by Paul Doiron
They let me ramble with minimal interruptions until this point.
“Let’s return to Trooper Hutchins,” said Danica. “You said he arrived at the accident scene approximately fifteen minutes after you.”
“I wasn’t looking at my watch, but that sounds about right.”
“Did he tell you why he was delayed?”
“Something about bad spark plugs.”
“Did you believe him?”
The question took me by surprise. So did my answer. “No.”
“Why not?” asked Menario.
I craned my neck around to meet his gaze. “It just seemed like an odd excuse.”
Why were they asking me about Hutchins? Was there an inconsistency in his statement? Maybe they were already laying the groundwork for an internal affairs investigation.
The muscular detective radiated heat like a pizza oven. “Hutchins says you were in a real hurry to get out of there.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. He told me it was a state police matter and that I should go home.”
“But you didn’t stick around to help him look for the girl.”
“I’d already done so before he arrived. It’s in my statement.”
“You walked up and down the road.” His tone suggested he considered my actions inadequate.
“How would you describe your relationship with Trooper Hutchins?” Danica’s eyes had grown opaque.
“We don’t have a relationship. I’ve only met him a few times.”
Menario gave me a blast of stale coffee breath. “You don’t like him, do you?”
“I have no opinion of him,” I replied, lying.
“Did you or did you not have an altercation with Trooper Hutchins last night?” asked Danica.
“I wouldn’t call it that. We were outside the Westergaard house, waiting for backup. I was angry, and he sort of pushed me.”
“Why were you angry?”
“He’d told me at the accident scene that he would assume responsibility for finding Ashley. He didn’t do squat. As a result, she ended up raped and murdered.”
“So you blame him?”
“Yes, I blame him-and myself.” I made an impatient gesture with my hands and looked squarely at the prosecutor. “I should never have gone home that night. I knew something was wrong.”
The detective and the prosecutor regarded each other over my head. My T-shirt was damp under the arms and down the back, from where I’d been leaning against the chair.
“Will you excuse us for a moment?” asked Danica.
With that, the two of them left the room. I rubbed my mouth and chin. Why had I confessed to feeling guilty over my conduct on the night of Ashley Kim’s disappearance? Was I intent on making myself a scapegoat, too? It must have been that stupid sermon Deb Davies gave me.
After several long moments, the door swung open and the detective and prosecutor returned. They brought with them a gray-eyed, gray-haired, gray-faced man who introduced himself as Detective Atwood of the Knox County sheriff’s department. He then parked himself in a corner and never spoke another word during the remainder of my time in that room.
“We’re going to play a video,” Danica said pleasantly.
“We want you to show us where you trashed the crime scene,” explained Menario.
This time, I didn’t rise to the bait.
Menario tried to run the video machine but quickly became exasperated by its unwillingness to bend to his command. A deputy was brought in to steer us through the house.
We started outside the building and moved carefully up the walkway, just as Charley and I had done the night before. At the front door, I indicated the place where my footprints left the steps and forged off through mud and snow around the corner of the house. Detective Menario scribbled furiously into a notebook as I narrated. The video tech had spent a lot of time photographing the broken window where I’d busted in-the broken glass shining from the carpet, and a few specks of what must have been blood from my arm. Each spot had been numbered and marked by an arrow, with a ruler beside it for scale. We lingered awhile in the kitchen, zooming in on the knife block with its missing blade, before proceeding upstairs. I couldn’t help but think of a cheap horror movie, the shaky camera stalking the hall as if from the killer’s point of view.
The images of Ashley Kim were even more gruesome than my memories. I found myself focusing on details I had missed-the frayed and bloody edge of the rigging tape over her mouth, the uneven depths of the letters inscribed into her pale flesh, the rawness of her genitals. I told the detective and the prosecutor how the body had been positioned when I discovered it and how I had turned the corpse over to read the word scrawled into her skin.
“We found your fingerprints on her shoulder,” said Menario.
“Did you find any others?”
“Your role here is as a material witness,” explained Danica. “We can’t share information about what we’ve discovered without undermining your usefulness to us when this case goes to trial.”
So I was being frozen out of the hunt for the murderer. I should have expected as much. Still, my curiosity was such that I couldn’t keep myself from making one last attempt. “I heard the medical examiner estimated the time of death to be yesterday afternoon.”
“Those results are preliminary,” said Menario without thinking.
Danica Marshall turned her blue death ray on him. “The medical examiner has issued no findings, so whatever you heard is gossip.” She gave me a tight smile. “I wouldn’t put any stock in it.”
“People are going to talk,” I said. “It’s inevitable in this town.”
The deputy-a young guy with acne scars and pale, watery eyes-smirked. I was glad I was amusing someone. As I glanced about the room, I became aware of Detective Atwood again, hanging silently in the background like Hamlet’s dead father.
“Well, you’d better not talk,” said Menario. “I’m not shitting around, Bowditch. You keep your mouth shut about what you saw in that house. That means no talking to the press. It means no talking with your girlfriend. Understand?”
