Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3)

by Leverone, Allan

“Put your gun away now,” Ferriss continued as if she had never spoken, “and you may still be able to keep your job. Continue acting in the reckless manner you’ve displayed here this morning, and not only will you find yourself unemployed, you’ll spend the next twenty years in federal prison.” His voice was silky-smooth and layered with menace. “I’m sure you’re aware it’s illegal to interfere with a federal investigation.”

  “You were going to kill that man,” she replied stubbornly. “I know exactly what I saw.”

  “No one’s killing anyone,” Ferriss said. “Yet. Everything’s under control. In fact, you’re the only one I see pointing a loaded gun at someone else.” He gestured to Cooper, who holstered his weapon reluctantly, with the look of a man who would rather be eating razor blades.

  “I’m taking the suspect to the station,” Sharon said after a long pause. She reached down with her left hand and yanked the man to his feet, keeping her weapon trained roughly midway between Agents Ferriss and Cooper with her right. The stench rolling off the suspect’s body would normally have made her gag, but right now she barely noticed and didn’t care.

  She began walking backward, a big wad of her prisoner’s shirt clutched tightly in her fist, refusing to turn her back on the two FBI agents. When she felt as though she had put a sufficient distance between herself and the feds, she eased her weapon into its holster and pulled a pair of handcuffs off the utility belt at her waist. She spun the prisoner around, hands behind his back, and deftly snapped the cuffs around his wrists. Then she marched him to her cruiser, keeping a wary eye on Ferriss and Cooper.

  Neither agent moved. They stood quietly next to the big hole dug out of the ground, the Caterpillar earthmover looming behind them, staring back at her with undisguised contempt.

  27

  Mike looked up from his desk as Gordie Rheaume rapped his knuckles once on the open door and then entered. “Sorry to bother you, Chief,” he said, “but Officer Dupont just radioed in and…”

  Mike shrugged. “Yes?”

  “She’s got a suspect in custody.”

  “A suspect for what?”

  “The murders, Chief!”

  Gordie’s face was flushed with excitement, and for a moment Mike had trouble making sense of his statement. “The murders? The Choate and Kendall murders? How is that possible? I sent her out to the Ridge Runner less than an hour ago to pull down the crime scene tape around the construction site. How did she go from that boring chore to arresting a double-murder suspect?”

  Gordie shrugged. “I dunno. I asked her the same question, but she said she’d explain it all when she gets here.” He looked at his watch. “And that should happen any minute.”

  “That’s fantastic news,” Mike said, standing and moving out from behind his desk with a smile.

  “Uh, there’s something else,” Gordie added.

  “What is it?”

  “She said the FBI guys were there, too, and that there was some kind of trouble.”

  “What trouble?”

  “She wouldn’t say, but she wanted me to stress that you shouldn’t let them anywhere near the suspect until you talk to her.”

  Mike ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Don’t let them near the suspect? Why not?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me, Chief, but she was adamant. She made me promise I would come right to your office and tell you. She seems to think the Feebs will be right behind her, and she didn’t want them getting to the prisoner before she could pass the message to you.”

  “Okay,” Mike said, nodding. He had no idea what kind of dispute Sharon might have gotten into with Ferriss and Cooper, but her sense of intuition was almost always spot-on. If she thought the agents should be kept away from the prisoner, Mike would do everything in his power to make it happen until he had a chance to talk to her.

  He looked up at the ceiling, lost in thought, and said, “Do we have anyone else in holding right now?”

  The dispatcher shook his head. “Nope. Lee Evans was locked up overnight on a drunk and disorderly, but we released him this morning after he sobered up and made bail.”

  “Good. I’m assuming Sharon will bring the suspect in through the back so she can deposit him right into the holding cell, so I’m going to go down there and wait. I want to talk to her the minute she arrives.”

  ***

  It didn’t take long.

