Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7)

36

The Present

‘We finally got an ID on the victim outside the bar,’ Maggie told Stride and Serena.

She stood in the doorway of Stride’s cottage on the 3300 block of the Point. It was a July evening after dark, and the windows were all open, letting in lake air through the screens. Stride sat in his red leather armchair near the fireplace, under the mantle that was decorated with a sign that read: BELIEVE. Serena sat on the walnut steps that led up to their unfinished attic.

He reached over to the small table next to him for a cigarette before he realized that he didn’t smoke anymore. Strange. After fits and starts, it had been three years since he’d had a cigarette, but sometimes he simply forgot that he was a different man now. You are always one moment away from being who you were, so the price of maturity is constant vigilance.

‘Who was she?’ Serena asked. She wore a purple tank top and shorts, leaving her strong arms and legs bare. The skin of her long legs was mottled by scars from burns she’d suffered in a fire two years earlier. Her flowing black hair was mussed.

It had been three weeks since Serena saw a young blond woman shot and killed outside the Grizzly Bear Bar in West Duluth. She’d chased down the shooter, but he’d escaped, leaving his gun behind but with the woman’s wallet and phone lodged in his pocket. They were no closer to finding him, and the woman herself had been a Jane Doe since the murder. Nothing in her baby-blue suitcase had helped them give her a name. Until now.

‘Kelly Hauswirth,’ Maggie said. ‘Twenty-two years old. From Denver.’

‘She was a long way from home.’

‘Yeah.’ Maggie danced uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

‘You can come inside,’ Serena told her. ‘I don’t bite.’

‘I think that’s what the wolf said to Little Red Riding Hood,’ Maggie replied, but she wandered into the cottage, handed off copies of a Colorado driver’s license to the two of them, and sat down on Stride’s sofa with her feet propped on the coffee table. It was like the old days, but it wasn’t.

A palpable frost chilled the air between her and Serena. The two of them had nursed an uneasy friendship since Stride and Serena began a relationship four years earlier, but the fractures between them had split open the previous fall. In the wake of a near-fatal accident that left him struggling with flashbacks and nightmares, Stride had made the one mistake in his life that he’d always sworn to avoid. He’d slept with Maggie. Within days, Serena moved out, and he and Maggie launched a short-lived affair.

But things changed, and then they changed again. That was the way of the world. He and Serena were back together. They shared the cottage with a pregnant teenage girl named Cat Mateo, whom they’d rescued from the Duluth streets. And Maggie, who was in many ways still his best friend, was an outsider now.

‘Where’s the kid?’ Maggie asked, glancing into Cat’s empty bedroom at the front of the house.

Serena rolled her eyes. ‘Out. Again.’

‘We think she has a boyfriend,’ Stride added, ‘but she won’t tell us who it is.’

‘Welcome to parenthood,’ Maggie said.

Stride knew that Maggie didn’t trust Cat. She was also still pretending that everything was fine between her and Stride, when it clearly wasn’t.

‘Kelly Hauswirth worked at a telemarketing company in Centennial,’ Maggie went on. ‘She told her co-workers she was going on vacation. Didn’t say where or with who. Word is, she kept to herself, didn’t socialize much. It was almost two weeks before anyone reported her missing, and it took the Denver police a while to connect the disappearance to our report.’

‘What about family?’ Serena asked.

‘Her parents are in Montana. They don’t talk with her more than once a month. The Denver cops sent a pic of the body to the police in Missoula, who ran it by Mom and Dad. They confirmed it was their daughter.’

‘Do they know what Kelly was doing here in Duluth?’

Maggie shook her head. ‘Nope.’

Stride studied the driver’s license photo of Kelly Hauswirth. Serena had described her as the suburban girl next door, and she was right. The woman’s blond hair was straight, her eyes wide and blue, her face round. Pretty, but not a stunner. She didn’t flirt with the camera. However, she’d left behind lace thongs and ribbed condoms in her baby-blue suitcase. The shy cheerleader type was in town for a man.

A man driving a stolen Grand Am.

A man who’d shot her in the back of the head.

‘Have the Denver police been able to trace her movements?’ he asked.

‘She charged a bus ticket from Denver to Minneapolis on her credit card. That’s nineteen hours of hell. The police talked to the drivers on the route, but no one remembered Kelly specifically.’

‘How about on the Minneapolis end?’

‘Nothing. There are no other charges on her credit card. If she took another bus to Duluth, she paid cash.’

‘She was obviously coming here to meet someone,’ Serena said.

Maggie nodded. ‘Yeah, one of her co-workers thought Kelly had hooked up with an online boyfriend. The Denver police dug into her phone records and say she was texting hot and heavy with someone, but all the details he gave her were completely fictitious. Name, location, occupation, all made up. They’re going to e-mail me a transcript. The number connected to a throwaway phone, and it hasn’t been used since the murder.’

‘He lured her,’ Stride said.

‘Looks that way. She got catfished.’

‘How’d she hook up with him?’

‘They don’t know. Probably a chat room, but they haven’t found it yet. This girl was easy prey. Very naive. The guy texted her photos of himself, but it’s really some male model you can find all over the Internet.’

Maggie held up a photograph of a twenty-something man with moptop brown hair and a trimmed, wispy beard. He wore a simple white T-shirt and had dreamy blue eyes that belonged in a boy band. He was good-looking but not threatening.

‘And that’s who she thought she was going to meet?’ Serena asked.

‘Yeah. Must have been a shock. You think you’re about to hook up with your Prince Charming. Instead, some stranger robs you and kills you.’

‘This was more than a robbery,’ Stride said. ‘Nobody goes to that much trouble to grab a wallet.’

Maggie nodded. ‘Yeah, we may have something else here. Something bad. Troy Grange called me today. He heard about our case. He thinks there may be a connection to a query he got from Interpol about security for outbound ships at the port.’

Stride’s face darkened. ‘What kind of query?’

‘Homicide. Troy says there’s another victim.’

‘Why haven’t we heard about it?’

‘Because the murder didn’t take place here,’ Maggie explained. ‘They found this other woman in Amsterdam. Her throat was slit, and she was dumped in one of the canals. But guess what she was wearing? A Grandma’s Marathon T-shirt from Duluth.’

By midnight, Cat hadn’t come home. They knew she’d turned off her phone, because their text messages weren’t being delivered, and the tracking app didn’t show them where she was. The girl was deliberately pushing boundaries and buttons.

‘I don’t get it,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t understand her behavior.’

‘That’s because you were never a teenage girl,’ Serena replied with a smile.

They sat on Adirondack chairs on the front porch of the cottage. The street was quiet, and the waves of Lake Superior thundered out of sight behind them. He flicked away a hungry mosquito.

‘One minute she’s sweet and innocent,’ he said, ‘and the next she’s the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.’

‘Teenager,’ Serena said again.

‘I know, but she’s so intent on keeping the baby. And she’s not ready for it.’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘I can’t help but think...’ he began, but he cut off his words. He didn’t believe in anyone else making decisions for a woman. Even a woman who was really just a girl. He continued to believe that Cat should give up the child for adoption, but she kept insisting that she wanted to be a mother.

‘You can go through bad times as a teenager and come out okay,’ Serena pointed out. ‘I did.’

‘Yeah, but a lot of girls don’t.’

‘That’s true.’

He felt like a father to Cat, which made him feel old. Plenty of other things made him aware of his age, too. In the eight years since he’d lost Cindy, gray had begun to win the battle over black in his hair. The leg he’d broken last summer had healed, but in the dead of winter, he sometimes found himself limping. In a few months, he’d turn fifty. There was something about the change in decade that made it harder to pretend you were young.

Life had reminded him over and over that he wasn’t bulletproof. It wasn’t such a bad thing. He’d begun to accept his mistakes and imperfections. He didn’t bang his head against every wall. He and Serena, both wounded, both alone, had found a measure of peace with each other. If they could keep it.

And Cat.

He hadn’t realized how much he needed someone like Cat in his life until he found her shivering in his bedroom closet three months earlier, on the run from a killer. Now he couldn’t imagine being without her. Which was what made her behavior so frustrating. He couldn’t protect her from everything. Not even herself.

Serena took his hand. ‘I should have trusted my instincts at the bar.’

‘How so?’

‘I knew Kelly Hauswirth didn’t belong there. I should have talked to her.’

‘You couldn’t possibly have known she was in danger, and talking to her wouldn’t necessarily have changed a thing.’

Serena shrugged. She didn’t always take her own advice about living without regrets. ‘What about the murder weapon?’ she asked.

‘The BCA is running prints and ballistics. We don’t have a report yet.’

‘And the Grand Am?’

‘Stolen from a parking lot at the convention center. No one saw anything. No prints inside. It’s a dead end.’

‘I wish I’d seen his face.’

‘Well, we may not have anything on him, but we know who she is now. That’s something.’

‘Kelly Hauswirth,’ Serena said again. ‘She looked like a Kelly. Sweet little Kelly falls in love with a guy online, and he gets her to come to Minnesota to meet him. And then — what? She realizes that the guy in the car isn’t the man she’s supposed to meet, and she tries to run?’

‘It looks that way,’ Stride said.

Serena shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Nothing about this feels right to me. I think this guy is an iceberg, Jonny.’

He knew what she meant. Most of an iceberg floated underneath the water, and it was the part you couldn’t see that you had to fear.

There was more to this murder than they understood yet.

37

Howard Marlowe typed into a Microsoft Word document on his computer:

He studied what he’d written, and he liked it. Next came the evidence he’d uncovered in his research.

Four years ago, he’d taken a lawn mower to Jay’s brother Clyde for repair. By then, Clyde didn’t remember Howard from the jury. Howard got to know him, went out with him, and peppered him with questions over drinks. Clyde admitted after half a bottle of Captain Morgan that he was pretty sure Jay had the gun with him that afternoon in the shanty. And he admitted that he never saw his brother with the gun again after that day.

Howard passed along the information to Archibald Gale, who said what he always said. It wasn’t enough for a new trial. So the appeals came and went, and nothing happened.

Janine Snow remained in prison.

‘What are you working on?’ Carol asked Howard from the doorway of his office. She’d gone to bed early, but she had trouble sleeping most nights. ‘As if I didn’t know.’

‘The book,’ he said.

His wife folded her arms across her pajama top. Dark half-moons rimmed her eyes. ‘The book. Will it ever be done? How long is it now? 1,500 pages? No one’s going to read it.’

He didn’t take his eyes away from the monitor. ‘It’s not about whether I publish it or not. It’s a hobby.’

‘A hobby? It’s one in the morning, Howard. You spend every minute you’re awake researching and writing that book.’

‘So what? I need something to fill my summers while school’s out.’

‘Really? How about doing something with your family? How about doing something with me?’

‘We were just in Door County,’ he told her.

‘One weekend. Three days. It rained. And the only reason we went is that you tracked another white Rav to somebody in Sister Bay.’

‘I told you. It’s my hobby.’

Carol shook her head in frustration. When he looked at her, he saw how much she’d aged in the last nine years. The extra ten pounds she’d always carried had become twenty. Her face, without makeup, was pallid like beach sand. She was right that he was ignoring her. They didn’t have much in common anymore. Their intermittent sex life had dwindled to nothing; he couldn’t remember when they had last slept together. Their daughter Annie was a sullen teenager, too preoccupied with her own life to worry about them. Carol didn’t have anything else. She still worked as a checker at the Super One. She quilted. She went to church. And she nagged him about the book like a squawking parrot on his shoulder.

She didn’t understand that the case was the most important work he’d ever done in his life. It was his life. It made him feel young again. His office had become a library of evidence, all of it neatly organized and categorized by subject. The witnesses. The exhibits. The gun. The Rav. Two years ago, he’d started turning his investigative work into a book.

But a book needed an ending, which he didn’t have yet. It would end when Janine was free.

‘What did you do today?’ she asked, making the question sound like an accusation.

‘I went to a pawn shop in Grand Rapids.’

‘Every week you’re in a different pawn shop,’ she snapped. ‘You’re never going to find anything after all this time. What do you hope to accomplish?’

‘The missing jewelry is still out there,’ Howard retorted. ‘Those are expensive pieces. Sooner or later, whoever has them is going to figure they’re safe. They’ll try to sell them.’

Carol opened her mouth to shout at him, the way she usually did, but this time she held her tongue. He’d heard it all before. The jewelry wasn’t missing; it was at the bottom of a lake, where Janine had tossed it, along with the gun. He would never find it. He was wasting his time.

His wife closed her eyes. She took a long, slow breath. He realized she was crying.

‘Tell me why,’ she said.

‘I’ve told you before.’

‘Tell me again,’ she said.

He got up from the chair with a sigh. There wasn’t much room to walk in the office anymore. Too many boxes, but he knew what was in each one. He went to his wife in the doorway, but they didn’t touch. They were strangers who shared a house and a child. It had stopped bothering him long ago. Couples grew older. They grew apart. If they were lucky, they stayed friends.

‘I put her in prison,’ he explained. ‘Me.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘It’s my fault. I wasn’t strong enough to stand my ground. If I can prove that she’s innocent—’

‘She’s not innocent, Howard. She’s guilty. She’s immoral. She’s the devil.’

‘Stop that,’ he snapped.

‘She took you away from me!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Carol laughed without a glint of humor. She spread her arms, pointing at the stacks of boxes, and her voice was wild with desperation. ‘Is all of this really more important than your marriage? Is this fantasy about her more real to you than I am?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ he said.

She put her arms around his waist and held him tightly, and he let her do it. Her head sank against his chest. It felt the way it had years earlier. When a minute had passed, he gently peeled away her hands, and then he went back to his desk.

‘Why don’t you come to bed?’ Carol murmured. An invitation.

‘I will. In just a little bit.’

She was silent, but she didn’t leave. Then his wife said: ‘I know you see her, Howard.’

He looked up nervously. ‘What?’

‘I know you visit her in prison.’

Howard wanted to deny it, but he didn’t think she was fishing for the truth. She hadn’t pulled this idea out of the air. She knew. Besides, his face was a confession, and he didn’t want to hide it from her any longer. She stared at him, and they both didn’t say a word, and then she turned and left him alone in the basement.

Cat lay on her back, watching the stars. Her boyfriend lay beside her. She had no idea what time it was, but she knew it was late. She’d turned off her phone, because she didn’t want Stride and Serena spying on her. They didn’t need to know that she was only fifty yards from their cottage, sprawled with Al on the beach, with the lake waves reaching almost to their bare feet.

He placed a hand on the bare skin of her swollen belly. The baby thumped from inside, and he grinned and said, ‘Cool.’

Al wasn’t the father of her child. She didn’t know the father’s name; he was just one of the men who’d paid her for sex in the bad days. Funny that the man would never know he had a child. A son. She didn’t know what she’d tell her boy about his father when the time came. Or about herself.

Cat felt Al’s fingers caressing the side of her breast, but that was as far as it went. He hadn’t pressured her for sex. Just kissing and petting. If he’d wanted sex, she would have said yes. Some boys got freaked out about being with pregnant girls, but Al said it wasn’t that. It was respect, he said. She’d told him that sex didn’t mean anything to her, not after years of doing it for money, so he said he wanted to wait until it did.

She wondered if that meant he was getting what he needed from someone else. She didn’t want to ask.

He sat up on the beach and helped her to do the same. Superior was loud. The cloudless sky shimmered with stars. She felt a strange rush of contentment, but it was shadowed by the guilt of hiding things about herself from Stride and Serena. And from Al, too. Keeping secrets was a hard habit to break. In the past, her secrets had kept her alive.

‘My buddy gave me a couple joints,’ he said. ‘You want a puff?’

‘No, thanks. I shouldn’t. But you go ahead.’

He lit one and held the smoke in his mouth. When he exhaled, sweetness surrounded her. He had a warm beer can in the sand, too, and she’d allowed herself a swallow, but nothing more.

‘Anna’s not speaking to me,’ Cat said.

Anna was the waitress at the Grizzly Bear Bar.

Al said nothing. The joint did its thing. He looked as if he were far away, on one of the stars, where all their little problems didn’t matter.

‘She’s not even reading my texts,’ Cat went on. ‘She’s pissed because I didn’t tell her I was living with two cops.’

Her boyfriend sighed as he returned to earth, as if this were a conversation he didn’t want to have. ‘Well, why didn’t you tell her?’

‘I didn’t want to scare her away.’ Cat scrunched up her pretty face in annoyance. ‘It’s not fair. Serena doesn’t want me hanging out with any of my old friends. She told Fred at the bar she’d have the place busted if he let me inside again.’

‘Sorry.’ Al added: ‘Do Stride and Serena know about me?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think they’d say you shouldn’t see me?’

‘I don’t know. Probably.’

‘Well, you’re not going to be able to hide it forever,’ he said.

‘Have you told your mother?’

He grinned, because she’d just given him a taste of his own medicine. ‘Okay. No.’

‘So there.’

He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. She liked him a lot, even though they’d only known each other a couple of months. He was two years older than she was. His body was tall and scrawny, with long legs made for basketball. He wore his black hair trimmed to a point on his forehead, and his goatee made a wiry square against his dark skin. His voice was soft and mellow, and it made her think of distant thunder. He wore cheap, baggy clothes from Goodwill, except for his Converse sneakers, which were the one treat he allowed himself at Christmas.

She’d met him because of Anna. Anna volunteered at local churches, and every couple of months, she twisted Cat’s arm to go along with her on community projects. It wasn’t Cat’s favorite thing, but she did it to stay friends with her. In May, she’d spent a weekend painting Al’s mother’s house from top to bottom. Cat and Anna supplied the labor, and the church donated the paint. Al got them burgers at the Anchor Bar for free when they were done.

Despite working two jobs, Al never had much money. The mortgage ate up most of his paycheck, and a backlog of credit card bills took the rest. His father had died of a stroke five years earlier, which was when the debt began piling up. His mother had emphysema and couldn’t work. His younger siblings were still in school, which was where he wanted them to stay. Between his days working maintenance at the Duluth Zoo, and evenings and weekends washing dishes at the Anchor, he didn’t have much time to spend with Cat. Stolen moments like this were precious to her.

The beach was mostly deserted. A mild lake breeze rustled her perfect chestnut hair. In the dark, fifty yards north of them, she could see another couple making out under the starlight. She knew Al had to go soon, because he worked in the morning, but she wished they could stay here all night.

‘I liked your mother when Anna and I met her,’ Cat said. ‘Don’t you think she’d like me?’

‘She’d love you, but she says I don’t have time for a girlfriend.’

‘Especially not a pregnant one, huh?’

‘Oh, that’s not it. Not really. She just doesn’t want me stuck on the bottom rung like her and Dad. Mom always says God has big plans for me, and if I don’t work hard, I’ll never find out what they are.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘It’s the way I was raised, so yeah, I have to believe it. She’d whack me if I didn’t. Except God must be pretty disappointed in me.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Cat asked.

He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I do stupid shit that I really regret. I’m not worthy of big plans.’

‘Join the club,’ Cat told him.

‘You? Come on.’

‘It’s true. God doesn’t have any plans for me. I’m just a screw-up.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ he chided her. ‘You’re special. Way more special than me. Why would you say that?’

‘It’s just hormones. I go up. I go down. I’m pregnant, so it comes with the territory.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hey, can I ask you something?’ she said.

‘Sure.’

‘Do you love me? Because I kinda think I love you.’

His eyes widened. ‘Cat, I—’

‘Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’m sorry. Wow, that was a really dumb thing to say. I’m pressing the delete button.’

Except you couldn’t delete things like that after you said them.

Al looked unhappy with her, and Cat didn’t blame him. She thought to herself: There I go again, screwing everything up. She stood up awkwardly and brushed sand from her skin. Al stood up, too. He looked as if she’d punched him in the gut.

‘We should go,’ she said.

‘Cat, listen, it’s not that I—’

‘No, don’t say anything. Please. Forget it, I was being stupid. I just want to get out of here. You have to work, and I’m sure Stride is waiting to read me the Riot Act.’

‘I’ll come with you. I’ll explain it to him.’

‘That would just make it worse.’

‘Well, let’s go back to my car,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you home.’

‘No, you go ahead. I’ll walk.’

‘Alone? Not a chance.’

‘It’s two houses, Al. I could shout, and Stride would hear me.’

He looked reluctant, but he allowed her to persuade him. He kissed her goodbye, which was normally magic, but she’d spoiled the moment for them. Stupid stupid stupid. He left her, his shoulders slumped, and disappeared southward along the beach. She watched him until he turned and headed for the street. She wondered if he’d call her tomorrow, or if she’d driven him away for good.

It wasn’t just talking about love before he was ready to hear it. That was a big mistake, but she was keeping other secrets, too.

She needed to tell him what she’d done.

38

Stride shook Troy Grange’s hand.

He didn’t see Troy often, but there was a bond connecting them. They’d both known personal losses that had upended their lives. Stride had lost Cindy to cancer almost eight years ago. Last summer, Troy’s wife Trisha had been murdered, leaving him to raise two young girls alone.

Troy greeted Maggie, too, and Stride didn’t miss the warmth in Troy’s face. He was pleased to see it. Troy was finally opening up again, which took a lot of time after the death of a spouse. He wondered if there was something more between the two of them. Troy and Maggie had worked together as colleagues for years, but it looked as if their friendship had drifted into attraction. At least for him. There was no way Maggie hadn’t picked up on Troy’s feelings, and Stride wondered whether the interest was reciprocated.

‘Sit down, guys,’ Troy told them in his foghorn voice. He was the senior health and safety manager for the Duluth Port, but his office was small, and he was rarely inside the building. Instead, he was out among the port’s docks, where thousands of tons of goods moved in and out of the city by boat and rail every day. Lumber. Coal. Iron ore. Cement. Grain. Limestone. The long boats brought in loads and took them out into the waters of Lake Superior, and from there to destinations around the world.

Along with that traffic came smuggling problems. Drugs. Weapons. People.

‘Maggie was telling me about this girl Kelly Hauswirth from Denver,’ Troy said. ‘Do you have any more leads on the guy who killed her?’

‘Not so far,’ Stride said. ‘We’re waiting for ballistics on the murder weapon.’

‘We’re assuming he’s the same guy who lured Kelly from Colorado to Duluth,’ Maggie added. ‘Someone established a fake online ID and built a relationship with her. When she figured out that this guy wasn’t who she thought he was, she tried to get away, and he shot her.’

‘I assume you interviewed everyone in the bar that night,’ Troy said.

‘As many as we could,’ Maggie replied. ‘A lot of them melted away before we got there.’

‘The Grizzly Bear is a watering hole for foreign crew off the boats,’ Troy said.

‘Yeah, and they’re a tight-lipped bunch. Nobody claimed to know the woman or who she was meeting.’

‘Figures.’

‘Why do you think there may be an Amsterdam connection?’ Stride interjected. ‘Maggie says Interpol reached out to you about another murder overseas.’

Troy grabbed a photograph from his office printer and passed it across the desk. The corpse in the picture was barely recognizable, with features bloated and bleached by time in the canals. A knife gash had split open her throat. Her strawberry hair was pasted to her skin. Her swollen torso had split open seams on her T-shirt, but Stride could still see the Grandma’s Marathon logo. Either the woman — or whoever had given her the shirt — had been in Duluth before she was killed.

‘When did they find this woman?’ Stride asked.

‘Last week.’

‘Have they identified her?’

‘No, the Dutch were hoping we could help them with that. The condition of the body doesn’t make it easy. They’re assuming she’s American because of the T-shirt and the quality of her dental work, but they don’t really know for sure. They also don’t know how long she was in the Netherlands. The marathon T-shirt was one of last year’s printings.’

Maggie leaned across the desk. ‘Can we get the jpeg?’

‘Of course, Sergeant.’

Stride smiled. Troy was invariably formal around them about official business. Stride was Lieutenant. Maggie was Sergeant. He was the kind of gruff ex-seaman who wore nothing but plaid shirts, jeans, and boots, but he had a serious way about him that Stride respected. He wasn’t tall, but he had the bulky build of a weightlifter. Nobody messed with Troy.

The security manager clicked a few keys on his computer. Stride’s and Maggie’s phones both chirped with an incoming e-mail as he sent them the photograph.

‘Do the Dutch police or Interpol know anything more about the circumstances of this woman’s murder?’ Stride asked.

‘Maybe. They found a tattoo on her wrist associated with an Estonian crime syndicate. Very brutal and very sophisticated. This group began with synthetic drug exports and high-end robberies, but Interpol thinks they’ve branched out into an international smuggling network. Illegal metals. Drugs. Weapons.’

‘And women,’ Maggie guessed.

‘Yeah. Exactly. Their guess is that this woman was kidnapped and dumped into a forced prostitution ring overseas.’

‘They think she was smuggled out through the Duluth Port?’ Stride asked.

‘Well, that was their question to me. I couldn’t rule it out.’ Troy folded his meaty hands together. ‘Look, port security guys talk all around the world. We’ve got tech guys who trawl the Deep Web — you know, the places that Google doesn’t reach. It’s practically a Craigslist for slavery. Women, girls, boys, babies, even pets. If you’ve got the money, you can write up specs for who you want like you were placing an order for custom drapes. And syndicates like this Estonian group will go out and grab someone who fits the profile and smuggle them out. It could be a girl in Sydney. Or Cape Town. Or Cancun.’

‘Or Denver, Colorado,’ Stride said.

‘Yeah. Exactly. They just disappear. Order fulfilled. Huge payday for the smugglers. And once they’ve outlived their usefulness, the girls wind up like this woman in Amsterdam.’

Stride got up and went to the window in Troy’s office. He could see train cars covered with graffiti. Silos. Pyramids of taconite. The sheer volume of everything that passed through the port made a single human being seem like a needle in a haystack. Easy to hide.

‘I’m not saying that’s what happened to Kelly Hauswirth,’ Troy went on, ‘but I think we have to consider the possibility. She was lured here, and somebody did that for a reason. Plus, I don’t like the fact that the meeting place was a bar where a lot of the overseas sailors hang out.’

Stride nodded. ‘We’ll need a list of the salties that were in port when the murder took place. And when each of them is expected back in Duluth.’

‘You got it.’

‘I want to talk to your contacts at Interpol, too.’

‘Sure.’ Troy stood up, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Listen, I hope I’m wrong about this, but if someone is smuggling girls through here, they didn’t start with Kelly, and they’re not going to stop there. It’s peak shipping season. For all we know, they’ve already got other girls hidden in the city, and they’re just waiting to get them out on a boat.’

Her name was Erin. She was from Grand Forks.

She knew who she was, but when she awoke, she found that her other senses had been stripped. Her mind swam, making her dizzy. She couldn’t tell the difference anymore between consciousness and dreams. She opened her eyes, but the world was black. A blindfold. When she tried to speak, to shout, to scream, she couldn’t make a sound. Something filled her mouth, muffling her cries. Her wrists pressed against each other behind her back, and she couldn’t move them. Her ankles were tied, too.

Panic rippled over her, like a wave so tall and strong it would cover her up and drown her. She squirmed and struggled in a fit of despair, but she was frozen in place. Blind. Mute. Bound.

This was a nightmare.

No.

Erin knew she was awake. She lay on a wooden floor on her side. Her blond hair spilled across her face. Dirt and splinters pressed into her skull like sharp fingernails. Her neck spasmed with pain. This was real. She could hear things. Somewhere close by, she recognized the trill of a cardinal in the trees, penetrating the walls around her. It sang to her, but she couldn’t sing back. Even so, it made her realize that the world was still out there.

She rolled onto her back, where her knuckles dug into the small of her spine. The weight of the gag stuffed into her mouth made her choke. She was afraid she would vomit. With a thrust of her body, she rolled again, all the way onto her face, where dust blew into her nose. It became difficult to breathe, and the stricture in her throat made her suck in each breath faster. She hyperventilated. Her heart raced.

Erin heaved herself onto her side. She had no sense of the space around her. How big. How small. She was inside, somewhere, but the room was hot. Damp sweat covered her skin. When she tried to bring her knees toward her chest, her ankles resisted. They were tethered on a short leash to something heavy and solid. A steel table, immovable. She kicked at it and realized her feet were bare. Her shoes had been taken. She wriggled around and sat up.

