“Right now he’s in lock-up as an accomplice to criminal conduct,” said Pomerleau. “I’m sure we’ll be adding charges. Conspiracy, felony murder, there will be no shortage of them. But my gut tells me you wouldn’t have been the first of Tempest Dow’s enemies to be chopped into pieces and trucked away as raw sewage.”

Finch very much wanted to make a sewage joke at my expense—I could see it on his face—but he restrained himself.

“The prosecutor will offer him a deal for flipping on the Dows,” I predicted.

“Will it bother you if he does?” she asked.

“No.”

I had put off the hardest question for last because I hadn’t wanted to hear the answer.

“The man they tortured to death, Reynolds—did he have a family?”

Pomerleau opened her notebook. “Reynolds Pedersen, age sixty-one. Resided at 252 River Road in Strickland. The van was registered to Carpet-Clean in Lewiston. We spoke with his employer who said Pedersen’s wife died unexpectedly last spring, and he’d been having trouble coping. They had no children, the employer said. So far, we’ve been unable to locate any next of kin. It happens sometimes. A person dies and there’s no one to inform.”

“Is that better or worse?” I said.

Finch looked at me as if I’d asked the question in Cantonese.

I’d instructed Colonel DeFord to send a strongly worded message to my friends telling them I was “fine,” whatever they might hear or read online, and that I would be in touch when I was ready to receive visitors.

“I don’t want them rushing here,” I’d said.

I feared Charley would be unable to help himself. He’d be gassing up his new Cessna 185 to fly down-state no matter what I said unless I escaped the hospital first. Stacey was right about her dad’s feelings for me. I was the son he’d never had.

I heard from my doctor that wardens and other police had come by and been turned away as per my instructions.

The one person who managed to slip in to see me came as no surprise.

Danielle Tate peeked around the edge of my screen while I was drifting in and out of sleep. She was dressed in her powder blue trooper’s uniform and holding her campaign hat. No doubt she had convinced the security guards and attending nurses that she’d been charged with keeping out unapproved visitors.