Dead Man's Bridge

by Robert J. Mrazek

  I thought about where I would have chosen to stay in a strange town where my son’s life had ended so long ago. I would have stayed in the same place my son had lived during the months he was here as a student. The last place he had lived before his death.

  Captain Morgo walked in on us a moment later and saw the bandage covering my side.

  “How bad is it, Jake?”

  “I’ve had worse,” I said, putting on the waterproof jacket to cover it.

  Before she had a chance to ask what had happened to me, I gave her the details of my interview with Hoyt Palmer. After telling her about General Taylor, I suddenly remembered Palmer saying that he had been the fraternity brother assigned to visit Creighton Taylor on the night he had been tapped to become one of their anointed pledges.

  “Could you get Ken on the VHF and ask him to find out from Palmer where Creighton Taylor was living when he visited him on pledge night?” I asked her.

  While she tried to reach Ken on the radio, I trudged into the lavatory and took a long, satisfying leak. When I came back out to the squad room, she was still trying. After another unsuccessful attempt, she said, “There must be some malfunction with his radio. I can’t raise him.”

  I called Lauren Kenniston again.

  “Does the story in the Journal say where Creighton Taylor was living at the start of his freshman year here?” I asked.

  “Let me check,” she said.

  “Drink this,” ordered Captain Morgo, handing me a large plastic cup she had just carried over from the refreshment bar.

  I took a sip. It was a thick chocolate milkshake and was as delicious as anything I had ever tasted. I finished it as Lauren came back on the phone.

  “His last known local mailing address was 326 Highland Drive.”

  Highland Drive was the first cross street after the traffic bridge. It led down to the Fall Creek Tavern. I didn’t know the street numbers, but there were a lot of homes on that street where people rented rooms to students.

  Captain Morgo said she would drive me over in her cruiser. Outside, the rain was finally losing its intensity. The wind wasn’t quite so violent either, but it was still gusting fiercely enough to make the trees on campus sway wildly before its might.

  We had just crossed the traffic bridge over the gorge when Captain Morgo received a call on her cell phone. She listened for almost a minute before saying, “Stay there. I’ll call you right back.”

  She turned to me and said, “That was Ken Macready. Hoyt Palmer is dead.”

  25

  I could have prevented Palmer’s death if I had been more forceful in demanding that he be moved out of the tower right away. In some subconscious way, maybe I had wanted it to happen.

  We got there in less than two minutes. Two of the sheriff’s cars were parked outside the tower, their strobe lights flashing. One of them was Dickey’s blue-and-gold cruiser. It was empty. The oak door at the base of the tower stood wide open. The black deputy was no longer there guarding it.

  I wasn’t thrilled about climbing that iron staircase again but managed to follow Captain Morgo all the way to the top without stopping. Ken Macready was standing on the same landing where I had left him.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, pointing through the dark passageway into the secret chamber. Ken’s uniform hat was missing, and the hair on the back of his head was stained with blood.

  “I never even saw him. It was like fighting a ghost.”

  “What happened to your radio?” asked Captain Morgo.

  “He took it, Captain,” he said sheepishly. “Along with the sheriff’s radio and his brother’s too. And all our weapons. As soon as I saw what was in there, I called you on my cell . . . he didn’t find that,” he added almost proudly.

  Ken was still holding the phone in his hand. After checking to make sure the wound to the back of his head wasn’t serious, I followed Captain Morgo on our hands and knees through the passageway into the chamber.

  Ken was right. It was hard to believe the scene that awaited us. High above our heads, Hoyt Palmer was hanging by his neck from the same kind of multicolored rope that had been used in the two previous murders.

  His body was slowly swinging back and forth under one of the hand-hewn oak beams that vaulted over the chamber walls. The other end of the braided rope was lashed to the nose of one of the stone gargoyles that flanked the throne chair against the outer wall.