She knew who she was but not where she was or how she’d gotten here or how long she’d been in this place. Time had no meaning. My name is Erin. I am a dental hygienist in Grand Forks. I am on vacation to see...

That was it. Matt. Mattie_1987. Matt the paralegal. Funny, sweet, athletic, such a shy, sexy face. Most men didn’t understand her, but Matt did. He seemed to know what it was like to be her, all the insecurities, all the nervousness when she looked in the mirror, all the doubts about where she was going in life. She’d never believed she could fall in love with someone online, but that was before she found Matt in the chat room. It was easier to talk to him than to anyone in her real life. There was something about the anonymity of the darkness and the screen that made her tell him secrets. She shared things with him that she’d never shared with her family or friends. Not that she had many friends. Or family, other than a distant sibling and parents who didn’t really understand her.

That’s me, too, he said. I know how you feel.

He was like her soul mate.

But her soul mate never showed up. She felt as if she’d lost hours in her brain. Lost days that were gray in her memory. She had a cloudy memory of a bar. Drinking. Waiting. Growing sad and anxious as time passed and the evening waned. More drinking. Where was he? She’d driven to Duluth to meet him. He’d said he would be there for her.

Texting over and over. No response. I’m here, Mattie, where are you?

Then the blackness descended. And now the terror. Not knowing where she was or how she’d gotten to this place or why she’d been imprisoned. It was an empty road between there and here.

Outside, she heard the scratch of footsteps on dirt. The cardinal, alarmed, stopped singing. Her first thought was of rescue, but she knew that no one was coming to release her. She listened, hearing the footsteps pause. There was a stretch of silence and then the metallic rattle of a lock being undone.

The hinges of a door squealed. Light stabbed the blindfold, but only for a moment as the door was closed again. She felt herself shivering. He was inside with her, coming closer. She thought she heard breathing, but her own breathing reverberated inside her head, like the panting of a trapped animal. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t cry for help.

He was near her. Inches away.

Fingers touched her hair, almost seductively, and she jumped. The gag loosened, but it still filled her mouth. Something cold and sharp pricked her neck, deep enough to make her gasp at the sting. The breathing came back, right beside her, warm and measured in her ear.

A disembodied voice filled her head.

‘If you scream, I’ll cut your throat.’

39

‘She’s never been in my bar,’ Fred Sissel told Serena.

The bar owner folded up the photograph of the dead woman in Amsterdam and slid it back to her with one finger, as if the paper carried a communicable disease. He took a towel from his sleeve and ran it over the varnished counter. It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday. The place was mostly empty.

‘You sound pretty sure,’ Serena said. ‘It’s not a great photograph. I don’t think I could answer one way or another.’

‘Then why show it to me?’ Sissel asked.

‘Sometimes we get lucky. We got this photo two days ago, and we’re canvassing the area to see if anyone remembers her.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

Sissel tweaked his mustache and smoothed his slicked-back, graying hair. He didn’t hide the fact that he wanted Serena to leave. The murder of Kelly Hauswirth had brought a lot of cops and news cameras to his bar. His customers didn’t like it, and they’d voted with their feet.

‘What about others?’ Serena asked him.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Other young women who didn’t fit in with the crowd here. Women like Kelly Hauswirth.’

‘It’s a bar,’ Sissel said. ‘People come and go. I look at the credit cards, not the faces.’

‘You took a pretty good look at my face,’ Serena pointed out.

Sissel’s mouth flickered into a smile. ‘Well, you’ve got a face worth looking at.’

‘Come on, Fred. Kelly Hauswirth had a suitcase with her. She stuck out in your crowd like a church lady at a biker rally. All I’m asking is whether you’ve spotted any other girls who match the same profile.’

Sissel tugged on his sleeves. ‘Sorry.’

Serena cast her eyes around at the handful of men at other tables. She leaned across the bar and lowered her voice. ‘Look, this woman in Amsterdam with her throat cut? The police there think she was a sex slave. Do I need to tell you what that’s like? Kelly Hauswirth may have been headed for the same life. You’ve got foreign sailors in and out of this bar every day. Somebody knows something. I want to know what you’ve heard. Rumors. Gossip. Whatever.’

‘If I hear anything, I don’t talk about it. It’s not good for my business. Or my health.’

Serena sighed with frustration. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a card. ‘If your ears start working again, give me a call.’

Sissel bent the card between two fingers and flicked it to the floor. Laughter rippled around them. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

Serena stalked out of the bar. Throaty catcalls followed her to the street. She emerged into the afternoon sunlight and shut the door sharply behind her. It was hot under a blue sky. Her blue jeans hugged her legs, and she stood atop slingback sandals with high heels. She wore a white tank top, and her wavy black hair scattered across her shoulders. She slid sunglasses over her face and walked diagonally across the street to the road that led down to Irving Park. Power lines streaked over her head.

She saw the wall of trees. Tucked inside them, invisible, were the muddy steps to the creek. She remembered the chase, but she wished she remembered more. His face. His smell. Anything about him. She only knew that he was ruthless. He’d killed without hesitation, and he could kill again.

Serena had a weakness for lost girls. Like Kelly. Like Cat. She’d been lost herself as a teenager, and she knew all about predators. The drug dealer who’d used her as his whore was long gone, but he lingered in her life in ways she couldn’t escape. She was closed off from people. She didn’t trust easily. She’d tried for years to get past things she couldn’t get past, before realizing they were simply part of who she was.

Jonny lived the same way, for different reasons. He was wary of the future, wary of believing that anything would last. His affair with Maggie had shaken her, but there was a certain inevitability about it. Maggie was in love with him. Sooner or later, that attraction was bound to blossom into something when Jonny was vulnerable. Serena blamed herself a little for not preventing it. She’d tunneled inside herself when he needed her. She couldn’t pry him out of his own shell because she was locked in hers.

But not anymore. She’d come a long way in six months alone. She’d made peace with a lot of things about who she was and who Jonny was. There was really just one ghost left between them.

Her name was Cindy.

‘You’re the cop, aren’t you?’ said a voice behind her.

When Serena turned around, she saw the waitress from the bar who was a friend of Cat. ‘I am,’ she replied. ‘It’s Anna, isn’t it?’

The girl nodded. ‘Anna Glick.’

Anna was older than Cat. Maybe twenty or twenty-one. She was anorexically skinny, all bones. Her makeup was so dark it was practically Goth, and her look was supplemented by studs in her nose, eyebrows, and lips. Spiky orange hair jutted out from under a wool cap. Serena could see in the girl’s eyes the smart, cynical expression of someone who knew how to read people and calculate the odds of getting what she wanted from them.

‘So how’s Cat doing?’ Anna asked.

‘Fine.’

‘She lives with you, huh?’

‘Yes, she does.’ Serena added: ‘Cat says you helped her out when she was on her own. Found her places to stay.’

‘I did what I could. Not just for her.’

‘I’m grateful. I’m glad someone had her back in those days. But Cat doesn’t need that kind of help anymore.’

Anna’s lips bent into a smirk. ‘In other words, stay away from her?’

‘It’s not about you. I just think it’s better if Cat cuts the cord with her past entirely. I hope you understand.’

‘Yeah, I hear you. Whatever you say. Just so you know, Cat came to see me, not the other way around. And just so you know something else, I have a house and, like, four jobs. Waitressing. Data entry. Medical coding. I’m not going back to who I was.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean anything personal.’

Anna shrugged. She had a chip firmly lodged on her shoulder. ‘You over here talking to Fred?’

‘That’s right. How long have you worked at the bar?’

‘About a year.’

Serena removed the photograph from her pocket of the dead woman in Amsterdam. She showed it to Anna, who didn’t flinch. The girl had a tough shell.

‘Do you remember seeing this woman around here?’ Serena asked.

‘What did Fred say?’

‘Does Fred’s memory affect yours?’

‘He doesn’t like us talking about what happens in the bar. Especially to cops.’

‘Well, Fred’s inside, and you’re out here with me,’ Serena said.

Anna examined the picture again. ‘I don’t think so, but I’m only here three days a week. Welcome to the part-time economy. If she was here, it was when I wasn’t working.’

‘What about the girl who was killed outside the bar? Kelly Hauswirth. You served her that day, right?’

‘Yeah, vodka and lemonade. She didn’t touch a drop. I already talked to you people. I carded her when she got to the bar, but I didn’t remember her name or where she was from. All I look at is the birth date.’

‘How long was she there?’

‘Couple hours.’

‘Did you talk to her?’

‘Sure. We were BFFs. “What can I bring you?” “Vodka and lemonade.” “You still okay on that drink?” “Fine, thanks.”’

Anna had a supple voice. Harsh and gravelly when she was being herself, as if she could scare off the world. Sweet and convincing when she channeled Kelly Hauswirth. When you lived on the street, you learned to be whoever your next meal ticket needed you to be.

‘Did Kelly say who she was meeting?’

‘No.’

‘Anybody hit on her?’ Serena asked.

‘You saw what she looked like. Lots of guys hit on her. She shot them all down.’

‘Are there guys in the bar who don’t take no for an answer?’

‘Sure, we’ve got plenty of those. I ran interference with anyone that was getting too fresh. The boys don’t mess with me. If I tell them to back off, that’s what they do.’

‘So you had to help Kelly with some of them?’

Anna tugged her wool cap lower on her forehead. ‘I told some of the drunker ones to leave her alone. It was no big deal.’

‘Have you seen others like her in the bar? Girls waiting for somebody? Maybe a girl from out of town, with a suitcase?’

‘No, but like I said, I’m a part-timer.’

Serena nodded. She didn’t think Anna was sharing everything she knew, but talking to cops was an occupational hazard. ‘Tell me something, Anna. Does Cat have a boyfriend?’

‘You should ask her about that,’ Anna replied. ‘Not me.’

‘She says no.’

The girl shrugged. ‘Then I guess she doesn’t.’

‘If Cat shows up here again, I’d appreciate it if you give me a call.’

‘So you can come drag her out?’

‘Exactly.’

‘You’re a real mother superior,’ Anna said.

‘No, but I’ve been in her shoes,’ Serena told her. ‘And yours.’

40

Janine Snow waited for her visitor.

To her surprise, she found that she looked forward to visits from Howard Marlowe. He came twice a month during the summers, less frequently during the school year. He told her about his research, his book, his determination to find evidence to set her free. When he ran out of things to say about Jay’s murder, which wasn’t often, he talked about his life, his dreams, his students, his daughter, and his wife.

In the early years, she’d thought of Howard’s visits as a slim thread connecting her to the real world. Then she realized that the real world was here inside the walls of the prison at Shakopee. Howard was a resident of a fantasy world. A world that didn’t exist anymore. A world in which she was free.

She was the same woman that she’d been in Duluth, and yet she was completely different. Age showed on her face more, because she couldn’t hide it now. Gray had painted over much of her blond hair. Her skin was natural, which meant the wrinkles near her eyes and mouth were there for everyone to see. She was still fit and trim, because she exercised regularly, but she fought with the weight of carb-heavy prison meals. Her nails were nothing more than the slimmest of crescent moons. She read voraciously. One of the benefits of Shakopee was an excellent library. She read history. Mysteries. Philosophy. Science. She’d never had much time to read in the past, and now she had nothing but time. Her old life had revolved around medicine and sex, and suddenly she had to make peace with a world where neither of those things played any role in her life. She kept up on medical journals for a year and then decided she never wanted to see them again. Even her sex drive waned.

Relationships with other inmates didn’t come easily to her. She was a woman who’d only been comfortable around men — people she could control, people she could manipulate — and now she lived in a community of women. She kept herself aloof at first. She couldn’t hide that she considered herself superior to the others, and they knew it. She didn’t like them. They didn’t like her. Even so, time passed, and time could smooth mountains. She joined the prison book club, and she found that the perspectives of other inmates were often deeper and more complex than her own. They defied her caricatures of who they were. When she finally opened her own mouth, she tried to show them that she was more than the bitch they thought she was.

A few became something close to friends. Some came and went after serving time for lesser offenses. Others stayed. Like her.

No one wrote. No one visited. Except Howard.

She found it strange that he was the only person, after all this time, who still doubted her guilt. Who still believed in her. He was the juror who’d put her in here. And yet he kept coming, more determined than ever, more in love with her than ever. She could have sent him away, but the loneliness would have driven her mad. She looked forward to seeing him. She even had a degree of fondness for him. The humane thing would have been to insist that he not waste his life on a foolish quest, but eight years hadn’t changed everything about her. She was still selfish.

‘Janine,’ Howard said.

She’d been far away, and he was standing above her. She smiled at him, got up, and shook his hand. His skin was clammy, as it usually was. She had the feeling that shaking her hand was the most erotic experience in this man’s life.

‘How are you?’ he asked as they sat down.

‘Much the same.’

‘It’s hot out. But nice.’

‘Good.’

‘You look great,’ he said.

‘Oh, well. Thanks.’

It was the usual small talk, followed by the usual silence. She didn’t mind. Years ago, she’d thought that Howard Marlowe was the most boring person on the planet. She still thought so, but boring didn’t seem entirely bad anymore. After a while, you looked forward to the predictable things. It was summer, so Howard wore his summer clothes, a collared short-sleeve shirt, black jeans, white tennis shoes. He’d had his curly brown hair cut before coming to see her, as he usually did. Five years ago, after consulting with her, he’d had LASIK surgery done, and he didn’t need glasses now. He had a suburban paunch that he tried to suck in when he was with her.

She knew he fantasized about her. He’d admitted it. She found it a little pathetic, but every now and then, she would make some coquettish gesture that she knew he’d remember. A meaningful look in her eyes or a tiny puckering of her lips. Or she would tug at her denim shirt in a way that emphasized the swell of her breasts. Harmless, but she felt she owed him something.

‘The book’s going well,’ he said.

‘Good.’

‘You don’t mind my doing it, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I run chapters by Mr. Gale. Should I run them by you, too?’

‘No, you don’t have to do that.’

‘I understand.’

‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, Howard. It’s just that I don’t want to relive it.’

‘Oh, I get it.’

‘That doesn’t mean I’m telling you to stop.’

‘No, I’ll keep going,’ he assured her. ‘When I publish it, it will bring lots of new attention to your case.’

Janine smiled at him. She held out no hope that Howard would ever finish his book, or if he did, that he would ever publish it.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ Howard said. ‘Carol knows about us.’

‘What?’

‘She knows I come down here to visit you.’

‘Oh.’

‘I don’t know how she found out.’

‘Oh,’ Janine said again. She didn’t know what else to say.

‘She wants me to stop, but I’ll keep coming, I promise. Don’t worry about that.’

Janine found herself indescribably sad. Sad about everything. Sad that she was ruining this man’s life and marriage. Sad at even the possibility that he might stop visiting and leave her completely alone. Sad that she was here.

‘Look, Howard,’ she said, watching him hang on her words. ‘I want you to think about this. Maybe you shouldn’t come here anymore.’

‘What? No. No way.’

‘You’re hurting your wife.’

‘I don’t...’ he began, and she realized that he was about to say: I don’t care. He stopped without going on, but she knew it was true. She’d become his Mona Lisa. She was everything to him, beginning and end.

This was wrong. She had to put a stop to it.

‘Really, Howard,’ she said in a sterner voice. ‘Go home to Carol. Forget about me.’

He shook his head fiercely. ‘I won’t do that.’

‘This isn’t fair to you or to your wife. It means a lot to me that you visit, but I’ve let this go on way too long.’

‘Janine—’

‘No, I mean it. You have to stop.’

‘I can’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’m not going to give up. I won’t quit until I find something. I won’t stop until you’re free.’ He paused and added breathlessly: ‘Until we’re together.’

Janine tried to keep the horror from her face. That was the fantasy behind all of this. He would get her out of prison. He would rescue her. And they would live happily ever after, just the two of them. She had to kill that dream right now.

‘I’m never getting out of here,’ she said finally.

‘Don’t talk like that! Don’t give up. I promise I’ll find proof that you’re innocent.’

‘Howard,’ she told him sharply, in a voice that was barely a breath. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m not innocent. I’m guilty.’

Stride didn’t look up as Maggie came into his office on Friday night. It was late and already dark. The woodland outside the building was invisible. The Duluth Police had moved in the spring to a new location in the open land north of the city. He missed City Hall, but not the building’s rats. It had been several months, but moving boxes still littered his office floor. He never found time to unpack, which was an excuse for the fact that he didn’t like to deal with change.

Maggie didn’t say anything to him as she sat down.

‘Troy got back to me with crew lists for the boats that were in port when Kelly Hauswirth was killed,’ Stride said. ‘I’m working with the FBI and with Interpol to cross-reference for criminal records. It’s a long list, but it’s a place to start.’

Maggie was still quiet, but he didn’t notice her silence.

‘Speaking of Troy,’ he went on. ‘I haven’t teased you about him, have I? I think he’s got a thing for you. He was giving you the eye when we saw him.’

He waited for the usual sarcastic reply, and when he didn’t get it, he wondered if he had crossed a line with her. Their own break-up, and his reunion with Serena, were still too fresh.

He looked up and said: ‘Mags?’

Her golden face was a ball of confusion. Her bangs were in her eyes, but she didn’t blow them away.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I got the ballistics report from the BCA on the murder weapon. The one that Serena found. The one that killed Kelly Hauswirth.’

‘Okay.’

‘They got two hits.’

‘Really? Excellent.’

Maggie was quiet again. Then she said: ‘The gun matches a bullet fired during a smash-and-grab robbery at a Chicago jewelry store more than eight years ago where a security guard was wounded. This was right before Christmas.’

‘Interesting. What was the other hit?’

His partner shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand it.’

‘Understand what?’ Stride asked.

‘I asked the BCA if they could run the test again. They said it was a lock. No question about it.’

‘Mags,’ he repeated. ‘What the hell are you saying?’

‘The gun that Serena recovered in the Kelly Hauswirth case,’ Maggie said. ‘That’s the gun that killed Jay Ferris.’

41

Serena knew that Jonny was awake. Their bedroom was dark, and they both lay atop the blankets. It was a warm night. The windows were open. She heard the trill of crickets in the bushes outside.

He’d told her about the case. Janine Snow. Jay Ferris. The investigation and trial. They’d talked about old cases before, but not that one. Typically, he only told her about cases that were unsolved, but the murder of Jay Ferris had been open-and-shut from the beginning. He’d never doubted what happened. There was only one loose end from the entire investigation — the missing gun — but even that detail hadn’t stopped a jury from convicting Janine Snow.

Except now the gun had been found. Serena had found it.

She slid her hand across the bed and laced his fingers. ‘Question,’ she murmured.

‘Okay.’

‘You said there were two hits on the gun. How come the ballistics database didn’t pick this up years ago during the original investigation?’

Jonny pushed himself up in bed. He reached over and switched on his nightstand lamp. A moth tapped against the glass. There were shadows on Jonny’s face and in his eyes.

‘It’s the usual backlog bureaucracy. The bullet from the Chicago shooting didn’t get logged for years, and when it did, they didn’t do a cross-region search. Just Illinois. Somebody didn’t want to bother sifting through false hits.’

‘Chicago,’ Serena said. ‘What’s the connection?’

‘There is no obvious connection that I can see. A jewelry store near Calumet Park on the south side of Chicago was robbed at gunpoint on December 20 almost nine years ago. That was just over a month before Jay Ferris was killed. A security guard tried to intervene and took a bullet in the thigh. The guard ID’d the perp from mug shots, and Chicago police found him a week later living with his aunt not far from Wrigley Field. He was wearing a Rolex watch he’d grabbed at the store. Real smart.’

‘But no gun.’

‘No gun. They didn’t need it to make a case. They had the guard’s ID and jewelry from the store. The shooter took a plea. In his statement, he said he’d sold the gun for cash the day after he hit the store. He didn’t know the buyer and couldn’t describe him. It was just one more gun on the Chicago streets. No one tried to track it down.’

‘And yet a month later that same gun was here in Duluth being used to shoot Jay Ferris,’ Serena said.

‘Exactly.’

‘Can you find the Chicago perp to get more details on the sale?’

‘He’s off the grid,’ Jonny replied. ‘He did three years, got out, never even bothered with a single parole meeting. There’s an outstanding warrant, but the police don’t think he’s anywhere near Chicago.’

Their bedroom door was closed, but they heard movement in the living room. Cat was up. She was a restless sleeper, and they often found her awake in the middle of the night. She’d suffered from nightmares for most of her life. When she couldn’t sleep, she turned on the television, or ate cold pizza from the refrigerator, or sat in silence on the back porch. Hearing her footsteps, Jonny looked at the door, wanting to check on her.

Serena got out of bed. She slid her nightgown over her head and then slipped a T-shirt over her bare chest. She stepped into shorts. She opened the bedroom door a crack, saw Cat sprawled on the living room floor in front of the television, and closed the door again. She draped herself across the end of the bed at Jonny’s feet.

‘So what happens next?’ she asked.

His face showed his frustration. ‘The gun has torpedoed the entire case against Janine. Archie’s filing an emergency motion for her release. The county attorney thinks he may get it. If the gun didn’t have a history, it probably wouldn’t be enough to convince a judge, but the fact that it was used in a violent crime prior to Jay’s death — and now in another murder years later — changes everything.’

‘I hate to admit it, but I agree with Archie,’ Serena said. ‘It looks like Janine never had that gun at all.’

Jonny shook his head. He was stubborn. ‘Not necessarily. The buyer in Chicago was a man, but street guns change hands all the time. Janine probably bought the gun later. Or Jay bought it for himself, and then Janine used it.’

‘And then what? You don’t murder your husband and sell the gun on the street. You get rid of it.’

‘She may have tried to get rid of it, but somebody else found it.’

‘Or somebody else shot Jay,’ Serena told him. ‘You may not like it, but that’s reality.’

He was quiet. Then he said: ‘I’m going down to Shakopee. I want to talk to Janine.’

‘She won’t tell you anything. The gun is her ticket out. She’s not going to jeopardize that.’

‘I know, but even if she won’t talk, I want to see her face when I ask her about it. Believe me, I know Cindy. I’ll know if she’s hiding something.’

Serena gave him a sad smile. ‘Cindy?’

He closed his eyes, realizing what he’d said. ‘Sorry. Janine. Freudian slip.’

She knew that the discovery of the gun had awakened ghosts for him. The murder of Jay Ferris, and the conviction of Janine Snow, didn’t exist in a vacuum. She could do the math. Jay Ferris had been killed in January. One January later, Jonny lost his wife. In between were some of the hardest days of their lives.

‘This must bring back some tough memories,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ he admitted.

‘Want to tell me about it?’

She waited to see if he would keep talking. Or if he would shut down the way he usually did.

‘You know the timing,’ he said. ‘It was a bad year.’

‘I know.’

He hesitated, and then he plunged ahead.

‘There was a shadow about Cindy in those days. She was so up and down. I thought she was angry because she thought Janine was innocent and I was trying to put her in prison. But it wasn’t just that. She was holding out on me. I was focused on the case, and all the while...’

Serena said nothing, but she knew. All the while, Cindy was dying.

She looked in his eyes for tears but didn’t see any.

‘I told you about Ross Klayman, didn’t I?’ he went on, staring at the ceiling of their bedroom. ‘The shooting at Miller Hill Mall?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured, wondering where he was going with this story. ‘Awful thing.’

‘Cindy was there. The wrong place at the right time. She saved a girl’s life and probably others, tackling Klayman the way she did. And you know what? I was angry with her. I was glad that girl was alive, but I was furious. I felt like she had put our lives in jeopardy by risking her own. It was stupid of me. Selfish.’

‘Hardly,’ Serena said softly, holding back tears herself.

‘I’ve thought about that day a lot ever since.’

‘Of course.’

‘I think Cindy knew what was happening to her. That’s why she did it. That’s why she took the risk in the mall. Steve Garske told me later there would have been symptoms. Warning signs. And she did nothing. She let months go by, until it was too late.’

‘Don’t lay that burden on her, Jonny,’ Serena said. ‘It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t yours. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

He didn’t reply.

She realized that she’d missed something important all these years. This wasn’t just about grief and loss for him. It was about anger, too. He was mad at Cindy for dying. For leaving him alone.

It was strange. For the first time, she saw Cindy not through Jonny’s eyes, but through her own. She’d put Cindy on a pedestal for years, but that wasn’t fair to either of them. Cindy was a woman, like her. Strong and afraid. Full of goodness and mistakes. If Cindy were alive now, Serena wouldn’t be in this bed, but Cindy was gone.

Life followed its own twisting path.

‘Nine years is a long time for a gun to stay out of circulation,’ she said.

‘Janine knows where it’s been,’ Jonny insisted.

‘Does she? Or do you not want to accept the possibility that you were wrong about her?’

‘I’m not wrong.’

Serena spoke softly. ‘If this is really about you and Cindy—’

‘It’s not,’ he snapped. ‘I know you think losing Cindy is clouding my judgment, but it’s not. I didn’t make a mistake back then. I’ve been wrong about plenty of things in my life, but not about Janine Snow.’

42

A poster of Guy Fieri stared down at Maggie from the wall of the Duluth Grill. The punk-haired host from the Food Network had profiled the restaurant on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, and since then, tourists had swarmed the place, grabbing most of the tables. Even so, the Grill was still a hangout for the Duluth Police, and the servers all knew Maggie. They always found her a booth near the window.

She dug her fork into a cinnamon roll that was twice the size of her fist. To wash down the sweetness, she took a slug of coffee from an artsy Duluth Grill mug. With her mouth full, she checked her watch.

Nathan Skinner was late.

She wolfed down the pastry while she read the News-Tribune. When her plate was empty, Nathan still hadn’t arrived, and she began to get impatient. She moved on to her third coffee refill. Her bacon and eggs replaced the cinnamon roll, and she nibbled at the bacon while she devoured the paper’s editorial page.

Finally, she heard a familiar laugh near the front door.

After all these years, Nathan was still a star to Duluthians who were old enough to remember his championship season. He couldn’t walk through a restaurant without being grilled about decades-old college hockey games. She wondered if it annoyed him or if he relished reliving his glory days on the ice.

Nathan slid into the booth across from her. He had the same masculine grin. ‘Maggie,’ he said.

‘Hello, Nathan.’

‘Long time.’

He hadn’t changed much physically. He was shaving his head, and Maggie guessed it was because he was losing his blond hair. His punched-down face looked baby-smooth, enough to make her wonder if he’d had a nip and tuck. His blue eyes still twinkled with male magnetism, and he kept in shape. His career prospects had obviously improved, because he was dressed better than in the old days, in form-fitting khakis and a yellow silk shirt. He looked like a Republican heading for the golf course, not a washed-up security guard.

‘What have you been up to?’ Maggie asked.

‘I run a business now.’

‘Yeah? What kind of business?’

‘It’s sort of like a corporate dating service. I help entrepreneurs in the northland find venture capitalists who have money.’

‘Interesting career change,’ Maggie said. ‘How’d you get into that?’

‘A college buddy helped me out. Said he didn’t want to see God-given talent like mine go to waste. I’d like to say it’s all about spreadsheets and ROI, but really, my end is mostly about cigars, luxury boxes, and hook-ups. I know how to schmooze people. I talk the talk.’

Nathan grinned again, and Maggie didn’t doubt that he’d found his niche. He was still in a fraternity, selling to other frat boys.

‘Nice to see you doing well,’ she said without enthusiasm.

‘Probably not as well as you are. Your husband left you a pile of money after he got shot, didn’t he? Condo over the Sheraton next to all those hospital docs? Pretty nice for a cop.’

‘You’re well informed,’ Maggie said, but she wasn’t surprised. Two winters ago, her husband Eric had been murdered. It was the biggest news story in the city. She’d been the prime suspect. And when she was cleared, she’d sold Eric’s sporting goods business and banked several million dollars.

‘Well, that’s part of my job. I keep track of where the money goes in town. Eric was on my radar, so now you are, too. If you’re looking for investments, you should call me. I can get you in on the ground level of some exciting projects.’

Nathan was smooth. He’d left the rivalry between them far behind. At least on the outside.

