Thin Blood Thick Water (Clueless Resolutions Book 2) (30 page)

Although they could not see well through the billowing snow, the pursuers followed the progress of the blowing snow cloud as the plane moved faster and faster along the field and began to pull away. The truck could only manage about 45 miles per hour on the rough, snowy surface. The airplane needed to attain approximately 70 MPH ground speed, into the slight headwind, in order to become airborne. To the pursuers in the truck, beyond the snow-cloud ahead, an approaching tree line came into view.

Chip, apparently aware that they might not get airborne in time to clear the trees, steered the plane slightly to the north where the tree line receded somewhat. With the take-off speed slightly reduced due to the turn, and with the tail-skid still not fully clear of the snow, the airplane seemed to be incapable of a lift-off. The tree line was now too close, and Chip pulled the plane into a sharp right U-turn, to head back toward the open field behind. As it turned, the plane’s right ski lifted, as its left wing dipped and made contact with the surface. Chip instinctively corrected with a turn to the left but the plane rocked violently to the opposite side and the right wing tip slammed down hard.

Because of the changed take-off direction, the slower truck would be able to cut the airplane off at an angle that crossed its’ new intended take-off path. In order to avoid the truck Chip swung sharply to the left again. This time the tail flipped up and the propeller contacted the snowy surface. It ground a furrow, scattering snow and frozen dirt chunks into the air. The propeller immediately broke down to stubs and the right-side ski support snapped. With a piercing, high-pitched metallic screech the aircraft suddenly jerked to a stop with its nose buried and the tail tilted skyward at a 45 degree angle.

As the truck approached, the four occupants of the plane could be seen slumped forward and unmoving. From the back section of the truck Max could see part of the plane through the mottled windshield and recognized, by the ID number on its upright tail section that, to his amazement, the airplane was the USAP Cessna with the attached skis! In that instance all sounds ceased except the idling motor of the armored truck, the slight murmur of the wind and some heavy breathing from within the truck. Don Chase quickly exited the truck with the riot gun and, pointing it back and forth between the side windows of the airplane, he slowly approached. The marshal exited the driver’s side of the truck and followed Chase, one step behind. They checked for signs of fuel leakage and were satisfied that there was none.

The sound of sirens could be heard from the direction of the town. As Chase held the shotgun at ready, the marshal reached around and pulled open the rear passenger door. One of the door guards tumbled out onto the snow, followed by the money satchel. The guard was bleeding from facial cuts and was semi-conscious. Neither of the guards appeared to have fastened their seat belts. The marshal took a gun from the guard’s pocket and pointed it at the slumping second guard, who was pushing away and trying to sit back from where he had been slammed against the back of the pilot’s seat. The marshal reached in and dragged the flailing, dazed guard out onto the snow beside his cohort. Kneeling on the back of his neck, he retrieved a pistol and proceeded to snap on handcuffs, one guard to the other, and then opened the co-pilot’s door.

Mahlah, wearing no restraint belts, had been forced forward against the co-pilot control wheel by the abrupt stoppage of the airplane, and appeared to be impaled through the chest area on a metal shaft jutting up through the floor of the cockpit. Blood was oozing from her mouth and she was not breathing. It was apparent that she was beyond help and would not be going anywhere.

They moved around the imbedded nose of the airplane and opened the pilot’s door. Chip Chaplain was slumped forward in his seat. Blood was running from his nose and dripping onto his knees. His forehead had impacted the sun visor apparatus over the instrument panel, and he appeared to be stunned from the blow. Both of his hands were bleeding and apparently broken.

A rescue truck had entered the field and was approaching the wreckage.

Meanwhile, Max was holding Maggie’s head in his arm as she lay across the rear floor of the armored truck. She was groggy from being partially strangled and was breathing heavily now, but regularly. Her eyes opened up and, seeing Max, closed slightly out of relief. Max could feel her body relaxing. The stress of the ordeal was wearing off now. Don Chace’s friend who had posed as the silent buyer, looking around to see that only Max and Maggie were nearby, moved over Maggie and looked down as her hood slipped back.

“Are you okay Maggie?” she asked softly. Max looked up and was stunned.  Maggie’s eyes opened wide.

“Carrie?” she asked. “Is that you?”

“Shh,” the girl said, “I’m ‘Jeanine’ now.”

A CRT from the rescue truck looked in and asked if anyone needed help. The girl pulled her hood over her head and tied it to partially hide her flawless, naturally beautiful face.

Don Chace looked in on them. Assured that they were okay, he motioned to ‘Jeanine’. “We had better get moving now,” he said. “Say your goodbyes.”

