Noie preoccupied himself with whittling checker pieces he kept in a shoe box, and he had the conversational talents of a tree stump. Plus, Noie had another problem, one for which there seemed to be no remedy. Even though he bathed every night in an iron tub by the barn, his body constantly gave off an odor similar to sour milk. Jack decided that Noie Barnum was probably the homeliest and most single man he had ever met.

  “Did it strike you as unusual that this couple would want to photograph a man they’d known for only a few minutes?”

  “My grandmother used to say people who are rank strangers one minute can turn out the next minute to be your best friends.”

  “Except we’re not rank strangers to the law, Noie.”

  “That brings me to another topic,” Noie said. “I know the government wants to get their hands on me, but for the life of me, I can’t figure why you’re running from them.”

  “You’ve got it turned around, pard. I stay to myself and go my own way. If people bear me malice, I let them find me. Then we straighten things out.”

  “I bet you give them a piece of your mind, too.”

  “You could call it that.”

  “You ever take your guitar out and play it?”

  “My guitar?”

  “You keep the case under your bed, but you never take your guitar out and play it.”

  “It sounds like it was tuned to a snare drum. That’s because I tuned it.”

  Noie’s expression had turned melancholy. He set down his fork and studied his plate. “That couple I met on the trail don’t mean us any harm, Jack. Particularly toward a fellow like you. I don’t know why you choose to be a hermit, but you’re the kindest man I’ve ever known, and I’ve known some mighty good ones.”

  “I believe you have, Noie.”

  “I worry about you because I think you’re bothered about something in your past, something you probably shouldn’t be fretting yourself about.”

  Through the back window, Jack could see the rain from last night’s storm still dripping off the barn roof and dew shining on the windmill and steam rising off the horse tank. The blueness of the morning was so perfect, he didn’t want to see the sunlight break over the hill. “We’ve got us a fine spot here,” he said. “Sometimes if you listen, you can hear the earth stop, like it’s waiting for you to catch up with it. Like it’s your friend and it wants you to be at peace with it. That’s why I live alone and go my own way. If you don’t have any truck with the rest of the world, it cain’t mess you up.”

  Noie seemed to study the content of Jack’s words, then he stared at his plate again and put his arms below the table. “I got blood on my hands,” he said.

  “From what?”

  “Those Predator drones.”

  “It’s not your doing.”

  “Those things have killed innocent people, Stone Age peasants who don’t have any stake in our wars.”

  “That’s just the way it is sometimes.”

  “My grandmother used to say there’re two kinds of men never to associate with. One is the man who’ll shed the blood of the innocent, and the other is a man who’ll raise his hand to a woman. She always said they’re cut out of the same cloth. They’re of Cain’s seed, not Abel’s.” Noie picked up his fork and waited for Jack to speak. Then he said, “Go ahead.”

  “Go ahead what?” Jack asked.

  “You looked like you were fixing to say something.”

  “If you see that Parks and Wildlife guy again, don’t be in a hurry to have your picture taken,” Jack said.

  “Where you headed?” Noie asked.

  “I thought I might tune my guitar. I’ll be up yonder in the rocks.”

  “Why are you taking your binoculars?”

  “After a storm, there’re all kinds of critters walking around, armadillos and lizards and such. They’re a sight to watch.”

  That same morning Anton Ling received the most bizarre phone call of her life. “This is Special Agent Riser, Ms. Ling,” the voice said. “You remember me?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied. “You’re with the FBI?”

  “I was the supervising agent who talked to you after your home was invaded.”

  “I’d like to believe you’re calling to tell me you have someone in custody.”

  “You don’t think much of us, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I don’t blame you. I want to tell you a couple of things, Ms. Ling. We have a file on you that’s three inches thick. I’ve tapped your phones and photographed you from a distance and looked with binoculars through your windows and invaded every other imaginable aspect of your privacy. Some of my colleagues have a genuine dislike of you and think you should have been deported years ago. The irony is you worked for the CIA before a lot of them were born. But my issue is not with them, it’s with myself.

  “I want to apologize for the way I and my colleagues have treated you. I think you’re a patriot and a humanitarian, and I wish there were a million more like you in our midst. I think Josef Sholokoff was behind the invasion of your home. I also think we’ve failed miserably in putting his kind away. In the meantime, we’ve often concentrated our efforts on giving a bad time to people such as yourself.”

  “Maybe you’re too hard on yourself, Mr. Riser.”

  “One other thing: Be a fr
iend to Sheriff Holland. He’s a lot like you, Ms. Ling. He doesn’t watch out for himself.”

  “Sir, are you all right?”

  “You might hear from me down the track. If you do, that’ll mean I’m doing just fine,” Riser said.

  Ethan Riser closed his cell phone and continued up a deer trail that wound along the base of a butte with the soft pink contours of a decayed tooth. He passed the rusted shell of an automobile that was pocked with small-caliber bullet holes and beside which turkey buzzards were feeding on the carcass of a calf. The calf’s ribs were exposed and its eyes pecked out, its tongue extended like a strip of leather from the side of its mouth. The air was still cool from the storm, the scrub brush and mesquite a darker green in the shadow of the butte, the imprints of claw-footed animals fresh in the damp sand along the banks of a tiny stream. Ethan was sweating inside his clothes, his breath coming short in his chest, and he had to sit down on a rock and rest. Behind him was a young man dressed in pressed jeans and a white shirt with pockets all over it and canvas lug-soled shoes. He wore an unpretentious black-banded straw hat with the brim turned down and a western belt with a big, dull-colored metal buckle that fit flat against his stomach.

  When the young man reached the rock where Ethan was sitting, he unslung a canteen from his shoulder and unscrewed the cap and offered Ethan a drink before drinking himself. “I got to be honest with you. I think this is a snipe hunt,” he said.

  “Hard to say,” Ethan said, blotting his face with a handkerchief.

  “That fellow was standing in the shade and wearing a hat when I took his picture. He could be anybody.”

  “That’s why I want you to go back now. I’ve wasted enough of your time.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself.”

  “It beats twiddling my thumbs in a motel.”

  “Let me treat you to lunch.”

  “What’s farther up?”

  “Jackrabbits and open space and some more hills. A game ranch or two, maybe one guy running cows. A gun club has a couple of leases where some oil-and-natural-gas guys bust skeet and drink whiskey. I think there might be a cabin that somebody uses during deer season.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “Not somebody anyone ever paid much mind to. Ethan, you don’t look well. Let’s go back.”