Jigsaw

That Monday, the fourth of October, it was one of those bright afternoons in western Maine, when you could believe that Indian summer would never end, but you just knew that winter was right around the corner. The late afternoon sun glinted through the leaves that were left on the trees, imparting a golden glow tinged with the changing colors of maple, aspen and birch. The school bus crept slowly along the road, disgorging kids a few at a time every couple houses or so, flashing lights warning motorists to stop. Most did, but last year little Johnny Hart got killed because some hotshot driver thought he had a better idea. The driver was never caught.

Jeremiah Templeton and his little brother Christopher - Jed and C.J. (Jed called him "Ceej") to their friends -- were also on that bus. You could tell they were brothers, even if you didn't look close. Jed had thick, wavy hair in a deep chestnut color, like the mane of one of those horses you sometimes see, and greenish-brown - some people might call it hazel - eyes. He was about five feet, three inches tall. He showed every likelihood of taking after his father, who was six feet three. Ceej, taking after their mother, was a little shorter - about four feet nine - and had hair the color of autumn. It was basically light chestnut, but there were streaks running through it that made it look sometimes reddish-brown and sometimes strawberry blond. He did look almost strawberry blond in the summer. His eyes were green. Both boys took after their mother in that they were fair-skinned; they burned easily in the summer. They both had fine features, and trim, but not really slender, athletic builds. You would look at them and think "baseball player," or maybe "dancer."

They were close, but being four grades apart they didn't think it was "cool" to sit together on the bus. So Ceej was with a bunch of his new fourth-grade friends toward the back, and Jed was sitting near the middle of the bus, for the moment alone with his thoughts. He had had a seat partner, but he had long since gotten off. Staring out the window at the golden afternoon, Jed allowed his thoughts to wander. 'I can't wait to go on that camping trip with Jared and his Dad this weekend. It's gonna be *so* cool having Jared all to myself for a while. It'll be so fun cuddling together in his sleeping bag out there under the stars. We could make a wish together on the first one we see, and have a contest to see who can count the most. I hope the weather stays nice. I wonder if Nina Colson will miss me.' Here Jed grinned to himself. Nina Colson was in his math class, and kinda cute. She also showed signs of being "interested." She was just starting to get boobs, and Jed wanted nothing more than to get her alone and look, or maybe even feel, under her shirt to see if it was really true.

The bus was slowing again; it was approaching the driveway to Jed and Ceej's house. Jed could already make out the medium-sized half-timber in the distance through the thinning trees. In the summer you wouldn't be able to see it at all until you got right up to the driveway, the leaves would be so thick. Jed and Ceej picked up their backpacks, got up and walked toward the front of the bus. As the bus rolled to a stop at the foot of the driveway the driver opened the door and they got off. Jed looked in the mailbox. There was the usual junk mail, and some important-looking stuff for his mom. Then they continued on toward the house.

"How'd you do in school today, bro," Jed asked, to make conversation.

"That Mrs. Boris is such a dweeb," Ceej replied with as close to a sneer as an eight year old could get. Jed chuckled, knowing Ceej would probably have some sob story about the teacher's "misuse" of someone in the class. "Right in front of the whole class she told Devon Hamilton that if he didn't brush his teeth every day, they'd rot out of his head. I mean, brushing your teeth is important and everything, but geeze, she didn't have to yell at him in front of the whole class! That's, like, so last century. His poor face was as red as your math book"

The conversation tapered off as Ceej found something on the porch of great interest. He wasn't quite ADHD, but he sometimes didn't want to stay involved with the same thing for very long. Jed opened the front door. "Mom, we're ho—" he started to holler. His face blanched and he could barely stifle a scream.

The crime scene was as horrifying as anyone could have imagined. The woman in her mid thirties seemed to have been brutally bludgeoned by some kind of blunt object … so badly mutilated that he barely recognized her as his mother. His father lay sprawled on the living-room floor near her. He had been, not just stabbed, but repeatedly slashed with something long and sharp. And there was blood spattered all over everything.

