Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  While Diggs looked for some way to get us out of the path of the lunatic behind us, I kept checking my phone for reception. There was none.

  “I think he’s been waiting to make his move until we were out of cell range,” Diggs said after I checked my phone for the sixth time.

  “Do you know where we are?” I asked.

  “Still on that same logging road. Rosie said they used to use it to bring contraband in and out of Canada. After that main turnoff, I don’t have a clue where it leads next, though.”

  “How far are we from the main road?”

  “About half an hour—maybe thirty miles by now.”

  I thought of the bodies that had been discovered; all we’d learned about how the victims had died... The hell they’d gone through beforehand. “Do you think it’s J.?”

  “I don’t want to think about that right now. Can you check out that topo map again?”

  I did, bouncing almost out of my seat when he hit a pothole the size of a moon crater. I sat back and braced myself with my feet against the dash while I lit the map with my phone. Diggs reached over and tapped my knee with one hand, then quickly returned it to the wheel.

  “Feet down,” he said briefly. “If we crash, you’ll break your legs.”

  Of course.

  I put my feet down, and did my best to keep myself in the seat aided only by my seatbelt and sheer willpower while I checked the map.

  “What the hell am I looking for?” I asked hopelessly.

  “The logging roads. They’re in red on there—I turned onto Smugglers Road off the main stretch. I want to see if there’s another road coming up that might bring us back to a highway.”

  I leaned in and focused my light on a network of thin red lines taking up the entire upper left quadrant of the state. Traveling on a rocky road at a high speed in the dark, for the record? An excellent way to test your map-reading skills.

  “Shit! Solomon,” Diggs warned. I looked behind us as he stepped on the gas. The truck was closing in fast.

  “Can’t you just pull into a side road before he knows you’re doing it and trick him into passing?” I asked.

  “What side road?” he asked. “Tell me where there’s a side road and I’ll gladly turn into it.”

  “Well, don’t get pissed at me,” I said. “I’m doing the best I can here.”

  “I don’t think it matters, anyway,” he said from between clenched teeth. “I think he knows this place backward and forward—the few side roads I have seen, he speeds up just before we hit them so there’s no way I can make the turn.”

  “He’s herding us,” I said. Sure enough, another logging road sped by. The second it was behind us, our pursuer dropped back. “God knows where he’s taking us.” I clutched the dashboard as I looked over my shoulder again. “We have to get the upper hand here. Or at least get some semblance of control.”

  “Well, I’m open to suggestions.” He flexed his fingers on the wheel and glanced at me again. “I want you to get everything we’ll need, okay?”

  “Everything we’ll need for what?”

  He didn’t answer me. “The first aid kit and my pack are in the back there. That map. Both our phones. Make sure we can grab them as soon as we hit. Any food you’ve got stowed away. My sleeping bag.”

  The truck sped up behind us again. I unfastened my seatbelt and angled myself into the backseat, grabbing everything he’d told me to—plus Erin Lincoln’s journal and my flash drive, of course—and then Diggs warned me to get back in my seat. The truck’s engine cycled a tone higher behind us. I’d just managed to get myself buckled in again when the pickup hit once more, its front end smashing against Diggs’ back bumper. The Jeep swerved off course. Diggs recovered at the last minute and got us back on the road.

  “You have everything?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “First aid kit, pack, map, phones, sleeping bag. What about water?”

  “Just one bottle—we’re close enough to the river here, we’ll just head there first and follow it back to civilization.”

  The truck hit again, harder this time. I flew forward, my forehead bouncing off the dash.

  “Goddammit,” Diggs shouted over his shoulder, followed by a long string of language more colorful than I’d heard from him in years. He took a breath, his hand on my arm. “Are you okay?”

  I touched my head gingerly. “Yeah—It’ll leave a mark, but I’m fine.”

  “Check the phone again.”

  I did. “No bars.”

  The road was getting more narrow, pocked with holes, trees encroaching on both sides. Up ahead, I could see a steep incline lit by the glare of our headlights and a full moon overhead. Diggs looked around, his fingers flexing around the steering wheel again. His shoulders were rigid.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “If we can get out of here now—”

  Before he could finish, the truck struck again. This time after the impact, the driver didn’t back off. Instead, he kept our bumpers locked and started pushing the Jeep up the hill. Diggs tried stomping on the brakes; threw the emergency brake; shifted it in reverse as gears screamed and the truck behind us just roared with that much more fury. It barely slowed down. The road leveled out at the crest of the hill, but on the left was a steep wooded ravine—I grabbed Diggs’ arm when I realized what was happening.

  “I know,” he said. I’d never seen him look more terrified. He tried to jerk the wheel to the side, but it didn’t make any difference—we were headed in one direction, and one direction only.

  Just as we went over, Diggs abandoned the wheel and pushed my head down. “Just hang on,” he shouted over the sound of screaming engines. I clutched the dashboard with one hand, the other holding tight to Diggs. The world spun and kept spinning, end over end, until I felt a sharp pain in my temple and darkness fell.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  “We’ve gotta go. Come on—Erin, wake up. Please.”

