Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  "If you don't follow a ritual exactly, don't be surprised when it doesn't work," Julian said. "I knew it would come to this when I started La Tesoraria, I was willing to pay the price."

  "And what about what Harm paid?" I said.

  Julian shrugged. "I didn't choose him."

  No. Fate or luck or the guiding intelligence of La Tesoraria had done that. And it could as easily have been Maidjene, or Lark, or anyone else who'd been here that night. It could have been me.

  "And what will you do now?" I asked him.

  'The Tesoraria work is over. It's served its purpose. I'll write up my notes." And maybe even publish them—safely, because no one would want to see the truth. Just as I hadn't wanted to.

  I looked at Julian. He was watching me with uninvolved interest, the cool dispassion of one who has made the decision that ends decision for all time.

  "Would you like a drink?" Julian said.

  He lifted a silver flask out of his pocket; the one I'd imagined, though I didn't remember ever seeing it before. A few drops of its contents in my glass of wine had made me sleep. A mouthful had made Harm helpless. What would a glassful do? And if I drank it, who had made that choice?

  "No," I said.

  Julian shrugged. Disappointed, but that was all. Julian had bargained with the spirits for perfect knowledge, and perfect knowledge casteth away fear.

  "And what are you going to do?" he asked me. "I haven't made up my mind yet," I told him. But I lied. I knew what I was going to do. AllI had to find was the courage.

  It took me an hour of driving around Tamerlane to find the sheriffs station again, and the closer I got, the less certain I was of what I should do when I got there.

  It seemed so much more likely that the whole thing had never happened. I could throw the knife in the lake; it wouldn't cause any trouble there, and the Sheriffs Department wasn't likely to drag the laike twice. I could forget Julian's confession. It was probably his idea of a joke, anyway, just to see how gullible I was. / was the one who professed to believe in magic, after aill. Julian professed no beliefs.

  It would be so easy to let everything go. Keep my mouth shut for twenty-four hours, and the weapon would be gone, the killer vanished. Gotham County could search forever for motive and weapon, and find neither. There had been no motive. And eventually the investigation would be dropped. Unless I told the Sheriffs Department what Julian had told me.

  I parked in the lot beneath the sign that said Visitor Parking and went inside.

  "I need to talk to Sergeant Pascoe—is she here?" I said to the uniformed man behind the desk. He'd been watching me for trouble from the moment I walked in; I suppose I looked like an accident waiting to happen.

  "Can I help you?" the sergeant said. I tried to remember the name of the detective investigating the Jackson Harm case, or even of the one I'd talked to this afternoon. It was after seven—would either of them still be here? Why hadn't I just found a phone and called? I could even have remained anonjmious, somehow. Maybe.

  "Or Detective Anthony Wayne," I said, retrieving the name from memory. "Is he here?"

  "Your name?" he asked.

  I wrenched at a mental clutch. "Karen Hightower. It's about Jackson Harm."

  The names got me a seat in the room where I'd spent most of the afternoon. It was even more depressing at night. I wanted to leave.

  444 Bell, Book, and Murder

  but it was already much too late. I'd given my name; they had my address. The chess pieces were in motion; the game had to be played out.

  Detective Wayne came in.

  "Good evening," he said. He was carrying two mugs, looking dapper yet rumpled. "Want some coffee?" He set the cups down on the table and juggled with a notepad. "You're . . . Bast, isn't it?"

  "Yes." I gave him points for taking the trouble to get not only the name, but the right one.

  He handed me a cup. It was black, and had oily beads on its surface. I drank, and tasted the bitterness in my nose and all along the lining of my throat.

  "And you said you wanted to talk to me?"

  He sat down next to me at the table. I saw a little cloisonne bat-pin from last summer's big movie pinned to his jacket. So the man had a sense of humor.

  "I know something," I heard myself say, insanely. The coffee slopped in the cup as I tried to gesture while holding it, and that made me angry. I'd been through this before. This time was no different.

  Tony Wayne waited me out.

  "I wanted to tell you something. It's probably nothing." I felt myself trying to remember something I'd known too well a lifetime ago, but the words wouldn't settle into any order. Ego te absolvo, and all my sins forgiven. Confession is good for the soul. Wash me in blood and my sins will be whiter than snow.

  "Someone told me they'd killed Jackson Harm," I said. 1 sipped the coffee, and to my disappointment. Detective Wayne didn't jump up and down and demand details. I tried to get his interest. "I've got the knife in the van. It's in a bag."

  "Can we look in your van?" Detective Wayne asked noncom-mittally.

  "Sure." I pushed the keys across the table. "Here."

  He got up and went over to the door. A deputy who must have been standing just outside leaned in, and they spoke. The deputy took the keys and went off.

  Detective Wayne came back over to the table.

  "Who told you they'd killed Reverend Harm?" he said.

  I wanted to say the name. I tried, but it wouldn't come; I felt myself gag on it, victim of the secular sorcery of shock.

  "It wasn't because he was him," I said instead. "It could have

  been anybody." It could have been me, if Julian hadn't had another use for me —and maybe some human vestige of self-preservation, even then. A last cry for help, in the midst of self-destruction. 'The point was, it had to be the first person he saw, just like in the old fairy tales, you see? It was because of La Tesoraria—he was doing the ritual in La Tesoraria and he got to the end. Julian's a magician, you see—" I'd done it; I'd managed to trick myself into saying his name. I felt my throat close with tears, choking me.

  "Julian Fletcher?" Wayne said.

  I nodded. It was easier, now. The first betrayal is always the hardest. "Julian Fletcher killed Jackson Harm. He told me he did. I found the knife in our stock. I asked him and he told me."

