by Jen Blood
I leaned back in my chair and attempted a reassuring smile. “It’s all right. You can say whatever you want. I’m just after the truth.”
She looked at Diggs for confirmation. He nodded.
“D’accord,” she said. She looked me dead in the eye. “He was mean. Smart, but cold. Cruel.”
I thought of my father and me in the greenhouse when I was a kid—tending the plants, wondering at every caterpillar and earthworm that crossed our path.
“Can you give us an example of what you’re talking about?” Diggs asked.
“He locked me in the cellar,” Luke said immediately. His eyes clouded. “He told me nobody would come for me because I was stupide. Il m’a laissé dans le noir.”
“He left him in the dark,” Diggs translated for me.
I swallowed past a knot that lodged itself halfway down my throat.
“It was just overnight,” Sarah said, like that somehow made it better. “Only a few hours. But Jeff slipped and told Erin. She came back and let Luke out.”
“I didn’t think nobody would find me,” Luke said. “I prayed on my knees and I tried to dig myself out. Bloodied my fingers. Hurt my head. Who would do something like that? I never did nothing to Jeff Lincoln.”
“What happened when you got out?” Diggs asked, saving me the trouble of coming up with an apology for the demon my father had apparently been as a kid.
“His père was très important in town,” Sarah said. “He owned a mill that shut down soon after Erin…” She stopped. “Après tout. But then, nobody did nothing because Mr. Lincoln would have their jobs. Jeff didn’t get away with it at home, though.”
Luke looked troubled.
“That bothers you?” Diggs asked.
“Erin told me things,” Luke said softly, like he was revealing a long-kept secret.
I looked at him curiously. “What things?”
“About home. What son père would do to Jeff when nobody was there. I was trying to be his amis.”
“And that’s when he locked you in the cellar?” Diggs asked.
“He was tres fâché. Angry. He told me to shut up. Hit me in the face.” Luke looked down at his hands, twisting his callused fingers together. “He said I didn’t know nothing about it because I was stupide. He told me I shouldn’t talk about him again. Jamais.”
“When did all this happen?” I asked.
Sarah looked at Luke. “It was after Mrs. Lincoln died, oui?”
He nodded. “Dans l’été. In summer.”
“Oui,” she agreed. “Not long before they found Erin.”
So, mere months before Jeff Lincoln dropped out of sight and his sister was found murdered, he’d been beating up mentally challenged neighbors and locking them in the cellar. I couldn’t imagine any of it. The man I’d known—the one who raised me and kept me safe for the first nine years of my life—might as well have never existed.
I took out the photo I had of the two of us out on the island together and slid it across the table to her.
“Do you recognize him?” I asked. “The boy you’re talking about—Could this be him?”
Sarah and Luke both leaned over the photo, looking at it closely. After a minute or two, they both eased back. The look on their faces was enough.
“He looks nicer, there,” Luke said. “Un bon père, oui? A good father?”
“Oui,” I agreed.
“How did Jeff get along with his sister?” Diggs asked. He glanced at me to see if I was still in the game. I managed a naked smile, but nothing more.
“He never left her side,” Sarah said. “They were like magnets, non? Opposites, but they fit. There was three, four years between them, but that didn’t matter. Il est très…” she hesitated again, looking for the word. “Protective. Very protective”
I held on tight to that tenuous lifeline. “And no one thought it was a little weird that he would do... well, everything that was done to Erin Lincoln before she died? Given that she was the only one he ever actually seemed to like?”
“She was afraid of him,” Luke said. “He didn’t want her to have no other friends. Jamais.”
“It wasn’t affection,” Sarah agreed. “He owned her. She was his pet. It was okay when she was younger. By the time she died, she didn’t like it no more.”
“You knew her, then,” I said.
Her eyes clouded. She didn’t say a word.
“Sarah and Erin were amis. Best friends. Together always. Sarah even went dancing avec Jeff. It wasn’t a good date, though,” Luke said. “She came back crying, et cried for two more days.”
She took a long sip of tea and set the mug down carefully. The look in her eye was all I needed.
“How old were you?” I asked. My voice was barely above a whisper.
“Thirteen,” she said. She held herself carefully upright. “He was handsome. Very charming, when he wanted to be.”
She put a hand over Luke’s and nodded toward the door, issuing an order in French. Luke got up without any fuss, said a quick goodbye to Diggs and me, and headed for the door. Sarah waited until he’d gone before she said anything more.
“I am sorry I can’t tell you better things about your father,” she said.
“He raped you,” I said. I couldn’t seem to get my voice back.
“It wasn’t like that,” she said quickly. “He didn’t beat me, nothing like that. He gave me beer. Was nice to me—and careful, so there wasn’t no worry about un bébé. But then when it was over, he wouldn’t talk to me no more. He drove me home, et then he stayed away from me. He tried to make Erin stop spending time with me and Luke, mais non. She never did listen to him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. The apology hung in the air, grossly inadequate considering the damage Jeff Lincoln—my father—had inflicted on this woman more than forty years ago. I stood numbly. “We should probably go.”
Diggs got up and took our dishes to the sink.
