Paskagankee Page 8

  Mike chuckled. He must be more tired than he realized.

  Up ahead on the narrow path, Officer Jimmy Hadfield led the way, followed closely by Sharon Dupont, with Mike bringing up the rear. Hadfield trudged along, head down, still sulking over not being allowed to spill all the gory details of the grisly discovery.

  The new chief of police found himself staring at Sharon, mesmerized by her shapely figure as she struggled along the slippery trail. He was developing a strong attraction to the younger woman, even though he knew it would be asking for trouble to start anything. She was his employee for one thing, and he knew he was damaged goods thanks to the Revere shooting for another.

  Still, he hadn’t been with a woman since his wife picked up stakes and moved back to her parents’ house almost a year ago, and Sharon Dupont was cute and smart and, as far as Mike knew, available. He found his mind wandering, curious as to whether she felt anything toward him. Stop it, he told himself. This is pointless, the woman works for you, for God’s sake, just let it go.

  Finally a weak, hazy glow shone through the trees ahead. It was difficult to see clearly for more than a few feet with the heavy freezing drizzle obscuring the visibility and the fact that night had long since fallen. Their flashlights worked to cut into the heavy mist but were no match for the curtain of black the mammoth forest dropped on them in conjunction with the weather. The group worked their way around one last fallen maple tree blocking the indistinct path and then found themselves amidst a crowd of nearly a dozen people all holding flashlights and coffee and trying to keep warm as a portable generator lit the eerie scene.

  A tall, gaunt man in a brown trench coat stood in the middle of the clearing, tapping his foot impatiently. His collar was pulled up against the cold and an old fashioned fedora was perched atop his head. He turned and said, “Finally. Can we get this show on the road?” Dr. Jan Affeldt was the county medical examiner. He had been called to the scene by dispatcher Gordie Rheaume on Mike’s instructions, and it was obvious he didn’t appreciate having to hike deep into the woods on this pitch-black November evening in the middle of the worst ice storm the area had seen in decades. Mike couldn’t blame him.

  The chief stepped forward and offered his hand, the tall man reluctantly taking it after a moment’s hesitation. “Dr. Affeldt, I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. Thanks for waiting. I know you want to get back to your family, as do we all, so I’ll try to move things along. I simply wanted to get a look at the scene in person before releasing the remains to you.”

  “Fine. Let’s just get on with it.” The doctor shuffled his feet, and Mike could see they were wet and muddy, reminding him how cold and miserable he was and everyone milling around out here must be.

  He took in the ghastly scene, bathed in the uneven artificial light provided by the generator chugging away in the background. Two portable lamps had been erected on metal stands, one on each side of the clearing. Each lamp featured a pair of automobile headlights, and both had been placed at an angle so their beams converged on an ancient oak tree. The beams shone upward into the tree and Mike’s gaze followed the light until he found what he was looking for—a disembodied human head.

  The head was lodged in the tree, resting awkwardly ten feet off the ground in a joint where a large branch extended from the trunk. Following Mike’s instructions, the crowd of officers had left it undisturbed where the unfortunate jogger, Carolyn Scherer, first glimpsed it. The blood pooled on the ground had now frozen into a mixture of ice and slush under the tree.

  One of the Paskagankee Police officers who had been cooling his heels—literally and figuratively—awaiting the arrival of Chief McMahon spoke up. “How long do you suppose that thing’s been up there?”

  Mike gazed into the unseeing eyes of the late Harvey Crosker, whose head was angled in such a way that he appeared to be peering down at the group of officers below. “Well, according to the young woman who was running out here, the blood was still dripping when she came by. It’s frozen into a solid mass now, so I would have to say whoever or whatever put that head up there did it not too long before Ms. Scherer passed by. I think it’s safe to say she is extremely lucky her head isn’t mounted up there next to Harvey’s.”

