by Ann Gosslin
Erin closed her eyes and tried to summon up a cohesive picture of her fractured past. An image wavered into focus. The gold rays of the medallion, glinting in the sun, the freckled chest, the smell of cigarette smoke and drugstore perfume. The smirk, the sneer. Stop stuffing your fat face.
But the photo was merely a distraction. It had nothing to do with Tim. His court date was coming up fast, and she was running out of time. But she still had one ace up her sleeve. Tim’s school chum, Jeremiah Sowka. The one with the acne and frizzy hair. He might have a story to tell.
31
Hartford, Connecticut
June, Present Day
At a corner table in a Dunkin’ Donuts, on the outskirts of the city, a balding man in a tan windbreaker blinked under the fluorescent lights. Next to him, a skinny kid with a mop of straight black hair and wearing football kit fiddled with a computer game. Erin squeezed past the scrum of customers, fidgeting like addicts as they queued for their morning fix of sugar and caffeine.
‘Mr Sowka?’
‘Yep, that’s me.’ He gave a mock salute. ‘Jeremy.’
Powdered sugar dusted his lip. ‘And this is my kid, Kyle. Sorry I had to bring him along, but his mom’s not home yet. He won’t get in the way though, will you, Ky?’ He cuffed the child playfully on the shoulder, but the boy, intent on his game, didn’t bother to look up.
The air was thick with the smell of burnt sugar and cooking oil from the deep-fat fryers. She removed her jacket and fanned her face.
‘If you want a jelly doughnut, you’d better get in line,’ he said, scratching a patch of eczema on his neck. ‘They sell out fast on Saturdays. And while you’re up there, would you mind getting me one of those Belgian cruller things and some doughnut holes for Kyle?’
From the back of the queue, she scanned the trays of glistening doughnuts, spackled with pink glaze, or spiky with sprinkles. The binge food of choice for some of her patients. But the thought of all that sugar made her teeth hurt. How she longed for the little tearoom near the Thornbury Clinic in London, with its assortment of colourful teapots and perfectly brewed tea, the fresh-baked lemon tarts and scones. She settled for a poppy seed bagel and a large coffee.
‘So, Timmy Stern, huh?’ Jeremy plucked the cruller and doughnut holes from the plastic tray. ‘Are you a relative or something?’ He tore open two packets of sugar and dumped them into his coffee. ‘My doc said I should stay away from this place, but we all gotta die from something, right?’ He made quick work of the cruller. In a minute it was gone. On his cheeks and jaw, tiny depressions on his skin were all that remained of his teenage acne.
‘I’m not a relative,’ she said, adopting a serious air. ‘I’m researching a book on family murders.’ She clicked her pen and wrote Jeremy’s name and date in her notebook. ‘The Stern case is of particular interest.’
‘Whatever floats your boat.’ He drained his coffee and stared at the empty cup. ‘I sure could use another one of these. Flew in from Chicago last night and didn’t get much sleep.’ He ruffled his son’s hair. ‘How ya doing there, buddy, want something else to drink?’
Kyle twitched away from his father’s hand, his eyes fixed on the screen.
Erin scraped back her chair. ‘I’ll get it.’ Annoyed at his impertinence, she gritted her teeth and re-joined the queue. But it was simply a matter of singing for her supper. When she returned to the table with a large coffee and two crullers for good measure, she sank into the chair, beset with fatigue. How long would she have to ply him with doughnuts before he said anything useful? This little excursion to Hartford was looking like a massive waste of time.
‘Shall we start with your first memory of meeting Tim?’
He blinked rapidly, as if there was something in his eye. ‘Sure, that’s easy. Timmy and I met in the sixth grade. I was the new kid that year. On the first day, the teacher tells everyone to give me a big welcome. But they kept their distance. Typical kid behaviour, you know? Curious, but cautious, trying to see how I’d fit in. We sat in alphabetical order, so I was put next to Tim. Sowka, Stern. Destined to be friends.’ He shrugged. ‘Or sworn enemies. It could’ve gone either way, but it turned out that Timmy had this thing for birds, and guess what? Sowka in Polish means owl. Go figure.’
