Crown of Serpents

by Michael Karpovage

  “What a joke,” replied Rae.

  “Now to the murder suspect,” said the reporter. “He was caught on a security camera casing the victim — Stephen Ashland’s — car in search of something. Let’s roll that video if you could.”

  Videotape of the large Indian looking into the small sports car appeared on the screen. Then Kantiio’s mug shot from his first arrest many years back filled the set. A wide smile exposed his gold front teeth.

  “The suspect has been positively identified as Ray The Mouth Kantiio, an ex-convict who lives in the Catskills. The Mouth nickname obviously comes from his gold front teeth. The picture on screen has been photo enhanced to reflect a gain in weight and age. He is a Native American from the Mohawk tribe. Has black hair he wears in a pony tail. Stands six foot tall and weighs approximately two hundred and fifty pounds. He was dressed all in black and drove a dark colored Lincoln Navigator with New York plates M-T-H-4-3-7-8. He is considered armed and dangerous. Anyone with information leading to his capture can collect the fifty thousand dollar reward.”

  An illustration of a Revolutionary War era rifle appeared next on screen.

  “And this is what the victim was apparently murdered over. A musket from the Revolutionary War. This musket was…”

  “It’s a rifle. Not a musket,” said an irritated Jake.

  “Sshh!” interrupted Rae, smacking him on the arm.

  “…stolen earlier in the day from a library in Upper Exeter, Pennsylvania by none other than Ashland himself. It is said this particular musket could fetch almost one hundred thousand dollars on the antiquities black market.”

  The television screen cut back to the security video as the reporter continued to narrate. “Later that night, the security video showed the suspect holding Ashland at gunpoint, going to his car, taking out this musket, then walking away behind the hotel.” The screen cut back to the reporter who was now reading from her notes. “It is assumed that the suspect put the musket in his SUV at that point, then brought Ashland back to his room and murdered him with a bullet to the head. This looks like a theft and buyoff deal gone bad.”

  She looked up at the camera. “And it’s at that point when the state police walked up to the room. They had been tracking Ashland since the theft occurred and were closing in to make the arrest, but were literally surprised by the presence of Kantiio. That’s when the shooting of Investigator Hart took place. The suspect then fled the scene. Chuck, that’s everything we have at this point. The investigation continues. Back to you.”

  The screen cut back to the news anchor in the studio.

  “Nice work Amanda. It sounds like quite a mystery indeed. Now to our next top story. Buffalo Bills quarterback P.J. Cain has—” The screen went black. Rae had shut off the television set and tossed the remote onto the bed.

  “No mention of the scalping, no mention of me being there,” said Jake. “Looks like your brass leaked exactly what they wanted. Not a bad move actually.”

  “We have top-notch investigators on the case, even though it burns my ass not being involved,” replied Rae, her brows furrowed. “I’ve got to get back on this case somehow.”

  Jake held up his hands. “Take it easy there. Don’t go cowboy on me just yet. Let’s at least go downstairs for some lunch and think this over. I’m starving and could use some company.”

  Rae nodded her immediate approval, grateful for the distraction. “Actually, I need an ice cold beer.” She stood up and retrieved her coat from the closet, throwing it over her arm.

  Jake grabbed his black leather jacket out of the closet and put it on. Rae was already in the hallway. On the desk next to his laptop he gathered his phone and room key. He picked up his wallet and with his back to Rae, opened it to check on a mini-DVD. This would be with him at all times until he got home, he decided — a precaution in case Nero’s boys came looking for his laptop. The DVD held all of the Boyd digital photos he had transferred off the laptop. This disc was his only back up copy, made as soon as he had checked in after the interviews this morning. He placed the wallet in the rear pocket of his jeans, then followed Rae down the hall to the lobby restaurant.