Again, Danica interjected: “As a law officer, you appreciate that principle, I’m sure.”
I tilted back in my chair. I felt that I had a certain leverage. “Has Ashley’s family been notified?”
“That’s not your concern,” said the detective.
“What about Westergaard. Have you found the professor yet?”
“No comment.”
“What if Mrs. Westergaard calls me?”
Menario glanced at a sheet of paper in his hand. “According to your statement, you didn’t speak with Mrs. Westergaard. Charley Stevens did.”
Danica intervened. “If you are contacted by Mrs. Westergaard-or anyone else-you should just refer them to Detective Menario or the state police public-information officer. Does that clarify things?”
“Yes.”
“The early hours of an investigation like this are absolutely critical,” Danica said, lecturing me. “We need everyone to be on the same team if we’re going to find the monster who killed Ashley.”
“In other words, I don’t want you and Charley Stevens going off the reservation again,” Menario snapped.
“Would you use that expression if Detective Soctomah was in the room?”
Menario’s supervisor was a Passamaquoddy Indian who’d grown up on sovereign tribal lands in easternmost Maine.
“Fuck you.”
The prosecutor rose to her feet. “Enough with the testosterone. We’re finished here.”
There was just one more lingering question on my mind. “I understand that there are similarities between this killing and the Erland Jefferts case.”
When I spoke that name, a look came over Danica Marshall that startled me. Her eyes hardened and her mouth drew taut. It was as if all the glamour had been sucked out of her, leaving her own death mask where her face had been. “There are no similarities between these killings,” she said. “And if you
go around saying there are, you will be very sorry. Do I make myself clear?”
Both Menario and the evidence tech visibly shared my surprise at her transformation. Even ghostly, expressionless Atwood shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Say it.”
“I never heard of Erland Jefferts.”
“Now take your truck and go.”
But as it turned out, I was going to have trouble keeping my promises. After I left the training room, I paused outside the reception window and checked my cell phone for messages. There were two. I had expected to hear from Sarah, but neither of the voice mails was from her. Instead, I had a call from Lieutenant Malcomb, asking me to report in once I’d finished at the jail.
The second message was a curveball. The caller was a woman who identified herself as Lou Bates. “I represent a group called the J-Team,” she said in one of the thickest Down East accents I’d ever heard. “We’ve learned that an Oriental girl got killed last night in Seal Cove and you discovered the body. It is our belief that you might have information that would exonerate my nephew, Erland Jefferts, of the wrongful accusation and conviction against him. I would very much appreciate a callback at your immediate and absolute convenience.”
Now, how in the hell did this woman find me? I wondered. The local constabulary wasn’t known for having the tightest lips around, and I was fairly certain MaryBeth Fickett had been working the phones all morning. In a small town, gossip travels literally at the speed of sound. But who would have connected me with this so-called J-Team?
I was puzzling over this phenomenon when I felt a hard tap on the shoulder. Behind me stood a blond woman I’d never seen before.
“Warden Bowditch? I’m Jill Westergaard.”
16
She was tall, with high breasts that seemed too big for her narrow hips. Her blond hair was held back from her forehead by sunglasses that she had pushed up there for that purpose. There was no hint of a wrinkle on that forehead. She had large brown eyes that were red around the edges, as if she’d been up all night drinking or crying, or both. She wore a khaki raincoat over a high-throated brown sweater that hid her neck from view. Her chocolate-colored slacks were tucked into L.L. Bean boots. If I had to guess, I would have put her age somewhere in the late fifties, although she was doing everything in her power to tell the world she was actually a decade younger than that.
“Mrs. Westergaard, I can’t talk with you.”
She ignored my statement. “Warden Stevens told me I could find you here. He said you were the one who found Ashley.”
Of course Charley had told her where I’d be. That troublemaking old coot liked nothing better than to stir the pot.
“Do the detectives know you’re here?” I asked.
“I just drove up from Cambridge.”
Greater Boston was a four- or five-hour car ride from Seal Cove, depending on the season and the time of day. With her husband missing, and seemingly guilty of a violent crime, I could understand her wanting to be at the center of the action, although I doubted the investigators would open her house anytime soon.
I glanced through the locked door that led back to the sheriff’s office. “Mrs. Westergaard-”
“Jill,” she said.
“I really can’t talk with you. This is a murder investigation, and I’m a material witness.”
Her large eyes got even larger, but her forehead remained placid. “Please.”
“I’m sorry.”
I tried to step around her, but she reached out and grabbed my sleeve, not with any force, but just pinching the fabric of my uniform. The timidity of the gesture made me pause.
“We can talk outside,” she whispered.
“It’s not that,” I said. “I’m bound by my oath not to interfere in an open investigation.”
“Hans didn’t do this terrible thing.”
“Mrs. Westergaard-”
“He couldn’t have done it,” she said in a tremulous voice.
