Dead Man's Bridge

by Robert J. Mrazek

  As I expected, it was the Pillsbury Doughboy with curly red hair and pasty skin. He wasn’t crying this time, but his hands were trembling as he came into the office. I told him to sit down in the chair by the desk.

  The boy was dressed in what he had been wearing in the holding pen: NBA jersey, gold chain, baggy jeans, and basketball sneakers. His cap was still jauntily cocked to the right side.

  “What’s your name, son?” I asked gently.

  “Cody . . . McNamara,” he said uncertainly.

  “Cody, I’m told that you were arrested for vandalizing several cars in the parking lot of the campus administration building. Did you do that?”

  I needed to find out right away how truthful he was going to be.

  “Yeah . . . we did it,” he confessed. “Brett and me.”

  “Thanks for being honest with me, Cody. Now this next question is really important. Last night, did you boys gouge some cars in the overlook parking lot, the one next to the suspension footbridge?”

  His eyes immediately dropped to his lap. Almost ten seconds passed before he began to slowly move his head up and down.

  “All right, then,” I said. “Cody, I guess you know by now that someone died there that night.”

  He nodded again but refused to look at me.

  “Will you tell me what you saw at the bridge?”

  A small flood of tears began to flow out of his eyes and roll down his apple cheeks. They came together at the point of his chin and dropped down onto the links of the gold-plated chain around his neck. I was about to pose the question again but decided to wait.

  As the seconds passed, it suddenly came to me who the second man had been in Sal’s sex videos, the one with the two cheap blondes. The last time I had seen him, he was the presiding judge in a state supreme court chamber.

  I had been in court representing the St. Andrews campus police department. We were one of the defendants in a liability lawsuit brought by a student who claimed she had gotten ill from asbestos poisoning after living in one of the older dorms.

  The man cavorting like a sex-starved porpoise was Supreme Court Justice Addison Davis. I was still trying to remember the name of the law firm that had filed the suit on behalf of the girl when Cody McNamara spoke again.

  “Me and Brett were coming back toward campus after hanging out by one of the sorority houses on the other side of the gorge,” he said in a wavering voice. “Both of us had our screwdrivers in our pockets and, uh . . . uh . . . we decided to key the first couple of cars in the lot.”

  He stopped to wipe his nose with the back of his hand before going on.

  “We were still there by the cars, and it was real dark. I told Brett I didn’t want to stay out any longer, and he started calling me a pussy and a faggot. That’s when I saw something moving down by that phone box that has the blue light over it. I grabbed Brett’s arm, and he looked down there too. This one guy was helping another guy down the path to the bridge,” he continued. “The other guy looked really sick. I mean, he couldn’t walk so good on his own, and the first guy had to practically hold him up as they went down there. When they got under the blue light, I saw that the first guy had something over his shoulder . . . a rolled-up garden hose like . . . and then they went out onto the bridge.”

  “What did you see after that?” I asked.

  “That was it. That was all I saw.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Brett said we ought to go down there and find out what they were doing . . . but I . . . I just wanted to go home. So when he started walking down toward the footbridge, I began walking the long way around. He must have decided to follow me because he caught up in a few seconds and we both went that way.”

  It made sense. The boy lived in the housemaster’s apartment in one of the freshman dorms, which were on the opposite side of the campus. The administration building where they had keyed the other cars was on the way.

  “Can you describe the first man, Cody . . . the one with the garden hose around his shoulders?”

  “It was really dark,” said the boy, “but he was big compared to the other guy.”

  “How big?”

  Looking up at me, he said, “Like you . . . maybe even taller.”

  Ben Massengale was taller than me.

  Standing up, I went out into the hallway and thanked Mr. McNamara for coming into the office. I pledged to see what I could do to help Cody when his case came up in juvenile court. As soon as they were gone, I sat down again and rested my head on the cushioned ergonomic pad on Lieutenant Ritterspaugh’s desk.

