Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3)

by Leverone, Allan

  Cooper chewed with renewed fervor. “What about breaking into evidence storage and just taking it?”

  Ferriss shook his head disgustedly and stared down his partner. “Will you please pull your head out of your ass? There’s always somebody at the station. How do you propose to break into their evidence room without being seen?”

  “Who gives a shit about an eighty year old dispatcher? I think we could handle him without too much trouble, don’t you?”

  “Jesus, get a grip! We’re not going to ‘handle’ an old man. That would bring us grief we don’t need, not when we’re this close to getting what we want after all these years. Just relax and use your head for once.”

  Cooper said nothing, but continued grinding his gum into submission. He didn’t seem to have gotten the message about relaxing. He started impatiently out the windshield at the expanse of Great North Woods looming just across the empty pavement, looking like he wanted to climb out of the car and beat the crap out of someone. Knowing Cooper, he probably did.

  Ferriss let his partner stew for a while. He knew his message would eventually sink in. At last, Cooper turned and said, “Okay, smart guy. You want me to use my head? Tell me how.”

  Ferriss smiled. He had known Cooper for so long he thought of him as a little brother. “We don’t need the disk,” he said softly. “Healy’s scared and confused and has no idea what the hell’s going on. Eventually, he going to come to the conclusion his best option is to leave town and figure things out as he goes.”

  “He’s probably already reached that conclusion.”

  “Maybe,” Ferriss agreed. “But he’s not about to skip town without his precious disk. And he doesn’t know it’s locked up safe and sound in the Paskagankee Police station. He thinks it’s still in that big, muddy hole in the ground. All we have to do is go there and wait. He’ll be along eventually.”

  Cooper thought about it for a while. Ferriss let him. For a long time, the only sound was the popping and snapping of Ward Cooper’s overmatched gum. Eventually Cooper turned and offered Ferriss a crooked smile.

  Ferriss started up the Suburban and executed a perfect three-point turn. Then he accelerated slowly away, toward Route 28 and the Ridge Runner.

  19

  Mike McMahon stood motionless in the living room of Bronson Choate’s small cabin, absorbing the sensations of violence and death. The bustling activity of the active homicide crime scene had ended, at least for the moment, with the departure of the crime scene technicians and medical personnel and investigators, and he had the home to himself.

  As a cop on the Revere, Massachusetts police force for a decade and a half, and then as chief of the tiny Paskagankee force for nearly two years, Mike had been present at dozens of scenes where violent crimes had taken place – rapes, assaults, murders – and to his mind they always retained a subtle air of tragedy once the victims, perpetrators and investigators had moved on.

  This one was no different. A butcher-block end table stood at a crazy angle next to a small, worn couch. The smashed remains of a glass lamp littered the floor next to it. A hard-backed chair stood empty in the middle of the room, a length of electrical wire coiled messily on the floor behind it.

  The chair was where Choate presumably had been held captive by his attacker. He had somehow managed to free himself from his bindings – the home invader had used electrical wire to immobilize Choate, not the smartest move he could have made – and tried to fight back just as his girlfriend arrived. The lamp must have been knocked off the table and smashed during that struggle.

  Choate had made it as far as the front door, warning Jodie Miller off before being struck in the head from behind with a blunt object, killing him in the open doorway of his own home. Bronson Choate had quite literally saved his girlfriend at the expense of his own life.

  But what was his attacker doing here? Why had he picked this house? Choate was employed as a merchant marine engineer, spending weeks at a time at sea, and had returned home from one of those stints only yesterday. Had his attacker been squatting in the cabin and gotten surprised by Choate’s sudden return?

  The theory made sense but for one problem: Mike couldn’t get past the nagging certainty that Bronson Choate’s murder – not to mention the subsequent similar attack and murder of Pete Kendall – was somehow related to Dan Melton’s uncovering of human remains next to the Ridge Runner and his insistence that there had been three bodies lying on the floor of the underground room, rather than the two that were presently being examined by County Medical Examiner Jan Affeldt.

