In the Dark aka The Watcher

9

Maggie was already awake when the phone rang at three in the morning.

She sat with her feet propped up on a kitchen chair and a cup of oolong tea getting cold on the table beside her. She wore a flowered silk robe. Every downstairs light was blazing, making it look as if she had thrown an all-night party and forgotten to send invitations. Light was the only way to give the house any warmth at all. Maggie called it her Dark Shadows house. It reminded her of the cheesy Gothic soap opera from the 1960s she had seen in reruns. Outside, the vanilla stone towered four stories, with ornamental molding along the roof lines like an ocean wave. A hodgepodge of arches and bays made it look like a LEGO castle designed by a child. Inside, there were curious little rooms everywhere, and dusty lace hung in the windows.

As a single person, she rattled around in it. Even when she was married, she had never liked the dark way the house felt at night. Maggie liked modern, bright, open spaces, with everything made of chrome and glass. The house was on the market now, and she was waiting for an uptick in housing sales to net her an offer. Once the house was sold, she had her eye on a downtown condo.

Maggie found herself up in the middle of the night several times a week, battling nightmares. The previous year had been the worst of her life, culminating in the murder of her husband in January and the cloud of suspicion that fell over her regarding his death. She still regretted her mistakes and secrets, which had temporarily strained the relationship between her and Stride and put not only herself but Serena in the hands of a brutal stalker. In the daylight, it was easy to forgive herself. The nights were another story.

She had a laptop in front of her, and she tapped her way through adoption Web sites. For months, she had been wondering about adopting a child, but the length and bureaucracy of the formal process intimidated her. She wasn’t sure if she could wait years, only to be disappointed. She had made inquiries with a number of international adoption agencies, but their replies weren’t encouraging. She was a naturalized U.S. citizen but had sought asylum from China after the uprising in Tiananmen Square, which essentially ruled out the possibility of adopting a baby from China. Being Chinese, however, she faced racism from countries that had no interest in turning over a white baby to an Asian mother. Her personal characteristics also worked against her, even in the States. She was unmarried. She was over thirty-five. She worked in a job where her personal safety was always at risk. The only thing on the plus side of the ledger was that she had inherited millions of dollars from her late husband’s business. Money always talked.

Maggie closed the laptop when the phone rang. It was Max Guppo.

“Sorry to get you up,” he said.

“I was up.”

“You said you wanted to know as soon as he was spotted again.”

“The peeper?”

“Right. I’m down in Gary. A retarded girl saw him outside her bedroom. I’m here with the father. His name is Clark Biggs.”

Maggie took down the address. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

She took five minutes to shower, then pulled on a black T-shirt, jeans, and a pair of square-heeled lace-up boots. She didn’t bother drying her hair, just let it fall in wet, messy bangs. A diamond stud winked from her tiny nose. She grabbed a burgundy leather jacket from her closet as she left the house and piled into the yellow Avalanche in her driveway.

Maggie sped down the hill onto I-35 and headed through the jumble of freeway overpasses that led south out of the city. The harbor sparkled in a swath of moonlight as the clouds raced past on her left. She accelerated to eighty-five miles an hour through the industrial zone, where plumes of steam belched into the air, forming white dragons against the black sky. Lingering raindrops tapped on her windshield. She veered off the interstate at Highway 23 and followed the fifteen-mile stretch of worn-out towns that tracked the path of the St. Louis River. Low mountains loomed beyond the road, swarming with evergreens and birches. She could see green tracks carved into the hills, which turned white with snow and became ski slopes in the winter. They weren’t exactly black diamonds, but if you were into downhill skiing, you didn’t have many alternatives in a state as flat as Minnesota.

Gary, where Clark Biggs lived, was one of the many small communities that had lost their way in the superstore generation. Its main street looked like a movie set out of the 1950s. Its brick buildings were mostly abandoned. Paint flecked away on old signs advertising Coca-Cola and Miller High Life. Between every building was an empty lot with weeds growing through cracks in the concrete. The bars were the new economic backbone of these towns, and they kept the Duluth police busy every night after midnight.

Clark’s small house was west of the highway and almost directly across the street from the town’s elementary school. The development butted up against a densely wooded area of parkland. Maggie drove past the development in order to scout the crime scene and found herself in a trailer park on the opposite side of the woods. The forest encroached on the mobile home community from all sides, and it wouldn’t be hard to park a car unnoticed and then duck into the trees and disappear.

She did a U-turn and returned to the development where Clark Biggs lived. The streets were wide, and the lots were large and flat, occupied by one- and two-story matchbox houses with detached garages. Tall, bushy oaks offered plenty of shade. It was the kind of neighborhood where cars and trucks didn’t get traded in; they simply sat on the lawn, rusting. Many of the houses had fenced yards to keep out the deer, but not the Biggs house, which was open and all on one level. It was painted white, with a block of five concrete steps leading up to the front door. The roof was missing a few of its red shingles. The large yard featured soaring pine trees and a weeping willow, and directly behind it, the yard spilled into the forest. The grass was long.

For a peeping tom, it was a prime choice. A quiet area. First-floor windows. An easy sprint back to the woods. This was a neighborhood where the biggest worry was Dad losing his foundry job or brother Jim getting cut in a bar fight after midnight. No one thought about pulling the shades and curtains. There was no one around to watch.

Maggie parked on the street, and Guppo met her outside. He was in his fifties and not much taller than Maggie, but the stretch dress pants needed to accommodate his girth could have doubled as a parachute. A few strands of greased black hair labored to stretch across his skull.

Guppo filled her in quickly.

“What about these footprints that Biggs found?” Maggie asked.

“There’s not much we can do with them,” Guppo said. “The rain mushed the prints by the time we got here.”

“Did the peeper head right into the woods?”

Guppo nodded. “We followed the trail to the trees, and we lost it there.”

“There’s a trailer park on the other side of the woods,” Maggie said. “We need to talk to the people there. Kids, too.”

“You don’t want me to wake people up over a peeping tom, do you?”

“No, tomorrow is soon enough. I want to know if anyone saw strangers, cars, anything unusual. Find out how many people knew this girl, too. I want to know how this guy finds them. She’s another blonde, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Pretty?”

“Well, yeah, but not in an adult way. She’s like a child.”

“Okay.”

Maggie hiked up the steps. Her big heels made a clip-clop noise. The screen door was unlocked, and she rapped on it with her knuckles and let herself inside. The house smelled like McDonald’s food. The carpet in the living room was worn and gray. The furnishings showed their age with nicks and scratches.

“Mr. Biggs?” she called.

Clark Biggs emerged from the shadows of a hallway on her left. He had his finger over his mouth to quiet her.

