Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (28 page)

“The
charge isn’t being made without a shred of evidence,” Sharon said stubbornly, a
grim set to her lips.
“I know what I
saw.”

“I’m
not questioning what you saw. All I’m saying is you can’t
prove
what you saw, and if we can get rid of these two jokers
simply by letting them sit in on one interrogation session, why not take
advantage of that opportunity? They ask a few questions and then they leave.
We’ve got nothing to lose, especially when you consider the trouble they could
cause if we shut them out.”

“Trouble?
They already said they weren’t going to involve their SAC down in Portland.
And, besides, they can’t just yank that guy away from us just to get even if we
piss them off.”

“Oh no?
The federal government can do whatever they want. We have no clue what they’re
investigating this guy for, but the fact they’ve been staking out the Ridge
Runner with a two-man team means they want him pretty badly. There’s no reason
to risk losing our prime suspect to the feds when keeping him here is so easy
to do.”

Sharon
looked down at the floor, her lips set in a thin line. Mike could see she was
struggling to control her emotions.
 
She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “You’re making a mistake.
I can feel it. Don’t try to tell me you can’t feel it, too.”

“Maybe.
But my mind’s made up. I’m going to get downstairs and get this over with so we
can send those two loose cannons back to Portland. You go back out on patrol,
and I’ll fill you in on the details of the interrogation tonight at home. Deal?”

Sharon
shook her head silently, and Mike thought for a moment she was going to continue
arguing. But she didn’t. She stood and said, “Good luck,” tightly, and walked
out of the office.

He
watched through the glass as she crossed the big open room, moving around desks
and chairs, and exited the front door. She refused to acknowledge or even look
at the two FBI agents, who were leaning against an unoccupied desk as they
waited for Mike.

Mike looked
at the clock on the wall and then buzzed Gordie, who was sitting at the
dispatch desk glancing between the loitering FBI agents and the retreating form
of Sharon Dupont, still visible as she crossed the parking lot to her cruiser.
He looked like a man watching a ping-pong volley. When his console buzzed be pushed
a button and said, “Dispatch.”

“Hey,
Gordie,” Mike said. “Has Phil gone out on patrol yet?” It was the beginning of Phil
Shankman’s evening shift.

“I
don’t think so,” Gordie said. “Last I knew he was still reviewing the day shift
log.”

“Good.
Get ahold of him and ask him to escort the suspect in holding into the
interrogation room and secure him in preparation for questioning.” Then he replaced
the phone and walked out of his office, thinking about Sharon Dupont’s words:
You’re making a mistake…don’t try to tell me
you can’t feel it…

He
tried telling himself she didn’t know what she was talking about, that he was
doing the most sensible thing he could under the circumstances.

But he
realized she was right, as usual. He couldn’t shake the feeling things were spiraling
out of control.

29

Mike led Special Agents Ferriss
and Cooper down the back stairs and along a narrow corridor to the police
station’s single interrogation room, which had been constructed next to the
large holding cell in the station’s lower level. They met Officer Phil Shankman
trudging along in the opposite direction. Shankman nodded once to Mike and then
gazed with interest at the two FBI men before saying, “Prisoner’s all ready for
you.”

“Is he
still cuffed?” Mike asked.

“Yep.
He’s secured to the table. He won’t be going anywhere.” Shankman turned to the
side to let the three men pass before continuing down the hallway and starting
up the stairs to the station’s main floor.

When
they reached the interrogation room’s heavy metal door, Mike took a quick
glance through the small wire-reinforced window before entering. He observed
the prisoner, whose name he now knew to be Jackson Healy, sitting at a dented
and scuffed rectangular aluminum table. Healy’s wrists were indeed still
handcuffed, and the glittering chain links connecting the bracelets had been
threaded through an iron tie-down ring bolted to the table’s surface. Healy sat
with his head down, apparently uninterested in his surroundings.

