The Maine Massacre Read Free

grinned.
    •The ranks of the Amsterdam Municipal Police are constable, constable first class, sergeant, adjutant, inspector, chief inspector, commissaris, chief constable. A commissaris is usually in charge of a division. Sergeants and adjutants are noncommissioned officers.
    •The Hague houses the various government centers of the Netherlands. Amsterdam is the country's capital.

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    T HE PLANE'S WHEELS SEEMED BOUND TO TOUCH THE TOPS of the tall pines bordering the tiny airstrip and the commissaris had to force himself to keep his eyes open. His ideas about America had changed once the stewardess walked him across the vast hall of Boston's airport and pointed at a two-engined plane. The plane looked old, with bulging lines dating some thirty years back. A young man in a heavily padded jacket and an oil-stained cap with earmuffs was wheelbarrowing a suitcase through the snow.
    "Is that my plane?"
    "Yes, sir," the stewardess said brightly. "Prestige Airlines, a small private company. They fly to most of the small airports in Maine. They've been going for years. I'm sure they're very reliable."
    The young man had got the wheelbarrow stuck and was pushing it with all his might. He was shouting, but his words didn't penetrate through the plate-glass walls of the airport building. The stewardess giggled. "That's your pilot, sir. He'll come back in a minute; he also takes care of the desk here."
    "Good God," the commissaris muttered. The stewardess studied the tired, drawn face of the little old man leaning on his bamboo cane. "Are you all right, sir?"
    "Yes, miss, just tired. I couldn't sleep, they were showing a movie while we crossed the Atlantic."
    "Where are you going again, sir?"
    "Jameson, Maine."
    "Jameson," she said. "That's a nice town, I spent a holiday there once. It's on the seashore, rather popular in summer but nobody would want to go there this time of the year. It'll be all snow and ice, I imagine."
    The pilot had come back and took the commissaris' ticket and suitcase. "Jameson?" he asked. "That'll be three, three and a half hours maybe, hard to say in this weather, and they may not have plowed the strip. They hadn't last time and I had to circle while they pushed the old plow around. I suppose they thought I wouldn't come in and their radio had broken down again."
    The commissaris' cane dug into the hall's wall-to-wall carpeting, its tip sinking away in the thick yellow strands.
    Another young man, in overalls, gum boots and a peaked cap, had arrived. "Is the old crate ready, Bob?"
    "Sure," the first pilot said. "As ready as she'll ever be. She was hard to start and we should really get some new cables. Another storm like this and she'll blow right away —that left cable is badly chafed, did you notice?"
    "Really?" the commissaris asked.
    The man addressed as Bob laughed. "Only the anchoring cable, sir. The plane itself is sound enough, old army stock and we've been looking after her. We'll be ready in a minute. Would you like to go to the bathroom before we take off? There's no toilet on the plane."
    But the trip hadn't been too bad. The other two passengers, stocky middle-aged men with brilliant red hats and shotguns in leather cases, had passed a bottle of strong, raw-tasting whiskey around and nobody had objected to the commissaris' small but smelly cigars. The plane flew low and the commissaris was impressed with the landscape, or seascape, for they followed a rugged coastline with many islands dotted in a cold and wild-looking sea. The pilots had pointed and shouted names, and he looked at a map he had been given as the hunters traced a course that ended in a small spot and the cursive letters JAMESON.
    "There!" the pilots shouted. The plane dived. It had taken the commissaris a few seconds to see the airstrip, a brown cross in the all-pervading whiteness.
    "Anyone meeting you?" the hunters asked as they kicked their duffelbags out the small door. "We have a truck here, can give you a ride."
    But the