Dead to the World

by B. D. Smith

  With that witticism, Ostrum began to get up from the table, but Anne stopped him with a question.

  “Did you think you were going to win your lawsuit?”

  “I was looking forward to it, actually. Eastman probably stiffed a lot of people during his days as a cut-throat developer. He could count on his lawyers to make it so difficult that his victims just gave up as the legal fees mounted. But a jury trial in Piscataquis County would have ended up with a different outcome, I think. Here I am - an honest, hardworking businessman with lots of ties to the local community and a solid reputation as a straight shooter, who gets cheated by a rich prick. Did I mention he was a real prick? And I was asking for a little over a million, the emotional stress it caused and all. I thought I had a good chance of winning.”

  Anne abruptly changed topics again.

  “Mr. Ostrum, do you ever do any SCUBA diving in the lake?”

  Smiling again, Ostrum leaned over and placed his hands palm down on the table.

  “I heard you guys think someone swam in underwater to torch his boathouse. But it wasn’t me. To answer your question – no I don’t do SCUBA diving. But my son does. We’ve been thinking about trying to bring up hundred-year-old waterlogged timber resting on the lake bottom from the logging days. Reclaimed timber is in high demand these days.”

  “Is your son around. We’d like to talk to him,” Doug asked.

  Ostrum’s smile broadened.

  “I can give you his phone number. He’s been in California since last fall – he calls it a gap year, I call it surfin, smokin weed, and generally fuckin off. But he’s twenty-one and he’s a good kid. His SCUBA gear is in the garage at home gathering dust if you want to investigate it.”

  Anne asked the next question.

  “What happened after Eastman was killed – there was an out of court settlement of your suit?”

  “Ayup. Elizabeth, who I remembered vaguely from high school, called me up about a week after her husband was killed and apologized for the misunderstanding. She asked how much I was owed, and I got a certified check from her a few days later.”

  “Were you surprised?”

  “No, not really. Elizabeth impressed me as a good person, but I think she had it pretty rough at home.”

  “How so?”

  “Oh, I think she was a handy punching bag for that prick. She kept to herself mostly, but I heard him screaming at her a few times when we were working on their boathouse, and when she did appear at the job site, I saw bruises and once she was sporting a split lip. Like I said, the guy was a prick.”

  “Did you ever see him hit her?”

  “No, I never did.”

  Doug had the next question.

  “Have any idea who might have torched the boathouse or been involved in the Eastman killing?”

  “Nope. I haven’t a clue.”

  “One final question Gary, do you have any tattoos?”

  Ostrum laughed again, clapping his hands. Several of the workers looked over at the sound.

  “You might be on to something there. The only one I have is an old Marine Corps Semper Fi tattoo,” Ostrum replied, pulling up his shirt sleeve to display the faded eagle, globe and anchor symbol. “But my son got a Sebec Lake tattoo last summer. A lot of the crowd he hangs out with have gotten lake tats lately. It’s a fad I guess, but I have no idea why they’re getting them.”

  Anne and Doug finished up the interview, recognizing already that the Ostrum lead Jack Walker had provided looked to be another dead end. And in what was becoming a frustrating pattern, while Ostrum dropped way down their list of suspects, their interview with him surfaced another line of inquiry to pursue – Eastman’s abuse of his wife could be a motive for her or someone close to her to have punched his ticket. They would have to follow up by interviewing his widow and her sister again and pressing the two women harder on their accounts. Maybe Jack Walker had more background on the sisters. They also needed to check with him on how his surveillance of Lou Binford was progressing.

  Anne and Doug decided to call it a day, and were looking forward to a quiet evening watching the sun go down and enjoying whatever other entertainment might be on offer – a mother merganser leading her dozen young in parade past the dock, or kingfishers chittering as they prowled the shallow waters, or maybe a low flying float plane eliciting angry objections from resident loons.

  When they got back to Doug’s Bowerbank cabin on the north shore there was a succinct handwritten note tucked into the screen door. Judging from the purple ink, Anne thought it was probably from the fledgling, and likely foreshadowed a coming uptick in pranking and worse by the Water Rats.

