Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  I closed the file and set it down between us. The remnants of my portabella burger was lodged halfway up my gullet, and my heart was pounding.

  “He didn’t do this,” I said.

  “I had the State M.E. fax me a copy of the coroner’s report. You might want to take a look.”

  I reopened the file and leafed through until I found the report. Autopsies forty years ago weren’t all that different than they are today, and the details of Erin Lincoln’s death were just as disturbing now as they had been then. She’d been raped, stabbed multiple times, and finally strangled to death with a leather belt that had been identified as belonging to her brother, Jeffrey Lincoln. Post mortem, a single letter had been carved into her chest: J.

  I thought of the father I’d known growing up on Payson Isle—of tending the garden with him, playing games, going to church services. The man I’d known had never even raised his voice. He loved animals, and the outdoors, and sunsets over the water. I shook my head, refusing to cave at the threat of tears. I closed the file and pushed it away again. If I looked at it one more time, there was no way I’d keep dinner down.

  “He didn’t do it,” I said again.

  “That’s not all that’s in there,” Diggs said. I fought the urge to put my hands over my ears. “Jeff Lincoln resurfaced in 1972. He spent two weeks in a psych ward in Lansing, Michigan, before he escaped and disappeared. No one ever saw him again—he stayed under everyone’s radar after that.”

  “So how does that have anything to do with the girls they just dug up on the border?”

  He paused. The music had ended, the house now quiet and warm and cast in shadow.

  “While he was in the hospital in Lansing, they got his fingerprints,” he said.

  I couldn’t get the image of Erin Lincoln’s body out of my head. “They found his prints at the grave site in Quebec,” I guessed.

  He nodded.

  “It wasn’t him,” I said. “He was on the island in the ’80s. He couldn’t have done it.” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince more—Diggs or myself.

  “He visited the mainland a lot though, didn’t he?” Diggs pressed. “You said he had buying trips, right? He did the shopping for the church. Went to craft fairs to sell the dolls the Paysons made.” He touched my arm. “As much as you might think you knew your father, maybe you didn’t really know him at all. You’ve painted this rosy picture of who you imagined him to be, the same way you painted this rosy picture of what your childhood in that church was like. How much of that is actually based in reality, though?”

  “I sure as hell knew him well enough to know he didn’t do this,” I said angrily. I stood and walked across the room, putting as much distance as possible between myself and the gruesome photos. “He never would have done that.”

  “Did he ever tell you what happened to his sister?”

  I turned on him. “Why the fuck would he name me after somebody he raped and murdered?” I shouted. “The hooded man—”

  Diggs was on his feet at that. He stayed where he was, but I could feel his frustration all the way across the room. “The hooded man what, Sol? You’re really gonna stand there and tell me that the phantom you say set the Payson Church on fire did this, too? He killed your aunt, then twenty years later tortured and murdered another handful of girls and planted your father’s fingerprints before he buried his victims so far in the middle of nowhere they’d likely never be found? If he was gonna frame your father, why would he go to that much trouble to get rid of the bodies? Think about it!”

  I was thinking about it; that was the problem. I shook my head. I had an overpowering urge to hit something. “So you think Gendreau brought me in on this because he thinks my father killed his daughter? His whole point was to use me to track Dad down when no one else could?”

  “I think you should ask him that.”

  I ran a hand through my hair and tried to get a handle on this latest information. What the hell had I expected I’d find when I finally got some insight into my father’s past? That he’d had an apple-pie-and-board-games childhood with a loving family somewhere, and then on a whim just decided to change his name and hide out for the rest of his life on some island with a bunch of religious nut jobs? I’d known it had to be bad… I’d never imagined something like this, though.

  I went to the window and stared out into the darkness, my reflection superimposed over a canvas of blue-black night and trees cast in shadow. Diggs came over and stood beside me.

  “I assume this means you’ll be headed up north next?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I want to get up there as soon as I can. I won’t be able to figure any of this out until I’m actually able to sit down with some of the key players to ask a few questions. And if Dad really is from up there…” My voice faded. If he was really up there, what? I’d like a reunion with the old family, if any of them are still alive? I’d like to find out every last detail of the brutal murder that took the sister I’d been named for?

  I still felt sick, my arms crossed over my stomach as I tried to erase the images I’d seen in both girls’ files now—Ashley Gendreau and Erin Lincoln. Unlike the victims in Canada, buried so long that most traces of the crime had been erased by time, the brutality of Ashley’s attack had been captured in half a dozen different mediums. Her mother sat through the trial; went through Technicolor photos that left no doubt about the kind of hell her daughter had endured in the hours before her death.

  And now it seemed my aunt had endured the same hell.

  If she had, what did my father know about both girls’ deaths?

  Diggs leaned against me, staring out into the same black night. “I could come with you.”

  I leaned back for just a second before I remembered the stacked brunette now keeping his office stocked with fresh wildflowers and Post-it notes. I straightened up. Shook my head. “You don’t need to do that—I’ve got it covered. You’ve got too much going on here, anyway.”

