Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  “They’re sure it’s her?” he asked. “I don’t see how they’d know so fast, this long after… How could they know so soon?”

  “They had the records you provided when Jenny first went missing,” Juarez said. “They’re very good at what they do—it wouldn’t have taken that long. I’m very sorry, but there’s no question that one of the bodies belonged to your daughter.”

  The old man nodded again. As much as a minute went by while we waited for him to say something. When he didn’t, Juarez continued.

  “I know a lot of time has passed,” Juarez said, “but I was hoping you could walk me through that day one more time.”

  Brian took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “Of course,” he said wearily. “Whatever you need.”

  “Jenny was home for the summer?” Juarez looked at the file briefly, but I could tell he didn’t really need to. He may have just gotten the assignment, but it was obvious he already knew this case cold.

  “Yes,” Brian confirmed. “It was her first year at UMaine Machias. She’d never been away from home before; it wasn’t an easy year for her.”

  “Did she have any problems with boyfriends, or any men she might have known on campus that she said made her uncomfortable?”

  “No. Nothing like that. No confrontations, no men we’d seen lurking around, no suspicious friends.” He said it like he’d been through this many, many times before.

  “Did you ever spend any time in Black Falls?” I asked.

  Juarez looked at me sharply.

  Brian shook his head, confused. “Up at the border? No. Why? You think that’s where the man who did this was from?”

  “We don’t know,” Juarez said. “It’s just one of many leads we’re following right now. Let’s get back to that day, if it’s all right.”

  Brian went through the entire day for us: breakfast together on the deck since it was warm out, then Jenny had planned on spending the day riding the trails with some friends. The friends got to the stable at about eleven that morning, where they found Jenny’s jacket and her backpack. There’d been no sign of a struggle. Her favorite horse was already saddled and in the paddock; it looked as though she’d been riding when she was interrupted. The nearest neighbors were miles away, and no passersby reported seeing anything unusual in the area that day.

  It was like she’d just dropped off the face of the earth.

  “What was going on for you at the time?” Juarez asked. “Was there anyone you’d met in your business dealings who made you uneasy? Anyone who commented on your family, maybe asked about your daughter?”

  “No. There was nothing like that. We’d just received a settlement after I filed a suit against a manufacturer in Detroit about a year before, but that was a large corporation—there was nothing personal about any of it. The only time I even had to go to court was for the settlement conference in Augusta.”

  “Which firm represented you?” Juarez asked.

  “The same one that represents me today: Whitman, Myer & Goldman. They’re out of Hartford, where I’m from originally. We dealt with a large firm out of New York.”

  While Juarez jotted that information down, Brian’s gaze shifted to the wall of photos in his living room.

  “I thought she’d come home, you know,” he said to me. “You always hear people say they’d know if their child was gone; somehow, they’d know. But I never did. My wife told me years ago it was time to move on.” He looked around the room helplessly. Behind his thick lenses, his eyes swam with tears. “I could never figure it out, though. How to do that.”

  He stood, went to one of the dressers, and picked up a photo of Jenny at four or five. She was sitting on a horse, Brian behind her in the saddle. They were both laughing.

  “She was everything,” he said, still looking at the picture. “Sun and moon. I didn’t want anything else, once she was born. Didn’t need anything else. And then once she was gone…” He looked around again, like he was searching for something he knew he’d never find again. “Then, I just wanted her back.”

  “I know how hard this is, but we won’t take much more of your time,” Juarez said. “I have a few photos I’d like you to look at. If you could just tell me if you recognize any of these men.”

  Brian nodded. Juarez set a photo album on the coffee table and flipped to a page bookmarked with a yellow Post-it. Amid a half-dozen shady villains I’d never seen before was a single face I knew well: My father. I held my breath while Bishop scanned the pictures, then flipped to the next page. He’d barely glanced at Dad’s picture.

  At sight of one of the men on the next page, however, Bishop went completely rigid. He looked up at Juarez, his eyes wide.

