by Paul Doiron
“The J-Team doesn’t care. As far as they’re concerned, these new killings just prove Nikki’s murderer is still on the loose. And your name is on their list.”
“I never committed a crime in my life.” Folsom’s muscled chest had begun to heave, and he seemed on the verge of tears. “Do you know what it’s like being called a sex killer? It nearly killed my mom to read that shit in the papers.” One of the waitresses dropped a plate, which shattered on the floor. We both watched as the cook scolded her for her clumsiness. When Folsom looked at me again, his eyes were dry. “What does it matter to you anyway?”
“I was the one who found Ashley Kim. I think there’s some connection between her death and what happened to Nikki Donnatelli.” I framed my next words with care. “Jefferts and Nikki had a sexual relationship, didn’t they?”
“That’s a lie,” Folsom sneered. “Nikki was a good girl from a good family. She wouldn’t have been interested in a scumbag like that.”
I sensed that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. “How can you be so sure?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Because I knew her, and you didn’t. I resent your talking about Nikki like she was some kind of slut.”
Interesting choice of words, I thought. But I didn’t want to provoke a fistfight with a former Marine, especially with one hand tied behind my back, so to speak. “What do you think happened to Nikki after she left work that night?”
“For seven years, I’ve been asking myself that question. Jefferts must have surprised her or something.” He pinched his nostrils as if to keep them from running and looked down at the greasy kitchen floor. “You don’t know what it’s like having people think you’re a murderer.”
“Actually, I do.”
Folsom shook his head as if I was just being agreeable and not stating an essential truth of my life. “I was having a good night tonight,” he said. “Why’d you have to come in here and fuck it all up?”
I suspected the bartender was withholding information about Erland and Nikki. But whatever Bell thought of him, Mark Folsom didn’t strike me as a man capable of raping and murdering a young woman. If anything, he seemed like a man carrying a heavy grief. I wondered if he blamed himself for Nikki’s death.
I reached for my wallet. It was then that I felt a certain lightness inside my skull. The beer seemed to be affecting me in a profound way. “What do I owe you?”
Folsom waved his hand. “Nothing. Just get the hell out of here.”
On my way out the door, I glanced over at the Driskos’ table. Father and son were alone now, laughing and backslapping as if they’d just won the lottery. The man they’d been sitting with had vanished.
Dave spotted me, nudged his son, and pointed in my direction.
I pointed back at them, making a pistol of my left hand and pulling my thumb down as if firing it.
I needed to make a detour to the rest room. I stood in front of the urinal for what seemed like half an hour, emptying my bladder.
While I was there, another guy came in and stood beside me at the next urinal. He unzipped but seemed to have a hard time getting going. When I flushed, he flushed, too, and began washing his hands at one of the sinks. We looked at each other in the dirty mirror. He was lanky, prematurely bald, and the bones in his face were very prominent, from his cheekbones to his jaw.
“You’re Stanley Snow,” I said.
“Warden Bowditch,” he said in his surprisingly high voice. “I heard you were the one who found Hans.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for doing that.” He wadded the wet paper towel in his hands into a ball. “The cops finally let us back into the house. But Jill said she can’t stand to sleep there, so she’s staying at the hotel. I think she’s going to sell the place.”
“Please give her my condolences.”
He gave me a closed-lipped smile and tossed his paper towel at the trash can. It landed on the floor instead, but he ignored it and went back out to the restaurant.
I looked at the wadded piece of paper for a moment and then stooped and retrieved it and dropped it in the trash. People’s thoughtlessness never ceased to amaze me. Then I wandered back out to the saloon.
When I passed the bar again, I noticed Folsom making a call on his cell phone. He gave me a dark glance, which raised the hairs on my neck as I stepped outside.
I met the Driskos again in the parking lot. They were both seated casually on the hood of my Jeep. How they knew it was my vehicle was a mystery.
“Warden Bowditch!” the son slurred. “It’s a surprise to see you here.”
“We didn’t figure you for a barfly,” said Dave, looking glassy-eyed and sour.
My left hand went into my jacket pocket and found the textured grip of my pistol. “Get off my Jeep.”
“Is this yours?” said Dave. They laughed simultaneously and, without even looking at each other, slid off the hood in unison.
“Dude, what happened to your hand?” asked Donnie.
“I was in an ATV accident.”
“That was you? Fuck! We heard it on the scanner. Barter’s little kid is like a vegetable or something.”
“You must feel like shit,” said his father. In the moonlight, his mustache seemed to be crawling like a black caterpillar along his upper lip.
“If you ever need an ATV lesson, you should give us a call,” Donnie added. “We can teach you how to ride better.”
These men had absolutely no fear of me. Their disrespect ate at my heart.
“Do you know what I just realized?” said Dave with sudden vehemence. “Now all three of us are on disability!”
Father and son looked at each and started to cackle.
“You boys seem happy,” I said.
“You have no idea, man,” said Dave. “You have no idea.”
“You might want to talk with the detectives sooner rather than later,” I said. “The DNA evidence I took is going to show that you swiped that deer.”
“Misdemeanor,” said Donnie with a smirk.
