Pious Deception (23 page)

“Valley” was too tame a word for it. It was more like an earthquake crevasse, a mile or so long and no more than a five or six hundred yards wide at any point. At the bottom of the sheer red wall on the far side a river raced—the Rattlesnake. It fell suddenly from the narrow opening at the west end of the valley, sped along, and disappeared as abruptly when the walls of the valley closed at the east end. Kiernan looked up, past the round enclosure at the end of the mesa. That giant fist of red rock hung out over the west end of the valley.

From beside Joe Zekk’s house a deeply rutted dirt road descended, weaving back and forth in ever-widening swings down the steep hillside to another dirt road that ran upstream beside the river, between two rows of wooden houses. There was no vegetation; the houses were gray; and the street was a dry desert brown. It looked like a ghost town.

On the near side of the switchback road, directly beneath Zekk’s house, a dusty cemetery of perhaps fifty graves climbed the hillside. Beyond it was an explosion of green: layer upon layer of terraced fields like the ones Kiernan had seen in the Himalayan foothills. The hillside glowed, emerald-green, apple-green, bottle-green, as the narrow terraces—no more than two yards wide—climbed its sheer wall. It seemed to Kiernan a world completely separate from the dessicated village upstream.

She stared at the village. There were no cars, no signs of people either. Why the tilled and irrigated fields if no one lived there? If someone did live in the village, why had they irrigated just that much land and not the rest? Were they already planning for the day when the church retreat would swallow most of that rushing water?

Turning back to the house, she climbed two steps onto the porch and rang the bell, expecting no answer, getting none.

A whiff of breeze cooled her forehead, then vanished.

Partway along its north side, the mesa was attached to the higher cliff that led back to the main road. From the other three sides there was a sheer drop: on the east was the switchback road to the village; the south edge hung over the river; and the narrow west end, farthest from Zekk’s, jutted out over the valley. The high adobe wall there effectively lopped off that end of the mesa and the fist of rock beyond it. Kiernan had been dazzled by Zekk’s castle, but now, standing here, she realized that that tip of the mesa was the prize spot. Or it would have been if the wall hadn’t blocked it off. She hurried toward it.

The sun beat off the adobe wall. She made her away around it to the far edge of the mesa. The rocky forearm was almost fifteen feet long. It hung precariously, like a diving board a quarter of a mile high, and seemed to contain within itself the coiled energy of millennia, as if the fist were ready to slam itself down into the valley exit and dam up the river forever. And most surprising was the lone, quite dead tree that had grown and died in front of that fist.

It was a moment before she noticed the circling hoards of blowflies by the end of the mesa and looked down to see another dead tree fifteen feet below, and in its branches an animal carcass, too well scavenged to be recognizable.

She turned and hurried away, before the blowflies could find her and fly into her eyes, up her nose, into her mouth and ears, an experience she recalled only too well from on-site examinations of bodies left in the open. She ran along the wall to the gate, a solid wooden door as high as the wall. It was locked.

The tall smooth wall would make entry difficult—it would be hard to get a grip on its thick, rounded top. She opted for the door, backed up to get a running start, leapt to grab the top, and pulled herself over it.

The area inside the enclosure was smaller than she had assumed. A well-tended cactus garden hugged one segment of the wall, and a dome-shaped building, ten feet in diameter, fitted against another. The most amazing thing was the view, or rather the lack of it. Here, at the tip of the mesa, the spot that looked out over the beauty of the valley below, at the magnificent rocky fist hanging over it, the spot where one might have stood at dawn and watched the sudden lifting of the veils of night—here there was nothing to see but the wall.

She tried the door. Locked. Zekk might be a deadbeat, but he wasn’t laid-back about security. The dome itself appeared to be windowless. It wasn’t till she had circled to the far side, by the outer wall, that she spotted a triangular window of blue stained glass at the top. She hoisted herself onto the dome and peered in.

Underneath the window was what appeared to be a foam mat, a pillow, and sheets left in a wad at one end. She squirmed around and, balancing on her stomach, looked down through the low end of the blue window toward the far side of the room. She could make out the edge of a dresser or chest. No more. No rug, no books, no sign of electricity. She squirmed lower to get a better angle. On the floor she could make out the lower part of a crucifix.

