TCE

M0

“Ruth asked me why the knife block she used this morning was gone,” Paul Bergin told Klaus at the temple. “I told her I didn’t know anything about it. The knife block is at the landfill and no one will ever find it, but Ruth said she let this FBI fellow named Mark Felt take her fingerprints, and that makes me wish the knife was done away with like the clothes and other stuff.”

“What’s done is done,” Klaus said. “That was the murder weapon and I didn’t know how soon I could get rid of it. But don’t worry, Paul. Even if they found the knife and trace it to Ruth, so what? She had no motive to kill the girl. She probably doesn’t even know her.”

But Paul wasn’t so easily soothed. “What if the sheriff and this Agent Felt come here next?”

“Now, I think, is a good time for both of us to be out in Headwater tending to the flock.”

Outside of the temple they looked down at the parking lot and saw three marked law enforcement vehicles and a rental. They tried to go back inside but Sheriff Walker and Special Agent Mark Felt were already waiting for them on either side of the front door. Roddy said, “Paul Bergin, you are under arrest for the murder of Kimberly Zinter. Hold out your right arm.” Paul was too shocked to move, so Roddy grabbed his jacket sleeve, cuffed his bare wrist, then made Paul face one of the doors. After both arms were cuffed behind Paul’s back Roddy patted him down, removed his wallet, and unlatched the carabiner key chain looped to his belt. He handed both of these to Felt, then handed Paul himself off to his deputies who were coming up the flight of stairs leading to the temple. “Fingerprints, new home, not a word, boys.”

The deputies took Bergin away just as Special Agent-in-Charge Tolson arrived on the with Agent Sullivan in tow. Sheriff Walker introduced Hansen to Felt as the Apostle of the Church. Hansen was indignant. “Prophet of the Church, if you please.”

“I need to talk to you,” said Felt, “but first, we have a court order to search the Temple for evidence pertaining to the murder of Kimberly Zinter.”

Klaus demanded to see the order and Tolson let him read it. Then he said, “I will hold you fellows to the absolute letter of this search warrant,” he said. “You may search only in the rooms which are locked with those keys.”

Gabriel Shybear was waiting for them just inside. “Gabriel, what are you doing here today of all days?” Roddy asked.

“I’m here every day now, Sheriff. There’s been a reshuffling. I hold a very important office in the Church: Deacon. Mr. Hansen is the Prophet now, and Paul Bergin is the Apostle.”

Sheriff Roddy Walker caught up on all the required introductions. “Mr. Klaus Hansen, Mr. Gabriel Shybear, this is Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and with him today are Special Agents Mark Felt and Bill Sullivan.”

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Mark Felt said, “Gabriel, would you be so kind as to take the Sheriff through your temple so he can make a note of all the doors that are locked before we get started.”

All of the doors except one along the wide carpeted foyer of A Wing were locked. While Gabriel and the Sheriff ranged through the rest of the temple, the Bureau agents went through Paul’s office like a tornado but yielded nothing. The door to Gabriel’s office was wide open, so the agents could not enter there. They moved to the hallway that ran around the circumference of the Sanctuary and did a third of a turn to the right, checking some of the doors in Roddy’s notes, before entering C Wing. The rooms that Gabriel and Dory had cleaned were not locked.

“What’s behind that door?”

“That’s a dry hole, Agent Sullivan,” said Gabriel. “It’s just my broom closet.” Nevertheless, Special Agent Felt found the appropriate key. Like Gabriel said, there was nothing inside but cleaning supplies. After that the sheriff and the three Bureau agents headed down the wide carpeted stairs to the basement cafeteria. There wasn’t much of interest to the FBI downstairs, which was open and airy, even in the kitchen, but the supply room on the north wall was locked and everyone gravitated to there.

“Is this the room from your report?” Tolson asked Special Agent Bill.

“Mecca,” Sullivan said.

