Erin Solomon Mysteries, Books 1 - 5

by Jen Blood

  “Some of our subjects have been stronger than others, of course,” Max continued, oblivious. “And you two…” He looked from Diggs to me and back again. “I wonder how much it would take—how many hours, how many days, at Will’s mercy, before you agree you’ll do anything for freedom.”

  “Anything meaning what?” I asked. “You want us to kill each other? That’s your objective?” I looked past him to Diggs. “What would it take for you to put me in the ground about now, Diggsy?”

  He laughed. It sounded strained and borderline hysterical, but it was still a laugh. “After this week? Not much. Maybe another night in that swank Sanctuary, and I’m there.”

  I looked at Max. He wasn’t amused.

  “And I’m on pretty much the same page here, so there you have it,” I said. “Get this fucking belt off my neck, and I’ll put a cap in his ass now.”

  Anger flashed in Max’s eyes. He waved his hand toward Rainier, a kind of ‘Have at it’ gesture that effectively drained any laissez faire I’d been feeling to that point. Rainier knelt behind me, his body pressed to mine, while he cinched the belt still tighter, his mouth at my ear. The air left my lungs and the world around me blurred. Diggs shouted. Everything but Rainier’s breathing in my ear, the cruel words he whispered, fell away. The world was underwater, and I was floating above it.

  “That’s enough,” I heard Max say. Rainier loosened the belt. I gasped for air.

  “There are a number of ways we’ve pushed our subjects to kill,” Max continued. I could barely hear him above the rushing in my ears and my own hacking cough. He paused until I’d finished. “Occasionally, it’s simple empathy. My subjects see how much these friends they’ve come to love are suffering, and they intervene.”

  He waved his hand again. Rainier tightened the belt around my neck, his left hand more aggressive on my body now. I could feel him, hard behind me. Diggs turned his head away. He strained at his ropes, but I knew he wouldn’t get free. No one would come. It felt like my lungs would explode, the belt cinching tighter around my neck, Rainier’s warm breath in my ear. Spots floated in front of my eyes, getting brighter with each passing second.

  And then, the angel of death appeared.

  He didn’t wear the cloak I remembered him in on the island when I was ten years old. Now, he wore jeans and a windbreaker; he might have just come from walking the dog or picking up groceries. He had a receding hairline and a thin, sharp nose, and he carried a gun. While Max and Rainier were so focused on my torture, he walked right up to them. My body screamed for air. The hooded man raised his gun. He aimed it at Rainier first, still standing right behind me. Instead of the deafening gunshot I expected, there was a muffled snick before the belt loosened. Rainier let go and fell backward.

  Max screamed, his face red with rage. The man pointed the gun at the center of his forehead.

  “You’ve become a liability, Max. We warned you about this when you left the fold.” He had a surprisingly gentile voice.

  “My family—” Max argued.

  “Your family has had enough,” the hooded man said. Another muffled shot sounded in the night. Max just stood there for a second as though suspended, a hole in the center of his forehead, before he fell to his knees. He pitched forward.

  The hooded man knelt beside me and untied my hands. He pulled the leather belt from around my neck, and helped me stand.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Are you all right?”

  I nodded, mute.

  “Good.”

  Then, he walked very deliberately across the clearing toward Diggs. His gun was up again. He stopped and looked around at the bodies bleeding into the forest floor around us, then fixed his gaze on me.

  “You know what I’m capable of?” he asked me.

  I thought of the fire in the church; the bodies on the island last spring. My father’s disappearance. Jane Bellows’ murder.

  “I do,” I said.

  “Good.” He released the safety on his gun and pressed the barrel into Diggs’ temple, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “Stop looking. If you don’t, I will come back. And I will kill him. You understand?”

  I nodded rapidly.

  “That’s good. I won’t tell you again.”

  He removed the backpack he’d been carrying, put the safety on his gun, and backed away.

