"Oh, it gets much better than that," Keller said. "They delivered the miracle in the ritual. Very sophisticated flummery, in fact. But that's why Moloch had such lasting popularity-it was convincing, and it was exciting. The statue had arms that stretched out to the congregation. When you placed the sacrifice in his arms, Moloch would appear to come to life and eat the sacrifice-the arms would slowly raise up the victim and place it in his mouth."

"And into the furnace," I said, not wanting to be left out any longer, "while the music played." Deborah looked at me strangely, and I realized that no one else had mentioned music, but Keller shrugged it off and answered.

"Yes, that's right. Trumpets and drums, singing, all very hypnotic. Climaxing as the god lifted the body up to its mouth and dropped it. Into the mouth and you fall down into the furnace. Alive. It can't have been much fun for the victim."

I believed what Keller said-I heard the soft throb of the drums in the distance, and it wasn't much fun for me, either.

"Does anybody still worship this guy?" Deborah asked. Keller shook his head. "Not for two thousand years, as far as I know," he said. "Well then, what the hell," Deborah said. "Who's doing this?"

"It isn't any kind of secret," Keller said. "It's a pretty well-documented part of history. Anybody could have done a little research and found out enough to do something like this."

"But why would they?" Deborah said. Keller smiled politely. "I'm sure I don't know," he said.

"So what the hell good does any of that do me?" she said, with a tone that suggested it was Keller's job to come up with an answer.

He gave her a kindly professor smile. "It never hurts to know things," he said. "For instance," I said, "we know that somewhere there must be a big statue of a bull with a furnace inside." Deborah snapped her head around so that she faced me. I leaned close to her and said softly, "Halpern." She blinked at me and I could see she hadn't thought of that yet. "You think it wasn't a dream?" she demanded.

"I don't know what to think," I said. "But if somebody is doing this Moloch thing for real, why wouldn't he do it with all the proper equipment?"

"Goddamn it," Deborah said. "But where could you hide something like that?"
Keller coughed with a certain delicacy. "I'm afraid there's more to it than that," he said. "Like what?" Deborah demanded.

"Well, you'd have to hide the smell, too," he said. "The smell of cooking human bodies. It lingers, and it's rather unforgettable." He sounded a little bit embarrassed and he shrugged. "So we're looking for a gigantic smelly statue with a furnace inside," I said cheerfully. "That shouldn't be too hard to find."