by R. R. Irvine
“Who is it?”
“Me,” Martin said.
“Use your key.”
Martin rattled the door. “The chain’s on.”
A mosquito slipped through the crack and came after Traveler, humming in his ear as he stumbled across the room to unlatch the chain. “Your widow must have thrown you out of bed early.”
“She got a call,” Martin said.
“So did I” Traveler headed back to bed. “Claire at two A.M. The same old thing. She wanted me to rescue her again.”
“What did you say?”
Martin’s tone of voice stopped Traveler dead in his tracks. He swung around but Martin’s face, backlit by the dawn, was in shadow and impossible to read. “I told her I was through playing games.”
Martin sighed. “You know how it is with these small towns. They’ve got their own kind of jungle telegraph. That’s why the sheriff here knew where to reach me in Moroni. He was the one who asked me to come see you.”
Traveler’s fingers were shaking by the time they found the lamp switch. Martin’s despairing face looked ashen in the bright light.
“We can stop looking for Claire,” he said.
Traveler sat heavily on the bed.
“She’s dead, Mo. Her throat’s been cut.”
24
THE SHERIFF’S waiting down the road about a half mile,” Martin said. “The Wasatch Cafe. He wants to talk to you.”
Traveler had his eyes closed, thinking about Claire. The only image that came to mind was of her sitting in the front row of the courthouse, her lips tucked into the hint of a smile that said I win no matter what.
“That’s where I had my run-in with Ellis Nibley’s sons,” he said.
“Could they have done this?”
Traveler replayed the phone call in his mind. “They’re not that devious. Besides, it was a woman. I’m sure of it.”
“Did you lock the Jeep last night?”
“Yes.”
“Then whoever did it came here last night, broke into the car and hot-wired it. Did you hear anything?”
“Firemen were coming and going all night.”
“We can ask around. We might get lucky and find a witness.”
“Why take the Jeep?” Traveler asked, though his suspicions were already making him queasy.
“You don’t want to know.”
“I’d rather hear it from you and be prepared.”
Martin sighed. “They wanted to make sure you got the message. She’s tied to the hood the way hunters transport deer.”
Traveler tasted bile. The Nibleys were hunters. “It’s my fault she’s dead.”
His father’s mouth opened and closed. If words had come out, Traveler couldn’t hear them. The throbbing pulse inside his head was suddenly too loud.
He bent over at the waist, bracing his hands against his thighs, and concentrated on breathing. Traveler squeezed shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Martin was rubbing his neck muscles.
“Take it easy,” Martin said. “Let me do the talking.”
The words, though understandable, sounded as if they were echoing along a tunnel. “Let me tell you a story about your mother. What do you say?”
Traveler didn’t speak.
“I went away to war a bridegroom. When I came back I’d gained a son and lost a wife. It was the happiest day of my life until I made the mistake of asking her why she’d been unfaithful. ‘You left me alone, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘With a son to raise. It’s your fault I had to seek help elsewhere.’ She cried then and told me her tears were for me, that I was the guilty one, the one who had to be forgiven. And you know what? She made me feel guilty, for Christ’s sake. Fool that I was. So don’t you start thinking that way. Learn from my mistakes.”
Traveler swallowed sharply. “Easy for you to say.”
“Is it?”
“I understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Traveler said, knowing that his own presence was a reminder of Kary’s betrayal. “But I should have listened more carefully. I should have known Claire’s cries for help were real.”
“How many times has she called you? Half a dozen? More? Each time it was the same. You said yourself she was a great actress on the phone.”
Traveler straightened up, making it impossible for Martin, a foot shorter, to keep up the massage.
“I’m surprised the sheriff didn’t come here in person,” Traveler said.
“You’d have to be a fool to tie a body to your own car. He knows that. Besides which, there’s a volunteer deputy waiting outside. From the looks of him, he must have been a volunteer fireman last night.”
“Does the sheriff have any idea who did it?”
Martin shook his head. “He said it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t shown up.”
“He’s right,” Traveler said. Claire’s face came to him, the way he’d seen her the first time. He lurched into the bathroom and held on to the sink while it filled with cold water. When he plunged his face into it, he wanted to rinse away his memory. Rid himself of the momentary relief he’d felt when Martin said Claire was dead. When he knew she could no longer torment him. But nothing changed. His guilt was intact.
“She cried wolf too many times,” Martin said.
Traveler heard her cry for help again.
“Jesus,” he sputtered into the water. He rose up, shaking himself.
Martin handed him a towel.
“It was a woman’s voice on the phone this time. That should have alerted me. Claire would never use another woman to play one of her games. She didn’t get on with them.”
“Just like your mother.”
Traveler pounded his fist against the image of himself in the mirror. Killing Claire didn’t make sense. Unless the suicides were murder.
“Why run me out of town?” he said. “When I don’t know anything?”
“You know something. You just don’t realize it.”
Traveler hit the mirror again, cracking it this time.
“I know that look of yours. Violence won’t get you anywhere, unless you’re beating on the right person, of course.”
“I loved her once,” Traveler said.
“And now?”
Traveler shook his head. There was no way he could explain his obsession with her.
Someone knocked on the door.