  “Best store your kayak in the house from now on.”

  18.

  Jack Walker’s surveillance of Louise Binford had so far yielded bupkis. He had focused on trying to match her boots to the print they had recovered from the boat at the Peaks-Kenny cottage after it had been used to run over Ximena in the South Cove. Jack knew that Lou always wore the same footwear - vintage combat boots, and he found a pair like hers on craigslist. Their tread pattern was a match with the boot print found on the boat. He was close, he thought, but needed her boot imprint to provide an exact match. He had tried following her at a distance for several days and waiting for her to walk on soft soil or across a hard surface with wet boots. He knew he had to be circumspect, however, to make sure she didn’t catch sight of him. After several days of fruitless following with no success, he devised another way to get her boot prints. Arriving at the roller rink early in the morning, he first soaked the ground at the bottom of the steps leading up to the front door with water, creating an impressive mud puddle that was impossible to avoid. He then replaced the worn carpet scrap on the roller rink porch with a new light-colored piece of carpet that should capture good impressions of any wet footwear that crossed it. It was then a simple matter of watching the roller rink from a distance, waiting for Lou to arrive for work and lay down some nice boot prints as she walked across the new carpet. Jack was optimistic that his plan would work, but halfway expected her to show up wearing flipflops, or to wipe her feet at the top of the stairs just prior to stepping on the waiting carpet.

  Lou arrived a little after eight o’clock, and Jack was relieved to see her splash right through the puddle climb the stairs, and then take a few firm steps on the carpet, as if she was deliberately making sure to provide clear prints of her boots for Jack.

  Jack waited a few minutes to make sure Lou was settled in front of her computer before slipping up to the side of the porch and recovering the carpet. Taking it back to his SUV, out of view of the roller rink, he was excited to see clear prints of Lou’s boots, and took several photos of the muddy patterns. Jack then sent the photos as email attachments to both Doug and to Peter Martell, head of the state police evidence response team, asking for a comparison of the boot imprint he had just recovered with the print found in the Lund boat used to run over Ximena Lapointe.

  It took less than a half hour for the text reply to come back from Martell – it was a match. They now had solid evidence that Lou had run over Ximena with the borrowed boat and could be charged with attempted murder. That in turn would give them grounds for obtaining a search warrant for her truck and house in Bangor, which could turn up evidence that she was behind the earlier attempt on Ximena’s life that resulted in the death of Don Robertson.

  Soon after he had received the text from Martell, Jack’s phone rang– it was Doug.

  “Great work Jack. Where are you, and where’s Lou right now?”

  “She’s alone inside the roller rink. I’m watching the front door from the parking lot.”

  “OK. Stay there. Don’t take any action. I repeat –
watch but don’t approach. We need to pull together a team to take her down. And don’t let anyone else gain access to the roller rink.”

  Jack confirmed he had heard Doug’s instructions, and looked down at his phone as a follow-up text from Martell popped up.

  “Distinctive cut marks on the bottom of the left boot are a clear match with the print lifted from the boat. No question.”

  Looking up from his phone, Jack was surprised to see Becky Hull, Lou’s intern, come around the corner of the roller rink and splashing through the puddle, start to climb the stairs. Jumping out of his truck, Jack ran toward the girl, calling out for her to stop. She stopped on the top step and he motioned her over to the side of the building, out of view. Sensing that something was up, Becky listened as Jack asked her to get back in her car and leave, and then with a quick nod, trotted to her car and drove away.

  Inside the roller rink, Lou had stepped over to the window, wondering where her intern was. They needed to go over several of the drone camera flight programs. With a growing sense of alarm, she watched as Jack exited his truck, rushed over to Becky, and sent her on her way.

