Before Stern could answer, thunder rolled across the sky.
Erin held her breath and waited.
He turned to look at the storm and when he whirled around, his face was black. ‘If anyone’s responsible for what happened to my family, it’s that pain-in-the-ass mother of yours. She didn’t have the sense to keep her goddamn mouth shut. Always needed to be the centre of attention. It’s her fault my daughters are dead.’
Erin reeled back in shock. ‘My mother killed your daughters?’
‘She might as well have.’ Stern exhaled noisily. ‘That bitch told your father about our affair, and he told my wife. She knew Dorrie was unstable emotionally, and that it would push her over the edge if she found out about Vivien and me.
‘That night, Dorrie called me at the hotel in Portland to tell me there was an emergency at home. There was something odd about her voice, so I raced back. When I got there, she was doped up or drunk, stumbling around and taunting me. It took me a moment to understand what she was saying, that my girls were dead. She had suffocated them with a pillow and then cut their throats. She’d wanted me to see it, all that blood. She looked at me with those mad eyes and laughed in my face. Revenge, pure and simple. Destroying what I most loved in life. It was the only way, in that twisted mind of hers, that she could get my attention.’
His face, a sickly shade of grey, was streaming with sweat. ‘Do you have any idea what I had to put up with? Coping with a wife like that? Do you think that was easy? I was on track to be partner at a prestigious firm in Boston when one of the senior partner’s wives found her passed out drunk in the bathroom. I had to slink back to Belle River with my tail between my legs. If word got around that my wife was a junkie, I’d have been finished as a lawyer. My whole life in the toilet after everything I’d worked for. Every night when I walked through my own front door… I never knew what I’d find. But that I would come home one night to discover my beautiful daughters…’ He covered his face with his hands and sobbed.
For a moment, Erin felt a twinge of sympathy. It would derange any loving father to find his daughters murdered in their beds by his own wife. That explained the strange discrepancies between the deaths. The two girls smothered in their beds, their throats neatly cut, compared to the blood and gore of the wife’s butchered body. Until now, it had never made any sense.
‘So, you killed your wife.’
A branch scraped against the window, followed by a flash of lightning. Stern stood in the corner, rigid as a statue.
‘You need to leave now.’ Each word like the jab of an ice pick.
‘When Tim came home that night,’ Erin said, ‘it must have struck you that he’d make the perfect scapegoat. My guess is you knocked him out with some kind of tranquilliser, smeared his clothes with your wife’s blood, and then bundled him into your car and drove to New York. Who would suspect? After all, you were in Portland with an ironclad alibi.’
He seemed strangely calm as he waited for her to say more. But Erin had said her piece, and she slipped past him and into the hall. The front door, though only a few metres ahead, seemed impossibly far away.
Behind her, a floorboard creaked, and a wisp of air prickled the skin on her neck. Before she could react, a hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled in his grasp, but his strength was too much for her. As she went to bite his hand, something sharp pierced her neck. A shadow embraced her, and she slumped to the floor.
46
A scrabble by her ear. The floor against her cheek was gritty and cold.
Erin opened her eyes to the dark. Not even a glimmer of light pierced the blackness. Her head felt woozy, and a dull pain cramped her gut. The dank odour of mildew and damp earth soured the air. She must be in a basement. Whether it was day or night, or how long she’d been out, was impossible to say. When did she arrive? Friday afternoon? By Monday, if she didn’t show up for work, someone would come looking for her.
But she’d told no one where she was going, not even Ray.
Her hands were cinched tight behind her back, a rag tied over her mouth. But even if she could call out, who would hear her? No one but Stern, who would only jab her with another hypodermic. Harrison must have given him a supply of knockout drugs in case of an emergency.
Footsteps overhead. She must be in the house, and not in some outbuilding or root cellar under the barn. Her wristwatch was gone, but she still had her amulet, and the weight of the quetzal against her sternum was comforting. Touching it with her fingertips always helped to calm her nerves, but she couldn’t even move her wrists.
As she struggled to sit upright, her head spun, and she nearly toppled over. There must have been something powerful in that syringe. Haldol or lorazepam. Or both. A combo used liberally at Danfield, whether warranted or not, where almost anything could get you the needle. Failing to turn off your light, talking back, begging to be let out. Whatever Stern had planned for her, short of dumping her body in a ravine, it couldn’t be worse than what she’d already been through.
At the sound of a scrape on the concrete floor, her heart skipped a beat. Was he coming for her now? Did he plan to kill her and dispose of the body? A shallow grave in the woods or tossed into an abandoned quarry, either
