The 1st Deadly Sin

He went back to the cottage, found a heavy envelope of reports a man coming on duty from Chilton had dropped off for him. They were from Sergeant MacDonald, copies of all the interrogations and statements of the people picked up in the continuing investigation. Delaney walked out to the van, got a paper cup of black coffee, brought it back. Then he sat down at his makeshift desk, pulled the gooseneck lamp closer, put on his heavy glasses, began reading the reports slowly.

He was looking for…what? Some explanation or lead or hint. What had turned Daniel G. Blank into a killer? Where and when did it begin? It was the motive he wanted, he needed. It wasn’t good enough to use words like nut, crazy, insane, homosexual, psychopath. Just labels. There had to be more to it than that. There had to be something that could be comprehended, that might explain why this young man had deliberately murdered five people. And four of them strangers.

Because, Delaney thought angrily, if there was no explanation for it, then there was no explanation for anything.

It was almost two in the morning when he pulled on that crazy coat and wandered out again. The compound around the cottage was brilliantly lighted. So was the packed path through the black trees; so was the bleak column of Devil’s Needle. As usual, there were men standing about, heads back, mouths gaping, eyes turned upward. Captain Delaney joined them without shame.

He opened himself to the crisp night, lightly moaning wind, stars that seemed holes punched in a black curtain beyond which shone a dazzling radiance. The shaft of Devil’s Needle rose shimmering in light, smoothed by the glare. Was he up there? Was he really up there?

There came to Captain Edward X. Delaney such a compassion that he must close his mouth, bite his lower lip to keep from wailing aloud. Unbidden, unwanted even, he shared that man’s passion, entered into him, knew his suffering. It was an unwelcome bond, but he could not deny it. The crime, the motive, the reason-all seemed unimportant now. What racked him was that lonely man, torn adrift. He wondered if that was why they all gathered here, at all hours, day and night. Was it to comfort the afflicted as best they might?

A few days later-was it three? It could have been four-late in the afternoon, the daily envelope of aerial photos was delivered to Captain Delaney. Daniel G. Blank was lying naked on his rock, spread-eagled to the sky. The Captain looked, took a deep breath, turned his gaze away. Then, without looking again, he put the photos back into the envelope. He did not post one outside on the cottage wall.

Soon after, Major Samuel Barnes called.

“Delaney?”

“Yes.”

“Barnes here. See the photos?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think he can last much longer.”

“No. Want to go up?”

“Not immediately. We’ll check by air another day or so. Temperature’s dropping.”

“I know.”

“No rush. We’re getting a good press. Those bullhorn appeals are doing it. Everyone says we’re doing all we can.”

“Yes. All we can.”

“Sure. But the weather’s turning bad. A front moving in from the Great Lakes. Cloudy, windy, snow. Freezing. If we’re socked in, we’ll look like fools. I say January the sixth. In the morning. No matter what. How do you feel about it?”

“All right with me. The sooner the better. How do you want to do it: climber or ’copter?”

“ ’Copter. Agreed?”

“Yes. That’ll be best.”

“All right. I’ll start laying it on. I’ll be over tomorrow and we’ll talk. Shit, he’s probably dead right now.”

“Yes,” Captain Delaney said. “Probably.”

The world had become a song for Daniel Blank. A song. Soonngg…Everything was singing. Not words, or even a tune. But an endless hum that filled his ears, vibrated so deep inside him that cells and particles of cells jiggled to that pleasant purr.

There was no thirst, no hunger and, best of all, there was no pain, none at all. For that he was thankful. He stared at a milky sky through filmed eyes almost closed by scratchy lids. The whiteness and the tuneless drone became one: a great oneness that went on forever, stretched him with a dreamy content.

He was happy he no longer heard his name shouted, happy he no longer saw a helicopter dipping and circling above his rock. But perhaps he had imagined those things; he had imagined so much: Celia Montfort was there once, wearing an African mask. Once he spoke to Tony. Once he saw a hunched, massive silhouette, lumbering away from him, dwindling. And once he embraced a man in a slow-motion dance that faded into milkiness before the ice ax struck, although he saw it raised.

But even these visions, all visions, disappeared; he was left only with an empty screen. Occasionally discs, whiter than white, floated into view, drifted, then went off, out of sight. They were nice to watch, but he was glad when they were gone.

He had a slowly diminishing apprehension of reality, but before weakness subdued his mind utterly, he felt his perception growing even as his senses faded. It seemed to him he had passed through the feel-taste-touch-smell- hear world and had emerged to this gentle purity with its celestial thrum, a world where everything was true and nothing was false.

There was, he now recognized with thanksgiving and delight, a logic to life, and this logic was beautiful. It was not the orderly logic of the computer, but was the unpredictable logic of birth, living, death. It was the mortality of one, and the immortality of all. It was all things, animate and inanimate, bound together in a humming whiteness.

It was an ecstasy to know that oneness, to understand, finally, that he was part of the slime and part of the stars. There was no Daniel Blank, no Devil’s Needle, and never had been. There was only the continuum of life in which men and rocks, slime and stars, appear as seeds, grow a moment, and then are drawn back again into that timeless whole, continually beginning, continually ending.

He was saddened that he could not bring this final comprehension to others, describe to them the awful majesty of the certitude he had found: a universe of accident and possibility where a drop of water is no less than a moon, a passion no more than a grain of sand. All things are nothing, but all things are all. In his delirium, he could clutch that paradox to his heart, hug it, know it for truth.

He could feel life ebbing in him-feel it! It oozed away softly, no more than an invisible vapor rising from his wasted flesh, becoming part again of that oneness from whence it came. He died slowly, with love, for he was passing into another form; the process so gentle that he could wonder why men cried out and fought.

Those discs of white on white appeared again to drift across his vision. He thought dimly there was a moisture on his face, a momentary tingle; he wondered if he might be weeping with joy.

It was only snow, but he did not know it. It covered him slowly, soothing the roughened skin, filling out the shrunken hollows of his body, hiding the seized joints and staring eyes.

Before the snow ended at dawn, he was a gently sculpted mound atop Devil’s Needle. His shroud was white and without stain.

Late on the night of January 5th, Captain Delaney met with Major Samuel Barnes, Chief Forrest, Captain Sneed, the crew of the State Police helicopter, and the chief radioman. They all crowded into the gate-keeper’s cottage; a uniformed guard was posted outside the door to keep curious reporters away.

Major Barnes had prepared a schedule, and handed around carbon copies.

“Before we get down to nuts-and-bolts,” he said rapidly, “the latest weather advisory is this: Snow beginning at midnight, tapering off at dawn. Total accumulation about an inch and a half or two. Temperatures in the low thirties to upper twenties. Then, tomorrow morning, it should clear with temperatures rising to the middle thirties. Around noon, give or take an hour, the shit will really hit the fan, with a dropping barometer, temperature going way down, snow mixed with rain, hail, and sleet, and winds of twenty-five gusting to fifty.