“I parked and got out and came around to the driver’s side. I saw the window was down and there was a girl inside, and I figured she was passed out, because a normal sleeping person would have reclined in her seat, you know? She had to be drunk or high was what I thought. Because the rain had come in through the window, too.”
“Did you touch her?”
“Not at first. I tried speaking. Then shouting. But she didn’t budge. I thought, too, maybe I recognized her—the back of her head. Angie has her mom’s hair. So I touched her and nothing happened, and then I saw the marks on her neck.”
“What did you do then?”
“Ran back to my truck and called 911.”
“Did you approach her car again?”
“No, sir.”
“So the only thing you touched in the vehicle was Angie herself?”
“Yes,” he said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Think carefully.”
“My memory ain’t great to begin with. Dorothy can vouch for that. My wife.”
He turned to the mirror then. It must have finally dawned on him that he had audience.
“I been in prison twice in my life,” he said. “When I got out the last time, I told Dorothy I’d die before I went back inside again. I ain’t the man I was. She’s got me reading the Bible. I never should have been in that park with that bottle of whiskey when those girls were there. And I never should have gotten tangled up with the Michauds. I can see as how you wouldn’t believe an individual with my past history, but I wouldn’t have harmed that girl even if I’d been tempted. I’m a coward is the reason. If I see blue lights in my rearview mirror, I just about shit my pants. I’m that afraid of going back to prison. I’ve done things I ain’t proud of—wicked things. But the Bible says all who seek for redemption will find it. Even the thief on the cross was forgiven.”
It was proof of Egan’s timidity that he sat there another twenty minutes, enduring Zanadakis’s questions, without once asking for a lawyer. As a felon, he had gone through this drill many times before. He knew his rights. With Roland, the refusal to ask for counsel had been an act of bravado. But Egan seemed afraid of provoking the ire of the police.
I found myself pitying him until I remembered the role he had surely played in the death of Warden Investigator Scott Pellerin.
When the redheaded man was finally told he was free to leave, I mumbled something about needing to use the bathroom. Instead I snuck out the front door of the station and waited for Egan to emerge.
The rain had eased up while I’d been inside, but the air was so saturated with moisture it felt like a downpour could occur at any moment. A rusty blackbird landed on the asphalt, almost at my feet, to gobble a drowned earthworm.
I made a point of inspecting the only Toyota Tacoma in the lot. It had a Meyer plow mount on the front and a rack of amber lights on the roof. There were rust holes around the wheel wells wide enough to stick a finger through. But it wasn’t the truck that had tried to force me off the cliff into the St. John River. I peeked into the bed and saw the usual items: empty beer and soda cans, cable ties, candy bar wrappers, and a single shotgun shell casing.
It was the last item that engaged my interest. I found a discarded pen on the ground and slid the tip inside the shotshell.
Finding Egan’s fingerprints on the crimped plastic might not be enough to gain a warrant to search the felon’s house for another firearm, but the hull alone was sufficient for my purposes.
I hid it behind my back until Egan stepped out into the weak, wet light.
He came to a startled stop when he saw me. The badge on my belt announced my identity as a law enforcement officer. He approached warily.
“You must be happy to be out of there,” I said.
He fumbled for a pack of Gold Crests in one of his many pockets. “I’ll be happier to get home.”
“I was one of the guys watching you through the mirror. I’m a warden investigator. My name is Mike Bowditch.”
“Yeah?”
I removed the shell, balanced on the pen, from behind my back. “I found this in your truck bed, Mr. Egan. It suggests you might have a shotgun at home in violation of the law.”
He couldn’t have spit out the words any faster. “It ain’t mine.”
“So if I have it dusted for prints—?”
“If you heard me, you know I ain’t stupid enough to risk going back to prison. I got a new life now.”
“I’m not looking to put the squeeze on you, Egan. I’m just hoping you’ll do me a favor.”
He shook a cigarette from the pack, stuck it on his lip, and now endeavored to locate a lighter. “What favor?”
“Show me your upper left arm?”
“What for?”
“I’ll explain after you indulge me.”
His hand trembled as he clicked the lighter. “And if I don’t, what happens?”
I raised the pen with the shotgun hull on it.
“You want me to take off my shirts, right now, in the rain and the cold.”
“It’s not currently raining,” I said. “And the temperature, the last I looked, was close to eighty degrees.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Your choice. But I’m taking this with me.” I opened a pocket on my rain jacket and maneuvered the shotshell so it dropped inside. “I’ll give you the afternoon to change your mind. Here’s my number.”
I handed him a business card.
For an instant, I thought he would rip it up, but instead he slid it into his back pocket.
I watched him drive off, knowing that I’d found the weak link in the chain.
But if I knew Egan could break, others did, too. What was his life expectancy under these dangerous circumstances?
37
As I returned to the station, I met Kellam coming out.
