Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  Back at Diggs’ place, Einstein settled on the bathmat while I soaked in the tub with half a dozen scented candles and a bottle of wine at my fingertips. I’d closed the curtains, popped two pain pills Edie Woolrich had given me, and was just beginning to feel the tension start to ease.

  The conversations I’d had over the past week replayed in my head. I did a cast call of the major players in my unfolding drama:

  Joe Ashmont, Matt Perkins, Noel Hammond. My mother and father. Rebecca Ashmont. Reverend Diggins. Isaac Payson.

  Christ. Had the whole town been involved in this?

  I now knew that Matt, Joe, and Rebecca grew up together. Rebecca married Joe, then apparently had an affair with Reverend Diggins when she was still part of his congregation, if the stories were to be believed. Joe moved her out to his island, where she had a son.

  Somewhere during those years alone on the island with her boy, Isaac Payson made contact with her. I went over what I knew about the founder of the Payson Church and realized it was precious little, gleaned mostly from articles I’d read by others even less informed than myself. Raised in Maine by a good, God-fearing family before he slipped the draft by disappearing to parts unknown during Vietnam; started a church in Mexico sometime in the mid-’70s; returned to Maine in 1976 with a small troupe of followers who settled with him on Payson Isle. As far as I could tell, he’d never been in trouble with the law, and the work he did out on the island and up and down the Midcoast kept him in good standing with the community.

  I could remember other women from abusive situations taking refuge with the Paysons; it would hardly have been unprecedented for Isaac to help Rebecca and Zion escape Ashmont’s iron rule.

  That brought me to the summer of 1990, and whatever events might have led to the fire.

  My father got a phone call early that morning. He in turn called Reverend Diggins for some ungodly reason, and told him he was on his way to the church. He left me at the hotel, but for some reason he never followed through on that meeting with the Reverend.

  Then there was my mother, and the story Hammond had given me about her: stacking all the bodies, destroying the evidence, seducing Hammond to ensure his silence. All of this done with the knowledge of Joe Ashmont and Matt Perkins.

  I got out of the tub and toweled myself off. The drizzle outside hadn’t gotten any worse, but it hadn’t gotten any better, either. The sky was boiled gray outside my bedroom window, heavy clouds hanging low overhead. It felt much later than early evening.

  The Reverend’s words were bothering me: If I didn’t know better, I would say you didn’t actually want to learn the truth at all.

  I could concede that that may have been true at one time. Hell, most of my teen years I’d been terrified of what my father might have been doing while he wasn’t with me the morning of the fire. Even then, I’d known that whether or not my father actually started the fire, he clearly knew more than he was saying. The question was, how much more? Maybe I hadn’t wanted the truth then, but I didn’t want to live this way anymore—plagued by guilt over what my father may or may not have done, the lies that he told and the lives that were lost. I wanted the truth.

  “So, why haven’t I called my mother?” I asked Einstein.

  I sat at the edge of the bed, Einstein at my feet. He perked up when he realized I was talking to him. What had the Reverend said? The people best equipped to answer my questions were my own parents.

  He hadn’t said the person best equipped, I realized.

  The people. My parents. Plural.

  I still hadn’t been to the cabin where my father lived out his final days. There was no good reason for that—I just didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to see what his life had been, how the man I’d worshiped had unraveled over the years. After his death, my mother had asked if I wanted any keepsakes to remember him by. I’d said no. As far as I knew, she hadn’t gone through his belongings. And if she hadn’t, chances were good that no one had.

  After all these years, did my father still have the answers I needed?

  I put on jeans and a sweatshirt and powered through the heady combo of muscle relaxants, wine, and fatigue. I grabbed my cell phone and hit speed dial.

  “I thought you were napping,” Diggs said.

  “I got my second wind. You’re probably not free tonight, are you?”

  “Seriously, woman? Don’t you ever rest?”

  “I did rest,” I said. “I thought of something I want to check out. So...do you have plans?”

