“What’s the next thing you remember?” I asked.
“I woke up and some deputy had his flashlight shining in my eyes. I didn’t even recognize him as that turd Guffey. Pretty soon, other cops started showing up, and I’m talking to this prick Winchenback. He wants to know the last time I saw Nikki Donnatelli. And I’m thinking, Nikki? What the fuck? I’m still buzzed, for Christ’s sake. I’m scared shitless that the cops are going to bust me for OUI. It doesn’t even occur to me that this dick thinks I abducted her-that’s how wasted I am.”
“Winchenback claimed you confessed to having done something to Nikki.”
For the first time, Jefferts’s voice rose in anger. “That’s bullshit! What he asked was if I might know where she was. And I said, ‘Yeah,’ because I thought I might have seen her at that party. And then suddenly he’s putting me in handcuffs, like I just confessed to killing her.” Jefferts appealed to Bell. “You showed this guy the forensic stuff, right, Ozzie? The state’s own evidence proves I was in police custody when some motherfucker raped and killed her.”
Bell nodded emphatically. “Yes, I shared all the files with Mike. He knows abut the rigor mortis evidence.” He turned to me again. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the prosecutorial tenor of this conversation. I thought we were in agreement that Erland was wrongly convicted.”
Jefferts leaned back in his chair. “Something tells me the warden doesn’t care about my guilt or innocence.”
“You’d be right on that score,” I said. “What I care about is a girl named Ashley Kim.”
He motioned at the cement walls. “I got an airtight alibi on that one, Warden.”
He had me there. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jefferts knew some telling detail he refused to disclose. “Tell me about your relationship with Dave and Donnie Drisko.”
“They’re assholes.”
“And Calvin Barter.”
“Ditto.”
“Did you ever buy drugs from him?”
Like a ventriloquist, he barely moved his mouth when he spoke. “No comment.”
Ozzie Bell put both of his palms down on the table, fingers spread wide. “You shouldn’t answer any more of his questions.”
But Erland Jefferts was beginning to enjoy himself. Laugh lines showed around his handsome eyes, and the corners of his mouth curled. “I know what’s going on here,” he said. “Warden Bowditch has a problem, and he wants me to solve it for him.”
“Really?” I said.
“You think I murdered Nikki Donnatelli because you’re a cop, and you refuse to believe your buddies shafted me for no good reason. But if I’m guilty as charged, then how is it possible the Oriental chick was killed in the exact same way as Nikki?” He paused for a time, studying my deadpan expression as if it were a Rorschach test. “Unfortunately, I was locked up here last week, so unless I’m the great Houdini, it wasn’t me that did it. That means it must have been the same guy who killed Nikki. But you don’t want to buy that theory because it proves the attorney general’s office screwed me over.”
I felt blood warming my cheeks as he spoke, not just because he was correct in his analysis-Bell was right about Jefferts’s intelligence-but because I’d come here intending to see through his bullshit. Instead, he’d seen through mine.
“I could offer a few other possibilities,” I said bitterly. “Maybe you told one of your cell mates about how you killed Nikki, and now he’s on the outside continuing your handiwork. Or maybe you had an accomplice seven years ago, and he’s still at large. For all I know, it was a whack job from the J-Team who was willing to kill another girl on your behalf to win your release.”
Bell sprang to his feet. “I resent that! I resent that!”
Jefferts, however, remained seated, with his hands folded on his swelling belly and a darkening expression. “Just because your old man was a killer doesn’t mean I’m guilty. You can try to convince yourself of that, Mike, but you and I both know it ain’t true. So thanks for coming in here and wasting my time.”
I stood up. “Get used to it. The rest of your life is going to be a waste of time.”
“Fuck you, too.”
Bell pinched my shoulder and called out to whoever was waiting for us to finish. “We’re done here! We’re done!”
Bell waited until we were outside the prison walls to fully lay into me: “You brought me here under false pretenses!” he said. “I’m ashamed of you, sir. Deeply ashamed.”
“Calm down, Ozzie.”
Driving down the hill from the prison, I noticed patches of greening grass amid the expanses of brown on the southern slopes. We tend to think of spring as a time of rebirth. But this lawn had never truly been dead. I wasn’t sure why that realization came to mind, but it did.
At the gas station, I pulled in beside Bell’s microscopic Nissan and idled the engine as he got out. “Clearly you are no friend to Erland Jefferts,” he huffed. “I’m extremely disappointed in you, Warden Bowditch. I thought you were a better man than this. The truth is going to come out, and when it does, your guilty conscience will haunt you for the rest of your life. Good-bye!”
I watched the old reporter climb into his Matchbox car and back hurriedly out of his parking spot, nearly sideswiping a gas pump. What I hadn’t told Bell was that being haunted by my conscience would hardly be a new experience.
It was only after he’d sped away that I realized I’d forgotten to return his files. The office box was still in the cargo bed of my Jeep. Sooner or later, the J-Team would want them.
I sat behind the steering wheel, trying to decide what to do next. I was afraid to check my cell phone, in case Sarah had left a message. How would I ever explain to her my escapade at the Maine State Prison with Oswald Bell?
I felt depressed and depleted. Overhead, I watched billowy clouds, a sign of an approaching fair-weather system, crawling eastward out to sea. Along Route 1, the heaped snowbanks were crusted with a litter-strewn layer of grime: a winter’s worth of sand pushed up into dirty, frozen walls.
I decided to go inside the gas station and buy a cup of coffee.
When I opened the Jeep’s door, I smelled a pungent odor on the breeze. Somewhere nearby, a vehicle had recently flattened a skunk. I thought of this unfortunate animal that had hibernated peacefully through blizzards and ice storms, safe and secure from harm. It had returned to life on a glorious spring night, shaken off five months’ worth of slumber, and ventured out in search of earthworms and fresh grass in which to dig for them. Heedless, it waddled out onto a belt of asphalt. Then wham! Death arrived at sixty miles per hour.
28
As I drank my coffee-too bitter from the pot-I played back my conversation with Erland Jefferts. I had assumed there was no direct link between the murder of Nikki Donnatelli and what had happened to Ashley Kim, that it was all just misdirection and sleight of hand. Hans Westergaard was a Harvard professor and a genius. He undoubtedly knew the tangled story of Erland Jefferts. What better plan for killing your mistress than to smother her in a way designed to mimic the notorious Seal Cove scandal? But if that had been his intention, why had he disappeared? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to call the cops himself, saying he’d just arrived at his summer house and stumbled upon a bloodbath. Maybe Westergaard had started down that road but lost his nerve.
Was there a chance Erland Jefferts really had been railroaded? I didn’t want to believe it.
So what was the connection between these two homicides? Jefferts had dropped a comment that surprised me, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Something offhand.
The thought of waiting at home for Sarah depressed me. It was a relief to feel some sunlight refracted through the windshield after two days wasted on the sofa. I’d already put my head on the chopping block by visiting the prison. Why not poke around a bit more?