  Another officer, Pete Kendall, spoke up. “What exactly is the point in sticking a severed heard up in a tree, anyway? Whoever did it couldn’t have expected someone to come by and see it way out here in the middle of nowhere, right?”

  “It looks to me,” Mike answered, “like the victim’s head was tossed into the tree, maybe by accident. It looks like an irrational act committed by an unthinking perpetrator.”

  After examining the scene and ensuring that the officers had taken photos from all angles, Mike sighed and said, “All right, let’s get him down from there. I assume you people searched the area for evidence, did you find anything?”

  Kendall spoke up again. “We did our best considering it’s pitch black out here, but honestly Chief, this ground is frozen solid with inches of ice on top of it. We didn’t find anything and it doesn’t seem likely that we will.”

  “Okay,” Mike nodded, “let’s get Mr. Crosker down and bagged—what little of him we have at least—and carry the remains out to the road where Dr. Affeldt can transport them to the morgue for the autopsy. I’ll pay Mrs. Crosker a visit and break the bad news to her. Everyone else can go on home, except the two of you who are still on duty, and we’ll plan on meeting here tomorrow morning at eight a.m. for a thorough search of the area in the daylight or what passes for daylight while this damned storm is raging. Any questions?”

  Mike looked around at the tired, cold faces surrounding him. They appeared numb from shock—eyes downcast, feet shuffling. Many of them had known Harvey Crosker, at least by sight; it was a very small town. The unthinkable fate that had befallen the man seemed to have had a profound effect on everyone. Mike was pretty sure he knew what they were thinking; it was the same thing he was thinking: this sort of thing was not supposed to happen in a quiet, out of the way community like Paskagankee, Maine.

  The officers got to work on the grisly task of recovering the victim’s head. Mike looked closely at Sharon, still standing next to him. She had barely moved and hadn’t said a word for nearly the past hour. Her eyes were haunted, and she asked the very same question he was thinking: “What the hell is going on here?”

  15

  MIKE’S STOMACH TWISTED AND churned. Telling a missing person’s family that you have located the lifeless body of their loved one was never an easy thing to do. It was physically and emotionally wrenching, both for the law enforcement professional tasked with delivering the terrible news as well as for the victim’s family. In this case, though, compounding the horror was the fact that they had recovered only a severed head. Given the gruesome circumstances surrounding the notification, the job was beyond distasteful.

  It was now almost 9:30 at night, and Mike wished there was some way he could put off this gut-wrenching visit until morning, but he knew that was nothing more than wishful thinking. The woman deserved to learn her husband’s fate as soon as possible, even if that meant surely guaranteeing a sleepless night followed by years of nightmares.

  After hiking back out to the road and signing the body bag—ludicrously empty with just a head inside—over to Dr. Affeldt, Mike offered to drive Sharon back to the station to pick up her car so she could go home before he continued out to the Crosker house. She looked exhausted, pale and drawn, and he remembered that neither of them had eaten since breakfast.

  “If you want,” he told her, “Instead of going all the way back to the station, I can just drop you off at your house and pick you up in the morning. That way you don’t have to try to navigate this icy mess in your little Toyota.”

  Her answer surprised him. “No,” she said. “It sucks that you have to tell that poor woman what happened to her husband. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to be there when you deliver the news. Maybe I can help soften the blow
for her just a little.”

  Mike smiled at her, grateful for the offer. He had done this sort of thing before, many times, and knew it would be difficult no matter what, but having Sharon there for support would make the duty a tiny bit more bearable, at least for them. There was no way to spare Mrs. Crosker from the brunt of the terrible news. “Off we go then, and thanks,” he said. “Afterward, though, I insist on driving you home. You look exactly the way I feel, which means there’s no way you should be behind the wheel of a car.”

  “You really know how to sweet-talk a girl.”

