by Arthur Day
McCAAL
I unloaded my basket onto the belt of the Stop&Shop on the outskirts of Mays Corners. What had been Ephraim Belts corn field was now the Mays Corners mall with Stop&Shop anchoring one end and a Walmart at the other. In between were Pietro’s Pizza, Kay Jewlers, Abbie’s Consignments, RightPrice Liquors and a Burpees Garden Supply. I would have preferred the corn field, but I had to admit to myself that the presence of the mall saved me an hour’s drive to get basic supplies necessary for survival like steak and Jack Daniels. I had long since concluded that, no matter what line I was standing in, the person ahead of me would have a problem and today proved no exception as the lady ahead of me in line searched through a wallet of coupons that would have done the Encyclopedia Britannica proud. Never fails I thought and considered going through one of the self-service lanes but they seemed backed up as well. The sign above one of the lanes was flashing indicating that the computer and the person in that lane were fighting each other.
Driving back through Mays and swinging left onto Town Road 20 towards the driveway to my house, I went through a mental exercise that I had used for years from when I had been a ranger in the army. Make a mental list of what you know to be true. Under each of these facts put what you think might be true. At the end of the exercise he usually knew what he had to do next to put what might be true either into the known facts list or in the mental trash can. Fact: Pam was dead. Possibillities. I and not Pam was the primary target and she had been killed to bring me into the open; the murderer was a man; the murder had been one of passion since she had been raped. I felt deep anger and shame that I had not been there for her and that someone had been able to take a hammer to the equivalent of a Ming era Chinese vase. Something rare and beautiful had been taken from me and the fact that we were no longer legally man and wife meant nothing. I would know why and by whom this had happened, or I would be dead and joining her wherever that might be.
Filled with such dark thoughts I hardly noticed that I had turned onto my driveway and was suddenly at its end a few yards in front of my house. Not only that but Dianne’s Subaru Outback was parked in the little area I used as a turnaround. I immediately felt more optimistic. At the same time, I knew that she was usually busy during the day and wondered if she was all right. Whatever it was it had to be important for her to be here at this time of day.
When I came into the house Dianne had her head in the refrigerator I admired the sight of her butt sticking out into the kitchen. Business casual slacks on the right figure would have stirred a saint. Tight enough to be a man’s I thought as she straightened up with a bottle of water in on hand. “Hi there.”
“Oh, hi MJ. I hope it was all right that I let myself in.” She held up the bottle.” Want a water?”
I grinned. “Nope but I enjoyed watching you search for one.” I put the grocery bag on the counter and winked at her.
“Oh, sir how you do carry on,” she replied but he could tell she was pleased by the compliment.
I smiled, walked over and put my arms around her. She was so beautiful that I wondered what definition of beauty I had known before this moment. Pam certainly had beauty, but she had been younger and the definition different somehow. I didn’t even try to compare but simply enjoyed Dianne’s body next to mine, the smell of her, the peaceful oneness of her. “And will continue to do so if you’re willing.”
She pushed him away. “Not right now, MJ. I have appointments shortly.”
“Okay.” I backed off. I would never continue once a woman said no. That was ingrained in my character, a huge part of the morality with which my mother had raised me. I felt somehow let down, though, as though the moment had been right but something else had not been right. This was not the first time this had happened, and I wondered if there was another man in her life. Certainly, she owed me nothing. If friendship was all she could offer, then I would accept that and be thankful. I went over to the little chest of drawers that served as a bar and poured a Jack. “I have no further appointments,” I said without turning around. I could almost hear her smiling behind his back.
“I took that name we came up with a couple of nights back and ran it through some of the public databases. Worth LLC was founded thirty years ago by Andrew Worth. He remains the majority stockholder although the company now is managed by others. I then googled Worth and found that he is seventy-four years old, has been married once. His wife, Beth died a few years ago. He has two children, Doug aged forty-two and Bitsy who died at seventeen. Worth LLC is a holding company for various manufacturing and service companies. He has a net worth estimated to be about forty million.” She fingered her cell phone some more. “He owns the Price Right liquor chain where we buy our booze. Nothing to do with anything but just one of those small-world coincidences. Also, GasNGo. I think they’re trying to get a permit to put a gas station and convenience store on this side of town if I remember the blurb in the paper correctly.”
“Any connection to Pam other than she worked for him at one point?”
“Not yet but I’ll keep digging.” She walked over and stood at my side as I stared out the window and sipped my drink. “Are you pissed?”
I looked at her in surprise. “Pissed? No why should I be. You’ve dug up stuff on Worth in a few hours that I might never have come up with. I think I was born too early. I have a hard time trying to find information on the internet.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Dianne replied. “I was talking about a moment ago when you wanted to hug me.”
I smiled a little sadly. “I’m not pissed. I know that you have other people in your life. At my age I don’t expect anyone to swoon over me. I love you but if you do not reciprocate, I can understand. I hope we can continue to be close friends though.”