  "When was this?" Wayne said.

  There was a knock at the door. The deputy came back in, carrying the kukri in its Ziploc bag, now rebagged in an evidence bag belonging to the Gotham County Sheriffs Department. I realized that not only the knife but the bag it was in had Just become evidence and thought I ought to care about that more.

  "Is this the knife?" Wayne said.

  I nodded. "I think it has blood on it. The oil on it will match what's on Harm."

  And there was beeswax around the body; could they tell that the candles were ours? That Julian had brought them here for Just this purpose?

  The knife went out again. Tony Wayne leaned close to me.

  "Now listen to me. Bast." There was only a slight hesitation before my name and I liked him for that. 'This is important, and we really need a straight answer on this. Are you telling us that Julian Fletcher killed Jackson Harm?"

  "Yes," I said, feeling defensive anger. "Ask him yourself. He'll tell you, too."

  It was long after midnight when they were done with me, and they kept asking me if there was anyone I could stay with tonight, just as if I weren't up here at a campground with two hundred and fifty of my closest friends, most of whom wouldn't want to know me after this. I thought about Lark. Maybe we had something in common at last.

  The door opened, and Fayrene came in with a bag of Dunkin' Donuts and a large coffee. She set them down in front of me.

  446 Bell, Book, and Murder

  "We brought Mr. Fletcher in," she said. 'They're processing him now. I thought you'd like to know."

  I pulled the lid off the coffee. Black. Fayrene reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of su
gar and creamers.

  "Can I see him?" I asked. The unshed tears were a hard weight at the back of my Jaw.

  "No," Fayrene said. There was a pause. "You'll see him soon enough."

  I wasn't sure what she meant, but it sounded frightening and final. I pulled the lids off four of the creamers and dumped them into the coffee. Fayrene winced, gently.

  "You know," she said, seemingly inconsequentially, "my boy thinks the world of you."

  I looked up, startled. She smiled. "Oh, we don't keep many secrets. First he does what he doesn't think I'm going to approve of— then he tells me about it afterward. He told me you were going to pick out some books for him to read?"

  "Yeah," I said. "I promised. You have to keep your promises." It seemed important to repeat that, but I wasn't sure who I was telling.

  Then 1 thought of something.

  "Fayrene," I said, and there was so much urgency in my voice that she whipped around to face me. "You don't need the Hal-lowFest registrations now, do you? You've got Julian. You've got a confession. You don't need them, right?"

  She stared at me for a long moment, and I could almost see her thinking.

  "No. I guess we don't need them now at that."

  That was when I finally started to cry.

  What is the demarcation line between reality and fantas)^ Was POash, with his insistence upon being a Klingon, deluded, or merely playing out a role? And what about Julian, who followed the Tesoraria's strictures with murderous exactitude? Where does science —or religion — cross the line into madness? Do the borderlands shift every generation, or are they fixed for all time?

  The real question was, could any of us stop what we were doing if we wanted to?

  No.

  Maidjene couldn't—she'd destroyed her marriage and risked jail to follow what she saw Wiccan law to be. I'd alienated my oldest friend for much the same reason.

  For his magic, Julian had killed.

  It was a difference not of kind, but degree. The same divergence that causes one Christian to picket a Planned Parenthood clinic and another to bomb it. And we say one is permissible, and the other isn't, as we must.

  But if it is, as it is, only a difference of degree, then where is the line drawn that makes one act right and the other wrong—the line not of law, but of morality? Where is the border between good and evil? How often does each of us cross it every day, and how can we know when we do?

  It was dawn by the time they finally let me leave the sheriffs station, and I didn't go back to the campground. I went to the nearest motel. Lark came later. I never asked him how he'd found me.

  On Wednesday morning I found out what Fayrene had meant when she'd said I'd see Julian soon enough. I saw him that day, in the courtroom where the Gotham County grand jury brought in a true bill of murder against Julian David Fletcher, and the case was bound over for trial.

  In the end, I spent several more days in Gotham County than I had time or money for, and the trial itself was still in the future. Lark stayed with me a while, and then he left. Wyler Pascoe stopped by, too. I asked him for a favor. He promised he'd do it. I can't remember what else I said to him.

  It was a cold, gray, empty day when I finally drove back to Paradise Lake to pick up the Snake's stock. Everyone, even Maidjene, was long gone. It was almost November; the campground was closed. I got the keys to the bam from Mrs. Cooper. We didn't have much to say to each other now.

  The inside of the bam was as cold as the outside, and all the electricity was shut off for the winter. Someone had thrown a sheet over the table on the second floor to keep the remaining mer-chamdise clean. I finished packing and sealing the cartons. I even put the books aside for Wyler; The Snake, I figured, owed them to me. Then I carried everything downstairs to the van. There was one more thing I had to do before I was free to go.

  In the fire pit in the Upper Meadow Wyler Pascoe and I burned the two copies of the Tesoraria that The Snake had brought to sell. When the leather binding was reduced to ash I filled the fire pit with the wood he'd brought, and when the fire was burning hot

  448 Bell, Book, and Murder

  and strong I burned the HallowFest registration forms one by one, along with the pamphlets Jackson Harm had left behind.

  O yearning heart! I did inherit

  Thy withering portion with the fame.

  The searing glory which hath shone

  Amid the Jewels of my throne.

  Halo of Hell! and with a pain

  Not Hell shall make me fear again—

  —Tamerlane, Edgar Allan Poe

  WITHDRAWN

  Ho longer the property of the

  Boston Public Ubraiy.

  $•!• of «• matortaJ btneWiCl t* tPf^

  ALLSTON

  GAYLORD S