Abel trotted a mile to the nearest trolley stop, and walked back into his office an hour later, having stopped to hide Sloater’s suitcase under the woodpile at his house.
Abel would continue to search for Lester’s loot for the rest of his life. He and Heidi became well respected members of the hospital community, and in 1958, they welcomed their son, Arthur as the newest member of the Bangor State Hospital maintenance staff. On a crisp January morning in 1969, Abel died peacefully at his desk, leaving a meager army pension and an old battered cardboard suitcase containing his journal, Lester’s note, several folders of old notes and photos and a deadly World War One trench knife in a homemade sheath. Although Heidi never knew Abel’s secret, Arthur had been privy to the Edgewink lore since his early teens, and he understood that the family torch had been passed to him. He would search in vain for his entire career, before attempting to settle the mantle of responsibility on his own son’s shoulders.
Bill Owens was intrigued by the family legend, but his sights were set much higher than a job at the State Hospital, and although he guarded the suitcase and Abel’s legacy and even did some halfhearted research on the gang’s history, he did no real searching, and by the time he passed the family secret on to his son, Albert, it had been relegated to the status of a quaint family myth –A myth that died with Albert in the foreign inferno of Afghanistan in 2009.
Book Two
The year was ‘37
when the Edgewink gang came through.
Aemon and Mike in a ‘29 Ford
with Lester leading the crew.
Strutting and bold as they surveyed the town
they’d left the big city behind.
Flushed with success and to Hell with the rest
only payoff and ease on their mind.
But the town in Maine where they landed
was not the best place to hide.
It was, in fact, their worst mistake
…and the place where they all died.
Except that Fate had other plans
for the outcome of that day.
Not all of the gang was killed, you see
and now the town must pay…
PP
Chapter 2.1
4 June 2014
Bill Owens watched the young couple saunter across the park. He had insisted on a public setting when he had finally agreed to the unknown caller’s repeated demands for a face to face meeting, and had gone to the trouble of having his partner, Rupert Jones watching the meeting from concealment. In the first call, a week ago, the caller had simple asked that Bill meet him to discuss a matter of ‘mutual concern’. Bill hung up and ignored the call back. Last night, the caller, had been devastating in his directness. ‘I know about your grandfather and the jewels. Meet me tomorrow or the whole world will know.’
The couple approaching his bench looked to be in their late twenties, the neatly dressed man tall, slim and red headed, and the woman an athletic-looking bottle blond wearing shorts and a thin spaghetti-strap top.
“Hi, Mr. Owens.” The man held out his hand, smiling. “I’m Colin Murch. Thanks for meeting me.”
Ignoring the hand, Owens reached for control. “To hell with that. What do you want?” he said, lumbering to his feet. He stood tall to emphasize his six foot, 220 pound frame, eyes hard, fists balled at his side.
Murch’s smile faded. “I want to help you find what you’ve been looking for,” he said, holding out a cloth-bound book, “and here’s the proof that I can. Your son, Albert gave me this.”
Owens recognized his grandfather’s journal and grabbed for it, bristling. “I know who you are. You stole this from him.”
Murch pulled the journal back and shrugged. “We talked. He told me the story and I ended up with it. The point is, I know a lot more of the story, and between the two of us, we can find it. You know you’ll never do it on your own, but we can do it together. A simple partnership, fifty-fifty, and no one has to know your grandfather was a murderer.”
“You threaten me and then expect me to trust you?”
Murch held up his hands. “Look,” he said earnestly, “we both need to trust each other here. Once we find it, we both lose if word gets out. We find it, split it down the middle, and then we move on and you never see us again.”
Owens stalled. “Who the hell are you people? What do you do?” he blustered.
“I’m a reporter for the News, and I do volunteer press work and historical research for the State Hospital. This is my friend Wanda. She works at the hospital, but the deal is with me. I’ve been researching this for years, and I’m close.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Albert told me you had something else, more information. Let me see it. The answer’s got to be there.”
