by Ann Gosslin
On the drive up, she had told Lydia about her little excursion to Matlock in June. How Stern wasn’t fooled for a minute that she happened to be spending a holiday weekend in the area. ‘What did you expect? You were spying on him,’ Lydia had said. ‘An inexcusable breach of the man’s privacy. Shame on you.’
But Erin didn’t feel ashamed, she felt vindicated, especially in light of recent events.
‘Well, you can’t sit out here,’ Lydia said, as she stepped into the sultry air and dabbed her face with a handkerchief.
As they walked up the drive, Lulu bounded over to greet them.
‘At least it’s not a pit bull,’ Lydia said, holding her skirt away. ‘Plenty of those in my neighbourhood.’
She sidestepped Lulu and pressed the doorbell. But the house looked shut up tight. Lydia pressed the bell again.
When the door swung open in a whoosh of air, Stern stood aside to let them in. He seemed to have aged ten years since the last time they met. Bags hung under his eyes, and the skin on his face was heavily creased, as if he’d just woken up.
‘Are we early? I hope we aren’t disturbing you.’ Lydia smiled kindly.
‘I was going over some papers and forgot the time.’ His voice was hoarse, his expression flat. He pointedly avoided Erin’s questioning look. The ebullient small talk of their first visit was nowhere to be found.
Seated at the table on the back patio, Stern poured iced tea into tall glasses. In the few minutes it took him to fetch the pitcher from the kitchen, his face had cleared. But something had happened in this house. An echo, however faint, of the violence and bloodshed of the murders all those years ago, and Erin was determined to find out what it was.
‘How’s Tim doing?’ Stern stirred a spoonful of sugar in his tea. ‘They won’t tell me anything when I call.’
‘He’s being well cared for,’ Erin said, after a pause. She had no intention of confiding any details.
He waited for her to continue, but Lydia broke in smoothly, her voice modulated, as if speaking to a child. ‘Perhaps you could tell us what happened the other night.’
A yellowjacket hovered near the sugar bowl, and Stern shooed it away. ‘I don’t know where to start.’ He lifted his glass and set it down again without taking a sip. ‘To be honest, I’m completely mystified.’ He stood and walked to the edge of the patio, turning his face towards the barn. ‘Things were going great. Tim seemed happy with the house and his room, and he loved hanging out with Lulu.’
Erin and Lydia exchanged a look.
‘What was your evening routine like?’ Lydia asked.
Stern returned to the table and topped up their glasses from the pitcher. ‘We ate dinner at six. Usually in the kitchen. Sometimes out here if it wasn’t too buggy. After we cleaned up and washed the dishes, Tim would go up to his room with his Sudoku. Mostly, he would turn the light out by nine or ten. I’ve always been a night owl, so usually I—’
‘Did you lock him in his room at night?’ Erin hadn’t meant to cut him off, but she was losing patience.
Lydia gave her a warning look.
‘Lock him in?’ His voice was strained. ‘Absolutely not.’
When he lifted his glass, his hand shook. ‘I did lock my own door, though.’ He addressed Lydia as if seeking absolution. ‘I truly believe Tim’s okay now, but I slept better knowing my door was locked.’
Lydia nodded. ‘That’s understandable.’
‘When I spoke with Tim,’ Erin said, ‘he told me his door was locked, and the window nailed shut.’
The yellowjacket returned, and Stern swatted it away. ‘Aren’t delusions a symptom of his illness?’
‘They can be. But that doesn’t mean everything he says or remembers is false, or never happened.’ She let this sink in.
Another yellowjacket arrived to join the first, and settled on a drop of spilled tea. Stern squashed it with a napkin and flicked it to the ground.
The photos from the crime scene scrolled through Erin’s head. The splattered walls. Stern’s wife lying in a pool of blood. Who wouldn’t lock their door at night with Tim in the house? Perhaps she was being too hard on him.
Lydia leaned forward and touched Stern lightly on the arm. ‘I can only imagine how upsetting this is for you, but it would be a great help if you could tell us exactly what happened on Saturday last week.’
