The man had just settled into Lewiston when things got ugly. Instead of welcoming gifts and handshakes, there were scowls and sneers. People whispered behind their hands when he passed and others sputtered out loud. There was derision from strangers everywhere he went.

His name was Douglas and he moved here in November. Talk about a colossal case of bad timing. Not long after Douglas came to Lewiston, there was a front page story about a heinous rape. The fiend was described in detail and a composite sketch of the wretch was displayed on the front page of the newspaper.

You know where this is going: the beard, the stocky build, the set of the eyes and mouth. The drawn face of the predator in the newspaper looked a lot like our friend Douglas, who was just beginning to call Lewiston his home.

“One day I bought a paper and I read about the lady who was raped,” Douglas said. “I looked at the sketch. It looked a lot like me. I mean, I had to admit it.”

You still know where this is going. Douglas had nothing to do with the sex attack. Douglas lives a clean life and gives money to charities. Douglas comes from a good family and would never commit a crime of such violence and degradation.

“We don’t hurt people,” he said. “We help people.”

I believe him. Mostly I believe him because I called a detective and asked if this Douglas character is a suspect in the sex attack. Hey, I don’t need some guilty guy using me to blow smoke.

Easing the paranoia

The detective assured me Douglas is not a suspect. With my paranoid and suspicious nature at ease, I listened to the rest of the man’s tale. And an ugly one it was.

“I’ve been dogged by this thing ever since it happened,” Douglas said. “I still get looks when I go into a store or when I’m out walking around.”

The looks are not the worst of it. One time, in a downtown grocery store, a pair clapped eyes on Douglas and believed they were looking right into the face of a villain.

“I was in Webb’s Market one night when two people walked in. They looked at me and one of them said, There’s the guy who raped that lady.’ The same thing happened to me in a taxi cab.”

Douglas said nothing in his own defense at the time. Later, he did something you would expect from a guilty man. He shaved his beard off after decades of sporting facial hair. He’d like to grow it back, but says he’s still getting weird looks even months after the rape.

“A person sees a face and they never forget it,” he said.

So, you picture this guy walking around Lewiston and checking out his new digs. He steps into the market for a loaf of bread and all the locals fall silent. You can hear clocks ticking and snow dripping off boots. The bad man has come among them.

Alibi intact

You can almost see the humor in it until it happens to you, and I know what I’m talking about here. A few years ago, a rapist attacked a woman at Bates College. Police were frantic to find the guy, and they whipped up a composite drawing. New technology and improved techniques result in a detailed sketch.

The drawing of the Bates rapist had a slender face with a pronounced nose and short hair. I remember when I picked up the composite from the police department. I stopped in my tracks, turned to the clerk behind the window and said: “Hey! This is me.”

It wasn’t me. I had an alibi from the night of the assault. I had been home with painkillers after dental surgery and I was talking to some young hottie I was crazy about. I think I ended up marrying that girl. It’s hard to remember because I was on painkillers.

The point is, it’s unnerving to see your likeness in a police sketch related to a crime of such a despicable nature as rape. Your instincts for self-preservation kick in. You remember all those crime shows about people who were falsely accused of terrible acts. You beg friends to recall that they were with you the night in question, but they’ll turn into comedians and pretend they don’t know you.

Douglas is rattled but he seems to be handling it well. He wants to grow the beard back, but he might wait a little longer. Like me, he hopes the next police sketch features a guy who’s 9 feet tall with a mohawk and a superfluous third eye.

He also hopes the suspect from November is locked down tight for a long, long time.

“I believe everyone has a twin,” Douglas said. “I hope this guy isn’t mine.”

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.

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