Paskagankee

by Alan Leverone

  Unfortunately for Mr. Frank Cheslo, it appeared he had no sooner navigated through and around the tree in his banged-up car than he promptly ran out of gas, coasting to a stop. That explained why the Focus was parked almost, but not quite, on the shoulder of the road and at such a severe angle.

  Mike theorized the man had then jumped out the driver’s side door in the pouring rain and sprinted to his trunk, where he retrieved a duffle bag filled with emergency supplies, leaving his door open so he could make a quick dash back into the car. The duffel bag and its contents had been scattered all over Route 17 and included a heavy winter coat, hat, warm leather gloves and a liberal supply of food and water.

  Cheslo had taken the time to close the trunk, so whatever horror had befallen the man must have occurred during the few seconds between retrieving his supplies and returning to the front seat, a distance of only a few feet. Unless the killer had been traveling with Cheslo, a possibility which seemed absurdly unlikely given that there had now been two murders committed in the same grisly fashion in the past two days in Paskagankee, Mike now knew without a doubt a terrifyingly sadistic killer was operating in and around town.

  That thought made him aware of just how alone and isolated he was right now. Mike gazed into the inky blackness of the northern Maine night and felt a sense of security from the heft of his service pistol sitting on his hip. He had consistently ranked in the top ten percent on the practice range in Revere and was glad he had worked hard over the course of his career at maintaining his proficiency with his weapon.

  A set of headlights approached slowly and deliberately from the direction of town. Mike hoped it was Sharon returning with the coffee. He needed a shot of caffeine, not to mention the lift he got from looking at the pretty young officer he was now, he supposed, dating. The thought made him smile.

  A light green minivan roughly the color of the stuff Sharon had puked up a couple of hours earlier pulled to a stop a few feet from the Focus. The van’s driver doused the headlights and killed the engine, and then the gaunt figure of County Medical Examiner Jan Affeldt stepped out of the vehicle.

  Mike offered his hand when Affeldt approached and the obviously annoyed doctor looked at it with distaste before reluctantly shaking it. “Would you mind explaining to me why I have to keep coming out to the middle of nowhere to hold your hand when my work can best be done in the morgue?”

  Mike glared at Affeldt as his smoldering temper flared. “Listen to me, Doc” he said. “I’m exhausted, I’m cold, I’m hungry, and I’m tired of finding people in this town ripped apart like so many paper dolls. I’m sorry for making you leave the warmth and comfort of your office and taking you away from your tea and crumpets, but I need to talk to you, and I don’t have time to drive all the way over to the morgue and sit around waiting for you to find the time to see me. So here’s how we’re going to do this—you’re going to answer my questions and if I need to see you again, you’ll come to me again. Do we understand each other, doctor?”

  The man stood silently for a moment as his eyes bulged and his face flamed red and then asked, tightlipped, “What do you want to know?”

  “I assume you’ve completed your preliminary examination of Harvey Crosker’s remains?”

  “You mean his head? The tiny portion of his body you gave me to work with? I have.”

  “Well, what can you tell me? Was he killed by an animal?”

  “I can’t say for certain because I have not yet nailed down a specific cause of death for the victim. He may well have been dead before his head was removed; let’s hope so, at least. But I can tell you this much, his head was not torn from his body by an animal, and he doesn’t appear to have been decapitated in an accident, either.”

  “So another human being pulled the man’s head off his body?”

  The medical examiner grimaced. “That’s not exactly how I would phrase it, but it would appear so, yes.”

  “How did you reach that conclusion, doctor?”

  “Well, there was deep bruising in the area immediately surrounding the jawline.”

  Dr. Affeldt paused and Mike asked, “What does that signify?”

  The ME said, “The bruising is specific and clearly in the outline of human fingers. Not claws, not teeth, but fingers. Someone tore the man’s head off with his bare hands, Chief.”