“That ain’t an admission of guilt by the way,” added his father.
“Well, I would expect to get a visit from Detective Menario if I were you.”
“Cops are assholes,” said Dave. Then he added with a smoke-stained smile, “Present company excluded.”
I advanced on Dave, who stood probably half a foot shorter than me. “I don’t appreciate hearing you talk that way about law-enforcement officers.”
“You’d better get out of my face,” the runt warned.
“Or what?”
“Or you’ll be sorry is what.” Donnie stepped forward to present a unified front.
I didn’t back down. “I think you boys have been lying to me from the start, and I bet you know a lot more about what happened to Ashley Kim than you’re admitting.”
“Fuck you.” Donnie made fists of his hands.
“Back off, Donnie,” I said.
His father, being older, wiser, or just less intoxicated, shoved his son. “Listen to the warden, Don.”
“The deer blood places you at the scene of the accident at the time of Ashley Kim’s disappearance,” I said. “That makes you prime suspects in her murder.”
“What about her dead professor boyfriend?” Dave gave me a sly smile. “Yeah, we heard about that. Or maybe someone else was there that night, too. You ever think of that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Figure it out, asshole.”
“If you boys know what happened to that girl-”
Disregarding my warning, Dave and Donnie sauntered toward the bar entrance.
“Have a good evening, Warden!” Dave called over his shoulder.
I bit my tongue rather than let loose with some profanity.
I thought that was the end of it. But as I was fiddling with the keys to my Jeep, one of them gave a loud shout: “Don’t drink and drive, Warden!”
Inside my vehicle, I tried to make sense of what had just gone down. For scraw
ny little men, the Driskos definitely had hog-size balls. What did Dave’s crack mean about someone else being at the crash scene the night Ashley Kim disappeared? Was he referring to the man who made the anonymous 911 call?
Trying to start the ignition, I dropped my set of keys on the floor. Sarah was absolutely correct: My judgment sucked. Driving to Seal Cove was the textbook definition of reckless. And to top it off, I hadn’t even gotten my hamburger.
I started the engine, backed carefully out, then headed back up the peninsula. After just a few minutes, I was passed by a Maine state trooper’s patrol car, a powder blue Ford Interceptor, moving in the opposite direction. The trooper continued around the piney bend behind me without decreasing speed.
A few moments later, I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw the patrol car behind me. It didn’t have its blue lights going, nor was it gaining velocity. It just tagged along at a distance of about a quarter mile, pacing me.
You think that cops spot impaired drivers primarily because drunks speed or weave across the center line, but just as often you can spot someone who is intoxicated because they are driving too slowly, overcompensating for their diminished capacities. As such, I kept close watch on the speedometer, maintaining a constant forty-five miles per hour.
But it was to no avail. As I crossed the line into Sennebec, the trooper suddenly accelerated and switched on his pursuit lights.
There was nothing else for me to do but steer carefully onto the mud shoulder and wait. The trooper pulled in behind me at an angle, as all law officers are trained to do, and paused there, reporting my tags, assessing my movements.
I decided to remove my splint. The pain was excruciating, but I thought it would look better to be driving with a blackened hand than with a splint. I retrieved my auto registration and proof of insurance from the sun visor, but I had a hard time getting my wallet out of my pants with one hand. My fingers found the Vicodin in the pocket. Quickly, I tucked the bottle under the seat.
The trooper emerged from his vehicle. Looking in my side mirror, I watched him approach closely along the side of my Jeep. He rested his right hand on his holster.
I rolled down my window.
“Can you step out of the car, please?” said Curt Hutchins.
32
I’d known it was Hutchins all along. He regularly patrolled this peninsula. The question was, had someone called him from the bar? A conviction for operating under the influence-or even its lesser cousin, driving to endanger-would mean the end of my law-enforcement career.
His voice was a monotone. “I need you to step out of the car.”
I climbed awkwardly out of the Jeep. “Jesus, Curt, is this necessary?”
“I need to see your license, registration, and proof of insurance.”
Never once making eye contact with me, he examined the papers I gave him as if he expected them to be riddled with errors. I’d forgotten how large a man he was. “How much have you been drinking, Warden?”
“Just a beer.”
The trooper was exuding anger from every pore. “What are you taking for the broken hand?”
“Ibuprofen.” At that moment, I remembered the loaded Walther in my pocket and my heart skipped a few beats. As a game warden, I had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but I was obliged to disclose that I was carrying. More important, I was prohibited from packing a gun while consuming alcohol or certain prescription medications.
I decided to keep mum.
In the process of handing the papers back to me, Hutchins deliberately dropped them in the mud. It’s a trick we all use. Lack of coordination is another marker of intoxication. To secure a conviction, you needed probable cause to do a Breathalyzer or blood test. I bent down awkwardly and gathered them.
“So what do you want to do first, the nystagmus test?” I asked, figuring my only way out of this mess was to be bolder than he expected.
He stared out from beneath the crisp brim of his trooper’s hat. He appeared drawn and tired. There was a patch of stubble on his throat that he’d missed when shaving. He didn’t respond.
