by Mike Doogan
“See them broken branches?” the old man said. “Somebody been in there a little while ago.”
Kane sat on a fallen tree and took off his snowshoes, then helped the old man remove his. He pulled a flashlight out of an inside pocket and led the way into the drift tunnel, stooping to avoid the low roof. The tunnel led in and down, and the two men followed it for maybe fifty yards, dropping to their hands and knees as the tunnel got smaller. From the marks on the floor, something had been dragged along it.
Finally, the tunnel opened into a sort of gallery in front of the rock face, which still bore the marks of the picks that had gouged it nearly a century before. Kane could rise to his knees and shine the flashlight around. The beam fell on something, and behind him, he could hear the old man suck in his breath. Caught in the beam of the flashlight were a pair of pale hands folded across a big book.
“Maybe that wasn’t an angel I seen,” the old man said as the flashlight’s beam climbed up the body to focus on Faith Wright’s dead-white face.
“Maybe it was, uncle,” Kane said. “Maybe it was the angel of death.”
27
And he said, who made thee a prince and a judge over us?
intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?
And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.
EXODUS 2:14
THE SUNDAY-EVENING SERVICE WAS NEARING ITS END when Kane slid into the back of the community hall. Nobody worked in Rejoice on a Sunday, and there were three religious services, the evening’s being the longest and most fervent. Moses Wright stood at the front of the congregation, wrapping up what must have been a powerful preaching. The sweat was rolling off his brow, and most of his congregation were on their knees, arms stretched toward the heavens.
“Jesus calls on us to be vigilant,” Moses was saying. “Go out and witness to your faith by the way you live, and be ready to protect it from the evils of the world.”
Calls of “Amen” issued from the worshippers. Young Matthew Pinchon stepped forward and turned to face the audience.
“Before we go, let us join our hands,” he said, “and pray for Faith Wright, wherever she might be, to come back to the righteous life. And for her family and all of us who know her here in Rejoice, as they seek to understand the ways of God.”
He motioned for Thomas Wright to join him at the front of the room. People stood up and took up the hands of their neighbors and bowed their heads.
“I think you might want to wait on that prayer,” Kane called. “I have a few things to say.”
Heads snapped up. The looks on their faces weren’t welcoming. Kane walked through the crowd until he was near the front, facing Pinchon and the two Wrights. All the eyes on him didn’t seem to bother him a bit.
“I found Faith today,” he said, speaking loudly so everyone in the hall could hear him. “She is dead.”
Thomas Wright staggered as if Kane had hit him. He bent over, uttered a low, keening sound, and began to cry. Moses Wright gave Kane a look of pure hatred. Kane didn’t like telling Faith’s father that way, but he had work to do here, and there was no way to do it that would be easy on Thomas Wright.
“She was lying in an old mining tunnel back up in the hills a few miles from here,” he said, his voice rising over the hubbub from the crowd. “Her arms were crossed over this.” He raised the brown leather-covered Bible over his head and shook it.
“How did she die?” Matthew Pinchon asked.
“It looked like what we call blunt-force trauma,” Kane said. “Somebody hit her or she hit something, and it killed her. But maybe you’d better let me tell this, and then I’ll answer questions.”
He raised the Bible and shook it again.
“Whoever killed her and hid her body is a religious man,” he said, bringing the crowd’s attention back to focus on him, “or else wanted us to think he is.”
He looked around the room.
“Because of what Faith was doing, there are many suspects,” he said. “But the reason Faith died wasn’t that she was whoring, at least not directly.”
The word brought a gasp from the crowd.
“What’s the matter?” Kane asked. “There are whores in the Bible, aren’t there? Aren’t there, Elder Moses Wright?”
The old man was trying to bore holes in Kane’s chest with his eyes. He looked up and gave the detective a twisted grin.
“ ‘And behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart,’ ” he said, his voice rising and falling in its preacher’s cadence.
“So there would be many suspects,” Kane said, “except that Faith left behind an account that tells us who her killer is. Left it behind in this.”
He shook the Bible again and pieces of paper flew out and landed at the feet of the three men. Pinchon and Moses Wright bent to pick them up.
“Leave those alone,” Kane snapped. The men froze. Kane stepped forward and retrieved the papers. As he picked them up, the people nearest him could see that they were covered in graceful, feminine handwriting. Kane sorted the papers carefully and returned them to the Bible.
The room was hot from all the sweating bodies. Kane had left his coat in the back but was otherwise still dressed for snow-machining. He’d have liked to have taken the time to get out of the snow-machine pants and boots, but he couldn’t pause now. Momentum would be important. He took a handkerchief out of a pants pocket and mopped his face.
“Her story is one this whole community should hear,” he said, “for it involves one of its leaders. Here is what it says.
“After her mother got sick, Faith needed comforting. She sought the comfort of a man she trusted, but instead of comforting her, he forced himself on her. This went on for some time. Faith didn’t know what to do. She was, I imagine, depressed because of her mother and shocked by this man’s behavior, and perhaps afraid that no one would believe her.
