The Dead Priest of Sedona
Page 21
Margaret and my son John arrived about forty minutes after we emerged from the water. Margaret was mad that I had been in actual danger. She will never know how close I came to running out of breath and passing out in that pitch-black water. This retirement job should not have included much personal risk. I was supposed to be checking on break-ins of vacation cabins and reading files with my feet up on my desk. John had grown up the son of a police officer, but he considered me an old guy. My only son thought that it would be a good idea if I went back into retirement.
Dawn was just bringing a pale blue color to the eastern horizon when we reached home. It was three days until Christmas, and I had a feeling of contentment. There might be years of legal proceedings before they were executed, but these Druids would not kill anyone else. I had something important to do before I went to bed.
CHAPTER 50
I sat alone in the kitchen and dialed a number in Honey Grove Texas. When Marilyn and Arthur Riker were both on the line, I explained that their son’s actions in quickly reporting the Father Sean crime had led to the capture of eight serial killers and the death of their leader. The Druids of the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness were known to have killed more than fifty people.
Arthur Riker asked about Chad. He wanted to hear about his abduction and his rescue. I reported the story that Chad had described in the parking lot of Montezuma’s Well. He had been running along the Dry Creek Road. He ran that same stretch of wilderness road every evening. He liked the solitude and the vivid night sky. It was a good flat surface to run on in darkness, and there was almost no traffic after sunset. About midway in his five-mile run, Chad heard a vehicle without lights approach from behind. Sensing danger, he moved off the road, only to collapse in pain into the ditch at the side of the asphalt. Chad had been struck by a stun gun. It was a type that fires a pair of small darts connected by wires to the electric stun component. The abductors had simply fired the gun from an open window of the slow moving van.
Five men lifted Chad’s inert two hundred and ten pound body into the back of a black panel van. Chad was taped to a two-wheeled dolly. His feet were secured to the flat platform at the bottom of the furniture moving apparatus, and his arms were tied to the sides. The crossbars pressed against his back. His mouth was taped shut to stifle any screams for help. Chad recognized Walter Wood as one of his abductors.
Chad lay on the dolly in the back of the van next to a wooden object that he could not identify from his position. If he stirred, he was shocked again by a handheld stun device like the one Moon Lady had identified. The paramedics found twenty-two blisters on Chad’s body from the stun guns before Chad was airlifted to Flagstaff Medical Center. As my partner lay helpless, Walter Wood tormented him repeatedly by covering his nose. With his mouth taped, Chad would nearly suffocate before Walter released his hold. Walter had explained that he wanted Chad to understand what he would experience at the Tarn of Cailleach. Walter was truly a monster.
Of the three men in the back of the van, Chad only recognized Walter Wood, but he made an effort to fix their faces in his mind. If he survived this encounter, he wanted to be able to provide accurate identification. The van bumped along a rutted gravel road somewhere in the darkness of that remote area. Chad could not determine where he was being taken, but he figured it was his last trip anywhere.
After several hours, the van stopped, and the dolly with Chad attached was removed. He recognized two of the voices in the group of nine people that surrounded him as he was moved up a steep trail. He heard Malcolm Wood talking with Professor Stone. When he reached the top of the trail, Chad realized that he was at Montezuma’s Well. He was certain of his fate.
He was taken down the trail to the edge of the dark waters. He was stunned again and a large flat rock was tied to his chest after he was removed from the dolly. He was dumped on his back in a small rubber raft. The dolly was taken back up the trail and a large wooden idol was rolled down to the water’s edge. It was the squat black shape that I‘d seen in the Druids’ circle while they sang their malevolent chant. Helpless, Chad had awaited his fate. He remembered thinking that at least it was a less painful death than that which had taken so many men at Pagan Point.
When my shot struck Professor Stone, Chad had understood what was happening. He had held his breath with all of his willpower hoping for help. Neither of us could believe that I found him in the ink-black water in that deep sinkhole. We both think that I must have had help and guidance. I was not ready to dismiss the possibility that Alicia Magnus and her coven had guided my hand, but it was more likely that Father Antonio’s prayers had helped me.
I explained to the Rikers that Chad was in good condition. He will probably be released from the hospital later today.
