by J. A. Kerley
I leaned in to check the incision, thinking about how Harry drove. “Maybe we bumped off a curb or something,” I ventured. “It was sharp and cut the tire.”
Rafael turned to Harry and shook his head approvingly.
“Now that’s funny,” he said.
We returned to the department and gathered our call slips at the desk. I threw away two from Danbury. I found a flagged slip from Smithson in Missing Persons the same time Harry found his. I pulled my cellphone from my pocket, dialed Smithson’s number.
“He’s right upstairs,” Harry said.
“You want to see him eating again?” I said.
Harry winced. I heard Smithson pick up. “It’s Ryder. I heard you’re looking for -”
“Listen, Ryder, I’ve been checking on some stuff here. The woman in the motel - you got the autopsy prelim didn’t you?”
“The basics, Jim. And I was there.”
“There any major physical identifications on her? You know, like maybe a -”
“There was a small port-wine stain on the back of her neck, about the size of a quarter.”
“I think there’s a problem. Y’all may want to stop by here pronto. Pray I’m wrong, Ryder. There’s a reason I’m using those words.”
“She’s a nun?” I said, incredulous.
Smithson pushed back the artificially black strands of his wispy comb-over. “Sister Anne Mary, real name is, or was, Marie Gilbeaux. There’s a convent up in Chilton County, like a farm community or something. They make and sell goat cheese and peach preserves and suchnot. She’d supposedly been traveling to the south ’bama and ’sippi area to check stores that sell the wares. Remember, I mentioned her when you and Nautilus stopped? We didn’t pick up on it, naturally; who’d expect a body in a sleaze-bag motel would turn out to…”
Harry picked up the report, leaned against the wall, read. “Birthmark, approximately three centimeters in diameter, left rear neck just below the hairline…” He looked at me. I nodded. “Pretty conclusive.”
It suddenly all fit. Farm work was hard, physical, outdoor labor, and would account for her rough and callused hands and sturdy, taut-muscled legs and arms.
Harry said, “We’ve got to let the convent folks know what’s happened. I suppose we could call up there. But it’s the kind of thing really needs a personal visit.”
“We could call the Chilton cops, have them handle it.”
“We could. That would be easiest, right?”
I thought of the body in the bed, the tiny candle-wick pupils, the Why me? mouth slack with agony. She’d died on our watch, and we owed her.
“I’ll bring the car around,” I said.
Chapter 9
Harry said, “How long had Marie Gilbeaux been with you, Sister?”
Sister Beatrice looked off into the distance. Her eyes glistened with tears.
“Thirty years, give or take,” she said, wiping a cheek with the palm of her hand. “How quickly it passed.”
Sister Beatrice was the head of Villa Madonna convent, and probably in her early seventies. Her eyes were green as the leaves of the oak above us, her skin weathered in a way that added a sense of agelessness. Her hair was short and silver, a bright cap. If I hadn’t known she was a nun, the baggy, faded Levis and white cotton work shirt might have led me to believe she was a retired Texas cowgirl. When we’d arrived fifteen minutes ago and our faces told our story before we did, she’d said, “Let’s go outside. I don’t want sad moments trapped in the walls.”
She’d led us through the large main building and out back to a porch beneath a slatwood awning. There was a flower garden past us, wildflowers, an untamed palette of whites and yellows and purples. Beyond, a large meadow swept to a grove of peach trees. In the distance two women repaired a fence, one steadying the post, the other nailing up wire. A herd of goats gamboled around them. I watched the goats for a moment; there were perhaps a dozen of all sizes. They seemed happy, I guess, as far as goats go.
“I don’t know how such things work,” Harry said as we let Sister Beatrice wind us through Marie Gilbeaux’s years at the convent. “Did she join you from high school or college?”
Sister Beatrice sat in a rocking chair, Harry and I on a large wooden bench. Every few moments Sister Beatrice closed her eyes, as if blotting out the madness we’d visited upon this peaceful retreat.
“She was a foundling, Detective Nautilus.”
“An unclaimed baby? Like left on your doorstep?”
