The Maine Massacre ac-7

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Reggie came, looked, and attempted to smile. De Gier felt embarrassed and took refuge in his whiskey, raising his glass and grinning at Reggie. Reggie looked away. De Gier thought the man looked very well in his faded brown sports jacket, corduroy slacks, and white shirt. The knot of Reggie's tie had dropped an inch, revealing the absence of a collar button and a thick growth of curly chest hair.

  "Never mind, Reggie. I am only teasing. You even remembered to put on a tie. But a trip to Boston wouldn't be wasted. You haven't been out of here for so long. Reggie is a military man," she explained to the commissaris. "He came here after his return from Vietnam and he says that he prefers nature, any nature, to the cities. I should be grateful. Reggie is an accomplished gardener and an excellent woodsman."

  "Vietnam?" the commissaris asked. "What outfit were you with, sir?"

  But Reggie had gone back to the sizzling sausages and Janet answered. "Reggie was with the Green Berets. He fought in trouble spots where the regular army wouldn't go. It's such a pity that the Vietnam war turned out to be a flop. Reggie should have come back as a hero, but now we are all supposed to be ashamed about what went on there. My husband was luckier. He fought in the Second World War and returned sporting his medals, but he came back as an invalid, poor dear. It happened in the last week, somewhere in Germany. A bullet in a very wrong place. He was paralyzed, and I had to push him around in a wheelchair. Such a shame. But he was very good about it, and he loved the life here. Another drink, sir."

  Reggie collected the empty glasses and refilled them. He served the sausages on little saucers and de Gier helped. When the sergeant had found his corner near the fireplace again he took a minute to study the man. A commando, a professional superman. De Gier felt jealous. He had often thought that he had been born in the wrong place. He saw himself gliding through a tropical forest, carrying some ultra-automatic weapon, a ripple among leaves and trailers and creepers. He tried to stop his fantasy, but it continued by itself. De Gier had traveled somewhat, but he had never been to the tropics and knew the jungle of Indochina only on film. And this man had actually lived in such an enchanting location. In a tent. Tigers growling outside, and small yellow men in black cotton pyjamas crawling everywhere. Hmm.

  "You do gardening here?"

  "Not now. The snow will be on the ground until April. I've been working on the tractor all day. I need it for pulling logs, but the machine is getting old. I keep on taking it apart, but it is just as old when I put it together again!"

  "How long were you in Vietnam?"

  "Three years. Until it was all over."

  Janet came over and made de Gier sit next to her on a settee. "Will you be going on patrol with the sheriff, sergeant?"

  "Yes, madam. He gave me the first day off, but tomorrow I am supposed to be working."

  "That must be an interesting experience. I wonder if we have crime here. Reggie, do we have crime here?"

  Reggie bent down and adjusted a woven rug on the shiny hardwood floor. "Of course, Janet. Jameson houses the biggest bunch of cutthroats this side of Manhattan. I'm glad you keep me on the estate most of the time. I wouldn't be sure of my life in town. The last time I walked down Main Street every second man carried a six gun and Beth was saying that she would rename her diner. The OK Corral I believe it's going to be called."

  Everybody laughed except Suzanne.

  "Ah yes," Janet said. "I mustn't forget to ask. You mentioned the sale of Opdijk's house yesterday. Did you see my old friend Michael Astrinsky? He is such a nice man, and he was such a good friend of Pete's. I had wanted to give you Michael's name, but I forgot. I am sure he could be of help."

  The commissaris put his glass down and shook his head when Reggie wanted to carry it to the table. "No more, thank you. I have to watch my habits these days. Yes, madam, we saw Mr. Astrinsky and he made an offer, but I would like to have another evaluation and the sheriff was kind enough to ask an expert friend of his to come and have a look at the place. Somebody from the next county, I believe."

  "Can I ask what Michael offered?"

  "Certainly. Thirty thousand."

  She shook her head sadly. "I don't know about values anymore, not since inflation has changed everything. Some years ago such an amount would have been a good price. That would be for an immediate sale, I imagine, with Michael buying for his own account?"