Owens hesitated. As much as his pride demanded he walk away, what the man was saying made sense. “I’ve got to think about it,” he said. “Where can I get hold of you?”
Murch studied the older man. “Uh, uh,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess I can wait ‘til tomorrow, but I’ll call you.” He turned away. “Just remember, one way or the other, I’m in this.”
When Murch and the woman were gone, Bill sat unmoving until his friend and business partner, Rupert Jones joined him on the bench. “I’ve seen him around,” Jones said. “Reporter for the News, I think. What’d he say?”
Jones was the only person Owens had ever shared any part of his family’s secret with. “He knows the story. He’s the one that stole the journal and stuff from Albert, used to be his roommate at college. He wants to partner up with me, fifty-fifty split, says he’s been working on it for years.”
“You going to do it?”
“I don’t know.”
Bill Owens went home to spend a sleepless night, balancing the pride and arrogance that demanded he keep his secret against the certainty that it would die with him if he did. When the phone call came in the morning, he put Murch off, and did the same the next day, but in the end he reluctantly agreed to a partnership that tasted of failure. On the third day, he met Colin Murch in the park again and gave him the last secret, the old letter written by his grandfather.
Colin Murch glanced over his shoulder as he walked through the Bangor State Hospital cemetery. Murch knew from Abel’s journal that he had killed Sloater and faked the agent’s suicide, but in the letter, which Able had written to his wife Heidi, apparently intending it as a private confession in case he lost the fight he knew was coming, Murch found the details that had eluded him. The faded handwriting outlined Abel’s plan to lure the agent into the hospital crypt for the final showdown, and spoke of it as an ideal place to hide the body.
Murch had considered digging up Lester Edgewink’s grave in his search for the gang’s hidden loot but had ignored the old crypt as a hiding place because Abel had recorded his unsuccessful search of years earlier. The crypt had been unused, and apparently forgotten, since the mid 1920’s, and was so overgrown as to be virtually invisible in the unkempt hillside beyond the old mortuary building. Murch knew that there had once been a second bunker, located some yards to the right of the crypt, but springtime runoff, perhaps an underground spring, had long ago found its way between ill-fitted stonework and that bunker had been reduced to an overgrown scar in the hillside.
In his volunteer historical research for the hospital, Murch had been searching for a rumored Civil War era underground railroad stop on the hospital grounds he had found referenced in local historical archives, so no one would think it strange if he were seen poking around the crypt, but he was still nervous about witnesses.
The hillside was a wild thicket of juniper and alders which had migrated down the sides and across the stone front of the crypt. With one last furtive look over his shoulder, Murch forced his way into the undergrowth until he could go no further, and then began cutting branches with the small handsaw he had brought. By the time he had fought his way in to the face of the crypt, he was winded and drenched with sweat.
Murch had also brought a small pair of bolt cutters, but the tarnished brass lock proved to be the least of his problems. The heavy, iron-banded wooden door fit closely into its iron frame, held fast by an intertwined matt of roots and vines, and time and rust had welded the hinges into stubborn immobility.
After ten minutes of fruitless effort, Murch retraced his steps out of the thicket and made his way into the old mortuary where he found a square, short-bladed shovel in the cellar. He went back to the crypt and slashed through the vegetation, finally using the shovel to pry the door open.
As the door squealed back against the rusty hinges, a dry, musty odor enveloped Murch, reminding him of cinnamon and old people. He pulled the door as wide as he could to let in light and stepped down into the shadowy chamber. A dozen plain wooden coffins sitting up on blocks filled most of the space, and a heavy layer of dust made the interior a monotone gray.
Murch knew that Able had opened the coffins in his search for the jewels, but he could see no signs of tampering as he squeezed between two rows towards the back of the room. As he got past the second coffin in the row, Murch pulled a flashlight from his pocket and aimed it at a dimly seen jumble of off-white sticks on the floor against the rear wall. A few steps closer, and the desiccated body of Penn Sloater revealed itself in the eerie shadows, lying on its right side with arms outstretched, the head oddly misshapen.
