by Carl Schmidt
“No,” Cynthia said. “William had insisted that I travel light. Everything I brought with me is in the bag on the floor behind my seat, and there’s nothing in the bag that can be traced back to the governor’s house.
“Whenever we ate, we cleaned our dishes, dried them and put them away. He didn’t want evidence of a second person lying around. I wore his sweats and jacket if I needed extra clothing. William informed the guard at the gate that he didn’t want to be disturbed over the weekend. The guard did not know I was there, and there is nothing of mine left in the home. As far as he knew, unless he is psychic, the governor was alone for the weekend.”
“That’s good,” I said. “No doubt, by now, they have interviewed the guard and have completely searched the house. If your identity could be extracted from anything in the house, there would already be an alert next to your name in the FBI file. We’d get nailed at the roadblock in a heartbeat.”
I took a deep breath and made my closing speech with great emphasis, “Cynthia, there is one final thing. I understand that you don’t want to talk to the authorities right now about your involvement. You have your reasons, and I respect that. But if our story falls apart at the roadblock, you will have no choice. You’ll have to come clean with them. If you don’t make that transition in a completely open and honest way, you won’t be treated as a material witness; you’ll be a prime suspect. And I will be an accomplice, either after, or before, the fact.”
“Definitely,” Cynthia responded firmly. It was some consolation that she finally sounded resolute. I could only hope she meant what she said.
I started the car and turned around in the driveway. I inched forward to Cundys Harbor Road. Together we headed toward the bottleneck that awaited us. If we could make it through the roadblock and over the bridge, we’d be well on our way home. Before that could happen, we’d have to clear the first hurdle, namely, putting Officer Edward Handley in my rear view mirror for the second time in less than an hour.
6
Stoic-in-Chief
We crawled slowly toward destiny.
A mile down Cundys Harbor Road, we came to the left bend that leads to the intersection with Highway 24 from the east. When we were halfway through the turn, I saw the same group of cars and police officers that were there when I’d driven onto the island.
Stage fright sharpens your senses and slows down time. That’s what I felt the moment I saw Officer Handley raise his arm and flag us to a stop. He and his sidekick were now handling the cars exiting the island from the harbor road. Other patrolmen were stationed to interview drivers coming onto the island from the north or leaving from the south.
Handley stood on the right-hand side of the road, so Cynthia opened her window as I pulled alongside. He greeted Cynthia first, “Hello, ma’am, I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My name is Officer Edward Handley.”
“Very polite,” I thought. “That’s standard operating procedure for softening up a witness.” I stiffened just a bit and braced myself for the upcoming dialogue.
“Hello, officer,” Cynthia replied. Her voice was comfortably strong, which was an immediate relief.
Handley then looked past Cynthia and spoke to me, “Mr. Thorpe, we ran a quick background check on you after you drove through a while back. We see that you are a licensed private investigator.”
As a singer in a band I have learned to control the sound of my voice. That facility is handy in highly charged situations, like meeting exotic women or talking to the FBI. “That’s right,” I replied, delighted to hear my voice hadn’t cracked in the least. On the other hand, I was not at all delighted that the FBI was investigating me.
“Are you involved professionally at this time?” Handley asked.
“I wish,” I replied. “I haven’t had a client in months.”
Both statements held shreds of truth. I always wish I’d have a client, and, technically speaking, Cynthia and I had not yet signed a contract. I took some small comfort in this verbal deception. Handley paused for a moment to consider my response.
I tried to get a read on his inner thought processes, but like most of the agents that come out of FBI school, he was a professional stoic. Surely they had assigned their top stoics to this case. I surmised that if you put Handley on a polygraph, ask him a direct question, and have him give three separate answers—“Yes,” “No,” and “I don’t know,”—the needle would respond the same for all three. In fact, it seemed likely that the machine would not even register a pulse.
Across the intersection, a few cars were entering the island heading south, and two somewhat younger officers stepped forward on the far side of the road to interview the drivers. Handley was probably the senior officer on duty. He appeared to be the eldest of the group, perhaps in his early 50’s. I dubbed him “Stoic-in-Chief.”
“Ma’am,” he said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“By all means,” Cynthia replied in a confident, professional tone.
After the preliminaries of getting her name and personal information, he asked, “How long have you been on Sebascodegan Island?”
“I arrived on Friday evening for a weekend visit,” Cynthia replied. “A friend of mine dropped me off, and Jesse has just come to take me home.”
“Where did you stay?”
“About a mile down the road, at 92 Cundys Harbor Road, next to the Cranberryhorn Cemetery.”
“Do you own that house?”
“Oh, no,” Cynthia replied. “The house belongs to friends of our family. The Smiths are away for a few weeks and offered their home to me as a getaway. I decided to take a little time off from work.”
“Could you please tell me where you were last night at 10:30 PM?” he asked, finally getting down to brass tacks.
“Well, I went to bed around 10:00 PM and fell asleep right away.”
“Did you see or hear anything unusual?”
“Not a thing, officer,” Cynthia replied. “I’m a very sound sleeper.”