  "Yes, madam."

  "It might be better to have the house listed. Although I don't know. The other houses on the Cape are empty and Michael hasn't been able to sell them, and he is an excellent businessman, the only rich man around we always say. He has done very well here. Our trouble is that we are too far from the shopping centers. Even in summer we don't have enough of a crowd to have our own supermarket. We have to drive over sixty miles to get groceries. Robert's Market only stocks the staples, some canned food and local produce and flour and so on. Of course many of us have our own vegetable gardens and we keep goats and even cows and have them slaughtered in the autumn to stock up the freezer. And we get fresh lobsters and fish all year 'round, but, still, it isn't the easy life the city people are used to. Only the tough dare to settle here. Don't you agree, Reggie?"

  "Sure, Janet." Reggie looked polite.

  Poor fellow, de Gier thought. Dancing attendance on a refined old lady in a palace in the woods must have its drawbacks.

  "So you may sell to the other realtor? I wonder if he would be interested. If he is in the next county he may be too far away."

  "I may," the commissaris said. "And we may end up accepting Mr. Astrinsky's offer. He also said he would buy the car at sixty percent of the new price."

  "But that's an excellent offer. The hardest thing to get rid of in America is a used car. The banks lend everybody money to buy a new one. Even high school kids can get a limousine these days. Sixty percent, my word! That would be the insurance value. Reggie just wrecked a one-year-old station wagon, bounced it off the road and turned it over so many times that the poor dung was beyond repair. It was a wonder he survived the accident himself. That's what we got, sixty percent of the new price. But Michael always liked Opdijk's car. He even borrowed it a few times. I would advise you to accept his offer."

  The commissaris smiled. "I am afraid the two offers go together, Mrs. Wash. I don't think he'll take the car if he doesn't get the house."

  "Yes," Janet said. "We Americans are tough dealers, and Michael is a true American, although his forefathers were gentle scholars in Poland, I believe. The scholarly part has missed him, but it got through to Madelin. She has an M.A. in philosophy and is working on her Ph. D. now. That's why she came home for the winter. Did you meet her?"

  "Yes." De Gier's affirmation was a little too enthusiastic, and Janet looked up and smiled at him.

  "Astrinsky left," Reggie said. "I saw him drive to the airstrip just now, as I came back from Robert's market. We stopped to talk. He's off for die Bahamas again."

  "Yes, he said he might spend another week or so there. The slow progress of winter is getting him down and he is engaged in some big deal over mere, I think. Or maybe he is using business as an excuse to loll about in the sun. Good old Michael. I envy him."

  The commissaris coughed. "So we won't see him again. Will anyone take care of his business while he is away?"

  "Madelin. She is a partner in his real estate business. Michael was divorced many years ago. He lives alone with his daughter."

  "I see."

  They stayed for a last drink, then Reggie walked them back to the car while Janet waved from the big double doors. The commissaris asked about the Cadillac.

  "Inside," Reggie said and pointed at a low building in the field bordering the house. "Locked and chained. The BMF gang managed to steal it last year, or I think it was them. The Cadillac came back undamaged. We found it sitting on the lawn in the morning. But Janet has made sure they won't get it again. We even have an alarm system now with bells that will ring both in the house and in my cabin. The cabin is in the woods, about half
a mile from here."

  "The BMF gang," the commissaris said when they were halfway home. "Amazing, don't you think, sergeant? A gang in a small, pleasant town like Jameson. I thought that only cities bred gangs."

  "They may get bored around here, sir."

  "Yes, bored. But I did meet that young foxlike fellow with the BMF ONE number plate on his car. Such an efficient and intelligent young man. Perhaps his gang is different from the ones we deal with. Do you know what BMF stands for, sergeant?"

  "B is bad, sir. M is mother."

  "And F?"

  "A four-letter word."

  Suzanne stirred. The commissaris drove on.

