Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (19 page)

She
kicked the office door closed behind her and said, “Those guys are going to…”

The
door burst open again, and FBI Special Agents Ferriss and Cooper trooped in,
their faces scowling and angry. A vein pulsed in the middle of Cooper’s
forehead and Mike hoped the man wouldn’t stroke out right here in the middle of
his office.

Sharon
thrust the disk toward Mike and then everyone was talking excitedly, their
voices indecipherable in the confusion. He stepped around them and eased his
office door closed, then returned to his original position behind his desk,
still without touching the disk.

He stared
at all three without saying a word, his gaze moving from Sharon to Ferriss to
Cooper and then back to Sharon. Slowly the chaotic stream of babble began to fade,
and then it died out completely. “I’m tired,” Mike said, “and it’s already been
a long day, so I’m not going to shout over everyone to be heard. Let’s all have
a seat and discuss whatever the problem is like the professionals we’re
supposed to be, shall we?”

Sharon
nodded wordlessly and stepped out of the office, returning a moment later holding
the heavy golden disk pressed against her body with one arm while using both
hands to drag a pair of chairs across the floor. She plunked the chairs down in
front of the desk with a thud and then slid a wheeled chair over from the
corner and sat in it, her expression stony. She held the disk in her lap, Mike
noticed, covered with both hands as if trying to shield it.

“I
uncovered this,” she said, speaking quietly and nodding at the strange-looking
circular object, “as part of my investigation. I dug through that site for
hours, while these two clowns did little else besides stare at my ass when they
thought I wasn’t looking. The minute I pulled this…
thing
…out of the ground, they suddenly turned into super-sleuths
and pulled rank. They want to take possession of it, Mike, but if they do, you
know and I know we’ll never see the damned thing again. I spent the morning
digging through that death-chamber, I found this evidence – whatever the
hell it is - and until we learn its relevance to our investigation, they’re not
getting it. They can have it when we’re done with it.”

Mike glanced
between Sharon and the two agents. He had no trouble believing her story. She
was dirty and bedraggled and looked as though she had crawled a mile through a
sewer tunnel, while the two feds seemed to have survived the search of the construction
site mostly unscathed. A small clump or two of stubborn dirt was stuck to their
dress shoes, and a thin film of dust covered their suits, but compared to
Sharon’s appearance, they looked ready for a night on the town.

He
nodded slowly, turning his attention to the heavy metallic disk. “What is it?”
he asked.

Sharon
shrugged. “I have no idea. Why don’t you ask these two geniuses? They seem to
have all the answers.”

Mike
raised his eyebrows and looked at Ferriss. Based on their earlier meeting, he knew
that man was the senior of the two agents. The FBI man gazed back with a sour
look on his face. Then Ferriss glanced over at his partner, who shook his head
obstinately. The thick purple vein continued to pulse in Cooper’s forehead.

“Come
on, guys, spill it,” Mike prodded. “You can’t expect us to release evidence
into your custody when we don’t even know what it is, or what application it
might have to our own investigation.”

“That’s
exactly
what we expect,” Cooper
answered, surprising Mike. He had thought Ferriss would do all of the talking.

Ferriss
raised a hand, silencing his partner. “I already told you,” he said evenly,
“that we’re not able to divulge the details of our investigation. You’re just
going to have to trust us when we tell you we need that disk a hell of a lot
more than you do.”

“Just
trust you.”

“Yep.”

“Well,
here’s the thing,” Mike said pleasantly. “On the one hand, I’ve got a dead cop,
and not
just
a dead cop, but a dead
chief of police, along with a dead
civilian, both killed at the same location just hours apart. I’ve got a bizarre
underground death chamber, complete with what appears to be the skeletal
remains of two human beings. I’ve got a witness who swears the room originally
contained a third body, which has now disappeared seemingly of its own free
will, and is unaccounted for.”