Handley gave his partner some time to record what she said, and Cynthia seized the moment to add, “When I turned on the news this morning, I heard what happened to Governor Lavoilette last night. It’s a total shock. Just a mile or so from where I was staying! I can’t believe it.” Cynthia paused a second and continued, “I’m sorry I can’t be more help, Officer Handley. I appreciate the work you are doing here.”
“We’re just doing our job, ma’am,” came the reply.
Officer Handley looked past Cynthia to me and said, “Mr. Thorpe, you and Ms. Dumais are free to go.” He pointed to my left and added, “Please take the south exit, make a sharp right back onto Highway 24 and return the way you arrived. Drive carefully. As you can see, the traffic is beginning to pick up.”
Indeed, I had noticed the traffic was picking up. In fact, I was delighted to see it. This offered some hope that the file entries bearing our names would drown in an undertow of information.
I eased away from our interview, bore left at the triangular intersection, and then made a sharp right onto Highway 24. I drove slowly through the roadblock. In about a minute, we made our escape over the small concrete bridge to the mainland.
“That was easy,” I said, with half of my tongue buried in my cheek.
“Thank God!” Cynthia replied.
We were silent for the next couple of miles. Cynthia focused straight ahead, breathing deeply. As we passed through a shopping complex, her head turned to the right, and then she said simply, “That’s where we saw Lincoln last night.”
“Excuse me,” I said. “Who’s Lincoln?”
“The movie. William and I saw the movie, Lincoln,” she replied.
I was curious about what had happened, of course, but resisted the urge to begin my own interrogation. I felt sure Cynthia was too tired to give me the full story, and I wanted to get her something to eat and let her rest. There would be plenty of time for details later.
“You must be starving,” I suggested. �
��Would you like to stop for something to eat?”
“Yes, but could we make it a drive through? I don’t want to be out in public.”
“There’s a Wild Willie’s Bakery on Maine Street,” I suggested. “I can get some take out. They have good sandwiches and salads.”
“A sandwich will be fine,” she said. “Something hearty…turkey, or chicken. Thank you so much, Jesse.”
Highway 24 turns left onto Bath Road and runs into the heart of Brunswick. It then curves right onto Maine Street. A quarter mile down the road I pulled off and found a parking place in front of Wild Willie’s. The restaurant was packed.
Cynthia stayed in the car, and I went inside. There was a long line at the counter. It was 1:30 PM, on a Sunday afternoon, a time when lots of people are hungry. As the line inched forward, I eavesdropped on the surrounding conversations. Everyone was talking about the governor’s murder. Reactions were agitated and extreme, ranging from sadness to outrage. The late governor obviously was a favorite among the local clientele.
Finally I got to the front of the line and ordered two sandwiches, one turkey and one chicken. Ten minutes later I was back at the car.
Cynthia had reclined her seat back and was resting with her right arm draped over her face. She was either taking a nap or hiding out. “Probably both,” I thought. “I have one turkey and one chicken sandwich,” I said. “Which would you like?”
“Turkey, please,” she replied, without moving her arm. “If it’s alright, can we keep driving and eat along the way? I’ll feel safer once we are on the interstate.”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s just a few miles from here.”
We passed over Route 1, where they drop the e from Maine St and make it Main St, a very subtle distinction, I thought, and one that would be hard to detect when receiving verbal directions.
We crossed the Androscoggin River, and in about five minutes we were on the interstate headed toward Augusta.
Cynthia finished half of her sandwich and curled up intent on sleeping.
“Before you nod off, Cynthia, I’d like to share something with you,” I said. “I was very impressed by how composed you were when talking to Agent Handley.”
“Thanks,” she said.
I added, “I also see you have mastered the two conversational devices for disarming adversaries in dicey situations.”
“You mean apologies and compliments?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, amused that she knew what the hell I was talking about.
“When I was taking classes to get my real estate license, the second thing they taught us was: ‘Whenever possible and appropriate, apologize to the client and top it off with a compliment,’” she said.
“Really? That’s the second thing they taught us in PI school,” I replied. “What was the first thing they taught you?”
“How to secure your commission,” she answered, smiling. “What’s the first thing they taught you?”
“A Bee Gees song,” I said.
“Huh?”
“The Bee Gees song…Stayin’ Alive,” I said. After she groaned I added, “It’s worked fairly well…so far.”
That ended our conversation. Cynthia closed her eyes. In less than a minute, she was fast asleep. She was either the sweetest young woman I’ve met in a long while, or a cold-blooded killer.
• • •
I munched my way north along 295. Quite a bit had happened in the nine hours since I rolled out of bed and onto Great Pond at 5:00 AM. The quiet drive home stirred memories of my childhood until a peculiar phrase began running through my mind.
“I used to be different. Now, I’m the same.”
That’s what my Uncle Frank used to say when I was a kid growing up in Waterville. I liked Frank, in a curious sort of way, even though I didn’t understand a word that came out of his mouth.
Whenever Frank came by, three things always happened: My dad would tell the truth, Frank would make things up as he went along, and I’d be stuck in the middle trying to figure it out. After twenty or thirty minutes of loopy dialogue, I’d be as antsy as a sidewalk crack.
