H

  • HA: Elroy arrived back at the Temple where Dory had been waiting. When Earl Warner saw them he said, “I’m making Sundays and Wednesday mornings White Wing only. If that inconveniences the Tontos then so much the worse for you.” “That’s a pretty big change, sir. You should run that by the Apostle.” “The Apostle has no objection, boy. It only remains to be written down in black and white.” Dory took the hint and started walking out, her brother following. “Not you, boy. You need to stay.” “I’ll pick you up at five, Elroy.” When Dory was out of earshot Earl said, “Where’s the Killing Artifact?” “It’s back in the Temple storeroom where you saw it, sir. I thought you might change your mind about that poor dead lady.” “You need to show it to me again.” So they went back to the same gray metal locker, but this time Alfred Shoenherr tagged along with a cardboard box in his arms. When Warner saw the Windgate again he said, “Maybe you just sawed off a rod in metal shop and painted it black.”
  • HB: “Please touch the staff, sir, it’s cold as the jars for my mother’s scrolls. Only Ayat could make something like this. That’s why momma says it’s a Class One artifact.” “Give it to me, boy.” Shoenherr set down the cardboard box he was carrying. Warner touched the end of the staff to the box but nothing happened, even after he flipped it around and tried the other side. “How does it work, boy?” “Ayat and Davar work it together. All we need to do is point it. That’s the whole purpose of the Last Rite, sir, didn’t you know? We come together in a time of sorrow and see visible proof God is still active and present with us.” “Prove it, boy. Get rid of this box.” “What’s inside, sir?” “Never mind what’s in the box! Just make it disappear using your alleged Class One artifact!” Warner and Shoenherr were startled by the sudden noise as Elroy lapped the box into nothingness. “Take heart, Alfred. You see how God Himself smiles upon our endeavor!” Havilah lay under packed snow that first fell in November of ’42. But it was a dry cold and the paved roads in town had long been clear. Remiel’s body was found by a man in his eighties named Mahkah.
  • HC: He was older than the town itself, a young boy of the People when Takoda became Chief, but still in good health. Doctor Wahkan saw to that. The largest animal Mahkah ever killed was a coyote baited with a live hare. Mahkah almost missed the girl, whose body dangled at a roadside attraction that had always bored him. On maps three American states came together, but even when there was no snow, Mahkah never saw any lines. What caught his eye was how the girl’s head and arms drooped back, and how her feet didn’t touch the ground, as though she were floating, nailed to an invisible cross. Mahkah parked at the tri-state monument, which was fenced like a crude horse corral. Two sets of tire tracks lay in the snow and footprints made a tangled net near the girl. Mahkah tried to be careful in his approach to leave the site clean for the sheriff. But already he could see no movement of the girl’s chest and no condensation from her mouth. The dead girl was too pale to be Kuwapi, or even of the Haivri clan.
  • HD: Old Mahkah had never heard tale of Elyonim among the whites. The Indian chafed with frustration when he could not do the simple kindness of closing the girl’s frozen green eyes staring out upon eternity. But now he recognized she was one of Erik Zinter’s foster children and he wept. He knew the long, unhappy union of the Red Wing and the White Wing of the Root of Jesse Fellowship was finished. Mahkah left the little fenced-off area, and an hour later returned with Sheriff Roy Sternbach and two deputies. The sheriff told Deputy Bill Holsinger to begin snapping pictures while Deputy Bob Lurz followed Sternbach with a notepad, taking down his running commentary. Roy noted there were three sets of tire treads and three sets of boot prints. The first order of business was to identify which prints belonged to Mahkah. Bill said, “I need to steal your sole with my camera, Chief, so lay it out there.” Mahkah winced at the terrible pun and lifted one foot as best he could.
  • HE: Bill got a photo of the bottom of each boot to make sure they could tell his footprints from that of the perpetrator. Then Bill methodically photographed his way to the girl’s body. Roy noted most of the spilled blood was some distance away from the marker, near one of the truck tread marks. There was a long indentation in the snow between the explosion of blood and the body. Sternbach guessed the girl was already dead when she was skidded over there. When the sheriff and his deputies finished documenting the murder scene, they all pitched in to lift Remiel free of the sign supporting her and set her down on a foldaway stretcher. Sternbach shouted an oath when he read the plaque the body was covering. He realized they were at the exact place some surveyor decided the corners of two states ran flush against the border of a third. When the sheriff and his deputies finished documenting the scene, they all pitched in to lift Remiel free of the survey marker and set her down on a foldaway stretcher.
