Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) (26 page)

“Stop
right there,” she said sharply. “Pull that trigger and you’ll die less than a
second later.” Her nerves were thrumming and adrenaline was pumping madly
through her body, yet her voice stayed strong and calm and her aim never
wavered.

Time
stopped and for what felt like an eternity nothing happened. Ferriss’s
shoulders slumped and he lowered his weapon, and then a moment later Cooper
followed suit. He turned to face Sharon. His eyes were blank and cold. “Have it
your way,” he said quietly. “You’re just delaying the inevitable.”

“What
the hell is wrong with you two?” she said in bewilderment. “You were about to
murder a man in cold blood!”

Agent
Ferriss glanced from Sharon to his partner and then back again. An oily smile
slid across his face, but his eyes looked no less dead. “You’ve got it all
wrong,” he drawled, the unmistakable hint of a Southern upbringing coming out
from the stress. “We wasn’t gonna murder nobody, we was just subduing the
suspect, weren’t we, Agent Cooper?”

Cooper
never took his eyes off Sharon’s, the hatred undisguised on his face. “That’s
right,” he finally agreed. “Subduing the suspect.”

“Good
thing you came along when you did,” Ferriss continued. “You can help us take
this man into custody.”

Sharon hesitated,
her gun still trained on Ward Cooper. She knew what she had witnessed, and it
wasn’t a pending arrest, it was a pending execution. At Cooper’s feet, the
suspect started babbling, “Get them away from me, get ‘em away, they’re gonna
kill me!”

“Shut your
mouth right now,” Cooper muttered angrily, prodding the suspect with his shoe, and
to Sharon’s surprise, the man stopped talking.

The
small group eyed each other silently and suspiciously. Sharon had a moment of
disbelief at the utter unreality of the situation. She was holding a loaded gun
on two federal agents, who she was certain had been about to murder the only
suspect in the killings of two Paskagankee residents. What the hell was going
on here?

Ferriss
took a slow step in Sharon’s direction and she immediately turned her weapon
toward him. Ferriss had holstered his gun and he raised his hands, palms out,
in a gesture of conciliation. He said, “I think there’s been a serious
misunderstanding here. You seem to have misinterpreted our disarming of the
suspect,” he pointed to the Colt revolver in the grass next to the
still-kneeling man, “as something…sinister.”

He
smiled. The gesture contained absolutely no warmth and the sight chilled Sharon.
“You need to holster that weapon now, officer,” he continued, “before something
bad happens to you.”

“Excuse
me?” she said sharply. “Is that a threat?”

“Put
your gun away now,” Ferriss continued as if she had never spoken, “and you
may
still be able to keep your job.
Continue acting in the reckless manner you’ve displayed here this morning, and
not only will you find yourself unemployed, you’ll spend the next twenty years
in federal prison.” His voice was silky-smooth and layered with menace. “I’m
sure you’re aware it’s illegal to interfere with a federal investigation.”

“You
were going to kill that man,” she replied stubbornly. “I know exactly what I
saw.”

“No
one’s killing anyone,” Ferriss said. “Yet. Everything’s under control. In fact,
you’re the only one I see pointing a loaded gun at someone else.” He gestured
to Cooper, who holstered his weapon reluctantly, with the look of a man who
would rather be eating razor blades.

“I’m
taking the suspect to the station,” Sharon said after a long pause. She reached
down with her left hand and yanked the man to his feet, keeping her weapon
trained roughly midway between Agents Ferriss and Cooper with her right. The
stench rolling off the suspect’s body would normally have made her gag, but
right now she barely noticed and didn’t care.

She
began walking backward, a big wad of her prisoner’s shirt clutched tightly in
her fist, refusing to turn her back on the two FBI agents. When she felt as
though she had put a sufficient distance between herself and the feds, she
eased her weapon into its holster and pulled a pair of handcuffs off the
utility belt at her waist. She spun the prisoner around, hands behind his back,
and deftly snapped the cuffs around his wrists. Then she marched him to her
cruiser, keeping a wary eye on Ferriss and Cooper.

Neither
agent moved. They stood quietly next to the big hole dug out of the ground, the
Caterpillar earthmover looming behind them, staring back at her with
undisguised contempt.

27

Mike looked up from his desk as
Gordie Rheaume rapped his knuckles once on the open door and then entered.
“Sorry to bother you, Chief,” he said, “but Officer Dupont just radioed in
and…”

Mike
shrugged. “Yes?”

“She’s
got a suspect in custody.”

“A
suspect for what?”

“The
murders, Chief!”

Gordie’s
face was flushed with excitement, and for a moment Mike had trouble making
sense of his statement. “The murders? The Choate and Kendall murders? How is
that possible? I sent her out to the Ridge Runner less than an hour ago to pull
down the crime scene tape around the construction site. How did she go from
that boring chore to arresting a double-murder suspect?”

