Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (32 page)

“Drop
the guns now,” Sharon barked, not because she thought there was any chance in
hell the men would, but more because she couldn’t think of a single thing else
to do.

Ferriss/Wesley
ignored her and spoke to his brother, never taking his eyes off Sharon. “Never
mind the lawmen,” he said. “Let’s do this,” and Sharon stared in utter
disbelieving horror as Cooper nodded once and then the two men swiveled their
arms smoothly, bringing their weapons to bear on each other’s foreheads.

Before
she could say another word, the brothers squeezed their triggers, again firing
in near-perfect unison, and the centuries-old assassins blew each others’
brains all over Mike McMahon and the ruined body of Jackson Healy.

And
Sharon screamed.

37

It was after midnight before they
left the station. Mike carried a canvas equipment bag slung over one shoulder while
Sharon maintained a firm grip on his arm. They moved as quickly as they could
to navigate the gauntlet of television cameras, flashbulbs and shouted
questions. Mike felt off-balance, with one eye swollen shut and the other
nearly so.

He
stopped roughly in the middle of the chaos, Sharon sticking closely by his
side. Even nearly blind, Mike could see that the skin of the assembled
journalists had been bleached a glaring white by floodlights erected
haphazardly around the lot like fast-growing weeds. He scanned the throng with
his half-open good eye as he waited for the buzz of excited voices to recede,
picking the expectant face of the Portland
Journal
’s
Melissa Mannheim out of the crowd, as well as those of representatives from Fox
News, CNN all of the other major networks’ news divisions. He wondered how they
had gotten to the flyspeck of a town in extreme northern Maine so quickly, then
realized they wouldn’t have had to – he and Sharon had been answering
questions by investigators from the FBI and the Maine State Police for more
than eight straight hours.

He
waited patiently, and when it became clear to the reporters no one would get any
information until everyone stopped shouting, they reluctantly closed their
mouths and waited for Mike to speak.

Finally
he did. Sort of.
 
“We have nothing
to say at this time. A joint press conference will be held here tomorrow at
9:00 a.m., and will include myself, as well as representatives from the FBI’s
Portland office and the Maine State Police. At that time, we’ll give a short
statement regarding today’s events and then answer any questions you might have
to the best of our ability, given that the investigation is ongoing. Thank you
all for your patience, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

A
frustrated groan spread through the crowd and the shouted questions resumed as
Mike and Sharon turned away from the cameras and walked determinedly toward
Mike’s car, which he’d left at the far end of the lot. The voices rose in
volume and intensity, blurring together into an indistinguishable roar as the
journalists battled each other to be heard, but then Mike froze as Melissa
Mannheim’s unmistakable screech ripped through the crowd: “Chief McMahon, is it
true two FBI agents executed a suspect in cold blood inside your station this
afternoon while you stood by and did nothing?”

He whirled
to confront Mannheim, almost losing his balance thanks to exhaustion and
near-blindness. Sharon steadied him and then tightened her grip on his elbow, practically
dragging him to the waiting car. “Don’t let her bait you,” she whispered
fiercely. “You’ll be giving her exactly what she wants.”

Mike
allowed himself to be pulled to the car. Sharon opened the door and he dropped
heavily into the front passenger seat. He knew she was right, knew that confronting
the pushy reporter to answer her infuriating charge would be playing right into
her hands, not to mention would also cause pandemonium and do nothing to convince
the media jackals that what she said
wasn’t
true.

The
worst part was that he wasn’t even entirely convinced that her statement
was
untrue. He
had
given up his gun to the killers, and then he
had
stood by while Wesley and Amos Krupp
– there was no point referring to them by their current FBI names; he
knew without a shred of doubt that they really were the notorious Krupp
brothers, wanted in the mid-1800’s for bank robbery and murder – executed
a man inside the Paskagankee Police station before turning their guns on each
other.

Sharon
started the car and eased out of the lot, weaving around reporters and network
film crews trudging to their vehicles. Mike leaned against the headrest,
squinting hard, and watched as a small knot of journalistic die-hards, apparently
refusing to accept the notion that there would be no more news to report until
morning, continued milling around the police station’s granite front steps.

When
they reached the road, Sharon picked up speed and turned toward their home.
Mike considered telling her to keep an eye on the rear view mirror in order to
ensure they weren’t being tailed by an enterprising reporter, then thought
better of it. For one thing, Sharon was smart enough to do exactly that without
being told, and for another, the Portland
Journal
’s
Mannheim the Maneater already knew where they lived. If she wanted to hassle
them, all she would have to do would be to let slip the address of Sharon’s
little house and then stand back and watch the action.

He
sighed quietly. As bored as he had been sitting around waiting for another job
while Pete Kendall had been running the department, as much as he had missed
police work, he would never have wanted to return to the job under these
circumstances.

Sharon
cleared her throat. Mike smiled – as much as he could, with sutures
covering half his face like some horrible road map and his skin bruised and
swollen – and said, “What’s on your mind, babe?”

She
stared out the windshield as the headlights cut twin beams of light through the
coal-black northern Maine night. “You’re not really buying Mannheim’s idiotic implication,
are you?”

Mike
sat in silence, watching the thick cover of the ever-present forest slide past,
crowding in, as always, from all sides. A pervading sense of claustrophobia was
never far off in Paskagankee, Maine.

After a
while he spoke, but not to answer Sharon’s question. How can you give an answer
you don’t have? “You should never have kicked in that door, you know, not all
by yourself. Protocol would have been to call for backup, get everyone out of
the station, and then wait for help. And if you
were
going to come charging in there like some modern-day Dirty
Harry, you should have at least taken the time to put on a vest.”