  He hesitated—wrestling, I knew, with deadlines he couldn’t miss.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I interrupted before he tied himself in a knot. “What about your Cuban comrade-in-arms. Is he around?”

  “Yeah,” Diggs said. “He just swung by, actually. I think he’s headed your way. You’re going out to the island?”

  “I just want to check something out,” I said before he could lecture me on all the sleep I wasn’t getting and all the ways it was bound to kill me. “I’ll make sure he brings his gun and his Bond ’do, don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

  “So I’m guessing our late dinner at the Shanty is out, then.”

  “Shit. I forgot.” My ill-advised lip lock with Diggs seemed like a lifetime ago, the big talk we’d planned downright silly compared with everything else going on. “I’m sorry. Raincheck?”

  “Yeah, of course. Don’t worry about it. Give Juarez my regards—and, Solomon?”

  “I know, Diggs—be careful.”

  “Very careful. Careful to the power of ten. Squared.”

  Though the math was beyond me, I made the promise all the same. After I hung up, I tried Hammond’s cell phone again. It went straight to voicemail. Again. He wasn’t picking up at home, either—avoiding me, or was he still out on his boat?

  I took Einstein out for a quick pee and left him to keep the home fires burning at Diggs’ place. Juarez was just driving in when I intercepted him.

  “Do you have any plans for the afternoon?”

  “As far as I know, all my plans involve tailing you, unless I want Diggs to castrate me by nightfall.” He tried for a smile, but he didn’t look that amused.

  “You don’t need to tail me—I think I popped one pain pill too many. You mind driving?”

  “Where to?”

  “Noel Hammond’s place first. Then, how about a nice evening jaunt across the bay?”

  I braced myself for a lecture that, refreshingly enough, didn’t come.

  “You’re the boss. I’m just here to make sure you get home in one piece.”

  He opened his passenger’s side door for me. I hip-checked him as I climbed in, giving him what I hoped was a sexy grin—though given the painkillers, bruises, and swelling, I may have come up short. “And to look pretty—don’t forget that, Jack. You make great arm candy.”

  He laughed and shook his head, but I could tell that he was pleased. Men. A little flattery really will get you anything.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hammond’s truck wasn’t in his driveway when we got there. I pounded on his front door anyway, but predictably got no answer. The way I figured it, he was still at least one step ahead of me, maybe more. With that in mind, there was really only one logical place he could have gone. Payson Isle.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said as soon as the realization struck.

  Juarez was waiting in the car. I glanced his way, then tried the front door. It was locked. I went around to the side and peered in the kitchen window.

  A car door slammed. A moment later, Juarez joined me.

  “You think you could jimmy the lock on the front door?” I asked.

  “Not unless I have a damned good reason to, no.”

  I trailed behind as he walked around to the back. A low deck with a barbecue grill and two lawn chairs, a glass-topped table with an ashtray half-filled with cigarette butts…and a sliding glass door that led into the kitchen. Juarez opened it easily and stood aside.

  “No breaking, just
entering,” he said.

  “A man after my own heart. I just want to leave a note, let him know I was here.”

  “Sure you do.”

  Juarez stayed on the deck while I went in.

  “Noel?” I called. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted him to answer or not.

  The house remained quiet. The black and white cat materialized, threading his way between my legs. Juarez finally gave in and followed me inside.

  “I’m just looking for some paper—to leave that note,” I said.

  He found a notepad and pen by the phone and tried to push them into my hand, but I ignored him. Instead, I went into the room where I’d seen Hammond get his files earlier that day, and found a cramped study with shelves of books lining the walls. Many of the titles were familiar—books on Jim Jones and David Karesh, Heaven’s Gate, Amityville, and two thin volumes on the Paysons that I’d practically memorized.

  Two oversized scrapbooks were lying on Hammond’s desk. I opened the first and several yellowed newspaper clippings fell to the floor.

  “Erin,” Juarez said, standing at the threshold to the room, “you should put those back.”