  Seating themselves at a corner booth in the bar area, Rae looked troubled. After they each ordered a beer she started out with, “I’ve got to apologize for the way I treated you in the interview last night. I had to appear to be on the state’s side, just so you know. It’s just that with the discovery of the Indian grave, the accidental death of the trapper, the arson, the rifle theft, and now the murder of your boss, well, we couldn’t help finger you as a key suspect in all of this.”

  “Material witness, not suspect. Besides you said I’m clear,” Jake looked up with questioning eyes. “Right?”

  “Yes. Yes. But—”

  “But what? The grave accident has nothing to do with Ashland’s murder. That’s just sheer coincidence. Like I told you and the other investigators, I think Ashland was simply going after the gold once I planted that seed in his head from Fort Niagara.”

  “But all this Indian stuff is linked somehow to Nero.”

  Jake went silent, looking away. As he pondered whether he should tell her the whole truth about the Crown of Serpents he didn’t notice a Native American man that entered the restaurant and sauntered up to the bar for a drink. The man wore sunglasses and had several fresh bruises on his cheeks.

  “Look, at MHI we are researchers and historians,” Jake retorted, somewhat fired up. “We gather information and expose history. It’s what we do for a living. Ashland had the same clues from Boyd’s journal entry of September 12th that Alex Nero and I had. That’s the link you’re after. Ashland simply deciphered it first and took off down the path. It was rather easy with the help of the Internet. He had a one day head start before I even thought about pursuing it.”

  “So, as soon as Nero saw the journal, he too could have acted on it,” asked Rae.

  “Right. That’s what I explained to your brass.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Rae’s eyes softened. “I mean it Jake. We just have to analyze ever little nuance.”

  “I know and you hung by my side, which I do appreciate. All I’m saying is Nero found out about the journal’s contents the same day Ashland found out. And Nero is an avid collector too, so he knew what he was doing. So, either they were in on the rifle theft together or acting alone and happened to cross paths. That I don’t know.”

  Rae looked down. She nodded to herself.

  “Hey, our drinks are here.” Jake glanced at the waitress holding two beers. Just beyond her the man at the bar walked out, catching Jake’s eye for a fraction of a second.

  “Sir, your drink,” said the waitress, recapturing his attention.

  “Oh, sorry. Thanks.”

  Rae also thanked the waitress and grabbed her frosty mug by the handle. Jake raised his glass and clinked it against Rae’s. She went to sip her beer when Jake announced, “Here’s to bulletproof breasts. I mean vests! Vests! Oh jeeze!”

  In a snorting chuckle, Rae blew the foamy head out of her mug, spraying Jake in the face.

  “That came out all wrong. I’m sorry, still got a couple of things on my mind,” Jake embarrassedly said, as he wiped foam from his cheek.

  Rae kept on laughing, a loud, true natural laugh. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, now much more relaxed. “You are something else, Major,” she said with a wide grin, holding up her beer. “Alright, here’s to bulletproof breasts.”

  “I’ll drink to that!”

  They clinked glasses once more and sipped their beers. Another round and some bar food later, Rae sighed. “I have to get back home to Seneca Falls, I really need some sleep.” She confided in him that even though she was on leave she was still going to follow up on the arson case and anything else that led to Nero. Jake paid the bill and held up her coat. She turned around and put her arms through the sleeves.

  She faced him. “What are your plans?”

  “Going to check out, then head over to
my uncle’s house on the reservation. Spend the night there with family. Then tomorrow afternoon I’ll head back home to Carlisle.”

  “I see,” she said, disappointed.

  “But if I’m traveling through Seneca County I’ll stop by your station, if you don’t mind.”

  Rae lit up. “You sly dog. Of course I don’t mind. Give me a shout tomorrow, about an hour’s notice if you could.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He took her hand in his arm and walked her out to the front lobby.

  “You have a safe trip home now,” said Jake.

  Rae stopped, leaned into him, and gave him a quick kiss on his lips as a goodbye.

  21

  Route 390 South. Near Avon Exit #10.