Gordie
shrugged. “I dunno. I asked her the same question, but she said she’d explain
it all when she gets here.” He looked at his watch. “And that should happen any
minute.”

“That’s
fantastic news,” Mike said, standing and moving out from behind his desk with a
smile.

“Uh,
there’s something else,” Gordie added.

“What
is it?”

“She
said the FBI guys were there, too, and that there was some kind of trouble.”

“What
trouble?”

“She wouldn’t
say, but she wanted me to stress that you shouldn’t let them anywhere near the
suspect until you talk to her.”

Mike
ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Don’t let them near the suspect? Why
not?”

“She wouldn’t
tell me, Chief, but she was adamant. She made me promise I would come right to
your office and tell you. She seems to think the Feebs will be right behind
her, and she didn’t want them getting to the prisoner before she could pass the
message to you.”

“Okay,”
Mike said, nodding. He had no idea what kind of dispute Sharon might have gotten
into with Ferriss and Cooper, but her sense of intuition was almost always spot-on.
If she thought the agents should be kept away from the prisoner, Mike would do
everything in his power to make it happen until he had a chance to talk to her.

He
looked up at the ceiling, lost in thought, and said, “Do we have anyone else in
holding right now?”

The
dispatcher shook his head. “Nope. Lee Evans was locked up overnight on a drunk
and disorderly, but we released him this morning after he sobered up and made
bail.”

“Good.
I’m assuming Sharon will bring the suspect in through the back so she can
deposit him right into the holding cell, so I’m going to go down there and
wait. I want to talk to her the minute she arrives.”

***

It didn’t take long.

Less
than two minutes after Mike stepped through the reinforced metal basement door
at the rear of the station, Sharon wheeled her cruiser into the small secondary
lot. Right behind her, a nondescript two-door Honda sedan sped into the lot,
driving much too fast, and slid into a spot next to the police vehicle. Special
Agents Ferriss and Cooper were out of the Honda and walking briskly toward Mike
before Sharon had even finished removing the prisoner from the cruiser’s back seat.

Ferriss
looked more or less unruffled, although there was a tightness to his posture
that Mike didn’t remember seeing before. Ward Cooper, on the other hand, was
plainly furious, his face flushed bright red with percolating anger. Mike felt
a momentary pang of sympathy for Sharon having to face down the two federal
agents by herself, regardless of the specifics of the confrontation.

“We
need to talk,” Ferriss said without preamble.

“You’re
damn right we do,” Sharon said, approaching from behind as quickly as she could
while still escorting the handcuffed prisoner with one hand on his elbow.

Cooper
whirled on her. “You listen here, little Missy, we’ll do the talking. You just
shut your mouth and stand back.” He made as if to pat her on the head.

Anger
flashed in Sharon’s eyes and she moved quickly at the much bigger man, standing
on her tiptoes and getting in his face. For a second Mike thought she was going
to take a swing at the agent, and he moved to step in between them. But she
merely narrowed her eyes and growled, “Don’t you ever talk to me like that
again, little man. It would be the biggest mistake of your misogynistic life,
and from what I’ve seen, that’s saying something.”

To
Mike’s surprise, Cooper said nothing. Instead, he turned away from her dismissively.
Mike took advantage of the momentary lull in the hostilities and said, “Okay,
here’s what’s going to happen. Officer Dupont will process the suspect and get
him into a holding cell, and then we’ll all meet in my office and hash out the
problem.”

He
turned to Sharon without waiting for an answer from the FBI men. “I assume you
read the prisoner his rights?”

She
nodded. “I did it on the ride over here. He hasn’t said a word since these two
geniuses tried to kill him. In fact—”

“—Tried
to
what?”
Mike interrupted.

“You
heard me, they–”

Chaos
erupted again, with both FBI agents talking over the beleaguered officer, who
shrugged and spread her hands in a
what
can I say?
gesture.

“ENOUGH!”
Mike said, his voice not quite a shout but sharp and authoritative. Abruptly,
the competing voices stilled and Mike said, “Nobody say another word. We’ll
talk it all out in my office.”

He
nodded at the prisoner, who appeared not to be paying the slightest attention
to the squabbling taking place around him. The man’s eyes were open wide in
fear, and glued to Alton Ferriss and Ward Cooper. It was exactly the sort of
reaction Mike would have expected if the two agents actually
had
tried to kill him, although he knew
that could not possibly have been the case. He told Sharon, “Take him in and
process him. When you’re finished, come to my office.”

She
nodded curtly and pulled the prisoner away without another word. She opened the
heavy door and disappeared into the building. For his part, the suspect seemed
only too happy to be putting distance between himself and the feds, and once
again, Mike felt a sense of disquiet overtake him.

The
moment the door slammed behind Sharon and her prisoner, Alton Ferriss said,
“While we’re waiting for her, Chief, we’ll fill you in on what happened out
there.”

“No you
won’t,” Mike said.

The
hostility written all over Cooper’s face now showed up in Ferriss’s. “What did
you say?”

