“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.