The Pied Piper of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  “Time out,” Peyton said as flippantly as he could muster. He bent to search for the next mine.

  “Oh, boy,” Rabbit said simultaneously with the small pop of the mine’s initial explosion.

  The Tommy erupted straight up from the soil like a miniature flying saucer. Four feet off the ground it exploded with a dull thud that reverberated across the hills. Dozens of stainless steel balls thudded into the stone structure behind Lyon and Bea. At the opposite end of the cemetery pellets shattered the front windshield of the backhoe.

  “You still alive, Peyton?” Rabbit called.

  No answer. Lyon stood to shade his eyes and look across the Piper Pie toward the spot where Peyton had been standing. A small crater surrounded by mounds of recently spread topsoil, which were molded into piles like gigantic animal leavings, marked the spot. “Peyton!” Lyon yelled.

  “This has got to end,” a weak voice said. Peyton had thrown himself behind a tombstone when the Tommy detonated. His quick reaction had protected him from the mine’s powerful secondary explosion. He slowly straightened up. Deep facial lines which had once radiated a dominant assurance had reformed into weak crevices, giving the impression of a personality dissolved. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “Let me go. Please.”

  Lyon walked down the path Peyton had cleared of mines. “Enough of this, Rabbit.”

  “He’s not thinking right,” Bea called after him.

  “Stop where you are, Wentworth,” Rabbit said. “I have no quarrel with you, but I will shoot if I have to.”

  Lyon stopped midway between the mausoleum and backhoe. “Exactly what are you doing?”

  “As a young man I took a blood oath to fulfill the Covenant of the Bridge,” Rabbit said. “If that vow is to be broken forevermore, it has to come to an end in a fitting way. This is that way.” During the conversation Rabbit had stood up behind the backhoe. He stepped around the edge still gripping the rifle firmly.

  Rocco still lay prone on the walk in front of the mausoleum. He steadied his right wrist with his left hand. His elbows propped on the flat surface gave him a steady aiming platform for his .357 magnum. He estimated that the small man with the rifle was now less than fifty yards away. There was little wind. The only impediments to the shot were the two men standing directly in front of Rabbit.

  Lyon shifted slightly to the right, giving Rocco a clear lane of fire. The police chief estimated that he would be able to fire at least twice before Rabbit had a chance to react. It would be one of the most difficult shots of his career. It had to be done. He did not want to kill, but circumstances dictated that he try for a fatal wound.

  “I think that you’re holding a chicken shit hand and I’m calling,” Peyton said. His stature straightened as his body language indicated he had made a different assumption and was proceeding on a new track.

  The others watched in amazement as Peyton’s transformation propelled him toward Rabbit.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Bea called to him.

  “I know this man,” Peyton said. “He doesn’t have the balls to take me on.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Rocco added.

  “Once a servant always a minion. You know, little man,” Peyton said, “I just realized that the reason you couldn’t kill Paula like your so-called blood vow required, was because you don’t have the gonads to do it. You couldn’t kill her just like you had to use land mines in your attempt to get me. Well, I’ve figured out the dumb little pattern of explosives you’ve placed and now I’m going to rip that rifle out of your stubby little hands and stuff it down your constricted little throat.”

  Rabbit was expressionless. The rifle held at his waist drooped toward the ground.

  “Everyone down!” Rocco’s yelled command was to clear the path for his own impending shot.

  Lyon immediately dropped to the ground while Bea inched back behind Rocco.

  Peyton ignored the command as he continued a zigzag walk toward the man with the rifle.

  Another pop signified the activation of a Tommy mine. Peyton’s look was of absolute confusion. He had obviously miscalculated, and it was difficult for him to assimilate this fact. He hesitated a microsecond too long before stepping to the side, where another pop activated a second mine.

  Both munitions devices rose into the air and exploded.

  Whistling hot shrapnel passed harmlessly over Lyon’s head and rattled against the wall above Rocco and Bea.

  In the other direction, the exploding canisters released another salvo of a hundred projectiles that passed above the short man’s head.

