To Collar a Killer, page 33
funeral, will you?”
“Whose funeral is that?” I said dumbly.
“Your father’s. His time has just about come.” He even
looked at his watch, the bastard.
“Don’t tell me you’re still thinking of killing him.”
“Oh, I already have.” He grinned. “And you’ll never be able
to prove it. Just like you’ll never be able to prove—”
Jack Sr. grabbed his throat. Something was happening in his
eyes. He looked at me, then at Maxwell. “You sonovabitch,” he
said to Maxwell, then fell out of his chair onto the grass and lay
motionless.
I stood there with my mouth hanging open then said weakly,
“A doctor. We need a doctor.” I got my voice back and yelled, “I
need a doctor over here, now!”
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“It’s too late for that,” said Maxwell, grinning.
Jamie came running over. “Jack, what is it?”
I pointed to Jack, Sr., lying in the grass, then to Maxwell.
“He killed my father.”
“Oh, Jack, no!” She knelt next to my father.
“Don’t look at me,” Maxwell said, all innocent. “I was
searched when I got here, remember? How could I have killed
him?”
Quentin Peck and Mike deSpain came over. “What’s going
on?” Quent said.
Jamie looked up and said, “It’s a false alarm. He’s fine.” She
helped my father to his feet.
“That was kind of fun,” Dad said.
Jamie took a handkerchief and a plastic evidence bottle from
her pocketbook. (She calls it a pocketbook, I call it a shoulder
bag.) She picked up my bottle, then poured the beer into the ev-
idence bottle.
Maxwell was nonplussed. “What . . . what are you doing?”
“Oh,” I said, “we switched bottles when you weren’t looking.
Remember? When my friend spilled his drink on you? My fa-
ther switched my beer bottle with the one you tampered with.
So the bottle Jamie is collecting as evidence has the poison, or
whatever you used to try to kill my father, still inside, mixed
with the beer. And you, Your Evil Highness, have been caught
on camera administering said substance in said bottle. In fact,
you’ve been caught on four cameras.”
I pointed to the camera up in the branches of the oak tree, the
one in the upstairs bathroom, the one in the carriage house, and
the one Kristin had hidden artfully behind the bales of hay by
the kennel.
“You sonovabitch.” His eyes were blazing. He had the face of
a murderer. I hoped the cameras were getting a good shot of
that look. “You recorded all this?”
“Even better,” I said. “It’s being broadcast live. There’s a
satellite truck hidden behind the carriage house. You’re on net-
work TV. Come to think of it, you’re probably being seen all
over the world—CNN, Al Jazeera, who knows?”
Quentin Peck came forward with a pair of handcuffs. “Ian
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Maxwell, you’re under arrest for the murders of Hugh Gardner
and Sherry Maughn, and the attempted murder of John Field.”
In total shock, Maxwell glared at me for a moment, and then,
before they could put the cuffs on him, he ran for it.
Peck and deSpain drew their weapons and shouted, “Halt!
Stop or I’ll shoot!” and the like, but he ran as hard as he could to-
ward the play yard and his chopper. Meanwhile they couldn’t
shoot because some of the kids were still down there gaping at
the fascinating machine, poking the toes of their tennis shoes
into the chain link to get higher up for a better angle for gawking.
When Peck and deSpain saw this, they gave chase on foot,
but Maxwell was too fast. He got there well ahead of them.
Brianne O’Leary, though, was already on her handheld radio
talking to Mike Brooks, so before Maxwell even got the door
closed on his copter we heard the sound of rotors and whirling
blades coming from Mrs. Murtaugh’s house.
Maxwell’s chopper lifted into the air. Quent, on the other
side of the fence now, got a couple of rounds off, one of them
cracking the side window, another putting a hole in a fuel tank.
Maxwell kept rising up, but his gasoline (or whatever kind of
fuel they use) was dripping all over the place. Then, when he
got high enough over the trees and the power lines, he took off
to the southeast.
Mike Brooks banked his chopper to the right and went after
him in hot pursuit.
Everyone was standing, craning their necks, trying to see
what was happening. And then behind me, from the porch, a
guy grabbed one of the Blue D’Arts’ microphones and said,
“It’s on TV!” There was a squeal of feedback as he said this.
We all turned to look. The feedback kept squealing, but he kept
talking. “They’re showing the whole thing live! You’ve gotta
come see this!”
Suddenly, everyone at the party went into phase transition
and ran inside the house.
Me? I sat back down, put my hand on my dad’s knee and
said, “Nice work, Dad.”
“What’s that, sonny? I can’t hear you.”
I laughed. “You can take your hearing aid out now.”
