The Pied Piper of Death Read online

  “You ever tell anyone these stories?”

  “Not since I stopped selling them to the mags. In fact, now that you mention it, no one ever comes down here for anything anymore.”

  Bea Wentworth wondered how many apartments, shopping centers, and condos named Wildwood there were in this country. She slowed the Saturn to turn off New Jersey’s Route 129 just past the Wildwood Continuing Care Retirement Community sign. Underneath the name and above the logo was the community’s marketing slogan: WE CARE FOREVER.

  She shivered at the concept as she turned down a cul-de-sac that ended in front of the apartment units and administration building. Directly in front of the U-shaped apartment complex was a three-hole pitch-and-putt golf course. A single player, wearing wildly checked Bermuda shorts, knelt on one knee near the second pin. His ball lay a few feet out and he examined the green’s tilt as thoroughly as a general analyzing enemy terrain.

  She parked in a visitor’s slot in front of the main building and entered a highly polished terrazzo tile entryway that led to a gleaming reception desk. “I’m looking for Colonel Squeeks,” she said. “I understand that he lives here.”

  The peppy young woman behind the desk smiled automatically and spoke exuberantly. “Oh, yes, Marvel Squeeks is one of our favorite residents. In fact, you practically ran over him when you came in. He’s out there on the golf course now. If you just turn right around and stomp right down you can’t miss him.” She giggled. “Oops. Sorry. I call the line dancing classes on Mondays and Wednesdays and I forget myself. If you’d like a sales brochure we are opening our next section in a month. We recommend a full-living luxury apartment to begin with. When you require further care we will move you, at no cost, to our assisted-living units. If necessary, from there you can progress to our state-of-the-art skilled nursing home, available to those who need full care with their activities of daily living.”

  Bea blanched. The remains of her day crumbled into a thousand shards. She looked blankly at this refugee from a cheerleading camp who still smiled from behind the reception desk. She realized that she was older than Miss Call-the-Line-Dancing—but that much older? “Do I look like a potential purchaser?” she asked in a low voice.

  Another giggle. “Oh, I meant for your parents, of course.”

  Of course, Bea thought as she left the lobby and crossed the drive to the pitch-and-putt golf course. The colonel had sunk his putt and was preparing a pitch shot over a sand bunker to the final hole.

  “Colonel Squeeks,” she called out.

  He squinted in her direction. This seemed inadequate, so he shielded his eyes from the sun and changed glasses. “Do I know you, young lady?”

  Young lady, Bea thought. This was truly a day of extremes. “No, sir,” she replied. “Army Personnel at the Pentagon gave me your name.”

  “I don’t practice medicine anymore, young person. And for quite a few years I have been Colonel Squeeks, Retired. So that your trip out here is not a complete waste, want to watch me make my shot? It’s going to be a quickie so as not to hold up that foursome behind us who want to play through.” He bent over his nine iron and eyed the golf ball seriously.

  Bea looked over her shoulder and felt a surge of disappointment at her wasted time and effort. In the far distance a maintenance man rode a large grass mower across a side lawn. “I’ll wait, Doctor.”

  “I’m kidding about the foursome. I’m not dotty yet. That comes next week.” The golf club hit the ball with a neat click that lofted it in a high arc. It dropped firmly on the small green, only five feet from the pin. The colonel grunted in satisfaction and turned to Bea with a smile. “How’s that?”

  “I’d say it couldn’t be much better,” Bea replied.

  “Ought to be good. I play these same three half-holes six times a day. I have nothing else to do now that Boots is gone. Funny how things work out. We waited years to put down our endowment fee and move in here. We were still in good health, but we thought, let’s just be on the safe side and not worry about the future. So we moved to this place in order to have the nursing home as protection in case we needed it. Boots never did need it. She went in six weeks when the Big C got her. Funny, huh?” He bent over to make his putt.

  “Boots?”

  He laughed and missed his putt as the ball swerved to the side. “They used to laugh at that name whenever we changed assignment stations and reported in. Doctor Marvel Squeeks and Boots. Lots of fun at the officers’ club. Enough of that. What do you want, young person? Did I treat a relative in one of my wars?”