Owl. She wrote that down. Almost as an afterthought, she scrawled the name of the strange bird Tim had drawn during their last session. Scopus… something. She would look it up when she returned to Lansford. ‘What were his parents like?’
‘His parents?’ With his finger, he herded some scattered sugar crystals into a little pile. ‘Haven’t a clue. Timmy and I mostly saw each other at school. I didn’t go over to his house much. He usually came to mine. Come to think of it, I don’t remember ever seeing his dad at the house. Just his mom, but not much of her either.’
A group of teenage girls burst through the door, noisy as a flock of starlings.
Jeremy fidgeted and drummed his fingers on the table.
Kyle paused his game long enough to ask where the bathroom was. Erin waited until the boy left the table. Now was the time to ask some of the more delicate questions.
‘What was his mother like?’
As Jeremy scanned the room, his gaze rested briefly on the girls in their tight jeans. ‘Like I said, I hardly ever saw her. Whenever I was at Timmy’s, she was mostly somewhere else. Or lying down in her room maybe. Who knows? She wasn’t like my mom, hanging around the kitchen with plates of cookies and glasses of milk. I remember a lot of ashtrays filled with cigarette butts. Pink lipstick on the filters.’
Erin shifted in her seat. This line of questioning was going nowhere. ‘What about other friends, or enemies? Was Tim ever bullied at school?’
‘Sure. Him and me both.’ He rubbed the angry patch of eczema on his neck. ‘We were the class dorks, total losers in the eyes of the cool kids. There was this one guy everybody hated. I don’t know where he was from, but he would roll into town at the end of June like clockwork, strutting around like he owned the place.’
Her ears pricked up. Was he talking about Graham?
Kyle returned to the table and tapped his father on the arm.‘Can we go now?’
A look of confusion crossed Jeremy’s face. ‘What time is it?’ He scrambled for his phone. ‘Damn. I’m supposed to drop Kyle off at soccer practice.’ He jerked his chair back. ‘Time to go, buddy.’ He shot Erin an aggrieved look. ‘Are we done here?’
‘Not really, but—’
‘You can ride along if you want,’ he said, heading for the door. ‘But we gotta go now, or my ex will have my ass in a sling.’
*
With a screech of tyres Jeremy pulled up to a football pitch on the other side of town. Kyle jumped out to join a group of small boys in green jerseys and yellow shorts swerving across the playing field, iridescent as a school of fish.
Jeremy checked the time on his phone. ‘Not too bad, only ten minutes late.’
He waved at his son, but the boy had joined his mates and took no notice.
‘Okay. Shoot. What else you got?’ He made as if to grab the notebook from her hand, but she yanked it away.
Now that they were no longer moving, she could finally identify the smell inside the car. Congealed grease from the empty fast-food cartons peeking from beneath the seats. She cracked the window for some air.
‘What about this bully you mentioned,’ Erin asked, ‘the one who came to town in the summer. What was his name?’
‘Huh?’ Jeremy dragged his attention away from the boys on the field. ‘Can’t remember the guy’s real name, but he had this stupid nickname. Called himself the Viking. What an asshole.’
She dropped her pen. Graham kept popping up in other people’s stories like a bad smell. ‘The Viking?’ Erin subtly retrieved the pen from her lap and scribbled a note.
‘Yep, can you believe it? A summer kid. He was like this… kingpin of a group of toughs. They had these stupid names for themselves, the Viking, the Enforcer, the Duke. Then,
to make things worse, he enrolled at Belle River High my senior year. Timmy was gone by then, and I remember thinking he was lucky. Better the loony bin than having to deal with that idiot for an entire school year.’ He touched the side of his head. ‘I’ve still got a scar from the time he slammed me against my locker. But his real specialty was forcing your head into the toilet and flushing it. Don’t know how many times I had to suffer that. It was even worse for Timmy, though he didn’t like to talk about it.’
Erin wondered if the scar on Tim’s cheek was another legacy of her brother’s bullying. She felt a senseless urge to apologise for Graham’s reign of terror. But having been a victim herself, she was on Jeremy’s side, hoping that the Viking, in a delicious stroke of karma, had been made to pay for his crimes.
