“Yes.”
“About everything?”
“About everything.”
“But you don’t think he gave the order to disperse?”
“Oh, I think he gave it all right,” Quinn said slowly. “Only it might not have been his own idea.”
“You mean he was bribed?”
“He wouldn’t look at it like that.”
“I would. When money changes hands and no goods or services or act of charity is involved, it’s a bribe.”
“All right, call it that. But put yourself in his place: the colony was going downhill, people were deserting and no new converts were showing up. Even before the death of Haywood and of Sister Blessing, he must have seen the beginning of the end. Two murders brought it perilously close.”
“You’re breaking my heart, Quinn.”
“I’m trying to reconstruct what might have happened.”
“Well, go on. The end is perilously close. And?”
“The murderer may have offered him a deaclass="underline" disperse the colony for the time being, and later reconvene under better circumstances.”
“Meaning with working capital?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a mighty nice theory, Quinn,” Lassiter said with an ironic smile. “However, there are a few teeny-weeny holes in it.”
“I know that, but—”
“Now, according to the confession letter which Martha O’Gorman finally decided to tell me about, O’Gorman was killed by a transient in a fit of anger. O’Gorman had about two dollars on him and there was an old typewriter in the back seat of the car. Total value of the take, say ten bucks. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but if I were about to refinance a religious colony, I’d figure on a little more than ten bucks as working capital... No, don’t interrupt. I’m aware of your idea that Alberta Haywood paid the man to murder O’Gorman. Here you’re in real trouble: first, nothing of this was mentioned in the letter. Second, Alberta Haywood had no reason for wanting O’Gorman dead. Third, she has denied, very convincingly, that she knew any transient and that she gave him any money, or any of George Haywood’s clothes. Now, where are you?”
Quinn shrugged. “Where you said. In real trouble.”
“Well, I’m right behind you.”
Lassiter went over to the window. The bars across it had been fashioned to look like fancy iron grillwork, but they were still bars and he didn’t like them. In moments of weariness and discouragement, he wondered whether the bars were there to keep his own self from escaping.
He said, without turning, “Twenty-four people give up everything they possess for the sake of a twenty-fifth—their residence, their community life, their sheep and cattle—even, to a certain extent, their beliefs—because they can’t live in the outside world without accepting many things about it that they find sinful. So what made them do it? Only two reasons seem powerful enough for me to accept. Either a great deal of money was involved or the Master himself is the man we’re after. Take your choice.”
“I choose the money.”
“And where did it come from?”
“Alberta Haywood’s embezzlements.”
“For Pete’s sake.” Lassiter whirled around impatiently. “You were the one who convinced me she was telling the truth about not paying anyone to murder O’Gorman, not knowing the transient, not giving him George Haywood’s clothes—”
“I still think it was the truth.”
“You’re contradicting yourself.”
“No,” Quinn said. “I don’t believe she gave a lot of money and George’s clothes to a transient. I believe she gave them to somebody else.”
Twenty-Three
He had become part of the forest.
Even the birds were used to him by now. The mourning doves waddling around outside their sloppy nests or paired in swift whistling flights, the towhees foraging noisily with both feet in the dry leaves, the goshawks waiting in ambush to pounce on a passing quail, the chickadees clinging upside down on the pine branches, the phainopeplas, scraps of black silk basted to the gray netting of Spanish moss, the tanagers, quick flashes of yellow and black among the green leaves, none of them either challenged or acknowledged the presence of the bearded man. They ignored his attempts to lure them by imitating their calls and offering them food. They were not fooled by his coos and purrs and warbles, and there was still food enough in the forest: madrone berries and field mice, insects hiding beneath the eucalyptus bark, moths in the oaks at dusk, slugs in the underbrush, cocoons under the eaves of the Tower.
The birds were, in fact, better fed than he. What cooking he did was hurried and at night, so the smoke of his fire wouldn’t be seen by rangers manning the lookout station. Even at best, the supplies at the Tower were meager and now they were also stale. He ate rice with weevils in it, he fought the cockroaches for the remains of the wheat and barley, he trapped bush bunnies and skinned them with a straight razor. What saved him was the vegetable garden. In spite of the weeds and the depredations of deer and rabbits and gophers, there were tomatoes and onions to be picked, and carrots and beets and potatoes to be dug up and cooked, or half cooked, depending on how long he felt it was safe to keep the fire going.
The fawns, the only wild creatures willing to make friends with him, were, of necessity, his enemies. When they came to the vegetable garden, at dawn and at dusk, he threw stones to chase them away, feeling sick at heart when they fled.
Sometimes he apologized to them and tried to explain: “I’m sorry. I like you, but you’re stealing my food and I need it. You see, someone is coming for me but I’m not sure how much longer I have to wait. When she comes, I’ll go away with her and the vegetables will all be yours. I have been through a great deal. You wouldn’t want me to starve now, just at the point where our plan is working out....”
He still called it “our plan,” though it had been hers from the beginning. It had started with such innocence, a meeting on a street corner, an exchange of tentative smiles and good mornings: “I’m afraid it’s going to be another hot day.” “Yes ma’am, I’m afraid it is.”
After that he ran into her unexpectedly at all sorts of places, a supermarket, the library, a parking lot, a coffee house, a movie, a laundromat. By the time he was beginning to suspect that these meetings were not entirely accidental, it no longer mattered because he was sure he was in love with her. Her quietness made him feel like talking, her gentleness made him bold, her timidity brave, her lack of criticism self-confident.
Their private meetings were, necessarily, brief and in places avoided by other people, like the dry, dusty river bed. Here, without even touching each other, they voiced their love and despair until the two seemed inseparable, one word, love-despair. Their mutual suffering became a neurotic substitute for happiness until a point of no return was reached.
“I can’t go on like this,” he told her. “All I can think of is chucking everything overboard and running away.”
“Running away is for children, dearest.”
“Then I’m childish. I want to take off and never see anyone again, not even you.”
She knew the time had come when his misery was so great that he would accept any plan at all. “We must make long-term arrangements. We love each other, we have money, we can start a whole new life together in a different place.”
“How, for God’s sake?”
“First we must get rid of O’Gorman.”
He thought she was joking. He laughed and said, “Oh, come now. Poor O’Gorman surely doesn’t deserve that.”
“I’m serious. It’s the only way we can be sure we’ll always remain together, with no one trying to separate us or interfere with us.”