Clipper chuckled. “Okay, but I want five pounds of venison…each.”
Clipper went home and poured himself a couple inches of Glenlivet over ice, and sat in the den thinking about serial rapists. His division’s caseload was not especially high at the moment, but he sensed that was about to change with the hunt for a monster—a hunt he knew from experience would most likely demand a high price from his division.
The next morning, Clipper was at his desk early, plowing through the accumulated incident reports and setting aside several for assignment. He flipped through the Amburg casebook, shaking his head at the scarcity of information. There was so little to go on that he found himself hoping they could tie in the Rojas case, just for more to look at, even if it did point toward the specter of a serial criminal.
As if summoned by his thoughts, there was a tap at the door, and Nelson Miller stepped into the office.
“Thought you might want copies of this,” he said setting a manila folder onto Clipper’s desk. “Max Trimble told me about your homicide.”
“Thanks.” Clipper gestured to a chair. “I was going to call and suggest we get together. We haven’t got much of a starting point on Amburg. One so-so suspect, her boss, already lawyered up. I’ll give you his photo and vehicle info. Maybe we’ll get lucky and somebody’ll put him on campus last night.”
“They just might,” John Peters said from the doorway. “I spoke to him at his house this morning, and he claims he went to a movie from seven to nine in Orono last night, and then just drove around for a while. The theater would put him about a half-mile from the campus.”
Miller looked puzzled. “I thought you said he lawyered up,” he told Clipper.
Peters laughed. “Whole different crime. I just asked, and he coulda told me to go to hell, but he didn’t.”
Miller grinned. “I’m going to like working with you guys. Feels just like Philly.”
“That where you’re from?” asked Clipper.
“Yup. Philly PD. Great job. I was there nine years, but my wife's a country girl and she wanted out. Sometimes I miss the action, but nobody's shooting at me and she's happy here, so I guess it was a good move."
Clipper made the introductions, but before the two men could do more than nod, he had to do it again as Dave Adams sauntered into the office.
Adams shook hands with Miller and looked at Clipper. “They finished up with Pollack late last night. Got a positive dental match and put a fractured skull as the probable cause of death.”
Clipper frowned. “Any idea what caused it?”
“Something round, like a pipe or Billy club, but probably around an inch in diameter. No sign of debris in the wound. Oh, and probably no rape. At least all her clothes were intact. SP got some foreign fibers off her shirt and some decent tool marks on the cabin window. I asked them to put a hustle on the lab work.”
Clipper turned to Miller. “Kristen Pollack disappeared six weeks ago on her way home from church. Seventeen-year-old honor student—a good kid—and we got nowhere with it. A couple guys found her when they opened their hunting camp last week.”
Miller grimaced. “I know how that feels. We’re still scratching our heads over that Henderson kid that was shot in the steam plant lot in September.”
“No leads at all?” Peters asked.
“Nope. We assume he was there dealing drugs—found almost two grand in his pocket and he was a known dealer—but from the blood spatter on his car, it looks like he was shot from the cemetery on the other side of the river. Would have been about a four-hundred-yard shot, but we never found the slug or the exact spot the shot came from. No talk on the street.”
Clipper looked at Adams. "That reminds me—I asked Carol Murphy to put out a request for witnesses on Amburg. You want to stay on top of that with dispatch?”
Adams nodded and left, Miller looking thoughtfully after him.
“So maybe we got three?” he said, stepping around Clipper’s desk to the window that overlooked the river.
"Sure looks like it. You get anything on Rojas's background?"
Miller turned back. "The boyfriend's a jock. He was playing intermural basketball when she was hit, and the roommate says there was nothing unusual going on. The evening run was apparently her normal thing." A smile touched his lips as he gazed down at Clipper’s desk. “Your wife?” he asked, pointing to a small framed picture of Janice.
“Well, not yet, but we’re probably headed in that direction.”