  Less than two minutes after Mike stepped through the reinforced metal basement door at the rear of the station, Sharon wheeled her cruiser into the small secondary lot. Right behind her, a nondescript two-door Honda sedan sped into the lot, driving much too fast, and slid into a spot next to the police vehicle. Special Agents Ferriss and Cooper were out of the Honda and walking briskly toward Mike before Sharon had even finished removing the prisoner from the cruiser’s back seat.

  Ferriss looked more or less unruffled, although there was a tightness to his posture that Mike didn’t remember seeing before. Ward Cooper, on the other hand, was plainly furious, his face flushed bright red with percolating anger. Mike felt a momentary pang of sympathy for Sharon having to face down the two federal agents by herself, regardless of the specifics of the confrontation.

  “We need to talk,” Ferriss said without preamble.

  “You’re damn right we do,” Sharon said, approaching from behind as quickly as she could while still escorting the handcuffed prisoner with one hand on his elbow.

  Cooper whirled on her. “You listen here, little Missy, we’ll do the talking. You just shut your mouth and stand back.” He made as if to pat her on the head.

  Anger flashed in Sharon’s eyes and she moved quickly at the much bigger man, standing on her tiptoes and getting in his face. For a second Mike thought she was going to take a swing at the agent, and he moved to step in between them. But she merely narrowed her eyes and growled, “Don’t you ever talk to me like that again, little man. It would be the biggest mistake of your misogynistic life, and from what I’ve seen, that’s saying something.”

  To Mike’s surprise, Cooper said nothing. Instead, he turned away from her dismissively. Mike took advantage of the momentary lull in the hostilities and said, “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. Officer Dupont will process the suspect and get him into a holding cell, and then we’ll all meet in my office and hash out the problem.”

  He turned to Sharon without waiting for an answer from the FBI men. “I assume you read the prisoner his rights?”

  She nodded. “I did it on the ride over here. He hasn’t said a word since these two geniuses tried to kill him. In fact—”

  “—Tried to what?” Mike interrupted.

  “You heard me, they–”

  Chaos erupted again, with both FBI agents talking over the beleaguered officer, who shrugged and spread her hands in a what can I say? gesture.

  “ENOUGH!” Mike said, his voice not quite a shout but sharp and authoritative. Abruptly, the competing voices stilled and Mike said, “Nobody say another word. We’ll talk it all out in my office.”

  He nodded at the prisoner, who appeared not to be paying the slightest attention to the squabbling taking place around him. The man’s eyes were open wide in fear, and glued to Alton Ferriss and Ward Cooper. It was exactly the sort of reaction Mike would have expected if the two agents actually had tried to kill him, although he knew that could not possibly have been the case. He told Sharon, “Take him in and process him. When you’re finished, come to my office.”

  She nodded curtly and pulled the prisoner away without another word. She opened the heavy door and disappeared into the building. For his part, the suspect seemed only too happy to be putting distance between himself and the feds, and once again, Mike felt a sense of disquiet overtake him.

  The moment the door slammed behind Sharon and her prisoner, Alton Ferriss said, “While we’re waiting for her, Chief, we’ll fill you in on what happened out there.”

  “No you won’t,” Mike said.

  The hostility written all ove
r Cooper’s face now showed up in Ferriss’s. “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘No.’ You’re not filling me in on anything until Officer Dupont has finished with the suspect and is present in my office as well. She deserves to hear everything you have to say.”

  Ferriss blew out forcefully in frustration. “I’ve had about enough of this Podunk little town and this Podunk little police department. We’ve tried our best to include you in our investigation, and—”

  “—Stop right there,” Mike interrupted. “I don’t want to hear it. You two have done nothing to include my department in your ‘investigation.’ In fact, you haven’t even explained what, exactly, it is you’re investigating. So save your self-serving load of bullshit for somebody who’s buying. Give me your cell number, and go on down to the Katahdin Diner for a cup of coffee and some blueberry pie. I guarantee both are better than any you’ve ever tasted. When Officer Dupont’s finished booking our suspect, I’ll call you boys and you can come on back and we’ll clear everything up then.”