  I floated for a while, halfway between consciousness and something infinitely nicer, before Diggs’ voice finally registered. Pain came next, accompanied by a wave of nausea and the even less pleasant memory of what the hell I’d gotten us into.

  I was on my back outside the Jeep, beneath a star-filled sky and a canopy of forest. Bono was still singing somewhere far off. Diggs tried to pick me up, but I squeezed his arm to let him know I was awake.

  “I can do it,” I whispered.

  I caught a glimpse of his face: blood down the side, terror in his eyes. The terror vanished the second he realized I was with him, replaced almost instantly with a determination I’d come to know well over the years.

  “Come on,” he said. “We have to go. Can you walk?”

  I sincerely doubted it, but I made the effort anyway. My right leg folded beneath me, but no real pain came until Diggs grabbed my arm to keep me on my feet. I cried out. He let go.

  “Sorry—”

  My head spun, darkness closing in again. Diggs stopped long enough to face me, still holding me up with his hand under my other arm. He looked me in the eye.

  “We have to do this,” he said.

  I nodded, though even that small movement brought back the nausea. He lifted my chin with one hand, his eyes boring into mine.

  “You’re okay,” he said. “We’re alive. I won’t let him near you.” I’d never seen him look so fierce. “We’re getting out of this, Sol. We just have to keep moving.”

  If he’d expected an argument from me, he wasn’t getting one. I nodded gamely. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  He took my good hand. He had his backpack on and a bottle of water in the mesh side pocket, a map clutched in his other hand.

  “You ready?”

  I swallowed past all the fear and doubt, pushing it far away. There was no room for it here. “I’m ready.”

  Part III: The Jungle

  Chapter Thirteen

  Juarez’s plane touched back down in Black Falls at ten o’clock Sunday night. The landing c
ould have been smoother, but wasn’t the worst he’d ever had. He dug his nails into the arms of his seat and thought of Erin’s words that morning: Mind over matter. It was the sort of thing someone who had never experienced aviophobia would say—to Juarez, she may just as easily have told him to will his way to time travel, or sprouting a dorsal fin. He’d been afraid to fly for as long as he could remember, all the way back to thirteen years old, when the sisters would wake him from nightmares in which airplanes crashed into a sea of fire off the Miami coast.

  All of that required more of an explanation than he was prepared to give Erin that morning, however. Besides, she’d been sweet enough to be concerned, and kind enough to distract him until the plane landed. If he had to fly, that wasn’t a bad way to go.

  He tried Erin’s cell phone when he landed, but she didn’t answer. He frowned. He’d already tried her once before, with the same result. He called the hotel he’d booked for her and Diggs, and was told they hadn’t checked in yet. It had been nearly four hours since he’d left the two of them at the restaurant; more than enough time for them to make the trek from Quebec City to Montreal. A pinprick of concern needled its way beneath his skin.

  He made sure that his phone was on, put it in his pocket, and offered up a quick, silent prayer that for once Erin had decided to go against her nature and listen to someone else for a change. If she hadn’t, and arrived in Black Falls while this latest development was still unfolding, he would simply have to deal with it. For the moment, there was very little he could do about any of it.

  From the air field, Juarez drove straight to the Black Falls police station, where Sheriff Nathan Cyr was waiting for him. There were seven others in the cramped police station, most of them in civilian clothes. Juarez offered a perfunctory nod when he came through the door, then asked to speak with the sheriff alone.

  “Who’s at the crime scene now?” Juarez asked the moment they were shut in Cyr’s office. A deer’s head was mounted on the wall, along with framed photos of the sheriff’s family. The sheriff himself was likely in his fifties, with dark hair and a dark moustache and a beer belly that hung over the belt of his uniform.

  “I just left Teddy—my deputy—over there. He knows not to touch anything.”

  “There’s no question it’s Bonnie Saucier?”

  “Not one,” the sheriff confirmed. Juarez was surprised he didn’t look more shaken, considering what he was dealing with. “She’d only been out there a few hours, so no problem with ID there.”

  “And you still believe there are other bodies buried there?”

  “We’re not positive, but it looks that way,” Cyr said. “We’re basing some of that on what Bonnie said to Red when she called this afternoon. But there are a few mounds in that area, about the right size. I figured I’d leave that to you to figure out.”

  “Can you take me out there?”

  “Now?” Cyr hesitated. “You don’t want to go out in the morning? There’s not much you can tell right now. We’ve got a couple of guys up there to make sure no animals go for the body overnight. She’ll be just as dead come morning.”

  Juarez didn’t even dignify that with a response.

  It took half an hour driving through dense woods before they reached the site. During that time, Juarez went over everything that had happened in Black Falls since he and Erin had left town that morning, point by point, starting with a phone call Red Grivois had received from Bonnie Saucier at three o’clock that afternoon.

  “Did she say where she was calling from?” Juarez asked.

  The sheriff shook his head. “If she did, Red didn’t recall. It was late afternoon. After church is out, Red likes to tip back a few. Just to relax, you know. There were a few things he wasn’t completely clear on, thanks to that.”

  Juarez nodded. “So, he got the call from this woman. And she said…?”

