by Paul Doiron
I’d had enough of Hiram Reed. “If you’re concerned about being entrapped or misquoted, I can video our conversation.”
Hiram Reed would not be mollified. “Recordings can be edited, Natty.”
Pillsbury placed one of his strong hands on his friend’s shoulder. “I’ll be OK, bud,” he said in a voice that couldn’t hide his sadness for Hiram’s wretched condition. “You know I can take care of myself, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’ll catch up with you tonight at the Trap.”
Reed’s eyes gleamed, and when he spoke it was with great emotion. “I will always have your back, Natty. You know that. Don’t you?”
“You don’t even need to say it, bud.”
Hiram Reed sighed hard enough for me to smell the booze on his breath from ten feet away. He collected his two unopened cans of beer and gave me a parting glare as he made his way unsteadily up the hill in the direction of the fogbound airfield.
* * *
Pillsbury didn’t invite me inside his residence. Instead he directed me toward a shed of gray planks that served as his workshop. Coils of multicolored line were piled everywhere. The shelves held cans of antifouling paint for the bottom of his boat and DayGlo Filter Ray for his buoys (blaze orange was, unsurprisingly, the hunter’s signature color). Hand tools such as hammers and hacksaws hung on the walls, while longer implements—including shovels, spades, and a scythe the grim reaper would have coveted—were crammed together in a rain barrel like so many umbrellas in a stand.
Steam rose from a water-filled bucket atop a potbellied stove. The air was astringent with pine-scented woodsmoke.
“Have a seat,” he said over his shoulder.
There was, conspicuously, no place for either of us to sit.
Pillsbury plunged his dirty hands into the steaming bucket. He rubbed the scalding water around his long, tanned neck. He shock his head like a wet dog, and droplets flew from his hair and sizzled off the stovepipe.
“I had heard that you were the island constable once, Mr. Pillsbury.”
“For four years.” Nat Pillsbury smiled. He had the sharpest canine teeth I’d ever seen. “But I was never a real cop. No more than Andy Radcliffe is.”
I gave Nat my standard spiel about how it was in his best interest for me to record our conversation.
He waited silently for me to ready my iPhone. Then he said, without preamble: “So I was fucking her. I admit it. What else do you want to know?”
“We’re talking about Miranda Evans?”
“If that’s what you say her real name was. She told me it was Ariel. I used to call her the Little Mermaid. So the chick who got off the boat this morning was her sister? And she didn’t know anything about what her sister was doing here or how she died? Jesus. She must have pissed herself.”
“Not exactly. Ariel Evans is tougher than she appears.”
“Then they were similar in that regard. The two sisters.”
On a sawhorse was a mug of old coffee with a whitish scrim along the surface. Pillsbury drank it down as if it were freshly brewed.
“How did you and Miranda meet?”
“I help out Jenny with the maintenance on her rentals. Ariel—sorry, Miranda—had problems with her hot-water heater. But it was just that the pilot had gone out when I replaced the tanks. She had knocked back half a bottle of wine by the time I got there. She offered me a beer. Twenty minutes later I had her bent over the kitchen table.”
He wanted to throw me off balance. “There’s no point in trying to shock me, Mr. Pillsbury.”
He set the empty mug down. “I can see that.”
“Not speaking ill of the dead is also a fine practice.”
He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned his ass against the workbench. “She wouldn’t have given a shit about what I just said. Besides, how are you going to find out what happened if you expect everyone to sugarcoat their words? It seems to me you’d want the complete truth.”
“So you would describe your relationship as purely sexual?”
Now it was his turn to bristle. “I didn’t say that.”
“The way you described that initial encounter—”
“Just because a woman doesn’t have hang-ups doesn’t make her a whore!”
True enough. “When did your wife find out that you were having sex with Miranda Evans?”
He had an easy, unforced laugh. “You think Jenny shot her? My wife has never so much as touched a gun in her life. She’s terrified of them. It was how her dad died. Drunk, cleaning a fucking Luger pistol he thought was empty. Not that it matters. Jenny has about thirty alibis from yesterday. It was her morning behind the counter at Graffam’s.”
“You didn’t answer my question about when she found out about your affair.”
“Affair,” he grunted. “I never thought of it that way. But whatever. If you’d asked me yesterday, I would have said Jenny didn’t have a clue.”
“I’ve heard that you and Miranda were pretty public at the Trap House. You arranged for her to drink with you there. You didn’t think your wife would find out?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I was letting my dick do all the thinking. I have that problem. Me and most men on the planet.”
His answers came quickly, but not so fast that they seemed to have been prepared in advance. His gaze was steady and level. His body was loose and relaxed.
“What about you? What were you doing yesterday morning when Miranda Evans was shot?”
His lips curled, and he showed me those healthy canines again. “I was hunting. I thought we’d established that already.”
“Hunting alone?”
“Always.”
“Where?”
“East side of the island, up in the big spruces above the marsh. That’s where the big bucks go before the rut. The only bucks you see in the orchard are little spikes. From your questions, it’s clear that you think Miranda wasn’t shot by accident. You think she was murdered.”
