I didn’t want to risk damaging the investigation. I worried that someone would get information they weren’t supposed to have, that some key piece of evidence would turn into gossip that would turn into hearsay, and in the process become inadmissible in court. I felt like my silence meant loyalty to Mom, putting her before those who had lost her.
But I also wanted to put things on hold. I’d done my best to move forward without this call. There had been life with her, and now there was life without her—a stark before and after, twelve years of each, splitting me in two. I needed time to adjust. I needed time to think. I wanted to keep it small, controlled. Walt advised me to have my office number removed from the university’s website, in anticipation of press coverage, or worse. I was glad to hide.
Finding the man who’d killed her would mean once again imagining life if he hadn’t. And I’d gotten so used to ignoring her absence. To pretending that I wasn’t supposed to have a mother. That mothers were just something other people had.
I had a good excuse for hiding the news from the family, but in the coming days I would feel like a traitor. Word leaked out, but not through me. Carol called me suddenly, for the first time in months. We talked about everyday things, the usual catch-up basics—my roommate, work, improvements she was making on the house—but the end of the call was ragged, extended, her usual brisk sign-off was forever in coming. Finally she said, “Gloria called that police hotline. They said something about talking to people in Bridgton. It’s so strange; she just called randomly, and then they acted like something was going on, but they wouldn’t say what.”
I wouldn’t say what, either. I hedged. I acted surprised but not terribly interested. I got off the phone as smoothly as I could. We all just had to hold on for a little while longer. Walt would call soon.
But two days later, before I was able to call my family, they called me: my grandmother, Grace, had passed away. The next week, the indictment was made public, and I called them back. Walt had spoken to them earlier that day; he was the one to bring them the news, not me. If he’d known my grandmother was nearing the end, he would have called them earlier. But no one had told him. No one had told me, either.
In many ways, my grandmother had stopped living many years before. Her life had more or less halted when Mom died. She was obsessed with the murder, thought and talked about it constantly, could not stop wondering who had killed her daughter. She called the police incessantly, demanding information, detailing her theories about this man or that man. She rarely left the house; she had no hobbies. She told a friend that she couldn’t leave, didn’t want to: “This is where my memories of Crystal and Sarah are.” Isolation and fear accelerated her decline into dementia. It’s hard to know for sure what she understood in the end; she was often lost in time, sometimes didn’t recognize people. But if we could have told her Michael Hutchinson’s name, there’s a chance she would have had some peace before dying.
37
* * *
Here’s how he got caught.
In 2002, Michael Hutchinson heard that a few of his friend Rob Desjardins’s pot plants had been taken from a power-line forest clearing. They knew who was responsible—a guy named Ian, a sort-of friend of theirs who would know where the weed was kept. Rob and Michael rounded up another friend, Derek. The three piled into Michael’s dump truck, picked up some beers, and drove to the construction site where Ian worked. Just before they got there, Michael dropped Rob off, to wait in the woods a short distance away.
Michael and Derek found Ian, said they had weed and some beers. “Come for a ride,” they said.
Ian, just nineteen years old, was dumb enough to get in the truck. Michael drove fifty or so yards down the road and slowed to a stop as Rob walked out from between the trees. Derek stepped out so Rob could climb in and wedge himself next to Ian. It was only after Derek got back in and the truck started to move that Ian noticed that the guys had a gun on the dashboard—an actual Glock. Rob grabbed hold of Ian’s fingers and started pressing them back, hard, demanding to know where his plants were. Then they drove him to the woods and showed him the empty spot, like rubbing a bad dog’s face into a ruined rug. Derek carried the gun as they walked through the trees. “Where are the plants, Ian?” they asked. “Where are the fucking plants?”
Ian walked around aimlessly, looking for the plants that he knew were actually back at his house. Finally the guys gave up. When the others stopped to smoke a cigarette, Ian bolted. Then he heard the gun fire, and knew things were serious. He ran and ran. By the time he reached the police station, he was so scared, he didn’t even lie. Said he’d stolen the plants and he was in danger.
But Ian was just a kid. The next day, he and his girlfriend, Alyssa, were driving down Maine Hill when they saw Michael and Derek coming up in their rearview mirror. Ian leaned out the window and gave them the finger, and when he and Alyssa pulled into the Big Apple parking lot, Michael and Derek pulled in behind them. Derek grabbed Michael’s gun, got out, and pointed it in Ian’s face. The two exchanged words, and moments later Derek got back into the truck and Michael drove off. They didn’t get far before the police pulled them over, dispatched to respond to the 911 call Ian had made from the Big Apple.
Both kidnapping and criminal threatening with a firearm are felonies in Maine; Derek was charged and convicted, and so was Michael, most likely because it was his firearm and because he drove the truck. Eventually Michael had to submit to a cheek swab for entry into CODIS, the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, which contains DNA profiles of thousands of forensic samples from suspects, convicted criminals, and crime scenes nationwide. There’s no way to know what this meant to him, if he understood that opening his mouth for this brief moment could end up revealing that he was a killer. Still, two more years would pass before the match. Maybe by then he thought he’d gotten away with it. Or maybe not. A friend of his later told the police about a party where Michael, wasted beyond comprehension, had held his hands in a campfire, fingertips out. Looked like he was trying to burn his prints off.