Murch shouldered the last coffin aside and knelt beside the body. The dry air of the crypt had mummified much of Sloater’s remains although dry rot and insects had reduced his clothing to tattered scraps. Yellowed bone and patches of leathery skin showed through the tattered fabric of an old fashioned suit. Murch spotted a piece of dark leather among the rags and picked up a wallet which opened to reveal Sloater’s FBI credentials, but nothing else of interest.
Murch tossed the old wallet back on the body as he stood and looked around the crypt. It was built of rough, but closely fitted, granite blocks with an arched granite ceiling and a dusty stone floor. At some point, the interior surfaces had been whitewashed, presumably to lend some sophistication to the simple construction, and heavy fabric drapes had been hung to cover the rough walls.
Following a formless instinct, Murch squeezed along the back wall to the rear left corner of the room. At his first touch, the fabric covering the back half of the side wall collapsed almost soundlessly to the floor in a cloud of musty dust as fine as smoke and Murch, coughing in the foggy cloud, was somehow not surprised to see the barely visible outline of a wooden plank door set flush into the wall. It had been cleverly painted over to blend into the rough rock wall.
The door was too stout to break or pry, and the large iron plate spoke of a serious lock so, after a moment’s thought, Murch left the crypt and went back to the mortuary cellar.
The hospital mortuary was housed in a large brick building that was once the main armory of the Civil War era light artillery company. Although autopsies were no longer conducted there, the ground floor still contained a fully equipped autopsy room, a morgue and laboratory, a small chapel area and several small rooms filled with the detritus of bygone times. Furniture and equipment huddled under ghost-like sheets, and a faint odor of decay lay heavy on the air. The gloomy cellar was filled with ancient woodworking and grounds-keeping tools, now only used as dead storage for the hospital maintenance department. For Murch, the mortuary building embodied the fascinating history of hospital hill more than any other place, and he had come to enjoy its air of age and solitude.
This time, however, Murch strode through the empty building and down into the cellar without his usual appreciation of history. He followed his flashlight beam to the wall adjacent to the crypt and began his search. He judged about where the tunnel should be, and after moving a stack of old lumber and a couple of wheelbarrows, he spotted a bookshelf-like tool rack standing tall against the wall. It seemed to move slightly at his touch, and a determined pull swung it away from the wall on hidden casters, revealing the door behind. Unlike the door on the other end of the tunnel, this one opened with a push, and Murch peered into the brick tunnel that lay behind. It appeared to be about thirty feet long, and led straight to a set of three wooden steps that climbed to the door at the other end… and it was empty.
Chapter 2.2
Eyes wide, cresting a wave of adrenalin-fueled exhilaration, the intruder crept quietly down the eerie hallway. Moonlight flickered through the fancy skylights, stroboscopic flashes through low clouds scudding before the gusting early summer wind, surreal shadows twisting and leaping…
Bill Owens felt the skin tighten on the back of his neck as he scrambled to sit up in bed. He stared vainly into the ebony darkness of his bedroom, the noise that had roused him a thundering echo in his memory, even louder than the pulse that roared in his ears.
Bill was alone in his two story cape style house, not by choice, but because Janice, his wife of 12 years, had left their childless marriage two weeks previously, presumably in search of greener pastures. Always a light sleeper, and still not used to sleeping alone, a small corner of his brain cursed his habit of keeping his bedroom dark as possible as he fought off panic, hoping against hope that Janice was back...
The noise came again, softer than the memory, a hollow thud just outside his closed bedroom door followed by a click as the unlocked door began to swing open. Legs flailing, Bill struggled to kick off the clinging sheet, moaning in terror as the door swung slowly to the wall. The pale gray doorway framed a still, dark silhouette which was suddenly washed in silvery moonlight. Bill pawed sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes and strained to recognize the shadowy figure. Then he began to relax.