The nine Druids at the Tarn of Cailleach were all men, ranging in age from sixty-two to twenty. None of them was willing to talk, but from their driver’s licenses and identification, we found that none of them except for Harvey Stone and Malcolm Wood lived in Northern Arizona. We believe that most of them attended Northern Arizona University or lived in the Sedona area as young men. It will take some time to determine exactly how they got involved with the cult.
We identified a Bakersfield man as being on the list of the mail order purchasers of woad dye from a little store in Surrey, England. We found a pot of the greasy stuff in the van. The Druids had marked their faces with it like Indian war paint. Their ghastly wooden idol was taken to the evidence storage area in Flagstaff. I wanted to burn it on the spot, but Sheriff Taylor wouldn’t let me.
Flagstaff police found Helen Wood hiding in the basement of Harvey Stone’s house in Flagstaff at about 2:30. She was arrested as an accessory to murder. We think that the Wood family stayed with Professor Stone between their escape from the Apple Tree Tavern and their capture at the Tarn of Cailleach.
Divers recovered the body of Harvey Stone about four hours after his midnight death. My lucky shot had penetrated his heart. The divers reported several skeletons were visible in their underwater lights. The sinkhole is part of an underground river. We might never know the number of sacrifices performed there. The bodies might have drifted down into the water filled caves deep below the Tarn of Cailleach.
Marilyn Riker asked about the probability of convictions for all the Druids. I was confident that we would convict all of them. I explained that there would be a press conference at noon. By then we would be ready to announce that all eight surviving Druids would be charged with multiple counts of first degree murder.
Arthur Riker asked how this malicious and amoral cult began more than fifty years ago. I did not have a reliable answer yet. We might never know the truth. Personally, I thought Malcolm Wood had brought the barbaric practices from his home in Cumbria. If the cult survived from the eighth century until 1572 when Thomas Woodhouse reported it, it might have survived in secret to the present day. There might still be Druids following the ancient rite in the Lake District or other areas of the British Isles.
Malcolm Wood seemed extremely disturbed that the sacrifice to Cailleach had been interrupted. He ranted about the end of the world being near unless the goddess was appeased. When I suggested that we burn the idol, the Druid had to be restrained by four officers. It did not seem like an act. I think Malcolm truly believed that the world is endangered by our apprehension of his murderous sect.
The Druids of the Secret Mountain Wilderness had probably been drawn into the cult much like people were seduced into other cults. Once the recruits attended their first sacrifice, they had committed a capital crime and could never leave the cult. I explained that the Arizona attorney general had agreed to limited immunity for Dr. Peter Beech. The doctor was prepared to testify about the murders committed by this group. That testimony and the circumstantial evidence should be enough to see that the Druids never left the Arizona State Prison at Florence. Their decades of crimes might have gone unpunished without Kevin’s discovery of the Juniper Grove. Kevin Riker had saved many lives
.
I hoped the call helped to comfort the Rikers.
I had a couple of Margaret’s double chocolate fudge walnut brownies before going to bed.
THE END
Books by Charles Williamson on Kindle https://www.amazon.com/author/c.d.williamson
Mysteries:
The Dead Priest of Sedona: Book One of the Mike Damson Mysteries The Dead Chef of Santa Fe: Book Two of the Mike Damson Mysteries The Murders at El Tovar: Book Three of the Mike Damson Mysteries The Victim at Vultee Arch: Book Four of the Mike Damson Mysteries The Arson at Happy Jack: Book Five of the Mike Damson Mysteries The Dead Man at Doyle Saddle: Book Six of the Mike Damson Mysteries Oil Town: Book One of the Howard McAlester Mysteries
Time Travel:
Temporal Foam: A Novel of Accidental Time Travel
The Argonauts of Phoenix: The Second Adventure in the Temporal Foam Science Fiction:
Black Dot: Jack Dunn, Cyber-Detective Volume One
Green Glow: Jack Dunn, Cyber-Detective Volume Two Blue Haze: Jack Dunn, Cyber-Detective Volume Three Fantasy:
The Pogrom of Mages: The Healers of Glastamear, Volume One The Mages’ Winter of Death: The Healers of Glastamear, Volume Two
Coming in the spring of 2016:
The WAR OF THE FIRE MAGES:The Healers of Glastamear, Volume Three The Peaceful Pillage of Pompeii: The Third Adventure in the Temporal Foam The Mauling at Kinnickinick Pueblo: Book Seven of the Mike Damson Mysteries