Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3)

by Leverone, Allan

  Two sets of bones lay in the mud, positioned in close proximity to each other, and the ruined remains of what might at one time have been rudimentary furniture—perhaps a table, a few chairs, and some shelving, now collapsed and almost entirely rotted away—littered the space. Tree-roots had grown through the ceiling and thrust downward into the room in a tangled mess, suggesting to Mike that this was no recent construction, but had been buried next to the Ridge Runner, undetected, for years, maybe decades. The obvious question was had the bones been down there the entire time, or were they a more recent addition?

  Mike straightened and turned to Pete Kendall. “Has anything been disturbed?”

  Kendall shook his head. “Nope, not a thing. Soon as we’re done here, I’ll transport the remains to Dr. Affeldt, but I didn’t want to move anything until you had had the opportunity to examine it on site.”

  Mike nodded thoughtfully and then turned to Dan Melton. “And you saw a third set of remains, which have now gone missing, before you called for help?”

  “Well, yes and no. They weren’t remains. It wasn’t a set of bones like these.” Melton gestured in the general direction of the construction site. “It was an actual body, Mike. A man, and he was naked, sort of draped across that table-thing down there, like he had fallen asleep without getting dressed first.”

  Mike was watching Melton closely as the man spoke. Dan saw Mike’s look and said, “I know what you’re thinking, but you asked me what I saw. That’s what I saw. You can believe me or not; I don’t really care. But that’s what I saw.”

  Mike raised his hands in a calming gesture. “I’m not questioning what you saw, Dan, I’m just trying to figure out what possible explanation there could be for what you saw, especially given the fact that this naked man is now missing. You didn’t see anyone come or go in the time between your call to the station and Officer Dupont’s arrival?”

  Melton shook his head. “I already had this conversation with Officer Dupont, and then again with Chief Kendall. Nobody came and nobody went, at least not from the front of the Ridge Runner. I can’t speak for what was happening behind the building, because I wasn’t back there.”

  Mike knelt down on his haunches and examined the sidewalls of the subterranean room, as well as the much newer pit Dan Melton had been digging before making his gruesome discovery. If someone had stolen human remains out of the bottom of that hole, they would have had to climb in and out somehow, and the distance from ground level to the hard-packed dirt floor of the newly unearthed secret room had to be close to ten feet.

  The grade of the sidewall was steep, nearly ninety degrees, but thanks to the roots that had forced their way through the ceiling and walls, there were plenty of hand-and-foot holds available. It would not have been impossible for a determined climber to work his way down there and back out again. Why he would do so was anyone’s guess, but it would definitely have been possible.

  Any evidence of such a climb, though, had disappeared hours ago. The steady-falling drizzle had turned the entire pit into a morass of sticky mud, eliminating potential boot or shoe tracks any intruder might have left behind and rendering the hole practically inaccessible. Mike didn’t envy Pete Kendall the job of retrieving the remains, but was glad the new chief hadn’t assigned the job to tiny Sharon Dupont.

  He rose to his feet and wiped his hands on his jeans, smearing mud on the now-rain-saturated denim. He glanced at the three people gathered in a rough semicircle around him and smiled. “You guys look like drowned rats.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Sharon said, smiling at him.

  “So what do you think?” Pete said.

  “I wish I could give you some insight, but I’m as baffled as you are. Maybe when the autopsies are complete on these remains, we’ll get some idea how long ago they were killed and how long they’ve been down there. I assume you’re going to light a fire under our esteemed ME?”

  Kendall nodded. “I’ll ask him to put a rush on the lab work, but you know Dr. Affeldt. He’s about as cooperative as a hibernating bear most of the time.”

  Mike thought back to some of the run-ins he had had with the County Medical Examiner while he was running the department. Pete Kendall’s description of the man was as accurate as any he could have come up with. “Okay,” he said. “If you’d like my assistance, keep me apprised of any developments and I’ll help in any way I can. For now, though, I’m afraid I’m useless to you.”

