Fatal Voyage tb-4

by Reichs, Kathy

  “By whom?”

  “Ralph Stover was told that it would soon be his turn to move from the outer to the inner circle, was advised of the conditions, and was asked to perform a few extra duties. He stored Mitchell's body in a freezer at the Riverbank Inn.”

  I suppressed a shudder.

  “That's why the volatile fatty acid readings were off.”

  “Exactly. In early September Stover was officially proposed to succeed Veckhoff, and Mitchell's body was taken back and placed in the courtyard in preparation for an induction ceremony. That's when things began to unravel. Some within the inner circle opposed Stover's promotion, seeing him as too zealous, too unstable. The dispute dragged on, decomposition began, meaning the body couldn't be used for the ritual and the corpse had to be buried in the cave.”

  “But not before a coyote visitation.”

  “Bless them.”

  “Stover did the dirty work again?”

  “He's our man.”

  McMahon upended another drawer, taped the box, and labeled it with a felt-tip pen.

  “Anyway, after weeks of wrangling, the Stover faction prevailed. George Adair was abducted on October first. The crash occurred on October fourth.”

  “I retrieved the foot on October fifth.”

  He stacked the box with the earlier ones and opened a file drawer.

  “As you know, Stover also killed Primrose Hobbs. Lucy Crowe found Stelazine in his apartment at the Riverbank Inn. The prescription was written by a Mexican doctor for none other than Parker Davenport. Stover had four capsules in his pocket Sunday night. The same drug he used on Primrose.”

  He looked at me.

  “She also found a length of wire that matches the garrote from Hobbs's neck.”

  The cold fist. It still didn't seem possible that Primrose was dead.

  “He told me he did it because he could.”

  “An order may have come from the inner circle, or he may have been acting on his own. Perhaps he feared she'd discovered something. He probably stole her key and password to remove the foot from the morgue and alter the file.”

  “Has the foot been found?”

  “Never will be, I suspect. Hang on.”

  McMahon disappeared into the hall, returned with two more empty boxes.

  “How can so much crap accumulate in one month?”

  “Don't forget the rubber snake.”

  I pointed to an artifact on his desk.

  “I'm curious how Crowe found me.”

  “She and Ryan hit High Ridge House minutes apart Sunday night, well past the time you should have arrived. Finding your car in the lot but no sign of you in the house, they went looking. When they found the dog—”

  He glanced up, quickly back to the box. I kept my face neutral.

  “Apparently your chow got hold of Stover's wrist before he was shot. Ryan found a medical bracelet with Stover's name on it lying next to the dog's snout. Crowe made the connection based on something Midkiff had told her.”

  “The rest is history.”

  “The rest is history.”

  He threw the snake into the box, changed his mind and took it out.

  “Ryan headed back to Quebec?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, I kept my face neutral.

  “I don't know the monsieur that well, but his partner's death really turfed him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Throw in the niece, and I'm amazed the guy held it together.”

  “Yes.” The niece?

  “‘Danielle the Demon,’ he called her.”

  McMahon crossed to his jacket and tucked the snake into a pocket.

  “Said we'd probably read about the kid in the papers one day.”

  The niece?

  I felt a smile tug the corners of my mouth.

  At times neutrality is difficult.

  I found Simon Midkiff bundled in overcoat, gloves, and muffler, dozing in a rocker on his front stoop. A brimmed cap hid most of his face, and I suddenly thought of another question.

  “Simon?”

  His head snapped up and the watery eyes blinked in confusion.

  “Yes?”

  He wiped a hand across his mouth, and a filament of saliva glistened on wool. Removing the glove, he dug under layers of clothing, withdrew glasses, and slid them onto his nose.

  Recognition.

  “I'm glad to see you are all right.” Chains looped to either side of his head, throwing delicate shadows across his cheeks. The skin looked pale and paper-thin.

  “Can we talk?”

  “Of course. Perhaps we should go inside.”

