The dead person must undergo certain ordeals that
concern his own destiny . . . he must also be recognized
by the community of the dead and be accepted among them.
   —Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane

THE IRON taste of blood was pungent in the closed air of the public bathroom. Matt helped Jerry set up his camera equipment in front of the line of stalls. It was as if they were waiting for someone to emerge.

Matt had washed himself off as best he could. His head was clear now as he opened the stall doors, taping them back so that the camera would have a clear line of sight.

It was after he’d been working for a half hour that he realized he’d left the other deputy sitting in the hallway without instructions. Instead of busywork, he should be telling other people what to do. He wasn’t used to being in charge.

He handed Jerry the camera tripod. “Start taking pictures,” he said. “I’ve got work.”

Outside the bathroom, he saw that the deputy sitting in the hall was Dustin Hartman. Hartman’s eyes were red and swollen, his face streaked with tear tracks.

As Matt approached, Hartman spoke. “Valerie Herrick said wait for the officer in charge . . .” His voice began to shake. Matt looked at him, waiting for him to get a handle on himself. “Do you know who that is, because I’m just—”

“That’s me,” said Matt. “And don’t look so damn surprised, Dusty. So you left all this hanging so I could take care of it? And you’re taking orders from Valerie Herrick? Have the Herricks been blabbing to the media? I heard—”

“No, no—Valerie said . . . she said . . . I mean . . .” The deputy trembled around the mouth again. “I know the guy, the guy who’s dead. How can Father Arlen be dead?”

“I hear you.” Matt put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been here awhile, right?”

Hartman nodded. “Too damn long. First deputy to get here after Lieutenant White. And the lieutenant is over on the other side of the Resort now, checking on witnesses.”

Matt opened his mouth to ask why Lieutenant White hadn’t been put in charge of the scene, and then it came to him. Russ White was married to the owner of the Resort. Matt was surprised though that Sheriff Merrill had recognized the clear conflict of interest—Merrill wasn’t known for such distinctions.

Hartman was still talking. “We’ve been holding the fort down, waiting for you to show up. What took you so long?”

Matt ignored his question. “Look, I want you to hold yourself down right now, pull yourself together. That’s your job right now, you hear me?”

Hartman shook his head. “Hell, this is all wrong. He was our priest, Matt!” Some of the spit on the deputy’s lips spun out toward Matt. “A fuckin’ man of God!”

Matt glanced at the security guard sitting shell-shocked in the hallway. “Get a grip on yourself,” he said quietly to Hartman.

He’d give the man a job, that would calm him down.

“Go tell Valerie Herrick—if she’s still here—or the night manager, whoever it is, that we need a ground-level hotel room. Need it all night.”

The deputy gathered himself. “Sure thing, Lieutenant, but I think they’re sold out.”

“Well, get me a storage closet with a phone—anything,” said Matt. “Check in with the backup lieutenant—let Russ White know where they put us. We’ve got to interview the staff before they leave for the night. And get some of those deputies to rotate in here, I need someone who can hold himself together. Hell, just go find Lieutenant White, okay?”

Hartman nodded again, his jaw quivering. He swallowed hard.

Matt put a hand on the deputy’s arm. “There’s more to do here. A lot more. And I need you focused, on target. You’ll be okay, just shake it off.”

Dustin shook off his arm angrily, and Matt saw that Hartman was embarrassed now, he was enraged by Matt’s attention.

Hartman turned and moved past him, barging blindly down the hallway. The young man would not forgive him for seeing his weakness. Matt shook his head wearily. In the silence, he could hear the subdued click of Jerry’s camera, the whirr of the advancing film. The security guard spoke to Jerry then, his voice echoing in the hallway.

“You know there’s bodies in there, kid.”

Matt looked down at the older man and saw that his hands were still shak ing. His voice had a thin, hoarse edge.

“People got cut up.”

“I know,” said Jerry. But Matt couldn’t catch his eye quick enough to stop him talking about what he’d seen. “There’s not as much blood as I’d expect for a dismembered body. From what I can see, the stalls are pretty banged up, and there are slide marks there on the floor in the blood. Found a shoe print in the corner, untouched, not the deceased’s. Got a good shot.”

