Trespasser (36 page)

When my mom came home from wherever she’d gone, she looked ashen and thinner, and she hugged me so hard, I could barely breathe. In the car, riding back to our mobile home from the Coles’, she told me that she’d had an accident and was no longer pregnant.

“What happened?” I asked as the wind rushed in around my ears.

“I fell,” she said.

“What happened to the baby?”

“He’s in heaven.”

She must have stopped at the house to break the news to my father before she came to fetch me, because when we got there, the door was ajar and his truck was gone. He didn’t return for three weeks, and when he finally did, my mom announced they were getting a divorce and that the two of us were moving to the big city, which was how she always referred to Portland.

My mother was a strict Roman Catholic. She attended Mass every Sunday and still said the Rosary. It didn’t occur to me until much, much later what she’d done.

*   *   *

When I woke again in the hospital, Sarah was sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed. She was wearing Levi’s and a black turtleneck. Her lower lip was swollen, and I late discovered that she had purple-and-black bruises across her abdomen. Her hair appeared greasy for the first time I could recall, and the shadow behind her eyes was visible for any fool to see. She leaned forward and called my name, summoning me from sleep.

“Stanley Snow is dead,” she said.

My voice was still barely a croak. “Good.”

“I thought he was going to kill you. I thought he was going to kill us both.”

“Me, too.”

She came around to the side of the bed and touched my hand. “The doctor said you have a concussion but that you’re going to be OK.”

“What about you?”

“Just some cuts and bruises.” She said this while looking at my IV bottle.

I had a hard time getting the next words out. “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?”

My question startled her. Her eyes widened and she leaned back slightly, and I could see her trying to decipher how I could have discovered her secret. After a moment, she breathed out again. Ultimately, it didn’t matter how I knew.

“I was going to tell you, but you weren’t ready and—I think it was because I was afraid.”

She waited for me to answer, not knowing if I would respond with anger or with tears.

“You didn’t need to be afraid,” I said.

She didn’t speak, just squeezed my hand harder.

40

Two days later, the gentle yet hulking prison guard named Thomas escorted me into the Maine State Prison’s visiting area. I had received special permission to see a prisoner on such short notice. Once again, I had an appointment with Erland Jefferts.

When I’d called Ozzie Bell to arrange the visit, he’d been ecstatic. He’d heard the news about my fight with Stanley Snow, and although he voiced concern for my girlfriend and myself, he couldn’t suppress his giddiness. He was so upbeat, he didn’t bother asking me why I wanted to talk with Jefferts alone.

I didn’t have long to wait. The model prisoner came through the door with the biggest shit-eating grin I’d ever seen.

“My man Bowditch!” He looked neat and clean in his blue denim outfit. His wavy blond hair was wet and combed carefully back behind his ears. He surveyed my bandaged head and new sling and shook his head with amusement. “You look like half a mummy, dude.”

“Have a seat, Jefferts.”

The inmate and I faced each other across the table. He waited for me to start the conversation, but I was in no particular hurry.

“I guess I should start by thanking you,” he said. “I can’t believe it was Stanley. He was, like, the last person I ever suspected.”

I tried to remain still as I spoke. “Why was that?”

He gave me one of his patented movie star smiles. “He just seemed like this honest, hardworking type of guy. He never got too high or too low. ‘Steady Stanley,’ I used to call him. I don’t think I ever saw him drink a beer. But I guess that’s how psychopaths are—cold and calculating.”

“Some are,” I said. “But then you have killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, people who are complete alcoholics. My father was a drunk.”

He leaned back in his chair. I was certain he didn’t know what to make of my subdued manner. Maybe he figured I was sedated.

“Well, in any case,” he said, “Stanley wasn’t a drinker.”

“Do you remember the last time you saw him?”

“The dude never visited me. Not once in seven years. And he was my own cousin. But it makes sense now, in retrospect.”

I shook my head. The motion was like a flare going off inside my brainpan. “I meant the night Nikki disappeared.”

