by Archer Mayor
I heard footsteps on the landing outside, followed by a knock on the door. “It’s open.” The light from the landing backlit Spinney’s gangly silhouette. I leaned forward and lit my desk lamp. We both squinted at each other.
“You get a lot done this way?” “Secret of my success. Have a seat.” He crossed the room and took the chair by my desk. He was carrying a folder, which he placed delicately on his bony knees. “Thought you’d like to know what we’ve dug up.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Does Smith know you’re here?” He allowed a half smile. “He said you’d get a report.” He opened the folder. “I’ll skip the stuff you already know.
The fire is still legally an accident, nobody saw a thing, and nothin’s going’ nowhere fast. But,” he raised a finger for emphasis, “we are chipping away at it. Remember the 9-mm casing, which could have come from anywhere, despite Wingate’s having owned the same kind of gun?”
“Sure.” “Well, the print we lifted from it belongs to Bruce Wingate. It ‘puts him at the scene,’ as they say, for the first time.” “It puts his print at the scene.” He gave me that loopy, wide grin. “Right. We kicked that around, too, especially since he says he lost the thing.”
“Which he may or may not have.” I remembered what I’d been kicking around in my head just minutes earlier. “If he didn’t, then he might have been there and fired it. But if he did lose it, then anything’s possible.” “Like the daughter.” %143 I shrugged. “Sure, the daughter-or the wife. What do we know? aybe Ellie tried to kill Julie and frame Wingate, or kill Wingate and ame Julie, or killed Fox on purpose or by mistake, or tried to kill erself and missed.” Spinney was laughing. “All right, all right Apple dug up a lot ore on Edward Sarris. Want to hear it?” “Sure.” Spinney blinked a couple of times to focus on his notes.
“He’s pretty bland, really. Used to be a college professor, wrote a book about me of his back-to-nature ideas, dropped out and formed the roots of is outfit in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Did pretty well, and then me up here because things were getting too crowded and tense down uth.” “How so?” “He was a real pain in the butt to the town government, constantly gging them about what they were doing. He’d show up at council Ieetings and raise hell. It was legal but it caused problems.
They started going after him for code violations of one kind or another, and e’d stall ‘em with lawyers. But that was about it-no big deal. They ink he finally left more because of his success than because of any assles with the town.” “Where’s he get his money?” “They give it to him.
That’s part of the deal. When you join up, ou hand over every dime you own, along with all your material ossessions. He keeps the cash and sells the rest. Then he’s got the estaurant, which has almost no overhead since all the workers are olunteers, and he’s got a mailorder business for all the natural foods ey grow for nothing. He gets into a jam every once in a whileelatives of Order members try to sue because of the money angle, one tate agency or another sticks its nose into labor relations, or the vital tatistics law, which he just ignores, or health and sanitation. Things ke that.
None of it ever sticks he runs a tight ship, he’s got good legal dvice, and he knows what he can get away with. As far as anyone can II, he’s smart and weird, but he ain’t crooked.” “What about the kid that died?
Hamilton said some kid fell off a ridge a while back.” Spinney shrugged.
“I looked at the file: pretty cut and dry. They aid it was an accident, we investigated, and we agreed. The kid took nose dive off the bridge.
We gave a more careful look than we might ave otherwise, because of the people involved, but that kind of thing appens. The bridge railing was a joke-designed for adults. The little uy just squirted underneath, according to the witnesses.” “So there was a bunch of them there.” %144
“Oh, yeah-it was an outing. Twelve kids and two adults. The kid apparently broke ranks and ran to the edge of the bridge.” “How old was he? Hamilton thought fourteen months.” Spinney closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. Yeah, that was it, just a toddler. It was a real shame. Apparently he was mentally retarded. That might have been why he made a run for it-never understood the danger he was in, plus at that age, what does anyone know?” He pulled a drawing from the file on his lap and handed it to me. It was a scaled sketch of the crime scene with Wingate’s outline and six sets of footprints in different colors spread out around him like multi-hued flower petals.
