The Saint of Wolves and Butchers

by Alex Grecian

  FEBRUARY 1977

  The frequency of Rudy’s seizures had decreased over the years to a point where they occurred at regular intervals every few months and rarely interfered with his routine. He associated them, correctly or not, with the perfectly round smooth scars that skipped down his chest and abdomen and ended at his groin. The lightning had affected both his brain and his body in unexpected ways. Neither his hair nor his toenails had grown back, and he had lost all the hearing in one ear, but he had learned to read lips, so he appeared at all times to be thoughtful and attentive, carefully watching people’s faces when they talked. Yet he often heard disembodied voices and saw strange people and objects in the corners of his vision.

  Magda had died giving birth to their third child, a girl, and Rudy subsequently spent less time at home on the ranch. The life he had once craved as an American family man he now looked back on as an interlude between the more crucial periods of his work. His children were looked after by a succession of nannies, and Rudy had moved most of his personal belongings to a small house on the border of the churchyard.

  His flock had grown steadily over the years, lost souls attracted by rumors that Reverend Rudy of the Purity First Church had the power to heal sickness and dispel doubt. Lightning had infused him with the electric mastery of Divine Will. He had not just seen the light, it had moved through him, His wonders to perform.

  In Sunday school the children of his parish were taught that Reverend Rudy had spoken directly with God during that fateful storm, and they learned that his spells were holy messages from on high, were clarifications of the Word. A depiction of the red pattern of his scars had been painted from ceiling to floor in every room of the church, and each livid circle represented the first letter of one of the tenets of the faith: “Power Resides in Us,” “Unity Brings Strength,” “Rebirth, Not Death,” “Invest in Ourselves,” “Treat Others as They Deserve to Be Treated,” “A Yielding Nature Is Divine.” Taken together, the letters spelled the word PURITY, which his congregation chanted at the start of morning and evening masses.

  The same red dots also festooned the sides of a Volkswagen minibus, bought as a tax write-off and used for church outings. From a distance, the bus strongly resembled an ice-cream truck, and when the church’s youth group wasn’t away on a picnic or visiting a museum, Reverend Rudy enjoyed driving his bus through neighboring towns, taking pleasure in the inevitable disappointment of small children who followed along behind him, quarters clutched in their little hands.

  These excursions also served a second, more satisfying, purpose.

  Twelve teenagers had disappeared from western Kansas over a period of seven years. All of them had been girls between the ages of ten and eighteen, but investigators had not found a single connection among them. Two of them had attended the same school, but none of the twelve had known one another, so far as anyone was aware. Three of them had been black, two Jewish, six Hispanic, and one had been visiting from an American Indian college in eastern Kansas. No bodies had been found, and the police departments of three counties had concluded that the girls were runaways. Flyers were handed out, appeals for information were made on the local television and radio stations, photographs were stapled to telephone poles, but no new leads were uncovered.

  Had anyone ventured down the stairs to the subbasement of the Purity First Church, down beneath the shuffleboard court, the communal hall, and the cozy kitchen, they might have uncovered some sign of those twelve missing girls. They might have found evidence of other men, women, and children who had been there, had spent their last moments on Earth staring at six red scars before moving on. Reverend Rudy had put a great deal of work into renovating that cold room, with its concrete-block walls and its hulking furnace. The walls had been soundproofed, covered with thick insulation and another layer of concrete. The ceiling had been stripped to the joists and reinforced, gaps filled, and the whole thing replastered, then carpeted. This had the unfortunate effect of making the room smaller, but Rudy had convinced himself that sacrificing some space was worth it in the long run.

  Two stainless steel tables had been brought in and bolted to the floor. The tables were heavy and awkward, and the stairs leading down to the subbasement were steep and narrow. No one could see Rudy’s secret room, no one could know it even existed, and so he and Jacob had done all the work themselves. It took them a year and a half. When they had finished with the heavy work, Jacob had traveled alone to Boston with a shopping list provided by Rudy. He returned four days later with a trunk full of surgical equipment. Scalpels, shears, rib spreaders, clamps, specula, drills, and a variety of bits. Rudy unpacked the trunk with little gasps of excitement, setting each new tool in its preordained place on the aluminum racks against the walls.