  The small group trudged through the wet field to the front of the Ridge Runner and parted company. The last thing Mike saw as he backed out of the lot was Bo Pellerin, still gazing out the bar’s plate-glass window. He looked as though he had just bitten into a lemon.

  7

  Bronson Choate swam up to consciousness like a diver breaking the surface of a lake. The first few moments consisted of a dark void, followed by utter confusion as he began processing information again. His brain’s first order of business was to advise him he was suffering from one whopper of a headache and would likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Its second was to instruct him to open his eyes.

  The world swam and blurred and his head throbbed, but his vision slowly cleared. He blinked and glanced around slowly to minimize the pain. He was inside his cabin. Tied to a chair, hands lashed behind his back.

  He craned his neck and turned his body as much as possible, which was not much, but enough to see that a length of electrical cord had been ripped out of a floor lamp and used to tie him up. The cord was stiff and not terribly pliable, and Bronson thought that with a little effort he might be able to loosen it enough to free his hands. He wondered why anyone would have used it in the first place. He began working at the wire, feeling with his fingers, picking at the knot.

  From down the short hallway he heard the heavy clomping of footsteps, and then a man emerged from his bedroom, dressed in a pair of his jeans and work shirts. And his boots. Bronson assumed this was the same man who had attacked him outside his front door, but everything out there had happened so fast he couldn’t be sure.

  The intruder saw that he was conscious and stopped in his tracks, eyeing him suspiciously. “What’s that buggy out there?” he said, nodding in the direction of the front yard.

  “Buggy?” Bronson repeated, confused.

  “That’s right, the buggy you were riding in when you arrived here. What is it?”

  “Are you talking about my Jeep?”

  “Jeep,” the stranger said hesitantly, trying the word out, repeating it like a man might mimic something in a language he had never heard before.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Bronson said, “and if you want it, you can have it. It’s all yours, just take it and go.”

  “Take it? How? Where’s the horse?” the man asked, as if he hadn’t heard a word Bronson said.

  Bronson shook his head slowly, wondering if his injuries might be more severe than he realized. His attacker wasn’t making any goddamn sense. “Horse? What horse?”

  “Don’t play stupid,” the man said menacingly. For the first time, Bronson noticed he was clutching an ancient pistol in his hand, a revolver. The gun was rusted badly, corroded to the point where it had to be unusable. “The horse that pulls your carriage. Where is it?”

  “There’s no horse. It’s just a car. You know, you drive it. A car. With an engine.”

  “Car,” the man said, and the word seemed as foreign to him as “Jeep” had. Bronson wondered if he might be mentally challenged. He examined the man’s face and noticed two thin scars running in parallel lines across his right cheek. The lines disappeared under the collar of the shirt the man had taken out of Bronson’s closet.

  He wondered what the man was planning to do to him.

  He wondered whether he would to survive the day.

  He continued to work at the electrical cord, knowing the bulk of his body was shielding his efforts from view of his captor. For now.

  ***

  Jackson was hungry. He was also upset an
d confused and a little afraid of the man he had trussed up in the chair, who seemed to be talking gibberish: a buggy with no horse? But more than anything else, he was hungry.

  When he had opened his eyes and seen daylight streaming through the ceiling of his underground death trap, Jackson had been momentarily disoriented. His clothing had somehow disappeared – where it had gone was anyone’s guess – and the steady rain soaking his naked body had chilled him to the point where he felt colder than he ever had in his life. The skies were slate-grey and threatening, but to Jackson Healy it was the most welcome sight he had ever witnessed.

  He had examined his surroundings cautiously despite the freezing cold because he was unsure of what in God’s name was happening. Then he had seen a man. The man’s back was turned to Jackson and he was walking away from a massive yellow iron machine, which was sitting on the ground next to the ceiling of the underground room.

