Excerpt from
Reflections on the Ritual
In the year of Our Lord,
A.D.
1557
Somewhere in Europe
At dawn, a hungry crow made several final strike bites to remove an eye from the corpse putrefying at the gallows outside the city gate.
Under cover of darkness the souvenir hunters had already picked over the remains of the heretic. They took teeth, locks of hair, fingers, and snippets of fabric, to be sold in the backward provinces as cures for everyday maladies, perhaps talismans for unrequited love.
Such was the status of last month’s judgment.
For those who had missed out, this morning held greater promise. Anticipation was in the air, carried on the smoke from the bakers’ ovens, the iron works, and the market fires that curled beyond the walls to the far reaches of the community, inviting all citizens to gather near the square.
For today, they would bear witness to a rare event.
The judgment and sentencing of two young sisters charged with having succumbed to devils. The practitioners of sorcery and witchcraft would be compelled to bow to the glory of God.
A local holiday had been declared.
Every stratum of the region partook. The poorest of country folk, servants, artisans, and rich merchants, rose early from their beds and dressed in their best clothes. They had set all the day’s duties and business affairs aside to make their way to the city, through the market to the center. In every corner of the town, the streets swarmed with activity.
The smells of fresh bread, produce, and slaughtered poultry and swine mingled with those of goat heads boiling in blackened kettles and the stench of urine and excrement from the chickens, pigs, cattle, and horses, who also trod along the busy streets.
Minstrels performed, jesters joked and juggled, while hawkers claimed to offer genuine items belonging to the young witches. “This is her comb, I assure you, Madame.” Crowds gossiped and speculated as their numbers swelled in the shadow of the church spire where necks craned to watch the local tradesmen make final preparations.
The clock tower chimed and the square fell silent.
Those knowledgeable in the proceedings of these matters quietly explained to their neighbors that the accused, being held in the jail, would at this very moment face a chance to renounce Satan, confess their crimes, name those who also sinned, and convert. If they confessed, it would be deemed false. If they refused to confess, it would be an admission of their heresy. Don’t worry, their guilt is assured.
The penalty is a certainty.
A rumor rippled through the square. Only a rumor, mind you, because the statute guaranteed the anonymity of the executioner to thwart those dark forces that would attempt retaliation. As you know the rumor arose from the relative of a chambermaid at the inn, or was it the boy from the stables, or the old guard at the court? No matter, the story being that the presiding executioner was Xavier Veenza, the hermit monk from the distant mountains.
In all of Europe, few were as skilled at the ritual.
“If we have Veenza, then we are to behold something, to be sure, eh?” Winks and nods were followed with enthusiastic nudges.
The prosecution of the heretics began a fortnight ago when the girls were given the summons. They were roused from sleep and brought at night to the government building for questioning. They were urged to confess, to renounce the devil. They were threatened with torture, taken below to the torture chamber. They were shown the instruments of agony, stripped naked, and prepared for what was to come.
Soon the screams of the young prisoners pierced the jailhouse walls, resounded through the square, to the church spire, the rooftops lined with onlookers, and the hotel windows where tourists, who’d traveled far for the event, cocked their ears.
The cries of the witches were received well. This, my friends, is what we’ve come for, to attest to the swift application of justice against the enemies of God.
Is it Veenza’s work? Do you think it is he?
Then court officials, noblemen, and various leaders of the church took their reserved places in the grandstand—the moment of truth had arrived.
Having allowed sufficient time for confession and spiritual consolation—the heretics were removed from their cells, manacled, shackled, and placed by local guards on a cart for a procession to the place of execution. A cordoned area enclosed two stakes, fashioned from dead wood, jutting from the ground amid chest-high heaps of straw, twigs, and branches.
A long, slow burn.
Nearby, a kindling fire crackled. Next to it, the executioner’s altar displayed an array of odd-looking instruments hinting to the crowd that there were better things to come.
At this point, no space within the entire square was vacant, having been jammed with citizens eager to see an event they would recount for generations, the burning of two local witches.
The procession was a slow, painstaking process whereby the mother of the condemned wailed, prayed, and implored magistrates to spare the souls of her daughters.
J
ason Wade’s motel room in Spokane smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. The green digits of the clock on the night table showed 10:54 p.m. when he tossed his bag on the bed, then called Carl McCormick’s home number.
“It’s Jason Wade, sorry for the late call, I just got in.”
