Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 (18 page)

"Are we gonna let Satan drag us down into the muddy depths of Boone Creek?" boomed Brother Verber. It wasn't exactly what he meant to say, but he'd lost his place in his notes. "There is sin along the banks of Boone Creek. Jesus has invited us to walk across the water and cross to the shore of righteousness, but some of us won't heed His call. No, some of us are so crazed by lust and the desire to press our naked flesh -- "

"You pervert!"

Everybody, including Brother Verber, Jim Bob, Mrs. Jim Bob, Lottie Estes, and Mrs. Ira Pickerell, stared as Darla Jean McIlhaney stormed up the aisle and banged out the door of the Assembly Hall.

"Amen," said a voice in the back.

CHAPTER TEN

After I finished at the library, I dropped by the sheriff's department to leave the note to be examined for fingerprints and started back to Maggody. As I came to the airport, I remembered the locked rental car and pulled into the lot.

A dusty black limousine was parked under a sign that prohibited parking for more than three minutes. The chauffeur, a middle-aged woman with pinkish blond hair, was reading a romance novel and surreptitiously sipping a beer. I went into the terminal, which was hardly grand enough to merit the term, and headed for the rental counters.

"Chief Hanks!"

I spun around and saw Dr. Sageman seated near a plastic plant. "Are you going somewhere?" I asked as I went over to him.

"No, of course not. Surely you remember that I was supposed to meet an assistant producer from X-Files. His flight has been delayed by mechanical problems. I've been waiting for more than two hours. I think I'll have him paged at the Dallas airport and find out if we need to reschedule our interview. I am not accustomed to being kept waiting like this." I continued to the rental counter, flashed my badge, and explained the problem. The agent professed to have never before encountered such a problem. I asked to speak to her supervisor and was told he didn't come in on weekends. I reiterated the problem in simple sentences composed of one-syllable words. The agent suggested I return the following day, but after a few reckless threats from me she went into a back office to call her supervisor for guidance.

Dr. Sageman appeared at my elbow. "I reached my party, and he agreed to postpone the interview until tomorrow. I'll dismiss the car and ride back to Maggody with you."

"Okay," I said, as if he'd asked if I was willing to give him a ride and were awaiting my response. He marched away as the agent returned with a key.

"Don't lose this one, too," she said, viciously snapping her gum as if it were a weapon. "If you do, you'll have to get a locksmith to make new ones at your own expense."

I pocketed the key and went outside, where Sageman waited with an armload of files and a cardboard box. He followed me to my car, fussed with his precious commodities until he was satisfied nothing would fly off the backscat, and then climbed into the passenger's side.

"I'd hoped for a firm commitment," he said as we left the airport. "The producers of X-Files used to be very keen on UFO sightings, but lately they've been doing a lot on guardian angels and poltergeists. The crop circles caught their interest, though, as did the inexplicable tragedy of young Brian's untimely death."

"You're going to talk about that on television? I thought he was your surrogate son and heir to the throne."

Sageman pulled off his glasses to flick away what must have been a very small tear. "If his death serves to warn others, it will not have been in vain."

"Let me ask you something," I said as I whipped around a truck, then swerved back into the right lane in time to avoid a bus destined, according to a placard, for Minneapolis. Arkansas's version of life in the fast lane. "You've seen burn marks like those we found, haven't you?"

"I haven't seen the marks, but from what you said, they may resemble those found in Arizona several years ago. A policeman saw a flaming cigar-shaped object go down beyond a hill, drove into the desert to investigate, and came across a craft and two humanoid figures dressed in white. Before he could get close enough to make out any more, the craft and crew departed. Although there were some discrepancies in his later testimony, the sighting was basically validated."

"And you used it in a book," I said.

"I didn't know you were one of my fans," he said, practically purring. If he hadn't been a tad nervous about my driving, he might have pinched my cheek, but his bloodless hands were clutched in his lap. "I was contacted by a local resident who had been driving along the same road when she saw the craft. She pulled over to get a better look. The next thing she knew, she was turning into a gas station four hours later. I was able to help her recover the hours of her life that had been stolen from her, and although her memories were distressing, she was relieved to learn the truth."

