Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3)

by Leverone, Allan

  Was it possible the old spinster was telling the truth? Could the year really be 2013? Could Jackson have somehow survived more than one hundred fifty years trapped in that underground hellhole, his unconscious body hanging in some unexplained state of suspended animation, not alive but not dead either, while the two corpses trapped down there with him slowly rotted away to nothing more than bare bones?

  Was any of that really possible?

  He thought about the things he had witnessed in Peru, in the Valley of the Spirits, spying on the shaman priests during their otherworldly middle-of-the-night ceremony. He thought about Puerto de Hayu Marka, the Gate of the Gods, and about the alien-looking figure dressed in flowing robes that had materialized through the door carved out of solid stone, and about the gel-like liquid Jackson had brought back from South America that was supposed to make a man live forever but that he was too fearful to drink.

  Then he thought back to the moment he had, in sheer desperation, unable to come up with a single alternative, poured the bitter-tasting liquid down his throat, convinced he was facing a long, slow death of starvation and dehydration.

  He tried to recall what had happened after swallowing the liquid and realized he could not; at least not with any degree of accuracy. He had a hazy recollection of stumbling around the chamber, a single flickering candle throwing terrifying shadows on the wall, capering monsters and misshapen alien beings.

  He remembered being tired, so tired.

  And then he had gone to sleep, only to be aroused from his unnatural slumber by the cold slanting rain pelting his naked body. He had been clothed when he went to sleep, he was certain of that much. Would clothing rot away in a damp underground room over the course of a century and a half? Jackson didn’t know for sure but he guessed that, yes, it probably would.

  That was what clinched it for him: waking up without a stitch of clothing on his body to find himself in an almost totally unrecognizable world.

  As hard as it seemed to be to believe, Jackson Healy decided the most likely explanation for the confusing events that had befallen him was that the years was, in fact, 2013.

  And as utterly horrifying as that conclusion seemed, as impossible as it was to believe, Jackson knew that if it was true, he could adjust. He was nothing if not flexible. It wouldn’t be easy; he would need time, and probably help, and definitely money, and while he had no idea how he would manage the first two items on that list, he knew exactly where he would find the money: the solid-gold disk that no one else in the world knew about was still sitting somewhere down in that hellish underground prison.

  He simply had to work up the courage to descend into the death chamber one last time and search until he uncovered the disk. Then he would have all the money he would ever need. He knew he could do it, too. When cash was involved, Jackson Healy was capable of just about anything. He had proven that many times over.

  Now that he had developed the beginnings of a plan, Jackson found himself getting excited. His exhaustion melted away, and even his fear began to recede. He continued strategizing. Once he had the disk in his possession, he would turn his attention to leaving Paskagankee behind forever and finally – a century and a half later – slipping across the border into Canada. He would sell the disk and then settle down in some tiny, isolated village not unlike this one.

  Now that he really stopped and thought about it, there was one very distinct advantage to waking up in the year 2013 as opposed to 1858: he would finally be free of the damned Krupp brothers, who must have died off and been shoveled into their graves at least a hundred years ago. No Krupps meant his days of endless running were finally over.

  Jackson leaned against a tree and allowed himself the luxury of a momentary smile. His plan to escape the dogged pair of brothers, who chased him for years and across two continents, had worked! Not in the way he had expected it to, of course – it had taken far too long and involved untold misery – but still, he was finally free of his pursuers.

  Now he just needed to locate that disk and slip out of town.

  25

  FBI Special Agent Ward Cooper munched methodically on potato chips, one after the other, working his way through the bag. Alton Ferriss knew his partner wouldn’t stop until he had pulverized every last chip, and it was driving him crazy. Crunch, crunch, crunch, swallow. Wipe hands on seat. Reach into bag and begin again.

  Cooper was bored and impatient, and Ferriss knew it was impossible to try to have a conversation with the man when he was in such a black mood. So he sat across the front seat quietly, idly picking his teeth with a well-worn toothpick and keeping a close eye on the construction site behind the Ridge Runner, glancing over every few seconds to see if there was any activity, then looking away.