Jed had to struggle to keep from throwing up. Don't touch anything! Was his first thought. If they find your fingerprints…. His next thought was, that man Dad was talking to the other night - he might come and get us too! "CEEJ, RUN!!!" he screamed, and grabbed his little brother. Backpacks abandoned on the porch, they pelted down the steps, down the driveway and out to the road and kept running as fast and hard as they could. "Jed, what happened?" Ceej demanded plaintively as they ran on. "What is the matter with you?"

For several minutes they ran, but finally their young bodies forced them to slow to a trudging walk. Suddenly Jed became aware that they were approaching the playground on the outskirts of town. "Oh, shit," he muttered sotto voce. "I didn't mean for us to come here!"

Ceej must have heard him just the same, because he said, "you said a bad word, Jed. You'll get punished."

"Shut up, Ceej. I gotta think what to do." Then he said, "see those bushes over there?"

Ceej nodded solemnly.

"Let's go hide over there for a minute."

Ceej followed him as he crouched down, and the two of them wormed their way to a clump of bushes that formed a sort of screen to give users of the playground a little privacy, and also to serve as a sound baffle for nearby residents that had expressed some annoyance about screaming, laughing kids. Once they had made themselves more or less comfortable in the bushes, Jed said in a stage whisper, "Okay, look, Ceej, something very bad happened back at the house. I didn't want us to go in an' touch anything, an' us get blamed for it"

Ceej's lower lip started to quiver. "B-b-but what, Jed?!"

"Never mind that right now; you don't need to know. The important thing is, we need to get outa here, and go somewhere else, fast, because we could be in danger. So you see why we can't let anyone else see us?"

"I-I guess so, but I think it may be too late. Someone at the playground has seen us, Jed."

Jed glanced up sharply. Coming toward the very clump of bushes where they were hiding was a slightly older boy, whom Jed recognized as one of the ones who had been shooting hoops as they had tried to hide. "C'mon, let's get outa here!"

Jed and Ceej tried to run in the opposite direction, back to the road that led back into town. He must have truly felt like he's been caught between a rock and a hard place, because back in town were terrible, unknown dangers, and this playground represented a different kind of danger to him that he simply didn't have the presence of mind to define at the moment. But the younger boys were no match for the older one, who was a star athlete on their school's J.V. squad. He caught them and tackled both of them to the ground. Jed screamed and said, "No, no, let us go! We don't want to play with you."

"Stop it!" the older boy said sharply. "Just stop it. Nobody is going to hurt you. Now tell me what's going on here."

"Nothing. Nothing. I want my mother!"

"Easy, little fella, easy," the older boy said more gently. "We'll help you find your mother, but first you're gonna have to fill me in on what's going on." He eased his hold on the two boys a little, but continued to encircle them with his arms in hopes of calming them down some. "Now, my name is Jonas, and I was just shooting some hoops with my friends here, and I heard you guys rustling around in the bushes. You look like you were being chased by demons from hell. What's up?"

Jed started to cry - the first tears he's been able to shed since encountering the grisly scene back at the house. "W-w-we might be," he whimpered.

Jonas' first thought was to say, "What, a big dog or something?" But these two were trembling like the wrath of God was upon them, and they certainly looked to be of stronger stuff than to be scared off by some mangy ol' dog. "Tell me about it," Jonas said gently instead.

"M-m-my Daddy used to talk every night on the phone to some man. I think he must have been very bad, because Daddy yelled and swore a lot. Th-then a couple days ago, he was talking to the same man and said, 'I don't want to work for you any more; I quit.' And then - and then - w-we came home from school today, and - and I went in first, and they were layin' on the floor, an' there was blood all over…."

Unable to go on, Jed sobbed brokenly in Jonas' arms. Ceej, having only just heard the story for the first time of what Jed had seen back at the house, began to tremble violently.

At last, Jonas started to get it. He gathered both boys closer and started to gently rub their backs. 'Christ,' he thought, 'I'm out of my depth here. What do you do with two little boys who sound like they have just been severely traumatized?' Some of his hoop-playing buddies pushed through the bushes saying, ""what the --?" "Jonas, what's going on here?" "What're you doing back here, jerking off?"

