Read The Maine Massacre for Free Online Page B

What's it called? Edam?"
    "Yes."
    "Good, That's good cheese. We'll have to keep it away from the prisoners. They steal, you know. Stole my salami the other day. Sat around munching in their cells and didn't know what happened to the salami. Big salami too. Let's have a piece of that cheese now. I'll get the trimmings."
    De Gier cut two good-sized slices with the knife the sheriff had left on the table.
    "Here we are. Keep it in a strongbox in my room. Bourbon. You drink bourbon over there?"
    "Not too often, but we would like to."
    The sheriff poured. "Try it, you'll like it, as the dealers say to the junkies. But they give them shit. This is the real stuff, hundred proof, a present from a grateful subject because we caught another subject with twenty thousand dollars' worth of antiques taken from the first subject's house. I've been hoarding the bottle, but it'll have to go."
    They drank.
    "Yes?"
    "Yes." De Gier's eyes shone.
    The sheriff smiled. "That's better. I thought that maybe you wouldn't fancy the good stuff and then it would be hard to get to know you. Right. Now tell me, sergeant, what brings you here?"
    De Gier told him about the fund financing exchange of American and Dutch police officers.
    The sheriff sipped, lowered his glass, raised it, and sipped again.
    "Yes," he said slowly, "but I don't buy that. You'll have to credit me with some intelligence, sergeant, even if you find me in Jameson, Maine. Why would an Amsterdam murder brigade police detective be sent here? There are such cities as New York, or Chicago, and there is a place called Los Angeles. There is crime over there and the quality of the crime could be compared to what you have in Amsterdam. But in Jameson... No, sergeant. This town is barely on the map. So tell me, if you want to tell me. What have we got here that makes you interested, so interested that a general troubles himself to phone die Woodcock sheriff all the way from his shiny office on the eighty-fourth floor of his Manhattan plastic palace?"
    The bourbon oozed down to de Gier's stomach and warmed his blood on the way. He felt tempted to tell the truth. The truth is the best lie. He took a deep breath and told the truth.
    "I see," the sheriff said a few minutes later and got up and refilled the glass. "And this comrmssaris, this gold-braided gentleman with the pain in his legs, he is due soon, is he?"
    "He should be here now."
    "A little old man with thin gray hair and grandpa spectacles?"
    "That's right."
    "I saw him. He came in on the regular plane before the state troopers dropped you off from their spacecraft. Is he staying with a lady called Janet Wash?"
    "Don't know that name. He'll be staying with his sister, Mrs. Opdijk. Her husband died a few days ago. They have a house on Cape Orca."
    "Ah," the sheriff said. "So you are finally telling me. In your own way, of course. My predecessor left a file on Cape Orca; the file is mine now. Cape Accident it should be called, for he wrote them all off as accidents. The old sheriff wasn't too fond of work I believe, although I wouldn't spread that belief around, even if he lives in Boston now."
    "The old sheriff?" de Gier asked. "Are you the new sheriff?"
    "Oh yes, sergeant. Very new. Three months now and I still don't know the country at all. I was born and raised in the capital, a long way from here. But I know Cape Orca because I read the file. And Pete Opdijk died under my supervision so to speak. An accident. The fifth. Schwartz just ran away, but he might have been another if he had stopped to wait."
    "Schwartz?"
    "Captain Schwartz. The name is not familiar?"
    "No."
    "Maybe not, suit yourself. Maybe you came in on the Opdijk angle. Opdijk was a Dutchman and Captain Schwartz an American, even though he professed to be a Nazi. The others were Americans too, but their deaths link them to Opdijk, your client."
    "Client," de Gier said.
    "I'll tell you what I know. You can read the file later. A third and last glass?"
    They had the third