  We entered a combination kitchenette–living area with one interior door, which I presumed led to a bedroom and bath. The furnishings were lacquered pine, and looked like they'd come from a home workshop.

  Books lined the baseboards, and notebooks and papers covered a table and desk. A dozen boxes were stacked at one end of the room, each marked with a series of archaeological grid numbers.

  “Tea?”

  “That would be nice.”

  I watched as he filled a kettle, took Tetley's bags from their paper holders, placed cups on saucers. He seemed frailer than I remembered, more stooped.

  “I don't get many visitors.”

  “This is lovely. Thank you.”

  He led me to an afghan-draped sofa, placed both cups on a coffee table made from a slice of tree trunk, and dragged a chair opposite.

  We both drank. Outside, I heard the whiney buzz of an outboard motor on the Oconaluftee River. I waited until he was ready.

  “I'm not sure how well I can talk about it.”

  “I know what happened, Simon. What I don't understand is why.”

  “I wasn't there in the beginning. What I know comes from others.”

  “You knew Prentice Dashwood.”

  He leaned back, and his eyes shifted to another time.

  “Prentice was an insatiable reader with a staggering array of knowledge. There was nothing that didn't interest him. Darwin. Lyell. Newton. Mendelyev. And the philosophers. Hobbs. Aenesidemus. Baumgarten. Wittgenstein. Lao-tzu. He read everything. Archaeology. Ethnology. Physics. Biology. History.”

  He interrupted to sip his tea.

  “And he was wonderful at spinning yarns. That's how it began. Prentice told stories of his ancestor's Hell Fire Club, describing the members as rakish good fellows who banded together for riotous profanity and intellectual conversation. The idea seemed benign enough. And for a while it was.”

  His cup trembled in its saucer as he set it down.

  “But Prentice had a darker side. He believed that certain human beings were more valuable than others.” His voice trailed off.

  “The intellectually superior,” I prodded.

  “Yes. As Prentice aged, his worldview was strongly influenced by his cross-cultural reading on cosmology and cannibalism. His grasp on reality diminished.”

  He paused, sorting through things he could say.

  “It started out as frivolous blasphemy. No one really believed it.”

  “Believed what?”

  “That eating the dead negated the finality of death. That partaking of the flesh of another human being allowed the assimilation of soul, personality, and wisdom.”

  “Is that what Dashwood believed?”

  One bony shoulder shrugged.

  “Perhaps he did. Perhaps he simply used the idea, and for the inner circle the actual act, as a way to keep the club intact. Collective indulgence in the forbidden. The in-group, out-group mindset. Prentice understood that cultural rituals exist to reinforce the unity of those performing them.”

  “How did it start?”

  “An accident.”

  He sniffed.

  “A bloody accident. A young man showed up at the lodge one summer. God knows what he was doing way out there. There was a lot of drinking, a fight, the boy was killed. Prentice proposed that everyone—”

  He withdrew a hanky and ran it over hi
s eyes.

  “This took place before the war. I learned about it years later when I overheard a conversation that was not for my ears.”

  “Yes.”

  “Prentice cut slivers of muscle from the boy's thigh and required everyone to partake. They had no inner- outer-circle distinction back then. It was a pact. Each was a participant and equally guilty. No one would talk about the boy's death. They buried the body in the woods, the following year the inner circle was formed, and Tucker Adams was killed.”

  “Intelligent men accepted this insanity? Educated men with wives, and families, and responsible jobs?”

  “Prentice Dashwood was an extraordinarily charismatic man. When he spoke, everything made sense.”

  “Cannibalism?” I kept my voice calm.

  “Do you have any idea how pervasive the theme of humans eating humans is in Western culture? Human sacrifice is mentioned in the Old Testament, the Rig-Veda. Anthropophagy is central to the plot of many Greek and Roman myths; it's the centerpiece of the Catholic Mass. Look at literature. Jonathan Swift's ‘Modest Proposal’ and Tom Prest's tale of Sweeney Todd. Movies Soylent Green; Fried Green Tomatoes; The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, Her Lover; Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend. And let's not forget the children: Hansel and Gretel, the Gingerbread Man, and various versions of Snow White, Cinderella, and Red Riding Hood. Grandma, what big teeth you have!”