“He came out into the parking lot after Folsom tossed me out of the bar. He said I was too drunk to drive, but I told him to get lost. I guess he must have seen how wasted I was, and that was when he got the idea to pin the murder on me. It was probably when he stole the tape out of my truck, too.”

“You never mentioned in your court testimony that he was at the Harpoon.”

He brought his hands together, laying one over the other. “I was pretty wasted.”

“How do you think he found you passed out in the woods?”

“He must have followed me around that night.”

“When do you think he abducted Nikki?”

He gave a halfhearted shrug. “Good question.”

“It looks like you’ll be getting a new trial,” I said placidly.

He flashed that brilliant smile. “That’s what Ozzie says. There’s just no way they can railroad me again after what Stan did. It’s open-and-shut, man. Open-and-shut.”

“How so?”

He seemed bemused by my question. “It all makes sense now, right? At the trial, my lawyer argued that I couldn’t have killed Nikki, because she died while I was in police custody—on account of the rigor mortis evidence. Snow killed her after they arrested me, just like we always said happened. But that bitch Marshall was so hot to nail me, she denied the state’s own science. The newspapers are going to crucify her now.”

I sat there quietly.

Jefferts seemed to sense something was amiss. “Are you OK, man? You don’t look so hot.”

“No, I’m not OK,” I said. “Your accomplice just tried to kill me and my girlfriend.”

“My accomplice?” Jefferts tried to shake the accusation off by pretending he hadn’t heard me correctly. But he’d heard me all right.

“You remember the last time I was here?” I said. “I asked you what you did after you left the Harpoon that night, and you said something that struck me, but it took me a while to figure out what it was. You said you drove around and called some of your friends on your ‘CrackBerry’ to find out if there were any parties going on.”

He smiled again, but this time without showing his teeth. “I’m not following you.”

“Well, I remembered the inventory of items the police recovered from your truck. There was a lot of crap there, but no BlackBerry.”

Jefferts stared at me silently for a few moments, without expression. “I must have lost it.”

“Either that or someone stole it.”

“That’s a possibility.”

“There was another thing that had me puzzled. I read Ozzie Bell’s files, and Stanley Snow was never mentioned. All of your other cousins attended your trial or signed letters demanding that you be pardoned. Snow never did either of those things, and I wondered why.”

He adjusted his shirt collar but didn’t respond.

“The J-Team has been pretty aggressive in naming other people as potential suspects in Nikki’s murder,” I continued. “Calvin Barter, Mark Folsom, the Driskos, and half a dozen others. Why not Stanley Snow? The rigging tape used to suffocate Nikki had been exposed to salt water, so it might have come off his uncle’s lobsterboat, the
Glory B.
If your defense team was throwing darts against the wall, how come one didn’t hit your buddy Stan?”

His eyes were hooded now. “You should ask Ozzie that.”

“I asked Sheriff Baker. He said you told the J-Team to leave Stanley out of their witch-hunt.”

“Because I didn’t think he did it. He was my friend and I didn’t think he did it.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Simple as that.”

“All along, you’ve been presenting everyone with only two choices. Either you’re totally guilty or you’re totally innocent. Nobody ever considered the possibility that you might first have been complicit in Nikki’s abduction—and then later been played for a patsy by your cousin.”

Two bursts of color appeared on Jefferts’s cheeks. “Go to hell.”

I decided not to respond to the personal attack. “You did say one thing that I believed. I think you and Nikki did fool around a little. Mark Folsom said he threw you out of the bar that night because you grabbed Nikki, but I bet there was some history there. My theory is that you waited for closing time to apologize. I think that somehow you sweet-talked her into going for a ride with you.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“There’s no way Nikki would have gone anywhere with a troll like Stanley Snow.”

Beads of sweat had appeared along his forehead. “You’re just making this shit up.”

I continued my story. “You drove Nikki to your secret spot down lover’s lane, and then something happened. Maybe you tried to force yourself on her and she said no. Whatever happened, you knocked her senseless, because the coroner’s report said she had a wound on her forehead that no one could explain. She was hurt, and you panicked. That’s when you called ‘Steady Stanley’ for help.”

