Purgatory

by K M Stross

  “Yes, it’s beautiful out this morning,” Cross said. He used one finger to casually wipe away the cool sweat that had accumulated on his forehead. “I was hoping you might be able to lead me to Sheriff Taylor.”

  The man leaned over the counter, running his finger across the long piece of paper taped on the surface with tee times written in small horizontal boxes, half of which were empty. He stopped halfway down the page and checked his watch. “He had a tee-time for nine o’clock, so he’s probably on the fourth or fifth hole by now. He’s shooting eighteen, though, so he won’t be in anytime soon.”

  Cross nodded, debating his next move. He glanced around the room, pretending to consider wasting an entire day browsing golf merchandise seriously. Polite silence usually worked this kind of situation, Cross had found.

  “I could give you a ride out to him if it’s an emergency,” the man said. He motioned toward the collar. “I figure that’s why you’re here.”

  Cross smiled warmly. “I would greatly appreciate it if you would take me out to see him.”

  “Sure thing,” the man said. He grabbed the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Marco, come up and watch the shop for fifteen.” He shut it off before getting a response. “Follow me, Father.”

  Cross followed the man through the next set of doors and into the back of the clubhouse. Outside, the air smelled like wet fresh cut grass, as if the course itself was covered in an airtight dome where none of the dry deserts could reach it. There was a clean white EZ-Go golf cart parked next to the doors; Cross sat in the passenger seat and let the attendant take them down the cobblestone path that led to the first hole. A well-dressed middle-aged couple was standing at the tee-off markers, talking quietly while a threesome finished up on the green a hundred and fifty yards away. Cross wondered which ranch the couple owned, how much they had taken in ten years ago compared to now, how many times in the past few years they’d hired someone whose documents didn’t match up.

  They stayed on the concrete path, pausing when a golfer was nearby and taking a shot, weaving through the artificially planted maple trees and thick green grass, farther south until they finally stopped at the sixth hole where a handful of thick-bellied men stood in the tee-off box. Each was wearing a different-colored Polo shirt and khaki shorts.

  “You guys are going too slow,” the attendant said with a smile. “I gotta kick you out for the day.”

  The sheriff turned, mouthing a thin cigar that was tucked between two tight pale lips pulled back in a smile. “Goddammit, Chuck…” He stopped when he spotted Cross. “Whoops. Sorry about that, Father.” His white shirt was tucked tightly into his beige khaki pants, revealing the full extent of his gut. It looked out of place without the thick leather belt and firearm. When he reached up to pull away the cigar, his shirt sleeve pulled up and revealed his skin’s true color, shades lighter and without the persistent red tint that seemed to be the norm for the white townsfolk.

  Cross stepped out of the cart and walked onto the soft grass. “Sheriff.”

  Sheriff Taylor paused, waiting for one of the men in his group to tee off. The shot hooked right, landing off the fairway two hundred yards down and just barely stopping before reaching a small sand trap. “You’ve got a lot of the store owners and ranchers swooning like schoolgirls,” he said. “Everyone thinks this is the last step and the Church is gonna finally do what should have been done a long time ago.”

  “Believe me,” Cross said, “I’m just as excited as they are.”

  Taylor smiled through the cigar. “Well, then I’m more than happy to let you interrupt my golf game! Terry here can’t wait to get this whole Father Aaron mess sorted out.”

  The man who’d just teed off bent over to pick up his tee, nodding at Cross. He was in his fifties, slightly thinner, wearing a white baseball cap tightly over his narrow head.

  “Terry owns the video store,” Taylor said quietly. “Very interested in getting some more Spanish-language movies in, but not until the Church canonizes Father Aaron. God only knows where the Mexicans are getting VHS players in this day and age.”

  “From my store,” said the man named Terry. “Not new. Refurbished.”

  Cross waited while the second man hit his first shot. The ball went straight, landing short of the first ball. “I was actually wondering if it would be possible to speak with Father McCormack. I haven’t been able to find him.”