‘Did you ever report this Viking person to a teacher or the principal?’ She purposely avoided his eye.
‘Are you kidding? I was trying to stay alive, not sign my death warrant.’
She ran down her list of questions. ‘What about in the months leading up to the murders, did you have any sense that Tim was unstable, or prone to violence? Did he mention hearing voices or act unusual in any way?’
‘Voices?’ He scratched his ear. ‘Not that I remember.’
‘What about drugs?’
‘A bit of weed now and then. If Timmy was hitting the harder stuff, he never told me.’
Jeremy’s attention was focused on the boys scrambling after the ball. He was fast losing interest. She’d better speed things up a bit.
‘Does this mean anything to you?’ She handed him the sequence of letters she had copied from under Graham’s yearbook photo.
He squinted at the paper. ‘In what context? Like a, waddya call it, an anagram?’
‘Belle River High School, 1978.’
Jeremy flicked the paper back to her. ‘No idea.’
She was running into one brick wall after another. ‘One more question,’ Erin said, ready to wrap things up. She had a long drive back to Lansford, and a stack of patient files to get through before she could call it a day. Not to mention that her car was across town, and she’d have to find her own way back. ‘On the day of the murders, did you see Tim?’
‘Nope.’ Jeremy rolled down his window. ‘Funny you asked, though, as he was supposed to come over to my place that afternoon. He called to say he couldn’t make it, that he had to help his dad around the house or something. Later on, I think around nine, he called from the movie theatre. Said he was going straight home after his shift, instead of meeting up to go out. He had one of those weird headaches he used to get. Always described it as like an ice pick in his brain.’
An ice pick. It sounded like a migraine.
‘I drove over to his house sometime after eleven to see how he was doing. Tim should have been home by then, but the house was dark. I figured everyone was asleep, so I drove back home.’
Erin’s ears pricked up. ‘I didn’t see that in the police report.’
Jeremy stifled a yawn. ‘I took my mom’s car without asking. If she found out, I would have been grounded till I was forty. I was going to tell the police eventually, but then the cops found Timmy, and I figured it didn’t matter.’
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘Nah, no one was out. The rain was coming down in buckets. I did pass some lady on my way back into town though.’
That got Erin’s attention. ‘What did she look like?’
‘Couldn’t tell. She had a scarf over her hair. I remember the car though. A green four-door. Or maybe grey. Greeny grey. It could’ve been a Dodge or maybe a Pontiac, though I couldn’t say for sure.’
A green Dodge sedan. A chill ran through her, although there could have been a dozen green sedans in Belle River that summer. Coincidence, perhaps, but it might be something.
32
Manhattan, New York
June, Present Day
Across a stream of yellow cabs, honking and jostling along the rain-washed street, Erin spotted Ray standing in front of the Morgan Library. She waved to catch his eye, but he was looking at something in his hand. She’d taken an early-morning train into Penn Station, and with her brain still sluggish from yesterday’s meeting with Jeremy, and the long drive back to Lansford, she was finding it hard to stay focused.
Last night, Jeremy had sent her an email with the layout of Tim’s house. A draughtsman he wasn’t, but it was better than nothing, and she was hoping Ray would be able to fill in any gaps. Worn out from several nights of fitful slumber, her primary goal was to get through the day without collapsing into a heap.
As if sensing a shift in the air, Ray looked up and smiled as she stepped onto the pavement. Grey suede jacket slung casually over a shoulder, a lock of hair flopping on his forehead. As he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, his eyes sparked with mischief. Whatever had dampened his mood during their recent dinner had evaporated into the mist.
‘Find the place okay?’
She smiled at his concern. It was a few blocks from Penn Station, how could she miss it?
‘Coffee?’ He tucked the slim paperback he’d been reading into his back pocket.
‘Lovely.’ Considering how tired she was, a gallon would be welcome.
As if sensing her fatigue, he touched her elbow and guided her along the pavement. ‘The place around the corner’s got the best pasteis de nata this side of Rio. If you’re up for it later, I thought we could have a look in the Morgan. There’s an interesting exhibition on.’
