“I haven’t tasted coffee in years,” she said. “Those people, they believe it’s an evil.”
“Those people?” Rose said. “Isn’t one of them your husband?”
Cork said, “Why don’t you tell them everything, Sarah?”
And he listened as she told again the story he’d first heard on Kretsch’s boat. She stared down at her hands and began hesitantly, in a way that made Cork think she was unused to speaking to so many people at once.
“My father, see, he was a pretty hard man, real disappointed in life. My mother died when I was a kid, and my father and me, we just kind of drifted around. He was a drunk. He’d earn a little, drink a lot, get mad at the world, beat me up. He blamed me and everyone and everything else for what he called his misfortune.”
She risked a look up, as if to gauge some criticism she thought might be leveled at her for being that kind of victim. Cork hoped what she saw in their faces would only comfort her.
“Go on, Sarah,” he said gently. “Well, when I was sixteen, we found ourselves in Spokane, Washington, listening to a man named Reverend Jerusalem Hornett talk about the end of the world, which he believed was right around the corner. He said it was the responsibility of the righteous to be prepared to fight the armies of Satan. In his mind, that was the government and the Jews and the liberals and pretty much anybody who wasn’t a member of his church. For a preacher, he didn’t say hardly nothing about love. Everything he read from the Bible was all about killing and vengeance. My father, he just ate that up. Before you could snap your fingers, we were signed up with Reverend Hornett’s church.”
She stopped and drank the last of the coffee in her mug and asked timidly, “Could I have some more?”
Rose obliged, and Sarah watched the coffee pour as if it were gold.
“So you joined the church,” Cork said.
She nodded. “The Reverend had three sons. Joshua, he was youngest, was real good-looking and quiet and sweet, not like the other Hornetts, and if I didn’t particularly like the kind of people Reverend Hornett’s sermons drew to his church, I sure liked the look of his son. And he liked me, I could tell. The Reverend was married to a woman just as hate-filled as him, sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued and sharp-witted like some kind of, I don’t know, vicious hunting animal. I’m telling you, she had a razor blade for a soul. It was like somebody broke a chunk off the hard rock that was her husband and used it to make her, too.”
“Any idea why they were like that?” Cork asked.
“The Reverend, he spent time in prison early on, which is where he claimed he had his vision of the End Times and was tapped by God to be some kind of general in the holy army. Abigail, hell, I believe she was born purely evil. Some people are like that.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” Rose said quietly but firmly.
“Well, maybe she had a rough childhood then or something, I don’t know. By the time I met her, her heart was dead to anything except the Reverend and bringing about his vision of Armageddon.”
“You and Joshua fell in love?” Cork said, encouraging her to continue her story.
She shook her head. “More like we fell in lust. He was pretty ripe for picking. But Abigail was dead set against it. She had another girl chose for Josh, homely as tree bark but real strong and real set in her belief in all the crap the Reverend slung around. Long and short of it, I got pregnant, and Josh and me had to get married, and Abigail, I swear, hated my guts.”
“That must have been uncomfortable,” Rose offered.
“I thought I could handle her,” Sarah said. “I didn’t understand how heartless that woman could be.”
“Tell them what happened that summer,” Cork said.
Sarah drank from her mug and wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.
“The Reverend moved a bunch of the church folks up to a wilderness area real near the border with Canada, where he had a kind of compound. It was real basic. No running water. No indoor toilets. No electricity. I don’t think it was ever meant to be a permanent place, just somewhere safe and isolated where he could make plans for another place he called the Citadel, which was supposed to be some sort of fortress for Christian soldiers to gather and ride out Armageddon. He had pretty elaborate ideas.”
“How was he going to pay for it?” Cork asked. This part was of particular interest to him.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, most of his followers weren’t much better off than me and my dad.”
“Okay, go on,” Cork said.
“Once we were there, we stayed. It became like a prison, real hard to leave. I didn’t ever once see a nurse or doctor. Abigail tended me, if tending you could call it. When the baby came, I delivered on a bunk in a log cabin by the light of a kerosene lamp. Me and Josh, we’d already picked out names for the baby. Eve if it was a girl, Adam for a boy. Well, it was a boy. But the minute I saw his face, I knew he was different. I understood about Down syndrome. I’d seen those folks on television and in magazines. When I looked at little Adam, I knew. So did Josh. He didn’t want nothing to do with his son. He blamed me. Told me I hadn’t taken care of myself right. The Reverend, he said it was some kind of judgment from God. My father, he just stayed out of it.”
She seemed on the verge of tears. Rose put her arm around the woman’s shoulders, and Sarah looked up at her gratefully.
“I didn’t care my baby was different,” she said to Rose. “I loved him every bit as much as if he’d come out perfect. In a way, I was glad he wasn’t perfect. I thought here is a person who will need me and love me his whole life, which was something I never had before.”
“I understand,” Rose said.
“Then one morning, a few weeks after Adam was born, when I woke up and went to get him out of the little dresser drawer I was using as a crib, he was gone. I screamed bloody murder, but everyone claimed they had no idea what had become of my baby. I tore around that church compound, pulling out my hair and crying like I don’t know what. Joshua, he couldn’t look me in the eye. But Abigail, she stared me down and said, and God help me these were her exact words, ‘Satan must have come to claim his own.’ If I’d’ve had a gun at that moment, I’d’ve shot that evil woman dead.”
