Gray Ghost (12 page)

Thick black clouds were hanging low in the sky Monday morning when Calhoun and Ralph went down to Bitch Creek with their coffee. The air was still and heavy. It smelled damp and organic, and moisture was dripping off the trees. Calhoun wondered if a line storm was going to come blasting through from the northeast, ripping the leaves off the trees and blowing the warm summery air away, leaving the crisp chill of autumn in its wake. It was the season for line storms—the autumn nor—easters that demarcated the line between summer and fall in New England.

He supposed he could check the weather forecast on the radio, but he didn’t see the point. There was nothing you could do about it.

It had rained overnight, and the boulders along the stream were wet. Calhoun and Ralph sat on them anyway. The surface of the stream was littered with yellow poplar leaves. They swirled like little sailboats in the eddies and gathered in rafts along the edges of the stream, but right in the current seam where the stream was narrowed by the remains of the old bridge and the quick water rubbed against the slow water, Calhoun spotted the dimply rise of a trout. Probably eating some ants or beetles that got blown onto the water along with the leaves.

He hoped Lyle liked the idea of having his ashes mingled with clean spring water and trout and mayflies in Bitch Creek.

After a while, he heard the sheriff’s Explorer coming down the driveway. Then he heard the car door slam. Then the sheriff appeared at the top of the slope.

Calhoun made a show of looking at his wrist where a watch would’ve been if he’d worn one.

“Okay, dammit,” said the sheriff. “So I’m twenty minutes later than I said I’d be. If you carried that cell phone around with you like I told you to, you’d know why. Now I’m going up to your house, and I’m going to pour myself some coffee, and then I’m going to dry off a chair and sit on your deck, and the sooner you come up and join me, the sooner I can fill you in and we can get going.”

Calhoun smiled. The sheriff sounded kind of pissed. He wasn’t usually that long-winded.

“Let’s go,” he said to Ralph.

Ralph scurried up the hill, and Calhoun followed behind, and when he climbed up on the deck, the sheriff was sitting there sipping coffee with his reading glasses perched low on his nose, peering at a notebook that he had propped up on the arm of the chair, and Ralph was lying on the deck beside him.

The sheriff looked up over the tops of his glasses. Then he reached into his pants pocket and took out a thin electric cord with a heavy square plug on one end. He put it on the table. “Use this to recharge your phone,” he said. “We got to be able to keep in touch, Stoney. You didn’t lose it, did you?”

“I got it somewhere,” said Calhoun.

“I tried to call you about an hour ago. Wanted to tell you I was going to be a little late and fill you in.”

“Fill me in now,” said Calhoun.

The sheriff looked down at his notebook for a minute. “Okay. First off, the reason I’m late, I was talking with the ME’s office up in Augusta. They matched up Errol Watson’s prison dental records with the X-rays of that corpse we found on Quarantine Island. So we got ourselves a positive ID, which is pretty damn big progress all by itself. I managed to track down the whereabouts of the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Watson, guy name of Acworth, though I wasn’t able to talk to him, inasmuch as he’s presently residing in a cemetery.”

“He’s dead?” said Calhoun.

The sheriff nodded. “Drowned three summers ago. Jet Ski accident.”

“I guess he didn’t kill Errol Watson, then,” said Calhoun.

“No,” said the sheriff, “and he won’t be helping us figure out who did, either.” He looked at his notebook for a minute. “I got a meeting with Detective Gilsum this afternoon.”

Calhoun felt a twinge of panic. “A meeting,” he said.

The sheriff laughed. “You aren’t invited, Stoney. This is just me and Gilsum and maybe Enfield. Gilsum wants to keep this thing organized and coordinated, and I’m all for that. He’s got some Portland detectives talking to Watson’s neighbors and coworkers and anybody else they can track down who knew him. He’s also lined up some state cops up there in Augusta to question people about Paul Vecchio. At this point, Gilsum is treating Watson and Vecchio as separate cases.”

“That don’t make any sense,” said Calhoun. “It’s pretty obvious—”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the sheriff. “The point is, Gilsum has got competent people doing what needs to be done, tracking down people and interrogating them, and that is good for us, Stoney, because it’s necessary, but it’s the kind of legwork can be terribly boring and unproductive.”