"Sh-sh-sh!" Jonas barked. "It's two young boys, and something's just scared the hell out of them. I don't have a clue what it was, but I think it might be a good idea to take them to my house for now."

"Jonas, are you sure? They could be in some kind of trouble."

"Oh, they're in trouble all right - big trouble, if I understand his story right, but it isn't what you're thinking. C'mon, let's get them home. Harry, you take the little one. The rest of you, I'm sorry to cop out on you like this, but I'm thinkin' this is a wee bit more serious just now. I'll call you guys later and fill you in if I can."

Jonas picked up Jed, and Harry picked up Ceej, and together they walked the few blocks to the McConnaghay home.

---

Maureen McConnaghay was thirty-three years old, and a part-time reporter for the Dispatch, the town of Arkham, Maine's weekly newspaper. She was "Old Irish," descended from immigrants who had settled in New England in the mid-nineteenth century and preserved their Irish heritage. She even still talked with traces of an Irish brogue, though these days, she used it more as an affectation to get a rise out of people. There were also times when she lapsed into a thick brogue if she felt stressed. There was a saying in town, "Oh, don't worry about Maureen; she's just being Irish." She was raising her son, Jonas, alone, her husband's having walked out on her some years back. No skin off her nose, really. She didn't even care whether there was ever an actual divorce or not, just so long as the son of a bitch stayed gone. Both she and Jonas were better off without him. Between reporting, the occasional free-lance article, and substitute teaching at the school, she made a good-enough living to support the two of them in relative comfort. It allowed her to be home - at least most of the time -- when Jonas was. He didn't have to be a latch-key kid, and for that she was grateful.

She was just beginning to think about cooking dinner for herself and Jonas, when she heard a noise on the front porch. She went and opened the front door, and there came Jonas and his friend Harry, and they were each carrying a kid, for God's sake!

"Jonas Patrick McConnaghay, jus' what is that yer goin' and bringin' home now? I thought you were going to be playing basketball after school."

"Mom, we need your help," Jonas said softly. "These kids were wandering around near the playground, and something has scared the he- uh devil out of them."

"Well, come on in already and let them sit down.. Would they like something to drink?"

"Maybe some water for right now, Mom. I think they're a little too shook to handle anything heavier."

She went to the kitchen and drew two glasses of water, then came back and set them on the coffee table. Jonas and Harry had set the kids down on the couch. The boys tried to drink the water, and Jed started to choke. Jonas sat down beside him and patted his back. "Easy there, buddy. It's not gonna go away. You'll be all right in a minute."

Maureen invited Harry to have a seat, and perched on the edge of the recliner across from the couch. "Now would ye be tellin' me what this is all about?" she demanded.

Ceej spoke up. "Our mommy and daddy died."

"Aw-w-w, Honey, I'm so sorry to hear that," said Maureen. "How did it happen?"

"Jed says a bad man killed them."

Maureen exploded. "What?!" Then more gently, "I'm sorry, what is it that makes you think someone killed them?"

Jed made a visible effort to pull himself back together. "When we got home from school today, I found them on the living-room floor. Mom had been beaten with something, and Dad was all cut up."

"And why is it you think someone killed them?"

"Be-because a few days ago I overheard my Dad on the phone talkin' to a man he was always arguing with, somebody named Randall, an' I probably shouldn't repeat the words he used, an' he quit his job an' everything."

"What kind of work did your daddy do?"

"He worked as an eng'neer."

If it were true that light bulbs really grew over peoples' heads, there would have been one over Maureen's now. You could just see on her face as her brain made a series of very unpleasant connections. "Scordo!" she whispered with distaste. "I'd bet me mother's Waterford crystal on it!"

Jonas raised his eyebrows in inquiry. "Say what, Mom?"

"You probably don't know this, Jonas, and I don't know as I'd go so far as to say I 'know,' but as a reporter I hear things. And Randall Scordo, one of the town Selectmen, and a general contractor, has his fingers in every crooked pie that's ever been baked. And he's got three-quarters of the town eatin' out of his hand to boot."

"So what's that got to do with these two?"

"Try this on for size," Maureen proposed. This boy says his father -"

"My name's Jed," he said.

