The Shadow Bird

by Ann Gosslin

  As Erin drove away, the weight pressing on her chest faded to nothing. Not only had she faced Vivien and survived, she’d got the information she came for. One more piece of the puzzle slotted into place. With Vivien’s confession about lying to the police, another detail had come into focus. Stern not only lied about his alibi, but there were eight hours he couldn’t account for. And if he wasn’t with Vivien in Portland, he could have been anywhere. Even Belle River.

  43

  New York–Vermont Border

  August 1977

  He opens his eyes to a shaft of sunlight, stabbing through the canopy of trees. The ground under his cheek smells of leaf litter, mouldy and damp. Pine needles rustle overhead. When he tries to sit up, the world spins and he falls back. His eyes are gritty. His mouth tastes like the inside of an old shoe. A chorus of birds, flitting through the boughs, shriek and twitter, clamorous as church bells. His head throbs with pain, and he covers his ears to block out the noise. As he closes his eyes, his only wish is to re-enter the void.

  He sleeps for what feels like years, gliding above the surface of a dreamscape, searching in vain for a place to rest. But when he jerks awake, the sun is not much higher in the sky and the birds are as loud as ever. He rolls over and pushes himself up on his hands and knees. Wobbling as he stands, his feet are clumsy and heavy as lumps of clay. His canvas jacket, too warm in the heat, is damp with sweat, and he pulls it off. His T-shirt is covered with some kind of dried paint, rusty brown. He runs his hands over his chest and wonders where it came from or how he got here.

  Was he in a car accident, or a plane crash? Abducted by aliens?

  The songbirds chirrup, oblivious to his presence. Perhaps he has died, and they can’t see him.

  For a moment, the birds cease their chatter. All is silent, and then he hears it, the sound of a passing car. So, he hasn’t travelled to Middle Earth, after all. Nor was his body flung across space and time. There must be a road nearby, and he shuffles off to find it.

  A quarrel of sparrows and a murder of crows mock his progress as he tramps through the undergrowth. Twigs snap underfoot, branches lash his face. But before long, he crashes through a tangle of thorny shrubs and onto the weed-choked verge of a two-lane road winding through the forest.

  As far as he can see, there is nothing but trees. Green and more green. The only way out is to follow the road, but his knees wobble, and his mouth is dry as dust. As he sinks into a heap on the roadside to wait for a passing car, he sets off an explosion of grasshoppers that spring like popcorn through the tall grass. Through the fog in his head, he hears the distant hum of tyres on the road and tries to stand. But a darkness passes over him, and he slips away.

  When he comes to, a red light flashes in his eyes like a beating heart. The crackle of a radio splits the air. A human shape looms over him, blocking out the sun.

  ‘What’s your name, son? Do you know where you are?’ The man crouches down, his face shaded by a wide-brimmed hat. ‘Are you in pain? It looks like you’ve been in some kind of accident.’ He stands and scans the area. ‘Got a car around here?’ On the man’s chest, a silver badge flashes in the light.

  ‘Where are we?’ His throat hurts.

  ‘You don’t know? Have you been drinking or taking any drugs?’ He helps Tim to his feet and walks him to the squad car. ‘You sit in the back, and I’ll call it in. If you’re lucky, someone’s reported you missing.’

  The man guides him into the back seat, where he lies down and closes his eyes, listening to the crackle of the radio, and a string of numbers he can’t decipher.

  ‘I’ve got a 10-81 here, and a possible 10-58. See if anyone’s put out an APB that matches the description. Male, late teens. Five-ten, brown hair, medium build. Over.’

  The cop bends and squints through the window.

  ‘Copy that. Over.’

  The radio squawks like a demented crow.

  ‘Say again?’ He steps away. ‘Holy shit. No kidding. Okay, I’m bringing him in now.’

  44

  Manhattan, New York

  August, Present Day

  ‘This is all very cloak and dagger.’ Ray smiled at Erin as she emerged from the Dyckman Street subway and into the sweltering air. ‘Not that I’m complaining.’ He leaned in and kissed her on the lips. ‘I was wondering when I’d see you again.’

