by Paul Doiron
“Light’s not the issue,” said the pilot. “It’s the rain and wind coming in tonight. But I’ll get you home, Detective. Don’t you worry.”
Radcliffe appeared around the corner of the house. “Jenny Pillsbury’s here!”
“The rental agent?” The detective checked his watch. “Took her long enough.”
I asked Charley to assist Ronette while the detective and I spoke with the woman who had been Ariel’s landlady during her short stay on the island.
Jenny Pillsbury was standing in the road, talking with Hiram Reed. While we’d been occupied, Harmon Reed had slipped away with Kenneth Crowley.
“Nothing suspicious about that,” Klesko muttered.
The constable introduced us to Jenny Pillsbury. She was tall, almost six feet, with short dark hair and widely spaced brown eyes. She wore a flannel shirt, blue jeans, and work boots, but there was nothing mannish about her at all. From his smile, Klesko obviously found her quite attractive. He wasn’t the only man among us who did.
“I’m sorry it took this long for me to get here.” She presented the detective and me with business cards. The name of her rental agency was Island Accommodations. “This was my morning to work in the store. I was just saying to Hiram that it feels like he’s been following me all day—or that I’ve been following him.”
“You can’t get rid of me, Jenny,” he said.
“I would think you’d have had better things to do than hang out all morning with those old geezers at Graffam’s. At least I was working. What’s your excuse?”
“An utter lack of ambition,” said Hiram Reed.
She reached into a tote. Something jangled inside. “Here are the master keys to the cottage. I’m willing to help you any way I can. I can’t believe the hunter who shot Ariel would slink away like that. It’s a horrible reflection on our island. Nobody’s going to want to rent a house out here again.”
“What can you tell us about Ariel Evans?” Klesko asked. “How did she first contact you?”
“Through my website. She made the reservation and paid the deposit online back in the winter. It was all pretty standard.”
The detective removed his notebook from his pocket, reminding me to record this impromptu interview.
“So there was nothing out of the ordinary?” he asked.
“It’s unusual for someone to book three months, let alone stay past Columbus Day, after the inns and restaurants close. And there was one other thing. In August Ariel warned me she would be delayed in arriving. She had an assignment overseas, she said. Then she showed up a few days later. From that phone call, I thought she wouldn’t be here for weeks. But her work schedule wasn’t any of my business.”
“Did she ever tell you why she’d chosen Maquoit?” Klesko asked.
“Not in so many words. But the rumor going around was that she was visiting Stormalong. You’ve heard about our hermit?”
“We wondered if she intended to write a book about him,” I said.
“I can’t think what other reason she would’ve had for rowing over there so often. The man is disgusting.”
Something about Jenny Pillsbury was discordant, I realized. She spoke at a measured pace and had unnervingly steady eyes. Yet I sensed that she was, deep down, extremely anxious.
“What were your interactions with her like?” Klesko asked.
“My interactions?”
“Was she an easy or difficult renter? What was your impression of her as a person?”
Pillsbury shuffled her feet and put a hand to her mouth. “I never had any problems with her as a renter. She liked to drink and have people over at the house, I heard. But I didn’t get the sense she was destroying the place. Personally, I found her charming. Everyone on the island seemed quite taken with her. That’s why I can’t believe she was killed deliberately. It had to have been some sort of horrible accident. Nothing else makes sense.”
9
Jenny Pillsbury jingled the keys. “I don’t suppose you want me to come with you, but I can definitely let you inside.”
“We’re not ready to search the house,” Klesko said. “We’re still waiting on a warrant.”
I tried not to show my surprise.
Jenny was also perplexed. “Why do you need a warrant? I’m giving you permission on behalf of the owner.”
“Who is the owner, by the way?” the detective asked, readying his pen to jot the name in his notebook.
“Tom Epstein. He’s a cardiologist in Philadelphia. He told me I should give you access to anything you need.”
“You spoke with him?”
“Wouldn’t you want to know if your tenant had been shot to death in your backyard?”
“Can I speak with you, Detective?” I asked.
We stepped to the side.
I said, “I’m the one who’s supposed to file the affidavits for search warrants.”
“But you didn’t, and we’re getting short on time. You told me we needed to divide up the tasks. I understand if you feel overwhelmed, Mike. But you need to get your head clear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it true that you had me call Danica Marshall because there’s bad blood between you?”
Sometimes I forgot how small a state Maine is. It figured that Assistant Attorney General Marshall’s long-standing grudge against me was common knowledge in the state police CID.
“I’m not trying to undercut you here,” Klesko said when I didn’t respond. “But I’ve done this a bunch of times before, and this is your first rodeo. We’re partners, and you need to trust me.”
“When the judge calls back, I want to speak with him.”
“Of course.”
We returned to the place where Jenny Pillsbury, Hiram Reed, and Charley Stevens were gathered. They were looking at the sky, discussing the weather. The rainstorm moving in overnight was supposed to be a doozy.
“Why do you need a warrant?” Jenny hadn’t missed a beat.