  “This is Hank Gendreau,” he said. “The man who killed his daughter back a few years after Jenny disappeared. Why is he here?” He choked on the words, his breath suddenly coming harder. “Are you saying…? The way his daughter died. Is that what happened to Jenny?”

  He’d gone deathly pale. I sat back to give him some space. Juarez set the album aside and slid to the edge of the couch, closer to Bishop. He put his hand on the man’s knee.

  “I’d like you to sit back and take a couple of deep breaths,” he said. His voice was almost mesmerizing, it was so calm. “I know how hard this is.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Bishop said stubbornly, still fixated on the now-closed photo album. “Is that how she died? I remember that case—every bit of it. Jenny…”

  “We don’t have the coroner’s findings yet,” Juarez said smoothly. “There’s no hard evidence that that’s how she died.”

  It was a lie, I knew. Considering the look on Bishop’s face, I couldn’t imagine telling him anything else.

  We didn’t learn much more from Brian Bishop after that. He gave us the same details he’d given investigators thirty years ago, and didn’t recognize anyone else from the album of suspects—including my father—as far as he could recall. Considering how many years had passed since that time, however, I wasn’t ready to take that single win as a sign that dear old Dad was in the clear.

  As we were leaving, Juarez took Bishop aside and asked if there was anyone he could call.

  Bishop said no.

  I thought of Red Grivois, a retired cop haunted by the broken bodies of two girls he hadn’t been able to save. How many others’ lives had been destroyed by whoever had killed these girls? How many more interviews would we have to do like this?

  And what did my father have to do with any of it?

  Juarez was quiet as we pulled out of the drive, back past the rolling hills and the chestnut horses.

  “They thought it was a kidnapping at first,” he said out of the blue. He stopped at the end of the drive, staring blankly at the road ahead. “That settlement Brian was talking about was huge—it was in all the papers. They waited a solid week for a ransom demand.”

  “So whoever this was—or is—has no interest in money,” I concluded.

  “That much is clear, at least,” Juarez agreed. “The killer has never made any attempt to contact the families, keeps his victims’ bodies well hidden after the fact, doesn’t seem to feel the need to be in the public eye or involved with the investigation like so many serial killers. Dennis Rader, Javed Iqbal, Gacy… They were all bold, occasionally even flamboyant. Lived to taunt the cops and shock the public.”

  “So the act of killing is the reward for him,” I guessed. “It’s not about the publicity.”

  “There’s something else that’s been bothering me. The bodies they found buried in Canada were wrapped,” he said.

  I looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “In a sheet, buried with their faces covered. He tortured them when they were alive, but the way he disposed of the bodies suggests he felt some remorse. Or at least showed the victims some respect after their deaths.”

  I considered this. Bright sunshine had given way to dark clouds rolling in fast, the heat as oppressive as ever. I pulled my
hair up off my neck and stared at the approaching storm. When I looked back at Juarez, he was watching me. I gave him an awkward smile.

  “What a shitty case,” I said.

  “It is.”

  “Is it the worst you’ve ever seen?”

  He shook his head.

  “Top five?”

  He thought for a second or two before shaking his head again.

  “Top ten?” I persisted.

  “Top ten,” he agreed.

  I shook my head. “Jesus. How do you do this day after day? I mean, I’m assuming there aren’t a lot of happy endings for homicide cases—the final bell’s pretty much rung by the time you come in.”

  “It’s a good ending if we can catch someone. Prevent them from killing again. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s a good one. Sometimes, it’s the only solace you can provide a victim’s family.”

  Something about the way he said it made me think this wasn’t just idle speculation on his part; he was speaking from experience. I thought back to a rainy night in Littlehope last spring in Juarez’s arms. A tan line on his ring finger. You’re married, I’d said.

  Not anymore. Not for a long time.

  “Your wife…” I began.