  Sheriff Taylor’s smile faded. “Why would you need to talk to him? He came here after Father Aaron died.”

  “I’m interested in his take on the whole situation,” Cross said. “He might have some notes I can use to piece together my final report.”

  Sheriff Taylor took a deep breath. “Hold on.” He stepped up to the tee box and teed up. He hit the ball without taking a practice swing, sending it far and to the left. It bounced off one of the man-made hills and jumped back onto the edge of the flat, narrow fairway. He motioned with his hand over Cross’s shoulder. “I’ll take him back in, Chuck.”

  “Okay,” Chuck said. He made a U-turn with his cart, heading back toward the looming white clubhouse.

  “Come on,” Taylor said, hobbling back to his golf cart on the concrete path. Cross followed him, and Taylor drove them to the first ball, waiting in silence until the sheriff’s portly sunburned partner hit his second shot. The ball went rolling up the steep hill to the green, stopping ten yards short. “Good shot, Stan!” he called out. He pulled back onto the path, steering the electric car toward his ball on the edge of the fairway.

  “Have I offended you, Sheriff?” Cross asked. “Because that’s definitely not my intention.”

  “Father McCormack is dead.”

  “How?” Cross asked. “When?”

  Taylor stopped a few feet short of his ball and hefted himself out of the comfortable seat, causing the left side of the cart to lift up violently. He reached into his bag in the back and pulled out an iron. “He hanged himself a few weeks after he arrived. I think.”

  “You think?” Cross asked.

  Sheriff Taylor walked over to his ball, lining up his shot. He took one slow swing, arcing the ball high in the air. It landed on the green, rolling past the pin and continuing until it came to a stop at the edge of the green. “Bit of a bombshell, ain’t it?”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Cross said.

  Sheriff Taylor sighed. “I left the case open because I wanted to be absolutely sure, you know? That type of thing… oh boy, that’s not the type of thing the Church wants to hear about one of its priests, a hanging and all. And there were some things… nothing too important, but they didn’t fit. Enough to keep the case open so the Church wouldn’t have to own up to the whole thing.”

  “Like what?” Cross asked.

  Sheriff Taylor shrugged. “Just small things. Questions I had that needed to be put to rest before I can close the case, like why Father McCormack made a point of canceling the mass for immigrants’ right before his suicide. I gotta be sure, Father. It’s a suspicious death, you know? And it’s a priest.”

  “Hence the church being closed,” Cross said.

  “Right,” Taylor said. They drove along the path, to the top of the hill next to the sprawling green, which stood out like a neon light next to the dirty brown gravel cart path.

  “So you’re still investigating the case?”

  The sheriff reached around to grab his putter from his bag. “Always will be, I figure. I’m not interested in poking around the church for too long. Most everyone is.”

  “Because it’s haunted?” Cross asked, thinking back to the missing bottles of wine and cigarettes in Father Aaron’s old office.

  “It’s the feel,” the sheriff said, stepping onto the green. He bent down in front of his ball to line up the shot. “The place just has a nasty way of getting under your skin.”

  Cross sat quietly while the sheriff’s two partners chipped onto the green. Taylor didn’t wait for them to get up to the green before taking his first shot. It ro
lled quickly, then slowed and stopped a few feet short. He marked it, letting the others putt out before placing a fresh ball back on the green and tapping it in. “That’s par,” he said with a smile.

  “Where did Father McCormack live while he was here?” Cross asked once the sheriff returned to the golf cart.

  “In the church,” the sheriff said. He took a long puff of the cigar. “Dumb bastard. I offered to set him up in a nice apartment right over the café. Could have cleared out the illegals living there no problem.”

  “Why do you think he canceled the early mass?”

  Taylor sighed and pulled back onto the path, dipping down over the next hill covered with large flowering maple trees before reaching the southernmost edge of the country club. He stopped in front of the tee box. To the left of it was a tall black wrought-iron fence and beyond that a small man-made gulley and beyond that: Mexico. There was no border fence, only a handful of signs peppering the landscape, the lettering facing away so only people coming in through Mexico could read the messages.