  “You did an autopsy on a young man many years ago. It took some doing to come up with your name.”

  “I did a lot of autopsies on young men. Young men were what we managed to kill, wound, or maim most in my business.”

  “In 1951 at Fort Dix, New Jersey, a young second lieutenant was shot in the back after a training exercise. He was dead on arrival at the base hospital. The records show that you performed the autopsy.”

  Colonel Squeeks missed another shot and glared at the offending ball. “Yes, the Fort Dix one. Funny, most of them merge together and are forgotten, but not that one. I’m not sure if the reason I still remember is because it seemed like such a waste since it was after a training exercise, or because the powers that be gave me a hard time over the report. You know how the service is. They like everything tied neatly together. And that case just didn’t work out that way.”

  “Why not?”

  “The accident happened after a combat exercise in which live ammunition was fired. The training problem was called, “The Platoon in the Attack” or some such thing. At the end of the exercise the men were supposed to turn in all their remaining rounds, but there was no way to keep an accurate count of what had actually been fired. Usually nothing came of it.”

  “But this time something did?”

  “Damn tooting. One of the men must have really had it in for the lieutenant and loaded a live round back into his piece. He was shot in the back in the middle of the company street. No one saw who did it. That’s where I came in.”

  “You found the bullet?” Bea asked.

  “What was left of it. The Provost Marshall wanted to make an arrest. Every man in the platoon had a rifle and each one had been fired that day. I was to extract the bullet so they could run ballistics tests on each rifle in the platoon.”

  “And you couldn’t find it?”

  “Oh, I found it okay. I took one piece of strange metal out of that kid’s back. It didn’t match up to any projectile our army fired in this century.”

  “And the investigators weren’t happy?”

  “That’s an understatement. They were livid. Never could run a ballistics match on those M-1s.”

  “And they never found out who killed Lieutenant Piper?”

  “Was that his name? I’d forgotten that. Nope. Never did make a case against anyone.”

  “The piece of metal you extracted. Was it shrapnel?”

  “Any piece of metal imbedded in a man is shrapnel, young lady. So you could call it that. What it wasn’t was like any bullet we used in this century. This was a funny mashed piece of metal. It wasn’t like any of the junk I took out of men over the years.”

  “Did you make a guess?”

  “That made them madder yet. I told them it looked like a Civil War minié ball.”

  TEN

  She stood in the center of the field, which sloped up gradually behind her. The meadow seemed to merge into the horizon near the rim of sky. Ankle-high, new-mown grass sprinkled with dots of tiny yellow flowers surrounded her. A gentle wind brushed her hair into slow easy waves. The clarity of the early morning light gave a deep hue to the natural greens and bright yellows. It was a technicolor day.

  Paula Piper seemed confused. She looked in each direction as if expecting help.

  Lyon stood far below her on the cusp of the rolling land that stretched toward the distant girl. A Civil War Spencer carbine was cradled comfortably in his arms. He kne
w that any cry of warning he gave would be warped by the wind and lost in the distance.

  The danger marker was slightly to his left. Although he did not read German, its meaning was clear. It was a rough-hewn wooden sign in the shape of a slanted cross. In another place it might warn of a railroad crossing. In this field its scrawled black letters warned of another danger:

  ACHTUNG

  MINEN FELD

  “Don’t move!” he yelled.

  His words were lost in the wind.

  But his name carried across the meadow. He heard it as if from a faraway tunnel, “Lyon.”

  “Don’t take a step! The field is full of Tommys. You know how they are. If you step on one it will leap in the air before it explodes. You hear me?”

  “I’m afraid,” she said with a hesitant step toward him.

  “No!”

  “Tell Rebecca I’m coming. I can’t wait longer.”

  The young woman with her hair blowing in the wind began to run across the field toward him. As she continued down the slope the incline increased her momentum.

  “No!” he screamed again. She wouldn’t stop.

