Checking my watch, I saw it was past five thirty and approaching dawn. Outside, the sky was still dark, but the rain had turned to a fine drizzle, and the wind was definitely slackening a bit. Getting into the truck, I remembered Ken Macready telling me that the hurricane would reach its peak later in the morning. This had to be the eye of the storm passing over us.
The roads around the town square were flooded with six inches of water, and I wondered if the lake might have begun to overflow its banks. Glancing into the rearview mirror, I saw that my pickup was leaving a wake behind me, as if I were trolling for game fish in a power boat.
I imagined Bug waiting for me in our cabin and decided to check on her as soon as I had a chance. What I needed most at that moment was coffee. I hadn’t slept more than six hours over the previous three nights and didn’t anticipate any change in that situation.
Driving back up Campus Hill, I tried to focus on Hoyt Palmer’s disappearance. Even in my worn-out state, I knew that only two things could have happened to him. Either he had left his hospital room voluntarily or the murderer of Wheatley and Massey had taken him out.
I remembered Schmidt saying that nobody had gone down there, which meant that he had probably kept a pretty good watch for anyone trying to get by him in the corridor. But he wouldn’t have expected Palmer to slip past him from the other direction.
If it had been abduction and the killer was crafty, he could easily have created a diversion to mask his infiltration of that corridor. I would have. Once in the room, all he had to do was disable Palmer and then wait in one of the other rooms for his chance to leave.
If Palmer had been abducted, it was a likely possibility that he would soon be headed for a rendezvous at the suspension footbridge. The first two deaths were obviously connected, and Palmer was the missing link.
Turning on the VHF transceiver, I reached Captain Morgo and told her that our man had gone missing from his hospital room. I recommended that she issue a missing persons alert for him right away.
She was still at the bridge with the sheriff’s investigative unit but agreed to forward the request immediately. Before signing off, I suggested she post guards at both ends of the bridge, and she promised to do so before leaving the murder scene.
Heading across the campus, I passed by the ivy-covered dormitory in which I had lived as a freshman. The college still hadn’t lost electrical power, and through the lower windows I could see a boisterous hurricane party taking place. In one of the upper-floor windows, a young coed’s face was pressed against the glass as she gazed out at the storm. I waved to her as I went by, but she couldn’t have seen me.
A big sycamore tree had fallen against a side wall of the campus police building, and a team of men with chainsaws were cutting it away. Pulling into the rear parking lot, I parked in Captain Morgo’s spot by the back door.
After unlocking the tool chest secured behind the cab of my truck, I pulled out the surveillance equipment that I had found in Sal’s room at the Wonderland Motel and took it inside.
Every desk in the squad room was occupied by security officers or members of the college’s emergency deployment team, all of them fielding phone calls or dispatching assistance. A handful of folding cots had been set up along the walls, and several officers in rain-soaked uniforms were sacked out on them.
I needed somewhere private to view the videos and decided to use Lieutenant Ritterspaugh’s empty office on the second floor. The room was dark and tinged with the aroma of her incense burner. Setting the surveillance equipment on her desk, I went back down to the squad room and poured myself a big mug of black coffee, chugging it as I stood there.
My mind was tracking about as well as the woolly mammoth over in Duffield Hall. There was only so much that coffee could do for me after all the adrenaline I had expended in the last twenty-four hours.
In Afghanistan, I had often used amphetamines to get through nightlong stakeouts, but I wasn’t about to ask for one now. I glanced across the squad room. The cots along the far wall began to look like the presidential suite at the Hay-Adams. I poured myself another mug of coffee.
On my way back upstairs, I passed Ken Macready in the hallway and asked him to bring the camcorder material he had shot at the Wheatley crime scene up to the lieutenant’s office.
As I was connecting the recording equipment to a television monitor, another rending crack was followed by a deafening thud that made the floor tremble. Another sycamore, its shallow roots loosened in the mushy soil, had gone over.
A few moments later, Ken brought the disc into the office and handed it to me. As he was heading out the door, an idea suddenly registered in my head, and I put down the connector cables.
“Ken . . . when I got here yesterday morning, there were two kids sitting downstairs in the holding pen,” I said. “Check the arrest log and find out what they were initially charged with before their lawyer got here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think it’s about time you started calling me Jake.”
He was grinning as he went out the door.
Fortunately, the camcorder video was digital. One of the electronic components in Sal’s metal case was a mini digital video player. I finished connecting it to the back of the television monitor and put in the disc.
The action lasted only about three minutes, and the little bald man had shot some of the first vivid footage. He could have gotten a pile of money for it from one of the TV tabloid news shows. Billionaire Decapitated—Fun for the Whole Family. There was a dramatic close-up of Wheatley’s body as it was falling, followed by my frantic efforts to grab his head before it followed the rest of him down the gorge.
The next images were of me as I sprinted toward the command car. The footage stopped abruptly at the point when I grabbed the camera out of his hands. The last two minutes consisted of Ken panning the camera around the small crowd of observers who were standing at the overlook.
I had finished running it the first time when he stepped back into the office.
“Those two boys you asked about,” he said. “They were charged with vandalism, malicious mischief, and destruction of private property.”
“Did the log indicate what they had actually done?”
He nodded. “They were caught defacing some cars with screwdrivers over at the administration building. Their lawyer is apparently a local hotshot. He’s trying to get the charges dropped by promising full financial restitution to the victims.”
“What time were they arrested?” I asked.
“According to the log, it was three thirty in the morning.”
“How old are they?”
“Eleven and twelve.”
I would have gone directly to their homes and interviewed them separately, but there was no time. After telling Ken about the keyed cars I had seen in the overlook parking lot on the night of Wheatley’s death, I said, “Call their parents and explain that those kids could be material witnesses in the investigation. Tell them that if they bring them here right away, I’ll do my best to help get their charges reduced. When they get here, separate them.”
“Done,” he said.
I rewound Ken’s section of the footage and played it again. Unfortunately, most of the people who had gathered at the overlook to rubberneck the tragedy were standing in the shadows far away from the streetlamps. In the pale reflection of the blue emergency light, I was able to recognize the little bald man who owned the camera, as well as the two pot-bellied alumni who had recognized me. Of the remaining dozen or so figures, about half were women. The other faces went by in a murky blur.
At one point, Ken had swung the camera in a wider arc and caught the cars parked at the lower edge of the parking lot. The camera didn’t linger at any point, and all the images sped by. When I played it a third time, however, my eyes were drawn to a figure illuminated against the backdrop of the evergreen trees that fringed the lot.
The fourth time through, I hit the pause button as soon as the panning motion began. By continually punching the pause button, I was able to see each image as it unfolded, a split second apart.
As the footage arrived at the evergreen trees, there was a momentary flare of light as a car or police vehicle went by on the street. For just that moment, it illuminated the trees. I kept the last frozen image on the television monitor for almost ten seconds.
Not only was it possible to see the human face peering through the branches of the trees, but there was no doubt who it was. I had spent too many hours with him over the years not to recognize his craggy features.
It was Ben Massengale, the fallen hero who had inspired me to make the army my career way back when I was in the ROTC program at St. Andrews. He could have been rubbernecking like the rest of the onlookers. Word would have spread fast down to the Creeker. At the same time, he was still wiry and strong. And he was an expert with military accouterments.