Once again Pillsbury had me against the ropes. “I received a list from my supervisor of everyone on Maquoit who possesses a valid hunting license. Your name isn’t on the list.”
“Then it sounds like you should write me up for hunting without a license.”
“When all of this is over, I intend to do so. What kind of gun did you use to shoot that deer?”
“My dad’s thirty-aught-six.”
“Do you mind showing it to me?”
He gestured toward a corner where an enormous piece of plywood rested against a tool bench. He flipped the plywood away to reveal a gun safe. I was somewhat surprised to see it. He hadn’t struck me as someone who would own one.
He must have seen the question behind my eyes. “It was Jen’s condition after she got pregnant. She didn’t want our kid to be able to get at the guns in my armory. Besides, there are people on this island who will steal you blind when you’re inshore.”
“Even when you’re the constable?”
Again with the wolfish grin. “Especially when you’re the constable.”
The safe looked heavy and expensive. It had a three-handled dial. He turned the dial right, then left, then right. I heard a mechanical click, and the heavy door swung open. Inside were two rifles, a .22 caliber Marlin Model 60 and a well-used .30-06 caliber Savage Model 99. There was a shotgun: a Mossberg Mariner 500 with the antirust barrel and the synthetic pistol grip. There were three handguns: a Smith & Wesson .45 caliber Governor Revolver, a 9mm Glock G26, and a .32 caliber Bersa Thunder.
“These are all the guns you own?”
“Yep.”
“Nothing in your nightstand or your bedroom closet?”
“What caliber round was she shot with?”
“I’m not allowed to say. It’s an open investigation.”
“But it was a deer rifle presumably.”
He handed me the Savage. The wooden stock was smooth where it had been handled over the years. The barrel smelled of bore solvent
and oil. He had cleaned the gun after he’d dressed his deer. That one action told me a lot about Nat Pillsbury. I disdained gun owners who didn’t respect their firearms. Strange as it might sound, I felt a certain kinship with him in that moment.
I checked the action to be sure he hadn’t stored the rifle loaded. The chamber was clear.
He set the deer rifle back inside the gun safe, closed the door, and spun the dial. “You’re welcome to examine any of these at the state police lab. As long as you return them to me cleaned.”
Until I found a slug, there would be no point in performing ballistic tests. “When was the last time you saw Miranda Evans?”
“Three nights ago at Gull Cottage. I told her I was ready to leave Jenny and the baby for her. All she had to do was say the word, I said.”
What kind of man would leave his wife and child to run away with a woman he’d just met? And how might he have reacted if she rebuffed him? Or worse, laughed at his puppy-dog proposal?
“How did Miranda react to your offer?”
“She said she wanted to have sex. She said we could talk about it after. We never did.”
“You didn’t see her at all the day before she died?”
“I was working on my boat in the harbor from dawn to dusk. Kenneth Crowley was with me the whole time. I came home and had supper with Jenny. I was home all night. The next morning, I went hunting alone like I said. I didn’t kill Ariel—sorry—I didn’t kill Miranda Evans. Do you want me to repeat that for the record?”
“No, I got it.”
“I have no idea who killed her.”
“You keep answering questions I’m not asking.”
“I don’t know about you, but my time is valuable. I hate to waste it.”
“Have you spoken with your wife in the past few hours?”
“No. Why?”
“Because she was met by detectives at the terminal on Mount Desert Island when the ferry arrived.”
His anger was like the explosion of a bomb I hadn’t realized was in the room. One second he was calm and loose. The next, his hands had become clubs and his face was a war mask.
“What the hell for?” he all but shouted.
“Because she didn’t disclose that her husband was the man sleeping with her tenant. Because you were contemplating running off with Miranda. Because that gave your wife a motive to kill her.”
He whipped the empty coffee mug against a wall, where it broke into shards.
“Hiram was right. You guys are assholes. If you want to continue this conversation, you’d better arrest me. If you want to search my house, you’d better come back with a warrant. In the meantime, you can get the hell off my property.”
25
The FBI’s recommended method for interrogating a suspect goes by the dubious acronym PEACE. The letters stand for Preparation and Planning, Engage and Explain, Account, Closure, and Evaluate. Ariel had already called me out for my lack of preparation and planning. The rest I’d made a muddle of. Now I left Pillsbury’s house with plenty to evaluate.
I had failed one of the first commandments I’d been taught as a cadet at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy: never let a confrontation get personal. You do that and you surrender all of your authority as a police officer. It’s not just for your sake either. The last thing society needs are thin-skinned cops patrolling the streets who are scared for their lives. Even in experienced veterans, adrenaline can become a lethal drug. Lethal for the person not wearing a badge.
I would listen to my recorded conversation again before I sent it to DeFord and Klesko. Hearing their legitimate criticisms would be easier, I hoped, if I had already identified every time I’d been knocked for a loop by one of Pillsbury’s verbal punches.
On a whim I decided to go searching for Hiram Reed. As Nat’s best friend, he warranted a conversation. His feral temper would likely prove an impediment. As would his double-digit blood-alcohol content. But Hiram was a weaker man than his father, and when you’re splitting wood, you always aim for the crack.