“Those must be my shoes there. I slid on the floor. Got myself red all over,” said the security guard. “Goddamn me . . .”

Matt was making a list of deputies when he heard a voice he recognized. Russell White. Matt shook Russ’s hand with a sense of relief. “So you got the staff covered? Hartman told me you were talking to witnesses?”

Russ shook his head. “Jesus, Matty, do I need to hold your hand on all these things? You took forever to get here. And now the word is, you can’t hold your dinner, you pansy-ass little—”

“Save the insults for your mother.” Matt laughed. “At least I got you to clean up my messes. Until you retire, eh?”

Russ grinned wearily. “Look, I just wish you could have spared me this one. I got plans for the future. I don’t need this on my mind.” He sighed and straightened his shoulders. “But hey, you need help, I’m your man. I think we’ve already found some folks who might have seen the perp. I’m starting with the staff—you need the staff interviews completed, right?”

Matt nodded.

“No problem. I’m all over it,” said Russ. “And we already have the artist working on a composite. I got a description from the staff here at the resort, and some guy at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy says he saw a guy wearing those clothes.”

“All right—sounds like things are moving along. Need anything else?”

“Well, Nancy Ferreday is helping me do the interviews, so that’ll be quick and easy.” Nancy was a psychologist employed on criminal cases by the county.

Russ grinned and pointed toward Jerry, who was still snapping pictures of the floor. “We left the bathroom for you to examine, of course. You and the CA from Spokane—some young guy named Storgen—you guys will cover the dirty work for us.”

“Thanks a lot!” Matt held out a pair of gloves. “Here—take a look with me?”

Russ waved off the gloves, laughing. “No way, not before the election!”

“Yeah, like you’ll win anything. Andy’s never lost before.”

“Screw the fat guy—I’m gunning for him in January.”

Matt looked quizzically at Russ. “Hell, I never took you seriously about that.” Andy Merrill had been in the office so long that for most people, Merrill and the office of sheriff had become synonymous. In the summer, the Spokane papers had exposed a kickback scheme, and afterward the County Commissioners had censured Sheriff Merrill and mandated a special election for January. But no one had prohibited Andy Merrill from running for his office again.

But then Russ grinned and asked the same question.

“Whattaya think—seriously—do I have a chance against Merrill?”

“Snowball’s chance in hell,” said Matt. “Nobody’ll ever beat Andy for sheriff.”

“You never know.” Russell smiled and clapped a hand on Matt’s shoulder.

Then the grin slipped off his face. “Jesus, Matty, this is wrong from one end to the other. What did we do to get stuck with Father Arlen’s death? What did I do?”

Matt grimaced in reply. “I hear you—this is the last thing I need in my life right now. I told Merrill a few months ago I needed a lighter load, what with Pop’s health problems and all. I can’t work fifty to sixty hours a week right now.”

Russ glanced at his notes again. “Last thing I need is a time of death. Do you have that yet? Nancy and I need to pin these people down as to when and if they heard anything. If there was just this one guy involved, or if more than one person did this. Bathroom gets banged up like this, someone has to have heard something.”

Matt shook his head. “I wish I had that for you. But things are a bit confused with the body—you might have to wait for the Spokane coroner’s office to fig ure that one out.”

“Sounds like this is going to depend a lot on what the Spokane techs tell us. But I gotta tell you, so far this looks just like the Metaline Falls thing. Same guy might have stopped by Coeur d’Alene. The FBI thinks they’re tracking a serial killer over there.”

“They would.” Matt shrugged. “I’m gonna sort this out a bit before I go with that.”

“Hey, it’s your ballgame,” said Russell. “Just keep in mind you’ll have to tell those damn reporters something. They’ll be asking about that. You saw them—even the TV stations from Spokane are here.”

If Merrill showed up, he’d want to have a statement ready to read. He liked to press the flesh and be seen on television. And he liked to have all the answers in front of him before he spoke. So there was that to do as well.