  He drew a tremulous breath.

  “And, of course, there are the participants of necessity. The Donner party; the rugby team stranded in the Andes; the crew of the yacht Mignonette; Marten Hartwell, the bush pilot marooned in the Arctic. We are fascinated by their tales. And we embrace our famous-for-fifteen-minutes serial killer cannibals with even greater curiosity.”

  Another deep breath, exhaled slowly.

  “I can't explain it, don't condone it. Prentice made everything sound exotic. We were naughty boys sharing an interest in a wicked topic.”

  “Fay ce que voudras.”

  I recited the words carved above the entrance to the basement tunnel. During my convalescence, I'd learned that the Rabelais quote in sixteenth-century French also graced the archway and fireplaces at Medmenham Abbey.

  “‘Do what you like,’” Midkiff translated, then laughed mirthlessly. “It's ironic. The Hell Fires used the quote to sanction their licentious indulgence, but Rabelais actually credits the words to Saint Augustine. “‘Love God and do what you like. For if with the spirit of wisdom a man loves God, then, always striving to fulfil the divine will, what he wishes should be the right thing.’”

  “When did Prentice Dashwood die?”

  “Nineteen sixty-nine.”

  “Was someone killed?” We had found only eight victims.

  “There could be no replacement for Prentice. Following his death no one was elevated to the inner circle. The number dropped to six and remained there.”

  “Why wasn't Dashwood on the fax you sent me?”

  “I wrote down what I could recollect. The list was far from complete. I know almost nothing about those who joined after I left. As for Prentice, I just couldn't—” He glanced away. “It was so long ago.”

  For a long moment, neither of us spoke.

  “You really didn't know what was going on?”

  “I put it together after Mary Francis Rafferty died in 1972. That's when I withdrew.”

  “But said nothing.”

  “No. I give no excuse.”

  “Why did you tip Sheriff Crowe about Ralph Stover?”

  “Stover joined the club after I dropped out. That's why he moved to Swain County. I've always known he was unstable.”

  I remembered my most recent question.

  “Was it Stover who tried to run me down in Cherokee?”

  “I heard it was a black Volvo. Stover has a black Volvo. That incident convinced me that he really was dangerous.”

  I gestured at the boxes.

  “You're digging here, aren't you, Simon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without permission from Raleigh.”

  “The site is crucial to the lithic assemblage sequence I'm constructing.”

  “That's why you lied to me about working for the Department of Cultural Resources.”

  He nodded.

  I set down my cup and stood.

  “I'm sorry things haven't turned out as you'd hoped.” I was sorry, but couldn't forgive what he had known and not reported.

  “When the book is published people will recognize the value of my work.”

  Outside, the day was still clear and cool, with no haze in the valleys or along the ridges.

  Twelve-thirty. I had to hurry.

  THE TURNOUT FOR EDNA FARRELL'S FUNERAL WAS LARGER THAN I expected, given that she'd been dead more than half a century. In addition to members of her family, much of Bryson City, and many from the police and sheriff 's departments had gathered to lay the old woman to rest. Lucy Crowe came, and so did Byron McMahon.

  Stories of the Hell Fire Club now eclipsed accounts of the Air TransSouth crash, and reporters were there from across the Southeast. Eight seniors butchered and buried in the basement of a mountain lodge, the lieutenant governor discredited, and more than a dozen prominent citizens jailed. The media were calling them the Cannibal Murders, and I was forgotten like last year's sex scandal. While I was sorry that I could not shield Mrs. Veckhoff and her daughter from the publicity and public humiliation, I was relieved to be out of the spotlight.

  I hung back during the graveside service, thinking of the many exits our departing lives can take. Edna Farrell didn't die in her bed but departed through a much more melancholy door. So did Tucker Adams, at rest under the weathered plaque at my feet. I felt great sadness for these people, so long dead. But I felt comfort in the knowledge that I had helped bring their bodies to this hill. And satisfaction that the killings were at last at an end.

