by Jen Blood
I waited for him to continue.
“Did you hear about the bodies they found up at the border last week?”
“In Canada?” I asked. “Sure, who hasn’t?”
A week before, a couple of hunters had gotten off track in the deep woods along the border between Maine and Quebec. In the process, they stumbled on a shallow grave…and then another one. And another. By the time they made it back to civilization, they reported that they’d found half a dozen of these unmarked graves. It turned out that all six belonged to high school and college girls who’d gone missing sometime in the ’80s. There weren’t a lot of details beyond that yet, but the story had been getting plenty of air time ever since.
“You’re telling me that whoever killed those girls is the same one who killed your daughter,” I said. I didn’t actually come out and say he was full of shit, but it was certainly implied.
“They were all Ashley’s age. All tortured. Strangled.” He stopped. The hardness vanished from his eyes. “They all died the same way,” he said. “Five of the bodies have been identified as girls who’d gone missing from Central and Northern Maine at around the same time Ashley was killed.”
“According to the stories I’ve heard about this case, you’d taken three tabs of acid the day your daughter was killed,” I said, unmoved. “They found you with the body, covered in her blood. And correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s the little matter of a confession that keeps cropping up in all these appeals you’ve been filing.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying—I was out of my mind by then. The drugs were still in my system. And even if they hadn’t been, finding Ashley that way…” His eyes filled with tears. If his grief was an act, Hank Gendreau deserved an Oscar. “I was out of my mind,” he repeated.
“So, what changed?” I asked. “How are you so sure of what happened now, twenty-five years later? How do you know you didn’t stumble across your daughter on a path in the woods that day in the middle of some epically bad trip and just lost control? And then when you came to, the reality of what you’d done was so horrifying you just blocked it out.”
“I didn’t kill my daughter,” he said. “You don’t have to believe me—take a look at the evidence. The DNA and blood samples as much as prove it.”
I’d heard rumblings about this, but I wanted to hear the details from him before I formed any opinions. “If you have DNA evidence proving you’re innocent, why are you still in prison?”
“The judge says it’s tainted; he ruled it inadmissible. But I had tests done. There were blood and skin cells under my daughter’s fingernails. They weren’t mine.”
“They can’t tell whose they were?”
“There wasn’t enough to come up with a match—most of the evidence got tossed after the first trial. But it didn’t come from me; that much has been proven. Someone else did this. I couldn’t do something like that.”
I took a few seconds to think about that. The room was hot and overcrowded. There were sweat stains at the neck of Gendreau’s denim shirt and under his arms. A little boy with dark hair played with a plastic truck in one corner of the room, a rail-thin, dark-haired woman not far from him. She chewed gum and held hands with a built blond guy with some seriously disturbing tats extending from his upper arm all the way up his neck. He caught me staring and met my eye. Smiled. I looked away.
“I’m not a detective,” I said, my attention back on Gendreau. “I’m a reporter. Which means whatever I find, chances are good that I’ll shout it from the rooftops. You’re prepared for that?”
“That’s part of the reason I contacted you. You think if I had any doubt about whether or not I’d done this, I’d call a reporter to investigate? Would I order DNA tests if there was any question in my mind that I might’ve just blacked out? I’m telling you.” He leaned in so close that I saw one of the guards take a step toward us. “Find the man who killed those girls and buried them in Canada, and you’ll find Ashley’s killer. He did this.”
“Look, Mr. Gendreau—” I began.
He held up a hand to stop me. “Whoever murdered my little girl is still out there. I have two other kids I watched grow up from behind prison bars. They won’t speak to me. My wife filed divorce papers an hour after I was convicted. I lost everything the day my daughter died.”
I glanced at the photo again, not sure how to respond. It took maybe fifteen seconds before I’d made up my mind. “If I do this, I’m doing it my way.”
“That’s what I expected,” he assured me. “And for every piece of information you bring me, I’ll answer anything you want about your father.”
“I won’t do anything until you give me at least one scrap about my dad,” I insisted. “Last name. Where he was from. Something.”
“Black Falls,” he said. “That’s where I met him. You want to know more, you’ll need to work for it.”
I got the same sweet-as-sugar rush I always get when I have a lead, and stood. Black Falls. “Fair enough. I’ll be back in a few days.”
He nodded. Something about his story still bugged me—aside from the fact that if Hank Gendreau really was innocent, the wheels of justice had skidded horrifically off course. Or maybe it was just something about him that bugged me. At the very least, I didn’t trust him. The guard who’d been about to intervene on my behalf a minute or two earlier flashed me a smile as I left the room. When I looked back over my shoulder, Gendreau was sitting where I’d left him, his gaze fixed once more on the seconds ticking by.
◊◊◊◊◊
After I’d retrieved Einstein, my next stop was to the Downeast Daily Tribune, where I cut my teeth as a reporter way back when I was still wearing combat boots and too much eyeliner. That meant returning to Littlehope, of course—the hometown I’d been avoiding since the aforementioned horrifically bungled Payson investigation in the spring. The second we crossed the town line, Einstein was on his feet, whining at the window. He darted past me as soon as I opened the car door in the Trib parking lot, made a quick rest stop at a nearby shrub, and headed straight for the front door without me.
