Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  “I’m so sorry,” the girl apologized, clearly mortified at the dog’s behavior. Kat paid no attention, already on her knees to greet Einstein. “I heard what happened,” Rosie continued. “I knew something must have happened when Erin and Diggs didn’t show up to get him last night. I kept him as long as I could, but I’ve got classes this afternoon.”

  “I’ll look after him,” Kat said immediately. “You don’t need to worry about it.”

  “Oh—uh, I don’t know. Erin seems pretty attached.”

  “It’s all right,” Juarez reassured the girl. “This is Erin’s mother; she’ll take good care of him until Erin’s back.”

  Rosie breathed a sigh of relief. “D’accord. Bien. It wouldn’t be a problem, except for those damn classes.”

  Kat still ignored them both. Einstein wagged his tail ecstatically, lapping her face. She got off the floor with some difficulty and took the dog’s bag from Rosie without a word. “I’ll just take him for a walk, then,” she said.

  Juarez hurried after her. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder just outside the door. “Hang on—I still have questions.”

  “Which I’ll answer shortly,” she said. She glared at the hand still touching her. He removed it before she removed it for him. “I just want to stretch my legs. I’m not under arrest, am I? I’m assuming I’m not a suspect in all this.”

  “I just thought you might be anxious to do whatever you could to ensure Erin was returned safely. You do want her returned safely, don’t you?”

  Anger flashed in her eyes. “Don’t make assumptions about what I do and don’t want for my daughter. You don’t know the first thing about me. Now, I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t you have work you need to do somewhere around here?”

  She stalked out without waiting for an answer. Juarez wasn’t at all surprised when she headed straight for a silver Prius in the parking lot out front, put the dog inside, and drove away.

  Erin and all of her hang-ups were making more sense by the second.

  Rosie was still in the station when he returned, studying the maps on the wood paneled walls intently. Juarez grabbed his jacket with the intention of going after Kat for a few follow-up questions.

  “I can walk you out,” he said to the girl. “Wouldn’t want you to miss your classes.”

  She made no move to leave. “So, it’s true, then?” she asked. “Bonnie Saucier is dead? And still no sign of Erin or Diggs?”

  He stopped, a wave of fatigue washing over him. It had been too long since he’d eaten, and far longer since he’d slept last. Lucia’s sweet voice whispered in his head. How do you expect to save the world if you can’t even save yourself?

  He turned and faced the girl. “It’s true,” he confirmed.

  “And there were other bodies, oui?”

  “I can’t really discuss that.”

  “Ah,” she said. She nodded understandingly. “Pas de problème. You think Will did it, though?”

  “We don’t know anything yet. We’re investigating every possible lead.”

  “But he’s one of the leads you’re investigating, non?”

  “What’s this about, Rose?” he asked wearily. “Is there something I can answer for you?”

  She hesitated. Her fingernails were painted bright fuchsia; she gnawed on her thumbnail and stared back at the map for another minute or more before she finally spoke.

  “When I was une petite fille, ma mère dated Will Rainier one summer, d’accord?”

  Suddenly Juarez was all ears. “Okay.”

  “She broke up with him and went away at the end of the summer, parce que she found him…with me, you know? I moved in with my mémère after that.”

  He thought of Jamie Flint’s story, about the woman who worked for her. The dog Rainier had killed. How much damage had this man done over the years? And why the hell hadn’t anyone stopped him? “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t know.”

  She waved him off. “Non, c’est bien. I screamed like a banshee. Just about bit his pecker off, too. He probably would’ve killed me if my mémère didn’t tell him she’d finish the job if he ever came near me again. He stayed away after that, oui.”

  Juarez squelched a smile. “Good for you. And that’s good information about Will—”

  “That’s not why I’m telling you.” She shook her head rapidly. “One night we were at his house, and I was sleeping on his couch—he didn’t have a spare bedroom or nothing. Sometimes I’d sleep in his bed with ma mère when he was out wandering in the woods with Sheriff Grivois. They was always out there together, drinking and shooting and drinking some more. But that night he was home, so I was on the couch and this friend came to visit. My maman didn’t like him—she wouldn’t come out, and she told me one time that Will might be bad but he wasn’t so bad as his friend.”