  Even more incredible was the sight of Big Jim Dickey and his brother. The two men were splayed out on their knees facing one another, about three feet apart. Taylor had taken their handcuffs and shackled the brothers’ wrists together through the arms of the throne chair. They looked as though they were kneeling before an absent king.

  Turning to Ken, Captain Morgo asked, “How did all this happen?”

  “He took our keys, goddammit,” said Big Jim from down on his knees. “Call my brother Cecil and ask him to get over here right away with bolt cutters.”

  “We’ve got an emergency crew that can bring them over from the campus police building in a few minutes,” said Janet Morgo.

  “Call Cecil, goddammit,” he growled, obviously worried that his monumental incompetence would be exposed to the voters if the campus emergency crew arrived first.

  “Give me your cell phone, Ken,” I said, punching the number Dickey called out to me from the floor. While it was ringing, I began taking pictures of Palmer’s hanging corpse. I framed Big Jim and his brother prominently in the foreground.

  “What the hell are you doing, Cantrell?” yelled the sheriff, trying to turn around from his locked embrace. His brother appeared to be resting his face on the arm of the throne chair.

  “Just recording a crime scene, Sheriff, like any good cop would do,” I said good-naturedly. “And Cecil isn’t picking up.”

  Cutting off the connection, I punched in Lauren Kenniston’s number and sent her a text to come immediately to the bell tower. Her first exclusive. I followed up with a call to the dispatcher’s number at the campus police building. Carlene answered immediately. I told her to send an emergency rescue team to the tower with bolt cutters.

  I then placed a 9-1-1 call, which went straight to the sheriff’s office. After identifying myself, I told the dispatcher there that another murder had been committed at the bell tower on the St. Andrews campus and to send over their homicide team. I knew Lauren would be monitoring it on her scanner.

  “Sheriff Dickey is in a bit of a bind,” I said. “Tell them to hurry.”

  “You fucking bastard . . . I’ll run you out of Groton for this.”

  I took more photographs.

  “I don’t want you threatening one of my men, Sheriff,” came back Janet Morgo. “Officer Cantrell is only doing his job.”

  “And I’ll have your job, too, you goddamn bull dyke,” he snarled up at her.

  Ignoring him, Captain Morgo turned to Ken and said, “So tell us what happened here.”

  He was obviously still woozy and sat down in one of the leather club chairs.

  “When the sheriff got here, he told Marlon, the deputy guarding the entrance at the bottom of the stairs, to go back on sector duty . . . that he would handle things here himself,” he said. “He then told me to stay out on the landing while he and his brother questioned Mr. Palmer. A few minutes later, the chimes started ringing up in the tower like there was no tomorrow.”

  “And the sheriff sent you up there to take a look, right?” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Ken. “When I got to the top of the stairwell, the emergency lights suddenly went out. I felt a blow to the back of my head . . . I guess it put me down for a while. When I came to, the lights were back on. There was no one up in the belfry, so I went back down the stairs and looked in here. It was just like you saw it. That’s when I called Captain Morgo.”

  So Taylor had closed the last account.

  “How could one man have done all this?” whispered Captain Morgo in my ear.

 
“Special Forces training,” I said. “Taylor may be an old man, but taking Dickey and his brother in the dark would have been child’s play for him.”

  I walked back to the throne chair.

  “I warned your brother about this possibility, Sheriff,” I said. “You may be in for a long vacation after this gets out.”

  This time he stayed silent, his steer-like arms and back rippling under his uniform shirt, his face a mottled red. Motioning Captain Morgo to join me in the stairwell, I reminded her that we had a possible address for General Taylor if he hadn’t already left Groton.

  We passed the St. Andrews emergency crew coming up the stairs. They were carrying two heavy vinyl bags full of rescue equipment. Following in their wake was Lauren Kenniston, who gave me a big smile as she came hustling up the staircase. I was expecting Captain Morgo to tell her that the crime scene was off-limits to the news media, but she never said a word as Lauren passed us.