  The two charges hit Peyton from opposite directions and flung him backward over a tombstone.

  Lyon was the first to reach the body. He knelt by the man’s side to reach toward the lolling head to clear an airway.

  Rocco stood over him. “Forget it. Nothing can be done.”

  Bea was the first to see Frieda come through the cemetery gates, walking resolutely toward her husband. The rigidity of her posture and the stiff movement of her legs signaled her anxiety. She carried something clutched in her right hand. Bea realized that the Welch cottage was only a quarter of a mile away, and Frieda must have heard the shots and guessed at their origin.

  Frieda walked through the cemetery behind the backhoe. She held a cast iron frying pan tightly as she looked at her husband’s back with eyes of infinite sadness.

  She walked silently up behind him and brought the skillet down on the center of his head.

  Rabbit fell forward into the dirt. Frieda reached for the rifle and tossed it aside.

  “It’s over, Rabbit,” she said. “It’s all over.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Bea Wentworth lay on the edge of the large bed at Nutmeg Hill and stared at the ceiling while dawn crept upriver from the sea. Lyon had captured the bulk of the covers and was splayed by her side consuming the majority of the space.

  “What have I done?” she whispered softly into the awakening day. “Whatever possessed me to do that?”

  “Yeah,” Lyon mumbled as he turned to face in the opposite direction while yanking the remains of the covers over his shoulders. “You did it with your own little motion from the floor of the convention,” he said without a trace of sleep in his voice.

  “You phony!” She sat bolt upright to hit him over the head with her pillow. “I’ve been lying here silently suffering and you knew it all along.”

  “Only since your conscience began shouting to the rooftops over that nomination you made at the state convention yesterday.”

  “I thought I was suffering quietly. Besides, Roger Candlin might make a good U.S. senator.”

  “Sure he will, as long as he has Bismarck and Maeterlinck to give him aid and comfort. Actually, the governor told me she thought your nomination by acclamation was a brilliant move. It keeps the party from a possible primary election blood bath. No one dares to oppose Roger. But whatever possessed you to nominate him?”

  “For a mad instant it seemed logical. We got rid of him as a problem by kicking him upstairs. Roger is shrewd and Machiavellian, but honest within those parameters. The nomination gets him out of the day-to-day running of state politics, which we need. Everything was going along fine until he realized what I was doing. That’s why he got his revenge by having his minions nominate me.”

  “Maybe you’ll like Congress. You’ve got a good chance to win since the congressional district overlaps your senatorial district.”

  “If that happens, I’d be beholden to Roger for his nomination. I can’t stand that thought.”

  “Think of the alternative. It might have been Peyton running for the Senate.”

  “I suppose.” She lay back on the pillows, contemplating an imaginary panorama that moved across the blank ceiling. “How long do you think Rabbit will be in prison?”

  “Of his twelve years, he should be out in five unless he does something rash. Unfortunately, knowing Rabbit, that is altogether too possible.”

&nbs
p; “Katherine and Paula tell me they’re going to keep Bridgeway, but they might turn it over to the state as a park. Either way, Rabbit has a job when he returns and he and Frieda can keep the little house.”

  “That’s something positive.” Lyon felt her loom over him as her hair brushed gently across his forehead. She bent to whisper in his ear the few words that shattered the moment.

  “There’s someone downstairs.”

  Her lips slid across his neck as he twisted his head to hear better. Over the years Nutmeg Hill’s creak and groan house sounds had become as familiar to him as the workings of his own body. “I don’t hear anything.” He reached around her waist and pulled her closer. “But as long as you’re here, I’ve got a great idea.”

  “Knock it off,” she whispered in his ear and shifted. “I tell you, I hear someone walking around down there. Get your gun.”

  “I don’t own a gun.”

  “Set the attack dog on them.”

  “We don’t have a dog either,” Lyon said. “But I do smell coffee. Do burglars usually start the coffee machine?”