  “How is that possible, doctor? Is there any technique you are aware of which would allow a human being to remove another person’s head from his shoulders by hand?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then what are you telling me?” Mike shook his head in frustration. “I’m not following you.”

  “I’m telling you the medical facts as I see them,” Affeldt answered curtly. “That’s what you asked me to do. It’s not my job to interpret them. Now, is there anything else you need from me? It’s cold out here and I have work to do.”

  Mike paused. He was dumbfounded and literally had no idea how to proceed. The information he had just received from Jan Affeldt was specific and straightforward; the ME had not hedged at all. You couldn’t ask for more than that in a homicide investigation. The only problem was it was also impossible.

  “No, that’s all I have right now,” Mike finally answered, shaking his head tiredly. “The remains of this victim will be transported to the morgue soon. It looks like we have a complete body this time, although it’s in a number of different pieces. I’d appreciate it if you could make this autopsy a top priority and get your conclusions to me as soon as possible.”

  “Of course,” the doctor replied and turned without another word, striding briskly back to his minivan. He started it up, executed a neat K-turn, and accelerated back toward Paskagankee.

  As the County Medical Examiner’s taillights disappeared into the distance, Sharon passed him in the Paskagankee Police SUV, returning from town with the hot coffee. She parked on the side of the road and exited the vehicle carrying two oversized Styrofoam cups, handing him one and looking at him with concern. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look terrible.”

  Mike smiled, gamely attempting a comeback. “Hey, thanks for the vote of confidence. I just need a caffeine pick-me-up, that’s all. My conversation with Dr. Affeldt, Penobscot County’s Mister Happy himself, didn’t clear much up. In fact, I have more unanswered questions now than I had before he blessed me with his presence.”

  “What did he say?” she asked, blowing away the steam rising off the top of her coffee cup and looking up at him over the plastic cover.

  Mike frowned and shook his head slowly. “It’s time to call in reinforcements.”

  22

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU want to get the Staties involved?” Sharon asked. “You know how it’s going to go if you do: they’ll take over your investigation and more than likely shut you out.” She was dressed in a short silk negligee, brushing her hair in front of the vanity mirror in her bedroom while Mike lay on top of the bedcovers, propped against her maple headboard on two pillows, watching her and having trouble concentrating on the conversation.

  “No,” he said, “I’m quite sure I don’t want to get them involved. That’s the last thing I want to do, precisely for the reason you just stated, but I also know I have no choice in the matter. A single murder is something I can investigate, but now that there’s concrete evidence we have some kind of serial killer psycho stalking Paskagankee, I’ve got to get help in here. We’re just not equipped to deal with something like this, and I’m afraid more people will die before we catch this guy, or this thing, or whatever the hell it is.”

  The pair had remained at the most recent murder site until the victim was bagged and transported south to the morgue just outside Orono. Once again they strung yellow “POLICE CRIME SCENE - DO NOT DISTURB” tape around the area where the body parts had been discovered. The wrecker Mike had called after he finished examining the disabled Ford Focus arrived thirty minutes after Dr. Affeldt drove away and in short order had winched the car onto the back of the flat
bed and begun transporting it to the State Crime Lab in Portland.

  By then it was nearly midnight and Mike and Sharon had been on the go nonstop for over sixteen hours. They fell into the Paskagankee Police Explorer and drove slowly toward Sharon’s house a few miles away. The road conditions had improved slightly due to the fact that no freezing rain had fallen for nearly twenty-four hours and the salt and sand trucks were able to cover all of the town’s roads at least once. A silence born of exhaustion and a touch of awkwardness permeated the vehicle, with each of its occupants lost in their own thoughts.

  “So,” Sharon started.

  “Yeah. So.”

  “What are your plans?”

  Mike pulled his hat off and ran his hands through his thick brown hair. “I’m going to call the State Police in the morning and get an investigative unit up here as soon as possible.”