“Does that mean they’re going to follow up with Mattie Perkins?”

The sheriff shook his head. “I told Gilsum we already made a connection with that family, and we’d try to catch up with Mattie’s mother this afternoon, get her story ourselves.”

Calhoun nodded. “Okay. Good.”

“I also made an appointment for us to talk to the PD who handled Watson’s case,” said the sheriff. “Fella name of”—he squinted at his notebook’“Maxner. Otis Maxner. He’s got an office down in Westbrook. Does real estate law now. I talked to him on the phone for a minute on the way over here. He said he remembers the Watson case. We’re supposed to be there at eleven. And after that’ around twelve thirty’we’re going to drop in on Judge Roper, who heard the case. He’s retired now, said he’d be at the marina and we better not be late, as he’s going fishing. His Honor August Roper. Sat on the bench for close to thirty years. Ever run into him?”

Calhoun shook his head.

“Reputation for being tough but fair. Salty old bastard. So anyway, how’s all that sound to you?”

Calhoun shrugged. “Sounds like a lot of damn talking. You said for starters. What else you got in mind?”

“I want to talk to the parents of Watson’s victim. Folks name of Dunbar. They live down in Biddeford.”

“You make an appointment with them?”

“We’ll drop in on them unannounced,” said the sheriff, “see how it goes. They both work. Their daughter, Watson’s victim, she’s off to college. They got a teenage son who goes to school. We’ll show up on their doorstep this evening around dinnertime, flash our badges at them.”

“Disrupt ‘em,” said Calhoun.

The sheriff smiled.

“Catch ‘em off guard.” Sure.

“Don’t give ‘em time to get their stories straight,” said Calhoun. “You’re gonna treat these poor folks as suspects?”

“Everybody’s possible suspects,” said the sheriff. “But I believe the parents of some child that’s been molested would have the world’s best motive to cut off a guy’s dick, wouldn’t you say?”

“Wouldn’t blame ‘em one bit,” said Calhoun. “What about the child herself?”

“I guess she’d have a motive, all right,” said the sheriff, “though it’s kind of hard to imagine her actually doing it.”

“Where’s she go to school?”

“California,” said the sheriff.

“So much for that idea.”

The sheriff pushed himself to his feet. “So what do you say, Stoney? How’s that sound to you?”

Calhoun shrugged. “Not sure what you want me tagging along for.”

“You got a good shit detector, Stoney.” The sheriff pushed himself to his feet and hitched up his pants. “Ready to rock and roll?”

Calhoun stood up. “You’re the sheriff. I’m a mere deputy. You want me to drive?”

“Why don’t you follow me. We’ll leave my vehicle at Kate’s shop. Then we won’t have to come all the way back here before my meeting with Gilsum.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Calhoun. He looked at Ralph, who was snoozing on the deck beside them. “Why don’t you go get in the truck.”

Ralph lifted his head, looked at Calhoun, and yawned. Then he got to his feet and trotted down the steps. He paused to lift his leg against a bush before he went over and sat beside the truck.

“You sure you want to bring Ralph?” said the sheriff. “He’ll be cooped up in the truck all day.”

“Ralph don’t mind that. He likes riding.”

“I don’t know, Stoney,” said the sheriff. “He’d probably be happier staying home, running around, swimming in the creek.”

“Maybe he would,” said Calhoun. “But I wouldn’t. Last time I left him home, I thought I lost him.”

Attorney Otis Maxner’s office suite occupied the bottom floor of a big yellow Victorian on Main Street, which ran along the Presumscot River in downtown Westbrook. When Calhoun and Sheriff Dickman walked in, the receptionist, a middle-aged woman with a round face and a well-practiced smile, asked for their names, then waved at some sofas and chairs, suggested that they have a seat and relax, and said she’d let Mr. Maxner know they were there, and could she get them some coffee?

“Our appointment’s at eleven,” said the sheriff. He looked pointedly at his wristwatch. “It’s eleven right now.”

