The Searcher (8 page)

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

                                         —
E
XODUS
20:3

Extract from
Riches and Redemption—The Making of a Town

The published memoir of the Reverend Jack “King” Cassidy

I arrived at Fort Tucson with the priest's gold all but spent and to raise more funds—and to my eternal shame—I tried to sell the Bible to an itinerant preacher name of Banks who balked at the size of the book, saying if God had meant him to have such a thing He would have sent it in smaller form. He told me instead of a Jesuit mission south of Tucson where a fine old example of scripture might find a permanent home on some sturdy lectern where no poor soul nor mule would have to carry it more.

I blamed encroaching poverty on my decision to try and part with the Bible, but in truth I could feel the hold it had on me and I was frightened of it. The visions of the white church and the pale Christ on the cross haunted my waking hours and I feared I might be losing my mind, like the priest had lost his. But setting it down now, it seems clear to me how all of this was God's design—the priest traveling from Ireland and finding himself in the bed next to mine, the Bible being signed over to me, the gold funding its journey west, and my chance conversation with the preacher who sent me on the path that would lead me to the Jesuit mission and the pale Christ on his burned cross.

We saw the smoke rising in the morning sky a couple of hours
after sunrise on the second day. I had joined a cavalry supply train heading south to Fort Huachuca via the trading post where the Jesuit mission was based. We smelled them long before we saw them, poor murdered souls roughly delivered to God at arrow point or at the keen edge of a savage's knife. The trading post was an inferno, roof timbers sticking up from burning buildings like smoking ribs and a large burning cross standing by a pile of smoldering timbers that had been the Jesuit mission. At first I thought the cross and crucified figure of Christ upon it too large for such a humble chapel. It was only as we drew closer that I saw the truth. The burning man was real.

He blazed like a grotesque torch, all signs of identity razed from him, his head thrown back in agony and fire pouring from his open mouth as if his screams were made of flame.

Captain Smith, the officer in charge, ordered someone to throw a rope around him and drag the cross to the ground and away from sight, but no rope could ever drag the image of that burning man from my memory. I uttered a prayer, commending his immortal soul to God where it would be forever at peace and free from whatever demons had made their evil sport here. And when I finished I heard a murmur of “Amens” around me and realized that my prodigal companions, normally so cavalier and contemptuous of God when in the warm embrace of a bottle or by the light of a campfire, were drawn straight back to His goodness and love when faced with this bleak and terrible example of its opposite.

We set to work smothering the smoldering church with shovels of dirt and I wondered how an all powerful and merciful God could allow such monstrous sport to be visited upon His faithful servants and lay waste to His own house of worship. I could see no purpose in it and wondered if, in the battle between God and the Devil, it
was the Devil who had actually won. It was only then, in the deepest depths of my doubt, that Christ Himself appeared to me, rising from the ashes of His father's ruined church to show me the way and the truth.

I saw His face first, shining white against the gray-black ashes. He was staring straight at me with an expression of such agony and anguish that I stumbled back in shock and my boot trod heavy on the charcoaled remains of a roof spar, which levered the thing up farther and I saw it entire. It was the Christ crucified, carved from pure white marble and fixed to a cross of hard wood that had been burned by the fire but not destroyed.

I guessed from its position in the ruined church that it must have hung above the altar and I imagined how the Christ must have stared down in lament as flames consumed His Father's house. It was a miracle the cross had survived, a miracle that I had found it, and I recalled the words of the raving priest as he pressed the Bible into my hands and transferred his mission to me.

—
You must carry His word into the wasteland. Carry His word and also carry Him. For He will protect you and lead you to riches beyond your imagining.

And here He was.

I walked into the smoking ruin of the church and took the pale Christ in my arms—His cross now mine, my burden now His. I could feel the trapped heat of the fire radiating out of the solid wood and it felt like the warmth of His love flowing into me and I realized then why God had allowed the savages to slaughter good Christian folk and burn His house to the ground.

It had all been for me.

He was showing me, in such a way as a simple soul like myself could understand, that the church I had to build must be stronger
than this. If it was to stand against such evil as thrived here in this blasted wilderness, it had to be like the pale Christ who had been untouched by the fiery instruments of evil that had destroyed all else.

The church I was to build had to be made of stone.

“H
E SAID WE SHOULD STAY WHERE WE'RE AT
?”

“That's what the man said.” Mulcahy was standing by the window of the motel, cell phone in hand, staring out through the gray net curtain at the parking lot beyond.

