They’d been drinking with someone that night at the bar, a bald man who’d kept his back to the darkened room. Stanley Snow was bald, and I’d run into him in the rest room. I’d also just passed his speeding truck hours earlier on my way home from Parker Point.
Snow had keys to the Westergaard house. But what motive would he have had to kill his employer and rape and murder an innocent young woman? As a local boy, he would have known the particulars of Nikki Donnatelli’s death well enough to copy it. In all the reading I’d done about Erland Jefferts, I realized, the caretaker’s name had never come up. He was just about the only guy in Seal Cove whom the J-Team hadn’t added to its list of potential predators. That seemed odd in and of itself.
God, I was driving myself crazy with questions, especially when the likelihood was that Dave or Donnie had just passed out with a smoldering cigarette.
My friend Deputy Skip Morrison had shown up in his Dodge Charger to direct traffic away from the fire. But there was no traffic to direct on the dead-end road, so instead he had wandered up the hill to watch the firemen hose down the burned-out shell of the trailer.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I heard the call on the radio.”
“I thought you were on leave.”
“I am.”
He shook his head at me and chuckled. “So much for the Driskos.”
“Did you hear if anyone found any trace of their dog? They owned a pretty vicious pit bull.”
“Guffey said he saw a crispy critter inside.”
“That’s weird. Dave told me she never went indoors.
“Maybe he made an exception occasionally.”
“I think they were afraid of her. I was afraid of her.”
“Well, it sounds like she perished in the fire. Wherever Dave and Donnie are at the moment, I’m guessing it’s just as hot as where they left.”
I spotted Hank Varnum standing in a circle of volunteer firemen, some of whom I recognized and some of whom I didn’t. They were rolling up their heavy hoses, but they didn’t seem in any rush. “Excuse me for a second, Skip,” I said. “Hey, Hank!”
The tall grocer had ashes in his whiskers. He stuck a long finger out in the direction of my splint. “I heard you crashed your ATV chasing Barter. How’s your hand doing?”
“It’s all right.”
“If that kid dies, that son of a bitch should be tried for manslaughter.”
“He’s already facing a slew of charges, including child endangerment and felony OUI.”
“What about the damage he did to my trees? How is he going to make restitution for cutting down those oaks?”
“Calvin Barter is going to jail, Hank,” I said, beginning to feel exasperated with his abiding anger. “And his son suffered a potentially fatal head injury.”
“I was sorry to hear about the boy,” he said, not sounding particularly sorry to my ears. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“I wondered if you could point out Dane Guffey to me.”
“Over there.” He indicated a man sitting on a stump, apart from the others. Guffey had removed his helmet but was having trouble tugging off one of his boots. Even from a distance, I knew I’d never seen the man before. He was a chunky guy with a weak chin and a forehead that extended beyond the peak of his skull. He was the spitting image of his old man.
I left Hank and walked through the black streams flowing from the charred mobile home down the hill. “Guffey?”
His cheeks were sooty and a strong smell of smoke came floating off his body. He was panting as if he’d just run a marathon. “Yeah?”
“I’m Mike Bowditch.”
He narrowed his eyes and spat on the ground. The spittle was black. “You’re the warden who came to my house last night. My dad gave me your card. He said you wanted to talk with me. What for?”
I chose not to answer his question. “I admire what you did back there. Going inside that burning building alone like that.”
“Tell the chief,” he said in a smoke-parched voice. “Milton says the internal attack team can’t go into the structure until he’s on the scene. So now I’m in the doghouse.”
“Why did you do it?”
He finally got his boot loose. He tossed it on the wet ground and pulled a rubber gardening shoe onto his stockinged foot. “I knew Dave and Donnie were inside. Their vehicles were out front. And those guys never walked anywhere they could ride.”
I tried to make my next question sound natural. “How did you know so much about them?”
“As you know, I live just down the hill. Are you ever going to tell me why you came to my house last night?”
“I met Erland Jefferts yesterday,” I said point-blank.
He didn’t roll his eyes, but his expression revealed the depths of his annoyance. “That’s one subject I’m done talking about.”
“I just have a few questions.”
“Well, I’m not going to answer them.”
“It has to do with that so-called murder-suicide on Parker Point. You must have heard about it.”
“I heard about it,” he said. “What does it have to do with me?”
“There were similarities to the Donnatelli killing.”
“So?”
His indifference to the death of two people shocked me. “You used to be a deputy, Guffey. The state police are trying to catch a murderer.”
“Yeah, I used to be a deputy. For about eight months.” He stood up from the stump he’d been sitting on, and I realized that I’d underestimated his size. He was much taller and a hell of a lot heavier than I was.
“It doesn’t bother you to think a man might get away with murder?” I said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ask your friends on the J-Team. While you’re at it, tell them to stop slandering me in the newspapers.”
“They’re not my friends. And maybe if you stopped lying about Jefferts, they’d get off your back.”
My jujitsu must have worked, because he poked me hard in the ribs. “Everything I put in my report was the truth. I can’t be held responsible for what Winchenback said.”
“What did he say?”
He ran his tongue across his teeth and spit again, but nothing much came out.
I repeated the question. “What did Winchenback say?”
Guffey began gathering his turnout gear and stuffed it into its oversize bag. Over his shoulder he muttered, “I told you I’m done talking about it.”
“Where can I find Detective Winchenback, then? I’ll ask him myself.”
He gave a snorty laugh. It reminded me of the sound a neighing mule makes. “Sennebec Cemetery. Six feet under. Cancer of the tongue, ironically.”
“So Winchenback lied in his testimony,” I said.
“I never said that.”
“But it’s why you quit the sheriff’s department.” It was a wild guess, but I knew instantly from the way his back muscles tensed that I was correct.
Guffey threw his turnout bag on top of a pile of planks in the bed of his pickup. “I quit for a bunch of reasons, and they’re none of your fucking business. What do you care about my life anyway?”
“I care because I was the one who found that dead girl, and I want to nail the bastard who raped and smothered her.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I don’t think you’re as cynical as you pretend to be.” Hadn’t Sheriff Baker said almost those exact words to me a few days ago?
“I’m going home now.” Evidently, Guffey was as jaundiced as he seemed. He reached for the truck door handle.
I felt my opportunity to learn something from him slipping away. Anger and desperation caused me to grab the top of the door as he slid behind the wheel. “I don’t know what happened to make you curl up inside a shell. But if this psychopath kills another person, you’ll have blood on your hands.”
He yanked the door closed so hard, I had to snatch my hand away to avoid having my fingers amputated. “Go fuck yourself,” he said through the window.
I had to shout to be heard above his revving engine. “You think Winchenback and Marshall railroaded Erland Jefferts, don’t you? You think someone else might have killed Nikki Donnatelli and planted evidence to incriminate Jefferts.”