The room closed in around her. Her father was alive? She didn’t believe him. Stern was just messing with her head. But then the light dawned. The day she’d spied on the house with the binoculars. The man on the doorstep in the beige jumper and baggy khakis.
‘You sent my father to prison?’
‘Who said it was me?’ He pivoted to face her. ‘It’s your mother who has a habit of sending people away. You of all people should know that.’
A drop in pressure seemed to suck all the air from the room. It was a relief when a clap of thunder broke the tension. Erin fought to stay calm, but her heart jerked oddly against her ribs.
‘Who I am isn’t relevant,’ she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. ‘What interests me is why you lied to the police.’
His mouth twitched. ‘You used to be a criminal psychiatrist, am I right?’
She blinked, wondering whether or not to lie.
‘Yes, I know all about you, Dr Cartwright. Funny what you can find out these days, just by turning on a computer. So, you don’t need me to tell you that in a domestic crime the husband is always the primary suspect. When the police inquired about my whereabouts the night of the murders, I told them the truth. That I had dinner in Portland and then spent the night at a hotel with a woman who was not my wife. When asked if this woman was with me the entire night, I said yes.’
His unwavering stare bore into her skull. Sweat trickled down her neck.
‘I was in a state of shock. My wife and daughters had been brutally murdered. My son was missing. At the time, nobody thought he was a suspect. They assumed one of two things: that he’d spent the night with a friend, or he’d been abducted.’
‘You weren’t concerned for Tim’s welfare?’
‘Of course I was. I wanted the police to find him. What I didn’t want was for the Belle River police department, who hadn’t the first idea how to handle a murder inquiry, to waste precious time by treating me as a suspect. After Tim was found covered in my wife’s blood, whatever story I’d told the police no longer mattered. But, tell me, is there a point to all this? Your mother’s been jerking my chain for years. I don’t need more hassle from her daughter.’
‘You’re still in touch with her?’
The ghost of a sneer crossed his face. ‘Only by cheque.
She’s been blackmailing me for years.’
‘What for? You said you have nothing to hide?’
‘Vivien’s unstable. How could I know what story she’d cook up after the fact? Lobbing a cheque at her every now and then is like tossing a bone to a dog. Better to keep her quiet than have her drop a grenade into my life. And I had my new wife to think about.’ He wiped the sweat from his face. ‘My family was killed by my mentally ill son, yet it’s me who’s being harassed. How’s that for justice?’
A crack of thunder shook the house, followed by heavy rain that lashed the windows. From upstairs came a thump.
Erin looked at the ceiling. Was that Tim? Did he know she was here? The windows were closed but not locked. Would she be able to escape through one of them if Stern attacked her? She looked to the fireplace for a weapon, but the iron poker was gone.
‘Here’s what I think,’ she said. ‘You killed your wife and your daughters and made it look like Tim was to blame. Who would ever suspect you, a successful lawyer and upstanding pillar of the community? You were counting on that to tip the balance in your favour.’
A muscle twitched in Stern’s jaw. ‘Fascinating, Dr Cartwright.’ He clapped twice. ‘You have quite the imagination.’ He took a step towards her. ‘But, tell me this, if Tim didn’t murder my family, what was he doing two hundred miles from home, covered in his mother’s blood? How did he get there?’
‘You drove him there.’
‘I drove him?’ Stern laughed so hard he began to cough.
‘My dear young lady, you’re delusional. You might want to consider checking yourself into that asylum again. What was it called… Danfield? Once a raving lunatic…’ He raised his eyebrows, allowing the rest of the sentence to hang in the air.
‘You could have drugged him and driven him there,’ Erin said. ‘Dumped him in the woods over the New York state line before turning around and heading back to Portland. It wouldn’t have taken more than six or seven hours, there and back. Nobody would ever know. After all,’ she said, ‘you had an alibi for the entire night.’
Neither of them moved.
Another thump came from upstairs, followed by the sound of a chair scraping across the floor.
‘If I’m a cold-blooded killer, then you’re mighty brave, aren’t you, coming out here to confront me on your own.’ He paused to rub his temples. ‘But you haven’t got a shred of evidence. Everything you’ve just said is pure speculation. Even if you went to the police, they’d never reopen the case.’
‘They would if they had an eyewitness.’
That got his attention. His mouth twitched. Coupled with the greenish cast to his skin, Erin would say he was worried.
‘That was the one loose end you needed to tie up, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘To get rid of the only person who knew what really happened in your home that night. You could make his death look like suicide, or an accident. Who would question it? A mental patient recently released from long-term incarceration, who