“But Faith was a strong person, and she fought her way clear of this man. How she got him to stop, it doesn’t say. Perhaps she threatened to expose him, I don’t know. But she forced him to stop taking advantage of her, and life went on.”
Kane stopped and looked around the room. It was completely silent and all eyes were on him. He went on.
“Life doesn’t just go on, though, when you are a sexually abused child. Especially when you see your abuser every day. Faith came to be of the opinion that she had been ruined. Whether she blamed herself—many victims do, at least initially—I don’t know. I do know that she couldn’t seek professional help, and came to think she had been ruined, physically and spiritually. Some of you mentioned that, after her mother’s death, she seemed to just be going through the motions of her religion, and that’s why.
“That would have been bad enough. But when she was about sixteen, her abuser told her that he wanted to marry her. There were complications to that, but he said he could work them out.
“Faith was sickened and afraid. But as I said, she was strong. So she hatched a plan. She won permission to attend the regional high school and threw herself into after-school activities. That kept her away from her abuser, but there was more to it than that. Once everyone had accepted her schedule, she arranged things so that she could go to work at the roadhouse.
“She wasn’t interested in the money, or the sex, really. She was interested in making herself unattractive to her abuser. When she found out her engagements were being taped, so much the better. The tapes would be evidence of her harlotry, evidence that would convince her abuser to look elsewhere.”
Kane mopped his face again and looked around the room. Everyone was intent on his story. He turned to face the three men at the front of the room.
“That’s what’s written on these pages,” he said, holding up the Bible. “The rest we have to guess. I suppose what happened was that she confronted her abuser, showed him evidence perhaps, and that he killed her for it. Jealousy, rage, illicit sex. They are often a deadly brew.”
&nb
sp; He turned slowly, looking at everyone in the room, then faced the three men at the front of the room again.
“What’s interesting—ironic, really—is that her killer didn’t find her account, hidden in her Bible. A sly child abuser would have searched for evidence. A holy man, or a man pretending to be holy, would have looked in the Bible.”
Kane walked forward until he was standing in front of one of the men.
“Why didn’t you search this Bible, Moses Wright?” Kane said, poking him in the chest. “Or should I call you Mikey Hogan?” That earned him a look of surprise from the old man. He poked him again. “Didn’t you tell me more than once that everything a man needs to know is in the Bible?” Poke. “But you don’t really believe that, do you?” Poke. “All this religion is just mumbo jumbo you use to control Rejoice and get what you want.” Poke. “Isn’t it?” Poke. “Here you have him, folks, your religious leader.” Poke. “A murderer and a child abuser and a fraud.” Poke. “Too goddamn stupid and evil to look in a Bible.”
Moses Wright’s anger grew with each poke. His face worked as he fought to control his temper, but the rage grew in his eyes and, at Kane’s last words, he exploded.
“I’m not stupid!” he yelled. Spit flew from his mouth and landed on Kane. “There was nothing in that god-damned Bible! I looked!”
The silence that followed his outburst was complete. No one even took a breath. As close as he was, Kane could see the understanding of what he had said come into the old man’s face.
“Wait! Wait!” he called. “I can explain.”
The crowd wasn’t sure what to do. The people of Rejoice had just heard their spiritual leader admit to murder and, to their way of thinking, worse. But they were used to listening to him and, for the most part, obeying him. They shifted on their feet uneasily. Then, one by one, without a word, they turned to go.
“Stop!” Moses Wright yelled. “I am your leader! You will listen to me!”
He leaped back from Kane, pulled an automatic pistol from his pocket, and fired into the ceiling.
Even in a room as big as the community hall, the gun was loud. Everyone stopped moving. Moses Wright waved the gun at his son and Matthew Pinchon, and the two moved away from him.
“You will listen to me,” Moses Wright said in a softer voice. Then he straightened himself up and began talking.
“You should have listened to me when I counseled against bringing in an outsider,” he said, his voice booming. He waved the gun at Kane. “Without me, Rejoice will just wither and die. And I did nothing wrong! Nothing!
“Maybe I should have waited until Faith was older, but she was willing. Eager. She seduced me with her tears and her need. And she was old enough, as old as her grand-mother the first time I lay with her.”
Thomas Wright took a step forward.
“You dare to blame my daughter,” he growled. He took another step. “She was just a child.” He took another step. Moses Wright fired at the floor in front of his feet.
“Stay back, Thomas,” he said, “for I will smite you, too.”
Matthew Pinchon reached out, grabbed Thomas Wright’s arm and pulled him back.
“That’s all right, Elder,” the young man said. “We will have our time.”
“Your time,” Moses Wright said with a sneer. “You have no time. Without me, there will be no Rejoice. And I have done nothing wrong. She was old enough, I tell you.”
“But she was your granddaughter,” a voice called from the crowd.
“Yes,” another called, “are you going to tell us that it was not sinful of you because Lot lay with his daughters?”
“No!” Moses Wright thundered. “It was not sinful of me because she was not flesh of my flesh nor blood of my blood.”
That brought silence again.
