Bell, book, and murder

by Edghill, Rosemary

  "I'm Sergeant Blake. You say you saw men with guns?" he asked me.

  They grew them big in Gotham County—the sergeant was Fayrene's male counterpart, big and husky with the start of a spare tire around the middle, black hair instead of blond, and the addition of a large mustache. The gun was the same though: a Heckler & Koch .45 automatic with a ten-round clip. Businesslike.

  "1 saw a rifle," I said, not really sure now about what I'd seen. "And about five men. And I heard a gunshot."

  "Roy's radioed for an ambulance," Sergeant Blake said, which did not reassure me. "I'll be back to talk to you in a few minutes, so I'd appreciate it if you stuck around here for a while, ma'am."

  Sergeant Blake left. I heard the cruiser drive off, and the blips and yelps of the siren that meant he was clearing the way ahead.

  "Isn't that the stupidest piece of trash?" Mrs. Cooper said.

  It took me a moment to refocus my mind from Sergeant Blake and his gun to the Reverend Harm's little essay.

  "Well," I said inadequately.

  "Wanted me to hand them out! Free! And I told him, 'Jackson Harm, as sure as I'm standing here those people are just going to laugh in your face! And why should I do your dirty work for you?' — well! Then he started rabbeting on about equal time, and I told him that this was a campground, not a presidential election, and then he said—bold as brass, if you please — "

  It occurred to me that Mrs. Cooper was one of those speakers whose conversation doesn't require participants, merely an audience, and then I thought that she probably didn't get too much of either one. And so I would have listened even if she weren't telling me things I really wanted to hear more about. Certainly she'd had as many jarring shocks as I'd had that day, but where were the people for her to share them with?

  Now that I'd had a chance to actually talk to Mrs. Cooper I could place her type: New England liberal, of the breed who will defend her fellow citizens' eccentricities to the death and demand the same tolerance for her own. A kind not much seen in these parts in recent years, more's the pity.

  "First he tells me that God doesn't like the way I'm running Paradise Lake—well, I told him that God could tell me that in person, rather than sending a nasty little errand boy like him!"

  I laughed at the joke, as I was meant to. It's amazing how many people who profess to believe in an omnipotent, om-

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  nibenevolent, omnidirectional, detail-oriented god still manage to believe that this god doesn't have either the time or the inclination to run his own errands.

  "And if he thought that I didn't have God's home address, after having him in my Sunday Bible classes all those years — "

  Harm, I supposed she meant, and not Harm's celestial supervisor. "And?" I prompted, finishing my coffee.

  She got up to get the standing pot. Her hands were shaking, and I put it down to age, but when she turned around 1 could see it wasn't age—it was fury.

  "He had the nerve —the absolute nerve, that jumped-up little brass-bound bastard — "

  I blinked in surprise. Profanity is supposed to be the exclusive preserve of the young and trendy.

  " — to tell me that if I let you people rent the place again this year, I could kiss good-bye to the Summer Youth Bible Study Camp!"

  'The Bible Study Camp?" I echoed, trying not to look as baffled as I felt.

  "They have Paradise Lake for July. All of July," Mrs. Cooper said.

  Now it started to make sense, and as usual, the bottom line wasn't about theology, but money. A campground is like any other small business, and the margin between failure and survival is slight. One month of her peak season fully booked and occupied might very well make the difference between Paradise Lake's success and failure for Mrs. Cooper.

  "Could he do that?" 1 asked.

  She snorted and refilled our cups. "Just between you and me and the gatepost, Jackson Harm wasn't quite the big stink he thought he was. But still..." Her voice trailed off. "Well, he won't be doing anything now, that's for sure!" she said in satisfied tones.

  "And he was up here Friday?" I asked, just to be sure.

  "Friday morning, bold as brass, preaching at me as if I were a public meeting for two and a half hours, until I had to call Tom down to the Sheriffs to disinvite him. And at that he left all of his damned pamphlets behind!" She jerked her chin and I saw three suspicious-looking boxes piled in the comer of the kitchen.

  "And Saturday morning he was dead," 1 said.

  "Up in my woods, which is pure meanness on his part. Have another cookie," Helen Cooper said.

