Janice loaded a round into the chamber and resettled herself behind the rifle. So hard was she concentrating on the crosshairs that the shot, when it finally came, did surprise her; when she reacquired the target after the minimal recoil, she was gratified to see a black hole just an inch to the right of the bullseye.
“Good shot,” said Holland, peering through a spotting scope. “Now do it again.”
At the end of an hour, the scope had been fine-tuned to shoot dead center, and Janice’s best three-shot group measured three and a half inches. Clipper had managed one at just a hair under two inches, and Holland had casually fired two three-shot groups that measured just under an inch—one with Janice’s rifle, and one with his own model 70.
Later, when they were cleaning the rifles in Holland’s basement workshop, he expanded on his sniping history. “Up through Korea, snipers used specially tuned service rifles and fairly rudimentary optics, but by Vietnam the military had turned to high end civilian rifles—Winchester model 70s and Remington 700s like yours with custom scopes.” He shook his head. “The ammo went from thirty-aught-six to three-oh-eight to Winchester three hundred magnum, and nowadays they’re shooting .338 Lapuas and fifty-caliber machine gun rounds, and making hits at a mile and a half.”
Clipper looked out at the target frames, two hundred yards across the field. “So… Petersen, and that kid up at the University,” he mused. “Four hundred, five hundred yards, those weren’t really hard shots at all.”
Holland’s answering smile was grim.
Chapter Eighteen
Abigale Pecheski closed the door of her Court Street apartment and gave it a firm tug to make sure it was locked. It was a short walk over to Hammond Street and up the hill to the Congregational Church and she was looking forward to the weekly Saturday night bean supper as an alternative to her own cooking and the solitary meals in her small apartment. At twenty-three, Abigale’s life revolved around her daytime job as a research assistant in a large downtown law firm and her dogged attempts to write her first novel at night. A bit of a loner by nature, she was satisfied with her austere existence, confident and happy in her own independence.
She pulled her thin coat tighter as she stepped onto the sidewalk, turning towards downtown without noticing the dark car that idled to the curb behind her. She had taken about twenty steps when the slight sound of feet scuffling on the sidewalk behind her and the stunning blow to the back of her head occurred simultaneously.
Stunned and disoriented, she offered no resistance to the arms that encircled her and the hands that painfully groped at her breasts as she was pulled toward the shadows of the vacant lot beside her apartment building. She was only dimly aware of her clothing being torn and the sudden chill of the cold ground at her back. The last thing she remembered, before a sickening slide into darkness, was a searing bolt of pain and a rough hand at her throat.
Clipper met the on-call, Ken Thomas, at the emergency room. At one-thirty a.m. the waiting room was empty except for a pair of homeless men propping each other up in a far corner and a tired-looking mother trying to shush a wailing toddler; the hospital’s normally frantic pace was slowing down. As Clipper walked through the door, he spotted Thomas talking to a doctor he recognized from many prior emergency room visits.
“She had waist-length hair done up in a bun under her hat,” the doctor was saying. “Probably saved her life. She took a hell of a rap on the back of the head, but the skull didn’t fracture. She was raped, and the guy beat up on her face pretty bad. She’s got a broken rib, and we’re treating her for hypothermia, too.”
“Is she conscious?” Clipper asked.
“We sedated her pretty heavily, but she’s awake,” the doctor said. “You can try to talk to her for a moment, but don’t be surprised if she drifts in and out on you. We’re going to start stitching her up shortly.”
Clipper and Thomas went back to a treatment room where a young woman in a hospital gown lay on a bed. She was rail-thin and pale, with a delicate triangular-shaped face and pallid, pipe-stem arms. Her face was battered, lips puffy and split, and one eye swollen closed with a ragged cut over the brow. Her most striking feature was a magnificent mane of dark brown hair, but when she turned her head slightly at the sound of the door closing, Clipper could see the pale white skin of a shaved area at the back of her head.
“Abigale, these men are policemen. They need to ask you a couple of quick questions, okay?”
The girl made a sound that might have been “yeah,” and Clipper stepped closer.
