The Maine Massacre

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  The fox sipped from his enamel mug. "And if there were no interference from us, if the superrace, the humans, would have the grace to disappear, the beauty of the woods would spread. The trees would push over die cities, very quickly, more quickly than you would expect. There's a road in the back of this sawmill. It was a first-grade hard-topped road two years ago, but when it was short-circuited by the new highway and forgotten, the woods moved in and covered it up. There are cedars growing through the broken tar now, and moss and wildflowers between the cedars' roots. Two years. In ten years New York City would be overgrown. I would like to be a witness to that process."

  "You would be among the dead, Mr. Fox."

  The fox nodded. "I would be. But would that matter?"

  The commissaris' eyes twinkled briefly. He had remembered the plane landing on Jeremy's Island and recalled his fear. "It wouldn't matter to you, would it, Mr. Fox?"

  The fox smiled back. "Oh, it would undoubtedly. I scare easy, but we are discussing a theory. The point is that my death, which would be part of the extinction of our species, may not be all that important."

  The commissaris drank his brandy. De Gier moved uneasily. There was no breakthrough yet. He wished the commissaris would reach out more openly and wondered whether he could help.

  The fox had moved too, but the commissaris sat very quietly, his whole attitude suggesting that he was very much at ease and had nothing in mind. Except sipping a little more brandy perhaps.

  The fox tugged at his hair. "You came to ask questions? I hear you visited Jeremy earlier on today."

  The commissaris looked over the rim of his mug. "News travels quickly in Woodcock County, Mr. Fox."

  The fox shrugged. "I have a CB radio in my jeep. I heard Madelin talk to the old guy who runs the airstrip. You asked Jeremy questions?"

  "Yes."

  "Did he answer?"

  "In a way."

  The fox jumped up, clapped his hands, laughed, and sat down again. "In a way!"

  De Gier laughed too. It was done now. He got up, stretched, and wandered over to Albert, who reached for the brandy bottle. Albert grinned back at him and poured. The fox was still talking.

  "Jeremy is my local sage. I used to go over to the island and I would ask him questions, but he never answered. He would talk about other things instead, different things altogether. Tell me stories, jokes, anything. But he never seemed to hear what I asked. Then later, maybe the next day, I would think about what he had said and find .that he had answered. Very funny, and annoying too. He plays around, and very seriously, once you get a feeling as to what he is doing. But go ahead, you can ask me questions now. I may want to try to imitate Jeremy's method, but I won't be as good at it as he is."

  "You try, and I'll try," the commissaris said goodhumoredly.

  The fox was on his feet again. "One moment, before you go ahead I want to ask a question too. How does your quest go? Can you point at anyone yet?"

  The commissaris shook his head. "I am a foreign visitor to your great country, Mr. Fox. I wouldn't point a finger at anyone, but your sheriff will I think, and I would imagine that we don't have to wait long now."

  "You hear that, Albert?" the fox asked. "My sheriff. Your sheriff too. Our public servant, if only he would remember."

  "Oh, he does, Mr. Fox. I have had the pleasure of being able to observe the sheriff, and so has the sergeant here. We are quite impressed. And so should you be. To consider authority as the enemy isn't always wise, and perhaps even... yes... childish. But no matter. It is my turn now, and here is my question. How did you manage to send off Captain Schwartz? I believe you admitted being instrumental in his departure, but I didn't hear how you forced him to remove himself, and I am interested."

  The fox ran his fingers over a freshly cut board. "Okay, if you want to know I'll tell you, but you'll only get my side of the experiment. You should ask the captain too. But then his side might be confused. They say he's crazy, which, unfortunately, may be true. If it is true my experiment is all balled up. I was hoping that he'd turn out to be intelligent."

  "He wasn't?"

  "Perhaps not. But he was a Nazi, and still is I'm sure. I did some reading at college about what the Nazis call their philosophy. There was a lot of hogwash in their literature, but they also talked about the right of the strong, which interested me, of course. Like what I saw in the woods— the clever and the strong eat the stupid and the weak. The superrace. And when you have a superrace you have an underrace. You can either destroy or use the underrace. But the Nazi books were too crude somehow. They said something, but they didn't say it right. And I knew I couldn't just learn from books, I would have to find some direct learning, mouth-to-mouth stuff, and do some experimenting. And here was a real-life Nazi, an officer. I had another angle too. My father was shot by the Nazis. According to what I've been told, he was caught by an SS patrol and the Germans didn't feel like being bothered by prisoners that day. Maybe they were short of manpower or maybe they didn't have time, I don't know. Anyway, they lined up their catch and machine-gunned them from the rear."