  Sharon laughed, the sound filtering through Mike’s exhaustion and lifting his spirits. “Thanks for confiding your official police business to me, boss,” she said, mock-seriously, “but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about your more immediate plans. Are you coming back to my house tonight?”

  Mike chuckled. “And I’m supposed to be a trained investigator. I must be more tired than I realized. Well,” he said, “do you want me to?”

  “Are you crazy? Of course I want you to. Assuming you want to.”

  “Then that’s where we’re headed,” Mike told her. “Let’s just swing by my apartment first so I can grab some stuff. That way I don’t have to try to scrape my face with the razor you use on your legs, and you won’t have to sneak away in the middle of the night to wash my laundry.”

  “I’ve got news for you,” she laughed. “I didn’t have to sneak anywhere. You sleep so soundly a bomb could go off next to you and you’d never even know it.”

  They drove across town to Mike’s apartment building and within a few minutes he had packed a duffel bag not unlike the one found on the ground outside Frank Cheslo’s disabled Focus. Then they drove to the police station so Sharon could pick up her car.

  Now, back in Sharon’s warm house, Mike gazed at the young woman as she prepared for bed. He considered the unreality of the situation—investigating some kind of superhuman demon stalking this tiny town, murdering people in the most gruesome manner imaginable, while at the same time starting a relationship with this beautiful woman.

  But that’s not the whole story, is it? She’s not just a beautiful woman, she’s a beautiful member of your police force. A subordinate.

  Mike forced that thought to the back of his mind. He knew the time would come when he would have to confront the issue of dating a member of his own police force, but right now he just didn‘t have the energy to think about it. The two were providing each other something they both needed—for Mike, Sharon offered a valuable sense of normalcy that his life had been missing since the tragic shooting on that sweltering July night in Revere a year and a half ago, and for Sharon, he was an anchor, a way to resist the siren song of alcohol that returning to the town of her youth had reawakened.

  “How long do you plan on brushing that hair?” Mike asked. “It looks pretty damned good to me right now and so does everything else, for that matter.” Sharon smiled and placed the hairbrush down on the vanity table and turned out the light, padding softly to bed and sliding under the covers next to Mike.

  23

  THE LIGHTS INSIDE THE Paskagankee Police station seemed unnaturally bright to Mike after spending virtually all of the last forty-eight hours in the field, much of it in the dark of night or muted grey daylight under overcast skies. Few of the day shift officers had arrived yet, but Mike had come in early because he wanted a little time to organize his notes on the two murders.

  The State Police investigative team was due in Paskagankee by nine a.m. and would require a comprehensive briefing. The responsibility for conducting that briefing fell to Mike as chief of police, even though it was the last thing he wanted to be doing. Conducting a meeting when there was nuts-and-bolts investigating to be done seemed to Mike to be a waste of valuable time, but there was no way to avoid it, and the sooner the briefing was completed, the sooner he would be able to return to real police work.

  He kissed Sharon on the top of her head, buried deep inside a pile of pillows, before leaving her house for the drive to the station. Her shift was not due to begin until eight o’clock, and Mike knew she was exhausted, so he decided an extra hour’s worth of sleep would be something she might appreciate. Plus, if he was being completely honest with himself, he knew it would look better and result in fewer hassles—less questions and juvenile comments and knowing looks—if they came to work separately than if they arrived in the same vehicle for a second day in a row.

  Mike’s reluctance to call in an outside investigative team turned out to be irrelevant. He had received a call in the middle of the night on his department cell phone from the Maine attorney general advising him that a two-man serial murder task force would be arriving in the morning per specific orders from the governor, and that was that. Whether he had called for help or not, he was getting it.

  At ten minutes to eight, as the day shift filed in, most of the officers greeting each other in subdued voices rather than with the typically boisterous razzing that normally marked shift change, Sharon entered and flashed a dazzling smile on her way past his office. He winked at her and looked forward to seeing her after conducting the task force briefing. Mike still had a lot to do beforehand, however, and dived into the material, forcing himself to push aside the pleasant memories of last night.

