Taking my long shot hypothesis one step further, if the cult needed a contact with the community, there would have to be an advance party — and that advance party would be someone the community didn't suspect. What better cover than being a 70-year-old widow? Long shot? Leap in logic? Probably, but I've learned that the logic of the ordered and civilized world seldom applies to situations like this.
I poured myself a second cup of coffee, thanked Bert for his hospitality and stepped back outside into the fog. I detoured just long enough to try the door to Kelto's unit, but it was locked, so I went on back to number 8. When I got there, B.C. was perched on the edge of the bed with a sheepish look on her face.
"Relax," I advised her. "I've had a few bad nightmares myself."
She tried to smile, but when the effort fell short, I handed her what was left of the second cup. It took her less than ten seconds to drain it. "Worst night of my life," she muttered. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been here."
I wanted to avoid a pity party and the string of time-wasting apologies that are usually part of that libretto. Instead of commenting on her tough night, I sat down 'on the edge of the bed next to her and whipped out my stack of file cards. "It's a new day and we've got things to do. Here's the agenda." I really hadn't thought it out all that well, so I was rapidly scribbling notes as we went through the stack. "We're going to do some checking on our friend Kelto and the lady they call Widow Austin. After that, we're going to meet Jake Madden and go to that village meeting he intends to call. After that, I want to talk to somebody at the Waverly RCMP post."
Brenda looked at the stack of cards, then up at me. A small smile played at the corners of her mouth. "Thanks, E.G.," she whispered. "I was a basket case and needed a friend."
PART 5
So far, B.C. had managed to survive the cultural shock of Chambers Bay, the discovery of the three victims, an attempted rape, and two days in very close proximity to yours truly. She was road tested and proving fairly serviceable. On the third morning we did what writers do best, hopefully, we wrote. That is to say, I organized my stack of file cards, and Brenda entertained herself by diligently constructing a logic tree, an old Cosmo device that tests the theory that everything related to the events traces back to one tap root. There was one curious thing about it. I had to show young Brenda how to do it because, she indicated, Cosmo never covered it. It was doubly curious when you consider that the logic tree is one of the old boy's pet testing devices. On the other hand, maybe the old geezer had a new gimmick.
At any rate, the results of the logic tree exercise did confirm one nagging suspicion, and that was simply that so far there was no logic to the pattern. We had victims who were brutally assaulted and still others who had been carved up with near surgical precision. We had young victims and old victims, boys and girls, men and women, and our creature hadn't confined his activities to humans, either — witness the destruction of two sheep and a horse. And, if that wasn't enough, we had situations involving total destruction and still others where the only thing disturbed was one or two vital organs.
B.C. stayed with her snowballing list of variables longer than I would have, but finally she demonstrated her frustration by throwing her pencil down and muttering an emphatic "damn."
By nine-thirty the fog had peeled back slightly, and I was able to see all the way across the motel parking lot to the dense growth of pine on the other side of the highway. It was just enough to make me decide to give it a try. It had cleared enough that B.C.'s constitution was renewed, and our accomplishments were going to be minimal if we continued to sit in our motel room, reviewing old data and waiting for the sunshine to break through.
Our first stop was at the Chambers Bay community office building, an ancient edifice constructed of crumbling brick surrounded by a landscape that consisted of mostly hardpan occasionally interrupted by patches of grass. The young lady behind the desk informed us that her name was Angie and readily expressed an interest in helping us in any way she could. We told her that we were doing research on a family tree and were interested in talking to a woman that we believed might have some information that could help us. The woman, of course, was the Austin widow.
"Dumb old me," Brenda gushed in an embarrassingly poor imitation of a Southern drawl. "We drove all the way up here, and I left her name and address on the dresser — dumb old me."
Angie dug into her files while I scowled at Brenda. She shrugged her shoulders and quietly pointed to the fact that we were getting the information we wanted.
The Austin widow turned out to be Glenna Hoyt Austin, 67 years old and most recently a resident of Fort Albany on the southwest shore of James Bay. Her husband, an outfitter on the Albany River, had been dead for a number of years, and she had come to Chambers Bay in search of a long lost niece identified only as a Miss Harris. The aforementioned Miss Harris, Angie informed us, was no longer a resident in the area and had left no forwarding address. The widow Austin, however, had stayed on, and Angie gave us instructions on how to get to her place.
Despite the fog, we found it. The surprise was that the old lady's house was just down the road and up the hill from the very spot where Percy Kramer had made his ill-fated pass at B.C.
The ramshackle old house was in an advanced stage of decay. It was shuttered (all broken) and badly in need of paint. The front porch sagged, and if ever a house could be described as lonely, this one qualified. There wasn't another structure visible in any direction. I looked over at B.C. She was apprehensive about the whole thing, and it had begun to show — wrinkles of concern, my mother used to call them.
"Ready?" I grinned. "Research is the fun part of writing, meeting new people in new places and learning new things."
I trudged up the hill with B.C. close behind. It took several solid raps before the door was grudgingly opened a scant four inches. A squinty, dull brown eye peered around and out at me and a twisted, uneven whisper masquerading as a voice asked, "What'cha want?"
I stepped back out of the long shadows so that the old woman could see my face.
"Mrs. Austin, my name is Elliott Wages and this is Miss Cashman. We were wondering if you could spare us a couple of minutes to answer a few questions."
"About what?" she snapped. The response was almost a whiplash.
B.C. stepped forward, all sweetness. "We're doing some research on this area of the province — social research, needs of the elderly, quality of the available medical services, things like that."
Brenda had hit the old woman's hot button. The Austin widow opened the door another four inches. The shielded face bobbed up and down as she appraised us from head to foot. "You ain't from the church, are ya?"
"No," B.C. said calmly, "we're from the Canadian Research Bureau." She reached into her shoulder bag, pulled out her American driver's license and handed it to the woman. The widow snapped it out of her hand, held it up close to one eye, studied it momentarily and handed it back. "All right," she hissed, "but be quick about it."
Brenda nodded. "We'll be as brief as possible," she replied sweetly.
With B.C.'s assurance, the door creaked open and the old woman waddled into the darkened room ahead of us. Two flickering candles served as the only illumination. The cluttered room was a montage of gray on gray unrevealing shadows. When she got to the center of the room, she turned around and stared at us defiantly.
Most folks who have been around me any length of time accuse me of stereotypical thinking, and while I'll admit to a certain amount of this decidedly universal human failing, I will not apologize for the habit. Over the years it has served me well. It is seldom necessary to start from ground zero in assessing new situations. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it. The fatal flaw in this practice, of course, is that one or ten or whatever percent that pops up deviating from the norm. All of this leads up to the fact that I knew I was confronting a 67-year-old widow — hence, she should have been white-haired, with kindly blue eyes, slightly stooped, sheltered by a shawl and happily offering us chocolate chip cookies. Nothing could have been further from the package we confronted.