The bathroom was crowded. Jerry took pictures and the coroner’s technician measured dents and splashes of blackened stains on the walls. Matt was dusting the bathroom door handle with ninhydrin powder.

Each print emerged as a round spiral, seeming to rise up from the depths of the metal. Matt thought most of the prints were Robert Allen Fosworth’s.

He turned his head at the sound of a booming voice. Someone was pushing through the barrier of deputies at the entrance, laughing and talking with them as he moved forward.

It was Sheriff Andy Merrill, finally arriving at the scene. When he got down the hallway, the sheriff squatted down in the hallway beside Matt. His breath puffed out, the fingerprint dust steaming off the handle in a miniature black cloud.

“So, you got the guy in custody yet?” said Merrill. He looked at his watch. “I’ve left you here for—what?—three hours. You must have got the case wrapped up by now!”

Matt reached down with the fingerprint brush. The handle was done. He began dusting the area of the door just above the latch—often hands grasped this part of a door to swing it open. He did not answer.

“So,” said Merrill. “When are the Feds due to come in? I figured I’d show up just in time to meet them.”

“Actually,” said Matt. “I haven’t called them.”

“Whoa, what the fuck’re you playing at? I mean, deputy called in, said the lead on the case is losing his lunch here, what’s that about?” said Merrill. “And you haven’t called the FBI yet? Russell said we got a serial case here. Murder, dismemberment.”

“Yeah, I can see that, Andy, but . . . ,” Matt looked up at Merrill, and the piggish glee in his face. It made him angry, gave him some sort of unlooked-for resolve.

“Look, I think I can handle this case on my own,” Matt said. “I’m fine now. I can do this thing.”

“Well, that’s good to hear, at least. Maybe something good will come out of this after all. I could use a breaking case with the media.” Merrill put his head back in the bathroom. “Jeezus, lots of picture rolls. How many pictures Jerry taken so far? Any of ’em useful?”

“I don’t know. I figure we’ll process them, and work out which ones might actually help our case. We’ll need the scene kept closed for a while of course.”

“I see,” said Merrill. He stood heavily. “So, anything I should know?”

Matt stopped dusting “No, not much. I’ve got competent guys here. Except for—”

Merrill guffawed. “Hey, I’m real sorry about Russell, but that’s not my fault. Valerie Herrick twisted my nuts on that one—made me promise to have him on the scene.”

“No,” said Matt. “Russ White is not the guy I’m complaining about.”

“What?” Merrill squinted at him, as if unable to see clearly. “You aren’t pissed about Valerie Herrick pulling her favorite lieutenant into this mess? That’s a major conflict of interest. Matty, you can be honest—”

“I don’t care about Russ,” said Matt. “Don’t misunderstand. That’s not the guy I’m thinking of—Russ is all right. He’s the best right-hand man you could have found.”

Merrill guffawed and lifted his weight from the doorframe. “Look, Matty, even though you helped him get off on a technicality, you and I both know that Russ screwed—”

“Dammit, Andy!” Matt angrily stripped the rubber gloves from his hands. “Russ didn’t know she was underage. He’s a damn good officer. Get some perspective, would you? We’ve got Arlen dead, and you’re still worried about politics? About Russ?”

Merrill held up a hand. “Hey, knock it back a notch, Matty—I mean, yeah, just between you and me and the shithouse, I’m always worried about the fuckin’ politics. And I’m going to ask you to make sure that Russ doesn’t do the press tonight. You can do—”

“Why should I exclude him from that?”

Merrill sighed. “To tell the truth, Matty, it’ll look way the hell too presidential just as the filing deadline for sheriff comes up.”

Matt threw his gloves angrily in the trash. “See, what did I tell—”

“Hell, Matty, listen—there’s another side to it too. I’m not doing my job tonight if I don’t worry about the potential conflict of interest. He’s married to Valerie, after all.”

Matt turned back and glared at him suddenly. “Andy, don’t worry your pretty little head, okay? I’ll do the damn press conference. How about you worry about the politics and the conflicts of interest, and I’ll get the real work done, okay?”