  The week before, she’d had to cancel their date in the city. With the unfinished family business still ahead of her, she hadn’t wanted her anxiety to spoil their day. Last night, on impulse, she’d texted him to meet her in upper Manhattan. Perhaps now, with everything behind her, they could start again.

  He pulled away and studied her face. ‘Nothing’s wrong,

  I hope?’

  ‘No, but I didn’t want to explain over the phone.’

  While it was true she had come through her encounters with Graham and Vivien unscathed, seeing them again had disturbed her in ways she had yet to sort out. Time would help, but in the meantime, what she needed was a diversion. Something unusual and festive, where she and Ray could relax and enjoy each other’s company.

  With the help of a city guide, she’d chosen the Cloisters for their day out. Having first learned about the museum and vast stretch of woodland on the northern edge of Manhattan in a book she’d read as a child, she could only hope it was as magical as described. They slipped through the gates of the park, leaving behind the heated concrete and sticky asphalt of the city streets. Before them stood the ancient cloisters, much of it constructed from carved blocks of stone salvaged from a medieval monastery in the Pyrenees. In the dappled sunlight, the air was remarkably sweet, as if they’d passed through a portal into rural France.

  Erin gazed in wonder at the soaring branches of the trees, spackled with sunlight and alive with birdsong.

  Ray smiled. ‘I haven’t been here since I first moved to the city.’

  As they strolled through the courtyard gardens, she breathed in the scent of a dozen herbs, laid out in a pleasing pattern of knots and squares. All her favourites were here – bee balm and lemon hyssop, myrtle and sage. The drone of bees filled the air as she ran her fingers over the rough stone walls.

  ‘It reminds me of Granada.’

  ‘You’ve been to Andalusia?’ Ray’s eyes lit up as he looped his arm through hers.

  ‘A long time ago.’

  The sun’s heat drove them into the cooler air under the stone colonnades that led to the gallery where the unicorn tapestries hung. Under a row of dim lights, the famed panels of painstaking needlework depicted an age-old story. The hunt and capture of the mythical beast. The violent death and rebirth.

  Erin paused in front of the tapestry of the unicorn in captivity, restored to life after death, yet still enclosed, its spirit subdued, as it lay under the branches of a pomegranate tree.

  ‘I lived in southern Spain for a year,’ she said, leaning in to examine the millions of tiny stitches that had gone into its making. ‘That’s where I ended up after leaving home at seventeen.’ She retraced her steps to begin the tapestry sequence again. ‘I found a job as a cleaner, and lived in a tiny shared flat near the Alhambra. The texture of the old stone walls and the scent of orange blossoms are what I remember most.’ She turned away from the dying unicorn, bleeding from its breast, and looked up at Ray. ‘I miss it, sometimes.’

  A barrel-chested man in shorts and leather sandals entered the gallery and looked at them with barely concealed annoyance, as if expecting to be alone.

  Ray held her arm and led her into the sunlight. ‘Shall we get something to drink?’

  They passed under the colonnades through stripes of light and shadow, their feet tapping on the stones, before emerging into the museum’s courtyard café.

  At a table next to the herb gardens, Ray pulled out a chair. ‘Is coffee okay, or would you rather something cold?’

  Sapped by the heat, Erin struggled for a moment to remember where they were. She blinked twice, and the scene wavered before her eyes
. A shifting crowd of visitors in shorts and T-shirts, chattering in English.

  Her heart thumped and she was back in her body. You’re in New York. This is Ray.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, dropping into a chair. ‘I’m feeling a bit dizzy.’ Her hands were clammy with sweat.

  ‘I’ll be right back.’ Ray made a beeline for the counter to get their drinks.

  Erin looked round in vain for the toilets, until she spotted a discreet arrow pointing down a passage. In the loo, she locked the door and leaned against the sink, scanning her face in the mirror. Am I going mad? It was too much, seeing Graham and her mother on the same day. An avalanche of memories, transporting her back in time. The dark years when she’d been wrestled to the floor and shot full of drugs. Carted off to a locked ward. Abby, the wild-eyed girl with the scarred wrists, who’d attacked her with a piece of jagged metal, barely missing her jugular as she sliced it down Erin’s chest. And Nicky, so full of life. Finally free from Danfield after nearly a year, only to hack open the veins in her arm and bleed to death in the bath at home. No matter where she went or how far she ran, those memories were lodged like a parasite in Erin’s brain.