  There was no guile in his eyes when he looked at me, no mask. “Lucia. She was killed six years ago, in Nicaragua. She’d been volunteering at a school there.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes. As am I.” He disappeared for a second or two, lost in his memories. Then, he met my eye and smiled. “It was a long time before I could think of anything that reminded me of her. Remember any of the reasons that I loved her.”

  “But you can now?”

  “It seemed dishonorable not to. I couldn’t protect her before she died; the least I could do was honor her memory after she was gone.”

  Honor. It wasn’t a word people used that much anymore, but it seemed completely natural hearing it fall from Juarez’s lips—a tenet he held fast to. “And you found the person who did it? The man who killed her?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. But I will.”

  He put the car back in gear before I could comment any further, already speculating about the woman who had first stolen Jack Juarez’s heart, and the tragic end that she met. She would have been beautiful, I was sure. Someone who shared his faith, his unshakeable sense of right and wrong.

  After a few minutes of silence, Juarez now lost in his own thoughts, I turned the radio on. I barely winced when Clay Aiken launched into “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Hell, if I spent enough time in Juarez’s dark, dark world, I suspected I might even start to see the charm in Taylor Swift.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  The remaining four interviews that day weren’t any more helpful than the first, and they definitely weren’t any more fun. After Brian Bishop’s reaction, Juarez wisely took Hank Gendreau’s photo out of the mix in his Big Book of Suspects. Two mothers we talked to thought they’d seen my father’s face before, but they couldn’t say for sure. Beyond the loss of their daughters and the fact that they lived in Northern Maine, there didn’t seem to be any tie between the victims’ families. The Bishops were a respectable, upper-middle-class family, while eighteen-year-old Grace Starke’s father was cooling his heels in jail on drug charges when she was taken. Seventeen-year-old Becca Martineau was a high school soccer star active in student government; nineteen-year-old Stacy Long was a high school dropout whom everyone thought had run away until her body was discovered in that grave just north of the Maine/Canada border. One of the victims was still unknown, but Riley Thibodeau was a cheerleader from Madawaska who survived lead poisoning at eighteen only to be murdered in the woods two years later.

  The only thing all the victims had in common was the fact that they were all young, pretty, active girls of a certain age. And they’d all suffered unspeakable physical pain and mental torment before they were finally killed and buried in a shallow grave deep in the woods. And, of course, the prime suspect in each of their murders just happened to be my father.

  Things lightened up on the drive back to the Budget Inn, thanks in large part to Juarez, who seemed to take murder and mutilation in stride. It was a little disconcerting, actually. We stopped for dinner at a dingy roadside diner with red-and-white checked tablecloths and mind-blowing bacon Swiss burgers. I whipped his delectable ass at a game of pinball at the back of the diner, all the while grilling him about the case.

  When we sat down for dessert, I pulled out the files again.

  “We should go over what we have so far,” I said.

  He looked around, a spoonful of ice cream halfway to his mouth. “Here?”

  “Here,” I confirmed. I dug out pen and paper and started writing. “We can start with Erin and Jeff Lincoln’s disappearance in 1970.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  I wrote down Erin Lincoln murdered: October 1970

  “Then came Jeff Lincoln’s stay in the psychiatric ward in Michigan,” Juarez said.

  “1972, right?” He nodded without consulting any notes. I wrote it down.

  “And then he drops off the radar,” I said.

  “When did your father join the Payson Church?”

  “1978.”

  “And he never said anything about where he’d been before that?”

  I shook my head. He didn’t say anything, eying my notes. I finally gave in and scribbled: Adam Solomon joins Payson Church of Tomorrow: December 1978

  “And then in 1982, Jenny Bishop disappears from her house in Houlton, Maine,” Juarez said.

  “And five years later, Hank Gendreau finds his daughter murdered in the woods. According to Gendreau, Jeff Lincoln was there.”

  From there, we outlined the remaining disappearances Juarez had dug up from ’81 to ’90. He had specific dates for all of them, but I was lost when it came to figuring out where my father might have been for each one. The Paysons lived on an island ten miles off the Maine coast; we prayed and baked and grew tomatoes. Calendars weren’t really a priority.