Mecca turned out to have the same broken piano, hymnals, mason jars, and stacks of Green Dome coloring books that Gabriel had seen before when he took Robyn and Hunky and Dory into the supply room. Bill Sullivan pointed at the plywood board at the back wall. “Flashlights, gentlemen.” The board was moved aside, and presently the three G-men were standing around the rock cairn that formed the uttermost summit of Green Dome.

Felt didn’t like how the murder investigation had suddenly veered into an area where he hadn’t been briefed. Tolson’s agenda was intruding now. Stones were haphazardly torn away from the cairn and Tolson went inside. Then Felt heard Tolson utter an oath that was most unbecoming of an FBI agent, followed by, “There’s nothing here!” After the search under the altar fell through SAiC Tolson left the temple and took Sullivan with him. Special Agent Mark Felt was fine with that. Conflicting agendas were never productive. That left only the B Wing of the temple to search. It was set up as a historical museum, although under the new management of Prophet Hansen the Kuwapi contribution to the Church of Green Dome had been stripped out. Some of the more valuable pieces were missing entirely. But something about B Wing stayed with Mark Felt for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was the variety of genuine articles dating back to the Civil War. Perhaps something in the way Sheriff Walker explained what he was looking at. Agent Felt found the experience profoundly immersive.

After that Felt found Klaus Hansen’s office, which was also in B Wing, and he walked right in. M2

This prompted an angry objection from Hansen. “You’re in violation of the judge’s orders, Felt. You know you can only search those rooms which are locked.”

Sheriff Walker held up his notebook and said, “Ah yes, but this room was locked at the time we served the warrant. In fact, you presence here is interference with a murder investigation.”

Walker and Felt searched every corner of the office and found nothing. Then Felt upended the waste basket on the floor. A large book with a green cover fell out. “What have we here?”

SWalker thumbed through the pages and saw that it was the text of the Green Book, holy writ for the Church, entirely written by hand. He said, “Agent Felt, this is called the Printer’s Manuscript. It is said to have been made in heaven from what they call the White Scroll.”

Felt said, “Gosh, you would think something irreplaceable like this would be considered priceless. Yet somehow it ended up in the trash. I wonder why.” Then it was Felt’s turn to pour through the pages of the manuscript. When he saw the pages in the very front of the document he said, “Now that’s cute. This is like a kind of baby book for the Church. All the important decisions and events are recorded here, like this entry from 1931 marking when Klaus Hansen became the Apostle. Mr. Hansen, would you please write your signature in the sheriff’s notebook so I can see if they’re the same?”

“Special Agent Felt, I assert my Constitutional right against self-incrimination.”

“I see. Oh, look Gabriel, it says here Doriel resigned as Apostle, yesterday, on the very day your wife was murdered. Were you present when this entry was made?”

“Yes sir, Special Agent Felt.”

“Do you remember about what time of day it was?”

“It was about eight o’clock in the AM, sir.”

Sheriff Walker wrote that in his notebook.

Felt said, “Gabriel, I may need you to testify in court under oath to the same effect. Now let’s see who replaced Doriel as the Apostle. Why look, it’s Klaus Hansen! And he signed it. Gabriel, did you witness Klaus Hansen making this signature?”

“Yes sir.”

“So let’s back up a bit to an entry made in 1866. It says if the Prophet dies or resigns, the Apostle becomes the new Prophet. So here’s Klaus Hansen as the new Apostle, with the Prophet having only an hour or two left to live. Please Gabriel, tell me, what happened immediately after Klaus Hansen became, once again, the Apostle of the Church.”

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“He had his own breakaway Church down at the bottom of the hill, with only white folk there. He said we should go meet with them and announce the division in the mother Church was healed. So Paul left with Kim, but Klaus took me separately in his own truck. He wanted me to bring the sacred relic, which we call the Golden Gift, and I told him I didn’t want Paul to know where I had hidden it because he was no longer an officer of the Church. But on the way down we got into a heated argument over racism or something like that, and he just pulled over and made me get out before driving off. So I walked back up to the temple where Dory was waiting.”