Over time, however, I learned to take control of my situation. I’d say something like, “Dad, can I go to my room and do some homework?” or “Dad, I really have to pee.” That’s when he’d say, “Hold on, Jesse, your uncle is just about to leave,” which always came as news to Frank. But he knew enough to take his cue.
He’d get up slowly, fake a serious look on his face for my benefit, and punctuate his visit with, “Jesse…you know…I used to be different, but now I’m the same.”
Before I returned Cynthia Dumais’ phone call earlier that morning, everything was pretty much normal. Frank might have called it “the same.” After that, everything became completely different.
If I could travel back in time, Frank’s two-line quip would finally make some sense.
• • •
The sky had darkened in the early afternoon, and a gentle rain was falling. By the time we passed the Gardiner exit at Lewiston Road, it was pouring. The Nor’easter that had been predicted all week was arriving on schedule. It was 2:20 when we turned off Foster Road and up the driveway to my home. I was happy to see that no one was there to greet us.
When I stopped the car, Cynthia came to life. We grabbed our suitcases and dashed through the rain to the porch. Once inside, I showed Cynthia to her room and left her there to settle in. She hadn’t seen a bathroom since yesterday evening, and I was sure they wanted to get acquainted.
I dropped my bags in my bedroom and headed straight to the living room and the TV to see if there was any progress in the murder investigation. I scrolled to CNN. Wolf Blitzer was covering the “Assassination of Governor William Lavoilette.”
In a couple of minutes, Cynthia joined me. We watched anxiously to see if there were any new developments. They had some footage of the crime scene taken in the wee hours of the morning, at precisely the spot where we had encountered the roadblock. Wolf read the details that were available. The only real news—for me, at least—was that there had been a pair of witnesses. A couple lived across and down the road a few hundred feet from the intersection. They hadn’t seen the murder, but they had heard a single gunshot.
The exact spot where the murder took place is not visible from their home. A stand of trees blocks their view of the intersection. When the shot was fired, the man of the house turned on his porch light and walked down his driveway to see what was going on. At this point in the investigation, however, the authorities were not releasing any more information that the man may have provided.
CNN also noted that the governor’s wife, Rebecca, was in Africa at the time of the murder. She was wrapping up a ten-day trip to parts of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. All three countries had been ravaged by wars in recent years, and there were significant numbers of immigrants and refugees from these three countries living in the Portland area. The trip was intended to create better awareness of the problems facing these immigrants as they struggle to eke out a life away from their homeland.
Rebecca was now on a flight from Mogadishu to Boston.
The report about the assassination droned on in the usual, repetitious way, when there is nothing new to report. CNN filled the time slot with clips of the governor, reviews of his tenure, and some very thin speculation about what might have transpired the night before.
Cynthia watched for about ten minutes and then said that she needed to get some serious sleep. She looked a bit wobbly, but was holding up reasonably well. I stood up as she was about to leave the room. Unexpectedly, she stepped forward and hugged me close. Before letting go she said, “Thank you so much, Jesse. Right now I’m dazed and spinning. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I have some rest.”
“Take all the time you need, Cynthia,” I said.
She then made her way to my spare bedroom and closed the door behind her.
I was a bit wobbly myself. A week’s worth of adrenalin
e had flushed its way through my system since breakfast. There was little to do but wait for Cynthia, so I went to my room to take a nap. I figured that it would be a good idea to stay in sync with my client. Before getting onto the bed, however, I went to my dresser to check on Rhonda. She’d been hibernating since last winter. It now seemed entirely possible that she might get some exercise.
It was Eric’s idea to give my .38 Special a proper name.
7
The Harem
Eric Cochrane and I put together our first band, Mystic Notions, when we were in high school. He and I assembled our second band, Ocean Noises, shortly after I returned to Augusta from Andover.
We began playing gigs in the spring of 2005, but it took time to develop a following. Financially speaking, the first couple of years were very lean. In fact, it was almost a year before we recouped the cost of our sound system. In the meantime, I needed to supplement my income if I wanted to hold onto the farm.
I had learned some rudimentary carpentry skills during my years at Colby. I had worked for three summers at Bear Spring Camps as a handyman doing a variety of repairs on the cabins. There was plumbing, painting, electrical installations, tiling, roofing and even leveling to be done. Several of the cabins tilted noticeably each spring from the freezing of the lake and the heaving of the bank. These skills helped me secure a few construction jobs, but the work was not steady and in the winter, almost nonexistent. That’s when I got the bright idea to become a private investigator. I took the necessary courses and got my PI license.
Eric and I hung out together a lot in those days, and when I told him I needed a handgun for my new profession, he insisted on going with me to make the purchase. I wouldn’t say that Eric is a “gun nut” per se; he’s more like an all-purpose nutcase, with a specialized interest in the sundries found in pawnshops. He claimed to know a fair amount about handguns, and wanted to help me make the best possible choice. He also had his eye on a red and white Stratocaster that had recently shown up at Capitol Pawn and Jewelry on Water Street. That particular Fender guitar was very flashy. He thought it would provide us with a little more stage presence. So we drove down to Water Street to do some shopping.