The Jupiter Knife
Page 20
“So you’re thinking what I’m thinking. This book is mostly general discussion, ideas, and tables of the motions of heavenly bodies.” Michael closed the book from Diana and pulled out the book from Mahonri. “This text, Pap, is far more…uh, actionable. Yes, the stars move in a certain way, but Mahonri’s book tells me how to use that energy. I say we kidnap Erasmus Green, and I have a plan to do it.”
“Kidnap him. So we can interrogate him.” Hiram clenched his teeth so hard, his jaw muscles ached. His conscience fought him. They were entering into a duel with the darkness, a darkness that turned men into monsters, and then drove them to evil acts. What did the deer-men hunt, on the night when Jupiter entered a new decan? But the law wouldn’t see it that way, all they would see is a crazy farmer and his Navajo son kidnapping an esteemed banker in a small desert community.
Sheriff Jack Del Rose just might get off his soft backside and do something then…if he wasn’t already involved in this business somehow. Did Del Rose, Gudmundson, or Clem know about the deer-men and this hunt?
“What’s your plan?” Hiram asked.
Michael told him.
Hiram considered.
“Pap,” Michael said, “we’re close to cracking this case.”
“These aren’t cases,” Hiram said. “These aren’t your detective novels.”
“Are you sure? We have a dead body, a town full of secrets, and a list of possible suspects. One of which, I’m sorry to say, is Diana Artemis. This sure feels like a detective novel.” Michael was joking, but a slick sheen of sweat covered his forehead.
Hiram didn’t hide his sigh. “Tonight, if things don’t go as planned, you have to drive away and leave me. And if, say, Sheriff Del Rose calls you later, you say you left to check on the beet farm and you don’t know a thing about the craziness your old pap might have gotten up to, back in Moab.”
Michael smirked at him. “It’s me, your genius son. It’s my plan. Of course it’s going to work. As long as our timing is right, we’ll be fine.”
Hiram felt a hard knot in his belly. Their timing would have to be perfect.
* * *
At the gas station, Hiram called Diana’s landlady Edna. It took a few minutes, but she got Diana got on the phone, and Diana gave him Erasmus Green’s birthday, hour and minute, as well as the town of his birth—Erasmus was born in Moab itself, and she had already found the latitude and longitude, which were apparently relevant. She passed on this information readily, and without asking why.
Before hanging up, she said once again, “I’m on your side, Hiram.”
Hiram relayed the information on to Michael because it was Michael who would have to set up the charm.
Hiram’s trust in himself was failing. Even simply talking to Diana brought back memories of the widow’s low-cut dresses, and of Elmina, their bed, and their bodies, and even of Monique in France, lovely, energetic Monique. Hiram didn’t trust his own craft to work, and in any case, it was Michael who had found the hex.
After the call, they drove out of Moab, looking for cultivated fields. When they stopped, Hiram bought supplies, including a bale of hay, from a local farmer growing alfalfa in irrigated fields. With the hay strapped to the back of the Double-A, they headed back into Moab.
They’d reach the Maxwell House Hotel at around five, while the restaurant was still empty of customers. Green said he and other deer men would eat before the hunt, but that the hunt wouldn’t begin until night fell. With the long summer days, the sun would set at eight-thirty, but the sky wouldn’t get dark until nine.
That would give them some time to talk with Erasmus Green. Only it wasn’t talking, it would be an interrogation following a kidnapping. Hiram didn’t see a way around it. If he went to the sheriff, nothing would happen. If he tried any other law enforcement, he couldn’t exactly explain there was a ritualistic hunt involving men who became deer-monsters.
Green and the other deer-men had struck first. Hiram was simply following the next logical course of action, or at least it followed his logic. Michael had found the charm in the book for a reason, otherwise, they wouldn’t have had it nor their plan.
Michael parked the truck. Hiram led the way up the steps and into the restaurant lobby of the Maxwell House.
The place was empty. But for how long?
Even the front desk was empty. From up the stairs, noises—they’d have to hurry.