Felt said, “The reason I’m asking, Gabriel, is there’s three final entries here, one declaring Kim to be dead, one making Klaus Hansen the Prophet, and one making Paul Bergin the Apostle. Did you, as the Deacon, witness any of those entries being made?”

“No sir.”

“I’m trying to ascertain the time.”

“Dory said no one returned to the Temple before I did, and that was about nine thirty in the morning. It was about ten when they returned, and they told me Kim was dead.”

“Sheriff, what time did old Tashunka arrive at your station and report the murder?”

“It was just about noon.”

“I’m going to need to corroborate this with Dory, but we have now is Klaus Hansen affirming, in writing, that Kimberly Zinter, or Kimberly Shybear if you will, was dead approximately two hours before Tashunka discovered her corpse. Mr. Hansen, do you have anything to say before you are placed under arrest for murder?”

He said, “I will say this exactly once, Special Agent Felt. From here on out I will speak only to your superior officer, Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson.” Felt introduced himself to Dory and mentioned that he had a few questions for her. In his opening gambit Felt said, “You are under no obligation to answer, but I do have a few questions remaining to tie off this case and your help would be greatly prohibited. I only warn you that making a false statement to a federal agent is a crime. Do you understand, Miss Shybear?”

“Yes, Special Agent Felt, I do understand how serious this is.”

“What was your relationship to the deceased?”

“She and I were classmates at the Church parochial school. For a time, we were officers of the Church. And also we were very close friends.”

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“Where were you two days ago, on January 20?”

“I spent the entire day either in the Temple, or in the Temple parking lot, or at my house, or on the road between the Temple and my house.”

“What time do you first arrive at the Temple?”

“About a quarter to eight, in the morning, as was my habit. I was still the Apostle of the Church on that morning.”

“Can you tell me if anything of note happened after you arrived at the Temple?”

“The former Apostle of the Church arrived, Mr. Klaus Hansen. He came with Paul Bergin, who used to be the Deacon, until both of them stormed out and started their own church in some barn. They came back and said we had one more chance to put the Church back together. Can you be believe that? They said we had one more chance. They wanted their old positions back, both Apostle and Deacon, as though nothing had happened. Gabriel told ’em to pound sand, so they got ready to leave again. I was bored of that whole cycle so thought I would break the logjam by resigning my own position. Offer half of what the arrogant fools were demanding, at any rate.”

“Then what happened?”

“Klaus took the deal, natch, because at least he got his job back, and Paul’s pretty much his lapdog anyway. Then they talked Robyn and Gabriel into going down to their barn and patching things up with the White Wing. I’m Red Wing so I wouldn’t be welcome there anyway. I stayed in the Temple cleaning the rooms we reserve for out-of-towners.”

“Were you alone in the Temple after that, Dory?”

“As far as I know, yes. The only vehicle sitting in the parking lot was my Woodie.”

“Did anyone come to the Temple during the rest of that day?”

“Gabriel showed up about an hour later after walking halfway up the mountain. Another half hour after that Hansen and Bergin came back too. I thought it must have been a pretty short reunion ceremony. Hansen booted me out of the Temple because I wasn’t an officer of the Church anymore. He said he only wanted to see me there on Wednesdays with the rest of the Red Wing. So I got in my station wagon and drove home.”

“Thank you Dory. That’s all the questions I have for you right now.”

Next up was Klaus Hansen, who hobbled into the interrogation room with his ankles cuffed so he had no illusion he could get up and walk out like Dory just did. He already said he would only speak with Tolson, so Clyde consulted a brief Felt had put together for him before he spoke. M5

“Mr. Hansen, we placed your vehicle at the crime scene.”

“With tire treads, Clyde? How many different kinds of tires does town as small as this have?”

“Gabriel Shybear is willing to testify that you declared the girl dead before her body was found by the old Indian, who, by the way, immediately notified the sheriff while you did not.”

“But you can’t tie the murder weapon to me. You can’t tie the footprints to anyone. All you have is the word of an aggrieved husband.”

“You had motive. You led the White Wing out of the Church over the marriage of Gabriel and Kim, and only returned when such a marriage was made forbidden as an article of canon law.”

