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

by S. W. Hubbard

  It only took a few minutes to load the gear into Frank’s trunk and send Rusty on his way. Frank surveyed the jumble of backpacks and bedrolls. An unzipped pack on the top of the pile revealed the corner of a spiral-bound notebook. Frank knew he shouldn’t, but temptation got the better of him. With the deserted office behind him and the open trunk shielding him from view from the street, he pulled out the notebook, opened it at random, and began to read:

  October 28

  I woke up feeling strong today. I am sure I can attain Level Two soon if I continue on this path. Today’s goals are: replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, complete all assignments in a timely manner, follow all directions given by Pathfinders.

  So much for worrying that he was intruding on the most personal musings of a troubled teenager. Frank flipped to another page.

  November 3

  Today will be a better day than yesterday. Although I encountered some setbacks in my quest to attain a Level Two because of my inappropriate display of emotion with Christa, I understand and accept the disciplinary action imposed by Pathfinder Steve.

  Very interesting. Frank wondered what the “inappropriate display of emotion” was. Had Christa and the writer been caught in the sack together, or had they merely called each other names? And what was “the disciplinary action imposed by Pathfinder Steve"? Frank read on, but each subsequent entry read like the first, with repeated mentions of the writer’s desire to obtain the elusive Level Two. The whole tone of the thing reminded him of a news report during Chairman Mao’s reign.

  Frank replaced the notebook and searched for another to read. The cover of this one said it belonged to Heather LeBron, the girl with no hair. More of the same: the positive thinking, the goals, the reiteration of the commitment to following the Pathfinders. Frank closed it after scanning two pages. Hard to believe that all a kid’s progress in school would unravel if she didn’t write this drivel for a day.

  Frank got into the town patrol car and drove north. The hamlet of Trout Run extended for only two blocks from the central green in any direction, but the town limits stretched in a roughly ten-mile radius. It took Frank about five minutes to arrive at the junction of Route 12 and High Meadow Lane, a sparsely traveled road that ran past the academy. He’d only gone a quarter of a mile down it when he noticed a sign: caution, don’t pick up hitchhikers, students not permitted to leave grounds. He slowed to look at it more closely. Made of metal, it reminded him of the kind of sign used on interstates when they ran close to prisons. He drove on and encountered two more of the signs before he came to the North Country Academy, where he was stopped by locked gates.

  This was new—he didn’t recall the gates ever being locked under the previous administration. He rolled down his window to press the intercom button and waited to be admitted.

  The drive led up to a grand old gray stone building in the Gothic tradition. Off to the side, the dorms—two clapboard buildings painted a muted green—nestled in a grove of trees. A one-lane paved road branched off the main drive, and Frank could see a few small cottages fronting on it before it twisted down a hill. Grassy playing fields stretched out behind the dorms, but no teams practiced there. In fact, he didn't see any kids outside at all, despite the sunny weather.

  On the drive over, he had debated how to present Payne with the sabotage idea. He didn’t see a way to inquire delicately about such an outrageous notion without setting MacArthur Payne off. And an angry headmaster would lead to an outraged town council, which would lead to an unemployed police chief. He knew what he should do, and he knew what he wanted to do—but he hadn’t decided if guilt would trump desire.

  Chapter 5

  An athletically built young man emerged from the gatehouse and directed Frank to pull up alongside a parked van. “Dr. Payne has been expecting you," he said, as he transferred the camping equipment to the van. He didn’t speak again and appeared to be counting under his breath. When he moved the last of the backpacks, bedrolls, and tents, he turned to Frank. “Two are missing.”

  “Mr. Reiger’s tent and sleeping bag were destroyed by the bear,” Frank explained.

  “Nevertheless, we’d like them back.”

  “They’re beyond repair,” Frank assured him. “Torn, soaked with blood. The state police lab has them. An analysis may show what caused the bear to attack.”

