The Maine Massacre (6 page)

Six houses on one line, south shore of Cape Orca.
That was the main clue of course, the connection, the thread.
Only one house occupied now; the Opdijk house. The
others empty and two of them burned down.
Strange, wasn't it? Valuable property, left to rot, left for the storms to blow through, for vandals to desecrate and ultimately destroy, to burn. Burn, that was the limit; they wouldn't burn by themselves. Right. Now the former occupants.

Case number one. A Mr. Jones.
He couldn't put a face to the man. Suzanne had hardly known Jones, but Suzanne never knew anybody except herself, her poor suffering self. The commissaris wondered if Suzanne had known her husband. The bedrooms were separate; they might have been separate from the start. Why would Opdijk have put up with Suzanne? Did he want a housekeeper and no more? But Suzanne wasn't much of a housekeeper either. The house was clean of course, and fairly luxurious but otherwise—a hellhole of bad taste. Well, never mind. Mr. Jones was dead. An old man living by himself in a small, good bungalow set at the end of the Cape, overlooking the water like the other houses. A man who kept to himself. Found dead in his own woods, shot through the head. Two years ago. During the hunting season. Bullet came from a deer rifle. Accident, pity. According to Suzanne the house wasn't sold. Nobody else moved in, and eventually it burned down.

Case number two.
The death
of Mary Brewer,
a woman about sixty years old, also retired. Miss Brewer liked to sail and to take her eleven-foot boat out on the bay. The Coast Guard had warned her several times and she had been fined for not wearing a life jacket or taking proper precautions, but she kept on sailing for the horizon and one day she didn't come back. Her corpse turned up bashed by the waves and the rocks and partly eaten by sharks or raccoons. Raccoons, the commissaris said, and he remembered how Suzanne had pronounced the word. Clearly the animals disgusted her. The commissaris had seen raccoons in the Amsterdam zoo. Very likable, he had thought, small dainty bears with agile hands. But they ate Mary's corpse. Well, why shouldn't they? The lady was dead. Another accident. And again the house found no new occupants. It still stood there. The furniture and trimmings had been removed by the heirs, but the empty shell was left.

Case number three.
The disappearance of
Captain
Schwartz.
But there was a difference to the pattern here and more was known. Schwartz, a genuine captain of some U.S. army outfit, retired, became a Nazi, and liked to march around his grounds with a swastika band around his arm. He also wore a German-style cap. There were no other Nazis in Woodcock County, but the captain occasionally went to New York to meet friends. He also wrote articles for the party monthly in which he propagated Nazism as the solution for American crime and corruption and urged his countrymen to conquer the world and kill the Jews. An evil man, but, as far as he had been able to deduce from Suzanne's incoherent rambling, probably insane and unable to realize his preaching in any way besides writing to be read by other madmen. His neighbors would have no contact with him and the local store wouldn't serve him, but he didn't mind and did his shopping in the next county. If he wanted any conversation he talked to a portrait of Adolf Hitler, hung in the hall of his house. But his activity attracted hostility from Jameson's rowdies. Suzanne talked about a gang. She even had a name for the rebels of Jameson: the BMF gang. The commissaris didn't know what the letters stood for. A motorcycle gang if he interpreted Suzanne's information correctly. And the leader of this gang, a young man called the fox, a particularly nasty character according to Suzanne, was reputed to have visited Schwartz and possibly threatened him, for the Nazi suddenly left and was never seen again. The captain was supposed to be living in New York now. A relative had come out and perhaps sold the house, but it was still empty. Suzanne wasn't clear about the timing of Captain Schwartz's troubles and subsequent flight. Some years ago, she'd said.

Case number four.
A gentleman by the name of
Carl
Davidson
who lived by himself after his wife died of a heart attack in the hospital. Davidson liked to walk in the woods and might stay out camping for a few days. Because he lived alone and had few social contacts he wasn't missed until his frozen corpse was found by wandering locals. It had been snowing heavily and there were no tracks.

