by Ann Gosslin
After they left, Erin waited a good five minutes before getting up to pay her bill. When she stepped outside, she hung back under the awning to check the street, before making a beeline for the car park out back. As she hurriedly freed the helmet from the crossbar of the bike, someone behind her coughed.
‘Dr Cartwright?’
She stiffened. But by the time Erin turned to face him, she had a smile ready. No sign of his lady friend, or his car. He must have followed her after she left the café.
‘I thought that was you.’ His smile did not come quick enough to mask the suspicion in his eyes. Not a man she would want to face in a courtroom.
‘What brings you to this neck of the woods?’ he said, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket. ‘Did we have an appointment?’
She felt caught out, like a child with her hand in the biscuit tin.
‘How nice to see you again,’ she said, brightly, hoping her voice sounded natural. ‘An appointment? Not at all, I’m up here on a weekend getaway. A friend of mine said this was a nice area to explore by bike.’ She gestured at the helmet. ‘She also said the farmers’ market in Hanover was not to be missed.’ She showed him her bag of jam and maple syrup as evidence, like a witness on the stand.
‘Where are you staying? The Black Horse? A lovely place. Be sure to give my regards to Jean and Artie. Tell ’em I said to treat you well.’ He looked at the helmet dangling from her wrist, then at the bike leaning against the fence post. She could see his mind scrolling backward and putting two and two together. She held her breath and waited, but the moment passed, and she turned to unlock the bike.
But Stern didn’t move away. She could hear him behind her, shuffling his feet on the gravel. He cleared his throat. ‘Now that we’ve bumped into each other, may I ask if there’s any news about Tim’s case?’
In the dappled shade, his face looked strangely opaque. It may have been a trick of the light, but for a moment it seemed as though his eyes could see through her skull and straight into her brain.
‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any details about Tim or the status of his case,’ Erin said, easing the bike round until it was pointed towards the street. The air felt heavy, and she was anxious to get away. ‘I’m sure someone will contact you before Tim is scheduled to appear before the judge.’
‘That’s good to know.’ He slapped some dust off the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Enjoy your stay in Hanover.’ The voice was hearty. But his eyes hadn’t changed, and it was his eyes that bothered her. Surely, he didn’t buy her story about driving all the way up here to buy jam at the local farmers’ market.
The wheels of the bike spun on the gravel as she pulled out of the car park and pedalled away, acutely aware of Stern’s cool stare, boring into her back. Some might say those penetrating eyes were the sign of a true believer. A man lit by the flame of a higher power. But Erin would call them something else.
34
Belle River, Maine
August 1977
Music thumps from the stereo in the basement rec room, blocking out the chirrup of crickets in the yard. Jeremy’s parents have gone out to a party and won’t be back until late. A perfect time to break out a little weed. Jeremy pulls the plastic baggie of Jamaican Gold from the pocket of his jeans and sets to work rolling the sticky buds into a fat spliff. He lights the end and takes the first pull, holding the smoke deep in his lungs before passing the spliff to Tim. He’s not all that fond of weed, but he takes a pull, coughs and sputters.
Another toke, and the top of his head shears off. He can feel his blood and bones break away and waft through space to rendezvous with the stars. He closes his eyes and lies back on the orange beanbag, his heart galloping as his spinning thoughts race for the moon. He takes another toke, waiting for the familiar calm to flush through his veins, but this time he feels something different. An urgent, vibrating energy, like a swarm of bees descending through the air. Bees in the trees. Bees in his blood. Jeremy’s face balloons to twice its size.
‘Man, this is heavy stuff,’ Jeremy says. ‘Where’d you get it?’ He lies flat on the floor and laughs like a loon. ‘I’m totally wasted.’
It was that boy everyone called the Duke who gave Tim the weed. He’d been acting all chummy recently, even slinging his arm around Tim’s shoulder when they’d run into each other at the docks last week. Punching him on the shoulder, laughing at his jokes. Like they were blood brothers, or members of some long-lost tribe. Weird, that’s for sure. But if Jeremy knew who’d given him the dope, he’d freak out, sure they’d been poisoned. If there was anyone Jeremy hated worse than the Viking, it was the Duke. A snake in the grass was what Jeremy called him.
He sucks more of the oily smoke into his lungs, and tries to focus on his friend’s face, but it keeps moving in an out of his sightline, until it detaches from Jeremy’s body and floats up to the ceiling like a helium balloon.
Blood canters through his veins and electrifies his fingers. A surge of power blows his body into the size of a giant, while sharp fangs push through his gums. Beset by a furious hunger, he eyes Jeremy’s limp form, splayed out on the beanbag, and the delectable, tender skin of his neck, where a blue vein pulses, beating in time to the werewolf thump of Tim’s heart. How inviting the pale skin looks. He creeps closer, presses his finger against the beating blood.
Jeremy stirs and opens his eyes. ‘Hey, man. What’s up?’
