The Wells of Hell (15 page)

I went up to the front desk, where a
harassed young policewoman was trying to cope with a haywire switchboard. Dan
followed a little way behind me, still holding a bloodstained handkerchief to
his cheek. As it turned out, he hadn’t been too badly slashed, but the
creature’s attack had given him a pretty severe shock.

‘I have to see the Sheriff,’ I told
the policewoman. ‘My name’s Mason Perkins. He knows who I am.’

The girl looked at me as if I was
crazy. ‘The Sheriff can’t see anyone right now.
No one at
all.’

‘Will you just give him my name and
tell him it’s desperately urgent?’

The girl disconnected one call and
connected another. ‘Mister, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but all hell’s going on here
right now, and Sheriff Wilkes has got more than his hands full.’

I looked around. The lobby was thick
with smoke from the cigarettes of the waiting newsmen, and the chatter and
shouting was almost deafening. The TV people kept switching their lights on and
off and framing make-believe shots with their fingers, and the telephones rang
in unholy choirs, persistent but unanswered.

‘What’s going on here?’ I asked the
policewoman.
‘Some kind of red alert?’

‘I’m
sorry,
I’m not at liberty to tell you. But as soon as Sheriff Wilkes gets free, I’ll
try to let him know you’re here.’

I turned away from the desk in
frustration. But then I saw my old drinking buddy Jack Ballo from the New
Milford paper, standing slouched against the doorframe with a cigarette
dangling from his lips and his little green Tyrolean hat perched on the back of
his head. I told Dan: ‘Wait here one minute,’ and*’ I pushed my way through the
crowds of deputies and reporters until I made it across the lobby. Jack saw me
coming, and raised his hand in a slight salute.

‘How are you doing?’ he asked me, as
I squeezed past the paunch of a fat deputy with a Bill Haley haircut.

‘I’m doing fine,’ I told him. ‘At
least, I think I am. What the hell’s going on down here?’

‘Haven’t you heard?
A very nasty homicide out at Washington Depot.
A young girl
was just about torn to pieces.’

‘Anyone I know?’

Jack took his notebook out of his
sagging coat pocket and flipped through it. ‘I doubt it. She came from a new
family, only moved in about two or three weeks ago.
The
Steadmans.’

‘Any clues?’
I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘It sounds like
the work of some kind of maniac. And when I say maniac, I mean maniac. Her neck
was broken and the flesh was ripped right off her. Most of her internal organs
were removed, and the black plastic bag squad are still looking for them.
Heart, liver, lungs.
All AWOL.’

My mouth felt parched, as if I’d
been smoking all day without taking a single drink. I could feel my left eye
twitching with tiredness and nervous exhaustion.

‘What about suspects?’ I said. ‘Did
Carter give you any ideas?’ Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘I hope you’re going to pay
me for all this information, preferably in a libatory fashion.’

‘Listen, Jack, it’s real urgent. I
think I may know something about it. Will you just tell me?’

‘I’ll tell you what I know if you
tell me what you know.’ I nodded. ‘Okay. It’s a deal. Now, will you please
hurry?’ He consulted his notebook again. ‘Well,’ he said, slowly, ‘it seems
like only three people are missing from the Route 109 area round about
Washington Depot, and those are Jimmy and Alison Bodine, who are both wanted in
connection with the death of their son yesterday, and a man called Frederick
Karlen, who was staying with his aunt for a couple of days. His aunt’s name is
Elsa Greene, and she says that Frederick was the nicest, most harmless
individual you could ever have met.’

‘Did she say if he’d drunk any
water?’ I asked.

Jack frowned.
‘Water?
What does that have to do with anything?’

‘I don’t know yet. But did you ask
her if he’d drunk any?’

Jack looked perplexed. ‘Not that I
remember. I mean, that isn’t exactly the kind of question you ask people about
their missing nephews, is it?’