“I know
the protocol,” Sharon said tightly. “But I wasn’t going to wait while those
two…
freaks
…blew your brains out. And
putting on Kevlar takes time I didn’t feel could be spared. Sue me.”

“As a
cop,” Mike continued, ignoring her angry aside, “I can’t condone what you did.
But as your fiancé, I don’t know how to thank you. I owe you my life,
literally.”

She
turned and smiled, her face radiant, her teeth glowing white in the weak
moonlight struggling through the side window. “As I recall, you saved me a
couple of years ago from a fate worse than being shot in the head, so the way I
see it, we’re even. Maybe now we can get to the point where one of our lives
doesn’t constantly
need
saving.”

They
fell silent for a while, and when Mike spoke again it was to address a
different subject. “I owe you an apology,” he said simply and without preamble.

“Apology
accepted.”

“Don’t
you want to know what it’s for?”

“I
already know what it’s for. You’re not that hard to read, remember?’

“Try
me,” Mike said, although he had no doubt she knew exactly what she was talking
about.

He
wanted to hear her say it.
Needed
to
hear her say it.

“You’re
sorry you didn’t listen to me about Ferriss and Cooper being determined to
execute Jackson Healy. You feel like if you had given more weight to my
warnings, this whole fiasco might have been avoided.”

Mike
chuckled despite the pain it caused his injured face and head. “You’re right
on, as usual,” he said. “About most of it.”

“Really,”
she countered. He could see she was now genuinely curious. “What did I miss?”

“There
was no way anyone was going to stop the Krupps from killing Healy. If they
hadn’t been able to do it today, they would have killed him tomorrow in his
holding cell, or ambushed him outside the station as he was being taken to jail
in Portland, or they would have taken him down some other time. But they were
on a mission, and they weren’t going to stop until they completed it. Hell,
they had been single-mindedly pursuing their objective for over a hundred and
fifty years, what would a few more days or even weeks have mattered to them?”

“You
really believe all that stuff Ferriss was saying about Peru, and the Fountain
of Youth, and being betrayed back in 1858, don’t you?”

Mike
hesitated and then nodded forcefully. “I sure do.” He turned in his seat and
stared until she looked over, then he held her eyes and said, “And so do you.”

“Is
that so?”

“Yep.
As I recall, wasn’t it you who quoted the fictional Sherlock Holmes in saying,
‘if all other possibilities have been exhausted, then what’s left, however
unlikely, must be the truth’?”

She
grinned. “That would be me.”

“Well,
then, think about it. The FBI has already begun examining the personal
histories of Special Agents Ferriss and Cooper, and once you dig more than a
year or two prior to their hiring, guess what you find?”

Sharon
answered instantly. “Nothing.”

“Bingo.
The trail is completely cold. You know how hard it is to live completely off
the grid, to live so anonymously you leave no footprint for investigators to
find and follow? It’s damned near impossible, and it
never
happens with federal agents.”

He
paused and took a deep breath. “You’re damn right I believe it,” he repeated.

Sharon
turned into her driveway and Mike blinked in surprise. He had been so caught up
in their conversation he hadn’t even been aware of the miles rolling by. Sharon
switched off the engine and they sat in the darkness, comfortable in each
other’s presence, enjoying the nocturnal stillness.

“What
are you going to do about the press conference tomorrow?”

Mike
started in surprise. He didn’t realize he had dozed off before Sharon’s
question. He shrugged. “I’m going to explain what happened to the best of my
ability.”

“Are
you concerned about more questions like Mannheim’s?”

“Not
really,” he said, realizing he meant it. “I took what I felt was the best
course of action at the time. There will always be those who second-guess you.
The more significant the decision, the more vociferous will be the criticism.
The important thing is to be able to look yourself in the mirror afterward.
It’s the only thing you can control, when all is said and done.”

Sharon
nodded and he said, “Besides, I’m only a minor story in this goat-rope. The
feds are the ones who have to try to explain two of their agents shooting an
unarmed, handcuffed man after beating the crap out of one officer and shooting
at another. I almost feel sorry for Fred Griffin.”

“Who?”

“Fred
Griffin. He’s Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Portland Field Office, and
he’ll be here in the morning for the press conference. He’s going to be roasted
alive by the media.”

“And
you
almost
feel sorry for him.”

“Yeah,
almost, but not quite. The guy’s an officious prick, and living proof that the
bureau needs to refine their hiring and promotional procedures.”

Sharon
laughed. It sounded like a softly pealing bell. “Well, if this doesn’t get them
to do something, nothing will.”

She
opened her door and Mike squinted against the sudden brightness of the interior
dome light. “Come on, old man,” she said teasingly, “let’s see if we can’t get
at least a few hours of sleep before that stupid press conference.”

He
shook his head. “Sleep is going to have to wait a little longer, at least for
me.”

“Why’s
that?”

“Because
my work tonight isn’t done yet.”

38

Sharon extinguished the
headlights as the car turned into the empty Ridge Runner parking lot. The
crunching of gravel under the tires in the three a.m. stillness sounded to her as
loud as a Fourth of July fireworks display. Mike had insisted on coming here
alone, but she steadfastly refused to listen, telling him, “We’re in this together,
and I’m sticking it out to the end.”

And she
meant it, as far as that went, but the truth was Mike McMahon looked like hell.
Lack of sleep, stress and the beating he had taken at the hands of Ward
Cooper/Amos Krupp had taken its toll on him, and she feared he might fall
asleep at the wheel on the way over here and drive into a tree.