The Angels' Share

by R. R. Irvine

“When they brought the woman here,” Moab said, “murder was inevitable. Lust set friend against friend. It was Cain and Abel over again. Brother Armstrong’s blood is on our hands. We are as guilty of his murder as Brother Moyle.”

  38

  TRAVELER WENT one better than an apostle and evoked the name of the prophet himself, Elton Woolley, in order to escape the red tape. The sheriff didn’t like it but knew better than to say so. He let Traveler go with a pass to get by the roadblocks, which both of them knew were already too late. The Saints of the Last Day had been unable to provide information about Hyrum Moyle’s car, other than it was blue, or about Claire, either, for that matter. Only one woman had come among them, Suzanne Farnsworth, and that was more than enough as far as they were concerned.

  Afternoon was giving way to evening when Traveler reached the city. He was exhausted. The sudden change of altitude and climate had accelerated his head cold. He would have gone home to bed if it hadn’t been for something Orson Pack had said. Moyle and Armstrong called themselves brothers. Brothers in trouble might go home. Since Ephraim Moyle was living at the old Hotel Utah to be near his prophet, that left the Armstrong place on Eighth Avenue.

  The house looked the same as last time, closed, blinds and curtains drawn against the heat, the Tongan sitting on the front porch. Traveler had his foot on the bottom step of the porch before realizing that something was wrong. There were too many flies, a black swarm of them giving frenzied movement to the Tongan’s hands and face.

  A surge of adrenaline cleared Traveler’s nostrils. His hands were shaking as he drew his pistol and climbed the steps. The wicker chair was soaked in blood, as was the floor beneath it. He waved away enough of the buzzing flies to see that the man’s throat had been cut. There were no signs of a struggle. The Tongan must have been caught napping.

  Traveler swallowed hard to curb his gag reflex and knocked on the door. When he got no answer, he left the porch and moved cautiously around the side of the house. He was halfway down the driveway, peering into the shady depths of an open garage, when he noticed a rope dangling from the doorway of Heber’s boyhood tree house. At the same instant he saw that what he had originally thought to be a clothesline connecting the main house and the elm was, in fact, an electrical cable.

  He checked the garage before crossing the backyard’s scorched grass to take hold of the rope. He tugged. It felt secure enough, though the prospect of shinnying up twenty feet to the platform started him sweating. He glanced around one more time, took a deep breath, and began to climb.

  He saw the woman’s feet through the partially open door as soon as he boosted himself onto the wooden deck. Thinking about staked goats, he used his toe to nudge the door all the way open. Suzanne Farnsworth, bound and gagged, was alone in the tree house, which was also a makeshift TV studio, complete with monitors, videotape machines, and what appeared to be computerized editing equipment.

  Traveler pulled the rope up after him before going to work on her adhesive bindings. The moment the gag came off she began to cry, softly at first but growing in intensity until sobs convulsed her body. He held her in his arms, making soothing noises until she calmed enough to speak.

  “He killed Heber. And the man on the porch. I was there. I watched. He‘d taped my mouth and hands. I couldn’t do a thing.”

  Traveler said nothing, preferring to let her tell what happened in her own way.

  “Heber confessed everything to me. How he and Hyrum fell into evil with a whore and were diseased. They made a pact then. They called themselves brothers in sin and returned to Salt Lake, where they intended to right the wrongs of the missionary system. Seeing home again brought Heber to his senses. He wanted to get medical treatment, but Hyrum refused. ‘Our disease must be expunged by deeds,’ he kept saying.”

  Sobbing took her breath away. Traveler rocked her gently and patiently, until finally she continued.

  “Heber was innocent, you understand. Hyrum used him. He needed Heber’s TV equipment to make a videotape about murder, though he pretended that it was only playacting. But Heber started to guess the truth when you first came here looking for him, when his parents drove to the Uintas to tell him about the real murders. Soon after that he contacted me. But it was Hyrum who came to get me, who tied my hands and said he’d kill me if Heber didn’t go along with his plans.”

