Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  It was eleven o’clock before they got a visual on the inside of Kat’s car. I heard the crackle of a walkie talkie, and one of the cops on the ledge responded. The words were hard to make out. Diggs tried to take my hand, but I walked away. The divers had climbed back in the boat, and I could hear the motor starting up again as they returned to dry land. I thought I might be sick before someone finally spoke to me.

  Sheriff Finnegan took my arm and pulled me aside.

  “The car’s empty,” he said. I thought of all the ways other people would handle the news—drop to their knees and thank God; burst into tears; embrace strangers.

  I just nodded. My throat felt dry, my eyes drier. “Thank you,” I said. Finnegan started to walk away, but I ran after him.

  “This means he still has her,” I said. “You said you sent someone out—you haven’t heard back from them yet? They should have been able to get to the island and back by this time, I don’t care what the weather is. You’re sure they went there?”

  “They did—I heard back about half an hour ago. They didn’t find anyone.”

  “How hard did they look?” My voice rose until it was loud enough to hear over wind and rain, sirens and strangers. The sheriff moved closer, with that look cops get when they’re trying to placate crazy people.

  “They couldn’t do a thorough search at night in this weather—we’ll go out and look closer tomorrow, just like I promised.”

  “She’ll be dead tomorrow,” I shouted.

  Diggs came over and pulled me aside, a hand on my arm. “They’re doing what they can. You need to stop.” He said it as kindly as anything he’d ever said to me. “We’re gonna go home and have some food, and then you’re going to bed. Just a nap.”

  I hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours, but the thought of stopping the search now was unthinkable. I shook my head.

  “I need to talk to the Marine Patrol guys,” I said. “Find out where they looked, see if they saw any sign of Ashmont’s boat. If they aren’t back yet, maybe I can get them to check out some of the other islands nearby.” I felt better with some semblance of a plan—like I might actually stand a chance of surviving this night. “Edie said Matt knew all the area islands—he might have taken her somewhere else.”

  I knew I didn’t have much time before Diggs just knocked me out and dragged me, bound and gagged, back to the house—judging by the look on his face, he was entertaining the thought at that very moment. I turned my back on him and chased after Finnegan again, who was getting ready to hightail it out of there along with the rest of his crew.

  Before I could reach him, a call came in on his radio.

  They’d found Kat.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Half an hour later, I stood at the town landing with Diggs. Marine Patrol was on their way in. I didn’t know any details about what had happened—not how they’d found my mother, or where, or in what condition. I just knew they had her.

  The boat came in at a little after midnight that night. The winds had died down but the rain hadn’t slowed, flooding the landing’s dirt parking lot. An ambulance was parked at the end of the wharf amid shouting and chaos and lights and an entire world that felt like it was underwater. I couldn’t remember ever being dry.

  There were too many people around her for me to see Kat when we first arrived—paramedics and cops and strangers in every direction. Diggs saw her first. I heard him whisper, “Jesus Christ” under his breath, and then when I tried to get to her he grabbed me from behind and wrapped his arms around me—one arm across my chest, one across my stomach—and held me back. He didn’t budge when I fought him.

  “Let them work, Sol,” he said, his mouth close to my ear. “They need space if they’re gonna help her.”

  When I finally got to her, Kat didn’t look anything like the woman I’d known. She was drenched and unconscious, strapped to a backboard with a head collar and an IV. Her face looked like she’d gone two rounds too many in the UFC. Her left eye was swollen shut, and an ugly purple welt on her forehead still leaked blood that had matted her dark hair.

  My stomach lurched and the world tilted. All at once, I remembered nights trailing Kat on cases when I was a kid.

  “Keep breathing. It’s just a body, the same as all the ones you’ve seen before. This one’s just a little banged up. Don’t look away. Don’t think about what it should look like. Just think about how we’ll fix what we’ve got.”

  “You okay?” Diggs asked me. He was still behind me, still holding on, though I’d stopped fighting him.

  I nodded. He let me go when I told him to, my voice calm and my eyes still dry.

  “I should go with her,” I said. “Einstein…”

  “I’ll take him back to the house and meet you at the hospital,” he said. His blue eyes had gone dark, his forehead creased in a way that was usually reserved for tight deadlines and difficult ex-wives. “She’ll be okay, Erin.”

  It was a silly, hollow lie that sounded worse once it was out in open air. I didn’t dignify it with a response, and Diggs looked embarrassed for having said it at all. I climbed into the ambulance once Kat was loaded inside. The doors closed.

  I’d been in ambulances before, but not for years; I used to do ride-alongs with Kat, back when it still mattered to me that I impress her somehow. I didn’t recognize much of the equipment anymore, but I still knew the protocol: stay out of the way.

  I sat awkwardly by my mother’s gurney. Sirens started as we pulled away. I took her hand. It was cold and pale. I couldn’t remember ever having held it before. I stared at her face, knowing that underneath the bruises and the blood and the swelling, was the woman I had both worshiped and despised for most of my life. It was the face of a victim, now—stark evidence of the fragility of the human body and, most terrifyingly, of the fury and violence I had brought to Payson Isle.

