Blood Knot: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mysteries Book 3)

by S. W. Hubbard

  Chapter 1

  Irene Delafield was dead and Frank Bennett was glad.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d been happy to hear of someone’s passing. When Ronald Beemis, serial child molester, had been shanked in the exercise yard of the Missouri state prison, Frank couldn't help but feel that the world was a better place. And when Osvaldo Merguez and Tyrone “Teeko” Mills had taken each other down in a blaze of semiautomatic gunfire over contested drug turf in Kansas City, Frank had joined his fellow cops in a genial celebration at their local bar.

  Irene Delafield didn’t have a rap sheet–she was the organist at the Presbyterian Church in Trout Run, New York—but what she did to the fine old melodies in the Presbyterian Hymnbook was positively criminal. Under Irene’s inept fingers, “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” became a dirge. She was so flummoxed by the syncopations of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” that she lost the entire congregation before the first verse ended and left each person valiantly singing whatever he thought best. As the widower of a very fine church musician, Frank couldn’t bear to listen to Irene play. When he occasionally got in a churchgoing mood, he headed down to the Congregational Church in Keene Valley, where the organist put on a creditable show. Frank’s flagrant disloyalty did not go unremarked in his adopted hometown. He was, after all, the police chief of Trout Run and should set an example.

  So he had chosen the first Sunday in November, All Saints’ Day, to rejoin the fold now that a heart attack had taken Irene off the organ bench for good. And it hadn’t been bad. The service had ended with a rousing rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” that made sitting through Pastor Bob Rush’s meandering sermon worthwhile.

  He was still humming under his breath when Reid Burlingame and Ardyth Munger cornered him during fellowship hour.

  “Good to see you here, Frank,” Reid said. As chairman of the town council, Reid was his boss, so Frank was glad his attendance had been duly noted. “What did you think of today’s music?”

  Frank swallowed the last morsel of his crumb cake. "Terrific. Stepping outside the hymnal with that last number, no?”

  “Matthew wanted to play it, and Bob said it was okay,” Ardyth explained.

  “Matthew?”

  “Matthew Portman. That was him playing the piano during the service.”

  “Ah, that Matthew.” Matthew Portman was only fourteen years old when he had filled in on piano last year while Irene visited her sister in Toledo, and church at­tendance had risen dramatically. After that, Pastor Bob had thoughtfully encouraged Irene to take more vacations, but she had clung to her organ bench with barnacle-like tenacity, and Matthew hadn’t gotten another shot.

  “Did you see this?” Ardyth tapped the back page of her bulletin, which proclaimed in boldface print: Hymn Sing and Pie Social, Saturday, November 14. “It’s a fund-raiser so we can send Matthew for organ lessons.”

  Reid beamed. “We’ve had a real stroke of luck. Oliver Greffe, the music teacher at the North Country Academy, is quite an accomplished organist. He’s agreed to instruct Matthew. It’s another example of the good things that school is doing for our town now that it’s under new management.”

  Frank braced himself for another one of Reid’s rah-rah speeches. He’d hardly had a conversation with the man lately that didn’t revolve around what a boon to the local economy the new North Country Academy was proving to be. The academy used to be a third-rate boarding school catering to kids who couldn’t get into—or had been kicked out of—better institutions. But its remote location and indifferent academic reputation had finally driven it out of existence at the end of the last school year. Trout Run greeted the news with a big yawn—although technically within the town limits, the school had never seemed like part of the community. Only one person from Trout Run taught there, and all the local kids went to Trout Run Elementary, then on to High Peaks High School.

  Then, at the end of the summer, a man named MacArthur Payne had bought the North Country Academy and the place had been reborn as what Reid liked to call a “therapeutic school.” Frank, who hadn’t mastered political correctness, referred to it as “that high-priced private reform school.”

  “So Matthew’s going to the North Country Academy for organ lessons, huh,” he said. "What’ll they do if he doesn’t practice—lock him up?”