  * * * So I did, while Mrs. Cooper regaled me with more local color from Jesus Jackson's glorious career. In addition to Mrs. Cooper, the Reverend Harm had harassed the local paper, the local radio station, and even the welfare office in Tamerlane, which is twenty miles up Route 6 and the closest thing to a city there is in Gotham County.

  It occurred to me I'd just been handed a motive for murder that the Sheriffs Office would have no trouble understanding. Mrs. Cooper's.

  She had motive—Harm was trying to drive away the customers on whom her livelihood depended: the Bible Camp and HallowFest. If she wanted to do a frame-up, she had enough experience from previous HallowFests to do a fair job of imitating our handiwork. And she'd had opportunity—by her own admission Harm'd been here Friday afternoon.

  But so had Maidjene. And Lark. And probably even Larry Wagner in his Warwagon, all set to fight World War III and convinced that the world was against him.

  No, I couldn't believe in Mrs. Cooper for the killer. If she were to kill someone —something I didn't doubt for a moment she was capable of—she wouldn't use a knife. A shotgun, maybe—I'd be surprise^ if she didn't have one. But Harm hadn't been shot. He'd been stabbed. And I didn't think Mrs. Cooper had the physical strength necessary to stab Harm, let alone the inclination to get him half-naked first.

  The doorbell rang again. I glanced out the parlor window, but didn't see any flashing lights. Mrs. Cooper went to open the door.

  "I just couldn't tear myself away," I heard Fayrene Pascoe drawl.

  She came into the kitchen, still in uniform, this time with the addition of a dark green nylon bomber jacket.

  "Hi, Fayrene," I said.

  "You in trouble again?" she asked me amiably. The walkie-talkie on her hip chattered on intermittently, with flashes of static and 10-codes I wished I could interpret. I caught a burst of someone telling someone else to "secure the area," and hoped it meant the trouble was over.

  "Some boys are up here bothering my campers!" Helen Cooper said fiercely.

  "Jeff and Johnny are probably taking care of it, Mrs. Cooper;

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  don't you worry. I heard over the radio one of your friends got shot, though — nothing serious," she added to me. "So I thought I'd come over and see the fun. What were you doing up there this time of night?"

  'Trying to pursue that freedom of religious expression to which the Constitution theoretically entitles me," I said. I sounded as if I were spitting nails. "Sorry," I said after a moment. "It was our Saturday bonfire —"

  "I've seen 'em. We had one of our units on a short drive-by tonight, but Tony didn't think we needed anybody out here," Fayrene said. After a moment I placed the name: Mad Anthony Wayne, our detective-on-the-spot.

  "Well, we were all just standing there, and these guys started coming down from out of the pine forest, and one of them had a gun—rifle or shotgun, I don't know—and I ran like a rabbit," I said.

  "More people should do that," Fayrene said.

  When Fayrene walked me back up to the site it was glaringly lit by the searchlights of two cruisers and looked pretty well trampled. More cars not belonging to the festival were parked nearby, and I counted six uniformed deputies, not to mention the EMTs and their big orange-and-white truck. Just now arriving. The deputies were herding the HallowFesters into little clumps and chasing after the ones who just wanted to leave.
Babies were crying, and I looked automatically for Ragnar and Iduna. I didn't see them, but I did see Xharina, standing next to Klash and looking worried. There was an eerie continuity between the two sets of leather, straps, buckles, and elaborate makeup. I looked away before we could make eye contact, following Fayrene.

  There were flashlight beams as the deputies walked the wood, blazing emergency lights, and blaring radios. Fayrene sliced through the chaos as if it were familiar territory, swapping jokes with the other deputies. In the middle of it all, the bonfire Maid-jene's coven had so painstakingly constructed and lit blazed on, even with no one there to care.

  As is usual —though not, as I am starting to suspect in my case, typical — I was on only the very fringes of the whole thing and had to piece it together out of what I found out later. Which was this:

  It wasn't religious bigots so much as it was a case of Saturday night and nowhere to go —and Paradise Lake and its exotic visitors very much in the forefront of the public mind, thanks to all

  the coverage in the paper and on the local news about Harm's death.

