Beneath the Ashes

by Dea Poirier

  “Why is she just calling now? Did she say anything else?” Sometimes at this stage in a case, especially when it gets this much media attention, people will start probing departments for answers. It concerns me that this girl is coming out of the woodwork now and that she didn’t come to us earlier in the investigation. Is she just feeling us out? Or does she have legitimate information?

  “Blake is the one that took the call. He didn’t say that she said anything else or offered information about why she was calling now.” He looks back at the legal pad on his desk, as if checking to be sure.

  “If that’s all, I’m going to catch up with Austin before we talk to Tegan.”

  He waves his hand in dismissal. “That’s all.”

  I walk out of his office and cross the room to Austin’s desk. She’s sipping from a cup of tea when I walk up and glances at me over the rim. Both of her hands clutch the cup, as if she’s afraid she’ll drop it.

  “Hey, Claire,” she says as she puts the cup down.

  After pulling up a chair, I plop down next to her desk. “What can you tell me about Tegan Hartley?”

  “She’s twenty or so, works as a mechanic in town. She got in trouble three or four times for truancy, but nothing serious.” Austin glances over her shoulder to see who’s taking note of our conversation. Then she lowers her voice to add, “She’s known to get around town, if you know what I mean.”

  I try not to let my frustration rise with that sentiment. That’s something that always annoyed the shit out of me in Vinalhaven. Guys can fuck anything that moves and suffer no ill reputation, but a woman loses her virginity to someone she doesn’t intend on marrying—and bam, she might as well stamp SLUT on her forehead. It’s ridiculous. Even worse is when there’s talk that a woman was asking for a horrible fate just because she had a libido.

  “She’s a mechanic?” I ask, trying not to let my lingering frustrations touch my words.

  “She works on motorcycles, snowmobiles, ATVs over at Midcoast Custom Repairs.”

  “She gets here in twenty. Do you want to sit in on the conversation? She wants to talk to us about Asha and Jessica. She apparently knew them both.”

  Her eyes go wide for just a moment. “She did? Why didn’t anyone else mention that she knew them? I’ve never seen them together.”

  “That was my question. Maybe no one knew they were acquainted.”

  Twenty minutes later, my desk phone rings. It’s the receptionist alerting me to Tegan’s arrival. I walk to the front of the station and find her leaning against the desk, chatting up the receptionists like she belongs here. Tegan looks like she should work at a motorcycle shop. She’s got on a worn leather biker jacket, with patches sewn into the crinkled hide. Beneath the jacket, a vintage band T-shirt peeks out. From the pyramid on it, my guess is Pink Floyd. She’s got on tight skinny jeans tucked into buckled motorcycle boots that go up to midcalf.

  Her hard features go along with the clothes: high cheekbones, a pronounced nose, and lips that remind me of Angelina Jolie. When she sees me, the left side of her mouth quirks up, and she sweeps her long black hair away from her face.

  “Tegan?” I ask, though I know she must be.

  She nods, and I introduce myself before bringing her through the bull pen. “The only place we have to talk is the room we usually use for interrogations. Is that okay?” I ask. The only other option would be for me to kick Sergeant Pelletier out of his office, and I’m not about to do that.

  “Whatever works,” she says in a voice much deeper than I’d expect out of a woman in her early twenties.

  I show her into the room, and Austin joins us. Tegan sits at the table, the metal chair scraping against the concrete floor. The back of her head is reflected in the one-way mirror behind her.

  “Would you like anything to drink?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I’m all set.”

  I take a seat, Austin sitting beside me. “So, Tegan, what brings you in here today?”

  “I’ve been out of town for a couple weeks, and when I got back yesterday, I saw the stories about Jessica and Asha.” Her voice is husky, filled with emotion as she says it. There’re no tears, but I can tell that she’s trying to remain composed.

  “And how did you know them?” I ask.

  She leans in, her elbows propped on the table. “If I tell you something that’s not technically legal, could I go to jail for it?” she asks, all the emotion shed completely.