How easy he made it sound. Breakfast. A stroll through a museum that epitomised old New York. Perhaps, afterwards, a leisurely lunch at a sleek bistro in Tribeca. It was the sort of charmed life she’d once dreamed about.
The aroma of espresso and toasted almonds greeted them as they entered the tiny coffee house, its glass case crowded with pastries, and barely enough space for three small tables. As they carried their coffees and a plate of the famed custard tarts away from the counter, Ray nabbed a table vacated by a woman in clattery stilettos, who left a cloud of perfume in her wake.
‘I’m glad you called,’ Ray said, pouring steamed milk in his coffee. ‘I must admit, though, when I imagined us going out again, it was to a place nicer than this. Dark wood, candlelight.’ He flashed a wan smile. ‘But something tells me this isn’t a date.’
She hesitated. Why burst his bubble? ‘Can’t a girl come into the city on a whim?’ She met his eyes over the rim of her cup. At some point she’d have to confess that what she really wanted from this meeting was to pick his brain about Tim. For now, it wouldn’t hurt to let him think this was a kind of date. Why shouldn’t they share a coffee and witty repartee like normal people getting to know each other? That she was lying about who she was would have to be dealt with later, if things got personal, but not today.
Revived by the caffeine, she followed Ray into the Morgan, oddly empty, and with the solemn atmosphere of a cathedral. Insulated from the noise of the streets, she breathed in the musty scent of the leather-bound volumes that were kept, like precious jewels, behind protective metal screens.
‘Sunday morning’s always a good time to come here,’ Ray said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘While the rest of Manhattan is out having brunch, we can have the place to ourselves.’
As they threaded their way through the vaulted rooms, Erin paused to lean over a glass case of fifteenth-century illustrated manuscripts, exuberant with splashes of blue and gold, bright as a harlequin beetle. In the next case, an engraving from the Book of Hours depicted in minute detail the laying out of the dead. An emaciated body lovingly cared for as it awaited the next phase of its journey.
Ray appeared at her side. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it? Carpe diem, and all that. I love it here, though I realise it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.’ He gestured at the books. ‘A few years after I moved to the city, my mother came down from Maine for a visit. The first and only time she ever braved the mean streets of New York, and I dragged her here to th
e Morgan. She stayed for five days and the entire time she was terrified someone would snatch her bag, or that we’d be mugged walking home from dinner.’
‘Do you ever go back?’ Erin leaned closer to the display case, trying to decipher the medieval French inscribed within a lavishly coloured border.
‘To Belle River? No. Me and my folks…’ he looked away. ‘We’re not close. My younger brother’s the favoured son. Married with two kids, he works with my dad in his construction business. It was bad enough when I left home for the big, scary city, but after my marriage fell apart, things got a bit frosty. They hate that I’m divorced.’ He touched the small of her back. ‘Ready to go?’
The warm sun had burned away the morning mist. As they strolled uptown, the urge to confess everything beat in her head like a drum. With the mention of his divorce, things had taken a personal turn, and it didn’t seem fair to keep lying to him. They crossed into Bryant Park, where the trees sparkled from the recent rain. A group of city dwellers and tourists alike sprawled on the chairs and benches, enjoying the sunshine. She pointed to a vacant bench. ‘Do you mind if we sit?’
He pressed his palms together. ‘Madam, your wish is my command.’ He seemed to be in inordinately high spirits, and she considered dropping the whole subject of Tim. How much easier it would be to enjoy the day and see where things might lead. As Ray sat on the bench and stretched out his legs, the light filtering through the leaves dappled his face. Near his elbow, a fat bumblebee roamed amongst the dog roses.
‘I have a confession to make.’ She slipped out of her pale green cardigan and bundled it on her lap, unable to meet his eyes. ‘My last name isn’t Carson, it’s Cartwright. And I’m not a writer either. I’m a psychiatrist.’ When she glanced up, Ray’s face was still. ‘Following his trial, Tim Stern was sent to a maximum-security psychiatric facility near Syracuse. He’s been there since 1978. I couldn’t tell you the real reason for my interest in his life because…’ she sought his eyes. ‘My involvement in his case is confidential.’