and waited until a man with a thick New York accent answered.
“Oswald Bell here.”
“Mr. Bell, this is Mike Bowditch. I read the files you gave me. I’d like to meet Erland Jefferts.”
26
The world was melting. The next day, the sun reappeared, as if it had suddenly remembered it was springtime now and no longer winter. The tidal creek behind the house was swollen with runoff from the dripping ice, and the chickadees in the pines were singing a libidinal tune.
I didn’t tell Sarah where I was going. I let her leave for school in the belief that I planned to spend my day on the couch reading the Hemingway book Kathy had brought me from Key West. I knew that if I told her about my call to Ozzie Bell, she would assume I was meddling in the Ashley Kim investigation-which I was.
Dressing yourself with one hand is harder than you think. After trying for ten minutes to button a flannel shirt, I switched to a military-style sweater. I didn’t even bother attempting shoelaces, but tugged on my neoprene boots. Inspecting myself in the mirror, I thought I looked like a sickly duck hunter about to venture onto the frozen flats. I wondered if the prison guards would discern the opaque Vicodin glassiness in my eyes.
I wasn’t accustomed to driving with my left hand, having to reach across my body to shift gears, using my bad hand to hold the wheel steady. I’d arranged to meet Bell at a gas station up the road from the prison, where he would leave his vehicle. The two of us would ride in my Jeep, we’d agreed.
He stood waiting outside a blue Nissan about the size of a golf cart. He was dressed in exactly the same clothes he’d worn to the diner-black pants, black polo shirt, and black blazer lightly dusted with dandruff along the collar. His glasses were enormous, with heavy plastic frames, and his thick white hair was styled and swirled in a manner that made me think of a soft-serve ice-cream cone.
“Warden Bowditch! Or can I call you Mike?”
“Mike’s fine,” I said.
“Thanks for coming. Yowza, what happened to your hand?”
“I was in an all-terrain-vehicle accident.”
“What-like a go-cart? One of those things the kids ride?”
“Something like that.”
He coughed suddenly, a phlegmy sound that rattled wetly around his throat for a long while before he managed to gulp it down. “Cigarettes,” he explained at last. “What was it Norman Mailer said? ‘It’s easier to give up the love of your life than quit smoking.’ It took me forty years, but I finally did it. I knew Mailer back at the Voice. If there was a real newspaper editor in this backwater state, Erland Jefferts wouldn’t still be behind bars, I’ll tell you that much.”
I glanced at my watch for effect. “I’d like to get going, Mr. Bell.”
“Call me Ozzie. I appreciate your taking the time for this, Mike. But you won’t be sorry you did! If you don’t leave today convinced an innocent man is behind bars…” He trailed off, paused to collect his thoughts, and then began again. “You’re going to like Erland. You remind me of him a little. Not physically. But you’ve got the same inner strength. I’m a good judge of people. Every real journalist has a foolproof bullshit detector.”
When he climbed into my passenger seat and watched me reach across my body to shift gears, the peculiarity of the situation seemed to dawn on him. “Maybe we should take my Nissan. You shouldn’t be driving with a hand like that.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I can manage.”
The Maine State Prison in Thomaston used to be a landmark on Route 1, a brick and razor-wire edifice that some called “Shawshank.” Then in the 1990s, the state built a massive complex on a wood-shrouded hilltop in the nearby town of Warren. Except for the distant spotlights, which gave the night sky an ocher glow, the new prison was largely hidden from the view of passing motorists. Out of sight, out of mind seemed to be the architectural and governmental intent.
“So you read the files, then?” Bell asked me as we turned up the hill toward the immense cream-colored structure. “You understand that the scientific evidence is indisputable. Kitteridge’s own report proves Erland could not have killed Nikki Donnatelli.”
I smiled at him. “You seem to have a low opinion of Dr. Kitteridge.”
“The guy’s a disgrace.”
“In your report you wrote that he threw away the fly larvae collected from Nikki’s eyes.”
“Threw it away! We don’t even know if they were Calliphoridae or Sarcophagidae.” Bell shook his hands in the air as if they were wet and he needed to dry them. “And he never measured the hypoxanthine in the ocular fluid. The least he could have done was to take the body and ambient temperature! All he did was a bullshit test for rigor mortis.”
I flicked a glance at him. “He testified rigor was passing off when he examined the body.”
“Which proves that Erland couldn’t have killed her, because he’d been in police custody for the previous thirty-six hours.”
“My understanding of rigor mortis is that there’s lots of variation depending on body size, temperature, and other factors.”
“Yes, yes. But Nikki was a small girl, and it was a hot day. Based upon the state’s own findings, there can be no question about the time of death.”
“I guess that’s what puzzles me,” I said.
“How so?”
“Well, you say that Dr. Kitteridge is incompetent, and you cite all these mistakes he made at the autopsy. But if he’s such a quack, why are you willing to take his word about the rigor mortis? How do you know he didn’t get that part wrong, too?”
He stared at me through those Coke bottles. “I don’t follow you, Mike.”
“It just seems like you’re trying to have it both ways. You don’t want to believe anything Dr. Kitteridge says except when it validates your theory about the time of death.”
Bell pointed a big finger at a building. “Park over there,” he said, disregarding my argument.
The rules at the Maine State Prison require that all inmate visits be scheduled twenty-four hours ahead of time and that new visitors complete a detailed application form. But someone-I suspected Sheriff Baker, with his deep prison connections-had greased the skids for me. They let me in with just a glance at my driver’s license, warden’s badge, and a cursory pat-down. As for Bell, they led him away to a special room. As a perennial pest, he was probably subjected to cavity searches on a routine basis-how else to find the bug up his ass?
Before we were permitted into the visitation room, a stern-faced guard with the long torso of a weasel ran down the visitation rules with us. “There shall be no profane or loud language. Nothing may be passed between the visitor and prisoner. The hands of the prisoner and visitor must be visible at all times. The visitor and the prisoner may embrace or kiss briefly at the beginning and end of the visit. Prisoners and visitors may hold hands during the remainder of the visit. Visitors are not allowed to use the rest room in the visit area unless it is an emergency or undue hardship. Visitors are encouraged to use the rest room prior to their visit. Prisoners are not allowed toilet privileges during their visit under any conditions.”
I tried to picture the circumstances under which I might want to kiss Erland Jefferts, but my imagination failed me.
A tall guard with coffee-colored skin and hands the size of bird-eating tarantulas then escorted us into the visitation room. He greeted my companion with what appeared to be genuine affection. “How are you doing today, Mr. Bell?”
“I am well, Thomas. And you?”
“It’s good to see the sun.”
“You and I are fortunate to see the sun! The men in here are not so lucky.”
“Them’s the choices they made.”
“Not all of them, Thomas. Not Erland Jefferts.”
The towering guard laughed as he showed us to Visit Booth 2. “So you keep telling me, Mr. Bell.”