“Oh
yeah? Well–”

“—I’m
not done yet,” Mike interrupted, raising his voice and cutting off the Fed.
After the easy camaraderie of his initial statement, the outburst had the exact
effect he wanted: the FBI man stopped talking, momentarily shocked into
silence.

“As I
was saying,” Mike continued, his tone amiable again. “I’ve got all these
events, which I’m willing to bet a month’s salary are related, although I
couldn’t begin to tell you how. In addition, I’ve got my best officer sitting
in front of me telling a story of investigative ineptitude at best, and sexual
harassment at worst.”

“That’s
ridiculous,” Ferriss spat. “We might have glanced at her butt a couple of
times, but, hell, who could blame us for that? She’s a damned fine-looking lady.
Besides, it’s not like we groped her or anything.” While Ferriss talked,
Cooper’s face had grown steadily redder, until now it resembled an
out-of-control bonfire, with the reliably pulsing vein stuck in the middle.

“Well,
see, that’s where you should consider yourself fortunate,” Mike said. “I
believe my officer showed remarkable restraint under the circumstances, but if
you’d tried to lay a hand on her, I’m pretty sure you would have found yourself
regaining consciousness in the hospital down in Portland sometime tomorrow.”

“And
facing a lawsuit the likes of which you couldn’t imagine in your worst
nightmare,” Sharon added, fuming.

“None
of my nightmares involve lawsuits, missy,” Cooper said, his voice tight with
fury.

“Hey!”
Mike
said, banging the desk with a fist. “Let me finish saying what I have to say.
This is the last time I’m going to tell you.”

He
waited a heartbeat, then two, for his message to sink in, and then continued. “Everything
I just mentioned is what I have on one hand. On the other hand I have two
federal agents, neither of whom I’ve ever worked with or have even seen before.
These agents show up in my office the morning after a brutal double murder,
speaking cryptically about missing persons cases and claiming, without offering
anything to back up their statement, that the evidence
my
officer uncovered through her own diligence is so critical to
their mysterious case – the case they’re unable or unwilling to discuss
– they must take possession of it immediately.”

Mike
lifted his hands chest-high, palms up, like a set of scales. “This is what I
have on both hands. Now, put yourselves in my shoes, gentlemen. What would you
do?”

“I’ve
had it!” Cooper burst out, his throbbing vein working overtime. “Just grab the
damned disk and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Ferriss
ignored him, as did Mike. Sharon shot him a scornful look, which he either
ignored or didn’t notice. The senior FBI agent waited a moment and then said, “Okay,
I put myself in your shoes. It doesn’t change a thing. That disk is our
evidence, and we’re taking it back to Portland.”

Mike
shook his head. “Wrong answer, guys.”

He
turned to Sharon and said, “Go process that thing, whatever it is, and then place
it in the evidence room. Double-check to be sure the room is locked when you leave.”

Sharon
stood without speaking. She stared down each agent, in turn, and then walked out
of the office, pulling the door closed behind her.

“You’re
making a mistake,
Chief,”
Ferriss
hissed, his voice low and threatening.

“Maybe
so,” Mike said, unruffled. “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. When
you’re willing to spell out why that evidence is so critical to your case, we
can revisit the subject of releasing it into your custody. Alternatively, if
you’d like to have the Special Agent in Charge down in the Portland field
office give me a call, I’d be happy to discuss the subject with him.

“Until
then,” he said, “it looks like we’re done here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I
have a lot of work to do. As I believe I mentioned before, it’s already been a
long day, and it’s going to get a lot longer. As pleasant as it’s been chatting
with you fellas, unless there’s anything else, I’ll have to ask you to get the
hell out of my office.”

The men
sat for a moment, unmoving, staring across the desk at each other, Mike doing
his best to ignore the throbbing vein in Agent Cooper’s forehead. Finally,
Ferriss said, “This isn’t over,” and the two agents stood as one and marched
out of the office.