“You should talk to Red Grivois,” Sarah said, just as the dogs came bursting through the door with Luke on their heels. “He was with the state police for many years. He found Erin, and investigated the case. He’s been fishing, but he’s back. I’ll call and tell him to expect you.”
“Wasn’t he the same one who was first on scene when they found Ashley Gendreau?” I asked.
“We don’t have many police up this way—every mal thing that happened here for many years, Red was the one had to pick up after it. It wasn’t a good job.”
I supposed not. Still, he was definitely high on my list of people to talk to while I was in Black Falls. While Sarah made her phone call, Luke and I occupied ourselves picking burrs out of the dogs’ fur and Diggs studied the photos on the walls. When Sarah hung up, he nodded toward the prints.
“These are all Luke’s?” he asked.
She nodded, her eye on her brother. “Oui. There are many things he can’t do. Neither one of us was nothing much in school, mais there are things he takes to. God’s way, I like to think. There is balance, always.”
Except for Erin Lincoln, of course, raped and murdered at twelve years old. And Ashley Gendreau. And any of the other victims of the monster we were trying to find.
Sarah walked us to the door. We said brief goodbyes, but I was so stuck on her revelations about my father that she might as well have gone back to French. We were on our way out when Diggs stopped for one last question.
“What about Hank Gendreau? Did you know him, too?”
“Oui. We know his sister Bonnie, bien sûr. Hank was friends with Jeff, though,” she said. She didn’t look happy about that. “Et Will Rainier. We didn’t spend lots of time together.”
“So what happened with his daughter…? You know about that.”
It’s not like everything we’d been talking about had been a walk in the park, but this was the first time I saw a genuinely emotional reaction. Her eyes swam with tears. She brushed them away and nodded. “Mais oui. Everybody remembers here.”
“Do you th
ink it was a coincidence that Ashley died the same way Erin Lincoln died?” Diggs asked.
“Non,” she said shortly. “Coincidence… I don’t believe in that. Hank left after Erin and Jeff went missing; we thought then he must know something. Après Ashley… Non. No coincidence,” she said again.
“Do you think Hank and my father were both responsible for Erin’s death, then?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Je ne sais pas. Everybody’s thought about it, everybody still thinks about it. Nobody knows, mais Jeff et Hank et Will. Ton père wasn’t the only monstre in this town. Hank was just wild—too many drugs. But Will was just mauvais. Evil.”
She took my hand at the door and held it tightly. “There are some things it is better not to know. This may be one, oui?”
I didn’t say anything, not sure what kind of response was required in that situation. When she let me go, I joined Diggs on the front step. We were silent the entire trek back to the Jeep.
Chapter Seven
Diggs and I rented a couple of rooms at a Budget Inn on Route 1 a few miles shy of Black Falls, stopped long enough to dump our stuff, and within twenty minutes were on the road again.
Black Falls was an old mill town built on the Aroostook River, with railroad tracks running clear through town to connect it to the rest of the country. Now, the mills and the railroad were shut down, the economy had tanked years ago, and as far as I could tell all that was left were a few potato farms and a main stretch through town with more FOR SALE OR RENT signs than actual businesses.
Red Grivois lived in a little house in the heart of town, an old pickup on cement blocks in his well-groomed front yard. When we pulled in, he sat at a pine picnic table with a half-full bottle of Black Label and a twelve pack of Bud beside him. He had thick white hair and thick white eyebrows and a red nose that suggested this wasn’t the first night he’d knocked a fifth back on his own. Diggs looked at me before we got out of the Jeep.
“This should be fun,” he said.
“Yup. How do you wanna play it?”
“This is your story. I’m pretty sure he’ll want to talk to you a lot more than me, anyway. You’ve got nicer legs.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Diggs,” I said.
I grabbed my bag and put Einstein on his leash. Then, I strolled across the lawn and took a seat on the bench opposite Grivois without waiting for an invitation.
He looked up, grimaced at the sight of me, and looked back down at his red Solo cup of whiskey, clearly remembering another girl, another time. As superpowers went, I’d take flying or invisibility over the ability to freak out the locals just by showing my face, any day of the week.
“So, what do you want to know?” he asked. There was no trace of the Acadian accent; I could barely detect a Maine one. He lit a Camel and pushed a warm beer toward me, which I accepted.
Diggs came over and sat down beside me. Grivois didn’t offer him anything, which was just as well. Better to be left out than forced to refuse.
“You were the one who found Erin Lincoln’s body,” I said. I took the file from my bag and set it on the table between us.
“Well, you’ve got me there. Is that it?” he said.
“Not quite. I just have a few questions about that day. And about the investigation afterward.”
“I’ll tell you all I can,” Grivois said, “but I can’t make any promises. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”
Diggs glanced at the half-dozen empty beer cans beside him, but didn’t say a word.
“How long had you been looking before you found the body?” I began.
“That’s not in the file?”
“I just want it in your words, if that’s okay.”
He frowned. “Six days. We got a call about coyotes showing up closer to the camps than we like out at Eagle Lake, so I went to look. There was enough woods then that they usually kept to themselves; if they were coming that close to the camps, I knew there had to be a reason.”
