Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (18 page)

She
briefly considered offering the ladder to her companions first, then discarded
the thought and clambered down. It was her crime scene; the Feds could come or
not, their choice. As she passed below ground level, the temperatures dropped
dramatically. The trapped air still out of direct sunlight had not yet warmed.

The
human remains were gone, transported to the morgue last night by Pete Kendall.
He had also supervised a thorough photographing of the entire scene by patrol
officer Harley Tanguay. It had been one of Pete’s final duties before being
called to the Bronson Choate murder scene, where he had later lost his life.

Sharon’s
job today was to examine the eerie room in search of anything the investigators
might have missed yesterday, as well as to try to get a feel for exactly what
had happened down here. She gazed for a moment at the tons of earth covering
the portion of the room that had not been opened like a sardine can by Dan
Melton’s earthmoving bucket and said a quiet prayer that today wouldn’t be the
day the whole thing collapsed. Then she took a deep breath and walked to the far
corner to start her search.

Behind
her, the two FBI men descended the ladder and began a search of their own.
Mindful of Mike’s instructions, she tried to keep an eye on them while still concentrating
on the task at hand. Her initial impression of Special Agents Ferriss and
Cooper seemed to validate Mike’s concerns. The two men’s “search” consisted of
a single walk around the circumference of the ancient room, where they glanced
with apparent disinterest at the rotting wooden tables and chairs, and then
confined their investigation mostly to the area that had been exposed by
Melton’s equipment.

Sharon
did her best to ignore their shoddy work habits, dedicating herself to her
search despite having no idea what she might be looking for. She briefly considered
coming right out and asking them what their game was, since neither special
agent was acting anything like a trained investigator, then abandoned the idea
as pointless. If they hadn’t told Mike what they were up to, they certainly
weren’t going to confide in her.

After less
than an hour, the agents climbed back up the ladder and out of the hole,
presumably for a smoke break. She heard the men talking in hushed voices but
could not make out their words. A few minutes later they returned, still doing
little apparent investigating. Sharon continued her methodical search.

An hour
later, she had covered nearly half of the room but found nothing that would
indicate what its purpose might have been or why two (or possibly three) people
had died in it. Her two FBI companions had by now given up any pretense of
investigating and spent most of their time staring at her with unnerving
openness. She began to get a very bad feeling and was thankful for the service
pistol strapped at her hip.

She was
running her hands along the earthen wall and moving slowly to her left, when her
boot struck an object buried just below the surface of the dirt floor with a
heavy
clunk.
The sound resonated
through the enclosed space and the feds looked at her with renewed interest.

Bending
down, Sharon dug through the hard-packed earth with her fingers. Less than an
inch below the surface she struck something hard and smooth. It felt metallic
and cool to the touch. She began scraping away the dirt along the object’s
edge, and soon it became clear the item was perfectly round. It was also big.

After a
few moments she thought she had removed enough earth that she might be able to
pull the object free if she could slide her hands underneath it. With a grunt
of effort, Sharon wriggled her fingers, pushing and prodding to get the
leverage required to lift the item. By now Ferriss and Cooper had moved close.
They loomed over her, watching quietly, neither man offering to help.

Finally
she felt as though she had enough of a grip that she might be able to break the
earth’s hold. She pulled upward, straining, and after a moment with no result,
it suddenly lifted free. It looked perfectly round, about a foot in diameter,
and it was heavy.

And it appeared
to be solid gold.

Sharon
stood in the muted light of the bizarre death-chamber and stared in surprise at
her discovery, absolutely baffled as to what it might be.

The two
feds stood next to her, both gaping at the circular object. Cooper said
quietly, “Hoooly shit, he was here. He was really here,” and then Ferriss
glared at him with a look that would have melted steel and he closed his mouth,
cringing under his partner’s angry gaze.

Sharon
furrowed her brow. “Who was here? Do you know who this belongs to? What is it?”

Ferriss
growled, “Can’t say. But that’s evidence in the case we’re working, and it’s
coming with us.”

Her
reached to take the mysterious metallic object out of Sharon’s hands and she
tightened her grip, yanking it away and turning to block the agent with her
body. “I don’t think so,” she said tightly. “Whatever it is, it’s evidence in
our
case, and you’re not touching it
until the Paskagankee PD is done with it.”

“Is
that right?” said Ferriss. His tone was simultaneously mocking and dangerous,
and once again Sharon was thankful she was armed. She had never before had that
feeling in the presence of other law enforcement officers. The agent continued,
“I’ll just make a call or two and that evidence’ll be out of your hands and
clear of this hick town before you know what hit you, little lady.”

“It’s
Officer Dupont to you, jackass, and you’re not touching this until I hear
otherwise, from someone whose opinion I respect.” She leveled a hard stare at
the man and he took an instinctive step backward. His partner didn’t move,
though, so Sharon stepped nimbly around him and moved to the ladder, careful to
maintain a firm grip on the disputed evidence as she climbed.