  “There’s water in there, and a compass. There’s a search party looking for you due east of here.”

  “Okay,” I said. I could hardly hear my voice over the thundering of my own heart.

  As he was walking away, the man turned back and looked at me. He smiled. “It’s always nice seeing you again, Ms. Solomon. I hope for your sake that we won’t meet again for some time, though.”

  He holstered his gun and disappeared into the woods.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “She’s unexpected,” Juarez came up with finally, while he and Jamie were out searching late that night. Mandy had found an address on Three Brook Mountain where Max Richards had chartered a seaplane two years before. And now, here they were. Searching another stretch of deserted woods in the hope that they might find something besides deer and bear and rogue vacationers.

  Jamie glanced at him in surprise.

  “You asked what I like about Erin,” he explained. He’d been struggling with the question all night. It was a relief to finally find an answer that felt true. “Why I’m out here. Turning myself inside out.”

  “Unexpected?” she asked. “Explain, please.”

  He shrugged. An owl swooped down farther along the path. Neither of the dogs seemed concerned. “Unexpected. The things she says; the things she does. Tough one minute, crying over sick puppies the next.” It wasn’t coming out right, but he got the sense that Jamie understood, regardless. He continued. “Last month I had the flu. She called my assistant to find out my favorite place to eat. For three days, she had them deliver dinners, and paid extra so they’d include cold medicine and jelly beans. She has a good laugh. Is a terrible driver. And I’m ninety-nine percent certain she’d let me drown if she had to choose between me or her dog.”

  Jamie laughed. “And that’s a good thing?”

  “It shows loyalty. I like that.”

  “All right,” she said. She’d been dragging for the past half hour, but suddenly she seemed revitalized. “Well, now I approve. Let’s find this girl, huh?”

  It was midnight when Casper caught the scent and sounded off. The searchers were cold and the dogs were tired and Juarez knew that everyone should have been retired for the night hours ago, but Jamie had said they could keep on. Just a little longer, she’d told him. The dog’s excitement this time around sent a jolt of adrenaline through his system.

  When both Casper and Phantom picked up the scent, neither of them slowing down, Juarez felt a familiar comingling of anticipation and dread take root.

  “Erin!” he shouted. He hurried on ahead, shining his light into the darkness. Jamie was just a step or two behind him, cautioning him to go slowly.

  He paid no attention.

  “Erin! Are you out here?”

  He thought he heard something, but there was too much noise to tell for sure. Jamie halted the dogs. Everyone listened.

  Diggs was the one who answered, his voice so faint it was hard to hear through the trees. “We’re here. We need a paramedic.”

  The dogs led Juarez and Jamie straight to them from there, through a short stretch of woods where Diggs was sitting vigil beside Erin, who lay motionless on the ground. Her eyes were closed. Juarez’s heart sank. He forced himself forward.

  “She’s still alive,” Diggs said. He shook his head, fighting tears. “She passed out about twenty minutes ago—dehydration, maybe. Or shock. I tried to carry her…”

  Jamie came over and tried to lead Diggs away, but he wouldn’t leave Erin’s side until the paramedics came. When they arrived and started attending to her, Erin came to with a start, fighting the moment she was consciou
s. Her face was a mass of cuts and bruises, her right wrist misshapen and dangerously swollen. Juarez knelt beside her.

  “It’s okay,” he said. She was shaking. “We’ve got you. You’re all right.”

  She tried to get up, but the paramedics managed to convince her to stay where she was. She held tightly to Juarez’s hand, her eyes wide with shock. He waited for tears.

  There were none.

  “I’m glad you came,” she whispered to him.

  He kissed the top of her head, holding her as close as he dared. Even then, it felt like she was very far away.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When I woke up, it was to white walls and white ceiling and a lovely floaty feeling I wasn’t anxious to leave. The second I moved, my mother appeared. My lovely floaty feeling faded.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  I tried to nod, but my neurons weren’t firing in quite the right direction. I tried speaking instead. “Where’s Diggs?” I croaked.

