“So you never had any idea about Arthur Bullard?”
“No, of course not,” she said, and the hate twisted her face. “How could I have kept working for his company? How could I, years later, have gone to a party at his house? Wendell obviously didn’t tell me where they took the girls either. If I’d known it was the lodge, I would never have agreed for the three of us to join Scotty up there for that weekend.”
“All right,” Horn said. “So you divorced Wendell.”
She nodded. “I put Clea in the car the next morning, and we drove to Reno. I rented a room and stayed there just long enough to divorce him, and then we came back.”
“What about him? Did you tell the police?”
“No,” she said. “To this day, I don’t know if I did the right thing. It wasn’t because I had any love left for him—that was gone, every ounce. It was just that he was so. . . destroyed. He cried that night. He swore he’d never touch another girl. He begged me to let him go someplace and try to start a new life.”
“So you did. I’m not sure it was the right decision either. There were other little girls, you know, past and future.”
“Wendell said when he told the others what had happened, they would break up and scatter. I wanted to believe him. I hoped it was true.”
“It wasn’t,” he said.
“I know that now. Every day I know it. I feel as guilty as he was.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “Important thing is to get Clea home and to make sure these men—what’s left of them—get put away. I’ve got an idea about how to get some information to the police about them. That should do it. Now, about Clea. . . . I need to know what went on before she left. Paul tells me you were fighting. What about?”
“I don’t know,” she said vaguely. “Little things. Everything. She just seemed very angry.”
“Any chance she could remember anything at all about those times at the lodge?”
“You’re thinking that was it? I don’t see how she could remember. She was so young. And besides, more than ten years had gone by. Why would it suddenly come up?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. When did the fighting start?”
“I think it was just a few days before she ran away.” She paused to reflect. “Do you want to know what scares me the most? The idea that somehow she blames me for what happened all those years ago. I know it sounds fantastic, because so much time had gone by, and we were happy in so many ways. But it’s the only explanation I can come up with. That she somehow remembered it and blamed me for it.”
“Did anything unusual happen around the time she left?”
“I don’t think so. She was out of school for the summer and at home most of the time. Sometimes friends would come over, or she’d go visit them. And one day all of us went to. . . .” She stopped, took a breath. “Oh, God. We went to the funeral. All of us.”
“What do you mean? She wasn’t at Scotty’s funeral.”
“No,” Iris said slowly. “Arthur Bullard’s.”
“Clea went to his funeral?”
“Yes. I thought it was a little strange. She asked to go. She’d never been to a funeral, but we thought it would be all right. You know, she’s at the age when children are able to think about death and ask questions about it. We didn’t want to be evasive about it, so we took her. She seemed strange on the way home, almost as if something had happened at the funeral. And then those awful fights began, and one morning I went in to awaken her, and her bed hadn’t been slept in.”
He felt confused. “The funeral. I don’t get it. I mean, if she knew that old man Bullard had been one of the men at the lodge, I could understand his death setting her off. But they all wore masks. . . hoods. And she was so little.”
“I know,” Iris said. “At the time, I just thought that it was a mistake to take her to the funeral, that maybe it was just too morbid for her. Now I wonder if it was something else.”
“I think we’ll find out now,” he said. “Clea’s going to tell us. We just have ask the question right, that’s all. She’ll be back home, and everything will be all right. And then I’ll only have one thing left—doing something about Scotty.”
He got up. “Thanks for being honest with me. Maybe it’s best if you don’t tell Paul I was here. I’ll just go out the back way.”
She followed him out the door and through the garden to the path that led to the front of the house. She looked tense, as if something remained unsettled. At the path, he turned, listening to the snip, snip of the gardener’s shears up in the pepper tree.
“A long time ago,” he said, “we were talking about other people’s houses, and you said you envied anyone who had their own Japanese gardener. Well. . . congratulations.”
She said nothing. He noticed again the mark her dirty hand had left on her forehead and reached toward her, intending to wipe it away. But she flinched, and he stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Sorry. You’ve got a little dirt on your face.”
She rubbed at if halfheartedly, but a trace of the mark remained, like a small shadow passing over her.
“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you,” she said, taking a breath and letting it out. “He’s alive.”
“Who?”
“Wendell. I told you he died in San Francisco. It was a lie.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Horn was on the road at first light, when the westernmost ridge of the San Gabriel Mountains lay to the north like giant sleeping cattle, still almost indistinguishable from the night sky. The Ford did not take well to extreme heat, so he wanted to cover some miles before the sun was far up. An old Army canteen full of water lay on the seat next to him, along with a paper bag holding a sandwich he’d hastily put together in Maggie’s kitchen. He had reluctantly awakened Maggie before leaving, just to tell her he’d be gone most of the day.
He drove east about ten miles until he hooked up with the two-lane road that wound up through the San Fernando Pass and beyond. After an hour, the road had climbed a thousand feet or so, and not long after he switched off his headlights he felt the first rays of sun warming the back of his neck through the rear window. Far below to his right, he could make out the dark slash of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. People said it was the aqueduct’s water that made the desert bloom hereabouts, that turned the dry San Fernando Valley into a place of orchards and homes.
