Tabernacle

Thomas H. Cook

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Year: 1983
• ISBN:
  9780547524023
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Kriminal- & Mysterienliteratur

He kills according to the will of God. He believes in the mission that God has made manifest to him: to restore the sanctity of the Mormon Church. The means to this purification will be multiple murder.

The streets of Salt Lake City run straight and clean. The Mormons, God's chosen people on Earth, are upright and moral. Nestled between the Great Salt Lake and the Blue Mountains, the Mormons have built up a City of God, dedicated to God and to the faith that His revealed Word will prevail. But among the citizens of Salt Lake there is one man not content to rest on faith, one man who is moved to act on it. And he acts without qualm or question or mercy.

Against this killer stands Detective Tom Jackson of the Salt Lake police. Jackson, originally a New York City cop, is an outsider in a city of insiders, a man searching for his lost ideals as well as for an insane killer. He must cut through official ineptitude, blindness, and cover-up to get to the shattering truth at the center of the Tabernacle, at the dark heart of the Mormon faith.

PART I

1

HE INSERTED THE KEY into the lock and opened it. The room was spare and uninviting, a place where people came for a few hours, then left forever.

He stepped inside. To the right he could see a scarred bureau with a dull, filmy mirror. A jagged crack ran diagonally across the glass, cutting its reflection of the opposite wall in half. Overhead, a square fixture of frosted glass diffused the light from the naked bulbs behind it. He could see the husks of small insects that had been trapped between the glass and the bulb, then burned alive.

He turned, closed the door, and locked it. He would open it only one more time, then his task would begin. Tilting his head upward, he sniffed the air. The fetid odors of the room made his stomach tighten. In his mind he could see the legions of tawdry women who must have stood before the cracked mirror splashing on their cheap perfume. He could imagine the artifacts of the place: paper cups half-filled with warm beer, ashtrays overflowing with stale cigarettes. Traces of these odors were still in the room, surrounding him, testing his dedication. He knew that part of the burden of his mission was to endure such debased places, with their unwholesome histories.

He walked to the center of the room and looked to the left. The door to the bathroom was open. He could see the toilet pushed up against the back wall, its base stained yellow, the seat chipped and pitted. The sink was on the left, rusty pipes protruding from the wall beneath it. He could not see the bath. He did not want to. Soon enough, he thought, and turned away.

The double bed stretched out toward the center of the room. It was covered with a white bedspread that repeated washings had worn down. Looking at it, he could not imagine sleeping on such a thing, and for a moment he saw his own bed—the clean percale sheets, the thick down comforter. Soon he would be home, and he understood that for all the perils of his mission, it had mercies as well. And one of them was that each act took only a little time.

He took off his hat and dropped it on the bed. Then he slipped the surgical gloves from his coat pocket and pulled them onto his hands, wriggling his fingers, tugging the gloves tight against his finger tips. Part of the mission was that everything be done cleanly. Cleanliness was one of the commandments of the faith. Fastidiousness of body and purity of mind, these formed the twofold duty of man.

Glancing about him at the rusty air conditioner sagging from the window and the film of dust that covered everything, he understood once again the terrible dignity of his task. The world had always been besotted, rolling in its own physical and spiritual filth. But he had been born into the one faith that refused to be corrupted. And now this single refuge from the world’s sordidness was being betrayed. The meaning of this betrayal suddenly filled him with an aching emptiness. Knowing that the enemy was everywhere, permeating everything, made his task seem all but impossible. And yet, he thought, it was part of the duty of men to resist despair. Although they had to see things clearly, even the harshest aspects of the world, they could not permit themselves to be defeated by their own lucidity.

Quickly, he stepped over to the phone beside the bed and picked up the receiver. He could hear the clicking of the switchboard in the motel office.

“Yes?”

“I wish to make a call.”

“Sure. Give you an outside line.”

“Thank you.”

He heard a dial tone, then dialed the number.

“Hotel Utah. Good evening.”

“I want to speak with William Casey.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.”

He realized that he was whispering and raised his voice.

“William Casey, please.”

“Just a minute, sir.”

He waited, listening to distant voices, people moving about the hotel lobby. A beautiful place, he thought, the lobby of the Hotel Utah. He could see it in his mind. The ceiling of inlaid glass high above the plush red carpet. The magnificent crystal chandelier, great marble columns, and gilded balconies. He had once thought of the Utah as the perfect expression of the part of his faith that demanded elegance of manner and refinement of taste. Now it too had been subverted, and he hated the Hotel Utah as yet another place where material beauty masked corruption.

The receiver seemed to have grown very cold by the time he heard a voice on the other end.

“This is William Casey.”

The voice was light, flippant; its casualness revolted him.

“Mr. Casey, I’m a visitor in Salt Lake,” he said.

“What’s that?”

He raised his voice again.

“I’m a visitor in Salt Lake.”

He waited for Casey to speak, then went on.

“Did you hear me, Mr. Casey? I am a visitor in Salt Lake.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Can we do business?”

“And why not?”

He felt his fingers tighten around the receiver.

“A Negress,” he said.

“No problem. I can arrange it.”

“Fine.”

“Where?”

“Paradise Motel. Do you know where that is?”

There was a laugh on the other end, and he felt his hatred surge through the line. “I asked you if you know where it is.”