  The Runner was located no more than a half-mile north of this cabin, if you walked a straight-line path through the woods, and Mike suspected that fact was critical to understanding what had happened here. Someone had managed to steal the remains of a human victim right out from under the nose of Melton – for what reason Mike could not imagine – and then had hidden the remains somewhere in the thick forest. That person had then started walking, stumbling onto Choate’s cabin and holing up here.

  The question was, why? Why take the remains of one person from the pit and leave the other two? And if that had happened, how did the mysterious thief/murderer even know Melton would uncover the long-buried underground room in the first place? Could Melton have been involved? And what about Bo Pellerin, longtime owner of the Ridge Runner?

  Mike considered all of these possibilities, walking aimlessly around Choate’s empty cabin, and eventually eliminated both Melton and Pellerin as suspects. He had had more than one run-in with Bo, the most serious one back when he was investigating the disappearance of Earl Manning last year, but while he felt Pellerin could be rude and dismissive and wouldn’t hesitate to skirt the law where his bar was concerned, he also felt reasonably confident the man was nothing more than a small-town bully who had been genuinely surprised at the discovery of the bizarre underground room next to his business.

  And the idea that Melton would somehow construct a secret room next to the Ridge Runner and bury bodies in it, only to then dig it up himself and invent a story about disappearing victims, was frankly ludicrous.

  His mind wandered back to the contentious meeting this morning with FBI Special Agents Ferriss and Cooper. Something didn’t smell right about their interest in the case, and while their story of a hush-hush missing-persons case was technically feasible, it didn’t hold water. If the federal agents were really working a case, why could they not share even the most basic details of it with local law enforcement?

  And their demeanor was particularly perplexing. Their FBI ID’s were legitimate. Mike had scrutinized them closely and had made a quick call down to the Portland field office after this morning’s confrontation. But the behavior of Ferriss and Cooper was unlike that of any federal agents he had ever encountered in nearly eighteen years of law enforcement. FBI field agents tended to be buttoned-down, terse and overbearingly polite.

  The exact opposite of Ferriss and Cooper, in other words.

  Mike wished now he had had more time to question the Portland SAC, but he knew he would likely not have coaxed any significant information out of the man. They were Feds and he was not, and that was a line of demarcation that was rarely breached, especially where small-town police officers were concerned.

  He sighed and took one last look around Bronson Choate’s living room, then walked outside to re-examine the exterior of the property, where his friend and fellow cop Pete Kendall had been murdered.

  Glancing at his watch, Mike did a double-take. He had been inside the little cabin much longer than he had planned to be. There was still a little time to do a walk-through of the spot where he had stumbled over Pete’s body in the predawn darkness roughly twelve hours ago, but then he would have to hurry back to the station.

  Choate’s girlfriend, Jodie Miller, was due at three p.m. for a second, more in-depth interview, one that Mike intended to conduct himself. She was the only person he knew of who had come face-to-face with the killer and lived. She was lucky
to have escaped, and he was determined to go over every second of the encounter in the hopes of uncovering some piece of evidence, some hidden memory, that would help bring the murderer to justice.

  Pete Kendall had been his friend. His memory demanded it.

  20

  Rose wasn’t surprised when the telephone began ringing again. She had been expecting it to. Annette Middleton, her young assistant at Needful Things, was a natural caregiver, the type of person who, upon encountering a baby bird with an injured wing, would nurse the thing back to health and then release it back into the wild weeks later.

  There was zero possibility that Annette would let the issue drop when Rose didn’t answer the phone the first time. Annette would allow a reasonable amount of time for Rose to get her message and return the call, and if that didn’t happen, she would try again. If a second call was unsuccessful, she would probably close the shop and drive out to Rose’s home herself.

  And that was something Rose was determined to avoid.