  When I passed one of the cars I was surprised to see there was someone in the back—an older man, with the undefinable air of being Not One of Us. He was wearing handcuffs and looked bored and irritated, which was better than I would have been doing in the same situation.

  "So, John-boy, you managed to make any arrests yet?" Fayrene was addressing Sergeant Blake, whom I'd met earlier. "Oh, and I already took the statement of the original complainants."

  Sergeant Blake looked at her, and then past her to me, then back again.

  "Local boy," he said to her. "Nothing much. We can hold Arnold here on menacing—he had the shotgun. The worst we can charge his friends with is harassment, maybe a little conspiracy. They took Reece Wheeler off to Taconic Hospital—somebody plinked him with a .25 or a .32, and none of the boys here was carrying anything like that. So they say."

  He looked back at me, while I figured the rest out for myself. Someone had been wounded tonight, but not someone from Hal-lowFest. The victim had been one of the local party animals, one Reece Wheeler. And if Wheeler had been shot, and his fellow Jukes and Kallikaks disavowed it, the only other possible candidate for shooter was one of us —and no one was admitting to possessing the gun that had shot him.

  "I didn't shoot him." I barely kept myself from saying I was glad he was shot and hoped it hurt. I was not prepared at all for the sheer triumphal fury that shook me at the thought that one of our attackers had been shot. At that moment, I wanted them all dead, as slowly and p£iinfully as the hand of Man could contrive. I'd been terrified and I wanted revenge; it was a stupid, childish, clockwork reaction, and I tried very hard to regret it. "I don't know who shot him. 1 wasn't here." I had a witness to the last statement, at least.

  "Any of your friends cany guns?" Sergeant Blake asked. "Anyone here we should talk to?"

  "Not that I know of." And at that moment, I wouldn't tell him if I did. Fortunately the need to lie, if not the impulse, was absent.

  Childish, like I said.

  "Find it yet?" Fa3n-ene asked.

  Sergeant Blake made a spread-handed shrug that took in the entire scene, including the clumps of Pagans standing and watch-

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  ing. The entire area around the fire was littered with things people had dropped in the confusion: hats, wands, Pepsi cans, baby bottles —even an athame or two.

  "In this, Fay? We're going to sweep the woods in the morning, but sure as you're bom that pop-gun's at the bottom of the lake by now. Nobody saw a thing, and Reece says he doesn't want to press charges, so you know how much rope the DA's going to give us."

  "Well, that's mighty white of Brother Reece," Fayrene drawled, her flat upstate accent becoming more pronounced.

  "Are you the officer in charge of this investigation?" It was Maidjene, sounding small and scared, but there. 1 raised my hand in greeting. Her eyes focused on me for an instant, then flicked away. Her face was whiter than it'd been this morning by Harm's body, an occasion that seemed a thousand years ago now.

  Sergeant Blake turned to her. "I'm Sergeant Blake," he said.

  "My name is Phyllis Wagner. I'm the organizer for this festival." Maidjene hesitated. "Can you stop them from coming back?"

  "1 don't think they'll try anything else, Ms. Wagner," Sergeant Blake said soothingly.

  "You didn't think they'd try this, or you'd have left someone here to protect us," Maidjene said, shaky but dogged.

  Blake looked at Fajnrene, and some cr3rptic cop-thing seemed to pass between them.

  "We'll have someone walk the area a few times tonight," Sergeant Blake told her. He didn't seem to know about the material Maidjene was supposed to turn over to his department, or maybe he was just being subtle. "Now, do you want to lodge a complaint?"

  "I —" Maidjene hesitated, although I could tell she was mad and scared in just about equal portions. If she lodged a complaint there might be a trial where she'd have to testify, and that would be an awfully long commute for somebody who lived in Jersey and currently had no visible means of support.

  "I'll complain," I said harshly. "I saw them coming down the hill. I saw the gun. I'll do it."

  Maidjene's look of gratitude did little to salve my aching conscience.

  "Are you sure about that, miss?" Sergeant Blake said, in that tone that suddenly makes you sure of nothing at all. I'd dealt with the law before, though, so I stood my ground.