That was true. But, like most L.A. stories, it had its dark side. While lobbying for a plan to divert water from the slopes of the Eastern Sierra and carry it hundreds of miles down to L.A., certain big operators in business and government had secretly bought up huge swaths of valley land, planning to cash in when the desert turned from brown to green. The young Arthur Bullard, Scotty told him once, was at the time building up his own real estate business. He watched those men and learned from them—and, before long, was one of them.
Another hour, another thousand feet, and a dark, imposing range of mountains rose up ahead and to his right. He passed cars and trucks heading down into L.A., some of them loaded with produce from up the coast. He stopped at a small diner, one of the few signs of civilization on the road, to have a cup of coffee and ask directions. The waitress had never heard of his destination, but the owner, after some reflection, was able to help. “Funny,” he said. “That place has been up there long as I can remember, and you’re the first person ever asked me how to get there.”
He drove on, thinking about what Iris had told him. Wendell Brand had begged her to help him disappear, and believing in his sincerity, his shame and repentance, she had agreed to make up a story for him. She was the only one who knew where he had gone, she said. He had chosen a place where he thought no one would look for him, and Horn had to agree it was an inspired choice. His place of refuge struck Horn as a gigantic, mirthless joke.
He found the turnoff about two miles past the diner—no sign, just a dirt road off to the right that began to climb almost immediately and soon was deep in sage and chaparral. The road was barely more than a single lane, full of turns, and badly graded. He drove slowly. The road rose steeply now, the Ford beginning to labor with the altitude. He pulled over to rest the engine for a while and ate his sandwich. It was Spam, something he’d had more than enough of during the war, but he was hungry.
After another half-hour of driving, Horn estimated he was close to a mile up. The chaparral gave way to pines. Still no road markers, no signs of people or structures. Just when Horn began to wonder if he had taken the wrong path, the road leveled off, and he saw a stone gate up ahead.
He drove through and saw spread out before him a collection of wood and stucco buildings clustered around a spacious grassy area. In the middle was a round stone well, with bucket and pulley. The buildings’ architecture was simple but strong and suggested pictures he’d seen of some of the old California missions. Beside the largest building rose a modest bell tower. Here and there he saw men wearing hooded robes of white cotton, each one working at some kind of task.
He got out and, after asking directions of one of the robed men, found his way to a work site behind a nearby building where several men were putting up the timbered frame of what looked like a shed or storeroom. The man supervising the work was big, with hood thrown back on his shoulders to reveal a large, curly head and vivid red beard.
“Are you the abbot?” Horn asked him.
The man nodded. “Brother Timothy.”
“I’d like to see Wendell Brand. Brother Wendell.”
The abbot regarded him without expression, his large, work-hardened hands clasped in front, their backs entwined with wiry, pale-red hair. “We allow visitors only for special events, or on emergencies,” he said quietly. “We’re a working order. We try to focus on what we have to do and leave the world outside.”
“This is a kind of emergency,” Horn said earnestly. “I’m his brother. . . uh, his brother-in-law Wesley, and I have an important message from his ex-wife.”
“You’ve never visited before.”
“I know. You could say we’re not close.”
After staring at him for another moment, the abbot nodded. He spoke briefly to one of the other monks, who then walked off. “He’ll go find Brother Wendell,” the abbot said. “I’ll show you where you can wait for him.” He led Horn to the main building, which apparently held the chapel and bell tower. They entered through a side door and were in a kind of meeting room with a simple round wooden table, six chairs, and a crucifix on the wall.
“He’ll join you here,” the abbot said, indicating for Horn to seat himself. “But only if he wants to see you.”
Brother Timothy seemed in no hurry to leave. He stood regarding Horn with mild curiosity. “You look like a working man,” he said.
“I’ve done my share.”
“When Brother Wendell came to us several years ago, he had what you might call a white-collar background; he wasn’t used to hard work. But he’s different now. Here, we all learn the satisfaction of labor in the right cause.”
Horn nodded, only partly listening. He glanced out the window. “When I imagine a monastery, it’s in a place like this,” he said. “Somewhere on a mountaintop or ‘way off in the desert.”
“Yes,” Brother Timothy said. “We’re not near anything here. Just God and the sky. And maybe something else.”
“What’s that?”
“If you go in that direction,” the abbot said, pointing off to the northeast, “eventually you drop off the mountain and enter the great desert. Just where mountain and desert meet is the San Andreas Fault. You know what that is?”
“Sure,” Horn said. “From the big quake.”
The abbot nodded. “Years ago, we had a monk here named Brother Mark. He was old and a little. . . you know, sometimes he would say things that we couldn’t quite understand. But he believed that the fault in the earth led straight down to Hell.” The abbot smiled. “Most of us would just listen politely. And Brother Mark would go on to say that God put us here on the mountain for a reason, to watch over the fault and make sure that nothing evil ever came up and walked the earth. And you know something? Even though his stories sounded fanciful, to this day some of the brothers debate whether they might be true.”
