In the Drink (14 page)

“Why don't we get together tonight when you get back from the prison and put our heads together on it again?” Duncan suggested.

“What about the interview with this Apostle Mike guy?”

“I couldn't set it up for today. Right now we don't know where he is. So that will have to wait.”

“Do you think you'll be able to get away later?”

“I've been up all night so I'm taking a sleep break at three this afternoon and plan to return to work at ten. How about I spend the last hour or so of my break with you? I miss you, Mack.”

Again I glanced at Mal, feeling suddenly awkward about having this private, somewhat intimate exchange with Duncan in his presence. But he still appeared to be focused on his driving. “That would be nice,” I said, avoiding a
miss you, too
comeback and wondering why I was reluctant to make the declaration.

“Meet me at the back alley door at eight then.”

“Will do. Sweet dreams until then.”

“They will be,” he said, his voice suddenly softer, deeper, making me taste rich, dark chocolate, “because I'll be dreaming about seeing you.”

I felt myself blush as I disconnected the call and kept my face turned toward the side passenger window.

We rode in silence the rest of the way. Mal didn't ask me about Duncan or the call, nor did he try to make any idle conversation. It should have felt awkward, that silence, but it didn't. When we pulled up in front of Erik Hermann's house fifteen minutes later, he parked and the two of us sat staring out the windows, stretching the silence a little longer.

The neighborhood was one of the nicer ones in the city and Erik Hermann's home was a two-story brick colonial with a perfectly manicured and landscaped yard. The other homes in the area were older, but well maintained and large in size. I guessed Hermann's house had to be well over two thousand square feet inside and guessed it and most of the other houses in the neighborhood would list for four hundred grand and up.

“How does a college professor afford a house like this?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.

“You got me,” Mal said. “Maybe he married into money.”

We got out of the car and as Mal came around to join me he said, “How do you want to do this?”

“I'm betting his mother told him about Carter's visit, so let's tell him we're part of Carter's research team, and we're hoping to add some more detail and color to the dry descriptions and narratives that we found in the police files. We'll see where that takes us and wing it as we go.”

Mal smiled at me. “I like a girl who's willing to wing it. Let's fly, Ms. Dalton.”

We got out of the car and walked side by side to the front door. The air was brisk, signaling an end to our brief interlude with the atypically warm weather, and the neighborhood was quiet. Then the silence was broken by church bells ringing out the hour, most likely signaling the start of the morning service. I wondered if Erik was a churchgoer, meaning our visit might be a waste of time. Mal and I had discussed calling ahead, but in the end he convinced me that it would be better to make our visits unannounced. It would lead to more spontaneity, he said, and not give anyone time to prepare a story.

We climbed the front steps to the porch and I rang the doorbell. From inside, a woman's voice hollered out, “I'll get it,” and we heard footsteps approaching. The locks—at least two dead bolts—were thrown and then the door opened to reveal a young, dark-haired woman who looked to be in her mid- to late twenties. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her face was bare of makeup. She was dressed in black yoga pants and a T-shirt, and she had a towel draped around her neck. The faint sheen of sweat on her arms and face made it clear what she'd been doing when we rang the bell.

“Can I help you?” she asked, a little breathless. She had a strong, deep voice for a woman with a pleasant cadence. She oozed self-assurance. But oddly, her voice triggered nothing for me . . . no taste, no visual apparitions . . . nothing, and I noticed the void right away. My mind has become so accustomed to the various reactions my synesthesia creates that they become background noise most of the time, like sleeping with a fan on. The sudden lack of that noise is as noticeable as an unexpected loud noise. I wondered if I'd missed it, or if it really was absent. It wasn't like it had never happened before. There had been a handful of other people over the years who had triggered a similar reaction—or lack thereof—but they were rare. It both puzzled and intrigued me.

“I'm sorry if we interrupted your workout session,” I said with a smile. “We weren't even sure you'd be home, given that it's Sunday morning. You know, church and all that.”

“Oh, we don't belong to a church,” the woman said in a friendly tone, making a dismissive motion with her hand. “Are you selling something? Or are you Jehovah's Witnesses?”

“Neither,” I explained. “We're here to talk to Erik Hermann about his sister, Anna. Is he here by any chance?”

The woman frowned and shifted her gaze to Mal. “Are you the guy who's writing the book?”

“Sort of,” Mal said. “Mackenzie and I are research assistants for the writer, Carter Fitzpatrick. We help dig up the facts, and he spins them into word magic.”