Sweating profusely in the muggy air, Stern wiped his brow with a napkin. Even on the patio, in the shade of the sycamores, the heat was suffocating. The metallic buzz of a cicada broke the stillness.
‘The day started out fine,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘I got up early to work in the garden. Tim was still asleep at nine when I went in to check on him. He likes to sleep late, but I try to get him up by ten. I don’t think letting him sleep all day is a good thing, and the social worker from Burlington said it was important to establish a daily routine.’
From her shady spot under a sprawling blue hydrangea, Lulu loped towards them and rested her head on Stern’s knee.
‘We had lunch here on the patio at twelve on the dot, the time Tim prefers. After lunch, he walked over to the pond with some stale bread and fed the ducks, then he took a nap in his room. Dinner at six.’ Stern stroked Lulu’s velvety ears.
‘In the middle of the night, I woke to hear Tim shouting. When I went into his room and switched on the lamp, he was sitting bolt upright in bed, a look of terror on his face. When he saw me, he started yelling, go away, go away. So, I closed his door and locked it from the outside, so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Then I called an ambulance. It took nearly an hour for them to get here. The whole time, Tim was shouting and pounding on the door. When the paramedics arrived, they held him down and gave him an injection.’ Stern’s face was pinched, his eyes bloodshot. ‘As soon as he settled down, they took him away.’
Erin studied the trail of sugar crystals on the table before looking Stern in the eye. ‘Tim said you came into his room holding a pillow. That you tried to smother him.’
Stern jerked back in the chair. ‘Why would he say such a thing?’ He covered his face with his hands and shook his head. ‘Poor Tim, he was doing so well. Kept his room clean, helped me with the chores, and he really bonded with Lulu.’ He patted the dog’s head on his knee. ‘He was in charge of filling her bowl with kibble and making sure she had plenty of water to drink.’ Lulu, upon hearing her name, looked at Stern with hopeful eyes. He rubbed his forehead as if something occurred to him. ‘I don’t understand why this happened. Do you think his medication stopped working?’
Medication only works when you take it, Erin thought. Surely, he knew that. She was having trouble breathing in the sweltering air. ‘Was he taking his meds?’
‘Every night, right after dinner. I watched him swallow the pills.’
Lydia wrote something in her notebook.
‘I’d like to have a look at Tim’s room.’ Erin stood up too fast and her head spun.
‘By all means.’ He led them through the kitchen and into the hallway. A quick glance confirmed that the door to Stern’s den was firmly closed. What she wouldn’t give to get another look at that photo. Or anything else that provided a clue to what this man might be hiding.
Upstairs, the door to Tim’s room was shut. Stern twisted the knob and pushed it open. See, not locked. ‘Feel free to look around.’
A single bed, covered with a white cotton blanket, a desk and chair, a chest of drawers. Two sturdy rugs, blue and green, on the oak floor. No busy patterns or pictures on the walls. No mirror. Surely the advice of the social worker.
Erin crossed the room to check the window. It opened with ease for a few inches and stopped. Two brass knobs were screwed into the sash, the kind of safety device someone might use in a child’s room. The six-inch gap, while allowing the free flow of air, was barely wide enough for a cat to slip through. Directly below, the slate tiles of the patio glinted in the sun.
‘The social worker suggested the security pegs on the window,’ Stern said,
moving next to her, so close she caught a whiff of his aftershave. ‘As you can see, it still opens to let air in.’
She turned and looked at the door. No key in the lock. But that didn’t mean anything. It could have been removed for their visit.
Stern invited them to look into his own bedroom on the other side of the hall, with an expression that declared he had nothing to hide. The room was as she remembered. Bland as a hotel suite, seemingly unchanged from their first visit. The only new addition was a solid brass bolt fastened to the inside of the door.
As Erin scanned the room, her attention was caught by a row of framed photos on the dresser. The one with three men in camouflage vests jumped out at her. One of the men – a boy, actually – with blond hair and a square jaw looked familiar. But before Erin could get a closer look, Stern ushered them out of the room.
Something about the photo, and the camouflage vests, triggered another thought. ‘Are there any weapons in the house?’
