With familiar resignation he promised the Lord a full hour of prayer to pay for the few minutes of erotic admiration of the bodies of the young girls. It was always disciplined prayer, kneeling motionless on a hard surface, keeping the mind focused on the task at hand, that of not only asking forgiveness for weakness, but vowing next time to meet the sweet perfumed tauntings of the devil with greater strength. And at the end of the hour of prayer he would remember to thank the Lord for having given him this great weakness of the flesh so that he was better able to comprehend, with humility, the weaknesses of his parishioners who told him of acts so scruffy and so horrid it made him dizzy to listen to them.
As he walked slowly along he tried to compose the structure of the long prayer he would make in atonement for the sins of the mind. But he could not find a beginning, or think of a suitable biblical reference. Far back in his mind, like a worm living inside what had once been a healthy structure, he held the suspicion that there would be no prayer this time.
He walked into the small park at the far end of Zedekiah Lane and sat on a concrete-and-cypress bench in the shade, out of the glare of the early-afternoon sunlight. With the nail of the little finger of his left hand he carefully picked a loose scrap of skin from his forehead. He wondered if reflected sunshine would be good for his psoriasis. In a few minutes he counted his pulse. It was eighty-two. He wondered what his pressure might be.
He knew he was using the trivial concerns of the body to distract him from the mortal sickness of his soul. He thought of the casual sinning committed with apparent unconcern by John Tinker Meadows and Joseph Deets, and he tried to convince himself that their sins, because there was no repentance or atonement, were greater than his own. But he knew the argument was forlorn. He found himself wishing he had not destroyed the photographs and tapes of John Meadows and Mrs. Wintergarten. He could no longer lock himself away and look at the pictures while listening to the tapes. It had been one way of diverting his attention from his own problem, that problem so great that he was afraid that if he ever thought it through, step by step, the pressure would blow his heart apart.
He wondered idly if he might be able to buy without risk of course materials as stimulating as the ones he had destroyed, and he wondered if they would help blur the sharp agony of his spirit.
His father had died at fifty-three. Walter was now fifty-four.
For many years he had thought that were he to suddenly begin to die, if that great crushing pain they spoke of began to squeeze his chest and cripple his left arm, he could not know whether he would go gratefully to Jesus, or whether his last thoughts might be instead of an intense regret that through all his life he had averted his eyes from the young bosoms and lips and behinds and prayed to God to help him resist temptation.
In the act of dying he might try to tell himself that he had lived his life the way it was supposed to be lived, as a man of God.
The proper way. The decent way. God's way.
For all the years of his life he had averted his eyes, used prayer to cleanse his mind. He had not rolled and snorted in strange beds as had so many others he could name. He had not defiled his own marriage. The devil had approached him in female form many times. He had coveted. That was a sin, of course. But he had resisted, and that was strength.
But now was it all to be wiped out because of one incident which happened more by accident than design? Was all the rest of his life to be discarded just because of that?
He realized he was arguing with the Lord, and he was being angry with the Lord. But it was no good, of course. It was far too late to try to set up scales and balances.
The sin he had committed gave him the terrible assurance that when this sun became a nova and the earth a cinder, F. Walter Macy would still be turning slowly, slowly on the iron spit, his indestructible flesh basted each moment in lava, his eyes bulging forever as he howled his torment and his remorse and his agony.
He could contemplate the inevitable punishment for the act, yet he could not let any slightest specific memory of that time enter his mind. If it did, he felt that he would scream and become mad.
It struck him as most odd that he could divert his attention from his secret pain by making such vivid pictures in his head of things he had never seen that he became aroused. He knew he could probably never pray again, not the way he used to.
And with prayer denied him as diversion, he escaped into erotic fantasy. Jenny MacBeth and Jenny Albritton, rolling and stretching and stroking in their languid sensual ease. Joe Deets, bucking away at the sweet flesh of the blonde Angel, defiling her with his vileness.
He used to think that because he could so vividly imagine the doing of evil, he was thus stronger than other men in being able to resist performing it. He now knew that had been but vanity, and it had been his way of rationalizing a certain sickness in his mind. He wondered if it was that very sickness which had propelled him into the Church in an attempt to escape the consequences of the diseased imaginings. But now he knew that any sense of escape had been illusion. He had been entrapped. Everything was changed. There was nowhere to run. And if there was a refuge, he could never run fast enough.
The patient and eternal fires of hell were awaiting Walter Macy.
Sheriff Wil Dockerty found Roy Owen waiting to see him when he came back from the Kiwanis meeting on Friday afternoon. He looked at the messages Myrna had left for him and then told her to send Mr. Owen in. Ever since he had found out the man was staying at the Moons' motel, he had been expecting Owen to come see him.
He was a little surprised at the size of him. These little bitty blonde women usually turned up married to big men.
Dockerty had learned that you go slow and easy with small men. They are quick to take offense, easy to rile. But this one had a steady gaze. He looked calm and smart. The mustache was a statement, apparently.