“How does Wendell vote?”
“I think Brother Wendell is among those who have a healthy respect for the power of Satan.” The abbot looked out the window again. “Here he comes. I’ll leave you now.” He stuck out his hand. “It was good to meet you, Wesley.”
Horn sat for a moment, hands clasped on the table, wondering at his nervousness. His hatred for Clea’s father threatened to take him over, turn him into the raging thing that could easily have beaten Bernie Rome Junior to death. What would he say to him? He clenched his fists briefly, relaxed them, forced himself to breathe deeply.
The door opened, and Wendell Brand entered. He was not a large man, and he looked almost lost in the billowy robe. Unlike the abbot, he wore his hood fitted loosely over his head. Once, he might have been called almost delicate, but Horn could see that the life here had hardened him, browned his face and chipped his nails. He looked at Horn curiously, his face relaxed. Except for the eyes, which always seemed in motion, and which were framed by extra lines suggesting wariness, or hurt, or pain.
“You wanted to see me?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t have a brother-in-law.”
“But you do have an ex-wife, don’t you?” Horn gestured toward one of the chairs, and after a brief hesitation, the other man sat. “Do you know who I am?”
Brand shook his head.
“I’m John Ray Horn.”
“Oh. Of course.” Brand’s tone was simply polite. “You’re the movie actor.”
“Not any more.”
“Iris told me about you. She writes every now and then, and sometimes she sends money—not for me, but for the order. I’ve asked her to pray for us, and I believe she does so. Iris is a very good woman.”
Horn looked around the small room and then out the window, where the mountain sun burned strongly but where a cooling breeze riffled the branches of an evergreen on the far side of the clearing. He felt contempt for his own politeness, his failure to deal simply and directly with the little man across the table. He wanted to feel Wendell Brand’s neck between his fingers.
He took a deep breath and heard the words begin to tumble out as if spoken by a stranger. “I’m here about Clea,” he said. “I’m here about the hunting lodge, the men you took her there to be with, the pictures you took of her, the things. . . . the things you did. . . .” He stopped, the rest of his words stuck in his throat.
Wendell Brand had shrunk back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, the thin hands receding into the large sleeves until they disappeared. But his expression did not change. His mouth worked for a few seconds, and then he said, “I knew someone would come. Someday.”
“It’s me. I’ve come.”
“Iris told you.”
Horn nodded.
“She said she wouldn’t tell anyone. I forgive her.” Brand looked down at the scarred surface of the table. “I’ve never forgiven myself. But God has. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to the place where I can ask God’s forgiveness and know it’s there.”
“That’s nice,” Horn said. “But right now it’s me you should be worried about, not God.”
Brand shook his head. “I’m not accountable to you,” he said quietly.
“Do the rest of the brothers know?”
“No. Just the priest who comes to hear our confessions. This is between me—”
“And God. I know.” Horn all
owed himself a small smile. “Religion really comes in handy sometimes, doesn’t it? I come from a religious family, had a man of God for a father, and my Daddy could deliver a sermon that had the ladies crying and rolling their eyes, then come home and beat me to a pulp for sassing him. Then ask God to forgive me.” He felt himself slipping away from the matter at hand. “How do you feel about ruining your daughter’s life?”
“God will look after her,” Brand said. “Her mother will look after her. So will her new father. With God’s help, he’ll be a much better father than I was—”
“Stop talking about God,” Horn cut in. “I’m getting tired of it. I want some information from you. I want to know about the men at the lodge, how they operated, what happened there. I especially want to know the one name I don’t have.”
Brand shook his head. “The others have to answer for themselves,” he said. “I won’t condemn them.”
Horn got up slowly, Brand’s eyes following him warily. In another minute, he thought, I’ll be shaking like a leaf. Or I’ll kill him. “You sick little piss-ant,” he said, looking down at him. “You’ll tell me. You’ll tell me every single thing I want to know.”
“No,” Brand said, staring back at Horn, looking almost brave in his oversize robe. “Each man has custody of his own soul.”
“Oh, yes,” Horn went on. “Because if you don’t, I’ll wreck the nice little life you’ve built up here, all snug and secure, going around in your hood so you can hide your face whenever you’re feeling guilty about something. You’re still covering your face, Wendell, just like in the pictures of you and your friends—have you noticed?
“I’ll start by going out there and ringing that bell, ringing it until every godforsaken monk, or brother, or whatever you call each other gathers around. And then I’ll tell them just what you did to your own daughter and all those other little girls. And what I don’t know, I’ll make up. And then I’ll find me a cop who just loves to nail the men who hurt children, and I’ll show him the pictures—that’s right, I’ve got them—and then I’ll tell him where to find you. And he’ll come up here and drag you down this mountain, back into the world you tried to run away from. And we’ll make Iris testify, you can count on that. And somewhere along the line, between the arrest and the trial, I’m sure the cops will tell you in great detail just what cons like to do to child molesters.”
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