Clipper ignored Peters’s barely contained snort of laughter from the doorway and gestured for Collins to continue.
“This was a nice neighborhood, only three of us down here. Us, we’ve been here since ’65, Mrs. Stanley across the street and Mr. Potter next door. Mr. Potter passed away two years ago, and Mr. Petersen moved in.” Collins grimaced. “That’s when the trouble started. Mrs. Stanley—she was a young widow, poor thing, lost her husband in one of those Arab countries—anyway, she came to me and asked if we’d had trouble with prowlers or peeping toms. Said she thought she’d seen someone outside her house several times at night. I told her to call the police, but she wasn’t sure and didn’t want to raise a false alarm. Then I found some footprints in my begonia bed, out back, and I knew she wasn’t just imagining it. I started watching and, sure enough, that Petersen man was sneaking behind my house and across the road to get into her back yard. ‘Call the police,’ I told her. ‘Have them come out and shoot him.’” Collins glanced toward her husband. “I’d have been happy to do that myself,” she said with a thoughtful look, “but Ollie won’t have a gun in the house.”
“Did she finally call?” Clipper struggled not to smile at the woman's matter-of-fact ferocity.
Collins shook her head. “I couldn’t convince her. Mrs. Stanley told me she had some things missing from her clothesline—you know, personal things—and then she started getting phone calls late at night.” Collins glanced at her husband and lowered her voice. “One time I snuck over and left a note on his door. ‘We know what you’re doing,’ it said, but that didn’t help, he just kept skulking around.” Collins sighed. “Mrs. Stanley moved away six months ago. She ran away, and I’m sure he’s just sitting there like a fat spider waiting for another woman to move in, but he also still goes out late at night.”
Clipper said, “How do you know that?”
“I don’t sleep much, what with watching Ollie and all.” Collins got up and moved to her husband’s side, smoothing his hair and adjusting the ventilator on his torso. “I saw Mr. Petersen drive past the house Sunday night about eleven o’clock.” she said flatly. “I don’t know when he came back, but his car was in the drive when I got up at six on Monday morning.”
Chapter Six
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Harold Petersen licked his lips and looked across the interview room table at Clipper. “I wasn’t at the store Sunday night.”
Clipper smiled. “Then where were you? We know you weren’t home.”
Clipper and Peters had gone directly from Petersen’s house to his store and taken him to the station for interrogation. He’d agreed with minimal protests, as if knowing it was inevitable, and had sat with head lowered, mute through the Miranda warning.
Petersen’s face was pale and greasy in the fluorescent lighting. “I, uh, I might have gone out for cigarettes. I don’t remember.”
“Where do you usually get your cigarettes?”
“Well, you know, wherever. Mostly just at the store.”
John Peters leaned across the table. “Yesterday, you described Chelsea Amburg as foxy. Why did you think that?”
Petersen licked his lips again. “Well, she, uh, she’s built nice, and pretty and all.”
“Was she friendly?”
“I— I guess so.”
Clipper again, interrupting: “We’re processing Chelsea’s apartment right now, Harold. Finding lots of fingerprints and fibers and stuff.”
Peters asked, “You ever see Chelsea outside of work? Maybe go out for coffee, or drop by her apartment?”
“No. No, I never.”
“So how are you going to explain it if some of those fingerprints we find are yours?”
“You won’t. I— I’ve never been inside.”
Clipper leaned forward. “Harold, do you ever have any problems with prowlers around your house?”
“What? No, I—”
“We’ve had a lot of prowler complaints in your neighborhood.” Peters said. “If we check our records, I bet we’ll find prowler complaints from Chelsea, too. She ever mention that to you?”
“No,” Peterson moaned, eyes darting to the door as if seeking escape. “No.”
Clipper held up his hand. “Look, Harold,” he said, “we know you’re not telling us the truth. I can see it eating at you. We’ll all adults here, so why don’t you just level with us. If you were keeping an eye on Chelsea’s place, watching out for her, we’d understand that. Sometimes a guy has to stand up for weaker people, take care of his neighbors and employees. Maybe check on them or give them a call from time to time.”
