Finding Amy by Joseph K. Loughlin, Kate Clark Flora Read Free Book Online Page A

regular in the Old Port bar scene, well known to bartenders and bouncers.
    They learned that Gorman had been raised in Troy, Alabama, and Delray Beach, Florida, and had lived in the Portland area for about eighteen months. He had moved up from Florida after his mother, Tammy Westbrook, and her boyfriend, Rick Deveau, had moved to Scarborough.
    A state criminal records search revealed that he was on probation in Maine for theft, a piece of information he had neglected to share in his interview with the police. (Individuals on probation are obligated to disclose this information when being questioned by police. They are also supposed to inform their probation officer of any contacts with the police.) The omitted information was significant because probation suggested a serious level of criminal activity. Detectives contacted the Troy and Delray Beach police departments to determine whether Gorman had a record in those states.
    On the same Tuesday he interviewed Eric Rubright, Danny Young interviewed Russ Gorman a second time. Gorman said he had worked as a car detailer and was an on-call bouncer at the Iguana bar. He had been crashing at the Brighton Avenue apartment for about two weeks, sleeping on one of the living room couches. The other residents of the apartment were Kush Sharma, Jason Cook, Dave Grazier, and Grazier's fiancée, Dawn Schimrich. Prior to staying at 230 Brighton Avenue, Gorman had stayed at 136 Oxford Street with Matt Despins, another bouncer at the Iguana, and Brent Plummer.
    Gorman repeated his version of events: He and St. Laurent and Sharma had left the Pavilion and gone to the apartment on Brighton Avenue. When no party materialized, St. Laurent wanted to go back to the Pavilion to look for Eric Rubright. Gorman left the apartment at about 1:45 a.m. to drive her back to the Pavilion in his red Pontiac Grand Am. On their way out, they met Jason Cook returning from work.
    At the Pavilion, Gorman said, he slowed down in the street to let her off, not even putting his car in park, and there was a group of people hanging around out in front when he dropped her off. He told Young he had reservations about leaving her there alone at that hour, but he insisted this was what she wanted. He then returned directly to 230 Brighton Avenue.
    Gorman said that the trip took only about six minutes each way but balked when asked to name the streets he'd taken, refusing to be locked into any specific route. Gorman told Young that St. Laurent did not appear to be drunk.
    Gorman said that when he got back to the apartment, Jason Cook was on the computer, sending an e-mail message to his aunt in Florida. Gorman also reported that he made a phone call, although he couldn't recall whom he had phoned. He gave three possible names: his ex-girlfriend Jamie Baillargeon, Matt Despins, and a friend named Kermit Beaulieu. He said he was on the sofa, watching TV, when Dawn and Dave returned.
    As they had with Rubright, the detectives told Gorman that they would like him to take a polygraph test, which would help with their investigation and would help to eliminate him as a suspect. 4 Gorman refused to take the test, saying he would want to consult a lawyer first. Police then asked Gorman if he would let them search his car. He indicated that it was an inconvenient time and added, “I'm definitely seeing a lawyer.”
    Gorman's responses, when he was not in custody or being interrogated but only being interviewed along with many other people, told the police a lot. First, they flagged a familiarity with the criminal justice system. Gorman was not intimidated by police or by being in a police station— behavior that is sometimes unnerving to police officers. Indeed, he started his second interview with a line of chatter about a “guy in a yellow suit acting weird in the Old Port” that the police definitely ought to take a look at. Gorman was also very comfortable asserting his rights. Once they got his records from