  Reid glared at him. “Frank, that’s a very unfair remark. You—”

  "Joking, I was joking!” Geez, Reid had really lost his sense of humor over this place.

  “The lessons will be here in the church, where the organ is,” Reid explained. “Plus, Matthew will be able to walk here.”

  “His father won’t help out at all,” Ardyth interjected. “He wasn’t going to let Matthew take the lessons until Pastor Bob went and spoke to him. Those poor kids are really struggling without their mom.”

  Ardyth had a tendency to dwell on misfortune, while Reid was a determined optimist. “That’s why the organ lessons are such a godsend. And, have you heard about the latest two people to get good jobs at the academy? Lorrie Betz and Ray Stulke.”

  Frank’s hand hung suspended over the Danish tray. Lorrie had crammed more heartache into thirty years of living than most people manage in a lifetime. And Ray was Trout Run’s foremost blockhead. "What in the world are those two qualified to do at a school? Cleaning?”

  “Oh, no. They’re going to be Pathfinders.”

  “The only path Ray can find is from his barstool to the john. What kind of position is a Pathfinder?”

  “Fine for you to be so cavalier, Frank," Reid said. "You have a good, secure job. Most people in this town aren’t so lucky. We’re losing our young people because there are no opportunities for them here. And with Clyde being so sick, we can’t count on Stevenson’s Lumberyard to continue as our prime employer.”

  Reid straightened the lapels of his tweed sports coat. “This town needs to diversify. If MacArthur Payne makes a success of this school, it will be a source of good steady work with benefits for years to come. Steady work keeps people out of trouble. You should appreciate that.”

  Ardyth studied her shoes as if she’d never seen patent leather before. The thump of the big coffee urn being hauled away broke the uncomfortable silence, and Frank grabbed the opportunity to leave as Ardyth began helping with the cleanup.

  He trudged across the green toward his truck, trying to shake off the sting of Reid’s words. Last night's jack- o’-lanterns mocked him, their cheerful gap-toothed grins now transformed into grotesque snarls by the gnawing of hungry squirrels.

  Unspoken in Reid’s tirade was the fact that Frank was an outsider who'd taken the position of police chief away from a local. True, the job didn’t pay well enough for a man to support a family. For twenty years his predecessor had combined the police chief’s job with furniture refinishing to make ends meet.

  Herv’s retirement had touched off a great debate: increase the pay of the chief’s position and induce a local man to train for the job at the police academy, or abolish it altogether and turn Trout Run’s law enforcement over to the state police. In the middle of the fray, Frank had washed up on the town’s doorstep: a man with twenty years’ experience marred by one big mistake that had forced his resignation, willing to work cheap because he had a decent pension from the Kansas City force. His hiring had been an uneasy compromise, and Frank knew, even though Reid would never be so crass as to remind him, that he had cast the deciding vote in Frank's favor.

  Now with a few unguarded wisecracks about the North
Country Academy, he’d given Reid the impression that he didn’t care about the fortunes of other people in town as long as his own bread was buttered.

  Frank looked up at the towering peak of Mount Marcy in the distance, and the smaller mountains that tumbled toward the town, shutting out the problems of the wider world. If he knew what was good for him, he'd start showing some enthusiasm for the North Country Academy. But really, how excited could he get about a school that imported scores of juvenile delinquents into his jurisdiction?

  Chapter 2

  Frank jolted awake from a deep and dreamless sleep. The surge of adrenaline produced by the sound of a phone ringing in the middle of the night brought him to instant alertness.

  “Bennett,” he answered, and as he listened his eyes registered the time on his bedside clock: 4:55 a.m., only an hour before dawn on Friday.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said, already on his feet and reaching for his uniform. A bear had attacked some campers on Corkscrew Mountain. The Trout Run volunteer ambulance squad was en route. The local environmental conservation officer had been notified and the state police were on their way, but Frank could be at the scene faster.