“Can you tell us who did this?” he asked.
Her head moved once, slowly side to side. “Nuh,” she mumbled almost inaudibly. “Did’n see.” She moaned softly. “Hurts.”
Clipper appreciated the interruption in Abigale’s treatment, but he could see that there was nothing to be gained from prolonged questioning, so he mouthed Thanks to the doctor and motioned Thomas out into the hall.
“What have we got?”
“She lives alone at 517 Court Street, second floor apartment. One of the other tenants heard moaning from the vacant lot next door at about twelve-thirty. He found her on the ground with no one around. He says she lives alone, real quiet, no boyfriend that he’s aware of, thinks she works in a law office. I’ve got a couple of patrol guys doing the door to door, and Dave’s on the scene.”
Clipper left the hospital and drove to the Court Street address. The work lights Adams had set up in the vacant lot beside the apartment house threw surreal shadows on the nearby houses, and even at two-thirty on this cold fall morning, the usual knot of anonymous onlookers stood at the police tape barrier.
As soon as Clipper got out of his truck, one of the uniformed officers, Mitch Reynolds, trotted up with a big smile on his face. “I think we got lucky,” he said. “Guy across the street remembers an older dark blue or black Chevy parked right in front of her house around eight o’clock. Struck him as odd because there’s plenty of off-street parking here, and he don’t usually see cars on the street at night.”
“I don’t suppose he got a registration.”
“No, but I called a friend of mine at Waldo SO, and he checked Gerard Beaudreau’s house. His car’s not there.”
Chapter Nineteen
On Monday morning, Clipper was about halfway through the stack of weekend reports when a grinning Dave Adams burst into his office. “We got him.”
“Beaudreau?”
Adams nodded. “Yup. She was wearing a vinyl belt, and I got a match on two latents. It’s Beaudreau, no doubt at all.”
Clipper opened a word processor on his computer and quickly composed draft affidavits for a search warrant and an arrest warrant for rape and aggravated assault. He emailed them to the district attorney’s office where an assistant DA would polish them and take them to a district court judge.
“Why don’t you stand by at the court,” he said to Adams. “I’ll call Waldo SO for an assist, and we’ll meet up in Winterport when you get the warrants.”
Two hours later, Clipper and Adams stood beside Clipper’s unmarked car in the parking lot of a convenience store in Winterport Village, with two Waldo County deputies who had the jurisdictional authority to make the actual arrest. Clipper had worked with the older deputy, Del Hunter, in the past and found him to be a practical old-time cop.
“Kenny Lampson,” Hunter said, lifting his chin at the younger deputy by way of introduction.
Lampson nodded. He was a small man, slender and baby-faced, and Clipper thought he didn’t look old enough to be a deputy sheriff, but the cocky grin and enormous Smith and Wesson model 29 on his belt proclaimed him ready.
“Thanks for the help, gents,” Clipper said after Hunter had examined the warrant. “We’ll take him off your hands as soon as we make the arrest.”
Hunter nodded. “Hope you can keep him off the streets for a while,” he said. “Guy’s a real pain in the ass.”
Lampson licked his lips excitedly. “I hope the bastard kicks u
p a little,” he said.
Hunter laughed. “I don’t,” he said, “Man’s a monster. Not likely anyway. He only fights women.”
They drove to Beaudreau’s address, two miles from the center of town on a secondary road. Clipper held back to allow the marked cruiser to turn into the long gravel driveway first.
Beaudreau’s old blue Chevy was parked at the end of the drive, alongside a small frame house that had probably once been white. The house squatted on the edge of what looked like an acre of junked cars and farm equipment, patches of graying paint clinging to its scabrous clapboards and one end of the sagging roof covered in a blue plastic tarp. The front yard was an overgrown tangle of weeds and pieces of rusted farm machinery.
There was a front door opening off a small rotted porch, and Clipper nodded for Adams to watch it as he caught up to the deputies who were approaching a side door off the driveway.
They all stood to the side as Hunter rapped on the door. “Waldo County Sheriff’s Office,” he hollered. “Open up, Gerard.”