“All that means, Clyde, is the new Prophet had more common sense than the old one did.”

“Ah, yes, but that ruling left the original marriage in place, til death do they part. And you cannot account for your whereabouts between the time when you left Gabriel on the side of the road and the time you returned to the Temple, which also happens to bracket the time of the murder.”

“The girl was already dead when I got down there,” Hansen said. “You already have the killer.”

“So you admit you were both there, and you deliberately made the case federal to get my attention. Now you indeed have my attention, Prophet Hansen. The floor is yours.”

“I am the Prophet, Clyde, as you just said. If you keep me in custody Gabriel Shybear will hold Last Rites for his wife in a private ceremony and you will never see the Golden Gift. But if you swear to drop the charges, I’ll make her Last Rites public services. At the end you and your agents can descend on Gabriel and scoop up the Golden Gift at your leisure.”

Mark Felt gave a start, but he knew the Director would never tolerate letting Hansen go free. No judge would instruct a jury to ignore the other set of footprints, but even if one did, Bergin’s defense team would argue for a mistrial or at the least get his conviction overturned on appeal.

Sheriff Walker responded the way Felt initially wanted to do, “You can’t be thinking of letting him go. We’ve got him cold for conspiracy to commit murder at the very least.”

Felt said, “Sheriff, I’m dying to discuss this with you, but this is not the time nor the place.”

Tolson found that remark interesting. “Where are your thoughts trending, Felt?”

“Sir, when the Director sent me here he told me the case would be independent of your DECON work, and my reports were to go directly to him, but unfortunately here’s a situation where the two investigations have run right into each other. The Director’s orders to me were to, quote, ‘mesh with Tolson where practical’ so I will look to the senior agent on site for guidance.”

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“Excellent, Felt. Then let us go forward and see what shakes out. Prophet Hansen, you have my word as a federal agent the Bureau will not charge you with the murder of this girl. But if this is just a big bait-and-switch operation, if I don’t have the Golden Gift in my hand at the conclusion of all this, you will be right back in here and all bets are off.”

“I understand.”

Tolson instructed the sheriff to remove the shackles from the prisoner’s ankles. After he was done Felt caught Walker’s eye and gestured to meet him outside. When they were both out of earshot, the Sheriff said, “There’s no need to explain, Special Agent Felt. I get it. Operational deception. Even the sheriff of a ramshackle town like this knows the FBI doesn’t actually charge perps with crimes. They leave that to the US Attorney or a Grand Jury.” At Last Rites Klaus had absolutely nothing to say about Kim at all. He never mentioned her parents. He never mentioned how she had gone missing for the last two months, and how she had been in quarantine for six months before that. Hansen didn’t know the girl, he didn’t know her family, nor her friends, nor their families. He had no feelings for her what- soever, other than the fact that he hated her with an abiding hatred for marrying Gabriel Shybear and thus, in his view, she ripped apart the One True Church. So instead of giving anything like a decent eulogy, Klaus embarked upon a particularly malicious Bible study. He said, “Friends, please join me in turning in your Bible to the book of First Kings chapter eleven, verses four through eleven.” Gabriel Shybear stood in front of Klaus in a white robe, but one step down from the elevated chancel platform, holding a large Bible open for the Prophet to read. Hansen said, “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. Wherefore the LORD said unto Solomon, ‘Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant.'”

After this the people in the congregation hoped the Prophet was finished, but then he continued, to their dread. “Now turn, please, to the book of Nehemiah chapter thirteen verses twenty-three through twenty-seven.” The Prophet went on and on for a full hour, quoting favorite parts of the scriptures having to do with the “sin” of inter-marriage between races, until most of the Bunners were frantic, desperately wishing he would stop. Eventually he ran out of scripture.