“Mary’s finally sleeping.”

Maggie nodded and introduced herself. She quickly assessed Clark, who looked like a typical Minnesota blue-collar worker. Big and strong, a pot roast and Budweiser guy. Unlaced boots. Old clothes. Long, sandy hair with a ridge where his baseball cap had been. She could see sleeplessness and worry in his face.

They took seats on the tattered sofa.

“How is she?” Maggie asked.

“Scared to death,” Clark said bitterly. “What kind of freak does that to a sweet little girl?”

“I understand how you feel,” Maggie said. “My sergeant tells me that Mary is mentally handicapped, is that right?”

Clark nodded. “She suffered a traumatic brain injury as a child that left her severely retarded.”

“What happened?” Maggie asked.

“A few other kids held her too long underwater as a game, if you can believe it. Physically, she’s a normal sixteen-year-old girl, but she’s barely at a kindergarten level for learning.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me, Ms. Bei. Mary is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t give a shit whether she’s five years old going on forty. I would do anything for her.”

“Of course.”

Maggie decided that she liked Clark Biggs. She had a weakness for men who hid behind a brusque mask. Mary was the center of Clark’s universe, despite the pain, expense, and hardship that her disability must have caused him over the years. Guppo had told her that Clark was divorced, and she imagined that taking care of a girl like Mary had proved to be more than their marriage could endure. He didn’t look like a man who complained about it. He just went about his life.

“The other police officer said this man has done this before,” Clark said. “Is that true?”

“We think it’s the same man, yes. There have been nine reported peeping incidents on the south side of the city and in southwest Superior. The girls are all blond teenagers, like Mary.”

“You mean he chooses them?”

“We think so, yes.”

“Who is this son of a bitch?”

“That’s what we need to find out. Can you tell me if you know any of the other victims?” She rattled off the list of names from memory.

Clark shrugged. “Katie Larson. That’s Andy’s girl, right? They live in Morgan Park?”

“Yes.”

“I know Andy from church. Katie babysat for Mary a couple times. That was two or three years ago. I don’t know any of the others.”

Maggie jotted down the relationship in her notes. There had been ancillary connections among some of the other girls, too. Two of them were on the same soccer team. Two got their hair cut at the same place. Three went to the same high school. Nothing constituted a trend that tied any of the other girls together.

“Does Mary go to school?” Maggie asked.

Clark nodded. “She attends a special school in Superior for developmentally disabled children. My wife takes her there during the week.”

“You and your wife are divorced?”

“Yes, I have Mary on the weekends. Donna takes her during the week.”

His face twitched. It was a sore subject.

“May I have Donna’s address and phone number? I’ll need to talk to her.”

Clark recited them. “I haven’t called Donna to tell her what happened. She’s coming by in the morning. I want to let her know in person.”

“I won’t talk to her until you do.”

He nodded.

“I’m sure Sergeant Guppo asked you some of these things already, but please bear with me,” Maggie continued. “Have you noticed any strangers near your house recently? Have you seen any parked cars in the neighborhood that you didn’t recognize?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Has anything unusual happened involving Mary lately? Or has your wife mentioned any problems with her during the week?”

Clark shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Does Mary interact with many other girls outside school?”

“No, she’s mostly with Donna or me.”

Maggie nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you could write up a list tomorrow of the people that Mary regularly comes into contact with. Men and women. People at school. People at your workplace or your wife’s workplace, if she ever goes there. Anything like that. Because of her condition, Mary’s universe is substantially smaller than those of the other girls who have been peeped, which may make it easier for us to find an overlapping connection with the other victims.”

“I’ll get you a list,” Clark said.

“This is an awkward question, Mr. Biggs, but can you tell me more about Mary’s intelligence level? Do you think she would recognize the man who peeped her? Or could she pick him out of a lineup if she saw him?”

“She’s not stupid,” Clark snapped. “She’s just disabled.”

“I wasn’t trying to offend you. I just want to know if she could be a witness for us.”

“I don’t know whether she saw this guy’s face, but Mary remembers things. If she saw him, and you show her a bunch of pictures, she’ll pick him out. I’ll never let her inside a courtroom, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I understand. Would you mind if I had an officer bring a photo book of registered sex offenders in this region? For Mary to look through?”

“I don’t know if I want to traumatize her like that,” Clark said. “If she sees him in there, she’s going to be scared.”

“That may be the only way to find him.”

Clark sighed. “Okay. I want to be there, though.”

“Of course.” Maggie added, “I’d like to come back and talk to Mary, too, if you don’t mind.”

“She’ll be with Donna. You’ll have to clear it with her. I have to tell you, I’m not too crazy about the idea. You’re not going to get anything from her, and I don’t like her talking to strangers.”

“I promise I won’t get her upset.”

“That’s not a promise you can keep,” Clark said. “She’s a big girl, but she’s a child. She’s scared of things she doesn’t understand.”

“May I see her?” Maggie asked.

“What, now?”

“Not to talk to her. I just want to see what she looks like.”

Clark frowned. “I don’t want to wake her up.”

“I’ll be very quiet. I’d like to see her room, too.”

Clark relented and led her down the hall. For a big man, he walked quietly on the old floorboards. He inched Mary’s door open and peered inside, then let Maggie squeeze into the room in front of him. Mary was asleep and snoring gently. Her father was right-she looked like any other teenage girl that way. Other than Mary being blond, Maggie didn’t see any physical characteristics that she shared with the other victims. She was heavier than most of the other girls. Her hair was the curliest. She was lying on her stomach, with the blankets kicked halfway down her body. Her nightgown had bunched up, and her lower back was exposed. Maggie noticed a tattoo of a butterfly on her spine.

She silently checked out the windows. With the night-light shining, she wasn’t sure if Mary would have been able to see much outside. Maggie didn’t feel confident about getting any results from the photo array of local sex offenders.

She returned with Clark Biggs to the living room.

“I notice your daughter has a tattoo,” Maggie said.

“So?”

“I was just surprised.”

“Mary loves butterflies. Her mother thought she would like having a tattoo of one. They did it without telling me.”

“Would you have objected?”

Clark frowned. “No, I guess not, but I’ve got tattoos, and I know it hurts like hell to get them. Even so, Mary was thrilled with it. She likes showing it off by lifting her shirt, though. She shows it to everyone. I don’t like that.”

“What do you mean, everyone?”

“If someone drives by, and she’s in the yard, she lifts her shirt. If someone comes to the door, same thing. I can’t make her stop.”

“I understand. I think that’s all for now, Mr. Biggs.”

“I hope you nail this bastard. I’m going to sleep on the floor in Mary’s room until you do.”

