22

“ARE YOU SURE YOU want to get the Staties involved?” Sharon asked. “You know how it’s going to go if you do: they’ll take over your investigation and more than likely shut you out.” She was dressed in a short silk negligee, brushing her hair in front of the vanity mirror in her bedroom while Mike lay on top of the bedcovers, propped against her maple headboard on two pillows, watching her and having trouble concentrating on the conversation.

“No,” he said, “I’m quite sure I don’t want to get them involved. That’s the last thing I want to do, precisely for the reason you just stated, but I also know I have no choice in the matter. A single murder is something I can investigate, but now that there’s concrete evidence we have some kind of serial killer psycho stalking Paskagankee, I’ve got to get help in here. We’re just not equipped to deal with something like this, and I’m afraid more people will die before we catch this guy, or this thing, or whatever the hell it is.”

The pair had remained at the most recent murder site until the victim was bagged and transported south to the morgue just outside Orono. Once again they strung yellow “POLICE CRIME SCENE - DO NOT DISTURB” tape around the area where the body parts had been discovered. The wrecker Mike had called after he finished examining the disabled Ford Focus arrived thirty minutes after Dr. Affeldt drove away and in short order had winched the car onto the back of the flatbed and begun transporting it to the State Crime Lab in Portland.

By then it was nearly midnight and Mike and Sharon had been on the go nonstop for over sixteen hours. They fell into the Paskagankee Police Explorer and drove slowly toward Sharon’s house a few miles away. The road conditions had improved slightly due to the fact that no freezing rain had fallen for nearly twenty-four hours and the salt and sand trucks were able to cover all of the town’s roads at least once. A silence born of exhaustion and a touch of awkwardness permeated the vehicle, with each of its occupants lost in their own thoughts.

“So,” Sharon started.

“Yeah. So.”

“What are your plans?”

Mike pulled his hat off and ran his hands through his thick brown hair. “I’m going to call the State Police in the morning and get an investigative unit up here as soon as possible.”

Sharon laughed, the sound filtering through Mike’s exhaustion and lifting his spirits. “Thanks for confiding your official police business to me, boss,” she said, mock-seriously, “but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about your more immediate plans. Are you coming back to my house tonight?”

Mike chuckled. “And I’m supposed to be a trained investigator. I must be more tired than I realized. Well,” he said, “do you want me to?”

“Are you crazy? Of course I want you to. Assuming you want to.”

“Then that’s where we’re headed,” Mike told her. “Let’s just swing by my apartment first so I can grab some stuff. That way I don’t have to try to scrape my face with the razor you use on your legs, and you won’t have to sneak away in the middle of the night to wash my laundry.”

“I’ve got news for you,” she laughed. “I didn’t have to sneak anywhere. You sleep so soundly a bomb could go off next to you and you’d never even know it.”

They drove across town to Mike’s apartment building and within a few minutes he had packed a duffel bag not unlike the one found on the ground outside Frank Cheslo’s disabled Focus. Then they drove to the police station so Sharon could pick up her car.

Now, back in Sharon’s warm house, Mike gazed at the young woman as she prepared for bed. He considered the unreality of the situation—investigating some kind of superhuman demon stalking this tiny town, murdering people in the most gruesome manner imaginable, while at the same time starting a relationship with this beautiful woman.

But that’s not the whole story, is it? She’s not just a beautiful woman, she’s a beautiful member of your police force. A subordinate.

Mike forced that thought to the back of his mind. He knew the time would come when he would have to confront the issue of dating a member of his own police force, but right now he just didn‘t have the energy to think about it. The two were providing each other something they both needed—for Mike, Sharon offered a valuable sense of normalcy that his life had been missing since the tragic shooting on that sweltering July night in Revere a year and a half ago, and for Sharon, he was an anchor, a way to resist the siren song of alcohol that returning to the town of her youth had reawakened.

“How long do you plan on brushing that hair?” Mike asked. “It looks pretty damned good to me right now and so does everything else, for that matter.” Sharon smiled and placed the hairbrush down on the vanity table and turned out the light, padding softly to bed and sliding under the covers next to Mike.