On my way out to the parking lot, I had to climb over the trunk of one of the downed sycamores. Its gnarled muddy roots filled the air with a raw earthy smell, as if Mother Nature was starting to sweat from her vast labors in turning the world upside down.
I turned on the news in the truck and learned that Hurricane Ilse had been downgraded to Category Two. It seemed like she had forgotten to tell us in Groton. I heard another crescendo of thunder, and the sky went darker as rain came down like a curtain.
The main road across the campus was empty except for a careening garbage can and whirling clouds of autumn leaves. Near the traffic bridge, I saw a newly downed power line. Yellow sparks were shooting out of its exposed end as the wire whipped back and forth across the road like a demented rattlesnake. Turning on the radio transceiver, I reported it to the campus security dispatcher.
When I pulled into the parking lot at the Fall Creek Tavern, I was surprised to see it still had power. It stood out against the craggy gorge like the beacon of a lighthouse.
Near the precipice, the wind was gusting at sixty or seventy miles an hour.
Bent over, I was heading toward the side entrance when I heard several loud cracks followed by what sounded like muffled hammer blows. The noises were coming from the Creeker’s foundation wall. I knelt in the lee of the wind to take a closer look.
I was no mechanical engineer, but it looked like the bottom support timbers of the building had just shifted on the stone foundation. Along the mortared foundation wall, I could see four inches of newly exposed surface, still untouched by the driving rain. A few moments later, it was soaked as dark as the rest.
When I stepped inside the bar, the blast of the wind was muted by the amplified noise of blaring rap music. At least a hundred people crowded the big downstairs room, packed together from the open kitchen to the back pool table area that extended out over the edge of the gorge.
I found the owner, Chuck McKinlay, sitting at a table near the smoky fireplace. Over the jukebox, I had to lean down to tell him what I had just seen outside. He gazed tranquilly back up at me, his eyes vacant with single malt.
“The Creeker’s been here since before my grandfather was born,” he shouted, as if that answered my question.
“You should check it out, Chuck,” I urged before heading off to look for Ben Massengale.
Before I took two steps, Johnny Joe Splendorio emerged out of the crush in front of me.
“Jake,” he yelled over the noise, his cheeks flushed burgundy red. “I got something good for you.”
I scanned the crowd at the bar, hoping to find Ben on his favorite stool.
“The Gambian pouched rat,” he said close to my ear. “They grow to fifteen pounds . . . big as raccoons, and they eat anything . . . I mean birds, cats, garbage scraps . . . best of all, you can fight ’em like pit bulls. The goddamn Latinos will love them.”
Ben wasn’t sitting or standing at the bar, and I began pushing through the crowd toward the room in the back. Johnny Joe stuck close behind me.
“I’m raising the money for the first shipment, Jake,” he yelled. “Buy a hundred and they’re only twenty a piece. I figure we can sell ’em for fifty each.”
“Where have you been?” a sharp voice came from over my shoulder.
It was Kelly. A tray of empty beer bottles was balanced above her right hand.
“I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday,” she said.
Seeing the look on her face, Johnny Joe wisely retreated. When Kelly took in the cuts around my eyes and my swollen jaw, her eyes softened.
“Oh, Jake,” she said, still balancing the tray in one hand while stroking my face with her left.
“Kelly, I don’t have any time to tell you what’s going on,” I said. “You have to trust me that it’s important.”
“Those two killings everyone’s talking about?” she asked with an involuntary shudder.
I nodded.
“Have you seen Ben Massengale since last night?” I asked her.
“He was here,” she said. “He was talking with somebody at the bar for the longest time. The guy may have run him home.”
“What did the man look like?”
She pursed her lips for a few moments and said, “God . . . with everything going on Jake, I can’t remember.”
“If he comes in again, please call the campus police dispatcher and have them contact me on my radio. I’m heading down to his apartment.”
“Jake,” she called out, and I swung around.
“Be careful, honey,” she said with an apprehensive smile.
I remembered the problem I had seen outside and said, “Kelly, I think this building is starting to move on its foundation. Chuck is too drunk to care, but it could be dangerous. Use my name and call the Groton emergency line. Tell them to send one of their building engineers over here right away. Be sure to tell them it’s an emergency.”
“Don’t worry, Jake. I’ll take care of it,” she said, raising her lips for a quick good-bye kiss.
Outside, the force of the wind was steadier and more violent. Driving down Campus Hill, my headlights almost disappeared in the torrential rain as it swept the windshield.
More than a foot of standing water now flooded the downtown streets. Abandoned cars sat stranded at nearly every intersection. I drove past the town square and traveled the three blocks along Seneca Street to where Ben lived.
