Chapter 28
As I started my car and pulled out onto the street, a sense of dread filled me and tears burned at my eyes.
My phone rang then, and when I answered it I saw it was Duncan.
“Hey, stranger,” I said when I answered.
There were a few seconds of silence and then Duncan said, “Are you okay, Mack? You sound down.”
“I am.” I then told him about my trip to the church and my failure to find the next clue. “I’m scared, Duncan. I only have a few hours left to figure this thing out. What if I don’t?”
He hesitated before he answered. “A few hours are a few hours. We aren’t beaten yet. We’ll put our heads together and come up with something.”
I desperately wanted to believe him, but it was hard, even though I kept hearing Father Manx’s words in my mind: Have faith.
“If it helps,” Duncan went on, “I think we may have solved the case involving Tiny’s sister and her friend.”
That got my attention. “What? How?”
“Erik Hermann committed suicide last night. His wife found him around five this morning, dead in his car in the garage. He left the engine running and ran a garden hose from the exhaust pipe through a window, sealing it with duct tape. The ME said is looked like a clear-cut case of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. He left a note.”
“What did it say?”
“He asked his sister and Lori for forgiveness, and then said that he couldn’t bear to live with his guilt any longer after twelve years of living in hell.”
“Twelve years? He said that specifically?”
“He did.”
“Wow. Does Tiny know yet?”
“He should. Jimmy and I told his parents early this morning. They were going to call Tiny as soon as we left.”
“Are you sure that the note is legit?” I asked, remembering another case not too long ago that I worked with Duncan.
“Yeah, we had a handwriting expert look at it and compare it to other samples of Hermann’s writing.”
“How is his wife, Marie, doing?”
“Okay, considering. To be honest, I suspect she wasn’t all that surprised. Several people we talked to said that Hermann had a serious drinking problem and has for years, and that he always seemed depressed. If they knew it, she had to know it, too.”
I knew what Duncan said was true—I was able to discern as much in the brief visits I’d had with Erik Hermann. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have killed himself if we hadn’t come sniffing around to let him know that someone was looking into the case again.
“Can I tell the others?” I asked.
“Wait a bit if you would. We’re planning on releasing a statement to the press in about an hour.”
“Does this mean you’ll have to cancel our plans to get together today?”
“Not at all. We’ve already cleared the case. I have some paperwork to finish up so I might be a little later than planned, but other than that we should be good to go.”
I was glad to hear that Duncan and I would still be able to get together, but when I hung up the phone, I was plagued by an overwhelming sense of guilt, wondering if I had somehow played a role in Erik Hermann’s death.
I drove aimlessly for a while, not wanting to go back to the bar yet. Christmas decorations had started springing up around the city, and normally the light displays would have cheered me. But today they only depressed me. What a horrible time of year for a family to lose someone.
I kept replaying my meeting with Erik the day before, wondering if something I had said had pushed him over the edge. Hard as I tried, I still found it tough to believe that Erik Hermann had killed those girls. I recalled the yearbook he’d had on his desk and wondered why he’d had it out. Had he known then that he was going to kill himself? I wished now that I’d had a chance to read some of the things his classmates had written in the book. Would they have provided some extra insight into his character?
Though I wasn’t conscious of having a particular destination in mind, I realized I had driven to the UWM campus. The student evacuation for Christmas break was evident everywhere: piles of trash and furnishings along the curbs, parking lots that had once been filled to the brim were now empty, and where once there would have been students bustling back and forth between classes, the sidewalks were now nearly deserted.
I flashed back on Father Manx’s words to me: Have faith. My gut had led me here, so maybe I’d do what he said and have faith in the idea that it had done so for a reason. I parked and headed for the chemistry building, not sure it would even be open. It was, though the hallways were eerily empty, making my footsteps sound hollow. I headed for Erik Hermann’s office.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it locked, but luck was with me once again. The door was closed, but when I turned the knob it opened.
The outer office looked much the same as it had before except there was a stack of empty boxes in one corner. The door to Erik’s office was open and when I entered I saw that it, too, looked much the same.
