Dead Man's Bridge

by Robert J. Mrazek

  I could see she wasn’t thrilled about being left inside the cabin with no access to the porch or the lawn, but I didn’t have time to explain it to her before locking the door behind me.

  The pickup was rocking in the wind when I started it up and began heading toward Groton. The road surface was already littered with downed branches and wind-driven debris. I kept my speed down to thirty so I had time to swerve around the bigger obstacles.

  About a mile from town, several deer ran wildly across the road past my headlights. Although I braked right away, it was impossible to avoid hitting the last one with a glancing fender blow.

  A hefty buck, he skidded across the gravel road for ten yards, rolled over, and came up on his feet. As I watched, he shook himself and trotted off after the others.

  “You and me both, brother,” I called out to him as I drove on.

  Heading up the steep grade along the gorge, I saw that the lower windows of the Fall Creek Tavern were lit up like an ocean liner. As I passed by, people were standing three deep at the bar, confirming the old axiom that storms bring people together. Of course, for the regulars, any reason to drink was a good reason.

  I pulled into the overlook parking lot next to the suspension footbridge. Captain Morgo’s police cruiser was already there, its lights out. There was no indication that I was approaching a crime scene.

  Taking my flashlight and work gloves, I headed down the path toward the bridge. Through the driving rain, I could see a dark figure standing under the trees. Ken Macready emerged out of the downpour, his uniform covered by a wildly flapping green poncho. He trained his flashlight on my face as I came toward him.

  “What the . . . ?” he began.

  “I ran into some barbed wire,” I said. “So what happened here?”

  “We’ve got another dead guy,” he said, coming to attention. “He’s right in the same place as the one yesterday.”

  “Where’s Captain Morgo?” I asked loudly.

  He pointed toward the bridge. “She’s already out there.”

  “What about the sheriff?”

  “They’ve already had three storm-related deaths . . . He radioed the captain a few minutes ago that he would get here as soon as he could.”

  “Any word on when the storm is going to peak?”

  “According to the weather service, we won’t see the worst of it until later this morning. Right now it’s gusting about forty-five.”

  A purple-white flash of lightning lit up the dark sky, followed by a crash of thunder.

  “What’s the hurricane’s name again?” I asked with a reassuring grin.

  “Ilse.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just a little pussy cat . . . nothing to worry about.”

  His young freckled face grinned back at me.

  “Let’s get to work,” I said.

  Together we continued down the path toward the bridge.

  Remembering Carlene’s words about there being another caller, I stopped at the blue-light emergency phone. I opened the door of the metal housing with the tip of my finger and shined my flashlight in. There was only bare wire again. The new phone was gone like the last one.

  “Just like last time,” said Ken.

  Under the college’s service contract, our electronic security provider was responsible for repairing the emergency phones within an hour of a reported outage. Assuming they had done so, the killer was for some reason following the same pattern. It could only be because he wanted us to know it was him.

  “What did you do with that camcorder footage you took of everyone who was here yesterday?”

  “Captain Morgo gave the camera back to the guy. But I’ve got the recorded material in my desk at the office.”

  “Good man,” I said. “We’ll watch it later.”

  I pulled up the hood of my waterproof jacket to keep the rain out of my eyes and to hide the damage to my face from Captain Morgo. She would probably find it another docking offense.

  “Don’t let anyone out there except the sheriff’s men,” I said, leaving him at the entrance.

  On the suspension bridge, the gusting blasts of wind drowned out the cataract of wild water racing down the gorge two hundred feet below me. The reinforced concrete path of the bridge was swaying under my feet as I approached the shadowy outline of Captain Morgo. She was standing halfway across the span and gripping the bridge railing with both hands.

  Her skin was the color of a ripe avocado. The force of the wind gusts was inflating her cheeks, puffing them up like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. Uneasily taking one hand off the railing to face me, she looked up and shouted, “I . . . need your help.”

  As she raised her head, the wind flipped her uniform hat off her head, and it went sailing over the rail behind her. I could see the open terror in her eyes. Even with the Glock 17 on her hip, she looked like nothing so much as a bedraggled grandmother in a gaudy police uniform, vulnerable and defenseless. When another gust shook the bridge, she grabbed the railing again with both hands.

  “These are designed to take a lot worse than this,” I shouted to her.

  Taking a guarded step toward me, she took my left hand in hers and grasped it hard. Putting her mouth closer to my ear, she shouted, “I was wrong about all this, Jake.”

  Looking down at her, my past anger just melted away.

  I nodded once and squeezed her hand in return.

  “Do you know who it is yet?” I shouted over the wind.

  She shook her head and yelled, “The call came in less than twenty minutes ago. I just got here.”

  I trained my flashlight on the walkway beside her. It looked almost exactly like the scene I had encountered the previous night. The end of the brightly colored rope was lashed around the railing with the same stopper hitch. Sitting in the lee of the wind at the foot of the railing was a green plastic drinking cup.