“Hey, there you are,” McCormick said. “Where’re you staying?”
“Big Sky Suites.”
“That’s across town from us.”
“Sorry I’m so late. My car lost a fan belt in Ellensburg, had to send to Yakima for a replacement. Then my cell phone died. I lost a lot of time.”
“No problem. I worked on Cull today, made calls to set things up for us. Get some sleep, I’ll come and get you at the motel, say nine a.m. sharp.”
After hanging up, Jason put his cell phone on charge, reached for the bag of tacos and refried beans he’d picked up at a drive-through, then flipped through his file on Gideon Cull.
Coming here was a gamble that could cost him more than a few hundred bucks out of his own pocket. But he couldn’t ignore his gut feeling that Cull might be connected to Karen Harding’s disappearance and Roxanne Palmer’s murder. The Spokane link with the old sex complaint had to be checked out.
He had little experience chasing this kind of serious stuff. He’d likely already missed some important aspect, he thought, getting into bed. But he had nothing to lose. If he was wrong, he’d back off. Then what? The
Times
and the
Post-Intelligencer
weren’t options for him.
There was always the brewery.
But what if he was right?
He stared at Cull’s picture until exhaustion turned to sleep.
At 9:00 a.m., Carl McCormick’s blue Dodge pickup stopped at the motel’s entrance. McCormick wore jeans, a polo shirt, and a dark jacket that emphasized his white hair.
“Jason.” McCormick shook his hand. “Good to see you.”
“Same here.” Jason got into the cab. It was littered with newspapers, phone books, and files. “Thanks for helping me.”
“No, I owe you. If this Cull is linked to Palmer and Harding, then you’ve got a big ass-story. Now, given that Palmer’s from Spokane, how about we agree to share our data?”
“Sure. What do you think the chances are that he’s linked?”
“Too soon to tell. Nothing’s ever what it seems. You’ve got to be careful with these stories. A guy who looks guilty one minute is cleared a minute later.”
McCormick had called one of his contacts, Margaret Hipple, a manager in the human resources department of Tumbler River College. She met them at a small restaurant near the school and was nervous at Jason’s presence.
“This is all on background,” McCormick assured her. “We’ll protect sources. We’re just interested in the information. As I told you, this man could be tied to some violent crimes.”
Hipple hesitated before unfolding a piece of paper with information she’d collected from the college’s records on staff and students, archived stuff from the basement, she told them.
“Going back several years, Gideon Cull was a parttime lecturer of religion. He also did a lot of volunteer community work with support groups, addiction groups, the homeless, convicts, people in crisis, that sort of thing. Here and throughout the state. He traveled quite a bit.”
“What about complaints against him?” Wade asked.
“Only the one. A student claimed he’d touched her improperly.”
“Was it investigated?”
“Yes. Cull was deeply anguished by the allegation. He was held in high esteem, but it was quietly suggested he take a sabbatical while the complaint was dealt with.”
“Was it referred to the Spokane PD?” McCormick asked.
“No. The policy on something like that at the time was for the school’s Professional Standards Committee to first look into it. If it was credible, they would refer it to the police.”
“What was the outcome?” Jason asked.
“The woman who launched the complaint dropped out, then moved away. The committee tried to reach her to follow up on her complaint, but she left no contact information. So it was set aside.”
“So no one really knew if it was true or not?” Jason asked.
Hipple nodded. “Correct, but the committee’s feeling was that this young woman was somewhat unstable. She’d also said she thought she was being followed on campus by a strange man, which could not be substantiated. She just didn’t seem credible. Cull denied her allegation, cooperated fully, and was concerned about her mental state of health.”
“How do you know this information?” Jason asked.
McCormick smiled to himself. The kid was learning.
“I chaired the committee at the time.”
“So what happened?”
“He resumed teaching at the college. But soon after, he left and eventually went to Seattle.”
“With no black mark on his record?”
“We gave him a positive reference.”
Jason and McCormick paused to consider the information, and then McCormick asked Hipple to give them the woman’s name. She looked away to think about it, then glanced at her page and lowered her voice.
“Bonnie Stillerman.”
“Spell that?” McCormick asked. “And do you have her date of birth?”
Hipple gave it to them along with other data, including a lead on finding one of Bonnie Stillerman’s old college friends in Spokane. McCormick turned away to make some calls.
“I’m helping because I trust Carl. I don’t believe Gideon Cull could be tied to anything like what you’ve suggested, but I know I’d never live with myself if he was and I didn’t help.”