“I’ll be sure Mr. Maxner knows you’re here, sir,” she said. “Please make yourselves comfortable. What about some coffee while you’re waiting?”

The sheriff said, “We don’t want to be comfortable. We don’t want coffee, and we don’t want to wait. We want to talk to the lawyer. We have an appointment with him at eleven, and it is eleven, and we do not intend to be kept waiting.”

The secretary was nodding and smiling. “Of course, sir. If you’ll just—”

“We are not clients,” continued the sheriff. “I am the sheriff and this is my deputy. We’re not here for legal advice. Our hours with the lawyer will not be billable. We’re here because Mr. Maxner, who is a lawyer and therefore an officer of the court, might be able to help us enforce the law, and as far as I’m concerned, eleven o—clock means eleven o—clock.” He cocked his wrist and looked at his watch. “And it is now one minute past eleven.”

The secretary’s smile never wavered during the sheriff’s assault. “No coffee, then,” she said when he stopped for a breath. “I’ll let Mr. Maxner know you’re here.”

She picked up her phone, spoke softly into it, hung up, and shifted her smile back to Calhoun and the sheriff, and right then the door beside her desk opened.

Otis Maxner was a tall, thin guy with close-cut sandy hair and pale skin and round glasses. He wore chino pants, a navy blazer, and a blue striped shirt, no necktie. He looked like a college kid to Calhoun, but he had to be somewhere in his early thirties, at least, if he’d defended Errol Watson in court six years ago.

He came at them with his hand extended. “Otie Maxner,” he said. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

The sheriff and Calhoun both shook hands with him. “We just got here,” said the sheriff.

“Come on,” Maxner said, “we’ll go into my office. Did Rita offer you coffee ?”

“She certainly did,” said the sheriff. “We declined.”

“Water? Juice?”

“We’re all set.”

They followed Maxner into a large office that Calhoun figured had once been a parlor in the old Victorian. There was a brick fireplace in one corner. The ceiling was high and the windows were tall. Maxner’s desk had its back to the wall facing the doorway. Four upholstered chairs encircled a round glass-topped coffee table under the windows. On the other side of the room sat a long conference table lined with straight-backed wooden chairs.

Maxner gestured at the upholstered chairs, and Calhoun and the sheriff sat down.

“Sure I can’t get you something?” said Maxner.

“We’re good,” said the sheriff. He took his notebook out of his jacket pocket. “Sit down, please.”

Maxner sat down, crossed his ankle over his knee, and plucked at the crease in his pants. “You wanted to talk about the Errol Watson case, you said.”

The sheriff nodded. “Whatever you can remember about it.”

“May I ask you why?”

“No.”

Maxner smiled uncertainly, as if he thought the sheriff was joking. Then he said, “What’s Watson done now?”

The sheriff said nothing.

Maxner smiled. “I just figured, he’s probably out by now, so he’s probably in trouble again.”

“Why would you think that?”

Maxner shrugged. “The crimes he commits. He can’t help himself. He’s that kind of man.”

“Tell me about the case, Mr. Maxner, will you?”

“Sure. Okay.” Maxner cleared his throat. “I was a PD back then, fresh out of law school, looking for experience and action, hoping to make some connections. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, or even if I wanted to practice law. I was, you know, young and idealistic, and defending indigent people, making sure their rights were respected, it seemed like a good thing to do.” Maxner shook his head. “That was before I started meeting my clients. Wife beaters, child molesters, armed convenience-store robbers, drunk drivers, drug dealers.”

Calhoun noticed how the sheriff nodded and smiled now and then, encouraging Otis Maxner to talk without giving him any direction or feedback.

“What I’m trying to say,” said Maxner, “is that a public defender’s idealism is tested constantly. It’s always safe to assume that your clients are guilty, although they always lie to you. Usually they’re guilty of really nasty things. So you have to keep telling yourself, your job isn’t to win the case, it’s to make sure that the prosecution doesn’t cheat.”

“Errol Watson,” said the sheriff.