  The fox was on his feet, talking almost eagerly.

  "Yes?"

  "So here we have Captain Schwartz. It was only afterward that I found out that he'd never been a fighting man. He was only a clerk captain, doing paperwork behind the lines in Korea. Rather a mousy man, but all I had. And he does walk around in a U.S. uniform with the proper insignia taken off and replaced by a red armband with a black swastika. He has a portrait of Hitler in his hall, and he plays records of German war songs. I went to see him and took a hand gun, a Magnum, a heavy gun. He wouldn't let me in, but I kicked the door out of his hands and let myself in. He went for the telephone, but I beat him to it and threw the telephone through his window. The window was closed. There was a bit of a mess. I wanted to show him that I was the stronger party, you see."

  "Obviously."

  The fox grinned. "Quite."

  "Did you manhandle the captain?"

  "No, that wasn't necessary. I sat down and made him sit down opposite me, and I asked him about his philosophy and about what he was trying to do. He didn't answer. Then I put my gun on the table. I told him I would leave the room and that he could shoot me in the back. I even cocked the gun for him as it has a heavy trigger. I also told him that if he didn't shoot me, I would come back into the room again to collect my gun. I didn't say I would kill him or harm him in any way."

  "You're still with us, Mr. Fox."

  "Sure. He did nothing. The experiment fell flat. He wouldn't even answer the simplest questions."

  "You had some revenge, Mr. Fox. Did you tell him about what happened to your father?"

  "No. I didn't have revenge in mind. But you're right in a way. It was good to see mm fidget and listen to his teeth chatter. He left Cape Orca the next day. His son or somebody came and sold the house."

  "Thank you," the commissaris said. "Very good of you to confide in me."

  "Confide?" the fox asked. "I did more than that. You are working for the sheriff and I've just made a confession. According to local rules my behavior was criminal. You can have me arrested."

  The commissaris put his mug down and nodded when Albert held up the bottle. "Just a drop, please. No, Mr. Fox. There's no call for your suggestion. If you hadn't known that I wouldn't pass on your information you wouldn't have given it to me. But I'd like to know a little more. Madelin told the sergeant and the sergeant told me that you took your disciples, or fellow students, to a slum in New York once and fought a local gang. One of your mates got a knife in his chest and died. You yourself knifed and killed a member of the opposing gang. Is that correct?"

  "That's correct."

  "Why did you go that far?"

  The fox took a moment and grinned slyly. "Go all the way to New York, you mean? But what else could I do? We're out in the sticks here, on the edge of the country. Canada starts across the hills and it's all sticks up there too, for hundreds of miles. We're backward count
ry people. Some of us read books and so did I, but books are theory. I learned how to saw lumber from books, but I couldn't cut a board properly until an old sawyer came along and taught me. In New York we could be shown what our thoughts look like in action."

  "Gérard died."

  "He didn't have to go to New York. It was his decision. Mine was my own. I could have died too, but the knife flew his way."

  "The suggestion was yours."

  "Yes, oh yes."

  "Here's my question. Do you have any feelings about your friend's death now?"

  "No."

  "No feelings at all?"

  "If I have any I have good feelings. Gérard tried. So did we. We are still trying. There are more people out here trying. Jeremy. Madelin. Tom of Robert's Market. And a few others, out in the woods, or on the islands. Not too many fortunately, we don't want to crowd each other. I've been back to New York since the gang fight. I hung around and looked at people. I spent a lot of time, days on end, mostly in the subway stations. I must have seen a million people. And none of them seemed alive. They were all very busy, running in circles, like the chipmunk my mother had in a cage. I let him out and he ran into the woods, but he ran in circles. He was crazy. A raccoon got him, a slow old raccoon. The chipmunk was a good meal for the raccoon, his last meal, for my neighbor bashed his head in with the butt of his gun. The raccoon wasn't worth a shell."

