Alter Ego

18

Serena stared at the photograph of Peach Piper that Maggie had sent her in an e-mail. There was no question that Peach was the girl they’d found in the woods, but in this photo she was fresh and alive. She had blond hair cut in a Mia Farrow pixie style. Freckles dotted her forehead, and her face was small and almost perfectly round. She was tiny, skinny, flat-chested, the kind of girl who could have passed for a teenager if she’d wanted.

What struck Serena most was the loneliness in Peach’s blue eyes. The photo showed her smiling, but her smile couldn’t completely hide the longing behind those eyes. She looked like someone who was alone in the world and had grown resigned to the fact that it would never change.

It made Serena angry. She had a weakness for lost girls. She’d been one of them herself, which was one of the reasons she’d fought so hard to make sure Cat was not a lost cause. But for Peach, it was too late. That made Serena furious. Particularly if Peach had died because of the whims of someone rich, powerful, and untouchable.

What did Peach see that got her killed?

Maggie had called to ask that question. Peach Piper had been spying on Dean Casperson, watching his house night after night from behind the lenses of a Moonraker telescope. What did she see?

Maybe another drugging. Maybe another assault. Maybe she’d seen what Casperson was really capable of. But if she’d witnessed an assault and rape at the house in Congdon Park, where was the evidence to back it up? And was that enough to call in a hit man to kill Peach?

Then Serena remembered: John Doe hadn’t come to town to kill Peach. He was already here.

According to Curt Dickes, John Doe was at the party at Casperson’s house on Saturday night, helping a drunk girl into his car. Peach must have seen both of them through the telescope.

Who was the girl?

Was she dead? And if so, where was her body?

Serena got up from her desk at police headquarters. She stretched her long arms over her head. It was already early evening. She was tired, but she wasn’t ready to go home, because she felt she was close to unraveling something. She went to the vending machine and bought herself a Snickers bar. She unwrapped and ate it as she leaned against the wall. The sugar revived her. She wandered back toward her desk, but then she detoured to Max Guppo’s desk, which was just outside Stride’s empty office.

Guppo was still at work. Like Maggie, he always seemed to be there. However, Guppo, unlike Maggie, had a life. He’d been married for twenty-five years and had five daughters, a house, a boat, and everything that made a native Minnesota boy happy. He was the most Christian of Christians she’d ever met.

“Hey, Max,” Serena said, dropping into the chair in front of the desk.

Guppo took his eyes off his monitor. He typed at a speed that seemed incongruous with his thick fingers. He had an oversized slab of homemade meat loaf on a paper plate in front of him, and he picked off large chunks with a plastic fork. A piece of apple pie waited for him under plastic wrap.

“Hey, Serena,” he replied. He held up the plate of meat loaf. “Want a bite?”

“No, thanks.”

“What’s up?”

She explained what Maggie had told her. “I’m trying to figure out why Peach Piper got killed. This Bolton guy in Florida thinks it must be because Peach found something linking Casperson to another assault. We know John Doe took a girl out of Casperson’s party last Saturday, and the girl was either drunk or drugged. That girl has to be our victim. And John Doe was not a chauffeur. If he was there, the girl’s dead.”

Guppo’s round face scrunched into a frown. He leaned back in his wheeled chair, which was a risky maneuver. The chair made noises of protest under his weight. “Except nobody’s missing,” he said.

“Are we sure about that?” Serena asked.

“Well, there aren’t any reports. If a local was missing, we’d know about it. It would have been reported by now.”

Serena nodded. Guppo was right. “Yeah, girls don’t just go missing around here without somebody noticing. What about someone from the Twin Cities? Maybe she drove up here for the day and got an invitation to the party.”

“Alone? And she didn’t tell anyone where she was going?”

“It happens. The filming of the movie got a lot of play in the media. Everybody knows about it down there.”

