The Servants of Twilight

She couldn't talk herself out of her fear. She knew that something bad was going to happen when the two men showed up.

30

At eight o'clock Tuesday morning, Charlie met Henry Rankin in front of the Church of the Twilight: a Spanish-style structure with stained-glass windows, red tile roof, two bell towers, and a broad expanse of steps leading up to six massive carved oak doors. Rain slanted at the doors, streamed off the steps, making oily puddles on the cracked and canted sidewalk. The doors needed to be refinished, and the building needed new stucco; it was shabby and neglected, but that was in keeping with the neighborhood, which had been deteriorating for decades. The church had once been the home of a Presbyterian congregation, which had fled ten blocks north, to a new site, where there weren't so many abandoned stores, adult bookshops, failing businesses, and crumbling houses.

"You look wiped out," Henry said. He stood at the foot of the church steps, holding a big black umbrella, frowning as Charlie approached under an umbrella of his own.

"Didn't get to bed until three-thirty," Charlie said.

"I tried to make this appointment for later," Henry said.

"This was the only time she would see us."

"It's all right. If I'd had more time, I'd have just lain there, staring at the ceiling. Did the police talk to her last night?"

Henry nodded." I spoke with Lieutenant Carella this morning early. They questioned Spivey, and she denied everything."

"They believe her?"

"They're suspicious, if only because they've had their own problems with more than a few of these cults."

Each time a car passed in the street, its tires hissed on the wet pavement with what sounded like serpentine anger.

"Have they been able to put a name to any of those three dead men? "

"Not yet. As for the guns, the serial numbers are from a shipment that was sent from the wholesaler in New York to a chain of retail sporting goods outlets in the Southwest, two years

ago. The shipment never arrived. Hijacked. So these guns were bought on the black market. No way to trace who sold or purchased them."

"They cover their tracks well," Charlie said.

It was time to talk to Grace Spivey. He wasn't looking forward to it.

He had little patience for the psychotic babble in which these cult types frequently spoke. Besides, after last night, anything was possible; they might even risk committing murder on their own doorstep.

He looked at his car, by the curb, where one of his men, Carter Rilbeck, was waiting behind the wheel. Carter would wait for them and send for help if they weren't out in half an hour. In addition, both Charlie and Henry were packing revolyers in shoulder holsters.

The rectory was to the left of the church, set back from the street, beyond an unkempt lawn, between two coral trees in need of trimming, ringed by shrubbery that hadn't been thinned or shaped in months. Like the church, the rectory was in in-repair.

Charlie supposed that if you really believed the end of the world was imminent-as these Twilighters claimed to believe-then you didn't waste time on such niceties as gardening and house painting.

The rectory porch had a creaking floor, and the doorbell made a thin, harsh, irregular sound, more animal than mechanical.

The curtain covering the window in the center of the door was abruptly drawn aside. A florid-faced, overweight woman with protuberant green eyes stared at them for a long moment, then let the curtain fall into place, unlocked the door, and ushered them into a drab entry hall.

When the door was closed and the susurrous voice of the storm faded somewhat, Charlie said, "My name is-"

"I know who you are," the woman replied curtly. She led them back down the hall to a chamber on the right, where the door was ajar. She opened the door all the way and indicated that they were to enter. She didn't come with them, didn't announce them, just closed the door after them, leaving them to their own introductions. Evidently, common courtesy was not an ingredient in the bizarre stew of Christianity and doomsday prophecy that Spivey's followers had cooked up for themselves.

Charlie and Henry were in a room twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, sparsely and cheaply furnished. Filing cabinets lined one wall. In the center were a simple metal table on which lay a woman's purse and an ashtray, one metal folding chair behind the table, and two chairs in front of it. Nothing else. No draperies at the windows. No tables or cabinets or knickknacks.

There were no lamps, either, just the ceiling fixture, which cast a yellowish glow that, blending with the gray storm light coming through the tall windows, gave the room a muddy look.