  When the mourners dispersed, I approached and laid a small bouquet on Edna's grave. Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned. Lucy Crowe was walking in my direction.

  “Surprised to see you back so soon.”

  “It's my hard Irish head. Impossible to crack.”

  She smiled.

  “It's so beautiful up here.” My gaze swept over the trees, the tombstones, the hills and valleys spreading to the horizon like orange velveteen.

  “It's why I love the highlands. There is a Cherokee creation myth that tells how the world was created from mud. A vulture flew over, and where his wings beat down, there were valleys. Where his wings rose, there grew mountains.”

  “You are Cherokee?”

  A Crowe nod.

  Another question answered.

  “How's your situation with Larke Tyrell?”

  I laughed.

  “Two days ago I received a letter of commendation from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner assuming full responsibility for the misunderstanding, exonerating me of any wrongdoing, and thanking me for my invaluable contribution to the Air TransSouth recovery. Copies were sent to everyone but the Duchess of York.”

  We left the cemetery and walked up the blacktop to our cars. I was inserting my key when she asked another question.

  “Did you identify the gargoyles on the tunnel entrance?”

  “Harpocrates and Angerona were the Egyptian gods of silence, a reminder to the brothers of their oath of secrecy. Another gimmick borrowed from Sir Francis.”

  “The names?”

  “Literary and historic references to cannibalism. Some are pretty obscure. Sawney Beane was a fourteenth-century cave-dwelling Scot. The Beane family was supposed to have slaughtered travelers and taken them home for supper. Same thing with Christie o' the Cleek. He and his family lived in a cave in Angus and dined on passing travelers. John Gregg kept the tradition alive in eighteenthcentury Devon.”

  “Mr. B?”

  “Baxbakualanuxsiwae.”

  “Very good.”

  “A Kwakiutl tribal spirit, a bearlike monster whose body was covered wi
th bloody, snarling mouths.”

  “Patron saint of the Hamatsa.”

  “That's him.”

  “And the code names?”

  “Pharaohs, gods, archaeological discoveries, characters in ancient tales. Henry Preston was Ilus, the founder of Troy. Kendall Rollins was Piankhy, an ancient Nubian king. Listen to this. Parker Davenport chose the Aztec god Ometeotl, the lord of duality. Do you suppose he was aware of the irony?”

  “Ever take a close look at the seal of the State of North Carolina?”

  I admitted that I hadn't.

  “The motto is from Cicero's ‘Essay on Friendship’—‘Esse Quam Videri.’”

  The Coke-bottle eyes held mine.

  “‘To be rather than to seem.’”

  Winding down Schoolhouse Hill, I couldn't help but notice a bumper sticker on the car ahead.

  Where will you spend eternity?

  Though placed in a broader time frame than I'd been considering, the decal posed the same question that was on my mind. Where would I spend the time ahead? More pointedly, with whom?

  During my convalescence, Pete had been caring and helpful, bringing flowers, feeding Birdie, heating soup in the microwave. We'd watched old movies, engaged in long conversations. When he was away, I spent hours recalling our life together. I remembered the good times. I remembered the fights, the minor irritations that simmered, then eventually escalated into full-scale battle.

  I had resolved one thing: I loved my estranged husband, and we would always be bound in our hearts. But we could no longer be bound in our beds. While handsome, and loving, and funny, and smart, Pete shared something with Sir Francis and his Hell Fire mates: His hat would always be off to Venus.

  Pete was a wall I could beat myself against forever. We made much better friends than spouses, and henceforth, I would keep us that way.

  I turned onto Main at the bottom of the hill.

  I'd also considered Andrew Ryan.

  Ryan the colleague. Ryan the cop. Ryan the uncle.

  Danielle was not a paramour. She was a niece. That was good. I considered Ryan the man.

  The man who wanted to suck my toes.