  I knew I had to find Ben Massengale, but first I spent a few minutes thinking about what I could still do to resolve Jordan’s other predicament. If I couldn’t find and then confront the blackmailer, he would be resigning in less than twelve hours. Whoever was demanding the five million dollars had to know about the Wheatley gift sitting in Jordan’s private discretionary account. Why only five? I wondered. Why not ten or twenty?

  Had the blackmailer arranged to kill Wheatley because Wheatley was the only one in a position to know that Jordan had the money and could do whatever he wanted with it?

  Who would have had access to the information aside from Jordan?

  The questions kept turning over in my mind like an ancient cement mixer. Raising my bleary head from the elbow pad, I looked up at the wall clock. It was twenty after six, and the wind was climbing again on the decibel scale. The sky through the window was a weird metallic color.

  I came up with two ideas. They probably weren’t going to do any good, but I decided to act on them anyway. Digging into the breast pocket of my waterproof jacket, I found the business card for Bobby Devane. Picking up the phone, I called the cell number that was scrawled on the back of it. The number rang five times before kicking over to his voice mailbox.

  “This is Robert Devane,” came a low raspy voice. “Leave a message.”

  So I left him a message.

  “This is Jake Cantrell in Groton, Bobby. I was the one who met Sal and Angie at the Wonderland. I’m enjoying all that illegal surveillance equipment of yours . . . especially the blackmail videos. Sal was kind enough to tell me what you hired him to do. So before I have you arrested for extortion, Bobby, I thought we should probably talk. Give me a call.”

  I left him my extension number at the campus police department and hung up. Unlike the cabin phone, it had a feature that kicked straight back to the dispatcher if I wasn’t there.

  Next, I dug out the home number Jordan had given me for Brian Razzano. It rang only twice before someone picked it up.

  “Razzano,” said a baritone voice. I recognized it from all the TV commercials.

  “My name is Jake Cantrell,” I began. “I live down the lake from you and work in the campus security office at St Andrews College.”

  “Jake Cantrell,” he slowly repeated, as if pondering a name from the distant past. I was struck by the fact that he didn’t seem remotely surprised by my calling him at six thirty in the morning in the middle of a hurricane.

  “Not the immortal Tank Cantrell?”

  “Yeah . . . good old Tank,” I said.

  “I was in the stands when you broke through the line against Tulane and ran for the winning touchdown,” he reminisced. “You were dragging two guys on your back there at the end and—”

  Interrupting him, I said, “Your name was given to me as someone who employs a man named Bobby Devane in confidential investigations. Last night, I met two of his employees at the Wonderland Motel up near the thruway. They had electronic surveillance equipment in their room, and they have been filming people in intimate situations who apparently had no knowledge of it. Personally I think you’re heading the blackmail operation, Mr. Razzano, and if I give what I already know to the New York Times, they’ll be scraping your name off the front of the campus nanoscience center before the chisel is even dry.”

  I was wincing over the mixed metaphor when he shouted, “For God’s sake, wha
t are you talking about?”

  “I’m sure you already know, Brian,” I said. “How about the Honorable Justice Addison Davis for one? You ever see the good judge naked and being sandwiched between two blondes?”

  I hung up the phone as a branch hurtled against the upper panes of the office window. It remained suspended there for a few seconds before being swept away by the wind.

  Only time would tell if my poking a stick into the two beehives would produce any live stingers. In the meantime, I had to find Ben Massengale. I had a pretty good idea where he would be.

  18

  On my way out to the parking lot, I had to climb over the trunk of one of the downed sycamores. Its gnarled muddy roots filled the air with a raw earthy smell, as if Mother Nature was starting to sweat from her vast labors in turning the world upside down.

  I turned on the news in the truck and learned that Hurricane Ilse had been downgraded to Category Two. It seemed like she had forgotten to tell us in Groton. I heard another crescendo of thunder, and the sky went darker as rain came down like a curtain.