  "Ah," the commissaris said. "I see." He tittered. "How interesting. Twice interesting. To add the prefix 'bad.' Most interesting indeed. To have intercourse with the mother would be the ultimate bad thing to do, I suppose, although the mental attitude behind such a belief seems retarded. Perhaps Americans are retarded in certain ways, in spite of the wealth and the push buttons. They may have developed too quickly and the Victorian fears clung on. Yes, that could be. But to name the worst and then to add bad." He tittered again.

  "Yes," he said after a while. "This foxman could be a genius of sorts, like some of the American cartoonists. Did you ever study American cartoons, sergeant? Some of them are really funny, outrageously funny."

  "Bad boys," Suzanne said.

  "What's that, dear?"

  "Bad boys, Jan. Not funny at all. You would know if you had been here longer. Pests-Opdijk was afraid of them. In summer they roar about on their motorcycles, and in winter they come in on snowmobiles, still roaring about as if the cape belongs to them. Even Reggie can't deal with them, and the sheriff would never come out. I telephoned several times. They would come into our garden. They have no regard for private property. Once they even cut down a tree and rolled the logs down to our beach and another boy was waiting with his powerboat and took them away."

  "The sheriff? This sheriff?"

  "No, the old sheriff. Every time I called he said he didn't have a cruiser available and when the deputies showed up they were always too late. One of the gang is a girl."

  "A girl? On a motorcycle?"

  "Madelin has sold her motorcycle. She flies her father's plane now. She buzzed Opdijk when he was fishing last summer. 1 telephoned her father, but I couldn't get through to him. Madelin should know better, but she is as bad as the others, master's degree or not."

  "Madelin," de Gier said, and his voice vibrated on each syllable of the name.

  Suzanne's small head turned around. It seemed she saw the sergeant for the first time.

  "Pah!" she said. The exclamation cut through the overheated car.

  The sergeant looked guilty; the commissaris had smiled, briefly, for the station wagon skidded again and claimed his attention.

  7

  No," the Commissaris said and looked critically at De Gier. The sergeant hung on to the lowest branch of a pine tree growing at the side of the path leading down to the landing. "This is ridiculous, sergeant. You keep on falling over. Here, let go and then grab me."

  He poked his cane into the snow and reached out. The sergeant slithered down to him. "There, that's better. We are at a disadvantage here, sergeant, but we can make use of the situation. It's good if things can't be taken for granted. Put on your hat."

  The raccoon hat had fallen onto the snow and the commissaris picked it up with his cane. They walked on slowly.

  'Tell me more about the BMF gang, sergeant. If there's anything to tell. That's another disadvantage. It's hard to obtain information. No computer that spits facts at you, no informers in little pubs or on benches in the park, no prisoners who get bored in their cells and welcome company, even our company. Just us, sergeant. The two of us. Well? What do you know?"

  "Not much, sir. There is a young man in jail by the name of Albert. Convicted on a charge of reckless driving, but the sheriff claims that the prisoner, on another occasion, deliberately damaged the chief deputy's cruiser."

  The commissaris sat down on a stump. "Go on, sergeant, details, you must have details."

  He listened. "That's all?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Very clever. And this Albert is the jailhouse cook now? What is his cooking like?"

  "Excellent, sir. He even bakes bread. The dinner he served was first class, and his breakfast was even better. And he doesn't slop the food on the plates, he arranges it."

  The commissaris was nodding and smiling. "And the girl, another member known to us, has a master's degree in philosophy and is working for a Ph. D. And she flies an airplane. And she had the audacity to buzz a retired banker fishing off his own shore. Ha!"

  "She may have killed him too, sir."

  "Oh yes, sergeant. Why? To enable her father to make a profit on the Opdijk house? To help Suzanne be rid of a husband who kept her here against her will? Or just for the hell of it?"

  The sergeant grinned.

  The commissaris' cane shot out and hit him in the stomach. The sergeant fell, rolled over like a cat, and got back on his feet.

  "Well done, sergeant. You haven't wasted your thousand hours on the judo mat. Have you considered Suzanne as a suspect yet?"

