Paskagankee (40 page)

2

“Help me with him, for crying out loud! He might look like a bag of bones but he's still heavy!” Max Acton ignored the petulance in Raven's tone and strolled out the front door of the rambling, two-story Victorian home. He watched with amusement as she crossed in front of the Porsche's hood and opened the passenger side door of the tiny sports car, grabbing their sleeping target by both shoulders and shaking him awake.

It had taken months of surveillance and diligent research to narrow the list of potential subjects down to Earl Manning. Paskagankee was a small and isolated town, but even here dozens of men fit the profile Acton was looking for, and selecting the proper target was not a decision to be taken lightly. In the end, though, it had come down to Manning. The loser was relatively young and in apparently decent physical condition, despite years of heavy drinking. He was single, a loner with no wife or girlfriend, no steady job, and no immediate family in the area to raise the alarm when he suddenly vanished.

The only cause for concern regarding Earl Manning's suitability as a test subject was his past relationship with a female Paskagankee police officer, a beautiful young woman named Sharon Dupont. The last thing Max Acton needed was some ex-lover cop digging into Manning's disappearance, unearthing—Max smiled to himself at the pun—things that were best left undisturbed.

The more research Max conducted, though, the clearer it became that this Dupont bitch would be a non-factor. The relationship between the two, such as it was, had taken place well over a decade before, while the girl was still in high school, and had been based upon a shared passion for alcohol rather than any kind of mutual love or respect. Dupont had gone on to straighten her life out, eventually attending the FBI Academy before returning to Paskagankee to care for her terminally ill father.

Now, all indications were that Officer Sharon Dupont had become involved with the Paskagankee Chief of Police, Mike McMahon, leaving little doubt she had left her tenuous connection with Earl Manning behind forever. Of course, Max knew that if he was wrong, he would be inviting trouble of the worst sort, but the fact of the matter was that eventual police involvement was inevitable. There was no way to avoid it. Even with a drunken loser like Earl Manning, sooner or later someone would notice he had disappeared.

The goal was simply to avoid the appearance that anything was amiss for as long as possible, and to leave nothing tying Max Acton to the fallout when the authorities did become involved. Earl Manning seemed to be the subject who would best allow him to accomplish this goal, so Earl Manning it was, despite his long-ago ties to a member of the Paskagankee Police Department.

In a way, Max was comforted by his discovery of Sharon Dupont's alcoholic past. He had seen Officer Dupont around town, and her beauty was truly breathtaking. She was perhaps the equal of Raven in the looks department and it was a rare woman who could make that claim. The connection between a pretty go-getter like Sharon Dupont and an alcoholic loser like Earl Manning had initially mystified Max. There was no accounting for taste, though, as the old saying went, and his discovery of Dupont's alcoholism explained a lot. Addicts like to hang together.

Max stood back a couple of paces and watched Raven struggle to remove Manning from the Porsche. The subject had been roused from his torpor but still seemed logy and slow. Manning peered around confusedly, clearly attempting to get his bearings but just as clearly unable to do so. Max wasn't surprised. He had leased a home in one of the most out-of-the-way, obscure areas of an out-of-the-way, obscure village. It was entirely possible, likely even, that Earl Manning had never seen the house or even visited this area despite being a life-long resident of Paskagankee.

Raven grabbed Manning by the elbow, yanking, pulling the drunk out of the car with surprising strength for such a delicate-looking woman. The drunken man scrabbled for purchase as he exited, trying to get his feet underneath his body, standing too soon and smacking his head against the car's frame.

“Come on baby, slow down,” he protested, rubbing one hand vigorously over what was going to be a good-sized bruise on his forehead. “We'll get started soon enough, don't you worry, I'm gonna—” He froze when he saw Max in the shadows and began backing up, shrugging out of Raven's grasp. Only now did he seem to suspect that his anticipated night of passion with the delectable Raven was never going to happen. But now, of course, was much too late for this potentially life-saving insight.

Max moved forward quickly and flanked Earl on the left, leaving Raven to steady his right elbow, and together they began escorting their guest across the driveway in front of the Porsche and up the walkway toward the front door. “What is this all about?” Earl sputtered, turning his attention to Raven and in the process spraying her with spittle. She grimaced and wiped a palm over her face and didn't answer.

He turned to the left. “Who are you?” he asked Max, who didn't have to wipe any saliva off his face but who didn't answer, either. They were moving quickly, taking advantage of the surprise factor to hustle their guest into the house. He would be joining them inside now no matter what, that particular die had been cast the moment Manning joined the seductive Raven in the Porsche, but the farther they could move things along before he got truly frightened rather than just angry and confused, the easier and more painless the whole process would be.

At least for them.

They hustled their stumbling, complaining guest up the three red brick front steps, through the door into the house and as they did, Max withdrew a heavy plastic bag from the back pocket of his sharply creased dress pants. He moved methodically, taking his time. It would not do to drop the damned thing now that they were so close to completing the first step in the plan.

Raven continued to shepherd Manning into the living room and Max hung back after pulling the front door closed. With their guest safely inside the house, there was no reason to hurry. His fate was now sealed.

3

Earl Manning stepped reluctantly through the front door and into the living room of the old Victorian style home. He supposed when the house was new the room would have been called a parlor—that was what his grandmother would have called it—but as a guy who did his growing up in the 1980's and 1990's, it was a living room. The space was wide-open and airy, filled with wicker furniture placed almost but not quite randomly. A Berber carpet graced the middle of the room and an impressive potted palm took up most of the northeast corner. The room seemed casual and lived-in, almost to the point of being staged.