“That’ll be the deputy,” Martin said.
25
THE DEPUTY, still wearing protective fire clothing, hitched his gun belt and opened the passenger door on the sheriff’s cruiser. His only piece of uniform, other than the belt, was a Stetson like the one the sheriff wore. Martin slid onto the front seat while Traveler got in back, feeling like a prisoner behind the grill-work shield. Norma Beasley, with Baby Joe in her arms, stepped out of the motel’s office to watch them on their way.
The sun hadn’t been up more than half an hour, but the temperature was already in the eighties. The smell of smoke had disappeared, along with the wind. But smoke was still rising from the mountain peaks, reminding Traveler of volcanoes on the verge of eruption. Flames were visible, too, making him feel as if he were already in hell.
“We want you to identify the body.” The deputy started the engine.
“I did that already,” Martin said.
“Sheriff Hickman wants confirmation.”
Martin half turned and reached a finger through the grille as if to touch his son. “I wanted to spare you that.”
“I never saw anything like it before,” the deputy went on, his Adam’s apple fluttering. “Laid out like that, it’s . . .” He swallowed whatever he’d been about to say.
As the cruiser passed by the office, Mrs. Beasley took hold of one of Baby Joe’s arms and waved it. Perhaps it was the fanning motion, perhaps it was Traveler’s imagination, but the smell of the woman’s rose toilet water suddenly engulfed him. As always, the smell of roses reminded him of his cousin, Orson, and the last time they’d played catch together in front of Grandfather Ned Payso
n’s house. For some reason Traveler’s mother had put an end to the outing, driving him home while he protested all the way that there was still enough light left to keep on playing. Without him, Orson had begun a game of catch with himself, bouncing the tennis ball off the front steps. A wild ricochet had sent him into the street from between parked cars. The driver, Traveler remembered his mother saying later, didn’t even have time to put on his brakes.
That night he’d heard his parents arguing.
“A funeral is no place for a boy his age,” Martin said.
“He has to be there. It’s expected.”
“By whom?”
“Everybody,” Kary said, her tone giving no leeway.
“It’s best to remember someone the way they were,” Martin responded. “That way they’re never really dead.”
When the time came, Traveler had tried to resist. But his mother dragged him by the hand into Grandfather Ned’s living room where the coffin, surrounded by roses, lay across sawhorses draped in black. Kary had lifted him up to kiss Orson goodbye. He had makeup on and smelled just like the roses.
******
The deputy pulled onto the shoulder of the road, bypassing the Wasatch Cafe’s gravel lot, and killed the engine. He nodded at Traveler to get out, but his hands stayed on the steering wheel, gripping hard enough to show he had no intention of following.
The jeep was parked to one side of the cafe, near the phone booth. A green plastic tarpaulin had been thrown across the car’s hood. The mound beneath it looked too small to be Claire. The sheriff and a woman Traveler didn’t recognize were standing nearby.
“I’ll go with you,” Martin said.
Part of Traveler wanted to tell the sheriff to go to hell, wanted to walk away and remember Claire as she was in memory. Another part wanted to be alone with her one last time.
He took a deep breath and got out. “I’d better do this alone.”
“I understand,” Martin said. “I’ll wait for you.”
Sheriff Hickman detached himself from the woman and joined Traveler next to the tarp.
“I’m sorry,” Hickman said. “Your father told me how close you were to her.”
Traveler sucked air through clenched teeth.
“I’ve taken photos of everything,” the sheriff added. “Doc Gourley is on his way over from Ephraim. We can’t move her until he gets here. So if you’d rather wait till he gets her cleaned up, I understand.”
“If you’re giving me an option, why send the deputy?”
“You’re a pro. You know it’s never a good idea to waste time.”
Traveler glanced at the lady bystander, who was trying not to stare at him but couldn’t help herself.
“We couldn’t spare any men off the fire line,” the sheriff explained. “The only man left in town besides me and my deputy—and he’s only with me temporarily—is Ellis Nibley. He wouldn’t be of any use to us anyway because of his grieving, that and the town wanting to keep the general store open. So Pearl McConkie is here representing her husband, the bishop, and the council. She came straight over from fixing breakfast at the Relief Society.”
To Traveler, she looked interchangeable with the two previous Mrs. McConkies he’d met. “What is she, a witness in case I confess?”
Hickman shrugged.
“What about the Nibley boys?” Traveler asked.
“Everybody in town knows about your run-in with those two, so I checked on them first thing. If someone was trying to make them look guilty, it was a mistake. They were accounted for all night, what with fire fighting and the bishop’s prayer meetings.”
Traveler sighed. “Let’s get it over with.”
Hickman turned back the tarpaulin far enough to expose Claire’s head and neck.
“Christ.” Traveler nodded and swallowed hard, thankful for an empty stomach. “That’s Claire.” He jerked away, closing his eyes, trying to recall Claire alive. But her gaping throat was like a blinding afterburn.
A hand touched his arm. Without looking he knew it was his father.
“There’s no blood,” Traveler said.
“She wasn’t killed here,” the sheriff answered.
Traveler opened his eyes to bright sunlight, cool by comparison to the burning image inside his head. The tarp was back in place.