A New Brunswick rescue ambulance was pulling away from the library to transport the library caretaker to a nearby Canadian medical center in New Brunswick. Maurice Leblanc walked toward the wrecked airplane, which by now was surrounded with police, fire, rescue and medical response team members. Three fire trucks had responded to the scene and flame-retardant foam had been sprayed on and around the Cessna as a precaution. The Federal Marshal had reclaimed the money satchel and secured it inside the armored vehicle. After Don Chace had signed to release it, the marshal drove the truck back to the U.S. side of the library to await an escort for transporting of the money back to the U.S. Treasury disposal facility, from which it had come. The Maine State Police had requested that the bullet-pocked armored truck be confiscated as evidence.

Don Chace’s friend ‘the buyer’ had not exited the armored vehicle and remained in it to await an escort back to her safe haven. She had known Max, Maggie, and Don Chace in a previous life, and was now placed, incognito, in a witness protection program.

Mahlah was pronounced dead at the scene. Her body had been extracted from the airplane wreckage and was being transported to the state morgue.

Chip Chaplain was arrested by the State Police Senior Officer on the scene and transported to the medical center for further medical attention.

The two patched-up and handcuffed bodyguards, both Native Canadian Indians that had escorted Mahlah from across the border in New Brunswick, were taken into custody to be transferred to the immigration authority office in Augusta.

After turning over the three handguns taken from the robbers and answering questions, Max, Maggie, Don and Maurice walked back to the relative warmth of the library to collect their thoughts and their belongings.

The escort transport had come and gone with Chace’s ‘friend’.

Thanksgiving morning, when Max and Maggie left Hargrove House Apartments, on the way to pick up Maggie’s mother they had detoured to spend an hour with Max’s mother at the nursing home where she had lived for several years. Mrs. Hargrove’s cognizance wafted in and out these days, as she struggled with the onslaught of Alzheimer’s disease. They never knew for sure if she realized exactly who they were.

The couple enjoyed the remainder of the holiday with Maggie’s mother, and aunts. The younger sisters of her mother, had arranged for a meal including her and Max. The gathering took place at a condo apartment located in White Plains, a suburban neighborhood in New York, near the Connecticut line.

Following the assemblage, Maggie’s mother rode back with Max and Maggie to her assisted living apartment in Fairlawn, Connecticut. It was the first time Max and Maggie had joined her family’s Thanksgiving meal as a couple.

Almost three weeks had passed since the show-down in Fort Fairfield.

One week following the confrontation at the border crossing, Don Chace called Max with an inquiry as to Maggie’s health, and expressed his gratitude for her and Max’s participation in the operation.  He suggested that, if they were free they could meet up with him and he could give them an update as to the result.

“Maggie is fine, Don. I’ll tell her you asked,” Max answered. “She is away on a two-day finance seminar, but I know she’d really like to hear about it.”

“Well, I can give you what I know,” Don quipped, “and if I leave anything out, tell her to call me.”

“Okay, wise guy,” Max retorted with a chuckle, “Fill me in.”

Chip Chaplain had been charged by the RCMP with second degree murder of Ernest Bickford, Chace told Max. Chip was accused of aiding and abetting the now-deceased Mahlah Bickford in the murder of her husband, withholding information as to the killing, and tampering with evidence at the crime scene. Chace indicated that the information came from Chip Chaplain’s confession. He was being held by the Maine State Police for robbery, firing a weapon at police officers and civilians, assault and battery, and illegal flight through international air space boundaries without authorization. The RCMP had requested his extradition to stand trial in Canada and the request is under consideration.

“Chip had been having an on-going affair with Mahlah,” he said. “Ernest became aware of it.”

“Chip was directing assignments for the USAP operatives and must have set up meetings with Mahlah to coincide with the away-assignments for her husband,” Max supposed.

Chase agreed and went on to describe an occasion, taken from the transcript of Chip’s confession, whereas the three of them were at the family bungalow in Halifax. An argument flared up and, having threatened to have Mahlah removed from his will, Ernest was going to fly alone back to Ithaca. At stake for her was his sizable family inheritance.

“That must have been an interesting scene,” Max inserted.

“I’ll say,” Chase agreed. “According to him, Mahlah was screaming obscenities at Ernest and followed him into the boathouse. He was casting off the mooring lines securing the floatplane and, as he crossed in front of the idling airplane to push-off and jump onto the pontoon, Mahlah pushed him into the spinning propeller.”

“Christ!”  Max exclaimed, “That must have kicked up quite a mess!”

“I would think so,” Chase responded. “According to the forensic examination of the planes operating system, the turbine engine stalled and the un-moored floatplane drifted back against the unopened boathouse door, held inside only by the door latch. Chip said that Mahlah had been spattered with some of Ernest’s pureed body parts and had to take a shower.

“That’s ugly! Man, nobody knows what that intensity of anger can produce,” Max responded.

