Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3)

by Leverone, Allan

  He stopped and waited.

  No response. The bastard was going to be a coward right to the end. He was hiding in a closet or something, and they would have to haul him out by the hair. Wesley hoped Healy hadn’t had time to set up some kind of booby-trap before going into hiding; he had been gut-shot once and had no desire ever to repeat the experience.

  “Healy!” he yelled again, and again received no answer. He wondered where the tavern owner had gone. Had Healy killed him and dumped the body somewhere? It wouldn’t have surprised him.

  “Come on,” Wesley mumbled to Amos, and the two men resumed their search, marching behind the bar and through a set of swinging wooden doors into the combination kitchen/storage area. Supplies had been stacked haphazardly across the floor, again suggesting at least one man had been working when he was interrupted. Why that man would have been working in the middle of the night, Wesley couldn’t imagine and didn’t care.

  The brothers searched the tavern methodically, starting at one end and working their way to the other. They opened every closed door, even those on storage cabinets clearly not big enough to conceal a full-grown piece of shit like Jackson Healy.

  Nothing.

  They checked behind furniture, in the washrooms, under tables and behind the bar, and within minutes concluded the tavern was empty.

  And that left one possibility. The basement.

  Wesley nodded toward the stairs and the pair started down, guns drawn, moving slowly, alert for an ambush. Wesley was in the lead, and he swiveled his weapon smoothly back and forth in an attempt to cover the entire basement.

  It became immediately clear Jackson Healy wasn’t here, but he had been. The flickering light of a half-dozen candles revealed the unmoving body of a man crumpled in one corner of the basement, next to the building’s granite-block foundation. The man had been suckered just like the Krupps had been suckered two years ago; Wesley would recognize Healy’s handiwork anywhere.

  But Healy was nowhere to be found.

  Somehow he had escaped again, vanishing into thin air at the last possible moment.

  And Wesley Krupp exploded. The rage that had been eating away at him for the last two years, smoldering like last night’s campfire at sunrise, suddenly and without warning burst into flame. This was too much to take. Tracking Healy, forcing him to run nearly non-stop for the past two years, finally trapping him—again—only to see him disappear like a ghost or that strange being they had seen walk out of solid rock at Puerta de Hayu Marka, it was all just too much.

  He raised his gun into the air and let loose a wild shot into the basement ceiling, screaming something unintelligible, even to himself. Amos put one hand on his arm in a calming gesture and Wesley shook it off angrily. “I’ve had it!” he shouted into his brother’s face. Amos jerked away as spittle flew.

  “I’ve had it,” he repeated, and reached into a pocket, removing a box of matches. “Follow me,” he said, clomping up the stairs. “This place is gonna burn. Healy’s here somewheres and we’re gonna smoke him out.”

  “Wes, we searched every inch of the damned building. He ain’t here.”

  “He’s here, I can smell him. Wherever he’s holed up, he’ll come runnin’ out once the flames start nippin’ at his sorry ass.”

  “What about the guy in the basement?”

  “What about him?”

  “We’re just gonna kill him?”

  “He’s probably already dead anyway if Healy’s had at him, and besides, he don’t matter. Nothing matters ‘cept finding Jackson Healy, and if putting match to wood on this piece of shit tavern accomplishes that, we’re gonna do it right now.”

  Wesley knew Amos wouldn’t stand up to him and he was right. His little brother simply shook his head, lips compressed into a thin line on his wide dumb face, and said nothing. That was how it had always been in the Krupp pecking order, Wesley taking charge and Amos following behind, and that was how it would always be.

  Wesley strode to the bar and grabbed a nearly full bottle of whiskey. He tossed it to Amos and said, “Start splashin’ this around on the walls.” Then he grabbed a second bottle for himself. He smashed the neck on the edge of the bar. Amber-colored whiskey flew everywhere and Wesley inhaled the heavenly aroma. Then he moved to the far end of the building and got to work.