  He looked like he was about to argue when his phone rang. The expression on his face was all I needed to confirm that that very same stacked brunette was on the other end of the line.

  “I can call her back later,” he said.

  “Nah, answer it,” I said. I grabbed Jeff Lincoln’s file and the dog. “If I don’t see you tomorrow, I’ll catch up with you another time. Thanks for this.” I nodded toward the file numbly. Diggs answered the call as I was headed down the hallway, but I made a point not to listen.

  Two minutes. Growing up, my mother used to say that was all the time anyone needed for even the worst emotional shit-storm before a woman with any true substance could get control and soldier on. Dad was more forgiving of emotional shit-storms—or at least I thought he was, but since I hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with the man since I was nine, it was becoming a lot harder to remember his views on life.

  As a general rule, I tried to avoid taking Kat’s advice on anything beyond basic medical care—and even that was sketchy—but at the moment, the two-minute rule seemed like a good idea.

  I gave myself a minute and forty-five seconds of tears and a borderline panic attack over Jeff and Erin Lincoln, the connection to my father, and the recognition that, whatever the truth might be, there was no way it could possibly be good. I refused to acknowledge that any of my inner turmoil might have something to do with Diggs and his new lady friend. When my time was up, I took a deep breath, set my files and my laptop on the bed, and pulled myself together. I changed into boxers and a t-shirt, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. Then, I got into bed with Einstein, opened the first file I found, and dove in.

  Chapter Five

  Diggs was gone when I got up the next morning, though he’d left a note on the fridge instructing me to give him a call before I left town. Childishly, I did not. I packed up the Jetta with Einstein, what little gear I’d brought with me, some bottled water, and a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the trip. I didn’t bother saying goodbye to Kat or Ma
ya on the way out of town, reasoning that I could just call them from the road or drop a line once the story was done and I was settled back in Portland. I didn’t stop by the Trib. The sun was bright and I played Jenny Lewis too loud with Einstein hanging his head out the window all the way down 97 toward Route 1, desperate to get the hell out of Dodge.

  Before I hit Route 1, however, I cleared the front gate and found a shady parking spot at the state prison. It was unexpectedly cool, so at least I had that going for me. I set Einstein up with some water and a well-worn Kong, and then I went inside to take my rage out on the man who’d introduced me to Jeff Lincoln and all his demons in the first place:

  Hank Gendreau.

  I hadn’t had the foresight to set up a meeting with Hank before I showed up, which turned out to be a problem. It took almost an hour before things got straightened out and the warden agreed to give me ten minutes. The visiting room wasn’t available, so a stocky guard with a buzz cut led me to a smaller, private room where I suspected inmates usually met with lawyers. The guard remained posted at the door, though as far as I was concerned Hank Gendreau had a lot more to worry about than I did.

  Hank must have known why I was there, because he didn’t look nearly so happy to see me this time around as he had before. He was already seated when I got to the room, but I remained standing.

  “Tell me about Jeff Lincoln,” I said before he could say a word.

  “Do you know where he is?” he asked immediately.

  The same kind of wood-veneer table that had separated us two days before was between us now, but the civility was nowhere to be found.

  “Tell me what you know about his sister first,” I said. “What happened on that lake? Did you see her brother again after they disappeared?”

  “I wasn’t there—I don’t know where he went after. I don’t have a clue what happened on the lake the day they went missing.”

  “You must have heard something, though. Did you know her?”

  “Of course I knew her,” he snapped. “You grew up in a small town—you know what it’s like. We all knew each other.”

  “I went to see your lawyer yesterday,” I said, trying a different tack. “I got a chance to talk to the woman who lives there—Bonnie. Do you know her?”

  “Yeah, I know her.” He rolled his eyes at me. “She’s my sister.”

  Some investigative reporter I was. That explained the way she’d been staring at me the day before, though: she must have seen the same resemblance Hank had when he’d found the picture of my father and me in the paper.

  “She said you told the cops something when they first picked you up the day of your daughter’s murder. That you’d seen someone else out there?”

  That fear returned to his eyes for just an instant before it vanished. “Jeff,” he said, after just a second’s hesitation. “I saw Jeff out there.”

  I didn’t say anything. The fear vanished from his eyes, replaced with pure bile. I sat down. Wet my lips.

  “You’re lying,” I said. My voice was barely more than a whisper. “You would have told the police if you’d seen him that day.”

  “I did tell them. Red Grivois—he was the first cop on the scene. I told him. Ask him. But I was out of my mind, between the drugs and what I’d seen. Who the hell do you think’s gonna believe somebody like that—covered in his daughter’s blood, raving about a kid who went missing seventeen years before? I might as well have told them Bigfoot did it.”

  I struggled to get my voice back. “Your sister said she saw something—or that she sees someone. Does she think the killer is Jeff Lincoln, too?”

  “I don’t know what she thinks anymore; you can’t go by her. You go by me. I was there.” The harmless do-gooder I’d met before had vanished, now that we were alone. His eyes burned with grief and rage and a kind of madness that I suspected no one ever really came back from.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked. “Why did you send that picture to me? What’s supposed to happen next here?”