  She shuddered. “If I hadn’t come they wouldn’t have fought. Heber didn’t have a chance. Not against Hyrum’s knife.”

  Her body stilled momentarily. The tremors returned when she went on. “It’s all my fault. I wouldn’t sleep with Heber before he left for England. I was afraid. If I got pregnant it would ruin his calling. But I see now that I was wrong. Had I been his lover none of this would have happened.”

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Traveler said softly.

  “Because of me he’s dead.”

  “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “The Saints of the Last Day are right. Because of women, evil is perpetuated. Without us God can bring an end to all of Satan’s works. It would have been better if Jack had killed me.”

  “Jack?”

  “It was my nickname for Heber. He hated being called Heeb, so I christened him Jack, Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. But Hyrum took the name for himself. He said it made him one with Heber.” She shivered. “Just before he left he said, ‘Don’t worry. Jack will be back for you later.’ ”

  “Why would he say that?”

  “He plans to make one more videotape, of a murder so that everyone can watch him pay his angels’ share. He‘ll have to come here to edit it.”

  “Who is he going to kill?” Traveler asked, though he already knew the answer.

  “A woman named Claire.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Tied up in the trunk of his car.”

  ******

  Traveler broke into the main house where he found Doris and Klaus Armstrong tied to their twin beds. He was still struggling with the tape that bound them when Suzanne blurted out the details of their son’s death. After that, he called Willis Tanner again, first to report an end to the would-be Moyle dynasty and then to ask for help.

  Tanner promised paramedics for the Armstrongs and the girl, and police and Tongans to scour the city for Hyrum. Traveler did some scouring of his own until exhaustion, abetted by his head cold, forced him home a couple of hours before dawn.

  He intended only to shower before resuming the search. But Martin wouldn’t hear of it.

  “If you don’t get some rest, you won’t be able to help anyone,” he said, while leading Traveler down the hall toward the bedroom. “All I ask is that you lay down and close your eyes for a while. I’ll wake you when it’s light.”

  39

  TRAVELER AWOKE in darkness, momentarily unsure of where he was until he reached out and switched on his bedside lamp. The light, seen through gummy eyelashes, looked distant and muted.

  He felt his way into the bathroom quietly, so as not to disturb his father, and eased the door shut behind him. Only then did he run hot water and soak away the mucus residue. When he was finally able to open his eyes all the way, the face he saw in the mirror looked like it belonged in a hospital. His throat was raw, a constant reminder of his father’s tumor. Both nostrils were completely plugged.

  Coughing, he sat down on the toilet seat and tried to focus on his wristwatch. If everything was in working order, himself and the watch works, dawn was less than an hour away. He got to his feet and went back to bed. But no sooner did his head hit the pillow than he bounced right back up and turned on the light again. He tilted his head first one way and then the other, listening for something, a sound or an idea, he wasn’t quite sure, whatever it was that had awakened him in the first place.

  A muted explosion, more like a popping sound, made him smile. The neighborhood kids were up already and firing off their fireworks. He knew the feeling well, any excuse to raise hell and make noise. The Fourth of July. The twenty-
fourth, today, Pioneer Day. Firecrackers would be exploding all day.

  He squinted reassuringly at the calendar thumb-tacked to the wall over his childhood desk. A Utah calendar because the twenty-fourth was printed in red. Next to it he’d posted a map of greater Salt Lake, one he studied every so often on the theory that eventually he’d learn all the street names.

  A siren, coming up South Temple by the sound of it, prompted another smile. At twelve he’d had a collection of cherry bombs that kept police patrolling the neighborhood for days. He‘d eluded them by knowing every nook and cranny in the area.

  He left his bed to look for his old escape routes on the map, and that’s when it hit him, the idea that had awakened him in the first place.

  He opened the center drawer of the desk and sifted through a clutter of old letters, photographs, pencils, and paper clips until he found a yellow day-glow marking pen. Uncapping it, he started circling the murder scenes, beginning with Jordon Park and working his way toward the last one, Sunnyside.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and connected the circles with a broad yellow line. It was like an arrow pointing at Pioneer Trail State Park, the hallowed Mormon ground where Brigham Young had said, “This is the place.” The very reason behind today’s celebration.