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“Ah, I was just having fun. I can’t believe he actually tried to
kill me.” He gave me a broad grin and put his hand on my
shoulder. “But you had his every move covered, didn’t ya,
Jackie boy? And him a dangerous killer.”
I shook my head. “I once worked with a Chihuahua named
Tiki who was a lot more dangerous than Ian Maxwell.”
Jamie came over. “Jack, aren’t you coming?”
“Where?”
“Inside to watch the helicopter chase!”
I looked down at the watch I wasn’t wearing and said, “You
know, I would, honey, but it’s almost seven o’clock.”
She looked at the watch she actually was wearing. “Okay.
What happens at seven?”
“That’s when the dogs get exercised and fed.”
“You mean, you don’t care what happens next?”
“Me? Not particularly. I already did my part.”
“But what if he gets away?”
I stood up. “It doesn’t matter. He’s already cooked. In fact,
I’d say he’s been fricasseed, whatever that is.”
She shook her head at me like I was crazy. “Well, I don’t
know about you, but I want to find out what happens.”
“That’s fine, honey. You can go ahead.” I turned toward the
kennel. “But I’ve got dogs to take care of.”
“Jack!” She sighed and turned to go up to the house.
Leon and Jen came over, with Magee following them. Leon
was kind of following Jen, a bit like a puppy dog himself.
Jen said, “Can we come with you and play with the dog-
gies?”
“Don’t you want to watch the helicopter chase?”
Jen wrinkled her nose and said, “No, that’s so bogus.”
Leon said, “Two white men in helicopters? Nah, I don’t think
so.” He didn’t mean it, and Jen and I both knew it. He looked
back toward the carriage house, where his own TV sat waiting
for him. We caught him looking and he said, “Well, yeah, you
know, unless one of ’em blows up or something.”
“You have got so much to learn,” Jen said, as if she had just
appointed herself his teacher.
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He kind of shrugged shyly. He had such a hard teenage crush
on her.
“Jack!” Jamie called from the porch, letting Frankie and
Hooch out in the process. “Come inside! They’re flying over
Rockport Harbor now!”
Tipper raced up to the house to meet the bigger dogs.
“That’s fine, honey. Let me know how it all turns out!”
She shook her head at me and went inside.
Then Leon, Jen, and I (along with Tipper, Frankie, and
Hooch) all went to the kennel to get the rest of the dogs.
A little while later, while the animals were all running
around the play yard, nipping and feinting and play biting and
such, we heard some loud gasps of amazement and then some
horrified screams coming from inside the house.
We all stopped what we were doing—the dogs included—but
then the moment passed and we all went back to playing again.
Epilogue
After the party was over and most of the guests had gone
home, Farrell Woods and I collected the leftover sand and ashes
from the grill, broke into the funeral home where Jill’s cre-
mated body was being held, waiting for her relatives to come
from Michigan to pick it up, and traded them for Jill’s re-
mains—ashes for ashes, sand for sand. (To the untrained eye
cremated human remains look like a mixture of sand and ashes,
which is why, at the cookout, I’d put the charcoal in a bed of
sand.) We felt a little bad about the fact that her family would be
keeping the residue from my barbecue in an urn on the mantel
while Jill would actually be resting peacefully in the waters of
Camden Harbor, but we knew she would’ve wanted it this way.
We drove down to the docks, and stood around, kind of
dumbly, wondering what to do.
Woods said, “I guess we just throw ’em in the water?”
“Yeah. Maybe I should quote the Twenty-third Psalm.”
He gave me a surprised look.
“Catholic school,” I explained.
So I spoke the words of the psalm and we scattered her ashes
on the saltwater of Camden Harbor and bid our last farewell.
As for Ian Maxwell and the famous helicopter chase, by now
nearly everyone in the world has seen the footage at least a
dozen times, so I shouldn’t even mention it except to say that it
was a good thing the carnival was still closed for repairs that
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evening, because when Maxwell ran out of fuel, eventually lost
control, and then crashed into the Ferris wheel, well, a lot of
people could have been hurt otherwise. As it was, the only one
injured was Maxwell himself, who, sad to say (or maybe not so
sad), didn’t survive the crash.
If it had been a movie, there would have been a huge fireball
a second after the impact. But since Maxwell’s fuel tanks were
empty, there was no explosion, just a lot of tangled metal. And
of course, the impact knocked the Ferris wheel over, sending it
crashing onto the other rides in a kind of slow motion chain re-
action. Oh, it made a spectacular scene, no question. And they
replayed it on the news over and over and over. In super slow-
mo, digitally enhanced, the whole deal.
Leon liked it, even without the explosions.
There was also videotape of Maxwell playing with the bill of
his baseball cap, like a spitball pitcher, and then a moment later
reaching his hand over my father’s beer bottle while Dad and I
were fumbling for the cell phone I’d dropped “accidentally.”