Matt did not wait for a reply. He moved back into the depths of the blood-streaked bathroom and lifted the radio from his belt. He needed two more deputies: one to cover the hallway, and another to finish the fingerprint work.

Russell White looked dirty. His sleeves were pushed up, brown rings around his wrists above the plastic gloves. And he had coffee cupped in his hands, the white Styrofoam smudged with streaks of rusty residue. The steam rose into his face.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’m here because Val is paying me back.”

“For what?”

Russ glanced over at the Spokane coroner’s assistant working in the same room, a man named Rick Storgen who was studiously ignoring them both. Storgen and one of his technicians were examining the scene. Already they had laid the body out on clear plastic, the pieces on two stretchers.

Russ pointed down at his crotch. “You know,” he said. “I been letting the little head make decisions again. Gets me in the doghouse . . .”

Matt shook his head, a great fatigue coming over him. Some things never changed. He glanced away from Russ, he looked down at the stretchers on the floor.

The body lying there seemed oddly unreal. The flesh was wrapped in plastic to keep fluids from draining on the floor, and in the uncertain light, the pieces seemed to have fallen apart accidentally. The flesh was swollen and pale all around the broken edges.

Russ took off his gloves, stripping them wearily from each of his fingers. Russ’s hands caught Matt’s eye. The nails were rimmed with a dark residue, the spirals on his fingers filled with the brown rust from the body. “Jesus,” Matt said. “You’re covered in the stuff—we should have been more careful about the crime scene.”

Russ shrugged. “Just part of the job, right? Cleaning up messes—it’s what we signed up for. There’s no being careful about it. No one’s gonna live forever, you know.”

“Gentlemen?” said Storgen, “Sorry to interrupt—but I think my team might have some preliminary data, and I thought, considering, that you—”

“Yeah, go ahead,” said Matt. He glanced at Russ, who nodded and lifted his coffee for another sip. The steam fogged his glasses as the coroner’s assistant spoke.

“All right.” Storgen held an unlit cigarette that twitched almost imperceptibly. He might have been holding a tool, working it with his fingers. “Body temperature says that time of death was between six and seven. That’s inaccurate, of course, because the cavity was opened.”

“What do you mean by that?” said Russ.

“I mean that there may have been a long interval of time—as long as a day, potentially—between the time of death and the body being dismembered.”

Storgen plucked at the edge of the plastic, pulling it tighter around the torso. Detached from the neck, Arlen Bowman’s head was turned to the side, as if he were turning to get up.

“Earlier, you said his throat was cut? Are you sure that was the cause of death?” Matt looked up from the broken neckline. He looked at the dull blue eyes on the stretcher. The eyelids hadn’t closed all the way. Water was beaded on the dead cheeks and brow, as if it had sweated through the skin.

Storgen hesitated as he spoke. “Reasonably sure—it’s hard to tell with all the trauma of the dismemberment. But I can tell you one thing—his throat wasn’t cut here. We don’t have enough fluids for a jugular spill here, even though the body was obviously chopped up in the bathroom.” Storgen pointed at the deep gouges in the sides of the stalls, the cracked tiles on the floor.

“What else happened to him? Anything before the throat?”

“Oh yes, there was a lot that happened before the blood loss. The skin was cut in all sorts of places, and burned. But you can’t see it, unless you take the clothes off.”

“But that might not have been the same person—the same time at least— doing the killing and the dismemberment?” asked Matt.

Russ laughed. “I don’t know how you come up with this stuff, Matty!”

Storgen shrugged. “We don’t know. I can tell you that it was all carefully done. If you look at the face and the wrists—the skin on the ankles, under the socks too, the socks and shoes were replaced afterward—you’ll see here this sticky white residue. The skin is slightly abraded in the same places.” Storgen pointed to the flesh just below the palms, and around the lips, where it was bruised and dotted with tiny spots of blood.

Matt swallowed thickly and rubbed his hands together to feel the skin move, waxy and smooth, the hair paper thin against his fingertips.

“He was taped very tightly with duct tape to keep him from moving or crying out,” continued Storgen. “This kind of tape doesn’t come off very easily. That’s why the soft flesh is swollen, broken around the mouth. See, the perp ripped it off after.”

