by Paul Doiron
Before we were permitted into the visitation room, a stern-faced guard with the long torso of a weasel ran down the visitation rules with us. “There shall be no profane or loud language. Nothing may be passed between the visitor and prisoner. The hands of the prisoner and visitor must be visible at all times. The visitor and the prisoner may embrace or kiss briefly at the beginning and end of the visit. Prisoners and visitors may hold hands during the remainder of the visit. Visitors are not allowed to use the rest room in the visit area unless it is an emergency or undue hardship. Visitors are encouraged to use the rest room prior to their visit. Prisoners are not allowed toilet privileges during their visit under any conditions.”
I tried to picture the circumstances under which I might want to kiss Erland Jefferts, but my imagination failed me.
A tall guard with coffee-colored skin and hands the size of bird-eating tarantulas then escorted us into the visitation room. He greeted my companion with what appeared to be genuine affection. “How are you doing today, Mr. Bell?”
“I am well, Thomas. And you?”
“It’s good to see the sun.”
“You and I are fortunate to see the sun! The men in here are not so lucky.”
“Them’s the choices they made.”
“Not all of them, Thomas. Not Erland Jefferts.”
The towering guard laughed as he showed us to Visit Booth 2. “So you keep telling me, Mr. Bell.”
After he’d gone, Bell leaned close to me. “I call him ‘Doubting Thomas.’ He’s not a thug like some of the others. That skinny man outside—Tolman—he’s a thug. But Thomas is not too bright, either, and he’s very young. All the experienced guards, the ones with smarts, they know Erland is innocent.”
So Sheriff Baker had told me.
The protocol was for Bell and me to sit on the same side of a table—every item in the room was bolted to the floor—while the guards went to fetch Jefferts. The long wait gave Bell a chance to return to his dissertation on rigor mortis.
“I think you’re missing the important point about the time of death,” he said in his smoke-strained voice. “Maybe you didn’t have a chance to read the trial testimony in full, so I don’t blame you. Danica Marshall—I call her ‘the Black Widow’—is an expert prosecutor. She builds her cases very methodically, like spinning a web. I wasn’t present for Erland’s trial, but I’ve watched her in action since I joined the J-Team. I wanted to study her approach the way an entomologist studies a spider.”
“A spider is an arachnid,” I said.
Either he didn’t hear me or he didn’t find the correction worthy of acknowledgment.
“The Black Widow leaves nothing to chance. She studies every scrap of evidence and coaches each witness for the prosecution. She uses her looks, too, but that’s neither here nor there. I suspect she was raped as a young woman. That would explain her hatred of men.”
I kept my eyes on the door through which they would soon be bringing the prisoner. Bell and his relentless lectures had begun to annoy me.
He continued anyway: “In every murder trial, the prosecutor asks the medical examiner, ‘Based on your examination, at what time did death occur?’ And the ME specifies between which hours it might have taken place. The prosecutor wants to prove to the jury that the victim died at a certain hour, when the defendant had an opportunity to commit the crime. But the Black Widow didn’t do that! She asked Kitteridge if he had reached a conclusion about when death occurred, and he said, ‘Probably thirty hours or more.’ Why be so fuzzy? Because she knew Erland couldn’t have murdered Nikki, and she wanted to confuse the jurors.”
“What would be the point in her railroading an innocent man?”
“You are a game warden, so perhaps you feel a certain loyalty to the prosecution. But you are intelligent and open-minded. I know you attended Colby College. You see, I have studied you, too.” Was I supposed to feel flattered or stalked? “And you must admit that there are times when the cops fixate on a suspect too quickly. They know in their bones that so-and-so is guilty, but they don’t have the evidence to convict. What happens then? If they are professionals, they keep investigating until they find the evidence. Or they admit they are wrong and begin looking at other suspects. But not all detectives and prosecutors are so scrupulous. Some are lazy, like Winchenback and Marshall, who just decide that Erland Jefferts is guilty, and then do everything within their powers to convict him—even by withholding evidence and misleading the jury.”
