The Maine Massacre (21 page)

18

T
HE OPDUKS' STATION WAGON GROUND SLOWLY AHEAD, whining in first gear. The commissaris was driving. De Gier sat huddled in his fur-lined coat.

"You look like a polar traveler, sergeant, an unhappy polar traveler. Aren't the hounds pulling the sleigh fast enough? The sawmill should be at the end of this road. We'll arrive in a minute."

The sergeant blew some thin smoke out of the collar of Opdijk's garment. "1 am not unhappy, sir, I am trying to figure out what we were doing on the island. Jeremy gave you no answers; he only confirmed that his dog died. You surmised that correctly, I should have thought of the possibility, but I didn't. I have been thinking about little else than the Cape Orca murders. The dead dog seems no part of them. You think Janet Wash ran the dog down on purpose, sir?"

"Here we are, sergeant. There's smoke coming out of that big shed. Our friend is in."

"And he didn't give you the correct name of the gambler. I'm sure he was only play-acting, yet you seemed pleased enough with his answer, or nonanswer."

"Out," the commissaris said and opened his door. "You've been my student long enough, sergeant. Why ask if you can find out by using the brain you keep in that handsome head of yours? The answers are clear enough. I can see them, so why shouldn't you? I haven't been hiding any of the information that came my way, and I trust you have given me all of yours. The encounter we had on the island was the result of an attack based on our combined knowledge. Good day, sir. I hope you can spare us a little of your valuable time."

The fox was waiting for them on the path to his shed. Albert had come out of the shed too, carrying some boards that he lowered carefully onto the trailer attached to the fox's jeep. The fox shook hands.

"We've met before," the sergeant said. "You pulled us out of the snow."

The fox grinned. "We've met a number of times, sergeant, directly and indirectly. We made you as welcome as we could, circumstances and existing limitations providing. Will you be leaving soon?"

"I think so."

"A pity. I was thinking of making you an honorary member of my organization, such as it is these days. Would you and your friend come in? The mill isn't too comfortable, but it'll be a little warmer than out here. I have two barrel stoves going, but one wall is open so that we can pull the saw logs in. Most of the heat goes straight out again. Albert, you're coming in too?"

Albert came, smiled at de Gier, and shook the commissaris' hand. "1 hear you're a police commissioner from Europe."

"I was," the commissaris said, "and very likely I'll be one again, but here I am trying my hand at being a private detective."

"You find the activity worthwhile?"

"Yes, thank you, very."

The fox took his woolen hat off and poured coffee from a jug standing on a hot plate in a comer of the mill. Most of the shed was taken up by an old truck engine powering a circular saw and the machinery required to maneuver the logs into position. The engine was going, forcing them to shout, and the fox switched it off. "Drop of brandy in your coffee? It's a nasty day. A bit of brandy makes a difference."

"Thank you."

They raised their mugs and sipped. The fox dug about in his curly hair, which had flattened under his hat; only the two tufts near his ears stood up. His long face with the tilted eyes looked expectantly at the commissaris.

"You deserve your name," the commissaris said.

"I hope so. I've spent some time observing the way a fox lives. There are several around here, and they hunt close to the mill sometimes. Yesterday one of them got my rooster. 1 saw him coming and shouted, but he never wavered. He knows I won't shoot him, so he comes by daylight. The neighbor's chickens disappeared during the night. The fox opened the latch of the barn door."

Albert laughed. "Don't exaggerate. Your stories are getting too good. A fox doesn't open a latch, the raccoons do that."

"Excuse me," the commissaris said. "What's a raccoon again? Some sort of bear?"

"Yes, they look like bears, but I don't know if they belong to the bear family. They're small. Here, the sergeant's hat is made of a raccoon skin."

"Ah yes. I had forgotten. Go on with your story please."

"Story? Oh, the fox getting at my neighbor's chickens with the help of a raccoon, that's right. The fox must have gotten a raccoon to open the latch of the barn door for him, and then he shared the chickens with his friend afterward. A fox is a leader, of course. He initiates the action, delegates what he can't do himself, and shares the benefits." The fox laughed. "Some animals are smart. Do you know what we call policemen in the States, gentlemen?"

The commissaris shook his head.

"Pigs. All of us have qualities of animals. So have the police. The police like to wallow in dirt, and they'll gobble up anything that falls on the side. They get fat and eventually they get slaughtered, but there are always new pigs. Pigs are very fertile."

The commissaris sipped his coffee.

"You don't agree, sir?"

"Perhaps. Your statement is a little too general I think. Tell me, Mr. Fox, when you started your gang, the BMF gang I believe it is called, what sort of a gang was it? In its initial stage I mean."

The fox looked at Albert. "What were we like, Albert?'

"Like we are now. I don't think we've changed much. But the trimmings were different. I remember I had a black leather jacket with a white skull and bones painted on the back and I wore a chain round my neck. I used to like to wear dark glasses and I tried to ride a motorcycle, but I wasn't very good at it then. I fell off a couple of times. You had some special army helmet, and Tom and Gérard and the others sported little leather caps. We would ride our motorcycles in formation, and we sometimes went to Bangor and the Canadian cities and drank a lot of beer and we had some good fights."

"Hell's Angels," the commissaris said and smiled. "We have them in Amsterdam. It's a popular type of manifestation. Must have been with us for twenty years, longer maybe. The black leather clothes and the dark glasses are universal properties of that type of gang. You know what they always reminded me of?"

