Paskagankee (37 page)

“Indeed. Interested?” she asked, throwing open her bedcovers in invitation. Mike didn't think he had spoken loudly enough to be heard across the hospital room.

“You know what I mean,” he said, shaking his head and limping out into the hallway again, dodging a couple of kids streaking down the hall as he pulled the door closed behind him. He leaned reluctantly on the crutches and made his way slowly toward the hospital's parking garage, looking forward to getting back to his apartment. Mike McMahon was late for a hot date with a shower and about twenty hours of sleep.

Epilogue

THE EARLY-MAY SUNSHINE beat down on Revere with an intensity that belied the date. It felt to Mike much more like mid-summer than spring, especially compared with the relative cool of Paskagankee, located as it was in the woods so far to the north, much nearer the Canadian border than here, on the outskirts of Boston.

He held tightly to Sharon Dupont's hand as they strolled together across the field, dotted with headstones. Stately, centuries-old maple and oak trees surrounded them. In the distance Mike could hear the muted sound of highway traffic, the never-ending symphony of tires and engines that played across any modern city nearly twenty-four hours a day. He had forgotten the constancy of the noise; in Paskagankee automobile traffic was almost an afterthought. He decided he liked the silence better.

Sharon tossed her head to clear her black hair out of her eyes. It had grown back to the point where it was now almost as long as it had been prior to the emergency surgery performed last November to reduce the swelling in her brain. Her grip was still weak, thanks to the two broken arms, but seemed to be improving daily with physical therapy.

When Mike had suggested the weekend trip down the seacoast to his old stomping grounds, he knew she suspected the reason, but he didn't say and she didn't ask. Melissa Manheim's book on the Paskagankee killings was due out within a few weeks, and it would create a media firestorm. The investigation had gone exactly as Mike expected it to—the entire mess was pinned on Chief Walter Court's defenseless shoulders. He had gone mad for some unknown reason and executed six people, tearing their bodies apart in the most grisly fashion imaginable.

How he had managed to dismember six full-grown adults—with no tools, no help, and an arm so badly broken it was nearly falling off his body—was never addressed in the official report. How he managed to keep coming when Mike McMahon pumped twelve bullets from a semi-automatic pistol into his body was never addressed in the official report, either.

Manheim's book would come out and the attention of the world would be focused on tiny Paskagankee, Maine, again for a time, just as it had been late last year. News crews would come and shoot their footage for reports that would cast doubt on the State Police investigation, townspeople would be interviewed, theories on the crime spree advanced, a few—but not many—of them even more outlandish than the truth.

Eventually, Mike hoped within a few days or so, some other strange and bizarre story would grab the attention of the world and Paskagankee would become just another footnote in the unending news cycle. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but ride out the impending flurry of unwanted publicity and hope it was short-lived.

It was almost time to begin the drive back up I-95 to northernmost New England. Mike and Sharon had eaten an early dinner at one of Mike's favorite Italian restaurants in East Boston, one town away from Revere, and he had purchased a single exquisite long-stemmed yellow rose from a street vendor as they strolled along the sidewalk back to Mike's truck.

Now the sun dropped steadily toward the horizon in the unseasonable heat as the pair walked hand-in-hand across the cemetery. Mike seemed to know exactly where he was going. “You've been here before, haven't you?” she asked.

“Many times,” he said tightly, holding her hand the way a hungry man might clutch a slice of pizza. They reached a small granite marker, tucked away in a remote corner of the field and decorated very simply with a carving of a baby angel winging her way to heaven. On it were written the words, “SARAH MELENDEZ, JANUARY 12, 2003 – JULY 16, 2010. REST IN PEACE.”

Mike placed the flower on it, saying nothing.

Sharon looked at him closely. “What a beautiful stone.”

“Thanks,” Mike replied.

“You bought it?”

He nodded. “The grandparents had no money; they couldn't afford to memorialize her. I thought, under the circumstances, that it was the least I could do. Of course, they wouldn't accept anything from me—I can't say I blame them—so I purchased it and had it sent to them anonymously. I wanted that little girl to have a fitting memorial.”

They stood silently, listening to the muted sounds of the late-afternoon Revere traffic, of commuters rushing home to their families and people frenziedly living their lives. It all seemed far away from this little wooded corner and the peace and quiet of the gravesite.

Finally, still without speaking, they turned as one and began walking back the way they had come across the carpet of grass, intensely thick and green and lush, reborn after the long winter. They held hands and moved in comfortable silence through the cemetery, ready to begin the long trip back to Paskagankee.

THE END

Coming soon

REVENANT

Book two in the Paskagankee series

PROLOGUE

Don Running Bear's brakes screeched out a complaint as he pulled to a stop at the end of his dusty driveway. His ancient Chevy pickup kicked and bucked like a temperamental stallion when he shut down the engine, eventually giving up the ghost and wheezing into silence.

He sat in the cab and mopped his face with a well-worn handkerchief. Faded renderings of sacred Navajo animals covered the blue cotton, which the passage of time had dulled to a sickly greyish-brown color. The hankie had been a gift from his grandfather and was now threadbare and clearly on its last legs. Don knew he should take some action to preserve it, maybe store it a drawer or something, but he had used the damn thing for as long as he could remember and could not imagine going through even a single day without being able to touch the only remaining link to the man he so admired.

The temperature outside the pickup had to be well over one hundred degrees, which meant inside the truck it was probably close to one-forty, but Don was in no hurry to get inside the house, despite the fact his air conditioning would provide a welcome respite from this blast-furnace heat. Don needed to think, and to do that he had to be alone. So he sat in his truck, barely noticing the sweat running down his weathered copper face.