  And Jackson had panicked. He leapt to his feet, nearly crying out in fear but somehow forcing himself to stay quiet. He maintained the presence of mind to pick his Colt revolver out of the mud, and then he rushed to the closest wall of the suddenly liberated prison cell. He scrabbled up the muddy side, using exposed tree roots as handholds, and when he reached the top he flung himself out of the hole, flopping face-first onto the ground. Wet grass had never felt so good.

  The man Jackson had seen upon waking was still looking in the other direction. He was leaning against a building located exactly where the Paskagankee Tavern had been, although the structure looked nothing like what he remembered. The man was hunched over against the driving rain, holding his hand to his ear and talking quietly.

  The man was alone. He was clearly crazy.

  Jackson bolted. He sprang to his feet and sprinted around the hole, past the strange-looking yellow machine, and ran full-speed into the comforting cover of the forest. He continued on as fast as he could, no destination in mind, just moving, too confused and frightened to think. He skirted boulders and climbed over fallen trees, trying to remember where he had left his horse, but nothing looked familiar. He kept moving.

  Eventually he had burst through a small clearing and seen a cabin. By this time, Jackson had regained enough composure to realize he needed to find clothing immediately. It was his top priority, even above figuring out what the hell was happening. He was now shivering uncontrollably and his teeth chattered like someone was shaking a bag full of dice.

  And he was hungry. Unbelievably, stomch-crampingly hungry.

  He had glanced once again toward the small cabin in the middle of the clearing and shrank back behind the cover of trees just as the strange-looking carriage rolled up. A moment later a man, presumably the shack’s owner, had climbed out. Jackson thought for one brief moment about calling out to the man for help, but he abandoned the idea immediately as sheer folly. He was completely unclothed and holding a pistol he only now realized was corroded to the point of uselessness.

  Appealing for help would be foolish, so Jackson had taken the man by surprise, attacking and immobilizing him, and gaining access to his cabin.

  And now the man had finally regained consciousness, which was wonderful, because Jackson was famished. He realized now that he had made a mistake while addressing the cabin-owner. He had been asking about the odd-looking buggy in front of the cabin, when that was not the critical question, at least not at the moment. He had more pressing concerns.

  “I need food,” he said as his victim blinked rapidly in an obvious effort to reorient himself following the blow to the head.

  The man squinted at him. “Take whatever you want. I’ve been gone for a while, so you won’t find much in the fridge, but I’ve got some canned stuff in the pantry. You’re welcome to it. Pile it all in the Jeep and take it with you.”

  Jackson narrowed his eyes at the man. He was talking gibberish again. “Fridge?”

  “Yeah, you know, the fridge. The refrigerator. In the kitchen.” The man nodded in the direction of the only room in the tiny cabin Jackson hadn’t yet had a chance to explore. “Like I said, there’s not much in it, but go check it out. Take whatever you want.”

  Jackson followed the man’s eyes and decided he had nothing to lose. If this “fridge” was where the food was, then the “fridge” was where he needed to be. He could not believe how hungry he was, the sensation was building and building, rapidly approaching the point where he could think of nothing else. He shot one last suspicious glance in his prisoner’s direction, then turned and trudged into the kitchen.

  ***

  The minute his captor turned his back and began walking toward the kitchen, Bronson was up and out of his chair and moving across the room. He had unfastened the stiff electrical wire binding his wrists with little effort and now moved as quietly but as quickly as possible. It was critical he take advantage of the surprise factor to regain control of his home, because Bronson was growing more and more certain the man now dressed in his clothing was suffering from severe schizophrenia.

  That his captor had attacked him while naked was strange enough, but their brief conversation, just concluded, was even more bizarre. Ranting and raving about extreme hunger while not seeming to understand what a refrigerator was? And what were all those weird questions about his Jeep?

  This was bad. At the rate things were going, Bronson Choate felt there was every reason to believe the man might simply kill him and continue living for the foreseeable future in Bronson’s isolated cabin.

  And there was a more pressing concern. His girlfriend was on her way here.