  Cooper’s gaze, however, was focused on the site like a laser beam. An ant wouldn’t be able to climb out of the hole without Ward Cooper spotting it. He stared through the windshield with the single-minded intensity of a peeping tom with his face pressed against a pretty girl’s bedroom window.

  The pair had parked diagonally across from the Ridge Runner, and as far down the road as was possible without losing sight of the stakeout area. The agents had left the black bureau Suburban in the lot at their Portland hotel, reasoning it was a little too conspicuous, and instead had rented the most invisible car they could find under short notice: a white, late-model Honda Civic.

  Cooper, predictably, had disagreed with the decision, arguing that they had no idea how long the stakeout would last and that the Suburban would be a hell of a lot more comfortable than a tiny econobox car.

  Ferriss didn’t care. He didn’t think Jackson Healy would notice the black Suburban with the smoked windows – a vehicle that practically screamed “U.S. Government” to most people – any more than any other vehicle, given how terrified and confused he must be by now, but there was no reason to take chances when they were this close to achieving their goal. So on the off chance Healy would get spooked by the big SUV, he had overruled his partner and insisted on the rental.

  Cooper had pissed and moaned and grumbled – had been himself, in other words – and finally dropped the subject after being steadfastly ignored by Ferriss.

  Funny thing is, Ferriss thought, he’s right. This damned clown car is about as comfortable as an amusement park roller coaster. His back was stiff, his ass hurt, and every so often his right leg would cramp up, sending shooting pains through his calf and halfway up the back of his thigh. He refused to give Cooper the satisfaction of hearing him complain, though, or even of opening the door and stepping out to stretch his legs unless he had to take a leak.

  Ferriss glanced around the interior of the car as if he hadn’t already done so a hundred times before looking over at Cooper. He expected to see the same thing he had been forced to look at all day: the constant chewing of chips and the repetitive motion of hand into bag and then up to mouth.

  But this time, when Ferriss gazed dully across the front seat, Special Agent Cooper was sitting bolt upright with his nose pressed almost into the windshield. The nearly empty bag of chips sat forgotten in his lap. He said, “Hooooly shit, there he is,” his voice tinged with a note of awe and perhaps even a little trepidation as well.

  Ferriss’ gaze lingered for another split-second on his partner. To say he was surprised would be a gross understatement. Ward Cooper was a hard man, stoic, not given to displays of fear.

  After a moment he followed Cooper’s sightline and immediately spotted a man with long, scraggly hair dressed in filthy clothing slipping hesitantly out of the thick underbrush behind the Ridge Runner. The man walked five feet into the open field and then stopped, as if only now realizing how exposed he was. He looked around wildly, his head on a swivel, and then continued, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape ringing the construction and walking swiftly toward the big hole in the ground.

  The figure was too far away to tell with the naked eye whether it was actually Healy, but Ferriss had no real doubts as to the
man’s identity. Just to be sure, he reached into the back seat for a pair of binoculars and raised them to his eyes, spinning the wheel between the two eyepieces to bring the image into focus.

  His breath caught in his throat. It was Jackson Healy.

  Cooper had already exited the car, closing the door gently to avoid alerting their quarry to their presence, although Ferriss doubted Healy would have heard the sound from this distance. Even if he did, it seemed unlikely he would understand its significance.

  Nevertheless, as he climbed out of the Honda, Alton Ferriss took the extra second to ease his own door closed quietly. Then he hurried across the empty road and trotted after his partner, who was already advancing stealthily toward the filthy man, gun drawn.

  26

  Sharon Dupont was operating on autopilot mode as she drove her cruiser toward the Ridge Runner, lost in thought, navigating mostly by reflex on the quiet roads.

