The Forest Prime Evil Read online

  I walked up the aisle and saw there were no prayer cushions for the faithful. Knees had to face up to hardwood floors. I investigated the vestibules on both sides of the church, but neither was occupied. The only thing out of the ordinary was a tape recorder atop the pulpit. Usually you see a Bible. Curious, I went to it and pushed the play button.

  There was static for a few moments, then a voice that didn’t lack for wind, or lungs, or passion. The tiny speaker in the recorder muted the orator’s bass, made it a bit tinny, but it was still loud enough to be heard throughout the church. I lowered the volume.

  “We’re going to talk about miracles today,” announced a voice I assumed was Reverend Sawyer’s. “Now you know that the Bible, the living word of God, is full of miracles, hundreds of them.

  “Observe Mark, chapter eight, beginning at verse twenty-two: ‘And Jesus cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.

  “ ‘And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.

  “ ‘And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.

  “ ‘After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.’

  “Some of you, I fear, are like that blind man. You don’t see, or don’t want to see, the miracles going on in your life.

  “Others of you can only partially see. Though the Lord has put his hand on you, your eyesight is but half restored. You only see men as trees.

  “I offer you the miracle of seeing clearly, I offer you the touch of Jesus. Thank the Lord . . . ”

  I thanked him for the fast-forward button, using it to jump through the rest of the tape. There didn’t seem to be much continuity to Sawyer’s talk. His dialogue jumped between miracles and angels. Sawyer seemed to think there was an army of angels waiting to be called upon, all ready to come to the aid of the faithful.

  The rambling tenor of his sermon surprised me. Sawyer was known for his conservative political tirades, which usually had an agenda that centered more on the tangible than on the ecclesiastical.

  I rewound the tape, brought it back to its genesis. Or Leviticus. Or whatever. Then I went looking for Sawyer again, searched the vestry but found it empty. There was a lingering smell of coffee and doughnuts, and fried chicken, the aroma of church socials. On the far wall was a mosaic, Christ and his twelve disciples sitting down to his last meal. I hunted out Judas’s expression and wasn’t surprised to see he had a poker face.

  I walked back to the parsonage, pushed the bell again, and waited. Mrs. Sawyer was faster this time—she must have been working on her vanity.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Sawyer,” I said, “but I couldn’t find your husband in the church or in the vestry.”

  She didn’t say anything, waiting for me to continue the conversation. “Perhaps he slipped back inside,” I said, “and you didn’t hear him.”

  “The Reverend,” she said, “isn’t the kind of person who slips anywhere.”

  She made it sound as if I had used the word slither.

  “Well, maybe he walked inside,” I said, “and is quietly resting somewhere.”

  She shook her head.

  “Any other ideas where he could be? I very much want to ask him some questions.”

  She didn’t rise to the bait, didn’t ask me about the questions, and didn’t ask me in to wait for him over a cup of coffee. Usually preachers’ wives are hospitable. It comes with the territory. But maybe she sensed a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  “He might be out walking,” she finally said.

  “Does he often go for walks?”

  “Of late, yes.”

  “Any particular path?”

  “The Lord’s,” she said.

  I couldn’t tell if she was making a little joke and looked at her for some giveaway. She didn’t like being examined closely and blushed a little. The color added to her features, gave hint that if Ruth Sawyer allowed herself to be other than serious she could look considerably prettier. “I will tell my husband you called, Mr. Winter.”

  “But he won’t know what I was here for,” I said, still trying to draw her into further conversation.

  “You don’t strike me as someone easily dissuaded,” she said. “I am sure you will acquaint him with your purpose.”

  She hadn’t made a move to close the door, but she clearly wanted to retreat back into her silent house. “Please give him my business card,” I said, handing it to her in such a way that she couldn’t help but read it and take note of my occupation.

  I’ve had doors shut on me faster, but not too many.

  9

  MY BUSINESS CARD hadn’t gained me the extra five minutes of conversation I desired, but I still wasn’t ready to leave. A good investigator knows when to wait. And how to wait. I grabbed my Leitz binoculars out of my truck. They led me like a divining rod, pulling me to a promising spot. No water, but something better, a splendid view. Ostensibly, I was going to be looking for the wandering Reverend Mr. Sawyer, but I hoped for plenty of secondary diversions.

  At first I found only the expected and commonplace, plenty of sparrows and finches and starlings, and a few horned larks and meadowlarks. I did my desultory viewing, and for ten minutes overlooked the obvious. The great blue heron had remained motionless, but I still should have noticed four feet of bird. My ready excuse was that I hadn’t expected the heron to be in the field. It’s easy to miss things when you don’t think they belong. With all the bodies of water nearby, I would have expected the heron to be hunting for fish instead of working the field below me. But this heron evidently had a taste for pocket gophers. He was standing ready at a hole, his long, sharp bill primed for a spearing. I waited for him to strike, but his patience was greater than mine, and I finally looked elsewhere.

