The Pied Piper of Death (18 page)

“He doesn't,” Bea said, “but he remembers stuff like barbed wire. Don't ask me, Rocco. I can't figure it out.”

“That north woodlot is still vacant,” Lyon said. “I walked it yesterday and there isn't any wire in there. Only a few New England stone walls.”

“A man hunting in the woods is found dead from a wound that appears to be from his own rifle. Unless the entrance wound was in the center of his back, most law enforcers of those days were going to rule it an accident. Who was going to think murder for an eighteen year old?”

“They were all eighteen,” Bea said.

“We seem to have four eighteen-year-old men shot to death and one eighteen-year-old woman missing,” Lyon said. “Each of the men was killed under different circumstances, but each died from a minié ball wound. All of this occurred in one family at somewhat regular intervals.”

“If we reduced that to a mathematical formula,” Bea said, “and ran it through a computer, the odds of random coincidence would be one in a million.”

“Guarantee it,” Lyon said.

Rocco signaled for another drink and Sarge ambled over to the booth with the vodka bottle to pour another double shot. “This is ridiculous,” Rocco said.

“So, if a double isn't big enough, you get a triple,” Sarge said agreeably as he continued pouring.

“I didn't mean the drink, but thanks anyway, Sarge,” Rocco said. “Granted that the fickle arm of coincidence would be stretched mighty thin, but that's not as troublesome as the long-toothed murderer you guys are trying to construct. Standard Piper was killed in a hunting accident in 1873. Need I point out that was over one hundred twenty years ago? If we had a twenty-year-old killer going for his first one in 1873, we'd now have a perp pushing his big one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Come on, guys. Knock it off.”

“The Piper family curse,” Bea said with a smile into her soda.

Lyon leaned back in the booth. “Well, Bridgeway house does have all the prerequisites for a curse. We have a nice dank mausoleum located in an interesting family cemetery. In addition to that, there's a cliff jumper who returns during the full moon to finish her dessert. To really round out the haunting, I would like to add a baying dog and possibly some ancient bones cavorting on the lawns.”

“If you're into the supernatural, Wentworth, you have the wrong criminal justice agency here. You want people really far out like the CIA,” Rocco said. “Is that your bag now?”

“Of course not! I don't believe in curses from other dimensions, just as I don't believe in agile killers pushing their second century. But something is going on here, Rocco.”

“If we don't do something soon, we may have another killing on our hands,” Bea said.

Lyon agreed. “Maybe that's what my dream was trying to tell me. Paula is next.”

“When?” Rocco asked.

“It could happen anytime.”

In the library of Bridgeway House, Peyton Piper continued polishing the 1840 Dragoon saber with the triple-bar brass hilt. His full attention seemed drawn to the weapon's finish rather than to Lyon's recital of past Piper deaths. When Lyon finished, he continued working on the brass fitting with a chamois cloth. When he was finally satisfied, he carefully replaced the saber on its felt cushion in an open case next to its mate. He ran his thumb across the sharp blade before turning to face his former classmate.

“Sure, we've had violent deaths in the Piper family,” Peyton began. “The nineteenth century was a turbulent time. Caleb's son was killed in a hunting accident. Do you know how many people have died from accidents on Bridgeway property in the last hundred years? A bunch, Lyon. Another Piper was shot on a riverboat while playing poker. Anyone who plays that damn game with strangers ought to be shot. Speakeasies were illegal, bad things happened in them. Many thousands of men are killed after or during army training. Your problem is that you overdramatize!”

“There are too many coincidences that form a pattern, Peyton.”

“We Pipers are active people. We are involved in life. Things can happen to active and involved people. I resented Swan preying on Paula's teenage obsession with death. His motives were sexual; yours are equally transparent and as insulting.”

“Paula is the target of a killer. Will you protect your daughter? Use that private police force of yours to guard her until we get to the bottom of this.”

“And the end of your little fable will just happen to coincide with the closing of the party nominating convention in July?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Isn't it odd that at the same time that I make a bid for the senatorial nomination, a move opposed by your wife, you just happen to come up with this far-out story about a Piper curse.”