  “I will—just give me a second.”

  I knelt in the dim, crowded room, scanning articles Hammond had been hanging onto for years now. Most were from the days following the fire—some from the Trib, some from larger newspapers around the state, and one lengthy article I knew well from the Boston Globe. There was a profile piece I’d read before on my father, done by the Portland Press Herald on the tenth anniversary of the fire—not long before Dad’s death. I studied the picture.

  I had few photos of my father. He always used to say he wasn’t good looking enough to waste film on, though this was hardly true. The photo had been taken before he’d lost everything in the fire, but looking back I realized there had always been something a little haunted about Dad. In the picture, he was working on the island. He wore a t-shirt, his hand up to shield his eyes, squinting in the glare of the afternoon sun. He didn’t look thrilled at whoever had snapped the shot.

  “Erin,” Juarez said again. He crouched beside me and helped pick up the scraps scattered at my feet. “We need to go.”

  “In a minute,” I said. I leafed through the rest of the book. There were also clippings from other mass suicides—mostly Jonestown. Some of the text was highlighted, with scrawled notes in the margins.

  Juarez took my arm. “Dammit, Erin—you can’t just come into someone’s home and start prowling around.”

  I pulled away. “Keep your knickers on, would you? I just want to look—he’s been doing the same investigation I have, probably for a hell of a lot longer.”

  He didn’t answer me. When I looked up, he’d straightened and was staring at the notepad he’d taken from the phone stand in the other room.

  “I think you should take a look at this.”

  I set the scrapbook down carefully and stood. Juarez bit his lip and handed me the paper.

  There was a telephone number written in red ink, with a 206 prefix—Washington state, if I remembered correctly.

  Above it, written in Hammond’s sloping scrawl, was a name.

  Adam S.

  I went straight to his telephone, picked up the receiver, and dialed the number.

  My hands were shaking.

  “That could be anyone—could mean anything,” Juarez said. He was watching me like I might burst into flames any second now. I didn’t blame him; at this point, I wasn’t willing to discount anything.

  On the other end of the line, a phone rang. Five, ten, fifteen times. No answering machine, no voicemail. Juarez didn’t say anything. Just stood there, waiting with me.

  Twenty-two rings, and then a voice.

  “Dammit, Noel—I told you not to call me again.”

  I nearly choked on the sound. My eyes flooded; the world tilted sideways.

  “Dad?” I barely recognized my own voice. A few seconds of silence passed between us—no one speaking, no one breathing.

  The line went dead.

  August 14, 1990

  On a Friday afternoon, the wet heat of July having given way to the golden swelter of August, there is a fight on the compound. Rebecca watches it unfold from a distance: Zion and Will Colby, another boy from the church. It’s not so much a fight as an attack, really, because Zion does nothing to defend himself. Rebecca has seen this boy watching her son. She’s seen the envy, the hatred, in young eyes spoiled not by experience but by a soul that Rebecca imagines has always been rotten.

  The boy is wiry, quick and lean, a head taller than Zion and perhaps two years older. Though most of the children in the church are quiet and well behaved, Will is argumentative, lazy, always looking for a way out of daily chores or evening services. He hates Zion. Rebecca sees it in the way he fixates on her son, the way he slows to whisper remarks to him—remarks that Rebecca cannot hear but can nevertheless imagine, by the snakelike twist of the boy’s mouth, his fists clenched as though he’s just delivered a physical blow.

  Zion never responds.

  On this day, however, the boy has apparently had enough of her son’s passivity.

  Rebecca watches Will lean in to whisper something. She stands at the open entrance to the greenhouse, the doors open to allow a breeze through the stifling space. The boys are across the field, alone, the other children having already returned to the house for lunch. Zion turns and walks away. Will chases after him and shoves him, hard, in the back. Zion stumbles two or three steps but does not fall. He pauses, rights himself, and continues to walk away.