  Within minutes, the tavern was ready. It had already smelled of stale beer and alcohol when the brothers entered, and now the stench was almost overwhelming, even to a veteran whiskey drinker like Wesley Krupp. Wesley struck a match and handed it to his brother. “Start at that end,” he said, nodding at the far side of the room. Amos took the match and wandered away and Wesley lit another for himself.

  He bent down and touched the match to a corner of the room, at the point where the interior wall intersected with the wide pine floorboards. Instantly the match flared bright yellow, and flames danced away, shooting across the floor along a track of spilled whiskey, and climbing the wall along another.

  Smoke began to billow, a lot of smoke. It gathered just below the ceiling like a rapidly building storm cloud. Wesley dropped the match into a puddle of whiskey and stepped back quickly as the puddle burst into flame. He fumbled for another match, lit it and tossed it into the center of the room before shouting to Amos, “That’s enough. Let’s get the hell out of here while we still can!”

  The brothers rushed across the barroom and through the front entrance, bursting into the refreshing night air, both men gagging and coughing, Amos with wide, frightened eyes and Wesley with a smile on his face the like he had not displayed since before being betrayed by Healy in South America.

  The men leaned over, hands on their knees, catching their breath. After a moment, Wesley chuckled. “That’ll get Healy’s ass out here, and when it does, we’ll be waiting to give him the welcome he deserves.”

  “What about the back entrance?” Amos asked.

  “You go cover that. I’ll stay here and watch the front.”

  Amos glanced around nervously, the light from the blaze flickering in his eyes. “We can’t be here when this fire’s discovered, Wes, we’ll go to jail for sure.”

  “Look around you. This place is so far off the beaten path it’ll burn for hours before anyone even notices something’s wrong. We’ll be long gone before that happens. Now just get back there and wait for Healy to come stumbling out; it should happen any minute now.”

  In front of them, nearly the entire building was ablaze. Flames licked around the eves and reached for the nighttime sky. Wesley watched as his brother headed for the back entrance, stumbling around the corner, giving the intense heat of the still-building fire a wide berth.

  When Amos disappeared, Wesley focused his attention determinedly on the front door. His feet were planted solidly on the dusty ground, his weapon ready. He was certain Healy would show his double-crossing face any second now.

  The fire continued to grow, burning out of control as flames devoured the tavern with shocking speed.

  And Jackson Healy never showed.

  PART II

  1

  Modern day

  Paskagankee, Maine

  A steady rain fell from slate-gray skies as temperatures hovered just above the freezing mark for the third consecutive day. The conditions were more appropriate to mid-December than mid-May, and the sound of the raindrops pelting the roof of the Caterpillar earthmover was almost hypnotic.

  Dan Melton yawned and stretched inside the cramped cab of the Cat. It had been another late night last night—almost all of his nights were late ones now that Mary had split, sick and tired after three years of putting up with his drinking and his constant unfulfilled promises to quit—and he wanted nothing more than to call it a day and go home. Maybe pull the top off a brew and watch the Sox on TV; they were scheduled for a rare weekday afternoon game at Fenway, assuming they weren’t rained out.

  But watching TV and drinking beer didn’t pay the bills, and until he could figure out a way to make them do so, Da
n knew he needed to finish this job. Completion would be the only way to force that asshole Bo Pellerin to pay the demolition fee, and Dan had a feeling he’d be needing cash, and lots of it, once Mary got tired of crying on her mother’s shoulder and decided to contact a divorce lawyer. Hell, for all he knew, maybe she had already taken that step.

  Dan sighed. He should have known better than to get hitched a second time after his first marriage had been such a fucking nightmare, but Mary had always told him he was one of those people who needed to learn every lesson the hard way, and apparently her insight had been right on target, if a little late to do Dan any good.

  As usual.

  This job had started out as an easy one. He would spend half an afternoon clearing the sod over the failed septic system behind the run-down Ridge Runner roadhouse, so that the concrete baffles of the system could be removed and disposed of. Then he would come back tomorrow or the next day and fill in the whole shebang once the new baffles had been delivered.