“There are few people in my life but there are parts of my life that you would not understand and that keep me from having a closer relationship. I don’t mean to sound mysterious, but you’ll need to take that on faith. We will definitely continue as friends. Hell, I couldn’t imagine not being with you or calling you up or going out to dinner with you. See? Mickey agrees,” and she held up her watch where Mickey Mouse smiled his eternal smile happily out at them.
“Glad to hear it. Really and truly,” I told her and meant it. “How ‘bout a sandwich?”
“Love to but gotta run. Time to make a living, know what I mean?” Dianne smiled impishly and waggled her fingers at him. “Later,” she called back over her shoulder.
I watched her car make its way slowly up the rutted path that I called a driveway. What a strange and enchanting woman she was. Parts of mystery, fun and deadly abilities. Almost shy one moment and charging into the battle with gun blazing the next. I had no idea what she was refusing to tell me, but it was obviously important to her to the point where she could say she loved me and push me away at the same time. Women. Go figure.
BUCKMASTER
Okay. We go down on both sides. Stay well clear of the stream itself. If you spot anything that nature might not have put there just stick a little flag opposite that spot and the CSI folks can go in and take a look. If you see anything that looks like tire tracks or oil droppings let me know and we can get photo of it and maybe even a mold for the lab to look at. Questions?” Buckmaster looked over the two deputies but neither spoke up. “Okay, Dan take the left side and Evan take the right.”
They stood by the little stream that ran downhill only a few yards from where Pam’s body had been discovered. It was as Rossman had described it, not deep but wide, maybe wide enough to hide the tracks of a vehicle. After the conversation with Rossman, Buckmaster had returned to the office to see if he could pull a couple of deputies off their current duties to help him look for signs that someone had indeed used a vehicle in the stream bed to hide his tracks. He would have had to enter the stream at some point even if he dumped the body and then backed down the stream. Maybe this would be an expensive afternoon th
at yielded nothing but Buckmaster thought it was something he had to do. Memory flooded through him as he watched, grim faced, where his men started slowly walking downstream on each side of the water.
It had been Sheriff Portius back then, a good politician who knew when to pick his fights and a competent cop who had been through thirty years of crime in Rockmarsh, Litchfield and surrounding counties. He must have seen something in the young deputy under his command for he kept Buckmaster beside him when he went out into the field. There had been a murder in neighboring Litchfield. Someone, in a burst of passion apparently, had butchered Samantha Cones in her home on Deer Hill Road near Gaylord Pond and had subsequently been traced to the Algonquin State Forest where he had disappeared.
The murder had been particularly gruesome. The victim, a widow with a grown son living in Philadelphia, had been repeatedly raped over a period of time the coroner estimated to be three days and then stabbed and finally shot in the head. Buckmaster had not seen the body but, when the Rockmarsh Sheriff’s office had been asked to join in the hunt he had seen pictures and they still haunted him to this day. The victim had not been young and beautiful, just the opposite in fact, and had looked even older in the pictures. Friends and neighbors had pointed out Freddy Tilson Barton as a man who had been at her house recently. Freddy was nowhere to be found and a search of his room at a boarding house in Colebrook had yielded his prints but nothing more. Either he carried his life on his back or he had disposed of everything he owned prior to going to Samantha’s house. Portius had changed his view of the crime from one of passion to premediated and had put out an announcement on the radio to beware of Freddy Barton. He is armed and dangerous. Alert the police if you see him.
Buckmaster slipped on knee-length rubber waders and walked out into the middle of Rossman’s Creek. Stepping slowly and carefully both to maintain his footing and avoid disrupting evidence should he see any as he went down the hill away from the crime scene.
Portius had brought in dogs based on a scrap of material found at the crime scene and they had led the police to the state forest. It was a vast tract of land of some twenty-five hundred acres along Sandy Brook on the west side of the Route 8 state highway. Buckmaster had been on one wing of the search party and the ground in front of him was heavily wooded and broken by small ravines that probably poured water down to the brook in the rainy season. Within a few minutes he was sweating through his uniform and trying not to get snagged on branches and briars. He was making his way down yet another ravine, really just a large dip in the ground when the perp landed on his back pushing him forward and causing him to trip over a dead-fall log sending him to his knees, an accident that probably saved his life. The forward motion of the perp acted almost like a judo throw and Barton flew through the air to the bottom of the ravine. He was unhurt and sprang up towards Buckmaster with his knife held out in front of him only to find himself looking at the barrel of Buckmaster’s service revolver.
“Stop. Drop the knife” Buckmaster had shouted. He was so scared that he thought he might have peed himself. His voice came out in a loud squeak as he looked at Freddy Barton down the barrel of his gun.
