Paul Doiron - Trespasser

“Mrs. Bates-”

“We, the J-Team, are currently petitioning the governor, the chief justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, and the attorney general of Maine, requesting a complete, fair, and independent investigation of the Erland Jefferts case. This travesty of justice must not be allowed to stand.”

It took me a few moments to realize that she had reached the end of her speech.

“Mrs. Bates,” I said. “I appreciate your commitment to your nephew’s cause, but I just can’t say anything at this time about any open investigations or pending legal matters. Please respect my position and don’t call me again.”

I switched off the phone and stuck it in my belt holster. I removed my gun belt and hung it in the bedroom closet, unbuttoned my uniform shirt and sniffed the underarms to see whether I could get away with wearing it again, decided not, and tossed it into the hamper. Then I went into the kitchen to pour myself a whiskey.

Sarah was stirring the chowder. “So who was on the phone?”

“A crazy lady who thinks I can somehow help get her nephew out of prison.”

“How would you do that?” she asked.

My supposition was that Sarah was unfamiliar with the Erland Jefferts case. The murder and trial occurred while she was still in high school in Connecticut, although the antics of the J-Team still got enough ink these days in the local newspaper.

“She says her nephew was wrongfully convicted seven years ago and believes the real killer murdered Ashley Kim last night. For some reason, she thinks I can help her.”

She put the spoon down next to the burner and started to sob.

“Sarah.” I stepped forward and put my arms around her.

A shiver rippled down her spine. “I’m sorry. I’ve been doing this all day. All the teachers were talking about the murder. That’s why I left school early. I kept breaking into tears and didn’t want the kids to see.” She reached for a dishrag to wipe her nose and eyes. “Go on. What were you saying?”

“It was nothing important.”

She shook her head, so that her blond hair swayed just like Jill Westergaard’s had that morning. “I want to hear what you found out from the detectives.”

I took my glass and sat down at the kitchen table and sipped my whiskey. “The state police are still looking for this Hans Westergaard, who owns the house. They think the killing was a rendezvous that somehow went really, really bad.”

“So this professor was the one who murdered her?”

“In these cases, it’s almost always the boyfriend,” I said, parroting Skip Morrison’s words.

“But the detectives don’t know for certain?”

“The probability is high.”

“But there’s a chance it was someone else? It could be some random psychopath who happened on the accident scene and offered to give her a ride.”

I gulped down the rest of my whiskey. “I don’t think there’s a random psychopath in Seal Cove.”

Sarah dished me a bowl of chowder and set it on the place mat. “The teachers were saying-” Her voice caught in her throat again, but this time she managed to recover herself and continue. “We were saying how scary it is for women to drive alone at night on some of these back roads. What happened to that woman, it could have happened to me.”

This conversation seemed poised to become another indictment of our living situation. Sarah had made it abundantly clear that she would have preferred renting an apartment up the road in swanky Camden. I dug into my dinner. “Well, it didn’t.”

“You think Ashley Kim was just unlucky.”

“Basically.”

“That’s how you and I are different.” Sarah had been raised as an Episcopalian and still considered her parents’ family priest a trusted friend. She was a person of faith, just as I was a person of doubt. On the question of happenstance, she saw destiny’s hand instead of random luck. “I don’t believe in accidents.”

At dinner, I kept waiting for Sarah to break the news to me, if there was news, but she ate quietly, lost in her own head.

Finally, as we were washing the dishes side by side at the sink and my inhibitions had been lowered by two more whiskeys, I just blurted out the question. “So how’s your stomach?”

She focused on what her hands were doing in the soapy water. “It’s still giving me trouble.”

I waited for her to say more, but that was the beginning and the end of the subject.

As I refolded the napkins, I sneaked a look at Sarah’s midsection. I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but her abdomen was as flat as the tabletop. If we had a baby and it was a little boy, I realized I could teach him everything my father had failed to teach me. That possibility of having a second chance at childhood, if only vicariously, appealed to some deep emotion I couldn’t even name.

She must have picked up on one of my brain waves. “Was your father always like that?”

“Like what?”

“Self-destructive.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “My grandmother used to tell me he was different before he went to Vietnam.”

“Different how?”

“I’d rather not talk about my dad.”

“I understand.” She nodded knowingly and put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” She hesitated, looking at me intensely out of the corners of her sky blue eyes. “It’s kind of strange.”

Now I was genuinely nervous. “What is it?”

“Did you vacuum the rug?”

“Yes,” I replied, lying.

“You actually cleaned something in this house?”

“Yes.”

She laughed and tossed the wet dish towel at me. “Who are you? And what did you do with my boyfriend?”

The phone rang very early the next morning. Sarah reached across my naked back to answer it.

“It’s Kathy Frost,” she mumbled.

I raised myself off the mattress with a groan. “Jesus, Kathy,” I said, blinking at the darkened window. “Do you know what time it is?”

“I don’t know. Early?”

“It’s five o’clock on a Saturday morning.”

“I must still be on Key West time.”

“Florida is in the same time zone as Maine.”

“Oh, yeah.” A dog was whining plaintively somewhere in the background. “Well, now that you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, how would you like to get some breakfast? I brought you a souvenir.”

I sat up and swung my stiff legs off the bed. The floorboards were cold as ice beneath my heels. “OK. Where?”

“How about my place? I’ve got a sick dog here. I don’t know what shit Devoe fed him, but it’s been coming out both ends all night long.”

I rubbed the flakes from my eyelashes. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Bring doughnuts! And coffee!”

So my sergeant had somehow conned me into driving forty miles to her house in the predawn light, on my day off no less, and paying for breakfast in the bargain. What was it about women that made me agree to their most outlandish requests?

I left Sarah dozing in bed and shuffled, naked, into the bathroom. The harsh light above the mirror showed a drawn, stubbled face, making me wonder whether I’d done the Rip van Winkle thing and overslept by a decade or two. My head ached from the three whiskeys I’d consumed before bed. I needed to cut back on those, I decided. And my pubic bone was sore in a spot I rarely had reason to consider. I’d been surprised by Sarah’s sudden playfulness the night before. One moment she’d been all sad and teary, and the next she was reaching for my zipper. She hadn’t seemed like a woman worried about an unplanned pregnancy.

When I’d toweled off after the shower and was pulling on my pants, I found Sarah leaning sleepily against the doorjamb, holding the phone. She, too, was naked. “It’s for you again,” she said, yawning. “It’s Hank Varnum.”