I pressed my hand to my head for a
moment, and thought hard. Then I said: ‘Somebody should have done. Carter
should have done, for sure. I just hope that he did.’

Jack said warily: ‘Are you saying
this homicide could be connected with all this water pollution we’ve been
having lately?’

‘I’m not saying anything.’

‘Come on, Mason, you made a deal.
You’re a plumber, right, so what are you doing around here anyway, unless
there’s some link between the polluted water and the dead girl?’

I looked him straight in the eyes.
‘Will you promise you’ll keep this under wraps until I say so?’

‘Well, I’m not too sure I can do
that.’

‘Either you do or I won’t tell you.’

He sighed.
‘All
right.
As long as you make sure I don’t get scooped. Now, what’s
happening?’

I chose my words carefully. ‘There’s
a possibility – only a possibility –
that
the water
pollution around the Washington area is in some way responsible for what
happened to Oliver Bodine, and also what’s happened to this girl. There’s
nothing conclusive. But Dan Kirk’s been making tests on the water, and he’s
found out some pretty odd things.’

‘What kind of odd things?’

I swallowed. I shouldn’t have been
telling Jack anything at all. But he was an old friend, and an unstoppable
gossip, and right now he could be helpful, especially if Carter Wilkes was
going to be too busy to pass on any police information.

‘The water contains an unidentified
micro-organism.’

Jack took out his ballpen and jotted
a few shorthand outlines in his book.

‘Anything else?’ he asked me. I
shook my head. ‘That’s all I know. But when Dan’s finished up with his tests, I
think there should be some pretty hair-raising news.’

‘Does he know what kind of
micro-organism?’ Jack wanted to know.

I shook my head. ‘He’s the
scientist, not me. Even if he told me, I wouldn’t know what he meant.’

‘Are you sure he hasn’t given you
some kind of inkling?’

I glanced across the crowded lobby
to where Dan was standing waiting for me, dabbing at his cut cheek.

‘Dan’s a cautious man,’ I told Jack.
‘When he’s good and ready to say what the organism is, then I guess he’ll tell
me; and then I’ll tell you. But keep it under your hat until it’s certain, will
you? If it’s wrong, and you print it, you’ll wind up with egg on your face and
Carter Wilkes will have my guts for sock suspenders.’

Jack tucked his notebook away. ‘All
right, Mason. This time I’ll trust you. But if anything breaks, I want to know
the same millisecond that you know – you got it?’

I gave him a nod, and then I pushed
my way back through the jostling reporters and policemen.

When Dan saw me coming through, he
gave a weak smile and said: ‘I believe you’re just in time.

I’m going to pass out.’

‘Pull
yourself
together,’ I told him. ‘You’re strong as an ox.
A bald ox,
possibly – but a strong one.
You know what’s happened here? There’s been
another homicide. A young girl was ripped apart out at Washington Depot. And
when I say ripped apart, I mean ripped apart.’

Dan stared at me, and blinked.
‘Ripped apart? Who was it?’

‘Nobody we know. A young girl called
Steadman. Her family moved into the area two or three weeks ago. Jack said it
looked like the work of a maniac. She was torn to pieces and all her insides
were missing.’

‘Jesus,’ said Dan, and his face went
paler than ever. I held on to his arm to steady him.

Even amidst all the shouting and the
turmoil and the ringing telephones I couldn’t help thinking about those dark
and desperate moments in the woods in back of old man Pascoe’s place. I
couldn’t help recalling the hard crustaceous grip of that enormous pincer, and
the smaller, sharper claw which had begun to probe against my back and my belly
in search of my soft and vulnerable insides.

I couldn’t help remembering a sea
story that my father had read to me when I was a boy, and conjuring up the
vision of a dead pirate whose face had decayed into a pale slush, and inside
whose gaping body hundreds of crabs teemed.

I said to Dan: ‘Are you thinking
what I’m thinking?’

He gave me a quick, humourless
glance. ‘That Jimmy or Alison might have killed the girl? Yes, that’s exactly
what I was thinking.’