It was at this stage of his diatribe that I’d begun to wonder whether coming to the prison had been such a smart move on my part. Then the doors slid open and the guard whom Bell called Doubting Thomas emerged. He was leading by the arm a handsome blond-haired man in a light blue work shirt and jeans.
“Erland!” Bell exclaimed, rising to his feet.
27
The two men did not kiss, but Bell did wrap one heck of a bear hug around the prisoner.
“It’s always good to see you, Ozzie,” said Jefferts, taking a seat across from us. He seemed slightly shorter in real life, but his eyes were an aqueous blue and the strong jawline was familiar to me from the GQ photo shoot.
Bell waved his arm like a magician gesturing at an empty cabinet from which his assistant has just vanished. “Allow me to introduce Warden Michael Bowditch. He’s read your case file and would like to assist us in getting you a new trial.”
I put my functional hand on Bell’s arm to slow him down. “That’s not entirely accurate. But I did want to meet you.”
“I don’t get many visitors.” He had a lobsterman’s accent—not as strong as his aunt’s—but it branded him as a native Mainer. “What happened to your hand?”
“I broke it.”
“That sucks.” He settled back in his chair and made unblinking eye contact with me. “I recognize your name. When your old man was on the run, it was all over the TV. We get to watch the news sometimes. But mostly they try to keep us ignorant in here.”
“Erland is the exception,” Bell interjected. “He has used this opportunity to better himself. He’s learned more about Maine law than half the attorneys in the state. I bet he could pass the bar on the first try.”
I held my tongue. It’s an old cop trick. People don’t like speechless intervals. Keep your mouth shut, and eventually they begin to babble. I wanted to see if my silence unnerved the convicted killer.
Erland Jefferts stared right back at me with a canny smile.
“So you must have questions for Erland,” Ozzie Bell blurted out.
“Just one,” I said. “Did you kill Nikki Donnatelli?”
“No.”
There was no hesitation, not a twitch around the mouth or a blinking of the eyes. Jefferts was either telling the truth or he had convinced himself of a lie he’d told repeatedly over seven years. The third alternative was that he was a stone-cold psychopath.
“So who killed her, then?” I asked.
He began to pick with his fingernail at something in his teeth. “I thought you had only one question.”
“I lied.”
He smiled broadly. “Here I thought cops always told the truth.”
“Sadly, we know that’s not the case,” said Bell.
“So who killed her?” I repeated.
“Hell, man, it could have been lots of guys. Didn’t Ozzie show you his list of local perverts? At the moment, I’d look at that Westergaard guy if I were you. He’s still missing, right? Have you checked out his whereabouts seven years ago?”
I leaned back and rested my splint on the table. “I’m guessing you have someone else in mind, though. Someone other than Professor Westergaard, since his name isn’t in Ozzie’s files.”
Jefferts let his eyes go blank. He had no intention of answering me.
Bell jumped into the conversation. “Erland is not required to do the police’s job. The defense only needs to suggest that other individuals had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime. And our affidavits
do that.”
I tried circling around for an unobstructed shot. “What happened at the Harpoon Bar? Why did Folsom throw you out?”
“Because I was flirting with Nikki.” His hard tone told me he was still carrying a grudge. “Folsom didn’t like it because he wanted to bang her himself.”
“Describe Nikki to me.”
“She was a spoiled little cock tease. We made out in my truck a few times—which is why they found her hairs and clothing fibers in it—but she wouldn’t let me touch her between the legs. Not at first. She said she had a boyfriend in Italy.” He laughed. “You think I’m incriminating myself by saying that we fooled around a little.”
He was right that the admission had thrown me for a loop. Was this apparent candor a ploy to win me over? “Tell me what happened after you left the bar.”
“I didn’t see Nikki again.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
A pink flush rose along his pale throat and spread across his cheeks. “I’ve been interrogated about this a thousand times before, you know.”