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Maggie said.

‘I’m sorry about you and Stride, by the way. You guys flamed out, huh?’ She couldn’t hide her annoyance, and he said: ‘Cops talk, Maggie. You know that.’

She did know that, but she hated being the subject of office gossip. She felt her face grow hot.

‘Hey, I wasn’t trying to poke the bear,’ he went on. ‘Seriously. I’m sure it was tough on you.’

‘What, do you watch Dr. Phil now, Nathan?’

He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far, but I’ve spent enough time on the down side of life to know it sucks.’

‘Fine, it sucks,’ Maggie said. ‘Move on. You’re not my therapist.’

‘Are you still holding a grudge against me? Come on, we’re both too old for that now. People really do like me, Maggie. I know that may be hard for you to believe. Actually, you might like me, too, if you gave me a chance. I’ve changed.’

‘What’s the old saying about leopards?’ she asked.

He grinned and shook his head. ‘No, really. I’ll be the first to admit, I was a pig in my misspent youth. Racist. Sexist. You name it. I was angry at the world and blamed everybody but myself. But time mellows people. Even me.’

‘Well, let’s light up some weed and sing Arlo Guthrie songs, Nathan. Since we’re being so mellow.’

‘Come on. You think I can do business with the attitudes I had back then? It doesn’t work that way. The economy is diverse. The world is diverse. So am I. My wife’s Hispanic. I met her on a trip to Guatemala. I even speak respectable Spanish these days. So if you want the old Nathan Skinner? No más.’

Maggie wondered whether to believe him. In her own experience, people didn’t change. They just became more of who they really were, for better or worse. She knew that was true of herself, too.

‘Actually, I do need the old Nathan Skinner for a few minutes,’ Maggie told him. ‘The guy who spouted racial obscenities at Wisconsin cops and cheated with Janine Snow. That guy.’

Nathan leaned across the table with a serious expression on his face. She had to admit that she still felt the old, unwanted attraction to him. He knew how to turn on the physical charm. There was also more calm and restraint about him than he’d shown in the old days. She couldn’t push his buttons so easily now.

‘I heard about you guys finding the gun in the Jay Ferris case,’ he told her. ‘I know what you want to ask me, but the gun’s not mine. It never was.’

‘So where do you think it came from? And where has it been all these years?’

Nathan eased back into the booth. He swiped a piece of bacon from Maggie’s plate, which annoyed her, because she loved the bacon at the Grill. ‘Honestly? I have no idea.’

‘This was a street gun,’ Maggie said. ‘Not a suburban Gander Mountain special.’

‘Do you think Jay had gang connections you never heard about?’

‘Not according to his brother Clyde. And we never got a whiff of that during the original investigation.’

‘Well, street guns don’t usually show up in a domestic murder case,’ Nathan said. ‘It’s gangs and armed robberies. Or maybe murder-for-hire. Wasn’t there some old lady who thought Janine killed her husband on the operating table? Did she pay some money to have Jay whacked?’

Maggie nodded. ‘Esther Rose. She passed away last year. It wasn’t her. We checked her finances nine years ago, and there was no evidence that she paid anyone to get rid of Jay.’

‘Then I don’t know what to tell you,’ Nathan said. ‘The gun disappears for years and then shows up at another murder scene? I don’t get it.’

‘There’s something I need to ask you about. Just between us. Did Janine Snow really want to know how she could get a handgun off the books?’

‘That was my testimony in court,’ he replied cautiously.

‘I know. Was it true?’

‘Even if it weren’t, do you think I’d admit perjuring myself? Sorry.’

‘I’m not trying to bust you. I just want to know if Janine could have figured out a way to buy that gun.’

‘You’re talking about a Texas girl, Maggie. They’re half-animal under those pretty faces. If Janine wanted a gun, she wouldn’t be shy about asking around. That woman knew how to get what she wanted. So yeah, the gun could have been hers, but I don’t think it was.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because there’s one thing about Jay’s murder that always bothered me. And it has nothing to do with the gun.’

‘What’s that?’ Maggie asked.

Nathan shook his head. ‘I didn’t have any trouble believing that Janine was the one who shot Jay. Frankly, I didn’t blame her for it. The man treated her like shit. But Janine’s a smart woman. Scary-smart. There’s no way — no way — she would have let you guys pin it on her. Losing control? Shooting Jay in the head and coming up with a lame story that nobody believes? Sorry. That’s not Janine Snow. She would have had a plan for the whole thing, and she wouldn’t be sitting in prison right now. As much as I hate to admit it, she may have been telling the truth all along. The gun wasn’t hers.’

‘Hello, Cat,’ Anna Glick said. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you know.’

Anna sat on a plastic chair on the weedy front lawn of her house in Morgan Park. It was a two-story house barely wider than an old Chevy, with a sharply peaked roof and brown stucco walls. Ivy vines draped over the wall facing the street.

‘You haven’t called me back,’ Cat complained. ‘You haven’t answered any of my texts.’

Anna had a Chromebook on her lap, and she wore shorts and a skimpy tank top that showed off her pale, bony limbs. ‘Uh, maybe because the cops you live with told me I should stay away from you?’

‘My friends are my own business,’ Cat insisted stubbornly.

‘Maybe, but I don’t need trouble.’

‘Hey, I won’t tell them. They don’t need to know who I see. Come on, I’m bored. I just want to hang for a while.’

‘Okay, fine, stick around if you like,’ Anna agreed with a sigh. ‘How’d you get here, anyway?’

‘Bus.’

‘Is that smart?’ she asked, eyeing Cat’s bump.

‘We’re only three blocks from the stop. It’s not like I’m handicapped or something.’

Anna shrugged. She nodded at a second patio chair leaning against the house, and Cat went and grabbed it. The day was hot. Both of them wiped sweat from their foreheads. Anna had a can of Bud on the lawn beside her, and Cat ducked into the small house to pour orange juice from the carton in the fridge. Outside, she sat next to Anna and sipped the drink in silence. Anna tapped away on her keyboard, playing a fantasy game. Cat didn’t interrupt her.

‘So where’s Al?’ Anna asked without looking up from her computer game.

‘I don’t know. Working, probably.’

‘Are you guys still an item?’

‘I guess,’ Cat said.

Anna’s eyes flicked away from the Chromebook. ‘You guess?’

‘I haven’t talked to him. He’s busy.’ Then she added: ‘I did something stupid. I asked if he was in love with me. It freaked him out. We haven’t talked since.’

‘Guys don’t want serious. They want right now.’

‘Al is different. We’re not even having sex. We’re waiting until it feels right.’

Anna’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, and then she kept typing. A smirk flew across her lips. ‘You think he’s going to get hornier as that basketball of yours gets bigger? I don’t think so. Most guys are afraid the baby will reach out and grab their dick while they’re pumping.’

Cat frowned as Anna giggled at her own joke. Then she said: ‘So how’s Fred over at the bar?’

‘Fred is Fred. He’s pissed about the cops and reporters hanging around. Are they any closer to finding the guy who did it?’

‘Stride and Serena don’t tell me anything about that,’ Cat replied.

‘They’re cops. No surprise.’

‘I miss the bar.’

‘Well, Fred won’t let you back in. Sorry.’

Cat knew that Anna was right, and she wasn’t happy. She chafed under the restrictions on everything she did. It was summer. No school. She was free, but she felt as if she’d been locked in prison.

‘I’m low on cash,’ Cat admitted.

‘Seriously? Again?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t the cops give you an allowance?’

‘It’s not much,’ Cat said. ‘I don’t think they trust me with money. They figure I’ll buy cigarettes. Or drugs.’

‘Uh huh.’ Anna took off her wool cap and primped her spiky hair. ‘Well, there’s a church project this weekend if you want. Cleaning out a house in West Duluth. You might pick up a couple bucks that way.’

Cat hesitated. ‘I don’t like doing that stuff.’

‘Hey, the last job worked out okay, huh? Painting that place in Superior? Plus, that’s where you met Al. You complaining about that?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s your call,’ Anna said. ‘Do whatever you want.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

Anna flipped down the cover of her Chromebook. ‘I don’t have to be at work for a couple hours. You want to go get a burger and a Coke somewhere? I’m buying.’

Cat grinned. ‘Great!’

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘How about the Anchor?’

Anna shook her head. ‘You just want to run into Al.’

‘I miss him.’

‘Cat, he’s a guy. Guys like him come and go like empty beer cans. Especially when you start throwing the L-word around with someone who hasn’t even poled you yet.’

‘I told you, we’re waiting—’ she began, but Anna waved a hand in front of her face to stop her.

‘Listen, I didn’t want to tell you this, okay? I knew you’d get upset.’

‘Tell me what?’

Anna fixed a drooping strap on her tank top. ‘Couple weeks ago, Al was over at the Grizzly Bear talking to Fred. I think he was looking to pick up some PT work. Anyway, my car had a flat, so Al drove me home. It was late, and he came inside with me, and we had a few drinks and put on some flicks. Next thing I know, his tongue was down my throat, and his hands were inside my T-shirt.’

Cat shot to her feet. ‘Al made a pass at you? Al?’

‘Sorry, kiddo,’ Anna told her, ‘but yeah, he did. Like I said, we were both pretty drunk. He’s probably been nursing a major hard-on wanting to get into your pants. The thing is, I won’t lie to you, Cat. As passes go, this wasn’t exactly a dropped ball in the end zone.’

‘What are you saying?’ Cat asked, but she already knew.

‘I’m saying it was a completed pass. Al spent the night with me.’

43

When Janine entered the visiting room, Stride noticed the physical changes of eight years, the same way he did when he looked at himself in the mirror. They were both older. She wore no makeup. No jewelry. Like every other inmate, she was dressed down. In the past, watching Janine walk was like following a celebrity who could part a crowd with her presence. She had an otherness that set her apart from ordinary people. Now she was one of many.

‘Hello, Jonathan,’ she said as she sat down across from him.

‘Hello, Janine.’

He could see her taking his measure, the way he’d done to her. She was probably thinking similar things. He was older. Bruised and not as cocky. They sat in silence for a while, and others in the waiting room stole glances at them. Everybody knew who they were. There were no secrets here.

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I was to hear about Cindy,’ Janine said finally.

‘Thank you.’

‘She was probably my only real friend. Not that I’m comparing my loss to yours. I know what a love match the two of you were. My heart ached for you when I heard. Really. I wrote to you, but I didn’t expect a reply. I just wanted you to know that my grief was sincere.’

‘I got your letter,’ Stride told her.

‘Good.

More awkward silence followed. Once upon a time, they’d been something like friends. Now he didn’t know what they were.

‘Are you involved with someone?’ she asked him.

He didn’t answer, and she sighed and looked away.

‘So I’m still the enemy, am I?’ she went on. ‘I thought after all this time things might be different. Well, it may not matter coming from me, but I know Cindy would want you to be in love. I envied the two of you. How you could be different and yet the same. Obviously, I never mastered the art of relationships.’

He was silent again, and then he said: ‘I’m involved.’

‘I’m glad. Is it serious?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even better,’ she said. Her eyes traveled around the room. ‘I suppose it doesn’t happen very often, coming to see people you put in prison.’

‘No, not very often.’

‘Of course not. Why would you? I don’t get many visitors.’

‘What about Howard Marlowe?’ Stride asked.

Janine’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘You know about him? Well, of course you do. I forgot I have no privacy here.’

‘Howard has built quite a hobby out of you,’ Stride told her. ‘He got copies of most of our investigative records through Archie. He calls us all the time. He wants us to investigate new leads. I gather he’s writing a book.’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘He visits you here, too.’

‘He does. Is it strange, a man like that who can’t let go?’

‘It happens,’ Stride said. ‘People get obsessed.’

‘On one level, I’m grateful. For the company. For someone who believes in me. On the other hand, I feel as if I’m cheating him out of his life.’

‘You don’t have to see him.’

‘I know. And yet when I think about taking him off the list, I just can’t do it. A part of me can’t let go. I’m hoping he’ll decide on his own that I’m not worth it.’

Stride wondered if she was sincere. The old Janine would always have put herself first.

‘I assume Archie has been in touch with you,’ he told her.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So you know we’ve identified the gun that was used to kill Jay,’ he went on.

‘After all these years. It’s quite a mystery.’

He expected to see a glint of triumph in her face. She knew that this discovery, whatever it meant, opened up new legal doors for her. For the first time, she had a realistic chance at a new trial or even a complete dismissal. The idea of release from prison was no longer a fantasy. Except he was surprised by what he saw. Anxiety. Even fear. The life inside was the life she knew. She really had become an indoor cat. Outside was uncertain. Outside was scary. She couldn’t simply walk back to her old life, and she knew it.

‘I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on that mystery,’ Stride said.

Janine shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. You know I can’t do that.’

Which was the answer he’d expected.

‘I suppose Archie reminded you not to tell me anything that might jeopardize your release,’ he said.

‘Yes, he did.’

‘There’s a solution to this puzzle. I’m going to find out what it is.’

‘I wonder if you will,’ she replied. ‘I’m not doubting you, but nine years is a long time.’

Stride stared at her eyes, looking for answers. ‘Can I be honest with you, Janine?’

‘I’m sure you will be.’

‘I think you’re guilty. I always have.’

‘I know that.’

‘And if you’re guilty, that means you must know what happened to the gun that killed Jay and where it’s been all these years.’

‘In other words, where did I hide it?’ she asked. ‘Or who did I give it to?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Even if I knew, you realize it would be foolish of me to tell you. Legally speaking.’

‘I know that.’

‘So why ask me? Why did you come down here?’

He couldn’t keep the frustration out of his voice. ‘Because this is about more than finding an old gun in the woods and running a ballistics test. This gun was used to kill a woman just a few weeks ago. The man who did it is on the loose. The lives of other women may well be at stake. I have just one clue. His gun. Eight years ago, that gun was in your living room. It’s the gun that murdered your husband. If I knew where it went after that, then I stand a chance of figuring out who used it last month.’

He hoped he would get through to her. She was already in prison, and he wanted to believe there was enough regret in her heart over what she’d done that she would choose to save someone else’s life. He saw her hesitate. He knew — he knew — that she had the answers he needed.

Janine leaned across the table and, violating the prison rules, took both of his hands in hers.

‘I’m sorry, Jonathan,’ she told him. ‘I know what you think of me, but I’m telling you the truth. I was telling you the truth all those years ago. That gun was never in my hands. I’m not the one who shot my husband.’

44

Howard had long ago memorized the jewelry that Janine Snow lost when her husband was murdered, but he still reviewed the photographs every time he entered a pawn shop. Six items. All expensive. A black pearl ring in a white gold setting. Matching earrings and a matching necklace. A bracelet of twisted gold chains interspersed with diamonds and blue sapphires. A hummingbird pin with a breast of real rubies. An emerald brooch in the shape of the letter J. Each piece was a custom design.

He parked in the ramp of the Fond-Du-Luth casino and emerged onto Superior Street. The casino was next to him, belching cigarette smoke when the doors opened. He’d never been inside. He didn’t gamble. It was a sweltering afternoon, and he thought about stopping at a bar, but beer fogged his head. He needed to be sharp as he perused the jewelry locked under the glass of the pawn shop counters.

For eight years, he’d visited the same shops again and again. Duluth. Cloquet. Grand Rapids. Hinckley. Even down to the Twin Cities. Dozens of them, from the upscale mall shops buying gold and silver to the alley-side joints that served up fast cash and payday loans. The owners all knew him, although he’d never told them what he was looking for. Howard was paranoid that if any of the owners knew they were fencing property stolen in a murder case, they’d make those items quietly disappear before he could identify them.

He climbed 2nd Avenue in the heat. He wore a red Kohl’s polo shirt, tan khakis, and sneakers with reinforced arches for his flat feet. The shoes were new, and the soles squeaked. Zenith Pawn was at the next corner, garish with neon.

Black pearl ring in a gold setting.

Hummingbird pin.

Emerald J brooch.

All these years, all these fruitless hours spent hunched over display cases, and he’d never lost faith.

Howard thought about his last visit with Janine and the odd confession she’d made. It shocked him, until he’d realized that she was trying to drive him away. He’d been too honest with her about his frustrations with Carol. Janine blamed herself for his dissolving marriage, and maybe she was right. Even so, he refused to let her send him away.

‘Say whatever you want,’ he had told her. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Howard opened the glass door of the pawn shop. Inside, the air conditioning made his damp skin cold. It felt good. Another customer was at the counter, a silver-haired lady dickering with the owner over the price of an old penny. The shop overflowed with inventory. Jewelry. Guns. Video games. Stamps and coins. Leather. Cutlery and knives. Electronics. Some items were new, but most were used, the litter of the Great Recession. Three balls were the universal symbol of boom times gone bust.

‘This is a 1933 wheat penny,’ the old woman insisted. ‘I looked it up. It’s worth twenty dollars. I cleaned it up for you, too. Nice and shiny.’

The owner was bald and big and reminded him of a pro wrestler like Jesse Ventura. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket. Somewhere inside the jacket, Howard assumed the man carried a bad-ass gun.

‘Beverly, sweetie,’ he replied in an Aussie accent, ‘it’s twenty dollars in uncirculated condition. This penny looks like it’s been through a stretchy machine at Fun Land. And cleaning it makes it worth less, not more. I’ve told you that.’

‘Twenty dollars,’ she repeated.

‘Sweetie, I can give you two dollars and a cup of decaf, and that’s because I’m in a good mood.’

The old woman continued to argue. Howard ignored her. He saw the owner shoot him a wink and a grin.

Howard slipped reading glasses onto his face. He bent over the long counter crammed with one-off jewelry items, and the glasses slipped down to the end of his sweaty nose. He tried to stay focused. After a while, the jewelry all looked alike. The same stuff week after week, most of it cheap paste.

He checked the tag on each item. Ring — four hundred dollars. Necklace — seventy-five dollars. Elvis tie tack — ‘priceless’. The owner had a sense of humor. Each piece was nestled in a velvet sleeve, and when Howard had surveyed the entire counter, he moved on to the next one.

Watches. Earrings. Murano glass charms.

But again — nothing.

It had been nothing all day in the other shops. It had been nothing every month since he began his search years ago.

He’d hoped today would be different because of the gun. The police had finally found the gun that killed Jay Ferris, years after the crime. The same gun had been used in a murder in West Duluth the previous month and in a Chicago robbery shortly before Jay’s death. No one could explain it.

Howard didn’t know how or why this particular gun had made its way from one crime to the next, but he felt vindicated. He’d been right all along that Jay’s own gun had played no part in the shooting. This was something different. This was what you’d expect from a home invasion, just as Janine had insisted. A stranger came to the door. Killed Jay. Stole the jewelry. Disappeared, along with the gun.

Now the gun was back.

Where had it been for eight years? Howard didn’t know, but he was willing to bet that wherever the gun had been hidden, the missing jewelry had been hidden there, too. If someone had used the gun, then it made sense that the jewelry might show up at the same time. The truth was coming to light.

‘Howie!’ the owner bellowed at him. His name was Caffy, which was short for his last name, Cafferty. ‘Mate!’

Caffy loomed on the other side of the counter like a brown bear. Wheat Penny Lady was gone, clutching two dollars in one fist and a styrofoam cup of Green Mountain Nantucket Keurig coffee in the other.

‘Want an old penny?’ the owner asked, flipping it in the air with his thumb and catching it in his giant palm. ‘Only twenty bucks.’

Howard stopped his search and looked up, his mouth falling open. A grin bent across the owner’s face.

‘Kidding, mate. This penny ain’t worth a dime. If you’ve got a chair that wobbles, stick it under one of the legs.’

‘So why’d you give her two bucks?’ Howard asked.

‘Oh, Beverly’s all right. Likes a yank on the crank in the casino now and then. Who knows, maybe she’ll take my twofer and win a Cadillac or something.’

Howard smiled. He actually liked Caffy. Most of the pawn shop owners he met were too slick by half, but Caffy dealt straight with people. If he didn’t have a soft spot, he had a thinner plate of steel near his heart. They’d talked over the years. Sports. Chinese history. Irish poets. Caffy was surprisingly well read, and well traveled, which Howard found fascinating. The man had led the kind of unattached wanderer’s life that Howard envied.

Even so, he’d never shown the photographs of Janine’s jewelry to Caffy. You could like someone face to face and not trust them when your back was turned.

‘That watch over there,’ Caffy boomed. ‘That would look good on your wrist.’

‘Who wears watches anymore?’ Howard asked.

‘Ah, they’re coming back. Smart watches. That’s the new thing.’

‘No, thanks.’

Caffy never took rejection personally. ‘Sure, whatever. You’re in earlier than usual, ain’t you? Thought it would be another couple weeks before you showed up again.’

‘Yes, I’m early,’ Howard admitted.

He was at the end of the last counter. He’d looked through hundreds of pieces of jewelry, ranging in price from five dollars to a thousand dollars. He’d found nothing even as interesting as the wheat penny.

‘Might help if you gave me a clue what you want,’ Caffy told him. ‘After all these years, the I’ll-know-it-when-I-see-it game gets old, doesn’t it?’

‘One needle, lots of haystacks,’ Howard said.

‘Come on, mate, give me a hint. Cheap, expensive.’

‘Expensive. Very expensive.’

‘Oh, well, why didn’t you say so?’ Caffy told him. ‘I do have a little private stock this week. Best customers only. Which don’t exactly include you, Howie, but you want to see it anyway?’

‘I do — thanks, Caffy.’

The owner retreated into the back. As he did, he pressed a button that locked the shop door, which told Howard exactly how far trust went between them. He could see the big Aussie disappearing inside an oversized steel vault, and he emerged a moment later with a typewriter-sized box. He set it on the glass counter in front of Howard and opened the top, revealing several dazzling felt rows of jewelry that were probably worth more than everything in the storefront counters combined.

‘Nice stuff, huh?’ Caffy said.

‘Very nice.’

‘Look, but don’t touch, mate.’

‘I won’t.’

Howard bent over, securing his reading glasses on his face. This collection wasn’t thirteen-to-a-dozen rings and bracelets. This was beautiful work. Multi-carat diamonds. Rubies and emeralds that glowed as if the inside of the stone were on fire. Gold that belonged on the bare neck of a perfect young starlet.

‘People really pawn this kind of stuff?’ Howard asked. ‘Why?’

‘You’re in the museum of lost dreams, Howie.’

Lost dreams or hot property, Howard thought. He took his time examining the pieces, because each was beautiful and distinctive, with a story behind it that he wished he knew. Divorce? Inheritance? Mistress? He wanted to pick the stones up in his hands, but he restrained himself.

Even so, there was nothing and nothing and—

Howard stopped. He stared at the fourth velvet row, where engagement rings nuzzled with bejeweled pinky rings. He stared, stopped, and stared again. His mouth went dry. His heart took off, beat beat beat beat.

There it was. After all these years, there it was.

Black pearl ring. The setting — two thick white gold bands intertwined to form a wreath. The stone as dark and ominous as the sea, swallowing all light. That was one of six pieces of jewelry missing since a winter’s night, January 28, almost nine years ago.

That was Janine’s ring.

45

The bartender directed Serena to a dirt lot behind the Grizzly Bear, where she found Fred Sissel. The bar owner sat on a picnic bench with his long legs stretched out and his dress shoes coated with dust. A cigarette perched between his lips, and his tie was slung over his shoulder to avoid ash. He sat uncomfortably close to Anna Glick, who texted on her smartphone. Sissel had his hand on the young woman’s thigh, and his face sported the kind of grin that men use when they’re being cocky and cool. Anna didn’t remove Fred’s hand, but the way she held her body didn’t offer encouragement.

Serena had done her research on Sissel. He was fifty-three years old. He’d lived his whole life in Duluth. He’d worked in sales and marketing for a small advertising agency until he lost his job in the recession. At that point, he’d scraped together enough savings and debt to buy the bar on Raleigh Street. He had more debt than savings, and the revenues had gotten worse, not better, in the six years he’d owned the bar. He was unmarried. The smile, the slick hair, the stained ties, were all lines on the business card of the perennial bachelor. His colleagues said he thought of himself as a ladies’ man, but that was mostly in his head. He had a paper-thin ego that could be blown away by the mildest breeze.

‘You said you had information for me?’ Serena called to Sissel. She’d received a text message from the bar owner an hour earlier.

Sissel whispered to Anna, who clambered off the bench. Serena saw the man’s hand graze Anna’s ass as she wandered away, still engrossed in her phone.

‘You can do better,’ Serena murmured as the girl passed her.

Anna shrugged, as if nothing could be more obvious. ‘I do.’

Serena crossed the lot and sat on the opposite side of the bench. Sissel, still sucking on a cigarette, smoothed his hair and rubbed two greasy fingers together. The smoke on his breath mingled with beer.

‘Some guy came into the bar this afternoon,’ he told her. ‘He was asking a lot of questions about that woman who was killed. Kelly Hauswirth.’

‘Who was he? A sailor?’

‘No, he wasn’t from the boats.’

‘What did he look like?

‘He was hard to miss. Blue glasses, blue pants, a white button-down shirt. Short, maybe five-six, skinny.’

‘So what did this guy do?’ Serena asked.

‘He came in mid-afternoon when the place was pretty empty. He ordered a beer, and then he asked me if I knew which table this woman Kelly was sitting at before she got shot. It was weird, but hey, people have their kinks. I told him which table it was, and he took his beer over there and sat down. When I went to take his order, he grilled me with more questions. Did I talk to the woman? How long was she there? Did I see what happened to her? That struck me as more than the average freaky curiosity, so I went out back and sent you a text. By the time I got inside again, the guy was gone. He finished his beer and told Anna to make his burger to go. Paid cash.’

Serena frowned. They often found hangers-on at murder scenes, but this one sounded odd. ‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘No, but I talked to one of the guys who came in right after Blue Pants left. He saw him get into a red compact. Headed toward Grassy Point.’

Serena stood up. ‘Thanks for the information, Fred.’

‘You’re welcome. Maybe you’d like to have dinner sometime.’

‘Maybe I wouldn’t,’ Serena replied.

She left Sissel on the bench and went around the side of the bar to the street. In the distance, the Bong Bridge slashed across the bay to Superior. She put out an alert with the description of the man and the car, and then she drove her Mustang into the industrial area near Grassy Point. This was where the business of Duluth got done. Boats belched iron ore down gravity feed ramps. Trains and trucks came and went. Lumber got stacked like matchsticks, and taconite was piled into black pyramids. The air always smelled of cut wood, and engines thundered like storms that never moved off. White columns of steam rose from the plants and merged into the white clouds.

Where the road turned toward the bay at 50th Street, she got lucky. A hundred yards away, she spotted a red Corolla. There was a splash of blue on the hood, where the man in the turquoise pants sat watching the rolling train cars. She parked her Mustang not far away and got out. She let a truck pass, then crossed the road to approach him.

‘Afternoon,’ she called to the man.

He was probably about thirty years old but looked younger. He had a baby face and nervous eyes behind the blue-framed glasses that matched his pants. He looked as if he wanted to jackrabbit across the train tracks toward the water.

‘Uh, hi,’ he said.

Serena let him see her police shield. ‘Do you mind coming down here for a minute?’

‘Uh, okay.’ He slid off the hood, scattering French fries from a white foam box. ‘Is there a problem? Am I not supposed to be here?’

‘Can I see some identification?’ Serena asked.

‘Sure. I guess.’

He dragged a wallet out of his pants and gave her his driver’s license. His name was Mort Sanders, and he was from the Twin Cities suburb of Eden Prairie. Mort looked like a geek who’d never outgrown his high school science classes. His short hair was curly and mocha-colored.

‘What do you do for a living, Mr. Sanders?’ she asked.

‘I’m a field service tech for a big gaming company. I test and repair their video slot machines.’

‘Is that what you’re doing in Duluth?’

‘Uh, no. I’m just up here doing tourist stuff.’

‘I understand you were in the Grizzly Bear Bar asking questions about the murder of Kelly Hauswirth,’ Serena said.

‘You know about that?’ His voice screeched like a badly played violin. ‘Holy crap, I knew this was a mistake. I swear, I didn’t kill her!’