The temple organist took her place at the edge of the raised chancel and began to play a Bach chorale prelude, “I Call You, Lord Jesus Christ”. The congregation sang the hymn in the original German from the words printed in the hymnal, though very few members still under- stood German anymore. The singing was therefore pretty lousy, but the underlying music was M7

gorgeous. Mark Felt, sitting in the pews, took note of the musician and remarked that the organist looked remarkably like the deceased. Sheriff Walker told him the girl playing was Kim’s twin sister Robyn, whom he once interviewed on the afternoon of the murder but he had not been able to contact her since. “Shall I hold her after the services?”

Special Agent Felt replied, “No. I think, Sheriff, that any need to question her further has been entirely overtaken by events.”

Wearing white robes in hez role as the Minister of the Final Rite, Deacon Gabriel Shybear stood behind the embalmed body of Kim, which lay face up on the altar, also clothed in white. Sofie Krause came out of the audience to stand next to him. She was wearing her green school uniform, like she always did when she went to Temple, since it was the most feminine garment she owned. Perhaps it was the only feminine one.

Special Agent Bill Sullivan gave a start. “Sir, that’s the girl I’ve been looking for! Sofie Krause!” Someone behind him snickered. The way he put it sounded hilarious.

Tolson restrained him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t move unless she tries to walk out of the temple. Oh yes, we have her, but my top priority is the artifact.”

“Most of you know me,” Sofie told the congregation. “If you don’t, I’m Sofie Krause. Kim was a close friend. We were the same age, we went to the same expensive school, we went to the same church. Most of you knew her too, and most of you know that she and her momma have had a pretty lousy time of it lately. Kim’s father died in the mines about nine months back. There was some trouble in the Church over that. After that me and Kim both got sick and we were stuck in quarantine for six whole months over in Wyoming. It was Kim, mostly, who got me out of that jam, but that’s what she always did. In school Kim always called me a scrub, but she never, ever turned me away when I told her I needed help with my class work. Somehow she had a way of explaining things to me better than the teachers did, and that kept me in D territory. Maybe, if she lived, she would have been a teacher herself one day. You already know she had a voice like an angel, and she could play the piano and the organ. I mean she could really play. It turns out her twin sister Robyn can play pretty good too, as all of you have heard. Thanks for coming here and doing that for us today, Robyn. Me and some other friends in band class had dreams of pressing a swing record with her, but now they’re dashed flat and that’s a terrible waste!” Then Sofie fell silent and stepped back from the lectern, with tears rolling down her face, but she remained standing next to Gabriel on the chancel.

Gabriel did not follow up with a eulogy of hez own, though he longed to express the love che had for his wife, or even to mention that she had been his wife. But things had already gone overlong with Hansen’s sermon, and besides, this was a tough crowd. Gabriel knew any mention of Kim as his wife would simply antagonize the congregation even more than Klaus Hansen’s sermon did. Instead che said, “On the surface this would seem to be a time of sorrow. But upon reflection, we see how that sorrow is really a sign of a deeper love. If Kimberly were a stranger to us, if she had no one among us who cared about her, we might feel, despite the Lord’s M8

commandment to love our neighbors, only a kind of indifference. Certainly not bereavement. And that, brothers and sisters, is the second most-important purpose of the Last Rite. We gather together in sorrow to recognize and celebrate the love that underlies our grief. So et us bow our heads in prayer. Bless us, O Lord, as today we have come together to commit the body of our beloved sister in faith, Kimberly Anne Zinter, directly into your hands. Sown in corruption, let her body be raised in incorruption. Sown in dishonor, let her body be raised in your glory. Sown in weakness, let it be raised in power. Sown a natural body, let her be raised a spiritual body as we eagerly look for the life to come when she receives again the many years that were taken away from her on Earth. In the name of your only son Yeshua we pray.”

The crowd muttered scattered amens.

“Do you believe, as I believe, that when Prince Melchizedek first came to Father Abraham, he unveiled our most holy relic as a sure sign of our Lord’s divinity?”

Some members of the crowd, who knew the correct way to answer the Call and Response of the Last Rite, said, “I do.” Gabriel produced the self-same relic then, and held it high for all to see. Clyde Tolson leaned forward in his pew.

