More than a decade later, when Hutchinson was finally identified, the police brought Miranda in to the Gray barracks for questioning. When they asked if someone else might have been seen in her car that night, she replied, “I don’t know—maybe.” We’ll never know quite what her answer meant. We’ll never know whether there really was a vehicle driving close behind her that night, blinding her, or whether she made up the bright lights to blind the police to something else. When the police officer began the polygraph examination to which Miranda had agreed, she got uncomfortable. She ripped the equipment off and walked out.
Back in 1994, no one followed up on anything contained in that first interview. If they’d gone to Michael’s house and spoken with him casually for a moment, perhaps asked if he’d seen anything unusual in the vicinity, as they might have done with any neighbor, they would have seen his injured hand. They could have asked him the same questions they asked other men they found to have injured hands around that time. They could have asked for a DNA sample.
When I try to figure out why Pickett and the others didn’t do any of this, I can only think that they must have dismissed Miranda as an emotional young woman. They were so diligent about so many other leads, no matter how flimsy. When a psychic called, claiming to have important details about the killer’s identity, Pickett contacted the new owners of the house and arranged a walk-through.
Not long after I read Miranda’s first interview, I found a report of a wreck Michael was in. I figured this must have been the accident that he presented to Walt as the reason for the scar across his hand. In the middle of that summer night, Michael sped along the Naples causeway, one town over from Bridgton, in a black pickup. It was June 26, 1994: forty-five days after the murder. I can see it: the black truck in the black night, flashing clean like a strobe as it passes under the streetlights. On one side, quiet clapboard houses and shops, hours silent. On the other, the deep, close waters of Sebago Lake, a light chop reflecting the shore light like stars.
Michael’s at the wheel, alone, drunk or more, but I can’t see him. Just before the narrow drawbridge, he turns down a smaller road to the right. A few minutes later, he jerks the wheel to the left, pulling a sharp U-turn before careening into a tree.
It’s impossible to know who called 911, but the police and ambulance come just before two in the morning. At first, they find no driver. The truck is towed, and the police call its registered owner, Michael’s father, Brad. He and his wife arrive shortly after and start scouring the woods. After three and a half hours of searching, they find Michael lying under the trees, having drunkenly wandered or run from the scene. The paramedics are called back; by now it’s five thirty. At the hospital, Michael’s chief complaints are listed: femur pain, chest pain, head injury. There is no mention of a large cut across his palm.
Michael had sped directly into a tree, causing almost twenty thousand dollars in damage to a two-year-old vehicle. The steering wheel was bent back, the windshield shattered. It’s the kind of accident that could easily kill a person. It’s the kind of accident that might not be fully accidental. If Michael had died that night, we might never have known who killed Crystal Perry. We would have waited for answers, never knowing they were buried. But also, Michael would not have married and terrorized his first wife, he would never have had children of his own, he would never have had any number of undeserved days of happiness and freedom.
The vehicle he was driving was a black 1992 F-150 pickup. New Hampshire plates, numbered BBX-639. As I finished digesting this report, my brow furrowed and my head moved slowly, mechanically, my ear turned down, as though I’d just heard something very confusing. My fingertips gripped the paper tighter, as though I could force meaning out of it. This number was familiar. A black pickup, license plate BBX-639. New Hampshire.
I flipped back through some other papers, reports I’d read before. Found the one I was thinking of. May 20, 1994, eight days after the murder. In the afternoon, Pickett gets a call from Linda. He scribbles a summary: “She just noticed a newer-model Ford pickup with New Hampshire plates up the street from her. The plate number is BPX-638. Crystal and Sarah use to walk by that residence on occasion when they’d go for walks with Linda or come down to visit Linda.”
One number and one letter off. Parked right across the street. Eight days later. And as far as I can tell, Pickett never even checked it out.
* * *
I can’t bear to contact Pickett. I don’t think real communication between us has ever been possible. I’d probably act like an angry, difficult teen and hate myself for it, and he’d offer a bunch of excuses for what I, with my 20/20 hindsight, see as avoidable errors. And since, at the time of the trial, Pickett still thought Dennis had something to do with Mom’s murder, I really don’t think he’d have anything useful to say.
But conversations with other officials have been surprisingly healing. The two threads of my search—the personal and the forensic—are not as separate as one might expect. When I visited officer Pete Madura, who was one of the first on the scene in the early-morning hours of May 12, at the Bridgton police station, he told me I could consider him a grandfather, if I wanted, that his home would always be open to me. The new chief of police, a man I’d never met, quietly interrupted us, insisting that he had to meet me. It was strange to be known by someone who hadn’t even been on the Bridgton force in the nineties.
But it was Kate Leonard, the cop who picked me up at the Venezia, who sat in the back of that ambulance with me, that I most wanted to see. Still, I was terrified of calling her. I was afraid of casting us both back there. I could immerse myself in the past as much as I wanted, but I couldn’t assume anyone else wanted to join me. I feared that just a phone call from me could drag a person down into fear and sadness once more.
When I finally found myself sitting down with Kate, I realized how curious I was about her life in the years since we’d last seen each other. A few months after the murder, she had left the police force and gone into social work, dealing with at-risk and traumatized kids. It was too hard for her, she said, to go through that night with me and then never see me again. There was so little she could do. Kate is single, with one daughter. When her daughter turned twelve a few years ago, she thought about me and Mom more than ever. Her best friend is Laurie Hakkila, the 911 dispatcher I’d talked to from the Venezia.