‘You mean a gun?’ Stern shook his head. ‘No, wait a minute. I’ve got an old shotgun in the barn. Used to do a bit of duck hunting in my younger days.’ Lydia started to speak, but he cut her off. ‘It’s in a locked gun safe and there’s no ammunition anywhere on the property. But I’ll get rid of it, if you think that’s best.’
Erin’s mind was on the photo. Could the blond guy be Graham? He’d liked to hunt and fish. Though how Stern would have known him was a mystery. Through Vivien, perhaps?
She had a dozen more questions, but he herded them downstairs and towards the front door, clearly wanting this intrusion to be over. Out on the front steps, they made an awkward threesome as Lydia thanked Stern again and they said their goodbyes. The cicada buzzed as thunderclouds gathered above the mountains to the west. Erin hoped the storm would hold off until they were on the motorway.
‘If there’s anything I can do to help Tim get back home, you’ll be sure to let me know, won’t you?’ Stern said. He kept his back turned to Erin, freezing her out, as he spoke to Lydia. Apparently, he’d told them all he was willing to say. Not just about the recent events that put Tim back in the psych ward, but anything to do with the original crime. Her conviction they were connected had only increased. She would have to get her answers from someone else.
Though the thought filled her with dread, it was time to pay a visit to the Viking.
40
Concord, New Hampshire
August, Present Day
The row of red-brick apartment buildings, darkened with age, squatted under a turbulent sky. Rain lashed the trees and pummelled the streets. Hugging the kerb, Erin inched her car forward, keeping a look out for 98 Morrison Avenue. If she’d ever wondered where former budding psychopaths ended up, drug kingpins or indicted hedge fund managers, it might have been a place like this.
She parked opposite the two-storey building, half-hidden by a row of sycamores, and contemplated her next move.
Her fingers sought the amulet, warm against her skin, though it was ridiculous to be afraid. He couldn’t hurt her now.
She waited another few minutes, but the rain showed no sign of letting up. Erin opened the door and ran across the street, soaked by the time she reached the covered area by the entrance. The dingy white paint on the door was cracked and peeling, and the brass nameplates, green and pitted with age, were smeared with fingerprints. Why would Graham live in a place like this? Mr Golden Hair. The bloody Viking, with the world at his feet.
Perhaps her online sleuthing had led her astray. But there was his name, G. Marston, taped on the letter box to apartment 2A. It could be another Graham Marston, but to find out, she’d have to go inside.
Her hand shook as she pressed the bell, but the solid weight of the quetzal against her skin give her courage. I can do this.
A moment later, she was buzzed into a gloomy foyer, ripe with the smell of kitchen grease and mildewed carpets.
As she climbed the stairs, dread pooled in her stomach. But before she could even knock on the door to 2A, it swung open to reveal a balding man in stained tracksuit bottoms and a grubby T-shirt, stretched tight across a roll of flab. Sausage fingers ferreted a couple of bills from a battered wallet. He pulled out two tens and raised his head.
‘Who the hell are you?’
For a moment, Erin was struck dumb. This man, with his thinning hair and dirty fingernails, could not possibly be her brother. Whatever she imagined he’d become in the intervening years, it wasn’t this.
She looked past him to the living room, with its porridge-coloured carpet and saggy sofa. Ratty venetian blinds were drawn against the outside world. The rancid smell of a rubbish bin filled the air.
‘Wrong apartment.’ He started to close the door, when the street-door buzzer rang again. ‘What the hell?’
A skinny kid bounded up the stairs, balancing a box of pizza and a paper bag on his arm. ‘Here you go. Still under thirty minutes, even with the rain pissing down.’ The boy smiled.
As soon as he’d handed over the money, he started to close the door in her face.
‘Graham.’
He squinted at her in the dim light.
‘It’s Mimi.’ She cringed at the sound.
‘Mimi?’ His eyes roamed her face. A nest of broken capillaries were spread across his nose and cheeks.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’
He snorted. ‘Well sure, why the hell not. What kind of person would I be if I shut the door in my own sister’s face?’
He stood aside to let her pass, hugging the pizza box and six-pack of beer in the crook of his arm. It was a tight squeeze, and she panicked at the thought of him reaching out to grab her. Unnerved at the prospect of being in the same room with him after all these years, she’d tossed a steak knife into her handbag before leaving Lansford. No protection at all against this hippo of a man, but it gave her a sense of security. This time she was armed.