“Or do you want me to recite the alphabet,” I continued. “Which way-forward or backward?”
A white pickup sped past, the driver slowing down to see what we were doing. I glanced at Hutchins’s cruiser and figured he had the video camera on his dashboard rolling. To a prosecutor, a tape showing a drunk trying, and failing, to walk a straight line was like money in the bank.
“I’d cut the wiseass shit if I were you,” he said in a flat tone.
“I know what’s going down here. You’re hounding me because you’re pissed about that night at the Westergaard house.”
“You think so, huh?”
“Your career is in the shitter because of Ashley Kim, and you’re guessing this is your chance to flush me down with you.”
“You really don’t know when to shut up, do you?”
“People tell me that.”
He peered into the front and back of my Jeep, looking for God only knew what. I wondered if he would search the vehicle; he would be within his rights to do so. He circled the Jeep, and then without a word, he returned to his cruiser, leaving me standing there along the side of the road to wait and worry.
My mind was racing. So what would happen after he busted me? He’d take me to the Knox County Jail for a blood test. Then would come the mug shots and fingerprinting. I’d have to call Sarah to bail me out. The union might be able to protect me until a guilty verdict came in-if it came in-but how long would that take? In the meantime, Colonel Harkavy would find some excuse to fire me. It wasn’t like I was the beloved mascot of the Maine Warden Service.
I was fucked, in other words. Maybe Sarah was right about self-destructiveness being hardwired into the Bowditch genes. And now, for all I knew, she might be bringing another generation of us boneheads into the world.
Hutchins climbed back out of his Ford, fastened the chin strap on his hat again, and came striding in my direction.
“Go home,” he said.
“What?”
“Get the fuck out of here.” His mouth became a sneer. “I think you’re probably impaired, and I could give you some field sobriety tests. Maybe you’d fail the blood test for real. But if you didn’t, it would look like I’m harassing you. And you’re right: My career is in the shitter anyhow. Busting you isn’t going to help me with Internal Affairs. So get in your car and drive home… slowly.”
I was speechless.
“Get in your car, Bowditch. Go home.”
Before he could change his mind, I slid back behind the wheel of my Jeep. And then, driving five miles under the speed limit and wondering the whole time if he was toying with me, I steered a course for home.
Hutchins followed me the entire way, stopping finally beneath the copse of white pines at the top of my muddy driveway. Sarah’s car was parked in the dooryard. Beside it was a bright yellow Volkswagen. What is Reverend Davies doing here? I wondered. I fastened my splint back on, gritting my teeth against the pain, then pulled the sling out of the glove compartment and arranged it around my right shoulder. I glanced in the rearview mirror. The blue Ford was still parked at the edge of the drive. Stiffly, I climbed out of my Jeep.
I opened the door, to find my girlfriend seated on the sofa beside Deb Davies. Sarah was in her pajamas. Her eyes were wet when they fastened on me.
She jumped to her feet. “Mike! Where the hell were you?”
“I got held up.”
“Hello, Michael,” said Davies. She wasn’t sporting her uniform or clerical collar. She was wearing jeans, a fuzzy purple sweater, and her signature eyeglasses. She rose more slowly.
“Reverend,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“She came to see you,” said Sarah.
Davies’s forehead was creased with worry. “Sergeant Frost told me about Professor Westergaard.”
I wriggled free of my coat and hung it on a peg beside the door. The coat was heavy from the Walt
her pistol still hidden in the pocket. “Did Kathy and Pluto find that lost girl?” I asked with affected casualness.
“Yes,” Davies said. “The little girl is all right.”
“Kathy’s been trying to call you,” said Sarah. “We all have.”
“I didn’t receive any messages.” I stuck my hand in my pants pocket, but the cell phone wasn’t there. Nor was it in my wool coat when I checked. “I must have left it out in the Jeep.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been driving with a broken hand,” Sarah said.
“I managed all right.” Then I sat down on the bench and began to tug ineffectually at my boots.
Sarah watched me struggling for a while and then came over to help pull them off. As she leaned close to me, her nose twitched. “Have you been drinking?”
“I had a beer with dinner.”
She covered her eyes with her small hand. “Are you crazy? Mike, you’re taking Vicodin. What the hell is happening to you?”
“I’m fine,” I insisted.
“You’re not fine!”
I went to the front window and parted the curtains. Hutchins’s cruiser was still parked there. What was he waiting for?
Sarah peeked over my shoulder. “What are you looking at?”
I turned to block her view. “I should have told you I was going to see Erland Jefferts,” I said. “I shouldn’t have been driving with a broken hand. I shouldn’t have stopped for a beer.”
“That’s it? That’s your apology?”
“Perhaps I should go,” said Davies. “Please feel free to call me-either of you.”
“Thank you, Reverend.” Sarah opened the door for her.
I peered outside at the top of the hill. It was hard to see from the light spilling out into the dark trees. Hutchins’s cruiser was no longer there.
“Take care,” said Deb Davies. I sensed that she was speaking to my girlfriend, not me.
“Good night,” I said.
After she closed the door, Sarah spun around. “I am so mad at you, I can’t even think straight.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.