  What better time and place for a disillusioned missionary to make an ultimate statement of sacrilege? To pay his tithe in blood. Claire’s blood.

  Traveler snatched up the phone, intending to call the police. He‘d dialed two digits before deciding on a change of tactics. When it came to protecting church interests, the police would be certain to overreact. Willis Tanner would, too, for that matter. But Traveler had no choice. He had to stick with the church on this one. And who knew? When dealing with missionaries, even disenchanted ones, he might need an expert on theology.

  He dialed Tanner’s home number from memory. The man sounded wide awake despite the hour.

  “Meet me at Pioneer Park,” Traveler told him without preamble.

  “Now?”

  “I’ll be parked on the side of the road, say a quarter of a mile from the entrance.”

  “I know you, Mo. You’ve come up with something.”

  “I’m working for your apostle,” Traveler reminded him. “I’m certain he’d want you to cooperate.”

  Tanner made a grumbling noise that sounded vaguely obscene. “How soon?”

  “Before the sun comes up.”

  Traveler was checking his .45, one of Martin’s mementos from the war, when his father walked into the sun room where they kept their guns.

  “What’s wrong, son?”

  Without looking up from the ammunition clips he was loading, Traveler quickly explained the situation, that he was on his way to find Claire, who was in the hands of a killer.

  Martin rubbed his throat as he stared at the pistol. For years he’d been refusing to handle cases that required him to carry a firearm.

  “I’m going with you,” he said quietly.

  Traveler recognized the tone. Arguing would be useless, even if he did have the time to waste.

  His father crossed to the gun cabinet and took out the twin to his son’s .45. Traveler tossed him a loaded clip, which Martin snapped into place. He cocked the weapon, checking its mechanism.

  “I don’t want you doing something stupid,” Traveler said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like taking the easy way out.”

  “If this is cancer,” Martin said, again massaging his throat, “I don’t intend to waste away. But I won’t pull the plug without fair warning, either.”

  “All I’m asking is that you be careful. This bastard thinks he’s the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper.”

  “Will you drive or should I?”

  40

  THE BARRIER leading to Pioneer Park was still in place when they arrived. But the padlock had been broken. There was no sign of Willis Tanner.

  “I think we’d better wait for him,” Martin said.

  In the distance the floodlit monument reminded Traveler of a monolithic tombstone, ablaze against the blackness of the Wasatch Mountains.

  “The sun will be coming up soon,” Traveler said.

  Even as he spoke the eastern sky seemed to grow perceptibly lighter, outlining the jagged peaks. “He‘ll be able to see us coming if we don’t hurry.”

  “Shit,” his father murmured. “Let’s go, then.”

  Traveler led the way into the park, his breath clouding the chill morning air. He kept to the asphalt road and moved as quietly as possible. His nose had cleared enough for him to identify the smell of pine and sage that was blowing down from the mountains.

  Every so often he paused to listen, but all he could hear was his father’s labored breathing, made worse by the tumor that was restricting the passage of air in his throat.

  Traveler stopped when they were about a hundred yards from the monument. “Stay here,” he whispered. “There will be less noise if I go on alone.”

  Martin sighed. “It’s hell to get old.”

  Traveler rechecked the .45 before tucking it into the belt at the small of his back. His father kept his own pistol holstered beneath his armpit.

  “Be careful,” Martin said.

  Traveler nodded and moved off without a word. Approaching the monument, a stone pillar that rose from two massive granite wings, he had the feeling that he was slipping back in time. At any moment Brigham Young’s bronze likeness would step down from his perch, pronounce this his promised land, and lead them all to glory.

  The sound of a mere mortal disappointed him. “We’ve been waiting for you,” it sang out.