The woman turned her focus back to me, her eyes doing a quick head-to-toe assessment. I felt sized up and judged, and had no idea what the final verdict had been. Her expression at this point was impassive, and it was as if synesthesia was my superpower and this woman was made of kryptonite.

Curious, I shifted my focus from her face to see if anything else about her triggered a synesthetic response. When I stared at her hair I got a faint whiff of fresh cut wood, a smell I'd experienced when looking at other dark-haired people. Then I focused on the sweat beads on her forehead and felt a prickling sensation along my arms, something I typically experienced when looking at sweaty people.

I was distracted then by a male silhouette that appeared behind the woman, backlit by sunlight coming through windows at the rear of the house. He was tall and slender, but I couldn't tell much more than that because the backlighting hid his features.

“Who is it, Marie?” he hollered. His voice was deep and tasted hot and beefy to me, like a sizzling steak. Clearly my synesthesia was still working.

“Are you Erik Hermann?” I said to the silhouette. “We're with Carter Fitzpatrick and we came to talk to you about the deaths of your sister and her friend, Lori Gruber.”

“I have no interest in stirring up any of that again,” he grumbled.

“Oh, honey,” the woman said, pouting prettily and turning back toward the silhouette. “What can it hurt? You've said a hundred times how much it bothers you that Anna's murder was never solved.”

Erik Hermann finally moved toward us and I was able to see his face. He had aged some since the photo that was in the files we had. The planes of his face were sharper, and gone were the downy softness and the slightly pudgy cheeks. Like Marie, he appeared fit, and I guessed that the two of them exercised regularly, but Erik's color was pale and a bit sallow, as if he'd been ill recently.

“My mother mentioned something about some guy who wants to write about Anna and Lori,” Erik said. “Is that who you're with?”

I thought I caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath and wondered if it was a true smell or a synesthetic reaction. I made a mental note to ask Mal if he picked up on it, too. If it was a true smell, Erik Hermann was hitting the booze early on a Sunday morning, which to me screamed drinking problem at the very least, and more likely alcoholic.

“Yes, the writer's name is Carter Fitzpatrick,” I repeated for his benefit, unsure if he had heard what we told Marie. “May we come in and talk with you?”

Marie looked at Erik and said, “At least hear them out, honey. Maybe this time someone will figure out the truth and you'll finally be out from under that shadow you've had trailing behind you all these years. Doesn't Anna deserve every chance at justice we can give her?”

Erik scowled at his wife and then at us. “I remember all too well what it felt like to be railroaded twelve years ago and I have no interest in resurrecting any of that scrutiny or pain. So you can tell your friend that he'll be writing his damned book without any help from me.” With that, he retreated back into the house, disappearing down a hallway. A moment later we heard a door slam.

“I'm sorry about that,” Marie said, giving us an apologetic smile. “He hasn't been feeling well lately and he's edgier than usual. And the subject of those murders tends to bring out the worst in him.” Her smile faded and she shook her head sadly. “I can't say I blame him. They really raked him over the coals.”

“Did you know Erik back then?” I asked her.

“Sure. I knew Anna and Lori, too. We all grew up together. It was a horrible thing that happened to them,” she said, looking stricken. “And it was doubly hard on Erik because at one point the cops seemed convinced that he killed them.” She shook her head in disbelief and exhaled her disgust over the idea with a sardonic
pfft
. “As if he could do something like that to anyone, much less his own sister.”

“Are you and Erik married?” I asked, spying the band on Marie's left hand.

She nodded. “We were high school sweethearts and got married a year after graduation. We've worked hard to put all of that anguish behind us, but it's hard to forget, particularly since the killer was never caught. I've seen the way some folks look at Erik, and I can tell they're convinced he's guilty. Resurrecting it all again is going to cause a lot of pain for him, but if it will help exonerate him once and for all it would be worth it. So while I don't think my husband is going to help you, I'm willing to try, though I doubt if I have any useful knowledge about the situation.”

“Sometimes the most insignificant facts can be telling if they're looked at the right way,” Mal said.

“The right way?” she echoed with a curious smile.

Mal tried to explain. “Having a fresh eye look at things casts them in a different light, particularly if it's someone with an objective point of view. I'm sure there were a lot of people involved in the investigation back then and that it was a very emotional experience for all of them. Maybe all the bits of information were divvied up among them with no one person having all the pieces, or a grasp of the big picture. Or maybe their emotions colored the way they interpreted things. Who knows? By looking at it again, maybe we can happen upon some bit of information that seemed insignificant initially, but could break the case wide open.”

Marie considered this for a moment and then shrugged. “I imagine it can't hurt to try,” she said. And then she stepped aside and waved us into the house.