  They eased the Explorer into the Crosker driveway just before ten o’clock, and Mike wondered if they would be getting the woman out of bed to tell her she was now a widow. His unspoken question was answered immediately, though, as before Mike and Sharon had even exited the car, the front porch light flashed on. He could see Mrs. Crosker’s robed figure at the living room window as they carefully crossed the ice-covered ground to the house.

  The freezing rain had nearly stopped, at least for now, but the footing was as treacherous as ever, forcing the two police officers to move very deliberately. Of course, Mike thought grimly, the task we’re here to accomplish might have something to do with our slow progress, too.

  The front door opened wide as they ascended the stairs and a warm, inviting light spilled out, chasing away the brooding darkness for a few seconds. Sally Crosker’s shadow loomed out the door, stretching into the front yard. “Please, come inside,” she said, trying to smile and failing.

  The woman was composed, but the strain was plainly evident on her face. She knew a visit in this weather at this time of night from the people searching for her missing husband could not possibly be anything but bad news. “You’ve found him, haven’t you?”

  Mike and Sharon removed their soaking wet hats at the same time and held them in their hands as water dripped unnoticed onto the Crosker’s entryway floor for the second time in two days. Mike looked down for a moment and then into Mrs. Crosker’s desperately searching eyes. They were already red-rimmed and tearing up, as though she couldn’t wait any longer to hear the bad news but needed to start grieving immediately.

  “Perhaps you’d like to sit down, ma’am,” Mike said gently. He put an arm around her shoulder and steered her to her couch.

  “Oh God,” she sobbed. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mike said as she collapsed into his arms.

  16

  IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN-THIRTY by the time Mike and Sharon left the Crosker household and once again hit the icy roads. Sharon had been indispensable after Mike broke the awful news. She made three mugs of tea, handing one to the woman and then draping an afghan around her shoulders before sitting next to her, quietly holding her hand.

  Mike filled her in on as few details as possible of the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body, and then they made small talk while waiting for Sally’s sister and brother-in-law to make the drive across town. She seemed to have a need to tell stories about their life together: their honeymoon, the children they could never have, how they fought about Harvey always forgetting to put the toilet seat cover down, anything to avoid considering the awful future now staring her in the face.

  When the two exhausted officers walked out the front door and into the night, they found the weather, incredibly, unbelievably, had worsened again. The rain slanted down at a severe angle, pelting the already icy ground and almost immediately freezing solid. It took ten minutes to scrape the windshield of the Explorer clear enough to drive.

  “That was horrible,” Sharon said as they pulled out of the driveway, the SUV’s heater struggling to force lukewarm air through the vents and into the passenger compartment. “You’ve had to do that before?”

  “Plenty of times,” Mike answered, rubbing his hands against the chill. “I have to say, you were great in there with Mrs. Crosker. Excellent people skills,” he said. “That’s rare in a cop. Hell, it’s rare in a person in any profession.”

  Sharon smiled and her face lit up. Even tired, hungry and cold she was beautiful. “Yeah, well,” she said, “you can thank my Bureau training for most of that. They teach you how to be empathetic, if you can believe it, for use in situations where information can be extracted from suspects using a soft touch. What you saw with Mrs. Crosker back there was actually nothing more than your federal tax dollars hard at work.”

  Mike laughed. It felt somehow foreign after such a strange day. “I think there’s a little more to it than that. You want to be accepted as a woman in the macho world of law enforcement, so most of the time you have to shut off your feelings and emotions. And it’s doubly hard for you, being so petite and beautiful. It’s too bad, really, because when you let the real you come through, like you did back there, it’s pretty special.”

  Sharon was silent as the truck fought its way through the night on the deserted and treacherous roads. They reached the driveway of her home and the house sat dark and empty as Sharon pulled on her gloves and hat and prepared to step once again into the miserable night. She hesitated for a moment. “Care for a nightcap?”

  Mike studied her face. It was radiant, with big, blue, searching eyes. “I don’t think that would be appropriate,” he finally answered.

  “It’s just a drink. Just one. Please.”

