On Tuesday, Sloater spoke with all of the patients on Lester’s floor and, late in the afternoon, met with Doctor Hopewell for the final time. “There’s nothing here,” he said dejectedly. “I’m going back to square one in Boston. We know Edgewink had a brother. Somewhere, he’s sitting on that loot, and I’m going to find it.”
“I wish you well,” said Doctor Hopewell, holding out his hand. “If there is anything further we can do, please call, and if you do,” he said looking at Abel who had just walked into the office, “just ask for my Administrative Assistant, Mr. Owens here.”
Abel managed to smile and nod pleasantly, hiding his panic at what he had just overheard.
Chapter 1.9
June 12, 1942
Abel Owens bounced his two year old son Arthur distractedly. “I’ve got no choice,” he said, reading the letter for the tenth time. ‘Order to Report for Induction’ swam in large print before his eyes. “I’ve got to be in Augusta on the twenty-seventh.”
Heidi came in from the kitchen and slumped onto the couch. “You shouldn’t have to go,” she said. “You work in a hospital.”
Abel was not a coward - he actually relished the thought of becoming a soldier and proving himself on the battlefield - but he couldn’t bear the thought of someone else stumbling onto the jewels while he was away (he’d never considered that they might already have been found). After Lester’s death, Abel had dedicated himself to finding the hidden loot. His apprehension at the F.B.I.’s knowledge of his existence gradually faded as the expected knock on the door never materialized. He married Heidi in the spring of 1939 and they set up housekeeping in a nice apartment at the foot of Hospital Hill. Arthur came alone nine months later and became the most important thing in Abel’s life – after the all-consuming search for Lester’s loot. He took more and more of the job of upgrading the facility from Doctor Hopewell and spent his days roaming the buildings and grounds, clipboard in hand. Slowly, over the years, he inspected every square inch of the buildings, recording the details of his search in a cloth-bound journal. He had even opened the old mausoleum, breaking the rusted lock and replacing it with a new one, and peered into each of the plain wooden coffins. All to no avail. All Abel had to show for his time was his journal and Lester’s cryptic note which he kept locked in his desk along with a copy of the construction plans for all the hospital building.
Forty-two year old Agent Penn Sloater was also joining the army, in a manner of speaking, and he too was not happy with the idea. Loaned to an Army intelligence group, ‘for the duration’, Sloater would be moving to Washington, D.C. In the four years since Lester’s death, he had remained in Boston, passed over for transfers and tolerated by his superiors because of his refusal to give up on the search for the Edgewink loot. His obsession with the case had finally resulted in his replacement as the agent in charge. Working in a small office by day and at home and on his own time at night, Sloater had developed an enormous understanding of stolen goods trafficking in New England and he had made it his business to personally investigate everyone accused or suspected of involvement. Penn Sloater became the world’s foremost expert on the shadow world of stolen goods trafficking in New England… and of a ghost named Abel Edgewink…
Chapter 1.10
September 28, 1944
Abel Owens hesitated at Doctor Hopewell’s front gate. Heidi and Arthur had gone back to live with her father two long years ago when Abel was sent to the Pacific. At first Heidi had tried to help her father in his office to make up for Abel’s absence, but as Arthur grew into toddlerhood, she found a sitter and enrolled in the hospital’s two year nursing school. Abel was proud of her ambition and eagerly followed her progress and Arthur’s pre-school adventures through her letters. In turn, he had written faithfully of strange places and the people he met, always trying to play down the horrors he witnessed. Combat had hardened Abel, distilled his boyish charm to an aura of cool competency and his youthful body to a hard, sinewy husk. In his final letters to Heidi, Abel had made light of wounds he’d received and had not mentioned his possible return from the war. Now a gaunt man with a wan complexion, gray before his time, he leaned heavily on a cane but held his head high as the late afternoon sun splashed color over the ribbons on his chest. He was alive, he was home, and there was once more a purpose to his life.
