Paskagankee (20 page)

The farmer continued lecturing Mike, a threadbare green John Deere baseball cap perched atop the man's head. It looked like it had been there since the day he was born, which, for all Mike knew, maybe it had. Sprague's face was ruddy and weathered from a lifetime spent outdoors in the harsh Maine climate. Mike pegged the farmer's age at about sixty and noted with frustration that the man viewed the world with the self-reliant attitude and obstinacy for which Maine Yankees were justly noted. “I know you think you're doing us a favor, Chief McMahon,” he said, “trying to protect us. And don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't appreciate that you got a job to do. But lemme tell ya something, seeing as how you ain't from around here. This town is so isolated, we need activities like my bonfire to help hold the community together.

“Besides,” he continued, “there will be hundreds of people gathered here, all talking and laughing and drinking. If some psychotic were to attack anyone at this event, he would find himself swarmed under inside of thirty seconds by some of the toughest men you've ever seen.”

Mike tried again. “I'm not questioning anyone's toughness, Mr. Sprague, and I fully recognize that I'm the outsider here, but you need to understand this situation is worse than you are aware and worse than anything this town has seen.” He thought about what Professor Dye had told him about the bloody history of Paskagankee and added, “At least recently.”

The farmer nodded curtly and said, “I know you're just trying to do your job, Chief, but we'll be fine tomorrow night. Come on by and share a mug of hard cider with us. You'll see what I mean if you do. Besides,” he leaned over and whispered conspiratorially to Mike, despite the fact they were all alone on the frozen field, “Chief Court wouldn't'a canceled.” He winked at Mike with a sly half-smile.

Mike pursed his lips and shook his head and gazed at the trees looming up from the edge of the forest in the distance. From here they looked like gigantic skeletons slowly advancing. “I'll take you up on that visit,” he said. “But I'll be working, so I'll have to take a rain check on the drink. I'll gladly enjoy a mug Saturday, though, if we get through tomorrow night with no problems.”

“Fair enough,” came the reply. Sprague clapped him on the back. “Everything'll be fine, you'll see.”

34

MIKE SAT AT THE kitchen table helping Sharon prepare dinner. It was the first night they had managed to leave work at a reasonable hour since before the Crosker murder, and they decided to celebrate by broiling a couple of steaks. Or, more accurately, Sharon broiled the steaks—as well as peeled the potatoes and steamed the vegetables—while Mike contributed to the effort by enjoying her figure in her jeans and sweatshirt and admiring her effortless grace in the kitchen.

“How'd you get to be such a great chef?” he asked, amazed at her seemingly innate sense of timing, cooking everything perfectly even though she used no timer that Mike could see.

She laughed. The sound reminded Mike of birds singing on a sunny spring morning. “How do you know I'm a good cook, when you haven't tasted anything yet? Maybe it's all going to taste like pig slop.”

“Oh, I've tasted plenty,” he reminded her. “It's just that none of it has been food yet.”

Sharon blushed, then jumped in surprise as Mike's cell phone chirped. “Dammit. I should have turned that thing off,” he said, despite knowing he would never consider doing that.

He answered the call and was surprised to hear Professor Ken Dye's voice on the other end of the receiver, scratchy and weak. He sounded like he had fled to the other side of the world. “Hello, Chief McMahon?” Dye said. “I'm in the middle of Paskagankee, right in front of the police station and town hall, and I have no idea where to go now. Could you give me some directions?”

“Of course, professor,” Mike answered, “but I thought you were going to get a good night's sleep and drive up tomorrow. The weather is forecasted to break finally and warm up considerably.”

“Yes, I know,” Dye replied. “But the more I thought about it, the more I felt we just could not afford to waste another eighteen hours before trying to get control of this situation, so here I am.”

Mike said, “Stay right where you are. Park your car in the police station lot and I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”

He hung up and apologized to Sharon. “I've got to pick up Professor Dye. He decided to drive up tonight. The guy is really concerned, and his concern is making me very worried. Is there any chance we can make it a meal for three instead of two?”

“Of course,” she said. “I'll throw in a couple more potatoes and some more veggies, and you'll have to make do with a normal-sized portion of steak instead of the Fred Flintstone caveman platter you bought. We'll share our steak with the professor and everyone will still have plenty to eat.”

Mike grabbed her around the waist and drew her into his arms, kissing her on the lips, hard. “No drinking while I'm gone either,” he said.

Sharon smiled easily. “It's funny, but since we've gotten together, I haven't thought once about getting drunk. I guess I'm busy with more important things,” she said, training her blue eyes on Mike's and squeezing his butt. It was his turn to jump; that was the last thing he had expected out of her.

He walked out the front door and into the icy mess as Sharon pulled more potatoes out of the cloth sack in her pantry, whistling a tune he did not recognize.

35

ICE TINKLED IN PROFESSOR Kenneth Dye's glass as he sipped his Chivas. Mike could see Sharon eyeing Dye's drink with what looked like a sense of longing, or perhaps he was imagining it because of what he knew about her. He and Shari were drinking coffee, and even though she cornered him when Dye wasn't paying attention and told him to share a drink with the professor, that she didn't mind, he felt good about sticking to coffee. For one thing, it demonstrated his support to Shari, and for another, Mike had an uneasy feeling in his gut that he should keep his wits about him; that things were somehow about to spiral out of control.

Dinner went well, with Dye and Sharon hitting it off and quickly chatting like fast friends. Mike was amazed. Sharon was easily thirty years younger than the seemingly egg-headed academic, employed in an occupation—law enforcement—that would lead you to believe they could not possibly have anything in common, yet there it was. The three of them talked and laughed through dinner as the teacher regaled them with stories about his colleagues in academia, about amusing things his students had done over the years, and about the time he spent living among Native American tribes.