35
Lansford, New York
June, Present Day
A stiff breeze, laden with the tang of the river, ruffled the yellow tulips Erin had placed in a vase on the kitchen table. On her way home from the clinic, she’d taken the long way round, to drive by Cassie’s house, the third time in two weeks. But the blinds were drawn, and the windows shut. She could only imagine what went on behind those closed doors, and hoped that Cassie was okay. When a man from the house next door stepped onto his front porch, she had started the engine and driven away. First, the weekend in Hanover to spy on Stern, and now this. If she kept pushing it, she’d be in serious risk of losing her license.
*
The phone at the police station in Belle River rang six times before someone picked up.
‘How old did you say the case was?’ The man had a smoker’s gravelly voice.
‘August 1977.’
‘Hang on a sec.’ He muffled the phone to shout something, before coming back on the line. ‘Name of the perpetrator?’
‘Timothy Warren Stern.’ She paused. ‘He murdered his mother and two sisters.’
‘Stern? Oh, sure,’ he said. ‘I heard about that case. Long before my time, though. Not much in the way of violent crime around here, so a case like that sticks in your head.’
‘If it’s possible,’ Erin said, ‘I’d like to speak to the officer in charge of the case.’
‘Don’t know what he can tell you that’s not in the police report, but I’ll have someone dig up the name for you. Call back tomorrow. I should have it by then.’
*
The punishing Florida sun glittered in a flat blue sky. After driving for an hour through an unending stream of salt flats and housing developments, the taxi pulled up to a gated community on the water, home of Harry Talbot, the detective on the Stern case. At the gatehouse, a guard checked Erin’s name against a list before waving her through. Masses of pink and white flowers from the oleander hedge lined the driveway. On the clipped lawn, date palms were arranged in mathematical precision. Crouching low to the ground, a crew of groundskeepers worked their clippers amongst the foliage, decapitating weeds and snipping errant blades of grass.
In less than a minute, her blouse was damp, her loose cotton trousers stuck to the back of her thighs. She followed the numbered arrows to a lime-green bungalow set on a postcard-sized lawn of prickly grass. It was a long way from the salt-pocked granite and pine forests of Belle River. Her sandals crunched along a path of crushed coral and broken shells that led to the front door. Before she could press the bell, a ma
n with a shock of white hair and a deeply lined face stepped onto the porch. His yellow polo shirt and khakis were rumpled, as if he’d just woken from a nap.
‘Come on in out of the sun. It’s a sizzler today, isn’t it?’ He ushered Erin through a tiled foyer and into the living room. White plantation shutters filtered the sun’s rays. ‘You must be about ready to melt. Not used to this kind of heat, are you? I can crank up the air con if you’d like.’
She shook her head. The room was as frigid as a meat locker. Erin slipped her arms into her linen jacket as Talbot crossed into the open-plan kitchen.
‘Would you like a glass of iced tea? Adele made a fresh pitcher this morning.’
‘Thank you, that would be lovely.’
She perched on the couch upholstered in pale peach fabric.
On the wall, a clock in the shape of a pelican ticked away the minutes. Talbot returned with a tray and handed Erin a glass before lowering himself into an easy chair. His right hip seemed to be bothering him, but his eyes were lively, with the keen glint of a cop back on the beat.
‘You’ve come a long way to pick the brain of an old man.’ He rattled the ice cubes in his glass before taking a sip of his drink.
Outside, a lawnmower started up, slicing through the stillness. ‘I’ve read the police report,’ Erin said, setting her glass on the table. ‘It was very thorough, but what I’m really interested in is your impression of the case.’ She struggled to sit up straight on the slippery fabric. ‘Whatever you can remember.’
‘Well, when it comes to the Stern case, my memory’s as sharp as a tack. Though sometimes I wish it weren’t so good,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘The scenes in that house will stay with me to the grave.’ He plucked his glasses from a shirt pocket and settled them on his face. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘From the beginning, if you don’t mind.’
‘That would be when the call came in,’ he said, scratching his jaw. ‘I was on desk duty. Just after ten it was, when the neighbour called, a widow living on her own. The Stern’s dog had been barking all morning, so she walked to the mailbox at the end of her driveway, where she had a partial view of the Stern home. The front door was ajar, that’s what she noticed first, and Mrs Stern’s car, a blue Pontiac sedan, was parked in the driveway. But there was no one out front, so she waited for a minute or two, assuming that Mrs Stern or one of the children had gone inside to fetch something and would come right out. But no one did, and the dog was still barking like crazy.’
Talbot hauled himself from the chair to close the slats on the shutters. ‘When nobody appeared,’ he said, running his finger along the sill as if checking for dust, ‘she went over there and called out from the front yard. But no one answered, so she looked through the window. That’s when she saw the blood splashed all over the walls and fled back to her house. The poor woman was hysterical. I jumped into an unmarked car with a uniformed cop named Danny Calhoun and hightailed it out there. No lights, no siren. We didn’t want to alert the perpetrator, in case he was still inside. Hot as Hades that day. I can still remember how the steam was rising off the roads in the sun.
‘I was a beat cop in Brooklyn for ten years, and saw plenty of things to keep a man awake at night, but I’ve never seen so much blood as I saw in that house. Mrs Stern was lying face down in the doorway to the kitchen. I didn’t bother to check if she was alive.’ He stared into his glass of iced tea, before meeting Erin’s eyes. ‘I didn’t need to.