Michael didn’t pause. He marched over to a table, the very table they’d seen Erasmus Green sit at before, both times they’d come in, near the back, with a view of the room. Michael had a piece of chalk in his hands, taken from the toolbox.
“Hurry,” Hiram hissed.
Michael crouched, then lay flat on his back, under the table, and began to scribble the signs underneath. He’d showed Hiram the book, and the complicated symbols, including Erasmus Green’s birthday: February 21, 1883. That meant Green was fifty-two years old. He was still strangely spry.
“Bark! Bark!” Leon came traipsing down the stairs, holding his dog-bottle monstrosity and smiling, in an obvious good mood. Was it the eclipse giving him power in some way? Or was it Jupiter, moving through Scorpio?
Hiram quickly walked forward and got in Leon’s way, keeping him at the bottom of the steps and obstructing his view so he wouldn’t see Michael. “Oh, Sorry, Mr. Björnsson.” Hiram pretended to be surprised. “Are you open? My son and I have so enjoyed your food. We’d like to take an early dinner before going up to our camp.”
Leon let out a laugh. “You should get a room here with us, Mr. Woolley. And aren’t we beyond last names? We’re old friends now, I daresay. Yes, Hiram, we can get you and your son some food. Where is he?”
Hiram waved back to the dining area. “At a table already. May I pet Petey…Peteys?”
Leon laughed more. He shoved the conjoined dogs into Hiram’s face. “Bark! Bark! Give me some petting, Hiram!”
Hiram grinned, though he didn’t feel it. The border collie’s hair was soft, all right, but the skin underneath had wrinkled. The chihuahua’s head felt like a hard rubber ball.
“Good boy,” Hiram said.
Leon pushed past him.
Hiram’s heart went to this throat. He followed the hotelier, and there, sitting at the table that was now chalked on its underside, was Michael, who waved. “What’s the special tonight, Mr. Björnsson?”
“We have local trout,” Leon said, “caught right out of the Colorado.”
“Sounds delicious!” Michael seemed genuinely enthusiastic.
Leon scowled. “Yeah, it is. It is.” Then he found a grin, threw Michael a bark from Petey, and waltzed back into the kitchen.
Hiram sat down, careful not to brush his knees underneath the table. One smear of the sigils might ruin their power.
Michael wiped sweat from his forehead. “Thirty seconds earlier, our plan would’ve been undone.”
“Your plan,” Hiram said. “Your charms. How are you feeling?”
“Chaste and sober mind,” Michael affirmed. “Got it. Which, I gotta tell you, is tough when you’re a seventeen-year-old boy. But my heart’s beating fast, and it’s not because there are any ginchy girls around. That man’s stuffed dogs give me the heebie-jeebies.”
“What of your faith?” Hiram asked.
Michael frowned and squinted. “Faith in God? I…I always had faith in the beauty of the stars, the complexity of the systems, the divine mathematics of the galaxy’s dance. And God…you know what, Pap, maybe I do. Maybe I believe. And I’m excited to try.”
“It will be enough.” Hiram smiled. If he had faith, and Michael had a chaste and sober mind, maybe between the two of them, it would be enough.
The trout came with rice, green beans braised in bacon, and some cheese biscuits Leon had made himself. Hot out of the oven, they were crumbly and rich.
Hiram fell into the meal, eating his fill but careful not to overeat.
Michael picked at his food, and soon gave up.
“Too nervous t
o eat?” Hiram asked.
“I am,” Michael said. “We’ll call it fasting. God willing, it’s close enough.”
“God willing.” Hiram liked how that sounded. “When I find myself forced to break the laws of man, I…sometimes…try to ask God that His will be done. If my cause is not righteous, I beseech Him to let my charms fail.”
“That’s so weird,” Michael said. “But I guess I understand it.”
After paying for their meal, Michael and Hiram walked out. They rehearsed the plan and then Michael drove away in the truck while Hiram took a short stroll. Michael’s scheme would either work or it wouldn’t, but it shouldn’t put anyone at risk, other than the two of them. As long as Main Street didn’t get too crowded.
