The Maine Massacre

9

De Gierdropped, rolled away, and kept on rolling until he was covered by a large rock. He knew he was OH its safe side. The rifle's crack had come from the woods, and the woods were on the other side of the rock. Not a bad shot at all. The bullet had been close to his neck. He took off his hat and peered over the rock. He could see a dark spot under the trees, moving away. The rifleman seemed hampered in his movements. There was something strange about his feet. That's right, snowshoes. He sat back and thought. The rifleman was perfectly safe. There was no point in following the man. He wasn't armed.

He got up and looked at the driveway of the Astrinsky house. Something lay near the spot where he had stood when the bullet whistled past. He found a stick and poked at the object. The raccoon tail. He looked at his hat. The tail was missing. He tried to grin, but his teeth chattered instead. A slight case of shock. He had been shot at before and had experienced the same reaction. Chattering teeth. Most annoying, but they would stop after a while.

The light on the porch was on. He had been in the light when the rifleman pulled the trigger. Set up again, just as in Robert's Market. They created their situations. He fought the little wave of self-pity that threatened to overflow his brain; so all right, he was here, in their territory, and they were playing their game. He would have to adjust to their tactics. He looked at the Dodge parked a little further down the driveway. He could walk to the car, get in, drive back to the jailhouse, have a bath and some coffee, and go to bed. Or he could visit the girl who had invited him.

The door opened and Madelin's voice reached out to the rock.

"Sergeant?"

"Here "

"Did I hear a shot?"

"You did."

"Why don't you come in?"

He sprinted across the driveway, picking up the tail on the way. She stepped back to let him jump through the doorway and closed the door. He showed her the tail.

"Came off my hat."

Her lips pouted. "That was close, sergeant."

He took off his coat, and she made him step out of his boots and slip into sheepskin moccasins. She stood very close, and he felt the curve of her breast and the pressure of her thigh. She was making him welcome, or perhaps she just happened to be standing close by. It was still a little too early to judge.

She led him into a room with a fireplace. He sat down on a settee and reached out to the burning logs.

"Have you had dinner, sergeant?"

"No, but I am not too hungry."

"Don't they feed you at the jailhouse?"

"Certainly, but I wasn't in the right place

"Certainly, but I wasn't in the right place at the right time."

"Aren't you hungry at all?"

"A little."

"I'll fix you a drink and make you a sandwich. Would you like a sandwich? A steak sandwich?"

"Yes, please."

She poured him a drink from a large brown bottle with an orange label and raised her own half-full glass. "Your health, sergeant." They drank. "I'll be right back."

He studied the flames and tried to recollect what he knew about Americans. He had arrested the vague young men, bearded, in rags, and their female counterparts, in long dirty dresses, often barefoot. They hung around in the center of Amsterdam during the summer. Sad innocents, dropouts, usually on the verge of starvation, often close to death. They would be jailed, go to court, be convicted and flown back to the States, under escort of the Dutch military police. He had also dealt with other Americans, the middle-aged tourists who came in groups, flown in daily by humpbacked jets. The tourists often lost their way or their possessions, and sometimes they were robbed.

He had also been in contact with deserters from the American occupation army in Germany. And he had read books and seen movies. But the actual encounters and the fantasies of stories and the screen hadn't prepared him for meeting Americans on their home ground. A U.S. bullet had missed him a few minutes ago. The next one might not miss.

He shook his head and looked around the room without taking in any details. "Straight, No Chaser." The BMF gang. A rifleman on snowshoes, plodding quietly away into the dark woods.

He sipped his drink, put it down, stretched, and began to amble through the room, his hands in his pockets. The same elegance as the Wash mansion but on a smaller scale. A bare room in a way, but each piece of furniture seemed to be a collector's item. The settee and the matching armchairs, the dining table pushed against the far wall, the bookcase, all seemed to date back to the quietness of the pre-rococo era. He admired the stem, solid lines and the superb workmanship that had created not only the furniture but also the room itself. Rough heavy beams, plastered walls, a hardwood floor, not nailed but pegged. The bricks of the fireplace seemed so old he thought they would crumble. He studied the room's only decoration, a fairly large painting hung above the mantelpiece. He stepped back and grunted approvingly. No mean work of art, and most macabre. He moved back a little more to take in the overall impact of the scene. Death. A tall skeleton riding a black horse. The skeleton was dressed in a flowing cape, a purple cape the same shade as the long skirt Madelin had been wearing just now. The horse galloped. Rider and steed were on their way to do some work, on a battlefield perhaps, or in a city succumbing to the plague. He approached the painting. The horse ran through a field of wildflowers. There were wooded hills in the back and a pale sky, shot through with flames.

