'This is the girl, Fayrene," Mrs. Cooper said.
"I'm —" I hesitated. "My friends call me Bast. Do you need my legal name?"
"Not if you haven't done anything wrong," Sergeant Pascoe said. "Do you think you can take us to what you saw, Bast?"
I must have looked panic-stricken; for a moment I wasn't sure I could find the place again. 'There was a dead man," I said firmly. "Up in the pine forest above the"— I had to think a minute to remember the Paradise Lake name for it—"Upland Meadow. He really is dead," I said.
I must have sounded more frustrated than I realized; Fayrene put a hand on my arm. "Let's go see," she said.
"I'll stay here," Maidjene said firmly.
In the last few years I have found a dead body and barely escaped becoming one, but this time was different. Fayrene and I —and Deputy Twochuck, who drove this time—went by car back to the bam and up the road that led to the Upland Meadow site.
Deputy Twochuck looked maybe nineteen and kept staring in the mirror at me until Sergeant Pascoe asked him if he wanted to put the car in a ditch. That was how I found out his name was Renny. Renny and Fayrene, and their guns. I wondered how much trouble I was in.
They parked at the edge of the meadow; you couldn't take a car up into the pine forest even if you wanted to. Sergeant Pascoe got out and came back to let me out.
"You stay here, Renny. I'll call you if I need you." She turned to me. I pointed up the hill into the pines. Sergeant Pascoe sighed.
The body was still there.
It was more of a relief than I'd thought it would be; once I was sure it was there I stopped and leaned against one of the pines, catching my breath.
"Pretty worried, weren't you?" Sergeant Pascoe said.
"I thought . . ."I shrugged. "I don't know."
Sergeant Pascoe grunted and went to stand over the body, looking down.
"Anybody else been up here you know of?"
"I brought Maidjene up, but she didn't go any closer than this." I was standing about where she had been. "Somebody stabbed him," I said helpfully.
Sergeant Pascoe looked up at me from under the brim of her hat. She was blonde and had the color of eyes that often go with that shade of blonde, a steely sort of grayish-blue. I'd seen those eyes before in other faces. Cop eyes.
"Now how would you know that?" she said.
"I . . . looked," I said finally.
"Sure you didn't do anything else?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Go on back down the hill and tell Renny I told him to call the M.E. And tell him to bring me up the tape."
I went on back down the hill and told Deputy Twochuck what Sergeant Pascoe had said. He gulped and looked excited, and picked up the radio mike and started spouting 10-codes into it. I went back up the hill.
"Hey! You can't go up there!" he said.
"So stop me," I said, walking off. Which wasn't fair to him, but it hadn't been a very fair morning, all things considered.
"Why don't you tell me what happened?" Fayrene said when I got back. John Doe still lay on the ground. It didn't look as if Sergeant Pascoe had touched him.
"I got here last night about midnight," I started, and told her everything that was any of her business. "So around dawn I decided to go for a walk."
"And what made you come up here?" Sergeant Pascoe said.
I shrugged. I wasn't really sure anymore. "It was in the same direction I'd been going."
"So then?" she said.
"Well, I thought I saw a body, so I went to make sure, and it was a body—"
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"Anybody you know?"
I shook my head. "People look different when tiiey're dead, but . . . no."
"And how is it you happened to take a closer look at our friend?" Sergeant Pascoe said.
"I just— I guess I just had to be sure."
It didn't sound like the truth, and for good reason—what I'd been making sure of was that John Doe hadn't just been murdered; he'd been sacrificed. And I had no intention of sajring so. At least not yet.
About this time Twochuck made it up the hill, carrying a big bright yellow roll of tape. He stared down at John Doe and gulped.
"Fa3n-ene, that's — "
"Why don't you go and cordon me off a nice big chunk of real estate, Renny, while we wait for the suits to show up?" Fayrene said.
Renny stopped himself with an effort. So he recognized John Doe. That was interesting; about as interesting as the fact that Fayrene hadn't wanted him to tell me what he knew.