The last time I’d seen the harbormaster’s son, he’d been staggering uphill, away from the village. The airstrip was fogged-in and useless. So where had he been headed?
The Datsun’s engine complained all the way up the incline. The exhaust coughed. Various belts squealed like piglets. I began to wonder if the truck was suffering delayed side effects from the collision with the deer.
I was about to abandon my fool’s errand when I caught sight of a beer can in the roadside weeds. I continued on slowly, concerned that in the impenetrable mist I might roll over the drunken man, passed out across the road.
The fog hung suspended three feet off the ground, too heavy to rise, too light to fall. But in my low beams I could make out the weaving trail Hiram had left as he continued east toward destinations unknown. Soon I’d passed the limp orange wind sock that marked one end of the airstrip.
On the far side of the field was a tall cone of gravel that might have been the leavings of monster-movie ants. In fact, I had come upon the headquarters of the island roadworks. A yellow snowplow, soon to be reattached to someone’s truck, waited for winter in the weeds beside a sand shed.
There were deep ruts between the gravel pile and the shed. Some of the tire prints had been made that morning, since they were filled with latte-colored water. Older, undisturbed puddles would have shown clear.
I paused to survey Maquoit’s impressive Public Works Department. As I eased the brake down, I heard an engine start up behind the shed. I shoved the gas pedal to the floor, but by the time I had rounded the pile of gravel, all I saw was a single red taillight disappearing behind swirling gray vapors.
I called out my open window, “I know you’re here, Hiram.”
No response.
“This is Warden Bowditch. I am not joking around. Get your ass out here where I can see you.”
Hiram Reed poked his head out from behind the sand shed. “How’d you find me?” he slurred.
“I followed your tracks from your friend’s house. Some people leave a trail of bread crumbs. You left a trail of beer cans.”
He emerged into the open with his hands dug into the pockets of his Levi’s jacket. His thick hair had lost its considerable volume under the weight of all the dampness. His wet, wrinkled face was as white as a frog’s belly.
It is my practice not to converse with intoxicated people. I don’t like to subject myself to their inanities, lies, and repetitions. The only exceptions I make are potential suspects or witnesses. This mind-set must sound unethical to many civilians, but I don’t know a single cop who will stop drunks from talking themselves into trouble.
“Who were you meeting up here?”
“Who said I was meeting with anyone? Besides, it’s none of your business.”
“I saw the truck peel out, Hiram.”
He removed his left hand from his pocket but kept the other one wedged in tight. He had something hidden in there. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”
The fog was becoming a light drizzle. “You’re soaked to the skin. How about I give you a lift into town?”
With one hand he tried raising his collar against the precipitation, but it kept flapping down. “Yeah, right. ‘Hey, little girl, you should get out of the rain. How about a ride in this nice windowless van of mine.’ Thanks, but no thanks.”
“It’s not every day someone compares me to a pedophile.” I realized I needed to change my approach. “You were right about your friend Nat, by the way. It would have been better for him if you’d stuck around.”
His face fell. “What did he say?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”
“You son of a bitch. What did he tell you? He had nothing to do with that slut’s death.”
I glanced into my rearview mirror and shifted into reverse. Through the open window, I said, “Whatever you say, Mr. Reed. Enjoy the walk home.”
My words goaded him into action. He loped toward my vehicle, on
e fist still wedged in his coat, the other making a desperate grasp for the handle of the passenger door. I hit the brake to let him climb in.
“Christ!” he said, surveying the shattered windshield. “What did you do to Blackington’s truck?”
“Hit a deer. You have an overpopulation problem out here.”
“Gee. You think?” His breath was humid with hops and barley.
I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other recording him.
“I don’t suppose you hunt?” I asked as I turned the truck toward the village.
“Used to,” he said warily. “Not for a long time.”
“Do you still own a deer rifle?”
He seemed to realize his mistake in admitting to having been a hunter. Somewhere under those glazed pupils and frazzled nerve endings was an intelligent human being.
“I sold it.”
“To who?”
“A guy over on Frenchboro.”
“What kind of gun was it?”
“I don’t even remember.”
This was a particularly poor lie. I had never met a single gun owner who couldn’t tell you what make and model firearm he owned or had owned.
“What about ammo? No boxes lying about gathering dust in your cellar?”
“Why would I have held on to bullets I couldn’t use?
“People forget things.”
He snapped his head around. “I wasn’t out hunting yesterday morning.”
“What were you up to?”
“I was sleeping off a long night. I ain’t exactly an early riser. Ask my old man.”
“That must be a problem, come lobstering season.”
“I manage.”
“Which boat is yours?”
“The Nennie.”
I remembered the craft because of its exceptional state of disrepair: a thirty-foot Sisu. Single engine. Canopy splattered with guano as if Jackson Pollock painted with gull shit. Bottom slimed with algae and crusted with mussels. The season opened in less than a month, and Hiram Reed’s boat didn’t look remotely seaworthy.
“Are you going to be ready to go on Trap Day?”