‘I didn’t say you did, but I’d like to know why you’re so curious about this crime. Did you know Kelly?’

‘Sort of. I mean, I never met her, but I knew her. Online. I’m on the road for work a lot, so I’m stuck in hotel rooms. I like to follow the chat rooms. It’s a big party in there, you know? Everybody’s drunk and hitting on everybody else.’

‘So you met Kelly in one of these chat rooms?

‘Yeah. She was Dream_on223, and I was...’

He stopped.

Serena said, ‘What was your handle?’

‘Beccababe911.’

‘You pretended to be a woman?’ she said.

‘Yeah, but it’s no big deal. Most people use fake IDs. They’re not dumb enough to put their real identity out there, okay? Kelly wasn’t Kelly online. If you talked to her, she said her name was Corinne, and she was from Maryland. And it’s not like gender-bending is so odd. The fact is, women will talk to other women. They’re on their guard whenever men approach them. So Beccababe can get to know women, which Mort Sanders can’t. I’ve made a lot of great women friends that way.’

‘By lying to them,’ Serena said.

‘I lie about my outer self but not about my inner self.’

Serena rolled her eyes and waited for the noise of a passing train to diminish. ‘Let’s get back to Kelly. Why are you here asking questions about her murder?’

‘I was reading a copy of the Star Tribune, and I saw an article about this murder victim in Duluth being identified. Kelly Hauswirth from Colorado. I saw the pic, and it was her. It was a shock. I felt really bad. So I just wanted to find out more about what happened to her.’

‘You said Kelly had a different identity online,’ Serena reminded him. ‘How did you know who she was? Did she tell you her real name?’

Mort wet his lips with his tongue. ‘No.’

‘So how?’

‘It’s kind of a hobby of mine.’

‘What is?’ Serena asked.

‘I collect people.’

‘Collect them? What does that mean?’

‘You’re going to think it’s weird,’ he said.

‘Oh, we’re way past weird.’

‘Look, I swear, it is totally innocent. I never do anything to them. I told you, it’s just a hobby.’

Mort slid a smartphone out of his pocket and punched a button to pull up his photo stream. He held it so Serena could see the screen, and he used his thumb to flick through a series of photographs. They were all unposed shots of ordinary people in ordinary places. A middle-aged woman in a grocery store. A teenager coming out of school. An older man in a suit getting on a bus. And then — Kelly Hauswirth. Serena recognized her. She saw Kelly jogging on a treadmill at a suburban gym.

‘Where did you get this photo?’ Serena asked.

‘I took it.’

‘How?’

‘I told you, I’m a collector. It’s what I do. The thing is, when you meet people online, most of them use fake personas, right? Different names. Different hometowns. Sometimes different ages and genders. But most people who create fake IDs also use some elements of the truth. It’s easier than making everything up. Maybe they tell you their real job, but not the real place they work. Or real stories about friends or family. Or the real car they drive. Get it? For me, the fun is to see whether I can meet a person online with a fake ID and figure out who they really are from the clues they give me. And if I do, when I happen to be in that city on a casino job — well, I track them down. Take a picture for my collection. See?’

‘You stalk them,’ Serena said.

‘That’s an ugly way to describe it.’

‘That’s because it’s the accurate way to describe it.’

‘No! I told you, it’s innocent. I don’t have any contact with them. I don’t want to be part of their real lives. I just want to know who they are. It’s harmless.’

Serena felt an urge to go home and take a shower. And never to boot up a computer again. ‘So you collected Kelly Hauswirth.’

‘Right.

‘You figured out that she wasn’t Corinne from Maryland. How?’

‘She wasn’t too tough. Parents are always a good way in. People lie about themselves but not about their parents. We talked about her being estranged from them, and she mentioned that they lived in Montana. Another time, she mentioned their first names. And then another time, she told me what her dad did for a living before he retired. I keep notes on all this stuff. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. She gave me enough to find her parents, and they helped me find her when I called them. Old people like to talk about their kids.’

‘So when you figured out that Corinne was really Kelly Hauswirth, you went to Colorado and followed her and took her picture.’

‘Uh, yes. I told you, it’s just a game.’

‘Then you read that she’d been murdered and you figured you’d come up here and ask around about what happened? Because you felt bad for her?’

‘Yes, exactly.’

Serena shook her head. ‘Sorry, Mort. No way. What are you not telling me?’

The man danced back and forth on his feet. ‘Okay, I was a little scared, too.’

‘Why?’

‘I wanted to make sure that someone wasn’t going to come after me,’ he told her.

‘Who would do that?’ Serena asked.

Mort slid off his blue glasses and cleaned them. He repositioned them on his face with both hands. ‘Kelly told me about this guy that she met online. She was really into him. Used the L-word. She told me who he was, the things he said, romantic stuff. I knew it was all bogus.’

‘How?’

‘Because the same guy hit on me, too. His handle was Lakelover. I tried to collect him, but he was way too cautious. Nothing he said about himself checked out. I knew why Kelly fell for him, though. He was cool, a good listener. As much a girlfriend as a boyfriend. He never pushed me for sex, which is pretty rare, but he asked me lots of questions about myself. Something about it felt — off. I had a bad feeling about him.’

‘Did you warn Kelly?’

‘I tried, but I sort of let on that I knew who she was. She got totally creeped out, and she blocked me. When I read that she’d been murdered, I thought about this Lakelover guy. I began to think — what if he was able to track me down the way I do with other people? I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever since.’

Lakelover.

That was a good handle for someone in Duluth.

Serena studied the young man next to her and realized he was genuinely scared. He was probably on the razor’s edge of violating privacy laws — and he was definitely on the far side of the moral line — but she didn’t sense any violent intent from him.

‘Here’s some free advice,’ she told Mort. ‘Take your collection and punch the delete button. And next time you feel like going into a chat room somewhere, go buy a book. Sooner or later, with what you’re doing, something bad is going to happen to you. Let Kelly’s experience be a lesson, okay?’

Mort swallowed hard. ‘Yeah, okay.’

But she knew he wouldn’t stop.

‘Now get out of here before I feel the need to arrest you for something,’ she said.

‘Listen, there’s one other thing you should know,’ Mort went on. ‘I was in another chat room last month, chatting up another girl. Cute, innocent, a lot like Kelly. She told me about her online boyfriend and how cool he was. His handle was Mattie_1987. The thing is, I know it was the same guy. Different room, different alias, but the personal details were identical.’

‘Mattie_1987 was Lakelover?’ Serena said.

‘I’m sure of it. No way two different guys would use the same background, same story, do the same seduction routine. It was him.’

Another alias. Another girl.

‘Who was she?’ Serena asked.

Mort drummed his fingers nervously on his blue pants.

‘Come on, don’t play innocent with me now,’ Serena said. ‘This other girl. Did you collect her?’

He nodded. ‘Okay, yeah. I did. I never got her picture, but I found out a few details about her. Her name was Erin. She was from Grand Forks.’

46

The Ingersstrom floated in the black water of Burns Harbor in Indiana.

As a saltie — an ocean-going cargo boat, not the freshwater ships that stayed in the Great Lakes — it was long at six hundred feet. The green-and-red steel of its hull was marred by discolored water lines and orange swaths of rust. Three thirty-foot cranes towered above the deck like praying mantises. The German-flagged ship had started its Atlantic crossing in Rotterdam and made its way through the Seaway, unloading shipments of steel coils in Canada and New York. In two more days, it would cross Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and pass under the lift bridge into the port of Duluth.

One of the ship’s crew leaned against a portable toilet two hundred yards from the Ingersstrom. The toilet smelled. So did he. His tight-fitting white T-shirt was thick with grease, and he hadn’t showered in three days. It was after dark, and he was largely invisible where he stood, but the port was alive with spotlights and metallic noise and the silhouettes of men who looked like busy ants. His blue-gray eyes moved slowly, studying the movement around him. Every hour in port made him nervous, but there were no surprises tonight.

Nearby, heavy boots scraped on gravel. A man waddled toward him from across the railroad tracks near Boundary Road. The crewman shoved his hands in his jeans and curled the fingers of his left hand around an ice pick. The man approaching him was squat and heavy-set, with a beard and greasy black hair. He recognized him as one of the engine crew from the Ingersstrom, but he didn’t drop his guard. He made sure the man was alone before he released the wooden handle of the pick.

‘Hello, Bernd,’ the man said to him.

Bernd grunted a greeting back.

‘Any troubles here?’ the heavy-set man asked. ‘All good?’

‘‘All good,’ Bernd said.

‘You eaten?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I had a sausage sandwich in town,’ the man told him. ‘With cheese fries. Better than the shit on board.’

‘Anything is,’ Bernd said.

‘Calm seas, eh? No worries?’

‘No,’ Bernd said, but he didn’t like small talk. The man had gone into the city of Gary for a reason, and Bernd was impatient to get what he’d paid for. ‘You have something for me?’

‘Yeah, I got it. No problems.’

The beefy man reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and extracted a package wrapped in a blue plastic bag. Bernd took it from him immediately.

‘It works?’ Bernd asked.

‘What, you think I tested it? Like I should shoot somebody?’

Bernd shrugged. ‘Cartridges?’

‘In the bag.’

He examined the automatic inside. It would do. He preferred revolvers, but the bigger clips of the black gun would be more useful. And his last revolver had been bad luck. After he’d blown off the face of the blond woman who was trying to run, he’d lost the gun on the wet steps when that other bitch tackled him.

Bernd shoved the gun into his belt and pulled his T-shirt over it. He squeezed the box of cartridges into his back pocket. He felt more secure having a weapon again. It had been a long time without a gun, but those purchases were easier in the USA than in Amsterdam.

The two men stood silently beside each other. The business of the docks went on around them.

‘So,’ the other man said. ‘Duluth again, eh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Another delivery?’

‘Yeah.’

The fat man thought about this. ‘Captain says he’s hearing things online. More surveillance. More questions.’

‘A body turned up in Amsterdam,’ Bernd said. ‘One of ours.’

‘So they’ll be searching. People will be on guard.’

‘Let them search.’

‘You say that, but it’s all our asses if things go bad. Maybe we should wait.’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Bernd snapped.

The fat man didn’t look happy. He wasn’t alone; others among the crew had begun muttering about the authorities. Bernd didn’t like extra heat, but skipping the delivery wasn’t an option. Their buyers were already impatient. The Saudis paid a freaking fortune for the American girls on their shopping lists, so they got what they wanted. Bigger risks meant bigger payoffs.

‘Well, keep your eyes open, eh?’ the fat man said, waving goodbye, heading across the busy port for the Ingersstrom.

Bernd grunted a salute.

His full name was Bernd Frisch. He was twenty-six years old. His narrow, pale face was heavily dotted with freckles, and his chin was rounded. He had blond hair shaved to his scalp on the sides and sitting in short, tight curls on top. His lips were thin, his nose a small, shallow bump on his face. Unlike most of his crew mates, he didn’t have a tattoo anywhere on his skin, and he was mostly hairless. He was tall, with a lean, hard body.

He’d lived most of his childhood life in Germany, and he spoke German and English fluently, thanks in part to a succession of American tourist girlfriends. He’d left school at fifteen, when he concluded that he was smarter about the real world than most of his teachers. For five years afterward, he drifted. Berlin. Prague. Riga. Tallinn. Needing money, he’d joined an Estonian gang as muscle to take care of their street-level problems. When the gang expanded into smuggling operations, he’d helped them bribe, blackmail, and threaten their way onto the Ingersstrom. The ship was now the backbone of their North American ventures. That included fresh-faced girls who could fetch as much as fifty thousand dollars with certain Arab buyers. They’d trafficked girls six times in two years.

His only failure had been the one who tried to run. The loss of a prime package didn’t sit well in Tallinn, and other gang members had paid for smaller mistakes with a plastic bag taped over their heads. Bernd was lucky. He was too valuable to lose, but the ice under his feet was thin.

He felt his American cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He checked his surroundings and then slid the phone into his hand. He’d been waiting for his Duluth contact to check in by text:

Are you on time?

Bernd keyed in a response: Two days. Be ready.

Always.

What about the package?

Already in storage.

Bernd typed: I expect no problems this time.

There was a long pause before the reply.

The last package arrived late. Not my fault.

Bernd didn’t want excuses. The situation with the woman from Colorado had been a disaster, and he couldn’t afford a repeat. None of them could. As it was, he was afraid the situation in Duluth had become too hot. He wondered about the police investigation and how far it had gone.

Have you had visitors?

Yes.

How much do they know?

Enough to cause problems. Plus, we have a new situation.

What?

There was a problem with the gun I gave you. It had a history. I didn’t know.

Bernd felt his anger rise. More problems. More mistakes. Whenever he relied on other people, they disappointed him. He’d invested time and money in the Duluth operation, and it was too late to walk away now. The only thing to do was to see it through.

Stick to the plan. Collect the girl. And then tie up loose ends.

He wrote:

Make sure the package is ready. I’m coming.

47

Cat listened to the whistle of trains across the street from Al’s house. She rested her feet on the broken footrest of an old recliner and sweated in the stifling living room. Dirty bowls and plates were stacked on a tray table in front of the sofa. The beige carpet was littered with video games and toys.

The walls were white, not yet scuffed with dirt and fingerprints. She saw family photos in frames that hadn’t been rehung yet. If she inhaled, she still caught the tiniest whiff of fresh paint. A couple of months earlier, she’d been here, with the furniture pushed into the center of the room under a plastic tarp, and a roller brush in her hands. She’d painted the downstairs, and Anna had painted the upstairs bedrooms.

That was when she’d met Al. He came home late, exhausted from his second job at the Anchor. She remembered the smile on his face when he saw the walls all white and clean. It was something new in a house that didn’t see many new things. She remembered the look in his eyes when he saw her, too. Men usually looked at her like a lion looks at food. Al’s eyes were different. He didn’t assume that she was for sale. He didn’t even notice the little pooch that said she was pregnant. He’d looked at her with a sense of wonder, as if she were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. Cat — tired, dusty, with flecks of white paint in her hair and on her golden skin — saw that look and fell in love with him right then and there.

She was such a fool.

Al’s mother wandered into the living room from the kitchen and handed Cat a can of warm Mountain Dew. The woman fell into a corner of the sofa that was nearest the recliner. ‘Silence. Isn’t that grand? Everybody’s finally asleep.’

Cat sipped the pop and smiled nervously. ‘It’s not like that a lot, huh?’

‘No, hardly ever. Except late at night like this. Mostly, it’s jabber jabber jabber.’ She put a hand gently on the wall behind her. ‘Gotta tell you again how sweet that was of you to paint this place. Real nice.’

‘It was nothing,’ Cat said. She wasn’t looking for praise for painting the house. Right now, she wanted to forget all about it.

Al’s mother was friendly, but her eyes weren’t naive. She sized up Cat like a butcher who didn’t need a scale to know how much ground beef was in her hand. ‘Is Al the daddy?’ she asked, pointing at her bump.

‘Oh, no, he’s not.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

The woman took short, shallow breaths, but despite her emphysema, Cat caught an aroma of cigarette smoke on her clothes. It was hard to stay away from the things you shouldn’t touch.

‘How old are you, Cat?’ she asked.

‘Seventeen.’

‘I had Al around the same age. Believe me, I know the drill. Is the daddy still in the picture?’

‘No, he and I aren’t together,’ Cat said. She wasn’t going to tell the truth about her baby’s father and the life she’d led before. It didn’t matter. Somehow she had a feeling that Al’s mother was shrewd enough to figure her out.

‘I don’t envy you what you’ve got ahead. It’ll be tough. No point in pretending otherwise. Me, I was lucky. My man stuck with me.’

‘I want the baby,’ Cat insisted.

‘Good for you, but if you’re thinking about my boy as your meal ticket—’

‘I’m not.’

‘Hey, I don’t blame you if that’s what’s in your head.’

‘It isn’t.’

Cat didn’t know if Al’s mother believed her, or if she even believed it herself. She thought that she was in love with him, but she was scared, and scared people can convince themselves of lots of things. Al was cute. Nice. Hard-working. Respectful.

And he’d slept with Anna.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

‘I just need to talk to him,’ Cat said.

His mother eyed her. ‘What’d Al do?’

Cat looked at her hands in her lap. ‘Nothing.’

‘Girl shows up at my house late at night and wants to talk to my boy? Come on, you might as well tell me. Otherwise, I’ll get it out of him myself.’

‘I should go,’ Cat said. ‘It was a mistake to come here.’

‘Do what you want, sweetheart.’

Cat tried to get up on her own and couldn’t. She pushed, but her body sank back into the recliner. The effort made her cry. Emotion gushed out of her like water through a broken hose. ‘He slept with my best friend!’ she wailed, feeling like a child.

Al’s mother sighed. She didn’t look surprised, but she waited for Cat to get control of herself and wipe her face before she said anything. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I thought I raised my son better than that. You want me to talk to him?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’ll talk to him anyway. I expect more from that boy.’

Cat sniffled. ‘I’m sorry. I should go. I don’t even know why I came here.’

‘No, you sit there and wait. Al always gets home about now. You give him hell, girl. He deserves it. And when you’re done with him, he’ll have to answer to me, too. But don’t misunderstand me, okay? I don’t approve of you and him. I’m not in favor. He can’t support you and your baby. He’s got other things to do with his life.’

Cat said nothing. She was miserable, and all she wanted to do was leave, but she heard the noise of a truck door outside. Al was home. Suddenly, Cat didn’t want to see him. It would hurt too much, because she hated him, and she loved him. Then the door opened, and there he was, looking startled to see her sitting there with his mother. He stood in the doorway, not moving, and his mother shoved herself off the sofa. She clucked her tongue at her son and then slapped him in the face.

Al rubbed his stinging cheek as his mother turned on her heels and left them alone. ‘What was that about?’ he said. ‘Why’d she do that?’

‘You know why.’

Al sat down on the sofa, looking like a deer frozen by car lights. ‘What’s going on? I’m sorry I haven’t called you. I’ve been busy.’

‘You’ve sure been busy,’ Cat said. ‘Anna told me what happened.’

Al swallowed hard and closed his eyes. He looked as if he’d begun to sweat through every pore simultaneously. ‘Oh, shit.’

‘All that talk. “It’s okay to wait, Cat. I want it to feel right for you. We don’t need to have sex.” Nothing but talk.’

‘Cat, I’m really sorry,’ he insisted. ‘It was one time, and it was a mistake. I never meant for anything to happen. I was over at the Grizzly Bear talking to Fred, and Anna’s car crapped out. So I took her home.’

‘You took her home and fucked her,’ Cat snapped.

Al took hold of his head with both hands. ‘Look, what do you want me to say? It just happened! She said, how about a drink? I figured, what the hell, one drink. Next thing I knew, we’d finished off a six-pack, and we started making out. It was stupid. You have to believe me, I don’t care about Anna. I care about you. I love you. You wanted me to say it? There, I said it.’

‘Yeah, because it means so much to me now,’ Cat snapped.

‘How can I make this right?’ Al asked.

‘You can’t. You can drive me home, and you can keep your mouth shut the whole way, and then you can go away and leave me alone. I don’t ever want to see you again. I wish I’d never met you.’

‘Cat, please—’

She pushed against the arms of the recliner, but she still couldn’t get up. Al jumped to his feet, took her hands gently, and helped her. As soon as she was standing, she pushed him away, not wanting him to touch her. His arms dropped uncomfortably to his sides, as if he had no place to put them.

‘I made a mistake,’ he repeated. ‘People make mistakes.’

‘Take me home,’ she muttered.

He yanked his keys from his pocket. She made her way to the front door, and he followed her silently. His head was hung low in shame. He felt bad, and she was glad. All she wanted to do now was hurt him. Punish him. Having Al betray her was worse than anything else, because she’d begun to count on him being there for her. He’d let her think that a boy could be with her for who she was and forget about who she’d been.

Instead, he’d proven what she always believed.

Nothing good ever lasted.

48

Stride studied the photograph of the opaque black pearl enrobed in twines of white gold. The ring was unmistakable. Once upon a time, Janine Snow had worn it on the third finger of her right hand. He’d seen a photograph of her from a hospital ball a decade earlier, adorned in matching black pearl jewelry and a revealing sequined burgundy cocktail dress. The night of Jay’s murder, according to Janine, this very ring had been stolen from her bedroom by the man who killed her husband.

Then it vanished, never to be found again. And now, like the gun, it was back.

The timing was no coincidence. The gun. The jewelry. Something had happened to bring them into the light.

‘I talked to Pat Burns,’ Stride told Serena and Maggie in his office.

Pat Burns had taken over as St. Louis County attorney from Dan Erickson two years earlier.

‘What did she say?’ Maggie asked. ‘What did the judge decide?’

She sat with her legs dangling in the chair immediately in front of Stride’s desk. Serena sat on Stride’s sideboard with her back against the office wall. The two women in his life avoided looking at each other.

‘He signed off on Archie’s motion and ordered Janine’s release,’ Stride told them. ‘She’ll probably be out tomorrow. The judge ruled that a third party clearly had control over the murder weapon all these years and that the violent history of the gun before and after Jay’s death makes it impossible to sustain the original trial verdict. He agreed with Archie that if the evidence of the gun had been available to the jury back then, Janine would have been acquitted.’

‘So she gets out,’ Maggie said.

‘She gets out. Pat will have to decide whether she can mount a new trial. And whether she even wants to, given the evidence.’

Serena spoke from the credenza. ‘I know you guys don’t want to hear this, but isn’t the most logical explanation that Janine really was telling the truth? Somebody had the gun back then, but not her. Whoever it was killed Jay Ferris and stole the jewelry.’

Maggie looked as if she wanted to argue for the sake of arguing, but then she said: ‘Yeah, Nathan said the same thing. He thinks we were wrong about Janine. I don’t know, boss. I hate to say we blew it, but I think we blew it.’

Stride knew what Cindy would say. Told you so, Jonny.

‘Let’s forget about Janine for the time being,’ Serena said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘We’ve got other problems.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning my weird little nerd, Mort Sanders, was on to something,’ Serena told them. ‘Mort was chatting online with a woman named Erin from Grand Forks. He says she was being chased by the same stalker who was involved with Kelly Hauswirth. Kelly was hooked up with a guy who called himself Lakelover, and Erin’s boyfriend was Mattie_1987, but Mort swears they’re the same guy.’

She held up an enlargement of a driver’s license from North Dakota, which showed an attractive blond, just over twenty-three years old, oval face, blue eyes, with a smile that was innocent and sexy at the same time. Stride couldn’t help but notice the similarity between this woman and the Colorado photograph of Kelly Hauswirth. They could have been sisters.

‘This is Erin Tierney,’ Serena said. ‘She’s a dental hygienist from Grand Forks. She’s been missing for at least two weeks. Her Nissan Versa hasn’t turned up anywhere. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.’

‘You think Erin’s the replacement for Kelly?’ Maggie asked.

‘Could be.’

‘Did she talk to anyone at home about having a new boyfriend? Or about taking a trip to Duluth?’

Serena shook her head. ‘No, Erin sounds like a loner, like Kelly. That may be part of the personality type this guy looks for. These girls live out fantasy lives online. In real life, they’re shy. Not many friends.’

‘Two weeks is a long time,’ Stride said. ‘If she was in the city, they may already have smuggled her out.’

‘Or they’ve got her stashed somewhere,’ Serena said.

‘What about these online user accounts?’ Stride asked. ‘Can we trace them?’

‘They’re fakes,’ Serena replied. ‘Their online bios don’t check out at all, but the details match up. I think Mort is right that we’re looking at the same guy. And there’s definitely a Duluth connection. I was able to get the ISP data for both accounts, and all of the logins come from the Twin Ports area. Both sides of the bridge. Whoever this guy is, he’s smart. He hunts for free Wi-Fi and never hooks into the same network twice, and there’s nothing in the pattern to suggest where he’s really located. He could be anywhere in Duluth or Superior.’

‘Have we shut down the two accounts?’ Maggie asked.

‘No, but we’re monitoring their activity. So far, Lakelover and Mattie are both lying low. They haven’t been online in days. In fact, not since Erin Tierney disappeared. Again, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.’

‘Troy still thinks there’s an international connection because of the murder in Amsterdam,’ Stride said. ‘We’ve got data from the night Kelly was killed. The boats in port included four salties outbound to Europe. The Relko, the Venstaat, the Ingersstrom, and the Pietra Ragazza. It’s possible they could use lakers instead of salties and transfer the girls elsewhere in the seaway, but the more times they move them, the bigger the risk.’

‘Is there anything suspicious about the individual boats?’ Maggie asked.

‘Not on paper. Chances are, the corporate owners don’t know a thing about what’s going on below deck.’

‘What about recent activity?’ Serena asked.

‘None of these boats has been back in Duluth since the murder. Two of them are due in this week, the Venstaat and the Ingersstrom. The Relko is in Asia and isn’t expected back this season. The Pietra Ragazza will return in September.’

‘That makes it likely that Erin Tierney is still in Duluth,’ Serena pointed out.

‘I hope so,’ Stride said, ‘but we also could be wrong about the transport network. Or they could have their hooks into multiple boats. Regardless, you’re right, let’s plaster Erin’s photo all over the city. Same with her car. If she came to meet this Mattie_1987, someone may have seen her.’

Maggie waited until Stride was done, then said: ‘We’ve got another angle working for us, too. The black pearl ring.’

‘Were you able to trace it?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I talked to Caffy at Zenith Pawn. Once he found out the jewelry was connected to a murder investigation, he started talking. He got the black pearl ring back in May from a Minneapolis accountant named Neal Fisher, who was in town for some Democratic political hoo-hah at the DECC. I talked to Fisher. He was dating a girl, and he bought the ring in Canal Park for her, but before the convention ended, she sent him a Dear Neal e-mail. So he pawned it before he left town. He figured he was making out pretty well, because he didn’t think the guy who sold it to him knew what it was worth.’

‘Where’d he buy it?’ Stride asked. ‘One of the antique shops?’

Maggie shook her head. ‘No, Neal knows a buddy of ours.’

Stride leaned forward. ‘A buddy?’

‘Remember Curt Dickes?’

Stride did. So did Serena. Curt was a janitor at one of the Canal Park hotels, but he also ran an endless series of low-level scams to feed his need for cash. He’d been a pimp hooking up tourists with UMD girls. A petty thief stealing stingray pups from the Aquarium. A scalper of counterfeit Yanni concert tickets. He wasn’t violent, but he was the kind of streetwise kid who would never go straight. Stride had known him since he was fifteen.

‘Curt sold this guy the ring?’ Stride asked. ‘Where the hell did he get it?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ Maggie said. ‘Curt’s been under the radar for a few days, but I just got a call. He’s got a new thing going. Duluth ghost tours. I’m going to track him down now.’

‘Good.’

Maggie stood up and headed for the door, but then she stopped. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans and blew the bangs out of her eyes.

‘You want to come with me?’ she asked Serena. ‘We could be like Rizzoli and Isles or something.’

Stride saw the surprise in Serena’s face. He was surprised, too. Maybe there was a chance of a thaw in the ice between them. He didn’t know what Serena’s reaction would be, but she wasted no time sliding off the credenza. The two women stood next to each other, short and tall.

‘Okay, let’s go,’ she deadpanned to Maggie, ‘but I get to be Angie Harmon.’

49

It had taken Janine two whole years to stop dreaming about her old life when she fell asleep at night. Her unconscious brain would whisk her back to her mansion on the hill or stand her in scrubs over the open chests of patients in the operating room at St. Anne’s. Even awake, she would find herself making false mental leaps whenever she read a book or a magazine.

I should look for those shoes the next time I’m at Macy’s.

Abruzzo in Italy — that should be my spring vacation.

I need to try the lobster ravioli at Bellisio’s.

Then she would wake up or she would remember: Those things are never going to happen again. Don’t dream, don’t fantasize, because dwelling on what you can’t have will drive you insane.

Except now life had turned on its head again. It was happening so quickly that she was disoriented. Nothing seemed real. She hardly dared to believe it. Right now, she was at Shakopee, and at the same time tomorrow, she would be on the other side of the security doors. She wondered how long it would take her brain to give up thoughts of prison when she dreamed.