“I didn't phrase it so sophomorically.”

“It must be magical since, according to you, these murders have been going on for one hundred fifty years. For a century and a half some evil force is eliminating the Piper firstborn. Come on now!”

“That's exactly what's been happening. The record speaks for itself. A computer model would indicate that the facts are impossible to explain without a murderous intent.”

“Give me a little respect! I am a businessman trained to make pragmatic decisions based on marketing, production, and financial facts. I do not avoid decision making, and I am quite capable of considering opposing possibilities. However, what you have just given me is an impossible train of circumstances dreamed up by a drunken police chief, augmented by an ambitious lady senator, and orchestrated by a space cadet. In other words, you speak utter nonsense. Your juvenile scheme is a poor attempt to screw me out of the nomination. Your advice seems to suggest that I retreat to Bridgeway with my daughter. We remain surrounded by armed guards and let the senatorial nomination go by default. Wentworth, you are using my daughter as a cheap weapon to defeat me.”

“Paula is in grave danger.”

“I agree on that. She is pursued by Charles Fraxer who wants to marry her for my money. The last time I saw that scum he had broken into my house to seduce my daughter in her own bedroom. I have taken steps to correct that young man's attitude.”

E
LEVEN

The world had become a menacing place.

Lyon leaned out the Saturn's window and viewed the Welches' small cottage and surrounding woods with deep suspicion. During his first view this tiny house, built to scale for small people, had seemed cozy and quaint. Recent events, however, had given Bridgeway house and its surroundings a bleak pall.

He had phoned Bea from the mansion. He told her that although he did not have Peyton's cooperation, he had a plan for temporarily hiding Paula.

There had been an uncomfortable pause on Bea's end of the line. “I suppose you're considering asking her to visit Nutmeg Hill?” she finally said.

“You're being Freudian over that dream again.”

“As we speak I'm looking directly at the subject in question and wondering where I hid my aerobic exercise videos.”

“I have another idea,” he had replied. “I think I can get her admitted under a false name for the summer session at Harris Junior College in West Virginia. Bill Johnson is director of Admissions down there and will help me out if I explain.”

“That's in the middle of nowhere.”

“Exactly. What better place for her until we get this sorted out?”

Bea and Paula stooped to exit the cottage's small front door as they hurried out to the car. They waved to Frieda standing in the doorway. Lyon moved to the passenger seat while Paula squeezed into the narrow rear compartment.

“Lyon hates to drive,” Bea said to Paula. She drove past Bridgeway's front gate to the lane that led down to the secondary highway. Two lone protesters, their placards on the ground, drank coffee from a thermos as they slouched by the side of the road. When they saw the coupe they jumped to their feet and began waving their signs frantically.

Paula tapped Bea on the shoulder. “Stop, please.” She leaned out to talk to the protester waving the PITCH PIPER OUT placard. “Have you seen Chuck Fraxer today?” she asked. “He told me he'd be out here.”

The middle-aged woman waving the sign seemed relieved to substitute normal conversation for belligerency. “A Piper Corporation truck stopped by to get him about a half hour ago,” she said in a neighborly tone. “We were concerned, but Chuck said that a girl named Paula wanted to see him.”

Lyon glanced at Bea with concern.

“Oh, my God!” Paula said. “Which way did they go?”

The woman pointed down the lane toward the obscured entrance of a logging road. The narrow rutted path wandered north past several cornfields. It disappeared into the center of a heavily wooded stand of second-growth timber. “Over that way. They said it went to the back entrance.”

“That's the north woodlot I walked yesterday,” Lyon said. It wasn't necessary to stress Chuck's danger. “There's no entrance down that way.”

“Let's go!” Bea said as she threw the car into gear. The Saturn leaped ahead and nearly knocked over the woman with the protest sign. Bea took the turn into the logging road with a screech of tires, but was forced to slow as the car jounced over the rutted path.