I could feel waves of nervousness rippling off Bell beside me. This wasn’t how he’d expected our conversation to go. “Mike, I don’t follow your line of questioning here.”
“I’d like to hear Erland’s version of what he did that night.”
“I’ll answer his questions.” The rosiness drained from Jefferts’s face as quickly as it had appeared. “I drove around awhile, called some buddies on my CrackBerry to see what was going on. There was this house party out on Graffam Point. I hung out there for a while, had a few drinks, got a blow job in the bathroom.”
This was news to me. “From who?”
“Some drunk chick, a college girl from out of town. The next thing I remember is being on the road again, and I’m starting to feel sick. So I pull down this dirt road—it’s that one with the big tree with all the initials carved in it—and I start throwing up. I guess I passed out after that.”
“So you have no memory of what happened next?”
“No.”
Was it any wonder the jury had doubted him? Alcoholic amnesia didn’t make for a convincing alibi. I couldn’t figure out Jefferts’s game here. Was he so sure the forensic evidence exonerated him that it didn’t matter how guilty he looked?
“What’s the next thing you remember?” I asked.
“I woke up and some deputy had his flashlight shining in my eyes. I didn’t even recognize him as that turd Guffey. Pretty soon, other cops started showing up, and I’m talking to this prick Winchenback. He wants to know the last time I saw Nikki Donnatelli. And I’m thinking, Nikki? What the fuck? I’m still buzzed, for Christ’s sake. I’m scared shitless that the cops are going to bust me for OUI. It doesn’t even occur to me that this dick thinks I abducted her—that’s how wasted I am.”
“Winchenback claimed you confessed to having done something to Nikki.”
For the first time, Jefferts’s voice rose in anger. “That’s bullshit! What he asked was if I might know where she was. And I said, ‘Yeah,’ because I thought I might have seen her at that party. And then suddenly he’s putting me in handcuffs, like I just confessed to killing her.” Jefferts appealed to Bell. “You showed this guy the forensic stuff, right, Ozzie? The state’s own evidence proves I was in police custody when some motherfucker raped and killed her.”
Bell nodded emphatically. “Yes, I shared all the files with Mike. He knows abut the rigor mortis evidence.” He turned to me again. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the prosecutorial tenor of this conversation. I thought we were in agreement that Erland was wrongly convicted.”
Jefferts leaned back in his chair. “Something tells me the warden doesn’t care about my guilt or innocence.”
“You’d be right on that score,” I said. “What I care about is a girl named Ashley Kim.”
He motioned at the cement walls. “I got an airtight alibi on that one, Warden.”
He had me there. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jefferts knew some telling detail he refused to disclose. “Tell me about your relationship with Dave and Donnie Drisko.”
“They’re assholes.”
“And Calvin Barter.”
“Ditto.”
“Did you ever buy drugs from him?”
Like a ventriloquist, he barely moved his mouth when he spoke. “No comment.”
Ozzie Bell put both of his palms down on the table, fingers spread wide. “You shouldn’t answer any more of his questions.”
But Erland Jefferts was beginning to enjoy himself. Laugh lines showed around his handsome eyes, and the corners of his mouth curled. “I know what’s going on here,” he said. “Warden Bowditch has a problem, and he wants me to solve it for him.”
“Really?” I said.
“You think I murdered Nikki Donnatelli because you’re a cop, and you refuse to believe your buddies shafted me for no good reason. But if I’m guilty as charged, then how is it possible the Oriental chick was killed in the exact same way as Nikki?” He paused for a time, studying my deadpan expression as if it were a Rorschach test. “Unfortunately, I was locked up here last week, so unless I’m the great Houdini, it wasn’t me that did it. That means it must have been the same guy who killed Nikki. But you don’t want to buy that theory because it proves the attorney general’s office screwed me over.”
I felt blood warming my cheeks as he spoke, not just because he was correct in his analysis—Bell was right about Jefferts’s intelligence—but because I’d come here intending to see through his bullshit. Instead, he’d seen through mine.