  “What friend, Rose? Did you get a name?”

  “Maman called him Mister E—that’s what he called himself, et maman said he was un idiot for doing it. But that’s what she always called him, ‘Mister E.’ And this one night he came over late, so I heard them.”

  Juarez’s thoughts leaped immediately to the journal entry Erin had read to him. The mysterious Mister E.

  “Did you hear any of their conversation?” he prompted. “Do you know what the E stood for?”

  “They were fighting…I know that. The man told Will he was a mal partner, never helping. I couldn’t understand everything they said—it didn’t make no sense, and Will was getting angry so I was trying to hide. But he said he didn’t want to do it no more. If the man wanted anybody else, he had to find them himself.”

  “Find them for what?” he asked. His fatigue vanished.

  She bit her lip. He was reminded of how young she was. “That’s what I didn’t understand,” she said. “He said they were for the test, oui? Or the experiment… He said Bonnie—she was the only one who passed the test. Bonnie and Will. Mais he wanted more like them. Hank and Jeff failed. Everybody else failed.”

  Juarez perched on the edge of the desk and looked intently at the girl. “I’d like you to think about that night, Rose. Did he ever say the man’s name? Or maybe your mom mentioned something? Can you remember anything at all about him?”

  She thought carefully for a couple of minutes, her forehead furrowed in concentration. Suddenly, her face lit up. “Eliot,” she said. “I remember because I just watched E.T., oui? And I remember thinking of that. I forgot, till just now.”

  In the journal entry Erin had read him, Mr. E spent the summer with Jeff Lincoln. The same Mr. E that made even Kat Everett go pale with fear. And now, a Mr. E had spent the night with Will Rainier just a few years ago. The two were partners—and Juarez was willing to bet they’d been partners for a very long time.

  He thanked Rosie and assured her that he’d contact her when he knew anything about Erin or Diggs. Then, he ushered her out, and was on the phone the instant he was alone. Mr. Eliot… He just needed to figure out who that was. Once he did, maybe this whole mystery would unravel. And then, God willing, he’d be able to get Erin home again.

  Chapter Twenty

  I stayed at the cavern entrance peering down, lying on my stomach with my heart in my throat, for what felt like a lifetime. Waiting for Diggs to move. Speak. Something. Rainier smiled up at me.

  “You can run if you want, but we’re not done with you yet. And the more you run, the more he suffers. Trust me on that one.”

  “Just go, dammit,” Diggs said when he could finally speak again. He sat up. His left leg was bleeding badly. He waited until he had my eye before he spoke again. “You come down here and we both die, right? What good does that do anyone? Run.”

  I couldn’t get my breath. Couldn’t find my voice. I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Yeah, you are,” Diggs said evenly. I expected him to be angry—to rant and rail and lecture while Rainier beat him to death. Instead, he looked at me with a kind smile, his eyes wet. “You know what you nee
d to do. Go on, Sol.”

  “If it was me, you wouldn’t leave,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

  “This is sweet,” Rainier said. He hauled Diggs up by the back of his t-shirt, a knife pressed to his throat. “But we’re done here—you’ve got a choice, little sister. Get down here, or start running.”

  Diggs never took his eyes from mine. “Please, Solomon.” His voice didn’t waver. “Go.”

  I stood.

  Rainier smiled at me, waiting for me to decide. He pressed the knife into Diggs’ throat, his eyes alight with a frenzied kind of madness. I could barely see through my tears.

  “What’ll it be?” Rainier asked. He twisted the knife, pressing it deeper. Diggs didn’t even flinch, his eyes still on mine.

  “You can do this,” he said.

  I turned away.