He dumped his food on the table. ‘Don’t mind the mess. It’s the maid’s day off. Hardy-har, just joshing.’ He wiped his hand on his shirt. ‘Doesn’t hurt to pretend though, right? The lord in his castle, and all that.’ He swept a pile of newspapers off the couch. ‘Have a seat.’
With her eye on the door, Erin lowered herself onto the edge of the sofa, jumpy as a fox.
A decaying stack of newspapers teetered on the floor by the couch. The air smelled of dirty bed linens.
Not missing a beat, he pried open the lid of the cardboard box and grabbed a slice of pizza, paved with salami and glistening with oil. ‘I gotta tell ya,’ he said, taking a bite, ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you in a million years. What’s with the hair? Some kind of goth thing?’
Goth? It was true she used to have pale hair. Dishwater blonde is what Vivien called it. But she’d dyed it dark brown after running away, not black. In her blue cotton jumper and linen trousers, she couldn’t look any less goth than she did.
As he chomped through the pizza, and glugged a beer, she imagined this might be how an entomologist felt, while observing a particularly gruesome species of arthropod.
Before she could jump away, he reached out and flicked a lock of her hair. ‘Remember that time you chopped your hair off as a kid? That was weird. But you were a weird kid, weren’t ya?’ With his finger, he made a circle near his ear. ‘So it kind of went with the territory.’
The cropped hair, how could she forget? Though it wasn’t crazy at all, but a perfectly rational, if desperate, act of self-preservation. What else could she have done in the face of Vivien’s threats to hack off Erin’s long hair while she slept? Snip, snip. Vivien liked to terrorise Erin by snapping the sewing shears in front of her face as she got ready for bed. Cutting off her own hair was the only way Erin could think of to put a stop to Vivien’s nocturnal reign of terror. That was the idea anyway. Though a fat lot of good it did her in the end.
‘Cat got yer tongue?’ He took a swig of his beer and smirked as he tore into another slice of pizza. A glob of tomato sauce fell to the carpet
. ‘Wanna slice?’
She shook her head, hypnotised by the grease on his chin and the piggy eyes. Her mind spun back to an image of herself as a child. Pudgy, awkward, terrified. How Graham used to stalk her through the house, jumping out from behind doors to grab her by the neck, trap her under the stairs, or lock her in the cellar at night. The friction burns, and the bruises from his vicious pinching. Baiting, jeering. She was a fat pig, a retard.
He popped open another beer and tilted his head, slugging down half the can in a single gulp. Munching and slurping his way to some pre-appointed doom. Even if he tried, he couldn’t be more a caricature of the boorish sad-sack than he already was. When had it happened, this transformation? Was it slow and steady, or all at once? Golden Boy gone to seed.
He waved a hand round the room. ‘In case you’re wondering, these aren’t my usual digs. I got me a nice house over in Nashua. Or did. But my ex got it in the divorce. Crap lawyer or it would have gone to me. I paid for the damn thing, didn’t I? And the last kid’s almost out of the house, so it’s not as if she needs all that space. It won’t be long before she’s sitting over there all by her lonesome, wishing old Graham was there to cosy up with on the sofa.’
Erin bit her lip to keep from laughing. Whoever the former Mrs Marston might be, she couldn’t imagine her, or anyone, wanting to snuggle up to this disgusting swine of a man. She’d seen enough, it was time to get the answers she came for and get out.
‘Do you remember a guy named Tim Stern?’
‘Timmy Stern?’ He grabbed a handful of crisps from the bag on the floor and tossed them in his mouth. ‘The whack job who axed his family?’
There was no axe involved, but that was beside the point.
‘What brought him up?’ Graham dropped the empty pizza box on the floor. ‘Wait, don’t tell me. You’re dating him, right?’ He glanced at her hand. ‘No ring, so at least you’re not engaged yet. But in case you’re about to tie the knot, you should know that, in addition to him being a murderous psycho, he’s a total wanker. But, hey, whatever floats your boat.’