  As he walked out to his truck, the frost-covered grass crunched under his feet. So far they'd had only a few light flurries of snow in the valleys, although the peaks of Whiteface and Marcy were already cloaked in white. The days had been pleasant, but the nights were damn cold. He couldn’t see the joy of sleeping on the ground in a tent in this weather.

  The campers who’d been attacked were from the North Country Academy. Frank wondered if anyone at the school knew the proper procedures for bear-proof storage of food on a campout. There were plenty of sightings of black bears in the Adirondacks by hikers and campers, but the bears were generally shy of people and went on their way if you backed away slowly and made some loud noise. The only thing that upset the relationship was food.

  Last summer, some moron had been cuffed when he offered a bear a granola bar so he could take its picture. The man hadn’t realized a bear that enjoys one granola bar is going to want another and might get a little testy when it’s not forthcoming. Now it seemed North Country Academy students were learning what happened when food was left lying around a campsite. You couldn’t blame bears for acting like bears. Usually they took the food and left, but Rollie Fister, who’d called Frank, said at least one camper had been seriously injured on Corkscrew.

  He made it to the trailhead in less than twenty minutes. The ambulance was there, and so was a Department of Environmental Conservation Jeep, both empty. The horizon was beginning to lighten to gray, but Frank needed his flashlight to make his way up the dark and rocky trail. Within minutes he heard voices ahead of him.

  “All right, there’s a big step down here—keep him level.” Roger Einhorn, head of the rescue squad, called out instructions to Orrin Snyder as they carried a stretcher down the steep path, while Rusty Magill, the conservation officer, walked ahead, illuminating the way. A pack of teenagers tramped along silently behind them.

  “What do we have, Rusty?” Frank asked.

  “Tent invasion. The bear attacked the teacher who was leading the camping trip. One of the kids came down for help, but it’s been more than two hours. He’s lost a lot of blood—it doesn’t look good.”

  Roger, built like a lumberjack, plowed steadily down the trail, but Orrin seemed to be struggling to keep up.

  “Let me give you a break, Orrin,” Frank offered. As soon as he picked up the handles of the stretcher, he felt his legs tremble—not from the weight, but from the shock of seeing the man he carried. His face was a bloody mass; one ear seemed to be completely tom off. Blood continued to soak through the bandages Roger had wrapped around his neck.

  “Jesus, I’ve never known a bear to attack like that!”

  “Neither have I,” said Rusty. “So far as I know, there’s never been a serious mauling incident in the High Peaks. Most of our calls on bears are simply nuisance reports.”

  Orrin said, “His down sleeping bag protected his body some, but it trapped him, too. He couldn’t get away.”

  “What finally stopped the attack?”

  “The noise woke the kids. One of them threw a rock at the bear, and it ran off.“

  Frank glanced over his shoulder, “Are all the kids accounted for?”

  “Yep, we did a head count before we started down. The only one not here is the one who called it in. He hiked out and over to Rollie Fister’s house. Rollie called us—said the kid was just shook up, and he would take him back to school.”

  A branch snapped; some beechnuts rained down on the trail. One of the girls shrieked.

  "The bear’s back. He’s following us!”

  Rusty shone his flashlight into the forest to the left of the trail. An animal crashed through the underbrush, toward them or away from them, Frank couldn't tell.

  Before Frank could set the stretcher down and reach for his service revolver, Rusty had his rifle up on his shoulder. The action threw the teenagers into turmoil. The girl who had first screamed leapt onto the taller boy’s back, practically knocking him over. She clearly meant to keep him between herself and whatever creature was out in those woods.

  "Jesus, Heather—get off me!” He shook himself free, and Heather landed on her backside. The two boys grabbed the other girl and bolted down the trail.

  “Don’t run!” Rusty warned, but the kids didn't stop. Rusty cocked his head, listening intently despite all the commotion around him. “That wasn’t a bear,” he an­nounced. “Probably just a raccoon.”