Although the professor initially had struck Mike as high-strung and stuffy, in reality he was outstanding company and the time flew as they ate and talked. After dinner Sharon served a homemade apple pie she had somehow managed to put together and bake in the time Mike was out of the house retrieving Professor Dye. Mike was beginning to think she may have missed her calling; that although she seemed to be a fine cop, she could have earned big money as a chef in some fancy five-star restaurant in Manhattan had she chosen that career path.

Now Sharon and Ken Dye relaxed at her small kitchen table while Mike cleared away the dishes and piled them in the sink. The professor insisted on helping wash them and was only dissuaded when Mike said he was going to leave them for later. Dye raved about the meal, and Mike could tell Sharon appreciated the praise despite also being a bit embarrassed by all the attention. “How in the world did you learn to cook so well?” the professor asked.

She related to Dye that she had been left more or less on her own after her mother died, and that she had spent hundreds of hours in the kitchen as a young teen, using the time as a way to feel close to the woman whose cooking, Sharon insisted, would have put hers to shame. Mike watched her with admiration, realizing he still had plenty left to learn about this complex young woman.

Gradually the conversation slowed. The coffee cooled and the three grudgingly began to face the fact that as pleasant as the evening had been, there was a darkness bringing them together; sinister events had taken place and were likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

Mike placed the last of the dishes in the sink, and they clattered against one another, the noise louder and more jarring than it should have been. He dried his hands and sat back down in his chair. “I must say, professor,” he said, “you didn't seem terribly surprised to hear from me when I called you earlier this afternoon.”

“Oh, I wasn't surprised at all. I did think it might take you a little longer to get back in touch with me, but the moment you walked out my front door I knew we would be seeing each other again at some point.”

“Really,” Mike said. “And why is that?”

“Because of what I told you in my living room. You see, Chief McMahon—“

“Mike,” he interrupted.

“Okay, Mike. You see, Mike and Sharon,” he said, nodding to their host, “You view the story I told you as a legend, a long-ago tale of love and sex and treachery. Well it is all that, and quite a fascinating tale too, if I do say so myself. But it's much more than just a story.

“The truth is I don't view Paskagankee's tragic history as some fanciful legend that has no bearing on present-day events. I lived among the Abenaqui as well as with many other tribes for years, and I know for certain that many, if not most, of their legends are based in fact. I've seen things you would not believe if I told you. I sometimes have a hard time believing them myself, and I was there.

“Anyway,” the professor said, smiling at Sharon, who stared spellbound at him as he spoke, “the upshot of all this is that I don't just
believe
that the spirit of a murdered Native American girl has taken possession of someone's body and is doing unspeakable things to the people of Paskagankee, I
know
that is the case. And as I told you at my home, the bloodshed will not stop until the spirit is neutralized. In fact, it will get much worse.”

Professor Dye looked earnestly at Mike and asked, “You found the body of the missing man, didn't you?”

Mike frowned and nodded.

“And the corpse was torn apart and horribly disfigured, wasn't it?”

Mike nodded again.

“And now other victims have been discovered, haven't they?”

“One,” Mike answered. “It was a stranger—a salesman passing through town during the height of the storm who was unfortunate enough to run out of gas at the wrong time and in the wrong place.”

“So,” Professor Dye said, taking a sip of his now cold coffee. He grimaced and the three of them looked simultaneously at the clock on the wall as if unable to believe forty-five minutes had passed since Mike finished clearing the dishes.

“So,” the professor repeated. “You recognized in the crimes the similarities to the legend I related, and you have nowhere else to turn.”

“That's about the size of it,” Mike admitted. “Except the situation is even worse than that. A special serial murder task force has taken over the case, per order of the attorney general, who is taking his marching orders from the governor. I'm no longer involved in the official investigation, except in the most peripheral way.”

Professor Dye asked, “Have you told the task force about the history of Paskagankee and its relationship to the murders?”

“Are you kidding me?” Mike said. “The task force at the moment is comprised of just two State Police investigators, and they already think I'm a modern-day Barney Fife. If I mentioned any of this to them, I'm pretty sure I'd be shipped off to the nuthouse and that would be the last you'd ever hear from me.

“Besides,” he added, sipping his own cold coffee, “those guys are the most by-the-book, closed-minded, hard-ass idiots I've ever met in my life, and I ran across more than a few during my years on the Revere Police Department. If you think you're having a hard time convincing
me
that what you say is true, try taking the issue up with them and let me know how that goes.”

The professor smiled. “I've spent the last two decades dealing with people like the fellows on your task force. You might imagine that academics are open-minded individuals, but in many ways they are no different than anyone else. They have their own preconceived notions about the world and how things fit into it, and if you try to get them to look outside that carefully constructed box of expectations, they shut their minds in a heartbeat. So I think I know exactly what you're talking about.

“But here's my question,” the professor said. “If you're no longer a part of the investigation, why am I sitting in this kitchen right now? I assume you didn't call me here just to chat, as pleasant as it has been.”

Mike shook his head. “No, I didn't call you just to chat. I will admit to you, and I think I mentioned this before, I'm a pretty straightforward guy. In my world, crimes are committed by people in flesh and blood bodies; people who leave fingerprints and DNA and other physical evidence behind that we use to establish guilt. The idea that a series of murders are being committed by a three-hundred-year-old Native American coming back from the dead to inhabit an innocent body is not the sort of thing that I would normally put much stock in. Or any.”