After a moment, the door swung silently open on a squalid kitchen that smelled of old grease and mold. Gerard Beaudreau, clad in faded blue jeans and a stained t-shirt, stood in stocking feet on the worn linoleum floor, hands at his sides and a sleepy half-smile on his round face. He took a silent step back as Clipper and the two deputies entered the room.
“These men are from Bangor Police Department, Gerard,” Hunter said. “They’ve got a warrant for you. Get some shoes on now. You’re going to take a ride with them.”
Beaudreau shook his head slowly. “I didn’t do nuthin’,” he said reasonably, smile still in place. “I been right here.”
“Well, they’ve got a warrant, so you’re going to have to go with them. Let’s go get them shoes.”
Beaudreau looked around vacantly and slowly spread ham-like hands out to his sides. “I don’t see why I—”
Lampson had taken a couple of steps past Beaudreau to look through the doorway into the living room. Now he whirled back and grabbed Beaudreau’s meaty right forearm with one hand, placed the other on his shoulder, and bore down hard.
“Hey!” he shouted into Beaudreau’s ear. “You’re under arrest, asshole. On the floor.”
Lampson, five ten and one hundred sixty pounds, might as well have been pushing on an oak tree. With a seemingly effortless twitch of his arm, Beaudreau flipped him three feet away into an enormous farmhouse-style sink full of crusted dishes and scummy grey water.
Hunter sighed deeply and glanced at Clipper as he reached for the baton on his belt. “Boy’s got a lot to learn,” he muttered disgustedly.
Beaudreau backed up a step. “Now, don’t you hit me with that,” he said, holding up a ham-sized hand.
Hunter made one last attempt to do it the easy way. “Okay, Gerard, then you calm down and let’s go get this thing straightened out.”
Beaudreau shook his head and curled the hand into an enormous fist. “No, I didn’t do nuthin’.”
As Hunter stepped to his right, Clipper slid a step to the left and launched an overhand right at Beaudreau’s jaw. The punch connected and felt good, but Beaudreau’s only reaction was a blink and an open-handed slap that spun Clipper around and brought tears to his eyes. The deputy got in one shot with the baton that raised an instant knot on Beaudreau’s forehead before the giant grabbed it out of his hand and threw it into the corner.
Clipper tried a low tackle, getting his shoulder into Beaudreau just above the knee and driving with his entire weight behind it, but Beaudreau just grunted and stepped back against the sink, dragging Clipper with him and absently smacking the young deputy, who had been trying to get out of the sink, back down into the water.
The older deputy grabbed for Beaudreau’s left arm, and he and Clipper grappled to take the big man down, but with a convulsive heave Beaudreau flung them both off. Clipper bounced off a wall, and Hunter sprawled to the floor.
Still smiling, Beaudreau stepped in and kicked Hunter hard in the ribs as the deputy attempted to get up.
Clipper got to his feet, breathing hard, but Hunter only rolled onto his back and moaned. Beaudreau turned to Clipper, smiling invitingly, but Clipper had had enough. He drew his Kimber and pointed it at Beaudreau’s head.
Beaudreau’s eyes widened at the click of the safety coming off and he quickly lowered his hands. “Okay, okay,” he muttered, “but I didn’t do anything.”
Clipper got cuffs on Beaudreau, then helped the battered deputy to his feet. The older man was hunched over and cradling what looked to be a sprained wrist.
Beaudreau, none the worse for wear other than the knot on his forehead, was immediately contrite. “Jeez, I’m real sorry,” he said, “but you shouldn’ta hit me with that stick.”
The deputy grunted and nodded towards his partner, who was finally climbing out of the sink. “You’re right,” he said. “I should have hit him.”
With Beaudreau safely cuffed and in the car under the watchful eye of a much-subdued deputy Lampson, Clipper, Adams and Hunter searched the small house from top to bottom. Other than a prodigious collection of pornography, the only thing of interest they found was a cardboard box containing an assortment of women’s clothing , an empty brown leather pocketbook, and a drawer full of condoms.