Under different circumstances Earl might have thought it oddly unsettling, but not tonight. Tonight Earl Manning was suffering the early stages of a monster hangover, and whacking his head on the side of the Porsche when he had climbed out of the car wasn't helping. Plus—and here was the worst part—Earl had no idea where the hell he was or what the hell he was doing here, although he had pretty much concluded by now that he wasn't going to get laid by one of the most beautiful, sexy women he had ever seen inside the boundaries of Paskagankee, Maine. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

In fact, although he didn't know what was about to happen, Earl guessed it wasn't going to be good, at least not for him. He reached for his cell phone. It was gone. That traitorous bitch Raven must have appropriated it while he was passed out in the car. Or maybe he had left it at the bar, he couldn't remember.
Dammit, it's hard to think when you're halfway between drunk and sober.

But Earl Manning knew one thing: he had had enough. He had come here thinking he would be alone with Raven, and instead the shadowy-looking man had forced him inside this house. Looking at it now, he could only conclude that allowing the guy to push him around had been a mistake. He should have stood up for himself immediately.

Well, it wasn't too late. He could still fix their wagon. He would simply refuse to move another inch until the shadowy man or Raven explained to his satisfaction just what the hell was going on here. Not one inch.

Earl walked roughly six feet into the living room that might have been called a parlor by his grandmother and stopped, turning to voice his objection to this whole charade, to complain about being treated like a sap by that traitorous bitch Raven. He spread his feet and set his shoulders. He turned, ready to demand some answers, to know just what in the
holy hell
this was all about, and as he did, the shadowy man who had appeared when Raven pulled him out of the Porsche stepped up close, too close, violating his personal space.

The man whipped his right hand around in a circular motion like Pete Townshend making his guitar scream at the Who show Earl had seen down in Portland in ‘96, only instead of holding a guitar pick in his hand he held a large plastic bag. The bag fluttered through the air and down over Earl Manning's head, and Earl immediately had two thoughts: 1) It really is true that alcohol dulls your reflexes, and 2)
He
would be doing the screaming instead of a guitar.

A heavy length of twine, almost but not quite a rope, had been threaded through the mouth of the plastic bag, and after yanking the bag over Earl's head, the man pulled the ends apart like a garrote. The bag closed neatly around Earl's neck just under his jawline. In his panic Earl drew in a deep breath to scream, knowing somewhere inside his Budweiser-addled brain that he was making a mistake, that it was the absolute
worst
thing he could do, but he did it anyway. He couldn't help himself.

The bag sucked into his open mouth and Earl gagged and coughed it back out. He shook his head violently back and forth as if registering extreme dissatisfaction with this turn of events, which, in a way, was exactly what he
was
doing. He struck out with his fists, not punching as much as flailing wildly, and felt a millisecond of satisfaction when he connected solidly with some part of the man's body, although which part he hit, exactly, he had no idea.

After that tiny victory, though, things went downhill fast. Earl stopped flailing and grabbed with both hands at the twine/rope being pulled with steadily increasing pressure around his neck, cutting off his air supply and digging into the soft skin, but it was useless. The shadowy man had all of the leverage, plus he was younger, stronger and presumably sober to boot.

It ain't a fair fight,
thought Earl, realizing immediately it would be a stretch to call it a fight at all. Then all conscious thought departed. He thrashed and grunted and sucked the bag into his mouth again, coughing it out again, his lungs screaming for oxygen, his body weakening by the second, his panicked reaction growing less and less effective.

He felt his extremities tingling, he was losing feeling in his hands and feet and all of a sudden he could feel his bladder release. Urine, hot and wet and humiliating, soaked his jeans at the exact moment he began falling to the beautifully polished hardwood floor.

His head struck the floor, hard, and he heard something crack and was surprised to discover he didn't feel any pain. Didn't feel anything at all, in fact, other than a warm, sort of fuzzy ambivalence. Turned out dying was a lot like getting drunk. Earl thought that in some ways it was a damned shame you could only do it once.

Panic subsided and serene acceptance took its place and Earl's last thought before the blackness descended like a shroud was that he would never have imagined in a million years that he would die on a parlor floor.

Preview

THE LONELY MILE

Allan Leverone

Chapter 1

May 1

Amanda Lawton sagged sideways, groggy and disoriented, her blonde hair hanging in sweaty strings in front of her eyes. The heavy duct tape attaching her arms and legs to the wooden chair was all that kept her from falling to the cold, cement floor. She shot a pleading look at her captor, trying to focus on him through the disorienting effects of fatigue, hunger, and the drugs he'd forced on her. The thin man swam in and out of focus, moving around in her field of vision like a jittery Casper, although he was not a ghost, and he certainly wasn't friendly.

This new room he'd moved her to—she thought it might be one of those aluminum-sided rental storage places—yawed and buckled in her watery eyesight.
This must be what it feels like to be adrift on a small boat in heavy seas.
Her stomach lurched. She thought she might puke.
Please don't let him gag me.

Her captor wrapped a final strip of the reinforced tape around each of her legs until they were completely immobile, then stepped back to admire his handiwork. Amanda knew this was her chance, probably her last chance, to beg for her life and her freedom. Maybe she could play on his sympathies, if he had any, and his humanity—if he was actually human—to plead with him to let her go.

She sat silently, though, trying to focus her gaze on him and failing, attempting to sit up in her chair and failing at that
,
too. What could she possibly say to him that she hadn't already said? What pleas could she try? What promises could she make? Over the past week, the nightmarish seven days that had seemed like an eternity, Amanda had begged and reasoned, threatened and cried.

Nothing had worked. Nothing had made a bit of difference. He'd handcuffed her to a filthy little bed in the damp, nasty basement of his crumbling house, taking her when he wanted her in all sorts of different ways, feeding her when he felt like it, making her beg for the bathroom, in general, treating her like an animal or a piece of garbage while lovingly whispering words in her ear that were totally inconsistent with his treatment of her.