When
Mike turned the knob and entered, the powerful stench of body odor and a heavy,
damp smell that reminded him of rotting wood struck him like a sledgehammer. It
was as though the prisoner had never been introduced to the concept of soap and
water. He wondered idly how long the smell would remain inside Sharon’s
cruiser.

Mike
tried to breathe through his mouth and stepped farther into the interrogation
room. It was barely more than a large closet, constructed with cinderblock
walls and painted a dingy off-white. There was no two-way mirrored observation window
as there were in the interrogation rooms of many bigger departments. In fact,
the room was mostly bare, containing only the table, bolted securely to the
floor, four chairs, one of which was currently occupied by the prisoner, a
small voice-activated digital recorder that Shankman had placed on the tabletop
out of the prisoner’s reach, and a console telephone hanging on the wall by the
door.

At Mike’s
entrance, the prisoner lifted his head and stared dully at him. Healy took in
the uniform and his eyes widened slightly at the sight of the holstered Glock
on Mike’s hip, but aside from that, offered almost no reaction at all.

That
changed dramatically a second later, though, as first Special Agent Alton
Ferriss and then Special Agent Ward Cooper entered the room behind Mike. The
prisoner’s eyes widened in unconcealed panic and he gasped and scrabbled
backward, the legs of his chair squealing over the beat-up institutional vinyl
floor tiles. He seemed to have forgotten he was chained to the table, because
the cuffs clanked against the iron tie-down bar as the bracelets dug into his
skin, jerking his progress to a painful stop.

Healy
didn’t seem to notice. Now stretched almost flat across the table, he stared at
the two agents like he had seen a ghost and said, “No, no, you can’t be here.
Get away from me.” He turned his panicked gaze to Mike and begged, “Keep them
away from me!”

Mike
stopped, surprised at the prisoner’s reaction, and felt Ferriss bump into him
from behind. He turned and looked questioningly at the two agents. Both were
sporting identical looks of utter undisguised malice, their mouths open in hard
smiles filled with dirty yellow teeth.

He flashed
back to Sharon’s comment that he was making a mistake – as well as to his
own unfocused feelings of unease and the prisoner’s extreme reaction to the
arrival of the Feds – and made a snap decision about allowing the agents
to participate in the interrogation. It was time to put a stop to this; he
would deal with the fallout later. “You know what, guys,” he said, lifting his
hands, palms-out, in a
stop
gesture.
“We need to rethink this whole interrogation–-”

Before
he had even finished the statement, Agent Cooper kicked the heavy door shut
behind them and lifted his gun out of a shoulder harness under his unbuttoned
suit coat. He stepped around Ferriss and from less than four feet away, leveled
the weapon at Mike’s face.

Mike reacted
on instincts honed by nearly twenty years of law enforcement experience,
reaching without hesitation for his holstered weapon. But before he could draw
down on Cooper, the agent barked, “Stop right there and keep your hands where I
can see them!”

Mike
froze and from somewhere behind him, the sound thin and reedy like it was
coming through a faulty landline connection, Jackson Healy rasped, “Wesley and
Amos Krupp, you should be long-dead, I killed you myself, you should be rotting
in your graves, it’s impossible, you’re ghosts, you’re—”

“SHUT
UP!” Agent Cooper screamed, whipping his gun in Healy’s direction before retraining
it on Mike.

Healy’s
voice trailed off after the warning, but he continued muttering what sounded
like mostly gibberish, disjointed snippets about spirits and South America and
rocks with doors in them.

Mike
ignored the prisoner and said softly, “Guys, what the hell? You’re committing
assault with a deadly weapon on a law enforcement officer. Why don’t we all
take a step back and talk about this?” He directed his comments at Ferriss, who
had demonstrated time and again he was marginally less unhinged than his
partner.

Ferriss
smiled, flashing his stumps of dirty yellow teeth. “Sorry, Chief, but we know
exactly what we’re doing. It’s time to end things. In fact, it’s well past time
to end things.” He glanced over at the prisoner, who was still stretched out as
far as possible away from the two FBI agents, watching the proceedings with
huge, frightened eyes. “Isn’t that right, Jackson, old buddy?” he said to the
man in a sibilant hiss.

