“I wondered if you could point out Dane Guffey to me.”
“Over there.” He indicated a man sitting on a stump, apart from the others. Guffey had removed his helmet but was having trouble tugging off one of his boots. Even from a distance, I knew I’d never seen the man before. He was a chunky guy with a weak chin and a forehead that extended beyond the peak of his skull. He was the spitting image of his old man.
I left Hank and walked through the black streams flowing from the charred mobile home down the hill. “Guffey?”
His cheeks were sooty and a strong smell of smoke came floating off his body. He was panting as if he’d just run a marathon. “Yeah?”
“I’m Mike Bowditch.”
He narrowed his eyes and spat on the ground. The spittle was black. “You’re the warden who came to my house last night. My dad gave me your card. He said you wanted to talk with me. What for?”
I chose not to answer his question. “I admire what you did back there. Going inside that burning building alone like that.”
“Tell the chief,” he said in a smoke-parched voice. “Milton says the internal attack team can’t go into the structure until he’s on the scene. So now I’m in the doghouse.”
“Why did you do it?”
He finally got his boot loose. He tossed it on the wet ground and pulled a rubber gardening shoe onto his stockinged foot. “I knew Dave and Donnie were inside. Their vehicles were out front. And those guys never walked anywhere they could ride.”
I tried to make my next question sound natural. “How did you know so much about them?”
“As you know, I live just down the hill. Are you ever going to tell me why you came to my house last night?”
“I met Erland Jefferts yesterday,” I said point-blank.
He didn’t roll his eyes, but his expression revealed the depths of his annoyance. “That’s one subject I’m done talking about.”
“I just have a few questions.”
“Well, I’m not going to answer them.”
“It has to do with that so-called murder-suicide on Parker Point. You must have heard about it.”
“I heard about it,” he said. “What does it have to do with me?”
“There were similarities to the Donnatelli killing.”
“So?”
His indifference to the death of two people shocked me. “You used to be a deputy, Guffey. The state police are trying to catch a murderer.”
“Yeah, I used to be a deputy. For about eight months.” He stood up from the stump he’d been sitting on, and I realized that I’d underestimated his size. He was much taller and a hell of a lot heavier than I was.
“It doesn’t bother you to think a man might get away with murder?” I said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ask your friends on the J-Team. While you’re at it, tell them to stop slandering me in the newspapers.”
“They’re not my friends. And maybe if you stopped lying about Jefferts, they’d get off your back.”
My jujitsu must have worked, because he poked me hard in the ribs. “Everything I put in my report was the truth. I can’t be held responsible for what Winchenback said.”
“What did he say?”
He ran his tongue across his teeth and spit again, but nothing much came out.
I repeated the question. “What did Winchenback say?”
Guffey began gathering his turnout gear and stuffed it into its oversize bag. Over his shoulder he muttered, “I told you I’m done talking about it.”
“Where can I find Detective Winchenback, then? I’ll ask him myself.”
He gave a snorty laugh. It reminded me of the sound a neighing mule makes. “Sennebec Cemetery. Six feet under. Cancer of the tongue, ironically.”
“So Winchenback lied in his testimony,” I said.
“I never said that.”
“But it’s why you quit the sheriff’s department.” It was a wild guess, but I knew instantly from the way his back muscles tensed that I was correct.
Guffey threw his turnout bag on top of a pile of planks in the bed of his pickup. “I quit for a bunch of reasons, and they’re none of your fucking business. What do you care about my life anyway?”
“I care because I was the one who found that dead girl, and I want to nail the bastard who raped and smothered her.”
“Good luck with that.”
“I don’t think you’re as cynical as you pretend to be.” Hadn’t Sheriff Baker said almost those exact words to me a few days ago?
“I’m going home now.” Evidently, Guffey was as jaundiced as he seemed. He reached for the truck door handle.
I felt my opportunity to learn something from him slipping away. Anger and desperation caused me to grab the top of the door as he slid behind the wheel. “I don’t know what happened to make you curl up inside a shell. But if this psychopath kills another person, you’ll have blood on your hands.”
He yanked the door closed so hard, I had to snatch my hand away to avoid having my fingers amputated. “Go fuck yourself,” he said through the window.
I had to shout to be heard above his revving engine. “You think Winchenback and Marshall railroaded Erland Jefferts, don’t you? You think someone else might have killed Nikki Donnatelli and planted evidence to incriminate Jefferts.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror to see if the coast was clear to back up. “Read my report.”
“If Jefferts didn’t do it, who did?”
“I’m sure your buddy Hutchins has some ideas.”
“Curt Hutchins? The state police trooper?”
To my surprise, he rammed the gearshift into park. The truck sat where it was, idling. Whatever dark secret Guffey was keeping wanted to come out. “Ask him why the J-Team hasn’t dragged his name through the mud like they did mine.”
I thought I understood what the ex-deputy was getting at, but I wasn’t certain. “Do you mean Curt Hutchins was living around here seven years ago?”
“Living around here?” Guffey snorted again. “He and his buddies were drinking at the Harpoon the night Nikki vanished.”
36
I’m not sure I staggered, but I definitely felt the mud slide beneath my feet. “Did the police ever look at Hutchins as a suspect?”
“Why should they?” said Guffey. “Winchenback had a ‘confession’ from Jefferts.”
I was stunned. “Well, what do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.” The ex-deputy threw the truck into reverse again. “That’s a lesson I learned seven years ago.”
I watched the former deputy swing his pickup around and then rumble down the wet hill and out of view.
Now what? I wondered. Should I call Menario and tell him what Guffey told me? But why would the detective listen to me about Hutchins or anything else? Sheriff Baker might believe me. I reached inside my jacket for my phone and instead encountered the grip of my pistol. I kept forgetting that I’d lost my cell.