"Why don't you step back here with me," Fayrene said. We both backed away from the body, in the direction of the "Police Line: Do Not Cross" tape that Twochuck was stringing from tree to tree. We'd almost reached it when Maidjene and Mrs. Cooper got here. Either Maidjene had changed her mind about revisiting the scene or she was charitably keeping Mrs. Cooper company.
Mrs. Cooper was wearing green wellies and a black and red plaid jacket. She ducked right under the yellow tape and marched over to the body.
"Helen," Fayrene said. "You don't want to — "
It was too late. Mrs. Cooper stared down at John Doe.
"God damn," she said, as if passing sentence. She looked at Sergeant Pascoe. 'That's Hellfire Harm."
Maidjene and I had both followed Mrs. Cooper.
"Jesus," said Maidjene, then: "Shit."
She'd been right. We were in trouble now.
Hellfire Harm —or as he was known to the HallowFest Community, "Jesus" Jackson Harm —had been a standing joke for years. He was a local character who'd sent long rambling letters to the Tamerlane Gazette Advertiser denouncing—among other things like vaccination, credit cards, and Suzanne Somers —our "unholy
forgathering of Satanic Witches and Imps of Satan." These letters, which the paper resignedly printed in full on the editorial page, were written in a style that hadn't been much seen since Matthew Hopkins wrote his memoirs, and we'd used to read them out to each other over Sunday breakfast. While Harm had obviously been passionately serious, he'd just as obviously been several sandwiches shy of a picnic; a joke.
Not now.
"And you didn't know him?" Sergeant Pascoe said, looking at me.
We'd all gone back to the other side of the police line, and she'd sent Twochuck down to cordon off the path up from the meadow, too.
"No. If he's Jackson Harm, then I knew what he said about Hallo wFest, of course. But I only read about him in the papers."
And if he was Jackson Harm, the potential for publicity on this was, well . . . it'd probably make the city papers.
"Who killed him?" Maidjene demanded.
'That's an interesting question," Sergeant Pascoe said. About then two more marked cars joined hers at the bottom of the hill.
By New York City standards Reverend Harm got a lot of attention, but then, Gotham County probably didn't have as high a per capita homicide rate as my home turf did.
It was a learning experience. Fayrene, I discovered, didn't have the authority to pronounce Harm dead—that was left to the Medical Examiner. It took the M.E. about twenty seconds to confirm that the Reverend Harm was dead, probably from the stab wound, although he wasn't committing himself. The Crime Scene officer was hovering over his shoulder, waiting for him to finish. The photographer who had come with them was taking pictures of everything in sight, including the stab wound.
I wanted to ask what they thought could make a mark like that, but not as much as I didn't want to be noticed. Maidjene had already gone off with Renny—Fayrene wanted a complete list of everyone who'd been on-site between yesterday and this morning, and statements from them all. I wished her luck in getting them, or of getting any use out of them if she did get them.
The ambulance that would take Harm to the morgue arrived. By now the Bardic Circle was full of HallowFest attendees being kept from climbing the hill by three deputies in Stetsons.
312 Bell, Book, and Murder
Fayrene walked over to where I was watching the m
orgue attendants try to get their stretcher through the crowd.
"I guess we're going to need your name now," she told me. She'd gotten Maidjene's, and I imagine she already knew Mrs. Cooper's. "And you'll have to make a formal statement, but you can do that with Renny."
I nodded. It wouldn't be the first time.
I gave her my business card, wrote down my work and home numbers, showed her my driver's license, and even gave Lieutenant Hodiac as a character reference.
"You know Sam?" Fayrene said.
"Yeah." Well enough to mention his name and be pretty sure he'd remember me, anyway. Sam is Detective Lieutenant Samuel Hodiac, NYPD, Cult Crimes Division. Belle sometimes does advisory-type work for him, and besides, he saved my life once. "Some people I know do some consulting work for him sometimes." I was surprised she knew him, but then, the law enforcement community is probably as insular as the NeoPagan one.
"And you're one of those New York witches camping up here this weekend?"
There was no point in denying it. "Yes."
She sighed and shifted her weight. The leather belt she was wearing creaked.