Healy’s
voice was shaking when he responded. “How did you get here? How did you find
me? How are you
still alive?”

Ferriss
smiled wider, his face cold, his eyes glittering with hatred. Mike thought it
was the most frightening thing he had ever seen, which was saying something
considering his history in Paskagankee. “We’ll get to that,” Ferriss said, “but
first things first. Chief McMahon, would you please remove your weapon, very
slowly, and hand it to me? And don’t forget, my brother’s gun is still trained
on your forehead and he will not hesitate to splatter your cranium all over
this room. Be smart, and you will leave here still breathing. Be stupid and
you’ll leave in a body bag.”

Mike’s
gaze flicked from Ferriss to Cooper and then back again. “Don’t worry,” he answered
evenly. “There’s not much danger of me forgetting something like that. But I
really can’t give up my weapon. As a fellow peace officer, I’m sure you can
appreciate the position you’ve put me in.”

Ferriss
laughed. Even Cooper snorted. “Fellow peace officer,” Ferriss said. “That’s a
good one.”

“Apparently
I’m off the mark. How would you describe yourselves, then?”

The
smile vanished off Ferriss’s face and he said, “If you want to live to find
out, hand over that weapon. I’m not going to ask again.”

Cooper
leaned forward and pressed the muzzle of his weapon against Mike’s forehead.
Mike thought if he moved fast enough, he might be able to snatch it out of the
man’s hand, but that left the problem of Ferriss. There was no way he could
disarm both men before taking a bullet.

He
sighed softly. Then eased his hand to his holster and unsnapped it. He lifted
the Glock 9mm and in one slow, smooth motion handed it to Ferriss, feeling
certain he had just signed two death warrants, his own as well as the
prisoner’s.

“Okay,”
he said, watching closely as Ferriss slid the weapon into his waistband at the
small of his back. “I’m unarmed. What now?”

“Now
you sit down in that chair,” Ferriss pointed to the empty chair placed directly
across the table, “and don’t make a single goddamned move unless you’re told
to.”

Mike
moved around the table, thinking hard. “So, you two are brothers? I should have
guessed.”

Ferriss
shrugged. “Yep. You might say we go way back.” He grinned and turned to the
prisoner. “Ain’t that right, Jackson, old pal?”

Healy
was no longer stretched out across the table in a pointless attempt to escape.
While Mike was surrendering his weapon, he had sat back down and was once again
hunched over the well-worn stainless steel tabletop. He refused to acknowledge
the taunt.

Mike
studied the interaction between the rogue FBI agents and the prisoner closely.
It was obvious the key to defusing the situation and getting out alive would
lie in understanding their relationship. The three men shared some kind of
history beyond what was apparent here; that much was abundantly clear.

What
was also clear was that Ferriss and Cooper, while maybe the worst, most corrupt
FBI men in the history of the bureau, actually
were
legitimate Feds – Mike had checked them out personally
after their arrival in town – and the fact that they were choosing now to
abandon their careers meant this fiasco was unlikely to end well. They had
nothing to lose.

“So,”
Mike said. He needed to regain control of the conversation and keep these men
talking. “Mr. Healy here is obviously very important to you two on a personal
level. How long have you been chasing him?”

Ferriss
and Cooper shared a glance. Then Ferriss said, “What year is this again?”

“You
know what year it is. It’s 2013.”

The
mischievous grin returned. “Just funnin’ ya,” Ferriss said. “We been chasing
this piece of human shit for…let’s see…”

Cooper
cut in, his voice harsh and deadly. “A hundred and fifty-seven years.”

30

Sharon made it as far as Main
Street and the Katahdin Diner before turning around. Her misgivings had been
building steadily since leaving the station, as had the sense that something
was amiss. Now, without any conscious thought, she knew she had to get back
there.