  She splashed her face with cold water and returned to the table.

  Ray stood and helped her into the chair. ‘Everything okay?’

  At her place was a glass of iced tea and a chicken salad sandwich.

  ‘It must be the heat.’ She fanned her face.

  ‘Drink something. That should help.’ He sipped his cappuccino.

  She held the cold glass against her cheek before taking a sip. ‘Thank you. I feel better already.’

  They sat for a moment in silence. Around them, the chatter of tourists and the warble of birds rose and fell as shadows moved across the stone floor. By the time she finished her sandwich, the other patrons had drifted away, leaving the two of them alone.

  When Ray returned to the table with more drinks, she decided to tell him everything. At this point, she had nothing to lose.

  He handed her a glass of iced tea, and she fidgeted in the chair.

  ‘I haven’t been completely honest with you,’ she said, unable to meet his eyes. ‘I meant to tell you earlier, but the timing was never right.’ She lifted her glass and set it back on the table without taking a sip. ‘There was another reason for my unusual interest in the Stern case, besides the assessment I was asked to do. A personal one.’ She searched his face. ‘Cartwright isn’t the name I was born with. I changed it when I moved to London. My real name is… Marston.’ She studied Ray’s face. ‘Graham Marston, the guy who bullied Tim at school, was my brother.’

  Ray’s shock seemed genuine. Either that, or he was an excellent actor.

  ‘Your brother?’ He was staring at her now, his upper lip pricked with sweat. ‘I don’t understand, I thought you’d grown up in England.’

  She shut her eyes and breathed in the scent of lemon thyme and bee balm. Light and shadow flickered across her lids. ‘When I was thirteen, my mother began telling people I was mentally disturbed. My guess is, she was putting something in my food that made me act strange. Your average garden is full of plant alkaloids that can mimic symptoms of psychosis.’ Erin waved her hand at the herb garden. ‘Anyway, with my brother’s help, she convinced a psychiatrist I was deranged, telling him she was afraid of me, and about how she’d woken to find me standing over her with a knife in my hand. I was taken away in the middle of the night and spent two years in a psychiatric hospital on a locked ward.’

  Ray reached for her hand, but she pulled away.

  ‘You’ve been so sweet to me… and I’ve done nothing but lie to you.’

  His face was creased with concern.

  She pressed the cold glass to her throat. ‘My aunt saved me. My mother’s sister, but the two women are as different as day is to night. When she discovered where I was, she got me out. I went to live with her in Belle River, on Gardiner Road. It’s where we used to stay in the summer, except Aunt Olivia would move in with a friend while we were there. They inherited the house when their mother died, but Olivia couldn’t bear to be under the same roof with her sister. After she found out what happened to me, Olivia not only barred my mother from the house, she threatened to go to the police if Vivien ever came near me again.

  ‘Two years later, Vivien was still on the warpath, trying to stir up trouble, so I fled to Spain for a year to hide out. After that, I moved to London to start a new life.’ Her fingers grazed the back of Ray’s hand. ‘Erin is the name of my father’s mother, long dead now, and Cartwright… I got that off the back of a delivery van.’ Her smile felt forced. ‘It seemed appropriate at the time.’

  The blood had drained from Ray’s face. She was sorry now to have dumped this on him, but he deserved to know the truth.

  ‘That’s the reason I’ve been so obsessed with Tim and his family,’ Erin said, raising her eyes to meet his. ‘At first, it was just the Belle River connection, but when I discovered my own family was involved, what with Graham possibly giving PCP-laced marijuana to Tim, and my mother providing a false alibi to Stern, so many things didn’t mesh with my own memories of that time.’

  She scooped an ice cube from her glass and touched it to her wrists. ‘I heard her come home that night, though I didn’t remember it until recently, when she was supposed to have been with Stern. For nearly two years, she lived in fear I would rat her out to the police. That’s why she had me sent to Danfield.’ The story, locked away for so many years, came out in a rush. Had anything she said made sense?

