The Dead Priest of Sedona

by Charles Williamson

  CHAPTER 41

  The next two weeks involved a lot of routine police work. Chad succeeded in finding the Woods’ discarded pickup tires in Prescott, Arizona. That’s a long drive from Oak Creek Canyon just to buy new tires. An associate at Wal-Mart remembered Helen Wood. He thought it was a little strange that she paid cash for the four new tires. What especially stuck in his memory was that the tires she was replacing were almost new and in very good condition. Chad recovered the Woods’ tires. They proved that the Woods’ vehicle was parked near Pagan Point shortly before the body of Father Sean was discovered. It was good solid evidence, but not strong enough to prove Helen and Malcolm’s involvement. Their son, Walter, could have been driving their truck while someone else drove the Navigator to the crime scene.

  I received two e-mails from the superior general in response to my daily updates. They seemed to indirectly indicate that the person who confessed to Father Sean was no longer in Coconino County. I called the Rikers twice a week with a progress report. Those calls were very difficult for me to make, and I looked forward to the one when I could report that the case was solved thanks to their son’s good citizenship.

  We held a press conference every Friday afternoon. The Secret Mountain mass murders continued to be of national interest, but without new leads or more bodies, the coverage trailed off. We worked hard researching the identities of the bodies found at Pagan Point. Three weeks after Father Sean’s murder, we had positively identified only twelve of the fifty-two bodies.

  I was not able to reach Dr. Beech, the owner of the property where the Navigator had been hidden. One evening, I described the problems in reaching the young doctor to Margaret.

  “I think it’s noble that the young doctor accepted an assignment in Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders. You talked with someone from his former office. Did they give any reason for his decision to work as an unpaid volunteer in possibly dangerous places?” she said.

  I explained that I had not really asked much about the doctor because he was out of the country.

  “Sweetie, when you checked with the organization, did they tell you when Dr. Beech had been back to the states this year?” she said.

  I had not checked.

  “You might want to inquire if Dr. Beech is a Catholic. He is the same age as Walter Wood and spent every summer vacationing just a few miles up canyon from the Woods’ place. It would not be unusual for the Wood family to know Dr. Beech and his parents,” she said.

  I felt like a fool. Who would the doctor have asked to look after his property while he was overseas but someone who lived in the area, a family that he might have known since childhood? I had no way of telling if Dr. Beech had received the three e-mails that I’d sent to the address that his former office gave me.

  Early the next morning, I started making calls to the French organization that sponsored Dr. Beech. After my third try, I found someone in Paris who was willing to help. Apparently, the Secret Mountain Wilderness Murders were known even in France. The murders helped prove that the American West was still dangerous and had received extensive European news coverage. The two things most Frenchmen now knew about Arizona was that the Grand Canyon was in the state and that Arizona still had Druids practicing human sacrifice.

  Ms. Roseau said she wanted to assist the authorities in Arizona in any way she could. The pleasant soft-voiced woman explained, “Dr. Beech is assigned to a remote mountainous area. The war destroyed both the roads and the land-based communications. He normally comes down from his assigned village twice a month. It’s an eight hour walk to the nearest usable road; however early snows have kept him from coming down in November. The last time the trail was usable was about two weeks ago, just a couple of weeks after Dr. Beech returned to the clinic.”

  “Returned?” I inquired.

  “Oui,” the melodious Ms. Roseau replied. “Dr. Beech took his one month annual leave from mid-September to mid-October.”

  I asked if Ms. Roseau knew if he had returned to Arizona during his sabbatical.

  “Oh yes, he signed up for a second year with us. He returned to Arizona to make arrangements to spend another year in Afghanistan. He is greatly needed. Dr. Beech is the only real western trained MD in that mountainous region.”

  I asked how Dr. Beech communicated with them.

  Ms. Roseau explained that there was no electric power in the area. “Dr. Beech uses a battery operated satellite phone, but he’s conserving the batteries. He only calls with a one-minute report every week. Warmer weather was expected this week. The doctor and some villagers might come out for supplies if the weather holds. By Christmas, the area will be inaccessible until spring,” she said.

  Finally, I asked if Dr. Beech’s records indicated his religious preference.

  I could hear a chuckle in Ms. Roseau’s voice as she said, “My dear Lieutenant. Damson, I am pleased to report that Dr. Beech lists his religion as Catholic, not Pagan.”

  I decided to e-mail the superior general and inquire if he remembered the dates of the e-mails from Father Sean. I was fairly certain that he would not tell me if Dr. Beech had confessed to being involved in human sacrifice in previous years. It would be interesting to see if Dr. Beech’s trip back to Arizona and Father Sean’s reports coincided.

  CHAPTER 42

  The day following the call to Paris, I asked Alicia Magnus if I could buy her a cup of herbal tea and discuss the Secret Mountain Wilderness cases. She was pleased at the invitation and closed her bookstore for half an hour so we had time to talk.

  She leaned across the table bringing her copper-topped head a few inches from mine and said, “We’ve been probing the other plane for information about the crimes. Have you felt us projecting wisdom and visions of the crime to you?”