  The commissaris nodded solemnly. "Yes, Mr. Fox. Thank you very much. For the brandy and your good words." The commissaris got up. The sergeant followed suit.

  "You don't want to know about who I killed on Cape Orca?"

  "I know who you killed, Mr. Fox."

  "Who?"

  "An old man by the name of Ranee. Paul Ranee."

  "Yes, I did."

  "I think I can see why you killed him. And you got rid of Captain Schwartz."

  "I didn't kill any of the others?"

  "No, Mr. Fox."

  The fox and Albert were operating the mill again when the station wagon drove away.

  "We've been very clever, sergeant," the commissaris said and shifted the car into second gear. "But we are still nowhere. To know the suspect's identity is one thing, to lay charges, as the sheriff says, is another. I'll have to think of a plan, and it should be better than the plan that has occurred to me. I don't like that plan at all, but it may be our only possibility."

  "You might tell me what you have in mind, sir."

  The commissaris stared ahead.

  "Sir?"

  A thin hand patted the sergeant's knee. "Find your own answers, sergeant. You have the training and you have the intelligence."

  "When will it be, sir?"

  "Tomorrow I think. Shall I drop you off at the jailhouse?"

  "Yes, sir. I think I'll be going for a drive."

  "The snooping and searching are over, sergeant."

  "Just a drive, sir. The landscape is beautiful, and we may be leaving soon."

  The wagon followed a long row of full-grown cedars. A flock of startlingly blue birds wheeled toward them. The bay glittered on the horizon, and the sun was setting behind a snow-covered hill, bright orange in its last low rays.

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "I wonder where Mr. Fox will go from here."

  "Will he have to go much further, sir?"

  "I would think so, sergeant, but he is on the right track. A dangerous track though. Let's hope he won't die too soon or lose his mind."

  "Are you on that track, sir?"

  The commissaris grinned. "Didn't you know, Rinus? And so are you. You've been on it for some time. You should recognize the view. The track leads uphill. Uphill tracks usually offer good views after a while."

  19

  THE BLUE DODGE WAS PARKED AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD leading into Cape Orca. De Gier sat behind the wheel. He was mumbling to himself in a reassuring manner. It was cold in the car and the BMF brandy had worn off. He had a slight headache and a slight thirst.

  "It is not really complicated," he said in a sudden loud voice. "It just seems complicated. They have told the truth but not all of the truth. He knows by now, and I should know. Point is that I don't, not quite. No."

  He stubbed out his cigarette, lit another, then cleaned the windshield with his free hand. He had a clear view of the bay and the white expanse helped to steady his thoughts. Surely the commissaris had worked out the solution. But only after he had seen the BMF gang and after he had spoken with Jeremy. De Gier was ready to disregard the BMF gang. The householders of Cape Orca's shore had been removed out of greed. Somebody wanted their land and their houses, but only to destroy them. The prime interest had been for the land, and still was. Counting in the island. Jeremy knew his island was wanted, for he had gone to a great deal of trouble to protect himself. The island was a fortress and its owner walked about armed, accompanied by fierce dogs and an all-seeing bird. Jeremy was friendly with the BMF gang, another point to consider. And the gang, although quite prepared to kill, would only kill if violence fitted into their experiments. The fox had turned out to be a curious man, not a greedy man. The behavior of a group is determined by the behavior of its leader. Albert, Tom, and Madelin were individualists but also active members of the gang. De Gier sighed. He was pleased that Madelin could be discarded as a suspect for a number of reasons. What reasons? But he shook his head and forced his mind to return to its original subject. The murders. Madelin was out.

  So who was in? Not Jeremy—the man was on the defensive. But there might be a motive in his case. Jeremy fancied himself a hermit, and hermits don't like neighbors who sail around the bay and operate chain saws and make themselves obnoxious in a number of irritating ways. But would Jeremy, the not unfriendly hermit, kill his neighbors? No.

  "Right," de Gier said pleasantly. Very good. Not Jeremy. Besides, Jeremy was a victim himself. Janet Wash, not Reggie, had steered the station wagon in such an aggressive manner that Osiris, the hermit's companion at that moment and his most ferocious dog, had attacked the wagon and got himself killed in the process.