Hiram found a bench to sit on. He held a small gray candle in his pocket, marked with a symbol that he’d been told was the Sixth Pentacle of the Sun, or the Key of Solomon. He’d anointed the candle in oil, said a prayer over it, and put it in his toolbox over a year ago, but it ought to work still.
This was not craft he’d learned from Grandma Hettie. He’d learned it from an old colored man in France, who’d had to explain it through another doughboy, one who spoke French and who couldn’t believe that Hiram was taking it seriously. But Hiram had not only taken it seriously, he’d used it in the war, burning one of the three candles the old man had sold him. Just once, but once was enough to know that it worked.
Hiram waited, Michael cruised slowly past in the Double-A.
Men began to drift into the hotel at around six-thirty.
They had agreed that Hiram would set his hat on the wooden slats of the sidewalk once Erasmus Green sat at his normal table in the restaurant. Hiram hoped that really was the man’s regular table—otherwise, Hiram would have to try to lure him into switching seats.
The banker walked up the street at seven and entered the hotel.
Michael passed again.
Hiram casually sauntered up the steps and peeped in. The Solomon candle, once lit, should hide him. It wouldn’t exactly make him invisible, but it would cast a shroud over him, turning him into someone you needn’t pay attention to. Comme un fantôme, the old man had said, and those were the only words of his explanation that Hiram specifically remembered. Hiram’s heart leapt. Yes, Green was at his table at the back, along with Banjo Johansson, and Howard Balsley, whiskey glasses in front of them.
Good, the liquor would help.
Hiram stepped to the corner, dropped his hat, and then walked quickly past Banjo & Sons Mercantile, and around the block. He had to act quickly now, before Michael did.
Hiram stopped beside the back door of the hotel. Placing the Solomon candle on a brick window sill, he lit it with his Zippo, murmuring a short prayer. His unnoticeability would last only as long as the candle did, so he was alarmed at the speed with which the flame immediately began to devour the wax.
Then Hiram hurried through the back door, down a long corridor, past the kitchen, and he emerged at the corridor by the front desk—on the far side of the lobby from the front doors.
Erasmus Green drank his whiskey, grinning at his friends, his eyes growing heavy.
Michael had turned their normal table into a sleeping table, marking the bottom with the astrological signs identifying Erasmus Green’s birth moment. Hiram had understood only that Green was born when the sun was in Pisces, but the information from Diana had made perfect sense to Michael. Hiram was impressed by Michael’s quick learning, and also anxious to see whether this hex worked. Hiram himself knew a sleep prayer, but it was really to help someone who had trouble sleeping, or to keep someone asleep who was already asleep—he didn’t think it would knock a man unconscious at the dinner table, surrounded by his friends.
Leon’s boy, Arnie, passed Hiram, carrying a tray. Hiram pushed himself up against the wall to let him by. Leon paid him no notice.
The kid was overworked, focused on doing his job, and didn’t even nod at Hiram. Or perhaps the Solomon candle had hidden him.
Arnie returned.
Any minute now. Hiram hoped Michael would have the presence of mind to grab his fedora. It would be a shame to lose a good hat.
Hiram glanced at Erasmus Green. His meal was in front of him, and his head bobbed up and down, eyelids dragging. Banjo Johansson and Howard Balsley were in some kind of deep conversation. Was Balsley part of the deer-men’s cult? He hadn’t been at the secret meeting at the mercantile that afternoon, and he wasn’t easily recognizable as one of the deer-monsters Hiram had seen the night before.
Honks outside, from the Double-A—that horn was as familiar as the laughter of his son.
“Hey!” a man shouted. “Something’s on fire out there!”
That would be the bale of hay, soaked in gasoline.
Tables emptied instantly, men rushing to the windows and door to look out onto Main Street. Erasmus Green fell forward at the same instant, head making a dull thud as it struck the table beside his plate. His scabby scalp glistened in the brass light, taunting Hiram with the reminder that he’d seen Green transformed into a beast.
Hiram was impressed; Michael’s sleep-table astrological hex worked. He hoisted the banker and slung him over his shoulders.
Arnie stomped past them, not giving Hiram a look. Hiram’s charm was working. His heart pounded, but he felt light and free.