  The doctor’s mission had become a holy mission.

  They were careful. After finishing the room, they waited. It was important to establish the church, as both an alibi and a safe haven, and that took a lot of work. It was another six months before Rudy took his own shopping trip and, when he went, he did not take the colorful Purity First bus. He paid four hundred dollars cash for a 1964 Buick Skylark and parked it in an abandoned barn on overgrown farmland adjacent to his Third R Ranch. He removed the station wagon’s back seat and welded a dog cage into the cargo compartment.

  That first night he drove south to Hays and cruised slowly through the slush that had formed along the streets out by the highway. The trip wasn’t as productive as he’d hoped, but he learned the lay of the land. On his next trip, he spotted a young man holding a cardboard sign and standing in the grass beside the on-ramp to I-70.

  Rudy pulled onto the shoulder and turned on his hazards. He let a Camaro pass him, and when the ramp was empty, Rudy leaned across and cranked the passenger window down. He turned on the dome light so the boy could see him.

  “Hey,” he said, “where you headed?”

  The boy stuck the sign under his arm and hoisted a backpack over his shoulder. He ran to Rudy’s car and leaned in the window. His breath was visible, drifting away to the west.

  “Thanks, man! I’m on my way to Chicago, but I got people in KC, if you’re going that far.”

  Under the yellow light of the dome Rudy could see that the boy was pale and fair-haired. Hidden by the shadows on the side of the road, he had looked darker, swarthier. Rudy frowned.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Jonas, sir. Jonas Miller. Oh my gosh, ain’t you the Rev? From up in Paradise Flats? I know you. My aunt goes to your church, man. How you doin’?”

  Rudy smiled and nodded, leaning farther forward so he could read the boy’s lips. “Jonas, yes. You were in Bible camp two summers ago, am I right?”

  “Damn.” Jonas shook his head. “Sorry. I mean, dang, Rev. You got a good memory.”

  “Indeed I do. I’m sorry, Jonas, I just remembered I’ve forgotten something back at the church. I’m afraid I can’t give you a ride tonight.” He fished his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out two ten-dollar bills, which he passed out the window to the boy. “Here, it’s getting dark out. You’d better find a motel room for the night. And get yourself something to eat.”

  “You sure, Rev? I don’t wanna take money from you.”

  “Think of it as help from the church. Next time you’re up my way, you can pay us back by taking some meals to our elderly parishioners.”

  “You bet I will. Thanks, Rev!”

  “Be careful out here, Jonas. You never know what kind of people are out and about at night.”

  “I can take care of myself, sir. Don’t you worry about me.”

  Jonas Miller adjusted his pack and backed away from the Skylark. He trotted a few feet down the shoulder and turned and waved. Rudy waved back and rolled up the window. He turned off the dome light and pulled a U-turn, going the wrong way down the ramp until he got back to the main thoroughfare. He headed north, back toward
the church, back home. He would have to try again another night. Jonas might remember seeing him in Hays, might wonder why Reverend Rudy was going east in the middle of the week.

  Rudy pounded his fist against the steering wheel and cursed his luck.

  He noticed the blinking hazard warning on the dash and belatedly flicked the lights off.

  The Skylark continued quietly along the road at exactly the posted speed limit and did not stop again until Rudy was home.

  PART TWO

  THE LORD of LIGHTNING

  CHAPTER SIX

  1

  They released Travis that afternoon. Ekwensi Griffith opened the cell door and handed him his jacket, belt, keys, phone, and wallet. Travis checked the wallet and nothing seemed to be missing. His phone was password-protected in his favorite obscure language, and he felt confident no one had tampered with it. There were three missed calls from his mother. He asked if his rented Jeep had been impounded and was told it was still at the lake, but nobody offered to drive him back to it. He did not ask about Bear.