“You are not my son, Thomas,” Moses Wright said. “Your mother, whore that she was, lay with another and brought you forth. You are not mine and I will have none of you. ‘For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully.’ I had tests done. I am barren.”
Thomas Wright gave him a twisted smile.
“Then there is some good news from all this,” he said. “I would not be your son for a guarantee of heaven.”
Kane put out a hand.
“Give up the gun,” he said. “What you did to Faith was still against the law in this state. And there’s the fact that you murdered her.”
The old man trained the gun on Kane’s chest.
“Stay where you are,” he said. “I did not murder her. It was an accident. She came to my house that night and told me what she had been doing. Offered to get proof to show me. Described the acts to taunt me. And I lost my temper. Pride and temper are my afflictions. I struck her. She fell and hit her head on the stove and was dead. It was not my will that she died. It was God’s.”
Kane took a step forward.
“Give me the gun,” he said, “and we’ll let a jury decide.”
Moses Wright laughed.
“Why shouldn’t I shoot you, too, then?” he said. “You are the cause of all my troubles with your prying and snooping. And you are an unbeliever. I would be justified in killing you. Just as I would have been justified in killing that evil brother of mine for what he helped Faith do to me, if he hadn’t hidden himself from me.” Spittle flew from his lips again. “Justified. God be praised.”
Kane could see his finger tightening on the trigger when Matthew Pinchon stepped forward.
“And then what, Moses Wright?” he said. “Will you shoot all of us? You were my counselor. I believed in you. I did things for you that were not lawful. I tried to drive this man away with bullets and destroyed his belongings because you told me he was evil. I believed you. I believed in you. And this is your true face? Then you had best shoot me after you shoot him, for I will not let you rest after what you have done.”
“Nor will I,” said Matthew Pinchon’s father, stepping forward.
“Nor I,” said another voice.
“Nor I,” said a third and a fourth and a fifth. Soon everyone in the room was speaking and walking slowly toward Moses Wright.
The old man looked at the crowd, then at Kane.
“I loved her,” he said. “I loved both of them, and they betrayed me. Now so have all my brethren.”
He gave Kane a lopsided smile, shoved the barrel of the gun up under his own chin, and pulled the trigger.
28
And I wrote this same unto you, lest, when I came,
I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought to rejoice.
2 CORINTHIANS 2:3
“YOU TOOK A HELL OF A CHANCE,” TOM JEFFORDS SAID when Kane stopped talking.
The two of them were sitting in a corner of the bar at the top of the Hilton. Jeffords was wearing civilian clothes and had had a word with the waiter, so no one was seated within earshot.
Kane had done several things after Moses Wright blew his brains out. He’d retrieved Abraham Jordan and his snow machine from the mine and deposited them, along with a couple of ten-gallon jerry cans full of gasoline, at the old man’s home. He’d given Slade a statement about finding Faith and confronting Moses Wright. And he’d had a painful discussion with Ruth Hunt.
Then he’d driven back to Anchorage. At the top of the pass, he’d taken the prepaid cell phone out of the envelope and punched Call. When he heard the connection being made, he’d said, “It’s over. The girl’s body has been found. Her killer is dead. It was Moses Wright.” Then he’d thrown the phone as far as he could into the trees.
Closer to Anchorage, he’d gotten on his own cell phone and dialed Jeffords to set up this meeting. He’d come straight to it, wearing two-day-old clothes.
“Yes,” Jeffords said, “a hell of a chance. Moses Wright might have shot you.”
“And put me out of my misery, you mean?” Kane said, smiling. “I suppose he might have, but I was wearing a Kevlar vest. And there really wasn’t any other way to play it.”
> “Why not?” Jeffords said. “You had all the evidence you needed in the girl’s handwritten statement.”
Kane let some club soda slide down his throat, then resumed smiling.
“True enough,” he said, “if there’d been a statement. But all I found between the covers of that Bible was the work of many anonymous writers compiled over about a thousand years, from Genesis to Revelation.”
“Then what was on the sheets of paper?”
“Faith’s outline for a paper on the separation of church and state. I picked it up at the trooper office when I stopped to tell Slade about the bodies.”
“So you were just bluffing?”
“I was, and counting on Moses Wright’s pride and temper to do the rest.”
The waiter came over and set another drink in front of Jeffords. Kane looked out the window at the darkness, broken only by the lights of the port and homes on the hill behind it. I wonder if I’ll ever not want to drink, he thought.
“Then how did you know Moses did it?” Jeffords said. “Why were you sure enough to go up against him like that? If he’d denied it, you’d have been up the creek.”
Kane shook his head.
“There might have been forensic evidence,” he said. “You never know. But I didn’t really need it. There were clues. Dorothy Allison, the name Faith used on her bank account? I found out in the library in Fairbanks that she writes about being abused as a child.
“And there was the fact that Moses was one of the few people in Rejoice who could dump a body unseen, since his house is on the edge of the community. He must have driven as close as he could to the drift tunnel in her Jeep, skied in towing her body on some sort of sled, then skied back out, driven the Jeep to the high school, and skied home from there. A lot of work for an old man, but he was tough as an old boot and he had all night.”
