Page 7 of A River Red With Blood
This was the most fraught part of the operation, even more so than the abduction itself, because the victim was now dead, and there was a big difference between being charged with attempted abduction and being charged with murder.They found a big yellow dumpster over by French Road, but for some reason there were people milling about, even at that early hour, and as they drove away, they saw one of the crowd begin a deep dive.Teal declared it a good omen and Kenney chose to believe him.Finally, they came to a black dumpster full of construction waste, just north of I-94.They parked, Kenney hit the trunk-release button, and within seconds the bag was in the dumpster.Teal even had time to rearrange some of the detritus to cover it up.Kenney then swung by the Riverwalk to drop Teal near his hotel before returning to the Airbnb where, at last, he slept.
But not immediately.He’d thought about sharing what was on his mind while they were driving back from dumping the body, but Teal had been fractious.He was always that way once the Game was over, just as Kenney got sad, but Teal was more quarrelsome than usual.It might have been because, while Kenney would have another turn next year, Teal wouldn’t get to play for two years.As for Kenney, his melancholy was a product of a sense of anticlimax, made worse by the cleanup.He liked to fantasize about someone taking care of the bodies for them, but that was the preserve of wealthy Saudi sheiks who could afford to pay to have journalists dismembered.Ordinary folks were forced to do the grunt work themselves.
He’d have to speak with Teal eventually, though.It would involve bending the rules, as once they were done with a girl they weren’t supposed to see each other again in that city, but Kenney regarded it as forgivable for once.There were minor breaches and major breaches, but one rule was sacrosanct: No Extracurricular Activities, and that rule, Kenney feared, had been broken once again.
Chapter 8
Before visiting Ward Vose at Maine State Prison, I performed due diligence on the circumstances of his son’s death, aided by a file from Allen Atwood Alcock and the coverage of the case in theMaine Sunday Telegramand elsewhere.I also steeled myself to trawl social media and a couple of local news websites that flirted with disreputability, even going so far as to read the comments under their takes on the drowning, which was like wading through raw sewage, if inhabited by lower forms of life.Some of the input came from people who were, or claimed to be, former students-cum-inmates of the Spero School.I made a note of their names, though at least one had already been called out as a fantasist.The majority had nothing particularly terrible to say about Spero, and one or two even said it had helped them straighten out their lives.Only one user, Domenure2627, was explicitly hostile, stating that staff had not intervened to prevent him from being bullied, physically and psychologically, by fellow students.Perhaps unsurprisingly, his allegations resulted in a pile-on, leading Domenure2627 to being bullied anew, after which he ceased to post.Still, I added his username to the list before returning to the main business of Scott Theriault.
Scott was born during one of his father’s earliest stints in prison, this one in the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, Vermont.All of Ward Vose’s prison time was served in the Northeast, and he could have produced a comprehensive guide to the regional penal system had he put his mind to it.Because Vose eschewed violence, and Maine and New Hampshire didn’t have three-strike laws, he’d managed to avoid punitive sentences, but had fallen foul of Maine’s habitual offender driving law having, at various points over a five-year period, eluded anofficer, passed a roadblock, driven to endanger, and operated after revocation.That he was arrested for the last of these while attempting to reach his son, who had broken out of Spero for the second time in as many weeks and contacted his father for help, cut no ice with the judge, which was why Vose was languishing in MSP.
Scott’s mother, Hailee Theriault, was just twenty when Scott was born, while Vose was six years older.The photographs of Hailee in Alcock’s file showed a redhead with a sprinter’s build and a face too hard to be pretty but interesting enough to be beautiful.She hadn’t changed much over the years, and was now married to a successful realtor and state senator named Jerry Rakestraw who had an eye on a run for Congress in Maine’s 2nd district.The 2nd district, which encompassed more than ninety percent of the state, was overwhelmingly white, rural, and conservative, and it would be interesting to see how Rakestraw chose to frame the death of his stepson in light of his political ambitions.He was a natural politician, which wasn’t necessarily a compliment.He was doing his utmost to cling to the center, alienating neither the right nor the left, which meant the committed on both sides were suspicious while the waverers saw him as one of their own.Then again, Maine was a difficult state in which to campaign, and what appealed to the liberals in Portland and Augusta went down like theHindenburgwith the more conservative elements elsewhere.But those same rural voters were also prone to voting Democratic in congressional elections and Republican in presidential contests, with the governorship a coin toss.In Maine, Janus, the god of duality, was also the god of politics, so Rakestraw might have been onto something by straddling the fence, even if lately he’d begun pitching for the Fearful White Vote, since that was the way the wind was blowing.
