Footprints of a Dancer (Detective Elliot Mystery) (24 page)

“No, Father. On the contrary, I believe the priest’s role would have been directly related to his faith, his Christianity.”

“In that case, unless you are being less than honest, and acting only to gain my favor, please continue.”

The sound of the wind increased, though it did not seem to be leaking through the windows or any other openings in the structure.

“Oh, I am being honest, Father. Some might say it’s not in my nature to be otherwise. I won’t ask for much of your time, just the name of the priest who would have presided over the parish during the time period.”

Again, Father Williams glanced at the windows.

“Unusual weather we’re having,” Elliot said.

The priest nodded. “Although your request is rather unusual, I’m inclined to align my decision based on your sincerity. While you were en-route, I looked up the information you inquired about. The priest’s name was Father Reynolds.”

“Thank you,” Elliot said. “Would you happen to know the complete name?”

“Yes, of course. It was Stanley Gerald Reynolds.”

The name delivered confirmation of what Elliot had expected. In the photograph McKenzie had shown him, the priest hadn’t looked exactly like his old college buddy, but there had been enough family resemblance for him to make a tentative assumption. Now, upon hearing the name, he had no doubt. The man, dressed in Catholic clothing and standing in the background of the photo was Stanley Gerald Reynolds I, Gerald’s great grandfather. “Is there anything else you could tell me about him?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Let’s just say I went to school with his great grandson.”

Father Williams frowned and glanced at the floor. “The records indicate he resigned his position that same year. The reason given was he’d become dissatisfied and disillusioned.”

“Thanks,” Elliot said. “I appreciate the information, and your time.”

Elliot turned and started toward the exit. He still had questions, but Father Williams seemed anxious to get on with his business. At the door, however, Elliot turned back. The priest’s answer begged for another question. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“The subject was, for many years, the source of rumors I do not wish to perpetuate. The truth is no one seems to know the exact fate of Father Reynolds after he left his post. Perhaps he simply left town, started a family as you indicated and lived out his new life in another community.”

Elliot left the church and descended the steps into a windless day, as serene and commonplace as it had been when he’d arrived. No leaves dotted the lawn, and no branches had broken free from the trees. A wind of the magnitude Elliot had heard from the nave should have left a reminder of its presence, but it had not.

Elliot reached for the door of the pickup and again the wind began to blow, and though it arrived with no perceptible disturbance of the area, it raked across his skin like currents of water, cooled from unimaginable depths of darkness.

An understanding of an impending change in his surroundings blossomed in Elliot’s mind. Where there had been cars, there were none, where there had been people, no one strolled the sidewalks. The buildings and houses were still there, occupying their sections of Oklahoma soil, but Elliot suspected that, like plastic replicas in a kid’s playhouse, they were empty. On Bagwell Street, just down from the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Elliot stood in a lifeless vacuum that, seconds earlier, had been an ordinary town.

A scream, not unlike the unnerving sound Elliot had heard the night he’d last seen Gerald, cut through the air.

Elliot scanned the area, his gaze fixing on the church.

Father Williams had come outside onto the lawn that ran beside the church. The priest stumbled and dropped to his knees.

Elliot grabbed his phone and punched in 911 as he ran to Father Williams.

Blood striped the left side of his face while a similar wound ran across his chest, his shirt shredded in a matching pattern. His eyes begged for Elliot to come closer so he could speak.

Elliot lowered himself to the priest’s side to hear the words he was forming.

* * *

About an hour later, Bill Ludlow, Poteau’s Chief of Police, crossed the room and poured himself a cup of coffee. “Tell me again why you were at the church.”

“Come on,” Elliot said, “you’ve been around law enforcement long enough to know I didn’t carry out the attack. There’s no blood on my clothes. I don’t have a weapon which could have inflicted that kind of damage. Anyway, all you have to do is ask Father Williams.”

“Yeah, well I’m way ahead of you. By the way, what was he saying to you when we arrived?”

“He kept repeating the name of Father Reynolds.”

“That mean anything to you?”