  Simple. Easy money.

  But then it had started raining, and he had explained to Pellerin that he didn’t dare operate his Cat behind the Runner with the ground saturated the way it was, because he was afraid the damned thing would get stuck in the mud and he wouldn’t be able to remove it until July.

  Pellerin had pissed and moaned and made like he was going to call another contractor, but better men than Pellerin had tried to bullshit Dan and hadn’t succeeded yet. Dan Melton was the only contractor north of Portland with the equipment necessary to complete this job, and there was no way Bo Pellerin was going to pay what Dumas Construction down in Portland would charge if they had to haul an earthmover all the way up here.

  So after hemming and hawing, cajoling and threatening, Pellerin had finally agreed to wait. He was in a hurry because the state health department wouldn’t allow him to operate his business without working restrooms, and the failure of his septic system had put the Men’s and Lady’s out of commission until a new system could be installed.

  “Christ,” Pellerin had groused, “none of my male regulars would have a problem stepping out back and pissin’ behind a tree. And we don’t get any women in here, ‘cept for old Blanche Raskiewicz, and she don’t count ‘cause she’s tougher than the rest of my customers put together. I’ll bet she pees standing up, anyway.”

  But that was three days ago, and the drizzle had fallen steadily ever since, broken up only by the occasional heavy downpour. Each day had seen Dan field two or three calls from Bo, and each day had seen him explain the issue with the Cat getting stuck in the mud again and again.

  But each day had also seen Pellerin’s calls become a little more aggressive than the last. The bar owner was losing a fair amount of money from the forced closure. Hell, Dan guessed by now half the male population of Paskagankee was probably suffering from the DT’s, thanks solely to the Ridge Runner’s shutdown.

  This morning everything had come to a head. Pellerin’s voice had been rough and insistent. “Listen here, Melton,” he said the minute Dan picked up the phone, not even giving him the chance to say hello. “The weather guessers say we’re going to have at least another day of this shit and I just can’t afford to be out of commission that long. You get your goddamn equipment over here and finish the job, or our deal’s off, and you can forget about getting paid.”

  Dan sighed heavily and agreed. His concern about the Cat was still just as valid as it had been three days ago, but that goddamn Pellerin had just worn him down, plain and simple. Dan Melton didn’t like arguing—although he supposed Mary might dispute that claim—and besides, Pellerin did have a point. A business owner could only keep his doors closed for so long just because of the weather.

  So now, the Cat slipped and slogged through the mud, rain falling on and around the enclosed cab, while Dan tried not to fall asleep. So far the earthmover seemed to be maintaining traction, and maybe with a little luck he would be able to drive the thing out of here when he was finished, which he very nearly was.

  The leach field was laid out in a rectangular grid pattern; each corner marked with a red stake. Dan had scraped the top couple of feet of earth off the baffles, and then carefully removed each one with a chain connected to the Cat’s big bucket. He had piled all of the baffles neatly together and was now in the process of digging the pit a little deeper in order to satisfy zoning requirements that had changed in the decades that had passed since the old system was constructed.

  And he was almost finished. He had dug in a pattern, starting with the land farthest away from the back of the Ridge Runner, and working his way in toward the building. Now, though, he was running into a problem. He sighed. It figured. That guy Murphy had really had his shit together when he invented his Law.

  The teeth of the Cat’s iron bucket had snagged on something just under the surface of the earth. Dan swore softly under his breath and manipulated the bucket, maneuvering it back and forth like a driver trying to free his car from a snowbank in the winter.

  Finally the bucket lurched free and Dan extended it a little farther before trying again. This time it plowed through the obstruction, the Cat’s big diesel engine straining for just a moment.

  Dan stared through the windshield. It looked as though someone had buried a massive beam in the ground at some point in the distant past. It had to have been a long time ago, because the beam was splintered and eaten through by rot. Had it been solid, Dan knew there was no way the Cat’s bucket would have been able to split it like it had.