Behind him, Javier paced, stamping dust and the smell of mildew from the carpet. “He didn't say nothin' else?”

“He said plenty, but the main thing he said was that we should stay put and wait for him to call back.”

Javier shook his head and continued to pace. He'd already visited the john several times in the twenty or so minutes they'd been in the room and Mulcahy had only heard him flush once, suggesting either that he had terrible hygiene or he was doing something in there other than pissing. The slime shine in his eyes gave Mulcahy a pretty good idea what.

“You think Papa knows where we're at?” Javier said, twitching and flicking his fingers as if they had gum on them.

“Probably.”

“Probably? The fuck does ‘probably' mean? Either he know or he don't.”

The only illumination in the room was coming from the TV. It was tuned to a local news station with the volume turned low. Carlos sat silently on the edge of one of the beds, his eyes fixed on the flickering screen as if he'd been hypnotized by it. He'd been like that ever since they'd walked in the door and heard what Papa Tío had to say. Mulcahy had seen that look a few times before: once in a jail cell outside Chicago when he was still in uniform and Illinois still had the death penalty, and a couple of times since when he'd been the cause of it. It was the look someone got when they'd resigned themselves to whatever was coming their way, like a rabbit when the headlights were speeding toward it and there was no time to get out of the way.

“You got a cell phone, either of you?” Mulcahy asked.

“Yeah, I got a phone.” Javier said it like he'd just asked him if he had a dick or not. He held up a BlackBerry in a gold-and-crystal-encrusted case, the blank screen angled toward Mulcahy. “I switched it off though, motherfucker. I ain't stupid.”

“Good for you. Who pays the bill?”

“The fuck's that got to do with anything?”

“Because if Tío pays the bill then he'll be able to track it whether it's switched off or not. Does he pay the bill?”

Javier didn't answer, which was answer enough.

Mulcahy nodded. “Then he knows where we are.” He turned back and looked outside, squinting against the brightness. Beyond the reception building he could see the traffic out on the highway.

He checked his own phone, making sure the Skype app was still running. Tío had said he was going to call some people then call him back, but that wasn't why he was checking. His pop still hadn't called.

“How come your phone's still switched on,
pendejo
?”

Mulcahy stared out at the day, felt the heat of the outside burning through the window and the cool air from the ancient air-con unit blowing feebly against his legs.

“I asked you a question, motherfucker.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If he had to kill Javier in the next few minutes—which was entirely possible—it would definitely be the highlight of an otherwise shitty day. “Papa Tío doesn't pay my bill,” he said. “He doesn't pay my bill, so he doesn't know the number or the network, and I called him on Skype so it would take him at least a few hours to trace the call and I don't plan on being here in two hours' time. But the main reason I've still got it switched on is because he said he was going to call me back—on Skype—so if I switched my phone off he wouldn't be able to, would he? And if he couldn't get hold of me he might get all suspicious and send a bunch of guys around to find out why I'd turned my phone off. And he'd know exactly where to find me because you're too cheap to pay your own bill. That answer your question . . . motherfucker?”

“Shit, man. Oh shit, shit.” Carlos was rising to his feet and pointing at the screen.

A shaky aerial shot of a big fire in the desert filled the screen. It wobbled unsteadily behind a caption saying: BREAKING NEWS—Plane Crash Starts Large Wildfire Outside Redemption, Az.

“
Where's the remote?” Javier had stopped pacing, his eyes fixed to the screen now. “Where's the fuckin' remote at?” Carlos held it up. “Turn it up, man.” Javier jabbed his finger at the screen.

Carlos pointed the remote at the TV, nudged up the volume, and the room filled with the somber tones of someone reporting on something serious. Mulcahy stared at the twisted wreckage of the plane, fuel and desert burning all around it, catching snatches of what the reporter was saying:

. . .
believed to have been a vintage airliner . . . en route to the aircraft museum outside Redemption . . .

This was not how it was supposed to happen. The plane crash was not in the script. It was most likely an accident, it was an old plane,
old planes crashed more than new ones, he imagined. Except Papa Tío didn't believe in accidents. He didn't believe in coincidences or apologies either. If something went wrong, then there was always a reason and there was always someone who had to pay.

And Tío hadn't called back yet.

And neither had his pop.

He turned to study the traffic out on the road, a slow-flowing river of metal and glass, and felt envious of the safe little lives each car contained. He wanted to join them and slide away from here, but that wasn't going to happen. He knew that as soon as he saw the truck ease off the road and up the ramp toward the motel. It was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, just like his. Black-tinted windows, just like his. It slowed to a stop at the top of the ramp by the reception building, but the two men inside showed no interest in going in. They were checking the parked cars, looking for someone.

