Paul Doiron - Trespasser

MaryBeth Fickett hadn’t told me that detail. I’d been left with the impression that Jill Westergaard was just another rich bitch from Boston who kept changing her mind about the specifications of her dream home.

“You really need to speak with the detectives,” I said. “It would be inappropriate for me to tell you what we discovered.”

“But you broke inside my home.”

“We had to.”

“Why? I don’t understand what you expected to find.”

This was a question for which I actually had no good answer. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

She let out a wounded-sounding sigh.

We sat quietly for the better part of a minute. I realized that I could hear her labored breathing.

“Hans didn’t do this terrible thing,” she said, using the same words she’d uttered inside the jail.

“If you know where your husband is, you owe it to him to tell the detectives.”

“But he didn’t do it. I know Hans.”

“Then you knew he was coming up here.”

“He often came to Maine to work if he needed to focus.”

“So why did you tell Charley he was missing?”

She wrapped her left arm around the leather steering wheel. “I’d expected Hans to call me earlier from the conference. I wasn’t suggesting anything sinister. He’s brilliant, and he can be a bit spacey at times. He was a chess prodigy in Copenhagen. He beat a Russian grand master when he was twelve! I’m sure he just forgot to call me. I was a little worried, but if I’d known that using that word would lead to people suspecting him of murder…”

She left the sentence unfinished. I could see her mind already building a house of cards.

“Did you know he was arranging a liaison with Ashley Kim?”

I didn’t mean the question to come out so pointedly, but she winced and shrank back against the steering wheel.

When she spoke again, it was with iron certainty. “Hans wasn’t having an affair with Ashley.”

“Then what was she doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

Her naivete made me feel compassionate toward her again. She seemed once again like a wife under an impossible delusion and less like a woman used to getting her way regardless of the circumstances.

“Your husband’s research assistant was murdered in his home, and now he’s disappeared,” I said in as gentle a tone as I could manage. “You have to see how that’s going to make him a suspect.”

“Never in a million years would Hans have an affair with Ashley.”

I exhaled. “Mrs. Westergaard-”

“Let me tell you about Ashley,” she said, showing her teeth. “She was a funny girl. Hans said she drew political cartoons for the Yale Daily News when she was an undergraduate. We had her up here last summer, and I enjoyed her company. When she had anything to drink, her speech got surprisingly profane. You would never have guessed it, given what a little mouse she was normally.”

“She was attractive,” I ventured.

She flicked her fingers at me, and I noticed that her manicured nails were painted maroon. “She was a nerd. You know how some of those Asian kids are.” She caught herself. “She had no social life, no social skills. She was extremely intelligent, and she could be witty, yes, but there is no way that Hans would ever have desired her. There was nothing remotely sexual about the girl! He would never have chosen Ashley Kim over me, for God’s sake.”

It was no surprise that she was vain or that she was in denial about her age. The Botox, the breast implants (those things couldn’t possibly have been real), the care she took managing every aspect of her appearance-somewhere beneath that elaborate facade lived a secret fear. Was it any wonder that she was deluding herself about her husband’s extracurricular activities and maybe about his capacity for violence?

“Mrs. Westergaard,” I said. “I don’t mean to be blunt, but I think you should consider the possibility that you’re letting your love for your husband cloud your judgment.”

“You think that’s what I’m doing?” She was incredulous.

I’d never intended this discussion to become an argument. “I’m just cautioning you against leaping to conclusions.”

“That’s quite ironic.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You don’t know the first thing about my husband. Yet you’re already convinced he’s a cold-blooded sex killer.”

I’m sure my face had grown red. “Well, I hope I’m wrong about him, but it would be better if he turned himself in to the authorities and made his own case.”

“You really don’t get it, do you? Something has happened to Hans. Has it even occurred to the police that my husband might have been abducted? I’m terrified out of my mind right now.”

She believed he was another victim.

“Do you have any idea who might have killed Ashley?” I asked.

“No.”

“What about your caretaker, Stanley Snow?”

She gave me another of those imperious smirks. “Stanley is the gentlest person I’ve ever known.”

“He has the keys to your house.”

“And that somehow makes him a killer? Why don’t you accuse me of murdering them while you’re at it? You people really are a bunch of bumpkins.”

You people? I knew I shouldn’t let this unpleasant woman push my buttons, but if she held me in such contempt, I no longer felt protective of her feelings. “Well, someone raped and murdered Ashley Kim, and the evidence points to your husband.”

She squared her shoulders. “Get out.”

I opened the door. “Go talk to the detectives, Mrs. Westergaard. Tell them what you told me.”

“I intend to.”

I rested my hands against the cold roof of the SUV and peered back at her brittle mask of a face. “I hope you’re right, and that they find your husband safe and sound.”

“Do you? Do you really?”

I went back into the building and retrieved my truck keys without any rigmarole from the attending deputy, which was lucky for him. My blood was already boiling.

How had I ever pegged Jill Westergaard for a damsel in distress?

It was entirely possible she would rat me out to Detective Menario and AAG Danica Marshall, informing them that I had violated my duty as a material witness not to talk about the case. Christ, I was an idiot.

It would be better if I made myself unavailable for a while. As I drove back toward Sennebec, I punched in Charley’s number and waited for him to answer.

“Howdy do,” he said.

“I can’t believe you told that woman where to find me!”

He chuckled. “I’m assuming you’re referring to Mrs. Westergaard.”

“Of course I am.”

“I thought an encounter with her might be a good test of your tree fiber.” In the background, there was some soft murmuring that must have been Ora. “You and I need to talk, young feller.”

“I’d say so.”

“How about we get some lunch?”

The clock on my dashboard said it wasn’t even ten o’clock. But I knew that Charley rose religiously before dawn, so for him, this was already the middle of the day.

“Why don’t I meet you at the Square Deal,” I said. “That way, I can say good-bye to Ora before you drive home.”

“I was going to suggest the very thing.”

The sky had a gray and arbitrary cast. In March, the daily question was always whether the next batch of precipitation would fall as snow, ice, or rain. Every morning, Mother Nature rolled the dice.

I barely recognized my formerly messy truck. It was as if the cleaning fairy had waved a magic wand and transformed it from a pumpkin back into a proper law-enforcement coach. That’s one benefit of having your vehicle impounded for inspection, I thought.

As I drove, I summoned the courage to telephone my division commander. Lieutenant Malcomb was on his way to a meeting with the Warden Service colonel in Augusta. As such, he was already in a pissy mood. The two men disliked each other intensely from having worked together for twenty-plus years in the field. Or so my sergeant, Kathy Frost, had told me. Malcomb himself would never have confided his personal sentiments to a rookie warden, especially one as trouble-prone as me.