“Found on our doorstep, yes. But she wasn’t a baby; not chronologically. She was twenty-two the day I opened the door to her crying, desperate face. But Marie was as lost a little girl as you’d find in the slums of Rio or Calcutta. I asked her why she’d come to us. You know what she answered?”
Harry leaned forward. “What?”
“She said she followed the light. She was serious.”
Harry nodded. “Hard to turn someone like that away.”
“She started as a volunteer. We provided quarters in exchange for work. She worked like a mule, nonstop. I’d say, ‘Slow down, Marie, take a break. The work will be here tomorrow.’ She’d push even harder, as if she had to keep in motion because she couldn’t stand stillness. She later confessed constant work quelled her memories.”
“Memories of what?”
Sister Beatrice turned uneasy eyes to the meadow. The two women moved to the next fencepost down the line; the goats followed.
“We talked over everything before she embarked on her studies. But any conversation we might have had is between us. Her life…was never meant to be public.”
Behind the words, I sensed her need to talk. “I respect that, Sister. But it’s possible something in her early life caused her death. Whatever turned her into that lost little girl so long ago.”
A flash of anger lit Sister Beatrice’s green eyes, hardened her voice. “She was abandoned at birth, Detective Ryder. Her father was a wealthy, depraved man who flaunted his lifestyle. Her mother was distant and indifferent. Marie was an accident, unwanted, and her parents whipped her with that fact until they drove her into the streets at age seventeen.”
Harry sighed and looked at his shoes. Tales that started like this rarely ended well.
Sister Beatrice continued. “Marie was a confused, yet intelligent young woman, and first found the freedom an adventure. But castaways always seek a surrogate family. She found it in a slightly older group of students at an art academy. They became a -”
“Paris?” I interrupted, a cold blade tracing my spine. “This academy was in Paris, wasn’t it?”
Surprise from Sister Beatrice. And suspicion. “How did you know that?”
“Would you know if one of those students was named Marsden Hexcamp?”
Sister Beatrice stood abruptly, leaving the rocker clicking on the floor. “What do you know about this?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Little more than the name. And some of the deeds. Like murder.”
“Marie hurt no one, Detective. She followed the group from France and by that time Marsden Hexcamp’s teeth were eating her soul. Some of Hexcamp’s followers were murderers, I know that. Others were onlookers. Hexcamp, a bloom of evil, enjoyed various…erotic entertainments. That was what Marie was used for, to view and participate in these activities, not the darkest aspects of this man’s evil, the killings.”
“She told you that?” I asked.
“She gave herself to God. After that there were no secrets to hold. She looked from the eye of evil to the eye of God. It allowed her to cast off all shame. She spoke freely to me, because she was free.”
I leaned forward. “This will sound strange, but it’s important: had she ever been a prostitute?”
Sister Beatrice regarded me curiously. “Not in the classic sense. Her father paid her a large allowance to stay away from home. It was access to money that initially made her attractive to the student group. She didn’t sell herself to strangers for money. But she referred to having been ‘
a whore for Hexcamp’. In that manner, I think, she felt herself a prostitute.”
“How were her last few days here?”
“Up before the sun and working like she had for three decades. It was her love, gardening, putting up the preserves, feeding the baby goats. As always, she was excited about her trip, talking with our retailers, meeting new people. And then she was gone with no word back after two days.”
Harry said, “May we see her room, Sister?”
“Of course.”
We followed Sister Beatrice through the building, past the wide doors of a quiet chapel with hardwood pews semi-circling a large crucifix. Sun poured through a stained-glass window, its rays tinted scarlet by the glass. Christ was looking down, eyes averted, rigid with his own passion. I found myself on tiptoe until we were well distant, walking a long hall with doors to either side.
“This is, was, her room.”
It was serene inside, windowed, dust motes crossing a yellow band of sunlight. There was a bed, a large bookcase, a chest of drawers, a desk and chair. A small woven rug centered the floor. Above the desk was a crucifix, a small version of the one in the chapel. I admired the detail, the crown the size of a wedding band, each bright thorn sharp as a pin.