“There’s really no need for that,” Maggie told him. “I know it was an awful experience for Mary, but it’s over.”

“Until the next time,” Clark said.

“I don’t think you need to worry about a next time. This peeper keeps changing targets. We’re trying to catch up to him by figuring out how he picks his victims.”

“Bullshit,” Clark snapped.

Maggie arched her head in surprise. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, he’s done this to Mary before. What’s to say he won’t come back again?”

“You’re saying this isn’t the first time Mary saw this man?”

Clark shook his head. “I think it happened last week, too.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why didn’t you report it?”

“I didn’t think there was anything to report,” Clark said. “I thought Mary had a bad dream. I thought she imagined it. But now that I think about it, the way she was shouting, ‘Him! Him!’ I think it was because the guy came back.”

The guy came back.

That was a first, as far as Maggie knew. None of the other victims had suggested that the man might have been watching them before. Of course, maybe he got lucky. Maybe they didn’t notice.

Maggie didn’t think so, though. This was new behavior. New and frightening.

She didn’t like it.

10

Serena drove west along the Point on Wednesday morning. After several days of rain, the clouds had blown out across the lake, leaving the city sunny and warm. In the calm harbor on her left, she spotted the rust-colored superstructure of an ore tanker shouldering through the deep water toward the lift bridge. She swore. She was running late already for her meeting with Peter Stanhope, and she knew that she would have to spend ten minutes now waiting for the boat to clear the canal and make its way to the open water.

As she expected, the bridge was up. Hers was the fourth car in line. She parked, rolled down her window to let in a humid breeze, and picked up a paperback by Louise Penny. When you lived on the Point, you were always prepared for delays at the bridge. Serena read several more pages of Still Life, until she saw the giant ship gliding under the bridge span. The boats always seemed to clear the bridge with only inches to spare, and they were an impressive sight, vast and silent. When the ship and the bridge exchanged farewell blasts of their signal horns, Serena turned her Mustang back on, and a couple of minutes later, she headed through Canal Park toward the city center.

Peter Stanhope’s law firm occupied the top two floors of the Lonsdale Building, in the commercial sector of Superior Street, among the banks, brokers, lawyers, and government workers that made the city tick. The facade was made of elegantly carved, copper-colored brick, with a roof line that resembled a Doric column. The building was smaller than the other high-rises around it and dated back to 1894. Peter could have chosen taller and more modern surroundings in the glass tower of the bank building one block east, but he had explained to Serena that he wanted his office to have a link to a more glamorous past, when the city, like his father, was rich and prosperous.

Serena found a parking meter and hurried across Superior Street between cars. She wore black pinstriped dress pants that emphasized her long legs, pointed-toe heels, and an untucked turquoise silk shirt. Her black hair was loose and fell around her shoulders. She carried a slim burgundy briefcase and felt as if she were dressed to be a ladder-climbing corporate executive. It was a strange feeling. When she was a Vegas cop, she had worn tight jeans and sleeveless T-shirts and hung her shield from her belt.

She took the elevator to the top floor at ten minutes after ten o’clock. She was panicked about being late, but she relaxed when the receptionist told her that Peter was tied up in another meeting and was running at least twenty minutes behind schedule. She took a seat on the sofa, then got up again and paced restlessly in the waiting area.

The lobby furniture was antique and expensive. Black-and-white photographs adorned the wall, showing Peter’s father and the postwar buildings, ships, and train cars of Stanhope Industries. Serena saw more modern memorabilia, too, including framed newspaper headlines of the major litigation victories of Peter’s law firm. They had won forty million dollars in punitive damages from a Twin Cities manufacturer over a defective heart stent. Almost twenty million dollars following a school bus accident that left one child dead. And so on. Peter and his team of associates were personal injury lawyers with a vengeance.

Serena wondered, not for the first time, what she was doing here. She was a homicide detective. A private investigator. She had a hard time imagining herself working for a law firm, even though the work would not be all that different from what she did now. She would still interview victims and witnesses. She would try to find sources inside corporations to uncover things that their executives wanted to keep hidden. It was still investigative work. She worried that the job wouldn’t be as exhilarating as her time on the street, but her experiences over the winter had worn down her physical and mental willingness to put herself in constant danger. For at least a year or two, she wanted to take a step back and rethink her life.

The opportunity had come out of the blue. Two months earlier, Peter Stanhope had read an article in the Duluth newspaper about Serena’s background as a detective in Las Vegas. He called her with a freelance assignment to uncover evidence of fraudulent billing practices at a Twin Cities hospital. Over the course of the next six weeks, Serena built relationships with two nurses and an accountant, who turned over papers that allowed Peter’s lawyers to pinpoint their discovery request and fast-track settlement negotiations. Peter was so impressed that he called Serena the following week to ask her to join the firm as a permanent employee.

She had been confused by Stride’s reluctance when she told him about the job offer, because she knew he wanted her to find a less risky line of work. Now that she knew his background with Peter, she understood. Her own excitement had soured, too.

A paralegal escorted Serena to Peter’s office at 10:45. The corner suite was at the rear of the building, with a sweeping view toward the lake. Like the rest of the firm, Peter’s office was decorated as if the year were 1950. On some level, Serena thought, Peter was trying to live up to his father’s legacy. It couldn’t be easy living in the shadow of an industrial giant. Serena thought it was interesting that after Randall Stanhope died, the first thing Peter had done was sell the family business.

Peter came around his desk and shook her hand firmly. “Serena, I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “This is what’s called ‘lawyer time.’ We are perpetually late for everything except court dates. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“That’s all right,” Serena told him.

He gestured at the round oak conference table near the window. “Please.”

They both sat down. Serena noticed a photograph over Peter’s shoulder of Randall Stanhope and his son, who was about ten years old in the picture, standing on the span of the aerial lift bridge over the ship canal near the Point. Peter saw her staring.

“That’s one of the few photos of me and my father together,” he told her. “Randall didn’t spend a lot of time with me. Anyone who says those were simpler times doesn’t know how hard he worked.”

“I’m a little surprised that you’re a lawyer now and not CEO of Stanhope Industries,” Serena said.

“I saw the writing on the wall,” Peter replied. “The big money in steel was long gone and never coming back. Too much foreign competition. When Randall died, I figured I would let someone else run the company into the ground. Which they did.”

“So you decided to become a lawyer?”

“Yes, Randall’s probably turning in his grave. He hated lawyers. To me, though, litigation is the ultimate competition.” He added, “Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure.”

Peter retreated to his desk to phone his secretary.