‘Right.
In that case, it’s urgent we get in
to see Carter. Why don’t you exert some of your inimitable scientific charm
over that police lady at the desk, and I’ll nip along the corridor and see if I
can interrupt whatever it is that Carter’s doing.’

Dan pulled a face. ‘Just at this
moment I feel far from charming. Look at this cut.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I reassured
him. ‘It gives you elan. You look like Douglas Fairbanks Jr after a heavy swordfight,
that’s all.’

‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll do my
best.’

We split up; and while Dan leaned
over the reception desk and involved the young policewoman in a lengthy and
convoluted conversation about nothing much in particular, I elbowed my own way
through the crowd in the lobby until I reached the closed swing doors that said
Sheriffs Office, Private in neat black lettering on frosted glass.

I stood with my back to the doors,
and when none of the sheriff’s deputies were looking my way, I opened the doors
up a little way and slipped inside. I paused for a moment or two once I*was
through, in case anybody came after me, but nobody did, and so I made my way
quickly and quietly along the polished corridor that led to the traffic
department, the muster room, and Carter Wilkes’ private domain.

The door of the sheriff’s office was
ajar, and cigarette smoke was drifting out into the corridor like tear-gas. It
was obvious that Carter was holding some kind of council of war, because the
room was packed with deputies and uniformed officers, and when I peeked around
the corner to see what was going on, I could make out maps and plans and heaps
of files and statements.

Carter, huge and big-bellied, his
armpits stained with sweat, was wearing a small pair of half-glasses and poring
over a detail map of Washington Depot and the surrounding hills. He was saying
harshly: ‘I want all of that ground searched systematic. Square by square, no
matter whether it’s hill or valley. I want to know when you boys have finished
your job that there isn’t a single leaf or a single candy wrapper that you’ve
left unscrutinised.’

The phone on his desk rang, and he
picked it up. Everyone in the room waited tensely while he said: ‘Yeah – yeah.
I see. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I got it.’

He set the phone down in its cradle,
took off his glasses and looked around. ‘That was the coroner’s office. They
did a preliminary post-mortem on Susan Steadman’s remains. She was attacked
with some kind of mechanical device which broke her neck and crushed her lower jaw.

They’re not too sure of what it was,
or how it was used, but they reckon she was subjected to a pressure of
something close to a thousand pounds. It was only after she collapsed to the
ground that she was disembowelled, and that was done with an extremely blunt
instrument.
Maybe a shovel.
They don’t have any ideas
at all about how the homicide was committed, and all they can say about time so
far is that she probably died a little after twelve this afternoon.’

‘Any sexual assault?’ asked a thin
young officer with a long nose.

‘No. Her underclothing was intact,
and there was no sign of any sexual interference.’

‘Anything missing?’ asked another
policeman.
‘Any money, jewellery, that kind of thing?’

Carter Wilkes cleaned his glasses on
a soft piece of cloth, breathing on them to bring up the sparkle. ‘Susan
Steadman was carrying four dollars eighty-five cents in a leather Indian-style
purse. She wore a twelve-dollar wristwatch. Neither
were
taken.’

‘So, as of now, there’s no apparent
motive?’ put in the first officer.

Carter nodded without looking up. He
seemed withdrawn and depressed, much quieter than his usual bluff and abrasive
self; but I guess he had plenty to be thoughtful about. Ordinary homicide was
serious enough, but homicide like this was twice as tough.

I said, quite clearly: ‘Sheriff?
Could I say something?’

Carter raised his
eyes,
he didn’t seem either surprised or annoyed to see me there. He said: ‘
What
is it, Mason?
Any news from Dan?’

‘I just located Jimmy and Alison
Bodine. I saw them only a half-hour ago, at old man Pascoe’s place.’

There was a murmur of surprise
around the room, but Carter raised his hand for quiet. ‘Did you bring them back
with you?’ he asked. ‘Are they safe?’