“You!” he said sharply, terror fading through confusion, giving way to anger. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Finally free of the sheet Bill, swung his feet onto the floor and then stood quickly to face the shadowy figure just now stepping forward from the doorway. “You can't just come...” He stopped abruptly at the bright, exquisite bloom of pain in his chest, and his heart embraced the blade that stilled it as the final darkness descended.
Detective Lieutenant Thomas Clipper stopped in the doorway and surveyed the scene. The body of a beefy, middle aged man was sprawled on its back on the disheveled queen-sized bed, feet hanging to the floor. Clad only in a pair of jockey shorts, the body showed a tiny drop of blood around a small wound in the left center of the pale chest and the purple lividity in the back, legs and feet that affirmed that the body had not been moved since death.
“What have we got,” he said to the uniformed officer stood in the middle of the room, notebook in hand.
“William Owens,” the officer responded, nodding towards the body. Apparently alone in the house, found by a Mr. Rupert Jones, his business partner, who’d stopped by to give him a ride to work. Call came in at 0745. House is clear, and Jones is waiting downstairs with Carter.”
Clipper surveyed the room, taking in an ornate dressing table and some other feminine aspects. “Wife?” he asked economically, stepping carefully into the room to bend over the bed.
“According to Jones, they’ve been separated for a couple of weeks and she’s staying with her mother over at 138 Elm.”
Straightening, Clipper pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “This is Clip.” he said to the Police dispatcher who answered. “I’m going to need the crime scene guys and an M.E. here. Give me a registration and criminal records check on William Owens of this address and put me through to the division.”
As he waited, Clipper surveyed the room with the practiced eye of an experience police investigator. At age thirty-two, he was the commanding officer of Bangor’s seven member Criminal Investigation Division. He carried 190 pounds on a 6 muscular foot frame with the easy grace of native good-health and periodic, if grudging, exercise. Close cropped brown hair over warm hazel eyes set in a normally cheerful face hid the layer of steel that those who knew him well had come to respect.
Clipper had been alerted
to the reported homicide by the dispatcher just as he was leaving home. A lifelong bachelor, Clipper lived in a small nineteenth century house situated on five wooded acres on the northern edge of Bangor. A sprawling deck, opening off the den and hidden from view in the rear of the house, and a modern kitchen were the only changes Clipper had made to the house’s vintage appearance. Over the years, he had painstakingly restored the old house until its gleaming hard pine floors, mellow natural woodwork and muted blue and grey paint scheme came together as his refuge from the world.
After a short delay, his sergeant, John Peters came on the line. Peters was a no-nonsense veteran officer who’s five foot eight, 200 pound hirsute frame resembled a dark, shaggy fire hydrant and whose unflagging, goal-driven investigative style was the perfect counterpoint to Clipper’s more understated analytical approach. He owned a single charcoal gray suit for court appearances and funerals, two ties and more than two dozen muted plaid shirts which he usually wore with jeans and engineer boots. Nobody could remember the last time he had appeared in a police uniform, although his wife claimed to have a picture of him in one as a young patrolman.
“What ‘cha got boss?”
“We got one dead from a stab wound, John. Sometime last night,” Clipper said. “Why don’t you take one of the guys and try to run down a Mrs. William Owens. She’s the wife of the victim, but they’re separated and she’s staying at 138 Elm Street with her mother. Dispatch will have a vehicle reg. If you get her, take her to the station and give me a call. Also send whoever’s free out here to start the door to door. We’re at 235 Broadway.”
With his team deployed, Clipper went down to the first floor and found officer Carter sitting in the living room with a small, pasty-faced man dressed neatly in slacks and a sports coat. He sent the uniformed officer to begin a crime scene entrance log at the front door and turned to Jones.
Past Due Page 5