To be sure, she was small and somewhat stooped, standing less than five feet. She was the unfortunate possessor of greedy, mud-colored pinched eyes, an ugly squat face and a mouth that was little more than a humorless slit across an ashen and wrinkled face. Her whole demeanor betrayed her perpetual conflict with the world that surrounded her.
"Now, ask yet questions quick-like and get outta here," she hissed.
The room itself was a chaotic collection of primitives and junk, all focused toward a white-clothed, waist-high round table in the middle of the dimly lit room. The table itself was decorated with a tall, white, tapered candle, a sprig of pine and a grotesque figurine of a black, pear-shaped creature with a bloated belly.
Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. To me, the little statue was, in a word, disgusting. Brenda, however, reacted quite differently. She bent over and gazed at the eight-inch-high statuette with what amounted to a degree of reverence. The old woman's eyes watched Brenda intently, and a sinister little smile began to play upon her ugly slash of a mouth.
"What is it?" Brenda asked softly. For some reason, I had the feeling B.C. already knew.
"Beautiful, ain't it?" the old woman rasped. Even at that, her voice seemed to have somehow softened. She moved in closer to the figure as though it was her mission to protect it from B.C.'s penetrating appraisal. "You are gazing," the old woman raptured, "at the sarcophagus of Sate, Ancient of Ancients."
B.C. repeated the pronouncement and looked up at me. Her eyes were glazed, and then suddenly she seemed to regain her composure. "Lovely," she repeated, her voice drifting off again.
"Is this a good time to answer our questions?" I interrupted.
"Get it over with," the old woman bristled.
For the next several minutes, B.C. spewed out what sounded like a well-prepared list of very official, typically bureaucratic questions all relating to health services. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn that the whole act was a carefully rehearsed and frequently practiced routine. She concluded by thanking the old woman for her time and bidding her a good day. She wasn't even subtle about hustling me out of the house.
We were safely back in the Z and headed back for the village before she quit scratching out her own notes and allowed me the luxury of a few questions.
"How did you know the old girl couldn't read? That little routine with the driver's license was beautiful."
"Long shot," she admitted, "but it paid off."
"And that list of questions — fantastic! You sounded official as hell."
B.C. looked straight ahead, her face furrowed into a frown. "Not bad for a flat-chested broad who snores, huh?"
She never cracked a smile.
I've heard it said that one of the secrets of winning teams is that there is always someone on the team who is willing to step forward, take charge and fire the team with enthusiasm. At the moment, B.C. was in charge. We aimed the Z into the fog and back for the motel. I was anxious to get on the phone to Lucy.
B.C. had already scribbled out a list of questions, most of them relating to what she informed me was a sixteenth century lesser deity called Sate. This time my mumbled instructions were even more vague than usual. I couldn't give Lucy much to go on from B.C.'s all too terse summary. I knew very little about Sate; in fact, I'd never heard of him.
Lucy must have picked up on my vibrations because she kept her small talk to a minimum. She hung up with a promise to get back to me as soon as she could come up with something.
While I was on the phone, Brenda practiced her pacing. She patrolled back and forth between the two rooms, from time to time pausing just long enough to assess the still dismal day droning on outside the shelter of our motel room. It was equally apparent that she had developed a taste for my Black and White; the Scotch supply was dwindling rapidly. Finally she slumped into the same chair that Kelto had occupied a few hours earlier, folded her hands under her chin and stared at me.
"Tell me what you know about this Sate stuff."
Brenda's face creased itself into something akin to a reflective frown, and she slumped deeper into the chair. "I'm digging back," she admitted. "He was a lesser Mongol deity that was supposedly chased into the great swamps of Pullan. The way I remember it, he and his band of true believers were run off because the authorities believed they were flesh eaters."
A piece of the puzzle tumbled into place.
"When?"
"I just don't remember," she said with an air of apology. "It wasn't the focus of what we were studying at the time, more of a footnote curiosity in an Ancient Cultures class."
My mind was already off to the races, B.C.'s offhand comment and admittedly vague recollections were just enough to spur the old theory developer into some unplowed territory. Already my mind was conjuring up images of Sate's zealots laboriously working their way, island by island, up the Aleutian chain toward the frozen wastelands of the north. "What else can you remember about the old boy?" I urged.
B.C. ran the tip of her index finger around the top of her glass and closed her eyes. "Nothing of any importance," she said lazily.
"What did that old girl call it? Ancient of Ancients?"
B.C. nodded.
"Wish we had some more information on the old boy," I added impatiently.
"Well," Brenda purred, "why don't we just wait for your little pet — what's her name, Lucy? I'm sure she'll be calling you back soon."
Madden's open village council came off as planned. By the time two o'clock rolled around, we had driven back into Chambers Bay and located the old community school building where 70 or so people had gathered in the drafty old gymnasium.
Jake, along with Harlan, Caleb and a stern, square-jawed, blue-faced man in the smartly pressed uniform of the RCMP, sat at a small table on a riser at one end of the room. B.C. and I located two seats up front and prepared ourselves for more research.
We hadn't been on the scene more than 48 hours and already we had a pretty good handle on some of the locals. B.C. spotted the combination hostess/waitress/owner of the diner with the name Vernice stitched on her brown and yellow polyester uniform, and I located Bert Johnson standing nervously along the far wall. Polly wasn't with him. Equally conspicuous by his absence was young Mr. Kelto. I was about to put the Widow Austin in the same category, but the old woman slipped in at the last minute and took a chair in the far corner of the room.
She was still wearing the same baggy brown coat sweater and her eyes were still pinched into an uncompromising squint.
It was exactly two o'clock when Madden rapped the table with a gavel, and the already somber crowd grew even quieter.
"I think everybody knows why we're here," he said.
It wasn't one of those situations where the crowd responds vocally. Instead, the only indication of involvement was the way they seemed to collectively stir in their seats and incline forward. It wasn't the kind of meeting where a person wanted to miss too much of what was said.
"For those of you that don't already know, we found Percy Kramer's body in the Carson woods late yesterday afternoon."