  The intricately braided cord looked identical to the other one, with the end knot shaped like a golden acorn. The cord even appeared to be lashed in exactly the same place on the bridge. I leaned out over the railing and trained the flashlight down at the swaying corpse.

  “Be careful,” cried Captain Morgo as she grabbed the bottom edge of my waterproof jacket in her powerful hands.

  There was an important difference between this death scene and the last. Unlike the first one, this body was stark naked. Aside from the reddish-gray hair on his head and genitals, the man was fish-belly white. I recognized him as soon as I coned the beam of the flashlight on his face.

  “Do you know him?” yelled Captain Morgo.

  I nodded.

  “He was Dennis Wheatley’s best friend. They were roommates here at St. Andrews twenty years ago. His name is Robin Massey.”

  I saw another difference after leaning farther over the railing to get a better look at his neck.

  “He didn’t use the concertina wire this time,” I called out.

  “Who didn’t?” yelled Captain Morgo, who was holding on for dear life.

  “The man who murdered them,” I said after regaining my balance on the walkway. “Maybe he didn’t have any more of it.”

  I wondered what had happened to Robin Massey’s clothes. Aside from his white clerical collar, which was wedged into the wire mesh beneath the railing, the only things left were his shoes. It was possible the wind had blown the rest away, or the killer might have thrown them over. Nestled at the base of one of the vertical stanchions, I saw one of the green plastic reunion cups. Picking it up with my gloves, I smelled the same aroma of whiskey that had been in Wheatley’s cup.

  “The coroner will find that he probably has as much liquor in him as Wheatley did,” I shouted over the wind.

  “Do you know why?” she shouted back.

  “I think they were both forced to drink against their will before he made them walk the railing.”

  It occurred to me that there was now only one roommate left from the original three, and that was Hoyt Palmer. I had last seen him on his w
ay to the Groton Medical Center in an ambulance. I told Captain Morgo who he was.

  “His life could be in danger too,” I shouted. “You should contact the Groton police and have a guard put on his room at the medical center. If he’s been released, they should take him into protective custody as soon as they locate him.”

  While she was calling the police dispatcher on her radio, I cradled the flashlight in my armpit and trained it on the acorn-shaped ball at the end of the braided rope. Gazing at it, I felt another twinge of recognition.

  Grasping the ball in the fingers of my work glove, I turned it over several times in my hand, examining the braided gold stitching that covered it like tiny cornrows. I suddenly remembered the presentation sword that the army had given me after I had won the Silver Star. The sword now rested next to the hearth of my fireplace, where I used it to poke logs.

  The acorn-shaped ball looked like a big sword knot. The use of them came from a time long ago when men actually fought with swords. They would loop a sword knot along with the strap through the handguard so that they wouldn’t lose their sword when the blade connected with steel or bone.

  But nobody fought with swords anymore. They were used at military weddings and promotion ceremonies. The last time Americans had fought with swords was during the Civil War, and I doubted if our murderer was 175 years old. The concertina wire suggested a military background too. But Wheatley and Massey didn’t have any connection to the military.

  “What do you think?” yelled Captain Morgo as I continued to study the acorn-shaped ball.

  “Do you know what happened to the braided rope that was used in the Wheatley killing?”

  “The sheriff’s people have it.”

  I knew that the chances of getting it back anytime soon were slim.

  “I know this doesn’t follow strict crime scene procedure, but I’d like to cut off this knot and take it with me,” I shouted. “There’s someone I know who might recognize it.”

  The old Captain Morgo would have rejected the idea immediately.

  “Do it,” she came right back.

  Using my pocket knife, I sawed through the braided cord and put the ball in my pocket. Standing up, I saw another dark figure coming across the bridge toward us from the direction of the overlook parking lot. I wondered why Ken Macready had let the person past until I saw it was Big Jim Dickey. Indifferent to the swaying bridge, he came strutting up to us like Moses parting the Red Sea.

  “This baby is going to be one shit kicker for the record books. I already got three dead over in Enfield,” he shouted to us as if thrilled at the growing body count.

  Looking down, he saw the clerical collar wedged into the wire mesh. With a steady stream of rain pouring off the brim of his Smokey the Bear hat, he said, “I hear we maybe got us another suicide over here.”

  Removing her hands from the railing, Captain Morgo turned to face him.

  “He was murdered, Sheriff . . . just like the last one,” she shouted back almost defiantly. “And I need your criminal investigation team here right away.”

  Turning to me, she said, “Are you going to the medical center now to interview Mr. Palmer?”

  I nodded.

  “Take Ken’s radio with you. Call me if you need anything.”

  “Thanks,” I said as Big Jim stared at us in obvious confusion.

  “And be careful,” she admonished me as if I were her prodigal son and had just gotten my first driver’s license.

  14

  I didn’t have time to ponder the reasons for Captain Morgo’s personality transformation. There was no reason to believe the change would be permanent. For the moment, I was just grateful that something had happened to alter her view of me. At the bridge entrance, I told Ken Macready about Captain Morgo’s request, and he turned over his VHF radio.

