The Maine Massacre (13 page)

"It comes and it goes," de Gier said. He felt too tired to respond to the wink. The raccoon hat had turned around again and the fluffy tail was getting into his mouth.

9

D
E GIER DROPPED, ROLLED AWAY, AND KEPT ON ROLLING until he was covered by a large rock. He knew he was OH its safe side. The rifle's crack had come from the woods, and the woods were on the other side of the rock. Not a bad shot at all. The bullet had been close to his neck. He took off his hat and peered over the rock. He could see a dark spot under the trees, moving away. The rifleman seemed hampered in his movements. There was something strange about his feet. That's right, snowshoes. He sat back and thought. The rifleman was perfectly safe. There was no point in following the man. He wasn't armed.

He got up and looked at the driveway of the Astrinsky house. Something lay near the spot where he had stood when the bullet whistled past. He found a stick and poked at the object. The raccoon tail. He looked at his hat. The tail was missing. He tried to grin, but his teeth chattered instead. A slight case of shock. He had been shot at before and had experienced the same reaction. Chattering teeth. Most annoying, but they would stop after a while.

The light on the porch was on. He had been in the light when the rifleman pulled the trigger. Set up again, just as in Robert's Market. They created their situations. He fought the little wave of self-pity that threatened to overflow his brain; so all right, he was here, in their territory, and they were playing their game. He would have to adjust to their tactics. He looked at the Dodge parked a little further down the driveway. He could walk to the car, get in, drive back to the jailhouse, have a bath and some coffee, and go to bed. Or he could visit the girl who had invited him.

The door opened and Madelin's voice reached out to the rock.

"Sergeant?"

"Here "

"Did I hear a shot?"

"You did."

"Why don't you come in?"

He sprinted across the driveway, picking up the tail on the way. She stepped back to let him jump through the doorway and closed the door. He showed her the tail.

"Came off my hat."

Her lips pouted. "That was close, sergeant."

He took off his coat, and she made him step out of his boots and slip into sheepskin moccasins. She stood very close, and he felt the curve of her breast and the pressure of her thigh. She was making him welcome, or perhaps she just happened to be standing close by. It was still a little too early to judge.

She led him into a room with a fireplace. He sat down on a settee and reached out to the burning logs.

"Have you had dinner, sergeant?"

"No, but I am not too hungry."

"Don't they feed you at the jailhouse?"

"Certainly, but I wasn't in the right place

"Certainly, but I wasn't in the right place at the right time."

"Aren't you hungry at all?"

"A little."

"I'll fix you a drink and make you a sandwich. Would you like a sandwich? A steak sandwich?"

"Yes, please."

She poured him a drink from a large brown bottle with an orange label and raised her own half-full glass. "Your health, sergeant." They drank. "I'll be right back."

He studied the flames and tried to recollect what he knew about Americans. He had arrested the vague young men, bearded, in rags, and their female counterparts, in long dirty dresses, often barefoot. They hung around in the center of Amsterdam during the summer. Sad innocents, dropouts, usually on the verge of starvation, often close to death. They would be jailed, go to court, be convicted and flown back to the States, under escort of the Dutch military police. He had also dealt with other Americans, the middle-aged tourists who came in groups, flown in daily by humpbacked jets. The tourists often lost their way or their possessions, and sometimes they were robbed.

He had also been in contact with deserters from the American occupation army in Germany. And he had read books and seen movies. But the actual encounters and the fantasies of stories and the screen hadn't prepared him for meeting Americans on their home ground. A U.S. bullet had missed him a few minutes ago. The next one might not miss.

He shook his head and looked around the room without taking in any details. "Straight, No Chaser." The BMF gang. A rifleman on snowshoes, plodding quietly away into the dark woods.

He sipped his drink, put it down, stretched, and began to amble through the room, his hands in his pockets. The same elegance as the Wash mansion but on a smaller scale. A bare room in a way, but each piece of furniture seemed to be a collector's item. The settee and the matching armchairs, the dining table pushed against the far wall, the bookcase, all seemed to date back to the quietness of the pre-rococo era. He admired the stem, solid lines and the superb workmanship that had created not only the furniture but also the room itself. Rough heavy beams, plastered walls, a hardwood floor, not nailed but pegged. The bricks of the fireplace seemed so old he thought they would crumble. He studied the room's only decoration, a fairly large painting hung above the mantelpiece. He stepped back and grunted approvingly. No mean work of art, and most macabre. He moved back a little more to take in the overall impact of the scene. Death. A tall skeleton riding a black horse. The skeleton was dressed in a flowing cape, a purple cape the same shade as the long skirt Madelin had been wearing just now. The horse galloped. Rider and steed were on their way to do some work, on a battlefield perhaps, or in a city succumbing to the plague. He approached the painting. The horse ran through a field of wildflowers. There were wooded hills in the back and a pale sky, shot through with flames.

He shook his head again. This would be the room where Astrinsky ate and read his newspaper, comfortable in front of the fire. He couldn't imagine the talkative, sociable man under this painting. He moved it a bit. The painting didn't fit the lighter space underneath. Some other painting should hang here. This skeleton, grinning madly, holding a scythe, its body thighs pressed into the flanks of the gleaming horse, had been hung here for his benefit. It might be part of the trap, a follow-up to the bullet in the driveway just now and to the encounter in Robert's Market.