  Working my binoculars across the clearing, I noticed that the same field looked very different than it had just minutes before. Something was missing. Some things. The many small birds had vanished. I looked around for the reason and discovered it: a loggerhead shrike. Shrikes are frequently referred to as butcher birds, a nickname deriving from their habit of impaling their larger prey on any available spike. Victims have been found hanging from barbed wire, branches, thorns, from virtually any small spear capable of suspending the shrike’s prey.

  Because of the way they dispatch their game, shrikes have been painted as insatiable killers, bloody hunters that impale victim after victim on a crucifix row. But studies have shown that shrikes kill no more than they can eat. They have an infallible memory for where they have hung their victims and always return to finish off their larder.

  What is ironic is that these butcher birds are songbirds, the only truly predatory songbirds. They’re not as operatic as most songbirds, but they do have a very respectable warble. Lady Death singing. They’re deceptive birds. To the casual glance, they’re innocuous, eight inches of innocence; the size of a robin, the coloring of a mockingbird, and the soul of an eagle. Shrikes weigh only about two ounces but will take on prey much larger than themselves, including birds, rodents, amphibians, and snakes.

  My shrike was hunting insects, which make up the bulk of their diet, vampire reputation notwithstanding. I saw it catch, then devour, what looked like a bee, then watched it go after other quarry. Twice, a grasshopper escaped capture, then it was caught. I watched the shrike transfer the grasshopper from beak to foot. Shrikes aren’t like other birds of prey. They don’t have talons. But even without some of the weapons associated with other feathered hunters, they’re every bit as effective. I followed the shrike and his victim as far as a blackberry patch; then they were lost to me. I wondered whether the grasshopper would end up spiked on the end of a blackberry thorn or just eaten in the shade.

  Humans are drawn to the macabre; maybe that’s why so many birders get excited by shrikes. Death by so-called nat
ural causes doesn’t interest us. But an impaled figure is another matter altogether I wondered if that was what had drawn me to the investigation of the Green Man’s death, and wondered also whether I was on a shrike hunt or a snipe hunt.

  “Mr. Winter?”

  I visibly started. Some hunter of hunters. I put down the binoculars and turned around. The Reverend Reginald Sawyer was standing behind me. He was holding my business card. My reaction seemed to satisfy the minister. Maybe it gave him pleasure to see people squirming.

  Sawyer had curly hair, which was more black than gray. His wire-rim glasses covered very dark eyes and rested upon a ski-jump nose, one with a long downhill and good takeoff. An expert’s jump. His face was well fleshed, his jowls prominent. He wasn’t wearing the vestments of the clergy, just a dark suit. But some people can look pontifical in the most basic of outfits. Sawyer was one of those.

  He was looking suspiciously at my binoculars. “I’m a birdwatcher,” I explained. “You’ve got a nice spot for viewing up here. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “No,” he said, but he left a lot of room for interpretation in his answer.

  I tried to make conversation—and make him less skeptical. “God’s country for birding,” I said. “Everything is so close, and so abundant—wetlands, and fields, and deltas, and woodlands, and meadows. A birder’s paradise.”

  Conversationally, I had gone one short step beyond the weather. Maybe that was my mistake. “It was not for birds that the Lord created this earth,” said Sawyer in a pedantic voice. “In Genesis one, verse twenty-six, we are told that God made man in his image, with dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air.”

  Unbeknownst to him, I had already heard one of his sermons, and I wasn’t in the mood for another. “Silly me,” I said. “Here I was under the impression that we no longer had to sacrifice birds to God.”

  There wasn’t much Christian charity in Sawyer’s eyes. “You didn’t travel from San Francisco just to look at birds,” he said, “and it’s apparent you didn’t come to me to hear about God.”

  “No,” I said. “I came to you to hear about the Green Man.”

  He shook his jowls, said, “I can’t help you,” then started to walk away.

  I followed him. “I’m doing background,” I explained. “I’ve been hired to look into his death.”

  “Why?” asked Sawyer. “He is in God’s hands.”

  “And on the way to those hands,” I said, “some suggest a commandment or two might have been broken.”

  The Reverend Mr. Sawyer stopped walking, took a long moment to read my face. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m investigating a death.”

  “And what’s this talk of broken commandments?”

  “The sixth,” I said. Sawyer didn’t comment, but he didn’t move either. He looked a little puzzled, or perhaps relieved. I wondered whether I had identified the wrong commandment. Quite possible. I made sure of my reference. “Thou shalt not kill.”

  If looks could break that commandment . . . Sawyer glared at me, made it quite clear I didn’t need to explain the Bible to him, then once more started walking away. I dogged his steps.

  “I can’t help you,” he told me a second time.

  “Why not?”

  “I know what they’re trying to do. I know what you’re trying to do. To make him more than he was. I think that was his plan all along.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “I’ve seen his image on T-shirts and sweatshirts. Idolatry. His words are repeated as if they were holy. They’re not. And he wasn’t.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me about him? Why not clarify the misconceptions? I’m not on a holy crusade. I’m just trying to understand him. You were his rival. The last thing I want from you is platitudes.”

