It wouldn’t be any great loss, as they say, but even so, it would be murder, Murder One, right here in Barnstead, New Hampshire, where there hasn’t been a genuine killing for several generations — not since the one over in Gilmanton, the one that woman wrote the filthy book about, Peyton Place. They should have burned that damned book. Maybe someone would write a book about this one, too. Killings up here are unusual. A few accidental shootings, hunting accidents, suicides, that sort of thing, sure, but no real live killings, he thought as he drove out of town, along the river, and turned left at the Congregational church, the only church in town, onto the dirt road that led to the narrow end of the Suncook Valley, where, in the shade of Blue Job Mountain, Hamilton Stark lived.
It was a cold, dark gray day, with the sour sky sagging down almost to the treetops. Along the sides of the narrow, winding road, the tin trailers and tarpaper-covered shacks seemed frozen into the several feet of old, leathery, late-winter snow that surrounded them, the vehicles outside and the leaning, dilapidated outbuildings scattered around them. Behind the dwellings and vehicles lay the woods, the dark, tangled third-growth pines and spruce — twisted, erratically spaced trees and groves laced together by the ruins of ancient stone walls and low, scrubby brush, a forest for squirrels and porcupines, creatures that run close to the ground or high above it.
As he drove, the chief squared his Stetson on his head, checked himself in the rear-view mirror, and hated his brother-in-law. He had not forgiven him. Although of course he told everyone that he had forgiven him long ago, which usually made the listener shake his head with surprise and admiration, for many of the things that Hamilton had done to the chief — not so much to the chief himself as to his wife Jody and her mother Alma Stark — were generally thought to be unforgivable. The chief usually explained the generosity of his spirit by saying, “Look, hey, the bastard’s just not right in the head. I mean, what the hell, you don’t think the bastard’s happy, do you?” And no, no one thought for a minute that Hamilton Stark was happy, which proved the chief’s assertion that the bastard wasn’t right in the head. The chief liked being right, especially when he could prove it logically.
Two miles beyond the church there was a large cleared field on the right and, at the far end of the field, a driveway that led from the road along the edge of the field to a white-painted metal gate and, a little ways farther, the house. The chief turned off the road onto the driveway and in a few seconds pulled up at the gate. Easing his bulk out of the car, he walked around to the gate and unlatched it, stopping for a few seconds to study the piles of trash, most of them half-buried in snow that lay in the field in front of the house. Shaking his heavy head with disbelieving disgust, he squeezed back into his car and drove through the gate, following the driveway to the front of the house, where he came to a stop behind Hamilton’s pale green Chrysler limousine.
Shutting off the engine of his own car, a Plymouth station wagon with the standard blue bubble on the roof, the chief slid out, zipped up his storm coat, slowly approached Hamilton’s car from the driver’s side, and immediately saw the three bulletholes in the window, which caused him to unzip his storm coat and draw his revolver from the holster on his left hip. It was a smoothly executed series of moves. For a large man the chief was fast and balanced, and he practiced all his moves diligently in his free time. Poised on the balls of his feet, his head laid back and slightly to one side, and holding his revolver with his left hand, he switched off the safety and reached for the door handle with his right hand, slowly, as if he were trying to catch a butterfly without damaging its wings. He whipped open the door, shoving the snout of his gun down into the space where the driver’s head ordinarily would have been situated.
Nothing. Empty. No blood on the seat. Slugs probably in the upholstery someplace — send the lab boys out to look for them later. Course, the slugs might be buried inside Ham’s body. Hit the bastard clean and fast, got the body out of the car right away so they could wipe it down, dumped the body in the trunk of the hit car, then took off to where they could drop it into some open water. The nearest open water would be the Atlantic Ocean, the chief figured. Kittery, Maine. This was going to be a tough case to crack alone, he thought grimly. He was going to need some help.
Jamming his gun into the holster, he walked back to his own car and sat down in the driver’s seat. He slammed the door behind him and started the motor and the heater, after which he slid a few inches to the right of the steering wheel to a position on the seat from which he could operate the radio comfortably. He stretched out his legs, plucked the microphone from the hook, and barked into its face. “Hawk! Come in, Hawk! This’s Eagle! Come in, Hawk. This is Eagle, come in, Hawk!”
After a few seconds of answering static, a high-pitched voice cried, “Hawk here, Eagle! Come in, Eagle!”
“That you, Calvin?”
“Sure is, Eagle. What’s up?”
The chief scratched at the nest of curly blond hairs where his throat met his chest. “I’m over to the Stark place, where Ham Stark lives? You know the place?”
“Sure. The place up on Blue Job Road, used t’ be his mother’s place—”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, listen,” the chief interrupted. “I think there’s been some kinda trouble up here. Looks to me like there’s been a little shooting.” Suddenly, as if the bank of clouds had parted and the sun had come out, the chief became frightened. Terrified. His head was located in his car precisely where he supposed Hamilton’s head to have been when he had been shot. Whoever had shot Hamilton could as easily shoot his brother-in-law. The chief flopped down on the seat, his right cheek pressed flat against the cool upholstery, and went on talking into the microphone. “Look, Calvin, get over here right away, will you? Where the hell are you now, for God’s sake?” he puffed. He was lying on his side, facing the glove compartment, and it was difficult for him to breathe.
“I’m over on Route Twenty-eight, on my way to that guy Yanoff’s, you know the guy, takin’ his goddamned dog home to him. Herb Kernisch says he seen it runnin’ deer last night and he’ll shoot it next time it’s out loose, you know Herb…”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. How long will it take you to get here?” The chief was terrified. He’d walked into a trap. Shit, shit, shit. Those were rifle slugs for sure. Hit men from Boston. Probably Cosa Nostra. Mafia. Italian. They’d as soon kill him as pick a flower, and they could do it, too, the way he’d set himself up. They could pick him off from fifty yards, and all he had was his damned service revolver.
“Oh… I dunno, twenty minutes, I guess, if I come straight over an’ don’t take this mutt back to Yanoff’s. I ain’t there yet.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake, hit your fuckin’ siren an’ get the hell over here!” he cried into the mike.
“You okay, Chief?”
“Yes. Yeah, sure. Just get the hell over here, will you, Calvin?” The chief was sweating, and his eyes were darting wildly back and forth across the narrow slab of leaden sky that he could see from his position on the seat. It was everything he could see — a rectangle of low, dark sky — but he expected that any second even that would go black on him, as three soft-nosed slugs penetrated his large, soft body.