Quests of Simon Ark

by Edward D. Hoch

  “I believe it, Mr. Ark, because these others tell me it is true. But imagine what the people and the public will think! They will never believe it—they will never believe that good and evil can live side by side in the same man. They already circulate fantastic rumors about this place, and now they will claim Summer was kidnapped and murdered in some sort of religious ritual.”

  I could see that Simon agreed with him. “It would be a fairly logical assumption, Father. But we have no choice except to call the local police. The murderer might not be so difficult to discover, after all. It must be one of those men downstairs.”

  “But which of them, Mr. Ark? Which of them?”

  Simon rose slowly from the chair and began to pace the floor, frowning. “If we sit in on the police questioning, we might learn something. How many are there downstairs?”

  “Eighteen men, plus the one who let us in.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Their leader, in a way. His name is Juan Cruz. He’s Mexican, studied for the priesthood for a time, but was dropped because of practices like these. He drifted into the States about ten years ago and joined the Penitentes. I fear Cruz is the one who keeps this little group banded together. Without him they’d surely listen to me and funnel their passionate piety into more normal outlets.”

  “You think this Cruz may have killed Summer?”

  “Normally I’d answer yes to that. He was the only one not tied to a cross when we arrived, and certainly such a deed wouldn’t be beyond him if he thought it would bring some good. I have had many long talks with Juan Cruz and have yet to convince him that the end does not justify the means.” The priest paused and then continued after a moment. “And yet … I do not think he would endanger his group of Penitentes here by committing a murder during one of their rites of penance. He would kill Summer under certain conditions, but he would pick another time and another place.”

  As if on cue the basement door opened and Juan Cruz appeared, fully dressed now and carrying the black hood he’d removed earlier. He was a bulky man, distinctly Spanish in appearance, with glistening black hair and tiny eyes to match. I disliked him immediately, but not for any action or word. Rather it was the dislike one often feels for a person of obvious superiority.

  “They are all untied and dressed now,” he said quietly.

  “Then we must call the police,” Father Hadden said. “There is no other way, Juan.”

  “I suppose not,” the bulky man answered.

  Simon Ark stepped once more into the purple spot of light that filtered down from above. “Do you know of any of these men who might have had a special reason for killing Glen Summer?”

  “Certainly not,” Cruz answered. “He was a sinful man, but he was seeking the way back to God. I doubt if anyone else was even aware of his identity. That’s the purpose of the hoods, you know.”

  “Who are the other eighteen?” Simon asked.

  “For the most part they are simply poor Mexican laborers who have lived in sin for many years. A few are Americans, like Summer.”

  “With the hoods to conceal identity it would be possible for an outsider to gain admittance, would it not?”

  “Possible but most difficult,” Cruz replied. “I am careful.”

  “The body has not been disturbed?”

  “No.”

  “Then I suggest we call the police immediately,” Simon said. “Too much time has already elapsed since the killing. Father Hadden and I will remain here while they question you and the others.”

  Cruz nodded reluctantly and went off to the telephone.

  I noticed Simon motioning to me and I walked over to where he stood. “My friend, you can serve no purpose here, but you might serve a very useful one elsewhere.

  Perhaps you could take Father Hadden’s station wagon and drive to this place called the Oasis. You could be there when the word came in about Glen Summer, and you could see what reaction there was. It might be most interesting.”

  It was agreeable with me, if only to get me away from the atmosphere of that place. Simon told Father Hadden of our plan and the priest nodded in agreement. “Take my car and see what you can learn,” he said. “You might especially observe the reaction of Summer’s wife, since I doubt very much if she knew he came to this place.”

  I left them and headed the dusty station wagon back down the road to Santa Marta. About halfway into town I passed the sheriff’s car, filled with grim-faced men, and a moment later the town’s ambulance-hearse followed.

  It took me a little time to locate the Oasis, a few miles outside of town. It sat back from the road a ways, a long low building with a parking lot and a few trees around it. Now, in the afternoon sunlight, there were only two cars parked there, and the business seemed slow for a den of sin. I parked the station wagon and went inside.

  The place was not unlike a thousand other bars back east. It was a neighborhood sort of joint, even out here in the middle of nowhere. Booths along one wall, the damp and glistening bar along the other. And curtains over an entrance to a back room. A bald bartender with a gray mustache was polishing glasses casually behind the bar, and the only customer appeared to be a good-looking blonde girl propped up on one of the bar stools. She was wearing a loose white blouse and blue shorts that were much too short. I guessed her age at twenty-five or younger, and the way she eyed me when I came in told me she wasn’t presently attached.

  “What’ll you have?” the bartender asked without putting down the glass he was polishing.

  “Beer,” I mumbled. “Too hot for anything else.” I picked out the stool just two away from the girl and lifted myself onto it. After a moment I asked, “Glen Summer around?”

  The bartender placed a bottle of beer and a glass in front of me. He took his time about answering, as if trying to determine the reason for my question. Finally, he said, “Nope. Gone away today. Back tonight.”

  “How about Mrs. Summer?”

  “She’s in the back. Want I should get her?”

  “No. Maybe I’ll wait for Glen.”

