Paul Doiron: Trespasser

To keep myself occupied, I made a wide circle around the Driskos’ wooded property, looking for their pit bull. I figured Vicky must have broken free of her rope. Maybe the fire and smoke had given her that extra energy to escape. Having a vicious dog running loose through these woods would be dangerous to the local wildlife, not to mention the local children. For all their small-man bravado, I think the Driskos had been secretly scared of her, too.

The forest floor was sopped. I found no dog prints anywhere. At the very least, I could conclude that Dave and Donnie hadn’t been in the habit of letting their watchdog free to chase deer. The hollows between the oaks held pools of water that would soon fill with mating wood frogs and spotted salamanders. So far, the amphibians had failed to emerge from their hibernating places. To me, spring never truly arrived until I heard my first frog.

Eventually, I returned to the commotion. I leaned against the side of my Jeep, watching the volunteers scurry about in coats and boots that seemed too big for them, like boys playing firemen. Dirty smoke drifted through the treetops. The air carried the sour odor of wet ashes. I reflected on my last visit to this trailer and my subsequent confrontation with Dave and Donnie at the Harpoon Bar. I’d been struck by how gleeful they’d seemed on both occasions. How had Dave responded when I told him he seemed exceptionally happy? “You have no idea.”

What had he meant by that? The Driskos must have understood they were still murder suspects. There was evidence, in the form of deer hair and blood, tying them directly to Ashley’s last known whereabouts. So why had they been strutting around the Harpoon like little red roosters?

Was it possible they’d known the identity of Ashley Kim’s abductor? If they’d been on the scene that night, grabbing that deer, had they witnessed something they only later understood as significant? Rather than going to the police-since no reward had yet been offered-I could imagine them trying to extort money from the murderer. Had the Driskos made a fatal error in threatening the wrong man with exposure?

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.