Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (24 page)

“Then
we have a stranger who shows up out of nowhere and brutally murders two people,
one of them an experienced law enforcement professional. We have the same
stranger assaulting an elderly woman the following day and then disappearing
again, but not before making wild statements about the year being 1858.

“Now we
have newspaper evidence of a horrific tragedy – and possibly a criminal
event –
that took place in exactly
that year
.

“What
am I thinking? I’m thinking that every one of these events revolves around the
Ridge Runner. I just can’t put together how.”

The
clanking of ceramic cups signaled Rose Pellerin’s return. She stepped expertly
around the boxes of paraphernalia, handing Mike and Sharon each a steaming mug,
then said, “Quite a story, isn’t it?”

“It certainly
is,” Mike agreed. “Timely, too, given the discovery Dan Melton made next to the
Ridge Runner yesterday morning. Any idea how it ended?”

“There
are follow-up stories in a few issues of the
Journal
over the next several weeks. I’ve placed them all in the
pile next to my computer,” Rose said, nodding at the small stack of equally
yellowed newspapers. “Feel free to peruse them at your leisure. But according
to the paper there was never any solid evidence uncovered that would explain
what really happened in the Paskagankee Tavern that night. The liquor
distributor’s delivery wagon was discovered hidden in the forest the next day, horse
and all.

“No
trace of the distributor, Matt Fulton, was ever found, nor of the
tavern-owner’s wife, Sarah Crosby. The prevailing theory at the time seemed to
be that Fulton and Sarah Crosby had been having an affair, and that the pair
murdered Lucas Crosby, then set fire to the tavern to cover their tracks. After
that they rode off into the sunset together.”

Mike
thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Makes sense,” he said.

“There
was only one problem with that theory,” Rose said. “Sarah Crosby’s sister Emma said
she would swear on the bible that Sarah had never met Matt Fulton and certainly
hadn’t been having any affair. She claimed, in a
Journal
interview conducted a few months later, that she was as
close to her sister as was humanly possible, and there was no way Sarah could
have carried on an illicit affair without her knowledge. She claimed Sarah was
utterly devoted to her husband, Lucas, and that she would not rest until the
story of what really happened to her sister and brother-in-law was brought to
light.”

Mike
glanced at Sharon, one eyebrow raised, and then turned back to Rose. “And?”

“And as
far as I know, nothing ever came of it. As I said, no trace of Fulton or of
Sarah Crosby was ever found. But Crosby’s sister did mention one other thing
during her interview that you might be interested in.”

Mike
nodded and sipped his tea, waiting for the elderly woman to continue.

“Emma
claimed Lucas Crosby had been heavily involved in the Underground Railroad
movement, the loose affiliation of people sympathetic to the plight of escaping
black American slaves that worked to provide shelter for the fleeing escapees
as they made their way to Canada and freedom. She said Crosby had modified the
tavern somehow, in order to hide escaping slaves, and that she feared some harm
had come to her sister and brother-in-law as retaliation for their
participation in the Underground Railroad movement.”

Mike
stopped drinking, his tea lifted hallway to his lips, as he digested Rose
Pellerin’s statement. He thought about the potential implications of that
information from a law enforcement standpoint. Finally he said, “I assume
nothing ever came of this claim?”

“Not
that I could find,” Rose said. “The way the claim was reported leads me to
believe even the reporter wasn’t taking it seriously. No reference to it was
ever made again, at least not in any of the
Portland
Journal
articles I found on the subject.”

“Hmm,”
Mike said, finishing his tea and glancing at his watch. It was nearly one a.m.,
and while he knew he should have been exhausted, he felt wide-awake and
invigorated. He smiled at Rose. “I must say you’ve been extremely busy. Great
work digging all of this information up.”

“Was it
worth getting out of bed and coming over here for?” she asked timidly. Mike
couldn’t help thinking what a difference there was between this lovely old lady
and her unfriendly, obstinate brother.

“Oh,
absolutely,” he answered. “This is extremely helpful, but I think at this point
we should all get home and get some sleep. Daybreak will be here before you know
it.”

The
small group began strolling through
Needful Things,
retracing their steps toward the front entrance and the
parking lot. Mike and Sharon saw Rose to her car, the two women chatting
comfortably about mutual friends and acquaintances in the tight-knit community.

Mike studied
Sharon’s face as she interacted with the older woman. She looked engaged and
happy, and he thought about how she had lost her own mother at a young age, and
how she hadn’t had a mother figure since she was twelve years old.

Rose
started her car and drove slowly toward the road. They watched as her
taillights turned right and disappeared. “She’ll be okay at this time of night
going home alone, won’t she?” Sharon asked anxiously.

“I
asked Phil Shankman to spend most of his overnight patrol time on Route 28,
concentrating on the area between the Ridge Runner and Rose’s home. She’s as
safe driving home as she would be inside her house with the doors and windows
locked,” he said confidently.

They
slipped into Mike’s car and he turned the key, pretending not to notice Sharon
eyeing him intensely. When it became clear she had no intention of turning away,
he gave in. “Yes?”

“Well?”

“Well,
what?”

She
spread her hands impatiently. “What do you think about everything that just
happened back there?”

“There’s
one thing I know with complete certainty.”

Sharon now
rotated her hands in a circular motion, telling him to get on with it, and he
grinned. “I can say for sure that Rose Pellerin makes the best cup of tea I’ve
ever had. Man, that was good!”

He
ducked, laughing, as Sharon tossed a backhand his way and said, “You know what
I mean.”

Mike eased
down on the gas and watched the pavement roll beneath the car. There was no
moon and the night was as black as coal. “I think that underground room dug up
by Dan Melton now makes perfect sense, given the story Sarah Crosby’s sister
told.”