Agent Penn Sloater had purpose in his life also. For two years, he sat at a gray Army Intelligence Corps’ desk by day, shuffling an unending river of meaningless paperwork in patient tedium. By night, however, he sat in his bachelor apartment, inflamed with the ceaseless search for Abel Edgewink. His work gave him access to enlistment records, and each night he left work with a purloined file of names for the New England region hidden in his briefcase. The master alphabetical list for the area did not contain the name Edgewink, so he began the long task of searching for anyone with the given name Abel and starting a new file on each one he found. Late nights and weekends were spent writing letters to local law enforcement agencies citing national defense priority and demanding assistance in vetting the surnames and backgrounds of each. Alone and unattached, Sloater often worked into the early morning hours, catching one or two hours of exhausted sleep before returning to the tedium of his desk, and as the summer of 1944 fled into autumn, only the fever and intensity of his obsession masked his physical and emotional degeneration.
Abel paused in the second floor staircase. In the four years after Lester’s murder, Carl Atherton had been locked down, his guilt taken for granted, and virtually inaccessible to Abel. He had gradually been worked back into the general patient population while Abel was away and now, Abel could finally get to him.
Abel doubted that he’d get any useful information out of Atherton, but he had to try. Atherton was the last person to see and, perhaps, talk to Lester.
When he was sure he was alone, Abel slipped onto the floor and into the locked ward. He found Atherton awake, sitting quietly on the edge of his bed as though waiting for him.
“Carl,” Abel said in a low voice, “you need to come with me.”
Atherton nodded submissively and lumbered to his feet, standing still until Abel reached out and guided him towards the door. Abel led Atherton to a nearby empty room where he sat him in a chair and gently closed the door.
Abel was a little apprehensive about being alone with Atherton, but he’d faced more dangerous enemies and he would see this through. He pulled a second chair over and sat, just out of arm’s reach. “Carl,” he said quietly, “You remember the man who was killed here seven years ago? Lester Edgewink? Do you remember Lester?”
Atherton fixed Abel with a placid stare. “Lester,” he parroted, nodding slowly.
“Someone killed him on this floor. Did you kill him?”
“Kill him,” intoned Atherton without inflection.
Abel grunted in frustration. “Did you talk to him? Did he say anything about his jewels? Did you see where he hid them?”
Even as Atherton’s attention drifted away, Abel recognized the futility of his questions. Sighing, he stood and led Atherton back to his bed on the locked ward. War had tempered any feelings of revenge Abel may have had, but he had already determined that Atherton could not survive this meeting. Standing by the head of the bed as Atherton lay back on the pillow, Abel glanced around once and, unobserved, slid the icepick he had pulled from his belt deftly into Atherton’s left ear. The big man stiffened, his heels beating a soundless tattoo on the bed, and then relaxed as death took him. Cerebral hemorrhage would be listed as the cause of death.
It was 1:00 am on a mild October night, three weeks after Abel’s return to Bangor, when Sloater’s obsession finally bore fruit. He slumped over his desk, blinking tiredly, half expecting the words to vanish. The faint excitement he felt at the line, Owens, Abel, 04/01/16, exploded into stunned disbelief at the next words, Bangor, Maine. His vision blurred and he leaped to his feet with a harsh croak of victory as the pieces fell into place.
Sloater hurried
ly threw some clothes into a bag along with all the cash and gas ration coupons in the house. He grabbed his sidearm, credentials and the cheap suitcase that contained his entire Edgewink gang case file and fled the small apartment that had never been home. By the time a pretty blond WAC was putting a new stack of meaningless paperwork on his desk that morning, Sloater had already crossed the border into Pennsylvania. He drove distractedly, the phrase, ‘I got ‘em, I got the jewels’ repeating ceaselessly in his mind.
Sloater drove until exhaustion forced him to stop at midday in a roadside turnout where fell into a fitfully sleep in the back seat. By five o’clock, he was on the move again, and with stops only for gas and a couple of hamburgers, he drove straight through to Bangor, arriving at six o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, October twentieth.