  He stared for a moment and then shrugged. It was strange, but no stranger than a lot of other shit he had seen or heard about in this weird-ass town. He muttered, “Ain’t that the damnedest thing you ever seen,” aware that he was alone but not caring.

  He clambered out of the cab and into the pit, hooking the chain around the biggest section of rotted wood. Then he climbed back up, lifted the beam, and deftly swiveled the bucket, dropping his discovery onto the ground next to the big hole. He would bring it to Bo Pellerin’s attention tomorrow, or whenever the hell it stopped raining. He sure wasn’t about to stand around in this shitty weather and talk about a rotting piece of wood.

  Dan turned his attention back to the big hole in the ground and smoothly ran the bucket along the edge nearest the building, filling it with mud and preparing to dump the load on top of the massive mountain of dirt he had already manufactured. When the bucket was halfway to the pile, something now visible at the bottom of the hole caught his attention.

  The bucket filled with saturated earth hung suspended in the air, forgotten, as Dan gaped in slack-jawed surprise at the unlikely sight visible through the Cat’s rain-drenched windshield: there was a hole under his freshly-dug hole.

  A second hole.

  It was big, and deep, and had the vague appearance of a rudimentary room. It looked as though it had been there – a man-made rabbit hole – for a very long time.

  And that wasn’t all. There were bones lying at the bottom of the hole. From his position up in the cab of the Cat, Dan thought they looked like human bones. Two sets.

  Dan Melton was no expert on human skeletal structure, but both sets of bones appeared intact and complete. They also both appeared at one time to have been clothed, as little bits and pieces of tattered fabric remained, the rest having long-since rotted away.

  Dan swallowed hard.

  He was suddenly very cold.

  Because as bizarre as it was to find bones lying at the bottom of the newly dug, suddenly-much-deeper-than-it-should-have-been septic system pit, they weren’t the strangest thing down there. Lying next to the two sets of apparently complete human skeletal remains was a third body.

  An actual body.

  Its clothing, too, had rotted mostly away, but the body itself looked whole, alive even. It was a man, complete with flesh-colored skin and a full head of hair. The body was unmoving, lying in repose with its eyes closed, but from Dan’s perspective looked an awful lot like a nearly naked guy taking a nap. />
  At the bottom of a hole.

  A hole that, until moments ago, no one knew existed.

  A hole that, until moments ago, had been buried under tons of Paskagankee earth.

  Dan Melton shut down the Caterpillar. The earthmover’s diesel engine fussed and complained and eventually gave up the ghost. Dan gaped out the windshield a moment longer, the chill in his bones deepening, and wished very much he was not alone right now. He was suddenly sure the man lying at the bottom of the whole would pivot at the waist and rise. He would rise and open his eyes and fix them on Dan’s face, and the eyes would be alive but also dead, devoid of any humanity, any compassion, and then the man would climb out of the muddy hole and come for Dan, and when he did, Dan knew the result would be worse than bad. The result would be horrifying.

  Dan took a deep breath to steady himself. It came out shuddery and paper-thin, like an old man’s. He knew he was being ridiculous but couldn’t help himself. He glanced back down at the bottom of the hole, half-convinced the body would be halfway to the Cat, but it wasn’t. It was still unmoving, lying in the septic system pit like a nearly naked guy taking a nap.

  He reached for his cell phone and wondered when he would be able to finish this job. It appeared suddenly quite obvious it would not be any time soon.

  2

  Sharon Dupont shut down her cruiser and shrugged into her rain gear. She gazed glumly across the Ridge Runner parking lot to where the back half of a gigantic yellow earthmoving vehicle was visible beyond the building. Its corrugated iron tracks had sunk into the mud halfway up their hubs, and she wondered briefly how in the world Dan Melton was going to get his equipment out of there.

  Then she sighed and stepped out of the vehicle. Sharon was intimately familiar with the Ridge Runner, both from her days spent holding down a bar stool inside the place before getting her shit—and her life—together, and from the investigation last year into the strange case of former drinking buddy Earl Manning’s disappearance.