  Her assignment was to remove the police crime scene tape from around the construction pit and the underground room. She had already notified Bo Pellerin that he would be free to resume construction of his new septic system by this afternoon, and the news had been greeted by the taciturn businessman with what Sharon thought was probably as chipper a response as he had ever uttered. “’Bout time,” he growled. “Gotta go,” he continued before she could say another word. “I need to get that lazy bastard Melton on the line and tell him to get over here and finish the goddamn job.” He had hung up without another word.

  Sharon couldn’t contain her uneasiness, or her sense that something was wrong. She was certain it was too soon to allow the room to be filled in as part of the construction job.

  The human remains had long since been removed for analysis, the scene had been thoroughly photographed, and she had dug through the small room with her own hands. It was empty. The only item of value seemed to have been the strange golden disk, now tagged and sitting in the police station’s evidence room.

  Everything else at the bottom of that hellhole while Sharon conducted her search yesterday had been pulled out and carted away earlier by Harley Tanguay. There was a table, a couple of chairs, and something that looked as though it may have been a rudimentary bed frame. All of the wooden artifacts were rotted almost entirely away and would provide little evidentiary value.

  So Sharon understood Mike’s decision. Bo Pellerin was dependent upon the income derived from the Ridge Runner for his livelihood – not to mention the fact that the bar represented Paskagankee’s only claim to night life – and it could be financially devastating to delay the resumption of business without good reason.

  But, still, the nagging sense of unease she had been feeling since before calling Bo refused to diminish. She tried to convince herself she was just being silly, that she was imagining problems where none existed, but the effort went nowhere. Alone in the cruiser, she shrugged and muttered, “Something’s not right.”

  The Ridge Runner came into view in the distance, the bar set off to the right and about two-thirds of the way along the Route 28 straightaway. The parking lot was empty. Not even Bo had arrived yet. She pictured him haranguing poor Dan Melton about getting his “lazy ass” out here to finish the job that had been interrupted and couldn’t help smiling.

  Then her attention was drawn by a sense of movement, more felt than seen, in the open field behind the bar. She took her foot off the accelerator and the cruiser began to slow as she squinted to get a closer look.

  Next to the open pit containing the underground room stood a man. Approaching from behind, as-yet unseen, were two other men. Even from this distance, highlighted against the bright yellow bulk of the still-parked Caterpillar earthmover, Sharon could tell right away that two of them were the FBI agents who had spent most of yesterday morning leering at her while she dug through the remains of the pit.

  The first person, she had no doubt, was the double-murder suspect.

  The suspect was peering intently into the pit as the two Feds stalked him quietly, guns drawn, making no move to alert him – yet – to their presence.

  Sharon’s uneasiness intensified and she punched the gas. The cruiser responded immediately, leaping forward toward the parking lot. She wheeled in without braking and moved to the front of the bar before pulling to a stop and killing the engine. The Ridge Runner stood between Sharon’s car and the three men behind it and she hoped the building’s bulk had served to shield the suspect from the sound of her car’s approach.

  She leapt out of the vehicle and hurried to the corner of the building, drawing her weapon.

  She eased her head around the corner and was surprised to see the agents had yet to place the suspect under arrest. They had by now positioned themselves directly behind the man, who looked as though he hadn’t bathed in weeks. What the hell are they waiting for?

  She watched in astonishment as Special Agent Cooper drew his weapon to eye level and held it in a two-handed grip aimed at the back of the suspect’s head. Then Cooper said, “Turn around, Healy,” his voice gruff and filled with malice.

  The suspect froze, his attention still directed at the bottom of the hole. He hesitated for a moment as if considering his options, then seemed to realize he didn’t have any. He turned slowly to face the agents.

  For a moment nothing happened and Sharon waited, wondering why the agents weren’t placing the man under arrest. Abruptly the suspect’s eyes widened, staring incredulously at the two law enforcement officials. His jaw dropped and he gasped and took one quick step backward, nearly tumbling into the pit, before stammering, “It…it…it’s you. But it can’t be, you’re…”

  “Dead?” Cooper said helpfully. Sharon could see his eyes glittering dangerously even from her position more than ten feet away.

