Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (11 page)

Fleeing
north into the United States thinking he was home free.

Finding
out the Krupps had survived and were hunting him.

Running
again, month after month spent with the Krupps dogging his every move, finally arriving
in the tiny northern Maine village with the Krupps right on his tail, killing
the liquor distributor and then knocking the tavern owner out to keep him from blabbing
about the secret slave hideaway to Amos and Wesley.

But
then what had happened? His plan had been a good one, and the innkeeper was out
cold, as he remembered. He had felt his way along the pitch-dark subterranean
passageway and into the secret room, practically dragging the barkeep’s little
woman behind him. The granite-block door had barely closed ahead of the Krupps’
arrival, so he knew they had searched the tavern.

The
last thing he remembered was hearing the muffled, faraway sounds of
destruction: walls crashing down, timbers and beams falling, the tavern being destroyed.
Wesley and Amos must have known he had outsmarted them—again—and
one of them had snapped. Probably Amos, he thought, the man had never had an
ounce of patience in his entire big ugly body.

One or
both of the Krupps had done something rash. Given the level of destruction that
seemed to have been occurring beyond those thick foundation blocks, the damned
fools had probably set fire to the tavern, burning it down with the
innkeeper—the only man with the knowledge that three human beings were
trapped inside a secret underground room with no way out—lying
unconscious on the basement floor.

That
meant the innkeeper had either burned to death or been killed by falling
rubble, and that had been the beginning of the end for Jackson Healy, the
innkeeper’s lovely wife, and one very pissed off old black slave. The three
people paced back and forth inside the tiny room, mostly trying to stay out of
each other’s way, all attempting, with varying degrees of success, to quell
their rising panic.

When
two hours had elapsed and the innkeeper had not yet returned to release them
from their subterranean prison, Jackson knew he wasn’t going to return.

Ever.

The
innkeeper had been so stricken about his wife being held hostage that Jackson
knew he would not have let one extra second elapse after the Krupp brothers
departed before would rush to the basement and release her.

Thus,
he was dead or dying and they were never getting out.

They
had gone through their supplies slowly, rationing them more or less on an equal
basis, although it became much easier to accomplish when Sarah mostly stopped
eating. Once she realized her husband must have been killed and there was no
hope of rescue, it seemed to Jackson that she was anxious to get on with the
business of dying in order to join the innkeeper in whatever came after this
life.

And she
did it, too. She was the first to die.

Jackson
had lost track of the number of days they had been trapped underground when the
young woman slipped away, but it seemed as though her death had happened much
more quickly than it should have, given her apparent good health. But what did
he know? He was no doctor, and her fate didn’t concern him, anyway.

What
did
concern him was the prospect of
sharing their earthen prison cell with a decomposing corpse, that concerned him
a lot, but by this time there were much more serious issues to worry about.
Their food was running low, and the old black slave’s health was deteriorating
rapidly, and Jackson knew the man would also die soon. Then he would be down here
alone, trapped with two corpses, and would likely go mad before following his
fellow prisoners into death.

But
Jackson had a secret, something he had carried with him for two years, afraid
to use but unwilling to discard. Day after day—or perhaps night after
night; Jackson had long since lost track of hours and days down here, and what
difference did it make, anyway?—when the old man drifted off to a
troubled sleep, Jackson would pull the long, clear tube out of the breast
pocket of his overcoat and examine its gel-like contents, recalling the words
the young Peruvian guide had spoken just minutes before Jackson had shot the
kid:
If you drink the liquid, you will
live forever.

What
had the boy meant by that? The words seemed clear enough, but were they really?

The
words had been a translation, uttered for his benefit by a child with a child’s
unquestioning belief in their truth. The boy had spoken them with such
conviction, Jackson had almost believed them himself, and why wouldn’t he? He
had just seen with his own eyes a solid, seamless boulder transform –
impossibly – into a door, using nothing more than a solid gold doorknob.
He’d seen a massive humanoid figure appear out of nowhere, dressed in foreign,
almost alien-looking clothing. He’d seen with his own eyes a mystical ceremony
probably not observed by any other living white man.

He’d
seen things he would never understand.

After
all of that, and in the dead of night, under the starry South American sky,
what the hell else
could
he believe?

He had
put enough stock in the child’s words to be sure he took possession of the bizarre
gel-like liquid sealed inside the clear tube before stealing the gold disk and
murdering everyone—or at least, thinking he had murdered everyone—and
then fleeing the continent.

But
that was where it had ended. Jackson Healy never quite developed enough faith
in the story enough to actually drink the stuff.

Now, though,
with the body of the innkeeper’s wife moldering in a corner of the room not
eight feet away, with the stench of death and decomposition filling his lungs
with every wretched breath he took, with the ancient black slave already weak
and getting weaker, soon to follow the dead woman into the great beyond, he
supposed he had no choice. It was either drink the liquid and take his chances,
or suffer for a few more days or weeks and then die like his two fellow
prisoners, alone and miserable.

So he
had drunk the liquid and taken his chances.

5

Mike McMahon was pacing. He paced
a lot these days, having resigned his former position as chief of the
Paskagankee Police Department over concerns raised by the Town Council about a
potential conflict of interest, given the fact he was living with one of his
subordinates on the force.

At the
time of his resignation, no one had as yet approached him about his living
arrangements, but it would only have been a matter of time, so he had saved
them the trouble. He submitted his letter of resignation the very day he
proposed to Sharon.

