Paul Doiron: Trespasser

Awkwardly, I slid my coat off and hung it on a hook by the door.

I heard the floorboards creak and was just turning my head when a sharp pain exploded along my right biceps. I fell back against the wall, aware that I was being assaulted but unable to do more than raise my splinted hand against my attacker. The metal crowbar came down hard on my forearm. I howled in agony and kicked out with my legs, but the intruder leaped back.

I was left to squirm there for a moment, blinded by tears, before my assailant tapped me, almost delicately, on the forehead with a steel club. There was an instant of achingly hot light-like a flashbulb going off at point-blank range-and then I ceased to see.

I came to as my attacker was slinging my limp body onto the sofa. Whoever it was must have torn the splint off my wrist, because my first sight was of my own corpse-colored hand. My eyes were watery and had trouble focusing.

For a moment, I didn’t know where I was or what had happened. I was as disoriented as a surgery patient emerging from anesthetic. If a voice had whispered that I’d been in a car crash, I would have believed it.

I felt a boot kicking my shins and then heard a high-pitched voice say, “Sit up.”

As I did, a weight shifted inside my head like a bocce ball rolling around inside my cranium. Something was standing over me. At first, it was just a shadow. Then, as my pupils began to function once more, the shadow became a man.

He was a tall, balding man with darting eyes. He had bulbous cheekbones and a jutting jaw. He was wearing a dark peacoat, oil-stained work pants, and heavy rubber boots. In one gloved hand, he held a crowbar. In the other, he clutched a rectangular bottle of amber liquid, which he thrust into my face.

“Drink this,” said Stanley Snow.

I blinked and tried to speak, but my tongue wouldn’t obey. I cradled my useless right arm against my chest.

“Drink it!”

It was my own half-empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s. He must have found the whiskey in the cupboard. A fishy scent came wafting off his clothes, the stench of rotten bait.

I pulled the words up out of my larynx. “The cops know it’s you, Snow.”

The sound of his own name being uttered caused the Westergaards’ caretaker to catch his breath. Slowly, he took a seat in the chair across from me, but his posture remained as tight as a coiled spring. He set the whiskey bottle on the table between us. “Bullshit.”

“I called Menario.” My voice sounded as if I had gargled with drain opener.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I called him on the pay phone at Smitty’s. I told him you owned the Glory B. ”

Every muscle in his body became utterly still. “What else did you tell him?”

I understood that Stanley Snow was going to kill me, but I was too weak and in too much pain to defend myself. All I could do was try to gather my strength and wits.

“She knew you,” I croaked. “Ashley Kim.”

He leered at me with a gargoyle’s smile. “She thought she did.”

“She met you with the Westergaards last summer.”

“That slant-eyed slut.” He leaned forward and waved the crowbar in my face. I followed the motion warily, as if it were a swaying cobra that might suddenly strike. “She came up here to get fucked. She got fucked all right.”

My head and hand were beating to different drummers, but my thoughts were beginning to flow freely again. Hans Westergaard had told his caretaker to get the house ready. Had he mentioned-master to servant-that he was bringing his mistress? Snow had been lying in wait for Ashley to arrive.

“But why Westergaard?” I asked.

“He shouldn’t have cheated on Jill. He had no right to do that.”

“You killed Ashley for her?”

He snickered but didn’t answer my question. He just scratched his nose absently.

I needed to keep talking, keep stalling. “The police know it’s you, Snow.”

The crowbar stopped waving. “There’s nothing they can pin on me. It’s pretty easy to set up alibis. Just drop in on some diners and gas stations. Make sure people see you. Collect receipts. If you turn on the TV loud in your apartment, people will swear you were there all day.”

In my mind I saw his white pickup truck with the snowplow parked outside the Square Deal Diner. I saw his face sneering at me from the other end of the counter the morning after Ashley Kim disappeared. Even then, he’d already been readying his alibis.

“They’ll connect the dots.”

“Cops are dumb,” he said. “Including you.” He was trying to project self-assuredness, but I detected a hint of desperation behind the bluff.

“I know you killed the Driskos. They saw you at the crash scene with Ashley. They demanded money to keep quiet.”

Some of the confidence drained out of those quick-moving eyes. “What else?”

“You murdered Nikki Donnatelli.”

“Strike one,” he said with a one-sided grin. “Jefferts killed that girl. A jury said so.”

“You used to be friends.”

“That’s what Erland thought.”

So why hadn’t Jefferts named Snow as an alternate suspect? He’d named every other degenerate in Seal Cove. “You pinned the murder on him.”

His eyes became merry. “There’s proof I didn’t.”

“What kind of proof?”

He reached inside his peacoat and removed something from his inner pocket. It was a cell phone. “I’ve got a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”

I was baffled. How would a cell phone enable him to avoid prison? “Is that Jefferts’s?”

“No, this one is mine, but you’re getting warmer. That’s strike two, by the way.” He dropped the phone and raised the crowbar, clutching it with both hands, imitating a batting stance. “You know what happens with strike three, right?” He swung the club. It whistled through the air above my head.

“You’re going to beat me to death?”

“I’m considering my options.”

“You’re out of options, Snow.”

“That’s what you think.” He said this with such calmness that I was completely unprepared when he came vaulting across the table at me.

Snow was quick and agile for such a gangly man. He tossed aside the crowbar and grabbed the whiskey bottle and knelt hard against my chest, pinning me to the sofa. With his free hand, he pinched my nose and began pouring scalding whiskey down my throat. I clamped my teeth shut, so the liquor spilled down my shirt, but he held my nostrils firmly, waiting for me to gasp for breath. When I did, he emptied the bottle down my gullet.

After he’d finished, he backed off, leaving me hacking. My insides burned like I’d swallowed acid. I could feel the whiskey trying to come back up.

“This is a pretty shitty little house,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “I guess they don’t pay game wardens crap. No wonder you’re so depressed.”

I coughed and spit, trying to vomit up the alcohol. My eyes had become gushers again, so he appeared blurred to me once more. I became aware of Snow stooping to retrieve his crowbar from the floor.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for that pretty girl of yours to come home?’ he asked.

I tried to sputter out something but couldn’t.

“I’ve been having trouble getting your gun safe open.” He gestured with his crowbar to the bedroom. “You mind telling me the combination?”

“Fuck you.”

“Figured you’d say that.”

He smacked my right arm again with the steel bar. I managed to move the wrist at the last second so that the blow caught me on the muscle of my forearm. Pain traveled up the median nerve and into my spinal column.

Snow peered at me from beneath his Frankenstein brow. “Yeah, I know all about you. Your old man shot himself, right? And Ruth Libby said you blew the head off some Indian. And now Calvin Barter’s boy is gonna be a vegetable because of you.” He began rocking back and forth on his boot heels. “No wonder you’re such a basket case, Bowditch. When I saw you at the Harpoon, I said, ‘That guy’s gonna blow his brains out some night.’” He let out a fake yawn. “What’s the combination to the safe?”