I wasn’t feeling quite so eager. I wiped my sweating palms on my khakis, checked my reflection in the glass door, and did what I could to wrangle my red hair into some kind of discernible style. That never actually panned out, so I eventually gave up and pulled it back into a ponytail, straightened my top, took a breath, and went inside.
The Trib is a no-frills operation—most days, you’re just grateful the plumbing works, so A/C is out of the question. The concrete walls were sweating and the linoleum was slick with humidity as I headed down the hall to the newsroom. Not a soul was in sight.
I was still a few feet from my destination when the newsroom door opened and Daniel Diggins, editor-in-chief, stepped outside. He had his head down, focused on some paperwork in his hands. Einstein gave a hysterical yelp of joy and was off like a bolt of furry lightning as soon as he caught sight of him. Diggs looked up from his papers, then just stood there for a split second, like he wasn’t sure I was actually there. Once he’d assured himself I was no mirage, a smooth, slow grin touched his lips.
He knelt to give Einstein a proper greeting while I bridged the distance between us. He had on shorts and an Arcade Fire t-shirt, his wavy blond hair as untamed as ever. His blue eyes sparkled when they met mine. Diggs is eight years older than me, and forty has never looked so good as it did on that man. He straightened. Stein wandered off to make sure all was copasetic with the rest of the paper.
“I wondered when you’d show your face around here again.” He said it with a smile, no trace of the awkwardness I was afraid I might find.
“I’ve been busy. You know how it goes.”
He looked amused, like my absence was exactly what he’d expected, my return right on schedule. I felt a flash of irritation that vanished when he took a step closer and tucked a tendril of hair behind my ear.
“You look good, Sol,” he said.
If I hadn’t been about to me
lt from the heat before, the look in his eyes was enough to finish the job. “You, too,” I said.
My voice didn’t sound like mine and the flush in my cheeks didn’t have a thing to do with the weather. In the good old days, we would have hugged hello and he would’ve given me hell for staying out of touch so long. Now, thanks to a two-minute conversation while I was pressed against his desk in this very building three months ago, I was blushing like a virgin bride.
I cleared my throat and took a step back. “I was in town on a story—figured I’d pop in.”
“And steal our Wifi?” he guessed correctly.
“I’ll buy you lunch for it; that’s not stealing.”
“Deal.” He nodded toward the newsroom. “Snag a desk, or you can set yourself up in my office. I’ll be back in ten.”
He didn’t tell me where he was going, and I didn’t ask. After three months without so much as an e-mail to let him know how I was, I figured I didn’t merit much in the way of explanations.
Einstein and I went into the Trib’s newsroom, but the heat and the faint smell of sweat and stale Cheetos drove me straight to Diggs’ door. His desk was uncharacteristically neat, complete with a labeled inbox, a new computer monitor, and a jelly jar of wildflowers looking somewhat worse for the wear. Diggs isn’t really a wildflowers kind of guy; the sight didn’t sit well with me.
I set myself up with my laptop on his leather sofa so I could make the most of the tiny bit of relief provided by an old box fan in the window. I’d already logged into the network and was looking for everything I could find on Hank Gendreau by the time Diggs returned.
He tossed a plastic-wrapped sub sandwich on my lap and handed me an extra-tall iced coffee.
“I thought I was buying lunch.”
He waved me off, his attention already on my computer. “Next time. So, what’s the big story?”
I set the laptop aside for the time being. The sub was from Wallace’s—the town general store—which meant it tasted like the best thing this side of heaven but probably took five years off my life. Einstein parked himself at my feet with his chin resting on my foot, gazing up at me with profound faith that I’d do right by him. I tossed him a pickle.
“What do you know about Hank Gendreau?” I asked.
Diggs perked up. “The guy who claims he was framed for raping and murdering his own daughter? That’s who you were visiting?”
“I got wind of some anomalies in his case, heard there might be a story there,” I said. “I figured I’d talk to him first and see what I could find out. And there was no rape,” I added. “His daughter was tortured and strangled. No sexual assault.”
“Ah. Well, I guess if all he did was torture and strangle her, it’s no big deal.” He bit into his veggie burger and took his sweet time chewing before he continued. “They just turned down his last appeal, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. But there’s been a lot of interest in his case over the years. There’s some DNA evidence the jury never heard about, apparently.”
Diggs got that look he always gets when he sees more than I intend on showing. “What’s your interest? I thought you were focusing on your dad’s story for a while.”
“I still need to pay the bills.” It was the truth. Basically. “People eat this shit up, you know that. So, what’s your take—is there a story or isn’t there? Do you think he did it?”
“They got a confession from him, right? He was in the woods tripping balls the day it happened, then they found him later covered in his daughter’s blood. Definitely a slam-dunk case at the time.”
“He says they found someone else’s DNA under her fingernails.”
Over the course of his career, Diggs has somehow managed to retain the details of just about every news story on all seven continents for the past century—something I tend to view as either incredibly helpful or just plain annoying, depending on circumstances. He didn’t even blink at what I considered fairly weighty evidence in Gendreau’s favor.