  Lou realized the local yokels must have found some hard evidence for either the run-down of Ximena or the killing of her boyfriend Robertson. Soon they would come for her. Walking back and sitting down at her computer, she said a few “fucks” under her breath and started going down her mental checklist of preparations for a quick disappearance if she ever got in trouble. She had to move quickly, that was obvious. The first problem would be getting past the deputy lurking outside before the cavalry arrived. Once that was accomplished, she would be most vulnerable during the drive back down to Bangor. But once she reached her rented garage over by the airport and exchanged her truck for the pickup truck she had hidden there – the one registered to her new identity, it would be smooth sailing. She had plenty of cash, along with a new passport, driver’s license and other identity papers stashed under the spare tire, and a very healthy online bank account linked to her new persona. A quick dye job to get rid of her distinctive purple hair and she would head out west. But first, she needed to pick up a few things from her motel room at the Peaks-Kenny motel and take care of a loose end – Katie.

  Outside, Jack stood next to his truck, watching the door to the roller rink, and thinking about how he would probably take shit from his friends for waiting around for a SWAT team. Why not just walk in and take her into custody? As far as he knew she wasn’t armed, and anyway, he would be ready if she went for a weapon.

  Lou was thinking over her options for how to get by the deputy lurking outside the roller rink when she heard the front door open and turned to see who had just come in. She was momentarily stunned to see Jack Walker in his Piscataquis County Sheriff’s uniform letting the screen door slam behind him as he walked toward her. The sun was behind Jack, and Louise couldn’t see the expression on his face, but she decided it was not a good idea to take any chances. He had started to ask something about Rebecca Hull when Lou casually slipped her hand into her coat pocket, thumbed off the safety on her Colt 45, and without removing the gun from her coat, shot Walker, hitting him in the right side of the chest. “Nice shot,” she thought to herself.

  Jack fell backward and was knocked unconscious when his head hit the floor, hard. Lou considered a second shot to finish him off but had seen enough sucking chest wounds during her time in the military to know that even with prompt medical attention he was most likely a goner. And while one shot might not draw much notice, she figured a second shot would definitely draw unwanted attention.

  Moving out the door, Lou held the gun down at her side and looked quickly around. There did not appear to be anyone nearby, other than a canoe coming into the marina, so she pocketed the Colt, walked over to her truck in the parking lot, and headed back into town.

  Tim Wakeland, who was walking back from the marina office toward his truck, heard the shot, and rounding the corner of the roller rink, noticed Lou’s purple hair as she drove out of the parking lot. Curious, he opened the door to the roller rink and saw Jack Walker’s body sprawled motionless on the floor. Stepping quickly inside, Wakeland approached Jack, saw the blood, and tore his shirt open to check the wound. Tim immediately recognized the seriousness of the situation. Quickly placing his hand over the hole in Jack’s chest, which was oozing bloody froth and producing an audible whistling noise, Tim Pulled out his phone with his free hand and called 911.

  “911. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “My name’s Tim Wakeland. I’m taking a gunshot victim to the Mayo hospital in Dover-Foxcroft. Let them know I’m maybe twenty minutes out. Chest wound. Unconscious but breathing.”

  Grabbing both arms of the wounded man, Tim slid him out the door, leaving a wide bloodstain on the floor. Several fishermen rushed over when they saw Tim pull the wounded man out through the front door of the roller rink, and with their help Jack was loaded into the bed of Tim’s pickup truck. One of the fishermen drove while Tim knelt next to Jack in the bed of the truck, sealing off the chest wound with a plastic bag.

  Just up the road a bit, Louise stopped briefly at the Peaks Kenny Motor Lodge on the way into town, packed up her stuff, and checked out. Glancing up as she paid her bill, she caught a quick glimpse of Tim’s truck fly past the motel but thought little of it.

  She had driven by Ximena’s house on the way into work, and not seeing her truck parked outside, had no idea where she was, and wasn’t going to waste time looking for her. She didn’t have much time. Her only stop would be Allie Oops in town, where she was hoping to confront Katie and find out if she had ratted her out.