“I never sent him any message,” Paula said. “We talked on the phone early this morning and were to meet at his place near school. I think Barry's got him.”

Bea edged the speed of the small car up to its practical maximum on the inadequate road.

Directly ahead a Piper Corporation security truck erupted through a thicket in the woodlot. It lurched up the single lane logging road with a wavering trajectory that its driver fought to control.

“Get off on the shoulder!” Lyon shouted.

“There isn't any. Let those bastards move,” Bea yelled back.

“We'll all be killed!” Paula screamed from the rear seat.

“I have the right-of-way!” Bea yelled. “You hear that, you guys?” she shouted out the window at the pickup, which was now only yards away.

Lyon could now see Barry grimly hunched over the wheel. He also saw that they were vehicle-jousting against superior equipment. The truck was equipped with a roll bar for protection of the cab. Oversize tires raised the reinforced front, designed for a winch and snow plow, above their hood. It was obvious that in any front-end collision the small Saturn would be destroyed.

“Let them by!” he cried as he grabbed the wheel and forced their car to swerve off the road into a ditch. The car tilted precariously. Their wheels spun uselessly in the dirt until they stalled to a stop.

The pickup sped past without reducing speed. A cloud of dust swirled over the tipped coupe.

“Unless Chuck was lying down in the truck bed he wasn't with them,” Paula said.

“I think we had better look for him in those woods,” Bea said. “And I think we had better look for him fast.”

Chuck Fraxer had been hanged.

Lyon did not actually locate him in the search so much as run into the young protester's dangling feet when they struck him on the shoulder. Small droplets of blood dripped from the hanging body and fell on his face. He looked up into the foliage where the body was tied. Paula was only a few feet behind him and Lyon pulled her against his shoulder and away from the sight of the hanging man.

“What is it?” The young woman asked.

“Don't look.”

“Break it up, you guys,” Bea said from behind them. “Let's cut the guy down.”

“God, I hope I can be as tough and unfeeling as her when I'm older,” Paula said.

“If you don't get out of my husband's arms you aren't going to get much older,” Bea said as she began to lower Chuck Fraxer to the ground.

The protester had been hoisted aloft by a rope that ran around his chest and under his arms. His nose had been bloodied in the beating, while the words “I love Tommy” had been painted across his bare chest. He groaned.

“He's not dead,” Paula said as she rushed to cradle his head on her lap and brush hair back from his blood-streaked face.

“They just seem to have beaten the hell out of him,” Lyon said.

“Barry did this, just like he probably killed Mr. Swan,” Paula said. “He senses what Daddy wants and then does it without being asked. It's clever that way. My father is never responsible since he never directly asks for these terrible things to be done. And when they are, somehow Barry gets rewarded.”

It took an hour for Lyon to walk to a nearby farmhouse, phone, and wait for Rocco Herbert. He returned with the police cruiser to drag the Saturn from the ditch. When Chuck Fraxer adamantly refused hospital treatment, Rocco used the car's first-aid kit to make a rudimentary attempt at treating his cuts and bruises.

Rocco insisted that Lyon and the graduate student ride with him for the trip to Middleburg. Bea and Paula would follow in the Saturn and meet them at Fraxer's rented house on the outskirts of the Middleburg University campus.

“How many guys were involved?” Rocco asked as they waited at the bottom of the Seven Sisters hills for the ferry.

“Three,” Fraxer mumbled through bruised lips.

“I'll need their names for the warrant,” Rocco said.

“Don't know,” was the mumbled response.

“Well, we can start with Barry Nevins and offer him a deal if he implicates the others,” Rocco said.

The two-car ferry nosed into the wooden pier as its single deckhand roped it taut and raised the gate. Rocco drove aboard and braked at the far end, where he crossed his arms and glared at the injured man in his finest authoritative manner. “Somebody takes a fall for this adventure of yours or I arrest you for trespassing. Got that?”

They sat silently for a moment and were halfway across the Connecticut River before Chuck Fraxer spoke. His words were slightly unintelligible because of his split lip.