This meeting was only the second time that Serena had met Peter Stanhope in person. Peter didn’t hide his money. His suit was cut out of a charcoal fabric that glistened in the light. His shoes were like mirrors. He wore an amber-colored silk tie with a matching pocket square, a Tiffany watch, and silver cuff links engraved with his initials. In her heels, Serena was about two inches taller than Peter. He was handsome, though, with a stocky, muscular frame. He had a strong chin and sunburned nose, and freckles dotted his face. He wore glasses that made two tiny copper circles around his eyes. His thinning silver hair was swept straight back. Like Stride, he was in his late forties.

Serena always found that intelligence was in the eyes, and Peter’s eyes were smart. He carried himself with polish and confidence, like someone at ease in his own skin. Even so, you couldn’t have so much wealth, or so much success, and not have arrogance ooze through in your demeanor. Every now and then, Peter smirked, and Serena saw the cocky boy peek out from his soul. She knew that lawyers were experts at wearing masks, and she wondered who the real Peter was, the savvy professional or the arrogant teenager. Probably both.

“Have you thought about the job?” he asked as he sat down again.

“I have, and I’m still thinking. I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course. Take all the time you need, but not a minute more. I want you with me. You could do great work here. Plus, the compensation would be a lot more than you ever made as a detective or a PI.”

“That wouldn’t be hard,” she said wryly.

“You told me you needed to talk to me. I assume you have some questions?”

“I do, but not about the job.”

“Oh?”

“I wonder if you remember a girl named Tish Verdure,” Serena said.

Peter rocked back in his chair and pursed his lips. “Tish Verdure. I’m pretty sure there was a girl in my high school named Tish.”

“There was.”

“Well, what about her?”

“She’s back in town. She’s writing a book about the murder of Laura Starr.”

Peter’s face darkened. “I take it you’ve been hearing stories about my teenage years.”

“That’s right.”

“Stories that make you wonder if you want to work for a man like me.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Serena admitted.

Peter let his chair fall forward, and he leaned across the table. “Well, I appreciate your candor, and I’ll try to be candid, too. First of all, let’s get one thing clear. I’m not going to apologize for who I am or who I was. I was an asshole in school, and a lot of people will tell you I still am. That probably includes many of the women I’ve dated.”

“That’s pretty much what I heard.”

Peter shrugged. “I’m not surprised, but I don’t care what anyone else thinks. Look, Randall had more money than God back then, and I thought it gave me a free pass to rule the world. I was smart, but I didn’t do squat. I slept with every girl I could. I was an arrogant son of a bitch.”

“Are you trying to win points for honesty?”

“Not at all. I told you, no apologies. This is me.”

“You know that my partner is Jonathan Stride,” Serena said.

“Of course. I didn’t know Lieutenant Stride well back in school, and I don’t know him very well now. But the things I remember probably don’t give him a very high opinion of me.”

“You could say that.”

“Okay, but here’s where I draw the line. I did not kill Laura Starr.”

“Who did?”

“The police thought it was a vagrant.”

“Is that what you thought?”

“All I know is that it wasn’t me.”

“She was killed with your baseball bat.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing. The bat was lying in a field for anyone to pick up.”

Peter’s secretary knocked on the door and came in bearing a small silver coffee urn and two china cups. She poured out and left without saying a word. Serena tasted the coffee and recognized the dark flavor of Star-bucks.

“So I take it that this writer, Tish, has her sights set on me,” Peter said. “She wants to nail me for the murder.”

“You’re certainly on her list.”

“You know, bad publicity doesn’t bother me. I get my share all the time. I just hate to see old gossip used against me.”

“I’m not sure you can pass it off as gossip,” Serena said. “Stride tells me that you were a suspect. Some people think that Ray Wallace deliberately steered the investigation away from you.”

“Ray was a problematic figure as a cop. We both know that.”

“A few years later, he was forced to resign as chief of police because of a bribery scheme involving Stanhope Industries,” Serena pointed out.

“That was long after I sold the company.”

“Yes, but Ray’s relationship started with Randall. Your father.”

“All I can tell you is that if Ray helped me behind the scenes, there was no need for him to do so. I was innocent.”

Serena frowned. Peter was convincing, but selling stories to a jury was his job. “Tell me what you remember about Tish Verdure,” she said.

Peter sipped his coffee. “I remember that she and Laura were thick as thieves. Both of them blond, very cute.”

“Did you date Tish?” Serena asked.

“Sure, I took a run at her. I took a run at every blonde with great tits back then. I still do. Tish said no. Shut me down cold.”

“You?”

Peter grinned. Serena saw the cocky boy flash in his eyes. “Amazing, huh? Well, Tish was a weird girl. Laura was pretty much her only friend. No dad, and then her mother got shot. Tough life.”

Serena held up her hand. “Wait a minute, Tish’s mother was shot?”

“That’s right.”

“What happened?” she asked.

Peter pursed his lips. “She was a teller at a downtown bank. There was a robbery that went bad. The mother was a hostage who didn’t make it out.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. Long before high school. Tish probably wasn’t even in her teens when it happened. I only knew about it because kids talked a lot. Everyone wondered why Tish was so closed off, and the rumor mill spread the word about her mother pretty quickly. Like I said, she was a weird girl.”

“But you asked her out anyway.”

“I was a slave to my libido,” Peter said. “Some things don’t change.”

“Who did you go after first? Tish or Laura?”

“Tish, actually.”

“And when she said no, you went after her best friend?”

“Something like that.”

Serena shook her head. “You’re right, Peter. You were an asshole back then.”

“I never said I wasn’t.”

“Did it bother you when Tish turned you down?”

“Not really.”

“I don’t imagine too many girls turned you down.”

“That’s why it didn’t bother me,” Peter said with a little smile.

“I heard Tish and Laura had a big fight that spring. Could they have been arguing about you?”

“About me? I can’t imagine why.”

“Except you were dating Laura by then, right?”

Peter stared at Serena. He took another drink of coffee. “Right.”

“So maybe Tish didn’t like Laura hanging out with you.”

“If she did, I never heard about it.”

“How did you meet Laura?”

“We were in Miss Mathisen’s geometry class together in our junior year. So was Tish.”

“Tish told us that Laura broke up with you after a couple of dates because you wanted sex and she didn’t.”

“Is that what she said? Well, she’s wrong, but it was a long time ago.”

“Is there any reason Laura would have wanted to keep your relationship a secret?”

“I have no idea, but you were a teenage girl once. Isn’t that the kind of thing that teenage girls do?”

“Sometimes.”

Serena wanted to ask more about the night Laura was killed, but she knew she had pushed Peter as far as she could. The rest was in Jonny’s hands. He was the cop, not her. Not anymore.