“A monk’s cell!” she muttered. The desert version of Austin Vanderhooven’s icy tower room! Even blue glass, to make it look icy.

She slid down the side of the dome and reached for her Swiss army knife. Her fingers hit keys—Vanderhooven’s house keys. Worth a try. Pulling them out, she stuck one in the lock, and the door opened.

Inside, the first thing that struck her was the heat. The dome looked like a small dark igloo, but the temperature was more suitable for a sauna. When her eyes adjusted, she looked around. The room held only what she had seen through the window—a chest, a crucifix, and a foam pad with the sheets pulled off. But what it told her was entirely different. The sheets had not been pulled off and left in a careless heap. They had been ripped off. Jagged tears broke the fabric in two places.

The chest was dusty, but for a circle the size of the crucifix’s base. Kiernan lifted the lid of the chest. Books, six of them, large old leather-bound religious tomes, real books, no fakes like the one in Vanderhooven’s bedroom. Clearly, they had been held open by their covers, shaken—to dislodge what?—and dropped. Now they lay one upon another, yellowed pages crumpled, several spines ripped.

And the crucifix had been broken in pieces. It took only a moment to spot the mark on the wall where it had been hurled. The top half had taken the brunt of the blow; the bottom half, which she had seen through the window, was almost intact. Looking at it, she thought of her own silver gymnast statuette, the one she’d so often hurled in frustration.

Had the dome been her own assailant’s second stop after checking Vanderhooven’s bedroom in Phoenix? Or the first stop? Whichever, the rage evident in his actions strongly suggested he didn’t find what he was seeking here.

But if the thief looked here, that meant the treasure was something that could have fit under the mat or between the pages of a large book. This was like playing twenty questions. Was the item bigger than a bread box? Smaller than a standard book, flatter than … well, flat. A paper, a document.

A document that someone assumed Vanderhooven might leave out here. Why? Because he would think it would be safer here, unguarded, than in Phoenix with him? Safer than in Phoenix in his hollow book? Or was it because the document or paper had something to do with the retreat?

The room told her nothing more, except perhaps about the austerity of its former occupant. Even if the window opened, it would still be uncomfortably hot. She looked up, suddenly sure that Austin Vanderhooven’s window would not open. She was not surprised to find no lever. She was surprised only to see that the stained-glass window, which had looked blue from the outside, looked pink, rose-colored, from in here.

She shut the door, hoisted herself back over the wall, and walked along the dry hot mesa to the Jeep.

She stood, listening. For someone used to the bustle of beach life, the silence was unnerving. She gave her head a shake, pulled out Vanderhooven’s keys, and headed for Joe Zekk’s back door. It opened on the second try.

With a final glance behind her, Kiernan walked inside, into the kitchen.

It took her a minute to realize that this place hadn’t been burgled too; it merely housed a slob. Dishes caked with brown topped with green fuzz, dirty pots, pans, glasses, cups, a dust-encrusted electric mixer, and enough beer cans for a Super Bowl party covered every counter and had spilled down onto the floor. The refrigerator contained nothing but beer cans, soda bottles, a stick of butter, and a steak. The mild stench of beer, sugar, and decay hung in the air.

A counter separated the kitchen from the living room, but there was no possibility of peering through from one room to the other. The pile of debris that filled the space beneath the hanging cabinets was an architectural achievement. No dish had been centered on the one beneath, but somehow the landfill of aluminum and plastic maintained itself.

As she moved around it through the doorway, Kiernan found herself walking carefully, as if each step could be the one to send the pile cascading to the floor.

The living room, which constituted the west half of the house, was shaped like a capital
D
lying on its side; its curved wall was all windows. A sofa faced the windows. Only a few inches of a wooden coffee table were visible under the litter of magazines, newspapers, dirty dishes, beer cans, and little airline liquor bottles. Against the wall were a television, a VCR, and three shelves of tapes.

Pornography tapes. All three shelves. A year’s supply.

Austin Vanderhooven down there in the dome contemplating the soul. Joe Zekk up here, contemplating the flesh. And Austin Vanderhooven had set this up. Or had he?