  “That depends,” I say. There are too many factors. I can’t guarantee her that whatever she says wouldn’t implicate her in some crime.

  “What if I didn’t do anything illegal—I just knew about it?” she asks.

  “Well, if you didn’t commit the crime yourself, but you were aware, then you could technically be charged as an accessory. However, the chances of that are low, and coming in here to volunteer information that helps with an investigation would put you in a good light. Chances are the DA wouldn’t want to go after you for anything if you helped us to solve these murders,” I explain. I try to dance around it as best I can. I can’t tell her that she won’t get in trouble for whatever she’s about to tell me. But if she helps me catch whoever is doing this, I’ll go to bat for this girl. I’ll do whatever I can to help keep her out of trouble.

  She’s quiet, chewing her bottom lip, clearly lost in contemplation. “I knew Asha and Jessica because of ATV,” she says in a low voice.

  “I’m going to need you to explain,” I say when she doesn’t continue.

  “Over in Bald Mountain Preserve—or some of the other preserves if it’s too packed—we have races. I haven’t ever participated, but they pay me to show up and help with the ATVs if anyone needs a quick fix. It’s an easy two hundred dollars, so I almost always go. Jessica and Asha both raced. There was another girl they did it with, but I didn’t ever interact with her. But I got drinks and had dinner with Jessica and Asha a few times.”

  Is that what the text messages they were receiving were for? Not bonfires? “Do you know about these?” I ask as I show her a sheet of the coordinates from my files.

  “Yeah, those are sent out so people know where and when the races are being held.”

  I make note of that and then circle back to something else she said. “That other girl you mentioned. Could that have been Melanie?”

  “I think so. I thought it was Miranda or Melissa, something like that.”

  “In the interviews we’ve done for Jessica and Asha, no one in their families, none of their friends, mentioned you,” I say. Though there’re no outward signs that make me disbelieve Tegan, I need to be sure that the information she’s providing is accurate.

  “We were careful. Asha, Jessica, and the others who raced didn’t really have anything in common outside racing. And a lot of the women are so competitive; they’re just there to win, not to make friends. So I don’t think they saw each other outside of those meet ups. Racing ATVs and betting on the results isn’t legal. No one wants to get busted or have it shut down. It’s one of the few things we can do and have it totally to ourselves, away from the tourists.”

  I don’t plan on shutting down their races. That’s not my fish to fry. But I do need to determine if our suspect ever came to the races. Though I know this all ties back to the hospital, there’s overlap here. “Nothing we saw indicated that Asha was involved in ATV,” I say. Though it was clear for Melanie and Jessica, how did Asha keep it a secret?

  “In middle school Asha fell off her brother’s ATV and got a really bad concussion. She’d loved them back then, but after her fall, her parents made her promise that she wouldn’t get on them again. They thought it was too dangerous. Though they let her older brother keep riding. About six months ago, she came back to the scene; then she was gone for a while because she got sick.”

  “Do you remember anyone named Trystan coming to the races?”

  She shakes her head. “No, I don’t remember anyone with that name.”

  “Were there
races going on the nights Melanie, Asha, or Jessica died?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “I think there was one a few days before Melanie died, on the seventeenth or eighteenth, but she couldn’t race because of her wrist. There wasn’t another before Asha’s death; that was too close to the other one. We usually space them out by a few weeks. And for Jessica, I don’t know. I was out of town.”

  “Did you see Melanie with anyone at the race? A man?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Do you think it would have been out of the question or out of character for any of them to have met a guy at the races and gone home with him or to a hotel?”

  She offers me a one-shouldered shrug. “I didn’t know them that well. But I did see Asha leave with a guy a couple times.”

  “Do you know who this guy was?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “No, I’d never seen him before. But that’s not all that surprising. There are a lot of people who come to the races that I don’t know. There are spectators; then there are those who actually race. Some people come from other towns—it’s not just Camden. Typically, I only deal with the racers. I don’t have any interest in those who are there to place bets. I’m there to keep the engines running.”