It was a neighborhood of rundown Victorian houses that had been turned into illegal apartments for transient workers. Electrical power had been knocked out on the street, and Ben’s house was dark when I pulled up at the curb. Unhooking my flashlight, I waded across his inundated lawn and climbed the sagging wooden stairs that led up to the porch.
A faded card on one of the mailboxes attached to the wall read, “B. Massengale: Apt. 3C.”
The front door of the building stood wide open. The wind-driven rain had already soaked the foyer of the hallway. Closing the door behind me, I smelled the sour odor of wet plaster.
A section of the ceiling above the foyer was leaking badly in several places, and water was splattering down in a steady rhythm on the hardwood flooring. Training the flashlight ahead of me, I headed up the staircase to his room.
As the rickety stairs creaked and groaned, I felt a small tremor of apprehension. To minimize the noise I was making, I placed my boots at the butt end of each step. On the third floor, I made my way down the dark hallway and approached Ben’s door. I thought about knocking but decided against it. Although it was hard to believe he was the killer, it remained a possibility. And he might not be alone.
The door was made of pressed fiberboard. Keeping the flashlight in my left hand, I removed the .45 automatic from its holster with my right. I waited another five seconds and kicked the door open, shattering the lock at the doorjamb.
The first room of the apartment was his kitchen. An assortment of pizza boxes and empty liquor bottles covered the drainboard next to the sink. Crossing the floor, I went down a narrow hallway. An open door on the left led into a living room that overlooked the street. There was a sprung leather chair by the window next to a small coffee table crowded with more empty liquor bottles.
The last door on the right was closed. Turning the knob, I slowly pushed it open. The window curtains were drawn shut, and the room was pitch black. I inched my eyes around the edge of the doorjamb and shined my flashlight inside.
Dirty clothes lay strewn across the floor. I found the bed in the beam of the flashlight. Ben was lying on his side, his face to the wall. I slowly walked over to him. He didn’t move.
Standing over him, I saw the regular swelling of his chest and stomach as he breathed in and out. The odor in the room was awful, like a bear’s den after a long winter. A bear addicted to cheap whiskey.
I walked across to his bathroom and shined the light inside. Aside from an old Marine Corps bathrobe hanging on the wall hook, it was empty. A photograph was Scotch-taped to the mirror over the sink. It was a picture of his late wife, Karin, and must have been taken around the time I was a student at St. Andrews. She looked back at me, as lovely as Julia Roberts.
I remembered the barbecues she and Ben had held for the ROTC students on Sunday afternoons in the backyard of their little house near the campus. We all thought he was the luckiest guy on the planet. The house was gone now, just as she was. They had torn it down to build one of the new learning centers.
Putting the .45 back in its holster, I pulled open the heavy curtains that covered the windows. In the murky morning light, I saw another empty whiskey bottle lying under Ben’s outstretched arm. The Seagram’s label was facing toward me. I wondered if that might have been what Wheatley had been drinking before he went off the bridge.
“Ben,” I said loudly, shaking his shoulder.
He erupted in a bout of tubercular coughing before rolling over in the bed to face the other way.
“Ben,” I called out to him again.
His eyes slowly opened and took me in.
“S’you, Jake?” he mumbled.
“Yeah.”
Going into the bathroom, I found a fruit jar on the sink. Rinsing it out, I filled it with tap water. After helping Ben to sit up, I held the glass to his mouth, and he gulped most of it down. When I took my hand away from his shoulder, he slumped back on the pillow.
In spite of his once prodigious strength, it was hard for me to visualize him on the suspension footbridge, doing what was physically required to hang two men against their will.
“Ben, I need your help,” I said, propping him up with his back against the pillowed headboard.
His head lolled forward, but he tried to focus his eyes. I pulled out the golden ball I had cut off the end of the braided rope from my breast pocket and held it up to him.
“Do you know what this is, Ben?”
He had taught the military etiquette class in the ROTC program.
“Sword . . . knot,” he said.
“Ever seen one that looks exactly like this before?” I asked next.
He continued to examine it through bleary eyes.
“Genrals,” he said, slurring the word.
“Generals?” I repeated.
“Genral’s . . . acorn . . . other officers . . . tassels,” he said, exhaling the sour odor of stale whiskey.
“How did you get home last night, Ben?”
He thought about it for ten seconds before finally saying, “Can’t remember, Jake.”
“Kelly said you were talking to someone for a long time last night. Can you remember who it was?”
His confused eyes were still focused on the acorn knot in my hand.
“Five . . . oh . . . deuce,” he muttered.
“You’re not making sense, Ben.”
“Five . . . oh . . . deuce,” he slurred again. “One oh . . . fist.”
“The 101st?”
His bloodshot eyes started to close and then briefly fluttered open again.
“You got a drink on ya, Jake?” he asked.
I shook my head no. A few seconds later, his chin dropped to his chest and he began to snore.