She was
in her cruiser and driving out of the Ridge Runner lot before the Feds had even
exited the pit.

15

Rose Pellerin spit blood out of her
mouth and glared up at the man who had hit her. She tried not to think about
the clump of bloody hair she had seen stuck to the grip of his beat-up pistol
and thanked the good Lord he had seen fit to strike her with an open palm
rather than shoot her or hit her with the gun.

“Git
up,” the man hissed with the hint of a southwestern accent, “and keep your damn
mouth shut or the next time I hit you you’ll wake up with the angels.”

Rose
rolled to her hands and knees, ignoring the bath towel and the sprinkling of
clothespins she had dropped when she fell. She stood slowly, keeping a wary eye
on the stranger, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. He was dressed
in a manner that would have seemed comical had he not just assaulted her. His
clothes were ill-fitting; they hung off him like a scarecrow’s outfit. They
clearly didn’t belong to him.

But the
fit of the man’s attire wasn’t what bothered Rose. Something that looked
suspiciously like dried blood was smeared all over the man, splashed liberally on
his clothes as well as his exposed skin. It almost looked like he had run
through a sprinkler, except it had been spraying blood instead of water.

And the
man smelled. He smelled as though he hadn’t showered in decades. The stench of
body odor and something unidentifiable wafted off him in waves. Rose felt her
eyes begin to water from the awful stench and tried not to gag. Her jaw
throbbed where she had been hit, and as she struggled to her feet she worried what
might happen next.

She
didn’t have to wait long to find out. “I said I want food,” the stranger
croaked, “and you’re gonna git me some.”

“Okay,”
she agreed, nodding slowly, doing her best to show compliance but not fear. It
wasn’t easy. She thought about that awful bloody hair on the man’s weapon and
shuddered. “Okay,” she repeated. “Let’s just go inside and see what I can whip
up for you, how does that sound?”

“Move,”
he said, gesturing toward the open back door with his bloody gun.

Rose
didn’t want to turn her back on her attacker but she knew she was being silly.
She would be sixty-three years old in two weeks and this disheveled mess of a
man looked like he was barely half that. If he wanted to hurt her it wouldn’t
matter in the least whether he was standing in front of her, behind her or next
to her.

She
took one last, quick glance at the man’s face. It was hard and unfeeling. She
turned and walked slowly toward the house. Once inside, she pulled a wooden
chair away from the small kitchen table and gestured at it with one hand. The man
sat without speaking.

“How
does an omelet sound?” she asked.

“And
coffee.”

“Of
course, and coffee. What would you like in your omelet?”

“Everything.”

“Excuse
me?”

“Whatever
you got, put it in there. I feel like I ain’t eaten in years.”

Rose
nodded and turned toward the fridge, risking a sidelong glance at the telephone
hanging not three feet away on the wall. The stranger was watching her with his
hard gaze from the table and she knew he would be on her before she punched the
“9” in 9-1-1. The phone might as well have been in the next county. She tried
to control her rising fear and opened the refrigerator door.

***

The pan was sizzling when Rose asked,
“Would you like to freshen up before you eat?”

The
stranger stared back with his flat gaze and just said, “Where’s the fire?”

Rose
furrowed her brow in confusion. “Fire? What fire?”

“The
fire. To cook the food. Where’s the fire?”

“This
isn’t a gas stove, it’s electric. There is no fire.” She tried not to grimace
as she glanced at the blood and dirt staining the stranger’s clothing and body.
“Now, how about washing up?”

The man
narrowed his eyes suspiciously but dropped the subject of fires. “Food first,”
came the curt reply. “How much longer?”

“It’s
almost ready,” Rose answered, wishing she had some rat poison handy. The man might
be a lot younger than she was, but he looked terrible, like he might be
suffering from some kind of terminal illness. She thought if she could just
slow him down a little, she might be able to escape, to rush to her car and get
the hell out of here. She would drive straight to the police station and come
back with Sheriff Kendall and as many officers as he could muster.

But
there was no rat poison.

She tried
to think of another option and wondered if she might be able to attack the stranger
when he wasn’t expecting it. The skillet currently sautéing vegetables for the omelet
was made of cast iron and was also, as a nice bonus, red hot from the
stovetop’s burner. If she could manage to crack the man in the skull, there was
every reason to believe he would drop like a sack of Aroostook County potatoes.

But she
would only get one chance, and he was seated all the way across the kitchen, a
distance of over ten feet. The odds of her being able to lift the pan, cross
the kitchen floor and then slug him before he could react were so slim as to be
laughable. She was old, and as the years had passed she had packed on a few
extra pounds –
okay, more than few,
she thought to herself grimly – and there was little doubt the younger
man’s reflexes would be quicker than hers, regardless of how sick he may or may
not be.

It
wasn’t going to work. Braining her attacker with a frying pan was a satisfying
fantasy, but that was all it would ever be. Rose sighed and stirred the
ingredients simmering in the pan, then moved to the coffee maker. She dumped
coffee into the filter and poured water into the reservoir, then pressed the
“Start” button.