Petersen took a deep breath. “I… I might have driven by her place, but I never did anything wrong.”
Peters slapped his hand on the table. “We know you didn’t drive by her place Sunday night, because she was working. If you wanted to see her, you went to the store. Did you go inside, or did you watch her through the windows?”
Petersen flinched, shaking his head. “I didn’t go there. I … I was…” His voice ran down, and his head dropped. “I guess I want a lawyer,” he whispered.
“All right, Harold,” Clipper said, pushing back from the table, “we’re done for now. You go get a lawyer and tell him to give me a call. We’ll talk again.” He turned to go, then turned back. “And don’t leave town in the meantime.”
After Petersen left, Clipper and Peters sat in Clipper’s office with Deputy State Attorney General Irwin Myer. Since all homicides in Maine were prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office, Myer had dropped by for an update on Bangor’s two homicides. He was one of the younger deputies, possessed of boundless energy and a go-for-the-throat courtroom attitude that endeared him to investigators all over the state.
Right now, he was shaking his head. “You just don’t have enough. Put him or his vehicle at the scene, and you’re golden, but no judge I know is going to issue a search warrant just because he’s a sleaze.” He shifted direction. “What’s your plan for the Pollack case?”
Clipper grimaced. “You know how hard we hit this case the first time around,” he said. “We’ll go back and talk to everyone she knew and every scumbag we can find but, unless something else turns up at the scene or the post, we’re still pretty much at square one.”
“You know, Gerard Beaudreau was on the street about the time Pollack disappeared, and as far as I know, he still is. Did you take a look at him?”
“Yeah, we had him in, but with no body, there was nowhere to go with it,” Clipper said. “We’ll look at him again on both of them, but I’m wondering if we should be looking closer to home on Pollack.”
Myer seemed to hear something in Clipper’s voice. “Something else?”
“Well, from the care the killer took to lay out and conceal the body, I’m thinking this may not be stranger-to-stranger. We haven’t got a cause of death or time yet—still waiting on the post—but we’re assuming she was killed around the time she disappeared, so we’ll bear down on the people she was close to.”
When Myer headed back to Augusta, Clipper spent a moment coordinating with Peters and Evan Paul. “You guys get the Pollack interviews lined up, and I’m going to talk to the guys who found her. Oh, and call the SP and see if you can get a current address on Gerard Beaudreau. He’s been keeping a low profile since he beat that murder charge over in Washington County. Let’s get him in and find out where he was Sunday night, and hit him again on Pollack.”
Clipper scanned the State Police incident reports Max Trimble had dropped off, then left the station headed for the address listed for Douglas Holland. When Holland opened the door, Clipper grinned in recognition.
“I thought I recognized the name,” he said, holding his badge in his left hand and reaching out his right to shake. “Tom Clipper. We met at Gunsmoke a while back.”
Earlier in the year, Clipper had gone to Gunsmoke, a local gun shop and shooting range, to purchase a new .45 to replace one destroyed in a gunfight. The shop owner had introd
uced him to Douglas Holland, his father, and they’d spent a few moments discussing the merits of the venerable .45 ACP round.
Holland smiled. “Of course,” he said. “How are you liking that Kimber?”
He motioned Clipper into a neat living room, clean and almost Spartan in its furnishings, and sat on the edge of a leather recliner, indicating Clipper should take a seat on the sofa across from him.
“Never really trusted the lighter calibers. I’ve always preferred the .357,” Holland said, nodding at a wall rack holding several rifles and a pair of handguns, “but I’m sure you didn’t come out here to talk guns. What can I do for you?”
“It looks like the body you found in your camp was a girl who went missing from Bangor last month,” Clipper said. “I’ve read what you told the State Police about finding her, but I’d like to get your impressions on what you saw, and I need to know who else besides you and Mister Woodman knew about the camp.”