“Pretty.” “Crofter’s handiwork-he loves stuff like this.” Spinney had another copy for himself. “Still, it helps, considering the crowd that was there before us. There is one caveat that Crofter wanted us all to understand, though. This is all pre-crime lab. They haven’t reported back on their version of what happened, so we don’t have details like the estimated weight of the individuals involved, the shoe sizes and manufacturers, or even who went where first or last or whatever.”
“Okay.” I studied the diagram. “So, let’s see. Two sets belong to Rennie Wilson blue and red. The blue set was made this morning just before I got there, and after he’d been called to the scene by Mitch Pearl, the hunter. The red set was made earlier, and matches the blood-stained boots you boys found in his house.” “Yeah. Red for blood, get it?” I looked up at him and deadpanned, “Got it. The green ones belong to Pearl, and the black ones to Wingate himself-black as in dead, I suppose. So that leaves the yellow and the white, the two that are unaccounted for. The yellow appear to shadow Rennie’s red tracks, and the white come from an entirely different direction.” I paused.
“Rennie and the white tracks seem to have a couple of odd connections…” I pointed at clusters at opposing distances from the body. “Maybe both of them stood around for a while, shifting their weight, as if waiting. Rennie’s seem the busiest, and are concentrated near the head of the victim, while whites are the least busy, just coming in, turning around, and leaving.” Spinney looked up at me.
“Christ, you’re good at this.” “Practice.” “I guess so.” Spinney shook his head and returned to the diagram.
“Crofter thought the other mysterious tracks-the yellow were a bit unusual. They’re smaller than the others and smooth, as if they were made by bare feet or moccasins.” %145 “So that might point at someone in the Order, since they all wear emade shoes, or it may be a setup.” I sat back and laid the sketch y lap.
“Have you confronted Rennie with all this yet?” Spinney gave me a long, enigmatic look. “Well, that’s proved to little difficult. We can’t find him. We went by the bar that trooper us about. He’d been there, knockin’ ‘em back pretty steady, but staggered out about a half hour before we got there. Now he’s ished.” I looked out the window at the traffic below, imagining Rennie out re somewhere. What the hell was he doing? If he had killed Wingate, then played dumb at the crime scene with me, then why had he he’d his bloody clothes where we could find them? It was a logical stion that played in his favor. “You follow up on his story about night?” “He checks out at the job. We found one guy who says he saw him king out to the parking lot and getting into his car at around thirty; the guy added that Wilson often stays late, wrapping things The Maple Door was a washout, though. The bartender I talked was there all last night, knows Wilson slightly from seeing him und, and says he definitely never showed his face. The only waitress firmed that, and she said she knew him pretty well; he’s got a utation as a boozer and a ladies’ man. “And you talked to Chaney.” “Chaney and a bunch of other people-nothin’.” He handed me erox copy from his file.
“Here’s a photo of Julie Wingate. We’ll be ting a sharper version later, but Smith figured the sooner the better.” “Any luck finding her?”
I eyed the picture, a slightly grainy but hful copy of the snapshot Bruce Wingate had showed me the mornfollowing the fire.
“The Order’s not cooperating, and until we get something legal inst her, we can’t force ‘em to open up. It’s almost too bad Rennie you did such a thorough search of that house-now
you’re their witness that she wasn’t there hours before the fire. We’re doing at we can, though. We’ve instituted two twelve-hour uniformed fts, two cruisers each. With the rest of us making rounds, maybe ‘II luck out and bump into her-or Rennie, for that matter.” “Do you have anything new on Paul Gorman?”
“No, we’re just starting on him.” “I have my doubts about his mobile phone routine this morning. ean, what was he doing, sleeping in his car? When I spoke to ingate and his wife last night, he said he hadn’t called Gorman since 0 nights ago-Monday-right after they’d spotted their daughter. I d him we would be checking the Inn’s phone records, and he sud %146 denly looked very pleased with himself. It struck me that he’d probably called Gorman more recently and that he’d used a public phone to do it-not the ultimate innocent gesture. If that pulls your chain, you might want to subpoena a few public phone records.” I slid a stapled sheaf of papers over to him. “That’s my report on the entire conversation.” Spinney nodded and wrote himself a note, muttering, “Great, thanks.” He looked up suddenly. “By the way, Gorman’s been making friends.” I hesitated a moment and then rubbed my forehead.