“Do you believe, as I believe, that when the Lord our God was made manifest on this very spot, the Island in the Sky, Chief Wanica took possession of our most holy relic, which we name the Golden Gift?” A more robust response came from the congregation. They were catching on.

“Do you believe, as I believe, that when the Kuwapi people were united with the pilgrims led by our first prophet, Mark Lange, the bodies of four fallen warriors of the People were committed into the hands of our God by the Golden Gift as a sign of their everlasting union?” A very hearty “I do!” erupted from the rest of the church.

Then, before the eyes of everyone in the sanctuary, Gabriel ignited the Golden Gift and used the hissing black shaft to make every scrap of Kim’s body disappear. He even took shallow swaths of the concrete altar along with it, although Gabriel was usually much more careful not to do so. Periodically a new altar surface had to be poured and cured. Che knew such measures wouldn’t matter anymore after this last Last Rite.

Clyde Tolson was frozen briefly as he took in this astonishing sight, but he quickly recovered and gave the signal to go. Sheriff Roddy Walker, however, did not recover. He sat transfixed, realizing his lifetime of unbelief had been entirely misguided. But that, after all, was the most important purpose of the Last Rite.

The sanctuary of the Green Dome Church was constructed as a hexagon, with aisles forming six spokes. Clyde Tolson, Bill Sullivan, Mark Felt, Dr. Trochmann, Deputy Lurz and Deputy Holsinger descended toward the altar, each man descending his own aisle, making straight for Gabriel, who saw them and quickly made the Golden Gift disappear into his little ready pocket

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of space-time. Clyde Tolson was the first to reach Gabriel, and he tackled him, flipping the young nephil face down. “Where is it, you son of a bitch?”

Gabriel was cuffed, poked, prodded and rolled over and over by four different men.

Some members of the congregation began to stream out of the temple. Others remained in their pews like the sheriff did, bewailing that they had come to full belief only after it was too late. The ones who had seen the Last Rite once before shouted angry oaths at Klaus Hansen for permitting unbelieving outsiders to witness and hence defile the Sacred Relic. This was the Abomination That Makes Desolate predicted in scripture. The Temple was defiled beyond any redemption. The Church existed no more.

After the Sheriff recovered and rejoined his deputies they arrested Gabriel and Sofie and took them away. Tolson and Sullivan knocked over the massive altar in their search for the Golden Gift. They looked for any trap doors in the floor of the chancel where Gabriel might have tossed it. Ultimately they even resorted to tearing up the chancel carpet.

Mark Felt didn’t seem eager to help them. He looked at Robyn sitting at the organ, who winked at him. Somehow he sensed the search would be futile and Tolson would not get what he was looking for. He also saw Klaus Hansen standing there with his mouth wide open in shock at how things were turning out. Felt came up behind him and cuffed his hands behind his back before he had time to offer any resistance. With that Hansen’s shock was doubled.

“Hey, jerk!” Hansen screamed at Tolson. “We had a deal!”

Tolson ceased from his labors to look at Hanson and saw how Felt had already cuffed him. Good. Save him the trouble of doing it himself. He glanced at Sullivan, then dropped the corner of carpet he was holding. Sullivan followed suit. Tolson said, “We did have a deal, Klaus. And I don’t have the Golden Gift. That means all bets are off, just like I told you.”

Gabriel and Sofie were thrown into separate but adjoining cells. They spoke no words to their captors despite every attempt to intimidate them. Instead they put on implacably stony faces and conversed with Robyn by way of Doryphone. In the middle of the night, at an hour selected by Robyn, Gabriel produced the Golden Gift and cut hez way out of his cell through an exterior wall of the sheriff’s station. Once che was outside che cut Sofie out too. Dory and Robyn were pulling up in the woodie. Sofie looked back and saw how the holes were carved as silhouettes of of people, as though she and Gabriel had escaped by running right through the wall like the cartoon characters did on Looney Tunes. Her own escape hole was in the shape of a girl in pigtails and a dress. “Very funny, Gabe.”

It would, in fact, amuse Mark Felt to no end when he saw it in the morning.