  “GOOD NEWS MR. NERO,” said Rousseau in his cell phone headset. He sat in the back seat of a black Hummer, a bandage across his forehead protecting the deep cut suffered from the gauntlet. An open laptop computer sat on a tray across his lap, the battery recharge cord plugged into a traveling office console socket. He followed a green dot over a roadmap displayed on the laptop’s monitor. “He’s on the road. We’ve been tracking him from his hotel in Rochester for about twenty minutes now.”

  Sitting in the front seats were his other two security agents. The man driving the Hummer, Mr. Kay, the Mohawk, nodded his head. He had observed Jake at Fort Niagara and had just placed him in the Strathallan restaurant. Sunglasses now off, two black eyes were revealed where the late Kantiio had elbowed and broken his nose. He tried to steady the Hummer as wind gusts whipped the vehicle.

  “Very good. Where is he headed?” asked Nero, on the other end of Rousseau’s line.

  “We’ve got him pulled over right now on Routes 5 and 20 off the Avon exit of 390 south. He’s been heading in the direction of where you said he’d be going. Maybe he had to take a piss or something.”

  The agent in the front passenger seat chuckled and smiled back at Rousseau. It was Mr. Jasper, the Oneida. He sucked on a cigarette and exhaled the smoke through the crack in his window. Every time he gulped though, his throat ached from where Kantiio had choked him.

  “Do you have a visual on him?” asked Nero.

  “Negative sir,” answered Rousseau. “We don’t want to spook him. We’re tracking him about three miles back. He has no idea.”

  “Get a visual of what he is up to then back off again. I want another report in twenty minutes. I’ll check back as soon as I get out of this lawyer’s office and close the deal on the Depot.” The phone call disconnected.

  Between Conesus and Hemlock Lakes.

  Having met at McDonalds where his uncle transferred two long duffel bags of equipment into his parked SUV, Jake asked, “How did you make out with the recon?”

  Joe grinned from ear to ear. “The land where the old village sat was just purchased by a white woman. She bought the house and surrounding property. She was very cooperative to say the least. Even made me coffee.”

  “Made you coffee?”

  “Let’s put it this way. She was about as big as me, alone, and simply needed someone to talk to.”

  “You charmed her you old goat,” Jake smiled.

  “Runs in the family,” Joe chuckled, taking out the digital camera. “Here let me show you what I found out.” The first photo showed the creek. It was no more than eight to ten feet wide and probably a foot deep at the most. On the bank of the shallow creek sat a two-story country style home and a brown barn. “She also has a barn and horses out back.” The next photo showed three horses within a wooden fenced-in pasture. Beyond the horses was the start of a ridge on the eastern slope. “Her horse field is fenced in and basically takes up most of the land in the flats, between the two creeks. It’s to the east of the main road.”

  “Good work.”

  “Check out this next photo. Surprise!” Joe switched to an image of three beach ball-sized rocks, covered in moss. “The three boulders placed east, west, and south. Just as Boyd said they’d be.”

  “No way!” Jake stared with a grin. “Are you shitting me?”

  “Nope. All I had to do was ask about three large boulders that had supposedly been near the original Indian village and she showed me exactly where they were. Said the only reason she knew about them was that her real estate agent mentioned they were part of a central fire pit or gathering area of the old village. Apparently it was a landmark that had survived all these years. Go figure.”

  Jake punched his uncle in the arm. “I can’t believe you found them.”

  Joe rubbed his shoulder. “Sometimes a bit of honesty combined with the famous Tununda wit goes a long way.”

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Let’s get moving.”

  “Oh, and one more thing. She’s out of town until tomorrow afternoon. She said if we wanted to, we could park in her driveway if we needed to walk her property some more.”

  “Too good to be true. Too good. I’ll take it!”

  Making the run to the target area, Jake wanted to approach from the same direction that General Sullivan did in 1779 — from the foot or north end of Hemlock Lake down through the rolling hills to the head or south end of Conesus Lake — on present day Route 15 South. The traffic on the roads posed no problem, but the weather was another story. It had been in transition all day, the winds of change in November at full force.