‘After calling for backup, we searched the rest of the house, but there wasn’t anybody alive in there. I found the two girls in their beds, the sheets covered in blood. I assume you know the details of how each of them died?’
She nodded. The crime scene would forever be imprinted in her mind.
‘Okay, so after seeing the bodies, Danny and I stared at each other, both thinking the same thing, that some maniac was on the loose, and we needed to move fast before he struck again. From the squad car, I called in the forensic unit. At the time, I had no idea how many people were living in the household, so we couldn’t be sure who, if anyone, had escaped the carnage.’
He smoothed the creases on his trousers. ‘Mr Stern pulled into the driveway just after eleven,’ Talbot said. ‘By that time, forensics had arrived and the whole place was taped off. We took him down to the station to break the news and to ask him some questions.’ Talbot drained his glass. ‘He kept asking about his son Tim, if we’d found him.’
Erin paused in her note-taking and studied his face. ‘Tim wasn’t a suspect at that point?’
He shook his head. ‘It crossed my mind that the kid might’ve done it, but it was too early to say. Being a small town, I knew who he was, of course. Used to work at the movie theatre on the weekend. Adele and I would take the kids on Saturday afternoons. He seemed polite enough, if a bit shy and awkward. Never would have pegged him as a killer. But then again, it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?’
‘How did Mr Stern react when he heard the news?’
‘He was pretty calm, considering. He’d only just driven up from Portland after meeting with a client. I didn’t think lawyers kept office hours on a Saturday, but what do I know.’ He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘When we questioned him about his whereabouts the night before, Stern said he’d driven down to Portland on Friday afternoon and checked into a hotel. When he called his wife at six, the two girls were at home, and the boy was working his shift at the movie theatre in town. Mrs Stern called him back a couple of hours later. Something about a dress pattern at a local shop. According to Stern, she sounded fine.
We have the records from the phone company, and it all checked out. Stern said he called the next day around ten to remind his wife to pick up his suits from the dry-cleaner’s, but there was no answer. When we asked if that was particularly worrying, he said no. She was often out in the mornings doing errands, and the girls would be at their various activities. Tim usually slept in late.’ He stood and massaged his hip. ‘Are you a golfer, Dr Cartwright?’
She shook her head.
‘We’ve got this nifty little putting green right here in the complex. Would you mind if we went over there so I can putt a few holes?’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Helps me think.’
*
With a straw sun hat belonging to Talbot’s wife perched on her head, Erin hovered at the edge of the putting green. The heat was ferocious, and she wondered how long she’d last before collapsing to the ground. Talbot bent at the knee and swung the putter, missing the little hole by a whisker.
Beads of sweat formed on her upper lip. ‘What about Stern’s alibi?’
He set up the shot again and got ready to putt. ‘Well, like I said, he checked into a hotel in Portland just before six on the Friday, and two of the staff confirmed they saw him at breakfast on Saturday morning. The client meeting checked out too. An older gentleman confirmed that he met with Stern at the firm’s office on Saturday morning at nine-thirty.’
In the distance, the pastel bungalows shimmered in the heat. ‘What about the woman whose name was removed from the police report?’
Talbot set up another shot and moved his hips into position. ‘Her story checked out too,’ he said, driving the little white ball cleanly into the hole. ‘She confirmed she was with Stern the whole night. After Tim was found and arrested, her name was removed from the report at her request. She was worried the media would get wind of it, and she’d have reporters camped out on her front lawn. Didn’t want her children finding out she had shacked up with a married man.’
‘Seems unorthodox to me,’ Erin said, fanning her face. ‘Altering a police report on a murder case.’
Talbot shouldered his clubs and heaved himself into the driver’s seat of the little golf cart. ‘Times have changed, Dr Cartwright. But back then, in a place like Belle River, with its small-town morals, a woman admitting she’d spent the night in a hotel room with someone else’s husband would have destroyed her reputat
ion. She was only a summer resident but still quite worked up about anyone finding out. She had family living in town, over on Gardiner Road. I could see how it could make things difficult for her, if it got out.’
Gardiner Road? She shivered. It could be any of a dozen houses on that road, but Erin somehow knew which one it was.
‘Besides,’ he said, manoeuvring the golf cart along a gravel path, ‘when the boy was picked up by state troopers, covered in his mother’s blood, the issue of Stern’s alibi became rather moot, don’t you think?’
No, she didn’t. When was an alibi ever moot? ‘Who questioned Tim when he was first picked up?’
‘The troopers who found him took him to the nearest hospital. When the docs there checked him out and pronounced him okay, he was taken into custody at the local sheriff’s office. Questioned there too, but he didn’t say much. Didn’t know how he got over the state line into New York, or whose blood was on his clothes. Disoriented and a bit panicky, he barely knew his own name. Kept saying something about a shadow, or some kind of bird with large wings. Drugs was my first thought, but he was clean when they ran the tests. At the time, he was being treated as a victim, not a suspect. Only after he was brought back to Belle River did we tell him about his mother and sisters. That boy was like a stone when he heard the news. Didn’t flinch or show any signs of distress.’