  They hadn’t seen each other for six weeks, the entire time Bronson had spent at sea, and Jodie Miller had refused to accept the notion of waiting one minute longer than absolutely necessary for their reunion. She in her car right now and was due to arrive from her home in Bangor at any moment.

  Bronson had to take advantage of the window of opportunity his attacker had opened by tying his hands in such a shoddy manner, or the situation would soon go from bad to much, much worse.

  He crept to the kitchen entryway and flattened his body against the wall. Took a deep breath. Eased his head slowly around the doorframe.

  The man’s back was to him. He stood unmoving, staring at the refrigerator. He reminded Bronson of a cow watching a car drive past. For a guy who was supposedly “famished,” he didn’t seem in any hurry to examine the contents of the fridge.

  Finally the strange intruder eased a hand forward and grabbed the handle. He pulled the refrigerator door open and recoiled, seemingly surprised by the yellow light spilling out of the appliance’s interior.

  Again, Bronson was struck by a feeling of unreality. Something was not right about this guy, but he didn’t have time to mull over what that something might be. He took a step into the kitchen, grateful for the cabin’s solid construction. He had built most of it himself and knew his location wouldn’t be given away by a creaky floorboard.

  He eased slowly forward. The man seemed utterly captivated by the interior of the fridge. He bent at the waist with his head stuck halfway into the open door. Another three feet and Bronson would be able to take him down. The fucking home invader would never know what hit him.

  Bronson raised his arms above his head. His plan was to lower the boom on the son of a bitch, to clasp his hands together and bring them down on the back of the guy’s neck. Whether he could actually break the man’s neck using that technique Bronson had no idea, but he had no doubt the blow would incapacitate him, and the fight would be over before it started. The son of a bitch had some serious payback coming.

  A foot and a half now. The guy’s back was still turned, and there was almost no way he could avoid taking a beating now, unless—

  --Outside, a car horn honked, a series of excited staccato bursts that indicated Jodie had arrived, and just like that, everything went to shit.

  Bronson froze, hands in the air, caught completely off-guard. He watched in shocked disbelief as the stranger whirled, moving much more quic
kly than Bronson would have expected. The man burst out of his crouch and hammered a fist into Bronson’s gut. The air whooshed from his lungs and he dropped to the floor with a teeth-rattling crash.

  The stranger advanced. Bronson kicked at his knee, aiming to shatter a kneecap, but his rushed blow went high. Instead of connecting with bone, he drove his foot into the meat of the man’s thigh.

  The home invader cursed and staggered backward, and Bronson struggled to his feet, retching and wheezing. Instead of advancing on his attacker, he staggered through the living room, thinking only of Jodie, knowing he had to warn her away. If she entered the cabin she would die, Bronson was certain of it.

  He weaved into the living room and stumbled into an end table. A glass table lamp wobbled and then fell to the floor, where it shattered with what sounded like a mini-explosion. He ignored it and crunched on the glass shards to the door, yanking it open, the sound of pounding footfalls telling him the attacker was right behind him.

  On the front landing stood Jodie Miller, blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, her face radiant. She opened her mouth in a joyful greeting, and then her excited smile faltered and turned to confusion. “What’s the matter, what…”

  “Get out,” Bronson managed, still struggling to breathe. The words came out barely louder than a whisper. “Get out of here and bring the police.”

  Jodie’s eyes darted up and over his right shoulder. Her confused expression turned to alarm, and Bronson knew she had caught sight of the stranger. She took one hesitant step backward on the landing and then Bronson felt a crushing blow to the back of his skull, and as consciousness faded, Bronson Choate prayed to a God he had not thought about in years that Jodie had understood his warning and was even now escaping before she too fell victim to the murderous stranger.

  8

  Mike took one look at Sharon as the meeting broke up at the Ridge Runner and decided to drive back to the station and meet her there. Her shift had officially ended long before they left the crime scene – or whatever the hell it was – and she looked so exhausted he didn’t want her driving home by herself. He would pick her up in his own vehicle and they could share a ride to her home on the outskirts of Paskagankee.