He shook his head again. This would be the room where Astrinsky ate and read his newspaper, comfortable in front of the fire. He couldn't imagine the talkative, sociable man under this painting. He moved it a bit. The painting didn't fit the lighter space underneath. Some other painting should hang here. This skeleton, grinning madly, holding a scythe, its body thighs pressed into the flanks of the gleaming horse, had been hung here for his benefit. It might be part of the trap, a follow-up to the bullet in the driveway just now and to the encounter in Robert's Market.

He adjusted the picture, picked up his drink, and sat down. How very nice. What next? Poison in the steak sandwich? Was she going to drag him into a dank cell in the basement and chain his sleeping or dying body to a cannonball?

Cannonball. He heard her voice touch his spine in the dark store.

She came back carrying a tray with two plates.

"I felt hungry too. Let me freshen your drink. How do you feel now?"

"Better, thank you. Who fired the shot you think? One of your friends I met in Robert's Market?"

She sat down on the carpet, close to his legs.

"Could be, but I don't think so. We had our joke tonight. Why go on? You behaved very well, sergeant. We were impressed. And I love your flute. I didn't know our jazz is still appreciated in Europe. You knew the tune, didn't you?"

"Yes."

She ate and he watched her. He wondered if she always wore see-through blouses in the evening. Her breasts were firm and tilted. He looked at her feet, very small under the thin black strips of high-heeled sandals. And the face of the princess, the dragon's girl. He was sure it was the same face, small, triangular, and dominated by the dark and fluid eyes.

"Eat your sandwich, sergeant. It'll get cold."

He ate the sandwich, a salad, and some pickles. He started on his second drink and studied the orange label on the bottle of bourbon. A good situation, but unreal, like the full-page advertisements in magazines. He wondered what they were advertising now. The bourbon? Of course. The orange label was the most conspicuous spot in the low-key room, as the painting hung in the shadow. Two models on a flat sheet of paper. The male model handsome and foreign, the female local but exotic. A cleverly thought out ad, selling a beverage distilled in the South demonstrated against a Northern setting.

Whoever flipped the pages of the magazine would stop a second and fantasize about what the couple would do after, say, the third drink. Copulate. But the image was veiled, hinted at, suggested. Maybe the photograph wouldn't be too clear. The models would appear in a hazy light, dreamlike. Drink this particular brand of bourbon and just see what will happen to you. And he was in the photograph. Performing. And that's what he would continue to do. It was his only chance to get at the dragon's princess. But the dragon might still be prowling nearby, carrying a deer rifle.

He picked up the bottle and read the label: The unique marriage of body and flavor has been the standard by which all other bourbon whiskeys are judged. The words didn't inspire him, and he put the bottle back.

"Another drink? Go ahead."

"No thank you."

He got up, put on his half glasses, and studied the painting. She laughed.

"Anything funny?"

"Yes, you. How old are you, sergeant?"

"Forty-one."

"You look silly with those spectacles. They destroy your image."

"I don't use them much, only when I read a lot, but my eyes are becoming weaker. I believe most people over forty need reading glasses."

She smiled. "You're straight, sergeant. I like that. The fox calls straight people cunning. Why don't you come straight with me? What are you doing here, in this one-horse-town in the sticks?"

"I'll tell you the truth, but you won't believe me. The commissaris, the old man now staying with Suzanne Op-dijk, came out here to help Suzanne, who is his sister. Suzanne wants to leave America and her brother is helping her to sell her property here. He is a police officer, chief of the homicide division of the Amsterdam Municipal Police. I am a sergeant working for the division. He has been very ill, and I've come out to make sure he is all right. His legs bother him. If he gets too ill he is in pain and becomes lame. He didn't want me to come, so my colleagues interfered and had me sent out officially, making use of an exchange program that has been in force for some years. Since we arrived we have become suspicious of a series of deaths on Cape Orca and we found that your sheriff shares our suspicion. As I am here in a more or less official position the sheriff has asked me to cooperate."

"The truth, so help me?"

"I said you wouldn't believe me."

"I think I do, sergeant."

"You invited me here tonight to find out?"

"Perhaps I did."

"Why did you hang the painting?"

She got up, took his plate and her own, and set them on the dining table. When she sat down on the carpet again she was a little closer and he wanted to bend down and kiss her. He didn't because he would have had to make an effort. It would be better if she flung herself into his arms or undressed in front of the settee.