Case number five.
Another old man, by the name of
Paul Ranee.
Unlike the others, who all originated in New York or Washington, D.C., Ranee was a local, a retired carpenter who had built his own small cabin between the bungalows of his neighbors. He had been an alcoholic but managed to stop drinking when told to do so by his doctor. Ranee was sickly and liked to stay oh his own grounds. Toward the end of his life he was running short of money. After not drinking liquor for several years, he suddenly died of alcoholic poisoning. His cabin burned down some months after his death.

Case number six.
Pete Opdijk, sawing down a dead tree, slipped, fell off the cliffs, and broke his spine and head.

The commissaris reread his notes and added a few full stops and commas. Then he whistled, blew a smoke ring, put his finger through it, and made some joyful but inarticulate sounds. But then his expression changed and became a mixture of sadness and indifference. He remembered that he wasn't in Amsterdam and that the detectives of the murder brigade weren't around to be summoned to join him in a conference. This string of deaths had nothing to do with him. It might be of interest to the local authorities and the local authorities wouldn't be altogether witless. He recalled the face of the small sheriff, impassive in the sleek cruiser. A fine pair of eyes, calm and penetrating. Surely the man wouldn't just float around in his power symbol while willful death repeated itself in house after house on the shore of a peninsula well within his jurisdiction. Or would accidents really happen in such an alarming, repetitious pattern? The victims were all elderly.

He studied his cigar carefully. Elderly. Statistics proved that the elderly often want to die, so they become accident-prone or actually commit suicide. Suicide requires an act of will. It is easier to become careless. And to be careless in Woodcock County might be very dangerous. Why on earth would Pete Opdijk pick a cold day to cut down a dead tree, walk on slippery ice to get to the tree, and work on the tree while he was balancing on the edge of a precipice? And why would an old man like Carl Davidson wander about in the woods? Did he want the blizzard to sneak up on him and kiss him to death?

He put his cigar between his thin lips. No, no. Opdijk wouldn't have spent a fortune on a comfortable bungalow if he meant to have an accident. And what about the other houses? Why wouldn't anyone move into them? Why were they left until they burned down? And who was burning them down? Vandals?

He rubbed out his cigar. "Bah."

"Yes, Jan? Anything wrong?" He shivered, he hadn't noticed her coming in.

"No, dear, just going through my notes."

"There aren't any complications, are there, Jan? Oh, I wish we could go tomorrow. And I wish we could go by boat. Airplanes frighten me."

"Do you want me to take your furniture, Suzanne?"

He watched the struggle on her face but didn't interfere.

"It will be expensive, won't it, Jan?"

"Yes, it will have to be crated and we will have to get trunks to take it to a port and you will have to pay to bring it through Dutch customs. Freight, duty—it will add up."

"I can't just leave it."

"No. You could, but whoever buys the house will have furniture of his own."

She swallowed. "Do you think I should have it auctioned, Jan?"

"The bigger pieces, yes. Certainly you could take the small stuff."

"The chinaware?"

"Yes." He picked up a fisherman's head from the mantelpiece. A pipe-smoking old man, rough but honest. Hardworking and mysterious. Why not? The clarity of the sea mirrored in the clear blue eyes. A strong chin, a straight nose, all in porcelain. But kitsch all the same. He put the fisherman down and picked up a pink dog, a Pekingese with bulging eyes. He put it down quickly. There were other pieces on the mantelpiece. A monkey hanging by its tail from a palm tree. A Spanish dancing girl with white breasts pushed out of a frilly blouse. She had very white thighs too. "Yes, you can take your collection, but you'll have to get a lot of tissue paper."

"I have tissue paper, Jan."

"Good. I'll go to bed. Maybe you were right. It was a long trip. Can I make a telephone call to Amsterdam, Suzanne?"

She hesitated.

"I'll pay, dear. I'll ask the operator what the charges are.

"No, no, that's all right, Jan. There is a telephone in your room."

He grinned as he climbed the stairs. This was one investigation he could get himself involved in.

It took a while before the sleepy voice of Adjutant Grijpstra yawned, said hello, and yawned again.

"Sorry, Grijpstra, it's me. I knew you were asleep but I won't take long."

"Aren't you in America, sir?"