  “Some of the boys want a fence put in here,” the sheriff muttered. “God, but that’d be a sight. The landscape’s pretty, I think. It’s got a rustic, old-timey feel to it.”

  Cross said nothing.

  Sheriff Taylor pointed to two figures sliding feet-first down the small gulley a hundred yards away. “You see them?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Cross watched them struggle in the dry dirt, their sun-scorched bare legs caked in dark brown dust that clung to sweat. They were young men, considering how nimbly they climbed.

  “They’ll probably stop in Purgatory,” Taylor said. “Maybe for a few days, maybe a few months. They’ll take a job on one of the ranches, and then they’ll most likely move on. Before Father Aaron showed up, we never had so many in the area. They either went northwest or northeast. They didn’t stop in this bumfuck-nowhere county. The illegals piss some of the townsfolk off, I get that. But for a lot of ranchers, those illegals are what keeps this town alive now.”

  Cross watched them duck into the safety of the gulley’s northern side as one of the golfers on the next hole purposely lined a stray ball in their direction. It whizzed into the gully, bouncing off a loose pile of jagged rocks and back onto U.S. soil.

  “They do the jobs that no one else wants to do,” Taylor said. “Without them, Purgatory would be a ghost town at this point. Our county has a hog operation now, for Christ’s sake! You know how hard it is to get a factory like that so close to such a small town? It’s a fucking privilege, Father. And without the help of the illegals, there’s no way they could possibly keep the ranches up and running anymore. Ma and Pa Johnson’s kids don’t want to shovel shit for a living, not for the pay the ranchers offer. But Madre and Padre Rodriguez have no problems with it.”

  “Maybe the ranches should offer more pay,” Cross said. Something about this place made him feel uncomfortable. Sitting in the shade of the golf cart surrounded by fresh grass while the exhausted immigrants only one hundred yards away—near the Par Three—struggled to climb the gulley walls before continuing their quest north, expecting something better.

  “Maybe the ranches can’t,” Taylor said. He reached into his pocket for another cigar, fumbling with it between his thick fingers. “Maybe they can, I don’t know. I don’t ask. And what if Father McCormack hung himself? What would the Church do then? God only knows.”

  “I’m sure they would continue the canonization process…”

  “Murder would be even worse. If I start seriously digging into the investigation and it turns out a spic murdered him, then the vigilantes would come in and round everyone up, and I wouldn’t be able to stop em. And then we’d go back to the good old days when I was using my goddamn office floor for a putting green.”

  “But what if he was murdered, only it wasn’t an immigrant?” Cross asked, not expecting an answer. He was thinking aloud now, trying to fit all of the pieces of the puzzle together. Trying to find a plausible connection to Gabriel Morrissey.

  Sheriff Taylor exhaled a thick cloud of smoke and made a U-turn on the path. “Do what you gotta do so they can canonize Father Aaron, all right? Tell your bosses that Father Aaron should be turned into a saint, and you can spend the rest of your life comfortably in Purgatory.”

  The words made Cross feel cold. He kept his arms close to his chest on the ride back to the clubhouse, trying not to look at the men and occasional woman reveling in their private Garden of Eden. They were probably from all the surrounding counties, each one with their own version of Sheriff Taylor. Each one reaping the benefits of being so close to a site of miracles.

  The sheriff took him around to the front of the building where the taxi was still waiting. Cantrell turned the engine back on once he recognized Cross in the passenger’s seat.

  “So what do you think, Father?” Taylor asked. He was staring at Cantrell over his dark sunglasses.

  Cross took his time stepping out of the cart. He swallowed his remaining questions like bitter pills. “I believe my case against Father Aaron is going to be weak. I believe he’ll be canonized.”

  Taylor smiled, chewing on the end of his half-finished cigar. “You’re goddamn right! Aaron Abaddon, patron saint of immigrants. Boy, that’s got itself a good ring to it.”