Clipper’s desk phone rang. Before picking it up, he said to Peters, “Why don’t you bring Nelson up to speed on Pollack and Amburg, and see if you can spot anything in common besides fractured skulls.”
When he answered the phone, it was Chief Norris demanding his presence in his office.
When he got there, Miss Elliot showed him in. Norris looked up from his desk, fixing Clipper with a hard stare and pointing a pudgy finger. “Lieutenant, I told you two days ago we needed to talk about your division’s overtime costs. I’m getting a lot of pressure to reduce expenses in the upcoming budget, and your overtime sticks out like a sore thumb.”
Clipper could understand the chief’s budget dilemma, and even felt somewhat sympathetic for the no-win situation he was in, but he was not about to make any concessions in his manpower needs.
“Chief, I’ve got guys volunteering to work nights without any shift differential, every man in the division is donating at least ten hours a week just to get the job done, and they’re all taking under-the-table comp time instead of overtime whenever they can. If you want my overtime reduced, give me two more men.”
Norris’s face flushed and seemed to swell, and his voice cracked with anger. “No, damn it. You’ll get by with what you’ve got, Lieutenant, and maybe less. I’m tired of trying to explain what you do to the council, and why it costs so much.”
Clipper took a deep breath. “Look, Chief, we’re the biggest city for a hundred miles in any direction. If the word gets out that we don’t have the ability to investigate crime, every two-bit hood and scumbag in the state is going to move here. My job is to see that that doesn’t happen, and your job is to get me the resources I need to do it. Would you rather explain the legitimate operating cost of a damn good investigative unit or a sky-high crime rate?”
Norris’s jowls quivered with anger. “Lieutenant Clipper, this is a direct order. Before you leave the building today, you will hand-deliver to me a written plan for reducing your division’s overtime and your division’s overall budget by ten percent in the upcoming year. Is that clear?”
“You’ll have your plan,” Clipper grated, turning for the door, "along with my estimate of the increase in the crime rate and the drop in felony closure rates.”
As usual after trying to reason with Chief Norris, Clipper needed a break from the station. He took his truck and slowly cruised the downtown streets, stopping occasionally to speak with friends, finally ending up at a McDonald’s, where he sat at a corner table guiltily eating a hamburger and french fries that he knew Janice wouldn’t approve of, and rehashing figures he already knew by heart.
Of the eleven people in the division—one lieutenant, one sergeant, one civilian secretary and eight detectives—only the detectives were eligible for overtime. At the current annual allotment of $100,000, Clipper’s overtime budget provided an average of about sixty-five man-hours a week of overtime. Much of this was needed just to cover to total of roughly twelve hundred hours lost to vacation, sick time, and training each year. In a quiet year, Clipper usually managed to get to late summer before needing to ask Miss Elliot to transfer some money into his overtime account from somewhere else.
Clipper took out a tablet and brought up the draft of a memo he had already done outlining an overtime cut of $10,000—which he thought would probably happen—and the more drastic step of an overall ten percent budget reduction of $53,500 which would have the effect of eliminating one investigator’s position—and thereby causing the need for more overtime
coverage. He added some rough crime statistics from memory, and a prediction of reduced investigative capabilities, which he knew the chief would edit out, and saved the document.
Clipper returned briefly to his office to print out his budget memo, which he dropped on Miss Elliot’s desk on his way back out. He drove back to Main Street and stopped by Ray Wheeler’s office. Ray Wheeler was a Doctor of Psychology who was under loose retainer to several area law enforcement agencies for their occasional personnel or consultation needs, and while he professed no investigative expertise, Clipper had come to appreciate his clinical perspective and native common sense, and had pressed him into service on several occasions.
He found Wheeler sitting alone in his outer office. “Hi, Doc. Got a minute?”
“Sure, but if you’re here to nag me about my parking tickets, I’ll have to charge my standard professional rate of two dollars a minute.”
Clipper grinned. “Worse than that. I’ve got seven dollars to my name and this terrible urge to decapitate myself. Can you help?”