“Greta?” “The one and only. She’s asked him to address a small crowd tonight and tell them of the evil that lurks among them.” He said the last in a tremulous voice, reminiscent of Boris Karloff. “Where?” “The Rocky River. We thought it might be a little confrontational to send one of our own to listen in, but you’re a good ol’ boy.
I exchanged a sour expression for his ear-to-ear grin and heaved myself to an upright position. “And here I was thinking it was nice of you to have dropped in.” My entrance had the subtlety of a wasp up the nose.
Aside from the bar, the Rocky River’s entire ground floor was lined with rows of seats: armchairs, sofas, straightbacks, metal folding chairs taken from the fire department-enough to seat the thirty or so people who were staring at me as if I was the only dru,k at a temperance meeting.
“Lieutenant Gunther. Welcome.” Paul Gorman stood with his back to the closed double doors of the darkened cafe/bar. Beside and slightly behind him, looking a whole lot less thrilled to see me, sat Greta.
“What do you want, Joe?” she asked warily. I sensed the same antagonism that had risen between us this morning. But there was also something else, a defensiveness perhaps at my having found her with Gorman, as if her innate, almost buried common sense agreed with my own skepticism of the man and his motives. “Heard there was a meeting.”
“You weren’t invited.” %147 “Whoa, whoa.” Gorman raised his arms, his professional smile ed in place. “Lots of people here weren’t specifically invited; we just the word out. I certainly have no objection to Lieutenant Gunther ng here. Have a seat.” I found a seat near the door. Looking around, I noticed the crowd relatively young-couples and individuals in their twenties and rties.
There were also several reporters with cameras, whose roles in this were not going to make things any easier for the police. I also saw Laura there, which surprised me; I hadn’t thought she’d interested in Gorman’s rap. She glanced over and gave me an embarsed smile. In my mind’s eye, I’d endowed her with more sense than e part of this crowd. It made me realize how little I knew her, and I’d presumed we shared some basic assumptions. “I was telling everyone a little about cults in general, Lieutenant nther-may I call you Joe?” “Joe’s okay.” I saw several of the reporters stare at me before erishly scribbling in their notebooks.
So much for maintaining a -profile.
“I was explaining how cultists, no matter how different they may ear on the surface, usually operate similarly in their recruitment and octrination. They focus on people that are essentially unhappy or certain in the first place, and then exploit these characteristics to win recruits over. Have you ever dealt with a cult before, Joe?” He was a slick son of a gun, I had to give him that. While Greta uld have preferred to throw me out a closed window, Gorman was ing to embarrass me to death.
I chose my words carefully, sounding like a press release. “Not cifically. I have dealt with individuals with some of that in their kground.” “No doubt you found them disoriented, often depressed, at odds h how to cope with their lives?” “That fits almost everyone I know.”
There were a few snickers. Gorman smiled more broadly. “Good int, and it applies just as aptly to cult recruiters. But where the police stly deal with aggressive types, cult recruiters go after the passive es.
They don’t want people who think they can conquer the world; y want people they can mold.” He held up a finger for emphasis. he irony is that in some cults, the goal is to create conquerors-but Iy as soldiers, never as leaders.” He was addressing the crowd by now, no longer just me, and the ence in his voice betrayed the practiced rhythm of an actor saying lines for the hundredth time.
I looked at the faces in the crowd as he talked about Sarris’s %148
megalomania, his preying on those weaker than himself, and a bevy of other Psychology I 01 catchphrases. The reporters were mostly bored; some of the crowd looked interested, and several more-Laura not among them, I chose to think seemed positively entranced. Greta was the easiest of these to spot, since she was facing me. She smiled when his sentences encouraged it, nodded just perceptively when he hit a standard chord note, frowned when he spoke of the duplicity of those who’d subvert others to support their own egos.