‘Will they attempt to try me again?’ she asked Archie on the phone.

‘If Dan Erickson was still the county attorney, I’d say yes,’ Archie replied. ‘With Ms. Burns in charge, I think it’s less likely. The evidence works in your favor now. Assuming they can’t ultimately show that you somehow acquired that gun after it left Chicago.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Or that you hid it after the murder. Or sold it. Or gave it away.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Then I think you’re safe, my dear.’

Janine wasn’t so sure.

She could hear the doubts in Archie’s voice. Not about her legal situation, but about her innocence. Her own attorney had never really believed in her. He’d given her a robust defense, but he thought she was guilty as sin. She’d told him over and over that she hadn’t pulled the trigger on that gun. She’d never so much as held it in her hand. Even so, Archie still suspected that she had simply outsmarted everyone else. Like a magician, she’d killed Jay and made the gun and the jewelry disappear. Until now.

Everyone else would think the same thing. She had no illusions about the public opinion of Dr. Perfect. People would still stare and wonder how she got away with it.

‘Welcome to the next chapter of your life,’ Archie told her. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

That was a good question. She didn’t know the answer.

She was accustomed to thinking day to day and ignoring the future. The thought of walking out into the world with no plan terrified her, because throughout her life, she’d always had a plan for everything.

The media would be waiting for her. She’d be mobbed. The release of Janine Snow would be big news. The surgeon murderer set free. She wasn’t ready for the questions they’d shout at her — What do you think really happened to your husband? Will you sue for wrongful imprisonment? — and she had no answers to give them.

She’d asked Archie if he could buy her some time. Get her past the media horde and hide her somewhere. She needed a few days to get her head around the idea of living outside the walls again, and then she could talk to the reporters. She couldn’t avoid the world forever, but she needed time. She needed to get used to different walls.

She would go back to Duluth. That was still home. For now.

Archie would put her up in a hotel. She’d paid enough to earn that treatment from him, at least for a while. She could stare at the waters of Lake Superior and order room service and drink wine. One day, then the next, then the next, until she figured out whether there was anything left to live for.

However, she had one immediate problem that wouldn’t go away. Howard Marlowe.

Howard, bland and boring. Howard, obsessed and driven by desire. This was his fantasy come true. Janine, free; the two of them, together. She’d never actually told him they had no future together, because all that time in prison, she’d had no future to give him. He was her little indulgence, someone to feed her ego.

Howard, Howard, Howard. Nice, unremarkable Howard, writing a book he would never finish, to rescue a woman who would never be in love with him. He would give up everything in his life for her. His wife. His child. When you’re an addict, nothing else matters except your addiction.

She couldn’t hide from Howard. He’d find her. That very first night, he’d be at the door of her hotel room. Probably with flowers, the poor fool. And champagne. Like she’d anticipated that moment the same way he had.

Janine realized that he deserved one night with her. She wouldn’t send him away without it. She’d toyed and played with the man for eight years, and if she let him enjoy his fantasy with her, that wasn’t such a great sacrifice. It was nothing but sex. Years earlier, when he’d showed up on her doorstep during the trial, she’d thought about taking him inside and sleeping with him. If she’d done it, would she be in prison right now?

Okay, Howard. This is what you’ve dreamed about. This is what it’s like to be in bed with me. She could live with that for one night. And in the morning, when she broke his heart, she wondered if he would still think it was worth the price.

Howard sat in his basement office, waiting for Archibald Gale to pick up the phone. A classical symphony played while he was on hold. He’d already listened to ten minutes of Beethoven, but Gale’s assistant assured him that the lawyer was anxious to speak with him. That was a big change from the days when he would make five or six calls to Gale’s office without getting a call back.

Finding the ring had changed his status. He would always remember the look of grudging admiration on Gale’s face when he showed him the ring.

Howard wasn’t stupid. He knew that Janine’s lawyer patronized him, full of hollow encouragement for his research. Yes, you keep digging, Howard. Yes, I have faith in you. And then he laughed behind his back. The truth was that Gale had never believed that Howard would discover anything remotely useful to Janine’s appeal.

So it was a triumphant moment to put the ring from the pawn shop in Gale’s hand and say: ‘I did it. I found it.’

That moment had changed everything between them. Suddenly, Howard wasn’t a crackpot, operating on the fringes of the case. Suddenly, Gale had called in an associate and taken Howard’s statement. Gale had clapped him on the back. Joked with him about lawyers and judges. Poured him a shot glass of expensive Scotch and sat and chatted with him as if they were fellow members of Duluth’s exclusive private club, the Kitchi Gammi.

Howard said, ‘Do you think she’ll finally be released?’

Gale, brimming with effervescence, replied, ‘Yes. Yes, this time I really do. Between the gun and the ring, I do.’

‘I always knew she was innocent.’

And then Archie Gale, with the strangest of grins, a little tipsy from his third shot of Laphroaig, said: ‘Yes, yes, innocent. Or exceedingly smart.’

Which Howard thought was an odd thing to say.

But it didn’t matter. It was really happening. Janine would be free tomorrow. He was dizzy with desire. Every nerve ending felt as if it were on fire with anticipation. He swiveled in his office chair and put his feet up on the basement wall and hummed along to Beethoven.

‘Howard,’ Gale said when he finally came on the line. ‘The man of the hour. You heard the news?’

‘Of course!’

‘Well, you definitely played a role in making this happen. Janine and I are very grateful.’

‘Do you know what time she’ll be released?’ Howard asked.

‘I do, but I’m not giving out that information to anyone. I’m trying to keep the media at bay. You understand.’

‘Well, I’m not just anyone,’ Howard told him. ‘I want to be there. To pick her up.’

There was a long silence on the line, and when Gale spoke again, his ebullience had tempered into something cooler. ‘That’s very gracious of you, Howard, but it’s not necessary. I’m handling all the details.’

‘I want to see her,’ he insisted.

‘And you shall see her, of course. Very soon. I’ll talk to Janine, and I’m sure we can arrange a time for her to thank you in person.’

Howard’s fingers clenched around the phone. ‘To thank me in person?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I need to see her tomorrow. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?’

The politeness vanished from Gale’s voice, and he became a lawyer again. ‘I’ll pass along your wishes to Janine, but when and if you see her is entirely up to her. I know she’s grateful, as am I, for all the hard work you’ve put in on her behalf. But you shouldn’t presume a personal relationship that doesn’t exist.’

‘It does exist,’ Howard snapped.

‘Well, I’ll talk to Janine, and I’ll be back in touch. I promise.’ Then he added, somewhat more kindly: ‘Listen, Howard. Take my advice. People are different in prison than they are in the real world. The two have very little in common. You need to be aware of that.’

‘Just call me back!’

‘Of course. I will.’

Howard spun around in his chair and slammed down the phone. He was disgusted. After all Howard had done on her case, Janine’s lawyer had humiliated him again. As if he were nothing but a groupie. Well, Gale would find out the truth soon. He’d talk to Janine, and Janine would set him straight.

‘You bastard. You worthless bastard.’

Howard looked up and jumped. Carol was there.

‘I didn’t see you...’ he began, but his words drifted away. Sweat made a film on his skin. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re leaving me,’ she said. ‘For her.’

She didn’t phrase it like a question. She didn’t beg him to change his mind.

He could barely look at his wife’s face, but when he did, he saw that her familiar eyes had turned dead. There were no tears. They’d been through tears many times, her crying at night, him pretending to comfort her. There wasn’t even any anger left. She didn’t yell at him. Or curse. They’d been through that, too. She simply stared at him with fish-blank eyes. Her arms hung at her sides. Every emotion, every feeling, had burned down to gray ash.

‘I can’t believe you did this to me,’ Carol murmured.

‘This was never about you. It was about me.’

‘Remember that when you see her tomorrow,’ his wife said.

50

‘So,’ Maggie said.

‘So,’ Serena replied.

The two of them sat at an upstairs table at Dunn Bros on London Road. The coffee shop was styled like a modern log cabin. Serena sipped a cup of black decaf from a ceramic mug. Maggie drank a caramel frappe and wiped the foam on her upper lip with her tongue. She had a blueberry scone, too.

Serena didn’t know how Maggie could eat the way she did and stay stick-skinny. If Serena made a daily stop for breakfast at McDonald’s or the Duluth Grill, she’d be ordering her jeans in plus sizes.

They’d already scouted several Duluth landmarks, hunting for Curt Dickes, the low-level con artist who’d fenced Janine’s black pearl ring. So far, they hadn’t located his Duluth ghost walk for gullible tourists. After they checked the empty parking lot at the Glensheen Estate — no sign of Curt — they stopped for coffee on the way back to downtown.

Maggie nibbled her scone and played with her Android phone. Serena flipped through apps on her iPhone. They had the upstairs level of the coffee shop to themselves. The relationship with Maggie made Serena feel like a teenager again, which was silly. She put down her phone and studied Jonny’s partner, who was her own age and whose love life had been a train wreck for as long as she’d known her. She didn’t think that Maggie had ever really been in love with Jonny. He was simply a crutch so she didn’t have to confront how bad she was at falling in love with anyone else.

‘Are you seeing anyone?’ Serena asked her, breaking the awkward silence.

‘Why do you care?’ Maggie replied, not putting down her phone.

‘I’m just curious.’

‘Well, you know me, Serena. A day without sex is like a day without sunshine.’

‘Funny.’

‘I’ve slept with most of the men in Duluth. I’m thinking of branching out to Cloquet.’

‘Fine. I’m sorry I asked.’

Maggie sighed and shoved her phone in her pocket. ‘All right, you win. I think my bitch switch is set to automatic these days. No, I’m not seeing anyone. And it’s not because of you-know-who. I’m taking a break from dating.’

‘Jonny thinks Troy Grange is interested in you,’ Serena said.

‘Yeah, Troy’s been dropping hints. He must be a masochist.’

‘He’s a nice guy.’

‘I know he is. I like his kids, too. He talked about the four of us driving down to the state fair this year.’

‘So?’ Serena asked.

‘So I told you. I’m taking a break. If I do anything, I’m going slow. Peck-on-the-cheek, knees-closed slow. For the time being, call me Sister Maggie.’

Serena had a hard time imagining Maggie as anyone’s idea of a nun.

‘What about you guys?’ Maggie asked, sipping her frappe. It was sensitive ground, her asking about the two of them. When Serena didn’t answer immediately, she added: ‘I mean, how is it with Cat living there? Instant family and all.’

‘It’s a struggle,’ Serena admitted. ‘I don’t think Jonny realized how difficult it was going to be. He had this idea that if we helped her, she’d turn herself around. It’s not that simple.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Maggie said.

‘I know you thought it was a mistake for us to take her in,’ Serena said.

‘Yeah, and I still do. Sorry.’

‘There are days when I agree with you,’ Serena acknowledged. ‘Even so, we love her, and she loves us. Unfortunately, that’s not always enough.’

Maggie said nothing more. They finished their drinks through another stretch of silence. Then Serena went on: ‘This case has brought back a lot of memories for Jonny. Memories of Cindy.’

‘I’ll bet.’

‘I don’t like competing with a ghost. Then again, I didn’t like competing with you, either.’

Maggie laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. ‘You were never competing with me, Serena. I was never in the game. Even when Stride and I were together, there wasn’t a day that he wasn’t still in love with you.’

Serena didn’t hear bitterness in Maggie’s voice. Just honesty. Maggie grabbed the empty cups from the table and stood up.

‘Oh, and for what it’s worth,’ she went on, ‘you’re not competing with Cindy, either.’

‘I think I am.’

‘Only in your head. Not his. Did Stride love Cindy? Yeah, of course he did. Was it a nightmare to lose her? Yeah. But that doesn’t change how he feels about you. I saw it all winter when you weren’t here. Trust me, it was extremely annoying.’

Serena allowed herself a faint smile. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault. Anyway, it’s not Cindy coming between you two. It’s the fact that Cindy died. That’s his problem.’

Serena stared at Maggie, and for just a moment, it felt like they were friends again. Which they weren’t. But at least they’d moved beyond being enemies.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Stride thought he had everything, and then it was taken away from him,’ Maggie said. ‘He’s not sure he believes in the future anymore. He’s worried it’ll be stolen from him again.’

‘That’s always a risk.’

‘I know, and Stride doesn’t like risks.’

‘He asked Cat to live with us,’ Serena said. ‘That was a big risk. He was thinking about the future when he did that.’

Maggie cocked her head, as if Serena were the densest woman on the planet. Maybe she was. ‘You’re right. Doesn’t that tell you something?’

Serena let those words sink in. When they did, they made their way up the length of her body and gave her a little chill. Sort of like the breath of a ghost, invisibly touching the nerve endings of her skin. Maggie had said things she didn’t need to say, and Serena could only imagine how hard it was for her. In her shoes, she wasn’t sure she would have been equally gracious.

‘You know, you really ought to call Troy,’ Serena told her. ‘Go to the state fair with him and the girls.’

‘You think so?’

‘I do.’

Maggie shrugged. ‘What the hell, maybe I will. But only for the cheese curds. Damn, those things are good.’

They found Curt Dickes after dark near the lift bridge separating Canal Park from the Point.

It was a windy night. Waves in the narrow ship canal struck the concrete walls and sent clouds of cold spray into puddles on the sidewalk. Overhead, a bone-white light illuminated the crisscross metal span of the bridge superstructure. Threads of fog moved in and out of the steel X’s, making them invisible.

A cluster of twenty tourists huddled near the canal. Some had umbrellas. Curt Dickes stood in the middle of them, or Serena assumed it was Curt. He was dressed in a skeleton costume that included a skull mask covering his face and a top hat at a jaunty angle on his head. In his left hand, he clutched a plastic sickle that was taller than he was.

‘Do you hear that?’ Curt shouted.

He had a microphone under his mask, because his voice was amplified, and he used an echo effect that repeated his last words. Do you hear that that that that?

‘That’s not the wind. Oh, no. That’s the scream of Lars Olson. His ghost never leaves the bridge, and on nights like this one, you can hear him pleading for mercy. Who’s Lars Olson, you may ask? He was the ex-chancellor of UMD. He died a horrific death at this very spot. Someone tied a rope around his neck and hooked him to the span, so that when the bridge went up...’

Curt put a bony fist near his neck and tugged sharply, letting his head dangle sideways.

‘He was hanged hanged hanged hanged hanged.’

One of the children in the group of tourists gasped. ‘Did that really happen?’

‘All of my stories are true!’ Curt announced. ‘You can run, but you can’t escape the dead dead dead dead dead.’

Maggie waded into the crowd. ‘Oh, give me a break, Curt.’

Curt spotted Maggie and Serena, and the skeleton froze in place. With a flourish, he removed his top hat and gave them a deep bow. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the lovely Maggie Bei and Serena Dial, two of Duluth’s finest, dedicated to keeping tourists like yourselves safe from the criminal underworld. Ms. Bei, Ms. Dial, have you decided to join our happy group to hear more absolutely true tales of ghosts in the Zenith City? Tickets are just twenty-five dollars each, payable in cash only, no refunds.’

‘Lars Olson was a character in an Ellen Hart novel,’ Maggie announced. ‘She killed him off by hanging him from the lift bridge at the beginning of This Little Piggy Went to Murder.’

Curt scratched the top of his head with his sickle and offered a nervous giggle. ‘Well, sometimes fiction is stranger than truth, you know. I mean, stories do come to me second-hand from time to time.’

A restless murmur rippled through the crowd.

‘What about the ghost of the marathon runner?’ a woman asked. ‘Was that one true?’

‘Totally true!’ Curt assured them. ‘I’ve seen him myself.’

‘Marathon runner?’ Serena asked.

‘Barnabas “Batty” Burns,” Curt replied confidently. ‘Eighty-seven years old. Tried to run all 26.2 miles of Grandma’s Marathon. Made it to within ten yards — ten yards! — of the finish line and dropped dead of a heart attack. Tragic. To this day, he runs the last block of the marathon over and over, trying to make it to the finish line, and he disappears into wisps of smoke just before he gets there. I’ve seen him dozens of times.’

‘You are so full of crap, Curt,’ Maggie told him. She grabbed the skeleton by his bony arm, and Serena took the sickle and poked him in the back.

‘Folks, hang out here for a while, we need to borrow your tour guide.’

With Maggie on his left side, and Serena on his right, they quick-walked Curt along the wall of the canal. Waves slapped loudly on the pier and doused them as they marched away from the bridge. When they were out of earshot of the tourists, Maggie grabbed the top hat and yanked the skull mask from Curt’s head. Curt, a twenty-five-year-old beanpole, tried to tame his greasy black hair. Musk cologne oozed from his skin.

‘Jeez, guys,’ he complained. ‘I’m trying to do a show here.’

‘Duluth has a cool history,’ Maggie told him. ‘Next time, try to stick to it, okay? No more Batty Burns the Long-Distance Runner.’

‘Hey, I’m a storyteller. There’s nothing wrong with that. Stride told me I should make an honest living.’

‘Well, you’re getting closer,’ Serena agreed. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not here to bust your ghost walk. It’s your other job we want to talk about.’

‘I’m not pimping anymore. I swear.’

‘Not that one,’ Serena said.

‘I found those boxes of camping gear behind the Duluth Pack store. I swear I thought they were throwing them away.’

‘Not that one, either,’ Maggie said. She held up an enlarged photograph of Janine’s ring on a piece of paper that quickly became sodden in the spray thrown from the canal. ‘Your other job, Curt. Fencing stolen merchandise.’

Curt put two skeleton hands on his chest in mock dismay. ‘Whoa, what? You got the wrong guy.’ He added an echo with his microphone: ‘Wrong guy wrong guy wrong guy.’

‘Save it,’ Maggie snapped. ‘You sold this ring to an accountant named Neal Fisher. He identified your photo, Curt, so quit playing innocent. Oh, and by the way, he ripped you off. He gave you two hundred bucks, and this thing is worth at least a few thousand.’

‘That asshole!’ Curt bellowed. ‘I know you can’t trust lawyers, but I figured accountants were okay.’

‘Where did you get the ring?’ Serena asked.

‘Um, let me see. I think I found it on the street.’

‘You found it?’ Maggie asked. ‘It was just lying there?’

‘That’s right. Over near the Depot. I figured it slipped off somebody’s finger. Their loss was my gain.’

‘This ring came from a stash of jewelry stolen nine years ago,’ Maggie told him. ‘The husband of the woman it belonged to got his head blown off during the robbery. People have been looking for the jewelry ever since, Curt. And now it shows up in your hands? That’s not a good thing. It makes me think you needed money back then, so you drove up there with a gun—’

‘No way!’ Curt retorted. ‘You know that’s not my scene, Sergeant. No violence. Not a chance.’

‘So where did you get the ring?’ Serena repeated.

‘Okay, somebody sold it to me. I gave them fifty bucks. And then I sold it to the accountant for two hundred. That’s commerce. Nothing wrong with that. Although now I wish I’d asked for a lot more.’

‘Who sold it to you?’ Maggie asked.

‘Just somebody I know.’

‘Who?’

Curt winced. His wet hair was shiny. ‘Look, are you sure you guys want me to tell you? Because I don’t think Stride’s going to be too happy about this. You neither, Serena. If I tell you, don’t blame me, okay?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Serena asked.

‘The girl who sold it to me,’ Curt said, ‘it was your girl. Cat. She’s the one who had the ring.’

He repeated her name, and it echoed.

Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat.

51

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Stride said.

He studied the closed door to Cat’s bedroom at the front of the cottage. He was seated in his red leather chair near the fireplace, and Serena stood against one of the dark wood columns that framed the nook where the fireplace was located. They could hear music through Cat’s door.

‘Do you want me to do it?’ Serena asked.

Stride stood up. ‘No, I want to deal with this myself.’

At Cat’s door, he knocked and heard her young voice answer from inside. He opened the door. Cat’s bedroom was small, with chambered windows facing the street, and two twin beds on the left and right. Cat was stretched out on her back on one of the beds, working on a book of Super-Advanced Brain-Tingling Sudoku Puzzles. She always did them in pen.

It was a reminder to him. This girl was smart. She had a gift, if she ever wanted to use it.

‘Hey, Stride!’ she said happily.

Cat rolled off the bed and gave him a hug. She did that most nights when she saw him. He felt bad that he wondered sometimes about her sincerity. He didn’t doubt that Cat loved him and Serena, but love was a complex thing for a girl like Cat, who’d been caught up in years of guilt, shame, and fear. He didn’t know if she could love anyone without trying to manipulate them.

Cat sat down on the end of her bed. She switched off the music. ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

Because she knew something was up. She could read his face. And he saw in her nervous brown eyes the uncertainty of a teenager who was keeping lots of secrets and wondering which one he’d uncovered.

Stride sat on the other bed. ‘I was thinking about your mother today,’ he told her. ‘I cared about Michaela a lot.’

‘I know you did.’

‘There’s not a day where I don’t feel regret about what happened to her.’

Cat hooded her eyes. ‘Me, too.’

‘Michaela told you to find me if you were ever in trouble,’ Stride said, ‘and you did. I’m glad you did, Cat. I didn’t always believe that things happen for a reason, but more and more, as the years go by, I do. Even when the worst things happen. I find myself realizing that the turns of life take us where we’re supposed to go.’

Cat was silent. She didn’t understand what he was saying, and when she didn’t understand, she got scared.

‘Do you like it here with us?’ he asked her. ‘Do you feel safe here?’

She nodded urgently. ‘Of course. You know I do.’

‘Then what’s going on with you, Cat?’ Stride asked quietly. ‘I need to be able to trust you, and I can’t. Neither can Serena. All summer, you’ve kept crazy hours, not telling us where you are. You’re hanging out with people you shouldn’t. You’re making bad choices. Why? We gave you a second chance, Cat. I gave you a second chance.’

‘I know you did, but I don’t deserve it. I’m not worth anything.’

He watched her eyes welling with tears, and he put up his hand. ‘Stop that. Listen to me. I don’t want to hear you talk like that. I don’t hold your past against you, and I never will. Who you were the day before you came here doesn’t matter to me, but what you do right now does matter.’

‘I told you, I’m not worth it!’

‘Well, I’m here to tell you that you are worth it,’ Stride said, ‘but that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences, or that you get a free ride. You’re going to have to figure out a way to put the past behind you. You’re going to have to decide that your life — and your son’s life — mean something. And you’re going to have to look in my eyes and realize that I’m not going anywhere. Other people have turned their backs on you. Not me. And not Serena.’

He watched her. Her head was bowed, and she wouldn’t look at him. Maybe one day she’d be able to stare into his eyes and be her own person, but she wasn’t there yet. He exhaled in disappointment.

‘Serena talked to Curt Dickes tonight,’ he went on. ‘You know what he told her, don’t you?’

Cat chewed her lower lip. ‘Curt bought some things from me when I needed money. It was just a couple times.’

If Cat said it was a couple times, he knew it was many times. And that meant she’d been stealing.

‘What do you need money for?’ he asked.

‘Just day-to-day stuff. Buses. Music. Jewelry sometimes. I like jewelry.’

‘If you need money, you can come to us,’ he said.

‘I know, but I don’t like to do that.’

‘Are you buying drugs?’

‘No. How can you ask me that?’

‘Because you’ve been lying to me, and I don’t trust you.’

‘I’m not using drugs. I’m not.’

Stride tried to stay patient. He couldn’t deal with all of this now. There was only one thing that mattered. ‘Okay, listen to me. You sold a black pearl ring to Curt a couple months ago. Where did you get it?’

‘I don’t remember.’

Which was a lie. Her face was flushed, and she couldn’t look at him.

‘Was it just the ring, Cat? Or was there other jewelry? I can describe all of it to you. Matching black pearl necklace and earrings. A diamond-and-sapphire bracelet. A hummingbird pin. An emerald brooch. Does that sound familiar?’

‘I only had the ring,’ she insisted. ‘How did you find out about it?’

‘Because that ring is connected to a gun, Cat. The gun and all the jewelry I talked about disappeared during a murder nine years ago. Now we’ve found the gun again. It was used in another murder last month.’

Cat’s eyes widened. ‘You mean at the bar — when Serena—’

‘That’s right.’

‘No! That can’t be. That’s impossible.’ She wrung her hands together and looked close to panic.

‘That gun showed up outside the Grizzly Bear Bar, Cat. Now some of the jewelry that went missing along with the gun can be traced to you. You. Do you realize the situation that puts you in?’ He got up and sat down next to her on the other bed. ‘Do you know anything about this gun? Or about the man who used it?’

She shook her head over and over. ‘No! I don’t know anything about a gun! Nothing!’

‘Then where did you get the ring?’

Cat looked dazed. And then she looked angry. ‘Talk to Al.’

‘Al?’

‘He’s my boyfriend. At least he was. He cheated on me. The ring came from his house.’

‘Did he give it to you?’ Stride asked.

‘No, I–I took it.’

‘You stole it? Why?’

‘I told you, I wanted money. And I like jewelry. You remember I always used to carry my father’s ring with me, right? I did that for years, but then I had to give it back. So I wanted — I wanted another ring to have. And I took it. Except I realized I couldn’t wear it, not with Al around. So I sold it to Curt so I could buy something else.’

‘Oh, Cat,’ Stride murmured. He was disappointed, and she knew it.

‘I’m sorry!’

He put his hands gently on the girl’s shoulders. ‘Are you telling me the truth? Because you know what happens next, don’t you? I get a search warrant tomorrow, and we tear Al’s house apart from top to bottom.’

‘The ring was in his house,’ she insisted. ‘That’s where I got it.’

‘What about the other jewelry I talked about? The earrings, necklace, brooch. Did you see any of those other pieces in the house?’

She shook her head. ‘I only had the ring.’

‘And the gun?’

‘I never saw a gun! I didn’t!’

Stride believed her. There were still secrets in Cat’s eyes, but he didn’t think she was lying about the gun. ‘This is important, Cat. Did Al ever say anything about this woman who was killed? Kelly Hauswirth?’

‘No!’

‘Did you ever have reason to think that he could be involved in criminal activity?’

‘No, no, that’s not him! He’s not a bad person.’

‘Cat, listen,’ Stride told her. ‘We think someone was trying to kidnap Kelly Hauswirth when she was killed. Possibly to sell her as a human slave. That’s as terrifying and cruel as it sounds. Someone in Duluth was making that happen, and whoever it is had access to that gun.’

‘He would never do anything like that.’

‘There’s another girl missing right now, Cat,’ he went on. ‘Her name is Erin. We need to find her. So please, think. Is there anything Al said — anything he did — that would help us find this girl? Do you know where she might be?’

Cat wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. ‘No. I swear, Stride, there’s nothing. I don’t know anything about a missing girl.’

52

It was morning, but Erin had no way of knowing what morning it was. Her world was black.

Every movement of her body brought pain now. Her skin was blistered where she’d struggled fruitlessly against her bonds. Cuts had scabbed over and broken again on her face. Her muscles, once so supple and strong from her visits to the gym, had balled into knots, like shoelaces tied so tightly they couldn’t be undone. She knew she had a urinary tract infection. Peeing brought a knifing sting.

Twice a day, the voice came back. The door would be unlocked and locked again, but the darkness was unrelenting. She was given food and a chance to relieve herself, with a knife at her throat and her limbs tied. Most days, she couldn’t hold it until then, so she found herself doused with a bucket of cold water to fight the smell. Even in the heat, she shivered so hard that she thought her bones would break.

She’d screamed once when the gag was removed. As she did, she found herself choked, every atom of air cut off until her limbs twitched, while the voice hissed obscenities in her ear. She didn’t scream again. She became docile, learning the routine, living by it.

Eventually, the animals at the zoo understand there is no way out.

One time, she’d murmured: ‘Why?’

She got no answer.

Another time — maybe it was yesterday, whatever yesterday was — she’d said: ‘When?’

Because she knew this was the beginning, not the end.

This time the voice told her: ‘Soon.’

Above her head, a summer rain began. It was still summer; the heat and drenching humidity told her that. She could smell the freshness of the rain from outside, and she could hear its drumbeat assaulting the roof. A squall, loud and sustained. She couldn’t see lightning through her blindness, but a growl of thunder made her prison tremble. It sounded like a devil’s throaty laughter.