“And if I don’t?” Barton’s eyes were wild, and he displayed a row of rotten teeth through a scraggly beard. “Whatcha gonna do cop? Shoot me in cold blood?” He dropped the knife
“Like you did Samantha Cones” Buckmaster regained some sense of calm but kept his pistol pointed at Barton. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Barton advance a step towards Buckmaster. “She had it coming. Ugly old bitch refused to put out. It would have been a mercy fuck in any case,” he sneered.
“Take one more step and I will shoot,” warned Buckmaster.
“I don’t think so asshole. All you jerks are the same. You’d never shoot an unarmed man.” Barton raised both hands to his shoulders and smiled.
Buckmaster remembered that the feeling had been like looking into the mouth of a rattlesnake. “Get down on your knees.”
“Whatever you..” Barton’ right hand flashed behind his neck and came out with another knife
Buckmaster would remember the sound of his gun going off and Barton’s face exploding into a red mask as his knife buried itself in Buckmaster’s shoulder. He had been lucky. Had Barton had a fraction of a second quicker his knife would probably have been in Buckmaster’s chest. That was what Portius told him when the rest of the search party arrived at the scene after hearing the shot. Although he hadn’t meant it to, the incident put him in the papers and gave a definite boost to his career.
Buckmaster relived that moment as he walked slowly downstream looking for anything manmade or rocks with scratches on them from the undercarriage of the all-terrain going over them. Sometimes everybody needs a little luck he reminded himself. He could certainly use a little now. Ahead of him Dan and Evan were walking slowly looking mostly in the direction of the stream but sometimes looking off into the woods as well. Good people, Buckmaster thought. They were not taking anything for granted. You needed people like that on your team he thought. You couldn’t make it in this business all by yourself. There was simply too much involved in criminal detection, and arrest. Neglect the smallest detail and a killer could walk free in a society that often is more empathetic with the criminal than with the victim after a defense attorney finishes spinning the evidence.
Buckmaster stopped and stayed very still. At his feet a few inches below the running waters of the stream was exactly what he had hoped to find. Thank you, God, he breathed a prayer. A large rock stuck up from the stream bed and its tip just broke the surface of the water. Something had gouged a large area on the top of the rock. “Dan,” he called, “Bring the camera over. Get some pics of this.” He waited while his deputy got shots of the rock from different angles. There would be no fingerprints but, nevertheless, Buckmaster tried to pick the rock up but it was not budging. Bedrock perhaps, he thought. Pulling out his cell phone, he called his office and asked the dispatcher to have the department four-wheel drive brought up. It had a big chain pull on it and would probably make short work of the rock if the rock was not part of some massive bedrock formation.
Evan drew a little flag on a straight piece of wire from a bag at his side and stuck it into the ground beside that point in the stream where the rock was located. “Do you think this is where the perp ran over the rock?”
“Could be,” replied Buckmaster cautiously. “I don’t know if the lab people can put a date on when the rock was scratched or what caused it but if they can we might be in business.”
“So far though that’s all we have. Mighty thin,” Dan muttered. Well he was prone to looking on the dark side of things. Buckmaster grinned. “So, let’s keep going and see what else we can find.”
Buckmaster waded downstream again leaving his team to resume the search. When they finally arrived at the spot where the stream disappeared, Buckmaster looked at the map and found that they were not far from the road. The stream had gradually curved back towards it from the deep woods where they had started. They had found no further marks either in the stream itself or on either side. They turned and walked away from the stream through groves of fir, hemlock pine, maple and oak. The land slowly rose and, as they walked to the top Buckmaster saw the road ahead through the trees. To his right and fronting the road was an old farmhouse. Perhaps its owner had seen or heard something. Someone had to have either transported or driven an all-terrain vehicle through the woods to the stream. That would have made noise, particularly at night when there would be few if any competing sounds.
The house was old and poorly maintained. The white paint was peeling and, in some areas had completely disappeared leaving the wood underneath gray and warped. The roof over the front porch sagged. On one of the front windows a pane of glass was broken and a piece of material had been stuffed in the hole. The front yard was a weed collector’s wet dream with overgrown bushes and a gre
en vine that threatening to take over the little porch. A dirt driveway led from the street to the rear of the house where there was a shed that looked as if it would collapse at any moment. Buckmaster looked inside but there was no vehicle that could have been used on the stream bed but only an old Ford pickup with the rear fender falling off and tied in place.
He knocked and stood there on the porch for a minute but there was no answer. He knocked again and this time the torn curtain on the left front window stirred slightly. “Open the door,” Buckmaster called. “This is the sheriff. Just need to ask a few questions.” Again, there was no answer. “If I have to come back you’re not going to like the result,” he called out again. “We can talk out here on the porch if you like. He was answered by silence and was turning to go back to his team in the department’s four-wheeler parked on the shoulder in front of the house when there was the sound of bolts and chains rattling and the door opened a crack.
The man who peered out at Buckmaster might have been fifty or seventy years old. His head was completely bald, and he had a salt-and-pepper beard that hung down to his chest. “Yeah?”
