Chapter 21 Maggie
Chapter 21
Maggie
She had first encountered State Police Detective Robert Alfond after a young woman was found murdered on Maggie’s property. She had not warmed to him then, and she liked him even less now as she watched how dismissively he treated Jo Thibodeau. He was sitting at Jo’s desk, in Jo’s territory, yet he expected her to fetch him coffee and print him some documents, as if she were his secretary and not the town’s acting chief of police. In Maggie’s previous career, she’d gone head to head with men like him, and while their dismissive attitude was a perpetual annoyance, sometimes it came in useful because being discounted also meant being overlooked. When you can work unseen, much can be accomplished.
At the moment, though, Jo just looked pissed off. She returned to her desk with the sugar and cream that Alfond had asked her to fetch; then she sat down facing him, her lips pressed together as though to suppress any impolitic comments. She waited as he stirred cream and sugar into his coffee, as he took a sip and grimaced at the taste. True, the coffee was probably bitter after sitting on the warmer for hours, but he’d be courting real trouble if he dared ask her to make him a fresh pot.
He set down his cup and finally deigned to look at Maggie. “Now tell us why you think your neighbor is innocent,” he said.
“I’ve known him for a few years now,” said Maggie. “He’s a good man, a reliable man. A man you can always count on for help.”
“What sort of help?”
“We’re both farmers, and that’s what farmers do. We help each other round up stray livestock, repair fences, pool our eggs for sale. I have never seen him lash out in violence, against people or animals. He adores his granddaughter, and she adores him.”
“And that’s why you believe he’s innocent.”
“Yes, I do.” Maggie looked at Jo, who sat stiffly in her chair. “You know Luther, too, Jo. Do you really believe he hurt that girl?”
“It doesn’t matter what she believes,” said Alfond. “Zoe’s blood was found on the passenger seat in his truck.”
“How much blood?”
“Enough to show up when they sprayed it with luminol.”
“So only trace amounts.”
“Because he probably tried to clean it up. We also have surveillance video from the Bluefin restaurant. It showed his truck going down the same stretch of Route One where the girl’s backpack was found.”
He was talking about the footage that Declan and Maggie had shared with Jo. And now they were using it against Luther.
“That footage doesn’t prove anything,” Maggie said. “Hundreds of other vehicles drive that same stretch of road every day. And Luther said he went to Augusta. That’s the road he would have taken.”
“Then there’s the issue of where he actually did go. His cell phone data tells us he only passed through Augusta. But then he kept going. All the way to Lewiston.”
This Maggie didn’t know. She looked at Jo, who gave a resigned nod.
“So you see why I’m not inclined to rely on your judgment regarding the character of Mr. Yount,” said Alfond. “We know he lied about where he went. What else did he lie about?” Alfond glanced at his watch and stood up. “Call me if he decides to talk,” he said to Jo.
Maggie was silent as Alfond walked out of the building. His nearly full coffee cup was still on Jo’s desk, waiting for someone else to throw it away. How nice to go through life assuming your messes would be cleaned up by someone else.
“It doesn’t look good,” Jo admitted.
“Let me talk to Luther.”
“You know I can’t do that, Maggie.”
“Alfond never needs to know. Give me just a few minutes alone with him. He trusts me. Maybe I can shake out the truth.”
Jo tapped her fingers on her desk as she considered Maggie’s request. While Jo did not know all the details about Maggie’s previous career, she did know it involved human intel, and she knew Maggie had a particular set of skills that might prove useful in this situation. She also knew that discretion was built into Maggie’s DNA and that this little breach of protocol would never reach Alfond’s ears.
“Empty your pockets,” Jo said. “Your phone stays here with me. Your watch too.”
“Seriously?”
“Do you want to see him or not?”
Sighing, Maggie took off her watch and laid it on the desk with her phone. She turned her pants pockets inside out, emptying them of two quarters and a wadded tissue. She even stood up and let Jo pat her down. Jo might be breaking the rules, but she was bloody well going to do it by the book. After confirming that Maggie had no dangerous weapons, nothing with which to commit a prison break, Jo walked her to the door leading to the detention area and unlocked it.
Maggie had never set foot in this section of the Purity Police Department, and her first impression was needs paint , but that was no surprise. When it came to apportioning funds from the town budget, updating the jail’s appearance was on no one’s priority list, especially when that jail consisted of only two cells. The walls were a sickly institutional green, and the paint had been chipped off and scuffed over the past half century. In a town as quiet as Purity, with so few serious crimes, these cells were probably vacant for most of the year, occupied only occasionally by a hell-raising tourist or a drunk driver. Seldom would they hold anything as exotic as a kidnapping suspect.
It was unfortunate that Luther looked the part. He was as unkempt as always, with his wiry nest of hair and dirty fingernails. They had not allowed him to change his clothes when they arrested him, so he was still wearing his farm boots and baggy jeans. When Jo unlocked the cell, he didn’t even look up but stayed slumped on the cot, his head bowed and his shoulders sagging. As Maggie stepped into the cell, Jo swung the door shut and locked it behind her.
“You have ten minutes,” Jo said.
“That’s not long enough.”
“I’m already doing you a favor, Maggie. I’ll be back when your time’s up.”
Jo walked out of the detention area, and Maggie heard the door thud shut. With two locked doors to get through, she and Luther were certainly not going to be breaking out anytime soon. She looked around the cell for a chair, saw none, and sat down on the cot beside Luther.
“Callie’s fine,” Maggie said. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
He released a shuddering sigh. “Thank you.”
“You need to call a lawyer. Ingrid and Lloyd know a good one in Portland.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“They found blood in your truck, Luther. On the passenger seat. It’s a match for Zoe Conover’s.”