  • HF: Sternbach shouted an oath when he read the plaque the body had been covering. He realized they were at the exact place some surveyor decided the corners of two states ran flush against the border of a third. At a stroke that made the case Federal. Perhaps that was what the killers intended. They walked the body out, pausing a moment for Mahkah to get another close look. He said, “This is the adopted daughter of the late Erik Zinter and his wife Clara. Her name was Remiel.” Mahkah put his fingers on her face long enough to melt her eyelids so he could close them. His look dared the sheriff to rebuke him for tampering with evidence. Deputy Bill said, “This is Remiel Zinter, sure enough. She played piano and organ at Temple. Oh boy, could she play.” Sheriff Roy opened the glove box of his truck and returned with a manila envelope containing a photo, comparing it to the dead girl’s face. “This was the local girl the FBI fellows said they were looking for.” “
  • HG: So this was never going to be our case,” said Deputy Bob, “even if she wasn’t dead and spread out over three different states.” And Bill added, “Sheriff, you know damn well those G-Men are about to come in here sniggering about our two-bit operation in this dead-end town.” Roy said, “Okay boys, if they want to take over our case let’s deliver it to ’em already solved. Maybe it won’t send ’em packing right away but at least it’ll shut ’em the hell up. Bob, go back to the marker and start walking around it in a spiral that grows four feet wider on every turn. Try to find the murder weapon. It looks to me like a big knife.” Bill helped the sheriff load Remiel’s body into the canopy of the department’s 1940 Dodge half-ton truck. On the way back to town Roy said, “I just can’t win, Bill. Half the men in Havilah are off killing the enemy. Things were getting quiet here, then the Bureau set up shop all summer. Now I have my first homicide.” They passed through the Aubry National Glasslands north of town.
  • HH: The FBI had a small trailer there, but Sheriff Roy saw there were no lights on. No smoke came from their wood stove. Bill tapped the manila envelope on the dash of the truck. “That girl was in federal custody somewhere for half of last year, but somehow she escaped and made the FBI look incompetent. Hell, they are incompetent. But now we’re tasked to find ’em.” “And they never told us what it was about. Now I suppose they will.” “Sheriff, what do you want me to do after we take her to the hospital?” “Develop the film you shot and file the negatives. Then get back to the scene and help Bob look for the murder weapon. I didn’t see footprints leading away from the marker, so I figure the perpetrators either tossed it or kept it. Take all the time you need. Pick up again tomorrow if need be.” Even with a reduced wartime population of nine hundred souls, Havilah was bigger than anything for a hundred miles around. By rights it should have had at least three physicians, but there was only Dr. Miriam Wahkan.
  • HI: Somehow she did quite well. The whites called her Plenty Practice. No one ever died under her scalpel, but even a local legend like Dr. Wahkan could not bring the dead back to life. “Remiel Zinter. How heartbreaking! And her father Erik was taken from us just last year. I can’t imagine how Clara is going to deal with this.” The sheriff winced, reminded that he must be the one to break the news to her. Dr. Wahkan said, “I have never had the displeasure of carrying out this protocol for you, Sheriff, thank God. For your father, I did it on but three occasions. That alone tells you Havilah is a very good place to live, does it not?” The sheriff nodded. “You identified this girl at a glance.” “ The doctor said, “She was something of a big deal in the Church, as anyone will tell you. A virtuosa on the keys. And very recently she was named the Apostle of the Church, despite her young age. Did you know that?” “No. One of my deputies mentioned something about a family squabble in the Root of Jesse Fellowship.”
  • HJ: She nodded. “There was a big split starting right at the top. I last saw Remiel in April of 1942 when Clara Zinter brought her to me. Her mother used to work right here in the hospital, did you know that?” The sheriff shook his head. “As a general rule I avoid discussing my patients, but this is not a contagious disease, Sheriff Sternbach, no matter what Special Agent in Charge Claude Colson and the quack he has on a leash say it is.” “Disease?” Dr. Wahkan rolled the girl’s body over to display the two stumps of her amputated wings. “We call this the Change. It presents during late puberty. Naturally, her foster mother was alarmed when it first became visible, but Remiel’s general health was sound. These growths are not unknown among the Kuwapi people.” “Then why did it happen to her? She’s so white she looks like she’d get moonburned.” “It’s inherited. Remiel is not the natural offspring of Erik and Clara Zinter, of course. The Change has been present in Havilah from the beginning.