  “There are distress calls coming in from all over the place,” he said. “Electricity is out in a lot of the county, and the governor will be declaring us an official disaster area.”

  I turned off the radio as soon as I was out of sight up the footpath. If I needed it at some point, I wanted to make sure the batteries were still charged and working. As I reached the overlook parking lot, another vehicle pulled in and parked. It was Jordan Langford’s Volvo. Walking through the curtain of rain toward it, I wondered who was driving.

  The power window on the driver’s side slid halfway down as I came up. It was Jordan. In the glow of the interior lights, he looked drawn. There were new pouches under his eyes, and his jaw sagged.

  “We’ve got another one out there on the bridge, I gather,” he said almost apprehensively as the slanting rain peppered his windbreaker through the window.

  “Yeah. It’s Robin Massey, Dennis Wheatley’s friend.”

  Staring straight ahead, he was silent for several seconds.

  “I knew Robin,” he said with deep sadness in his voice. “The man was a living saint. No one could have wanted to murder him.”

  “Yeah, well . . . someone did,” I said.

  He looked up at me for the first time. His eyes tightened as they took in my swollen face. I waited for him to say something but he didn’t. I wondered if Blair had told him about my fight.

  “Any new leads on Dennis’s death?” he asked.

  “It’s possible the murderer has some kind of military connection. That’s one of the things I’m trying to pin down. We also have a video recording of the people at last night’s crime scene. I’m going to take a look at it after I’ve interviewed a guy named Hoyt Palmer. He and Robin Massey were Wheatley’s roommates in their last year here.”

  “What was his name?” he asked.

  “Hoyt Palmer.”

  “I don’t remember ever meeting him with Dennis.”

  “He’s lived in Finland for the last twenty years. This afternoon, he was taken to the Groton Medical Center for possible food poisoning.”

  “I don’t have to tell you this . . . but please try to move as fast as you can,” he said. “This thing could wreck the college for years to come. I can just see the tabloid coverage now . . . come home to St. Andrews and die.”

  He still hadn’t asked about his own tabloid story.

  “How is Blair taking it all?” I asked him.

  “She’s okay,” he said. “Why?”

  “Just wondering . . . I assume she knows you well enough to figure out when something’s wrong.”

  “She’s fine,” he said emphatically.

  Apparently, she hadn’t confided her visit to me.

  My flashlight beam happened to be pointing down at the side of his car when I noticed a raw scar in the paintwork. It ran horizontally across the door and all the way to the rear fender.

  “Looks like somebody keyed your car,” I said.

  He nodded and said, “Who knows why? Blair saw it and pointed it out to me. I have no idea when it happened. Probably some kids.”

  I remembered the two other cars I had seen with similar gouges when I arrived at the overlook parking lot and found Dennis Wheatley’s body.

  “Any luck with my own little problem?” he asked forlornly.

  His wounded eyes were obviously anticipating bad news.

  “Yeah . . . I’ve made a little progress there.”

  “You’re kidding,” he came back, his voice animated for the first time.

  “No. I found the men who recorded you at the Wonderland. I’ve collected all their electronic equipment and possibly some other recorded material. I’ll take a quick look at those when I have a chance.”

  “Thank you, Jake,” he said, looking up at me again with his luminous eyes. “Truly.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done anything.”

  “What happened to your face?” he asked.

  “The price of progress,” I said. “But I don’t know yet who hired them to tape you or why. There’s still a long way to go.”

  “You said men. There was more than one?”

  “Yeah.”

  �
��If it’s a matter of priorities, these deaths are far more important.”

  “They could be connected.”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know a man named Bobby Devane?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Do you know anyone at the Razzano law firm?”

  “The whiplash brothers?”

  I nodded again.

  “The older one . . . Brian. He graduated from St. Andrews about twenty years ago . . . I think Dennis Wheatley’s class. Since then, he and his brother have made a fortune in divorce work, asbestos, and workers’ comp cases. He lives farther down the lake from you at Glenwood Landing . . . one of those huge trophy houses.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “He’s a new member of my board of trustees and has given the school a million dollars. His wife, Dawn, is a good friend of Blair’s. We’re dedicating the nanoscience learning center in his name next week. Why?”

  “Because he or his brother may have paid the men who were hired to film you at the Wonderland. The other possibility is this Bobby Devane. He runs a private detective agency in Syracuse.”

  I heard a crack like an artillery shell, and the massive oak tree at the end of the parking lot went over with a crunching roar, blocking the road toward campus. Jordan watched it go with almost detached curiosity.

  “Do you have a direct number for Razzano?” I asked.

  He pulled a cell phone out of his windbreaker pocket. Using a stylus, he punched the screen several times.

  “Home okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, and he wrote the number down on a notepad he pulled from the glove compartment. Shutting the window, he turned off the engine and got out of the car. While he walked down to the bridge, I headed over to my pickup.

  Hearing the thin wail of sirens approaching, I watched as a white panel truck carrying the sheriff’s investigative unit arrived. Three men jumped out and began unloading equipment from the rear doors as I headed down the hill.