  Will races out in front of him, and Rebecca remembers similar fights between Matt and Joe when they were boys. Joe—teeth and hands clenched, his entire body tensed like a fist ready to strike. She feels the blow Will delivers before Zion does. It is not a practiced swing like one Joe might have thrown, but it does the job. Zion falls backward and lands in the tall grass. Rebecca can just see his head as he shakes it slowly, clearing it of the pain. He does not rise, though Rebecca can hear the other boy shouting for him to do so.

  There is a moment when she considers going to defend her son herself. Thinks of what it must have been like for Mary to watch her child take the lashes, unable to intervene. Like Mary, however, Rebecca knows it is not her place. She stands silent in the distance and watches, motionless.

  Zion grunts as the larger boy attacks him, but it is the only sound she hears from him. A few seconds into the fight, there are footsteps behind her. She does not turn, sensing Isaac’s presence more than seeing it.

  “He is being tested,” she whispers to Isaac.

  When she looks at him, there is unmistakable fury in the Reverend’s eyes. “No,” Isaac whispers back, before leaving the greenhouse and running toward the boys. “He is being beaten, you fool.”

  He reaches the two boys and pulls Will—struggling, grunting, pink and angry and futile—from Zion. Rebecca goes to them as Zion stands with some difficulty. He is bloodied, his left eye cut and already beginning to swell. She feels sick, dizzy. Confused. This is her role? To stand idly by and let her son pay with his own blood, for a destiny he did not choose? Was Mary a pacifist, or merely a victim?

  At that evening’s service, Isaac orders Will to stand alone at the pulpit. The candlelight flickers over his features; Rebecca believes that she glimpses the demons living in his young soul. The boy’s mother, Cynthia, stands with averted eyes while Isaac circles her son.

  “Cruelty is not a godly trait,” Isaac begins. “Violence is a vice borne of man. It is not God’s will that we inflict pain upon others, merely to lessen the pain within ourselves.”

  He turns to Will, the boy now standing with arms slack at his side, face blank and eyes downcast. Zion stands beside Rebecca, his eyes also on the ground. He said nothing while she washed his cuts, tended his bruises. He says nothing still, as Isaac continues to circle.

  “Son,” Isaac addresses the boy at the pulpit. “I know that you feel pain and shame for what you
have done. But I believe that Satan has buried that pain so deeply beneath hatred and envy that you don’t understand the turmoil that resides in your soul.”

  The congregation is silent. Will still stands with his eyes averted, the faintest tremor visible in hands that are now bruised from the earlier attack.

  “But I believe the only way for you to truly reconcile the torment and hate that has seduced you is to confront it. Here and now.”

  Isaac stands in front of the boy, his back to the congregation, completely obscuring the smaller figure before him. “It is time for you to kneel before this church and beg forgiveness for the violence you have brought to this tranquil place.”

  He puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, pushing him down. There is no air, no sound, in the chapel. The boy resists. Isaac’s other hand goes to Will’s opposite shoulder, forcing him to his knees. Zion is watching now, his good eye open wide.

  “Have you never heard, boy, that violence begets violence? When the Romans doled out lashes to Christ until his body was broken, did he strike back? Wish them ill?”

  Isaac’s voice lifts, echoing in the too-warm room. He moves so that the congregation can see the kneeling boy, tears now running down the child’s pink cheeks.

  “No, sir,” the boy replies, his voice barely a whisper in the stillness.

  “And the passivity demonstrated by Zion this afternoon—do you believe that in his place, you would have the restraint—the courage—to lie still and silent in the face of such violence?”

  There is a moment’s pause before the boy shakes his head. Isaac turns to the congregation, locking eyes with Zion.

  “Son. Come here.”

  Zion does as he is told, avoiding eye contact with his assailant.

  “Would you take up arms against your oppressor?”

  Zion does not hesitate. “No, sir.”

  “But what about an eye for an eye, son?” Isaac’s voice is low, tempting; he is suddenly Lucifer promising the forbidden fruit. “You deserve to be safe in your own home, do you not?”