  I sat back in my chair to add a little more space between us. The woman made me uncomfortable. “Maybe,” I said. “I’ve had a lot of dreams about the murders at Pagan Point. A couple of times, the visions occurred when I was awake.”

  Alicia smiled. “Ah, I see. You are resisting the images. Tell me what you saw in your last daytime dream.”

  “Well, I don’t think it is anything supernatural. My last image was just a flash. It lasted no more than a second, and it was probably nothing. I felt that Malcolm Wood was waiting in the dark for another victim. Earlier, I also had a vision of the crime. It was so vivid, but probably was nothing significant. I don’t really believe in astral projections and such things.”

  “Mike, just relax and go with the flow. Let’s call it a hunch rather than anything supernatural. Do you think Malcolm could have survived that rock fall?”

  “I was there,” I said. “I saw them run into the tavern. Nothing could have survived in that little building with the thousands of tons of rocks that buried it. In another week, we should be able to prove that they were killed. The highway crew is getting close to the roof of the old place.”

  Alicia pulled her chair closer to mine and put her hand on my arm. “Hunches are valuable things. Don’t discard them casually Mike.”

  We visited about various people in Sedona. Alicia still did not think there were any other Druids who lived in Sedona. She could not suggest any suspects to add to the Woods.

  She finished her tea. Placing both of her hands on my bicep as if I might run away, she said with certainty, “There was great evil up on the plateau above the West Fork, but I don’t feel that evil here in Sedona. The others involved don’t live here. We would sense them.”

  As we walked back to her store, Alicia said, “My friends and I will continue to try and help. We have our own way of dealing with evil. We’ll seek to restore the balance and harmony to the community, to offset the black with the white. The Earth Mother will assist you Mike. Trust your hunches.”

  I was not certain what she had in mind, but I thought Alicia and her coven were sincere. However, I considered all this Wicca stuff just superstition. At the time, I didn’t realize that I would be less skeptical in a few weeks.<
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  It was the day following my visit with Alicia that I received a report from my contact at the FBI Lab. He had researched the sale of woad in the western states. The only known authentic source of substantial amounts of pure woad dye was a natural dye shop in Surrey, England. The shop produced limited quantities of woad dye from hand gathered wildflowers. It was expensive stuff. They sell it only over the Internet in the U.S. The shop did not take credit cards. Payment had to be made in advance with an international money order. The dye store had made a dozen shipments to California and Oregon in the past two years. None had been made to Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, or Utah. The FBI was checking on each order, but the use of money orders made tracing the buyer difficult.

  CHAPTER 43

  On a Friday morning, I was getting ready for my fourth press briefing when the head of the highway crew called from the Woods’ tavern location. Peter Williams said with an unaccustomed tone of agitation in his voice, “Mike, you and Chad should come to the rock fall pronto.”

  We were turning off 89A onto the road to the Woods’ place within minutes. I took the low water bridge and the rutted dirt road as fast as I dared. I knew that when a low-key guy like Peter Williams said to come immediately, I should take it seriously. We drove past the fallen oak and skidded to a stop. The reason for Pete’s call was instantly obvious. I was staggered by the implications.

  Heavy equipment surrounded the rock fall. Piles of pink sandstone still covered the smashed green roof of the flattened Apple Tree Tavern. Visible near the top of the fallen rocks was a black rectangle. Like the entry to some ancient king’s tomb, a man made cavern, a mine shaft was partly revealed. The uncovered portion of the opening was only about a foot high. It was at a level with the top of the original wall of the destroyed tavern and must have predated the construction of the rock building. Mines were common in the Sedona area. Nineteenth century prospectors had left many exploratory shafts. There had been a lot of silver found in Arizona, but none in the Oak Creek area.

  We would need to clear away more rock to enter the chamber that had been hidden behind the old tavern. I called Sheriff Taylor with the report. We both understood the implications of a passageway behind the tavern, but we did not discuss it on the phone. He was on his way and asked us to wait for him before we entered. Chad and I retrieved our vests and shotguns from the Explorer and stood by while the digging continued. The sheriff and four Flagstaff deputies arrived before the opening was large enough for us to enter. Finally, the passage was clear and the rock pile stable enough for us to enter. We flipped for it and Chad won. He entered first.

  We tossed flares into the opening to blind anyone whose eyes were used to the dark and to provide us with some light. We scrambled down the rocks that had fallen into the mine, our breaths held in anticipation. The red light of the flares revealed a long chamber lined with shelves. This had been a storage area for the moonshine and liquor sold by the tavern during Prohibition. There were hundreds of bottles, but most were empty. The remains of an old portable still were stored in a small side cut. We continued along the dark shaft. I could smell apples.

  The shaft made a left angle after about fifty feet. It headed up the canyon. Chad advanced carefully, tossing a flare ahead of him before he turned the corner. As we followed Chad, I already knew that we would not find the Woods in the remains of the tavern or here in the mine. When I smelled the apples, I was certain that the Woods had escaped. We soon came to a large chamber filled with several dozen five foot high bins. Some still contained apples, stored here against the winter cold. The rock walls of the mine provided the perfect temperature and the necessary darkness. The underground room would hold apples in good condition until spring and summer. From this chamber a broad wooden stairway led up to an area where some daylight was visible.