  'The fire was bright. He was close. The barrels reflected—on the rifle; even if they were blued, you could see them; they were metal.

  I knew he had a gun, and I knew he wasn't a member of Hal-lowFest. We had trouble this afternoon. You probably saw it on the news. I thought this might be connected."

  Blake asked for my name and address, and I gave them. I volunteered that I was selling here at HallowFest, and Maidjene told them that I was helping the committee running the festival, which was not really that far from the truth, all things considered.

  "Did either of you see a shot fired? Anyone with a gun?" Sergeant Blake said, but not as if he expected to get the truth.

  I shook my head. I'd been running down the hill when I heard shots.

  Maidjene shrugged.

  "Do you know anyone here who might have a gun?" Sergeant Blake went on. They must give out these lists of numbered questions in Famous Law Enforcement Officers Training School.

  Maidjene and I got the same idea at the same moment, and stared at each other with identically transparent looks of horror.

  "Larry," Maidjene said in a strangled voice. "Larry's got guns. Lots of them. He always takes them with him."

  Not that I suspected Larry. The question was, had someone borrowed one?

  The four of us went down to Larry's trailer. Along the way Maidjene filled them in: soon-to-be-ex-husband, survivalist, possessor of various firearms, and free-range pain in the ass. Neither of us had seen him up at the Circle, but that wasn't much in the line of an adibi.

  I didn't think any more of it than that it was another episode in that embarrassing real-world sitcom: 'The New Adventures of Larry," but as we got closer, it occurred to me that Fayrene and Sergeant Blake didn't share my insouciance about the upcoming interview. They stopped Maidjene and me at the edge of the parking lot and told us to stay here.

  "Which one is it?" Sergeant Blake asked.

  Maidjene pointed. There was that silent conference between the deputies again, then they both started forward. Their feet made almost no noise on the gravel. 1 could see that Sergeant Blake had his gun out.

  "Mr. Wagner? This is Sergeant Blake of the Gotham County Sheriffs Department. Could you come out here? We'd like to talk to you," Sergeant John Blake said.

  He and Fayrene were standing on each side of the door, their

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  backs pressed against the side of the Winnebago, and it suddenly occurred to me that they were — not expecti
ng, precisely, but planning against the possibility that Larry would choose to come out armed and shooting.

  "Who's there?" I could hear Larry's voice faintly even from where 1 stood.

  'This is Sergeant Blake from the Sheriffs Department, Mr. Wagner. Could you step outside for a moment, please?"

  "Philly?" The door swung open, aind there Larry stood in all his sweatshirted and fatigue-painted glory. He came down the steps looking for Maidjene, and only then saw the deputies.

  "What's going on?" Larry bleated.

  "Could you keep your hands away from your sides, Mr. Wagner?" Fayrene asked, with steel courtesy.

  There was enough light coming from the open doorway for me to see his face go slack when he realized that, beyond all expectations and nightmares, this was real

  Beside me, 1 heard Maidjene sob as between them Blake and Fayrene had Larry turned and spread and patted down before he could figure out quite what to say.

  He was lucky he wasn't armed. But he wasn't, and when they found that out the tension eased. Nobody seemed to be going to shoot anyone today, so I headed over. Maidjene followed.

  I didn't think Larry was the shooter—not really—but like Maidjene said, I knew he edways traveled with a number of handguns. Had he given one — intentionally or un- —to whoever'd popped Reece Wheeler?

  "Where've you been for the last half hour, Mr. Wagner?"

  "Was anybody with you?"

  "Did anybody see you come back here?"

  "Who'd you talk to today?"

  "Can 1 take a look inside your RV, Mr. Wagner?"

  Larry's head ping-ponged back and forth as the questions came at him. He fumbled through some answers, but as I watched, I realized that Blake and Fayrene didn't care as much about the answers as they did about the reaction to the questions.

  "What's this about?" Larry asked, when they finally let him. "Philly? You all right?"

  "A man's been shot, Mr. Wagner," Sergeant Blake said, "and we were hoping you could help us figure out who did it."

  Larry stared helplessly at Maidjene. I watched her, seeing her