  If she died, it would be because I had come back to Maine—I couldn’t delude myself about that anymore. Noel Hammond might have died as a result of his own investigation into the fire, but I was the one who called Kat. I brought her back here. I was the one who insisted on digging up memories that almost certainly would have been better left buried.

  I didn’t say anything on the ride to the hospital. I didn’t cry. I sat with my mother’s hand in mine and listened to the rain and the sirens and the EMTs on the line with dispatch, shouting orders back and forth. I prayed to wake up from a nightmare that seemed to have no end.

  Kat was still unconscious when we got to the hospital. I stood in the ambulance bay while they wheeled her into the hospital. A doctor in blue scrubs approached as soon as I came through the door.

  “You’re next of kin?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I’m her daughter.”

  “We’re taking her straight to surgery—we’re concerned that she has swelling that’s putting pressure on her brain. We need to go in and relieve that pressure.”

  Brain surgery. He pushed a clipboard into my hands. Kat was gone now—already wheeled out of sight, doctors and nurses swarming in the sterile, too-white, too-quiet hallway of a hospital that wasn’t used to dealing with this degree of violence.

  “She’s—she has a partner,” I said. To the doctor’s credit, he didn’t look at me like I was two rungs below the village idiot on the ladder of life.

  “Dr. Pearce,” he said immediately. “She and your mother have done some lectures here. We’ve already contacted her—she’s on her way.”

  “You know…” I didn’t know how to finish that statement. The doctor glanced down at the clipboard in my hand.

  “You can call her if you like, but I need you to sign this so we can go ahead with the surgery. Time is of the essence.”

  I nodded. If I were Kat, I’d have a long list of questions to ask.

  “Did Dr. Pearce say this should happen?”

  “You should call her—this is her area. She’ll tell you everything we’re about to do is very standard. And your mother won’t survive without it.
”

  My hands were shaking when I signed the release; it didn’t even look like my signature. As he was hurrying away, I shouted one more question after him.

  “This Dr. Pearce—she’s a good doctor? She knows what she’s talking about?”

  He turned. Something—pity, I think—flashed across his face. “She’s one of the best neurosurgeons on the East Coast. You should call her—she can explain the procedure, let you know what to expect.”

  I nodded. This time when he walked away, I didn’t try to stop him.

  Except for Diggs, the waiting room was empty when I got there. There was a drab carpet and wooden chairs with plush floral seats, and three Ikea-style wooden tables with outdated magazines and children’s toys. An old episode of Three’s Company played on a wall-mounted TV in the corner. Jack Tripper fell over the sofa into Chrissy’s lap; the sound was too low to hear the canned laughter that followed.

  Diggs was still wet from the rain, two days’ beard growth on his chin and his face gaunt with fatigue. If something didn’t break soon—or I didn’t just give up and go home—I wasn’t sure any of us would live to see a resolution to this whole mess.

  I sat down beside him.

  “They took her into surgery,” I said.

  “Did they say anything about her condition?”

  “Her brain’s swelling, they think—they need to go in to relieve the pressure.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders. I didn’t pull away, but I couldn’t let myself lean on him, either.

  “Did you know Kat’s gay?”

  He didn’t look surprised. “She doesn’t keep it a secret.”

  “She kept it a secret from me.”

  “Not telling someone something and hiding it are two different animals,” he said. “You were busy. Maybe she just didn’t think you’d care—it’s not like she told you about every new boyfriend she had back in the day, did she?”

  It was a valid point. Of course, Kat had changed boyfriends almost as regularly as she’d changed socks.

  “Do you know if they’ve been together long?”

  “The first time I saw them together was at a fundraiser in Portland,” he said. “That was a little over a year ago. They’ve done some volunteer work here at the hospital, taught a couple of lectures since then, so I’ve seen them a few times.”

  Over a year with a woman I’d never heard of. I leaned my head back against the wall. On TV, Jack had done something to piss off Chrissy and Janet—they were yelling at him behind the same sofa he’d fallen over just moments before.

  Diggs leaned down and picked up a wet brown handbag I hadn’t noticed before. He set it in my lap.

  “One of the guys from Marine Patrol gave this to me—he said it was on the boat with Kat.”

  Even considering water weight, it was heavier than it should have been. I unzipped the top, remembering days of sneaking cigarettes and stealing spare change as a teenager. In one of half a dozen compartments, I found the source of the weight: gray steel nested among a dozen gold bangle bracelets, though hardly as innocuous. A gun.

  I closed the purse before Diggs saw what I’d found. I didn’t know what to tell him. Hell, I didn’t know what to tell myself.

  Eventually, Diggs got tired of trying to comfort a woman who refused to be comforted, and withdrew his arm.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “What about a change of clothes—I could go back to the house and get something for you. Do you want something to eat?”

  “I’m fine, Diggs.”

  I caught his annoyance at my pat response, but didn’t comment.

  “Have you been able to reach Juarez yet?” I asked. I knew the answer—I’d been trying to reach Juarez for hours now. Either he wasn’t getting the calls, or he wasn’t answering.