“It ties in with an unofficial case I’ve been working. Father Reynolds used to be a priest here in Poteau.”

Chief Ludlow’s face showed interest. “Is that right? Well, where is he now?”

“The way I understand it, he disappeared in 1935.”

“Are you trying to play me for a fool, Elliot?”

“The thought never entered my mind.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. What’s a Tulsa police detective got to do with all this?”

Elliot briefly explained what had brought him to Poteau, leaning it more toward a missing friend rather than murder. It just seemed like the thing to do.

Chief Ludlow went behind his desk and lowered himself into his chair. “Let me ask you something. Coming from a place like Tulsa, you’ve probably seen it all, not much left that might surprise you. What’s your take on this?”

Elliot considered his answer. He didn’t want to be misleading, but he didn’t want to be led into a trap either. “With your being from the country, you should have more experience with animal attacks than I would.”

“You sound pretty convinced that’s what it was.”

“What else could it be?”

“Maybe you’re right. But you said you didn’t see or hear anything.”

“I heard Father Williams’ scream.”

“What kind of animal do you think could do that,” Ludlow asked, “inflict that kind of damage yet come and go without being seen?”

“I don’t know.”

Chief Ludlow rubbed his forehead. “Word travels fast in a place like this. I know what kind of questions you’ve been asking around town. I’ve lived here long enough to have heard the stories. I don’t want folks getting all stirred up over some hoodoo nonsense associated with the mounds.”

“That was never my intention.”

Ludlow’s flat, grey eyes studied Elliot. “What are your intentions? My instincts tell me there’s more to this than a missing friend.”

Elliot stared back at Ludlow. For rumors to have been powerful enough to last all these years, one had to wonder if any substance was behind them. “What about Father Williams?” he asked. “What was his
take
on what happened?”

Ludlow’s face remained flat, unreadable. “That’s all I have for now, Detective. But don’t go getting any ideas about questioning Father Williams. I’ve posted a guard.”

“I won’t bother him,” Elliot said. “I hope he recovers quickly.”

As Elliot walked out of Ludlow’s office, he wondered what, exactly, had happened after the miners removed the obsidian knife from the mounds, and what kind of archives the town newspaper might keep.

When Elliot found the office of the
Poteau Daily News
, the lights were on and a car was parked in front, so he pushed through the door and stepped inside.

A man came through a door near the back of the office, wiping his hands on a rag he’d pulled from his pocket. “Langley Peterson,” he said. “Make it quick. I’ve got work to do.”

A shock of silver hair protruded from beneath Peterson’s folded, paper hat. He’d walked in a stooped manner and remained slightly bent as he stood waiting.

Elliot decided to get right to the point. “What can you tell me about the summer of 1935?”

“That’s a pretty broad subject.”

“Let me narrow it down,” Elliot said. “I’m looking for information about Stanley Gerald Reynolds, better known as Father Reynolds.”

The newspaper man’s jaw tightened, wrinkles creased his forehead. “You don’t strike me as the kind who would walk in off the street, thinking he might get lucky. What makes you think I might know anything about something that happened so long ago?”

“Who says anything happened, out of the ordinary I mean? Maybe I’m just a guy on a genealogical quest, or a curious history buff.”

Peterson ambled over to an office chair and lowered himself into it. “I heard about Father Williams. You know what they say about small towns. You’re a cop from Tulsa. So cut the crap and tell me why you’re here.”

Elliot gave the newspaper man a brief and guarded run-down of what had brought him to town.

Langley Peterson stroked his chin. “I was just a kid at the time, and knowing that what’s in my head was filtered through the mind of a child has been a blessing, a sort of buffer between the lie of reality and the truth of fiction, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

A hint of suspicion flickered in the Peterson’s eyes. “You’re not one of those tabloid writers, are you?”

“Don’t worry,” Elliot said. “You had it right the first time. Name’s Elliot. I’m a detective.”

