Goth? It was true she used to have pale hair. Dishwater blonde is what Vivien called it. But she’d dyed it dark brown after running away, not black. In her blue cotton jumper and linen trousers, she couldn’t look any less goth than she did.
As he chomped through the pizza, and glugged a beer, she imagined this might be how an entomologist felt, while observing a particularly gruesome species of arthropod.
Before she could jump away, he reached out and flicked a lock of her hair. ‘Remember that time you chopped your hair off as a kid? That was weird. But you were a weird kid, weren’t ya?’ With his finger, he made a circle near his ear. ‘So it kind of went with the territory.’
The cropped hair, how could she forget? Though it wasn’t crazy at all, but a perfectly rational, if desperate, act of self-preservation. What else could she have done in the face of Vivien’s threats to hack off Erin’s long hair while she slept? Snip, snip. Vivien liked to terrorise Erin by snapping the sewing shears in front of her face as she got ready for bed. Cutting off her own hair was the only way Erin could think of to put a stop to Vivien’s nocturnal reign of terror. That was the idea anyway. Though a fat lot of good it did her in the end.
‘Cat got yer tongue?’ He took a swig of his beer and smirked as he tore into another slice of pizza. A glob of tomato sauce fell to the carpet. ‘Wanna slice?’
She shook her head, hypnotised by the grease on his chin and the piggy eyes. Her mind spun back to an image of herself as a child. Pudgy, awkward, terrified. How Graham used to stalk her through the house, jumping out from behind doors to grab her by the neck, trap her under the stairs, or lock her in the cellar at night. The friction burns, and the bruises from his vicious pinching. Baiting, jeering. She was a fat pig, a retard.
He popped open another beer and tilted his head, slugging down half the can in a single gulp. Munching and slurping his way to some pre-appointed doom. Even if he tried, he couldn’t be more a caricature of the boorish sad-sack than he already was. When had it happened, this transformation? Was it slow and steady, or all at once? Golden Boy gone to seed.
He waved a hand round the room. ‘In case you’re wondering, these aren’t my usual digs. I got me a nice house over in Nashua. Or did. But my ex got it in the divorce. Crap lawyer or it would have gone to me. I paid for the damn thing, didn’t I? And the last kid’s almost out of the house, so it’s not as if she needs all that space. It won’t be long before she’s sitting over there all by her lonesome, wishing old Graham was there to cosy up with on the sofa.’
Erin bit her lip to keep from laughing. Whoever the former Mrs Marston might be, she couldn’t imagine her, or anyone, wanting to snuggle up to this disgusting swine of a man. She’d seen enough, it was time to get the answers she came for and get out.
‘Do you remember a guy named Tim Stern?’
‘Timmy Stern?’ He grabbed a handful of crisps from the bag on the floor and tossed them in his mouth. ‘The whack job who axed his family?’
There was no axe involved, but that was beside the point.
‘What brought him up?’ Graham dropped the empty pizza box on the floor. ‘Wait, don’t tell me. You’re dating him, right?’ He glanced at her hand. ‘No ring, so at least you’re not engaged yet. But in case you’re about to tie the knot, you should know that, in addition to him being a murderous psycho, he’s a total wanker. But, hey, whatever floats your boat.’
The skin on her neck prickled.
‘I’ve been trying to remember the night of the murders,’
Erin said, resisting the urge to bolt from the room. ‘Where I was.’ She met his eye. ‘And where you were.’
He popped the tab on another beer and handed it across to her, but she shook her head. ‘Where do you think you were? Home in bed, right. Didn’t old Viv have a rule against sleepovers?’
Vivien had a rule against most things. ‘So if I was home in bed, where were you?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ He scratched his neck. ‘What are you, a cop or something?’
‘I’m a psychiatrist.’
‘No shit.’ He threw back his head and laughed. ‘That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year. The loony treating the loons.’ He snorted and downed the beer.
‘I’m trying to remember if I heard anything. Like somebody coming home very late, after midnight.’
Unless she had the dates mixed up, Erin was sure it was the same night she got caught sneaking out to the movie theatre, and that there’d been a storm, with the rain hitting the roof like marbles. Lying in bed in the dark, tense with the terror of being alone in the house, she had heard someone come through the kitchen door just before two in the morning.
‘It was a Friday night,’ she said. ‘You must have been out.’
He shrugged. ‘If it was a Friday, I sure wasn’t at home.’ He swung his feet onto the coffee table. ‘Out with the Duke and that crazy Lenny Simko, probably. I wonder whatever happened to those guys.’
‘You don’t keep in touch?’
‘Nah. Not since I moved out to Ohio. And after I came back here, it seemed kind of lame to look them up. For all I know, they’re all in prison. Or dead. The Duke used to do some pretty serious drugs back then.’
‘What kind of drugs? Cocaine?’
‘Nah. Cocaine’s for wussies. The trippy stuff. LSD, shrooms, angel dust.’
‘You mean PCP?’
‘Sure.