  “I want you to find him,” he said. “And then if I can’t kill him myself, I want him to rot in here. You saw what he did to my daughter. What he did to those other girls…and God knows who else. I know he’s your father, but he’s not human. You must be able to see that by now.”

  His voice had lowered to a harsh whisper. The guard shifted behind me. I tried to move my chair back, but it was bolted to the floor.

  “Go to hell,” I said. “You’re wrong. It wasn’t him—you don’t know what you’re talking about.” I made an effort to keep my voice level. “He wouldn’t do this.”

  “I knew him,” Gendreau said. “He was cold. Mean. And maybe he thought he had a right to do what he did...” I looked at him in confusion. He shook his head. “But nobody has a right to do something like that.”

  If the table hadn’t been between us and a guard hadn’t been two feet away with his hand wrapped around the Mace at his belt, I’m not sure what I would have done. I stood, my palms on the table as I leaned in. “Why the hell would anyone believe you? You said it yourself: you were out of your mind that day. You were the one they found covered in Ashley’s blood. You’ve got everything to gain by palming all this shit off on my father.”

  Gendreau looked at the guard, stood, and backed up until he was pressed against the concrete wall, as far from me as possible. The hate in his eyes was unmistakable.

  “Get her out of here,” he said.

  The guard tried to pull me away, but I wasn’t finished yet.

  “How does anyone know you aren’t the one who killed those other girls, too? You could have killed Erin Lincoln for all I know. You got a thirteen-year-old girl pregnant, for Christ’s sake. Maybe you’ve had a hard on for little girls for as far back as you—”

  He lunged for me suddenly, everything about him coiled as tight as a fist. The guard got between us before Gendreau ever touched me, and pushed me roughly toward the door. An alarm went off, bouncing off the concrete walls.

  “It was him,” Gendreau called after me. “Your father’s the monster. He did this!”

  Another guard arrived and pulled me out of the room before I went in for another shot at him, my blood boiling. Once we were a few feet down the corridor, I pulled my arm out of the guard’s grasp. He didn’t press the issue, but he also didn’t make any move to let go of his Mace.

  “I’ll need to report this,” the guard said to me. He had dark hair and a square jaw and a pug nose that didn’t fit his face. He was very unhappy with me. “I doubt you’ll be allowed back in here.”

  “Fine by me. I don’t want to come back here.”

  My cheeks burned, though it was more from embarrassment than rage once I got some distance. Half a dozen burly guards had gathered at the security station when we returned. A couple of them looked at me like I was clearly Satan’s spawn, while the rest just ignored me outright. My pug-nosed escort walked me back through the main entrance and all the way to the parking lot before he’d let me go.

  “You’ll be all right from here, Miss?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  He remained at the gate, watching me go. I could still hear the alarm blaring inside the building.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  I’d just managed to pull myself together—or as close as I was likely to come as long as people were saying my father was a crazed psychopath who butchered young girls—when I got to my car. Or rather, the spot where my car had been when I left it. In its place was a worn blue Jeep with a kayak strapped to the top. Inside, a very wet Einstein greeted me with tail wagging, his paws on the dashboard. All my stuff had mysteriously repacked itself into the back. Diggs—also wet—reclined in the front with his feet on the dash and his arms crossed over his chest, his straw hat pushed low over his eyes.

  “A prison riot, Solomon? Seriously?” he casually pushed the hat back so I could see his eyes, but otherwise didn’t move. “I can’t leave you alone for a second.”

  I felt a
rush of relief so sweet I almost sank to my knees. “I didn’t start the damn thing,” I said. “And it wasn’t technically a riot. What’d you do with my car?”

  “Sent it back with one of the boys from the paper. Don’t worry—it’s in good hands. Then Stein and I went for a swim.”

  “And now you’re here because…”

  He removed his feet from the dash and sat up. “You really thought I’d let you head sixty miles north of the Arctic Circle on your own to chase a psychotic serial killer who may or may not be your old man? Give me a little credit, Sol.”

  “What about the paper?”

  “Eh.” He waved his hand vaguely. “I took a few days off. I’m not the only one who works there—they can handle it. The only time anything worth reporting happens around here is when you’re in town anyway, so I think we’re safe.”

  “And Andie?”

  The humor vanished for just an instant. His eyes drifted from mine. “We’re good. She understands.”

  Bullshit was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept it to myself.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.

  “Head north till you see the Mounties?”

  Pretty much. I went around to the passenger’s side, forced Einstein into the backseat, and got in. Diggs ground the Jeep into gear. I put my seatbelt on as a sudden rush of emotion—fear or grief or a residual adrenaline rush from my encounter with Gendreau—washed over me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Diggs glance at me.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I wet my lips. Cleared my throat.

  He took a bottled water from his center console, uncapped it, and handed it to me without taking his eyes off the road. “I’m here, Sol,” he said. “Whatever we find up there…we can handle it.”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, then took a good slug of water and focused on keeping it together before I disgraced myself entirely.