Her green eyes were, at that moment, like jade knives.
“What happened after that?” Cork said.
She collapsed a little in her chair. “I went kind of crazy. There’s quite a spell where I don’t remember much. When I finally came around, I gathered that I’d been ranting about being the Virgin Mary and losing my son. I pretended to still be crazy, because I figured if I told them exactly what I thought of them, they’d kill me like they killed my baby boy. I thought about running away, but we were so far out in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t have no idea which way to go.”
“How long ago was this?” Cork asked.
She thought a moment, calculating. “Five, six years. I been biding my time since, waiting for my chance. When you folks showed up, I decided it was now or never.”
Cork asked, “Why didn’t you say something when Tom Kretsch and I were there the first time?”
“They’d’ve killed you for sure. They done it before and got away with it. They think they’re God’s special people and don’t believe in any law except what they say comes straight from the Bible to them.”
“Where’s Jerusalem Hornett now?”
“Died just before we came out here. One of his sons stayed back in Washington State to head up the church there while Abigail and Gabriel and Josh came out here with some of the faithful to start building the Citadel.”
“Those folks bought Stump Island with hard cash,” Cork said. “And all the construction they’re doing can’t be cheap. Do you have any idea where their money comes from?”
“Things go on at night. Boats come and go. It’s got something to do with that, I expect, but I don’t know exactly what.”
Cork looked down at Smalldog, still unconscious, and said, “Maybe
when he comes to he can enlighten us.”
FORTY-FIVE
In the late morning, Rainy Bisonette took heated water from the stove reservoir and poured it into a big washtub, and she and Jenny washed little Waaboo. Earlier, Henry Meloux had left the cabin and gone with Stephen and Aaron to gather mushrooms and tubers and herbs. Aaron wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, but he’d gamely agreed. Walleye, who would normally have trailed along behind the old Mide, seemed interested in the baby, and he stayed, lying in the meadow grass nearby, and watched with interest as the women went about their work.
“Part of it,” Rainy said, continuing the discussion they’d begun earlier that day, “is that he’s clearly sick, and he can’t figure out what’s at the heart of his illness. I’ve never seen him so tense, so anxious.”
“Is it possible he’s afraid of dying?”
“Uncle Henry’s the last person I would suspect of being afraid to make the passage and walk the Path of Souls.” She handed Jenny a bar of soap. “But maybe.”
Waaboo squealed with delight at the feel of the warm water and Jenny’s gentle, slippery palms. His little arms flailed, and water splashed, and the air above the tub was filled with droplets that sparkled in the sun.
“You told me you have children,” Jenny said.
“Three, all grown. My oldest, Alex, died in Iraq two years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Kari is a first-grade teacher in Eau Claire. She has a wonderful voice and sings with a couple of bands. She’d love to make her living that way. My youngest, Peter, is struggling. Issues with substance abuse. He’s clean at the moment and working as a mechanic in Rice Lake.”
“You’re not married?”
“My husband died a few months after Peter was born. A brain aneurysm.”
“You never remarried?”
“Too busy raising my children and supporting us all. And, I suppose, I never met a man I really thought I could live with.” She laughed. “Or maybe the issue was a man who thought he could live with me.”
Jenny finished with the child, and Rainy handed her the towel she’d brought from the cabin. “You’re very good with Waaboo. You’ve clearly had experience with babies.”
Jenny told her about working in the day care and nursery in Iowa City. And then, because she felt a deep comfort in her connection with the other woman, she told Rainy about her pregnancy at eighteen and her miscarriage and the feeling of emptiness that had sometimes overwhelmed her since.
“Have you ever talked with Aaron about how you feel?”
“Not really. He’s a good man in a lot of ways, but this isn’t something he would understand.”
Walleye, who’d been lying quietly in the soft bed of the wild grass, raised his head suddenly and looked toward the woods that edged the meadow. He lifted his nose and sniffed the wind. He stood quickly, and a low growl crept from his throat. He held rigid, watching the shadows among the trees.
Rainy shielded her eyes against the sun and peered toward the trees that had captured the dog’s interest.
Jenny had wrapped little Waaboo in the towel, and she held him to her breast. “What is it?” she asked, trying to decide if she should be concerned.
“A bear, maybe, or a wolf. We get them sometimes. They never bother us, but why don’t we take the baby inside, just to be safe.”
They gathered their things and walked to the cabin. Walleye hesitated, still focused on the woods, then finally relaxed and followed. Inside, he turned back, and just before Rainy closed the door against the view of the bright meadow and the dark woods beyond, he gave a low woof that wasn’t friendly in the least.
FORTY-SIX
Nearly an hour had passed since Kretsch and Bascombe had headed to the Angle. Cork sat watching Smalldog for any sign that the man was regaining consciousness, but the Shinnob lay completely still. Cork was beginning to be more than a little concerned that Bascombe had done serious damage. In a chair near a front window, Mal leafed through an old National Geographic. Bascombe’s rifle lay propped against the wall next to him. Rose and Anne sat at the dining table, sharing coffee with Sarah and listening as the woman continued to piece together life with the Church of the Seven Trumpets.