Rick Storgen held the pale leg on the stretcher. Using a pair of tweezers, he pulled the man’s sock carefully down. “There’s something interesting here though. Here and there, on the places where the duct tape stuck, there are some tiny bits of foliage.”

Matt pointed at the leg. “Leaves?”

“Pine needles,” replied Storgen. “I’d have the coroner’s office in Spokane analyze them to be sure, but it looks like white pine to me.”

“So somewhere outside the building.”

Storgen rubbed the stubble on his jaw and grimaced. “Yeah, most probably. But this is kind of tricky. The cut throat and the lack of the rest of the blood—it’s odd. The degree of turpitude in the flesh says that it happened after death, a few hours at least. Doesn’t make sense.”

“Huh—maybe he was killed elsewhere, and then just chopped up here?” said Matt.

Russ guffawed unexpectedly. “That’s an odd idea. Why would anyone do that?”

“No, not so odd,” said Storgen. “That idea might fit—perhaps the perpetrator transported him. Perhaps more than one person was involved. And if you’re considering that possibility, maybe Reverend Bowman could have died hours ago, even a day or two ago. The body could have been preserved somehow?” Storgen considered, rubbing his jaw.

Matt caught Russ’s eye. “So maybe you can tell the resort people—hell, just tell Val—that the chaplain probably didn’t die here. That’ll be a relief, at least.”

Russ gave a weak grin. “Yeah, that would be something my wife would be happy to hear. I might get back in the sack, just for passing that on.”

Storgen looked at Russ and nervously flicked some nonexistent ash off his cigarette. “Anyway, gentlemen, I think we’re done here. After the photographer finishes, you can transfer the body to the morgue.” Then Storgen turned to Matt.

“I’ll send you my report on Monday.” He turned and left the room.

Jerry pulled the plastic aside and took two more pictures of the face. The features of the dead man flashed hot white and then dropped into gray again. The image stayed with Matt, but he saw it in a different context: the eyes closed, the man standing in a briefing room in front of the deputies, the lips moving slowly, hands folded. Something in the photographic light made the face appear surprised, awakened. He remembered Arlen alongside him as they met with a family that had lost their mother in a fire. He saw the same face reflected in his rearview mirror, sitting in the backseat of a patrol car on its way to the annual sheriff’s barbecue. He thought of the chaplain talking to his son that time Matt found the pot in his son’s room.

And he remembered the last time he’d seen Arlen alive. They’d sat together for hours in Albi’s Bar and Grill, Matt doing most of the talking. Now a lot of that evening was black to him—whiskey had a way of wiping the time clean. He didn’t even remember leaving the place. Vaguely though, he could remember Arlen’s face early in the night, nodding in sympathy. Anyone else, he wouldn’t have shared half as much. The man had a way of listening that kept you calm, told you things would be all right. Matt could see him again, smiling, his blue eyes flashing with humor and good will. Arlen.

The face flashed in relief, and faded away again.

A resinous darkness had seeped into the corners of the room. Traces of the black ninhydrin dust, for fingerprinting, still glinted on the handles and doorjambs. He’d been here for six hours, it was almost morning. Russ had left some time ago, along with most of the rest of the shift. Soon the day-shift deputies would arrive and lock down the scene.

Matt pulled on another pair of latex gloves with a snap, and felt for his notebook and flashlight. When he turned the flashlight on, the room seemed to expand into shadow. Under the uneven light, the flat floor seemed concave, curving up to fill the edges with darkness.

Over the intervening hours, he felt as if things had settled into themselves, congealing so that anything that could have been revealed was hidden under the weight of the real. There was only what had always been there. The door, the stalls, the toilets, the tile floor, the faux-marble counter. He shone his flashlight against the walls, the stall doors, the toilets, the tiled floor. The shape of the sinks seemed different. They swelled out at him, the only purely white things in an uneven gloom.

He played his light over the splashed brown drops on the wall, and the taped notations that surrounded the gouges in the walls, the penciled lines around the splash trajectories, showing where the drops had come from. He moved his faint light into the corners of the room. Nothing waited there. They were empty, bare and deserted.

