I was in brambles so deep I had to keep shifting my hips left and right to stop them from clinging to me. The trees changed abruptly from birch to pine, the boughs slapping my face with their scratchy fingers and high sweet perfume.
Horns sounded from the road to the east. Angry horns chastising somebody for nearly causing an accident.
He’d escaped, down the hill from the woods, straight across the highway where he likely kept his car.
I stood on the edge of the highway inside the glaze of my own chilly sweat, breath coming in hot rushing gasps, as I watched cars and trucks resume their normal course into and out of town.
He was nowhere to be seen, the man I’d been chasing. Nowhere.
The ambulance siren was still a few blocks away by the time I got back to the parking lot. The night was dark and windy with drops of rain being blown on the breeze. The exterior lights of the brick apartment house gave it the stark imposing qualities of a prison.
A small crowd encircled McNally’s now-dead body. A few of the less-optimistic ones had brought umbrellas, apparently planning to stay here for some time. As usual with people who show up for murders, they seemed both somber and excited, and maybe just a little bit ashamed of the latter.
Jane was talking on a portable phone, giving orders to her troops about how to handle murder scenes. At least they’d had enough practice lately.
I went up to her and said, “He got away.”
She snapped down the antenna on the black portable phone. “Did he tell you anything before he died?”
“He was going to. But he was shot before he could get it out.”
I looked down at McNally. Jane had draped her jacket over his face and the upper part of his chest.
“You didn’t get a look at the person who shot him?”
“Not really.”
She frowned. “Even if you did, I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me, anyway.”
I wasn’t sure how I was going to sneak away from here and go out to the church.
But then Jane went and made it easy for me.
“Why don’t you get out of here, Payne? I don’t need any more aggravation.”
I wanted to argue with her but what was the use?
“If that’s the way you want it,” I said.
Just then the ambulance, full of wailing grief, pulled into the parking lot, a hero too late to matter.
10
By the time I reached the church, the rain started again in earnest, cold and drab and relentless.
I parked in the U-shaped gravel drive, then ran up to the front door. I heard guitar music. Except it wasn’t of the churchly sort, those “born-again” ditties that seem to be about romantic love but are really about Jesus (“He’s the greatest lover the world has ever known/The only lover who will never leave you on your own” ran a song I’d heard while dialing around on the radio one day) — no, this was bayou blues crossed with some high fine rock licks.
I went inside, stood in the back.
Kenny Deihl didn’t see me or hear me, apparently. He just sat up on a folding chair on the empty altar, pausing now to tune his guitar. The church was dark except for the lone narrow beam of a small spotlight that highlighted Kenny’s blond hair.
I listened to the rain, hard and cold, and had a moment of simple animal appreciation for my shelter, even if it had been built by a hypocrite minister.
“Kenny.”
I walked down the center aisle. The stained-glass images were difficult to pick out with no sunlight streaming through them.
He’d played a few chords, hadn’t heard me.
“Kenny.”
This time, he looked up. He wore a green Western-style shirt and jeans and Texas boots.
“Hi, Mr. Hokanson.”
“You seen the reverend?”
“Not in the last hour.”
“Think he’s up at the house?”
Kenny shrugged, looked back at his guitar. “Suppose he could be.”
I reached the altar, looked up at him.
“You a part of it, Kenny?”
He didn’t raise his eyes, kept pantomiming notes. “A part of what, Mr. Hokanson?”
“Remember I asked you how the reverend made enough money to keep everything afloat?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I found out how he does it.”
Now he raised his head and looked at me. “It’s like I told you, Mr. Hokanson. The reverend’s treated me pretty good, all things considered, so I don’t figure it’s my business to ask him any questions about where his money comes from.”
“He’s the worst kind of man there is, Kenny. He molests little girls and boys.”
He frowned. “Now I sure don’t believe that. Tell me he drinks a little, or cheats on his old lady from time to time — yes, I’d have to say he probably does. But what you said — no way, mister. No way at all.”
“You ever go into Cedar Rapids with him?”
“Not really.”
“How about Mindy? She go in with him?”
The shrug again. “Sometimes, I guess.”
“They pretty tight are they, Mindy and the reverend?”
He picked a chord. The church echoed with its keening power. “Tight? Yeah, they’re tight I guess you’d say. After the reverend learned the truth about Mindy and all. He had a hard time with it at first, the reverend did, but he seems all right about it now.”
“I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kenny.”
“About Mindy.”
“What about Mindy?”
He looked at me with unfathomable green eyes. Very somberly, he said, “Then you couldn’t tell either, huh?”
“Tell what?”
“Neither could the reverend.”
“Tell what?”
A slight smile this time. “Heck, I couldn’t tell either. Not till the reverend told me.”
“Told you about what?” I said.
“About how Mindy used to be a man.”
He just kind of drawled it out, nothing special now, old news in fact.
But to me it wasn’t old news.
If Tolliver was right that his son was still alive and killing people... what better disguise to assume than that of a woman?
“You’re sure of that?” I said.
“Mindy told him one night. All about it, I mean. Personally, I didn’t want to hear it. When she started talking about how — when he was still a man, I mean — they had to cut off his... Well, you know what I mean. I just couldn’t get that out of my mind. What kind of guy would let somebody cut off his... you know, down there.”
“Where did she have the surgery done?”
“Holland, according to the reverend.”
I thought of what the reverend’s wife had said last night, talking around a smirk, about how she hadn’t known her husband was so “kinky.” She’d been referring to the reverend and Mindy. Now her remark made sense.
Her husband was sleeping with a woman who had once been a man.
“They’re lovers?”
“Guess so. Like I said, it really ain’t my business.”
“And you don’t have any idea where I could find either of them now?”
“Not unless they’re up to the house.”
“Mindy goes up to the house?”
“Oh, sometimes. But then they get to squabbling. You know how women like to squabble.”
He played another lick, shrill and obscene in this ersatz house of God.
Then he grinned at me. “Gotta say one thing for those Dutch doctors.”
“What’s that?”
“They sure gave Mindy one fine set of hooters. I mean, her being a guy and all.”
11
I drove up the driveway to the reverend’s house. My car smelled of dampness now. The rain was falling so hard, it sounded as if hail were being mixed in.