  “Thank you for your time, sheriff,” Cross said. He walked around the cart and opened the back door of the taxi and got in.

  “No one else needed a ride,” Cantrell said, smiling through sun-cracked lips.

  “No,” Cross said. “I guess not.”

  “Where to?”

  Cross reached down to scratch an itch at the base of his boot, brushing his finger against his knife sheath. “Church.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Cross stood in front of the church, waiting for some divine intervention to stop him from continuing. No clouds gathered above for lightning to strike and warn him against continuing miraculously. Even though his skin had been burned an unhealthy reddish tan, he doubted it was enough to convince any wandering border patrols to kill him on sight for being an illegal. If there was a God, Cross severely doubted any deity would use the people in the hills as holy vessels.

  Thoughts of Father McCormack refused to leave.

  He took a deep breath and walked into the church, immediately falling back when the rank air hit him. He didn’t remember such a strong stench from last time. It smelled like rotting fast food, dipped in grease and left to congeal.

  He stood in the doorway, waiting for his senses to recover. It took a full five minutes before he could inhale through his nose without feeling his stomach turn. He walked back into the church, stopping again at the guest registration book in the foyer. He again scanned the names, this time with the help of the mid-day sunlight streaming in through the chapel windows. He licked his thumb, moving from page to page.

  There. There it was. Halfway down page 224, the handwriting Cross recognized, spelling out not Morrissey’s name but one familiar nonetheless.

  Al Hofmann.

  “Clever bastard,” Cross whispered aloud. He left the book and walked into the chapel, down the aisle, and into Father Aaron’s old office. It had been Father McCormack’s as well, which meant whatever still sat in the office could have belonged to either of the priests. Nothing had been gathered for evidence. Nothing had been moved. Nothing had seemed important.

  The books. Cross returned to the desk and this time held up each book to the light coming in through the broken window. Dust particles hovered lazily in the air, reflecting a beam of sunlight directly onto each leather-bound cover sitting at the edge of the desk. The first book was on advanced chemistry. The second was The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances and under that an old history book on theology in European history. Cross thumbed through the rough, aged pages that felt more like cloth than a standard weighted paper, hoping to find a large enough font to read without more extensive light. All of the words were in an old-fashioned typeface, too small for him to make out exce
pt for the larger text under various drawings and pictures. Pictures of beasts and demons, of various rites and passages from ancient religious sects that no longer existed.

  He set the book down and picked up the next one, hefting its weight in his hands, studying the fine golden script on the faded cover: The Book of Lies. He thumbed through the pages, surprised when two pieces of paper slipped out and fell onto the desk. Cross set the book down and carefully grabbed both pieces of paper by the tips of his fingers to ensure his sweaty fingers wouldn’t smear the ink.

  He unfolded the larger piece, noticing now—upon closer inspection—the faded blue lines on the paper and manually smoothed-out edges, as if someone had ripped it from a notebook and then individually ripped off the paper chads.

  To Henry Giamotti, Vatican City

  I am writing to you today regarding my placement in the town of Purgatory, Arizona, in the United States of America. I have recently taken over for a man by the name of Aaron Abaddon, who is currently being considered for sainthood. I spoke with the young woman who claimed to have been a beneficiary of the miracle in the town square and have remained unconvinced that any such event took place. She refused to delve into any details of the miracle in question, although I understand she spoke more with the investigator the Vatican sent earlier in the year.

  Although I am honored to be here during such an exciting moment in the town’s (and the Church’s) history, I have my doubts over whether the Vatican has fully explored the possibility that Father Aaron was little more than a hoax. I’ve found numerous chemistry books, and other materials concerning hallucinogenic substances tucked away in one of the storage rooms in the basement. There are other books too, concerning various heresies and false idols. All of the books had been carefully hidden. It’s possible—though, again, I don’t necessarily believe it so—that he could have planned to destroy the books before he disappeared. I have no evidence of this, only a suspicion. I hope you