“I appreciate your letting me ask you all these questions,” she told him. “I’m still a detective at heart, I guess.”

“That’s why I want to hire you.”

“I know. I’ll get back to you very soon about the job.”

“I may be in touch even sooner than that,” Peter said.

“Oh?”

“I have another freelance job for you.”

“What’s that?” Serena asked.

“Well, if Tish pursues this book, it could start causing me problems in the media. They’ll drag up old lies again. I need your help.”

“What can I do?”

“You can find out who killed Laura,” Peter told her. “Or barring that, you can prove it wasn’t me.”

11

Tish was late.

Stride sat on a stone bench amid the rose gardens of Leif Erickson Park. He ate a roast beef sandwich and inhaled the floral aroma of thousands of red, yellow, and white roses surrounding him. Nearby, a white gazebo overlooked the lake, on a bluff adjacent to the boardwalk that followed the cliff’s edge and wound down along the shore to Canal Park. At lunchtime, with a huge blue sky overhead, the park was crowded with people picnicking in the grass and admiring the flowers.

He saw Tish park on the opposite side of London Road and get out of a navy blue Honda Civic. She waited while a package delivery truck passed her and then crossed the street to the park. She waved at Stride and followed the cobblestone path through the garden to join him.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly, sitting down. She had no lunch with her, but she carried a white takeaway cup of coffee. She wore sunglasses, and she was dressed in a white Georgia T-shirt and gray sweatpants. She wore Nikes with no socks.

“Hello, Tish.”

“Sorry I’m so late. I was at the city engineer’s office, and I had to wait for their copy machine.”

“What did you need there?” Stride asked.

“Aerial photos of the city from the late 1970s.”

“For the book?”

Tish nodded. “I wanted to see exactly what the terrain looked like back then.”

“The Duluth paper ran a story about you and your book today,” Stride said.

“Yes, I thought it might flush out more people who remember what happened back then. There aren’t too many still around.”

“A heads-up would have been nice,” Stride said. “I’m getting calls.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t think about that.”

Stride took another bite of his sandwich and didn’t reply. He saw the delivery truck that had passed Tish return down London Road in the opposite direction and pull into a no-parking zone across from them.

“I heard about the break-in at your condo,” Stride said.

“The cops who showed up thought it was just kids.”

“Probably,” Stride told her. “They may have seen you move in and figured they could make a quick score. Those lakefront condos usually go to people with money.”

Tish shrugged. “No such luck. I’m doing a spread on Duluth for a Swedish magazine, and the condo managers let me use an unsold unit for the summer. That’s one of the perks of being a travel writer.”

“We’re still looking into the break-in, but it sounds like nothing was taken.”

“Right, my laptop was in my car,” Tish said. She added, “I don’t think it was kids, though.”

“No?”

“I think someone’s trying to scare me off.”

“Because of your book?”

“Yes. I suppose you think that’s paranoid.”

“A little,” Stride admitted. “It’s been thirty years, Tish.”

She didn’t answer.

“Tell me about the life of a travel writer,” he said, changing the subject. “It sounds glamorous.”

“Not as much as you might think. Sometimes I feel permanently homeless. Whenever I fall in love with a place, I leave.”

“What was your favorite place?”

Tish blew on her coffee and then took a sip. “Tibet. I love the mountains, but I couldn’t live there.”

“Why not?”

“Heights,” Tish said. “I hate heights. I always have. I had to cross this rope bridge over a canyon, and I swear they had to sedate me and pull me across on my ass with my eyes closed.”

Stride laughed.

“What about you?” Tish asked. “What are you afraid of?”

“Me? I don’t know.”

“Come on, there must be something,” Tish said. “Or do tough guys like you never get scared?”

“I’m afraid of a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Loss.”

She looked at him. “You mean like losing Cindy?”

“I mean like losing anything. I hate endings, good-byes, funerals, everything like that. The ends of books. The ends of movies. The ends of vacations. I like it when things keep going, but they never do.”

“How about you and Serena?” Tish asked.

“What about us?”

“Will the two of you keep going?”

Stride frowned. “Why do you care? Do you need to flesh out our characters in your book?”

“No, it’s not that. I think a lot about you and Cindy, so I wondered if Serena makes you happy.”

“She does.” He was curt.

“I’m sorry, is that too personal?”

He shrugged. “I’m a Minnesotan. We talk about the weather and the Twins, Tish. That’s as personal as I get.”

“Oh, I forgot,” Tish said. She added, “Beautiful day.”

“Yeah.”

“How about those Twins?”

“This could be their year.”

“You’re right, this is much better,” Tish said, smiling.

Stride winked and finished his sandwich. He crumpled the wrapper into a ball, got up, and deposited it in a wastebasket twenty yards away. He returned and sat down next to Tish again.

“Are you expecting a package?” he asked her.

“What?”

He nodded at the delivery truck parked illegally fifty yards away. “The driver in that van is watching you. He was following your car when you arrived.”

Tish stared. A face appeared in the window of the truck and then disappeared. The man had wraparound sunglasses and a shaved head.

“Can’t you do something?” she asked.

“I can write him a parking ticket.”

Tish put down her coffee cup and stripped off her sunglasses. Her face was tense.

“Do you recognize him?” Stride asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“He knows we’ve spotted him.”

The truck engine started like the growl of a tiger. The delivery truck jerked away from the curb and continued north on London Road. Tish watched it until the van disappeared behind a row of brick buildings.

“Do you still think I’m paranoid?” she asked.

Stride wasn’t sure. “Have you noticed the truck before?”

“Now that I think about it, I may have seen it a number of times in the last few days.”

“It may be nothing, but I’ll do a check with the delivery company,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I haven’t been ignoring you these past couple weeks,” he added. “I didn’t want to call until I had something more to tell you.”

“Do you have results back on the DNA tests?”

Stride nodded. “I got them from the lab this morning.”

“And?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. There was no match. We collected DNA from the flap of the envelope on the stalker letter that was sent to Laura, and we were able to get a good sample. When we ran it against the state and FBI databases, we came up empty. Whoever he is or was, he’s not in our files.”

“Damn.”

“It was a long shot.”

“Let me ask you this,” Tish said. “Would Peter Stanhope’s DNA be included in a database somewhere?”

“I doubt it.”

“So it could be his DNA, and we just don’t know it.”

“Sure.”

“Can’t we get a court to compel him to provide a sample of DNA?” Tish asked.

“Not without probable cause,” Stride said. “We would need to have something specific to tie him to the murder.”

“Laura was killed with his bat,” she protested.