He adjusted the picture, picked up his drink, and sat down. How very nice. What next? Poison in the steak sandwich? Was she going to drag him into a dank cell in the basement and chain his sleeping or dying body to a cannonball?

Cannonball.
He heard her voice touch his spine in the dark store.

She came back carrying a tray with two plates.

"I felt hungry too. Let me freshen your drink. How do you feel now?"

"Better, thank you. Who fired the shot you think? One of your friends I met in Robert's Market?"

She sat down on the carpet, close to his legs.

"Could be, but I don't think so. We had our joke tonight. Why go on? You behaved very well, sergeant. We were impressed. And I love your flute. I didn't know our jazz is still appreciated in Europe. You knew the tune, didn't you?"

"Yes."

She ate and he watched her. He wondered if she always wore see-through blouses in the evening. Her breasts were firm and tilted. He looked at her feet, very small under the thin black strips of high-heeled sandals. And the face of the princess, the dragon's girl. He was sure it was the same face, small, triangular, and dominated by the dark and fluid eyes.

"Eat your sandwich, sergeant. It'll get cold."

He ate the sandwich, a salad, and some pickles. He started on his second drink and studied the orange label on the bottle of bourbon. A good situation, but unreal, like the full-page advertisements in magazines. He wondered what they were advertising now. The bourbon? Of course. The orange label was the most conspicuous spot in the low-key room, as the painting hung in the shadow. Two models on a flat sheet of paper. The male model handsome and foreign, the female local but exotic. A cleverly thought out ad, selling a beverage distilled in the South demonstrated against a Northern setting.

Whoever flipped the pages of the magazine would stop a second and fantasize about what the couple would do after, say, the third drink. Copulate. But the image was veiled, hinted at, suggested. Maybe the photograph wouldn't be too clear. The models would appear in a hazy light, dreamlike. Drink this particular brand of bourbon and just see what will happen to you. And he was in the photograph. Performing. And that's what he would continue to do. It was his only chance to get at the dragon's princess. But the dragon might still be prowling nearby, carrying a deer rifle.

He picked up the bottle and read the label:
The unique
marriage of body and flavor has been the standard by
which all other bourbon whiskeys are judged.
The words didn't inspire him, and he put the bottle back.

"Another drink? Go ahead."

"No thank you."

He got up, put on his half glasses, and studied the painting. She laughed.

"Anything funny?"

"Yes, you. How old are you, sergeant?"

"Forty-one."

"You look silly with those spectacles. They destroy your image."

"I don't use them much, only when I read a lot, but my eyes are becoming weaker. I believe most people over forty need reading glasses."

She smiled. "You're straight, sergeant. I like that. The fox calls straight people cunning. Why don't you come straight with me? What are you doing here, in this one-horse-town in the sticks?"

"I'll tell you the truth, but you won't believe me. The commissaris, the old man now staying with Suzanne Op-dijk, came out here to help Suzanne, who is his sister. Suzanne wants to leave America and her brother is helping her to sell her property here. He is a police officer, chief of the homicide division of the Amsterdam Municipal Police. I am a sergeant working for the division. He has been very ill, and I've come out to make sure he is all right. His legs bother him. If he gets too ill he is in pain and becomes lame. He didn't want me to come, so my colleagues interfered and had me sent out officially, making use of an exchange program that has been in force for some years. Since we arrived we have become suspicious of a series of deaths on Cape Orca and we found that your sheriff shares our suspicion. As I am here in a more or less official position the sheriff has asked me to cooperate."

"The truth, so help me?"

"I said you wouldn't believe me."

"I think I do, sergeant."

"You invited me here tonight to find out?"

"Perhaps I did."

"Why did you hang the painting?"

She got up, took his plate and her own, and set them on the dining table. When she sat down on the carpet again she was a little closer and he wanted to bend down and kiss her. He didn't because he would have had to make an effort. It would be better if she flung herself into his arms or undressed in front of the settee.

"I always hang that painting when Father is out of town. The fox and I bought it together, in a New York junk shop. I like the painting. Father hates it."

"Good, so it is not just for me."

She nodded seriously. "But perhaps it is, sergeant. Death is a fascinating subject. Perhaps it's the basis of all thoughts. The deaths of the Cape Orca residents fascinate me too. I like to experiment, to see what happens if certain moves are made. To hang that painting was a deliberate move."

"You experiment on others?"

"Yes, and on myself."

"Were you involved with any of the Cape Orca killings?"

"Only with one. I bought the whiskey the fox gave to Paul Ranee. Paul used to drink, but he gave it up on doctor's orders. The doctor wanted to prolong the old man's life, but Paul was miserable, dying slowly, and he had always been such a marvelous old man. He was living on handouts and he hated accepting them, and he was too sick to do anything in return. The fox thought it would be a good idea if Paul had one last fling and got out happy. I agreed. The fox went out and spent a few days with Paul. They were drunk together until Paul died."

"Were you there?"

"No, I don't like getting drunk. The fox does. I would have been bad company."

"You didn't kill or help to kill the others?"

"No. I did attack Opdijk. I buzzed him with my plane when he was fishing, but I came from the seaside. He was perfectly safe. If I had come in from the cape he would have fallen on the rocks, as he did later on. I don't think he hurt himself, but he had a bad fright."