Guppo’s fingers flew on the keyboard. He spent five minutes loading and scrolling through multiple screens. Then he shook his head. “Good thought, but I can’t find a missing person report anywhere in Minnesota that looks even remotely promising. Frankly, a young woman disappearing like that in January would be big news. There would be headlines.”

“Well, thanks for checking, Max.”

She got up again and went back to her desk. She tried to put herself in the mind of Peach Piper, sitting alone in a cold, empty house in Congdon Park. She was eating Chinese food on a Saturday night and staring through a telescope at Dean Casperson’s house. If she saw an assault, then what? There was no missing person. No murder. No report of rape. Yet if it was worth killing Peach to keep her quiet, there had to have been another crime. Another victim.

John Doe was there. He helped a girl into the Impala. He was a hired killer; he didn’t just take her home.

What happened to that girl?

Her mind bounced from idea to idea. She thought about the secrets of someone like Dean Casperson. She thought about John Doe and Peach Piper and their lives intersecting. She thought about a single deer crossing the road in the middle of a blizzard and launching the entire investigation.

She was hungry, and that made her think of Chinese food again. And that made her think about Saturday night again.

Saturday night.

Girls don’t just go missing around here without somebody noticing.

Serena’s eyes bolted wide open. She got out of her chair and wove through the cubicles back to Guppo’s desk. She sat down and repeated the same thing to him: “Girls don’t go missing around here without somebody noticing.”

Guppo chewed his meat loaf and stared back at her, confused. “Right, but nobody’s missing.”

“That’s my point. Maybe somebody went missing, and we all noticed, but none of us knew what we were seeing.”

“I’m not following,” Guppo said.

“Last Saturday night. What happened last Saturday night?”

“Dean Casperson had a party in Congdon Park. Peach Piper was eating moo shu and watching the whole thing.”

Serena shook her head. “Not the party. Not Congdon Park. Nowhere near there. What else happened?”

“Um.” Guppo scratched his comb-over and searched his memory.

“Somebody died,” Serena prompted him.

“Nobody was murdered in the city last Saturday.”

“I didn’t say murder, but somebody died.”

Guppo thought about it, and then he understood what she was saying. “Are you talking about that kid in Proctor? Rochelle Wahl?”

“That’s exactly who I’m talking about. Did you see her picture in the paper? Rochelle was a very pretty girl. If she was at the party, she would have gotten Dean Casperson’s attention.”

“Except she wasn’t at the party.”

“How do we know? We never looked into it, because we had no reason to think she ever left home. She was found frozen to death in her own backyard.”

“The medical examiner said it was an accident.”

“Maybe that’s what John Doe wanted it to look like,” Serena suggested. “Call up the police report. What does it say?”

Guppo’s fingers flew on the keyboard again. He reviewed the details of the investigation into Rochelle Wahl’s death, and then he shook his head. “She was in her pajamas, Serena. Her parents were out of town, and she broke into the liquor cabinet and got drunk as a skunk. She went out into the yard to throw up, and she slipped on the ice and hit her head. She was unconscious in subzero weather for hours. She was dead of exposure and frozen as an ice cube by the time anyone found her. Are you really saying John Doe staged the entire scene?”

“I’m saying John Doe left Dean Casperson’s house with a drunk, unidentified girl. The next day, we found a drunk, dead girl in Proctor.”

“It seems like a stretch,” Guppo said.

“Not for a professional assassin. Curt said the girl he saw at the party was tall. Was Rochelle tall?”

Guppo checked the monitor, and his big lips puckered. “Five foot eleven.”

Serena spread her arms. “So?”

“So you think Rochelle crashed the party, got drunk, and had sex with Dean Casperson? And at that point, he panicked and brought in John Doe to get rid of her?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Serena replied. “And Peach Piper saw the whole thing. Remember, you’re leaving out the single most important fact about Rochelle Wahl. There’s a reason she would have been a lethal threat to Dean Casperson if anyone found out about her. She was fifteen years old.”