“That might get us a DNA sample if the crime happened last week and if we still had the bat. After thirty years, no judge would grant a motion with what we have today.”

“You mean, because Peter Stanhope has more money than God.”

“Frankly, yes. I’m sorry, Tish, but there are certain realities to face here.”

Tish watched the calm blue water on the lake. A light breeze rippled through her hair. “I can’t believe there’s nothing we can do. There has to be a way to get a DNA sample from Peter.”

“There’s something else,” Stride said. “More bad news.”

“What?”

“This can’t go in the book.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“We have additional genetic material from the crime scene. There was semen found near the body. The police kept that fact secret.”

“You still have the sample? It’s still intact?”

Stride nodded. “I ran the DNA from the semen. It’s not the first time I’ve done that, but we add thousands of people to those databases every year. It didn’t make any difference. There was no match.”

“Can you compare the semen to the DNA from the stalker note?” Tish asked.

“That’s the bad news.”

“What do you mean?”

“I did compare the two samples. The DNA on the stalker note doesn’t match the semen where Laura’s body was found.”

“That’s not good,” Tish agreed, frowning.

“No. Even if we could get a match to the stalker’s DNA, it means we’ve got someone else at the murder scene. The county attorney wouldn’t consider bringing charges against anyone unless we could identify the person who left that semen behind.”

“Do you have Dada’s DNA?”

“No.”

“So it could have been him. We know he was in the woods that night. He could have seen whoever killed Laura.”

“More likely, he killed her himself,” Stride reminded her. “Remember, Dada’s prints were on the bat. Besides, it’s all speculation. We don’t know who Dada was or where he went. After thirty years, he’s probably dead now. Life expectancy for vagrants like him isn’t long.”

“Do you remember anything that might help us track him down?”

“You know as much as I do. He was a Rasta. Dreadlocks, tam, the whole works. He probably wouldn’t look anything like that today.”

“He wasn’t old, though, was he?” she asked.

“No. Early twenties, maybe.”

“So he could still be alive.”

“You’d stand a better chance of finding Amelia Earhart.” Stride heard the cough of an engine and glanced at the street. “He’s back,” he said.

“Who?”

“The delivery driver.”

The same truck they had spotted earlier parked on the opposite side of London Road, near Tish’s Civic. This time, the driver’s door opened, and a man climbed down. He crossed the street and headed straight for them. He was tall and extremely thin, with pencil legs. He wore the delivery company’s uniform-short-sleeved button-down shirt, shorts, and white tennis shoes.

“Do you recognize him?” Stride asked.

Tish bit her lip. “No.”

As he came closer, Stride saw signs of age and dissipation in the driver. He looked like a heavy drinker. He was in his forties, but his skin was mottled across his bald scalp, and blood vessels had popped in his cheeks and nose, leaving a rosy web. When he pulled off his sunglasses, his pale blue eyes were rimmed in red. His blond eyebrows were trimmed short. He had a long, narrow face.

“Tish?” the driver said, ignoring Stride. “Is that you?”

She hesitated. “Yes, it’s me.”

“I heard you were back in town.”

“Have we met?” she asked.

“It’s me. Finn Mathisen. I know it’s been a long time. I don’t look like I did back then, but who does, huh? Remember, I had big curly hair?”

“Oh, Finn, sure, I’m sorry,” Tish said. She sounded as if she really did know who he was now. “How are you?”

“I’m getting by. I told Rikke you were in town, and she said I was crazy. But here you are.”

“Yes, here I am,” Tish said.

“I heard about the book you’re doing.”

“That’s right.”

“I was wondering if we could have lunch or dinner sometime. You know, talk about Laura and the old days. I’d really like that.”

Tish hesitated. “Sure, why not.”

“Do you have a cell phone number or something?”

“Of course.”

“Hang on,” Finn said. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and clicked it open. Stride saw him write TISH on the back of his hand. “Shoot.”

She rattled off her number, and Finn scribbled it on his skin.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“Okay.”

“You look really good, Tish.”

“Thanks.”

Finn retreated to his truck without saying anything to Stride. He drove away, waving to Tish through the open window as he did. Tish gave a half-wave in return.

“Old friend?” Stride asked.

“Laura’s friend more than mine.”

“He looks like he’s had a hard life.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t very good back then, either. His older sister, Rikke, was our math teacher. She asked Laura if she’d be willing to tutor him. Finn was into drugs in a big way. Very screwed up. Their parents were both dead.”

Stride nodded. “I remember Rikke Mathisen. She was one of those Nordic blond teachers, very attractive. The high school boys all had crushes on her.”

“I didn’t really like her, but Laura did,” Tish said. “I was pretty independent, but Laura still wanted a surrogate mother. I thought Rikke was being nice to Laura just to get help for Finn, and that bothered me.”

“Why?”

“You saw him. Finn had big problems. Laura wanted to rescue everyone, but she was pretty naive. I told her not to spend so much time with him.”

“Did you tell her the same thing about Peter Stanhope?” Stride asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Except she didn’t listen.”

Tish shook her head. “She did. Laura dumped Peter. He’s lying about the two of them dating secretly.”

“We have no way to prove that.”

“We can prove it with Peter’s DNA,” Tish insisted. “If you had that, you could prove that he was stalking Laura by matching it to the note.”

Stride didn’t like what he saw in her face. “Let me give you some advice, Tish. As a cop. If you want to write a book, then write a book, but if you try to put yourself in the middle of a police investigation, you could wind up in a lot of trouble. So don’t do anything stupid.”

12

Stride checked his voice mail on the drive back to City Hall and found an urgent message waiting for him from the new county attorney for St. Louis County. He parked in his usual spot behind the building, but rather than head directly to his office in City Hall, he headed for the courthouse instead and took the elevator to the fifth floor. The glass doors to the county attorney’s office were immediately on the right as he exited the elevator.

He asked the receptionist to tell Pat Burns that he was outside.

Pat was new to the job. The previous county attorney, Dan Erickson, had resigned in the wake of a scandal during the winter. Stride and Dan had been enemies for years, and he was pleased to see him gone. The county board had taken several months to name a replacement but had finally turned to Pat Burns, who was the managing partner in the Duluth office of a large Twin Cities corporate law firm. She practiced in white-collar crime and had spent several years in the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago before moving to Minnesota. She was tough and smart.

Stride wondered why a lawyer earning a partner’s income in a corporate law firm would give up hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to prosecute rapists and child pornographers, but he knew the answer boiled down to one word. Politics. Like everyone else whose backside graced a county attorney’s chair, she had her eyes on higher office. That didn’t bother Stride, but it meant that every prosecutorial decision was viewed through the lens of fund-raising and vote-getting.