  The young man stared at Frank for a long moment. “Dr. Payne will want to speak with you about this.” He picked up a phone in the office and dialed four numbers. “This is Steve. Chief Bennett has returned the camping gear and backpacks, but Mr. Reiger’s equipment isn’t with the rest. He says the state police are examining it.” Frank could hear Payne’s voice booming through the line. It didn’t sound encouraging.

  “Follow me,” the young man said after he hung up. Frank walked in silence with his escort toward Payne’s office. The young man had announced himself as Steve when he made the call—he might be Steve Vreeland, the Pathfinder on the hike.

  “So, Steve, were you the one who hiked out for help this morning after the attack?”

  “That is correct.” Steve kept his eyes focused straight ahead as he answered.

  “Brave of you to come down that trail by yourself in the dark, knowing the bear was still out there.”

  “As the Pathfinder, I was second in command. It was my responsibility,” Steve said. For a man who’d seen his colleague virtually eaten alive, he seemed remarkably free of emotion.

  “Very unusual for a bear to attack like that. Any idea what could’ve set him off? Did Jake Reiger mention there was anything wrong with his sleeping bag?"

  Steve clenched his teeth until the tendons in his neck stood out. “I already answered the questions of the state police and the DEC officer. We followed all appropriate guidelines for preparing and storing our food. The bear invaded his tent in the middle of the night without provocation.”

  They had arrived at Payne’s office. Steve rapped on the solid oak door and after receiving a muffled “Enter" from within, he opened the door, turned on his heel, and left without a word.

  MacArthur Payne marched across the room with his right hand extended. “It’s well past the time you said you'd have the equipment back,” he said, crushing Frank’s hand in his grip. “I was just about to call. And while you’re here, I have another police matter to discuss.”

  Frank freed himself from the painful handshake and took a step backwards. What kind of macho alpha dog behavior was this? If Payne expected an apology for the response time of the Trout Run police, he could pull up a chair to wait. No, no—wrong attitude. This was supposed to be a courtesy call. He let the remark pass and smiled at the headmaster. “Oh? What’s that?”

  Motioning Frank to sit down, Payne went behind his huge mahogany desk but remained standing. “Trespassers,” he spat out with the distaste usually reserved for terms like “pedophiles,” or “crackheads.”

  Frank said nothing, just watched the fellow.

  "People from your town have been sneaking onto the grounds of the North Country Academy,” Payne said. “Can’t have it. Upsets the order of things. Order is paramount to what we do here.”

  Upset the order of things . . . what was that supposed to mean? “I’m sorry, Dr. Payne. Let me clarify this—are you concerned that hunters are poaching on school property?” The academy property spread for more than a hundred acres, much of it wooded, but it was all posted no hunting.

  Payne’s straight, black brows drew down. “No, this is what concerns me.” With a snap, Payne spread a section of the New York Times across his vast, uncluttered desk. He leaned over, picked up a brown paper bag, and shook out the contents: a Snickers wrapper, a Doritos bag, and a crushed soda cup imprinted with the Stop’N’Buy market logo.

  “Litter?” Frank asked. The guy wanted police intervention because he found some litter on the school grounds? “And what makes you think that’s from people in town? Maybe your own students dropped it.”

  “Contraband,
” Payne spit out. “Academy students are not permitted to eat any food not served in the school dining hall.”

  Frank smiled. “Kids aren’t easily separated from their junk food. It’d be easy enough to smuggle it in.”

  “I think not, Chief Bennett. The repercussions for such behavior are well known among the students.”

  “Really? What are the repercussions for eating chips on campus?”

  Payne dismissed the question with a flip of his hand. “Not germane to our discussion. Let’s walk out to the perimeter of the property and I’ll show you what con­cerns me.” He put on his overcoat and pulled a black beret over his nearly hairless head. A man with less self-confidence might have looked silly, but Payne carried it off.