Hammering raindrops squeezed through the roof. Drips leaked on her face, and she grabbed for them with her dry, swollen tongue. She heard a toneless plink-plink, too, water making music on metal. The change in pitch among the falling water told her there was something large inside the room with her, and she knew instinctively what it was. Her car was hidden with her. Her Barney-purple Nissan Versa. No one would find it. No one would find her.

In the beginning, she’d prayed for Matt to find her. Mattie_1987. Her confidant, her friend, her lover. When he arrived at the bar and found she wasn’t there, he’d spread the alarm throughout Duluth and call the police. He’d pass her photo from hand to hand. Strange how long it had taken the truth to sink into her brain. Even when it was obvious, she’d refused to believe it. There was no Matt. He was a figment of her imagination. An online fantasy. She’d been lured and trapped here by the voice.

What bothered her more than anything was how easy it had been to be tricked. She felt like the perfect fool. Growing up, she’d thought girls were naive to fall for scams. She couldn’t understand how women could believe the same tired lines from guys in bars. And now she’d allowed herself to fall in love with a lie. To be drawn into something far worse than a one-night stand.

More thunder. The devil chuckled at the joke. No one’s coming for you, Erin.

She had tried to escape, but the steel of handcuffs and chains was insurmountable. She’d screamed and struggled, achieving nothing. She’d cried. Wept. Prayed. God didn’t answer and left her in hell. When the gag came off twice a day, she’d beg for mercy and bargain with the voice. Let me go. Please. I’ll do anything. What do you want?

That was all buried somewhere in the past. Her tears had dried long ago. She’d realized that the darkness was a grieving process; struggling, protesting, challenging — and finally accepting the reality. Her life was over. What was left to her wasn’t life at all. She’d felt herself going dead inside as the darkness continued, until she felt nothing at all.

Erin had a choice. Early on, she’d known that the choice was available to her. The last choice. When she explored the tiny universe allowed by her chains, she discovered that she was affixed to a heavy steel table. It was immovable. Bags of sand or concrete had been laid on top of it. The table was weighted, as heavy as her car, imprisoning her where she was.

However, the metal corner of the table above her head came to a sharp point. It was jagged, hooked, like the end of a dentist’s pick. The jab of metal was useless against the steel holding her in place, but that wasn’t what she needed it for. God had given her a way out of this hell, if she had the courage to use it.

The rain kept on, as hard as ever, but the thunder quieted. It was as if the devil knew what she was going to do.

Erin twisted her body, pushing herself onto her knees in the dirt, until she could nudge her chin over the smooth cold tabletop. She smelled the concrete dust, but she took a breath anyway, savoring it. Funny how you took life for granted. Breathe in, breathe out. She slid her face leftward, hunting for the prickly corner, like the needle of a cactus. It bit into her neck. Her salvation. Metal couldn’t penetrate metal, but it could penetrate flesh.

Home squirmed into her brain. Her apartment in Grand Forks. Good days. Swimming in the river. Red wine on Saturday nights. She couldn’t let those thoughts control her. Home didn’t exist. That life — her life — didn’t exist anymore. She pressed against the point of the table, which bit harder. Her body wanted to jerk away, but she didn’t let it.

The little claw took hold of her neck. Erin slung her head in a single sharp pivot. The pick held, and ripped, and tore. Pain awakened her, but pain was a friend. Rain leaked onto her body, warming her skin, but she knew with a wild sense of freedom that the rain had stopped.

This was blood.

This was escape.

Bernd Frisch didn’t smile at the coast guard officer. Smiling was what guilty people did. He wasn’t concerned by the search of the boat or the extra security. His fake Dutch passport would come through the computer databases as clean as spring rain. The entire crew had cleared customs inspections over and over, and today would be no different.

He answered questions. Politely. Offering nothing but facts. Where the ship had been. Where they had docked. What they loaded and unloaded. The voyage of the Ingersstrom was routine.

The one surprise was the photographs they showed him. The officer presented him with pictures of women. Had he seen them? Had he witnessed any of the crew interacting with these women? Had he seen them here in Duluth or elsewhere in Europe?

No. No. No.

Did he have any knowledge of human trafficking activities on this or other foreign ships operating in the St. Lawrence Seaway?

No.

Bernd recognized the photograph of the woman he’d delivered from Duluth last year — the woman who’d been found murdered in Amsterdam. He recognized Kelly Hauswirth, whom he’d shot in the back of the head. He recognized the woman who would be smuggled on board after dark tonight, before the boat set sail into the waters of Lake Superior at 2:00 a.m.

‘These women are unfamiliar to me,’ he said.

And that was that.

Bernd was cleared. He took his backpack and left the boat. They didn’t search him, so they didn’t find the gun at the bottom of the pack, fully loaded now. If they had spotted the gun, he would have told them that America wasn’t a safe place. Didn’t they watch television?

He swaggered down the gangplank to the busy port. Steam rose from the ground in humid clouds. The sky over the lake was black where a storm blew eastward away from the city. It had rained, but the rain was gone.

Welcome to Duluth.

Bernd slipped out his phone and texted. I’m here.

53

As soon as they climbed out of Stride’s Expedition at the house in Superior, Maggie knew she’d made a terrible mistake nine years earlier.

This was where Cat’s boyfriend lived, but she recognized exactly where she was. She remembered the sea-foam green, two-story house on the corner. The coming-and-going of the trains across the street. The overpass of Highway 2. The arborvitae, even taller now, towering over the roof.

‘I’ve been to this house before,’ she said.

Stride and Serena both stared at her. ‘What? When?’

‘After Jay Ferris was killed.’

Maggie’s memory painted the picture for her. Back then, it had been winter. Mountains of snow were piled on the street corner. The engineer who waved at her from a passing train wore an orange down coat and gloves. The sky was slate gray over her head, like it was today. And across the street, parked beside the two-story house, was a white Toyota Rav4.

The Rav wasn’t there anymore. There were no cars on the street or in the driveway. Even so, she remembered being here, questioning a man on the front porch. She and Guppo had interviewed dozens of Rav owners in Duluth and Superior, trying to pinpoint one of them who may have been parked on the street near Janine Snow’s home on January 28.

‘The owner’s name was Seymour Pugh,’ Maggie recalled. ‘He was on our checklist back then. He owned a white Rav, and he had a criminal record for burglary. I talked to him about Jay’s murder.’

‘Cat’s boyfriend is Al Pugh,’ Serena said.

Maggie nodded her head in frustration. ‘Al must be his son. That’s the connection.’

She’d misread Seymour Pugh all those years ago. He’d fooled her.

She was angry with herself, but there was no way she could have put the pieces together back then. Pugh was just one of many interviews, one playing card dealt from a full deck. She remembered liking him. He was a family man. A man who stayed with his wife and kids instead of running out. A man who got a solid job after his run-ins with police and prison.

A job. Maggie remembered Seymour Pugh’s job, and it meant something important to her now.

‘Pugh told me that he drove a truck,’ she said. ‘He was all over the Midwest delivering machine parts. Including Illinois.’

‘You think he was the one who bought the gun on the street in Chicago,’ Serena concluded. ‘That’s how the gun got to Duluth.’

Maggie banged her fist into her palm. She was stupid. Pugh had given her a song and dance about his values, about supporting his family, about finding God. She’d believed him. And now, she was convinced that he’d lied to her. The clues fit, and they all pointed in one direction. The white Rav. The connection to Chicago, where the murder weapon had been sold. The stolen jewelry that came from Pugh’s house.

She’d been talking to the man who murdered Jay Ferris.

‘Come on,’ Stride said. ‘Let’s go inside.’

The two streets leading to the house were barricaded a block away. They had a dozen officers with them, all in militia gear, with vests on. They weren’t taking any chances with what might be waiting behind those doors. The team fanned out around them, staking out positions on all sides of the house. A wooden fence surrounded the yard, and half a dozen officers made their way through the gate.

Gray clouds layered the sky. The street steamed with puddles. Stride, Serena, Maggie, and Guppo approached the front door, which was secured with bars. So were the windows. Maggie drew her Glock and aimed it at the door, and Guppo did the same. Stride pounded on the wall and shouted for anyone inside.

Those were the tensest moments. The silence. The waiting. Either this would go well or it wouldn’t.

Ten seconds later, they heard the knock of the deadbolt being undone. The door inched open. A young black man stared out at them, eyes wide. Just a sliver of his body was visible. He saw the guns and their stony faces.

‘Al Pugh?’ Stride demanded.

‘Yeah — yeah, what the hell—’

‘Put your hands up, open the door slowly, and come outside.’

The young man did as he was told, but he looked scared. Maggie thought he couldn’t be more than nineteen years old. He was tall but underfed, all skinny arms and legs. He was good-looking with his trimmed goatee and black hair against smooth cocoa skin. It was easy to see why a girl like Cat had fallen for him. He wore a T-shirt and loose-fitting cargo pants, and dressed like that, he looked a lot like the man Maggie had interviewed years earlier. But this young man would have been a child when Jay Ferris died.

Al nudged onto the porch, and Stride grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him down the steps. Stride spun the boy around, kicked his legs apart, and frisked him from head to toe. No weapons. He put a strong hand on Al’s shoulder and pushed him down on the front step at their feet.

‘Who else is inside?’ Stride asked.

‘My mom and my sisters. What’s going on?’

‘We have a warrant to search the property.’

‘Search? For what?’

Stride ignored him and barked at Guppo. ‘Gather the people inside in one room, and make sure someone stays with them. Search everything inside and out. Attic, basement, garage. Keep an eye out for false walls and false floors.’

‘False walls?’ Al asked. ‘What are you talking about? What are you looking for? We don’t have anything like that.’

Guppo led the team inside. Maggie heard shrill protests from a woman. Al’s mother.

Stride crouched in front of Al Pugh. ‘Are you Cat’s boyfriend?’

‘Cat? Is that what this is about? What did she say? Hey, I’m sorry I cheated on her, man. I don’t know what she told you, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch her either!’

‘How did you meet her?’

‘Here at my mom’s house. It was a church painting project. I thought she was cute, and we started going out. Tell me what she said, man! I didn’t do anything!’

Maggie held up a photograph of Kelly Hauswirth. ‘Do you know this woman?’

‘What? No! No, I — aw, wait, isn’t that the chick who got shot? That was all over the news, right? I recognize the face, but I don’t know her.’

Serena held up a photograph of Erin Tierney. ‘What about her?’

Al shook his head. ‘No way. Never seen her.’

‘She’s missing.’

‘I’m telling you, I don’t know who she is! That’s the truth.’

‘We’re taking your laptop, Al. We’ll find out all about the chat rooms. You might as well tell us about it. And who you’re working with.’

‘Man, I can’t tell you what I don’t know! I don’t even own a laptop.’

‘Cat says she took a ring from your house,’ Stride said. ‘A black pearl ring. Where did you get it?’

Al stared at them. ‘Ring? I don’t have any ring. Shit, man, laptops and pearl rings. Does it look like we got the money for stuff like that? I’m lucky if we got mac and cheese for dinner.’

‘This ring was stolen during a murder in Duluth almost nine years ago,’ Stride told him. ‘The gun that was used back then is the same gun that murdered a woman outside the Grizzly Bear Bar last month. The ring and the gun are connected, Al. And Cat says that ring came from this house.’

Al tried to stand up, but Stride shoved him down. ‘Aw, man, are you kidding? I don’t know anything about a ring, and I sure as hell don’t know anything about a gun! You guys are crazy!’

Maggie looked up as they heard a commotion inside the house. The front door wrenched open, and a woman in her late thirties stormed onto the porch, long hair flying. Guppo, in hot pursuit behind her, grabbed her flailing wrists, but when that didn’t stop her, he bear-hugged the woman and lifted her off the ground. Her legs kicked, and one high heel flew off like a missile. Her voice got louder and screeched for the heavens.

‘You people let me go and get out of my house!’

Al stood up again, trying to calm her. ‘Mom, Mom, knock it off, it’s okay.’

‘Put me down!’ she screamed at Guppo.

Guppo did, but he didn’t let her go. Al bounded up the steps before Stride could stop him and put his arms around his mother. She kept screaming. Police officers ran from different parts of the neighborhood. Finally, Stride shouted, raising his voice above the chaos, and everyone stopped in place.

It was silent. Al’s mother panted. Her face was furious. Her raspy voice dissolved in a coughing fit.

‘Listen,’ Al said, sounding calmer and older now, like a boy who wanted to protect his mother. ‘I don’t know what Cat told you guys, but you are on the wrong track. I swear. I don’t know anything about this ring she has, and I sure as hell don’t know anything about a gun.’

Maggie stared at Al’s mother. She was young, but she looked old. The woman wiped spittle from her lips and stared back at Maggie.

‘You know about the gun,’ Maggie said to her quietly. ‘Don’t you, Mrs. Pugh?’

Al started to interrupt, but then he saw his mother’s face, and he let her speak. She stood up straight and smoothed the housedress she was wearing. She was tall, like Al. The boy couldn’t hide his confusion. This was all new to him, but it wasn’t new to his mother.

She knew exactly what was going on.

‘Yes,’ she told Maggie. ‘Okay, yes, I do. I know all about that gun.’

They sat inside. One of Mrs. Pugh’s daughters made tea. The search of the house was over, but it had revealed nothing of importance in either murder investigation. There was no hidey-hole in the house or grounds in which the kidnapped women had been kept. Erin Tierney wasn’t here. She never had been. There was no jewelry from nine years earlier.

Everyone stared at Al’s mother, waiting for her story. There was an oversized photograph of Seymour Pugh with his family in a frame that leaned against a freshly painted wall. Maggie recognized the man from her visit years before. He still had the same smile, but life had corroded him at a fast pace. She wasn’t surprised to learn that he’d died of a stroke three years after she met him.

Mrs. Pugh stared at the photograph, too, and Maggie saw pride in the fierce little smile she gave Seymour. This was a woman who loved her husband, no matter what he’d done.

‘What you’re thinking is what it is,’ Mrs. Pugh finally told them. ‘It was Seymour who did it. He shot that man. Took the jewelry. Guess it doesn’t matter now, although I didn’t want Al and the girls finding out about their daddy. Seymour’s long gone, God rest him. I know Jesus forgives him. Jesus understands what he did.’

Mrs. Pugh was silent. She wiped her eyes.

‘The gun?’ Stride asked. ‘Where did he get it?’

‘He bought it on one of his road trips. Never told me about it. I would have made him get rid of it.’

She sat primly with her knees pressed together. Her fleshy body would have been toned once, and her worn-out face with its tumbling black hair would have been pretty. Maggie could imagine her and Seymour, hooking up, having kids, bumping into the struggles of life. It wasn’t easy then, and it wasn’t easy now. Her chest wheezed. She sucked in the air around her but never seemed to get enough.

‘Did you know what he was planning to do?’ Maggie asked.

‘No, no, ’course I didn’t. He wouldn’t dare tell me. He knew I’d kick his ass if I heard about it.’

‘Then why did he do it?’

Mrs. Pugh gave them a rattling sigh and stared at her lap. ‘For his family, what else? For me, for Al, for the girls.’

‘You needed money?’

‘Sure we did. A man does what a man’s gotta do when it’s his family. Jesus understands.’

‘When did you find out?’ Stride asked.

Her shoulders gave a little shrug. ‘Don’t remember. Few weeks later, I guess. Some cop came by the house, asking questions. Seymour said it was nothing to worry about, but I knew he was lying. That night, after the kids were in bed, I got it out of him. He told me what he’d done. Showed me the gun. The jewelry. He was too scared to unload any of it. I told him to bury it all somewhere. Get it out of the house. Throw it in the lake. Whatever. I didn’t want it here. I thought he got rid of everything, but I was wrong. He kept it. After Seymour died, I was going through his stuff in the attic, and I found a shoebox hidden in the rafters. There was the gun. The jewels he’d stolen. I tell you, I swore a blue streak at that man!’

Serena leaned forward. ‘What did you do with the box?’

‘I shoved it up on a shelf in my bedroom closet. I didn’t feel safe getting rid of it myself, and it’s not like I was going to tell you people what I found. Figured you’d lock me up if I did.’

‘What happened to the gun and the jewelry?’ Stride asked.

‘Far as I know anything, it’s still in the box.’

‘It’s not. We found the box. It’s empty.’ Stride’s head swiveled to her son. ‘Al, if you know anything about that box — about what was in it—’

The young man shook his head. ‘I don’t know a thing. I never saw it. I never even knew it was there.’

Maggie saw Stride and Serena exchange a sober glance, and she knew what that look meant. Cat. If it wasn’t Al, it was Cat. Cat found the box. Cat found the ring. And along with the ring was the gun that murdered Jay Ferris and Kelly Hauswirth.

‘When was Cat here painting the house?’ Stride asked, with a frown that looked as if his world were ending.

‘Sometime in May,’ Al said.

‘Did Cat paint your bedroom while she was here, Mrs. Pugh?’ Serena asked the woman in a soft voice. ‘Could she have gone in your closet and found the box on the shelf?’

Al’s mother scratched her chin and thought about it. Then she said: ‘No, the pretty young one was painting downstairs. Sweet girl. I liked her laugh. It was the other girl that did the bedrooms upstairs. The pasty one with the Halloween hair. She was a little creepy, I have to say.’

‘The other one?’ Serena asked.

‘Anna,’ Al interjected quickly. ‘The waitress at the bar. Anna Glick.’

54

Cat pounded on Anna’s door and waited impatiently for her friend to answer. The quiet neighborhood in Morgan Park where Anna lived was deserted. No cars. No kids playing. Black clouds blew across the afternoon sky, and high winds made the mature trees sway and talk. Drizzle spat on the ground.

‘Come on, come on,’ Cat murmured.

She was afraid that Anna wasn’t home, but finally, she heard the click of the latch and saw her friend peering out at her from inside. Anna didn’t open the door immediately, and when she did, she only opened it a few inches.

‘Cat,’ Anna said. ‘What’s going on? Why are you here?’

Cat shoved the door open and pushed past Anna into the small house, which smelled of cigarette smoke and the must of old furniture. Anna wore a cotton robe that barely covered her hips. It was tied loosely, and her bare skin made a narrow V from her small breasts to the knob of her belly button. Her spiky orange hair was mussed, as if she’d just gotten out of bed.

‘They know!’ Cat told her. She paced back and forth on the worn shag carpet and chewed her fingernails. ‘I knew this would happen. I knew they’d find out. I’m so stupid!’

‘What are you talking about?’ Anna asked.

‘Stride and Serena know about the jewelry you found at Al’s house. I sold the ring you gave me, and they traced it back to me through Curt. I’m such an idiot. I told you, I hate these scams!’

‘You didn’t mind them when you were raking in extra cash,’ Anna pointed out. She grabbed a half-empty pack of cigarettes from a coffee table and lit one. ‘I told you, church projects are the perfect cover. You paint people’s houses and see what shit they keep hidden away. Most of the time, they don’t notice that anything is gone until months later. If they even notice at all.’

Cat shook her head. She was sick with guilt. She liked the money she’d made with Anna — almost five hundred dollars in just a few months. Even so, she’d known from the beginning that the stealing would crash down on her head sooner or later. She wished she’d never agreed to be a part of it.

‘We need to come clean with the cops,’ Cat said.

Anna laughed at her and blew out smoke. ‘Yeah, right. That’s not going to happen. What exactly did you tell them?’

‘I told them I took the ring from Al’s house. I sold it.’

‘Did you mention me?’

‘No!’ Cat said. ‘I didn’t. I would never rat you out, but you know they’re going to figure out you were there, too. And they asked me about a gun! Did you find a gun at the house? They said it was the same gun that was used when that woman got murdered at the Grizzly Bear.’

Anna stared at her. She didn’t even look like Anna anymore. ‘I really wish you’d kept your mouth shut, Cat.’

‘I’m sorry, but what else could I do?’

‘What are the cops doing right now?’ Anna asked. ‘Where are they?’

‘Searching Al’s place. They got a warrant this morning.’

Anna’s face turned sour, and she talked softly, as if to herself. ‘It won’t take them long to make the connection to me. They’ll be coming here.’ Then she announced loudly: ‘Bernd, come on out, we have to go. We’ve got trouble.’

Cat heard the floorboards in the old house shift. In the doorway that led to the bedrooms, she saw a man. A stranger. He wore only briefs and made no effort to cover himself. His skin bore fresh nail marks on his chest. Anna’s. He was handsome, with a taut muscular body, but he conveyed menace like no one Cat had ever seen. His ivory-pale, freckled face was devoid of expression, and his blue-gray eyes watched her with the coiled-up ferocity of a tiger.

‘Who is...’ Cat began, her voice cracking.

‘This is my boyfriend. Bernd, we’ve got a problem.’

‘Another problem?’ the man said, spitting the words at her. ‘What did you do this time?’

Cat watched Anna fold like a flower. She’d never seen her friend intimidated by a man. ‘It’s not my fault, but the cops are coming. We’d better get out of here right now. Both of us. Permanently.’

Bernd marched closer to them. Cat felt nauseated by fright. She spotted men’s clothes in a pile on the floor, and Bernd squatted and dug in the pockets. Cat began to back toward the door, but Anna darted behind her and threw an arm around her head, burying her neck in the crook of her elbow. Cat couldn’t move and couldn’t breathe. Bernd stood up, and he had a gun in his hand, which he pointed at Cat’s head.

Cat whimpered and tried to speak, but she couldn’t.

‘On your knees,’ Anna told her roughly.

Cat sank to the floor. Her arms wrapped protectively around her stomach. Her chestnut hair spilled across her face, and sweat beaded on her forehead. She kept staring at the gun.

‘Tie her hands,’ Bernd said, snapping his fingers at Anna. ‘Quickly. Leave her ankles free for now. She’s going to have to go with us. Where’s the other girl?’

‘In my storage unit across the street.’

Bernd waited in stony silence while Anna ran to the kitchen and returned with a roll of duct tape. Anna bound Cat’s wrists tightly with tape, which was sticky and rough on her skin.

‘I warned you,’ Bernd snapped at Anna. ‘You put the whole operation at risk with your stupidity. I told you not to freelance.’

Anna flinched. ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay? Your people pay good money, but it’s not enough to live on. I found you the other girls—’

Bernd made a slashing motion across his throat. Anna stopped talking. The man stepped into his jeans from the floor. As he zipped himself, he squatted in front of Cat and held her chin between his fingers, pinching so tightly that she grimaced in pain. He shoved her face left and right, and then he put his hand on her stomach, and she tried to squirm away.

‘We’ll use this one as a bonus,’ Bernd said. ‘She’s pretty. Pregnant is a plus. Some buyers like that. And the baby will be worth something, too.’

‘You leave my baby alone, you bastard!’ Cat screamed into his face.

Bernd slapped her hard, leaving a welt and choking off the words in her throat. ‘She’s spirited, too. That’s good. They like the ones who fight. Maybe she’ll make up for the one you lost us.’

‘You shot the other girl!’ Anna barked. ‘If you’d kept control of Kelly, there never would have been a problem. I texted you about the cop in the bar. You needed to get her out of there, and instead, we wound up with a mess on our hands.’

‘The mess started with the gun you gave me,’ Bernd replied. He reached out and grabbed Anna’s neck with his hand, pinching his fingers shut like a vise until she began to twitch, unable to breathe. When he finally let go, she jerked away, coughing and crying.

‘Fucker!’ she moaned.

For the first time, Bernd laughed.

‘Anna, why are you doing this to me?’ Cat asked her. ‘What is this about?’

Anna rubbed her neck and looked furious at her humiliation. ‘Jesus, why are girls like you so naive? You’re going to take a trip, Cat. All the way to a desert kingdom. Don’t worry, you won’t be alone. Erin will keep you company.’

Erin.

Cat knew that name. Serena had mentioned that name. Stride had shown her Erin’s photograph.

‘That’s the girl who’s missing. Serena said that she had an online boyfriend who kidnapped her—’

‘Boyfriend?’ Anna retorted. ‘I’m her boyfriend.’

‘You?’

‘Yeah, me. All these girls are so perfectly clueless. Do you know how many pathetic single women have told me they loved me? How they’ve been searching their whole lives for a man like me? They’ll swallow anything I tell them.’

‘Enough!’ Bernd snapped. ‘We don’t have time for this. Gag her. I’ll make sure the street is empty. We’ll put her in the truck and get the other girl, and we’ll head for the boat.’

The man shoved the gun into his belt and marched out of the house. Cat and Anna were alone. Anna unrolled another stretch of duct tape and cut it with her teeth. The tape dangled from her fingers. She grabbed a dirty sock from the floor and wadded it up in a ball in her fist.

‘Open up,’ she said to Cat.

‘How can you do this to me?’

‘Open your mouth.’

‘I’m your friend.’

Anna pinched Cat’s jaw until her mouth opened and shoved the sock deep inside, making her choke. Then she slapped the tape across Cat’s lips and dragged the girl roughly to her feet. She pushed Cat toward the back door.

‘Time to go.’

55

Two and a half hours between Shakopee and Duluth marked the difference between Janine’s old world and her new world.

Archie was at the prison to give a statement to the media and handle the paperwork for her release. He arranged for her departure in an unmarked van from the loading dock. They drove past the unsuspecting reporters and made their way to the parking lot of a nearby Best Western hotel, where he had new clothes waiting for her and a room in which she could change. She showered and put on a blouse with three-quarter sleeves and a vibrant red-and-gray print. She left it untucked over tapered black dress slacks and heels. She wadded up the clothes she’d worn out of Shakopee and put them in a plastic garbage basket, where they could be burned for all she cared.

Archie waited outside with a town car and driver. He had champagne opened and a tray of hors d’oeuvres. She emerged from the hotel, wearing sunglasses, and got in the back seat of the car with him. They headed north to Duluth, but they didn’t speak for miles. She wanted to savor the silence, which he seemed to understand.

Somewhere near Forest Lake, on the northern edge of the Twin Cities, Archie got a text on his phone. He eased back in the leather seat, champagne in hand, and studied her over the half-rims of his glasses. His curly gray hair nearly grazed the roof of the car.

‘My police sources tell me they’re executing a search warrant on a house in Superior,’ he said. ‘It has something to do with the gun and jewelry that were found.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Janine watched the wilderness passing on the freeway. The lakes. The pines and birch trees. ‘Does that matter to us?’

‘Not really. I told you that you’re likely safe in any event. However, if they find the person who really pulled the trigger, it removes any final legal issues hanging over your head. A complete exoneration may be useful in whatever you choose to do next.’

‘Ah,’ she said mildly.

‘Do you know what you plan to do next?’ he asked her.

‘Well, being free doesn’t make me a surgeon again. Not to be crass, but the medical board never really cared whether I murdered my husband. They only cared that I was popping pain pills while operating.’

‘But you’re clean now.’

‘I am, but I’m almost nine years out of touch with my field.’

‘You can catch up.’

‘No offense, Archie, but right now, I just want to find a way to make it through today.’

He smiled at her the way a grandfather would. ‘Yes, of course. My apologies.’

They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey. One hundred and fifty miles took her back to Duluth. It made her sad to drive into the heart of the city, because she could see her estate on the hillside from the freeway. The house she’d designed. The house that was supposed to be her lifelong sanctuary. It belonged to someone else now. She’d been forced to sell it years ago to settle the malpractice case against her. It would never be hers again. Not that she wanted it now.

The town car took her to the hotel and shopping complex called Fitger’s. That would be her home while she assessed her future. Archie had arranged a press conference at his office the following day, but she needed at least one day and night of privacy. Anonymity. He’d already checked her into the August Fitger suite on the hotel’s top floor, with a king bed, whirlpool tub, and a view toward the vastness of the lake, and he’d stocked the room with clothes and toiletries. When they arrived, he handed her an old-fashioned key.

‘I’ll call you in the morning,’ Archie said, ‘but contact me if you need anything at all.’

‘I will. Thank you.’

‘You might need cash, so here you are.’

He gave her five hundred dollars. And still there was doubt in his eyes.