“Lily,” Sarah said, sounding immeasurably sad. “She was such a lonely girl. She had her mama mostly, and when Vivian was gone, she didn’t have nobody. I wanted to help her, honest, but if I did anything to give myself away, Lord only knows what they’d’ve done to me. I heard some talk about her getting visits in the night from Indian men. Joshua, he seemed real interested in that.”
Cork glanced her way and saw that the woman was staring down into her coffee and seemed disinclined to look Rose or Anne in the eye. She was quiet for a long while.
“I think he might’ve started using her,” Sarah finally said. “For sex, I mean. The great lust Satan had put in us early on he still had. Part of why I played crazy was so he wouldn’t be bothering me that way. I didn’t want nothing to do with that coward anymore.”
“Did Abigail or Gabriel know about him and Lily?”
“I can’t imagine they didn’t. They must have just decided to look the other way.”
“Does Joshua believe all the religious dogma?”
“I think the truth is that he’s afraid of Abigail, and he’d never say anything contrary to her. But deep down, I think he doesn’t believe it any more than I do. It’s just the way his life’s played out. The church is all he knows.”
“So when Joshua couldn’t use you, he used Lily instead?” Rose asked gently.
Sarah lifted her face, as if seeking understanding. “I feel real bad about it, but what could I do? If I tried anything, I’d’ve probably got us both killed. Then she was gone, just up and gone. Truth is I figured she threw herself in that lake out there. God knows I been tempted myself.” She let out a deep, exhausted sigh. “Now I find out she went away and hid somewhere and had herself a baby. Lord, but it’s a strange world.”
“It gets stranger, girl.”
The voice was Bascombe’s, and it came from the kitchen doorway. When Cork looked there, he saw Kretsch in front of the big man, the deputy’s hands bound with silver duct tape. A strip of duct tape sealed his mouth as well.
Bascombe shoved Kretsch into the room with the others. He held Kretsch’s rifle and slowly arced the room with the barrel, so that at one point or another it was aimed at them all.
“Let’s get this straight. Anyone tries anything, they’re dead. Mal, stand up real slow and move away from that rifle next to you.”
Mal did as he was told and joined the women at the table.
Kretsch mumbled something behind the duct tape over his mouth. Keeping a wary eye on Bascombe, Rose reached out and pulled the tape away.
“Sorry,” Kretsch said to the others. “He jumped me. I just didn’t expect . . .” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. None of them had expected this from Bascombe.
Cork said, “What’s going on, Seth?”
The big man eased his way around the dining area until his back was to the front windows and he stood between everyone else and the second rifle. “I tried to get Smalldog away from you the easy way, but you wouldn’t have it. So now we got to do it the hard way.” He spoke as if he was disappointed and they were the reason.
“And the hard way would be?”
“We wait. The Seven Trumpets folks should be along shortly.”
Cork said, “You and them.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of understanding. “Then what?”
“That’s up to Seven Trumpets.”
“I don’t get it,” Kretsch said.
Things were falling into place quickly, details Cork should have noted but, in the chaos of all that had occurred, did not.
“I think I do,” he said. “The Seven Trumpets folks needed armaments. A former ATF agent would be someone who knows how to get them. They pay you pretty well, Seth?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve got a lot more money in
the bank than I’d have if I worked a hundred years for the damn government.”
To Cork, Bascombe sounded like a man trying to convince himself that the responsibility for all the wrong that had been done was not on his shoulders.
Cork nodded, continuing to think it through. “You told us you worked ATF in the Pacific Northwest. I’m guessing your investigations there brought you into contact with the Seven Trumpets people. I thought you didn’t believe in all their religious crap.”
“I don’t. In my book, those folks are crazy as loons,” Bascombe said. “But loons with money.”
“It must have been you who suggested Stump Island to them for the Citadel,” Cork said.
“When I heard that the Baptists out there were putting it up for sale, I knew it was exactly what the Reverend had been searching for.”
“And took an early retirement from the government and came out here to help them in the same way you did back in Washington State, I imagine,” Cork speculated.
“More or less,” Bascombe said.
“What do they want with Smalldog?”
“Right now, he’s got a lot of their money.”
“Stole it?”
Bascombe laughed. “You think they’d just hand it over?”
“That’s why they tortured Lily?” Cork said. “They were trying to get to Smalldog through her?”
At the mention of the murdered girl, Bascombe seemed to grow sullen. He leveled the rifle directly at Cork. “Enough talking. Just shut up and wait.”
Like flesh electrified, Smalldog moved. He shot from the sofa and, in one long stride, reached Bascombe. His cuffed hands grasped the rifle barrel and swung it toward the ceiling. He used the momentum of his body to drive Bascombe into the wall. The big man’s head flew back and shattered the window. Cork was sure that would end him, but Bascombe let out a roar, and his big, strong body, pumped with rage and adrenaline, seemed to grow even more powerful. He threw his weight on Smalldog, and both men tumbled.