Hiram thanked the Lord Divine for his physical strength and walked with Green back down the hallway and out the back door, to where Michael had parked the truck. Hiram gently laid the banker in the back and then clambered in, picking his hat up from the truck’s seat and resettling it on his head.
Michael took a back road, a simple dirt track, out to another street and then back on Main Street, headed out of town. Behind them, Hiram saw a small bucket brigade of men watering the bale and stamping its flames into submission.
Hiram and his son had the banker. Now, to make him talk. Hiram felt bad for a moment for capturing the man, for casting sorcery on him, but then he remembered the frightened faces of Adelaide Tunstall and her children.
Hiram’s heart hardened. The Lord Divine had delivered the banker to them. Their cause was righteous. They hadn’t failed.
Chapter Twenty
By the time the banker came to, rattling along in the cab of the Double-A, Hiram had tied his hands behind him with a length of cord. Hiram had also blindfolded the man with an old blue bandana from the upper section of his toolbox. From the lower section, he had removed a small dried frog, completely dissected and wrapped in a square of deer leather, soft with age, and tucked it into his own pocket.
Deer leather. The irony wasn’t lost on Hiram.
Michael turned up to Frenchie’s Canyon and parked in a thick stand of junipers along the Colorado River, where they would be hidden from the view of the road.
Michael helped Hiram lower Green to the ground. Hiram had his revolver in his pocket and the rest of the rope coiled on his shoulder. He prodded the banker from behind, forcing the man across the road and up the rocky trail to Preacher Bill’s amphitheater. A back trail blind canyon should be a good enough place to keep themselves out of sight and the banker out of the hunt. Whatever the hunt was.
And whatever the deer-beasts’ role was in the hunt.
It was getting harder to see, with the sun gone from the bottoms of the canyons. They sat the banker down on a flat rock. Hiram checked the dugout, including its hidden chimney. The place was deserted.
Green chuckled. “Hiram, you can remove the blindfold. I know it’s you. You shouldn’t have come back.”
“I won’t lie,” Hiram said, “but what makes you guess it’s me, Erasmus? Why not, say, a bank robber, wanting your help in opening a safe?”
“I fell asleep at my table and whiskey wasn’t involved. How would a bank robber accomplish that?”
Michael shot Hiram a panicked glance. Hiram jerked his head, wanting Michael back in the shadows, while Hiram interrogated their prisoner. Michael moved himself behind Erasmus.
“That would result in me falling asleep after the meal, rather than before it.” The banker grunted laughter. “We didn’t really come after you. We wanted to get to Preece’s daughter. Why was she leaving town all of the sudden? What does she know about the Blót?”
Hiram stood in front of the man. “What’s the Blót?”
Erasmus grinned, and rattled off a string of foreign words.
Hiram let the rope drop in loops. “Let’s stick to English.”
“Hiram, what are you doing, kidnapping me?”
“I promised Addy I’d keep her safe from you, and to do that, I need to know the nature of your hunt…or tithe or Blót. It’s all the same thing, isn’t it?”
Green didn’t answer.
Michael was quiet.
“I want to know more about Jimmy Udall and Lloyd Preece,” Hiram said. “I want to know whether you and your friends were involved in their deaths, and what the connection is to your hunt.”
“And if I don’t tell you a word?” Green asked.
“That’s what the rope is for.” Hiram walked behind Green, caught him up in a lasso, and then pulled him back, dragging him to the dirt. At the same time, he looped an end around a knob of rock on the lower part of the canyon wall. Green lay on his back, pulled down, facing the darkness of the fading blue sky.
Michael stepped back farther into the shadows.
“And I will also seek help from the Lord Divine.” Hiram loosened and unclasped the banker’s shoe-string tie. He then undid the buttons on Green’s shirt to expose pale skin.
“What is the meaning of this?” Green asked nervously. “Hurting me won’t get you anything.”
“All I want is the truth.” From out of Hiram’s pocket, he took the square of deer leather, and unfolded it on the sandstone table next to Green. He picked up a frog’s tongue, thoroughly dried, about an inch in length. He laid the tongue on Green’s chest.