Looking for him.

C
ASSIDY DROVE,
S
OLOMON SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT
,
HIS WINDOW WOUND
right down so he could feel the wind on his face. It was an old car, leather seats, chrome trim, lots of space.

Lincoln Continental Mark V, Solomon's mind informed him.

It was nicer than being in the ambulance, the leather seats and padded doors made the experience less synthetic, but he still didn't like it.

“Would you mind closing the window, the air-conditioning doesn't work so well with it open.”

Solomon pressed the button to raise the window. He was thinking about the church and the altar cross and the words written on the wall, all of it revolving around the remembered image of his reflected self, the stranger in the mirror, the big mystery at the center of it all. The church was peculiar. Maybe that was why he felt an affinity for it. For a start, it was way too big for a town this size, like it had been built as a declaration of something grand or maybe to compensate for something. The interior was odd too, the fresco more reminiscent of a medieval European basilica than a church from the Old West. And
then there was the strange collection of memorabilia cluttering up the entrance like an afterthought.

“Why have a mining exhibition in a church?” he wondered out loud, his toes gripping the carpet as his sense of confinement started to gnaw at him.

“Tourists,” Cassidy replied, like he was cursing. “About a year back we moved some of the exhibits from the museum into the church to try and get more people through the door, on account of people being far more interested in treasure than God these days, and ain't that a sorry state of affairs?”

Solomon nodded and gripped the edge of his seat, trying to relax away his growing nausea.

“A lot of folks thought it was inappropriate, said it's not what the church is for. They cash the subsidy checks the trusts give out, but they don't want to think about where that money comes from. One of the joys of being mayor, all the grief and none of the credit. Like being a parent, I guess.”

“You don't have children?”

“Never was blessed. Are you okay? You seem kind of uncomfortable.”

“I'm fine,” Solomon said. “Just don't like being confined.”

Cassidy looked across at him like he was afraid he might throw up in his nice antique car. “Leave the window open if it makes you happy.”

“Thanks.” Solomon opened it all the way down again and relished the wind on his face. It carried the smell of smoke with it now and he could see it ahead of them, a curtain of darkness spreading right across the sky with tiny figures and vehicles spread out in front of it. “Only those who face the fire,” he murmured, “can hope to escape the inferno.”

“You know who wrote that?” Cassidy asked.

Solomon dredged his mind and was surprised to discover that he didn't. And in the perverse nature of his teeming brain he regarded any knowledge that didn't come easily to him as significant. “No,” he said. “No, I don't.”

“It was Jack Cassidy. He designed the whole church then painted the frescoes too. He was what you might call a Renaissance man. Could turn his hand to anything: miner, businessman, architect, painter, author—you name it, he tried it. And most likely mastered it too. Not bad for a man who started life as a locksmith.”

“Quite a troubled man too, I think. A man with his fair share of demons.”

“Well, he . . . maybe so, but . . . what makes you think that?”

“The figures in the fresco. The black words he wrote on a dark, dark sky. The fact that he painted hell as so vast and vivid and heaven so small and distant.”

“He was complicated, I would say. A serious man. You should read his memoir.”

Solomon pulled his copy from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. “I have.” He opened it to the dedication page, felt the familiar stab of pain in his arm when he read James Coronado's name. “What about James Coronado, was he a troubled man?”

“Jim? No, I wouldn't say so. I would call him pretty straightforward.”

“Was he in some sort of trouble?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“He was very well liked.”

“That's not what I asked. What about his death—is there any question hanging over that?”

“No,” Cassidy snapped, a little too quickly, then got hold of himself. “Listen, I don't know what ideas you have about how you might save him, but he's gone. Jim Coronado is dead. It was an accident, is all. A terrible, terrible accident. He was driving at night, he crashed his car. That's all there is. There ain't no point in raking up the mud searching for something that ain't there. You're only going to hurt people who been hurt bad enough already.”

He said it as though he was pushing a door closed and Solomon left it shut. The mayor clearly didn't want to talk about it and Solomon didn't think he'd get anything out of him anyway. The person he really wanted to talk to was James Coronado's widow. Maybe she would be at the city limits along with everybody else, lining up to try to save the town from the fire.