  As the memories surfaced and whirled like a Catherine wheel, Ray swam in and out of focus.

  What if Stern did it?

  There it was again. That voice, teasing and taunting. But she wouldn’t say it out loud.

  The nausea returned, and with it an overwhelming desire to lie down. She felt someone pulling her up by the arms and tried to speak, but darkness descended, and she slipped away.

  *

  When she opened her eyes, it felt like hours had passed, but it was still daytime and bars of sunlight slanted through the blinds. The pillow under her head was deliciously cool. A ceramic urn, glazed in a pleasing mosaic of yellow and green, stood in a corner by the bed. On the far wall, a motley collage of photos provided a bright spot of colour.

  As she pushed away the damp bed sheet, fragments of the day shimmied to the surface. The confession to Ray, her panic and confusion, the ride through the heat-buckled streets in a taxi, all the way to the Upper West Side.

  A knock, and Ray stuck his head around the door. ‘Look who’s up.’ He slipped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘How are you feeling?’ He felt her forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Much better. You were burning up before.’ He handed her a glass of water.

  Erin struggled to sit up, embarrassed at feeling so helpless. ‘I should get home.’

  ‘Why not stay over? We can order in food or watch a film. Whatever you like.’

  Nausea cramped her stomach. She rushed to the bathroom, where she threw up in the toilet. Heatstroke. She’d had it once before, in the cauldron of southern Spain. The mirror gave her the bad news. Sweat-damp hair stuck to her cheek, and her skin was milky pale. She splashed water on her face and yanked a comb through her hair before returning to the bedroom.

  It was empty. She could hear Ray in the kitchen, opening cupboards and running water in the sink. The parquet was deliciously cool on her feet, and she paused to look at the photo collage, a pastiche apparently, of Ray’s travels. Spain, Greece, Italy. A country in South America that might be Ecuador or Peru. Were there pictures of his ex-wife? She saw no photos of women, but her eyes were drawn to a familiar snapshot, similar to the one she’d seen in the Belle River Gazette from the 1976 bicentennial. Further down was a picture of Ray and an older man, both in baseball caps and sunglasses. A beach at sunset, with the surf at their backs and rocky bluffs damp with salt spray.

  Ray stood in the doorway, holding a plate of food. ‘I made sa
ndwiches. And, if you’re up for it later, I can open a bottle of Rioja.’

  ‘Is that Spain?’ She pointed to the photo.

  He set the plate on the bedside table. ‘Nope. Santa Barbara. Me and my dad from a few years back.’

  He came up behind her and lifted the hair from her shoulders. His breath tickled the back of her neck, as his lips sought the skin behind her ear. She shivered as he slid the cotton blouse from her shoulders and when she turned to face him, he kissed her neck and grazed his lips along the length of her collarbone. With a pang, she remembered the scar. But this time, it didn’t matter. She no longer had anything to hide.

  45

  Matlock, Vermont

  August, Present Day

  On Friday afternoon, Erin locked the door to her office and slipped away from the Meadows. While her judicious side urged her to inform the authorities of her suspicions and let them handle it, this trip to Vermont to confront Stern was a piece of unfinished business she needed to deal with on her own. Even if she convinced the police to follow up on the false alibi, Vivien would flat out lie. And if that didn’t work, she would wave Erin’s records from Danfield in their faces. Who’re you going to believe, me or some crazy girl?

  Not long after she crossed the border and entered the Green Mountains, heavy clouds rolled in from the west. Fat drops of rain slapped onto the windscreen, transforming the landscape into a watercolour painting. By the time Erin turned onto the road to Stern’s farm, the rain had slowed, and the sky began to clear.

  Stern’s SUV was the only car in the driveway. He must be alone in the house with Tim. Or was his woman friend inside as well, the one he’d passed off as his housekeeper? Not that it mattered. She would tell Stern what she had come to say, with or without an audience.

  By the time she reached the front door, her clothes were damp from the spitting rain. Heart thumping, she pushed the bell and waited. She must look a mess, but it didn’t matter. All she wanted was to see the look on Stern’s face when she told him what she knew.