Holland snorted. “I figured that was it,” he said, “but I don’t think I can help you much. Galen and I have owned that camp for forty years. We’ve had so many friends and relatives out there hunting that it would probably be easier to figure out who didn’t know about it.”
“You let other people use it?”
“Well, no. We’d invite folks out, but I think one of us was always there when the camp was used.”
Clipper nodded. “Her name was Kristen Pollack. Does that ring any bells?”
Holland shook his head. “Don’t know anybody by that name,” he said, “but I do remember the news stories when she went missing.”
“Do you recall anyone asking about the camp, or mentioning it around that time?”
“Nope. We use it for a few weeks a year and don’t even hardly think about it the rest of the time.”
“What did you think about the body?”
Holland hesitated, gazing into space. When he spoke, his voice was subdued.
“In the Pacific, we saw a lot of dead Japanese soldiers,” he said quietly. “Most of ’em were broken and twisted, burned, bloated. You could tell they died right where they fell, see the fear and agony on their faces. Once in a while though, we’d get into a cave or a camp back in the jungle, and it would be different. We’d see bodies that were cleaned up and laid out like they were part of some sort of ceremony. Suicides maybe, not on display, exactly but… taken care of. Like someone cared about them. I hadn’t thought of that in years, but it came to mind when I saw that body on the bunk. Killer or no, I think maybe whoever left her there cared about her.”
Clipper nodded and stood, glancing again at the rifle rack, unconsciously cataloging the weapons and noting an old bayonet on a small stand under the rifles. He also recognized the Purple Heart and Silver Star standing out among a large collection of medals and service ribbons displayed on a wall plaque. “I had the same feeling,” he said. “I’m going to see if Mr. Woodman has anything to add, and I think the State will probably release your camp in a few days.”
Holland shook his head. “Doesn’t really matter,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be doing any hunting there this year.”
Chapter Seven
The hunter slid silently into position, standing quietly, patiently in the soft moonlight. He was relaxed, but, at the same time, tense with anticipation and need. He had been here, standing silently in the dark, before; he knew it was only a matter of time before a suitable target came along. He smiled with the thrill of the hunt, savoring the spice of unpredictability as he expanded his senses into the chilly night.
Sonia Rojas was used to a much warmer climate, but she didn’t notice the chill as she loped easily along the wooded path, black ponytail bobbing rhythmically. At five foot eight and one hundred twenty-two pounds, Sonia loved the solitude and demands of distance running and was good enough to begin thinking of it as a profession. She was proud of the dedication and determination that had allowed her to nab an athletic scholarship, but still enough of a social animal to go out of her way to fit in with her less athletically gifted, and perhaps less serious, classmates. Wearing the severe ascetic face she routinely hid from them, she was three miles into her daily five-mile run through the University Forest trails, loose and sweating freely in the gathering twilight. Concentrating on maintaining her pace, she saw, but had no time to comprehend, the brief flicker of movement from the side before the darkness descended.
Clipper was in his workshop, rubbing a final coat of oil into a set of decorative maple boxes he was making for Christmas presents, when the call came.
“Clip, it’s Max Trimble. I’m on my way to Eastern Maine Medical Center. We got another girl attacked—at the University of Maine this time, but I think you might be interested.” Although the University of Maine Police Department was one of the larger departments in the state in terms of manpower, most of its officers were administrative and security specialists, and it relied on the State Police for serious investigative, crime scene, and forensic assistance. Clipper understood that Trimble’s involvement signified a serious case.
Twenty minutes later, Clipper walked through the EMMC emergency room entrance and spotted Trimble in a huddle with University of Maine Police Chief, Robert Gendron, and two University officers. He nodded to the group. “Evening, gents. What’ve we got?”