They rounded a corner and started dropping down toward the edge of town. Beyond it the whole world was on fire. The smoke was so high it blotted out the sun, and the flames at the base twisted and leaped in the air as the bright line of fire slithered closer. The fire crews were positioned half a mile out of town and about the same from the fire, working in lines, their forms smudged almost to nothing by the dust they were stirring up with rake and shovel as they cleared the ground of anything that might burn in an attempt to stop the flames from advancing. To the left of the road, a tractor was creeping like a clockwork toy, plowing up the ground behind it. It was making its slow way toward a concrete storm drain that cut across the ground in a straight line all the way to the slopes of the mountains. To the right a grader was struggling over uneven terrain it wasn't built for toward the anemic piles of crushed stone that rose sterile and ugly around a tall skinny tower with a lifting wheel at the top. Between the mine works and the storm drain the flanks were pretty well protected, but there was nothing in the center but a mile or so of clear ground
and dry vegetation. Two vehicles and maybe a hundred men against an army of flame.

“You should tell everyone to clear out,” Solomon said.

“Be a waste of breath,” Cassidy replied. “The folks here are kind of stubborn that way. Most of 'em would rather burn than abandon their town.”

“Then they may well get their wish.”

They pulled off the road and came to a halt next to a line of parked cars and trucks. Cassidy cut the engine and Solomon was already out of the door, desperate to feel the ground beneath his feet again. The wind gusted a greeting, roaring out of the desert and bringing the smell of the fire with it.

“Now I appreciate you volunteering to help here, Mr. Creed, I really do,” Cassidy said, climbing out of the driver's side and fixing his hat on his head. “But if you want to help us fight this fire, then you're going to need something on your feet.” He pointed to a pickup parked over by an ambulance that had lots of activity buzzing around it. “See that man in the green shirt? His name's Billy Walker. Tell him I sent you over and ask if he's got a pair of work boots he can loan you, then report to one of the fire crews. Sorry to cut and leave, but I've got a town to try to save and people look to me to lead.” He walked away, heading over to where Chief Morgan was standing by a tow truck, his stricken cruiser perched drunkenly on the back.

Shouts drifted from the desert. Out on the control line someone was pointing up at the sky where the yellow tanker was leveling out and getting ready for another run. It settled into position and the sky behind it turned red, as though the wings had sliced through the flesh of it and made it bleed. A bright scarlet cloud spread and fell onto a section of desert, then the vapor trail sputtered out. The red line had covered a little less than a quarter of the leading edge of the fire on
one side of the road and the air around Solomon was already starting to thicken with ash and embers falling softly around him like black snow. He held out his hand and caught one, rubbing it to nothing with his fingers. It was warm, most of the heat blown out of it by the wind, but the ashes falling closer to the control line would be fresh from the fire, maybe even still glowing as they settled on the dry grass. Soon there would be spot fires breaking out all over the control zone. It would need only one to take hold and the fire would have breached the thin line they were drawing in the sand. They were in the wrong position, wasting time and energy with what they were doing. At this rate the whole town was going to burn, along with everything in it. Then where would he be? What answers might he sift from the embers?

The wind roared again, twisting the distant flames into columns of orange and red, and Solomon felt as if the fire was sniffing him out, searching for him. He headed over to the ambulance and into the welcome shade of the billboard.

The man in the green shirt was helping set up a makeshift field hospital around the ambulance. Men and women in green scrubs and white rubber clogs were weaving in and out of each other, checking lists, carrying boxes of supplies, filling movable stands stacked with suture packs and dressings. Solomon recognized Gloria. She was unpacking boxes of gel dressings and FAST1 infusion kits.

“Billy Walker,” Solomon said, and the man in the green shirt turned around. “Mayor Cassidy sent me over to see you.”

The man looked him up and down, his eyes lingering on Solomon's bare feet. “Lemme guess—pair of boots, right?”

“Actually no, I was hoping you might have a hat.” Walker shook his head then loped off toward his truck.

The wind surged again, so hard it rocked the billboard and drove
the smell of smoke into Solomon's face like a threat. There was something else there too, something ominous and familiar.

Gloria appeared at his side. “You feeling okay now, Mr. Creed?”

“I'm fine,” he said, sniffing the air again. “How ready are you here?”

She looked around at all the activity. “About as ready as we'll ever be, I guess.”

“Good. You're about to get busy, I think.” The sound of a distant siren whooped out in the desert and the radio in the ambulance crackled to life.

Incoming, a voice said with an urgency that made everyone else go silent. “The grader got caught in a fire surge. The driver's hurt bad. We're bringing him to you now.”