  “Do you hear someone searching the bread box for a stale Danish and the liquor cabinet for our good vodka?”

  “Both.”

  “Okay, so now we know who it is. Go down there and do something to him for scaring me to death,” Bea said as she tumbled over him to lay on her stomach and scrunch a pillow over her ears.

  Her last remaining sheet slipped away and he saw that she was wearing his pajama top. For reasons he didn’t quite understand, he thought this far more erotic than if she were completely nude. Her right hand marched across the mattress searching for covers. He pulled the blanket over her as he reluctantly left the bed.

  Rocco was pouring coffee into mugs as Lyon shuffled down the backstairs still belting his terry cloth robe. The police chief handed him a coffee mug.

  “How did you know I wasn’t a guard dog who at this very moment would be leaping for your throat?” Lyon asked.

  “After living with you, the most ferocious pit bull would be out in the yard playing with his rubber ducks. You have company in the living room, but read this first.” He handed Lyon an official-looking document.

  “What’s this so early in the morning?” Lyon asked as he squinted at the blue-backed legal-size document with the town clerk’s embossed seal displayed at the bottom of the page.

  “The Selectmen passed a new town ordinance last night. To summarize, it states that any lighter-than-air device without proper gondolas or passenger-carrying undercarriages are banned from the town limits of Murphysville. I believe this includes your Cloudhopper.”

  “My balloon seems to be the only vehicle covered by the rule unless Tinker Bell decides to practice aerobatics over the town green.”

  “The volunteer firemen made sure I had a copy immediately.”

  “What are you supposed to do about it?”

  “Arrest the perps, I guess,” Rocco said with a smile. “Or at the very least, shoot them down somehow.”

  “I’m not quite sure that’s legal, but then again I’m not sure I want to test the ordinance. What am I supposed to do? When I fly a balloon I go where the wind carries me.”

  “My advice is that you attach a very large wind sock to the widow’s walk of Nutmeg Hill. I wanted to drop the legal paper off before I drove Katherine Piper to rehab at Silver Hills. Come say hello and good-bye.”

  In the living room Katherine Piper sat rigidly on the long sectional couch trying to force her shaking hands to grasp the coffee mug. She bolted to her feet as she tilted her coffee mug too far to one side and its contents spilled over the couch. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry,” Lyon said. “It’s very washable.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bea cringing in the kitchen as she poured her own coffee.

  “I’m going into rehab today,” Katherine said. “Although I’m not quite convinced that eight weeks at Silver Hills will sop up a decade of tippling.”

  Lyon saw Bea in the kitchen mouth, “It’s a good start.”

  “But I’ll do the best I can,” Katherine said. “Now that Peyton is gone I certainly have the time. I have asked Loyce Swan to say on at Bridgeway,” Katherine continued. “She can live in the gate cottage for as long as she likes. God only knows we owe her at least that much. And of course Frieda will stay on in the little house until Rabbit comes home. I think we ought to rename the hills of the Seven Sisters, the hills of the Three Widows,” Katherine said bitterly.

  Bea shuffled into the living room in a robe and fluffy slippers. She waved and perched on the arm of the easy chair across from the sofa. “How’s Paula doing?”

  “I sometimes think Paula and I got along better when I drank,” Katherine said. “Since her father died she’s had more interest in the Dow Jones than in suicidal poets. She’s dropped out of school and is working full time at the Piper factory. Her newest project is working some sort of self-destruct device into the land mines. It has something to do with the explosives becoming contaminated and inoperable after a year in the ground.”

  The phone rang and Bea snicked the wall unit from its fixture. She spoke briefly before handing the portable unit to the chief.

  Rocco spoke in a low monotone for a moment before jumping to his feet with the phone still pressed to his ear. “Good Christ!” they heard him say. “I hope someone kicks ass over that one!” He smashed the phone down. “This is no way to start a day,” he said.

  “I’d laugh if it wouldn’t hurt,” Katherine said. “I know him too well. How did he do it?”

