“You also testified against him at trial?”
“Hildreth subpoenaed me. I wasn’t in any position to deny the state attorney general.”
“Tell me if it’s none of my business. But have you talked to anyone about this? A professional?”
“There’s a priest in Bangor I sometimes go to for confession.”
Since my childhood, the church had rebranded it the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. The penance part I got; I understood suffering. But reconciliation with my Creator had so far eluded me.
“What did the padre say?” Klesko had also been raised a Catholic and still attended mass.
“That God forgave me for sending my friend to prison.”
“What more do you need than that?” Klesko deposited the empty cup in a trash can. “To make sense of this, I’m going to need to talk with Cronk. You can’t be part of that. As for Sergeant Richie—”
A rotund orderly in multicolored scrubs chose that opportune moment to lumber over.
“Detective Klesko?” he said in a high-pitched voice that didn’t match his body mass index. “The docs say it’s all right for you to talk with the sergeant now. If you want to follow me…”
Klesko didn’t say anything, but he gave me a sidelong glance that I read as permission to follow him. I didn’t hesitate.
Dawn Richie wasn’t remotely what I had imagined. I had expected a thick-limbed woman of late middle age. Instead I found an athletic person in her mid-thirties. Half her face was concealed beneath layers of tape and gauze, but her undamaged features were delicate, and the color of her eyes—a hazel that changed from brown to green—was mesmerizing. Only her helmet of mouse-brown hair fit the prejudicial stereotype I had carried inside the room.
She was sitting upright on a bed that could be adjusted for that purpose. She wore a papery hospital gown. Both of her hands were wrapped and rewrapped with bandages so that they looked like soft, white clubs or giant Q-tips. She had an IV, pumping saline I assumed, in the crook of one of her buff arms.
“I’m Detective Klesko with the Maine State Police.”
She raised her bandaged limbs. “Excuse me if I don’t shake hands.”
“We’re wondering if you feel up to giving a statement.”
“Frankly, I’d like to get it over with.” Richie turned her chameleon eyes on me. “Who’s tall, dark, and silent over there?”
“I’m Mike Bowditch. I’m an investigator with the Maine Warden Service.”
“A game warden! I don’t hunt or fish so it can’t be that I have an outstanding warrant against me.” The bandages on her face made her smile seem lopsided. “I know why you’re here, Warden Bowditch. You’re a friend of Billy Cronk. I’ve seen your name on the sign-in sheets.”
“I can leave the room if you’d like, Sergeant.”
“Stay if you want. It won’t change what I have to say.”
From her specific Maine accent—Down East, coastal—I gathered she’d grown up close to the prison in Machiasport, where she’d started her career. People from away often assume there is a single Maine accent, but there are at least a dozen subtle regional varieties.
Klesko removed his smartphone from his pocket. “Have the doctors given you any medication that might impair your memory or otherwise affect what you have to tell us?”
“No, but if you want to bring me some, I’d appreciate it.” She was a bit of a smart-ass, this Dawn Richie. “Just kidding! I’ve never been one for drugs or booze. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control.”
“I’m going to record this if you don’t mind,” said Klesko.
“Knock yourself out. Before we get started, I need to ask you about that gunshot. So I hear it was Rancic who took down Chapman?”
“That’s correct,” Klesko said.
This confirmation of the latest gossip seemed to please her. “How did he allow Chapman to get free of his cuffs? Darius wasn’t exactly the Great Houdini. I know, I know. That’s a question for later. You want to hear from me what happened in the laundry room.”
“We’ll also be reviewing the security footage,” said Klesko.
“A lot of good that’ll do you! Chapman and Dow were smart where they chose to ambush us. The washers and dryers block the cameras in that section of the room. It’s a blind spot.”
“Dow?” I said, already breaking my self-sworn oath of silence. “Which Dow?”
She let her gaze wander over me again with renewed interest. “We have a few Dows in the prison, but Trevor was the one who sliced up my face.”
Klesko voiced his displeasure with me by clearing his throat.
“Sorry,” I said.
Trevor Dow had been one of a handful of men I hated. He was a murderer and a drug dealer who had terrorized an entire town for years before I’d helped send him to prison.
And it was Billy who had stabbed the son of a bitch to death.
Jesus.
With the video recorder going, Klesko began his interview with the usual preliminaries; he stated his own name, the location, the date, the time, and identified everyone present in the room. Then he asked Dawn Richie to give her complete name and also spell it, which she did with amusement, then added, “Richie as in Richie Rich. Except I don’t have two nickels to rub together.”
Klesko smiled indulgently. “Let’s begin.”
“Do you want me to answer questions or just talk?”
“Give me an account of what happened in your own words. I might interrupt from time to time. I’ll almost certainly need you to clarify some points at the end.”
“Too bad you didn’t bring popcorn,” she said.
At approximately 7:45 that morning, Sergeant Richie had been called to the laundry room in B-Block by the guard on duty. The trustees assigned to the detail were reporting that several of the new industrial washers refused to start.
A quick inspection revealed that the units had been sabotaged—the control panels had been jimmied—and since the machines had been working the day before, and the door to the room had been locked overnight, the vandal or vandals must have worked the last shift.
Richie sent the morning crew back to