“There’ve been a couple of cases in the news about that lately,” he said. “The thinking now is that the nail clippers CSU used back then might have been contaminated from other victims.”
I read farther down before I shook my head. “They were using disposable clippers by then, for just that reason. Whatever scrapings they found had to come from under Ashley Gendreau’s nails.”
Diggs scratched his stubbled chin, thinking that over.
“Have you met him?” I asked.
“Gendreau? Once. I was doing a story on one of the job programs he spearheaded over at the prison. He’s done a lot of good work in there.”
“Everyone I talked to so far over there loves him,” I said. “Maybe times have changed, but the last I checked, guys accused of torturing and murdering their own kids aren’t real popular round the cell block. The consensus on the inside is he got railroaded.”
“Maybe he’s just a good actor,” Diggs said. He sat back in his chair and finished his burger. “He could be a sociopath. Split personality. Anything’s possible.”
“He’s seen shrinks for the past thirty years. You don’t think one of them might have picked up on that?” I pulled up the story Gendreau had turned me onto during our visit.
“And then there’s this,” I continued. I read aloud from the screen. “ ‘Five of the six bodies discovered buried in the woods along the Maine/Quebec border have now been identified as young women from the central and northern Maine area reported missing in the early ’80s.’ ”
“And you think whoever killed these girls is the same guy who killed Ashley Gendreau?”
“It’s a theory. They were all the same age. All kidnapped, strangled, and buried.”
“Except Ashley wasn’t buried.”
“Maybe her father interrupted the killer. Whoever did it had to run before he could haul the body away to his burial ground.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You’re reaching, Sol—this guy’s desperate. Since when did you become such an easy mark?”
I bristled. “I’m not an easy mark. There are plenty of unanswered questions here—I’m not alone in thinking maybe Gendreau got caught in a shit-storm with a bunch of cops out to string up the first suspect they found after they saw everything that had been done to this girl. You honestly think anyone could have been impartial after seeing that?”
He thought that over for a few seconds, then settled in behind his desk and fired up his own computer. “So, this mysterious killer who was murdering girls in the ’80s… Do they have any leads on who he is? Any clue where he might be now? Or why he just stopped killing for no apparent reason?”
“How do we know he stopped?” I asked. “He could have more burial sites than just the one they found. Or maybe he got caught. Maybe he died.”
We both fell silent, scanning the innumerable websites that detailed the brutal slaying of Ashley Gendreau in 1987. At the time, the public had been ready to skip Gendreau’s trial entirely and get straight to the lynching. He’d gotten hate mail, death threats, been segregated from the general population…and yet, despite all that, somehow over the years he’d been able to change a lot of minds while he’d been inside. I wasn’t ready to dial up the governor for a pardon just yet, but looking into the matter didn’t seem like quite the colossal waste of time I’d thought it was when I first got Gendreau’s letter.
I spent the afternoon and evening in Diggs’ office researching the Gendreau murder and the discovery of the bodies in Quebec. Hank Gendreau had given his lawyer permission to talk to me, so I set up a meeting for the following day. I checked the map to figure out where his daughter was killed and sketched out a time to visit the site later in the week.
I was in the middle of jotting down notes on the other victims when Diggs got up from his desk and turned off the fan.
“All right, Sol, I’m closing up shop.”
I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. “It’s not even seven o’clock—what happened to burning the midnight oil?”<
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“Not tonight. Your mutt’s wilting, and I’m teetering on the brink of heat stroke over here. First we swim, then we eat. This’ll wait until tomorrow.”
Einstein was looking pretty sad, and I was feeling a little damp myself. I peeled myself off the furniture and packed up my stuff. So far I hadn’t broached the subject of where I was planning to crash for the night—another thing that had changed since my last visit. I glanced at the flowers on his desk again. Usually, it was a given that Diggs would be putting me up during my stay. I wasn’t so sure about that anymore.
“I was thinking about giving Edie a call, and maybe spending the night there tonight,” I said, like it was no big deal at all.
Diggs flashed a brilliant smile my way, amused. “Oh?”
“It’s not really fair of me to just show up out of the blue like this, and expect you to…you know.”
He folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the doorsill, clearly enjoying himself. “No, I guess it isn’t.”
“You’re not gonna make this easy, are you?”
“Not if I can help it.” He straightened, grabbed my backpack, and tossed it over one shoulder. “Come on, Sol—I’ll race you to the car. We can fight about it there.”
Einstein was already out the door, hot on Diggs’ heels, while I was still trying to figure out my next move. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion, though: I’d been following Diggs since I was knee high to a toadstool. I wasn’t about to stop now. I grabbed the rest of my stuff and locked the door behind me, feeling undeniably nostalgic for those hot summer nights of my youth.
Chapter Two
Halfway to our old swimming hole, Diggs took a left and headed in the wrong direction entirely. We’d taken his Jeep; the top was down, the air was warm, and Einstein’s ears were blowing in the breeze. I had the uneasy feeling that what had started as the perfect evening was about to take a turn.