“And what did you find?”
He took the cap off the Black Label and dumped the rest of the whiskey into his cup. His frown deepened.
“You know what I found,” he said.
I glanced at Diggs. He shrugged, his meaning clear: this was my play.
“I understand you not wanting to think about it,” I said. “But if my father did this, I’d like to know. I need to.” It was a naked admission I hadn’t intended to make, but it did the trick. Grivois eyed me speculatively before he nodded.
“She’d only been there a day, maybe,” he said. “The coroner said she’d been alive up to then—running for maybe the full week before he caught her and killed her. Broken bones were healing; cuts had scabbed over.” He stared at the table, stone faced. “She’d been raped. Strangled to the point of death, then brought back.”
It was all information I’d read in the coroner’s report, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear.
“And what about the brother—Jeff?” I asked. “Did you find any trace of him?”
He hardened at mention of the name. When he met my gaze this time, there was a righteous fury I’d seen in cops before—the look of someone who’d seen the worst, and had no qualms about demanding justice in its purist form for the evildoers. Someone else who wanted Jeff Lincoln dead, then.
“You mean besides his belt wrapped around her throat? The same belt that was used to whip her backside till it was raw? Besides his initial carved in her chest? Or the fact that he disappeared the same time she went missing? Besides what we know happened later?”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “What happened later?”
“The nut house in Michigan,” he said impatiently. “And now the bodies on the border. You need more than that?”
“But you don’t have any hard proof that it was him,” I said. “I mean—there’s no witness who actually saw him do this. Everything else… There could be an explanation for that.” I sounded like a delusional kid, intent on believing a fairy tale the rest of the world had given up on years ago.
Grivois set his cup down. He straightened in his seat, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He looked at me calmly.
“I know he was your father,” he said. “But I knew Jeff Lincoln was trouble the day he set foot in this town. He was mean. Spiteful. It was his daddy’s fault—we all knew that. But he was dark in a way young people shouldn’t know to be dark. I wish I could tell you something else, but those are the facts. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind then that Jeff Lincoln did this, and there’s no doubt now.”
“What about alternate suspects?” I asked stubbornly. “There must have been someone else you looked at, right? Summer in a popular spot, there has to be someone other than my father who could have done this.”
Grivois looked at Diggs like he was hoping for some kind of intervention, but Diggs stayed quiet.
“What about G?” I asked suddenly, recalling Bonnie’s warning to me. “Does that name mean anything to you? Or just the letter?”
He looked genuinely perplexed. Diggs spoke up. “When Bonnie said that to you, was it with a soft jh sound to it?”
I nodded. Based on the look on his face, I was guessing that wasn’t a good thing.
“Jhee is French for the letter J,” he said. “It would make sense, considering the J on Erin Lincoln’s chest.”
I took barely a second to digest that before I moved on, refusing to be thrown. “What about Hank Gendreau? Seventeen years after Erin Lincoln is raped and murdered, his own daughter is tracked in the woods and killed in almost exactly the same way? You really think that was coincidence?”
“Some people still think Hank didn’t get a fair trial in that case,” he said.
“And you’re one of them,” I said, recalling both Hank and Bonnie’s words to that effect. “What do you think happened?”
He didn’t say anything for a while, staring into his whiskey. “It was too much like another girl I found—I knew who did that one. Th
ere was every reason to believe the bastard who killed Erin Lincoln killed Ashley Gendreau, too.”
“Except for the fact that the bastard who allegedly killed Erin Lincoln had been missing for seventeen years,” I said. “And Hank Gendreau was right there.”
“He saw somebody in those woods that day.”
“Jeff Lincoln,” I said with a nod. “According to his story. You really believe that?”
The look in his eye made it clear that he did, as a matter of fact. My guess was he’d go to his grave believing it.
“This alibi Hank had for Erin Lincoln’s murder; can you tell me what that was? I haven’t been able to get access to those files yet.”
He took another drink. “He and a couple of his buddies were up in Quebec that weekend. We double checked at the border—he wasn’t at Eagle Lake. Your father was. It’s as simple as that.”
I started to argue with him, but Diggs wrapped his hand around my arm and stood. “We should go,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”
I knew he was right. The sun was down and Givrois was obviously done talking. I got up reluctantly. “Do you mind if I contact you with anything else?”
Givrois tipped the last of his whiskey back, cracked open a beer, and looked around. I wondered if he had any family. There was no sign of someone inside the house: no curtains in the windows, no toys in the yard. Not even a dog prowling around somewhere, with the exception of my own mutt. He blinked bloodshot eyes and stared back at the table.
“Go ahead. I’m not going anywhere.”
◊◊◊◊◊
It was after ten by the time we finally got to the motel for good that night. That far up north, Route 1 is a ribbon of hills and dense woods where locals share the road with deer and moose, black bear and coyotes. The Budget Inn was on a stretch with one other hotel, but just behind both of them was a stand of trees so thick it seemed like they were just waiting to creep closer the second your back was turned—like some primeval game of red light green light. The woods were definitely winning.
Diggs bumped my shoulder when he noticed me staring at the tree line.