"Like some coffee, Mr. Owen?"
When he said yes, the Sheriff shouted out to Myrna, and she came in moments later with two big white steaming mugs.
"Drink myself too much of this stuff all my life," Dockerty said, pushing the sugar across the desk to where Roy Owen could reach it. It was a green metal desk in a small room with gray walls, a metal table piled high with file folders, a single window looking out onto a segment of parking lot and a long angular slice of one of Lakemore's downtown streets. Sheriff Dockerty was a big flabby old man with large white hands covered with brown spots, and a head totally bald, and equally spotted. His breathing was shallow and audible.
"Come down to find out if we know what we're doing down here, did you?"
"Not really."
"Satisfied with Hanrahan's report, were you? Don't look surprised. He's a pro. He checked in with me just as he's supposed to. And if he'd come up with anything he would have come back to us with it."
"Whose jurisdiction is it?"
"Mine, by default. The city limits go right to the county line over to the west, and the county line is about a hundred yards past the Moons' motel. But we work together on just about everything. Couple of years back the city council and the county commissioners got together and combined a lot of our functions, to save money. The city is kind of drying up lately, and the county has got a lot of structure out there at Meadows Center they don't get any ad valorem on."
"Do you think my wife is alive?"
"I'll put it this way. I do if you do."
"I don't," Owen said without hesitation.
"I would say the only possibilities would be total amnesia, and that is a very rare thing, I understand, or somebody holding her as a captive.
That doesn't make sense either. So I think she's dead. It's hard to get used to saying that word. I don't like the thought of never knowing what happened. What do you think happened to her?"
"From the pictures that were sent down, and from talking to Peggy Moon and her brother, she was a pretty little woman with blonde hair and a good figure. I keep wondering if she didn't have somebody with her when she lef
t to drive on down to the airport, or if she picked up somebody along the way."
"I would rule that out, Sheriff. She wasn't a damn fool. She never picked up hitchhikers. If she picked anybody up, or took anybody along with her, it was somebody she knew. I keep thinking about one little thing that seems uncharacteristic.
Lindy is... was a very tidy person. I mean she followed the rules. All the little rules. I am staying in that room. There is a sign on the inside of the door above the dead bolt that says "Please Leave Key in the Office When You Check Out." You can't miss it. She would have left the key in the office."
"I remember seeing the sign. How many people ignore it? In most motels you leave the key in the room."
"Lots of people ignore it, sure. Not Lindy. I think somebody checked her out. I think somebody put her and her luggage in that rental car and drove away. The maid found the key in the room and the luggage was gone. Lindy just wouldn't have done it that way."
"It's not a hell of a lot to go on."
"There never has been a hell of a lot to go on."
"Because it was a cold trail by the time we got the word on it."
"What about Moses?"
"He's not bothering anybody and he didn't bother her."
"He isn't exactly an ordinary person, Sheriff."
Sheriff Dockerty got up and went over to the metal table and fumbled through the file folders, dug one out from underneath a stack, slapped the dust from it and came back to his chair.
He opened it and recited, "Born July 20, 1943, William McVay Davisson, only child of James and Ethel Davisson."
"He said he committed a crime and he can't remember what it was."
"He was a brilliant and erratic kid. He was through high school when he was fourteen and they didn't let him go away to school because they thought he was too young. I don't think the parents were too stable either. The mother died after a minor operation. A blood clot in the lung. The father went into deep depression and shot himself in the head. There was a lot of money involved. This was not a likable kid. And very strange. So the aunt and uncle, the mother's relatives, got themselves appointed guardians and they had the kid committed to a private mental institution. After he found he couldn't get out, he went into a' he checked the folder again and said the word carefully 'cat-a-tonic state and didn't come out of it until years later. Then he was violent and they kept him sedated. And finally he was well enough for release, three years ago. The money was gone. After he showed up here I was able to check back because he could remember the name of the place, and they had a fingerprint record. If there was any crime, it was something he imagined he did. He said he couldn't remember it, but I got the idea he thought he had killed his folks, and that's why he was put away. They said he'd been a good patient for a long time, quiet and cooperative. When the money stopped coming in, they let him go. They notified the relatives, and got no answer."
"You don't consider him at all dangerous?"
"They didn't, and they're experts. He keeps to himself and works hard. He does a cash business. He's in demand for all kinds of chores nobody else wants to do. And he helps Mrs. Holroyd. I've always felt that just because somebody looks and acts different than the rest of us, there's no need to hassle them."
Thanks for telling me all this, Sheriff."
The Sheriff smiled.
"If you'd come in here pounding on my desk and demanding action, I wouldn't have told you a thing.
Look, I've given the disappearance of your missus a lot of thought and a lot of legwork. What it comes down to, there are a lot of pretty women between eighteen and thirty-five disappear in this country every month of the year. With too many of them it's a case of being stupid and going alone to a bar and having a couple of drinks and letting somebody' drive them home. Only they don't make it home. They make it into a shallow grave thirty feet off the road, or they make it into the middle of a vacant lot. There's a lot of brush and woods and fields around here. There's drifters and there's some homegrown men capable of rape and murder. I don't want to upset you, Mr. Owen."