When the tape was enhanced and played in slow motion, you
could see him dropping a tiny pellet into the beer.
My dad and Jonas and I took off up north the next day, and
spent the weekend trout fishing—just the three of us. When we
got back there were dozens of calls waiting for me on my office
answering machine; people were asking me to do TV inter-
views, offering me job opportunities in broadcasting, and even
some publishing deals. Those were the only calls I returned, but
since they wanted me to write about the Maxwell case, and I
wanted to write about dogs, I turned them down.
I took Dad to the airport and saw him off, then stopped at the
TV station to help out with the editing on Leon’s television de-
but. Him and Magee. It turned out great. Magee now had a
killer recall. He would turn on a dime while running full speed
and then come running back even faster than he’d been running
before. Now, that’s great TV.
As for Kelso, after the cookout he got a call from Dr. Lunch.
There was a big break in the Sebastian Video case, the one that
had got him a jail sentence. Kelso now had the chance to com-
pletely vindicate himself and bring closure to that chapter in his
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life. He flew back to New York that night to check out the lead,
with a promise to me that he’d also check himself into a rehab
clinic in Connecticut when he was done. (He tells this story bet-
ter than I do, so I’ll just go on:)
Detective Sinclair called during the week to tell me that the
State Police had followed several leads regarding Eddie Cole
and the idea I’d given them earlier that he might be hiding out
in Portland, but none of them panned out. Cole was still at
large. I suggested that he contact the authorities in San Diego;
that Cole might be hiding out there.
For some reason, Kristin Downey stayed in Waterville that
whole week. I didn’t realize it took so much time and money to
get a kid enrolled in college these days. But it wasn’t just the tu-
ition and books, apparently; there was housing to consider
(campus or off-campus), plus a telephone hookup, an AOL ac-
count, cable TV, some new clothes, and Kristin wanted to buy
Jen a car—something nice, like a Thunderbird convertible. The
girl opted for a used, rust-red International Harvester pickup,
which made me like her even more than I already did.
She spent her spare time at the kennel, hanging out with
Leon and the dogs. Frankie was her favorite, and he was totally
enamored of her. Speaking of which, Leon was always starry-
eyed around her, too, which she seemed to find both amusing
and endearing. As for myself, I was looking forward to having
her come to work for me once school started.
A week after the cookout and the helicopter chase, Jamie and
I were on the roof, listening to Tierney Sutton’s Blue in Green,
eating homemade ice cream and getting buzzed—but not bit,
thanks to insect repellent—by dozens of mosquitoes. We were
also discussing whether we should move the wedding back to
February now that she was both Chief State Medical Examiner
and the head of pathology at Rockland Memorial Hospital.
I still hadn’t told her about that kiss in the kennel. In fact, I
was just working up to it as we sat on the roof, discussing our
wedding plans.
“It’s nice sitting up here,” Jamie said. “And this music is as
delicious as your homemade ice cream.”
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“Isn’t it? Hey, we should have Doriane build a terrace so we
can be more comfortable when we hang out like this.”
“You know what I was thinking? What if we were to expand
the master bedroom and bathroom?” She looked at me. “Or am
I not supposed to talk about that with you?”
“No, that’s fine, honey. I think it’s a great idea.”
“But you said guys don’t like to talk about—”
“No, it’s re decorat ing we don’t like to talk about. We love to
talk about re model ing.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand you,
you know that? Not completely, anyway.”
“I hope not. Just like I hope I never understand you com-
pletely.” She asked me to explain, and I did. “Because if I did,
then things would get boring. No, I’m hoping to spend the rest
of my life getting to know you, sweetheart.”
“Ah, Jack,” she said, and kissed me.
“And I’ll tell you something else I hope.”
“What?”
“That this whole Ian Maxwell debacle is the last murder case
I ever have to solve. It was a doozy.”
Jamie’s eyes twinkled as she said, “Is that more wishful
thinking on your part, Jack, or do you really mean it?”
“That’s not fair. It isn’t like I didn’t mean it the last time and
the time before that. It’s just that things always seem to come
up, and you and I are the only people around with enough sense
to set them right.”
She sighed. “That’s true.”
We finished our ice cream and I was about to tell her about
Kristin’s kiss when Kristin herself drove up in her silver Mer-
cedes. She jumped out of the car and ran toward the front door,
frantic and all wound up about something.
“Kristin,” I called, “we’re up here.”
She craned her neck to look up at us. “Oh, there you are.”
She sighed. “Thank god, Jack. I need your help.”
“What is it?”
“It’s Jen,” she said. “She’s gone. I’m worried she may have