Janine didn’t go to her room. She’d been locked up for too long to lock herself inside again. With sunglasses hiding her face, she shopped both levels of the complex. She bought an expensive bottle of white wine and a hand-blown Hungarian wine glass. Downstairs, at the bookstore, she selected a long literary novel to pass the evening. The blond-haired manager was friendly, but Janine was pretty sure the woman recognized her. Even so, she was discreet.

After an hour, she went upstairs to her suite, opened the wine, and drank. She dragged an armchair to the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared at the majestic blue water. Five stories below her, people wandered the boardwalk, and children screamed and laughed. It was summer — the perfect season. A ship came in under the lift bridge. A ship went out.

Still she drank. Soon she was buzzed, and some of the weight lifted from her shoulders.

She didn’t know how long she’d been drinking alone when she heard a knock at the suite door. There was no doubt in her mind who it was. She’d told Archie it was okay to let him know. She got up, feeling wobbly, and made her way to the door and opened it.

‘Hello, Howard,’ she said.

‘Janine.’ He said it in a hushed voice, like someone standing in front of a Michelangelo sculpture.

He had flowers in his hand, a sunny bouquet of yellow roses, white daisies, and purple irises. He wore a suit that was old but had been recently cleaned and pressed. A faint grease stain marred his blue tie. His penny loafers had been shined. His center-parted hair rose high on his forehead and nestled in brown curls.

He handed her the flowers, and she said, ‘How sweet. Thank you.’

She found that she was almost glad to see him. Everything had changed in her life, but Howard was the constant, and there was something comforting about him. She felt warmth that wasn’t really affection but may have been gratitude. She pulled him by the elbow into the suite and shut the door.

‘No one saw you?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Do you want wine?’

‘Sure.’

She poured him a glass and poured herself another, emptying the bottle. She returned to the windows, and he followed her and stood next to her. The king-sized bed with its brocaded green comforter was near them by the adjacent wall. They sipped wine in silence. He finished his glass and took her hand. His skin was warm. He’d never touched her before, but she knew what it meant.

Janine put her own wine down and faced him. She reached up to stroke his face. Her fingertips caressed his shoulder. She tilted her head slightly, leaned in, and kissed him softly, lips to lips. His eyes were closed. She smelled mint on his breath.

‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ she whispered.

‘It’s the only thing I’ve dreamed about for years.’

The power of his fantasy made her flush. She felt no arousal herself, but she enjoyed the long-dormant sensation of controlling a man. She took over, which was what she always did in bed. She led the way. She dominated. Only one man had ever been different, after a lifetime of submissive husbands and lovers. Her equal.

Jay.

He’d given as good as he got. She’d been turned on by his strength in the early years, but after a while, she grew tired of the game. There could only be one alpha in a marriage, and she had no interest in relinquishing the crown. That was when things careened downhill.

It was strange, sharing herself with Howard. She was older now, simply going through the motions. And yet it was heady to watch the adoration in his eyes. She loosened his stained tie, slid it from under his collar, and tugged it like a rope in her hands. Teasing him, she wrapped it around his wrists and yanked it tight. She kissed him again, harder this time. With tongue. She held up his hands and sucked on the fingers one at a time. He quivered.

She let the tie fall and stepped backward, putting distance when he wanted to embrace her.

‘Take off your clothes for me,’ she instructed sharply.

Howard rushed to comply.

She found her thoughts going far away. She paid no attention as he undressed, fumbling with his shoes and belt. Different futures wandered through her brain. A doctor. A surgeon. A teacher. A consultant. Archie was right. She had things to offer the world. She still had power, knowledge, determination, and drive. Prison hadn’t changed who she was. Time hadn’t diminished her.

She was Janine Snow. Dr. Perfect.

Howard stood in front of her, naked.

‘Lie on the bed,’ she told him, and he did.

Yes. She knew now. She could do anything. Jay was a memory. Jay, who’d sapped her confidence, who’d degraded her. Jay was dead, and she was free. She could be whatever she wanted, and what she wanted was to be a doctor again, to hold life in her hands, to be God. No one could deny her that. The board would restore her license. The patients would come to her, because they wanted to live, and she could answer their prayers.

‘This is what I live for.’

She said it out loud. Howard thought she was talking to him. Talking about sex. Maybe she was.

She stood over this naked man on the bed, who was fully under her spell. She gave him a wicked smile. She touched him with warm hands, her fingers spread, playing him like a piano. His chest. His stomach. His legs. His thighs. His eyes were wide open, drinking in what she was doing to him. Fully clothed, she bent over and enclosed him in her mouth. Just a kiss, just for a moment.

I will show them all. I will get my life back. Jay had cost her eight years, but eight years was punishment enough. She had nothing else to answer for. No other sins.

Janine undressed, taking her time. Howard followed each undone button like a revelation. The loosening strap of her bra, then the cups as they fell away. The zipper on her slacks. The lace of her panties, which she peeled down inch by inch, until she was nude in front of him. She climbed onto the bed, straddled him with her thighs, and hovered with her breasts dangling and the V between her legs teasing an inch above him. Making him wait.

This wouldn’t take long.

They would couple, and she would let him hold her briefly. Then she would tell him the truth. It was a fantasy, but the fantasy was over. She’d crush his world, but better to do it fast, leaving him with the glow of fulfillment. She would thank him, kiss him, and send him back to his gray little life.

Goodbye, Howard Marlowe.

Janine lowered herself and felt him sinking inside her. He gasped, almost as if he were in pain, and called out her name. Like a prayer. This was ample payment for his devotion.

She rode him slowly, then more quickly, and as she did, her mind drifted to other things. She thought to herself that she could order the chicken with fig and brie from the hotel restaurant that evening. Maybe the ahi tuna appetizer, too. And another bottle of Chardonnay.

Then she could put on soft music and enjoy the solitude as night fell, and she could plan for tomorrow.

56

The small row of six storage units was immediately across the street from Anna’s house. The facility was built from cinder blocks, with double-wide green wooden doors, on a dirt lot that was overgrown with weeds. Dense trees swarmed the units, dropping leaves and branches on the mossy roof. Where the lot ended, the ground fell off into a steep ravine.

Anna backed her SUV to the last unit in the row. She got out, making sure they were alone. Bernd was in the back seat with Cat, and he dragged her out of the truck by the collar of her T-shirt. The gun was in his hand. Outside, the dirt under Cat’s feet was wet and spongy. Rain spattered her face, and wind swirled the treetops that grew out of the gully, making a roaring noise.

‘Erin’s inside,’ Anna told Bernd as she opened the tailgate of the SUV.

‘Let’s get her, and get the hell out of here.’

A packing crate filled the rear of the truck. The unfinished wood was stamped with the name of a foreign manufacturing company and labeled for steel shims. A bungee cord looped the square box, and Anna yanked heavily on the cord to drag the crate from the rear of the truck, where it dropped into the mud. She used a crowbar to pry open the lid. The crate was empty.

Cat saw her future, and she knew it was inside the box. Cat and Erin, the two of them, imprisoned together. The thought of being nailed into the wooden coffin, rolling with the waves of the sea, set off panic in her chest. She wanted to shout, but she couldn’t. She wanted to run, but she had nowhere to go. Her legs bowed; she began to fall. Bernd grabbed her elbow and jerked her to her feet.

‘Open the door,’ he told Anna impatiently.

The double doors of the storage unit were secured by a padlock, which Anna undid with a key. She swung open one of the green wooden doors. Cat saw the rear bumper of a purple Nissan Versa with a license plate from North Dakota. Otherwise, the interior was black.

Anna went inside and plugged an orange extension cord into an outlet, which illuminated a floodlight hanging from the ceiling. The breeze blew in, making the floodlight sway. Anna headed for the back of the storage unit, and Bernd pushed Cat inside, pulling the door shut behind them. The space smelled of mold and metal. Strange shadows played across the walls through streams of dust. At her feet, an army of black bugs pushed through the dirt and feasted on scraps of meat and bread.

Anna got to the front of the Versa and stopped cold. A strangled gasp blew from her mouth, and her fists clenched. ‘Oh, fuck.’

‘What is it?’

Anna stared at the floor and shook her head.

Bernd pushed Cat by the neck, and she stumbled forward, trying to keep her balance. When she came up next to Anna, she screamed into her gag. A woman lay at their feet, chained to a metal table that was weighted down with bags of cement. She was on her back, spread-eagled, her skin gray. A two-inch gash was open on her neck, and blood pulsed from the wound, pooling under her head and staining her long hair.

‘You stupid bitch...’ Bernd muttered to Anna.

He let go of Cat and swung his arm in a haymaker to the side of Anna’s skull. The blow knocked her halfway across the hood of the Versa. Her wool hat flew off. Dizzied, she slid to the dirt. She tried to right herself, then crawled on hands and knees to the woman on the floor. She put her fingers on the woman’s neck, coming away with blood on her nails.

‘She’s still alive,’ Anna told him. ‘She’s still breathing.’

‘And we’re supposed to move her like that?’ Bernd demanded.

‘Well, I don’t know — we could—’

‘Shut up,’ Bernd said. ‘Stop talking.’

‘Bernd—’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

Anna staggered to her feet. She grabbed for balance on the hood of the car. Blood was everywhere now. On Anna’s skin, her knees, her arms, her clothes. She’d bitten down on her tongue when Bernd hit her, and blood dripped from the sides of her mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ she pleaded with him.

Bernd’s face was knotted up into a mask of rage.

‘I didn’t know, how could I know?’ Anna went on. ‘We still have Cat. You said yourself, she’ll be worth a lot. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

‘Not you.’

‘You can’t leave me here!’ She took Bernd’s shirt in her bloody fists and shouted in his face. ‘You think I’m going to prison for the rest of my life for you? Fuck that! I’ll give you all up. Every one of your sorry asses. I’ll tell them everything!’

‘I know,’ Bernd said.

He brought the gun up and fired through Anna’s stomach. The noise reverberated in the shut-up space. Anna screamed in agony and laced her hands over her belly as she staggered backward. Streams of blood squeezed through her fingers. She stared down at herself in disbelief.

‘You son of a bitch—’

Bernd straightened his arm and fired again, directly into her head. The shot was like a bomb. Cat watched Anna’s face explode in a shower of bone and brain. Her friend’s knees crumpled, and Anna slumped to the floor in a dead pile. Cat squeezed her eyes shut and looked away. She felt deaf from the bang of the gun, and her skin was pricked with stinging, pinpoint burns.

The killer’s hand locked around her wrist. ‘Let’s go.’

Bernd dragged Cat by her bound hands, and her shoes scraped on the dirt. He got to the door of the storage unit and kicked it open with his heel. She squinted into the gray light of the afternoon. The rain was heavier, sheeting sideways in the wind.

The SUV was there, its tailgate open. The packing crate lay on the ground, the wooden lid next to it. Cat knew what came next. Bernd cocked his arm and flipped the pistol in his grip, ready to crash the butt of the gun into her head. Cat swung at him with her arms, but it was like striking an oak tree. His body barely moved. She lost her footing in the mud as she hit him and stumbled to her knees. Protecting her stomach, she tried to skitter away from him, but he grabbed her under her shoulders and hoisted her into the air. Her legs kicked. She landed blows without felling him. He dropped her down again, and with his bloody hand around her neck, he pointed the gun into her face.

She felt the heat of the barrel burning her.

And then she heard it. They both heard it. Sirens. Loud, wailing, roaring closer, not even a block away. She stared past the dirt lot to the street, barely able to hope for rescue, but there they were. The strobe lights of squad cars flashed between the tall trees, one after another, brake lights squealing as the cars swung wide. In the midst of them, she saw a truck she recognized.

Stride’s Expedition.

‘There!’ Al shouted, pointing at an ivy-covered house at the corner of a T intersection with Edward Street. ‘That’s where Anna lives.’

Stride jerked to a stop and bumped over the curb on the boulevard. With his window open, he gestured police cars past him, where they swerved into position, blocking both streets. He opened the driver’s door. Serena and Maggie climbed out of the back seat behind him.

‘Stay here,’ he told Al. ‘Don’t move.’

All of Stride’s attention was focused on Anna’s house, which was built on a shallow slope of lawn and had steps leading from the sidewalk to the front door. The wall nearest the street was completely draped in dense vines, obscuring the windows. He led the way toward the door, with Serena and Maggie close behind him. Rain slashed his face. He’d nearly reached the door when he heard Al shouting from inside his truck. The kid’s high-pitched voice was muffled by the window, but he screeched a name over and over, and Stride recognized what Al was saying.

‘Cat! Cat!’

Stride swiveled toward the street. So did everyone else. He saw a dilapidated row of storage units, a muddy, weed-covered driveway, a forest of soaring, waving trees, and an SUV parked near the last unit with its tailgate swung open. Beside the truck, a tall man backed away toward the edge of a steep ravine.

The man had a gun in his hand.

And he had Cat.

The passenger door of Stride’s truck swung open. Al screamed Cat’s name and bolted across the street, his arms and legs flying. Stride shouted after him, but the kid didn’t stop. Then they were all running: Stride, Serena, Maggie, the cops. Stride skidded down the lawn of Anna’s house and hit the pavement in a sprint. Ahead of him, Al kept shouting.

‘Cat! Cat!’

Al pumped through the mud, his sneakers splashing. He was almost at the SUV when the man holding Cat raised the pistol and fired. The first shot missed wide. Al threw himself behind the truck bumper, but a moment later, he charged again, and the man fired again. This time the bullet drilled into the meat of Al’s shoulder. Al jerked at the impact, his face twisted in pain, and his knees buckled. His hand clutched his shoulder, and he fell against the truck door.

Stride didn’t dare shoot. He kept the SUV between himself and the gunman as he evaluated Cat’s situation. She was bound with her hands in front, but otherwise looked unharmed. She wriggled frantically in the man’s grasp, but he had her neck in a chokehold as he pulled her toward the edge. When the man spotted Stride, he laid the barrel of the automatic against Cat’s cheekbone.

The two of them kept backing toward the ravine. Thick trees soared from the pit of the valley and loomed over their heads. Dense, leafy brush leaned in around them. Compost and dead branches, dumped at the fringe of the slope, made the earth like quicksand.

‘Stop!’ Stride shouted at him. ‘Stay where you are!’

The man cast a glance behind him, where the ground fell away. He was up to his ankles in mud. He took the gun from Cat’s head and squeezed off another shot, which pinged against the metal siding of the SUV. With one more shot, he shattered the truck’s windshield, pelting Stride with glass.

Stride ducked behind the truck and waited an excruciating five seconds. The man didn’t fire again. When Stride stood up, the slope ahead of him was empty. The deep gully had swallowed them up.

57

Stride went down and down and down.

He half-fell, half-climbed the sharp slope. The soft earth gave way under his feet, and he stayed upright by grabbing onto wet brush. Leaves slipped through his fingers. The deeper he went, the darker it got, blocking out the charcoal sky. When he glanced behind him, he saw Serena and half a dozen cops starting down the hill, but soon they disappeared behind the crowns of trees. He was alone.

Where the ground finally leveled, water gurgled over his feet. He was no more than a hundred yards from the open coastline where the St. Louis River widened into Spirit Lake, but for now, he may as well have been in a rainforest, trapped among trees so dense that he couldn’t see ten yards in front of him. He listened, but the noise of rain and wind drowned other sounds.

He saw fresh footprints in the mud of the creek, heading east toward the lake. That was their trail.

Stride yanked out his phone and called Maggie. ‘They’re moving east. There’s an abandoned set of railroad tracks by the lake. We should be able to get people in from the north.’

‘On my way,’ she told him.

He followed the ravine, shoving branches aside and wiping water out of his eyes. He felt blind and deaf. The rain got harder, drumming like thunder on a million leaves over his head. The creek water deepened, filling his boots. Every few steps, he stopped and squinted to peer through the forest ahead of him. There was no sign of them.

And then –

The flaky trunk of a birch tree burst into bark and wood dust two feet from his head. The crack of a gun rippled over the noise of the storm. He squatted and caught a glimpse of a man’s legs, anchored in the creek, facing toward him. Cat was still with the man, struggling to escape. They were fifty feet away. Another second later, the man turned and disappeared, dragging Cat behind him.

Stride gave chase, but the wilderness fought back. Spindly branches scraped his face and drew blood. The water and mud sucked his boots into the ground, clinging to him with each step. His arms hacked through the foliage, forcing a path. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes that he’d been inside the woods, but it felt longer. He no longer saw anyone ahead of him, but he kept low as he pushed forward, in case the man fired blind shots to slow his pursuers. He was glad he did, because four more gunshots echoed wildly around him, swallowed by the woods. He didn’t know how close any of the bullets had come.

Finally, beyond the trees, he saw water and sky. He spilled out of the forest and found himself on the graveled fringe of old railroad tracks, steps from the dappled surface of Spirit Lake. The wooded land mass of Wisconsin was visible a mile across the water. Streaks of rain surged from the low clouds. Almost immediately, as he reached the clearing, gunshots rang out again. He ducked, taking cover.

The man with the gun pulled Cat northward on the railroad tracks. On his left was the impenetrable forest, and on his right was the expanse of the lake. He had nowhere to go, but he ran anyway.

‘Stop!’ Stride shouted. ‘Give it up!’

In answer, the man fired at him again and kept running.

Stride followed. The railroad tracks were overgrown with weeds. The lake beat against the land, and the rain gushed across his body. He jogged, then threw himself flat as the man twisted back and squeezed off another shot.

Behind him, Stride saw Serena emerge from the trees. Six other officers did, too, crouched and ready. They spread out between the woods and the lake, and all of them pushed northward. Stride moved again, closing the gap between himself and the man with the gun. Beyond the man, a quarter-mile away, he spotted Maggie and a team of officers converging from the other direction.

They had him in a squeeze now, police coming from both sides. The man with the gun saw it, too, and he stopped dead on the tracks. He looked ahead. He looked back. There was no escape in any direction.

He put his gun to Cat’s head. ‘Everybody stop!’

Stride held up his hands to freeze those behind him. Up the tracks, Maggie did the same. Nobody moved. The man had a dozen guns trained on him, but he knew they wouldn’t fire with Cat in jeopardy. The man’s face swiveled back and forth, north then south. He tugged Cat tighter against his chest and jabbed the barrel into her hair above her ear. She squirmed in his grasp.

Her eyes met Stride’s. He was only fifty feet away, close enough to fire if he got a clean shot. Which he didn’t have. He tried to will himself into her brain. To tell her to be calm. To tell her that nothing was going to happen to her. To tell her that this would all end with her safely in his arms.

He wanted to believe that.

The stand-off drew out. The rain poured across them from left to right like a wave, carrying a sweet smell of pine. The forest was a lush wall of green, dark on a dark sky, practically dipping its roots in the lake. The railroad tracks made parallel lines that seemed to meet at the horizon. Stride dug his feet in the gravel of the tracks, steadying himself. He pointed the barrel of his gun squarely at the man’s head, but all he saw was Cat’s face. Too close.

His eyes flicked behind him. Serena was twenty feet back, down on one knee, her gun also aimed at the man’s body.

‘Let the girl go!’ Stride shouted at him. ‘Put your gun on the ground, and put your hands up.’

The man gave no sign of surrendering. Trapped in the man’s arms, Cat used the heel of her shoe to hammer his shin, but her kicks did nothing to dislodge him. The man whispered in her ear, then moved the gun from the side of her head to the soft skin of her face, and she stopped struggling.

‘You can come out of this alive,’ Stride called. ‘If you put down your gun, no one’s going to shoot you.’

Stride watched the man’s stony face as he weighed his options. He was trapped, pinned down, with nowhere to run.

‘You want this girl alive,’ the man shouted to Stride.

‘I want everybody alive.’

‘Call off the dogs,’ he demanded. ‘Give me a way out of this.’

‘You have one way out. Put the gun down. Let the girl go.’

‘Are you ready to let this girl die? And her baby?’

Cat flailed again, erupting in fury, but he kept her locked in his grip. As she struggled, Stride noticed one thing that the man with the gun had missed. Cat’s hands were almost free. Their run through the woods had shredded the tape binding her wrists, and if she twisted hard, they’d come apart.

She knew it, too. He could see it in the blackness of her eyes. There was something in her face that he’d never seen before — something determined and violent. This man had threatened her child, and she was ready to fight back.

They were running out of time.

‘I want all of these cops out of here!’ the man shouted.

‘You can get a lawyer. You can do a deal with the feds. But not if you hurt the girl.’

‘As soon as I put down the gun, I’m dead. You think I don’t know that?’

He sounded like an animal backed against a wall, and Stride didn’t like it.

‘If you surrender, you’re safe. You have my word. No one’s going to shoot you.’

But the situation was spiraling out of control, and Stride couldn’t stop it.

Cat’s hands were free. She’d severed the tape and was flexing her fingers. She’d gone limp in the man’s grasp, but the looseness was a ruse. She wanted to go for his gun. And she’d lose.

Serena saw it, too, and she murmured a warning. ‘Jonny.’

‘Cat, don’t move,’ Stride called to her. ‘We’ll get you out of this. Stay calm.’

A mistake.

He regretted it as the words left his mouth, and the man didn’t miss it. Cat. Stride had admitted that he knew this girl. She wasn’t a stranger. She was more than a hostage.

‘You want to save Cat?’ the man shouted. ‘Then get these cops out of here! You’ve got ten seconds before I pull the trigger. Kill me if you want, but she’ll be on the ground. Is that what you want?’

‘Stop! Don’t do this! Cat, don’t move, it’s okay.’

‘Ten...’

Cat’s fingers curled like claws. Fragments of torn tape dangled from her slim wrists. Her breathing accelerated.

‘Nine...’

‘Put the gun down!’ Stride shouted at the man.

‘Eight...’

Cat stared at Stride, and he stared back. Don’t, he tried to tell her, but she wasn’t listening; she was too far gone with fear and fury.

‘Seven...’

‘Jonny, he’s going to do it,’ Serena whispered.

‘Six...’

And he was. Stride knew that. The man was insane. When he reached zero, he’d pull the trigger, regardless of the consequences. And before that, Cat would wrestle him for the gun, and he’d overwhelm her in seconds. It all ended the same way. With both of them dead.

‘Five...’

Everything was careening to a finish. One way or another.

‘Four...’

Stride bent down and put his gun beside him on the railroad tracks. He straightened up and put his hands in the air with his fingers spread wide.

‘Look at me!’ Stride shouted. ‘Look! No gun!’

The countdown stopped. The man stared at Stride.

‘Now the others, too,’ he called. ‘All of them. Tell them to drop their weapons.’

‘First, we chat,’ Stride said. He took a step closer to the man.

‘Stay where you are!’ the man shouted. He kept the gun at Cat’s head. ‘She and I are going to walk out of here. Just her and me. And you’re going to let us go.’

Stride shook his head and took another step closer. ‘I can’t let you do that. I just wanted to prove that I’m not going to shoot you.’

‘Stop!’

Stride took another step closer.

‘I told you to stop!’

And another step closer.

Then the man finally did what Stride wanted. He took the gun away from Cat’s head and pointed it directly at Stride’s chest. ‘I said, stop!’

Stride froze. No one had a clear shot yet. Cat stared at him with a question in her eyes. Now?

‘Let me talk to her,’ Stride said. ‘I need to talk to Cat and make sure she’s okay. Take off the gag.’

He didn’t dare look at Serena, but he hoped she was keeping a dead aim on the man for the instant when Cat was free.

‘I need to talk to Cat,’ Stride repeated. ‘That’s a deal-breaker. Take off the gag!’

The man relented. He ripped the tape away from Cat’s mouth and yanked out the gag inside. In doing so, he had to let go of the chokehold holding the girl in place. Stride wanted Cat to fall where she was, but instead, with her hands free, she grabbed the man’s wrist and sank her teeth into his thumb and knuckle, biting down hard until her teeth were stopped by bone.

The man wailed. The gun fired wildly in the air. His hand, spurting blood, let go, and the pistol dropped at his feet.

Stride ran. So did Cat. The girl threw herself into his arms, and Stride spun her around and lowered her to the ground and sheltered her with his body. He couldn’t see behind him. He couldn’t see the man drop to the tracks as bullets missed high, couldn’t see him grab the gun with his uninjured hand and swing around to aim at Stride’s back.

An easy shot. A paralyzing shot. A kill shot.

The beach was alive with gunfire. Deafening, overlapping.

The man aimed, but he never fired again. A dozen bullets hit him at once. In his chest. In his head. The gun fell again, and so did he.

Stride waited, protecting Cat, until the echoes died to silence.

58

Cat fidgeted on the hospital bed.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be here. When can I get out of this place?’

Stride held her hand. ‘You’re not going anywhere until the doctors check you out. You and the baby. We want to make sure you’re both okay.’

‘I want to go home—’ she began, but then she stopped nervously. She looked away, not meeting Stride’s eyes. She wasn’t sure if she had a home anymore. She didn’t know whether, after everything she’d done, Stride would let her stay.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll go home soon,’ he told her. ‘Maybe tonight, definitely tomorrow.’ Then he added: ‘And we have a lot to talk about.’

Her pretty face was unusually pale, her long hair dirty and matted. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied honestly, ‘but I can tell you a few things. You’re going to make a list of every house you were in and everything you and Anna stole. You’re going to go to every one of those homes in person and apologize. You’re going to return anything you still have, and you’re going to make restitution for anything you don’t. You’re going to do community service every weekend from now until you graduate from high school. And that’s just my punishment. A judge will have more to say.’

She nodded. ‘Okay, Stride.’

‘I’m the easy one,’ he added. ‘Serena will be much tougher.’

Cat gave him a tiny smile, and it was good to see that smile lighting up her face again. When he’d first met her, he’d thought she had a magical smile. Then her lips bent down in genuine confusion. ‘Why the heck aren’t you kicking me out?’

Stride thought: Maybe because you keep telling me to.

‘Let’s make a new rule,’ he said. ‘You never ask me that again. Okay?’

She nodded. ‘Okay.’

Serena joined them in the hospital room. She sat next to Stride, and he slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. He could feel her exhaustion, emotional and physical. He was sure that some of the bullets that killed Bernd Frisch were hers, and she knew it, too. It didn’t matter who was on the receiving end or how justified it was or how much the man deserved it, firing a weapon into another human being took a bit of your soul and never gave it back. It wasn’t her first, but it wasn’t something that grew easier with experience.

‘Erin Tierney?’ Stride asked.

‘The doctors say she’ll make it,’ Serena said. The relief in her voice was palpable. ‘She was conscious for a while, but she’s sleeping now. She doesn’t remember much, which is a good thing. I talked to her parents, who are flying in tomorrow. We’ll get a therapist here, too.’

‘I’m glad she’s alive,’ Cat said from the bed.

She didn’t ask about Anna Glick. She knew Anna was dead. Stride realized that Cat had seen way too much death this year — more than anyone should face in a lifetime. And yet fate played out strangely. If Cat hadn’t made her mistakes, things would likely be different for Erin. Other women would still be in danger. By accident, Cat had led them to an evil that was far worse than stealing jewelry or cash under the guise of painting houses. Which didn’t excuse what the girl had done.

They’d linked Bernd Frisch through his passport to the Ingersstrom. The ship was on lockdown in the harbor. The feds and Interpol would be asking questions, and hopefully, the answers would blow open a European crime syndicate and save more lives overseas.

Strange fate.

Cat stared at Stride and Serena. ‘Can I ask you two a question?’

‘Of course,’ they said together.

She played with her fingers and then placed both hands over her stomach. ‘Am I really ready to be a mother?’

Stride looked at Serena, not sure which of them should answer. Finally, he said: ‘That’s your call, Cat, not ours.’

‘I want your opinion,’ she said. ‘And I want you to be honest with me.’

Serena leaned forward and put her hand on top of Cat’s. ‘Honestly?’ she said. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘I knew you’d say that. You’re right.’

‘Not because you’re a bad person,’ Serena went on, ‘and definitely not because I think you would be a bad mother. It’s just that you’re too young to take on that kind of responsibility. It will cheat you and cheat your son.’