  He knew that mines were laid in patterns that varied from the simple to the complex. No matter what design the weapons occupied under this hill, she would eventually step on one of the buried Tommys.

  She did. The barely audible barking thump was immediately followed by ejaculated clods of dirt as the mine leaped into the air. For a brief moment the platter-shaped device looked like a hovering frisbee.

  She froze in midstride to stare at the weapon in mute horror.

  The Tommy exploded and spewed its deadly emissaries across the field. Dozens of steel balls tumbled her backward as they ripped into her chest.

  “God, no!”

  Lyon sat up. His arms reached forward as they grasped at empty space. Perspiration beaded his forehead. The final vivid image of his dream still seemed real in the dim confines of Nutmeg Hill’s master bedroom.

  “What in the world is the matter?” Bea asked in alarm.

  “I had a bad dream.”

  “It must have been.” She plumped her pillow in her usual nesting manner. “I’ll never get back to sleep. It’s like dawn, huh?”

  He glanced at the small clock on the bed table. “Five. I think I’ll start the coffee.”

  He snicked his terrycloth robe from its hook on the closet door and slipped into it. His bare feet padded down the stairs to the kitchen, where he turned on the coffee machine that had been preloaded the night before.

  Lyon leaned against the back doorframe and looked across the field by the side of the house. He watched the early morning light creep across the lawn as the coffee began to drip.

  He heard Bea come into the kitchen. “I guess I’m ready for coffee now that you’ve made it. One of the perks of being married is having someone willing to listen to your bad dreams. So, okay, tell me about it.”

  He told her of the minefield while he poured.

  They sat in the breakfast nook, cradling warm mugs of coffee. “Wait a cotton-picking minute,” Bea said. “You’re telling me that in your dream you were standing in a field holding a rifle? Which is a gun that translates into a phallic symbol. And that little sexpot Paula is running toward you until she explodes. Wentworth, didn’t you ever take psych one-oh-one?”

  “It’s not a sexual dream.”

  “Try telling that to old Sig Freud.”

  “I think that dreams can sometimes be a signal from the subconscious. They can be an ordering of our conscious thoughts in a symbolic way.”

  “Run that by me again.”

  “My subconscious has picked up on something about the Piper matter. It’s trying to tell it to me in the only way it can.”

  “Through the symbols of a running sexpot and a Civil War musket? You said she called out Rebecca. That’s one of the occupants of the Piper Pie, right?”

  “Partly right. Rebecca Piper was Peyton’s great-aunt who disappeared in the early thirties.”

  “What is your subconscious trying to tell you?”

  “Damned if I know, Bea. If I did, I wouldn’t need all that scary background material.”

  There wasn’t anything frightening about Sarge’s Bar and Grill. Its beery daytime atmosphere was as familiar to them as a pair of old sneakers. Rocco had preceded them and was occupying his usual booth. He had a double vodka clutched in his hand as he stared morosely out the window at an ancient school crossing guard escorting kindergarten children across the street. Lyon and Bea slid into the booth across from him as Sarge served Lyon Dry Sack sherry and Bea a diet soda.

  “You drink too much, Rocco,” Bea said.

  “I see that you’re illegally parked in the loading zone again, Senator.”

  Bea loudly slurped her diet soda.

  “Okay, guys,” Lyon said. “What do we have?”

  Rocco gave a straightforward account of his trip to the Hartford police station. Bea wanted to hear more about the Beast in Dormant Records, but she sensed Lyon’s impatience and withheld her curiosity.

  “Where did you say Rebecca was last seen?” Lyon asked.

  “In the family plot. The place you call the Piper Pie,” Rocco replied.

  “And they never found out who owned the Civil War gun found in the speakeasy killing?” Bea asked.

  “Not only couldn’t they ID the owner, but it disappeared from the property room.”

  “Doctor Squeeks believes that Lieutenant Piper was killed by something that resembled a Civil War minié ball.” Bea finished summarizing her previous day’s trip.

  “Did the colonel have any idea of how it could have been done?” Rocco asked.

