“You’re making a lot of excuses for her, Quinn.”
“She doesn’t need my excuses,” Quinn said. “I’m only trying to help you realize that in a short time you’ll be dealing with people whose attitudes are vastly different from your own. You’re not going to change them, so you might as well understand them.”
“You sound like a member of the Peace Corps making a report on Cuckooland,”
“Cuckooland may not be quite as cuckoo as you think.”
“All right, all right, I get the message.” Lassiter yanked irritably at his collar as if he were being choked by new ideas. “So how do you fit into the picture?”
“I’d lost my shirt in Reno and was hitchhiking a ride to San Felice to collect a debt. The driver, a man named Newhouser, works on a ranch near the Tower. He was in a hurry to get home and couldn’t take me all the way to San Felice. I went to the Tower for food and water. During the course of my overnight stay there, Sister Blessing asked me to find a man called Patrick O’Gorman. Just find him, that’s all. I have the impression now that at the time she hired me she wasn’t even sure O’Gorman had ever existed. It’s possible that, when the murderer confessed killing O’Gorman, Sister Blessing didn’t quite believe it, she thought the whole business might have been a delusion. Naturally she wanted to find out the truth, although it meant breaking the rules of the colony and subsequent punishment. As it turned out, no delusion was involved. O’Gorman had existed all right. He was murdered near Chicote five and a half years ago.”
“You told the Sister this?”
“Yes, a week ago.”
“Did it frighten her?”
“No.”
“She wasn’t afraid that the murderer might regret confessing his crime and make sure she didn’t inform anyone else?”
“Apparently not. According to Karma, the girl who was with her this morning, Sister Blessing was in high spirits, singing about a good day coming.”
“Well, it didn’t get here,” Lassiter said grimly. “Not for her, anyway. What made her imagine there was a good day coming?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she was thinking not of herself but of the colony as a whole. It’s been going downhill for a number of years and the appearance of a new convert must have been encouraging.”
“Meaning George Haywood, or the man you think is George Haywood?”
“Yes. She had no reason that I know of to suspect Haywood wasn’t a genuine convert.”
“Someone else obviously had,” Lassiter said. “Now that’s a funny thing, isn’t it?—Sister Blessing knew a week ago that the murder was no delusion, it had happened, and yet it wasn’t until Haywood appeared on the scene that the murderer made sure she wouldn’t talk. How do you figure it, Quinn?”
“I don’t.”
“What’s the present size of the colony?”
“There are twenty-seven people, including two children and the sixteen-year-old girl, Karma.”
“Can you eliminate any of them as suspects?”
“The children, certainly, and Karma. Sister Blessing was Karma’s only hope of getting away from the colony and going to live with her aunt in Los Angeles, The Master himself would probably have to be eliminated—at the time of O’Gorman’s murder he was in charge of the colony when it was still located in the San Gabriel Mountains. His wife, Mother Pureza, is both frail and senile, which makes her an unlikely prospect.”
“Poisoning doesn’t require brawn or brains.”
“I don’t believe any female members of the colony are involved in the murder.”
“Why?”
Quinn knew the answer but he couldn’t say it aloud: The letter to Martha O’Gorman was written by a man. “It seems improbable to me. Sister Blessing’s role in the community was almost as vital as the Master’s. She was the nurse, the manager, the housekeeper. The mother figure, I guess the psychologists would call her. Pureza’s title of mother is purely nominal. She doesn’t, and probably never did, function in that capacity.”
“Tell me about some of the men in the group.”
“Brother Crown of Thorns is the mechanic, a bad-tempered semiliterate, and probably the most fanatic believer of them all. Since he reported Sister Blessing’s infringement of the rules and caused her punishment, she had reason to dislike him and quite probably he didn’t like her, either. But I can’t see him committing a murder unless he received his instructions in a vision. Brother Tongue of Prophets is a timid neurotic suffering from partial aphasia.”
“What the hell’s aphasia?”
“Inability to talk. He is, or was, as dependent on Sister Blessing as a little boy, and for that reason an unlikely suspect. Brother of the Steady Heart, the barber, poses as a jolly fat man, but I’m not sure he is. Brother Light of the Infinite, who looks after the livestock, is humorless and hard-working. Perhaps he works to the point of exhaustion in order to purge himself of guilt. At any rate he had access to poison in the form of sheep dip. Brother Behold the Vision is the butcher and the cheesemaker. I saw him only briefly, at a distance. I don’t know any of the others by name.”
“It seems to me you know quite a lot for a man who allegedly spent only a short time at the Tower.”
“Sister Blessing was a good talker, I’m a good listener.”
“Are you now,” Lassiter said dryly. “Well, listen to this: I don’t believe a word you’ve told me.”
“You’re not trying, Sheriff.”
The car had started to climb and the altitude was already having an effect on Lassiter. Even the slight exertion of talking made him breathe faster and more heavily, and, although he was not tired or bored, he yawned frequently.
“Slow down on the curves, Bill. These bloody mountains give me the heaves.”
“Think about something else, Sheriff,” the deputy said earnestly. “You know, nice things. Trees. Music. Food.”
“Food, eh?”
“Roast prime ribs, medium rare, baked potatoes—”
“Forget the whole thing, will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lassiter leaned his head against the back seat and closed his eyes. “Do they know I’m coming, Quinn?”
“I told the Master I intended to report Haywood’s death.”
“What kind of reception do you think I’ll get?”
“Don’t expect a brass band.”
“Damn it, I don’t like these cases involving a bunch of nuts. Sane people are bad enough, but at least you can predict how they’re about to act. Like you said, this is practically going into a foreign country where they don’t speak our language, observe our laws—”
“Welcome to the Peace Corps,” Quinn said.
“Thanks, but I’m not joining.”
“You’ve been drafted, Sheriff.”
In the front seat the deputy’s shoulders shook in silent laughter. The sheriff leaned forward and spoke softly into his ear: “What’s so funny, Bill?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“That’s how I figure it. Nothing’s funny. So I’m not laughing.”
“Neither am I, sir. It’s just the altitude, it gives me hiccups.”
Lassiter turned his attention back to Quinn. “Think they’ll try and keep us out? I’d like to be forewarned if there’s going to be any violence.”
“Theoretically they don’t believe in violence.”
“Theoretically neither do I. But I sometimes have to use it.”
“They have no weapons that I know of. Unless you count sheer force of numbers.”
“Oh, I count it all right.”
Lassiter’s right hand moved instinctively toward the gun in his holster. Quinn noticed the gesture and felt a protest rising inside him. He thought of Mother Pureza the way he had first seen her, looking up at the sky as if she expected it to open for her, and the Master, torn between pity and duty, trying to guide her back from her wanderings through the halls of her childhood... Brother Tongue with the little bird on his shoulder to speak for him... Brother of the Steady Heart plying his razor, and like any barber anywhere, talking about anything: “In my day, the ladies were fragile, and had small, delicate feet.”…