  The main road across the campus was empty except for a careening garbage can and whirling clouds of autumn leaves. Near the traffic bridge, I saw a newly downed power line. Yellow sparks were shooting out of its exposed end as the wire whipped back and forth across the road like a demented rattlesnake. Turning on the radio transceiver, I reported it to the campus security dispatcher.

  When I pulled into the parking lot at the Fall Creek Tavern, I was surprised to see it still had power. It stood out against the craggy gorge like the beacon of a lighthouse.

  Near the precipice, the wind was gusting at sixty or seventy miles an hour.

  Bent over, I was heading toward the side entrance when I heard several loud cracks followed by what sounded like muffled hammer blows. The noises were coming from the Creeker’s foundation wall. I knelt in the lee of the wind to take a closer look.

  I was no mechanical engineer, but it looked like the bottom support timbers of the building had just shifted on the stone foundation. Along the mortared foundation wall, I could see four inches of newly exposed surface, still untouched by the driving rain. A few moments later, it was soaked as dark as the rest.

  When I stepped inside the bar, the blast of the wind was muted by the amplified noise of blaring rap music. At least a hundred people crowded the big downstairs room, packed together from the open kitchen to the back pool table area that extended out over the edge of the gorge.

  I found the owner, Chuck McKinlay, sitting at a table near the smoky fireplace. Over the jukebox, I had to lean down to tell him what I had just seen outside. He gazed tranquilly back up at me, his eyes vacant with single malt.

  “The Creeker’s been here since before my grandfather was born,” he shouted, as if that answered my question.

  “You should check it out, Chuck,” I urged before heading off to look for Ben Massengale.

  Before I took two steps, Johnny Joe Splendorio emerged out of the crush in front of me.

  “Jake,” he yelled over the noise, his cheeks flushed burgundy red. “I got something good for you.”

  I scanned the crowd at the bar, hoping to find Ben on his favorite stool.

  “The Gambian pouched rat,” he said close to my ear. “They grow to fifteen pounds . . . big as raccoons, and they eat anything . . . I mean birds, cats, garbage scraps . . . best of all, you can fight ’em like pit bulls. The goddamn Latinos will love them.”

  Ben wasn’t sitting or standing at the bar, and I began pushing through the crowd toward the room in the back. Johnny Joe stuck close behind me.

  “I’m raising the money for the first shipment, Jake,” he yelled. “Buy a hundred and they’re only twenty a piece. I figure we can sell ’em for fifty each.”

  “Where have you been?” a sharp voice came from over my shoulder.

  It was Kelly. A tray of empty beer bottles was balanced above her right hand.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday,” she said.

  Seeing the look on her face, Johnny Joe wisely retreated. When Kelly took in the cuts around my eyes and my swollen jaw, her eyes softened.

  “Oh, Jake,” she said, still balancing the tray in one hand while stroking my face with her left.

  “Kelly, I don’t have any time to tell you what’s going on,” I said. “You have to trust me that it’s important.”

  “Those two killings everyone’s talking about?” she asked with an involuntary shudder.

  I nodded.

  “Have you seen Ben Massengale since last night?” I asked her.

  “He was here,” she said. “He was talking with somebody at the bar for the longest time. The guy may have run him home.”

  “What did the man look like?”

  She pursed her lips for a few moments and said, “God . . . with everything going on Jake, I can’t remember.”

  “If he comes in again, please call the campus police dispatcher and have them contact me on my radio. I’m heading down to his apartment.”

  “Jake,” she called out, and I swung around.

  “Be careful, honey,” she said with an apprehensive smile.

  I remembered the problem I had seen outside and said, “Kelly, I think this building is starting to move on its foundation. Chuck is too drunk to care, but it could be dangerous. Use my name and call the Groton emergency line. Tell them to send one of their building engineers over here right away. Be sure to tell them it’s an emergency.”

  “Don’t worry, Jake. I’ll take care of it,” she said, raising her lips for a quick good-bye kiss.