  Traveler looked to the pinnacle, to Brigham. But the prophet hadn’t moved. Nor had his two bronze companions. But one of the shadowy figures, lower down, on a flanking wing, broke from the surrounding group of statuary to wave. The base of the wing on which he stood must have been twenty feet off the ground, impossible to scale without a ladder or rope.

  “Jack’s the name,” came a shout. “God promised to send me an angel. And here you are, Moroni himself.”

  Traveler moved forward cautiously. He didn’t see Claire until he reached the visitor’s sidewalk near the monument’s base. She was tied in among the cluster of statues from which Hyrum Moyle had emerged.

  Still in shadow, Moyle raised his arms toward heaven. The movement was enough to bring his face into the bright beam of a floodlight. It was the bearded young man who’d laid healing hands on Martin during their visit to the Saints of the Last Day.

  “Look, Claire,” he said. “Moroni has come to collect his angels’ share in person.”

  The first shaft of sunlight slid between the peaks of the Wasatch Mountains. It caught the knife in Moyle’s hand and the video camera that was standing on a tripod a few feet away.

  “Angels don’t need guns,” he said to Traveler. The blade touched Claire’s throat. “Now get rid of it.”

  He couldn’t possibly see the pistol, Traveler reasoned, but didn’t dare argue. Using fingertips only, he drew his pistol and dropped it. Its loss made him feel useless. A real angel would be needed to leap the twenty feet of granite that separated him from Claire.

  “I know what happened in England,” Traveler said. “I can understand how you must feel, Hyrum.”

  “Hyrum is diseased. I’m Jack. I won’t be Hyrum again until I’ve cleansed myself with blood.”

  He entwined the fingers of his free hand in Claire’s hair, now highlighted by the rising sun.

  “For God’s sake,” Traveler shouted. “A little antibiotic and you’ll be—”

  “Man cannot cure what God has intended. Hyrum and I have been chosen to expose the church and its missionaries.”

  Rising panic had Traveler short of breath. He peered from side to side without moving his head. Were there toeholds among the granite blocks that formed the monument’s base? If so, how long would it take him to reach the man? A lifetime, he decided. Claire’s lifetime.

  “I�
�m not a member of the church,” Traveler said. Anything to forestall the man. “So don’t expect me to believe in crusades.”

  “God brought you here, Moroni. It was part of His plan that Suzanne should glimpse Jack outside the ZCMI. ‘Hire an angel to find him,’ God told her. And now you’re here, the Angel Moroni himself to witness this, my final tithing.”

  He kicked a rope ladder over the side of the granite slab. “The camera is running on remote control, taping everything that happens. You may come up if you’d like, but only after her blood has cleansed me.”

  Traveler didn’t move.

  “We’ve been watching you, Jack and I. We were there when Claire came to see you.” He jerked Claire’s head back, exposing the flesh of her neck. “She’s like all the others. She, too, offered to sleep with me, to infect me anew with the disease of corruption.”

  He laughed, a sound that scraped Traveler’s spine. “We stand no chance against them, you know. Joe Smith realized that when he sent out his first missionary. He knew we’d be tempted. It was his plan. He and his brother, Satan.”

  His knife left her throat to slash the air around her groin. “The Book of Mormon teaches us that the first Masonic lodge was organized by the Devil to turn people away from God. Joe Smith was a Mason, you remember. That’s how I recognized him as Satan’s disciple.”

  “Jesus,” Traveler murmured to himself. He‘d heard it all before, the wild rumors that Mormon-baiters like Mad Bill loved to spread. Until now Traveler had never known anyone to take them seriously.

  “Masons!” the man shouted, and pointed in the direction of the parking lot behind Traveler.

  Traveler spun around. The sun had cleared the peaks of the Wasatch and caught Willis Tanner creeping forward with four Tongans. Once revealed, they stopped dead in their tracks. Martin was visible, too, though he’d stayed where Traveler had left him, well out of harm’s way.

  “Goddamn it, Willis,” Traveler shouted in frustration. “Don’t move.”

  Tanner’s only response was to stare up at the monument.