  De Gier was looking for a position where he would be out of reach of the commissaris' cane and where he wouldn't be standing on ice.

  "Sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir. She may have pushed her husband, but I don't think she would have touched the others."

  "Do you think she is clever, sergeant?"

  "No, sir."

  "I agree with you. But she isn't that stupid either. She is stupid in certain areas only. I am sure she realized that her husband was keeping her here and that his death would release her. But to make me come out here… no. She could have asked my brother. Or perhaps she is a genius too, in her own single-minded, superbly egocentric way. Perhaps she is thinking that I will sell her house at the right price. You see, this death may have nothing to do with the others. She saw the neighbors die and thought about Opdijk joining the party."

  De Gier pondered the proposition.

  "Would you arrest your own sister, sir?"

  "On United States territory? Certainly not, sergeant. The very idea! Perhaps the sheriff can; but he might need proof. There is no proof, sergeant. And her confession will mean nothing if it isn't supported by circumstantial evidence. If she went up to Opdijk and pushed him and went back into the house, and if nobody saw her… eh?"

  The commissaris smiled. "Let's go on, sergeant. There's the island and there's a hermit on the island. Hermits like to be alone. They don't like noisy people around. Let's see what he looks like."

  They walked down the path, holding their arms free in case of a sudden slip. The commissaris' cane hit frozen clumps of snow, making them roll down to the bay below.

  "There's the shed the sheriff mentioned."

  The morning was clear and the snow glittered on the trees and on the pack ice that reached a few hundred feet into the bay. A flat motorboat chugged toward the open ocean, through the narrow channel between the jetty near the shed and the island. The island rose up gently from layers of ledge and great rocks. They could see a rowboat left out on the island's shore. The commissaris waited while de Gier went into the shed and came back with a pistol that had a short gaping tube instead of a barrel. The silence of the bay was so vast that the boat's putter seemed like a line of small dark specks on an immense sheet of white paper. A large black bird came gliding from the island and its croak startled the two men, leaning on the jetty's railing. The raven was clearly interested in the men's presence and circled above their heads, flapping its huge wings, before it suddenly turned and wheeled back toward the island's hill.

  "A spy," de Gier said. "Here you are, sir. I put a shell in it. That shed is a sort of emergency hut. It has a dinghy with paddles and a first-aid kit and other equipment. Do you want to fire the gun, sir?"

  "No, you can handle the gun, sergeant. But wait fo
r the raven to get back. We don't want to startle the bird with a display of fireworks. Let me have a look at that shed first."

  The sergeant waited, weighing the gun in his hand. The commissaris came back. "Well-organized hut, sergeant. Usually vandals interfere with that type of emergency arrangement, especially if it is provided by the municipality, the enemy. One might expect our gang to monkey with the boat and the pistol and the lines and grapples and so on. But it hasn't. Everything is spick-and-span in there." He shook his head. "We must be misinformed, or we have jumped to the wrong conclusions."

  The sergeant pointed at the channel. The powerboat was turning out of sight behind the curve of the cape. "There's part of the gang now, sir. I think I recognized them. Our friend the fox and Albert. Albert was released from jail today."

  "Really? On their mischievous way, eh? Go on, sergeant, fire away."

  De Gier aimed for a point a hundred feet above the top of the island's hill and pulled the gun's heavy trigger. There was a sharp retort and the flaming projectile whizzed off, slow enough to be followed by the eye. It disintegrated above the hill into a burst of bright green sparks.

  The commissaris whistled softly. "Most impressive, sergeant. So now we wait. If the hermit doesn't want to see us he doesn't have to show himself, but I hope he does. Fascinating, a man living by himself in the midst of nowhere. How big would that island be?"

  'Ten acres the sheriff said, sir."

  "Acres? Let's see. We used to measure in acres when I was a child. There was a vegetable garden next door to my father's house and that was supposed to be a half acre. Twenty times that garden; that's quite a sizable area and Jeremy has it all to himself. That must be him now, that black dot coming down the path on the hill, but there's something following him. Can you see what it is? My eyes aren't what they used to be."