  • HK: “If you accept the Green Book is true history, it goes much wider afield than here.” “I don’t believe the Green Book anymore, Doctor Wahkan, but I suspect you already knew that.” “Sheriff, this case will bring you into collision with the Church’s claims once more, but you won’t be at liberty to dismiss them so easily. Take the wound in Remiel’s chest cavity. It was made with just two strokes of a single blade. The killer went crosswise through the ribs without sawing. Look how cleanly her arteries are cut! I have no need for something like that, but surgeons worldwide would give a pretty for a knife so ridiculously sharp. Really, non-surgeons should never be allowed anywhere near them.” “Can you think of anyone who owns a blade like that, Dr. Wahkan?” “You should talk to Professor Cassiel. If you do, ell her to send someone over to watch the place, because I need to scoot.” “Why are you leaving?” “Clara Zinter was just like you once, Sheriff. She did not believe the stories in the Green Book.
  • HL: “She took Remiel to Lusk for a second opinion, and now our town has these unwelcome outsiders.” “You’re closing up shop because you don’t like out-of-towners?” “I’m not quitting, Sheriff. I can’t quit, actually. I’m responsible for the physical well-being of nine hundred people. But when these outsiders get word of her homicide, they’ll show up and find the body of their missing fugitive ready to be taken apart. And they will. It’s all about the wings, you know. They’re obsessed with them, and also with the internal changes that come with them. You see how the barbarians chopped Remiel’s wings off. If I’m still here when they arrive, they’ll notice I have a similar problem.” The sheriff glanced at the red feathers under Dr. Wahkan’s white lab coat. Naturally he had seen them when he came in but assumed it was just a Kuwapi affectation and said nothing. “Are you afraid they’ll perform a pre-mortem autopsy on you?” “Not at all. But Remiel was held against her will for half of last year.
  • HM: “The Academy has eager beavers in the legal department preparing to drape a civil rights lawsuit around Claude Colson’s neck, but there’s no guarantee they will prevail. Wartime changes things. Why take the risk? So I’m doing nothing but house calls from here on out.” Roy nodded. “I understand, Doctor. I like to think Havilah is a good place too, but the killers deliberately draped Remiel’s body across three states. That sort of thing does not happen in good places.” Dr. Wahkan began recording measurements from six dial thermometers with needle probes she inserted into Remiel’s corpse as though she were a turkey in the oven. “Why do you think the killers made that particular gesture?” she asked him. “After all, Remiel escaped from federal custody. This will only be your case for about five minutes no matter how and where she was found.” He said, “One time my father found a victim just over the state line.
  • HN: “He reported it to DC, and by rights it should have gone to the sheriff over in Lusk. But the Bureau told my pop to handle it.” “Did your father ever solve it?” “No.” “Maybe the killers remember that case. They don’t want the FBI pawning the case down to you. They think that’ll be a dead end so they made it newsworthy. That’s pretty sick, but so was killing Remiel.” “When we found her she was lying on the tri-state marker like this.” He spread his arms out and back. “Like she was crucified.” “Somebody was making a nasty point, Sheriff. Remiel was wedded to Elroy Shybear recently, but their union split the Church. They were cousins but they couldn’t prove it. The killers offered Remiel to God as some sort of blood atonement.” “She was married?” Dr. Wahkan nodded. That started Sheriff Roy on a cascade of free association. Outsiders despised the Root of Jesse Fellowship for many reasons, but mandatory cousin marriage was the biggest. For a time, the Mormons two states over had flirted with polygamy.
  • HO: Roy knew a current of racism ran through the Root of Jesse Fellowship in deep veins, but the custom of consanguineous matrimony kept a tight lid on it. The doctor seemed to know something about Remiel’s family history the Stiffnecks didn’t suspect and Roy guessed they wouldn’t believe her no matter the proof. It was all about skin tone. Bearing children for Elroy Shybear would nullify the whole raison d’être for their doctrine. “Now I have a possible motive,” the sheriff told her. “And now you also have the time of death,” said Dr. Wahkan. “Remiel died four hours ago, with a half-hour on either side. Call it 9:45 this morning.” “Thank you, Doctor.” Next came a duty Sheriff Sternbach found every bit as distasteful as his father described to him thrice before. Recalling the recent death of Erik Zinter, he yearned to dodge the responsibility to notify Clara Zinter and Elroy Shybear of the murder. How does one break it to a newly-widowed woman that half her family has been wiped off the face of the earth?
  • HP: Worse: the second death was decidedly not an accident. And how will her newlywed husband take it? The Academy hospital lay where Gran Via turned south and became Main Street. The Zinter home was about one klick to the east, on 2nd Street. South of 2nd a half-block was leveled and made into a gravel overflow parking lot for Bea’s Chicken Inn. Sheriff Roy parked there. A tall young woman opened the front door just as Roy was about to knock, leaving him temporarily speechless. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. They tell me that’s my calling card.” “Are you…?” Roy stared at the spitting image of the deceased, Remiel Zinter, waiting for him to speak. He pulled out his file to be sure. Identical. “Is Mrs. Clara Zinter at home?” “Mother isn’t living here anymore,” the young lady said. “I’m Robyn Redstar. I swapped places with her. Mom’s with her own folks back East. Do you want to come in? I’m sure you have questions, and it will be better than standing in the doorway.” Roy removed his hat and accepted the offer.