The desperation in her eyes provoked a strange emotion in me. I’m not sure how to describe the feeling except to say that it wasn’t sadness or pity; it was more like empathy. From my own experience, I knew how love can blind a person to certain vicious truths.
“Please,” she said again. “I need your help.”
In Jill Westergaard’s mind, she was the only person who could convince the police of her fugitive husband’s innocence. What would this poor woman do when they finally caught him and he confessed to every last bloody detail?
“I’ll meet you outside,” I said.
After she had left, I tied and retied the laces of my boots, thinking that what I was about to do was stupid and reckless. And yet I felt impressed by the nobility of my intentions. I might not be able to persuade Jill Westergaard of anything, but she would remember our conversation with gratitude.
She was waiting for me in the parking lot, wearing her sunglasses now and leaning against the hood of a sand-colored Range Rover, as if she might topple over without its support. The tone of the vehicle perfectly complemented her hair. This woman considers all her decisions very carefully, I realized.
She beeped open the SUV’s doors. With a quick backward glance at the jail, I climbed into the passenger seat. The interior of the vehicle still smelled of the automobile showroom. But there was a musky hint of perfume, too.
Jill Westergaard swiveled around to face me. “I need to know what you saw.”
The demand took me by surprise. I had expected her to continue her defense of her husband’s innocence, with me in the role of truth-hardened counselor. With her sunglasses down, I felt that she had me at a disadvantage. Given the immobility of her brow, I could read her expression only in the movement of her mouth.
“Mrs. Westergaard, I can’t tell you that.”
“No one will.”
So at least Charley had been mum on that point. “It’s a crime scene,” I said, trying to explain.
“But it’s my house. ”
I leaned back against the cold window. “I know this must be extremely difficult.”
She shook her head, so that her long hair swayed. “You don’t understand. I designed that house. I’m an architect. I put my entire soul into its creation.”
MaryBeth Fickett hadn’t told me that detail. I’d been left with the impression that Jill Westergaard was just another rich bitch from Boston who kept changing her mind about the specifications of her dream home.
“You really need to speak with the detectives,” I said. “It would be inappropriate for me to tell you what we discovered.”
“But you broke inside my home.”
“We had to.”
“Why? I don’t understand what you expected to find.”
This was a question for which I actually had no good answer. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”
She let out a wounded-sounding sigh.
We sat quietly for the better part of a minute. I realized that I could hear her labored breathing.
“Hans didn’t do this terrible thing,” she said, using the same words she’d uttered inside the jail.
“If you know where your husband is, you owe it to him to tell the detectives.”
“But he didn’t do it. I know Hans.”
“Then you knew he was coming up here.”
“He often came to Maine to work if he needed to focus.”
“So why did you tell Charley he was missing?”
She wrapped her left arm around the leather steering wheel. “I’d expected Hans to call me earlier from the conference. I wasn’t suggesting anything sinister. He’s brilliant, and he can be a bit spacey at times. He was a chess prodigy in Copenhagen. He beat a Russian grand master when he was twelve! I’m sure he just forgot to call me. I was a little worried, but if I’d known that using that word would lead to people suspecting him of murder…”
She left the sentence unfinished. I could see her mind already building a house of cards.
“Did you know he was arranging a liaison with Ashley Kim?”
I didn’t mean the question to come out so pointedly, but she winced and shrank back against the steering wheel.
When she spoke again, it was with iron certainty. “Hans wasn’t having an affair with Ashley.”
“Then what was she doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
Her naivete made me feel compassionate toward her again. She seemed once again like a wife under an impossible delusion and less like a woman used to getting her way regardless of the circumstances.
“Your husband’s research assistant was murdered in his home, and now he’s disappeared,” I said in as gentle a tone as I could manage. “You have to see how that’s going to make him a suspect.”
“Never in a million years would Hans have an affair with Ashley.”
I exhaled. “Mrs. Westergaard-”
“Let me tell you about Ashley,” she said, showing her teeth. “She was a funny girl. Hans said she drew political cartoons for the Yale Daily News when she was an undergraduate. We had her up here last summer, and I enjoyed her company. When she had anything to drink, her speech got surprisingly profane. You would never have guessed it, given what a little mouse she was normally.”
“She was attractive,” I ventured.
She flicked her fingers at me, and I noticed that her manicured nails were painted maroon. “She was a nerd. You know how some of those Asian kids are.” She caught herself. “She had no social life, no social skills. She was extremely intelligent, and she could be witty, yes, but there is no way that Hans would ever have desired her. There was nothing remotely sexual about the girl! He would never have chosen Ashley Kim over me, for God’s sake.”
It was no surprise that she was vain or that she was in denial about her age. The Botox, the breast implants (those things couldn’t possibly have been real), the care she took managing every aspect of her appearance-somewhere beneath that elaborate facade lived a secret fear. Was it any wonder that she was deluding herself about her husband’s extracurricular activities and maybe about his capacity for violence?