Not the best spot to ponder that. More to the point, all the tapes were still in their boxes, so this place had not been searched. The burglar had had the key that unlocked this house and both of Vanderhooven’s dwellings. Regardless of which he searched first, the dome or the rectory, he’d have gone over this place when he did the dome. Only one person wouldn’t have. Joe Zekk.

So what had Joe Zekk been looking for and where in this pigsty would he put it? She eyed the clutter. This really was a rubber-gloves job. Where would Zekk—clearly not a systematic man, not a disciplined one, and from the evidence of the bottles around, not often a sober one—where would he put the document? Somewhere immediately available. Not in a videotape box. He’d never remember which one. He would hide it in a one-of-a-kind place. The freezer? She made her way back to the kitchen and pulled open the door. The freezer was solid ice.

Behind pictures? The mirror in the hall? Taped on the bottom of a drawer?

A quarter of an hour later she found it, lying beneath a pile of wrinkled shirts in the dresser.

It was the last will and testament of one John McKinley of the town of Rattlesnake. In it McKinley left to the pastor of Mission San Leo thirty-six acres of land and first water rights from the Rattlesnake River, those rights to supercede the claim of the village of Rattlesnake. It was signed in large awkward script,
John McKinley,
and witnessed by Aaron McKinley and Ephraim McKinley. The date was September 13, 1937.

The will looked legal. It gave Austin Vanderhooven all he needed for his retreat. Where had it been kept all these years? And why had Austin Vanderhooven taken it out of there and put it where Joe Zekk could find it?

She walked back into the living room. And where the hell was Joe Zekk? Out peddling the Rattlesnake villagers’ pots, as Bud Warren had suggested? Some benefit those villagers got after giving up their water!

The kitchen door rattled.

Kiernan stepped back inside the bedroom. She slid the will under the bed.

The kitchen door opened slowly. Footsteps, light, hesitant, came from inside now.

Damn! Why couldn’t Zekk have kept a gun in his shirt drawer? The living-room carpet muffled the footsteps. She waited, letting them reach the middle, then took a deep breath and said, “Put your hands up! Lie flat out, face down!”

She peered through the doorway just in time to see a teenage boy run for the door.

T
HE BOY RACED OUT
Zekk’s kitchen door and around the house toward the switchback road to the village below. Kiernan grabbed McKinley’s will and sprinted after him. She dropped the will in the Jeep and raced
ONTO
the downhill road, skidding in the loose dry earth. The boy was nearly a foot taller than she, with legs that seemed a yard longer. He hit the first switchback and shot down the next leg of the road, digging the sides of his boots into the steep banks. He was gaining.

Kiernan raced after him, tensing her ankles with each plant of a foot. The running shoes were useless here. The soil was too loose, with rocks the size of melons. She was guessing with each step, hoping the dirt she aimed her foot at was not concealing a sharp, uneven rock. She looked ahead, trying to judge the next ten yards, then glanced quickly over the edge of the road. The boy had cleared the next switchback. He was running all-out. Kiernan looked at the sheer hillside, frantically searching for a path down, a way to cut him off, but there was none. The hillside was too steep, with no trees to grab onto, but enough cacti to make a fall painful. At the edge of the road, the bigger rocks and boulders crowded against each other. She came up on the switchback, jumped for the banking, skidded, and fell to her hands and knees. She pushed up and ran on. Swirling dust struck her face, filled her nose, and dried her mouth. She tried to swallow, couldn’t.

The boy was on the next leg below, going faster with each step. She ducked, grabbed a rock, and hurled it at him. Missed. She grabbed another. Hit! He clutched his shoulder, paused, his face rigid with anger. She bounced off the bank of the switchback, yelling, “Stop right there.”

He pushed off, racing faster.

“Stop, I said. Next time it’ll be your eye I hit.”

He hesitated. He was right beneath her.

He had size but she had momentum. She leapt, landing hard on his back. She grabbed him around the shoulders and hung on as the force threw them over the side of the road. With her arms around his back, they rolled. The jagged rocks scraped her back, scraped
his
face. The cacti cut her hands. The puffs of earth shot dirt into her eyes. The boy let out a yelp. They smashed into a boulder, the boy chest first. The crash knocked the wind out of him.