"—Jed's father was an engineer working with the town of Arkham. He was probably contracted for a town project - yes! That has to be it. He probably worked for the engineering firm that was contracted to build that new dam on the Sandy River. And Scordo put out some ideas that no honest man could live with, so Jed's father quit. So then Scordo murdered him and his wife to shut them up."

"Mom, you don't know this for a fact," Jonas temporized."

"You're right, Jonas, I don't - at least nothing I could prove in a court of law." She pounded her fist in the region of her heart. "But I'm damn sure convinced here that that's what happened. So now we've got to figure out what to do with Jed and his brother here."

"I'm C.J.," the younger one piped up, taking another sip of water.

"Well, Jed, C.J., we're very pleased to meet you, and now we're gonna have to figure out someplace for you to stay."

"Maybe they could stay with us?" Jonas ventured tentatively.

"Ah, I don't think that's such a good idea. Not that they wouldn't be welcome, but if I'm right, Scordo could very well come sniffin' around lookin' for 'em."

"I see what you mean," Jonas agreed. "What do we do then?"

"Well, for they same reason they can't stay with us, we can't go to social services either. Chances are Scordo's got them in his pocket too."

Jonas chuckled. "Mom, you can't be serious."

"I'm afraid I am. See, nearly every small town has its Scordo. Let me tell you a story. When I was little, my Gram used to talk about this man who practically owned the town in Ireland where her relations grew up. Collected rents and taxes, spied on people, generally made sure they behaved according to his standards. When the Great Famine hit, and people got so they couldn't pay their rent, he started evictin' 'em left and right. Before long there were bunches of people jus' livin' in the streets - hedgerows, abandoned shacks, wherever they could find shelter from th' weather. If ol' man Fitzmaurice ever caught anybody squatting in one o' them shacks, he or his henchmen shot 'em on sight - sometimes whole families."

"I remember studying about the Great Famine in school. But they never said things were that bad."

"Believe me, Son, it was 'that bad', and worse, for those that lived through it. My great-grandparents were among the fortunate ones - they knew someone who knew someone, and so on. They had a little money saved up themselves, that they managed to keep Fitzmaurice from finding out about, and their friends helped them and some other folks get passage to America."

Harry, who had been quietly listening to this whole exchange, finally spoke. "Speaking of 'knowing someone', I think I may know someone who may be able to help Jed and C.J. here."

"Go on, Harry," Maureen invited.

"Well, you know I used to play in a band -"

"I remember," said Maureen fondly. "Too bad you guys broke up. You were pretty good."

"Well, you gotta know how it is, Mrs. McConnaghay; guys move away, or lose interest after a while, things like that. There's always someone who wants to join a band, but when you've got one that's worked together for a while like we did, once someone leaves, you can never get the same sound, if you know what I mean. Why, we once played a pro gig."

Jonas laughed. "I remember that. You guys opened for an Aaron Carter show at the theater in Bangor. It was a pretty good show, but you guys were full of yourselves for weeks afterward. How many autographs did you end up passing out?"

Harry grinned unrepentantly. "I dunno, but it sure was fun while it lasted. Well, anyway, thanks to opening for Aaron Carter, we got contacted by Zac Hanson, you know, like in 'Mmmbop.' He was traveling around, visiting with what he called 'garage bands' like what Hanson started as, trying to give them pointers on how to get better, and maybe make the big time like he and his brothers did. Hey, do you think there'll ever be an American Idol for bands?"

"Harry, could you please get to your point?"

"I am, Mrs. McConnaghay, I just need to tell all this first. Anyway, Zac told us he knows someone who works to help rescue kids who got troubles. An' I got his cell number. I can call him and see if he can get his friends to help."

"Who, exactly are these 'friends' of Zac's?"

"I'm not sure exactly. Zac told me about it once, and I didn't really understand what he was talking about, but what they do, it seems, is go all over the country rescuing kids from bad situations. I can give him a call right now."

"Hold on there just a minute, young man. You may have something there, but let me make a phone call first. I just thought of someone who is most definitely not one of Scordo's toadies." Maureen picked up the phone and punched a number on the keypad. "Hey Josiah, it's Maureen."