On the ride back to Bangor, Beaudreau sat passively in the back seat, smiling vacantly at Clipper’s attempts at conversation.
“You got a pretty good punch, Gerard.” Clipper said.
“He had no call to yell at me and grab me like that,” Beaudreau responded. “We didn’t have to fight. I didn’t do nuthin’.”
Clipper finally asked, “Gerard, do you know why you’re under arrest?”
“I don’t want to talk about that. You got to get me a lawyer, you know. I got the right to have a lawyer.”
Clipper sighed. “Yes Gerard, I know.”
With Beaudreau’s refusal to talk, they took him directly to the County Jail to await the next morning’s arraignment, then dropped by Cleo’s for lunch.
Afterwards, Clipper sat at his desk and wrote a follow up report detailing the arrest of Beaudreau and the injuries of the Waldo County deputies. After a moment’s thought, he also wrote a short letter of commendation for Mitch Reynolds’s file in recognition of his quick thinking at the Pecheski rape scene. The fingerprints would still have given them Beaudreau, but it was due to Reynolds that they knew for sure Beaudreau hadn’t been home at the time of the murders. Of such small things were cases made. Small things like a car not at home in its owner’s driveway while Abigale Pecheski was being attacked, or a pocketbook that might belong to Chelsea Amburg.
But much as he wished they would, Clipper still didn’t think they were going to find anything—big or small—that tied Gerard Beaudreau to Kristen Pollack.
Chapter Twenty
Gerard Beaudreau shambled into the Third District Courtroom at eight o’clock Tuesday morning with three other men clad, as he was, in jailhouse-orange coveralls. When it was his turn, he stood quietly as the judge read the charges and asked him if he had a lawyer or money to hire one. Beaudreau shook his head mutely, and the judge sent him out to wait in a small locked holding room while he looked around for a lawyer to appoint to the case.
Seasoned defense attorneys knew better then to hang around the court on arraignment days, so the pickings were slim. Eventually the judge spied Hiram Buck, a personable young man who had passed the Maine State Bar and hung out his shingle a mere eleven months prior, and dragged him into his chambers.
“Got a challenge for ya, my boy.” The judge held out a copy of the complaint. “Rape and aggravated assault. He’s in the holding cell, and I haven’t got all day.”
Back in the courtroom twenty minutes later, Buck felt decidedly uncomfortable standing between his towering client and the flinty judge. He entered the expected not guilty plea, and Beaudreau was bound over for arraignment in the superior court. Bail was set in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, with tw
o sureties, and Beaudreau was sent back to jail.
Because his car was in the back lot, Buck walked out the service entrance with Beaudreau and the transporting deputy. He would follow them to the jail and spend some more time with his client in one of the interview rooms.
The sniper had been in place since well before dawn, snuggled down nearly a half-mile northeast of the county jail and old County Courthouse, in the spot he had scouted on the ridge on the other side of the Kenduskeag Stream.
Dressed in a quilted brown cotton jacket over warm red-and-black checked woolen hunting pants and a shirt dyed in mottled woodland browns and greens, he lay on a ground cloth at the top of a jagged brush and hardwood ridge that slashed down into a neatly trimmed, faded green residential neighborhood, penetrating the orderly square lots like a flaming arrow, ablaze with the remnants of turned fall leaves and bright fir boughs.
Working in the pre-dawn dark, he’d made his hide in a clutch of juniper and scree, just under the crest of the ridge. He’d taken the time to move rocks and fill holes to smooth the bed he’d occupy until his task was done, and now he rested quietly, twenty-three feet above and some eight hundred yards distant from the county jail parking lot, letting his mind drift as he kept watch across the stream valley. He was totally relaxed, letting time flow over and around him as he drifted through memories in a place where the present had no significance and the past could be inspected and once again made real. An onlooker might have thought him asleep, or even dead, as he simply endured.
He could not see the front of the courthouse from his hide, but he had a good view of the parking areas on either side of the stately old brick building, especially the door they used to move prisoners in and out.
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