“What do you mean, they disturbed the crime scene?”
“I guess we should explain what happened,” Charley offered.
“Now would be the time,” said the detective.
I left it to Charley to tell the tale, figuring Menario hated my guts already, so what was the use? The detective listened with arms crossed, occasionally asking a curt question to clarify a point, sometimes sighing audibly in disgust. He appeared to me like a man with a terminal case of constipation.
After Charley had concluded, the detective fell silent. Then, out of the blue, he said to me, “What did you do to your arm?”
Blood was dripping to the ground, but I felt no pain whatsoever. “Oh, I cut it on the glass door.”
Menario scowled. “We’re going to need samples from both of you,” he said. “Blood, hair, fiber, DNA, boot prints. The evidence-recovery techs will take those at the jail. Tomorrow, we’re going to need you to go through the video we shoot of the house, so we know exactly which rooms you fucked up.” He turned his basilisk gaze on me. “We’re impounding your truck, in case you carried any contaminants from it indoors.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Signed statements. And keep your mouth shut about what you saw here until I say otherwise.”
A deputy stepped out of the shadows. “The caretaker’s here.”
“Let him through,” the sheriff replied.
The deputy brought over a very tall, very thin man with small eyes and a bony face. He was wearing a black watch cap pulled over his ears, a dark peacoat, oil-stained work pants, and heavy rubber boots. I thought I recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t recall the circumstances of our meeting.
“This is Stanley Snow,” said the deputy.
Menario measured the man from head to toe, as if trying to guess his exact height. (I would have estimated six-five.) “You’re the caretaker?”
“Yes, I am.” Snow had a higher-pitched voice than I would have expected, given the acne-scarred roughness of his features. “Can you tell me what’s happened here? I was asleep when your dispatcher called.”
“When was the last time you spoke with Hans Westergaard?”
“He called three days ago and asked me to get the house ready.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“Make sure the driveway was plowed and sanded. Check the pipes and furnace.” He smiled in a way that suggested the answer should have been self-evident to anyone. “Hans or Jill always call me before they drive up from Massachusetts.”
“By Jill, you mean Mrs. Westergaard.”
“Yes.”
“Did he say he’d be bringing anyone with him?”
“No.”
“How did he sound to you?”
Snow cocked his head, as if he was having a hard time hearing Menario clearly. “I don’t understand the question.”
“You didn’t notice anything unusual in the tone of his voice? He didn’t say something that struck you as out of the ordinary?”
“No,” the lanky man said. “We only spoke for a few minutes. He asked how my winter was going-it was just small talk-and then told me he was coming up for a couple of days and needed the house to be ready.”
“When was the last time you visited the house?”
“Three days ago, like I said.”
I’d been listening to the interrogation with a growing sense of impatience. When was Menario going to cut to the chase? “Do you know a woman named Ashley Kim?” I asked point-blank.
Because he had no neck to speak of, Menario had to turn his entire body to fix me with a reprimanding glare. I think he’d been so focused on grilling the caretaker that he’d forgotten all about us. My unwelcome question had broken that spell.
“I don’t think so,” Stanley Snow said in answer to my question.
Menario raised his hand like a traffic cop signaling a car to halt. “Hang on a second, Mr. Snow. Sheriff, can you arrange for the wardens to get a ride to the sheriff’s office to give their statements? Their presence here is no longer required.”
11
The office of the Knox County sheriff is located in the same building as the jail, down the end of an obscure road near the sulfurous Rockland city dump. The deputy who drove us there, Skip Morrison, was a friendly acquaintance of mine, a freckle-faced beanpole prone to chattering. Charley rode in the passenger seat, while I was stuck in back, where the doors had childproof locks.
“So it looks like Westergaard is the perp,” said Skip, speaking loudly over his shoulder.
“I think it’s too soon to say that with certainty,” Charley said.
I realized that my old friend was technically correct. The circumstances appeared damning for Hans Westergaard, but at this point, who could say where the evidence might lead?
Skip was not persuaded. “I’ll give you odds right now that Westergaard’s our guy. In these things, it’s always the boyfriend.”
In spite of my better judgment, I found myself siding with Skip.
At the jail, a state police evidence tech made us change into orange jumpsuits and slippers while he bagged our clothing and shoes. My forearm was still bleeding, so I found a first-aid kit, rinsed the wound under the bathroom faucet, and wrapped it tightly with a gauze bandage.
The state had our fingerprints on file, but the technician drew my blood, swabbed my tongue, and carefully plucked several hairs from my head. Then we were given access to computers so that we could type in our statements. Menario and his detectives would certainly question us about these documents, and AAG Marshall would need to sign off on them, as well. I felt a ponderous responsibility to choose my words carefully.
At the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, we’d been taught to fill out incident reports with short declarative sentences. Don’t elaborate. Don’t hypothesize. Just stick to the facts.
But what, exactly, were the facts of my involvement in this murder investigation? How was I to explain my daylong infatuation with the missing woman? Or my itchy mistrust of Hutchins?
When I reached the section in the report where I was supposed to describe my discovery of the body, my fingers hovered over the keyboard. The image of Ashley’s naked body, bound with rigging tape, cruelly sliced, and defiled by that disgusting profanity made me nauseous. Why the hell would Westergaard torture her that way? And why leave her corpse in his own bedroom? Was he trying to make it look like the act of a random psychopath? Under the fluorescent lights of the patrol office, my head began to ache. The hour was too late for so many questions.
I became aware of someone standing at my shoulder.
It was Sheriff Baker. His L.L. Bean parka was folded over his arm, and I saw that he was wearing a pressed oxford-cloth shirt tucked into pleated chinos. His hair was wet and freshly parted. He looked neater than any man should look at three in the morning.
“Can I have a word with you, Mike?” he asked. “If you’re done with your statement.”
From across the room, Charley raised his red-rimmed eyes at me without expression.
I followed the sheriff into his office. The dull walls were adorned with plaques and awards bearing the names of various fraternal and community service organizations. The air smelled of furniture polish: a lemon/beeswax aroma.
“Have a seat.”
He moved a pen from the stand beside his blotter and began turning it in his nubby fingers. “We’re going to want you to come back here tomorrow morning to look at some videos of the house.”
“That’s what Detective Menario said.”
The sheriff continued: “I put a call in to your division commander earlier to inform him of your involvement in the investigation. He said he’ll be in touch with you.” His chair gave a squeak as he repositioned his oversize rear end. “I didn’t realize you’ve only been a warden for such a short time. Lieutenant Malcomb thinks you have real potential.”