"The subject you called Leonard wasn't quite as relieved, was he?"

He averted his face, despite the fact the only thing of interest along the highway was a field dotted with car cadavers. "That was my only failure," he said, sighing. "The boy approached me after a seminar and begged me to take him on as a subject. He was so upset that he could barely speak. Brian advised me not to become involved, but Leonard, as I called him in the book, was so obsessed with recurrent nightmares that I felt it might do him good to bring his fears out of his subconscious so he could deal with them."

"Maybe he should have done that with a psychiatrist," I said coldly. "I checked out your credentials, Dr. Sageman. Your doctoral degree is in education administration. That hardly qualifies you to do intensive hypnotherapy, does it?"

"I am a licensed hypnotherapist, Chief Hanks."

"All you had to do to obtain this so-called license was to send twenty dollars to some outfit in Denver. Plus postage and handling, of course."

"I did extensive independent study."

"For fifty dollars Brother Verber's seminary will make him a bishop. For a hundred they'll make him a cardinal, and for five hundred he can probably be Pope Willard. That doesn't mean he can move into the Vatican and canonize his cousins, does it?"

He buffed and puffed as we drove through a winding valley. Daffodils bloomed around the ruins of a farmhouse, and wild dogwood and redbud trees added patches of color to the placid green mountainsides. I'd returned to the Ozarks to escape the madness that was Manhattan. Now I wondered if I needed to retreat even farther to escape the madness brought into this backwoods sanctuary by people such as my passenger. The Himalayas came to mind.

"I want you to leave Dahlia alone," I said as we passed the Maggody town limit sign. "No more sessions, no interviews for that damn television show, no books, no nothing. If I find out that you've so much as greeted her on the street, I'll find a way to dump you in the county jail for a long, long time. It's amazing how paperwork can disappear, Dr. Sageman. You won't lose four hours of your life; you'll lose four months of it before someone remembers to arraign you."

"She approached me," he said stiffly. "She claimed to have proof."

I turned into the parking lot in front of Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill, continued around the corner to the motel, and braked with unnecessary vigor. "She's done a lot of peculiar things in her day, but I will not tolerate you encouraging her to believe she was kidnapped by aliens and who knows what else. I'm going to her house this afternoon to talk some sense into her thick skull. You, on the other hand, are to avoid her as if she has leprosy. Got it?" I waited until he opened the car door, then added, "And don't leave town again without my permission. I'm investigating a possible murder, and until I find some answers, you may consider yourself a suspect."

He was visibly angry, but his voice was crisp, and his accent thicker than the dregs of a proper teapot. "I shall inform you should I find the necessity to go to Farberville in the morning for the interview. I'm sure it gives you satisfaction to consider me as a suspect in Brian's death. However, you told me you found his body at eleven o'clock. I was with Rosemary and Dahlia up until that time. Even if I had not been? I had no way of knowing about this sighting because I never saw the note with the map. Perhaps you might attempt to discover who stole it from under my door. That shouldn't be too challenging for a police officer of your caliber, should it?"

I sat and fumed while he collected his files and the box from the backseat, then rolled down the window so I could cool off while I drove back to the PD. Once inside, I sat and fumed a good while longer. I knew Sageman was a charlatan, and I knew he knew I knew it (if you can follow that). He was a very rich and successful charlatan who'd written a lot of books and hundreds of articles for pseudoscientific journals. He'd turned Rosemary Tant into a heroine in the field of ufology with such titles as Abductions and Adolescence, Mother Earth; Father Star, They Come in Darkness, and Rosemary T. and the Extrinsic Paradox. She'd been on the Oprah show, for gawd's sake.