  He had no sooner resumed working than a tall, willowy, red-haired woman barged into his office, somehow managing to bypass the front desk and giving his office door a single perfunctory knock before charging in like she belonged there. She looked vaguely familiar, but Mike couldn’t put his finger on where he had seen her. She stood before his desk with an expectant look on her face, saying nothing, until he finally asked, “May I help you, Ms. . .”

  “Melissa Manheim, Portland Journal.”

  Mike reluctantly stacked his notes into a neat pile and slid them to the far corner of his desk, rising and shaking the reporter’s hand. The one hour of uninterrupted prep time he was counting on before the arrival of the State Police investigative team had suddenly been shortened considerably, maybe even eliminated, depending upon how persistent this young woman turned out to be. Mike pegged her as maybe thirty years old, and she stood at his desk, staring in anticipation. Of what, he wasn’t sure.

  Finally he broke the silence. “I’m Mike McMahon. I’m the new—“

  “Yes, I know who you are,” she interrupted. “You’re the new Chief of the Paskagankee Police Department, taking over for the recently retired Chief Court. I must say,” she purred, her voice low and seductive, “this is definitely an upgrade. Chief Court was a fine man and a good administrator, but you are much easier on the eyes.”

  Mike blinked in amazement. Had he just heard what he thought he heard? He glanced involuntarily out the glass walls of his office to the bullpen, where the day shift officers were gathering, and saw Sharon watching, her eyebrows drawn together with a look on her face which Mike could not decipher. “Listen, Ms. Manheim, it’s nice to meet you and all, but—“

  Once again she interrupted him, a trait that seemed to be habitual and one that Mike decided would become tiring very quickly if he were to be around this woman for any length of time.

  “—But you’re very busy investigating these horrible murders in your town and you don’t have time for freedom of the press, is that it?” she asked with the smug look of a woman used to bulldozing people into giving her what she wanted. “You’ve heard of the First Amendment, I presume, Chief?”

  Mike wondered through his growing impatience where the leak to the press had originated. Was it someone in his department, or perhaps Dr. Affeldt’s office? Right now, of course, the source was irrelevant, but Mike knew he would have to find it an
d seal it at some point.

  “Ms. Manheim,” he finally responded. “When we have anything to report we will be more than happy to announce it at a press conference, which you or a representative of your newspaper will of course be welcome to attend. Until that point, I have to tell you I don’t appreciate my workspace being invaded, and I don’t appreciate your sneaking past my front desk clerk.”

  “Well,” she said indignantly, “Chief Court and I had an understanding, and I expect—“

  Now it was Mike’s turn to interrupt the reporter. He had to admit it felt good. He raised one hand to stop her tirade and said, “I understand the First Amendment and freedom of the press much better than you probably realize, but you need to understand something, too. Whatever agreement you made with Chief Court regarding information to be funneled to your newspaper, or giving you unfettered access to this office, or about anything else for that matter, is hereby officially and unequivocally revoked. If you want to talk to me about the situation unfolding here in Paskagankee or about anything at all, I expect you to make an appointment beforehand. The next time you barge into my office unannounced, you will be arrested and escorted immediately to a holding cell where you will be charged with disturbing the peace. Am I making myself clear, Ms. Manheim?”

  “Crystal,” she responded, a frosty look transforming her appearance from one of almost carnal anticipation to icy, barely controlled rage. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” she continued, “and I have developed quite a robust following among the population of this region. Believe me when I tell you it would be a mistake to make an enemy of me.”

  Mike picked up his stack of notes and began riffling through them. “Thank you for the warning. If you’ve finished threatening me, I have quite a lot of work to do.” He looked from Melissa Manheim to his office door and let his gaze linger on it until she finally took the not-so-subtle hint and marched through it, pulling it closed behind her authoritatively in what was almost but not quite a slam. She wound her way through the bullpen staring resolutely forward, looking at no one, until exiting the building and disappearing.