It was an interesting phenomenon, since none of these local people were related to anyone in the Order. For me, the message became darker the more I listened to it. Gorman was stoking intolerance, not sympathy for the downtrodden, and yet he was using the same fuel, the same words he would have used on the parents of lost children.
And it was working. As he progressed, drawing more and more comparisons to the “cult” at hand, his explanations became less professorial and more impassioned; he let up on the theys and increased the 3’ous as he built up the threat of the cults to the people living near them. The number of captivated faces around me grew. The paranoia that Greta had been displaying since the moment I’d seen her three days ago was Iegitimized as fear in the face of real danger. As Gorman spoke, the Order gradually metamorphosed into a human toxic waste dump, planted in disguise among welcoming, friendly people, but designed and destined to leach out beyond its boundaries, infecting and polluting the minds and hearts of those who so innocently gave it harbor. It was a feat of elocution that set my hair on end. Greta stood after Gorman had finished talking. There was no applause. There was no shuffling, no coughing, no whispering to be heard. These people were caught up, believing that what they valued was at stake, and that salvation from their nemesis was at hand. “Most of you know me,” she said. “I’ve been in this town all my life. I’ve served most of you food and drink, or at least drink, and I’ve even cleaned up after a few of you. I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with-some people call me bitchy, and maybe they’re right. On the other hand, nobody in this town can call me a pushover, and they can’t say that I ever stood around and let something happen I thought was crap.
“Well, this cult is crap. It came in here all smiles and sweet talk, buying its way into the town, dumping gifts on the fire department and the school and whatever, just like Paul Gorman was saying. But then their true colors showed, and now look what’s happened-a fire, a murder, an innocent man being railroaded by the cops for killing a guy he barely knew-” %151 She waited a moment after the door had shut. “Hi.” Her expresn was wary. “Hi yourself” “I thought you were pretty good in there.” “Not good enough.” “Paul Gorman’s pretty slick.” “I’m glad you think so. I got the feeling half the people in there re ready to carry him out on their shoulders.” She made a rueful face.
“Maybe they were. The fact they showed for the meeting in the first place shows how uncomfortable they are th all this.” “Are you uncomfortable?” She smiled. “Me? A little-I’m mostly curious. And I have too uch time on my hands. Dangerous thing for a woman, they say.”
; I ignored the oneliner. “But you must have thoughts about this.” “Sure I do. I think people have a right to do what they want if they n’t hurt other people. But I don’t know if that’s what’s happening re.” “What about Greta?” She made a face. “I think Greta’s full of it. She runs a lousy siness, and now she’s losing money. It’s her own fault. If they’d ened a McDonald’s, she would have been in the same fix.” I found myself laughing at the image of Greta bringing in Gorman rid Gannet of the Golden Arches. I felt my earlier ill humor slipping ay.
Looking at Laura, smiling, I was suddenly grateful that she’d been ere to lift my spirits. “You had dinner yet?” “No, I was about to head home and put something on. You terested?” Something in her tone prompted me to be cautious. “No, let me at you. Your choice.” She hesitated, “Well, there’s ‘ ‘ ”’ She stopped and gave me a ‘schievous look. “How about the Kingdom Restaurant?” My astonishment showed.
“Is that all right?” She looked suddenly doubtful. “It’s fine. I’m just surprised. I would have thought you’d never set in the place.” She grinned. “I haven’t.” %152 The Kingdom Restaurant was, to the average tourist eye, quite charming.
The interior contained lots of wood-beams, rafters, exposed floors-and plenty of greenery, plants hung from almost every available overhead spot. There was a fire crackling in a large hearth, surrounded by a semicircle of comfortable-looking rocking chairs. The lighting was muted, mostly supplied by candles, including one at each of the gingham-covered tables-a city dweller’s dream come true.
Not that there were too many tourists there. The timing was lousy for them, or for anyone else outside a twenty-mile radius: It was too cold but with no compensating snow; it was fall but the colorful leaves were gone. Of New England’s many unofficial seasons, “T’Aint Season, this pause-before-the-snow-flies, was a general bust, except, of course, for the huiiters. There were three of them in “Day-Glo” dress parked at a table near the front window.