“Sure, I know every place in Salt Lake. What time, pal?”

“Midnight. Room 17.”

“It’s almost midnight now, but I’ll have her there.”

He heard Casey slap the receiver into its cradle and hung up. He eased himself down on the bed and took a deep breath. It was the beginning. One day this moment would be exalted above all the other things he had ever done.

After a moment he stood up, walked into the bathroom, and took a washcloth from the rack above the bath. He moistened it in the sink, walked back out into the room, and began cleaning the bureau. He wiped the dust from its top and sides, then leaned over and carefully washed the mirror. In the glass his fake mustache seemed to darken his features. At first the fools would think he had used it as a disguise. In the end, they would know the truth. They would see that every aspect of this night had had a rational foundation. He smiled, then peeled the mustache from his upper lip and placed it in his pocket. Without the mustache, his face looked stern and handsome. Because of his looks, he had been horribly tempted in his life, but he had never gone astray, and he thought that this fidelity to his faith, this capacity to resist irresistible temptation, was perhaps the greatest reason for his being chosen to carry out the mission.

He glanced at his watch. He did not have much time. Walking quickly to the bed, he wiped the dust from the headboard, then bent down and straightened the cover. Its off-white color and coarse texture reminded him of the Great Salt Flats. His father had taken him deep into them once and had pointed up toward the great blue sky. “That is the eye of God,” his father had said. “His eye surrounds the world and sees everything, sees you." He had never forgotten the sudden thrill and dread of having God’s presence made magnificently real: a great eye, watching him.

He walked to the back window, parted the Venetian blinds, and carefully washed each blade. Outside it was very dark, but he knew that God’s eye was not closed. He wiped the dust from the last of the blinds, then closed them.

Stepping into the bathroom, he carefully washed the small window, the sink, and then bent down and cleaned the base of the toilet. The room was a place of sacrifice, and must be made clean. More than anything, he had learned that God is not mocked. His instructions must be followed to the letter.

When he had finished with the bathroom, he walked back over to the bed and sat down. He did not feel tired, but he did not feel exhilarated either.

He peeled the gloves from his hands and put them in his coat pocket. Then he stood up, pulled off his coat, and hung it over the end of the bed. In a short time, he thought, it would be over and he would be home again, sitting quietly in his study, surrounded by his books. He knew he would complete his task, for part of the glory of God resided in the notion of completion, the sense of finality, of justice. Few men understood that all the days of their lives led to a single end. They scattered themselves in a thousand futile directions when there was only one direction worthy of life—the one that led through the pupil of God’s eye and into that bliss of ultimate and everlasting union.

When the knock came, he felt his heart begin to pound within his chest. For a moment he could not move. He grasped the cover of the bed and squeezed.

The tapping came again. He rose and opened the door. The Negress stood before him, her face staring through the rusty screen. She had large eyes and full lips, but beyond this he could make out no details.

Then she smiled broadly, and her teeth gleamed in the slant of light that fell across her face.

“Evening, honey,” she said.

He nodded.

“I am at the right place, ain’t I?”

Unable to speak, he nodded again.

She squinted, and he thought he caught an edge of irritability in the grostesque stupidity of her face. “Well, you gone let Rayette in, or whut?”

She moved back and he opened the screen. She passed jauntily in front of him, and he caught the common odor of her perfume as she stepped to the center of the room and swung around to face him. “How you doin’ tonight, honey?”

“Fine,” he said.

“Good. That’s good.” She turned away from him to survey the room. He knew that she was used to such places, that she had rutted in these bleak rooms for years.

“Nice homey place,” she said.

He dropped his hands into his trouser pockets and watched her.

She turned toward the mirror and looked at herself admiringly in the glass. She was tall and slender, with coarse, straight hair, and as she preened before the mirror he saw the absurdity of her pathetic vanity.

She placed her hands under her breasts and lifted them.

“You like?” she asked with a wink.

He did not speak. He felt his revulsion building, and because of that he knew his mission would be less difficult than he expected. In sending this ridiculous, posturing creature to him, God had made it easy.

Suddenly she moved toward him and he pulled away.

She stopped and looked at him oddly.

“What’s the problem, honey?”

“Nothing.”

She smiled indulgently. “Hey, look here, everybody’s a little ner vous. Ain’t nothing to be worried ’bout.”

Her eyes glanced up and down his body, but she did not move toward him. She was pretending to desire him, and this farcical play revolted him.

“Maybe you want Rayette to relax you?” she asked.

The lewd sultriness of her voice scraped across his ears like a blade.

She stepped forward slightly and lifted her hand.

“I’m a gentle woman,” she said. “I bet you a gentle man, too.”

He could feel his fists squeezing together rhythmically in his pockets.

She glanced at the movement of his hands and smiled.

“Maybe you jes’ want to do everything yourself,” she said.

He clenched his fists and did not release them.

“How’d you like to see Rayette all over?”

He stepped over to the bed, carefully avoiding her, and sat down.

She followed him with her eyes, shifting slightly to the right to keep him in view.

“You a handsome man,” she said.

He felt a smile tremble on his lips and struggled to keep it there.

“Let me get out of my coat, honey,” she said. Slowly she dropped the coat from her shoulders, al...