"Yes, adjutant, but there are telephones in America. It's quite an advanced country, I believe. Tell me, what happened to de Gier?"

"Isn't he with you, sir?"

"A-ha."

"You haven't seen him yet, sir?"

"A-ha."

Grijpstra was fully awake now. "I am sorry, sir. But he really did want to go and we were all worried about your health and you being alone out there, and the cold and so on, sir, and the chief constable..."

"What about the chief constable, Grijpstra? Did he order the sergeant to fly out here?"

"No, sir."

"And who is paying for this personal extravagance?"

"Oh, that's all right, sir. There is a fund, in The Hague. It is set up to finance the exchange of police officers."

"Police officers, adjutant, not nursemaids."

"Yes, sir."

"I am amazed, adjutant, absolutely amazed."

"I am sorry, sir. We'll pay it back somehow."

"You better, unless we can find the sergeant something to do here, something that will keep him so busy that he'll have no time to push me around in a pram."

"Yes, sir," Grijpstra said. "I am sure you can find him something to do."

"Sleep well, adjutant. Sorry to have woken you up."

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir, goodbye, sir."

Grijpstra put the phone down carefully and stuck out his tongue.

"What was that?" his wife asked. "Do you have to go out? Was that the commissaris? What did he want?"

"He wanted to joke with me."

"At five o'clock in the morning? Was he drunk?"

"No, dear, just sarcastic."

"They are always putting you down and you are such a hardworking man and you've been with the department for such along time."

"Don't overdo it," Grijpstra said. "Go to sleep. Since when have
you
been on my side?"

5

T
HE SERGEANT HAD A HEADACHE AND A DRY MOUTH when he woke up, but he could have felt worse. It was 10:00 A.M. He wasn't too sure where he was, but it came back to him. America, Jameson, sheriff, jailhouse. More details came to mind, and he remembered where the bathroom was. He had a long shower and shaved. He put on his denim suit and found the right scarf to go with the new pale blue shirt. He zipped on his ankle-length suede boots. He smiled and bowed at the mirror, but the bow brought back his headache.

America, he thought. The commissaris. The commissaris on Cape Orca. Cape Accident. A murder case. He sat down on the bed and held his head. It couldn't be. It was quite impossible that he had strayed into a murder case. But then he remembered that Grijpstra had once strayed into a murder case. The adjutant had been on holiday, somewhere far back in the provinces, on the German border. The adjutant was drinking coffee in the corner of the bar in a third-rate hotel and two local men had come in and begun to whisper together. Grijpstra had listened in from behind his newspaper. The adjutant had enjoyed his holiday. He had worked with the local police and they had solved a case that hadn't been a case to start with. The victim had been buried months before Grijpstra went on his holiday. The lady had died of asthma. Only she hadn't. She had been slowly poisoned by relatives. Clever Grijpstra.

Clever Sergeant de Gier. But did he want to be clever? The question split through his throbbing skull. The answer split back. He did
not
want to be clever. He wanted to make sure that the commissaris survived his mission and he wanted to see America. He got up and looked out the window. He saw snow on the branches of several trees, on the ground, on roofs, and on the ice of the bay below. Well, fine. American snow. And it doesn't snow in Holland; the climate has changed. It used to snow, but it doesn't anymore. He was seeing a novelty. Exotic faraway snow, and he was right in the middle of it.

He found the sheriff in the room below. The sheriff's boots rested on the shelf between the radio and the telephones.

"How are you feeling? Headache?"

"A little."

"You went through half a bottle of bourbon. If you had drunk half a bottle of anything else you wouldn't have a head at all now, you'd have a big sore. Coffee?"

Albert came in to pour the coffee.

"Breakfast, sergeant?"

"Yes," de Gier said. "Breakfast, that would be nice."

"What would you like?"

De Gier tried to think.

"We have no eggs," the sheriff said to Albert. "But there's fresh bread and a bit of bacon and some parsley on top and a raw tomato. More coffee. That'll clear your head, sergeant."

Breakfast came as ordered, and de Gier ate and felt better.

"You remember our conversation of last night?"

"I do."

"Cape Orca?"

"Yes."

