“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 scrawny 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.