"I always hang that painting when Father is out of town. The fox and I bought it together, in a New York junk shop. I like the painting. Father hates it."

"Good, so it is not just for me."

She nodded seriously. "But perhaps it is, sergeant. Death is a fascinating subject. Perhaps it's the basis of all thoughts. The deaths of the Cape Orca residents fascinate me too. I like to experiment, to see what happens if certain moves are made. To hang that painting was a deliberate move."

"You experiment on others?"

"Yes, and on myself."

"Were you involved with any of the Cape Orca killings?"

"Only with one. I bought the whiskey the fox gave to Paul Ranee. Paul used to drink, but he gave it up on doctor's orders. The doctor wanted to prolong the old man's life, but Paul was miserable, dying slowly, and he had always been such a marvelous old man. He was living on handouts and he hated accepting them, and he was too sick to do anything in return. The fox thought it would be a good idea if Paul had one last fling and got out happy. I agreed. The fox went out and spent a few days with Paul. They were drunk together until Paul died."

"Were you there?"

"No, I don't like getting drunk. The fox does. I would have been bad company."

"You didn't kill or help to kill the others?"

"No. I did attack Opdijk. I buzzed him with my plane when he was fishing, but I came from the seaside. He was perfectly safe. If I had come in from the cape he would have fallen on the rocks, as he did later on. I don't think he hurt himself, but he had a bad fright."

"Why did you attack him?"

She laughed. "Because the man was such a slob. Father likes me to go to the Blue Crustaceans' club sometimes, and I can't constantly refuse. I was always sure to find Opdijk there, and he always grabbed me. An uncle's friendly petting, but the bastard was feeling me up. I don't like to be felt up by slobs. It was good to see him jump and run and fall over. But I overdid it a bit. I nearly flew the plane into the Opdijk's house."

"Do you have any idea who killed Opdijk and Mary Brewer and the other two, a man called Jones and another called Davidson?"

"I have an idea."

"Would you tell me?"

"Shouldn't you find out for yourself? It must be interesting to find little clues here and there and try to piece them together. Why should I help you?"

De Gier reached for his empty glass and she refilled it. His teeth chattered again and he held his jaw.

"If you cooperate you may clear yourself. Now you are a suspect. So far we are just bumbling about, but the sheriff may call in the state police, who might use different methods. They wouldn't be hampered by local conditions."

She smiled and he saw the tip of her tongue and her moist lips. "Why should I want to clear myself, sergeant? I'm sure I couldn't be arrested and I'm sure nobody can be arrested. I am playing my game, which is watching your game, and the way you play it, you and the sheriff and your chief. And you can watch our game again. You've been taking part in it. It's all very involved and rather exciting, don't you think?"

Watching the bear in the circus, he thought, while the bear watches the audience.

Her head was close to his hand and he stroked her hair.

"Yes," he said. "The game is exciting. My chief thinks so too. He was so excited that he almost danced in the snow. He looked very funny. He has been trying to understand your gang. He likes its name, especially the/prefix bad. You say you like experimenting. Your membership in the gang must be an experiment. You study philosophy, don't you?" I

"Yes, but the books and the lectures are just words. If I attend all the lectures and do my utmost I'll get letters after my name, and perhaps one day I'll write something clever and my genius will be acknowledged. But that part of it is just silly. The true philosophers have always experimented. I was fortunate that I grew up with others whose minds were similar to mine. It's fashionable to be rebellious when you're young. Most American kids have a destructive period, but the fox always wanted to go further and he continued refusing to accept values that he hadn't tested. We became a gang and destroyed things for a while, material things, but the activity didn't get us anywhere. It was boring. The the fox said we should seek out gangs in a big city. He selected the biggest, New York, and we went down there for a few weeks.

"We were in our late teens and early twenties then. We found what we thought was the best part for our purposes, the Lower East Side. There were lots of gangs, most of them uniformed in some way. They didn't touch us, not even when we provoked them. The fox tried various methods. He used me as bait, but they just thought I was a prostitute. Finally Tom got us into the required trouble. He was a little drunk and he walked by himself and some Puerto Ricans mugged him. We got into the fight and the P.R.'s got help too. It was a true fight, with one corpse on their side and one on ours. The fox knifed a boy, a beautiful boy in dungarees and a black leather jacket. Gerard, a French Canadian from Jameson, caught a knife that had been thrown in his chest. He didn't see it coming. We left Gerard's body. We carried no identification, and his corpse wasn't there when we came back later. The police probably took it away. We all had a crisis then I think. We nearly gave up, and the fox stepped back and let us make up our minds. There were six of us left. Two gave up later on- they left the city and went out of state. I've lost contact with them. They married, got suburban homes in some city or other. They do the normal thing. Only the fox and Albert and Tom and I continued."