He waited twenty minutes before Pat’s door opened. She was reading from a legal-sized file folder and looked up at him over half-glasses. “Hello, Lieutenant, come on in.”

He had been here once before on a courtesy call two weeks earlier. At that point, the office still looked as it did when Dan Erickson was the county attorney. Since then, the masculine touch had been erased. Dan’s heavy furniture was gone. Pat preferred glass and Danish maple. The paint was fresh and brightened the room with a peach color. The old carpet had been ripped out and replaced with a light frieze. The whole room smelled of renovation, like a new house.

“Very nice,” he said.

“Thanks. I kept Dan’s bottle of Bombay, if that’s what you’re into. Me, I prefer chardonnay.”

“Nothing for me.”

“Do you mind if I indulge?”

“Not at all.”

“I practiced in London for two years after law school. I started out with the European habit of wine over lunch, and I’ve never been able to break it.”

She put the file folder down on her desk and took off her reading glasses. She opened a stainless refrigerator, pulled out an open bottle, and poured white wine into a small bell-shaped glass. She took a sip and then waved him toward a desert-colored microfiber sofa on the wall. Above the sofa, on a wooden shelf, was a modern steel sculpture on a cinder-block base.

He was wearing jeans, a sport coat, and black boots and felt under-dressed. Pat wore a tailored cream-colored pantsuit with a low-cut jacket and a white shell. A necklace of interlaced metallic squares dangled above the faint line of her cleavage. Her brown hair was short and coiffed, like an ocean wave breaking over her forehead. She was tall and slim, and Stride knew from her bio that she had turned forty years old in January.

Pat sat on the opposite end of the sofa and crossed her legs. She balanced her wineglass on her knee and inclined her head toward the file folder on her desk. “The widow of that golfer who got killed by lightning last month is suing the county,” she told him.

“How is that our fault?” Stride asked.

“It’s not, but a new theory of legal liability is born every day.”

“Golfers are walking lightning rods,” Stride said. “We fry one or two every summer that way.”

“Exactly. He was on a county golf course, and the wife’s attorney says we had insufficient procedures in place to provide shelter from an inevitable and predictable threat.”

“How about a caution sign with a picture of Ben Franklin?” Stride asked.

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Pat replied, smiling. She added, “Anyway, let’s move on to police matters. Is Maggie making progress on the peeper case?”

“Not so far. He hasn’t struck again since the incident involving the disabled girl in Gary a couple weeks ago. We’re keeping an unmarked vehicle near her house for several hours each night in case he comes back.”

“Is that likely?”

“The father thinks he peeped her once before. He may have a special interest in this girl.”

“Keep me posted on this case,” Pat told him. “Families don’t get too upset when drug dealers kill each other, but they feel vulnerable when perverts are peering in the window at their daughters.”

“Understood.”

“I’d like to set up a monthly status meeting with you,” Pat added, “so we can go over outstanding cases. Okay?”

“Of course. I’ll set it up with your assistant.”

“I’m not trying to tread on your turf, but I like to know what’s in the pipeline. I don’t want to be surprised by headlines or get sandbagged by reporters.”

“I understand,” Stride said. “If anything happens, either K-2 or I will call you directly to keep you in the loop.”

K-2 was the departmental nickname for Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick.

“I appreciate it,” Pat said. She added, “Peter Stanhope called me this morning.”

“Oh?”

“He’s concerned about this reporter, Tish Verdure, and the book she’s writing about an unsolved murder back in the 1970s. There was an article in today’s paper.”

“That’s right,” Stride said.

“This is the kind of thing I need to know about in advance, Lieutenant.” She didn’t snap at him, but her voice was cool and direct. “Particularly if someone like Peter Stanhope is involved. I don’t like to be blindsided when a major campaign contributor calls me to talk about a murder investigation, and I don’t know anything about it.”

Stride nodded. “You’re right. I apologize. I should have called you when I first met Tish and heard about her project. Candidly, I didn’t think that-”

Pat cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Never mind. I don’t want explanations or excuses. It’s done. I just want us to be clear for the future, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

“Now you can tell me about this case. I gather you knew the victim?”

“She was my wife’s sister.”

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry. Tell me what happened.”

Stride sketched out the facts of the case and retraced the investigation for her. He also told her what he knew about Tish’s book and about the DNA tests he had run in the past several weeks.

Pat sipped her wine and listened carefully to the story. “Peter was asking if we had any plans to reopen an active investigation of this case.”

“I don’t think we have enough evidence to do so,” Stride said. “So far, nothing changes the original theory of the crime, which is that Laura was killed by a vagrant. Tish hasn’t come up with anything to disprove or discredit that idea.”

“But you’re running tests on physical evidence.”

Stride nodded. “That’s true. If we had made a DNA match to find out who was stalking Laura, or to find out whose semen was near her body, that certainly would have changed things. We’d have new questions to ask and potentially someone with new information.”

“Except from what you say, one of the key pieces of physical evidence is missing,” Pat said. “Namely, the murder weapon. We also don’t have any idea how to find this vagrant after thirty years, or know whether he’s even still alive. I don’t know how we would go about bringing a case against anyone under those circumstances.”

“Agreed,” Stride said. “We’ve got a lot of suspects and a lot of reasonable doubt.”

“That means we need to be extremely careful about allowing speculation to make its way into the media. I don’t want anyone tried in the press when we have no intention of bringing charges in court.”

“You mean Peter Stanhope,” Stride said.

“I mean anyone.” Pat paused. “Look, Lieutenant, I’m a practical person. You and I both know that money talks. If I could prove Peter Stanhope was guilty of something, would I throw the book at him? Absolutely. Do I want you to avoid spreading rumors about him if we can’t prove he’s guilty of anything? Absolutely. I’d say that about any suspect, but yes, I’m going to be extra careful when it comes to someone who is a friend and supporter. That’s life.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“I have no idea what Peter Stanhope was like as a teenager or a young man. All I can tell you is that my firm has been on the other side of his in litigation, and my partners spoke highly of his professionalism.”

“Understood.”

“So let’s set some ground rules. First, be extremely cautious with what you tell Tish Verdure. We don’t know her. She’s a journalist and potentially a loose cannon. The last thing we need is her turning this into another Martha Moxley case, all right?”

“Fair enough.” He didn’t mention that he had just come from a meeting with Tish and that he had already shared something with her that he probably shouldn’t. The existence of semen near Laura’s body.

Pat held up two fingers. “Second, we both know that this case could blow up in our faces no matter what we do. If Tish gets someone in the New York media to take an interest, we’re going to get hounded with queries. This could wind up on 20/20 or Cold Case. National press.”