Maxner nodded. “Right. Well, Watson was one of them. Maybe not the meanest, nastiest client I ever had, but he was right up there, though you’d never know it to look at him. Very ordinary-looking man. You wouldn’t even notice him. He was a clerk in a hardware store. Wore a shirt with his name stitched over the pocket. Errol.” Maxner smiled. “He was accused of showing pornographic photographs to a minor child, exposing himself to her, making her touch him, and, um, fondling her. She wasn’t quite twelve years old, just a child, a sixth grader, and I dreaded the possibility that the prosecution would put her on the stand so that I’d have to cross-examine her.”

“They didn’t?” said the sheriff.

Maxner shook his head. “The parents refused to allow it. Good for our case, bad for theirs. Without her testimony, it was all pretty much hearsay. I was unable to keep his dirty photos from being entered as evidence, though, and they were pretty damning. Watson could’ve gotten eighteen years—probably should have—and he only got seven. That was over six years ago. He’s probably out by now. Seven usually means four served. I did a good job for him. Seven years was way better than he had any right to expect. Not that he was exactly grateful, of course. He thought I should’ve gotten him off. Claimed he was innocent. It was all a big misunderstanding.” Maxner looked at the sheriff as if he expected a comment or a question, or maybe a commendation.

The sheriff just looked back at him, and after a minute, Maxner kind of laughed and looked out the window. “I’m not sure how I can help you, Sheriff,” he said. “You haven’t told me why we’re talking about Errol Watson. I mean, it’s not like I knew the man. I just represented him that one time, and I had a lot of other clients, too.”

“You seem to remember him pretty well,” said the sheriff.

Maxner shrugged. “Errol Watson was hard to forget.”

“Any chance he was innocent?”

Maxner rolled his eyes.

“Aren’t these the kind of cases a public defender tries to plead out?”

“Sure,” said Maxner. “I did try. The ADA wouldn’t hear of it. This was before the trial, when he thought he was going to have the victim on the stand, nail Watson to the cross. When the parents reneged on that, the trial was practically over, and Judge Roper wanted to hear it to the end.”

The sheriff nodded. “Tell me about the trial.”

“When we couldn’t work out a plea, we waived our right to a jury trial. I figured we had a better chance at impartiality from a judge, and I turned out to be right. I kept Watson off the stand, needless to say. A jury would’ve interpreted that as evidence of his guilt instead of just your right as an accused person, but a judge knows better. Plus, of course, the victim’s parents both testified for the prosecution, and it was quite emotional. Would’ve had a jury in tears.” Maxner laughed quickly. “Practically had me in tears.”

“What was the gist of the parents’ testimony?” said the sheriff.

Maxner shrugged. “The mother described how their little girl had nightmares, refused to go anywhere alone, cried any time she saw a strange man. Mailman, UPS guy, just somebody walking down the street, she’d see him and go running up to her room. All men upset her. Couldn’t even hug her father. They spent thousands of dollars on therapy, no end in sight, and they had to send her to a special school for, um, disturbed girls. The mother was a good witness. Calm, articulate, factual. I cross-examined her, got nowhere with her, figured I was doing my client more harm than good, so I cut it short. The father, he was a different story. Very emotional. At one point, he stood up in his witness chair, tears streaming down his face, and he pointed his finger at Watson, and said something like, if there was any justice in this world, he’d be castrated.”

“Castrated,” said the sheriff.

Maxner shrugged. “He didn’t say castrated, exactly. You get the idea.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“He said he should have his, um, his penis cut off, and—”

“Did he use the word penis?” asked the sheriff.

“Actually, I believe he did.” Maxner shrugged. “The judge threatened to have the poor man removed from the courtroom if he didn’t get himself under control, which he did after a minute, and apologized. I didn’t even try to cross-examine him.”

“Who else testified?” said the sheriff.

“The girl’s therapist,” said Maxner. “A doctor, too. Also someone who saw Watson with the little girl on the afternoon of the, um, alleged crime.”

“Who’d you put on the stand?”

Maxner shook his head. “Nobody.”

“Nobody? No witnesses for the defense?”

“Watson had no alibi,” he said, “and he couldn’t suggest any character witnesses. I moved to dismiss on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The judge, no surprise, denied my motion.”

The sheriff glanced at Calhoun, who shrugged. It was interesting, watching the sheriff work.

