‘Stern was sending you money?’
‘Not in a regular way,’ he said, steering her towards a bench. ‘But every now and then, on my birthday, or for Christmas or college graduation, I’d get a card with a cheque in it. A big cheque. I’m not talking piddly amounts here. Two, five, sometimes ten thousand dollars.’ Ray shook his head. ‘Once, I tried to return the money, but he said he’d made some kind of investment in my name when I was a kid, back in my Little League days, and the money was from that. It did strike me as odd, though. I mean, why would he do something like that? But who was I to complain? I was a struggling student, and then trying to get by with a bunch of jobs that didn’t pay well. The money was a huge help. In fact, it changed my life. I used it to buy my apartment.’
He turned to look at the boats on the river. ‘It was only when you asked all those questions about Stern that I started to remember… after so many years of trying to forget… about the night his wife and daughters were killed. The memories came rushing back, and those cheques began to seem a lot less like generosity from a man who’d suffered a horrible tragedy, and more like… hush money.’
Erin dropped onto the bench. ‘Hush money? Why would you think that?’
‘Because I saw him. That night. I was out with some friends, squashed into the back seat of someone’s car. We were just cruising around when I saw Stern sometime around midnight, driving on one of the back roads that cut through the forest. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. We never heard any details about what happened that night. It was barely mentioned in the local paper. Plenty of gossip, to be sure, but nobody really knew anything. Stern must have kept the more salacious bits out of the news. He had that kind of pull. Though I did eventually hear that Tim had been arrested and charged with the crime.’
‘But you never told anyone that Stern wasn’t in Portland where he claimed?’
Ray turned his back to the river. ‘Like I said, I learned early on it was safer to keep my mouth shut. I was an awkward, frightened child. My dad was violent. My mom was a mess, and just as scared of him as I was. It got worse in high school. I turned into this sad loner, a bit of a weird kid. Awkward, shy. Kind of like Tim, I guess.’
From her bag, Erin pulled out the copies of Ray’s yearbook pictures she’d printed off the internet. With a red pen, she’d circled the string of nonsense letters that had kept her mystified for months, having failed to see, until a few days ago, what they meant: eldu#QUEpasa? She passed him the photocopy. ‘Someone whose high school nickname was “the Duke” doesn’t sound like a loner to me.’
When Ray looked at the photocopy, his face paled. When he said nothing, Erin continued. ‘I knew my brother had a bunch of friends with a reputation for raising hell. Vandalising property, selling drugs, terrorising other kids.’ She watched his face. ‘They had these ridiculous nicknames. The Viking, the Enforcer, the Duke. When we first met, I was so charmed by you, it never occurred to me that you were one of them.’
‘I really don’t know what—’
‘It took me a while to make the connection. But your yearbook photo gave it away.’
‘Erin, listen…’ He tried to grab her hand, but she pulled away.
‘All this time… getting to know you, baring my soul. How could I have known I was falling for “El Duque” himself.’
*
That night she cried. Though the tears had been building for months, ever since that day at Ruth Davis’ flat, when she’d nearly fallen to pieces, it was Ray who broke the floodgates. The look on his face when she’d left him on the banks of the river sliced her in two.
Skilled at seeing through the mask people showed to the world, how had she failed to spot the moral deficiencies lurking below the surface? On the train back to Lansford, she tried to come up with excuses for what he’d done. Not only the cruelty of his teenage years – hadn’t they all done things they were ashamed of? – but the lies about the money and his relationship to Stern.
But however she tried to justify it, the facts remained. In the guise of ‘the Duke’, Ray had tormented boys like Tim and Jeremy. But that wasn’t the worst of it. If Ray had come forward about seeing Stern that night, the truth would have come out, and Tim’s name cleared. Twenty-seven years in a locked ward. There were no reparations for that.
Two nights later, while she was tucked up in bed at the country inn near Albany, where she’d checked in to rest before returning to work, Erin’s mobile pinged.
Can we talk? I’ll come to you.
She reached for the delete button. But it was only fair to hear him out.
Saturday 3.00pm. 79 Maple Street, Albany.
She pressed send and switched off the light.
*
Erin was waiting in her car in front of a three-storey house with a wrap-around porch when a taxi pulled up and Ray stepped out. Dressed in jeans and hiking boots, he looked prepared for a day in the countryside. He glanced at the house