  “It’s impossible,” the suspect muttered. He was now breathing heavily and appeared to be on the verge of collapse. “You should be long dead.”

  Sharon furrowed her brow, unable to understand what that was supposed to mean, but aware things were going south quickly. “Well, guess again,” Cooper spat. “You’re not the only one to benefit from that funky Peruvian life-juice.”

  The suspect shook his head in disbelief.

  “Now,” Cooper continued, taking one step forward and placing his gun to the side of the man’s head. “Get on your knees.”

  The suspect hesitated. Then, with obvious reluctance, he did as he was told, dropping to a kneeling position in the weedy grass. His entire body was shaking with barely controlled terror.

  For maybe two seconds Sharon froze, unable to comprehend the scene playing out in front of her. These FBI agents weren’t going to arrest the man at all; they intended to execute him in cold blood.

  Ferriss took up a position next to Cooper, his gun trained on the kneeling suspect. Cooper had removed his weapon while the suspect dropped to the ground, and now he replaced it against the side of the man’s head. In a low voice, he said to his partner, “You don’t mind if I do the honors, do ya?”

  Ferriss said nothing. He simply stared at the suspect with cold, dead shark eyes. More than anything else, the look on Ferriss’s face was what forced Sharon out of her shocked inaction. She took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the Ridge Runner, lifting her service pistol to eye level and training it directly on Special Agent Ward Cooper.

  “Stop right there,” she said sharply. “Pull that trigger and you’ll die less than a second later.” Her nerves were thrumming and adrenaline was pumping madly through her body, yet her voice stayed strong and calm and her aim never wavered.

  Time stopped and for what felt like an eternity nothing happened. Ferriss’s shoulders slumped and he lowered his weapon, and then a moment later Cooper followed suit. He turned to face Sharon. His eyes were blank and cold. “Have it your way,” he said quietly. “You’re just delaying the inevitable.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you two?” she said in bewilderment. “You were about to murder a man in cold blood!”

  Agent F
erriss glanced from Sharon to his partner and then back again. An oily smile slid across his face, but his eyes looked no less dead. “You’ve got it all wrong,” he drawled, the unmistakable hint of a Southern upbringing coming out from the stress. “We wasn’t gonna murder nobody, we was just subduing the suspect, weren’t we, Agent Cooper?”

  Cooper never took his eyes off Sharon’s, the hatred undisguised on his face. “That’s right,” he finally agreed. “Subduing the suspect.”

  “Good thing you came along when you did,” Ferriss continued. “You can help us take this man into custody.”

  Sharon hesitated, her gun still trained on Ward Cooper. She knew what she had witnessed, and it wasn’t a pending arrest, it was a pending execution. At Cooper’s feet, the suspect started babbling, “Get them away from me, get ‘em away, they’re gonna kill me!”

  “Shut your mouth right now,” Cooper muttered angrily, prodding the suspect with his shoe, and to Sharon’s surprise, the man stopped talking.

  The small group eyed each other silently and suspiciously. Sharon had a moment of disbelief at the utter unreality of the situation. She was holding a loaded gun on two federal agents, who she was certain had been about to murder the only suspect in the killings of two Paskagankee residents. What the hell was going on here?

  Ferriss took a slow step in Sharon’s direction and she immediately turned her weapon toward him. Ferriss had holstered his gun and he raised his hands, palms out, in a gesture of conciliation. He said, “I think there’s been a serious misunderstanding here. You seem to have misinterpreted our disarming of the suspect,” he pointed to the Colt revolver in the grass next to the still-kneeling man, “as something…sinister.”

  He smiled. The gesture contained absolutely no warmth and the sight chilled Sharon. “You need to holster that weapon now, officer,” he continued, “before something bad happens to you.”

  “Excuse me?” she said sharply. “Is that a threat?”