  “He did,” Bea answered. “He told me that in those days they fired rifle grenades from a mounting on an M-1 rifle by using blank cartridges. He believes that a minié ball could have been forced into the barrel and fired by a blank with enough force to kill a man.”

  “Then the killer could have been any man in that platoon,” Lyon suggested.

  Bea shook her head. “Even that’s not simple. Most of the men went for showers when they returned from the exercise. They left their weapons in unlocked racks in the barracks. Not only the men in the platoon had access to those weapons, but any civilian employee from the boiler detachment, or working in the PX across the street could have picked up a rifle, fired out the barracks window and replaced it in the rack.”

  “Christian Piper was killed in 1897,” Lyon said. “The newspaper morgue papers tell me that there was an argument over cards on the Hartford-New York packet and he was shot once in the chest. Let me quote the newspaper report of the time: ‘Mr. Piper succumbed from a minié ball wound caused by a revolver souvenir from the Great War.’”

  “And the shooter?” Rocco asked.

  “‘In the ensuing melee, the unsavory gentleman involved in the game of chance seemingly disappeared over the side of the craft and swam to shore near the Seven Sisters hills.’ Quote unquote,” Lyon said.

  “Bridgeway is built on one of the Seven Sisters hills,” Bea said.

  “Surprise coincidence,” Lyon said bitterly.

  “What about the hunting accident in 1873?” Bea asked.

  Lyon shrugged. “The newspaper reported a hunting accident for Standard Piper, oldest son of Colonel Caleb Piper. The young man was killed while hunting in the north woodlot near Bridgeway. He was shot by his own weapon.”

  Rocco nodded. “That one could be an accident for real. We have them around here by the dozens. Often it’s some guy carrying a loaded weapon who tried to climb over a barbed wire fence. The trigger catches on a metal barb, and bam—he’s gone. That could have happened to Standard Piper. He was only eighteen and you know how impatient kids can get.”

  “In hunting accidents, if the victim isn’t shot by another hunter, is a snag on the trigger often a cause?” Lyon asked.

  “A good deal of the time that’s what happens. The fields around here are filled with old wire.”
r />   “Barbed wire wasn’t patented by Joseph Glidden until 1874,” Lyon said softly.

  “Quoth the Answer Man,” Bea said.

  “As a matter of curiosity,” Rocco asked Lyon, “do you know your own car license plate number?”

  “He doesn’t,” Bea said, “but he remembers stuff like barbed wire. Don’t ask me, Rocco. I can’t figure it out.”

  “That north woodlot is still vacant,” Lyon said. “I walked it yesterday and there isn’t any wire in there. Only a few New England stone walls.”

  “A man hunting in the woods is found dead from a wound that appears to be from his own rifle. Unless the entrance wound was in the center of his back, most law enforcers of those days were going to rule it an accident. Who was going to think murder for an eighteen year old?”

  “They were all eighteen,” Bea said.

  “We seem to have four eighteen-year-old men shot to death and one eighteen-year-old woman missing,” Lyon said. “Each of the men was killed under different circumstances, but each died from a minié ball wound. All of this occurred in one family at somewhat regular intervals.”

  “If we reduced that to a mathematical formula,” Bea said, “and ran it through a computer, the odds of random coincidence would be one in a million.”

  “Guarantee it,” Lyon said.

  Rocco signaled for another drink and Sarge ambled over to the booth with the vodka bottle to pour another double shot. “This is ridiculous,” Rocco said.

  “So, if a double isn’t big enough, you get a triple,” Sarge said agreeably as he continued pouring.

  “I didn’t mean the drink, but thanks anyway, Sarge,” Rocco said. “Granted that the fickle arm of coincidence would be stretched mighty thin, but that’s not as troublesome as the long-toothed murderer you guys are trying to construct. Standard Piper was killed in a hunting accident in 1873. Need I point out that was over one hundred twenty years ago? If we had a twenty-year-old killer going for his first one in 1873, we’d now have a perp pushing his big one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Come on, guys. Knock it off.”