  Back in the cruiser, she didn’t say anything for several minutes. When we had crossed over the bridge and reached the intersection that connected to Highland Drive, she turned to me with liquid eyes and asked, “What does my being a lesbian have to do with whether I can do my job?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  26

  The rain had finally stopped, although the sky remained a dense charcoal gray. I was noting the street numbers on Highland Drive as we drove slowly past the rooming houses. All the lawns were covered with branches and storm debris.

  “It has to be on the next block,” I said.

  As we approached the cross street, Captain Morgo said, “Oh, my lord,” and pulled the cruiser to the side of the road. Farther down the windswept plateau, the Fall Creek Tavern was lit up like a Hollywood movie set.

  Two Groton police cruisers bracketed the street at the top of the steep grade. A red fire truck sat on the road below them, its mounted floodlights trained toward the building.

  Going forward on foot, we saw that the Groton police had cordoned off the area near the gorge. More than a hundred people were standing behind the police lines on the other side of the road.

  In the glare of the floodlights, I could see that the bar was empty. Many of the bystanders had managed to save some of the liquor stock before being evacuated and were making short work of it while they watched the rest of the drama unfold.

  The building no longer rested on its original foundation. It had slid back toward the gorge, and the whole building was now slightly canted over the two-hundred-foot abyss.

  Six Groton police officers guarded the perimeter of the cordoned-off area. As we came up, one of them recognized Captain Morgo and waved us past the rope barricade. A man in khaki overalls was standing near the front entrance of the building next to a Groton police lieutenant.

  “It could go any minute,” he was saying to the police officer. “There’s nothing left to support it in the back . . . and when the rear half goes, it will take the rest of the building with it.”

  Walking around the side of the building, I looked out over the precipice and saw that the timbers and cross struts that had shored up the rear half of the building were completely gone. A few hung loose from the floor joists, suspended over the edge like stick figures. The side door to the bar was slamming back and forth with each wind gust. That was when I saw the hand-painted numbers above the doorway. I had never noticed them before that moment.

  “326,” the numbers read.

  So Creighton Taylor had lived in one of the upstairs rooms at the Creeker. I looked up at the top tier of windows. They were all dark. I wondered if General Taylor might be up there if he had stayed in his son’s room.

  I could see the corner of one of the pool tables poking through a smashed window in the rear half of the building, ready to break loose. There was a deep, grinding rumble, followed by the loud snap of boards cracking and the sound of shattering glass. The building appeared to shudder for several seconds and then began to slowly travel downhill.

  A roar went up from the crowd. It faded away as the foundation timbers ground to a halt. Someone in the crowd began singing in a ragged voice, “The night they drove old Creeker down.” It was Johnny Joe Splendorio, obviously too far gone to realize that the central focus of his existence was about to disappear.

  I saw the owner, Chuck McKinlay, standing at the edge of the crowd. He was holding an unopened bottle of Banfi Brunello in his left hand and a full decanter of his prized Napoleon brandy in his right. Tears were streaming down his face as I went over to him.

  “I need your help, Chuck,” I said.

  He seemed to be in a trance, or more likely drunk. His head slowly craned upward until our eyes met.

  “Oh, hi, Jake,” he said.

  “Did you rent one of your upstairs rooms within the last few days to a man who wanted it for homecoming weekend?”

  He reacted as if I had asked him to explain the theory of relativity.

  “I mean . . . tell me, Jake . . . how did you know the tavern was going to die?”

  I shook him by the shoulders.

  Both bottles fell from his hands and smashed on the pavement.

  “Oh, God,” he cried. “My Brunello.”

  I repeated my question, my face a few inches from his.

  “The room for the weekend . . . oh, yeah . . . the guy who wanted the attic space on the fifth floor.”

  “What happened to him?” I demanded.

  “Dunno.”

  I found Captain Morgo again at the edge of the police barricade.