  If Sheriff Goodman was in his office, he didn’t bother to come out and wish Travis well.

  He walked to his motel. The sky was the color of his peacoat, and his loafers sank into the new snow with every step he took. By the time he reached the Cottonwood Inn, his socks were soaked through and his feet hurt. The motel room seemed cavernous and cold without the comforting presence of Bear.

  He took a long hot shower, then selected a slate suit with a subtle pinstripe, a light gray shirt, and a black tie. He changed his wet peacoat for a silvery-gray waterproof jacket. After a moment’s thought, he retrieved a flat leather pouch from his suitcase and slipped it into his breast pocket. At last, tired but refreshed, he dropped the old suit off at the front desk to be cleaned and used an app on his phone to call a car.

  Thankfully the young man who drove him out to the wildlife refuge kept to himself, humming quietly along with a Townes Van Zandt album. Travis was able to tune out the music and think about his next moves.

  The body of Margaret Weber had not been weighted down. Someone had been in a hurry to get rid of her or had expected her to wash ashore. The killer was either a careful planner or a clumsy amateur, so there would be a great deal of forensic evidence on the corpse or there would be none at all. Unless there was a third scenario he hadn’t thought of. There was always a third option, and Travis had long ago learned to keep an open mind. But until that option presented itself, he would have to proceed with what he knew.

  He didn’t think Sheriff Goodman’s office would be sharing any lab results with him and he didn’t want to bet his freedom on the idea that the killer was a clumsy amateur. So he would act as if he were up against the careful planner, unless and until he found out otherwise.

  But why would someone want Margaret Weber’s body to be found? Had the killer purposefully set Travis up to discover her corpse? He didn’t think so. His visit to the wildlife refuge had not been scheduled and he hadn’t told anyone he was going there. It had been a random whim, a convenient nearby place to let Bear run free for a few minutes.

  And yet the sheriff had arrived at the lake almost immediately after Travis called in his gruesome discovery. Goodman had already been nearby. Was that a coincidence or had he been alerted even before the body was found?

  As the car approached the Kirwin Refuge’s visitor center, Travis looked around them in every direction. He saw nothing except a gray sky pressing down on leftover brown stalks of corn, a bare scrubby tree, and a narrow two-lane road that rose toward the clouds in front of them and disappeared in the blank silver haze of snow far behind them.

  The song “Home on the Range” popped into his head, and he smiled sadly at the thought that there must be a season when Kansas skies were not cloudy all day. He had seen the sun exactly twice since landing at the Kansas City airport.

  His driver plowed through a snowbank and stopped in the middle of the parking lot. Travis found a five-dollar bill in his jacket pocket and tipped the kid, then stepped out and squinted at the silent landscape. The car backed up and turned around and bulldozed back through the snowbank, turned left, and chugged off down the road. Travis spun in a circle, looking at everything through fresh eyes now that he knew it was a crime scene. The lookout and its rusted telescope, the skeletal trees, and the water iced over in places. His Jeep was still parked in the same spot, and its windows were intact.

  Travis had no trouble finding the path he and Bear had made through the tall grass. It had been widened by the boots of deputies and paramedics and by the wheels of a gurney, the grass trampled, the snow melted and dirty. He walked down to the lake and stood at the water’s edge.

  Margaret Weber’s body was gone, but she had left an impression. He bowed his head and murmured a few words for her, then scanned the shore in both directions. He saw no fresh dog tracks in the snow.

  “Bear!”

  He listened, but there was no movement beyond the fluttering of a few startled wings in the brush.

  “Bear, sekura! Venu ĉi tien, Bear!”

  Nothing. No answer. He hoped that was a good sign. He did not want to have to speak any prayers at this lake on behalf of his closest friend.