Cat suddenly looked older than her years. ‘I’m thinking now that maybe adoption would be a better way for me to go. Are there ways to adopt where he can know who I am?’

‘Yes, open adoption is becoming more common,’ Serena said.

‘What about you two? Would you two consider adopting him?’

Stride and Serena both stared at her, wondering what to say. ‘Cat, that’s a sweet thing to suggest,’ he began, ‘but we can’t—’

‘I mean, you two are going to get married, aren’t you?’ Cat continued, as if she hadn’t already taken away enough of their emotional hiding places.

Serena waited. And watched him. As if she were very interested in the answer he would give. She could have let him off the hook. She could have smiled or made a joke. But no. They’d left the subject of marriage off the table ever since getting back together, but sooner or later, they would have to decide what this relationship was.

In the end, Cat gave him an out.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know it’s none of my business.’

He hadn’t said a word, and he felt the faintest cool breeze of disappointment blowing toward him from Serena. He got up and went to the hospital window. Behind him, he heard Cat whisper: ‘Did I say something wrong?’

He heard Serena’s reply. ‘No, he’s just not ready.’

Stride let their hushed conversation go unanswered, even though he wanted to turn around and gather both of them up in his arms. All he could think about was how much he hated hospitals.

‘Can I see Al?’ Cat asked suddenly.

‘Maybe a little later,’ Serena told her. ‘You should get some rest.’

‘No, no, I’m fine. I want to see him. He saved my life, too, you know. I don’t want him thinking that I hate him.’

Stride turned back from the window. ‘Al’s lucky. The bullet went through his shoulder muscles but nothing vital. He’ll be okay.’

‘Please, can I see him? Five minutes.’

Stride and Serena both nodded. ‘Five minutes.’

Cat didn’t waste time. She slid out of bed and pushed her toes into slippers, and the three of them went into the hospital corridor. At the nurse’s station, Stride checked on Al Pugh’s room. When they reached the boy’s doorway, and Cat saw Al in bed, she flew to his side.

‘Al!’ she exclaimed. She bent down and hugged him, then let go as he flinched in pain. ‘Oh, sorry! Sorry!’

He laughed, which made him wince again. ‘That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Wow, you look good. I’m so glad you’re okay.’

‘You, too!’

Al was propped up in bed. His hospital gown was tied loosely at his neck, and the bandages on his left side extended from his neck to his elbow. Otherwise, his eyes were bright. Stride saw him for the first time as a handsome young man, with his neatly trimmed hair and beard. Friendly smile. The lanky physique of a basketball player. He understood Cat’s attraction to him.

Cat danced on the balls of her feet and stared at the floor. ‘Listen, Al, I’m sorry about all sorts of things. Lying to you. The things that Anna and I stole. I was such a jerk.’

‘Hey, I was a jerk, too. I just hope someday you can forgive me.’

Cat nodded. ‘How’s your shoulder? Are you okay?’

‘It hurts,’ he admitted.

‘You heard about Anna?’

‘I did.’

A nurse came into the room, and Serena touched Cat’s shoulder gently. ‘Come on, we should go and let Al rest. Trust me, I know what it’s like to get shot. It takes a lot out of you.’

‘Yeah, okay.’

She bent down and kissed Al lightly on the lips. Stride could see the kid’s face bloom with happiness. Al took Cat’s hand and didn’t want to let her go. It was a little gesture that made Stride realize that Cat had actually chosen well in finding her first real boyfriend. Al was solid. Hard-working. Not perfect, but no boy could be nineteen years old without doing stupid things. Something about the two of them made Stride smile and think about being nineteen himself. With Cindy. Back when he believed in the future.

He was still watching them when it happened.

The nurse undid the knot at Al’s neck to check on the bandage, and the fabric of the hospital gown slipped down, exposing his bare torso. Exposing something that didn’t belong on the chest of a healthy teenager. It took Stride a moment of shocked disbelief to understand exactly what he was seeing. Then, with the swiftness of a bullet from a decade-old gun, everything in the present and past made perfect sense.

This innocent young man. He was the key. He was what they’d all missed back then.

‘Jonny?’ Serena asked, watching his face.

The nurse retied Al’s gown, but Stride had already seen the zipper scar.

The scar of someone who’d had heart surgery.

59

They found Al’s mother in the hospital cafeteria.

She was with her three daughters, who ranged in age from ten to sixteen. When she saw Stride, Serena, and Maggie converging on their table, her lips puckered into a frown. Under her breath, she spoke to her children, and the girls picked up their trays and moved.

She continued eating calmly as the detectives joined her. She didn’t even look up when Stride said: ‘Janine Snow operated on Al, didn’t she? She saved his life.’

Toiana Pugh put her knife and fork back on the tray and folded her hands in her lap. She took a long breath, and a tear wept from her eye.

‘Yeah, she did. That woman was an angel sent from heaven. My little Sherman Aloysious was going to die. We were going to lose him. And that beautiful woman gave him back to us.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’ Stride asked.

Anger flashed on Al’s mother’s face. ‘So you could give her more trouble? Haven’t you done enough? That woman doesn’t belong in a jail cell. She should be helping other families. Other kids.’

Stride leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. The front legs of the chair came off the floor. He looked around at the cafeteria. Most of the people eating there were nurses in scrubs, but there were families, too. He knew what it was like to spend hours in a place like this. Waiting. Praying. Crying.

‘I understand,’ he told her. ‘Really, I do. But we need to know exactly what happened.’

Toiana jabbed a finger with a long purple fingernail at him. ‘You know how many docs we talked to back then? I can’t count. No insurance? Sorry, we can’t help you. My boy could turn blue in front of them for all they cared. But not Dr. Janine. She said she’d take care of Al. We had no money, no insurance, and she said, don’t you worry about that. I’m not ashamed to say, I was on my knees crying. Seymour, too. And Dr. Janine was as good as her word. She did the surgery. She saved him. Never asked us for one penny.’

‘I can hardly imagine how grateful you must have felt,’ Stride said.

‘Grateful? That’s not half of it. We owed her everything. Seymour and me, we told her, what can we do? How do we pay you back? She said, you just make sure Al lives a good life. That’s all. But we told her, if there is anything — anything you need — you call us. No matter what.’

There was a long silence at the table.

Finally, Maggie said, ‘And did she call you?’

Toiana grabbed her fork and picked at the lasagne on her plate, but she’d lost her appetite. ‘There were lots of follow-up appointments after the surgery. Dr. Janine talked about that husband of hers. What a beast he was. How trapped she was. Smart people can be the absolute worst when it comes to relationships. Here’s this amazing doc, but in her personal life, she wasn’t any different from the wives and girlfriends who end up at the shelters.’

Or that’s what she wanted you to believe, Stride thought.

‘We knew things were bad,’ Toiana went on, ‘but what happened next—’

She stopped.

‘Mrs. Pugh?’ Maggie murmured.

‘Not sure I should tell you any more.’

‘Do you want to talk to a lawyer?’

‘I don’t trust lawyers. Besides, I didn’t know a thing about what went on back then. I don’t blame Dr. Janine for what she did. Guess I don’t blame Seymour either. He felt he had a debt to pay. We owed her in ways you can’t measure.’

They didn’t press her, but they waited.

‘Dr. Janine came by our house,’ she told them. ‘This was a couple weeks before Christmas. It was a surprise. She’d never been there. Said she wanted to see how Al was doing. Me, I felt like it was a visit from the queen, you know? Everybody was so excited. And then she and Seymour — they went out and sat in her car. Talked. Must have been an hour or more. She left after that, and Seymour came back inside, and that man had some kind of big burden on his shoulders. I asked him what they talked about, but he put me off. Said it was nothing. The thing is, he was never really the same man after that. Never ever. He had secrets.’

It wasn’t hard to imagine how that conversation had gone. Janine asking for help to get rid of her husband. Seymour Pugh feeling like he had no choice but to do what she wanted. This doctor who had saved his son’s life wanted repayment in blood. A killing. A murder. And the next time Seymour Pugh was in Chicago, he bought a gun on the street.

‘After Jay was killed, did your husband tell you what happened?’ Stride said.

‘Eventually, he did. Like I said, it was after that cop came to see us. It all made sense then, how Seymour had been acting. I screamed at him until he told me the truth. Chilled my bones, that’s what it did. But would I have said no if he’d told me before he did it? I don’t know. Al was alive because of that woman.’

‘Did he tell you exactly how the plan worked?’

Toiana nodded. ‘It was supposed to look like a burglary gone bad. Kill the husband, steal some jewels. Dr. Janine didn’t want him to stay long, so she said she’d put some jewelry in a bag and leave it in the mailbox for him. She had a party to go to. That was when she wanted him to do it. She knew her husband would let Seymour into the house if he said our boy was one of Dr. Janine’s patients. It was all supposed to be done before she got home, but things went wrong. I mean, you can’t fool God, can you? She didn’t pull the trigger, but she went to prison anyway. Seymour wanted to help when they arrested her. Pawn the jewelry or something, or make sure the gun got found. I said no way. I mean, I felt bad for Dr. Janine, but I wasn’t going to let Seymour throw away our lives. He’d get caught. I knew it. And you people would put her in jail anyway. How was that going to help anybody?’

‘So what went wrong?’ Stride asked. ‘Janine was already back home when your husband arrived at the house.’

‘Seymour didn’t know that. He was real late getting there, and he thought about scrapping the whole thing, but he figured he’d better try to do it. He didn’t think he’d have the stomach to go back some other time. Her car wasn’t in the garage, so he thought she was still at the party. He figured it was safe.’

‘Why was he late?’ Maggie asked, and then she pounded the table. ‘The bridge.’

Stride looked at her. ‘What?’

‘The bridge! The bridge was closed that night. A semi overturned. We were up there for a couple hours, remember? Seymour Pugh must have been sitting there in his white Rav. Stuck. I bet if we grab the news photos, we’ll find his car. He was supposed to be at Janine’s house hours earlier, when she was at the party, but he couldn’t get there because of the bridge. So when it finally opened up, he drove to her house. He didn’t know that Cindy had already taken Janine home.’

Stride realized that Maggie was right. He also felt a new wave of resentment against Janine Snow, because he realized that Janine’s plan had relied on manipulating Cindy from the beginning. His own wife was supposed to be Janine’s alibi that night. The wife of the city’s chief detective — who could argue with that? Janine would ask Cindy to take her home, and they’d find Jay’s body together. Instead, Jay answered the door, alive, and the whole plan went to hell.

Janine must have figured that Seymour got cold feet. Except when she went to take a shower, Seymour showed up after all, took the jewelry out of the mailbox, shot Jay, and disappeared. Exactly as they’d arranged weeks earlier. And he could imagine Janine’s horror, discovering the body, and realizing that her plan for the perfect murder had made her the prime suspect instead.

‘Where is she?’ Stride asked Maggie. ‘Where’s Janine?’

‘Archie has her in a suite at Fitger’s.’

Stride stood up. ‘I think we should welcome her back to Duluth.’

60

‘I thought I was going to have to apologize to her,’ Stride said, as he parked on Superior Street outside Fitger’s. ‘For being wrong about Jay’s murder. For stealing eight years of her life.’

The three of them got out of his truck. Stride climbed the steps toward the hotel lobby with Serena and Maggie beside him. A bellman opened the door for them. The rich burgundy carpet, the grand piano, and the old-fashioned table lamps made him feel as if they were walking into the parlor of one of Duluth’s robber-baron estates. The hotel check-in desk, nestled behind iron grillwork, was like the teller window of a bank in the Wild West.

He saw carpeted stairs leading to the next floor. He knew where Janine would be, in one of the top-floor suites overlooking the lake.

Serena touched his elbow. ‘Are you okay?’

Stride shook his head. ‘This woman used Cindy. Cindy was her friend, and Janine deliberately tried to make her part of her plan to get away with murder. What’s worse is that she probably is going to get away with it. God knows what this does to double jeopardy. We convicted her of shooting Jay, but we were wrong. She never had the gun. And yet she was guilty of his murder anyway. I don’t know if we can ever put her back in prison for it.’

He started up the stairs.

‘She still got eight years,’ Serena pointed out.

‘Eight years of what should have been life without parole,’ Stride replied. ‘This was first-degree murder. Premeditated.’

He reached the hushed hallway of the hotel’s second floor. The Fitger’s manager, Tami, met him there, descending from the upper floors of the inn. They’d known each other for years. The petite blond’s normally ebullient face was serious. ‘Oh, Stride,’ she said. ‘That was quick.’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘I only just called your office.’

‘We’re not here for a call,’ Stride said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’ve got a disturbance upstairs. Screaming.’

‘Is it Janine Snow’s room?’ he asked immediately.

She nodded.

‘Who’s up there?’

Tami shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Archie Gale checked her in earlier this afternoon. She was shopping for a while, but for the last couple of hours, I thought she was up in her room alone.’

‘Stay here. We’ll check it out.’

The three of them headed upstairs. They were on the fourth floor when they heard the gunshot.

Stride broke into a run and took the steps of the last staircase two at a time. At the landing, he heard a second shot. He reached the fifth floor with Serena and Maggie immediately behind him. Janine’s suite was six feet away at the head of the staircase. Its door was ajar. He smelled the smoke of gunfire inside, and he drew his own gun. He listened, but the room was quiet now.

Stride nudged the door with his boot. It was heavy. Through the crack of the opening, he could see someone standing on the far side of the room. He led the way with his gun and called: ‘Police. We’re coming in.’

The person inside didn’t move or react. Stride opened the door the rest of the way. Inside the suite was a large living area with a sofa and coffee table decorated with fresh flowers. The dark light of the afternoon poured through a skylight. An open, empty bottle of wine sat on the table, with two glasses on either side of it.

He thought of the bottle of wine in Janine’s house on the night Jay was killed.

Just beyond the door, a body lay on the carpet, almost exactly where Jay’s body would have been beyond the foyer of Janine’s house. The parallel was eerie. The position of the body was the same. The hole in the man’s forehead was the same.

Stride recognized the dead man on the floor.

It was Howard Marlowe, the ex-juror in the murder trial who’d never given up his obsession with the case.

Beyond the living area where Howard’s body lay, the carpet led to a king-sized four-poster bed and a fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on Lake Superior between heavy drapes. He could only see the end of the bed; the rest was blocked by a tall walnut bureau. A woman stood at the foot of the bed. He didn’t recognize her. Her shoulders were slumped. She looked to be almost fifty years old, and she wore a baggy, untucked T-shirt over blue jeans. Her gray-brown hair was pushed back behind her ears. She stared at the bed, her arms limp at her side.

A revolver was on the carpet where she’d dropped it.

‘Step away from the gun, ma’am,’ Stride told her, but she didn’t move. She didn’t seem to hear him. She was in a daze as he came closer.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘My name is Carol Marlowe,’ she replied.

Stride got close enough to see the rest of the bed, and he understood what had happened. Janine lay among the tangled sheets. Naked. Dead. The two of them — Janine and Howard — had both been shot in the head. Howard’s wife had killed them in the aftermath of their lovemaking.

‘That bitch ruined our lives,’ Carol murmured. ‘She took everything from me.’

There was nothing he could say. Stride kicked the gun on the floor away from her. Maggie came up behind Howard’s wife, who offered no resistance to the handcuffs that Maggie locked around her wrists. Carol was limp as Maggie led her away, but as they reached Howard’s body, she came to life and began to wail and cry. Maggie had to physically restrain her as she fought to get to her dead husband.

‘Howard! Oh, God, Howard! I’m sorry!’

The door closed. The screams continued in the hallway.

Stride and Serena were alone with the bodies. The suite smelled of gunpowder and sex. The patio door was partially open, letting in sweet lake air and the humid reminder of rain.

He checked Janine’s pulse for final confirmation, but she was gone. Her eyes were closed with a strange look of peace. Her nakedness still had beauty, and her skin was as warm as life. He felt an urge to cover her, but there was no modesty in death. She was guilty. She was innocent. She was a heroine. She was the devil. She was all of those things.

His anger at her bled away into regret. One thing Stride never did was get emotional at crime scenes, but he felt an unexpected sense of loss. As if the universe were saying there were no such things as new beginnings. He didn’t want to believe that. Maybe the lesson was simply that you couldn’t escape the sins of your past. Sooner or later, they caught up with you.

He couldn’t look away from the woman on the bed. The strange thing was that he couldn’t see Janine’s face without seeing Cindy in his mind, too. January 28. Almost a decade ago, when everything was different. He could see his wife in the shadows of their bedroom that night. The moonlight shined on the bare skin of her shoulder. He could smell the smoke of his own cigarette as he told her about Janine and Jay.

They were both so young then. They didn’t know what lay ahead. How everything was about to change.

That was then. This was now.

61

Stride sat on the green bench at the end of the Point. His legs were stretched out, and the rippled waters of Superior Bay lapped at his boots. Yellow wildflowers sprouted along the beach. The late-summer sun had fallen behind the western hills, leaving an orange glow in the clouds. He was alone, but if he stared deeply into the semi-darkness, he could almost imagine Cindy beside him, the way she’d been for so many years. Her legs pulled into a lotus position on the bench. Her hands on her knees, her chin tilted toward the sky. Her long black hair cascading to her hips.

Here I am, Jonny, she would say. Don’t you see me?

It wasn’t real, of course. It was simply another Thursday evening. Serena was out at a movie. Cat was in her room at the cottage, doing her puzzles. Life hadn’t changed at all.

And yet he could still close his eyes and make Cindy come alive. As if no time had passed. As if the real dream were all the years that had happened in between. Elsewhere in his life, she’d become a ghost who haunted him less and less, but here, by the water, she was always waiting for him. Here there was never a need to say goodbye.

Stride watched the bay, trying to memorize every wave. They’d been here together so many times. Lived so much of their lives in this place. Talked and cried and laughed. Remembered.

How old were we when we first came here?

Seventeen. Cat’s age.

You asked me to marry you here.

Yes, I did.

What did I say?

You said not yet.

I’d only known you a week.

That’s true.

He knew what love at first sight was. He’d asked Cindy again at the end of the summer, and that time she’d said yes, although they didn’t tell anyone they were engaged. Not her father. Not Stride’s mother. It was their secret for a while.

Good things have happened at this bench.

And bad things, too.

Yes, and bad things. That’s life.

He came here at turning points. Good, bad, up, down. In many ways, this was ground zero for who he was. Put a pin in a map, and this was where you would find the soul of Jonathan Stride. In Duluth. On the Point. By the water. Not staring out at the lake but inward at the calm harbor and the industry of ships and docks. Life in the northland.

He wondered what Cindy would have said about Janine, now that they knew the truth. Her friend was guilty after all; her friend had used and deceived her. And yet he knew the person Cindy was. She would still be sad. She would still cry that Janine was gone. He felt that same sadness himself, but it wasn’t really for Janine’s death. She’d simply been one last open door to another time in his life. A door that had finally closed.

Tell me you’re not still pining after me.

That was what Cindy would say. And the answer was no. Not anymore. For a long time, he’d refused to let go of her, but not anymore.

‘I need to tell you something,’ he said aloud, as if she could hear him.

But there was no need to say it. Wherever she was, she was at peace with herself and with him. She would understand what he wanted to do next. She would say he’d already waited too long. You’ve got someone in your life you’re scared of losing again. And that’s a good thing.

Yes, it was a good thing.

He wished he could touch Cindy again, or smile with her, or have her with him for a few more seconds — but when he stared at the empty bench, she was gone. She’d been gone for years. There was nothing around him but the bay and the sand. It was the story of their relationship. She was there, and she was there, and she was there, and then she was gone.

He was alone.

Except he wasn’t. Not anymore. Not if he didn’t want to be. Not if he believed in the future.

Serena found Maggie in the basement bar of Tycoon’s on Superior Street, across from the casino. Stride’s partner sat alone with a Starfire ale at a candlelit table near one of the rough sandstone columns. The pub was located inside Duluth’s old City Hall, and the downstairs bar with its low ceilings had once served as the town prison. You could still see century-old names scratched into the stone from people who’d lived here among the dripping water and the rats.

Maggie held up her pint glass in a toast. ‘Well, well, Serena Dial. Of all the gin joints in all the world. How did you find me?’

Serena sat down across from her. She didn’t drink, but the bartender knew her, and he brought her a tall Diet Coke with crushed ice. ‘You weren’t at your condo, so Tycoon’s seemed like a safe bet.’

‘I thought about Black Water, but I was more in the mood for a beer tonight than a martini.’

Serena didn’t think the Starfire in front of Maggie was her first. ‘Can I tell you something? Speaking as an alcoholic with experience in such things.’

‘Go for it.’

‘You drink too much.’

‘And you think I don’t know this?’ Maggie asked.

‘No, I’m sure you do, but if you’re like me, you don’t start paying attention until your friends mention it.’

Maggie finished her beer and twirled her index finger in the air at the bartender to order another. ‘Well, when one of my friends mentions it, I’ll cut back.’

Serena nodded. ‘Slam noted.’

‘I’d hate to think I was being subtle when I’m this drunk,’ Maggie told her.

‘Too bad, because I could use a friend. I think you could use one, too.’

Maggie blew her bangs out of her eyes. ‘I don’t need anybody.’

‘Good for you, but that doesn’t work for me. Things have been weird, but it’s not all your fault. Anyway, if you want me to leave, I’ll leave.’

‘No, stay. If this old stonework crumbles, I can hide under your breasts.’

Maggie giggled. Serena, who was briefly annoyed, laughed, too. And that set off a fit of laughing that left them both breathless. When they could talk again, Maggie chuckled and leaned dangerously far back in her chair. ‘Can I just say something? It’s been a shitty couple of years for me.’

‘I know that,’ Serena said.

‘I mean, really. Shit-tee. I thought rich people were supposed to be happy. Maybe I should give it all away.’

‘So you can be poor and unhappy? I don’t think so.’

‘You’re right.’

‘The state fair starts next week,’ Serena reminded her.

‘Yeah, so? I can drink beer right here.’

Serena tapped Maggie’s phone on the table. ‘Call Troy.’

‘He deserves better than me.’

‘He likes you.’

‘Which makes him a party of one.’

‘Do you want me to call him for you? I’ll call him.’

Serena picked up the phone from the table, and Maggie grabbed it out of her hand. ‘I’m not ready,’ she insisted.

‘I think you’re just chicken.’

‘Cluck,’ Maggie said. The bartender brought her another Starfire, and she stared at it with a frown on her face. She knew Serena was right. She’d been drowning her sorrows in a lot of alcohol.

‘So why are you here?’ Maggie asked.

‘I miss our talks,’ Serena said.

‘Does Stride know you were coming to see me?’

‘No. I didn’t want to get his hopes up, in case we wound up in a girl fight.’

‘You’d have to call Guppo first. He’d pay good money to see that.’

Serena smiled. ‘Did Jonny tell you about Cat and the baby?’

Maggie shook her head. ‘We steer clear of the subject of Cat. Is everything okay?’

‘Fine, but Cat’s thinking of giving him up now. Adoption.’

‘Sounds like a better plan to me.’

‘She asked if Jonny and I wanted to adopt him.’

‘You mean, so she can be around for the good stuff, while you guys do all the work?’

‘Wow, you’re cynical,’ Serena said, ‘but it doesn’t matter. We’re going to tell her no.’

‘Do you both feel that way?’

‘Yeah, we do. I can’t have kids, so I’ve never really thought about it. Jonny thinks it’s a younger man’s game. So we’re in sync on this.’

‘And yet here you are talking to me,’ Maggie said, with a pointed look in her eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

Maggie didn’t miss much. For all of the troubles between them, they knew each other like sisters. And neither one was shy about telling the other when she was making a fool of herself.

‘Honestly, I worry that Jonny saying no to kids is really his way of saying no to me,’ Serena admitted. ‘Like he and I aren’t going anywhere.’

Maggie shook her head. She gave in and drank a healthy dose of Starfire. ‘For such a hot chick, you’re way too insecure.’

‘Look who’s talking.’

‘Insecure? Me? No, just realistic.’

Serena tapped Maggie’s phone again. ‘Troy.’

‘Fine, okay, you win. I will call him.’ Maggie dialed a number on the phone using her index finger and got Troy Grange’s voice mail on speakerphone. ‘Troy, it’s Maggie. I’m in. You, me, and the girls. Deep fried stuff on a stick next week.’

She hung up.

‘Satisfied?’ she asked Serena.

‘You’ll thank me.’

‘Maybe. Now quit reading anything into Stride saying no to Cat. It has nothing to do with how he feels about you.’

‘What about you?’ Serena asked.

‘What about me?’

‘You wanted to adopt a baby last year after Eric got shot. You were all in. You were going to do whatever it took to find one.’

‘Yes, and I got turned down by every agency in the state. Strangely, they didn’t like the idea of handing a child to a single woman with a dangerous job and a very public history of bad romantic decisions. I decided they were right. End of story.’

‘Not if you don’t want it to be,’ Serena said.

Maggie leaned forward. ‘Me adopt Cat’s baby? Is that what you’re suggesting?’

‘That’s what I’m suggesting.’

Maggie drank more beer. ‘No.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’ She put the mug down, and her voice softened, and she covered Serena’s hands with her own. ‘Look, tomorrow I will deny ever being sensitive. Okay? The fact is, Cat living with the two of you, and her baby living with me, is not healthy for any of us. Which I think you know perfectly well. But it was very sweet and very noble of you to suggest it.’

‘I was serious,’ Serena said, even though she knew that Maggie was right.

‘I’m sure you were, but no. I think it’s great that Cat is willing to look at adoption. She should choose a nice, stable young couple somewhere in the city who can give that kid lots of love.’

Serena smiled. ‘You’re going soft.’

‘Bite your tongue.’

She stood up from the table. ‘Okay, I should go. I’ll let you finish your beer in peace.’

‘Actually, I’m done,’ Maggie said. ‘A friend told me I’m drinking too much.’

Maggie threw cash on the table, and the two of them climbed the stairs to the street level of the pub. They didn’t talk. They emerged onto Superior Street, where there was a nighttime buzz of noise and neon. People came and went from the casino and jaywalked between the cars stalled at the red light. A police car turned from the hill, and the two of them waved.

The Sheraton Hotel, where Maggie had her condo, was two blocks away. The Chinese cop shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. It was a cool evening, hinting at an early fall. ‘Night, Serena. And thanks, by the way. I know this wasn’t easy for you.’

‘It was easier than you think,’ Serena said.

Maggie turned away and clip-clopped in her block heels toward the Sheraton. Serena watched her go and then retrieved her Mustang from the casino parking lot. She heard the Zac Brown Band singing on the car radio. She hummed along as she drove back to the Point, narrowly missing being bridged by an ore boat arriving from out on the lake. At the cottage, she parked and went in through the back door. She was surprised that Jonny’s Expedition was gone.

Inside, she checked on Cat, who was still playing Sudoku puzzles from a magazine balanced on her very pregnant stomach.

‘Do you know where Jonny is?’ Serena asked.

‘He went out,’ Cat told her with the strangest of smiles.

‘Out? Did something happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cat replied, but her voice said something else. It sang to her, as if to say: I know a secret.

‘Where did he go?’

‘He said he left you a note.’

‘Okay,’ Serena said, but she was confused. She pointed at the lamp beside Cat’s bed and said: ‘Lights out, kiddo, the puzzle will wait. It’s past midnight.’

Cat winked. ‘Yes, Mom.’

Serena shut the girl’s door. She realized that she felt an odd lightness in her heart. She started to undress by unbuttoning her blouse, but then she went inside their bedroom and saw a slip of paper folded on her pillow. She opened it and found Jonny’s handwriting inside.

I’m at the green bench. Meet me there?

It took only a moment for the lightness she felt to become the weight of all the things that were uncertain in her life. Maggie was right: she was insecure. The green bench was a place for turning points. Jonny went there in good times and bad times, and she couldn’t help but wonder which this was.

Good or bad.

I know a secret, Cat’s expression sang again. The secret was waiting for her at the end of the Point.

Serena realized that her first instinct was to run away. Even from good news. Even from things she wanted. She almost got into her Mustang and drove away from Duluth without ever finding out what he wanted to say to her.

Instead, in the still of the night, she went to meet him.