Inspector Chase went on to relate how the couple delayed calling the authorities for a day. They left the bungalow and took a drive into the New Brunswick Mountains. A stay at an Inn there provided them with an alibi.

“It was reported on the following day that they had gone back to the bungalow unaware of Ernest being there, and had discovered the gruesome scene,” Chace continued. “The inspection by the medical examiner, as expected, indicated that the death had occurred the previous day.”

Chace suggested that, since Mahlah had influence with the Halifax Police Chief, possibly through the laboratory-based drug trafficking, the incident was downplayed and listed as an accidental death with no further questions.

“And this went on undetected until the insurance investigation started?” Max asked.

“That’s right,” Chace responded. “Mahlah’s filing for the double indemnity, out of greed, lit the fuse. But there’s more. The accountant at the Bickford Laboratory was arrested and charged with falsifying government reporting records, aiding and abetting illicit drug trafficking, and forgery.”

Chace went on to tell Max that the entire staff of workers at the laboratory was charged with aiding and abetting illegal drug trafficking and turned over to the Provincial Native Canadian Conservatory, headed by the newly-elected Chief of the New Brunswick Reservation, Lamar “Dark-Horse” Brooks. Lamar had accepted the position as a way of memorializing the death of his brother Jonathan.

Chace suggested that the tribe members were apparently regarded as hard-working, honorable people except for the few ‘rotten apples’, which included the elder’s council and their group of enforcers. He felt that the tribe would be in good hands with Lamar in charge.

“We’ve been wondering what happened to Lamar,” Max said, disguising his dissention over the dismissive attitude Lamar showed that day on the mountain. “When he went along with the elders who were going to flush Mario, me, and Maggie, down their mountain toilet, I guess he had no choice under the circumstances.”

Chace didn’t know all of the details of the abduction, but he gave Max the benefit of the doubt on that segment of the saga. He continued on relating that the undersea exploratory vehicle belonging to the Bickford Laboratory was confiscated by the RCMP and held as evidence in an illegal drug trade investigation. As suspected by Inspector Marcel Leblanc, the two-man submarine was used by the corrupted reservation elders to conduct transfers of illegal drugs from South America in off-shore international waters. It was also found to be utilized by the reservation elders to control the tribe, mostly the older, more superstitious members. The old tales circulating among the conglomeration of indigenous tribes concerning the mountain sacrifices to the ‘god of righteousness’ told of offenders among the tribe being punished by ‘sacrificing’ them on the ‘mountain-side disposal’ machine. The machine was actually an air-circulation mechanism. It was developed by 18
th
century explorers to vent the shafts of mining expeditions dug into the mountains along the Forty Five River. An apparatus was built into the underground system which was energized by the enormous energy created by the force of trapped air which gathered below the mining tunnels as the river tide rose.

The abnormally fast rising tides along the deep ravines of the ‘Bay of Fundy’ as that region of ocean came to be called, created strong and swift currents. The Forty Five River currents, which changed direction twice each day, were partially deflected to provide the power to drive the ventilation system.  With its conglomeration of gates and gears it resulted in a version of the modern day garbage disposal. The ventilator mechanism ground anything entering its vertical venting shaft, located on the side of the mountain, into dust. Thus, the automatic, un-tended system remained jam-free and would function under all conditions.

The tribal Elders would place an ‘offender of the rules’ on the upper grate and open the grate to drop them into the mechanism at the time of high tide. The ground-up perpetrator would then be flushed into the river through an underground conduit. The river water would turn red as a result, enforcing the effect for all who watched the ceremonial process. This was the control method enforced by the corrupt council of elders for years.

The process did not live up to the epic tales spun by the elders as the younger, more educated and more sophisticated generation developed. Unrest among the younger members was presenting a problem to the controlling elders so, in order to reinforce their control method, mannequins were occasionally swished through the system at high-tide tribal ceremonies and a highly concentrated dye was simultaneously released up-river. A derivative of shark repellent initially developed by the Bickford Laboratory under a Canadian Military Contract, was the marker-dye which was altered to be colored a deep red.  The ceremonies were pre-arranged to be held according to the tidal charts. At the exact time of the peak high tide, the dye was dispersed into the out-going tidal currents of the river by using the Bickford undersea exploratory vehicle. The result was that, as depicted by the elders’ old tales, the river ran red.

Those demonstrations had been difficult for the rebellious younger generation to discount, but change was in the wind since the arrival of Lamar Brooks.

Chace had to cut off the conversation at that point. Max thanked him for the update and they agreed to a meeting for lunch for the three of them as more fall-out transpired.

Max’s conveyance of this information to Maggie would have to wait but, during their call later that evening he passed along the part about the red dye in the river. That tidbit resulted in an “Ahh!” from Maggie. He knew that she would be eager to hear the rest.