  A doctor and several nurses met Tim’s truck with a gurney outside the emergency room entrance, and Jack Walker was rushed inside and straight back to an operating room. It wasn’t long before several police vehicles pulled up outside the front door and a small crowd began to gather. Sheriff Torben was the first in the door, soon followed by Anne and Doug. They took Tim into a nearby conference room to wait for news on Jack’s condition. Tim had just started his account of what had happened when a nurse poked her head in the door and gave them an update on Jack’s status.

  “He’s stable right now, but he’ll be in surgery for another hour at least, and he’s lost a lot of blood. Another few minutes and he wouldn’t have made it.”

  “When can we talk to him?” Doug asked.

  “I’m not sure,” replied the nurse. He’ll be transferred over to Northern Light in Bangor as soon as he’s able to make the trip, and I’m not sure you will be able to interview him before that.”

  “Is he going to make it?” Anne asked anxiously.

  “He was shot once, in the right chest. It’s a serious wound but the bullet doesn’t appear to have hit any major blood vessels or any internal organs other than his right lung. Otherwise he would have bled out before you got him here. We’ll stop the bleeding and see how it goes from there.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to find the person who shot Jack,” Tim interjected. “I saw them driving away after the shooting, and they have purple hair.”

  “That’s Louise Binford.” Doug replied. “I guess Jack decided to take her on by himself.”

  After the nurse left Anne pulled Doug aside.

  “Doug, I think Binford might try to find Ximena and Katie before leaving town. It would be really stupid, I know, but she’s crazy enough to try it. I’m going to swing by Ximena’s place and Allie Oops to see if anyone has seen Binford, and I’ll call Peter Martell to make sure Katie is still down in Augusta.”

  After Anne headed out, Doug got Tim to run through his account of the shooting, and then followed up by asking him what he might have heard about Water Rat pranks that had been escalating recently. Tim had been a Water Rat growing up in Bowerbank, not too
far from Doug, and was able to add to their list a few more recent incidents that had occurred along the north shore of Sebec: patio boats untied from their docks, missing spark plug wires, and life preservers in trees. Nothing really serious, but still more vandalism than usual. Doug asked Tim to keep his ears open and let them know if he heard anything else of interest.

  After interviewing Tim Wakeland, Doug called Tom Richard and filled him in on the shooting of the sheriff’s deputy. Given the statement by Wakeland that it was Lou Binford that he saw driving away from the scene of the shooting, they now had more than enough for a search warrant of Binford’s garage and house. Tom agreed to set up surveillance on her house, put out a bolo for Binford and her vehicle, and get the search warrant application going. The net was closing.

  Anne called Katie as she jogged out to her truck, but her call went to voice mail. Next she called Peter and was stunned to learn that Katie had driven back up to Dover-Foxcroft that morning to pick up her paycheck. Anne replied, her anxiety level suddenly increasing.

  “Listen, Peter. Lou Binford shot a deputy here in town less than an hour ago, and she’s still at large. She may have skipped town already, but it’s possible she stuck around and is looking for Katie. I’m on my way right now to Allie Oops. I tried calling but she doesn’t pick up. Get on your phone and call and text her and tell her to turn around. Keep at it till you contact her.”

  There were several cars and a logging truck backed up at the stoplight by the civil war memorial in Dover-Foxcroft, and Anne turned on her blue flashing grill lights as she snuck around them on the right and turned to cross the bridge over the Piscataquis River. Once past the traffic backup she turned off her blue flashers and intently scanned traffic for any sign of either Lou Binford or Katie. Rather than continuing on Main Street, Anne turned left into the parking lot entrance by the Center Theatre. The lot stretched for several blocks behind the buildings on Main Street, and driving slowly through it, Anne could approach Allie Oops from the rear. She was hoping to enter the bar through the rear door but found it locked. Staying close to the wall, she walked quickly down the alley at the side of Allie Oops, and reaching the sidewalk at Main Street, peeked around the corner. There were a few people looking in the window of the hardware store across the street, but otherwise no pedestrian traffic. Anne froze, however, when she saw Katie’s truck parked on the other side of the street. Right behind it was Louise Binford’s pickup.