Rakestraw married Hailee Theriault when Scott was nine years old, shortly before Rakestraw was first elected to the state senate.Hailee had since given birth to three children with Rakestraw, all much younger than their half sibling.In those early years, Rakestraw made a big play of his family and was rarely pictured without them.But slowly, Scott began to vanish from photographs, and by the time he reached his teens he wasn’t to be found in any.I noted the absence but didn’t rush to condemn.When I was a teenager, I had no desire to take my place in family photos either, which caused my mother and grandfather no small amount of frustration.Having a stepfather whose political career depended on demonstrating a commitment to family values would have placed a strain on any adolescent, never mind one as purportedly rebellious as Scott Theriault.Perhaps Rakestraw and his wife decided it was better to excuse him than have him spoil publicity opportunities.But even in those earlier photographs, Scott stood out from his half siblings for a reason other than his age and height: Ward Vose was the child of a Black woman and a white man, and his son’s mixed-race heritage was apparent.
Already I had quite the list of people to approach if I agreed to take on the investigation: Scott’s parents, Spero students past and present, the police, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner—and that was just to begin with.According to Alcock’s paperwork, the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office and the Maine State Police had done what was required of them, and maybe more.The OCME’s report stated that Scott had alcohol in his system when he died.While the ME couldn’t be precise, Scott’s blood alcohol content would have been in the range of .10 to .15 percent, which meant his muscle coordination and reaction times were reduced and his reasoning and judgment impaired.A flask of bourbon was stolen from the principal’s office on the night Scott left the school, and the operating assumption was that he had taken it, along with food from the kitchen, to sustain him.So what we had was a teenage boy becoming intoxicated and disoriented in the woods, before falling and drowning.
I called Alcock and asked him to advise the OCME that I was acting on behalf of a client, namely Scott Theriault’s father, and any assistance they might be able to provide would be appreciated.I had always found a succession of state medical examiners to be cooperative, but it never hurt to have a lawyer smooth the way.Alcock said he’d make the call immediately, but I gave him twenty minutes before following it up.I was put through to an assistant to the deputy chief medical examiner, who located acopy of the same report I had in front of me.After a little to-and-fro, he put me through to the new DCME herself.Her name was Asmara Saputri, and she was, as far as I knew, the first woman of Indonesian heritage to hold significant public office in the state of Maine.I’d only met her once, in passing.Even then, she’d looked at me in a nervous manner, for which she could hardly be blamed.I liked to think I’d earned my reputation.
“Mr Parker,” she said.“Don’t take this the wrong way, but a call from you must immediately raise a red flag, or so my colleagues have warned me.”
“I have nothing but respect for the OCME,” I said.“Should anything terminal befall me, I can think of no better people to perform my autopsy.”
“That’s reassuring, and I promise we’ll do our very best for you.This is about Scott Theriault?If so, I should begin by saying that I did not perform the autopsy.That was my late predecessor, Dr Tutin.”
Humberto Tutin had died suddenly a few weeks earlier, from a heart attack at the age of fifty-nine.Actually, it was his second heart attack, as the autopsy revealed.The first was asymptomatic, so Tutin had gone to play his usual weekly match at the Augusta Country Club and collapsed on the court.He was dead before the ambulance could reach him.Tales of asymptomatic heart attacks in someone’s late fifties were not destined to make me sleep any more soundly at night.
I told Dr Saputri that I understood, and my question related to the break in Scott Theriault’s right leg.
“What about it?”
“It was very clean,” I said.
“Yes, a severely broken tibia.A person might not notice a hairline fracture of the tibia for a while, but Scott Theriault would have struggled to walk unsupported with that kind of injury.”
“If I’m interpreting the autopsy report correctly, Dr Tutin suggested the force was vertical and down.”
“I see that.”
“Could a fall really have caused it?”I asked.
“It depends on the fall: if the leg became trapped, for instance, and the momentum carried the victim forward.But off the top of my head, that type of fracture is more common following an impact or a collision.I’ve seen it on the football field following a bad tackle.”
“You mean a boot landing on a shin?”
“Yes, just that,” said Saputri.“But in this case, Dr Tutin identified irregular abrasions.His opinion was that the blow came from a rock or stone, a large one.Scott Theriault might have slipped, dislodging debris, some of which impacted on his lower right leg.”
“Unlucky for him.”
“Very.”
“Could it have been done deliberately?”
The pause that followed went on so long that I wondered if the line had gone dead.
“It’s possible,” said Saputri, “but I would be unwilling to go further.”
“As was Tutin.”