  “I think our killer is upstairs in the tavern,” I said. “I’m going in there to find out.”

  “Don’t be crazy. It could go any second now.”

  “If I don’t make it out in time, I want you to know there is a dead man named Sal Scalise lying in the kitchen of my cottage out at the lake. I killed him this afternoon after he tried to murder me. The reasons can be found in a batch of recorded messages on his cell phone that I have locked in my desk back at the office.”

  She shook her head with disbelief.

  “He also tried to kill my dog, and she may still be alive. I’m asking you to send someone out there to take her to a vet as quickly as possible.”

  I could still see the uncertainty in her eyes.

  “Trust me,” I said with a weary grin.

  “I do trust you, Jake. I was wrong about you, and I’m sorry.”

  I gave her a kiss on the cheek and began jogging toward the side entrance of the building.

  “Where the hell is he going?” I heard the Groton police lieutenant shout as I went through the open doorway.

  27

  As soon as I stepped inside, the walls began to convulse, which generated another roar from the crowd across the road. Crossing the buckled floor, I went straight up the backstairs behind the kitchen, following the frayed carpet runner.

  The wind was moaning through the broken windows on the fourth floor. Halfway down the hallway, another narrow staircase abutted the chimney. It led up into the darkness of the attic on the fifth floor. I turned on my flashlight and headed up.

  The attic was choked with discarded mattresses, furniture, and wooden packing crates. Under the open rafters, the gusting wind sounded like the breathing of some primordial beast. Pigeon droppings and plaster dust swirled around me, creating a murky, sour fog.

  Since Afghanistan, I had never felt I had knowingly experienced post-traumatic stress syndrome until that very moment. In my mind’s eye, I saw the faces of the men I had lost, the horrific ruin of them after the Taliban had finished with them. For a few seconds, I couldn’t move as I stood in the murky fog and tried to wipe out the memory.

  I felt the building suddenly shift again. Off balance, I grabbed the nearest doorjamb and held on. When the grinding noise stopped, I saw a faint gleam of light spilling out of one of the doorways.

  Hearing a low burst of chatter on my radio, I reached into my jacket pocket and turned it off. Pulling my .45 out of its shoulder holster, I mov
ed slowly forward along the plaster wall until I could see into the room.

  In the far corner, an old Coleman kerosene lantern sat on a metal desk. A .45 semiautomatic exactly like mine rested alongside it. Next to the gun was a framed photograph of a young man.

  I stepped into the room.

  “You won’t need that,” said Francis Marion Taylor, looking straight into the barrel of my pistol.

  The expression on his lean and weathered face was as tranquil as if he had just enjoyed a good steak dinner and was waiting for bedtime. There were deeply grooved wrinkles around his pale-gray eyes. I recognized him immediately.

  He had been sitting next to Ben at the bar when the four slumming angels had asked about Guadalcanal. He was wearing the same army field jacket with the Vietnam combat badge.

  “So you have finally brought me to bay, Major Cantrell,” he said with a taut grin.

  I dropped the .45 to my side as a loud vibration began to shake the outer wall beneath the rafters. It sounded like a professional boxer working a light bag.

  “I’m not sure how long this building is going to last,” said General Taylor. “You should find a safe exit while you can.”

  “I take it you’re not planning to go with me.”

  “No.”

  I doubted I could take him against his will and decided to play for time, if there was any time left, before the building went.

  “I needed to ask you why,” I said, holstering my .45. “I think I already know the answer.”

  “When Creighton died, I was deployed in Bolivia with a covert antidrug task force that was then assisting their government. By the time I returned home, he had been buried, both literally and figuratively. One of the boys in the fraternity he had just pledged had told police that he was depressed over breaking up with his girlfriend. The district attorney determined it was a suicide and ended their official inquiry.”

  “Who was the fraternity boy?” I asked.

  “Dennis Wheatley.”