“We’ve got a twenty-two-year-old student beat damned near to death on campus,” said Gendron. He was a soft-spoken man in his early sixties, a skilled administrator who did not pretend to be an investigator, whose concern and rage was clear on his face. “She’s still unconscious, and the docs say it might be quite a while before we can talk to her.”
“Got a time frame?”
One of the officers spoke up. “She was running alone on the forest paths. At about six o'clock, another runner interrupted a guy apparently beating her with a steel bar. The witness says the guy ran when he heard him coming, so all he got was a glimpse of the guy's back. Said he was a big guy. I came with her in the ambulance, in case she came to, but she didn’t.”
“The perp dropped the bar when he ran,” Trimble added, looking at Clipper. “It was a piece of rebar, like the one used on your victim the other night,”
A tired-looking man in green scrubs came out of the treatment area and approached the group.
“Dr. Samuels,” he said, nodding to the group. “She’s stable—in a coma, but right now that’s a good thing. With head trauma like this, there’s always the danger of subdural hematoma and increased inter-cranial pressure. We’ll keep an eye on it in CCU, and probably keep her under for at least a couple of days."
“Can you describe the head trauma?” Clipper asked.
“I’d say someone hit her from behind with a piece of pipe or a club. X-rays show a hairline skull fracture in the right upper rear quadrant. I looked pretty carefully, but I didn’t see any foreign material around the wound or under her nails. She came in with her clothes torn, but I don’t think she was raped. Interrupted, maybe. We did the rape protocol and bagged the clothes anyway. She won’t be responsive, but you can go in and see her if you need to before she goes upstairs.”
As Clipper, Trimble, and Gendron started for the swinging doors to the treatment area, they were joined by another man. About five-ten with short blond hair, regular features, and a wiry wrestler’s build, he was dressed neatly in slacks and a light jacket.
“Scene’s secure, and the State evidence guys are there,” he said to Gendron, “but other than a piece of rebar that looks like the weapon and some blood and scuff marks, I don’t see much that’s going to help.”
Gendron spoke to the Clipper and Trimble. “Tom Clipper, Max Trimble, this is Nelson Miller. He was a big city detective until he decided to try the quiet life.” To Miller: “Max is the lead investigator with Troop E, and Clip runs the Criminal Division for Bangor PD.”
Miller held out his hand. “Gentlemen, it’s a pleasure,” he said with an easy smile, before turning back to Gendron. “I’ve contacted her mother. She liv
es in Ellsworth, and she’s going to call her ex-husband in New Mexico. I've got guys looking for her roommate and her boyfriend, but no luck so far. How’s she doing?”
Gendron shook his head. “Still unconscious, and probably going to be that way for a while.”
Gesturing for the two uniforms to wait, he led the way into the treatment room, where a slender female was lying on her back with IVs in both arms and black wires, thin dark lines against the unnaturally pale skin, snaking from blinking machines to her head and under her sheet like cut puppet strings. A grim-looking ER nurse was standing by with the victim’s clothes and the rape protocol samples in a clear plastic bag. She handed the bag to Clipper.
“We got a room reserved downstairs for the bastard that did this,” she said.
Clipper suppressed a grin; he’d known the nurse since high school. “I’d be happy to oblige, Hanna,” he said, “but this one belongs to the University.”
He handed the evidence bag to Miller, who took it with a quizzical look.
“Downstairs?” Miller asked.
“Morgue,” said Clipper economically.
Before he left the hospital, Clipper called John Peters and filled him in. “I don’t like the feel of this,” he said. “Something tells me we’re just getting started. When you come in tomorrow, see if you can find out if Harold Petersen was at home tonight.”
“No problem, I’ll check with his neighbors,” Peters said. “Maybe we should think about putting somebody on PMs for a while.”
“Okay, let’s see if we can find a couple of volunteers in the morning.”
“Randy and I can take it for a while.” Peters and his wife had no kids, and he had few interests other than his job and hunting. A chance to work evenings during the upcoming deer season suited him just fine.
Past Master Page 4
