He remembered the harassed voice of Brother Light as he brought the can of sheep dip into the storage shed: “I have a hundred things to do, but Sister says I must fix the mattress or the stranger will be eaten alive by fleas.”... And Brother Crown, the prophet of doom: “We all carry a devil around inside us, gnawing our innards.”
Quinn said, in a voice that sounded ragged, gnawed by his own devil, “There must be no violence.”
“Tell them that.”
“I’m telling you first. By your own aggression, you might scare them into acts of destruction.”
“More Peace Corps stuff, Quinn?”
“Call it that if you like.”
“You suddenly bucking for sergeant in the army of the Lord? Maybe you’re hearing voices, too, eh?”
“That’s right,” Quinn said. “I’m hearing voices.”
One, in particular: “I have renounced the world and its evils. I have renounced the flesh and its weakness. I seek the solace of the spirit, the salvation of the soul. Having done without comfort, I will be comforted by the Lord. Having hungered, I will feast. Having trod the rough earth, my feet uncovered, I will walk the smooth and golden streets of heaven. Having here forsaken the pride of ornament, I will be of infinite beauty. Having humbled myself in the fields, I will walk tall and straight in the hereafter, which does belong to the True Believers.”
Quinn looked out at the desolate landscape. I hope you’ve made it, Sister. I hope to God you’ve made it.
Nineteen
Nothing seemed to have changed since Quinn’s first visit. The cattle grazed in the pasture, tails to the wind; the goats were still tethered to the manzanita tree, and the sheep in their log pen stared incuriously at the car as it passed. Even the spot on the path where Quinn had met Mother Pureza earlier in the day bore no traces of the encounter, no drops of blood, no footprints. Oak leaves and pine needles had drifted over it, and the dark orange flakes of madrone bark that looked like cinnamon. The forest had hidden its records as effectively as the sea.
Sheriff Lassiter got out of the car, glancing around uneasily as though he half expected to be ambushed from behind a tree. He gave orders for the deputies in the second car to stay where they were until he had a chance to inspect the place, then he and Bill, the driver, followed Quinn up the sharp ascent of the path.
There was no sound. No wind moved the quiet trees, the birds had not yet started to forage for their evening meal, and if the three men were observed as they approached the dining building, the observer gave no audible alarm. Now and then a tired little wisp of smoke climbed out of the chimney and disappeared.
“Damn it, where is everybody?” Lassiter said. His voice sounded so loud in the thin air that he flushed with embarrassment and looked ready to apologize if anyone had appeared to accept the apology.
No one did.
He knocked on the kitchen door, waited, knocked again. “Hello in there!”
“They may all be at prayer in the Tower,” Quinn said. “Try the door.”
It wasn’t locked. When he opened it, a draft of hot dry air struck Lassiter’s face, and the sun pouring in through the enormous skylight almost blinded him.
The long wooden table was set for the next meal, tin plates and cups and stainless steel utensils. The kerosene lamps were filled, ready to be lit; the fire in the wood stove was going and more logs lay piled neatly on the floor beside it, to be added later when Sister Contrition arrived to start supper.
The place on the stone floor where Sister Blessing had fallen had been scrubbed clean, and there was an acrid smell in the air like burning wool. Lassiter went over to the stove and lifted the lid with the handle. The charred remnants of the cloths used to clean the floor were still smoking.
“They’ve burned the evidence,” Lassiter said in helpless fury. “Well, by God, they’re not going to get away with this if I have to lock every one of them behind bars. Put that in your peace pipe, Quinn.”
He made several futile attempts to retrieve some of the remnants of cloth with a poker, but they fell apart at a touch. He threw the poker down. It barely missed his foot and he glowered at Quinn as if Quinn had been the one who had thrown it. “All right, where’s the Tower? I want to ask these buddies of yours a few questions.”
Bill was watching his boss anxiously. “Take it easy, Sheriff. Like Mr. Quinn says, this is foreign territory. Maybe we sort of need an interpreter, somebody can talk their language. What I mean is, sure, you have a viewpoint, but maybe they have a viewpoint, too, and if we kind of go easy at first—”
“What’s happened to you?” Lassister said. “You getting soft in the head like Quinn here?”
“No. But—”
“O.K., then. No buts, Billy-boy.”
The only sounds as they walked were the occasional crunch of an oak leaf underfoot and the squawk of a scrub jay sensing danger and giving the alarm. In silence, the three men passed under the entrance arch of the Tower into the inner courtyard. The dead man lay where he had fallen, in front of the shrine.
The body had been covered with a blanket, and on a bench nearby sat Mother Pureza, clutching a rosary and watching the intruders with unblinking eyes. She had been washed and wore a clean white robe.
Quinn spoke to her softly. “Mother Pureza?”
“Dona Isabella, if you please.”
“Of course. Where are the others, Dona Isabella?”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“Away.”
“They left you here all alone?”
“I’m not alone. There’s Capirote—” She pointed a bony forefinger at the dead man, then at Quinn. “And you. And you. And you. That’s four, and I make five. I’m not nearly as alone as I was when I had to sit up in my room with no one to talk to. Five is a good little conversational group. What shall we choose as an opening topic?”
“Your friends. The Master, Sister Contrition, Karma—”
“They are all gone. I told you that.”
“Are they coming back?”
“I don’t think so,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “Why should they?”
“To take care of you.”
“Capirote will take care of me when he wakes up.”
Lassiter had removed the blanket from the dead man and was bending down, examining the head wounds. Quinn said to him, “I can’t believe her husband would have left her like this to fend for herself.”
Lassiter straightened up, his face grim. “Can’t you?”
“He seemed very fond of her.”
“This is another country, remember? Maybe fondness isn’t a word in their language.”
“I think it is.”
“All right, what do you suggest? That they haven’t really gone away, they’re out there playing hide-and-seek in the trees?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“Either the Master plans to return, or else he left his wife here deliberately, realizing the time had arrived when he could no longer care for her properly. He knew we’d be coming, that she wouldn’t be alone for any length of time.”
“You mean he felt the old lady would be a hindrance while he and the rest of them were on the run?”
“No. I think he intended her to be found and to be put in an institution. She needs custodial care.”
“Your interpretation of the Master’s motives are pretty charitable,” Lassiter said. “It doesn’t change the facts: a murder has been committed, perhaps two, and an old lady sick in the head has been abandoned.”