“I don’t know how it got there.”
“You didn’t notice any blood?”
“You know what my truck’s like. It’s a goddamn mess! Chicken feathers, farm tools. And the upholstery’s black. How would I see any blood?”
He was certainly right about the state of his truck. It was, after all, a farm vehicle, and the last time Maggie rode with him, she’d ended up with straw and animal dander clinging to her clothes.
“Tell me what happened after you dropped off Zoe,” Maggie said.
“I left town.”
“You told the police you went to Augusta.”
“Yeah.”
“Why Augusta?”
“It’s not relevant.”
“It is to the police.” Maggie paused. “Luther, they tracked your cell phone. They know you didn’t stop in Augusta. You kept going, all the way to Lewiston.”
He said nothing.
“If it goes to trial, it’s all going to come out anyway. So you might as well tell me what you were doing there.”
He sighed. “I don’t want you to think badly of me, Maggie.”
“I need the truth. Good or bad.”
“It’s not good.”
“What did you do in Lewiston?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why are you so secretive about this?”
“Because of what I was planning to do. What I would have done, if I’d had the nerve to go through with it.”
“And what was that?”
At last he met her gaze. “Kill a man.”
For a moment, Maggie thought he couldn’t possibly be serious. That his answer was merely flippant, in the vein of: If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you. But looking into his eyes, she realized he meant what he’d said. And she actually believed him. He might be a peaceable man, but if the situation called for it, Luther Yount would not hesitate to pull a trigger.
“Who were you going to kill?” she asked.
The clank of the door being unlocked cut off his answer. He went silent as Jo walked into the detention area, keys rattling in her hand. “Sorry, Maggie.” She opened the cell door. “You have to leave.”
“We aren’t finished talking.”
“I’ve bent the rules enough. Alfond’s headed back here, and if he finds you, he’ll have my head on a platter.”
Reluctantly, Maggie rose to her feet. “We’ll stay on this, Luther. My friends and I. Just hang in there.”
Jo walked Maggie out of the cellblock and swung the door shut behind them.
“Well?” said Jo. “Did you get anything out of him?”
“Possibly.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll get back to you later.”
“Why can’t you ever give me a simple answer?”
“Because answers aren’t always simple, Jo.” Maggie headed to the exit, then stopped. “I do have one more question. It’s about Zoe’s backpack.”
“What about it?”
“You have a list of what it contained, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Were there any feminine hygiene products?”
Jo frowned. “Why are you asking?”
“It’s just something to think about,” said Maggie, and she walked out the door.
Outside, she paused beside her truck, feeling the weight of Luther’s precarious situation as heavily as a physical burden. In the two and a half years she’d known the man, she’d seen his kindness and his courage and his utter devotion to Callie. The Luther she knew—or thought she knew—would never lay a hand on a girl. Or had she lost her sharp edge as she’d grown older? Had retirement made her too trusting and gullible, just another silver-haired mark for hucksters and get-rich schemes?
No. On this, she was certain: Luther Yount did not hurt the girl. Now she had to prove it.
She opened her truck door and was about to slide in when she spotted a familiar figure walking past, on Main Street. Susan Conover moved like a woman on a mission, her gait pressured, her gaze fiercely focused on her destination. This was Maggie’s chance to pull the woman aside, to convince her that Luther was not the monster the Conover family believed he was.
Susan walked into the town library.
Maggie followed her.
It might be tiny, but the local library was a source of pride for the town of Purity. The 1920s brick building served as more than just a repository for books; it was also the meeting place for knitting groups and book clubs and children’s story hours, and it hosted evening lectures on topics ranging from rose gardening to astronomy. It was also where tourists and locals alike could count on reliable internet access, and against the back wall was a row of public computers.
That’s where Susan was now sitting, her hands tapping on a keyboard.
Instead of approaching her, Maggie opted to just observe her for a moment, so she picked up a copy of Birds Motive Remains Unknown
“Can you believe people described him as a caring father and husband?” Susan shook her head and said, with a bitter laugh, “A caring father and husband who just wakes up one day and decides to slaughter four people.”
But Maggie’s attention was not on the article about Sam Tarkin and his bloody assault on Main Street. Instead, she stared at an unrelated article printed just beneath it.
Woman Missing
Purity PD is asking the public for information on the whereabouts of Miss Vivian Stillwater, 27 years old. She was last seen Friday morning at her rental cottage on Maiden Pond. She had planned to drive to Boston that afternoon, but when she failed to arrive, she was reported missing by her sister, Catherine Stillwater ...
The rest of the article was cut off by the bottom of the page.
“He looked so ordinary,” said Susan, pointing to the photo of Sam Tarkin.
It was an image of Tarkin and his wife, standing in front of their house on Maiden Pond. The man had a blandly pleasant face and smiling eyes, and Susan was right: there was nothing in that photo to indicate that he would one day mow down three pedestrians with his van. That he would execute a police officer, using the officer’s own weapon.
“Violence sometimes runs in families,” Susan said.
“It can.”
“And Reuben lives right across the pond from us. He watches us. He would have seen Zoe swimming. He would have known she’s a Conover, part of the family he hates so much.”
Maggie’s attention was back instead on the article about Vivian Stillwater. On the photo of a young woman with wide eyes and thick lashes and a curtain of hair tumbling to her shoulders. She thought about the skeleton dredged up from Maiden Pond, the bones of a young woman, still unidentified. Fifty-three years ago, Vivian Stillwater had gone missing from that same pond. Had she ever been found?
“Given his family history, and the fact he’s living right there , don’t you think the police should be asking questions about him?” said Susan.
“Yes, they should be,” said Maggie, her gaze still on the photo of Vivian Stillwater. About her, as well.