"Are you still interested?"

De Gier cleaned his plate with the last piece of toast. "Was I interested last night?"

"Yes, we both were. I still am, but I'm a little more used to bourbon than you are, so you can back out."

De Gier thought. "Yes," he said. "Let me go and see the commissaris first. You said I could use a car, a Dodge, I believe. I think I should discuss the case with him. He may have ideas. He'll have talked to his sister. If we were right, if our conversation last night was getting us anywhere, then he may confirm our, eh..."

The sheriff grinned. "Our, eh... dreams, hey? Or our, eh... facts?"

"You have facts, Jim. I am not from here. What do I know?"

"You know what you know. I can use what you know. But go and see—what did you call him again?"

"Commissaris."

"Go and see him. The key is in the Dodge. Be careful. We had a thaw during the night, but it froze up again. The roads are supposed to be sanded, but the town is short of sand, although there should be some on the way."

"Yes," de Gier said, but he hadn't listened. He found the Dodge, started it, and waited for the engine to warm up. He wondered what the commissaris would do if he saw his trusted sergeant appear out of the snow. What sounded like a good idea in Amsterdam might turn out to be a very bad idea in America. Perhaps the commissaris was perfectly capable of looking after himself, even if he had been very ill a week ago and even if he was under doctor's orders not to exert himself in any way.

The Dodge slid out of the parking place and into the road. De Gier turned the wheel, but the car didn't respond. It responded a little later, but it overresponded and slid to the other side of the road. Then it spun and de Gier was facing the jailhouse for a second. He saw a stop sign and braked, but the car continued, just missing a truck. It spun around once more, heeled over on two wheels, hit a snowbank, and fell back. De Gier reversed and touched the accelerator, but the rear wheels wouldn't grip. He tried another time. The engine whined, the wheels whirred. He switched the engine off, got out, slipped, and fell on the ice. He was trying to get on his feet again when a red station wagon stopped behind the Dodge. A small old man in an oversized furlined overcoat and a raccoon hat complete with tail came out of the station wagon and shuffled toward the Dodge on enormous rubber boots held together by bright yellow laces. The hat was in the old man's eyes, and he tried to push it up with a hand covered in a mitten that reached to his elbow.

De Gier pushed himself up. He stared at the little old man in the coat and the hat and the boots and the mittens. His eyes grew until they were perfectly round. He put his hands over his face and breathed in deeply. He dropped his hands.

"Need some help?" the old man asked. "Maybe I can pull you out with Opdijk's station wagon. It has four-wheel drive. I've just figured out how to operate the extra gears." The old man spoke Dutch.

"Morning, sir," de Gier said. "Yes, that would be nice. I've got this car stuck. It's slippery."

"There is a chain in Opdijk's car. I'll get it."

The sergeant tried to help the commissaris, but his leather soles had no grip on the ice and he skated around, getting in the way until the commissaris told him to sit in me Dodge. The station wagon pulled and the Dodge made feeble attempts to extricate itself from the snow bank. When the commissaris stepped on the gas the chain snapped. He reversed the wagon and got out and knotted the chain. The second attempt made the chain break again and the station wagon got stuck in the bank too.

The commissaris and the sergeant got out of their vehicles and stood on the ice, arms linked, studying the situation.

"It's very good of you to come here and help me out, sergeant."

"Do you think so, sir?"

"No," the commissaris said. "I don't think so, but I am polite sometimes and try to say the right thing. You have a chief constable and God knows what American superstars behind you. Grijpstra told me a little last night. He moved heaven and earth to bring you here. Do you think he spoke to the queen too?"

"No, sir."

"So you are helping me out. That's nice. But I got the Opdijk car stuck too now. I am on my way to a real estate agent called Michael Astrinsky to sell the Opdijk house. Do you know where Astrinsky's office is?"

"Yes, sir."

"You do?"

"There's only one important street in Jameson, sir, Main Street. Mr. Astrinsky will have his office on Main Street. Main Street is over there, sir."

De Gier let go of the commissaris and pointed. He slipped and fell and dragged the commissaris down with him.

