40
Two days later, the gentle yet hulking prison guard named Thomas escorted me into the Maine State Prison’s visiting area. I had received special permission to see a prisoner on such short notice. Once again, I had an appointment with Erland Jefferts.
When I’d called Ozzie Bell to arrange the visit, he’d been ecstatic. He’d heard the news about my fight with Stanley Snow, and although he voiced concern for my girlfriend and myself, he couldn’t suppress his giddiness. He was so upbeat, he didn’t bother asking me why I wanted to talk with Jefferts alone.
I didn’t have long to wait. The model prisoner came through the door with the biggest shit-eating grin I’d ever seen.
“My man Bowditch!” He looked neat and clean in his blue denim outfit. His wavy blond hair was wet and combed carefully back behind his ears. He surveyed my bandaged head and new sling and shook his head with amusement. “You look like half a mummy, dude.”
“Have a seat, Jefferts.”
The inmate and I faced each other across the table. He waited for me to start the conversation, but I was in no particular hurry.
“I guess I should start by thanking you,” he said. “I can’t believe it was Stanley. He was, like, the last person I ever suspected.”
I tried to remain still as I spoke. “Why was that?”
He gave me one of his patented movie star smiles. “He just seemed like this honest, hardworking type of guy. He never got too high or too low. ‘Steady Stanley,’ I used to call him. I don’t think I ever saw him drink a beer. But I guess that’s how psychopaths are-cold and calculating.”
“Some are,” I said. “But then you have killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, people who are complete alcoholics. My father was a drunk.”
He leaned back in his chair. I was certain he didn’t know what to make of my subdued manner. Maybe he figured I was sedated.
“Well, in any case,” he said, “Stanley wasn’t a drinker.”
“Do you remember the last time you saw him?”
“The dude never visited me. Not once in seven years. And he was my own cousin. But it makes sense now, in retrospect.”
I shook my head. The motion was like a flare going off inside my brainpan. “I meant the night Nikki disappeared.”
“He came out into the parking lot after Folsom tossed me out of the bar. He said I was too drunk to drive, but I told him to get lost. I guess he must have seen how wasted I was, and that was when he got the idea to pin the murder on me. It was probably when he stole the tape out of my truck, too.”
“You never mentioned in your court testimony that he was at the Harpoon.”
He brought his hands together, laying one over the other. “I was pretty wasted.”
“How do you think he found you passed out in the woods?”
“He must have followed me around that night.”
“When do you think he abducted Nikki?”
He gave a halfhearted shrug. “Good question.”
“It looks like you’ll be getting a new trial,” I said placidly.
He flashed that brilliant smile. “That’s what Ozzie says. There’s just no way they can railroad me again after what Stan did. It’s open-and-shut, man. Open-and-shut.”
“How so?”
He seemed bemused by my question. “It all makes sense now, right? At the trial, my lawyer argued that I couldn’t have killed Nikki, because she died while I was in police custody-on account of the rigor mortis evidence. Snow killed her after they arrested me, just like we always said happened. But that bitch Marshall was so hot to nail me, she denied the state’s own science. The newspapers are going to crucify her now.”
I sat there quietly.
Jefferts seemed to sense something was amiss. “Are you OK, man? You don’t look so hot.”
“No, I’m not OK,” I said. “Your accomplice just tried to kill me and my girlfriend.”
“My accomplice?” Jefferts tried to shake the accusation off by pretending he hadn’t heard me correctly. But he’d heard me all right.
“You remember the last time I was here?” I said. “I asked you what you did after you left the Harpoon that night, and you said something that struck me, but it took me a while to figure out what it was. You said you drove around and called some of your friends on your ‘CrackBerry’ to find out if there were any parties going on.”
He smiled again, but this time without showing his teeth. “I’m not following you.”
“Well, I remembered the inventory of items the police recovered from your truck. There was a lot of crap there, but no BlackBerry.”
Jefferts stared at me silently for a few moments, without expression. “I must have lost it.”
“Either that or someone stole it.”
“That’s a possibility.”
“There was another thing that had me puzzled. I read Ozzie Bell’s files, and Stanley Snow was never mentioned. All of your other cousins attended your trial or signed letters demanding that you be pardoned. Snow never did either of those things, and I wondered why.”
He adjusted his shirt collar but didn’t respond.
“The J-Team has been pretty aggressive in naming other people as potential suspects in Nikki’s murder,” I continued. “Calvin Barter, Mark Folsom, the Driskos, and half a dozen others. Why not Stanley Snow? The rigging tape used to suffocate Nikki had been exposed to salt water, so it might have come off his uncle’s lobsterboat, the Glory B. If your defense team was throwing darts against the wall, how come one didn’t hit your buddy Stan?”
His eyes were hooded now. “You should ask Ozzie that.”
“I asked Sheriff Baker. He said you told the J-Team to leave Stanley out of their witch-hunt.”
“Because I didn’t think he did it. He was my friend and I didn’t think he did it.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Simple as that.”
“All along, you’ve been presenting everyone with only two choices. Either you’re totally guilty or you’re totally innocent. Nobody ever considered the possibility that you might first have been complicit in Nikki’s abduction-and then later been played for a patsy by your cousin.”
Two bursts of color appeared on Jefferts’s cheeks. “Go to hell.”
I decided not to respond to the personal attack. “You did say one thing that I believed. I think you and Nikki did fool around a little. Mark Folsom said he threw you out of the bar that night because you grabbed Nikki, but I bet there was some history there. My theory is that you waited for closing time to apologize. I think that somehow you sweet-talked her into going for a ride with you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“There’s no way Nikki would have gone anywhere with a troll like Stanley Snow.”
Beads of sweat had appeared along his forehead. “You’re just making this shit up.”
I continued my story. “You drove Nikki to your secret spot down lover’s lane, and then something happened. Maybe you tried to force yourself on her and she said no. Whatever happened, you knocked her senseless, because the coroner’s report said she had a wound on her forehead that no one could explain. She was hurt, and you panicked. That’s when you called ‘Steady Stanley’ for help.”
Jefferts restrained himself from flying across the table. “Fuck you.”
“When Snow showed up, he found you passed out from drinking a gallon of booze. Even better, Nikki was out cold, too. Here was this hot little waitress lying helpless in front of him, this stuck-up rich girl. I’m guessing it was then he realized he could rape her and pin it on you. So your good friend-the man you called for help-snatched her away and left you lying in your own puke.”
On the tabletop, his hands were balled into bony fists. “You can’t prove any of that.”
“The only evidence linking Snow to Nikki’s disappearance was the call you made to him from your phone,