"Gerard wasn't missed when you got back to Jameson?"

"No. His parents had got divorced and left. He hadn't been living with them. Nobody cared I think, and we didn't tell anyone what happened. We said he had stayed in New York."

"But you are telling me-"

"Sure, why not?"

"Do you do everything the fox tells you to do?"

She laughed. "No, sergeant. When we were in New York we ran out of money and he suggested I work in a porno studio. Some old man with a hairpiece and polished fingernails offered me two hundred dollars a day. The fox thought that was a splendid idea, but I refused."

"And the money?"

"I telephoned my father and got a check and flew home. The others came back much later. Maybe they worked or robbed a bank. I never asked them how they got money. We are very secretive, even with each other. It's part of the game. Perhaps we aren't really a gang but just individuals linked in some strange formation. If I disagree with an experiment I don't take part in it. 'Gang' is a childish word, but we've been using it."

"What's on the number plate of your car?"

"BMF ZERO."

De Gier laughed as she got up and put more logs on the fire. She came back and stripped. De Gier still felt cold. She pulled him to his feet and helped him undress.

"Do you like me, sergeant?"

"Yes."

"Most men do."

"It must make your experiments easy."

"Kiss me."

The loveplay took a good while. He controlled himself to make it stretch, but he still felt part of the advertisement, and the orange label on the whiskey bottle stayed in his mind. The dragon hadn't released the princess. It had made the princess available, and not for the first time.

De Gier was lured into various postures and all the while Madelin was submissive, inviting, seemingly passive. But he knew that she granted him no initiatives and that he was taken through a preconceived program. A good program, with a good end.

"I'll show you where the bathroom is. We might take a shower."

She let him go first and he went down again and dressed and sat near the fire, watching its glow hollow out the birch logs. Madelin returned a little later in a housecoat. She made coffee and they drank it on the settee.

"The sheriff tells me your father owns the shore strip on Cape Orca now."

"Did he check with the town clerk?"

"Yes."

"The records may not be up to date. When land is sold the title is transferred officially, but only when the new deed is registered. Land taxes have gone up lately. A new name on a deed usually alerts the assessor. It may be better to put off registration for a while."

"But what if the previous owner sells the land again?"

"That's a risk, but not when the previous and new owners are friends, or trust each other."

"So your father may have sold the land again and the town clerk doesn't know who the new owner is."

"That might have happened."

"Has it?"

She put a finger on his nose. "It might have and he may not have told me. I'm the junior partner. He's the head of a rival gang, the Blue Crustaceans. His ideas differ from mine."

"Do you like him?"

"I've fought him all my life."

"Another experiment," de Gier said. "I see."

She moved away from him. "Don't sneer at experiments, sergeant. It's the only way we have to find out, to really find out. The reason that you are here tonight is because I saw something in you, in the way you played your flute. The fox did too. He's considering you as an honorary member."

De Gier got up. "Are you serious?"

She smiled. "Yes. Are you leaving? Better be careful, it isn't safe outside. You can stay the night if you like."

"I'll be careful."

She caressed his arm and he waited patiently.

"Why are you a sergeant? Shouldn't you be an officer?"

"I didn't have the qualifications to go to the academy. I went to the police school. I'll probably be made an adjutant in due course."

"An adjutant is an officer?"

"No."

"Do you mind?"

"No. Officers spend most of their time behind desks. I prefer to experiment in the field; maybe you and I are alike in some ways. Goodbye, Madelin. Thank you."

She laughed. "Don't thank me. I'm a country girl. Foreign males don't come my way too often. I think I should thank you. You did very well."

She walked him to the door and melted into his arms when he reached for his coat. He kissed her in return, but he still felt that he hadn't been anywhere near her.

"Come again, sergeant."

"Yes, thank you."

When he pressed the microphone in the Dodge the sheriff's response was immediate.

'Ten three, sergeant."

"On my way home."

"I just had a call. I'm leaving the jailhouse now, coming your way. You should be hearing my siren in a minute. There's a man in the road and an overturned car. I'm alone. Bernie is watching the radio in the jailhouse. You can come with me if you like, or are you exhausted?"

The sergeant looked at the microphone.

"Ten three, sergeant."

"I'll come with you."

"Ten four, sergeant."