Mike
moved to his office window and watched as the pair plodded through the bullpen,
looking neither right nor left, and disappeared through the lobby door. He
hoped they would climb into their G-car and head south to Portland, but somehow
he doubted he had seen – or heard – the last of them.

17

The telephone abruptly stopped
ringing. Rose noted this development from somewhere that seemed very far away.
She had fallen limp in the stranger’s arms as the blue spots in her vision were
replaced by rapidly growing roiling black clouds. A buzzing sound began inside
her head, increasing in volume, becoming more insistent, and she knew
instinctively that she was seconds away from losing consciousness. A few
seconds after that happened she would be dead.

But then
the phone stopped ringing and the stranger’s iron grip on her airway relaxed,
just a little, just enough for Rose to choke a wheezing breath into her lungs.
The black cloud receded. She managed another shuddering breath and the cloud
disappeared entirely.

The
stranger seemed to remember her then, and he removed his arm from around her
neck, but thankfully continued supporting her, as she was afraid she might still
fall to the floor if he let go. He stared at her wide-eyed, face white, body
shaking.

And
then the answering machine clicked on. “I’m not here right now,” Rose heard her
recorded voice say. “Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as
I’m able.”

The unrestrained
panic returned to the stranger’s eyes and he spun a full three hundred sixty
degrees, releasing his hold on Rose to do so. She stumbled forward a couple of
steps, wondering whether she would break her hip when she collapsed to the
floor, but surprised herself by somehow managing to stay on her feet.

Through
the answering machine’s speaker, a sweet-sounding female voice was saying,
“Hello, Rose, this is Annette. I know you haven’t been feeling well, and when
you didn’t show up for work I just wanted to check in on you, make sure
everything’s okay…”

The
stranger stopped looking around the kitchen and was now homing in on the origination
of the voice. He took a step toward the kitchen counter, hesitated, then took
another, finally reaching the counter and extending an arm toward the answering
machine, a small plastic box Rose had placed on the countertop directly under
the wall-mounted phone.

The man’s
actions were so bizarre she momentarily forgot about being attacked, forgot
about nearly being choked to death, even forgot about her intense fear. As
Annette Middleton, the young assistant at
Needful
Things,
voiced her concern about Rose not showing up for work, the stranger
hovered over the machine, a look of intense concentration etched on his face.
Then, without warning, he swiveled his arm up like he was preparing to hammer a
nail and smashed the butt end of his pistol down on the machine’s case.

The
plastic cracked with a loud POP and Annette’s voice erupted in a high-pitched
electronic squeal and then abruptly died away. The stranger leaped backward
like he had been kicked in the chest by a horse, almost knocking Rose down in
the process. He spun on his heels and his narrow, angry eyes locked on to hers
and he said, “You’ve got some explaining to do, old lady. What in the hell is
going on here?”

Rose’s fear
rushed back and she said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you want me to say.
What don’t you understand?” She felt her panic rising and choked off a sob,
trying to keep herself under control.

“WHERE’S
THE OTHER LADY?” he shouted, his face just inches from hers, splattering her
with spittle. “WHAT WAS THAT GODDAMNED RINGING NOISE BEFORE? WHAT’S HAPPENING
HERE?”

And
just like that, it clicked in Rose Pellerin’s head. This man’s unreasoning
terror stemmed from the fact he had either never heard the ringing of a
telephone before, or, more likely, had suffered some kind of traumatic brain injury
and didn’t
remember
ever having heard
a phone.

The
same was also true with the answering machine. Annette Middleton’s disembodied
voice had had thrown him for a loop. He looked like he had just seen a ghost
because he
had
just seen a ghost,
practically speaking: a third person was talking but was invisible to him.

The man
stood panting, his chest heaving, pistol held loosely in his right hand. The
disgusting clump of matted hair was still stuck to the gun’s handgrip. Even the
violent blow to the answering machine had failed to loosen it.