  And ran.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  I stumbled down over limestone and shale, slipping more than once in a cascade of loose rock. The sun was high overhead, the air thick. If I’d known where to go to run for help, I might have done that—might have actually left Diggs alone to fend for himself, with the vague hope that I could find someone to save our asses. But as far as I knew, we were on our own; I’d seen no sign that the cavalry was on the horizon. Lacking that, I tried to come up with a plan to save our asses myself.

  Once I’d descended from the rocky outer face of the network of caverns, I crept along the treeline, searching for another entrance into the cave. Half an hour passed while I stumbled along in a panic, trying to find a way back in, all the while imagining what Rainier was doing with Diggs by now. Wondering whether he’d even be alive when I returned. When I finally found another way in, I set everything but my survival knife down outside and prepared to go in. I tried to still my shaking hands; quiet my pounding heart. I was already on my way in when I heard voices. It took me a second to reassure myself that they weren’t in my head. I pressed my back against the rocks and listened. When I turned, I caught sight of Diggs limping along the treeline not twenty yards from me, Rainier close behind.

  I grabbed my stuff and crouched behind a boulder.

  Diggs and Rainier continued past, apparently oblivious to my presence just above them. Diggs used a tree branch as a crutch. Rainier held a rifle at his back. They passed so close that I could see the sweat traveling in beaded rivers down Diggs’ face. When Rainier went by, I held my breath, watching the sloping way that he walked, the power in his shoulders, the confidence in the way he held the gun. I clutched the survival knife more tightly and closed my eyes. The sound of my beating heart was deafening. I felt sure Rainier would hear it—would sense the blood rushing through my veins.

  If I made a move, I realized, I would have to be absolutely certain of what I was doing. Rainier wouldn’t go down without a fight—and as long as he held that gun, I knew he would take one or both of us with him before that fight was done. They kept walking; I didn’t stop them. As they disappeared back into the woods, I heard Diggs’ voice reciting half-forgotten lyrics in a soft, easy tenor:

  She’s got fuck me eyes and a fuck you smile

  My red-haired, silver-tongued, steel-toed wild child

  I stifled a laugh, my eyes filling with more useless tears. Like that, I was nineteen again, wrapped in a bed sheet in a too-warm Portland apartment, while Diggs hummed in my ear and made up country songs just to make me smile. I remembered the feel of his body against mine for the very first time; the way he’d tasted that night, of cigarettes and Jameson’s whiskey. The way he’d moved. The way he’d known me. This would be a good night to live in, he’d said later, his arms around me. No morning after. No ‘What happens next?’ Let’s just stay here.

  “Stop,” Rainier said, before Diggs got any farther into the song.

  “Just thought a little mood music was in order,” Diggs said.

  “It’s not. I need to hear. Keep moving—and keep your mouth shut.”

  Diggs moved on, Rainier behind. I waited until they were far enough ahead before I followed their path into the woods.

  I followed Diggs and Rainier for an hour before Diggs began to drag. Rainier pushed him on, but it was clear he was fading fast.

  “Keep moving,” Rainier growled when Diggs slowed to catch his breath.

  “I’d be faster if you hadn’t knifed me,” Diggs said, the words slurred. “It slows a man down.”

  “I barely touched you,” Rainier said. “Rule number one: Don’t hurt the subjects before the experiment begins. Gotta be healthy enough to run, but hurt enough to fight.”

  “What’s rule number two?” Diggs asked.

  “None of your fucking business. Move.” Rainier pushed him in the back, hard enough that Diggs fell. He righted himself with a herculean effort, and forged on.

  By hour two, I was sunburned, parched, and covered with bug bites. My head pounded from the sun and lack of food or water, my body moving on muscle memory alone. We reached the river at three o’clock. Rainier tied Diggs’ wrists and ankles, ordered him to stay put, and disappeared back into the woods.

  I waited until I was sure he was gone before I crept forward. Diggs sat against a fallen tree, his head back and his eyes closed. His body was caked with mud and blood, bites and scrapes. Either he or Rainier had done a surprisingly good job of dressing the knife wound on his calf, but now the bandage was filthy. The gash in his thigh had been neglected—it was an angry red beneath the grime, swollen and festering.