“I shouldn’t know much about it, mind you. Good folk wouldn’t talk nonsense in front of the kids in those days, had to put them to bed first. I learned to feign sleep and keep a sharp ear open. Most of it was just
when’s it going to rain
and
how are we going to pay the bills
. Not much interest to a six year old. But it was the occasional verbal wondering of
why is this happening to us
, and
maybe there is something to what folks have been saying about the world coming to an end
that got my attention.”

“They say most rumors have an element of truth behind them,” Elliot said.

Peterson leveled his gaze. “You’re right, Detective. There was something going on all right. People started disappearing, whole families mind you. I was terrified. My folks would have croaked if they knew I was listening.”

“We’re talking about the middle of the Depression,” Elliot said, “and the Dust Bowl. People were doing that weren’t they, packing up and leaving their homes, going out of state?”

“That was the Sheriff’s explanation. The paper went along with him. And yeah, plenty of folks got their fill of it and moved on, but they’d talk about it first, tell somebody what they were planning. They didn’t just disappear during the night, leaving everything behind, including supper on the table. There was talk they’d found the Johnston family, buried in the floor of their barn.”

A disturbing thought snaked through Elliot’s head. Serial killings had patterns and this series was no exception, even though the murders spanned a time period of nearly eighty years, with victims chosen from the ranks of the homeless in Tulsa, a band of wanderers in Stillwater, and down-and-out Depression era families in and around Spiro. “When did this happen?” he asked.

Peterson stroked his chin. “I reckon it was right around the time the Pocola Mining Company busted into the King’s chamber, out at the mounds. The diggers said they heard a hissing sound when they breached the tomb walls and not long after a musty odor seeped out of the ground. The air rushing in to fill a 700 year old vacuum was what they said, and maybe that’s what it was, but I figure something more than a bad smell came out of the ground that day.”

Elliot leaned back in his chair. Neither Peterson’s expression nor his body language indicated deception. “What about Father Reynolds? How does he fit in with this?”

“There was talk maybe the young priest had gone mad, and that maybe he had something to do with the disappearing people. Some said he wasn’t a normal man at all, but had the ability to change into some sort of animal, a big cat.”

“What do you think?” Elliot asked.

Peterson hands began to tremble. “When those miners dug into the tomb, they released some kind of curse. And I’m not the only one who believes that.”

Elliot pulled out one of his business cards and gave it to Peterson. “I should be going. I’d like to talk more about this, but it’s getting late.”

“You don’t know me, Detective, but folks around here will tell you I’m a rational, conservative, church-going man.”

“There’s no need to justify yourself,” Elliot said. “I understand, and I appreciate your input.”

“There’s something else I need to tell you.”

“Go on,” Elliot said.

“My uncle on my mom’s side, Charles McDugan, who lived down the street from us, he was one of those miners.”

“He worked for the Pocola Mining Company?”

“That’s what I’m saying. Uncle Charlie, he had always been a kind and generous sort, but he turned mean, wouldn’t come out of the house or let anybody in.”

“Do you think he had something to do with the disappearances?”

“I don’t know, but I overheard Mama saying Charlie had found something out at the mounds, something he didn’t tell the other miners about. A few weeks later, Mama found him out back in a shed. He’d wrapped a length of baling wire around his neck and hung himself.”

A vision of Detective Ryan hanging from the ceiling of his cabin formed in Elliot’s mind.

“I saw a priest,” Peterson continued, “over at Uncle Charlie’s place a day or two before that. I suspect it was Father Reynolds. Not long after that, people stopped disappearing. I don’t know why.”

Elliot’s stomach tightened. The man in the photograph Doctor McKenzie had shown him, standing behind the table that held the obsidian knife, must have been Charles McDugan. “Thank you, Mr. Peterson. You’ve been most helpful.”

Elliot walked out and as he climbed into the truck, he thought about the fearful look that’d shown on Peterson’s face when he’d brought up the subject of the Spiro Mounds.

Elliot pulled his phone and punched in Carmen’s number. She answered on the third ring.

“It’s good to hear your voice,” she said. “Is everything all right?”

“Sure,” Elliot said. But he was hiding the truth, and he suspected Carmen could tell. He scanned the dark streets but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “How’s Wayne?”