  “Or we can call our SAC,” Ferriss answered, “and he can be all over your ass in about three minutes.”

  “Do what you have to do,” Mike shot back, “but do it from the diner, because you can get the goddamned president ‘all over my ass,’ and we’re still not talking about a goddamned thing until Dupont’s finished with the goddamned suspect!”

  Mike knew he had gone overboard with the profanity but he didn’t care. In fact, it felt kind of good. Ferriss said, “Lemme guess, while we’re having coffee and pie, you’ll be getting Officer Cupcake’s side of the story, is that about right?”

  “That’s not even close to being ‘about right,’” Mike said. “That’s not how I operate. You deserve to hear what Officer Dupont has to say just as much as she deserves to hear your story. I’ll say this one last time, since you don’t seem to be getting it: I’m not talking to anyone about anything until every interested party is present in my office. You have my word on that.”

  Ferriss and Cooper stared at him for a moment, then Ferriss reached into an interior suit coat pocket and fished out a pen and a slip of paper. He jotted down a number and handed it to Mike, then turned and stalked back to the Honda. Cooper waited a moment and Mike thought he was going to say something, but then he followed his partner without another word.

  As the car backed out of the parking space, Mike called through the open driver’s side window, “The cell reception’s spotty around here, so if I can’t get ahold of you, I’ll call the diner’s landline and have a message passed to you.” The two agents stared back stonily and drove away.

  The car pulled around the building and then turned toward Main Street. Mike watched until it had disappeared in the direction of the Katahdin Diner. Once again, he was struck by how little resemblance the pair had to any federal agents he had ever dealt with.

  28

  Sharon knocked lightly and then slipped into the office, dragging two chairs for the FBI agents behind her as she had done during their first meeting. She rolled the third chair over from the corner and then took a seat in the one closest to the office door.

  Mike said with a smile, “Planning a quick getaway?”

  Her return smile was tight-lipped and angry. “I don’t trust those guys as far as I can throw them. I want to make sure they can’t get up and bolt out the door to get at the prisoner.”

  He gazed at her, recalling her earlier charge that the agents had tried to murder the suspect. She stared back defiantly. “You’re serious,” he said finally.

  “You weren’t out there,” she said. “You didn’t see what I saw. These guys—”

  Mike held up a hand. “I told them I’d wait until they get here to discuss what happened out at the Ridge Runner.”

  Sharon sighed deeply and said, “Fair enough.”

  “But while we wait, did you get a name on the suspect?”

  She shook her head. “He still hasn’t said a word, and he had no identification on him. No driver’s license, no Social Security card, nothing. In fact, he didn’t even have a wallet. And the guy smells like he’s been marinating in a pig pen.”

  “Hmm,” Mike said, thinking. “Did he use his phone call to lawyer up?”

  Sharon shook her head. “Nope. Like I said, he hasn’t said a word to anyone, not just me. I offered him his one phone call and he just looked at me like I was crazy. Mike, I think we need to consider the possibility that this guy’s mental capacity is diminished. He doesn’t strike me as mentally deficient, and when I talked to Rose Pellerin – she spent enough time with him to get a read on him – she didn’t give any indication that the guy was anything but sharp. Still, there’s something definitely off about him.”

  “Maybe he’s setting up an insanity defense now that he’s been apprehended.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe, but that’s not the sense I’m getting. He just seems…I don’t know…overwhelmed.”

  Mike thought it over and finally shook his head. “Maybe we’ll learn more when I question him. For now, we need to get this FBI fiasco over with. Did Gordie call Special Agents Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum back from the diner?”

  “Yep. He made the call a couple of minutes ago, so they should be here any time now.”

  As if on cue, the two feds stalked through the bullpen toward the office. Mike could see both men eyeing them warily through the glass partition. They entered without knocking, and Ferriss said, “Well, aren’t you two all nice and cozy? Who could’ve predicted this? Oh, that’s right, me.”