A jeep stopped and a thin-faced young man jumped out, a lanky young man in a short leather jacket, an open-necked thin cotton shirt, and no hat. His light brown curly hair had been cut in a strange fashion and stiff tufts pointed above his ears.

"You from California?"

"No," the commissaris said. "We are from Holland, the Netherlands. Over there." He pointed at the bay.

"Really? No ice over there?"

"Not much."

"Is that so? Want me to pull you out?"

"Please. If it's not too much trouble."

"It's trouble all right," the young man said and walked back to the jeep and backed it to the station wagon. It took a little over a minute to free the wagon and a little over five minutes to extricate the Dodge. The young man put his spade, ash bucket, and chain back into the jeep, waved the commissaris' thanks away, and drove off. De Gier noted the registration on the jeep: BMF ONE. Only letters, no figures. The commissaris had read the registration too.

"BMF," the commissaris said. "Suzanne said something about BMF. a gang of sorts. Troublemakers. How did that helpful young man get his registration? Are they made-to-order here?"

A small red compact passed. The license plate said curs. There was a middle-aged woman at the wheel, heavily made up.

"Made-to-order," the commissaris said. "Incredible. But true, BMF."

"BMF ONE, sir. That young man was number one. The boss. Boss of the gang. The sheriff told me about the gang."

"What else did he tell you?"

"A lot, sir. He made me tell him what I was doing here, and I thought that the truth might answer all his questions at once. He didn't believe me. He has a file on Cape Orca. Your brother-in-law is the fifth corpse, sir, and a sixth victim ran away."

"Is the sheriff doing anything about that file?"

"He is new, sir. Three months in office. The old sheriff didn't care perhaps. He retired. He lives in Boston now."

"No," the commissaris said.

De Gier nodded energetically. "Yes, sir."

"No, sergeant. I've done the paperwork for my sister. The letters are posted. I am going to sell her house and get out of here. We were hired to take care of a city with one million peaceful citizens in it, in our own cozy little country, six thousand miles away. I've never heard of a town called Jameson. I happen to be here and I happen to be selling a house, but it's all most unreal, unsubstantial. Let's go to this man Astrinsky. We can leave the cars. But I'd like some coffee first. Would there be coffee in this town?"

They struggled across the street and inquired at Robert's Market. A bland-faced young man directed them to the town's only restaurant: "Beth's Diner. Country style food, all we have." "And a store where we can buy some clothes?"

"Next door, only other store in town."

"Good," the commissaris said when they were back on the sidewalk. "I hate shopping around. No choice simplifies life. You can wear these clothes, sergeant. They won't fit you either, but they'll look better on you than on me, especially the hat. Opdijk had a big head and you have a lot of hair. It may sit on the hair."

They got to the store holding hands and were served by a young girl. "A coat," the commissaris said. "Warm, and boots, please, miss."

"Would you look around, sir? Coats are on the racks. And there are boots under the racks. I'm minding the store. I don't know much about the stock, but everything is priced."

"Here, put my coat on, sergeant. There, the hat too." The hat turned and the raccoon's tail hung over de Gier's face. "Other way around, sergeant. It fits in a way. Take the boots."

The commissaris stepped out of his boots and began to rummage about. It didn't take long. He came back. "These boots fit. What do you think about the coat, sergeant? Not that it matters, I'll take it anyway."

"Yes," the sergeant said. "Very nice." It was a hooded navy coat, heavily lined. The commissaris' thin, small face peeped out of the hood. The sergeant looked away.

"All right. How do I look? I wasn't so nice to you just now. You can tell me the truth, Rinus. How do I look? You can laugh too if you like. I am sure I look perfectly ridiculous."

"You look like a movie star, sir."

"A comic character. A Marx Brother? Chaplin? My favorite? Buster Keaton?"

"No, sir."

"Who? Be honest, Rinus. You may not have another chance for a while."

"Walt Disney character, sir. Out of
Snow White."

"A dwarf? Smiley? Grumpy? The fellow who sneezes?"

"Dopey, sir."

The commissaris clapped his hands. There were just the two of them between die racks. The girl was waiting behind the counter for them to come out.