  “She gave him directions to this spot. Said she’d seen blood—that it all came to her in a dream. And around here, of course, we all know about Bonnie’s dreams. Nobody really questions ’em anymore. He called me, and we went out there together.”

  Cyr continued talking for the remainder of the drive, but Juarez wasn’t listening. He didn’t like to know that much about a crime scene before he arrived, preferring to come to his own conclusions about what may or may not have transpired.

  When they had driven as close as possible to the site, the sheriff parked behind another police car pulled off to the side of a narrow dirt road. The moon was full overhead, the air cool. The deputy, Teddy, was waiting in his car. He was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three, and looked terrified. The sheriff told him to go home, but Juarez stopped him.

  “I’d like you to stay a little longer, if you don’t mind. So I can get your impressions of what you’ve seen.”

  And find out whether or not the deputy had compromised his crime scene, of course. He left that part out.

  A narrow path littered with beer cans and cigarette butts led to an overgrown field where the gravestones from an old, forgotten cemetery were scattered in a distinctly haphazard fashion. The sheriff continued on through the first field and back onto another path in the woods. Juarez could hear the river nearby. The moon was bright enough that they barely needed flashlights, though he used one regardless. When they reached the cabin where Luke and Sarah Saucier lived, Sarah was waiting on the path with a large white dog. Teddy and the sheriff forged on ahead, but Juarez stopped and stood there for a moment, listening to the scene.

  He disliked having others with him in these situations—particularly those he didn’t know well. It was a common requirement for him to work with local law enforcement, however, and over the years he’d become used to simply taking the time he needed. If his pace was too slow for those around him, it was rare for them to come right out and say so. Once they saw the results he typically got, they stopped complaining.

  The house was well cared for, with a flourishing flower garden in front and a pen off to the side containing three goats, a donkey, and a well-made henhouse. A man, presumably Luke Saucier, sat on the front steps. He was rocking slowly, his gaze focused on the ground. According to the sheriff, the man suffered some type of mental deficit (He’s not all there, if you know what I mean, were the sheriff’s exact words). Juarez turned his attention to Sarah Saucier next.

  She was a large woman, though she moved well for her size—five-foot-eight or nine and easily two hundred pounds. He guessed her to be in her mid-fifties. She bypassed both the sheriff and his deputy and went straight to Juarez.

  “Ou est Bonnie? C’est vrai—elle est morte?”

  Juarez put his hand on her shoulder, guiding her away from the sheriff and his deputy. The dog growled at him; Juarez ignored it.

  “Ms. Saucier, can you tell me what happened?”

  “Oui. I came in to cook, et Tulip—le chienne—was barking. I called for Luke, mon frère, mais he is not home. Red came to the door. He said Bonnie called, et could he come inside.”

  She was close to hyperventilating. Juarez led her to the front door, his hand at the small of her back.

  “Why don’t you go inside,” he said. “And if you would please put on some tea—you have tea?”

  She nodded. “Oui.”

  “Good. If you would put on some tea, I’ll have the sheriff show me the scene. The deputy will go inside with you and your dog. I’ll be in shortly to speak with you.”

  With Sarah Saucier, her dog, and the deputy out of the way, Juarez followed Sheriff Cyr out to a path behind the house. He tried Erin again, with no more satisfying results than he’d gotten all night. After a brief internal debate, he paused to contact the police in Quebec, leaving instructions that Erin and/or Diggs be detained and he be called immediately should they attempt to cross the border. Then, satisfied that he had done everything he could, he rejoined the sheriff.

  They continued walking for as much as half a mile through dense underbrush and thick mosquitoes before the sheriff finally stopped a
t the edge of a small clearing. Juarez noted that the man didn’t venture any farther.

  “This is it,” he said.

  Juarez walked past him and surveyed the scene: A circular clearing ringed by evergreens, perhaps ten yards in diameter. A body encased in a white sheet lay at one edge of the clearing. When Juarez got closer, he could see that the sheet had been pulled away from the victim’s face, revealing a gray-haired woman in her fifties or sixties. Juarez crouched beside the body and pushed the sheet aside, holding the edge with a glove-clad thumb and forefinger.

  “Did anyone move the body?” Juarez asked the sheriff.

  “No, sir,” Cyr said immediately. “We don’t deal with these things much, but we know protocol. We moved the sheet enough to see who it was, then called you.”

  “But you didn’t put it back the way it was before?”

  “No, but I had Teddy take pictures before I checked to see who it was. We’ve got ’em back at the station.”

  “And other than that you haven’t examined the body?”

  “I haven’t,” he confirmed. “And nobody else has—at least, not that I know of.”

  Juarez nodded, satisfied. It was more than he usually got. He noted bruising around the woman’s neck and a bluish tint to her lips. He lowered the sheet, but stopped after only a few inches at what he found. The sheriff scratched his head and crouched beside him.

  “What the heck is that?”

  “Can you get photos of this?” Juarez asked. “I need to send them to someone immediately.” He stared at the woman’s thin chest. The letter inscribed there wasn’t unexpected, but it still sent a chill through him. What was unexpected was the age of the injury: The J carved into Bonnie Saucier’s chest had scarred over completely. She’d likely been living with the mark for decades.