  Mike shook his head wearily and said, “I told you we wouldn’t discuss the confrontation without you and we haven’t. But I’m about out of patience with you two. Why don’t you keep your snide remarks to yourselves and sit your asses down so we can talk this thing out.”

  Ferriss and Cooper sat heavily, and Mike knew he had to take charge of the meeting immediately or it could get out of hand in a heartbeat. He looked at Sharon and said, “Who saw the suspect first?”

  She nodded in the general direction of the agents, refusing to look directly at either of them. “They did,” she said. “I spotted them moving up behind him as I drove toward the Ridge Runner. Then I lost sight of them behind the building as I parked my cruiser. By the time I got out and walked to the corner of the building, this guy” – another nod in Cooper’s direction – “had forced the suspect to his knees and was about to put a bullet in his head.”

  Both Ferriss and Cooper immediately interrupted, their voices unintelligible as they attempted to talk over each other.

  “AGENT FERRISS,” Mike said loudly. The men stopped talking and he took advantage of the pause, ignoring Sharon’s inflammatory charge for the time being and directing a question to the senior agent. “What in the world made you decide to stake out the Ridge Runner construction site?”

  The two agents glanced at each other in unspoken communication. Neither answered.

  “Another one of those investigatory issues you can’t discuss?” he said drily.

  “You guessed it,” Ferriss answered, hostility evident in his voice.

  Mike sat for a moment. “So, for reasons unknown to me and that you’re unwilling to share, you knew the suspect in two murders would show up at the Ridge Runner, and yet you refused to share that information with me or my officers.”

  A smile flitted across Ferriss’s face and disappeared. “I think it’s an exaggeration to say we ‘knew’ the suspect would show up. Let’s just say we were playing a hunch.”

  “A hunch,” Mike repeated dubiously. “So, the suspect appeared out of the woods behind the Ridge Runner, I assume…”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then you moved to apprehend him.”

  “That’s pretty much the size of it.”

  “Where was the stakeout location?”

  “Down the road a ways, in our rented car.”

  “Down the road a ways,” Mike repeated. “How were you able to get from ‘down the road a ways’ to
the edge of the construction pit without the suspect seeing you?”

  Ferriss grinned wolfishly. “We’re just that good.”

  Mike ignored the comment and said thoughtfully, “His attention was directed at the bottom of that hole in the ground, wasn’t it?”

  “He did seem mighty distracted.”

  “What was he looking at down there, I wonder?”

  “I…”

  “I know, you can’t say.”

  Ferriss looked at Mike innocently. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll bet,” Mike answered, thinking about the big, heavy circular gold disk currently under lock and key in the evidence room, and how the two agents’ interest in it had seemed much more than casual. That disk had been retrieved from the bottom of the pit.

  He made a mental note to examine the disk more closely as soon as he could, and then refocused his attention on Agent Ferriss. “You boys showed up in Paskagankee about five minutes after that underground room was dug up a few days ago. In nearly twenty years working law enforcement, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the FBI move so fast on anything so seemingly innocuous as an unexpected hole in the ground.”

  “So? What’s your point?” Ferriss asked.

  “My point,” Mike said, “is that I don’t think you were interested in the secret underground room at all. I think you rushed all the way up here on a moment’s notice because you knew the discovery of that room would bring our suspect sniffing around, didn’t you?”

  Ferriss returned Mike’s thoughtful gaze with a wary look. Even Agent Cooper, who had been the epitome of impatience and anger during the entire conference, seemed taken aback. Instead of fury, his face reflected surprise and perhaps even a hint of concern. It was Cooper’s that convinced Mike he was on the right track.

  He continued, still connecting the dots. “And if that’s the case, this unknown suspect we have sitting in a holding cell downstairs, the man without a single identifying document in his wallet – hell, without even a wallet at all – isn’t unidentified after all. You know who he is, don’t you?”