A few
seconds later, the coffee began to burble through the system, hissing audibly
as it dripped into the glass carafe seated on the hotplate. Rose turned back to
the stove and then whirled at the sound of feet scrabbling on her vinyl floor
tiles.

The
stranger was sitting up perfectly straight, the back of his wooden chair
pressed against the wall as if he might be trying to force himself through to
the other side. His eyes were wide and he stared at the coffeemaker
unblinkingly. “What kind of joke is this?” he growled menacingly.

Rose
ran her fingers gingerly over the side of her face where the man had hit her.
It throbbed incessantly. She didn’t want to be struck again, and the man was
making it perfectly clear he was losing patience with her.

But
what in the world was so scary about a coffeemaker? The stranger’s frightened
gaze suggested he was looking into the face of the devil himself. “I-I’m
sorry,” Rose stammered. “I thought you said you wanted coffee. I can turn it
off if you’d like…”

She
reached for the electrical cord, strung out behind the coffeemaker like a
serpent. She would yank it right out of the wall and stop the coffee-brewing process
in its tracks. Anything to keep the lunatic calm.

“I do
want coffee,” he said, his eyes flicking from the offending appliance to Rose
and then back again. He stood and took a tentative step toward her, a
development she interpreted as a very bad sign. “Where’s the coffeepot and what
the hell is…
that
thing?” He flicked
his head at the Mr. Coffee machine.

“There
is no coffeepot. The coffee is brewed inside the coffeemaker and then drips
into the glass carafe, where it’s kept warm by the hot plate,” she said gently,
wondering what rock this strange man had grown up under. What grown adult in
the year 2013 didn’t understand how a coffeemaker worked?

Her
response seemed to allay the man’s fears, if only slightly, and he took a step
backward. He didn’t sit back down but he was no longer advancing threateningly,
either. Rose took a shuddering breath.
How
am I going to get out of this?

And then
the telephone rang.

Rose’s
phone was an old, hard plastic wall-mounted model straight out of the 1970’s
that had been in perfect working order when she bought the house. She had never
had a problem with it over the intervening decades and so had never had
occasion to replace it. It was canary-yellow and featured a loud, jangling bell
for a ringtone that Rose thought could probably be heard by folks living along
the Canadian border.

She
froze, fearing the worst. If the dripping of coffee into a glass carafe had
spooked the stranger, what would happen now?

She
didn’t have to wait long to find out. The man’s entire body jerked as if an
electric shock had blasted through his system, and then he stood stiffly,
searching desperately for the source of the noise, his long, stringy hair
flying in a dirty arc around his head as he tried to look in every direction at
once.

The
first jangling ring ended and the man stopped moving, and then of course the
phone began ringing again. The man stumbled forward now, his eyes bright with
panic. He spun Rose around so he was positioned behind her, then encircled her
throat with his left arm and began to squeeze, choking off her airway.

“Make
it stop,” he growled, his voice shaking.

Rose
tried to speak and couldn’t. She tried to breathe and couldn’t. In a matter of
seconds, bright blue and black spots began blossoming in her vision.

The
telephone rang again.

The man
squeezed harder. “MAKE IT STOP!” he shouted, and Rose knew she was about to
die.

16

Mike straightened a pile of
paperwork and shuffled it into a wooden “Out” box placed at an angle on the
corner of his desk. The bureaucratic bullshit generated by even a small-town
police department was staggering, and dealing with it had been his
least-favorite duty when he was chief the first time around. He considered the
irony of being buried under a mountain of it now that he was back on the job,
when there was so much real police work to be done, and shook his head glumly.

He
pushed his chair out from behind the desk and stood, stretching and yawning,
wishing he could sneak in a thirty-minute nap. Going well over twenty-four
hours without sleep could catch up to you quickly.

The nap
would have to wait, though. He needed to get to the scene of the double murder
– was already late, in fact – to check on the progress of the investigation.

He
should also be hearing from Sharon soon with the results of her search of the
earthen pit out at the Ridge Runner. He was curious to get her take on the two
FBI agents who had joined her. Mike had found Sharon Dupont to be, among many
other things, a keen judge of human nature. She was likely to provide insights
into the feds that he might have missed.

He
stepped around his desk and moved toward the closed office door when it opened
with a crash, nearly clipping him on the shoulder. Sharon marched in, holding a
large, dirt-encrusted, golden-colored disk clutched to her chest. He hadn’t
seen her coming through his office windows because he had lowered the blinds in
an effort to discourage visitors. There was simply too much work to be done;
the welcome-back greetings from officers coming on duty would have to wait
until later.

Sharon’s
clothes were caked with dust, and the nylon gloves she had worn to conduct her
search out on Route 28 – gloves she had still not removed in an effort to
avoid contaminating whatever she was holding – had seemingly morphed from
their normal baby blue to a dark brown, almost black.