  “The North Country Academy is no longer an ordinary boarding school,” Payne said as they set off across the broad lawn. “It’s an institution dedicated to saving lives. We admit troubled teens here, kids who have failed in every school environment that they have been placed in, and we turn them into successes.”

  Payne was leading him toward the high wrought-iron fence separating the school grounds from the road. The campus was far too large to be entirely enclosed by fencing, but as Frank walked, he realized how difficult it would be for a student to run away. The school buildings, all with large spotlights on every corner, stood in the center of the campus, surrounded by several acres of open meadows and playing fields with no place to hide. On three sides, the fields ran up to state-owned forest preserve, a protected wilderness area with very few marked trails. Going over the fence to the road would be too risky, with those signs warning drivers not to pick up hitchhikers. And of course, Trout Run had no bus or train service.

  Payne must have been watching Frank scan the scene. “It’s a beautiful setting, but quite inaccessible. That’s what made this property so attractive to me. We have two guards on duty twenty-four hours a day. One up there.” He pointed to the turret on the Gothic main building. “And one at the gatehouse.”

  “But a kid could slip across those fields at night and make a break for the woods,” Frank said.

  “A skilled hiker could make his way down to Keene Valley if he knew the lay of the land and had a compass and some supplies,” Payne agreed. “That’s why we keep the hiking and camping gear under lock and key. After every outing, all the equipment—even the water bottles—is counted and logged in by two employees. And we don’t allow any food to leave the dining room, so they’d be running on an empty stomach. There’s really only one weak link in the setup, and that’s what I want to show you.”

  Frank’s ears perked up—these details about the camping gear he wanted to hear more of, but Payne seemed hell-bent on showing him something else.

  They arrived at the far front corner of the campus, where a deep, fast-moving stream ran between the end of the fence and the beginning of the forest. Frank knew the road wasn’t far away, but he couldn’t see it through the trees.

  Payne pointed across the stream to a large flat rock. “I find the remains of small fires on that rock, beer cans, snack food wrappers. Someone is parking and hiking in from the road. I’ve posted a sign that this is private property, but it hasn’t done any good.”

  It was a pretty spot that might appeal to local kids looking for a place to hang out. Frank couldn’t see why this was a big deal.

  His lack of alarm was apparent to Payne. “These are kids with a history of running away, Bennett. They run away from home, run away from school, but really what they’re trying to do is run away from themselves. At the North Country Academy, we make them understand that there’s no place left to run. They have to stop and face their problems and overcome them.” Payne held up one gloved finger. “We do that by first making them accept the literal impossibility of running away. Then we move on to the metaphorical level. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  As much as Frank had his doubts about Payne, he had to admit that he did. He’d seen men who came face-to-face with themselves for the first time in prison and realized they had to change. But he also knew it didn’t work for most of them; they kept on doing more of what had brought them there in the first place. Of course, there wasn’t much encouragement in prison. Presumably the academy did more to help the kids change.

  “They receive some counseling, I guess, to help them solve their problems?”

  “I’ll be honest with you, Bennett, I’m not a big believer in therapy. Most of these kids have already been to every shrink in the book, and it hasn’t done them one lick of good. What's the point of sitting around in big sob sessions, blaming all your problems on your parents and your teachers and your so-called learning disabilities? Change the behavior, that’s what I endorse. Change the bad behavior, and the bad attitude will change right along with it.”

  Frank could see how parents at the end of their ropes would eat this up. Here was a man who didn't blame them for the way their kids had turned out and who promised to break their children’s bad habits the way you'd train a dog to stay off the furniture.

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “Not easy, Bennett. It’s hard work, but not complex, if you catch my drift.” He gestured to the horizon. “Climbing these mountains takes strength, stamina, perseverance—you can’t think your way to the summit, you get there by putting one foot in front of the other. These kids have spent way too much time thinking about their problems. It’s time for them to climb their way out.”

