Blood Test

Norman Matthews had been described to me as an aggressive and ambitious man. A hustler. As Matthias he’d tried to come across a holy man but there was enough cynicism in me to wonder if he hadn’t simply traded one hustle for another.

The Touch was a gold mine: offer the prosperous simplicity amid lush surroundings, remove the burden of personal responsibility, substitute an ethos that equated health and vitality with righteousness, and pass the collection plate. How could it miss?

But even if the whole thing was a scam it didn’t spell kidnapping and murder. As Seth had pointed out, loss of privacy was the last thing Matthias wanted, be he prophet or con man.

“Let’s take a look around,” said Houten, “and be done with it.”

I was allowed free access to the grounds, permitted to open any door. The sanctuary was domed and majestic, with clerestory windows and biblical murals on the ceiling. The pews had been removed and the floor covered with padded mats. There was a rough pine table in the center of the room and little else. A woman in white dusted and swept, stopping only to smile at us maternally.

The sleeping rooms were indeed cells — no larger than the one in which Raoul was confined — low-ceilinged, thick-walled, and cool, with a single window the size of a hardbound book and grilled with wood. Each room was furnished with a cot and a chest of drawers. Matthias’s differed only in that it had a small bookcase. His literary taste was eclectic — the Bible, the Koran, Perls, Jung, Cousins’s Anatomy of An Illness, Toffler’s Future Shock, the Bhagavad-Gita, several texts on organic gardening and ecology.

I took a tour of the kitchen, where cauldrons of broth simmered on industrial stoves and bread baked sweetly in brick ovens. There was a member’s library, its stock leaning toward health and agriculture, and a conference room with textured adobe walls. And everywhere people in white working, smiling, bright-eyed and friendly.

Houten and I traipsed through the fields, watching Touch members tend the grapes. A black-bearded giant put down his shears and offered us a freshly picked cluster. The fruit was moist to the touch and it burst electrically upon my tongue. I complimented the man on the flavor. He nodded and returned to his work.

It was well into the afternoon but the sun continued to rage. My unprotected head began to ache and after cursorily inspecting the sheepyard and the vegetable plots I told Houten I’d had enough.

We turned and walked back toward the viaduct. I wondered what I’d accomplished, for the search had been symbolic, at best. There wasn’t any reason to believe the Swope children were there. And if they were, there’d be no way to find them. The Retreat was surrounded by hundreds of acres, much of it forest. Nothing short of a bloodhound pack could cover it all. Besides, monasteries are secret places, designed for refuge, and the compound might very well harbor a maze of underground caverns, secret compartments, and hidden passages that only an archaeologist could unravel.

It had been a futile day, I thought, but if it helped Raoul confront reality it was worth it. Then I realized what reality meant and craved the balm of denial.

Houten had Bragdon bring Raoul’s personal effects in a large manila envelope. In the end he’d agreed to accept the oncologist’s check for six hundred eighty-seven dollars worth of fines and while he recorded the amount in triplicate, I walked around the room restlessly, eager to get going.

The county map caught my eye. I located La Vista and noticed a back road to the east that seemed to skirt the town, allowing entry to the region from the outlying woodlands without actually passing through the commercial district. If that was the case, avoiding Houten’s scrutiny was easier than he’d let on.

After some hesitation I asked him about it. He fiddled with a piece of carbon paper and continued writing.

“Oil company bought up the land, got the county to seal off the road. There was big talk of deep deposits, prosperity just around the corner.”

“Did they strike it rich?”

“Nope. Bone dry.”

The deputy brought Raoul out. I told him about my visit to the Retreat and the negative findings. He took it in, looking downcast and beaten, and offered no protest.

The sheriff, pleased with his passivity, treated him with exquisite courtesy while he signed him out. He asked Raoul what he wanted to do about his Volvo, and the oncologist shrugged and said to have it fixed, he’d pay for it.

I led him out of the room and down the stairs.

He was silent throughout the ride home, not even losing his cool when a chubby female border guard pulled us over and asked for his identification. He accepted the indignity with a mute acquiescence that I found pitiful. Two hours ago he’d been aggressive and poised for battle. I wondered if he’d been laid low by the accumulated stress or if cyclical mood swings were a part of his makeup I’d never noticed.