*
Niels was leaning against the reception desk, chatting with the duty nurse. ‘There you are,’ he said, as Erin came through the door. ‘I left two messages on your phone. Didn’t you get them? You just missed her.’
‘Missed who?’
‘Cassie Gray. She left ten minutes ago, very upset. But we couldn’t convince her to stay. I think she came here to talk to you.’
Erin stopped short. Cassie had come back to the clinic and she’d missed her. Damn. ‘What happened? Did she say how I can reach her?’
‘She didn’t. But the home number’s in her file.’
But that was no use. Twice Erin had tried calling Cassie at home. Both times the mother had hung up on her. She could pretend to be one of Cassie’s school friends. But Lonnie Tyler was surely too clever for that old ruse.
Regret washed over her. She should have been here. All this chasing around the country for clues about Tim’s past was running her ragged, not to mention stealing time away from her patients. And now this. Cassie had sought her out, looking for help, and where had she been? On a wild goose chase. If that wasn’t a sign it was time to stop, she didn’t know what was.
Except there was one lead she couldn’t ignore. The boy who’d won the science fair prize with Tim. One more foray into Tim’s life before he killed his family, and then she was done.
26
Manhattan, New York
April, Present Day
‘Tim Stern? Sure, I remember him.’ Ray grabbed a pile of laundry off the divan. ‘How could anyone forget?’ He trod barefoot across the floor, picking up newspapers and stacks of mail and dumping them on a table in the corner.
The air in the flat reminded Erin of a Middle Eastern bazaar. Cardamom and cloves and another scent she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Dramatic black-and-white photographs of the city covered the far wall. Across the room, a bank of windows showed a sliver of Riverside Park. She wondered what Ray did for a living that he could afford a place like this.
‘That’s better.’ He swept his fingers through his hair. ‘I’m a terrible slob.’
Erin bit back a smile. The flat might be a mess, but not the man himself. His crisp burgundy shirt was perfectly pressed, his face clean-shaven. And there was something charming about an untidy flat. A sign of someone too caught up with living to worry about the mundane details of housekeeping. As he passed closed to her, she studied his face. If she’d seen him before, no trace of it remained.
As soon as she was settled on the low-slung couch, Ray slipped into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine.
‘Care for a glass?’ He showed her the label. ‘Friend of mine’s got a superb vineyard in Mendoza. This one’s an excellent Pinot Noir. He sent me a case, all the way from Argentina, for my birthday last week.’
It was a bit early to start drinking, but perhaps a little wine might take the edge off her nerves. When he handed her a glass, their hands briefly touched.
Sprawling next to her, Ray spread goat’s cheese on a cracker and popped it in his mouth. ‘Olive?’ He passed her a bowl, but she shook her head. This wasn’t a social call. ‘So… Tim Stern, huh? Talk about a bolt from the blue.’ As he looked at her, his eyes, the warm colour of hazelnuts seemed to change with the light. ‘Are you writing a book or something?’ He propped his feet on a brightly coloured floor cushion. ‘True crime is hot right now. I know some people in publishing. If you’d like, I could put you in touch with them.’
‘Not a book, just an article.’ Heat rose to her face. To hide her unease, she stood and carried her glass to the bank of windows. Five storeys below, the street was jammed with yellow cabs, and the pavement teeming with Saturday shoppers. A woman juggling a baby and a sack of groceries flung her arm out and smacked her other child, a tiny toddler, on the cheek. The little girl’s face crumpled and she let out a howl. Erin instinctively touched her own face and winced. Poor kid.
‘I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression on the phone,’ Ray was saying as she turned away from the window. ‘It’s true that Tim and I were assigned to work on a science project together. But other than that, I barely knew him.’ He swirled the liquid in his glass. ‘We didn’t exactly move in the same circles.’
She returned to the divan, woozy from the wine already. In her rush to catch the train into the city, she’d forgotten to eat lunch.
‘After I graduated high school,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t get away from Belle River fast enough. But I’ve got my old class yearbook around here somewhere, if you want to see Tim’s photo.’ He gestured to the wall of books across the room. ‘Funny what we hang onto.’ Ray jumped up and ran his fingers across the hardbound volumes on the bottom shelf. ‘Nope, not here.’
He disappeared into the back of the flat, where Erin could hear the sound of furniture being dragged across the floor. Out in the street, a siren blared and faded away.
He rejoined her, hefting a blue and white book above his head. ‘I knew I had it.’ Sitting cross-legged on the floor, his back against the divan, he flipped through the pages. ‘There’s your man.’ He tapped a photo with his finger.
She scooted closer until her knee touched his shoulder. Timothy W. Stern, Jnr, Junior class of 1977, Belle River High School.
So, that was Tim. Before committing the bloody crime that sent him to Greenlake.
‘May I?’
As he passed her the yearbook, their hands touched again and she felt a distinctive tingle. She moved her knees away and studied the photo. Tim at seventeen, in a corduroy jacket and knit tie, cinched up tight