Don Running Bear was worried. He hadn't been sleeping well, being assaulted nightly by dreams filled with violence and bloodshed, nightmares which were clearly meant to be a sign. The problem was not that he didn't understand the significance of his terrible dreams, but rather that he feared he did. In these visions, which were all stunningly similar, a beautiful young Navajo girl wrought death and destruction, murdering strangers and cracking open their cold corpses, plunging her tiny hand inside their chests, ripping out the hearts of her victims before turning to dust herself and disappearing.

In these disturbing dreams, the identity of the young girl refused to reveal itself to Don, although she seemed strangely familiar. Each morning he awoke trembling, drenched in sweat, certain that with just a little extra effort he might be able to identify her, and maybe then begin to decipher the meaning of the nightmares. But so far, her face had remained elusive.

Don Running Bear wished he could turn back time and salvage just a few more hours with his grandfather. Niyol Running Bear had died more than a decade ago, and with his passing, so too had many of the mystical secrets of the tribal medicine man been lost. Niyol had adamantly refused to share his wisdom and knowledge with his son, Nastas—Don's father—saying only that the knowledge was explosive and dangerous and he would not involve his family in any of it.

Nastas had died young, killed in a horrific car crash driving drunk at a high rate of speed on the reservation, leaving only Don and his grandfather, and when Niyol had become seriously ill, he had reluctantly entrusted a very valuable relic—a stone—to Don, telling him only that it was to be hidden and protected at all costs, that it was a sacred stone, possessed of incredible power, magical and fearsome and terrible.

Don had been thinking a lot recently of both his grandfather and the stone. He wondered if the awful nightmares he had begun experiencing were somehow related to one or both of them. He guessed they were, but since his grandfather had never been specific about the danger the stone represented or about its awesome power, Don could do no more than guess. But the very fact he associated his dreams with the stone after Niyol had been gone ten long years illustrated the impression the old man had made.

Don Running Bear sighed and stepped out of his truck. Dwelling on the dreams and their possible relation to the sacred stone, long tucked securely away, was pointless without further information, and he had no way of acquiring that information. He vowed to let it go, to forget about the damned stone, but he had made that vow hundreds of times, maybe thousands, and knew he would never be able to follow through on it. The hot, dry wind which seemed to blow endlessly across the plains raised little eddies of dust around his shoes as he trudged across the front yard.

Don stepped through the front door into the cool stillness of his small home, distracted and upset. He made it two full steps and then froze in confusion and fear. Seated directly across the room, facing the door so there was no way Don could miss the sight of them, were his wife and teenaged daughter. The two were fastened to matching kitchen chairs placed side by side. Thick strips of shiny silver duct tape had been wound around their wrists and ankles, immobilizing them. Don's family stared in terror at him, eyes bulging, not speaking despite the fact they had not been gagged.

Behind the two women, looming over them in a stool taken from the breakfast bar in the kitchen, was a middle-aged man Don had never seen before. The silver haired man displayed a long, curved knife, holding it above Eagle Wing's and Kai's heads, turning it slowly in the air so that the sunlight pouring through the window winked and glittered off the polished blade's surface. If the man was trying to get Don's attention, his efforts had worked to perfection.

For a long moment no one moved. Time seemed to stretch into infinity. The stranger lowered the knife blade so that its razor-sharp point pressed against the soft skin of his daughter's throat.

Eagle Wing gasped softly and Don finally spoke. “What's going on here?” He worked hard to keep his voice strong and calm, fearing he knew the answer to the question but asking it anyway. Sometimes life's little plays are destined to be performed according to a script written by fate. He forced himself to direct his full attention at the man, not because he wanted to do so, but because he suspected that to do otherwise would be consigning his family to death.

“It's very simple,” the stranger said, maintaining a steady pressure with the knife-blade at Eagle Wing's throat. “An item of great value was entrusted to your care many years ago. You're going to give it to me.”

Don had an instant to decide how to play it. What were the odds the man with the knife was talking about anything other than the sacred Navajo stone? Essentially nil. But for the heavy weight of responsibility his grandfather had laid on his shoulders, he was an ordinary Native American man living an ordinary life. He was the proprietor of the reservation's General Store, a nearly invisible forty year old man who owned nothing of monetary value, certainly nothing worth breaking into his home and threatening murder to get.

Nothing except the stone.

And it was imperative the stone never see the light of day.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he said evenly, and as he did, the man's lips hardened into a thin bloodless line and he flicked his right wrist almost imperceptibly, drawing the tip of the knife-blade half an inch across Eagle Wing's throat. Blood welled sluggishly out of a tiny gash. Eagle Wing drew in a breath, a short, panicked gasp, but seemed to realize instinctively that to scream, or even to move, would be to risk suffering much greater damage, perhaps even death.

Kai Running Bear knew no such thing. Don's wife let loose a roar of rage and fear, thrashing helplessly in her chair in a desperate attempt to launch herself at the silver-haired man harming her child. The man rotated his left arm at the elbow, still holding the knife to Eagle Wing's throat, and drove his fist into Kai's face. The crack of her cheekbone shattering was followed by a dull thud as the chair and its suddenly unconscious occupant smashed backward onto the living room floor.

Don rushed forward instinctively, stopping after two steps as the man with the knife leapt from the stool and screamed, “Come any closer and she dies!” and Don knew he meant what he said. The stranger's eyes were black and determined and devoid of any shred of compassion or empathy. He might as well have been a rattler coiled under a rock in the desert, alert and lurking, prepared to strike.

For one second, then two, the men faced each other, locked in a silent standoff. Kai lay motionless on the floor, duct-taped to her toppled chair, her face beginning to swell hideously. Eagle Wing panted, the point of the knife pressed into her throat, her body shaking as it reacted to the stress and the pain of the knife wound, as well as the sight of her unconscious and badly injured mother.