  She gave me a look I couldn’t read. I started to panic, until I realized it wasn’t an Oh God how do I tell her her best friend is dead look so much as a Not this again one.

  “He’s in the next room—he’s fine. Heavily concussed and badly dehydrated, on antibiotics for all those war wounds he got out in the field. He’ll be all right.” She nodded to my wrist, now in a cast. “They had to do surgery; you’ve got some pins in there now. You’ll need at least two more before it’s one hundred percent again. If it ever is.”

  I blinked at the ceiling. “Okay,” I said.

  “Is there anything I can get for you?” she asked. “Maya’s on her way.”

  “My dog. I really miss my dog.”

  She actually laughed. When I looked at her, she was crying. Katherine Everett, with actual tears in her eyes. Or the morphine was working overtime. “He’s been staying with me. He’ll be glad to get back to you, though—I don’t give him all that fruity deluxe food you do.”

  “It’s not fruity,” I said. “It’s raw.” I closed my eyes. Before I could drift away again, she took my hand. She squeezed it—the good one, thankfully—until I looked at her again.

  “I want you to listen carefully to me,” she said. “Because we won’t go over this again.” Her eyes were shining with a feverish intensity. “Your father died out in the woods, that day when his sister was murdered. He never got over it. After that, he did everything in his power to turn his life around. But he never forgot that, and he made some bad decisions because of it. Got involved with the wrong people.”

  I thought of the man in the woods—the angel of death, his gun pointed at Diggs’ temple. I didn’t say anything.

  “Those people are powerful, and they’re deadly. If you keep looking…”

  “Why did they save me this time, then?” I asked. “If they’re so intent on keeping me from finding out the truth—”

  “Because your father and I can turn their worlds upside down.”

  “Jack told me about Dad’s family’s tie to the mob—I know all about it now.”

  She looked downright disdainful. “You think this is about mobsters? These people make the mob look like a bunch of choirboys in bad suits. This isn’t about them.”

  “But you can’t tell me what it is about,” I said.

  “No. I can’t. Your father has seen what happens when they’re threatened, and I’ve seen it through him. As long as you stay alive, I won’t tell their secrets. Not to you, not to anyone. But they only have so much patience.”

  “I know that,” I said. My voice didn’t sound like my own. “I’m done.”

  She couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d just announced I was ditching all my worldly goods and moving to Mars.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “You’re right—I saw what they can do. What they will do. I’m done. I’m going back to your place, and I’ll write up this story and sell it to the highest bidder, leaving out anything remotely connected to whoever the fuck this is. But that’s it. I’m done. It’s over.”

  She still didn’t look convinced, but she nodded. “All right. That’s good.”

  I studied her. The morphine was making me sentimental. “You were worried about me, huh?”

  “I was annoyed by you,” she corrected me. “As I usually am. Why can’t you knit? Or take up some kind of light recreational drug, like the rest of the world does when they’re bored.”

  I closed my eyes, smiling. “No. You were worried.” My voice faded. I felt her kiss my forehead the way Mrs. Brady always used to when she was tucking in her brood. Morphine really was lovely.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  The morphine had worn off and life was considerably less lovely by the next night, when I still hadn’t seen Einstein or Diggs, and nurses were coming around every half hour to stick something in me or take something out. Juarez peered in behind a bouquet of roses. He looked a little nervous—probably because he’d already been subject to a tantrum from me earlier that day about being forced to wear paper pajamas with no backs to them.

  “Up for a visitor?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Please.”

  He set the flowers on the table and dropped a pair of my favorite pj’s in my lap. “Those are for you.”

  “Flowers and pj’s? You’re officially my favorite person on the planet right now.”

  “If I’d known that was all it took, I would have sent them months ago.”