  He turned and trudged back up to the parking lot and over to his rental. He walked around the Jeep looking for footprints and signs of tampering, surprised to find none. He had assumed the sheriff would jimmy his way in. Travis keyed it open and slid in behind the wheel. It was dark inside. The windshield was already blacked over with snow and ice crystals. He switched on the dome light and checked the glove box. His gun was still there. He took it out and popped the magazine, checked the chamber. As far as he could tell, no one had touched it.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” he said.

  He slipped the gun in his pocket and started the vehicle. It turned over easily, and within seconds the vents began producing warm air. He grabbed his driving gloves from the box, slid back out onto the ice and gravel, and left the Jeep to warm up.

  If someone had seen him at the lake and warned Goodman, there was exactly one comfortable place that person might have hidden without being seen. Travis walked across the lot to the glass doors of the visitor center, stepping high and watching carefully for the best places to put his feet. The hems of his trousers were already wet, and he was mildly concerned about his leather boots. He stamped up and down on the welcome mat under the concrete awning and cupped his hands around his eyes. There was no movement in the vestibule, and so he opened the door and stepped inside. As soon as the doors swung shut behind him he felt a few degrees warmer. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them while he looked around at the bulletin board on the wall, the racks of pamphlets and brochures. Nothing had changed since morning, but now he was paying closer attention, looking for something. He wasn’t sure what, but he thought he’d know it if he saw it.

  A staggering variety of community notices and advertisements were tacked to the board with colorful pushpins: a haunted corn maze; an auction of the estate of Dorothy Franklin; three Christian rock bands giving concerts on different dates, two of which had already passed; a food program; a flu shot clinic; a pancake feed at the firehouse. There was a poster asking for information about a woman who had disappeared from the area, and he counted four xeroxed flyers with photos of missing children. Travis studied their faces in the grainy pictures, but wasn’t sure what he expected to see. If he had been born in a place as colorless as Burden County, he might have run away as a child. He moved on to look at the business cards for housepainters, personal health-care providers, DJs, day cares, house cleaners, craftsmen, and lawn services. Travis took a few of the cards and put them in his pocket. He tore the phone numbers from some of the notices.

  The rack held magazines with titles that reflected the neighboring area codes and wildlife. There were flyers enticing visitors to look at salt mines and giant hay bales and local his
tory museums. One leaflet proclaimed that the word of God was Purity and that this purity could only be achieved by rejecting “others”—and yet people new to the area were welcomed at services every Sunday morning. The contradiction amused Travis and he took one of the leaflets, folded it in half, and stuck it in his pocket with the business cards and phone numbers.

  But nothing struck him as significant.

  He turned to the vestibule’s inner doors and pulled the handles. They were locked, which didn’t come as a surprise. He considered a moment, then retrieved the flat leather pouch from his hip pocket and withdrew his snap gun and a torsion wrench. A moment later he opened the door and stepped inside the center’s main room. He put his tools away in the pouch and returned it to his pocket, grateful that his motel room had not been searched while he was in his cell. Many of Travis’s tools and weapons were illegal to carry in the state of Kansas.

  All the windows had blinds, shut tight against the pearly sky, so he turned on the overhead lights. The visitor center was one big room with a high ceiling and two offices at the back, their doors standing open. A sign on the back wall outlined the various interactive displays throughout the room. Travis turned three hundred sixty degrees, looking carefully at the fish tank, the reptile habitat, the board covered with fur and feathers and scales for children to touch and compare. He squatted and looked at the floor, angling himself so that the overhead lights shone across the linoleum. He saw scuff marks and dirt and a few small puddles that he had caused by tracking snow inside. He stood and walked to the back, inspecting each of the two offices in turn. He lifted the blinds in the first office and saw the straggly tree that bordered the two-lane highway. The second office shared an outside wall with its mate, which meant that neither office gave a view of the lake or the outlook post. If someone had been waiting in the center, they would have had a clear view of anyone coming or leaving, but nothing else.