  “Was there anyone there that stood out to you? Someone who was watching the girls there a little too closely?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “When and where do these races take place?” I ask.

  “It depends. They switch them up so it’s less likely that they’ll ever get found out and shut down. They used to do the same thing up north, in Appleton and Union, but they got shut down in both. Usually they’re on weekend nights. But when is variable.”

  “They race in the middle of the night? That doesn’t seem safe.”

  “Most of the ATVs have lights on the front, and they all know the area well enough that it’s fine. One girl, I think it was Melanie, got hurt recently and broke her wrist. Other than that, she was fine, though. No one’s been seriously hurt,” she explains.

  I really want to add a yet, but I don’t. “The next time you hear about a race, give me a call,” I say as I fish out one of my business cards.

  She glances at the business card but doesn’t take it. “Are you going to shut it down?”

  I shake my head. “No, I’ve got no intentions of shutting it down.”

  Carefully, as if the card might bite her, she scoops it up and slides it into her back pocket. “I’ve got to go. Need to get to work for my shift.”

  “Thank you for coming in,” I say.

  Austin walks Tegan out, and I head back to my desk to type up my notes from the interview. Just as I’ve got nearly all of them done, my cell phone buzzes in my pocket. I glance at the screen, but I don’t recognize the number.

  “Detective Calderwood,” I say as soon as the call connects.

  “Claire, this is Vera McConnel over at the medical center,” she says in a smooth, even voice, as if her breakdown over the media yesterday never happened.

  “Yes?” I say, unsure why exactly she’s calling.

  “I wanted to give you a heads-up that we will be terminating Trent Ibben today. He will no longer be allowed on hospital grounds.” She says this in such a way it seems like she thinks we’ve spoken about Trent before. But I have no idea who this man is.

  “And he is?” I ask when she doesn’t explain.

  “He is the head of our custodial-services team.”

  “And why is he being terminated?” I ask, making sure to use the same phrasing she did. I noticed she’s careful not to say fired, and I’m sure there’s a reason for that.

  “He was caught taking pictures of patients. Explicit pictures,” she says, her voice low, her words careful.

  “Oh?” I ask.

  “Yes, some underage patients. Girls in their mid- to late teens.”

  “Did he have pictures on his phone of Jessica, Melanie, or Asha?” I ask.

  She clears her throat. “Yes, he did. I wanted to make you aware, as I am sure that you will need to question him about this. We have also alerted the authorities to the fact that he has images of underage girls on his phone. I spoke to Sergeant Pelletier a few minutes ago, but I wanted to give you a call as well. He was caught in the act of taking the pictures by David.”

  My stomach flip-flops and then creeps up my throat as the information sickens me. If he has pictures of those girls and she’s seen them, that could be enough for us to get a warrant. “Vera, would you be willing to sign a statement saying why he is being terminated and that both you and David saw the pictures? That should help us get a warrant.” With anyone else, I’d be sure that they’d give us this information without any problems. But with Vera, who the hell knows.

  “Yes, we’ll both sign the statement, and then I’ll email it over to you.”

  “You may get a call from the judge to verify,” I explain.

  “That’s fine. I’ll put my cell phone number on there as well. I want to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible. The faster that man is in jail, the faster we can guarantee that he can’t kill any more of our patients,” she says.

  It seems that she’s softened her edge a bit on stopping these murders. And she seems incredibly certain that Trent did this. While it doesn’t look good for him, I need more evidence and a motive. I know that the reasoning behind her sudden willingness to help has nothing to do with loss of life and everything to do with stockholders and how her hospital is being portrayed in the media. The reporters have started giving it the title of the hunting ground for the Pen Bay Strangler. Which is obviously not ideal if you’re hoping patients will actually come to your hospital.

  I walk straight to Sergeant Pelletier’s office and rap gently on the open door. “Hey, you got a minute?” I ask. He waves me in, and I catch him up on the conversations I had with both Tegan and Vera. He confirms that he’s spoken with Vera.