Chapter 1.11
October 21, 1944
Abel had long ago fallen into the habit of dropping into work on the weekends. In the beginning, it was the perfect time to engage in search activities which might seem suspicious to the rest of the staff, but now it was more a matter of habit, and the once frenzied search had mellowed into a genuine interest in the history of Hospital Hill. Abel had become the recognized in-house authority on the hospital buildings and grounds, and he had even done some amateur excavation of the old Civil War garrison, retrieving a collection of rusted artillery gear and military artifacts.
On Saturday morning, when the duty operator stuck her head into his office to tell him he had a phone call, he was considering a plan to research and map the entire original army garrison.
“Hello.”
“Is this Mister Owens?”
“Yes.”
“Mister Owens, this is Agent Penn Sloater, Boston F.B.I… I don’t know if you remember me, but I was up there some years back investigating the death of Lester Edgewink, and you were mentioned as the contact person.”
Abel kept his voice even as he struggled to ignore the icy shaft in his stomach. “Yes, I remember. What can I do for you, Agent Sloater?”
“I’m going to be in Bangor on Monday, and I wondered if you could spare a few minutes. Just a little more follow up.”
“Yes, certainly,” Abel answered. “I, I’m not sure I can find the records…”
“Don’t go to any trouble,” Sloater interrupted. “I just need to look around a little, clear up a couple of small points. See you Monday morning.”
Abel sat holding the dead phone as a smiling Penn Sloater left the phone booth on Bangor’s main street and got back into his car. He drove to a residential neighborhood on the back side of Hospital Hill and left his car by a weedy vacant lot. He had been in town for eighteen hours, and had already scouted out a surveillance position in the woods next to the hospital and purchased a bag of sandwiches and soft drinks to see him through the long hours ahead.
As he settled into his hiding place, Sloater wondered if anyone was looking for him yet. He realized that somewhere in his mad dash to Bangor, he’d already made the decision not to go back. He unconsciously removed Lester’s knife from the sheath he had made and grimaced as he stroked it and imagined using it to pry the secret from Abel.
Abel spent most of the day deep in thought at his desk. He wrote a two page letter to Heidi, an explanation, a confession of his true identity, and tucked it in the front of his journal, just in case. The late afternoon sun lanced into his eyes when he finally left his office and wandered out to the hospital cemetery. He had no sense of Sloater’s covert observation as he stood for a while by Lester’s grave and then walked over and unlocked the mortuary. He strolled through the building as he had a thousand times before, finally going down into the cellar and through the long tunnel back to the hospital sub-cellar. He had long ago given up looking for Lester’s mark down here, but there was a soothing sense of ritual in his walk that brought him a measure of peace. As he once again left the hospital, this time for home, he squared his shoulders and smiled. He had no reason to fear Penn Sloater.
On Monday morning, Abel was standing outside the hospital’s main entrance when Sloater drove into the parking lot, but he barely recognized the rumpled figure that got out of the car and lurched forward to meet him. Abel remembered the agent as a clear-eyed, well-dressed man with a powerful, professional demeanor. The disheveled scarecrow that stood before him now was like a petty caricature, hatless and clad in a stained, wrinkled suit and muddy shoes. His skin was a sickly shade of gray except for his face which looked fevered and flushed. The only feature that reminded Abel of the agent he remembered were the eyes. They still burned with the intense, piercing gaze of a determined zealot.
Abel reached to clasp the offered hand. “Good morning, and welcome back,” he said politely, concealing his shock at Sloater’s appearance.
“Abel, isn’t it?” queried Sloater with an odd smile.
“Yes. What can we do for you, Agent Sloater?”
Sloater’s smile widened. “Well,” he said, “I need to speak to you in confidence. Is there some place we can talk privately?”
“Why don’t we take a walk out by the cemetery? We won’t be bothered there.”
Sloater’s breath came faster as he followed Abel around the hospital. He’s seen Abel go to the mortuary after his call the day before and his instincts told him he was near the end of his search. The two men walked to Lester’s grave by unspoken accord.