  “I tried a couple times. He’s not picking up for you, either?”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  I leaned my head back against the wall again and closed my eyes. Diggs got up to find a vending machine while I tried to work up the courage to call Maya Pearce. Diggs had returned and I had my cell phone in hand when Juarez himself walked through the waiting room doors.

  I put my cell phone back in my purse. Juarez stood in the entryway, holding to the doorsill like he might fall without it. He was drenched and clearly exhausted, but I wasn’t feeling especially empathetic at the moment. An unexpected calm fell over me. I stood.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I didn’t need to see Diggs to know the look he gave me—he’d been giving me the same look for the past week. He was worried. A little hurt, a little angry. I ignored him, tucked Kat’s purse under my arm, and grabbed Juarez before he could sit down.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  I walked out of the waiting room, down the corridor, and through the hospital’s automatic sliding doors without looking back. The rain had finally slowed to a manageable drizzle, the night black and starless. I walked across a nearly-deserted parking lot to a stretch of pine trees at the edge of the hospital property. When I turned, Juarez was a few steps back. He waited wordlessly while I lit a cigarette and led him to a patch of forest where the hospital’s incandescent streetlights barely reached us.

  “I lost my cell phone earlier—I just heard about your mother,” he said. “I got here as fast as I could. How is she?”

  “They don’t know—she’s in surgery right now.” I opened Kat’s purse and slid my hand inside. I never took my eyes from Juarez. “Matt did a number on her, though.”

  A flicker that looked a hell of a lot like guilt touched his face. “She said that?”

  “She didn’t have to.” My voice was steady—no tears, no emotion. Pure steel. I curled my fingers around the grip of the pistol my mother never got the chance to fire. “It was him, wasn’t it? That’s what he called to tell you—that he’d done something, hurt someone?”

  He shook his head. His face was drawn, his dark eyes haunted by ghosts I was only beginning to understand. “I didn’t know—he wasn’t making any sense when I talked to him. I didn’t know he’d go after your mother.”

  “But you knew he’d go after someone!” I shouted. “You knew he was dangerous—you knew something was wrong. You knew…” I pulled the gun from Kat’s purse.

  “Erin,” he said. His gaze locked on the gun for just a second before his eyes found mine again. He didn’t look worried, or even all that scared. Mostly, he just looked really fucking tired. I knew how he felt.

  “I found the angel in with your things,” I told him. “The one Isaac Payson gave you when you were out on the island. Who helped you escape—who set the fire?”

  The fatigue vanished from his face. He stood straighter, his jaw hardened, his dark eyes suddenly cold. I held the pistol more tightly and pointed it at the center of his body as I took a step back. I could hear an ambulance coming, the sirens getting louder the closer it got to the hospital. Jack didn’t say a word.

  “Who is Matt protecting?” I asked.

  Another few seconds, maybe a minute, passed before Jack spoke. “I don’t know,” he said.

  It wasn’t the answer I’d been hoping for.

  “I mean—I don’t know the answers to your questions,” he clarified. “I have just as many of my own.” Once the words were out, it seemed like he’d used the last of his energy for that single grain of truth.

  “I wasn’t lying that day in the car—I don’t remember my childhood. I don’t remember being on Payson Isle, if I ever was. I remember waking up in a Catholic hospital in Miami… I remember the women who cared for me there. When I came to Maine that first summer with Matt, none of it seemed familiar. It’s not like it all came rushing back and I suddenly remembered this life.”

  “And now?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know any of it—maybe I was Zion. Maybe Rebecca Ashmont was my mother; maybe I was there the day of the fire. Matt thinks I w
as. He used to slip and call me Zion sometimes—I just thought it was a quirk.”

  I still held the gun aloft, though it was heavy and my arms were shaking and it seemed almost silly, somehow, to continue with the delusion that I was in control. He took a step toward me.

  “I didn’t know he would hurt your mother. I didn’t know he’d hurt anyone, Erin—you have to believe me.”

  “What about the day I was attacked?” I asked. I tried to read him and kept my distance, the gun still raised. “How’d you get to the island so fast? How did you even know where the house was?”

  It took him a few seconds to follow my train of thought. When he realized what I was asking, he shook his head. “I’d been out there before—a few times since I’ve been back, trying to get to whatever memories might be locked inside my head. And I got out there so fast because I was worried about you—I was at the general store, so I hitched a ride with the closest fisherman I could find.”

  It made sense. It could just as easily have been lies, of course—there was no way to confirm any of it, short of finding the fisherman who’d driven him out to the island that day. I could do that later; for now, the only thing I had to go on was my own gut instincts. I lowered the gun. I felt sick, and tired, and the information that I had outweighed the information that I needed by a huge margin. And Jack didn’t know any more than I did.

  “I should go back in—find out if there’s any news,” I said when I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He nodded. I slipped the gun back in Kat’s purse. Jack stood just a few inches from me now. I believed him, it turned out—maybe I really did have an epically bad psychopath detector, but I couldn’t help it. I trusted him. He brushed the hair from my eyes with a cold, cold hand.

  “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  I flinched at his touch. “Don’t,” I said. Tears rose faster than I could keep them at bay. I turned before he could pull me any closer, stopping just short of a run as I fled for the safety of bright lights and sterile hospital walls.