At just after six in the morning, Matt pulled in his driveway and parked beside Sall’s Jeep on the verge of the grass. A book had been left in the car. He picked it up. There was no cover, the first page had the title: Hanging Woman Creek, it said. Louis L’Amour. A page was dog-eared where Jerry Kelberg had stopped reading.

When he opened the door to the bedroom he could see Sall’s shape flung out across the bed. After the fight about Doug, Sall and he hadn’t talked for two days. He’d tried not to come home until he had something to say. But he’d never come up with anything.

In the bed, Matt could see the thin blue veins on the insides of her thighs. In the spill of the light a faint pulse moved under her skin. He felt a sudden tenderness. Then an instant later came his memory of the blood in that bathroom, the pieces they had placed on two stretchers.

Matt paused beside the bed. Then he went back to the front door and locked it.

When he came back to the bedroom, he could see Sall’s nursing outfit was piled in a rumpled mass against the far wall. He placed his uniform atop it, and pulled the bedsheet down gently, so that her thighs were covered, and turned off the light.

SEPTEMBER 1988

THE GIRL was small enough that she could stand in a wheat field, when the stalks hadn’t yet reached three parts of the way toward their full height, and be lost in them, her pale hair blending in with the yellow of the fields.

Looking out from the bluff, the girl could see the faint edge of the Palouse Country—it was all fields there, like the dry rustling of the wheat behind her. From Five Mile Prairie, the whole of the Spokane Valley was spread out below her. She could see the river that ran like silver twine through the valley and the buildings, toylike far below. She could feel the wind on her skin.

From where the girl stood, the houses near the Prairie bluff were scattered, like so many blocks. The hills on the other side of the valley were covered by the shadow of a cloud. Her hair drifted and waved in the slight breeze that always came over Five Mile Prairie in the morning. She pushed her hair away from her eyes and squinted. The strands flipped back into her face and one caught in her mouth.

Absently, she wound the strand of hair around her fingers and began to suck on the points, pushing them together with her tongue into one sodden clump.

She closed her eyes and saw her father turn away from her again, held tightly by the man with the dirty ink all over his skin, a blue-black smear. The dragons glared at her as they twisted on his skin. Her daddy was going away forever.

The wind struck the wheat field behind the girl, and the rushing sound of it filled the air, gusts moving across that bright ocean of wheat. The girl closed her eyes. The air struck her a moment later, the wave washing over her, covering her skin with a fine sheen of dust, swirling past her and rattling the scarecrow cans that hung between the house and the garden, slapping the screen door, brushing the windows with bits of grit. She choked on the chaff in her mouth. When she could breathe again, she opened her eyes.

Her dress was covered in the small things left behind by the wind. All over her arms and legs were tiny bits of dead wheat husk, it seemed like a million bugs had landed on her skin. The gust of wind died out in dust devils that whirled across the yard and disappeared among the weeds.

When the man in the uniform came to the house, the girl looked up. At first, she had thought his car was her mother returning. Now that she knew he was in the house alone with her grandmother, she was nervous. Every time someone came to the house, her grandmother was angry with her afterward. She never said why.

The girl let the water from the hose run wild, swirling around each of the stalks and pebbles. Looking down at the running water, she remembered the lake, she heard again the feverish dream of voices all around her.

“You aren’t fuckin’ with me, are you? Everyone fucks with me.”

A hissing voice: “Goddammit—shoot the bastard! Scary motherfucker!”

A groan in her ear: “I got a knife. Big-ass pigsticker.”

But her father’s voice always echoed in her head: “God will be with me. Anyone can be redeemed.”

Then there was the silence of the interior of the other car, the single light glaring at her from the dashboard. The other voice with her, whispering over and over, “I’m your daddy now. I’ll take care of you. Just don’t worry about him anymore.”

“Close your eyes.” She pushed her fists into her eyes until there was only a red darkness inside her head. “Close your eyes, your daddy will be right here.” The darkness pulsed back at her. “Close your eyes.”