  “Ah, what the hell,” he said after another moment’s hesitation. “It’s been a long day. A drink sounds great.” He shut off the Explorer’s engine, and the two police officers sat side by side in the dark, the only sound the freezing rain pelting the roof of the truck. Mike wondered how long it would take to scrape the windshield this time when he came out to drive home.

  They opened their car doors and hurried to the front entrance, slipping and sliding on the flagstone walkway which was coated, as Mrs. Crosker’s had been, with a thick slab of ice. The house had been deserted all day and the ice had continued building up until it was now so heavy Mike thought it might be spring before it melted completely away.

  Sharon struggled with her key in the lock as the wind whipped the freezing rain sideways, soaking them both. Finally the door sprang open and they rushed out of the elements. They stood just inside the foyer in the dark as Sharon slammed the door and fumbled for the light switch.

  Mike was intensely aware of Sharon’s presence next to him in the pitch-black hallway—her breathing, heavy and labored from the rush to get inside, the scent of her perfume, citrus-y and soft, still lingering on her after a sixteen hour day, the rustle of her clothing as she searched the wall next to the door for the light switch.

  He reached into the darkness to pull her into his arms. He knew it was wrong, that he was making a mistake, that nothing good could come from an affair between a supervisor and his employee, but Mike didn’t care. He suspected she felt the same way as he did and needed to find out. He would just take her by the shoulders, pull her into his arms, and—

  The wall switch clicked and the lights blazed on. Sharon looked up at Mike with her big, blue eyes locking on to his, her face flushed from the rush against the weather—or was it something else?—and he stopped himself. Another awkward silence descended on the pair until Sharon chuckled nervously and said, “Well. We were going to have a drink, weren’t we?”

  They trooped into the kitchen, trailing water down the short hallway as they went. It felt to Mike like they had been doing that a lot lately. “Have a seat,” Sharon said with a smile. “What’s your beverage of choice? I have beer, scotch, vodka, rum. It’s a regular alcoholic’s paradise in here. My father always insisted the liquor cabinet stay well-stocked.” She laughed uneasily.

  “A beer sounds great,” Mike volunteered, and Sharon pulled one out of the fridge, grabbing a frosted mug from the freezer and pouring the beer into it like a pro.

  She handed the drink to Mike and then moved across the kitchen to her coffeemaker and dumped some ground beans directly from the can into the basket, then filled the water reservoir and punche
d the “start” button.

  “You’re not joining me?” he asked, surprised. It had been Sharon’s idea to stop for a drink in the first place.

  “I, uh, I can’t.”

  “Well, as you’ve already mentioned, I’ve seen your personnel file so I know you’re over twenty-one,” Mike answered. “What gives?”

  “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I invited you in.”

  Mike sipped his drink, savoring the taste as it worked its way down his throat and wondering what the other reason might have been. “Okay.”

  “Remember yesterday, when we stopped Earl Manning for speeding and it turned out he had been drinking, so we took him in?”

  “Was that just yesterday? It seems like about a month ago.”

  “Yeah I know,” Sharon answered and stopped talking. She distractedly twirled a lock of her short hair behind one ear. Mike waited patiently as she seemed to be searching for the right words to continue. Silence didn’t bother him. He was used to it.

  “You asked me why I didn’t get in Earl’s face when he was harassing me.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well,” Sharon said, taking a deep breath. “There’s more to the story.”

  “There always is,” he said. The aroma of fresh coffee began wafting through the kitchen. The smell was homey and reassuring, evoking a feeling of normalcy. It was almost possible to forget for a moment that someone was apparently running around Paskagankee brutally killing people and animals, tearing their bodies apart.

  The coffeemaker burbled and hissed and steam rose into the air. “Why don’t you grab a cup and join me,” Mike suggested. As Sharon set to work preparing her coffee, he asked, “Why didn‘t you tell me the rest of the story yesterday?”