"My boy Wyler's been bugging me to let him come up here and see what's going on ever since he heard about you folks last year." She sighed. "He's about sixteen, but he's getting to that age." At which, her tone implied, boys did not listen to their mothers, even if their mothers were heavily armed.
"Well, of course we wouldn't mind talking to him," I began slowly, trying to channel what my ex-High Priestess Bellflower, community outreach maven, would say in this situation. "But he is sixteen. He'd need his parents' permission before he — "
"Came out here and danced naked by the light of the moon?" she cracked.
"We don't do that," I said quickly, before I realized she was joking. Sort of. She hadn't been serious, and the reason was obvious: if there was anyone in Gotham County who knew exactly what we did at Paradise Lake, it'd be the Gotham County Sheriffs Department.
"You've been to a HallowFest," I accused.
" 'Bout ten years back," she agreed.
That would have been the year that we'd gotten deputies of our very own prowling the site at odd hours. What they'd been looking for, none of us ever found out.
"So you know," I said.
About then the Medical Examiner left and two people in plainclothes arrived. I was introduced to Detective Lieutenant Tony Wayne and Ms. Reynalda Dahl of the DA's office. They wandered off with Fayrene for a few minutes and came back alone.
"So what did you think when you tripped over that body. Bast?" Lieutenant Wayne asked. He didn't look a thing like Bruce Wajnie, or even Val Kilmer. I decided to forgot the obvious jokes. Detective Wayne was a solid, dark-haired, ordinary-looking man with brown eyes, a bushy mustache, and a gold shield. I wondered how much ragging he got over his name, considering he worked in Gotham County.
"I thought I should call the sheriff," I said. "He was dead."
"You made sure of that," Ms. Dahl said. For a minute I thought she was accusing me of the murder. She looked formidably corporate; blacks storming the Establishment bastions have to look whiter than white, especially in this field. It isn't fair, but then, what is?
"I looked under his shirt," I said. Even I could hear how defensive I sounded.
"Why?" Lieutenant Wayne asked.
"I don't knowr 1 said. "I came up here, 1 saw him—he looked dead; dead people look dead." I stopped and took a deep breath and tried to cooperate. I was innocent; cooperation was my job in the great civil machine. "I got down beside him and opened his coat. You could see the blood on his shirt; just a spot." I remembered something else. "He had a gun. 1 didn't touch it."
Dahl whipped off to say something to somebody else.
"It would ease our minds considerably if we could fingerprint you. Bast. Sometimes people touch things without noticing," Tony Wayne said. He was good; he had the kind of presence you would instinctively trust.
"Okay." I wondered if my prints were still on file down in the city. "Do 1 have to go down to your office?"
"We can do it here." He gave me a smile. Practiced charm. Soothing the probably innocent. "What happened after you saw the blood on his shirt?"
I thought back. "It wasn't buttoned," I remembered, surprised.
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"I don't remember whether it was tucked in. There was a spot on his T-shirt. Blood, you know? Shouldn't he have bled more?"
Lieutenant Wayne grunted; answering questions wasn't his department. Dahl came back.
"Crime Scene's got it. Smith & Wesson. ^Fwenty-two."
In the words of Doonesbuiy's Uncle Duke: "That thing wouldn't stop a hamster. "
"Something wrong?" Lieutenant Wajnie asked me.
"I — " I said. "I don't like guns," I said feebly. Guns are a joke, until somebody points one at you. It wasn't so long ago that somebody had pointed one at me.
"So you saw he was stabbed," Lieutenant Wayne prompted me.
"He looked really dead," I said, knowing I sounded like an idiot and hating it. "I went looking for the police. It was about 6:30 when 1 looked at my watch."
"Helen's call was logged in at 6:55," Fayrene said. She'd come back without my noticing. "Her place is about twenty minutes' walk from here, cutting straight through."
"And dawn was around five today. That gives us a window of about ninety minutes. Are you planning to go anywhere?" Only this last was to me.
"When?" I asked blankly. I could tell the three of them thought it was funny. "I'm going to be up here through Monday," I said, nettled. "So are about three hundred other people from half a dozen states. Then we're all going to go home." Please god.