  Her attacker had calmed somewhat, but the shrill jangle of the telephone’s ringer caused him to stiffen in his chair and again look around the kitchen in a near panic. After a moment, he seemed to recognize the ringer as the noise he had heard before, and he turned his attention to Rose, eyes narrowed, waiting for her to make a move.

  “All I have to do,” she said gently, “is answer the phone and get rid of the caller,” knowing full well who would be on the line. “But if I don’t pick up, whoever is calling might get concerned that I’m not answering. That person might then come over to check on me. I assume you wouldn’t want that.”

  “No visitors,” he said tersely.

  By now the phone had rung four times. Rose’s answering machine was set to pick up after three rings, but the machine had been smashed into several plastic pieces by the stranger’s gun. Rose assumed her young assistant would be well aware of the setting for her answering machine – she had called Rose at home many times – and when it didn’t activate, she knew Annette would become even more concerned than she already was.

  “Alright,” the stranger finally said with obvious reluctance. “Do what you have to do. But don’t be stupid.”

  Rose, who had moved next to the phone, picked up the handset immediately. “Hello,” she said, doing her best to sound unafraid, certain she wouldn’t be able to manage it.

  “Oh, Rose, hello,” came the reply, in Annette’s sweetly innocent voice. “You had me worried! I called a little while ago and your machine seemed to malfunction in the middle of my message.”

  “Yes,” Rose said, eying the stranger, who had gotten up from the table and now stood next to Rose watching her closely. He glanced nervously at the telephone handset every few seconds. The man was jumpy and scared and Rose knew she had to allay Annette’s fears and get her off the line as quickly as possible.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said into the phone, wishing she were a better liar. Her brother Bo could make up whoppers with the best of them, and then deliver the lies with the sincerity of an altar boy, but that skill was one she had never mastered.

  “Uhh…my machine died, I just noticed it. I’m not feeling well, so I decided not to come into the shop today. I apologize for not calling,” she continued, knowing she was beginning to ramble. She was rattled worse than she wanted to admit by the dangerous man standing next to her and she hoped that fear wasn’t apparent to Annette. “Just go ahead and close up the shop whenever you’re ready to go home, and don’t worry about it. We’ll pick up our regular hours again tomorrow.”

  There was a long pause, and the stranger moved closer to her. He was now standing right next to her, towering over her, his presence intimidating. She concentrated on not retching from the awful stench rolling off him. After what felt like forever, Annette said, “Ooookay. Are you sure you’re alright, Rose? I can be over there in fifteen minutes if you need me.”

  “NO,” Rose replied without thinking. It came out much louder and sharper than she intended, and even the stranger flinched in surprise. “I mean, thank you, Annette, but I’m just a little tired today, that’s all. I’m perfectly fine. It’s not necessary to drive all the way over here. In fact, I’d rather not entertain visitors today.”

  Annette sighed and the stranger glowered. It was clear he had exhausted his patience with this one-way conversation that he obviously did not understand. Rose guessed he was seconds away from striking out with his pistol, with the horrible dried blood and clump of hair, and either hitting her with it or smashing the telephone. “I’ve really got to go now,” she said hurriedly. “Goodbye, Annette.”

  She turned and replaced the handset on its cradle without waiting for an answer. She hoped she had been able to deflect the young woman’s concern sufficiently that Annette didn’t come running over here. Given her skyrocketing level of fear, she thought she had done a pretty darned good job of sounding calm and collected.

  She took a moment to compose herself, then turned and faced the stranger, who had blessedly moved a few steps away. She wondered what would happen now. She didn’t have to wait long. The man eyed her warily and, after a moment’s hesitation, said, “Why’d you ask me about the date earlier?”

  Rose’s fear spiked and she froze in her tracks. “Uh, I couldn’t remember, that’s all. You’ll find as you start to age that keeping track of things like the day of the week becomes much more difficult, and even what month it is becomes hazy, and…” Rose knew she was babbling and gradually her voice faded away to silence.