  “Can we bring in Trent for this and get a warrant?” I ask.

  “We can bring him in, but I want to talk to him before we put in for the warrant. The warrant may limit us, because right now, what we can charge him with is child pornography and voyeurism.”

  “I’ll grab Austin and go pick him up,” I say automatically.

  “I already have someone on patrol out picking him up. Sit tight. They’ll be back with him soon.”

  I head out of the station and sweep my coat on, needing a few minutes of fresh air before digging into the interrogation. When I get to my car, I check my messages. Two missed calls from Noah and several texts asking me to please call him. Roxie’s words come back to my mind. Am I just looking for a reason to push him away? I can’t even take the key I made for him out of my pocket. For now, my silence is the biggest step I can take on the path that will lead me further from Noah and hopefully toward answers. It’s strange how our lives braided together, and now, I can feel the threads that made us unraveling. But is that what I really want? The two sides of me are pulling apart at the seams as they war over which direction I should go. Instead of talking to him, I text Roxie and wish her luck on her interview.

  I watch a patrol car pull into the parking lot a few minutes later. Zane and Clint get out, then pull Trent from the back seat. As they walk toward the door, I slide out of my car and follow them inside. Once they have him settled in the interrogation room, Sergeant Pelletier tells me that he’s ready for me.

  “I’ve already put in a call to the DA. We can rush a warrant on his phone, DNA, and his house if he has no alibi, since we’ve got Vera’s statement and his access to the victims.”

  “I’ll get what I can out of him, but I’ll ask about the alibis first.”

  As we weave through the station, there’s a low drone of voices cut by telephones ringing. When I open the door to the interrogation room, I find Trent leaning back on his metal chair like he may as well be on a dock in Aruba.

  Great, he’s either an idiot or a sociopath. Austin appraises him for a long time
, like she’s not sure what to make of it either. Finally, she gives me a look that tells me she wants to dig in.

  “Hello, Mr. Ibben, I’m Detective Calderwood,” I say as I sit across from him, my blank notepad still on the table.

  Trent is a wide man, shoulders broader than his chair. His torso has a square sort of shape. He’s got a chiseled jaw, a slim, straight nose. He’s attractive, the kind of guy I’m sure could use his looks to lure women. Nothing about him says predator.

  His eyes sharpen with curiosity when he looks at me, but that quickly fades to disinterest.

  “I heard that you were suspended from your position at the medical center. Is that correct?”

  He says nothing and doesn’t even look up from the table. All right, more direct it is.

  “Did you work the night of the twenty-sixth?”

  Silence.

  “The night of the twenty-first or the twenty-fifth?”

  Silence.

  “Have you visited the Millay Inn or the Carle Motel?” I ask next, though I doubt he’s going to tell me anything. There’s no response.

  “Did you ever visit Bald Mountain Preserve, Camden Hills State Park, or Meadow Mountain Preserve during ATV races?”

  He glances up at me, his eyes going wide. He hadn’t expected me to ask that. His eyes drop again, and he goes back to picking at his nails.

  I fold my arms atop the table and lean in, as if conspiratorially. “Look. If you don’t help me here, I can’t help you.”

  But still, he says nothing.

  I push up from the chair and stalk back into Pelletier’s office. “He won’t talk, won’t confirm or deny anything.”

  “I’ll see if I can get a warrant without it,” he says and picks up the phone. “Keep pushing. See if you can get him to say anything.” But I fill him in on the ATV races. Though I intend to be true to my word for Tegan—I have no plans to shut them down—Sergeant Pelletier needs to know.

  I pull Austin to the side and have her call the hospital. I need to confirm that he wasn’t in the building while the murders took place. If we can get that information, that will make it even more likely the warrant will be granted. While Austin makes the calls, I check back in on Trent to see if he seems any more willing to talk. His eyes track me as I walk into the room, and it reminds me of a tiger watching a human in the zoo. But he says nothing; his mouth doesn’t even quirk like he has the desire to.