  De Gier's fist banged the steering wheel. But why, oh why, oh triple why, had Jeremy assisted the lady in escaping from her car wreck and why hadn't he denounced her to the sheriff? If she tried to kill him once she might try to kill him again, and Jeremy, although an original man, a negative original man, didn't seem to be interested in getting killed. And why had Janet said that Reggie drove the car?

  Just a minute, not everything at once. He had a headache, he was tired, and he wasn't particularly clever. Easy does it. Nice short connecting lines, lines he could control. What, for instance, was the exact relationship between Janet Wash and Reggie. The man was her servant, her retainer, but there might be more to it. If Janet was the guilty party, not only in the attempted murder of Jeremy but also in the completed murders of her neighbors, she wouldn't have committed her crimes herself. She was, after all, a lady, an elderly lady, some sixty years old. Reggie has better qualifications. An ex-Vietnam warrior, highly trained. Had she paid him? No, surely not. Reggie might be a killer, but not a paid killer. A gentleman. So what then? Was he her lover?

  De Gier had met several gigolos, and consulted his memory. Gigolos don't split wood—they wouldn't even grow an azalea garden. They might water the azaleas on a sunny afternoon, but that would be all. Five minutes with the watering can and back to the porch and a Tom Collins, to be sucked through a straw.

  The lady and her knight in shining armor. More like it. And a touch of mother-and-son. Sick, undoubtedly, but not sexy sick. A platonic relationship with the knight/son protecting and serving the lady/mother. Taking the blame for the station wagon accident so that the bad men can't harm the exalted female deity.

  De Gier's mouth sagged. Was he exaggerating? Maybe he was, so what the hell. He wasn't a psychiatrist, he was only a police detective. He could simplify as long as he didn't slip from the track.

  But why had Jeremy protected the lady? Out of his originality? His contrariness? Gamesmanship?

&n
bsp; The island's squirrel jumped through de Gier's headache and he winced. Jeremy had said something about the squirrel. It provided sport for the dogs—voluntarily. Jeremy had also claimed that he had gone beyond the squirrel, and Jeremy liked to speak in riddles, or answer in riddles. So said the fox.

  His thoughts broke. For god's sake, a zoo, a whole zoo, and he was in the middle of it. A squirrel, dogs, a fox, seals, a raven, a raccoon.

  Patiently he tried again. The raccoon was in this too. His own hat, minus tail. A raccoon, a small type of bear. A washbear, the Dutch name. Raccoons wash their food before they eat it. They had discussed raccoons, alias wash-bears, with Jeremy during their first visit to the island.

  De Gier sat up and grinned stupidly. BEWARE THE BEAR, BEWARE THE WASH BEAR. Jeremy, the hermit known for exceptional behavior, carting a sign about, and that's what the sign said. Beware the bear, beware the wash, beware Janet Wash.

  This discovery blocked all further thinking for a while, and he stared at the bay and the island. But once again he tried. So Jeremy had denounced the lady of the mansion to the authorities, in his own spectacular manner. By carrying a sign. No wonder the commissaris had been in such a good mood afterward, smiling and chatting and burbling in spite of his pain, for he was limping badly these days, his rheumatism aggravated by the cold.

  So what puzzles were left? Why would Reggie kill on behalf of his employer? All right, some nuttiness mere. Why would Jeremy help his would-be killer out of her car?

  Love, according to the commissaris, causes most violence. De Gier agreed. Tested police knowledge. Lovers and loved ones are first-class suspects. Now Janet wanted the island—he was getting ahead of himself again, but he could sort the next puzzle a little later. Why would Janet want all that land? There could be no other motivation— she didn't want her neighbors' homes because she had them destroyed. Back to Jeremy now.

  Jeremy loves Janet. No, past tense: Jeremy loved Janet, and the other way around too. They were of the same age and Janet's husband had been a cripple in a wheelchair. She might have taken a lover. She was still a beautiful woman at sixty so she would have been stunning at forty. Jeremy had been on his island for twenty years. Very good, an illicit affair, a small boat rowed between island and shore. Charming, really. He looked at the bay, an ideal spot for a love affair. And when the general died, his widow proposed to Jeremy or expected to be proposed to, but nothing doing. Jeremy preferred to be a hermit.