  The girl in the blue shorts slid off her stool, her shapely thighs bulging a bit under the tight fabric. She picked up her glass, moved it over a bit, and sat down next to me. “Mind?” she asked in reply to my look.

  “Why should I?”

  “I need somebody to talk to. This town is dead dead dead.”

  “So I’ve been noticing.”

  “Nothing to do with your afternoons but drink them away. The Oasis is the only civilized place for fifty miles.”

  She’d had a few drinks but she was far from drunk. Just unhappy, I decided. “You live in Santa Marta?”

  “Nobody lives in Santa Marta. They only exist. A month ago I was working up in Denver. I lost my job and decided to travel south, and this is as far as I got.”

  “What keeps you here if you don’t like it?”

  She waved an arm in a vague gesture. “Oh, things. You know.”

  I didn’t know, and I could see I wasn’t going to find out. “You know Glen Summer?”

  “Sure do! He’s a swell fellow.”

  “And his wife?”

  “She’s a bitch, but that’s the way it usually turns out.”

  I took a swallow of beer. “I came down through the mountains, past a big old house with a cross nearby on a hill. What is it, a convent or something?”

  She peered at me from under half-closed lids. “A bunch of crazy religious nuts. They go up there and beat each other with whips and stuff. Supposed to be good for their souls.” She gave a little chuckle. “If they did it in New York they’d be locked up in ten minutes.”

  “You from New York?”

  “I’m from everywhere. You’re just full of questions, aren’t you?” She signaled the bartender to pour her another drink.

  The only thing I’d decided about her was that she didn’t know about Summer and the Penitentes, and that wasn’t much. “What’s your name?” I asked, figuring there was nothing suspicious in the d
irect approach.

  “Vicky Nelson,” she answered. “Twenty-four and unmarried.”

  I told her my name, said I was from New York, but skipped the rest of the vital statistics. Before we could get in any more conversation I noticed a distant funnel of dust through the window. It was a car, traveling fast in our direction. A good guess told me it was the sheriff and I was right.

  He was short and fat—why are sheriffs always fat?—and he wore a holstered revolver low on his hip like some leftover cowboy. He’d come alone to break the news to Mrs. Summer, and I figured that made her a pretty important person in his opinion.

  “Delia around?” he asked the bartender.

  “She’s in back, working on the books, Sheriff.”

  “Get her for me. It’s important.”

  The bartender muttered something under his breath and put down the damp cloth. As he went through the back curtains I caught a glimpse of multicolored metal monsters lining the wall. The place was a little Las Vegas, complete with slot machines, and I was sure gambling wasn’t legal in this state.

  After a moment the curtains parted once more and a tall middle-aged woman appeared. She might have been pretty once, but that day was long past. I discovered later she was only thirty-five, but just then I would have guessed her for over forty. “Hello, Sheriff. What’s the trouble?” she asked.

  “I’ve got some bad news, Delia,” he said, ignoring the audience of Vicky and me. “It’s about Glen.”

  “God—what happened to him?”

  “Somebody killed him, Delia. Up at the morada …”

  “Killed him!” she gasped, her voice cracking. “At the morada?” I don’t know which surprised her more—the fact of her husband’s death or its place of occurrence. “What was he doing there?”

  “He was … with them, Delia. He was taking part in their … rites, and somebody stabbed him with a sword.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she screamed out. “You’re lying!”

  The bartender came around the row of stools and took her arm. “Steady, Delia. Let me take you in back.”

  The sheriff finally noticed us sitting there and nodded in agreement. “Let’s all go in back,” he decided. And the three of them disappeared through the curtains.

  “Glen Summer—dead!” Vicky Nelson said when we were alone. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “He was a good friend, eh?”

  “He was a good guy. I’d only known him these few weeks but he was a good guy. Say, how come you were asking about that place where Glen got killed, mister?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Just coincidence. What have you heard about it?”

  “Like I said, they’re nuts. I sure didn’t figure Glen Summer for one of them.”

  The sheriff came out of the back with Delia Summer and they got in his car. Her eyes were red but she was holding up well. The bartender returned, too, stepping behind his polished counter and picking up the damp cloth as if nothing had happened.

  “Summer’s dead?” I asked him.

  “Yeah.” He picked up another glass.

  “How’d it happen?”

  “Don’t know a thing, mister. You’ll have to ask the sheriff about it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and slid off the stool. I could see I wasn’t going to learn anything more here. “You want a ride anywhere?” I asked Vicky.

  “Guess not, thanks. I need a few more of these.” She held up her glass. “See you around.”

  “Yeah.” I went out and climbed back into Father Hadden’s station wagon. I didn’t want to go back to the villa in the mountains so I drove to the church where we’d first met the strange priest. It was only then, sitting there in the street before the great stone towers that I remembered the thing that had brought Simon and me to this place.

  Father Hadden believed that he was a medium. That was an interesting thing to think about, at least. I didn’t remember ever hearing before about a priest who could communicate with the dead, though it did seem logical that if such things were at all possible a priest would be the person to do it.