Jason nodded.
“That is all I can give you. Now I want your word that this comes from an anonymous source.”
“You have it,” Jason said, shaking Hipple’s hand.
Back in McCormick’s pickup heading across Spokane, Wade looked across the city wondering about Cull’s case and the complaint.
“It’s a puzzler,” he said. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
“It might not be a story yet, but it’s information.” McCormick’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened for a few seconds, then said: “All right, we’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Thanks, Dunc.”
Next stop: Riverfront Park.
After parking, McCormick and Jason took a path that threaded along a grassy meadow and tall swaying willows that led them to a man alone on a bench overlooking the Spokane River. He was an ex-FBI agent, now a private investigator, who traded data with McCormick. A broad-shouldered man with salt-and-pepper hair and intense dark eyes.
“Dunc, this is Jason Wade, I told you about him.”
The man nodded and folded his newspaper.
“What can you tell us about our subject?” McCormick asked.
Dunc grimaced and stared at the river.
“He had assault charges against him. But they were dropped. He was never convicted. Never did time.”
Jason pulled out his notebook, prompting Dunc to glare at him as though he’d committed an offense for being so eager, so he put it away.
“He hit his wife with a baseball bat after he caught her cheating on him. He was drunk at the time. She lived. He got a good lawyer.”
Dunc glanced at his watch.
“It turns out, the judge liked Gideon and said the situation and circumstances were mitigating. Go figure. Your subject was quite young at the time. A failed philosophy doctoral candidate studying to be a minister. He was remorseful, cooperative, all that crap. Since he was an aspiring clergyman, he offered to counsel convicts so he visited prisoners and he took a lot of courses and also became certified to teach. His wife left him but he started teaching and stayed out of trouble ever since.”
“Except for the college complaint,” McCormick said.
“Except for that.”
“Thanks, Dunc.”
He nodded, crossed his arms, and stared at the Spokane River.
McCormick took Jason to a small diner at the fringe of a downtown industrial section. Flies patrolled the grimy corners of the front window. Prices on the menu were updated in ballpoint pen. Jason ordered a BLT on white. McCormick got tuna salad, looked to the street, then summarized what they’d dug up so far on Cull.
“He’s been violent against his wife and had an unsubstantiated sex complaint against him from a female college student. Fast-forward a few years and you have a murdered Spokane prostitute. And students at Cull’s Seattle college, where he teaches Harding, call him creepy. It’s all interesting, but is there a story there?”
Jason didn’t think so. Not yet. They finished lunch, then met Bonnie Stillerman’s old college friend, Diane Upshaw. She’d shared an apartment with Bonnie at school and was now a real estate agent, an extremely busy one, selling new homes north of the city near the suburb of Mead.
“Bonnie didn’t have many friends,” Diane told them while leaning against her Lexus outside the model show home as colored banners and builder flags snapped in the breeze. “She was very quiet and shy.”
“Did you believe her complaint against Cull?”
“Something happened, because it was a big deal for her to make the complaint. She was so timid.”
“Did you know Cull?” Jason asked.
Diane shook her head.
“We understand Bonnie complained that she was being followed on campus.”
“Nothing came of it,” she said. “She was pretty stressed with school and the Cull complaint. She may have been paranoid. I suggested she take a break. Not long after, she just dropped out and moved away.”
“Do you have any contact information on her?”
“No. We lost touch. I think she just left Spokane to start over. Just took off. I still have some boxes of her stuff.” Diane opened her bag. “After you called me earlier, I took a quick look through some old pictures. Here.” She handed McCormick snapshots of Stillerman. A plain-faced girl who wore large glasses with bright red frames. Diane’s cell phone rang. “I think she moved to New Mexico,” she said before turning away to take her call.
Jason and McCormick spent the rest of the day unsuccessfully trying to locate old friends of Bonnie Stillerman or Gideon Cull.
In his motel that night, Jason lay on his bed not knowing what to make of what he’d learned about Cull, when he came upon an idea. One he would act on alone. He went to his files, flipping through Carl McCormick’s stories on Roxanne Palmer’s murder until he’d found what he needed, then glanced at the bedside clock: 11:20 p.m.
Not too late. A good time actually. Jason grabbed his map of Spokane, then a page from his file folder, which he inserted into the glossy outdated visitor’s magazine from his motel room’s desk drawer.
He headed for his Falcon.
This might work.