  I’ve found that the best way to get an earful of someone’s faults is to sing their praises in front of those who know them. But that only works with the living. To learn about the dead you have to be more inventive.

  We stopped walking again, this time in front of the vestry. Something I had said evidently rankled Sawyer. “What do you mean by ‘rival’?” he asked.

  “The media,” I told him, “painted the two of you as being at loggerheads. I wondered how much of that was point-counterpoint, and how much of it was personal.”

  “We didn’t debate on street corners,” said Sawyer.

  “But your paths did cross?”

  “Once,” he conceded.

  “Where?”

  “A public forum.”

  “What were the circumstances?”

  “I was speaking for the Third Day. He was supposed to give a talk on the woods.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  Sawyer shook his head.

  “What did he talk about?”

  “He profaned the word of God.”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it.”

  Sawyer looked human, if bedeviled is the true countenance of humanity. It was clearly a painful memory. I tried to draw it from him in a roundabout way.

  “When did this happen?”

  “In June.”

  “Not long after he arrived?”

  Sawyer took off his glasses, rubbed them, and nodded.

  “He often liked to use the words of others,” I said, “to make his point.”

  “He used the Bible,” whispered Sawyer.

  “To say what?”

  Almost choking, he said, “To read from the Song of Solomon.”

  The faithful explain the Song of Solomon by saying it’s an allegorical representation of God’s love for his people. Others just see it as biblical erotica.

  “Why did he do that?”

  Sawyer’s face went blank. “To mock me. To make a joke of the Bible. To confuse its holy message.”

  “But to what purpose?”

  Sawyer couldn’t, or didn’t, answer.

  “How many people witnessed this?”

  Painfully: “I don’t know. A hundred, two hundred.”

  “How long did he read?”

  “I didn’t stay to hear him finish. And I can’t stay to talk to you. The deacons will be here shortly . . . ”

  “Five minutes,” I said.

  Sawyer looked up the path to his house, considered, then motioned for me to enter the vestry. We sat at the nearest table, our backs to the mosaic. He made a point of looking at his watch. The stopwatch was running.

  “Did you ever talk with him personally?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t know the man?”

  “I knew him well enough.”

  “Well enough?”

  “I knew him well enough to stay my distance. ‘He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.’ Ecclesiasticus.”

  “The Green Man was pitch?”

  “I don’t like that name. It gives him a title. It makes him special. That’s what he wanted.”

  “Shepard was pitch?”

  “He was worse than pitch. He blackened the hearts of many, set them on the path of evil.”

  “He planted trees.”

  “He murdered souls. Ask your same questions of those who have hired you. Make them speak honestly. They’ll tell you of his practices.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I wouldn’t profane holy ground.”

  Before coming to America, my Scottish grandfather preached in the highlands. In his dotage, he preached to his grandchildren. We were the tougher audience, I think, but he persisted. Through repetition alone, some of his words sank into the hard ground of our heads. Whenever I wouldn’t own up to mischief, my grandfather always confronted me with a quotation from Luke. It usually worked for him, so I gave it a try.

  “ ‘For nothing is secret,’ ” I said, a little of grandfather’s lilt in my voice, “ ‘that shall not be made manifest; neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.’ ”
r />   The Reverend Mr. Sawyer grew visibly perturbed. The faithful don’t like their own ammunition used against them. “He called himself a pantheist,” he said, “but he was worse than that. He was an abomination.

  “He led the children into temptations, set up ceremonies. Under his shameful guidance, they worshiped tree spirits, and invoked false gods.”

  I was skeptical, but I tried not to show it. “How come I haven’t heard of this?” I asked.

  “Because it was a secret society,” he said. “And not something they like to talk about.”

  “Who is they?”

  “EverGreen and their ilk. They have hidden his deeds, downplayed them.”

  “How is it that the media never caught on?”

  “Because the ceremonies were done in darkness!” White flecks of froth appeared at the corners of his mouth. “Because they were hidden!”

  “And how did you hear of all this?”

  “I have my sources,” he said, after which he firmed his jaw and sucked at his jowls, making it clear he wasn’t about to give those sources up.

  “Tell me about the ceremonies.” I said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Everyone has different standards,” I said. “A dentist might find the roasting of marshmallows a terrible sin.”

  “This isn’t about roasting marshmallows. It’s about ritualism. It’s about tree worship and sick rites.”

  “What kind of rites?”

  “He called it a return to the old, a return to the sacred. He encouraged couples to dance around trees, couples proclaimed as the king and queen of the woods, and members of the royal court. He taught them their dance steps, the steps to hell. The couples held a stick between them, were admonished not to let go. Eventually they dropped to the ground, exhausted. And there, under their tree, they could only release that stick for the arms of each other.”