Standing over his cooling body, I recalled Donato’s last words. “She played you. She played everyone.”
He must have meant Dawn Richie. But how had she fooled anyone when she’d come within inches of having had her throat slashed?
I placed the crossbow in the back seat of my Scout and, this time, locked the doors.
The key fob Billy had handed me had a button you could push to remotely unlock the vehicle. I pressed it and heard a tinny beep ahead.
Maybe a hundred yards down the road I found the Land Rover Defender in which Donato and his men had driven into the forest. Parked behind it, bumper to bumper, was a white Honda Fit that had seen better days. The car looked to be half the size of the sport utility.
I could understand why Aiden Cronk, seeing the subcompact turn in my driveway, had described it as “Real small. Like the smallest car I’ve ever seen.”
The registration clipped to the driver’s visor was in the name of Tyler Pegg. What was it that he knew that had cost him his life—that it was Donato who hired the two prisoners to assassinate Dawn Richie before she ratted him out to his superiors?
Seeing the car answered one question, at least.
Billy must have hiked from the Bolduc Correctional Facility to the Peggs’ house, hoping to catch a ride with the one guard he considered trustworthy. Or maybe he had intended to “borrow” the vehicle.
According to Klesko, the fingerprint and footprint evidence showed that Billy had never gotten farther into the house than the mudroom, where, presumably, he’d found the keys he needed to abscond with the clown-size Honda. He might have arrived while the Peggs were slowly expiring from carbon monoxide or after they were dead. Because the gas is odorless, and he was there so briefly, he might never have noticed anything was amiss. He might still believe that Tyler Pegg was alive. That would be hard news for me to break to him.
I didn’t consider it to be disturbing the crime scene to back the stolen car down the road until I could get a cell phone signal.
Charley had tried calling me eleven times before he broke down and left me a voice mail with the big secret he had dug up and had hoped to spring on me “in person.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I taught you too well, young feller. You were right to have me check the transfers out of Machiasport in the months prior to the closing. Turns out that one foresighted guard managed to find work at the Maine State Prison six months before Sergeant Richie made the leap. You might recognize his name: Novak Rancic. I’d call that quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you?”
I met Steve Klesko and his detectives, along with the chief medical examiner and technicians from the Evidence Response Team, halfway along the Tantrattle Road. I hadn’t minded waiting alone, listening to the birds awaken in the predawn darkness: first a cardinal, then the robins. I figured the Cronks could use every second together as a temporarily reunited family. I also needed time to get my story straight.
Because I would be damned to hell before I gave evidence that might send Billy Cronk back to prison.
Let the Warden Service fire me.
If the attorney general offered me immunity, and I still refused to testify, I was more than willing to go to jail to protect my friend.
While I’d been waiting for the first responders to arrive, I returned Charley’s call and told him the actions I was prepared to take if need be.
“Are you sure you’re willing to pay that price?” the old man had asked. He had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam and knew something about the toll incarceration took upon the mind as well as the body. “Are you willing to trade your own freedom for your friend’s?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“It won’t matter if they have evidence that he committed felonies beyond those for which he was pardoned.”
“Then Billy and I can share a cell.”
“I’m proud of you, Mike.”
As it turned out, Charley had congratulated me on my brave decision too soon.
Within minutes of his arrival, Klesko had presented me with a cell phone and asked me to look at the image displayed. The screen showed a document affixed with the state seal. The detective directed me to the last paragraph:
WHEREFORE, upon full consideration of the facts previously stated, I do hereby grant William James Cronk a FULL AND FREE PARDON respecting all such offenses of which all are to take notice.
The Penguin’s florid signature followed.
“He commuted the sentence, too,” added Klesko.
“When did this come through?”
“The same night Billy walked out of Bolduc.”
“So was he free to go or not?”
“Do you want the technical answer or—never mind. In light of what you told us, I wouldn’t expect pushback from the governor for Billy jumping the gun.”
“What about the attorney general, though? Isn’t it up to Hildreth to determine whether the statutes were followed?”
“Hildreth has enough to worry about. It’s in everyone’s best interest for your friend Cronk to disappear from the news. The deputy warden of the Maine State Prison orchestrated a conspiracy resulting in multiple homicides and the attempted murder of Cronk’s wife and kids. There isn’t a politician on earth who’s going to say the man was wrong to protect his family after having demonstrated his heroism—especially with an election looming.”
“In other words?”
“I’m not a lawyer, but I have it on good authority that if Cronk tells the truth about everything he did and why he did it, he’s going home a free man before the night is over.”
I didn’t bother to mention