  Frank found himself smiling. You couldn’t deny the man’s power of persuasion. And maybe he was right. Maybe the kids got more value from six hours of hard winter hiking than they got from fifty minutes on the shrink’s couch.

  "So can you see why I feel it’s important that these trespassers be kept away, Bennett? This location allows us to minimize inappropriate distractions. But if the students believe that their old lives lie within reach, just on the other side of that stream, they won’t buy into the necessity of working their way to freedom.”

  Frank nodded. “I see your point. I tell you what— I’ll park the patrol car out here a few nights. It’s probably local kids, and a warning will send them on their way.”

  “An excellent plan. Thank you.”

  They turned and began to stroll back. The forced friendliness between them had gradually turned more genuine. Frank commented on the view, naming some of the High Peaks visible on the horizon.

  “Thank you for returning our camping equipment,” Payne said. "I understand there was some, er, delay with Jake’s gear?”

  “What’s left of it—and there’s not much—is at the state police lab.”

  Payne jingled the change in his pocket. “And why is that? I thought that Rusty Magill fellow believed the bear to be rabid. They have to test the bear’s brain for that. The sleeping bag won’t tell you a thing.”

  “That’s true. But the DEC officer detected what smelled and felt like bacon grease on Jake Reiger’s sleeping bag. Bacon grease is a very strong lure for bears. We know your group didn’t cook or eat bacon on this trip.”

  A furrow of concentration creased Payne's high forehead. “We use freeze-dried meals on every camping trip.”

  “But you do serve bacon here at the dining hall?” They had reached the door to Payne’s office and the headmaster held it open for Frank to enter. “Only occasionally. I prefer to offer the students a high-fiber, low-fat diet. A healthy diet helps restore healthy thinking.” Payne glanced sideways at Frank. “What are you getting at?”

  “Just trying to determine when and how that particular sleeping bag could have come in contact with a substantial amount of bacon grease.”

  Payne strode across the office to a dry-erase board in the corner. “Let’s be logical about this.” He picked up a red marker and pointed it at Frank as he spoke. “After every camping trip the gear is checked, counted, and returned to the locked storage room.”

  “By whom?” Frank asked.

  “Jake Reiger himself. He was the director of our Wilderness
Experience program. And Jake was the only person, apart from myself, who had a key to that room.” Payne printed “Equipment secure” in bold red letters on the whiteboard.

  “Now, as I mentioned earlier, the kitchen is off limits to the students, but not, of course, to the staff. They may request special meals, within reason. Let’s call in Mrs. Pershing, the head cook.” Payne picked up the phone and barked into it. While they waited, Payne beckoned to Frank to join him in front of a wall filled with framed photos.

  "This is what makes my life worthwhile. These are my triumphs.” He pointed at a photo. "That’s Senator Bruce Carmore. I saved his son’s life.”

  Frank squinted at the picture. Sure enough—it was that Republican from out west, the one always clamoring for an anti-flag-burning amendment.

  “The boy came to me drunk, drug-addicted, and suicidal. Today, he’s a sophomore at Penn State. Accounting major.”

  Frank scanned the wall. Every frame held a happy group photo—a clean-cut teenager surrounded by, often embraced by, his or her beaming parents. Payne was in most of the photos, as well. This selection of kids certainly didn’t look homicidal.

  “Any of your kids have criminal records?” Frank asked.

  “Drug offenses, drunk and disorderly, vandalism— that sort of thing.”

  “No violent crimes?”

  “I won’t take them if they have a history of sex assaults or any violence with a weapon. Too risky.”

  Frank continued to study the pictures. “Was Jake Reiger popular with the students?”

  Payne snorted. “None of our teachers is popular, Bennett. Popularity isn’t what we're aiming for; respect is.”

  “Well, did they respect him?”

  “He was earning their respect. He’d only been with this group for a few weeks. Jake always worked with the new arrivals.”

  “Always? You’d worked with him before?”