“I could offer a few other possibilities,” I said bitterly. “Maybe you told one of your cell mates about how you killed Nikki, and now he’s on the outside continuing your handiwork. Or maybe you had an accomplice seven years ago, and he’s still at large. For all I know, it was a whack job from the J-Team who was willing to kill another girl on your behalf to win your release.”
Bell sprang to his feet. “I resent that! I resent that!”
Jefferts, however, remained seated, with his hands folded on his swelling belly and a darkening expression. “Just because your old man was a killer doesn’t mean I’m guilty. You can try to convince yourself of that, Mike, but you and I both know it ain’t true. So thanks for coming in here and wasting my time.”
I stood up. “Get used to it. The rest of your life is going to be a waste of time.”
“Fuck you, too.”
Bell pinched my shoulder and called out to whoever was waiting for us to finish. “We’re done here! We’re done!”
* * *
Bell waited until we were outside the prison walls to fully lay into me: “You brought me here under false pretenses!” he said. “I’m ashamed of you, sir. Deeply ashamed.”
“Calm down, Ozzie.”
Driving down the hill from the prison, I noticed patches of greening grass amid the expanses of brown on the southern slopes. We tend to think of spring as a time of rebirth. But this lawn had never truly been dead. I wasn’t sure why that realization came to mind, but it did.
At the gas station, I pulled in beside Bell’s microscopic Nissan and idled the engine as he got out. “Clearly you are no friend to Erland Jefferts,” he huffed. “I’m extremely disappointed in you, Warden Bowditch. I thought you were a better man than this. The truth is going to come out, and when it does, your guilty conscience will haunt you for the rest of your life. Good-bye!”
I watched the old reporter climb into his Matchbox car and back hurriedly out of his parking spot, nearly sideswiping a gas pump. What I hadn’t told Bell was that being haunted by my conscience would hardly be a new experience.
It was only after he’d sped away that I realized I’d forgotten to return his files. The office box was still in the cargo bed of my Jeep. Sooner or later, the J-Team would want them.
I sat behind the steering wheel, trying to decide what to do next. I was afraid to check my cell phone, in case Sarah had left a message. How wo
uld I ever explain to her my escapade at the Maine State Prison with Oswald Bell?
I felt depressed and depleted. Overhead, I watched billowy clouds, a sign of an approaching fair-weather system, crawling eastward out to sea. Along Route 1, the heaped snowbanks were crusted with a litter-strewn layer of grime: a winter’s worth of sand pushed up into dirty, frozen walls.
I decided to go inside the gas station and buy a cup of coffee.
When I opened the Jeep’s door, I smelled a pungent odor on the breeze. Somewhere nearby, a vehicle had recently flattened a skunk. I thought of this unfortunate animal that had hibernated peacefully through blizzards and ice storms, safe and secure from harm. It had returned to life on a glorious spring night, shaken off five months’ worth of slumber, and ventured out in search of earthworms and fresh grass in which to dig for them. Heedless, it waddled out onto a belt of asphalt. Then wham! Death arrived at sixty miles per hour.
28
As I drank my coffee—too bitter from the pot—I played back my conversation with Erland Jefferts. I had assumed there was no direct link between the murder of Nikki Donnatelli and what had happened to Ashley Kim, that it was all just misdirection and sleight of hand. Hans Westergaard was a Harvard professor and a genius. He undoubtedly knew the tangled story of Erland Jefferts. What better plan for killing your mistress than to smother her in a way designed to mimic the notorious Seal Cove scandal? But if that had been his intention, why had he disappeared? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to call the cops himself, saying he’d just arrived at his summer house and stumbled upon a bloodbath. Maybe Westergaard had started down that road but lost his nerve.
Was there a chance Erland Jefferts really had been railroaded? I didn’t want to believe it.
So what was the connection between these two homicides? Jefferts had dropped a comment that surprised me, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Something offhand.