  “I thought I told you to go,” he said, eyes still closed.

  “And I told you I wouldn’t. How’d you know it was me?”

  “Because I know you. And you’re not as sneaky as you think.” He opened his eyes. They were glassy and distant, the pupils dilated. It took a minute before he actually focused on me.

  I started carving at the ropes around his wrists with my knife.

  “We can’t just run away from this, Sol,” he whispered. “You can’t just untie me, and we’ll skip off into the sunset. We either stop him, or he keeps coming at us.”

  I continued struggling with the ropes—not an easy task with one hand. “I know that. But I have your knife. And if we can get his gun…”

  “Then what? We just blow him away?”

  “Then we make him tell us how to get out of here,” I said, shaking my head. “Nobody’s blowing anyone away.”

  “Right,” Diggs said dryly. “Because that would be wrong.”

  “No. Because we’re not killers—that’s his thing, not ours.”

  I thought of this game Rainier had been playing all these years—this bizarre, deadly match he’d set up between young girls from vastly different worlds. It must have taken planning. Patience. Intelligence. As far as I could tell so far, Rainier might be as mean as a snake, but he wasn’t much brighter than one, either.

  “Where do you think he’s taking you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. Before he could answer, I heard Rainier coming up the path again. I severed the ropes at Diggs’ wrists at the last minute, then put the knife in his hand before I sprinted for the trees. He looked after me wildly, but there was no time for him to argue. When I looked back, just a few yards away but safely hidden in the trees, Rainier was looking directly my way, his gaze clear and cold.

  “You talking to someone?” he asked Diggs.

  “Just myself. I got lonely.”

  Rainier eyed him doubtfully, then looked back toward the spot where I was hiding. “Too bad your girlfriend turned tail,” he said. “Bitches. They’d just as soon stab you as give you the time of day.”

  “They can be tricky,” Diggs agreed dryly. “You’re taking it pretty well—Erin ditching us, I mean. I thought she was the whole point of all this.”

  “She’s not,” Rainier said. “But she’s not done yet, anyway. She won’t get far. We’re just getting started.”

  Diggs was still seated with his back against the tree with his hands behind him, the knife clasped there. Rainier prodded him with his
rifle.

  “Get up.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “Not until you untie my ankles.”

  I held my breath, watching to see if Rainier would actually fall for it. He leaned forward, the gun loose at his side. I could see how tense Diggs was. I crept forward. A horsefly followed me, lighting on my neck. I ignored it. All Diggs needed to do was make Rainier drop the gun, and I could race in and grab it. We were just one well-placed knife slash away, and the balance of power would shift. The horsefly dug in and started to feed just below my ear; I didn’t flinch.

  Rainier set the gun down and knelt on one knee, slowly working on the knots at Diggs’ ankles. Diggs eased his hands out from behind his back. The steel of the knife blade shone in the sun. I waited for Rainier to notice.

  He didn’t.

  I crawled another foot.

  Rainier bowed his head, focused entirely on untying Diggs’ ropes. Diggs waited until I was just a foot or so from the gun, barely concealed by the brush around us, before he raised the knife.

  He brought it down in a single, swift arc—that missed its target completely. Rainier never even looked up before he snapped one hand out and knocked the knife away. Then, in a lightning-quick move I never would have dreamed possible for a man that big, he was up and after me. I almost reached the trees before he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back into him. Diggs tried to get to the gun in time, but with his ankles still tied there was no way.

  Rainier smiled, pulling me closer.

  “I wondered when you’d come back to me,” he said, his mouth at my ear. He twisted my hair painfully and nipped my earlobe. “Now comes the fun part. Pick up the knife.”

  I shook my head, my eyes on Diggs. Rainier jabbed the gun into my back. “It wasn’t a request. Pick it up.”

  I picked it up.

  “Get on your knees.”

  I stayed where I was, clutching the knife. Diggs untied the ropes around his ankles while Rainier was focused on me, though it was clear he didn’t give a rat’s ass whether Rainier found him out or not.