  I lit a cigarette and tried to conjure up a phantom in the smoke. If Father Hadden could talk to the dead, why couldn’t he talk to the departed Glen Summer and find out who shoved the sword into him? I filed away that thought for further conversation with Simon.

  Ten minutes later, halfway through my third cigarette, the familiar sheriff’s car turned into the street before the church. I saw Simon and Father Hadden climb out, followed by the stout shape of the sheriff himself. While I was still debating whether to reveal myself, the sheriff strode quickly to my door and yanked it open. “O.K., mister, climb out. I want to talk to you.”

  “What?” I mumbled something, startled by this sudden turn of events. “What did I do?”

  The big sheriff rumbled on. “Never mind the wise talk. Come on inside while I get to the bottom of this.”

  I slid out of the driver’s seat and followed him into Father Hadden’s rectory, because at this point there was nothing else to do. Simon and the priest were already there, sitting at a big oak table in silence.

  “I got your buddy here,” the sheriff said triumphantly. “Nobody puts anything over on Ben Partell. You two were up there without any car, and then I see this joker at the Oasis drivin’ the church’s car. I just put two and three together, and I come up with all of you at the morada and this bird leavin’ for some reason. Why?”

  Father Hadden cleared his throat. “Really, Sheriff Partell, there’s no excuse for this type of questioning …”

  “And you be quiet, too,” the sheriff stormed. “I ain’t runnin’ for another three years. I don’t have to worry about the Catholic vote this season.”

  It was amazing to me how the calm, semi-dignified man who’d brought Delia Summer the news of her husband’s death could have given way in a brief half-hour to this growling, bullying person who now faced us.

  “You think we killed the man?” Simon asked mildly.

  “No, I don’t think you killed the man, but I’m sure as hell goin’ to find out, if I have to run in that whole collection of creeps. They were all hangin’ there on their damned crosses, all in the same room, and not a damned one of them saw a thing! You think I believe that?”

  “The room was quite dark,” Simon said. “And the dead man was at the end of it. Since I understand the Penitences were in the habit of entering the room one at a time at irregular intervals, any one of them could have plunged the sword into Summer and left him hanging there in the dimness.”

  “But Juan Cruz tied each of them to the cross. If he didn’t do it himself, he sure as hell must know who did.” The sheriff lowered his bulk into one of the chairs and took out a fat cigar. Now that he’d shown us he was the boss, he seemed content to pursue the investigation on a somewhat more subdued level. “Cruz was constantly in and out of that cellar room. You mean to tell me that one of those eighteen guys, stripped down to the shorts or a loincloth, could have taken the sword off the wall upstairs, carried it down to the cellar in plain sight, and stabbed Summer without anyone seeing him?”

  “It is possible,” Simon said.

  “Nuts! I’m taking that guy Cruz down to my office, and if he won’t talk I’ll beat the truth out of him. I’ll lock up that whole place if I have to. I’m no hick-town sheriff, you know!”

  Father Hadden rose and rested a gentle hand on the sheriff’s shoulder. “I have faith that the sinner will see his way to confess before very long,” he said. “Whatever the world may think of groups like the Penitentes, there is no doubt they are deeply religious men. The very fact of murder in such a place is unthinkable—the continued concealment of the crime by the killer is fantastic. He will come forward to confess, never fear.”

  But Sheriff Partell was far from satisfied. “Well, you start praying for his soul, Father. I’m going out and drag that Cruz in for questioning.” And with that he rose from the chair and went outside to his car.

  For a moment we s
at simply in silence, as people do when some sort of vague disaster has passed them by. Finally, I broke the silence. “He may be a slob, but he’s no dope.”

  But Simon Ark only sat in continued silence, as if deep in thought. “Tell me, my friend,” he asked at last, “what adventures befell you at the Oasis?”

  “Well …” I told him everything that had happened, as close as I could remember it. Neither he nor Father Hadden interrupted, but when I finished I could see they weren’t impressed.

  “Delia Summer must still be up there,” Father Hadden observed. “The sheriff brought her to officially identify the body and then he took us back here.”

  Simon stirred in his seat. “My friend, would you like to do a bit more traveling this day?”

  “I suppose so, but let me tell you my idea first.”

  “And what is that?”

  I turned to the priest. “Father, you told us before that you had been in communication with the dead.”

  “That is correct …”

  “Then why can’t you talk to the spirit of Glen Summer—talk to him and find out who killed him?”

  The priest’s face paled at my suggestion. “I fear you do not understand my problem, not at all.”

  Apparently I’d said the wrong thing, for Simon interrupted quickly. “My friend, would you take the car again and journey to the villa in the mountains? Perhaps you can somehow get a chance to speak to Juan Cruz before Partell takes him over.”

  “And what should I say to him if I do? Should I ask him if he killed Summer?”

  Simon ignored the sarcasm in my remark. “No, my friend. You should ask him if any member of the Penitentes was absent this morning …”

  “Absent?”

  “Perhaps there was an extra man in the room. It hardly seems likely that the murderer would allow himself to be tied to a cross in the same room as his victim. But if there was a missing Brother—perhaps that is your answer.”

  It sounded reasonable, if a bit far-fetched, and I agreed to go.