I made a mental note that she was intelligent and observant: two qualities you want in a witness. The rental agent might prove useful if my investigation bogged down, as it already seemed to be doing.
“It’s just a precaution,” I said. “When the case goes to trial, we can’t afford for there to be any weirdness. Defendants have walked free because police were told they had permission to search a piece of property and only later discovered that someone else was sharing the space, too, and had a right to privacy.”
“But Ariel was renting this cottage alone. And I’m authorized to give you permission. Dr. Epstein said so.”
Klesko’s phone rang. It was the judge to whom the detective had submitted the affidavit for a search warrant. He handed me his mobile. The reception was much clearer than it was on mine.
“Your Honor, this is Warden Investigator Bowditch.”
“What happened to Detective Klesko?”
“I’m the primary on this case. The detective submitted the application while I was interviewing a material witness.”
“Yes, well. It all looks good to me. Detective Klesko’s applications are always flawless. He should conduct a tutorial for his fellow officers. May I speak with him please?”
I handed the phone back to Klesko.
* * *
The door was unlocked and opened with a push of the knob. The hinges, I noticed, didn’t make a sound. On an island where every metal thing rusts overnight, it’s telling when someone cares enough to keep their hinges well greased.
What struck me first about the sunlit interior of Gull Cottage was how bright it was. The sea-green floorboards had been newly painted, and the walls were as white as schooner sails. The furniture was modern, comfortable looking, and everything matched. The paintings on the walls were of ocean scenes: waves crashing against cliffs, a lighthouse beacon cutting the fog; gulls perched atop ships’ masts. The Philadelphia cardiologist hadn’t wanted his tenants to forget they were vacationing on a Maine island.
The s
econd thing I noticed was the awesomeness of the mess. The hooked rugs had all been kicked out of place. Ashes had fallen from the woodstove and onto the floor beyond the protective mat. Beer cans and half-empty wineglasses occupied most of the flat surfaces. I would have bet money that the rental contract had a no-smoking clause, but the smell of stale cigarettes and marijuana blunts was pervasive.
“Looks like she threw a few parties,” I said.
“That might explain why she was so popular. You’re lucky you’ve got an evidence tech with you. I don’t even know where to begin here.”
While Klesko continued on into the kitchen, I peeked into the side room. It was some sort of library. The shelves were filled with well-thumbed paperbacks, the kinds of books you leave for strangers. Near the window was a trestle desk. You would have expected an author to set up her laptop there. But instead of a computer, there was an open artist’s sketch box.
The house might have been chaotic, but the contents of the box—pastels, charcoal pencils, pads of drawing paper—were carefully arranged.
When I turned back toward the front room, I found myself confronted with an enormous corkboard on the wall beside the door. On it were tacked maybe twenty sketches. Some were in charcoal, others in pastel. But all were of a single person: a gray-bearded man with long hair that was sometimes loose and sometimes tied in a horse tail. His features had been scoured by the wind and burned by the sun, but he appeared well fed, physically fit, handsome even in a rough-hewn way. He was dressed in a sheepskin vest and wore a leather cord around his throat on which was strung a gold ring.
“Steve! Take a look at this.”
A moment later the detective stood beside me.
“This has got to be the hermit. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know who else it would be. Radcliffe said she spent days over on his rock. What was his name?”
“Blake Markman.”
“Why was she sketching him?”
“Beats me. But these are really fantastic. She had a tremendous talent.”
Klesko gave me a gray-toothed grin. He was still trying to make nice after our brief confrontation over the warrant. “You never struck me as the artsy type, Bowditch.”
“What I mean is, none of the articles I’ve read about Ariel Evans said she was a visual artist as well as an author. I find it odd that there are all these drawings but no sign of her being a writer working on a book.”
“I’m more intrigued by the absence of a cell phone.”
“You think someone might have stolen it?”
“If they did, it meant they entered the house after they shot her.” Klesko’s implication—that her death was indeed a murder—hung heavily in the air. “Maybe her phone’s upstairs with her computer and her notes.”
I lingered behind him, spellbound by the drawings. Something about them was almost unbearably haunting. It wasn’t just the hermit’s pain. It was the artist’s as well. Only someone who had suffered profoundly could have captured the utter brokenness of this man’s spirit.
* * *
I finally caught up with Klesko upstairs in the master bedroom. He was standing with his hands on his hips and a frown on his face. The down comforter lay on the floor, at the foot of the four-poster. The sheets had been stripped from the mattress and the cases from the pillows.
“I guess this explains why she was doing laundry,” he said.
The windows were open and the curtains were snapping in the breeze blowing in through the screens.
I said, “I don’t see any computer or notes.”
The detective made a wide circuit of the naked bed and entered the adjoining bathroom.
On the bedside table was a half-empty glass of red wine and one of those snap-open pillboxes with a variety of pills. I knew little about prescription drugs. But in general, I knew that few of them mixed well with alcohol.
A moment later I heard Klesko exclaim from the bathroom, “Bingo!”
He was bent over the overflowing wastebasket. He’d removed a pen from the inside pocket of his bomber and stuck it into the trash. When he lifted it, a torn condom wrapper was on the end.