I don't know if Mal felt as uncomfortable as I did about entering the house on the heels of Erik's stormy exit moments ago. If he did, it didn't show. I, on the other hand, felt ready to bolt and had to fight hard not to do so.

Erik had disappeared down a hall off to the left of the entryway. I caught a glimpse of the kitchen straight ahead—Sub-Zero fridge, chef style range, and granite counters—and to the right was a combination dining and living room. The dining table was a dark, polished mahogany centered over a thick Persian rug and surrounded by tall-backed, cloth-covered white dining chairs. A small crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling and at the table's center were three crystal candle holders with long white tapers in them. The living room also featured a Persian rug, and it looked cozy and comfy with a large couch and two chairs done in soft, brown leather with nail head trim. A couple of throws and a variety of pillows added a touch of color. On one wall was a large stone fireplace with a huge wood mantel above it. A coffee table between the couch and fireplace was wood painted a sleek, glossy black and on top of it was a large glass vase with two long calla lilies in it. The place looked like something out of a home design magazine. It also looked unlived-in. There were no personal touches like photos anywhere.

Marie gestured toward the couch and told us to have a seat. As I slipped past her I caught a whiff of something with an herbal smell . . . a shampoo perhaps? It triggered a faint fluttering sensation along my arms, as if a dozen butterflies were hovering above them, flapping their wings. Marie sat in one of the chairs, perched on the edge with her hands between her knees.

“Where would you like to begin?” she asked.

“If you don't mind, I'd like to start with the day of the murders and what you know about Lori's and Anna's whereabouts, as well as Erik's.”

“I don't know anything about what Lori and Anna did that day except for what I've learned from Erik, the family, the news articles, and the police. From what I heard, the two of them went for a bike ride and never came back. If I remember right, it was a couple of months before they found the bodies. I do know that Erik had nothing to do with what happened to them because I was with him during the time in question.”

Her statement puzzled me. “I thought he was riding out in the country with a friend, some boy named Dylan,” I said.

“He was . . . well . . . the riding in the country part. But it wasn't with a boy. I'm Dylan.”

I must have looked even more confused because then she added, “My first name is Dylan. My parents were big Bob Dylan fans and thought the name was cute and clever, but I never liked it.”

“I see,” I said. “I assumed Dylan was a guy.”

“A common mistake,” she said with smile. “That's just one of the reasons I never liked the name. A few of my friends used it back in high school, but these days the only one who uses it is my brother, and he does it solely to torment me.” She flashed an amused, slightly put-upon smile that made me suspect she actually liked that her brother did this. “I prefer to go by Marie, which is my middle name.”

“So you and Erik were together during the time of the girls' murders?” Mal asked.

She nodded, looking chagrined. “Erik had just turned sixteen and his parents got him a new car. Not really new, of course, it was used, but it was a car and independence and all that other cool stuff teenagers worship. He wanted to show it off to me so he drove me around town at first and eventually we headed out into the country, parked somewhere, and did what kids do.” She paused, looking abashed. “We both lied about what we were doing for a long time because we didn't want our parents to know what we were up to. But when the cops started hinting around that Erik might be a suspect, we realized what the repercussions might be if we didn't fess up. So we finally told the truth.”

I said, “We heard that Erik liked his sister's friend, Lori Gruber, and that was why he came under suspicion.”

Marie's expression turned hurtful. “I don't know where that rumor came from,” she said. “I think Lori might have started it herself because she had a crush on him, though she pretended not to.”

“If she did, Anna didn't know about it,” I said. “At least not according to her diary.”

Marie frowned. “You've read Anna's diary?”

I nodded. “Erik's parents were kind enough to let Carter copy it as part of his research for the book. Anna not only said that Erik liked Lori, she wrote about an incident that happened between the two of them. It said something about Erik trying to come on to Lori and she ended up slapping him to make him stop.”

“That's not what happened,” Marie said with a dismissive
pfft
. “I asked Erik about it and he said that Lori tried to kiss him and he pushed her away and told her he wasn't interested. That made her mad and that's why she slapped him. I don't know if Anna made the story up on her own—she did have a vivid imagination and used to write stories all the time—or if Lori told her it happened the way Anna wrote in the diary.”

I frowned, still bothered by the story. “If that was the case, why did Anna write about how smitten her brother was with Lori before the incident? She and Lori seemed to be very good friends and if Lori had a crush on Erik, I think she would have told Anna.”

Marie shrugged. “I know that Lori and Anna were very close,” she said, “but I'm sure they kept a few secrets to themselves.”