"Go right ahead, please."
The thing about that kind of crime, it's usually sloppy. Even if the rape is intentional, often the murder isn't. Ditch the body and get the hell out. But somebody had to go to a lot of trouble to clean this up. She had to be checked out of the motel. They had to dispose of a body and two suitcases and a train case and a purse and a little typewriter. They had to put that rental car right where the rental people would find it and think their customer hadn't left enough time to stop at the rental desk.
There's one thing I wanted to know about Linda Owen and didn't have any way to check it out. The magazine people couldn't answer my question, but you probably can. Was she a strong woman, physically? I mean in the sense she would put up a fight?"
"Oh yes. She was only five foot one and weighed a hundred and five pounds, but she was a diet and exercise nut. She jogged whenever she could, and she had a rowing machine she used to keep her waist slim and her stomach flat. And she was very quick, very coordinated. She was good at games."
The Sheriff leaned back, closed his eyes, placed his folded hands on his broad stomach.
"Sheriff?"
"Just give me a couple minutes here, Mr. Owen."
Roy Owen composed himself, wondering if Dockerty had some kind of sleep disorder.
The Sheriff straightened up, sighing heavily.
"Now let's try this. This was a northern woman down here, blonde wavy hair, gold jewelry, makeup, fancy clothes and a rental car. She was a woman working for a magazine that prints a lot of sexy garbage. She was using a false name. She was under cover, if that's the right word. Now we're all country down here, pretty much. You go show her to the average working man here in this county and tell him what she was doing for a living, and he'd figure her for a part-time hooker."
"Now just a..."
"Hold it! You know she wasn't. And from what you say, I know she wasn't. We've got enough tourists coming here these days, the lines get kind of blurred, and it wouldn't be as obvious as it used to be, but somebody could have made some kind of bad judgment about her and tried to follow it up, and used some muscle and all of a sudden found out he'd used more than he'd wanted to, and there he is with a dead woman on his hands. But I kind of think that whole idea would depend on his knowing why she was here and who she was working for. He would have had to think she was playing it cute."
"What if she did find out something that could hurt the Church?"
"Like what? There's a little diddling going on here and there like there is in any big organization you can name. As far as the money part is concerned, I was raised up with Charley and Clyde Winchester and those two are good old boys. They make sure everything runs fair and honest. Anyway, as near as I could find out, she didn't even get close to anybody who could tell her much of anything. That Friday Moses drove her to the Administration Building, she got in to see Walter Macy, he's the assistant pastor at the Tabernacle and he handles a lot of scut work. And she acted so kind of strange Eliot Erskine followed her on into Walter's office. She wasn't there more than three minutes. She said she had some kind of Russian religious items she wanted to donate to the Church, and Reverend Walter told her he'd see what he could do, and Erskine marched her right on back out, and she got in the old red pickup and that was that."
"Erskine?"
"Used to be a cop in Atlanta. Good man, they say. Second in command of security at the Meadows Center. Rick Liddy is in charge. He was with the FBI. They keep it pretty tight. They buy good equipment. On the other hand, we just don't know where she was all day Saturday. Peggy Moon says-she saw Mrs. Owen drive in and back out a couple of times, but she didn't pay much attention. Weekends there is one hell of a lot of traffic in the area of the Meadows Center, guided tours and indoctrination, and movies about the Eternal Church and all that, to say nothing of the services and the panel shows and those little carnival things they put on for the kids. I couldn't find anybody who
noticed her anywhere at all that Saturday."
"Thanks for giving me so much time."
The Sheriff smiled and yawned.
"Come the end of this month, that's all I'm going to have. Time. And I can't hardly wait to stop doing any damn thing at all, except eat and sleep and walk my dogs and work on my 1938 Rolls-Royce. Any luck at all and I can get that sucker back on the road again."
They said goodbye and as Roy was leaving Dockerty called him back and said, "I could have given you the wrong impression about how I give Moses a lot of leeway. I want to be honest with you. If the people in charge of Meadows Center come to me, or to the fellow who takes my job next month, and says Moses is a thorn in their side, then we roust him out of the county and maybe out of the state. It is a practical world, Mr. Owen, and we have to do practical things."
"I understand. Thanks."
Eleven The Reverend Joseph Deets had dressed very carefully for what might become a disastrous confrontation. After he had donned what he called his God Suit, backward collar and all, and examined his image in the mirror, he decided it might be better to wear a more casual outfit. He knew he would be more comfortable, and that might make the difference. Gray polyester slacks, white moccasins and a blue denim shirt with four pockets and short sleeves, worn outside the slacks. He was annoyed and amused to discover that every few minutes he would inadvertently take a very deep breath.
John D MacDonald - One More Sunday Page 19