  Frank helped the girl up. The baseball cap she’d been wearing had fallen onto the trail, and Frank saw that only a faint stubble of fair hair covered her head. Was the poor kid a cancer victim? What kind of parent would ship a sick teenager off to boarding school?

  She snatched the cap up from the ground. “What’re you looking at?”

  Before he could respond, she trotted ahead to catch up with the other kids, who were running full tilt now that they realized how close they were to the end of the trail.

  Frank, Orrin, and Roger were the last to step out into the trailhead parking area. The sun was up, the state police had arrived, and so had MacArthur Payne.

  Frank saw the headmaster engaged in a finger-wagging, brow-furrowing dialogue with State Trooper Pauline Phelps. Payne had a buzz cut that revealed every bump on his bullet-shaped head, and a beaky nose, flattened at the tip, as if he’d crashed into a brick wall in his formative years. About as tall as Frank, he was a good thirty pounds of muscle heavier.

  The rational part of Frank’s mind told him to steer clear of the obviously angry Payne. Orrin and Roger had the victim loaded into the ambulance; the kids were accounted for. A bacon and eggs breakfast called to him from Malone’s. But the part of him that always needed to be on top of things, always needed to be in control, drew him magnetically into the discussion.

  "You absolutely cannot go up there, Mr. Payne,” Pauline was telling the headmaster as Frank approached.

  “Doctor,” Payne corrected. “My students have left their personal belongings at the campsite. Two of my employees need to go and retrieve them.”

  “Trooper Phelps is correct. It’s not safe. There’s a rogue bear roaming this mountain." By this time, Rusty had joined the debate as well.

  Frank watched Payne’s lips purse in annoyance at Rusty’s words. But he must have pegged Pauline as the more formidable obstacle, because he continued to direct his arguments to her. “With all the commotion made bringing Jake and the kids out, that bear has gone to ground,” Payne said. “He won’t bother my men.”

  “You can’t be sure of that, Dr. Payne,” Pauline answered with exaggerated deference.

  “My men are experienced hunters—they’ll take a rifle with them.”

  “No!” Rusty, normally so soft-spoken, practically jumped into the air. “The Department of Environmental Conservation will capture that bear. No one else is going near it. We ha
ve to determine what caused it to attack. It may be rabid.”

  Frank stepped into the fray. “Mr. Payne, there's no need to worry about the kids’ camping gear. The conservation officers will collect it and bring it down. You'll have it by the end of the day.”

  “Not soon enough,” Payne barked.

  The quizzical look on Frank’s face mirrored Rusty’s and Pauline's. What possible urgent need could the students have for their camping gear? Those poor kids were never going to want to camp out again after what happened this morning.

  "It's not the camping gear I’m concerned about,” Payne explained. “Each student keeps a journal. Writing in it is a daily requirement. Most of them left their journals behind in their backpacks. They need them back immediately.”

  “Oh, a diary-writing emergency. Now I understand,” Pauline said.

  Frank fought a smile and took on the good-cop role. “Listen, Dr. Payne—we’re all a little worked up over this incident. There hasn't been a life-threatening bear attack around here in years. Let Rusty and the DEC crew do their jobs, and I'll make it my business to get those journals back to you by midday. All right?”

  Payne glowered at them all. “You don't seem to appreciate that you are keeping me from doing my job. These. Children. Must. Follow. A. Routine.” He punctuated each word with a thump of one fist in the other palm. “It's essential to their recovery. Let them skip the routine once—just once—and everything you’ve worked for is lost.”

  Pauline spread her legs and folded her arms across her chest. “You are not—”

  Frank interrupted, using his most reasonable tone. "Surely the kids can do today’s writing on a separate sheet of paper and put it into the journal later. Wouldn’t that work?”

  Payne had the look of a chess master who’d been checked by a rank amateur. “Highly unsatisfactory." He pivoted, his shiny dress shoes grinding against the stony dirt of the parking area. “I will expect you to keep your commitment to deliver all my students’ possessions by midday,” he called back as he marched toward a van where the students sat waiting for him.