"Okay, that's about everything for now," Lieutenant Wayne said. "We'll be in touch if we need anything further. And we'd appreciate it if you didn't discuss this with anyone."
I nodded. Yeah, right.
"Come on." Fayrene took my arm. We went down the hill. Jackson Harm followed us down in a zipper bag.
There were a bunch of people, including Maidjene, standing around in the meadow.
"Sergeant Pascoe!" Maidjene called. Fayrene walked out to meet her.
"Look, are we going to be able to use this area for tonight?" Maidjene demanded, as soon as Fayrene was within hailing distance.
It was a reasonable question. There were cars parked on the grass, digging muddy ruts in it, and yellow tape was strung from tree to tree across the whole north side of it.
"You'll have to talk to Lieutenant Wayne about that," Fayrene said.
"The First Amendment—" Maidjene began argumentatively.
"Look, as long as we're on this side of the tape we're okay, right? And you guys are going to be gone by then, right?" I interrupted, desperately willing Maidjene to shut up.
"Nine o'clock?" Fayrene said, proving she knew as much about HallowFest as I'd thought. "Probably. Might be a deputy up there, though."
"That's okay," 1 said. Maidjene glared at me, betrayed.
"I'm glad," Fayrene said dryly. "Now if you'd all just clear out of here?"
I gave Maidjene the firm eye. She shrugged and walked back to the largest clump of watchers and started persuading them to leave for woods and pastures greener and fresh fields anew.
"It's like herding cats," Fayrene muttered.
"You don't know the half of it," 1 said. She looked at me, surprised I'd heard, I guess.
"So you don't think they're going to stay out of our hair?" she asked me.
It seemed to be a serious question, so I gave it serious thought. "I guess . . . a lot of us have too much confidence in our own abilities," I said.
She laughed. "I guess you do, but there shouldn't be much to mess up once we're done —and we photographed it all, anyway."
By now we'd reached her car. With two more cars behind it, it wasn't going anywhere soon. She opened the door and fumbled around in the glove box for a minute and pulled out a card.
"If you happen to remember anything else
about this morning, you give us a call," Fayrene said. She wrote another number on the back. "Any time." It was not a social request.
"Yeah," I said.
I was dismissed. Fayrene went back up the hill again. I went off to help Maidjene clear the meadow.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning. The sky was blue, the birds were singing, the sun was even warm. And the Reverend Harm was dead, and public opinion—if nothing more—was going to point to someone at HallowFest as his killer.
'The deputies would like everybody to clear out," I said to a group of people 1 remembered faintly from other HallowFests. They were
316 Bell, Book, and Murder
all in SCA garb of t±ie later MGM period, and one of them was wearing a silver pentacle brooch that must have been four inches across. NeoPaganism, as interpreted for these current Middle Ages.
'Tell them to leave us alone," the brooch-wearer said. I wondered when I'd been appointed police liaison for HallowFest.
'They better," one of the others said. I remembered her. Tammy was what everyone called her; it was short for Tamar. "Or Goddess'll zap them, just like she did Jesus Jackson." She giggled, as if it were all a joke.
"Payback time," a man with a large hunting knife on his belt agreed. 1 wondered what we must look like to the forces of law and order: knife-wielding hippie freaks? Or worse?
'They would like you guys to clear out of the meadow," I repeated. "Are you checked in yet?" I said on a sudden inspiration.
It turned out they weren't; that got them moving. I walked away quickly. It had been a stressful morning, and people carrying on as if Jesus Jackson's murder were actually some sort of supernatural seal of approval on their religion of choice did not improve my temper.
I gritted my teeth and went down the easy path to the bam, feeling like Cassandra booking passage on the Titanic: something awful was going to happen, and there was no way I could stop it.
^•^^ SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7—9:00 a.m. ^'-i^
I walked through the bam: you can go in one door and out the other to reach the cabins if you're in a hurry. Deputy Renny Twochuck had taken over one of the smaller rooms. The door was open, and there was a line of people waiting to make statements. I ducked inside. He raiised his pen when he saw me.
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