  • HQ: Throw-rugs covered the hardwood floors, and he could smell the light odor of a gas furnace. A radio was playing “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo” by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, and Robyn turned it down. “Please, Robyn, turn the radio entirely off. It’s hardly appropriate for what I must tell you.” The girl complied and invited the sheriff to be seated. He got the overall impression the Zinter family was firmly middle-class. Not destitute and not ostentatious. A small coffee table lay between them. Robyn smoothed her plaid dress. Roy saw that she wore bobby socks and saddle shoes. “You were about to tell me that you found the body of my sister,” Robyn said. “That she had been stabbed and left to die in the cold.” On one level, Roy felt relief; his duty to notify the next-of-kin was mooted. But Robyn had stated things she should not know. “You don’t seem to be too upset about it,” Roy said, taking a small notebook and pen out of his jacket liner. The sympathetic bearer of bad news was a detective again.
  • HR: “When did you know your sister was dead, Miss Redstar? Did an old Indian fellow pay you a visit today?” “Just call me Robyn, please,” she said. “Nobody else visited me today, Sheriff. If I tell you how I knew she was gone, it will be the truth, but you would call me insane.” Roy said, “Robyn, this is a murder investigation, so I exhort you to hold to that thought: that whatever you tell me must always be the truth. As for believing you are insane, I’m already having trouble with how you’re taking the news of your sister’s murder.” Robyn said, “You must have heard stories about identical twins who seem to have a link that defies explanation. Stories of twins who were separated at birth. They never met, yet they led lives with coincidence piled upon coincidence, with the same kind of job, and even the same kind of spouse.” “Robyn, are you saying you and Remiel had a telephone in your head to keep tabs on each other? If that’s what you‘re trying to tell me, young lady, I wouldn’t believe you were insane.
  • HS: “I would run you in to the station for knowing material facts about this case with no plausible explanation why.” Robyn stood up and walked to her record collection, pulling a ten-inch 78 RPM record from its sleeve. Holding it up she said, “This is Remy. And in every instant of time, a copy is made of her. By the time she’s sixteen, she’s quite a stack of records. But then she starts skipping. The music store says nothing is wrong, but Mom’s a stickler for high fidelity. She quits her job at the music store and takes her to Lusk. Soon after that, the stack gets impounded. Nobody figures out why Remy skips. Remy escapes, changes her label, and becomes Robyn. Then Robyn and Elroy want to get hitched, and the Apostle says he can swing it. But the Elder says, ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome platter?’ So the Deacon takes a kitchen knife to her. But he only gets the top platter, see? He didn’t touch this older one down here. That one comes out and starts growing a new stack of platters, and here I am.”
  • HT: Robyn fell silent and stared placidly at Sheriff Roy. After a long pause, he said, “You win, Robyn.” Then there was just a hint of a smile on her face, but Roy wasn’t amused. “People as growing stacks of records? That’s too plumb crazy to take you to the station or lock you up. The Deacon did it, you say? Alfred Shoenherr?” She nodded. “You haven’t given me enough probable cause to even check him out.” Robyn said, “My sister was killed with a knife of a peculiar color and make, was she not?” Roy kept his face immobile and said, “Possibly.” “Well, tomorrow is trash day. So if you dig in his garbage can, I think you’ll find the whole set. You won’t even need a search warrant since he already threw it out.” “Now that I can use,” Roy said. “Remiel’s body was found on the tri-state marker, which makes it a federal case. Now whoever killed her did that on purpose. That’s why I’m trying to break this case before the FBI gets here, on the general principle that you never give a creep what he wants.”