I finally noticed the answering machine was blinking frenetically at me. The last thing I wanted to do was listen to lectures from Ruby Bee, but I hit the play button and sat back while the tape rewound. The first message was from McBeen, the county coroner. His tone was as peevish as usual as he confirmed the cause of death as functional hypoxemia with carbon monoxide as the likely agent. There was also a contusion on the back of the skull from a blow that could have resulted in unconsciousness; internal hemorrhaging indicated it had happened prior to death. The time of death was compatible with the hour and a half that I'd surmised, but as always, McBeen was hanging out in the ball park.

The next two messages were from Ruby Bee, who's convinced I hover over the answering machine whenever she calls, refusing to pick up the receiver simply to annoy her (there is some truth in this). Eilene Buchanon called to say she'd seen a light in the pasture behind her house; her description matched Roy's. Jim Bob wanted an official report as soon as possible. Ruby Bee insisted I speak to her then and there if I knew what was good for me. Four times.

I settled my feet on the corner of the desk and gazed at the ceiling, trying to come up with a theory -- good, bad, or marginally probable -- that would explain how Brian Quint had received a lethal dose of carbon monoxide in an open wooded area. Or why he was lying in the middle of the burn marks. Or what had made the burn marks. Or what the hell was going on in Raz's cornfield. Pretty soon I had enough questions for a thirty-minute game show, although the grand prize might be a mutilated carcass and a fun-filled trip to a glamorous resort on the back side of the moon.

The tabloids would no doubt claim (in capital letters) that little ol' Maggody was in the midst of an intense extraterrestrial experience -- or intraterrestrial, not to slight the ITH enthusiasts. It would make a sensational story. There had been two dozen witnesses when something had taken place across the creek from the cornfield. Almost everybody in town had seen the orange lights. Roy and Eilene had seen the identical white light. An anonymous witness claimed to have seen a saucer crash. Three sober, if highly suggestible, witnesses had seen an alien walk on water. Perhaps all that could be dismissed as pandemic hysteria, but I couldn't dismiss the reality that Brian was dead.

Church had been over for an hour. I decided to go to Kevin Buchanon's house and see what he knew about the note. For the record he's the quintessence of the clan's cognitive inadequacies; astronomers interested in studying black holes could save billions of the taxpayers' dollars by shining a light in his ear.

Raz was too engrossed collecting money from the crowd to return my wave as I drove by his shack and parked behind Kevin's car. Kevin himself came out onto the porch as I came up the walk. "I'm glad to see ya, Arly," he said, his throat rippling as if tiny salmon were swimming up it to spawn, "but I ain't sure what you kin do. I mean, I've been pounding on the door all morning and begging to be let in, but she stopped answering me more than an hour ago. You know how women are."

"I'm not sure what I can do either," I said, "since I don't know what you're talking about."

He sat down on the top step, propped his elbows on his knees, and, after a few false starts, cradled his face in his hands. "Dahlia's all upset about something, but she won't tell me what, and I'm worried she's gonna do something terrible to herself. My ma sez to let her be, that she'll get hungry sooner or later and come out, but the refrigerator and two cabinets are empty. She could stay locked in the bathroom for weeks!"

"She won't do that, Kevin," I said, trying to sound optimistic. I changed the subject before he could press me for an explanation. "I need to ask you something. Yesterday you delivered a note to Reggie Pellitory while he was in the employees' lounge at the supermarket. Where did you get it?"

"Yesterday?" He scratched his head and swallowed several times. "What time yesterday?"

"I don't know the exact time, and it doesn't matter. Where did you get the note? Did someone give it to you? Can you describe the person?"

His elbows slipped as he recoiled under the pressure of my questions. "I ain't sure what time it was," he said, choking out each word as if it were a hair ball. "I hadn't had my break yet. I was supposed to have a break at four, but then Jim Bob jumped on me because some lady dropped a bottle of ammonia in the housewares aisle. I mopped it up and swept up the glass, but the whole store was stinking to high heaven, and Jim Bob told me to get the fan from the lounge. It must have been going on five before I had a break."