Madden stared back at me blankly. My theory was a long way from empirical.
"It just stands to reason. Lucy tells me the geological profile and the topographical features of each place that these incidents have occurred were all networked with caves and subterranean caverns. I don't think it's a coincidence that this old woman comes to town and ends up in the very house that has access to this hidden inlet. Put two and two together. Kelto believes that the true believers were all sent here to help the Emissary make the preparations for the coming of Sate — and this house is perfect."
"Okay," Jake sighed, "but why is she dead?"
"I think the so-called Emissary, whoever he, she or it is, knew the old girl was doing a lot of talking and was afraid she would reveal something she wasn't supposed to reveal. Everyone knew I was asking her questions."
The look on Madden's face told me that he was trying to sort through what had to sound like a highly speculative, half-baked theory. "What you're tellin' me is that this house, this place and this time are no accident, that they were chosen by the one you call the Emissary?"
I nodded. "I know it stretches your imagination, but it's actually starting to come together for me."
"Let me get this straight," Jake said. "Are you telling me that these ugly critters that we've been chasing around through the woods are down there in that inlet?"
"That's what I think," I admitted. "Look, it makes sense. Think back about how each of those sweeps were organized. Each time a group has come in from the west, they've used the shoreline as the starting point. The group that worked its way in from the highway used the Carson road as its western boundary. In other words, both groups missed it simply because no one on the sweep teams even knew it was here."
"Are you tryin' to tell me Kendall organized it that way?"
It was easier to shrug my shoulders than admit I wasn't certain about anything, including Kendall. "I guess the question has to be, are we sure he didn't?"
Madden again walked to the edge of the precipice and peered over the edge. It was like looking into a monochrome kaleidoscope, a fascinating world of churning and ghostly grays that hid the angry, swirling waters. I knew what he was going to say when he turned back to face me.
"We're gonna have to go down there, you know."
"There is only one way to do it," I protested. "Go down to the shore and work our way along the coast until we find the cave that accesses back into this inlet."
"The coast line is sheer thirty-foot walls along this section. We couldn't spot the passageway from the top of the cliff."
"We sure as hell can't scale over the edge here," I insisted.
"The goin' might be a little rough," Jake assessed, "but it could be done."
B.C. was still shivering, so we went back around to the front of the house and back into the room where Glenna Austin maintained her sightless sentinel. There was something different about the room from the first time B.C. and I first visited the woman, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Madden had escaped into a world of detail, the kind he could handle. "How many men do you figure we need to go down there and start searchin' through those caves?"
"Only people you can trust," I admonished him.
Jake looked at me as though he didn't think it was really possible that the Emissary could actually be someone he knew. "I can trust all of them," he grunted, but there was a definite lack of conviction in his tired voice.
"You must be very careful who you reveal your plan to," Kelto warned ominously. "The Emissary could be anyone."
Madden looked past me at the young man, the look of uncertainty now more evident than before. "I've known most of these people for years. Hell, I'd lay down in front of their trucks. They're all trusted members of the community."
"Reverend Bell was a trusted member of the Battle Harbor community, too," Kelto countered quietly.
"Wait a minute," I sputtered. "Are you saying Myron Bell was the Emissary of Sate at Battle Harbor?"
Kelto nodded. There were tears in his eyes.
PART 10
Have you ever wondered how many kinds of revelations there are?
Some revelations astound us, while others merely confirm a cherished bias.
There are revelations that alter the course of our lives and in some cases even redefine history.
There are revelations that shape love and hate and revelations that are of no consequence.
I feel reasonably certain that if I took the time to page back through Wages's "Rules to Live By" I would somewhere rediscover that old adage that goes something like, "If it's all neat and tidy and you can wrap a pretty bow around it, the contents are likely to be spoiled." In other words, old E.G. had been sucker-punched, snookered and bamboozled.
I reflected back on that old man's cherub-like face with its too warm smile beaming out over a gilt-edged Bible, the rickety old wheelchair, his wistful study of the turgid waters of the misty strait — and recast that image in light of Kelto's revelation.
E.G. Wages had bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Why else would the church take a man still in his prime and relegate him to an obscure cell in an obscure house in an obscure village in an obscure corner of the world? Why wouldn't the mother church try to capitalize on his message? Why, indeed, wouldn't that church send him forth? Why wouldn't this soulful message have the most universal of all appeals?
The answer, of course, is obvious.
The church had learned the real truth about Myron Bell.
Somewhere, somehow, some way, they had discovered that one of their own, one of their chosen, one of their annointed was in reality a disciple of darkness, an Emissary of the demon Sate.
What better way to conceal the embarrassment?
What better way to bury the fact?
What better way to close the pages on what had to be one of the church's darkest hours?
Hide him.
Consider the liability if the truth were ever uncovered.
Kelto was telling the truth. Somehow I knew that. He was right on the money; all the components were there. The trusted, integral part of the community, driving the school bus to the remote retreat site, the mysterious mechanical failure, the sending of the younger group ahead by themselves, the convenience of three distracting boys — one, two, three — not obvious but very logical, very clever.
And who were the earlier ones? Was it the little nun who had so carefully assembled the Lute orphans for the coming of Sate on that remote Choker Point smoke site? And is it now painfully evident why the Erickson woman was never found at Baffin Island? Finally, was it Marry Marry or Dawn at Owl's Head — or was it both?
Kelto's revelation told me everything I needed to know. Now the burden was as much mine as his.
As Madden shepherded us back into town in the crawling four-by-four, we worked through the logistics of an alternate approach to Kendall's sweep plan, but before we could do that, we had a lot of convincing to do. There was still a great deal about the Chambers Bay situation that Kendall didn't know anything about.
There was a lot to be said for Kendall's plan. The RCMP sweep was militarily efficient, and we had the right gear for it. The men had already been through the exercise twice, and they knew what to do. The downside risk was equally obvious. Kendall was needlessly exposing his men to another encounter with one or more of the creatures that had already proven to be more than any one man could handle.
The Wages plan, on the other hand, was the flip side of the coin — and, to be fair, its primary appeal was to long-shot lovers. Before Kendall would consent to my plan, though, he would have to be convinced we knew what we were talking about, and that wasn't going to be easy. All this was compounded by the fact that neither Madden nor I had any experience with caves, and there was no sure way of knowing for certain if our two-thumbed, three-fingered adversaries had gravitated to the underground network for their Chambers Bay sanctuary.