“I
said, ‘No.’ You’re not filling me in on anything until Officer Dupont has
finished with the suspect and is present in my office as well. She deserves to hear
everything you have to say.”

Ferriss
blew out forcefully in frustration. “I’ve had about enough of this Podunk
little town and this Podunk little police department. We’ve tried our best to
include you in our investigation, and—”

“—Stop
right there,” Mike interrupted. “I don’t want to hear it. You two have done
nothing to include my department in your ‘investigation.’ In fact, you haven’t
even explained what, exactly, it is you’re investigating. So save your self-serving
load of bullshit for somebody who’s buying. Give me your cell number, and go on
down to the Katahdin Diner for a cup of coffee and some blueberry pie. I
guarantee both are better than any you’ve ever tasted. When Officer Dupont’s
finished booking our suspect, I’ll call you boys and you can come on back and
we’ll clear everything up then.”

“Or we
can call our SAC,” Ferriss answered, “and he can be all over your ass in about
three minutes.”

“Do
what you have to do,” Mike shot back, “but do it from the diner, because you
can get the goddamned
president
‘all
over my ass,’ and we’re still not talking about a goddamned thing until
Dupont’s finished with the goddamned suspect!”

Mike
knew he had gone overboard with the profanity but he didn’t care. In fact, it
felt kind of good. Ferriss said, “Lemme guess, while we’re having coffee and
pie, you’ll be getting Officer Cupcake’s side of the story, is that about
right?”

“That’s
not even close to being ‘about right,’” Mike said. “That’s not how I operate.
You deserve to hear what Officer Dupont has to say just as much as she deserves
to hear your story. I’ll say this one last time, since you don’t seem to be
getting it: I’m not talking to anyone about anything until every interested
party is present in my office. You have my word on that.”

Ferriss
and Cooper stared at him for a moment, then Ferriss reached into an interior
suit coat pocket and fished out a pen and a slip of paper. He jotted down a
number and handed it to Mike, then turned and stalked back to the Honda. Cooper
waited a moment and Mike thought he was going to say something, but then he followed
his partner without another word.

As the
car backed out of the parking space, Mike called through the open driver’s side
window, “The cell reception’s spotty around here, so if I can’t get ahold of
you, I’ll call the diner’s landline and have a message passed to you.” The two
agents stared back stonily and drove away.

The car
pulled around the building and then turned toward Main Street. Mike watched
until it had disappeared in the direction of the Katahdin Diner. Once again, he
was struck by how little resemblance the pair had to any federal agents he had
ever dealt with.

28

Sharon knocked lightly and then
slipped into the office, dragging two chairs for the FBI agents behind her as
she had done during their first meeting. She rolled the third chair over from
the corner and then took a seat in the one closest to the office door.

Mike
said with a smile, “Planning a quick getaway?”

Her
return smile was tight-lipped and angry. “I don’t trust those guys as far as I
can throw them. I want to make sure they can’t get up and bolt out the door to
get at the prisoner.”

He
gazed at her, recalling her earlier charge that the agents had tried to murder
the suspect. She stared back defiantly. “You’re serious,” he said finally.

“You
weren’t out there,” she said. “You didn’t see what I saw. These guys—”

Mike
held up a hand. “I told them I’d wait until they get here to discuss what
happened out at the Ridge Runner.”

Sharon
sighed deeply and said, “Fair enough.”

“But
while we wait, did you get a name on the suspect?”

She
shook her head. “He still hasn’t said a word, and he had no identification on
him. No driver’s license, no Social Security card, nothing. In fact, he didn’t
even have a wallet. And the guy smells like he’s been marinating in a pig pen.”

“Hmm,”
Mike said, thinking. “Did he use his phone call to lawyer up?”

Sharon
shook her head. “Nope. Like I said, he hasn’t said a word to
anyone,
not just me. I offered him his one
phone call and he just looked at me like I was crazy. Mike, I think we need to
consider the possibility that this guy’s mental capacity is diminished. He
doesn’t strike me as mentally deficient, and when I talked to Rose Pellerin
– she spent enough time with him to get a read on him – she didn’t
give any indication that the guy was anything but sharp. Still, there’s
something definitely off about him.”

“Maybe
he’s setting up an insanity defense now that he’s been apprehended.”

She
shrugged. “Maybe, but that’s not the sense I’m getting. He just seems…I don’t
know…overwhelmed.”

Mike
thought it over and finally shook his head. “Maybe we’ll learn more when I
question him. For now, we need to get this FBI fiasco over with. Did Gordie
call Special Agents Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum back from the diner?”

“Yep.
He made the call a couple of minutes ago, so they should be here any time now.”

As if
on cue, the two feds stalked through the bullpen toward the office. Mike could
see both men eyeing them warily through the glass partition. They entered
without knocking, and Ferriss said, “Well, aren’t you two all nice and cozy?
Who could’ve predicted this? Oh, that’s right, me.”