  Experiencing a warm front of 60-degrees earlier in the day, but marred by rain, high winds, and low cloud cover, a cold front had moved in. Temperatures were expected to drop by almost 30 degrees with possible snow showers. As they drove south, Jake glimpsed leaf covered green grass, and harvested farm fields of cut corn stalks. It wasn’t long before thick snowflakes blew in from the west to cut down on visibility. To his uncle, the weather was a hindrance. To Jake, it was a blessing. The worse the weather, the more people would stay indoors allowing those who ruled the night to exact their stealthy business. It was exactly what a 10th Mountaineer had hoped for.

  As he approached the south end of Conesus Lake, he pulled off onto the right shoulder of Route 15 and consulted his maps. The Groveland Ambuscade map came out first, followed by the NYS Gazetteer of topo maps. Jake studied both and said they would be swinging a right onto Foots Corners Road, which would turn into Henderson Hill Road, and their descent down into the lake valley.

  Yielding back onto the main road, they proceeded closer. A few minutes later they made the right turn and slowly drove past flat open farmland on both sides of the road — Foots Corners. Jake mentioned, “This was where the Continental Army encamped on September 12, 1779. They set up on this hill overlooking the lake.” Jake pointed to the far right side of Groveland map.

  Joe glanced at the modern day topo map to read the name of the hill — Turkey Hill. “I’ll be damned.” Joe peered over to open meadows darkened by a dying sunset. “Like driving right into history.”

  Jake pointed ahead. “And down there is Conesus Lake on the right. To the left are the inlet creeks and swamp they had to reconstruct a bridge across. Butler and Brant had destroyed the old one upon their retreat.”

  “Sullivan picked a good strategic high ground by encamping up here,” Joe noted.

  “And look, on the far side, there’s the steep hill Boyd climbed that same night and then reconned further west about seven miles to the Genesee River. The next day, as he headed back to the camp, he was ambushed just at the top of the hill.”

  “That’s the route I came down from earlier today. The Geneseo side.”

  Jake drove another mile and descended further into the valley, passing an open gravel pit on their left. At the end or bottom of Henderson Hill Road, Jake stopped at the junction of East Lake Road, looked in the rearview mirror to make sure no one was behind him, and turned on the overhead map light.

  “We need to take a left,” he said. They entered the flats of the valley where the village of Kanaghsaws once stood. He pointed to the old ambush map tracing their route.

  “It’s like we’re shadowing Thomas Boyd’s footsteps.�
� Joe remarked.

  Jake nodded. He then opened the folder of documents and pulled out Boyd’s September 12, 1779 journal entry with the original parchment cipher fragment reattached to the corner. Following his index finger down, he stopped in the middle of the entry and read. “He was summoned to General Sullivan’s tent that night and given the order for the early morning reconnaissance mission. Sullivan said to Boyd as a Brother of the craft he knew he could be trusted and that he had proven his worth in courage, service, and duty.”

  Jake perused further down the passage. “Here, this is what we want.” He read the passage verbatim. “Upon refilling our water pouches at the parallel streams near the village, McTavish and me slipped away to have our fortunes buried for it proved too heavy a burden for the mission. We will come back for it on our return journey after reaching objective point.” Jake switched off the light, gunned the engine, and turned left.

  Jake continued. “For them to bury their loot was not uncommon at this stage in the campaign. Most soldiers, from what I’ve read in other journals, mentioned they were heavily weighed down. And these were scouts who had to travel light.”

  “And since Boyd and McTavish basically had a pot of gold, they surely wouldn’t leave it behind at the main camp for others to plunder,” said Joe.

  “There, on the left,” announced Jake. “The sign for the first creek.” He read it out loud. “North McMillan Creek.”

  The SUV passed over the creek culvert. Joe pointed left to the woman’s house just beyond a row of pine trees lining the main road. “Pull up behind her house back by the barn. We’ll be better concealed from the main road.”