“Hmmm. My best advice is, get your knife sharpened by an expert. Now, that’ll be two dollars, and your remaining five should get you a good edge on the knife. What else can I do for you?”
Clipper slipped into a chair and told Wheeler the specifics of the Amburg and Rojas attacks and the discovery of Kristen Pollack’s body.
“There’s no real evidence to suggest a serial criminal here, but I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to come,” he finished.
“Well, three fractured skulls are unusual, and from what you said, a couple of other things stand out as well. The three girls were all of an age, and they were all hit over the head with similar weapons, apparently from behind and without warning or regard for their survival. Two of them are U-Maine students, but a lot of young women around here fit that category." Wheeler glanced at his watch and stood. “Got an appointment coming in,” he said, “but keep me updated and I’ll give it some thought.”
Clipper left Webber’s office and drove back to the station. He found John Peters working on the Amburg case book, assembling copies of all the case reports and interviews into three identical three-ring binders. When it came time for prosecution, the case books would ensure that the department, the prosecution and the defense all had the same information.
Peters closed the binder he was working on. “We need to start a stakeout on Petersen,” he said.
Clipper frowned. “It’s going to have to be hit and miss,” he said. “The overtime cupboard is bare, and Norris is getting antsy.”
“I got that covered. With the mutual aid pact, Miller can give us a bunch of his security troops. We can give them a little training and use them with our guys. They’ll even use their own vehicles.”
Years before, Bangor had established mutual-aid agreements with the surrounding towns and law enforcement agencies, which allowed for exchanges of manpower and equipment for specific activities. In addition, Bangor’s detectives held county deputy sheriff commissions as a courtesy, which expanded their jurisdictional authority to cover the entire county.
Clipper thought it over. “Okay, but make sure one of our guys is on every detail. Going to be tough on that dead-end street. Maybe you can work something out with the neighbor, Mrs. Collins.”
Peters flashed a shark grin. “Already talked to her, and I’ve also got a call in to the real estate agent that’s listing the house across the street. We’ll start tonight.”
Clipper spent the rest of the afternoon on administrative drudgery until he caught himself nodding off at his desk. At four thirty, he left the station and cruised out Broadway past Hal’s Handy Stop. He pulled in and sat for a moment, trying to visualize Sunday’s savage attack before heading home, no wiser than he’d been before.
Chapter Eight
Some of Clipper’s weariness lifted when he got home and opened the front door to see Janice wearing a pretty dress and holding a glass of amber liquid and ice. He took the glass and sipped the single malt appreciatively.
“What’s this, a celebration?” he asked.
“Yep,” she said with a smile. “And when you finish that, you’re going to take me out to dinner.”
“I thought you stopped playing the lottery.”
Janice giggled. “Better than that. I got my grant!”
Over the past couple of years, Janice had become Bangor’s de facto city historian. She’d started by organizing a museum on the State Hospital grounds featuring the history of the artillery battery which had occupied Hospital Hill during the Civil War, as well as that of the hospital itself. After that successful debut, she’d joined the flagging Bangor Historical Society and quickly rose to its presidency as she led it, in partnership with the city, to the construction of a new museum in one of Bangor’s early lumber baron mansions. For the past six months, she had been seeking a grant for the construction of a World War II memorial and remembrance archive.
“$165,000 from the Castilano Foundation, and when we finish moving the office into Gaylord Mansion, we’ll have our old building for a site.”
The Historical Society had originally been housed in an 1890s era house on the edge of Bangor’s downtown. Now the question of what to do with that site was answered as well. Janice was a force to be reckoned with.
Later, over steaks, she explained her plans.
“You remember that retired Army guy we met at the gun shop a while back?” she asked. “Mr. Holland? I got a list of Maine World War II veterans from the VA, and his name was on it. I thought I’d look him up and see if he’d be interested in lending a hand as a consultant.”