I looked at the top of Erik’s desk and then at the stacks on the credenza, searching for the yearbook, but it wasn’t there. I recalled my suspicion that Erik might have a bottle of liquor hidden in his office somewhere, and curious, I searched the drawers of the credenza. They were filled with hanging files and miscellaneous stacks of paper, but no yearbook and no liquor bottles. Next, I moved to the desk and started searching those drawers. The top right one was filled with office supplies: pens, pencils, sticky notepads, staples, extra rolls of tape, paper clips, a staple remover, and bulldog clamps. I shut it and opened the larger drawer beneath it. There it was, a half-empty bottle of vodka. Propped up next to it was the yearbook. I took it out and opened it. This time there was something else tucked inside the front cover: an open envelope with what looked like a folded letter inside. Both the envelope and the paper appeared yellowed with age. I carefully removed the letter and gently unfolded it. It was a letter addressed to Erik, written in a girlish, flowery style with purple ink.
Dear Erik,
I’m so sorry about what happened today. When you kissed me, you surprised me and I reacted without thinking. I didn’t mean to hit you. If you still want me to be your girlfriend, I would like that a lot.
The letter i in both Erik’s and Lori’s names were dotted with little hearts. So much for Erik’s motive, I thought, setting the letter on top of the desk. Then another thought occurred to me. Had he gotten the letter before or after the girls were killed? Had he killed Lori because she rejected him, only to come home and find the note? That would explain the depth of his pain and anguish.
I picked up the yearbook again and started reading the handwritten notes and signatures on the inside cover from Erik’s friends and classmates. They were the typical stuff: Good luck. Glad we survived Mr. G’s Algebra class. See you next year. That sort of thing.
I moved on and paged through to the start of the freshman class pictures.
Lori and Anna were in the same grade and given that their last names were close alphabetically, I found both of their pictures on the same page. I recognized Anna’s picture immediately—it was the same one that had been in Tiny’s file—but when I looked for Lori’s picture, I didn’t recognize it right away. Had it not been for the name typed beneath it, I wouldn’t have known it was her. The eyes had been exed out with a ballpoint pen, and it had been done with such viciousness that the scoring had torn through the page. In addition, a gash had been drawn across Lori’s neck with red ink, and devil horns had been drawn atop her head.
Typed beneath both girls’ names were brief epitaphs: Forever in our hearts beneath Anna’s picture, and Your light will shine forever beneath Lori’s. There was an arrow drawn from Lori’s epitaph to the side of the page, and there, also written in red ink, was Lights out, bitch!!! I flipped back to the front of the book and looked at where Erik Hermann had written his name on the inside of the cover to identify the book as his. The writing was tight, heavy, and angular with a strong left slant. Then I flipped back and took another look at the writing next to Lori’s picture. This writing was round and light, with a right slant and a distinctively feminine style.
An idea came to me. I set the book on the desk next to the letter, and reached into my pocket to take out my cell phone to call Duncan. I felt something else in there and when I pulled it out, I realized it was the recorder I’d had from my visit to Erik the day before. As I slid it back into my pocket, I heard a voice behind me.
“What are you doing in here?”
I whirled around, and saw Marie Hermann standing in the doorway to Erik’s office, holding an empty box. Her eyes and nose were red from crying, her skin blotchy.
“The door was open,” I said evasively.
She cocked her head to the side and gave me an impatient look. “I had to go to the bathroom. I probably should have locked the office behind me when I did, but there wasn’t anyone around so I didn’t see a need. Why are you here?”
“I . . . I felt awful about Erik . . . I wanted . . . I thought . . . I’m sorry.”
She gave me a hateful look. “Are you? It’s because of you and that stupid writer friend of yours that this happened. You just had to go dredging up painful memories.” She set the box atop a stack of papers on the credenza and walked around to see what I was doing behind the desk. When she saw the drawer open, and what was in it, her eyes widened. Then she looked at the yearbook, and the letter and envelope on the desk. Something in her face shifted, and when she looked at me again, I felt my blood literally run cold. It was as if I had ice water coursing through my veins.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Marie.
“I’m packing up my dead husband’s office,” she snapped. Then she narrowed her eyes at the desktop. “Where did you find that letter? Erik told me he destroyed it.”
Puzzle pieces in my mind began to slip into place, and the picture they were forming was unsettling. My hand was still in my pocket, still on the recorder, and I fumbled and felt the button to turn it on. “Erik didn’t kill Lori and Anna, did he?” I said, slowly sliding my hand out of my pocket.
“Of course he didn’t. Erik was a good guy, a sweetheart. He was much too good for that bitch Lori. But it took me to open his eyes to that fact.” She turned then, walked over to the door, and closed it. Then she spun around and faced me again, leaning back against it. She smiled, but there was nothing friendly about it.