“You
think Crosby
was
running slaves out
of the country?”

“It
makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If you’re a northern Maine tavern owner and
you’re smuggling slaves out of the country in the 1850’s, you had better have a
rock-solid place to hide them, because black faces would stick out like a sore
thumb around here. A secret underground bunker would have been fit the bill
perfectly.”

“But
what about the liquor distributor who disappeared along with Sarah Crosby?”

“Think
about it,” Mike said, working it through in his head. “The distributor was
probably involved. What better way to sneak the slaves into Paskagankee than in
a beer wagon? Nobody would have paid any attention to the thing, and a regular delivery
schedule would have given them plenty of opportunities to smuggle freedom
seekers into and then through the town.”

“So you
think it’s possible someone discovered the whole thing and killed Crosby in
retaliation?”

“Again,
it makes sense, don’t you think? Especially given the fact that two sets of
human remains were discovered inside the room. The murderer locks Fulton and
Crosby’s wife in the underground room, then kills Crosby. The room’s a
well-guarded secret, so Sarah Crosby and Matt Fulton slowly starve to death,
dying in agony right under the noses of a whole town full of people searching
for them.”

“But
why not just lock Crosby in the secret room as well?”

“Who
knows? Maybe he put up a fight and was killed before he could be herded inside
the room. The theory’s not perfect, I’ll admit, but it fits the evidence pretty
well.”

Sharon
was quiet as she considered the possibility. “What a horrible way to go,” she
said, her voice a whisper.

Mike
nodded. “There’s one thing I don’t understand, though.”

“What’s
that?”

“What
the hell does any of this have to do with a double murder that took place one
hundred fifty-five years later?”

24

Jackson rose slowly and brushed
the twigs and dirt of the forest floor off his already filthy clothing. He had
barely slept overnight. Between his concern about the town organizing a posse
to come after the man who had murdered their sheriff, and the fact that even in
the summer the temperatures got damned cold at night up here in the North Woods,
Jackson had tossed and turned until the first hint of light insinuated itself
into the sky. Then he just admitted defeat and got up.

But lack
of sleep and deep-forest solitude had given Jackson plenty of time to think,
which was something he sorely needed to do. It was also something he had not
had much time to do since waking up two
days ago at the bottom of that muddy hole.

Something
was very wrong; he knew that without a doubt. Jackson Healy was many things,
including cold, calculating, disloyal and greedy, but he was not stupid. And
the world he had observed since climbing to freedom through the ceiling of that
underground room barely resembled the world he knew based upon a lifetime of
experience.

He had
sprinted out of the old lady’s house yesterday afternoon with no plan and no
destination in mind. He just ran, leaving the house in a panic after the lady’s
two simple words – “It’s 2013” – simultaneously confirmed his worst
fears and sent a chill of terror shooting through his body like a lightning
bolt striking the Texas plains.

Nothing
he had seen of this cursed town since awakening the day before yesterday resembled
the tiny village he had ridden into in a desperate attempt to flee to Canada
ahead of the pursuing Krupp brothers. The bizarre self-propelled buggies
everyone seemed to ride around in, the strange-looking clothing everyone seemed
to wear, all of the impossible, futuristic gadgets inside the old lady’s home
yesterday, all of it indicated to Jackson a shift in reality that he could not explain.

Was it
possible the old spinster was telling the truth? Could the year really be 2013?
Could Jackson have somehow survived more than one hundred fifty years trapped
in that underground hellhole, his unconscious body hanging in some unexplained state
of suspended animation, not alive but not dead either, while the two corpses
trapped down there with him slowly rotted away to nothing more than bare bones?

Was any
of that really possible?

He
thought about the things he had witnessed in Peru, in the Valley of the Spirits,
spying on the shaman priests during their otherworldly middle-of-the-night ceremony.
He thought about Puerto de Hayu Marka, the Gate of the Gods, and about the
alien-looking figure dressed in flowing robes that had materialized through the
door carved out of solid stone, and about the gel-like liquid Jackson had
brought back from South America that was supposed to make a man live forever
but that he was too fearful to drink.

Then he
thought back to the moment he had, in sheer desperation, unable to come up with
a single alternative, poured the bitter-tasting liquid down his throat,
convinced he was facing a long, slow death of starvation and dehydration.

He
tried to recall what had happened after swallowing the liquid and realized he
could not; at least not with any degree of accuracy. He had a hazy recollection
of stumbling around the chamber, a single flickering candle throwing terrifying
shadows on the wall, capering monsters and misshapen alien beings.

He
remembered being tired, so tired.

And
then he had gone to sleep, only to be aroused from his unnatural slumber by the
cold slanting rain pelting his naked body. He had been clothed when he went to
sleep, he was certain of that much. Would clothing rot away in a damp
underground room over the course of a century and a half? Jackson didn’t know
for sure but he guessed that, yes, it probably would.

That
was what clinched it for him: waking up without a stitch of clothing on his
body to find himself in an almost totally unrecognizable world.

As hard
as it seemed to be to believe, Jackson Healy decided the most likely
explanation for the confusing events that had befallen him was that the years
was, in fact, 2013.

And as utterly
horrifying as that conclusion seemed, as impossible as it was to believe, Jackson
knew that if it was true, he could adjust. He was nothing if not flexible. It
wouldn’t be easy; he would need time, and probably help, and
definitely
money, and while he had no
idea how he would manage the first two items on that list, he knew exactly
where he would find the money: the solid-gold disk that no one else in the
world knew about was still sitting somewhere down in that hellish underground
prison.