  Rocco brushed his forehead with his massive hand. “During the van trip to max security he bit a deputy sheriff. He’d already slipped his cuffs, and was able to jump out of the van.”

  “I hope you are kidding, Rocco,” Bea said. “I can’t believe that Rabbit has escaped.”

  Rocco shook his head. “Well, it won’t be for long. When we put out the APB, how many men fit his description? He’s probably at home with his wife. That’s where they always go when they break out.” He started for the door. “I better go down there and see about him before someone gets hurt.”

  “Well,” Katherine Piper said with relief, “I can always start rehab another time.”

  Bea and Lyon shook their heads and Katherine Piper’s smile faded.

  “I’ll drive you up there,” Bea said. “Give me three minutes to throw some clothes on.”

  Lyon stood at his computer console and looked out the window of his study that overlooked the patio of Nutmeg Hill. The quiet scene reinforced his conviction that there was a certain balanced symmetry in life. Rabbit would be captured soon. Rocco was right, there was no place for him to run. No burrow was remote enough to hide him for long. Eventually Rocco’s solid police procedures, mixed with an intuitive sense, would lead him to the fugitive. Rabbit would be escorted back to prison with several years added to his sentence.

  It was time for the Wobbly monsters to return. His book must be restarted and life must begin again.

  His benign monsters were down on the river below the house. The two furry animals were zipped into an Eskimo kayak, paddling furiously downriver. Their strong furry shoulders moved in practiced unison as they propelled the small craft through the center of the channel.

  It might be a possible story. Perhaps something about the Wobblies and how they saved baby seals from vicious fur pirates. It might be worth thinking about.…

  The barrel of a pistol pressed into that spot where his spinal column joined the base of his brain. The movement behind him had been so silent that he had no advance warning of the approach.

  “Do not move. Do not even breathe or I blow your head off.”

  “Running from the van was a very foolish thing to do. You can’t avoid Rocco for long.” Lyon turned slightly, to look into the muzzle of a very long-barreled pistol that the small man held. He recognized the weapon as an exhibit from one of the display cases in the Piper library. It was a percussion-cap Colt single-
action revolver from the Civil War era.

  Lyon’s close view included a look into the gun’s chambers. It appeared as if the weapons were primed and ready to fire. “Appropriate gun. Fires a minié ball, I would suppose,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why, Rabbit?”

  For the first time Rabbit looked directly at him. His eyes were surrounded by dark hollow rings, giving him a raccoonlike appearance. “If I don’t do it here, it will be in the cop car with Rocco. I’ll run and he’ll have to shoot me. If not with him then when the deputies take me to the prison. If not then, then when I get to max security. On the first day I will run for the wall and they will have to shoot me. Somewhere soon it will happen, but I would rather do it here.”

  Lyon understood but couldn’t answer.

  Rabbit looked at him with a wistful smile. “Thank God you didn’t call me a determined little man. I think I would have thrown up.”

  “I’m still not satisfied, Mister R. How come the Welches were the family forced to fulfill the covenant?”

  “I understand that in the beginning we were just onlookers. Young Swan swore to his dying father that he would do it. When he was killed in the war it was assumed that Candlin would step in to fulfill the covenant.”

  “The same Candlin who was having dinner on the patio when the first Mrs. Colonel didn’t take a dive off the parapet.”

  Rabbit nodded. “Yep. The same man who started the meal as a farmhand and was a private banker by dessert. Doesn’t take much to figure out that he was bought.”

  “So the promise became the Welches’ by default?”

  “We were the only men of honor left. It helped that our size protected us as long as the Candlin who fought in the Civil War was alive. He was too pompous to seriously consider little people as the perpetrators.”

  “Honor that carried down for over a hundred years. Honor that kept men killing young men and women for generation after generation.”

  “The Pipers helped matters by generally being very unpleasant people.”

  “And was Rebecca also unpleasant enough to be murdered?”

  “That was distasteful, and the reason that I decided to stop the covenant when it came time to include Paula. I could no more kill her than my own kid.”