"No."

"Of us, of the police, of the strong arm of the police. A darker more romantic version but essentially the same. That hypothesis was confirmed later when I learned that the beatniks, the flower people, the hippies, and their latter-day varieties use Hell's Angels to do police work at their rallies. I watched young men with bare chests and black leather jackets and the other customary paraphernalia, the SS helmets and so forth, ride their motorcycles to keep the thoroughfares open. I even saw them beat up offenders, youngsters who climbed fences or got annoyingly drunk. A most interesting discovery. Rebels have rules and appoint police to enforce their rules. It is true that the police terrorize and are aggressive, but it is also true that the police keep order. Humanity, in whatever society, has an inborn need for order. It cannot function in anarchy."

The fox had been listening carefully. He toasted the commissaris with his mug.

"Do you agree, Mr. Fox?"

The tilting eyes gleamed. "You are talking about humanity."

"I am, sir."

"But perhaps humanity doesn't matter so much," the fox said. "Perhaps we overemphasize our importance. I've spent time in the woods, the wild woods. There weren't any humans about. Ail I saw were trees and plants and animals and insects. The woods are quiet and beautiful, and there's no police force. There are no rules, no morals. I don't see jack rabbits riding cruisers, or jays in stiff hats, or squirrels hanging around in helicopters to see if everything is the way they think it should be. It's the way it should be, without any interference at all."

The commissaris held up his mug.

"More coffee, more brandy, or both?"

"More brandy. Thank you. Very good brandy. Did you stop to think what would happen if humanity ignored its rules, starting tomorrow, for instance?"

"Yes," the fox said. "There would be anarchy, as you said just now. A terrific mess. Just like the woods would be if you suddenly drove a million animals into one area. The clever and the strong would eat the stupid and the weak. There would be an orgy of killing, but not for too long. Disaster would change into balance. In a few years the woods would be quiet and beautiful again."

The fox sipped from his enamel mug. "And if there were no interference from us, if the superrace, the humans, would have the grace to disappear, the beauty of the woods would spread. The trees would push over die cities, very quickly, more quickly than you would expect. There's a road in the back of this sawmill. It was a first-grade hard-topped road two years ago, but when it was short-circuited by the new highway and forgotten, the woods moved in and covered it up. There are cedars growing through the broken tar now, and moss and wildflowers between the cedars' roots. Two years. In ten years New York City would be overgrown. I would like to be a witness to that process."

"You would be among the dead, Mr. Fox."

The fox nodded. "I would be. But would that matter?"

The commissaris' eyes twinkled briefly. He had remembered the plane landing on Jeremy's Island and recalled his fear. "It wouldn't matter to you, would it, Mr. Fox?"

The fox smiled back. "Oh, it would undoubtedly. I scare easy, but we are discussing a theory. The point is that my death, which would be part of the extinction of our species, may not be all that important."

The commissaris drank his brandy. De Gier moved uneasily. There was no breakthrough yet. He wished the commissaris would reach out more openly and wondered whether he could help.

The fox had moved too, but the commissaris sat very quietly, his whole attitude suggesting that he was very much at ease and had nothing in mind. Except sipping a little more brandy perhaps.

The fox tugged at his hair. "You came to ask questions? I hear you visited Jeremy earlier on today."

The commissaris looked over the rim of his mug. "News travels quickly in Woodcock County, Mr. Fox."

The fox shrugged. "I have a CB radio in my jeep. I heard Madelin talk to the old guy who runs the airstrip. You asked Jeremy questions?"

"Yes."

"Did he answer?"

"In a way."

The fox jumped up, clapped his hands, laughed, and sat down again. "In a way!"

De Gier laughed too. It was done now. He got up, stretched, and wandered over to Albert, who reached for the brandy bottle. Albert grinned back at him and poured. The fox was still talking.

"Jeremy is my local sage. I used to go over to the island and I would ask him questions, but he never answered. He would talk about other things instead, different things altogether. Tell me stories, jokes, anything. But he never seemed to hear what I asked. Then later, maybe the next day, I would think about what he had said and find .that he
had
answered. Very funny, and annoying too. He plays around, and very seriously, once you get a feeling as to what he is doing. But go ahead, you can ask
me
questions now. I may want to try to imitate Jeremy's method, but I won't be as good at it as he is."

"You try, and I'll try," the commissaris said goodhumoredly.

The fox was on his feet again. "One moment, before you go ahead I want to ask a question too. How does your quest go? Can you point at anyone yet?"

The commissaris shook his head. "I am a foreign visitor to your great country, Mr. Fox. I wouldn't point a finger at anyone, but your sheriff will I think, and I would imagine that we don't have to wait long now."

"You hear that, Albert?" the fox asked.
"My
sheriff.
Your
sheriff too. Our public servant, if only he would remember."

"Oh, he does, Mr. Fox. I have had the pleasure of being able to observe the sheriff, and so has the sergeant here. We are quite impressed. And so should you be. To consider authority as the enemy isn't always wise, and perhaps even... yes... childish. But no matter. It is my turn now, and here is my question. How did you manage to send off Captain Schwartz? I believe you admitted being instrumental in his departure, but I didn't hear how you forced him to remove himself, and I am interested."