Sloater broke the silence. “It must be difficult to lose a brother.”
Abel turned to meet Sloater’s hot gaze. “It was,” he said evenly. “He was all I had.”
Sloater sighed. “Look,” he said, “all I’m interested are the jewels, ah, the return of the jewels. Turn them over now and you’ll never see me again.”
Abel looked into Sloater’s eyes and saw madness. “You’re not working for the F.B.I. anymore, are you?” he said quietly.
Spittle sprayed from Sloater’s lips. “They’re mine,” he growled abruptly in hushed intensity. “I’ve searched for seven years, seven years … my career, everything… gone. They’re mine!”
Abel thought furiously. Sloater would never believe that he didn’t have the loot and, now that he’d come this far, he’d never stop looking.
“I’ll show you what I’ve got,” he said with a dejected slump of his shoulders.
Turning on his heel and fumbling with his key ring, Abel walked slowly to the old mausoleum set into the hillside.
In the few steps between the grave and the mausoleum, Abel reverted from quiet office worker to the dispassionate killer he had been in the Pacific. He bent to unlock the tarnished brass padlock then, waiting until he judged Sloater was a couple paces behind him, rose into a swinging turn, a short-handled shovel in his hands. With the fully extended swing of a major league hitter, the flat side of the shovel caught Sloater just above the eyes, crushing the front of his skull and killing him instantly. He dropped straight down, legs twitching and eyelids fluttering briefly in response to the random impulses of a dying brain, and a small black automatic pistol fell from his hand. Abel pulled open the mausoleum door and quickly dragged the body inside. He stepped back outside and took a long look around to make sure he’d been unobserved and then scooped up the gun with the grim realization that he had done the only thing he could have to save his own life.
The eighteen-by-twenty foot mausoleum had been judged full when the twelfth coffin had been interred in 1926. Since then, it had sat unchanged, a forgotten item on an evolving bureaucratic agenda. Plain wooden coffins sat on blocks of concrete, perfectly preserved in the dry, musty air, in rows of three down each side with three perpendicular pairs in the middle. Years before, Abel had squeezed in to pry open each coffin in his search for Lester’s loot. Now, he lifted Sloater’s wasted body to the top of the first coffin in the right hand row and carefully searched it. He took sixty three dollars and some gas ration coupons from Sloater’s wallet and then shoved the wallet and its federal credentials back into an inside coat pocket. As he shifted the body, he felt a har
d object at the right hip and moved the coat back to reveal a World War One trench knife in a home-made leather sheath. Abel recognized the knife instantly and knew without looking that it would bear Lester’s mark. Sudden hot tears blurred his vision as he savagely ripped it off Sloater’s waist and thrust it into his own belt before abandoning his plan of hiding Sloater’s body in one of the coffins and brutally dragging and sliding the corpse over the coffins to the back of the chamber and wedging it down into the meager space between the last coffin and the wall.
Carrying Sloater’s gun and the knife under his coat, Abel relocked the mausoleum door and walked quickly to the parking lot. He looked casually around before jumping into Sloater’s car and driving off the hospital grounds. This was the most dangerous part of his hastily composed plan, but he saw no one he knew as he drove down Hospital Hill, through town and out into the countryside. He drove to a wooded lane that ran by the Penobscot River near the trolley line that tied Bangor to the smaller surrounding communities and backed the car as far as he could into the underbrush. He took a few moments to search the car and found two medium sized suitcases on the back seat. On was stuffed with a jumble of clothes, and Abel removed a light coat and necktie before closing the case. The other suitcase contained stacks of type-written reports and sheaves black and white photographs in file folders as well as several fat notebooks. Abel realized that he was looking at Sloater’s entire Edgewink gang case file. He set that suitcase aside and took the coat, tie and a hat he’d found on the front seat, to the bank of the river where he left them folded on the ground. Sloater’s car would be found a week later, the mystery of the missing F.B.I. agent’s apparent suicide causing only a brief stir in the community.
Past Due Page 4