  Chad pushed open the trap door at the top of the stairway. It formed a substantial part of the floor of the storage shed used for the equipment for the apple orchard. The Woods only needed to wait until the excitement died down after the landslide. They could be anywhere in the world now. This was a fiasco. Chad and I had walked on this shed’s wooden floor, never realizing that the Wood family might still have been waiting below.

  The aftermath of this discovery was not pretty. The whole Coconino County Sheriff’s department was vilified in the press for our stupidity. Sheriff Taylor conducted the Friday afternoon press briefing himself, facing the music. My boss is an effective and competent law enforcement officer but not a good public speaker.

  This mistake was so widely covered in the press that it would be hard to find a similar position if he lost the next election. I respected him for taking direct responsibility for the escape and for meeting personally with the press. Unfortunately, he was slow with answers, and he didn’t think quickly on his feet. The press crucified him after he left the meeting in fury after one especially brutal question about the department’s intelligence, and every news program carried his bleeped-out obscenity and his angry mask as he charged from the meeting room.

  The evening of the discovery of the Woods’ escape, I called the Rikers with the bad news. The Rikers sounded distant and disappointed.

  Kevin’s father said, “Thank you for the update.” He hung up.

  God, I wanted to be able to call them back soon with the news that their son’s murderers were in custody, but things had gone from a dead end to the whole department looking like fools. The Wood family could be anywhere.

  Saturday morning, I went by to see Father Antonio with an 8 by 10 photo of Dr. Beech, an enlarged version of his driver’s license photo. Father Antonio welcomed me with kind words. He understood the situation.

  “Mike, I’ve prayed for God to give you his guidance and help to bringing this evil to an end. The Altar Society has been concentrating their prayers on supporting your efforts. You’ll apprehend these pagans before they kill again. God will be with you and your efforts, my son.” He recognized the photo of Dr. Beech as someone who had met with Father Sean several times in September and early October.

  Dr. Beech had never responded to my e-mails. I was certain that he was the former Druid who had confessed to Father Sean. I even considered going to Afghanistan to interview him, but the sheriff vetoed that. He felt there were still too many local leads that needed to be investigated.

  The next two weeks were busy. We followed up on two-dozen false sightings of the Woods and did a lot of legwork on the fingerprints taken from the rental cabins. It was going to take old-fashioned police work to salvage this case. We had fifty-four murders, and the evil bastards had a three-week head start. The FBI worked the out-of-state Woods sightings. They put Walter on the Most Wanted List. The FBI was also checking on all of the purchasers of natural Woad dye.

  Ian Stone gave me the names of the leaders of the various Druid sects that had members in the western United States. I contacted each of them to ask for membership rolls. None would agree to provide them, but all the Druid leaders wanted the cases solved before it further damaged their organizations’ reputations. Each of them agreed to contact me if they found any information that would help us find the Wood family or anyone else involved with the crimes.

  A film crew from America’s Most Wanted was in Sedona at the Woods’ place when my son and his family arrived for their Christmas visit on Thursday, December 20. I was in no mood to enjoy the holiday.

  CHAPTER 44

  The dream had captured me so completely that it was real; my darkened bedroom was only a shadow. In my vision, the Druids had assembled again. Four foul-smelling and malicious gods were arrayed along one side of a small black moonlit lake; nine Druids, dressed in long white robes and holding white candles, knelt on the opposite side of the coal-black tarn. In my vivid nightmare, I knew these false gods: Cailleach the gray hag, dark woman of knowledge, Macha the battle goddess who collects the heads of her victims, Camulus the god of war, the invincible, and Fea the hateful trickster. The full moon illuminated the gruesome scene. The mournf
ul screech of a ram’s horn trumpet sounded in the humid air. The Druids tossed silver coins into the small lake making silver splashes in the still water. Floating in the fetid air above the black tarn was a man. A large brown rock was tied to the victim’s chest with dozens of loops of a thick hemp rope.

  I got up quietly so Margaret would not be disturbed. John and Sue were in one guest bedroom and my granddaughters were in the other. After I checked each room to see that they were safe, I sat alone in the kitchen thinking. I was still having a difficult time accepting the motive for these crimes. How could people believe in this religion’s demands for blood sacrifices? For fifty years, murders were conducted in the circular grove at Pagan Point. Tests had shown traces of very old bloodstains on the stone altar that stood under the fallen oak tree in front of the destroyed tavern. A team was exploring the property for remains of possible earlier victims killed at the tavern. Of course, no one was surprised when no bodies were found under the crushed green roof of the Apple Tree Tavern.

  I recognized the demon gods of my dream from my readings about the Druids. The superior general had described the sacrifice of a victim by drowning in the report from an English martyr. I understood a lot of what had happened at Pagan Point but little of why. Although I could accept that there were crazed evil serial killers in the world, a cult of such murderers baffled me? How could participation in serial murders be passed from father to son to grandson?