Harry said, “Have you found anything to explain her disappearance?”
“I looked across her desk, found nothing. The county police were in a few days ago, but that was before she was…found…”
Sister Beatrice broke down. Harry steered her to the chair, helped her sit. I studied the bookshelves. Tomes of dogma and biographies of saints nestled against books on gardening and animal husbandry. There were several mystery paperbacks. Sister Marie’s closet revealed work clothes, a few dresses and suit-pant combos, and two habits. I found nothing untoward in her chest of drawers, Harry managing to stand between Sister Beatrice and me as I pawed through Sister Marie’s unmentionables, sturdy and unadorned. I checked beneath the bed, between mattress and boxsprings, nothing.
I looked at her desk. A small stack of envelopes, junk. And a small brown envelope with only the address. The lettering was in ink, block-lettered.
“Is that her mail, Sister Beatrice?”
“From the past couple of days.”
“Do you mind if I…”
“No, please, do what you think best.”
I pulled latex gloves from my jacket pocket and plucked the brown envelope from the desk. It was about a quarter-inch thick, postmarked in Mobile on Wednesday, the day after the room at the Cozy Cabins had been rented. I opened it, shook out the contents.
Another envelope. Brown. Like Lydia Barstow had described arriving for Rubin Coyle.
Harry said, “Why do I think I know what’s coming?”
I opened the second envelope, shaking into my palm two pieces of cardboard, lightly taped together. I separated the sandwiched cardboards, flapped them open.
A swatch of bright color fell into my hand. Paint layered over torn canvas scarcely larger than a postcard. Reds and whites and blues were overcoated with glazes that gave the swatch striking depth and reality. It was beautiful, striking. But looking closer, I saw a white slash that could have been a shard of broken bone, pulpy marrow dripping from within. What looked like gilded worms squirmed over the surface. Sister Beatrice walked to the swatch as if drawn by a magnet.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, transfixed. “And yet…”
Harry looked at his watch. “We’re three hours out of Mobile,” he said. “Why don’t you give this Willow a call, tell him company’s on the way.”
Chapter 10
“A week after Hexcamp was jailed I took up residence at the farm where he and his band of mutants lived.” Willow paused to sip from his bottle of beer. “A half-dozen evidence techs had found nothing. But I had been tracking the monster for months. Once I saw him in the flesh, sat in the shadow of his monumental ego, I knew he’d have something. I was thinking souvenirs of the killings. Photos. Some type of memento. He’d need them.”
I drifted in the glider; Willow sat across from me on a wicker chair. Harry leaned against a porch support. Cumulus scudded across the Bay, bronzed by fading sun. A western breeze made the air tolerable.
“I ate there. Kept my clothes in his closet and my food in his refrigerator. One morning I was in the barn, converted to what he called his studio, sitting at the table where he worked. Nature called, and there being no facilities in the barn and the house a couple hundred feet away, I headed to the outhouse. It hit me that a warped man wanting to hide something might find a good place for it beneath a pile of shit. I got a flashlight and found a strand of clear, high-test monofilament running down the chute of the old two-holer.”
“How was the fishing?” I asked.
“Caught me a waterproof case. Inside were rolled canvases I figured destined for the collection, works in progress.”
“What did they look like?” I realized I was whispering.
“A brilliantly rendered skull, a rib cage with flesh rotting from it. Several pages of philosophical musings - dark, bleak stuff, created while under the spell of tracking and taking his victims. A poem about the beauty of the final moment, beautifully worded ugliness.”
Harry whispered, “Jesus.”
“Jesus was never anywhere near Marsden Hexcamp. He burrowed out of hell.”
Harry said, “If you’d kept these works you’d be showing them. Or copies at least.”
He shook his head. “I took them to the Mobile cops for safekeeping and they disappeared two days later. Presto, gone. Luckily, they weren’t needed for the trial; he’d left a wide red path. Not long later Hexcamp was shot dead in the courtroom. There should have been much more sensation following the events, but if you know history, you know -”
I nodded. “Hexcamp was sentenced in the morning, Governor George Wallace was shot that afternoon.”