“I’ve got his number at the office,” Clipper said. “I just talked to him yesterday—him and a guy he owns a hunting camp with. They were the ones who found Kristen Pollack.”
He felt a presence at his shoulder and looked up as Nelson Miller stepped to the table.
“Evening, Lieutenant.”
Clipper nodded and made the introductions between Miller and Janice. “You here alone?”
“Yeah, my wife wasn’t feeling well, and I had some business in town, so I figured I’d treat myself to a steak.”
“You’re welcome to join us, Mr. Miller,” Janice said.
“Who’s Mr. Miller? I’m Nelson, but no thank you,” Miller said with a smile, “I don’t want to intrude. I know how hard it is for a cop to get some time alone with his lady.”
As Miller walked back to his table, Janice raised a quizzical eyebrow to Clipper. “Do we look like we need more time alone?”
The doe put her head down to graze at the edge of the small meadow, nibbling at the delicate green shoots of grass as she edged tentatively out of the treeline. Her buff color and liquid movements rendered her nearly invisible in the early evening twilight as she fed in ghostly silence. She might never have been seen at all, had she not jerked her head up in momentary fright at the scream of an angry blue jay.
Madeline Mosier caught the flicker of motion out of the corner of her eye and stepped slowly to her right, careful to keep the brush pile between herself and her quarry. She froze, holding her breath as the sleek doe stiffened momentarily, head lifted inquisitively, delicate ears twitching in the still air, and then relaxed as the animal resumed feeding.
Patience, Maddy, she cautioned herself. You’ve got too much time and energy invested to blow it now. Having been alerted to the numerous deer tracks in and around the meadow by her grandfather, Maddy had been staking it out every afternoon for the past four days, leaving her car a hundred feet back on the lonely secondary road and picking her way over the ancient rock wall to crouch in her makeshift blind each day until dark. None of that mattered now, she thought. This was the shot she’d been waiting for.
Moving at glacial speed, she lifted her Canon EOS M50 into position and peered through the viewfinder. These would be the final shots she needed to complete her woodland animal folio for her photographic arts class.
At five foot two and just on
e hundred ten pounds, a casual observer might have taken Maddy for a child playing in the woods, but a single glimpse of the determined face beneath the cap of fiery red hair would quickly dispel that notion. She pivoted smoothly, framing the shot, bringing it into focus with practiced efficiency, and triggered the shutter once before the crackle of noise behind her broke the spell.
The doe disappeared in a single magical bound, and Maddy, instantly enraged, whirled almost as quickly to confront the intruder that had spoiled her shot.
About thirty feet away, halfway between Maddy and the road, stood a huge figure clad in some sort of long shapeless coat. His features were compressed into a grotesque mask under a dark watch cap, and a short, round club swung menacingly from his right hand.
Stunned by the apparent evil before her, Maddy took a mute step back, unconsciously pointing her camera and pressing the shutter. When the intruder shifted his weight to advance, she turned and bolted for the woods.
The hunter had hesitated at the noisy crunch of dry branches underfoot, but when the girl turned to face him, he lunged forward, knowing he must catch her before she vanished in the dark forest. He only managed three steps before smashing his shin into the stacked stones of the old wall and crashing to the ground.
Maddy ran blindly for a hundred yards, then stopped at the base of a gigantic pine. She listened closely, fighting back panic, but at first she could only hear the blood thundering in her ears. Then, as she fumbled her phone out of her pocket, she heard, from the direction of the road, the distant sound of a car starting up.
Clipper was just considering dessert when his cell phone chirped.
“Hi, Lieutenant,” the dispatcher said. “Sorry to bother you, but I just took a call you might be interested in. Old man Conroy out on Finson Road said he got a call from his granddaughter saying she was attacked by a man in the woods out by Six Mile Falls. Sounds like he’s headed that way with his rifle. I started a couple of cars, but he was wild. If he gets there first, there’s going to be trouble. You want me to notify the on-call?”
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