  • HU: At the sheriff’s station deputies Bill and Bob rushed in and threw a cellophane bag on the sheriff’s desk. “We found it,” Bob said. “Within throwing distance of the body.” The blade and handle were both white, as though cast from the same material, and smeared with blood. The blade itself was impossibly thin, yet completely inflexible. If it was used as a steak knife it was a remarkably dangerous one. Sheriff Roy picked up the bag and frowned with disappointment. Not a run-of-the-mill Sears Roebuck knife, not at all. He said, “This game isn’t nearly as fun when the other fellows don’t even try to win.” By a quarter to four in the afternoon the sheriff was at Migdalel College to see Professor Cassiel, but she was wrapping up a lecture. Sternbach sat in. She spoke of the battle for Stalingrad as “Verdun on the Volga” where the Germans were suffering the greatest defeat in their history. She spoke of the Allied attack across Egypt and Libya to sweep the Axis from the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
  • HV: Dr. Cassiel erased the large porcelain board at the head of the lecture hall while a student took that as a cue to advance to the next slide. This was a map of the largely empty Pacific Ocean. The professor used a Darkr Markr to circle a tiny pair of dots well to the northwest of Hawaii, speaking of the battle of Midway Atoll last June. “The Imperial Japanese Navy lost four carriers to our one, and their invasion was called off. This gave us unfettered access to the Coral Sea and the chain of islands standing between Japan and Australia.” She drew attention to an island in the Solomons called Guadalcanal. “Just like Stalingrad, this is still in play, but it is beginning to look like another important American victory.” She then spoke of how Japan had built an empire flung across the sea. “But the greatest story never told is how the brave officers and crew of our submarines are steadily making it impossible for them to hold that empire. At times they are striking right at the mouth of Tokyo Bay.”
  • HW: Then Dr. Cassiel invited the students to ask questions with the short time remaining. One student was recognized and said, “Professor, since the war broke out, Havilah’s population has become smaller by, I think you said, three hundred of our younger men. So twenty-five percent! Is that also the case in the rest of the country?” The Professor said, “Approximately one and a half million of our soldiers, sailors, marines, and fliers are already in service overseas, while our armed forces have grown from two million men and wen to seven million. Our country presently has 136 million people, so clearly Havilah has contributed manpower in a disproportionate manner.” “Does the Selective Service Board have it out for us here, Professor?” “Not at all. Most of our missing men in Havilah are volunteers. Just last month, the US government had to close the door to more sign-ups. They were getting so many volunteers that the worry now is the civilian labor force will be reduced below a critical level.”
  • HX: Professor Cassiel gave a homework assignment challenging the students to estimate the population of Havilah by the same time next year. When the students had filed out of the lecture hall Sheriff Sternbach laid the cellophane bag containing the knife on Cassiel’s desk for her inspection. “Where did you find this, Sheriff?” “Just over the state line. Somebody used it to kill Remiel Zinter and threw it away. It landed on the snow.” “White on white. Somebody didn’t want you to find it.” “But my deputies are very thorough. Do you recognize it?” “It’s part of a set of ten famous blades. One for each finger you could lose trying to use them.” “How do you know that, Professor?” “Well, there’s the blade itself. When you’re done getting fingerprints try setting it tip-down on a wooden table. It’ll sink to the hilt like the wood is water. And it’s described in the Green Book. Lailah made gift of the Blades of Many Colors to Gary and Marge Bergin before the Stiffnecks hit the Oregon Trail and came out here.”
  • HY: “I’m afraid that’s not much help,” Roy said. “They wintered over at Big Blue in, what, 1865?” “Sheriff, the Academy has always taken a keen interest in these knives. They are Class Two artifacts you know.” “Can you explain?” “Well, a Class Three artifact is something we believe to be otherworldly by long custom. But one could plausibly make the case it has a mundane origin. A Class Two artifact, however, is obviously not of this Earth.” “And a Class One artifact?” “Sheriff, have you ever been present for the Last Rite?” He shook his head. “I lost my faith years ago, and I was vocal about it. They kept me out of my own father’s funeral. I don’t believe in angels and the underworld.” “That’s ironic, Sheriff, because Ayat herself saw how people gathering to make each other believe in the unseen never worked out. Something Paul called the Mystery of Iniquity always took root. So she tried to do something different, more akin to my lecture hall. But you are here to ask me about this Class Two relic.” “Indeed.”
  • HZ: “In 1880, Linda Bergin married into the Porter family. Linda coined the name ‘Stiffnecks’ for the pilgrims.” “I remember that part.” “Linda received them as a wedding gift from Lailah, over Academy protest. These are not simple kitchen knives, and they should be under lock and key.” “I agree! Two strokes with a kitchen knife couldn’t do what happened to poor Remiel. But where does the trail lead after Linda? We’re still in the last century.” “Linda Porter née Bergin is no longer with us. The knife set passed to her daughter Ruth Porter, again over Academy protest. And there the trail ends, Sheriff. Ruth is the wife of Alfred Shoenherr. Your next line of questioning is obvious, Sheriff, but I do have one thing to ask.” “Of course?” “If someone was willing to throw the White Blade into the snow simply to make it disappear, they might also make the whole set disappear just to throw you off their scent. If you discover the blades in spite of that, please remember my offer to provide a better home for them.”