“There are three of these in here. She must have flushed the rubbers.”
Ariel didn’t seem to be overly concerned about such things as clogging the landlord’s plumbing. “This explains why she was washing the sheets.”
“Did you notice the pillbox beside the bed?” he asked. “She had quite a pharmacy going. Ambien, Klonopin, Vicodin. But most of what was in there was lithium.”
“So she was probably bipolar.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone taking lithium recreationally.” Klesko removed a hairbrush from the gold-patterned toiletry bag beside the sink. The visible strands were long, wavy, and blond. “These mostly look like hers. I doubt the guy she was bonking bothered with a brush.”
I left him to poke through Ariel’s matching set of Coach luggage. I knew the bags were expensive because my late mother had favored the same brand. To my mom, there was no point to consumption that wasn’t also conspicuous.
The second upstairs bedroom showed no sign of having been used at all, for sleeping or anything else. The curtains were drawn and the window was closed and locked. I doubted Ariel had ever set foot inside it.
I peeked in a couple of closets, continued on to the main bedroom.
“I can’t find her computer anywhere.”
“Here’s her wallet at least.” Klesko raised a plastic bag containing a billfold made of some exotic reptile hide: crocodile, python, maybe even Komodo dragon. “Inside is her New York driver’s license, an AmEx Platinum Card, a subway card, and approximately five hundred dollars in cash.”
“She traveled light.”
“Look at her luggage. This wasn’t a woman who traveled light. We have more of the house to search, but there’s something else beside the laptop that should be here but isn’t.”
He didn’t have to tell me what it was. “Her cell phone.”
“And Mrs. Pillsbury told me that they texted this morning after Ariel discovered the dryer was broken. I tried calling the number she gave me and got an automated voice mail. I tried texting and got a notification that the message wasn’t delivered. So where is the phone?”
“The better question is, who took it?”
Klesko became very still. He removed a glove and massaged the muscles in the back of his neck. I could see him searching carefully for words.
“I need you to be honest with me about something, Mike. Based on everything you’ve seen here, do you honestly believe this was a random hunting incident?”
I turned to the window where the curtain continued to dance in the breeze. “One of your colleagues told me not to make assumptions. She said, ‘Never get ahead of your evidence.’”
Klesko picked up on the pronoun. “Was it Ellen Pomerleau who said that? Well, it’s first-rate advice. An investigator starts having problems when he gets ahead of his evidence.”
“Pomerleau is a first-rate detective.”
“But Ellen wasn’t the one who located the missing girl over in Birnam. It was you who found her.”
I flicked my eyes at him. “It was more like she found me.”
“From what I’ve heard, those freaks really put you through hell.” His tone was not unkind.
I said nothing.
“After what happened,” he continued in a soft, steady voice, “there were a lot of people who were shocked at your promotion. They thought you were responsible for what ended up happening in that basement. They thought you should have known better.”
I tried to maintain my outward calm. “Everyone is entitled to an opinion.”
“I guess the Warden Service decides things differently than we do.”
I opened and closed my hands at my sides. “What do you think? Would you say I’m up to the job?”
To his credit, Klesko stared me straight in the eyes. “I wish I could say yes, Mike. But I honestly don’t know yet.”
10
I should have felt sorry leaving the detective to document and collect the evidence inside the cottage. But his final words had left my face stinging as if he’d slapped me.
Out in the road a sirocco of dust and leaves had formed. The detritus whirled round and round in an upward spiral. The miniature tornado was at once awesome and eerie.
Radcliffe met me in the yard. “I thought you’d want to know. The Star of the Sea just pulled in at Bishop’s Wharf.”
It was the boat I had called to ferry the body of Ariel Evans to shore.
The Star of the Sea was legendary along the Maine coast for all the good work it did: ministering to the spiritual needs of islanders, diagnosing and treating their health problems (babies had been born aboard the ship, and emergency surgeries had been conducted via telemedicine hookups), hosting AA and other group-therapy meetings, and generally functioning as a valued connection to a world that tended to forget these poor, isolated communities even existed.
“Thanks, Andrew.”
“I’m feeling like kind of a third wheel here. Or maybe a fifth wheel would be apropos.”
“You’ve been very helpful already. Actually there’s one more thing you can do for me. Would you mind driving me down to the Gut? I’d like a look at this Stormalong place where the hermit lives.”
If nothing else, those obsessive sketches had raised Blake Markman to the top of my list of people to interview.
I climbed back into Radcliffe’s pickup, trying not to disturb his sleeping dog. My worries in that regard were unfounded. Bella kept snoring
“Any breakthroughs in the case?” Radcliffe asked with forced nonchalance. “I don’t suppose there’s any new evidence you’ve found you can share with me. I promise to keep your confidence.”
In the truck there was nowhere for me to hide. “It’s still very early in our investigation.”
“But there’s nothing to suggest she was killed deliberately? It had to have been a hunting accident. Everyone on the island liked Ariel.”
Not everyone, I thought. “We’re pursuing multiple theories.”