  He sat down. Since the rescue, in between the morphine and the bouts of unconsciousness, there’d been a tense uncertainty between us—probably because I’d gone against his direct order to stay in Montreal for the night, thereby nearly getting myself killed. I suspected an equally large part of that was the fact that I’d been running in the woods for two days with a man Juarez had been insisting for some time now, was in love with me.

  I tried to sit up. Juarez made a move to help me, but I stopped him with a glare. “So… What’s the what, please? Who killed whom? And how did Max Richards fit into all of it? And why was everyone convinced my father was the bad guy?”

  “Max was a friend of your father’s from his hometown.”

  “In Lynn,” I interrupted. “I got that part.”

  “Max got thrown out of Lynn after he set the mayor’s cat on fire.” I winced. “Exactly,” Juarez agreed. “He came to Maine to stay with your father.”

  “Who was having his own little rebellion by sleeping with everything with a pulse from here to the Mason Dixon line,” I added.

  “Do you really need me for this?”

  I closed my mouth and gave him my most winning smile. “I’ll be good. Please continue.”

  He got serious after that. “Will Rainier took a different approach to your father’s challenge than Jeff had originally intended. And when your father told him that he was absolutely, positively prohibited from touching his sister, he and Hank engineered the plot to take what Will had decided was rightfully his. Regardless of what Erin had to say about it.”

  I pushed away the thought of that night and everything Erin Lincoln must have gone through. It took some time before I could find my voice. Juarez took my hand.

  “You want me to go on?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Please.”

  He frowned, but he did as I asked. “Max must have followed them down to Eagle Lake that night when he heard about their plan. Hank ran, but he managed to keep Bonnie and Will with him.

  “We found the place where he’d been keeping all these girls over the past thirty years—his sanctuary, you said he called it? There were two separate quarters in there: a cozy little apartment with those rules you told me about. Then, on the other side, a much darker room. Cages and chains. Video equipment. He kept exhaustive notes of his ‘research.’” He used air quotes on that last word, then fell silent.

  “What about the other room?” I asked.

  He shook his head, not sure what I was asking.

  “Video equipment. Surveillance,” I said. “Was there any footage of that r
oom?”

  “We didn’t find anything. That’s where you said you and Diggs were kept.”

  I thought of Diggs’ arms around me. I’ll never let go. The look in his eye when Rainier took me away. The angel of death, his gun pressed to Diggs’ temple.

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t look at him, though. “That’s where we were kept.” He brushed the hair from my forehead. I changed the subject. “What about Max’s records? What did you find there?”

  “Everything,” he said briefly. “He kept notes from the beginning, dating all the way back to that first night with Will and Bonnie and Erin Lincoln: who killed whom, how it was done. With one exception, Max never actually killed anyone. He just pulled the strings, convincing everyone else to do it for him.”

  “Who was the exception?” I asked.

  “Mark Saucier.” I looked at him blankly. “Bonnie’s husband. When they got married, Bonnie stopped working for Max. Stopped doing all his dirty deeds. Apparently, Max didn’t take very kindly to that. He goes into great detail about Mark’s final days.”

  He’d gotten quiet again.

  “You still say this only makes your top ten worst cases?” I asked.

  “Definitely top five now.”

  Someone else would have stopped then. Let it drop for a while; we’d been tortured enough, hadn’t we? All of us. Stopping didn’t seem to be in my DNA, though.

  “So, why the J. on their chests? It doesn’t make sense to me, all those deaths somehow being used against my father?”

  “I’m still not completely clear on that,” Juarez admitted. “We know Max took Jeff Lincoln’s identity when he was admitted to that psychiatric unit in Michigan, with the intention of blaming Lincoln if any fingerprints or DNA were left behind.”

  “But that makes no sense,” I insisted. “If they actually caught my father after any of it, all they’d need to do was check his fingerprints and they’d see it clearly wasn’t him.”

  “It was just part of the mind game,” Juarez said. “A way of continually reminding Adam that he was in some way responsible for these girls’ deaths. That he would always be part of it.”