He had
known for months that the day was coming when he would be forced to choose
between the two things he loved – his job and his girl – and the
results of a bizarre plot hatched by a power-hungry maniac last year involving
a sacred Navajo stone and the kidnapping of a world-renowned software developer
had served to simplify the decision in a way nothing else could have.

Sharon
had nearly died.

Her
quick thinking and unerring cop instincts had allowed her to narrowly escape a
horrific death at the hands of Earl Manning, a local drunkard and former lover
of Sharon’s who had been turned into the unwitting – and unwilling
– pawn of cult leader Max Acton. Mike’s inability to save Sharon and the
knowledge that he had nearly lost her forever had made the choice an easy one:
he could always find another job, but the idea of living without the petite,
fiery Sharon Dupont was unacceptable.

And he
had never regretted his decision, not once. But finding work with strictly a
law-enforcement background in a town as remote as Paskagankee, Maine, a stone’s
throw from the Canadian border, was easier said than done, and he had spent
most of the time since his resignation cooling his heels.

He
would have a temporary but lucrative gig in a couple of months. Hollywood was
coming to Paskagankee in the form of a film crew and a bunch of actors Mike had
mostly never heard of to do location shooting for the upcoming motion picture
based on Portland
Journal
reporter
Melissa Mannheim’s book, NIGHTS OF TERROR.

Mannheim
had written the book two years ago, based on the string of brutal murders that
gripped Paskagankee almost immediately upon Mike’s arrival in the little town.
The book became an instant bestseller, earning Mannheim lots of
money—nobody knew how much and Mannheim wasn’t saying—and, of
course, the obligatory movie deal.

As the
hero who single-handedly stopped the violence, Mike had been approached by the
film’s production company, which had insisted on hiring him as a credited
“special consultant.”

The
problem was Mike McMahon had no desire to be listed as a consultant on a horror
movie. He had lived through the experience first-hand and felt no desire to
revisit those awful days, with Sharon Dupont missing and feared dead. That,
combined with Mike’s certainty that no movie could do justice to the story, led
him to turn the offer down flat, despite the fact it came with a fat paycheck
and few actual duties.

Unused
to being rebuffed, NorthStar Productions management refused to take no for an
answer, and after weeks of email negotiations, they reached a compromise. Mike
would not be listed anywhere in the film’s credits, but would agree to sign on
as temporary head of security for the short time the crew was in town. He would
make himself available to answer questions from the film’s director and stars
on an unofficial consulting basis, and in return would receive a fat check.

Mike
still wasn’t convinced he had done the right thing in signing the contract, but
money was money, and at least the gig would give him something to do for a
while. Unfortunately, the film crew wasn’t due in town for eight weeks, leading
to Mike’s current situation: wearing a pathway in the carpet of Sharon Dupont’s
living room.

He
traipsed through the kitchen, pausing to take a sip of coffee from a cup
strategically placed on the stovetop, then resumed his restless wandering:
through the kitchen, across the living room in front of the couch, sharp left
turn just before crashing into the rarely-used TV, through the dining room, and
then back into the kitchen for more coffee and to start the circuit again.

For the
thousandth time over the last three days, Mike wished the rain would stop
falling so he could walk outside, but a glance out the window confirmed what he
already knew: his wishes weren’t being well-received by the weather gods. The
rain sluiced down in dark gray sheets.

Mike
shook his head in disgust and had just begun another trip around his personal
walking circuit, when the telephone rang, making him jump. He squinted at the
Caller ID screen, surprised to be hearing from Sharon. He had seen her briefly
at lunchtime and didn’t expect to hear from her again until she returned home at
the end of her patrol shift.

The
number glowed on the screen and he realized it wasn’t Sharon after all. The caller
was new Paskagankee Police Chief Pete Kendall, the man who had succeeded Mike
in the chief’s job – despite not yet being thirty years old – following
Mike’s glowing recommendation. Pete rarely phoned, and when he did, it was
almost always after hours. This clearly wasn’t a social call.

“Huh,”
he mumbled to himself, and pressed the
Talk
button. “Hello?”

“Hey,
Mike, this is Pete Kendall. How’s the life of a semi-retired gentleman treating
you?”

“It’s not
all it’s cracked up to be,” Mike answered with a smile. “Although at least I
don’t have to deal with dumbass cops every day anymore.”

Pete
laughed. “I can see you’ve given the issue a lot of thought, but remember, it
takes one to know one. Anyway, I’m sorry to pull you away from your deep
philosophical musings, but we’ve got a situation, and I was hoping you might be
available to provide a little input on it.”

“Of
course. What kind of situation?”

“I
don’t know if you’re aware, but the septic system failed at the Ridge Runner,
and Bo Pellerin was forced to replace the whole thing.”

“Listen,
I know I agreed to serve as occasional consultant to the Paskagankee PD, but
I’m not sure I’m qualified to take on the job of digging a septic system. Or
that I want to, for that matter.”

Pete
laughed again, the sound warm and friendly. It reminded Mike how much he missed
his old life. “No, I’m not asking you to play in the mud and…you know, the other
stuff. Bo’s already hired Dan Melton to do that. But here’s the thing: Dan was
digging the pit for the new septic system this morning and he uncovered what
appears to be human remains in some kind of hidden underground bunker next to
the Ridge Runner.”

“A body
buried next to the Ridge Runner?”

“More
than one.”

“How
many more?”

Kendall
paused, and Mike wondered why. The question seemed pretty straightforward. Then
the young police chief cleared his throat and said, “It depends who you
believe. There are two sets of what I’m certain are human skeletal remains positioned
almost right next to each other at the bottom of the hole, but…”