"Maureen, my dear, how are you keeping these days?

"Not bad, Josiah, yerself?"

"Eh, fair to middlin'. What's on that devious mind of yours?"

"Well, Josiah, I've got a bit of a situation here I'm not sure how to handle."

"A 'situation', you say. Tell me more."

"Well, do you know the Templetons, here in Arkham?"

"Hm'm'm…name doesn't ring a bell. Should it?"

"Not necessarily. George Templeton worked for a civil engineering firm here in Arkham. I have reason to believe the firm he worked for was called in on that dam project that the county voted to build on the Sandy River. Well, just this afternoon, George and his wife were found murdered - by their twelve-year old son!"

"Any idea who the perp was?"

"I've got my suspicions, Josiah, but I don't wanna say just now."

"C'mo-o-on, Maureen, this is off the record."

"Randall Scordo. Or more likely, someone he paid to do it. 'Tis sure I am that he's involved somehow. It's got his name all over it. And if it's what I suspect, he may be after the kids next."

"That son of a bitch! I've been wanting to see his ass nailed to the wall for years. I may be a Family Court Judge, and not directly involved in criminal cases, but I hear things via the legal grapevine, and Randall Scordo's name gets passed around here in Farmington as one of the baddest plug-uglies ever to have his face on a 'Wanted' poster. But how is it you think I can help with this, Maureen?"

"Well, the children are here at my house right now -"

"How did they end up at your house?"

"My son brought them home. Near as I can figure, they fled the house after discovering the crime scene and ran into Jonas at the playground. He somehow got the story out of them - they're pretty rattled, you know - and brought them home with him. I could have them stay with me, but it'd be too easy for Scordo to find them. And I'd bet my last dollar he'd find a way to get to them if I got social services involved. So I was wondering if you had any ideas what we could do with them - you know - hide them somewhere for a few days or something, till this blows over, or Scordo can be caught and hanged from the highest tree."

"Hm'm'm, I don't know. I'm not sure hiding them temporarily is the answer. Scordo's vine has a lot of branches, and those young'uns aren't going to be safe anywhere in Franklin County, or the State of Maine for that matter. And from what you've just told me, it sounds like those kids need to be somewhere where they can feel safe on a more or less permanent basis. They've obviously been through a lot, and moving them around from place to place isn't going to help any. Wait - I did hear tell about some organization that does things like that - help kids in danger. They generally work with kids who are in abusive situations." He paused reflectively, then mumbled, "now what the hell was it they called themselves? Damn, I can't remember offhand, but they claim to be run by the Federation."

"Wow, that big a deal, huh?"

"One gets the impression that they think so. Heard they pull a lot of clout. Supersedes even local and national authority, when it comes to abused kids."

"Any idea how to get a hold of them?"

"Not really. Apparently, you've got to know someone in Starfleet or the Federation itself to get their attention."

"Hang on just a minute, Josiah." Harry had been listening intently to Maureen's half of the conversation. She turned to him and said, "Harry, this may be important. Do you know *who* this friend of yours' friends are?"

"Geeze, Mrs. McConnaghay, I don't really remember for sure what he said." He paused, deep in thought, then he brightened. "It was something about a youth services organization. Does that help any?"

Maureen winked. "It might. You may just have saved the day." To Josiah she said, "did you hear that, Josiah?"

"Yes, and now I remember what it was I heard. It's called Federation Youth Services, and it's run by a woman named Teri Short. But I don't have her number; do you?"

"No, but I have someone here who knows someone who apparently does know how to get a hold of her."

"Well great. You go ahead and do that, and if you need any paperwork filled out, I'll be here to help you with it."

"Thanks, Josiah, you're a prince. Bye." Maureen hung up the phone, then said, "okay, Harry, make your call."

Harry took out his cellphone, flipped it open, and appeared to be puzzled about something.

"What's wrong, Harry? I thought you said you had the number."

"I do - I just gotta find it." He continued to search through what was obviously a very long list, then finally said, "Ah! Here it is - in the 'Z's'." He highlighted the number then hit "dial."

---

To Be Continued