  When I was done writing everything out, the timeline was holier than the good book itself. Juarez and Diggs were both right about one thing, though: the only consistent thread in any of it seemed to be Jeff Lincoln. He was with Erin Lincoln; Hank Gendreau claimed he’d been at the scene the day Ashley was killed; his fingerprints placed him at the body dump in Canada, and at several of the crime scenes of other victims along the way.

  “Erin and Jeff went to Eagle Lake alone the weekend they disappeared?” Juarez asked out of the blue.

  “That’s the story.”

  He didn’t look convinced.

  “Why?” I asked. “You think someone else might have been there?”

  “I know you said they were close, but it still doesn’t seem like the kind of trip a fifteen-year-old boy would take his little sister on without a reason.”

  “That reason being?”

  “I have no idea, really. But having been a fifteen-year-old boy myself, I can tell you that, if I had a sister, there were probably only two things that could have convinced me to take off into the woods with her.”

  “Unless you really are a saint, a girl has to be at least one of those things.”

  “Or a party.”

  “Or some combination of the two?” I guessed. It was a good point—one I should have thought of before. Score one for the Fed. “Okay. So, whatever the reason was, we know at the very least that Jeff and Erin went camping that weekend. Then in 1987, Hank—” I stopped. “Do you have anything in that big thick file of yours about the cops questioning Hank after the Lincoln murder?”

  The waitress approached while Juarez was leafing through the file and left us with the check. Three minutes in, he’d found what I was looking for.

  “Here it is. I don’t think they questioned him after the body was found—just when Jeff and Erin first went missing. Since he’d been in Quebec at the time, they never followed up.”

  He handed the pages to me. I scan
ned through until a single name stopped me dead in my tracks. Juarez had gone to powder his nose; by the time he came back, I was on my feet with my jacket in hand, ready to declare the entire case solved.

  “What?” he asked cautiously.

  I looked up from cruising the white pages on my iPhone. “We need to get back to Black Falls,” I said.

  “For?”

  “Will Rainier.” Juarez looked at me blankly.

  “Will Rainier was Hank’s alibi when Erin Lincoln went missing.” He still wasn’t making the connection. I reminded myself that just because I’d committed the entire case to memory didn’t mean the rest of the world had. “Will Rainier was the third member of their trio in the picture Hank showed me at the prison. He also happened to be the only suspect in the Ashley Gendreau murder, besides Hank himself.”

  Chapter Nine

  Diggs, Einstein, and the Jeep were all missing when Juarez and I got back to the motel. Juarez returned to his room pleading official FBI business—whatever that meant—and I tried to reach Diggs for an hour before he finally deigned to call back, at just past nine that night. I could hear a crowd in the background and Waylon Jennings on the jukebox. It took a couple of false starts shouting over one another before I heard a door close and things quieted on the other end of the line.

  “Where the hell are you?” I asked.

  “I got a lead—I’m just down the road a ways. Grab the Fed and come meet me.”

  I tried to tell him about the Will Rainier tie-in I’d found between the Lincoln and Gendreau murders, but there was way too much excitement on Diggs’ end for me to get far. I gave up, got directions on where to meet him, and went to fetch Juarez.

  The Black Falls VFW was on a dead end street in the center of town, just over the railroad tracks. There was no parking lot per se, which meant trucks and beaten-down SUVs lined both sides of the road going back a good half mile. Juarez and I parked on the next street over, in front of a trailer with freshly-mown grass and a muddy ATV in the yard. What had been an uncomfortably warm day had cooled to sweater weather, though a cluster of boys we passed on the street were still playing soccer in shorts and t-shirts. Juarez and I took a shortcut along the railroad tracks through patchy woods, and came out the other side to find a couple of teenagers locked in a steamy embrace and a few others with cigarettes and beer hanging out by a giant boulder and a few scrubby spruce trees. Apparently, this was the place to be on a Saturday night in Black Falls.