Willow nodded. “The shooting was a wave crashing over everything. Marsden Hexcamp was washed from public attention.”
“And you?”
“I went undercover to investigate the murder of a union leader. Years passed. But I never got those pieces out of my mind. Hexcamp’s last words were spoken to me, Detective Nautilus. He said, ‘Follow the art, Jacob.’ Then the little son of a bitch rolled over and died.”
Harry said, “So that’s what you’ve been doing for over thirty years - following the art?”
Willow caught the allusion to obsession. His eyes tightened, but his voice stayed even. “What I’ve been doing for the past thirty years is pretty much same as everyone else, Detective: working, shopping, paying taxes, fishing when I get a chance - the sane and standard stuff. But now and then a case brought me into contact with people on the fringe, sado-maso-scato-whatevers. You know them - the people without souls.”
I could only nod my head. When you know these types, no words are necessary. Or sufficient.
Willow said, “Some of them talked about the collection, of having seen it. Stuff like that got me wondering about Hexcamp for a while, then another case’d be added to my workload and he’d go to sleep in the back of my head again.”
Willow took a deep breath. “The piece of art, whatever, you found at the convent - you couldn’t bring it along?”
I shook my head. “Left it with the Chilton County cops, their jurisdiction. They’ll send it to the AFB in Birmingham, we’ll find out anything as soon as they do.”
Harry said, “What about this woman that shot him, then ate the gun herself?”
“The Crying Woman; name was Cheyenne Widmer. From what we pieced together, she was Hexcamp’s main lover - though they all bounced between one another like rabbits, one big happy family: sex and love and death.”
“Sounds like the Manson clan,” Harry said.
Willow nodded. “Hexcamp enlisted others in his crimes, made them proud to serve him. But Manson was a pox-brain druggie, Hexcamp a genius - Van Gogh with a homicidal heart.”
Harry frowned. “Assume - assume - for a mom
ent this big chunk of whatever is out there. Why would someone kill for it?”
Willow snorted. “Status. Telling others you have it; being admired for it. The only difference is, with serial-killer memorabilia, you’re important in a smaller crowd. But these people make up for size in devotion. Worship even. Some are run-of-the-mill spookies, sure. People stunted in adolescence. Others are as serious as people who collect Ming vases. And some are rich, big rich. Owning the Hexcamp collection would, for these people, be about the same as owning the Mona Lisa.”
Harry said, “Let’s break this down, start at the beginning, see if we can get a sense of where this crap got to.”
“Probably the best place to start is with the stuff you found in the outhouse,” I said to Willow. “Where it might have gone.”
Harry thought a moment. “If it disappeared from the property room, there probably weren’t a lot of folks who could have made that happen. Know anyone who might…”
Willow narrowed his eyes. “I’ve suspected someone all along.”
Harry said, “Someone tied to Hexcamp?”
“Someone tied to the need to make a buck.” Willow looked at me. “Remember how I told you money pulls stuff out of property rooms…if the right person’s in charge of the room?”
“It’s been thirty-something years,” I said. “This person still around?”
“Ambrose Poll. Haven’t seen his name in the obituaries,” Willow said. “Not that I ain’t been hoping.”
Chapter 11
I awakened several times in a toss-turn night, fought back to sleep until seven, then jogged the beach. Though it was Saturday, a day off rotation, Harry and I had decided to brace Ambrose Poll this afternoon. We’d also elected to take Willow along.
I ran an almost-deserted beach, most vacationers waiting until the sun is high to wander from their rentals. I’d always found it strange, since the beach was cooler and more amenable in the early hours. I passed a few die-hard surf anglers, long rods tucked into sand spikes, plus the occasional beachwalkers, walking slow and looking for shells. The Alabama coastline is known for sugar-white sand, not shells. Specimens cast aside on Sanibel Island are keepers here, just being whole is noteworthy. Entire families will oooh and aaah at an unbroken sand dollar the size of a quarter.