“What else can you tell us about the man?” said the sheriff.

Maxner shrugged. “I just defended him that one time. He went to prison, and that was the end of it.”

“Well, okay, then. Thank you, Mr. Maxner. We appreciate your cooperation.” The sheriff slapped his thighs and stood up.

Calhoun stood up, too, and so did Maxner.

“I’m very curious, Sheriff,” said Maxner. “After all this time, Errol Watson? He’s out and doing it again, am I right?”

“Of course you’re curious,” said the sheriff. He held out his hand. “Thanks a lot for your time.”

Otis Maxner looked at the sheriff, then frowned at his extended hand, then shrugged and shook it. Then he shook hands with Calhoun and ushered them out the door to the waiting room, where the ever-smiling Rita ordered them to have a nice day.

Back at Calhoun’s truck, they let Ralph out to putter around and lift his leg on some bushes. Calhoun emptied a bottle of Poland Spring water into the plastic bowl he kept in back. Ralph lapped it all up and then went looking for more bushes to pee on.

The sheriff was leaning against the side of the truck, tapping his hat against the side of his leg. “Castration,” he said. “You hear what he said, Stoney?”

“I heard it.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Well,” said Calhoun, “the obvious thought is that the father there, Mr.—what’d you say the parents’ name was?”

“Dunbar,” said the sheriff.

“Mr. Dunbar,” said Calhoun, “went and did what he thought needed to be done to Errol Watson.”

“Castrated him,” said the sheriff. “That’s the obvious thought.”

“Of course,” said Calhoun, “anybody could’ve performed that operation. Mr. Dunbar had a good idea, and anybody who heard him say it no doubt agreed with him. In fact, you wouldn’t’ve had to hear that poor fella’s testimony to come up with the idea all by yourself. It’s the logical thing.”

“Somebody not only had the idea,” said the sheriff. “They went ahead and actually did it. And Mr. Dunbar is the most obvious one, him having not only articulated the concept in court but also having the kind of motive that can actually get stronger with time. Usually, in this business, what’s obvious turns out to be what’s true.”

“I’m not saying Mr. Dunbar didn’t do it,” said Calhoun. “I just said it was kind of obvious.”

“We’ll talk to him tonight,” said the sheriff. He glanced at his watch. “Let’s go see how the judge remembers it.”

The sheriff directed Calhoun to the Yacht Club in Falmouth. He parked his truck between a new Lexus SUV and a Porsche with the top down, and he and Ralph followed the sheriff across the crushed-seashell area and out onto a long floating dock.

The sheriff turned onto one of the finger docks that branched off the main dock and stopped at a center-console fishing boat named
Hard Time.
A small man wearing a grease-stained T-shirt and baggy blue jeans was kneeling inside the boat fiddling with a bunch of spinning rods.

“Judge Roper,” said the sheriff.

The man looked up. He had about five days’ worth of gray stubble on his cheeks and the stub of an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. He nodded. “Sheriff Dickman,” he said. “Come aboard.”

The sheriff climbed in. Calhoun stayed on the dock. Ralph curled up beside him on the sunwarmed wooden planks.

The judge cocked his head at Calhoun, then held out his hand. “Gus Roper,” he said.

Calhoun reached over and shook his hand. The judge had a big bony hand and a strong grip. “Stoney Calhoun,” he said. He pointed at Ralph with his chin. “This here’s Ralph.”

“You this man’s deputy?”

“Sort of.”

Roper glanced at his watch, then turned to the sheriff. “You got fifteen minutes. Then I got a date with some bluefish. You mentioned the Errol Watson case. I refreshed my memory after you called.”

The sheriff nodded. “We found his body. Throat sliced ear to ear, penis cut off and stuffed in his mouth. Body burned to a crisp out on Quarantine Island.”

The judge nodded. “I heard about that. Unfortunately, the state of Maine frowns upon judges handing down such punishments, but it’s a good one, all right. All I can do is put ‘em in prison. You want to know who killed him, I suppose.”

The sheriff nodded.

“You got a lot of suspects,” said the judge. “Start with everyone whose daughter or girlfriend he ever molested.”