  Outside, the force of the wind was steadier and more violent. Driving down Campus Hill, my headlights almost disappeared in the torrential rain as it swept the windshield.

  More than a foot of standing water now flooded the downtown streets. Abandoned cars sat stranded at nearly every intersection. I drove past the town square and traveled the three blocks along Seneca Street to where Ben lived.

  It was a neighborhood of rundown Victorian houses that had been turned into illegal apartments for transient workers. Electrical power had been knocked out on the street, and Ben’s house was dark when I pulled up at the curb. Unhooking my flashlight, I waded across his inundated lawn and climbed the sagging wooden stairs that led up to the porch.

  A faded card on one of the mailboxes attached to the wall read, “B. Massengale: Apt. 3C.”

  The front door of the building stood wide open. The wind-driven rain had already soaked the foyer of the hallway. Closing the door behind me, I smelled the sour odor of wet plaster.

  A section of the ceiling above the foyer was leaking badly in several places, and water was splattering down in a steady rhythm on the hardwood flooring. Training the flashlight ahead of me, I headed up the staircase to his room.

  As the rickety stairs creaked and groaned, I felt a small tremor of apprehension. To minimize the noise I was making, I placed my boots at the butt end of each step. On the third floor, I made my way down the dark hallway and approached Ben’s door. I thought about knocking but decided against it. Although it was hard to believe he was the killer, it remained a possibility. And he might not be alone.

  The door was made of pressed fiberboard. Keeping the flashlight in my left hand, I removed the .45 automatic from its holster with my right. I waited another five seconds and kicked the door open, shattering the lock at the doorjamb.

  The first room of the apartment was his kitchen. An assortment of pizza boxes and empty liquor bottles covered the drainboard next to the sink. Crossing the floor, I went down a narrow hallway. An open door on the left led into a living room that overlooked the street. There was a sprung leather chair by the window next to a small coffee table crowded with more empty liquor bottles.

  The last door on the right was closed. Turning the knob, I slowly pushed it open. The window curtains were drawn shut, and the room was pitch black. I inched my eyes around the edge of the doorjamb and shined my flashlight insi
de.

  Dirty clothes lay strewn across the floor. I found the bed in the beam of the flashlight. Ben was lying on his side, his face to the wall. I slowly walked over to him. He didn’t move.

  Standing over him, I saw the regular swelling of his chest and stomach as he breathed in and out. The odor in the room was awful, like a bear’s den after a long winter. A bear addicted to cheap whiskey.

  I walked across to his bathroom and shined the light inside. Aside from an old Marine Corps bathrobe hanging on the wall hook, it was empty. A photograph was Scotch-taped to the mirror over the sink. It was a picture of his late wife, Karin, and must have been taken around the time I was a student at St. Andrews. She looked back at me, as lovely as Julia Roberts.

  I remembered the barbecues she and Ben had held for the ROTC students on Sunday afternoons in the backyard of their little house near the campus. We all thought he was the luckiest guy on the planet. The house was gone now, just as she was. They had torn it down to build one of the new learning centers.

  Putting the .45 back in its holster, I pulled open the heavy curtains that covered the windows. In the murky morning light, I saw another empty whiskey bottle lying under Ben’s outstretched arm. The Seagram’s label was facing toward me. I wondered if that might have been what Wheatley had been drinking before he went off the bridge.

  “Ben,” I said loudly, shaking his shoulder.

  He erupted in a bout of tubercular coughing before rolling over in the bed to face the other way.

  “Ben,” I called out to him again.

  His eyes slowly opened and took me in.

  “S’you, Jake?” he mumbled.

  “Yeah.”

  Going into the bathroom, I found a fruit jar on the sink. Rinsing it out, I filled it with tap water. After helping Ben to sit up, I held the glass to his mouth, and he gulped most of it down. When I took my hand away from his shoulder, he slumped back on the pillow.

  In spite of his once prodigious strength, it was hard for me to visualize him on the suspension footbridge, doing what was physically required to hang two men against their will.