  The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “I ain’t talkin’ about the day of the week, I’m talking about the year. Even folks who’re a little slow know what year it is. Why’d you ask about the year?”

  The man had taken two shuffling steps toward her as he talked and now stood inches away again, glaring down at her like an angry teacher at a truculent student. “Why the year?” he repeated. “Answer me!”

  “I…uh…” Rose tried to think, to come up with some way to deflect the man’s suspicions. Why hadn’t she let the issue drop? The stranger’s face began to redden and she felt he was moments away from snapping.

  So she told him the truth.

  “You’re unfamiliar with telephones, and answering machines, and electric coffeemakers. Your whole manner of speech strikes me as that of someone from…I don’t know…a bygone era or something. I was just curious, I guess. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to pry or to upset you.”

  “Upset me?” The man seemed genuinely taken aback by her statement, but the redness had faded from his face and his eyes didn’t look quite so tight. He appeared to be breathing a little easier. “You didn’t want to upset me? Everything I’ve encountered in this damned town has upset me since the minute I rode in here last night, or last week, or whenever the hell it was.”

  Rode in here? That’s an odd way to put it, Rose thought, and exactly what I’m talking about. She debated whether to bring it up to the stranger, but before she could open her mouth, he surprised her. He said, “Okay, ma’am, I’m going to ask you the same question you put to me. What year is this?” He said it slowly and in a tone that indicated he would accept no waffling.

  Rose’s first thought was to pacify him, to lie and tell him it really was 1858, of course it was, what other year would it be? But she abandoned the idea immediately because she doubted she could pull it off. If her face, the tone of her voice, or anything in her demeanor gave away the fact that she wasn’t being truthful, she was afraid of how he might react.

  She reached up and ran her fingers over her bruised and swollen jawline and then answered, her voice quiet but direct. “It’s 2013.”

  The redness returned to the stranger’s face, and his eyes, instead of narrowing as they had done before, grew wide with terror. She tried not to react to the massive explosion she feared was to come, but couldn’t help herself. She cringed.

  But the stranger didn’t hit her.

  For a moment he didn’t do anything.

  He
stood before Rose, his expression haunted. Then he backpedaled, keeping his frightened eyes locked onto Rose’s. He shuffled backward until striking the kitchen wall hard enough to jar his entire body.

  He gave Rose one last confused glare, then turned and sprinted out of the house. The back door creaked open and then slammed shut and Rose could hear the heavy pounding of running feet. After a moment the pounding faded away, and silence rushed in to take its place.

  21

  Gordie Rheaume had been the Paskagankee Police Department’s day shift dispatcher for decades. He often worked the night and weekend shifts as well. Gordie had been on the job longer than any other member of the department, and at the age of seventy-two, with a wife lost to cancer more than a decade before and two grown children who had long since moved away, he had let it be known he was more than happy to work as many hours at the station as permitted.

  Gordie liked to think of himself as inquisitive. He knew most everyone else would probably substitute the term “nosy,” but he didn’t allow that knowledge to bother him much. In a tiny, out-of-the-way village hard by the Canadian border where residents relied on one another to an extent unheard of in most other places, it was only natural for folks to take a healthy interest in the goings-on of their neighbors.

  That was Gordie’s theory, anyway, and in his case, without much else to do, it seemed only natural to expand on that “healthy interest” a little. He knew which residents were having marital problems and who had just purchased a new car. He could recite the averages of every member of the Paskagankee PD bowling league, updated weekly. He knew who had been laid off at the struggling paper mill down in Millinocket and who had begun drinking too much of late.

  So when the caller ID at the switchboard indicated a call was incoming from Needful Things, Gordie knew immediately the voice at the other end of the line would either belong to Rose Pellerin or Annette Middleton. He knew further that Rose had been suffering from respiratory problems recently, and that she feared the onset of lung cancer, which had taken the life of her father many years ago.