Pressure increased on his arm. “We can talk about details later,” Martin said, pulling steadily in the direction of the cafe.
“Pearl volunteered to fix us breakfast,” Hickman said. “I, for one, could use something hot to drink.”
“Where was she killed?” Traveler asked.
“There’s no need for you to see it.”
Traveler glared.
“Suit yourself.” The sheriff led the way out behind the cafe, where he pointed to a length of frayed rope hanging from the limb of a cottonwood tree. Directly beneath the rope the darkened ground shimmered with flies. “The way I figure it—”
Traveler cut him off. “I get the picture.”
She’d been strung up by her feet and butchered. The Mormon way, blood atonement to pay for her sins.
“I warned you once before,” Hickman said. “Now I’m asking you again. Leave Wasatch.”
Martin shook his head. “ ‘We, and each of us, covenant and promise that we will not reveal any of the secrets of this, the first token of the Aaronic priesthood, with its accompanying name, sign, or penalty. Should we do so, we agree that our throats be cut from ear to ear and our tongues torn out by their roots.’ ”
Traveler swallowed, aware of his own tongue. His father was quoting from the temple ritual of endowment, the time when secret oaths and names were bestowed on the faithful, when the laws of blood atonement were laid down.
“The killer has to be someone who knows church ritual,” Traveler said.
“Since you both seem to know it so well, maybe I ought to arrest you. It would at least get the Relief Society off my back.”
“Maybe so,” Traveler said.
For the first time, he truly understood blood atonement. Understood why Mormons still swore temple oaths against the federal government, against those they blamed for the murder of their first prophet, Joseph Smith. Understood why Brigham Young sanctioned killing, under the guise of saving sinners, in order to survive his enemies. But unlike Brigham, Traveler had no intention of sending anyone to heaven. He was going to send Claire’s killers straight to hell, personally.
26
TRAVELER STARED at the plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs the bishop’s wife had fixed. Continuing hunger added to his guilt. That and his memory of the sudden sense of relief he’d felt when he realized he was off the hook forever. That Claire would never again torment him.
He sipped Mormon tea—hot water and milk—and watched Martin pile marmalade onto a piece of toast. The sheriff was outside dealing with Dr. Gourley, who’d arrived from Ephraim.
“May I get you two something else?” Mrs. McConkie asked. She’d been fussing over Traveler and his father for the last ten minutes. She no longer looked embarrassed, though Traveler had caught her staring at him in the mirror a few times.
“We’re fine,” Martin said with his mouth full.
“I’ll leave you men alone, then, and go do the dishes.”
Once she’d disappeared through the swinging door into the kitchen, Martin groaned. “God, how I need a cup of real, honest-to-God, sinful coffee.”
“Ask her.”
Martin shook his head. “To hell with it. I’ll get my jolt from the Coke machine back at the motel.”
Traveler had tried that yesterday, but found it stocked only with sin-free 7-Up. “I’ll make us some coffee myself.”
Martin waved his half-eaten toast in the general direction of the kitchen door. “You’ll hurt her feelings.”
“The cafe wouldn’t have coffeepots if this town wasn’t full of Jack-Mormons.” Traveler spun off his stool and moved around the counter. From there, he saw that Dr. Gourley had finished his examination and was
supervising the loading of the body into the ambulance that had accompanied him from the neighboring town.
Martin must have seen the same thing reflected in the mirror behind the counter. “I wonder when we’ll get the Jeep back?”
An Ephraim police car, driven by an officer equipped with a fingerprint kit, had come with the ambulance.
Traveler opened the cupboard above the hot water urn and found a small jar of instant coffee. “If this were Salt Lake, we wouldn’t see it for days.”
“You shouldn’t have told Hickman that Claire was a Gentile.”
“I told him the truth, that she no longer went to church.”
“In rural Utah, that’s like saying she was in league with the devil.”
Traveler fixed two cups of strong coffee and handed one to his father. “Some relative will baptize her after the fact soon enough.”
“Don’t get any ideas like that when I’m gone,” Martin said after his first sip. “I don’t want you or anybody else standing in a baptismal font for me.”
Traveler tested the coffee and made a face. “I want you to take the Ford and drive back to Salt Lake.”
“That will leave you stranded until they’re finished with the Jeep.”
Traveler mixed Mormon tea into his coffee. “I’ll rent a car or buy one if I have to. I want you to locate Claire’s parents. Find out anything you can about the Bennion family. For one thing, I want to know why they left Claire behind when they moved away from Moroni.”
“You heard Dora Neff. Claire didn’t want to leave her high school.”
“Claire never graduated from high school. She told me so herself.”
“Nice try, Mo. But I know you too well. I can see your mind working. You’re thinking that whoever tried to use Claire against you might make the same move on me. So you send your old fart of a father to Salt Lake and out of harm’s way.”
“Salt Lake’s a loose end,” Traveler said.
“Sure.”
“Okay, for Christ’s sake. I admit it. It’s a hell of a lot easier if I don’t have to worry about your back and mine too.”
“Bullshit. I’ll be covering your back.”
Pans banged in the kitchen, probably a protest against such profanity.