Jefferts restrained himself from flying across the table. “Fuck you.”

“When Snow showed up, he found you passed out from drinking a gallon of booze. Even better, Nikki was out cold, too. Here was this hot little waitress lying helpless in front of him, this stuck-up rich girl. I’m guessing it was then he realized he could rape her and pin it on you. So your good friend—the man you called for help—snatched her away and left you lying in your own puke.”

On the tabletop, his hands were balled into bony fists. “You can’t prove any of that.”

“The only evidence linking Snow to Nikki’s disappearance was the call you made to him from your phone, asking him to come help you deal with her. He needed to get rid of it. That’s why the police never found a BlackBerry in your truck.”

He settled back in his chair, composing himself. “That’s a nice story,” he said with a twitchy grin. “But I’m getting a new trial, Bowditch, and it’s all thanks to you. After Stanley killed those people, there’s no way they’ll be able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Within six months, I’m going to be out of this shithole.”

I rested my good elbow on the table and dropped my voice to a whisper. “Do you want to hear a secret? When Snow was beating the crap out of me, he did something strange. I was too fucked-up to understand what he meant at the time, but he held up his cell phone and told me it was his ‘Get Out of Jail Free card.’ What do you think he meant by that?”

“Who the fuck knows?” he asked, but I could tell he did know.

“He kept your message, Erland, from the night you called him. It’s what he’s had hanging over you all these years, the reason you never gave him up to the cops. He told you that if you ever mentioned his name to anyone, he’d just play the message, and any hope you had of ever getting out of here would go up in smoke.”

Jefferts’s mouth went slack with disbelief. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Stanley Snow dropped his BlackBerry inside my house, Erland. Whose message do you think was on it?”

*   *   *

Kathy Frost was waiting for me outside the prison. It was another dreary, misty day. A light rain had fallen near dawn, stopped for a while, and then started drizzling again. The extended forecast called for more of the same. It was mud season, after all.

My sergeant opened the door of her patrol truck for me and helped guide me inside. Then she went around to the driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“I think I scared him.”

She started the engine. “So you told him about Snow’s cell phone?”

“Yep.”

She pressed on the gas and turned the truck in the direction of the prison gate. “I don’t suppose you mentioned that there was no message on it from Erland Jefferts.”

“I didn’t say there was—not in so many words.”

“His defense will subpoena it. They’re going to find out you were lying to Jefferts.”

“By the time they do, Menario’s going to have found the actual phone with that message. Snow must have kept it somewhere safe. It was his ace in the hole in case Erland ever tried to strike a plea bargain.”

I could feel her looking at me out of her peripheral vision. “That’s high-stakes poker, Grasshopper.”

The windshield was fogging up. I reached down and hit the defroster. “It’s my ass on the line, not yours.”

She scratched her nose absently. “My question is why Snow stopped killing for seven years and then started again. He must have had other opportunities. I guess we’ll never know what really happened.”

I’d thought a lot about this question over the past forty-eight hours, trying to piece together the sequence of events that occurred the night Ashley Kim vanished. Snow had known that Hans Westergaard was secretly driving over from Bretton Woods to meet his mistress, and he must have plotted an ambush. My guess was that he’d already attacked and tied up the professor before Ashley hit her deer. Snow had probably answered the phone when she called Westergaard asking for a ride. She knew him from her visit to Maine the previous summer, knew he was her lover’s caretaker, and thought nothing of blithely getting in his pickup.

What Snow hadn’t counted on was that the Driskos would arrive at the crash scene while he was there. Dave and Donnie weren’t the sharpest tacks in the box, but even those morons could put two and two together. And so father and son embarked upon their ill-fated scheme to blackmail him.

The medical examiner had determined that Ashley Kim and Hans Westergaard died within hours of each other. Snow had evidently kept them imprisoned in the house overnight while he repeatedly violated the young woman. Had he made Westergaard watch? My gut told me he had.