“You stopped at Fairbanks Firearms?”
“Yeah. Why?”
My uncle had a perverse sense of humor. He would know that Gorman was a person of interest and that he and I were bound to cross paths again soon. But why would Denis pull such a potentially fateful prank on a man he considered a friend?
“Can you help me get him up, Warden Landry?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the jail in Farmington for booking.”
“On what charges?”
I recited the list. “I can add resisting arrest if you make this difficult.”
“What about my truck?”
“Warden Landry is going to take some photographs of the scene here,” I said. “We need to document where your truck was coming from and where the buggy crashed through the fence. The state police will want to do the same. After that, I’m sure someone can have it towed for you.”
“You’re going to impound my vehicle?”
“Well, we can’t leave it blocking the road now. Can we?”
I thought he’d called me every dirty word in the dictionary, but he seemed to have kept a slew of them in reserve.
“You don’t mind taking your free time to document this?” I said to Ronette when I’d gotten Gorman inside my Scout and chained to the D ring I’d had installed on the floor for occasions like this one.
“I’m going to leave this one to the state police crash-reconstruction team. Gorman and I have history, and I don’t want to mess this up even a tiny bit. That dirtbag needs to go down for this, Mike, and he needs to go down hard.”
The remaining members of the Stoll family milled about the field. It appeared that the father must have ridden in the ambulance with his injured brother. I glanced around for Zane, but he had vanished. Perhaps his emotions had gotten the better of him. The man’s skin was as thin as rice paper.
I climbed inside the Scout beside my muddy, cursing prisoner. He wore a strong cologne that wasn’t so powerful it covered the smell of fear in his perspiration.
“I gotta pee.”
I started the engine. “You’re going to have to wait till we get to the jail.”
“I could always just wet my pants all over your nice seat.”
“Don’t push your luck, Gorman.”
“I told you to call me—”
“And I said, ‘Don’t push your luck.’”
For the first ten miles or so, I thought Gorman Peaslee might actually have wised up and decided to heed his legal right to remain silent. Instead he had been using the time to think of ingenious ways to torment me.
“I bet it was that bitch Landry who planted the arrowhead in my truck.”
He was bent over in his seat, his handcuffs fastened to the floor between his legs, so he had to angle his bald head to make eye contact.
“What?”
“It makes total sense, the two of you entrapping me like this. Because you know I’m in the clear on that crash.”
My first instinct was to rush to defend my fellow officer (and to a lesser extent myself) from his slander. I couldn’t think of a warden less likely than Ronette Landry to pull a stunt like that. The woman had studied the code-of-conduct book the way other people do the Bible. I had never seen her take an action that was even borderline unethical.
But Gorman Peaslee had succeeded in planting a seed of doubt. I felt ashamed for even entertaining the vile notion. Yet the improbable accusation stayed with me.
This is what sociopaths do. They trick you into distrusting your judgment. That’s how a serial killer or a pedophile continues committing his crimes under the noses of people who sense that something is amiss but can’t bring themselves to believe their kindly, personable neighbor is a monster.
For once, I did the smart thing and bit my tongue.
But Gorman wasn’t finished poking me in the eye. “You know who my attorney is?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
He recited a name that made no impact on me whatsoever.
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s the best lawyer in the state! ‘Always hire the best lawyer, the best accountant, and the best doctor’—that’s what my old man used to say.”
“Your father sounds like he must’ve been a font of wisdom.”
That really riled Gorman up. “You want to know why I didn’t help that neckbeard? I’ll tell you why. Because I knew, no matter what I did, I was going to get blamed anyway. These days, you can’t say a bad word about a black or a gay or a transgenerate, but a middle-aged white American like me? It’s open season on us.”
“I believe Isaac Stoll is also a middle-aged white American.”
“He’s a religious kook.”
“As enjoyable as it is discussing politics with you, Mr. Peaslee, I won’t object if you’d like to exercise your right to remain silent for the remainder of this drive.”
“When I’m done beating this rap, I’m going to have my lawyer sue you and the state for false arrest and police brutality. I don’t even care if I win as long as my suit forces you to pay for your own attorney. Do you want to know the best thing about being loaded? It’s having the financial resources to take revenge slowly. Drip, drip, drip. That’s the sound of your life savings going down the drain, Bowditch.”
When we arrived at the Franklin County Jail, we entered through a series of locked doors in the rear of the building. In one of the anterooms, I was required to secure my sidearm in a special box. Then and only then were we allowed through the sallyport into the booking area.
I had been threatened in more sinister ways by more fearsome characters than Gorman Peaslee, so I didn’t worry about his intention to bankrupt me. But I can’t claim that the friendly way he was greeted by the county turnkeys didn’t give me pause. They all seemed shocked to see the great man arrive at the facility in chains.
“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” asked the sergeant in charge