“What do you suggest?” Stride asked.

“I suggest you make sure you know this case inside and out. Okay? Go back over everything. Make sure you’re able to answer any question that comes up. Revisit the entire investigation, but be discreet.”

Stride hesitated.

“What is it?” Pat asked.

“I have some concerns that the original investigation may have been compromised.”

Pat nodded. “You mean Ray Wallace.”

“Yes.”

“Ray was before my time, but I’ve heard stories. He was a big problem.”

“Ray was a good cop, but he crossed the line,” Stride said. “He may have leaped too quickly to a theory of the crime that exonerated Peter Stanhope. He may have made the murder weapon and the original stalker letter disappear.”

“Well, if Ray screwed the pooch, we should know about it before Tish or someone else gets there ahead of us.”

“Of course.”

“One last thing,” Pat said.

“Yes?”

“At some point, I may pull the plug. If all we’re doing is chasing our tail, and it’s obvious we’re never going to have enough evidence to put someone on trial, then I’m going to shut this down. I’m sorry, I know this girl meant something to you and your late wife. But if we don’t find anything new, then you and Tish are both going to have to live with the idea that the case will always be unsolved.”

WHO KILLED LAURA STARR?

THIRTEEN

July 5, 1977

The three of us were in our living room on Tuesday afternoon. It was me, my dad, and Jonny. The house had never felt so small. I hadn’t slept at all, and the walls felt like they were closing in, and the ceiling was coming down on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. The room was baking hot and so sticky that you broke into a sweat without doing anything at all. We all sat there, not saying a word, watching the dusty stream of sunlight through the front window. Jonny held my hand, and I buried my head in his shoulder. Tears of anger and regret streamed down my dad’s face. His face was beet red. He blamed Laura for living when my mom died, and now he blamed her for dying like she did. He had lost another one.

My dad. He was never a big man, and year by year, he seems to shrink. His dark hair, which was so full and thick when I was a little girl, is mostly gone now. His clothes don’t fit, but he won’t let me buy new ones, so his white dress shirts balloon at his shoulders. He sits in his recliner in the evenings and reads his leather Bible by the dim light. No ambition anymore. Just crushed dreams and a tug-of-war with God. I remember how he used to come home from Wahl’s in his sharp pinstriped suits, like a man on top of the world, a man going places. He was going to run that department store someday. That’s what he told Mom. Now other men have climbed over his shoulders, and Dad writes newspaper ads for white sales. At fifty, he looks sixty. You just don’t realize how one person depends on another, and when they’re not there, it’s like going off a bridge, and you’re falling and falling.

I went to Jonny’s place. After. In the middle of the night. He answered the door, and I looked a sight, crying, dotted with blood. He called the police, because I couldn’t do it. They came and took us back there, and I led them through the woods to the body, but I couldn’t go out to the beach. I couldn’t see it again. Even the big, tough cops couldn’t believe what had been done to her. Things like that don’t happen. Not here in Duluth.

They asked me a lot of questions in a police car parked back in the weeds and had me repeat over and over what I did and what I saw. I think they could have done that for hours, but Jonny stood up to them and insisted that they take me home. I needed to tell my dad. I needed to stand under the shower and wash away the blood. They took pictures of me first, though, flashbulbs popping in my face out there in the woods. They scraped blood from my skin. I realized that they thought maybe I had done this myself. I had killed her. I didn’t understand how anyone could think that. I told them I was innocent. I’m not sure they believed me.

“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I murmured.

I felt a need to take this on myself, for his sake. I never should have let her go.

Dad didn’t look at me. “God’s punishment is a terrible thing.”

“You know I don’t want to hear that.”

“I told Laura she was sinning,” he said.

I wanted to scream at him, but I didn’t. I bit my tongue. This was how he dealt with grief, how he explained awful, random things. He had become so hard and unbending over the years. As if standing straight made any difference at all when you were in the path of a tornado. As if lightning somehow distinguished between good and evil.

Dad bowed his head and started crying again. I sighed and looked up into Jonny’s dark eyes. He kissed my head. We had both grown older overnight, in a lot of ways.

I heard a knock on the front door. “I’ll get it,” I said.

The man on the doorstep had bushy red hair and a matching mustache. He wore oversized wire-rimmed glasses over pale blue eyes. I figured he was in his midthirties. He was medium height, but heavy and strong, with fingers like thick pork sausages. He wore a plaid sport coat and a white dress shirt that bulged out over his belt. No tie. Open collar and a fuzz of red chest hair. He wore flared denims and muddy dress shoes. I saw splotchy stains on his shoes. I wondered if it was blood.

“I’m Detective Inspector Ray Wallace,” he told me. “Duluth police.”

“Come in,” I said.

Wallace walked with a limp. He followed me into the living room, and I sat down next to Jonny again. Wallace introduced himself to my dad, who didn’t get out of his recliner. Wallace’s eyes shot around the room as he pulled out a dining room chair and sat down. You just know when somebody is smart, and Wallace was smart.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Starr,” Wallace said.

My dad used a handkerchief to blow his nose and then folded it and replaced it in his pocket. He laid his hands on his knees and didn’t say anything.

“I’m trying to find out exactly what happened to her, sir,” Wallace continued.

Dad still didn’t say a word. He stared blankly into the dust.

“I didn’t do it,” I blurted out, filling the silence.

To a cop, that must be like lighting up a big sign that says, I did it! I did it!

Wallace smiled with his lips, not his teeth. His mustache wriggled like a red worm. “No one is saying you did, young lady.” He looked at Jonny. “And who’s this?”

“I’m Jon Stride. I’m Cindy’s boyfriend.”

“Nice to meet you, Jon. Why don’t you head on home now, okay?”

Jonny pushed himself off the sofa and shook Wallace’s hand. There was something different about him right then, something I’d never seen before, something mature and attractive. I could see them sizing each other up like men do. “If Cindy says she didn’t do it, you can take that to the bank. And I’m staying. I was there last night.”

Wallace got a little glint in his eyes. “Suit yourself.”

Jonny sat back down.

I said, “It’s just that they were taking pictures, and I had blood on me because I stepped in it, and I picked up the bat because I thought I heard someone in the woods.”

“You picked up the bat?” Wallace asked.

“Yes.”

“So we’ll find your fingerprints on it?”

Oh, hell. “Yes, I guess so.”

“Okay, that’s good to know. It’s Cindy, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get along with your sister, Cindy?”

“Yes, of course I did.”

“Because sisters have been known to fight from time to time.”

“Sure, sometimes, but never anything serious.”

My dad stirred from his gloom and interrupted. “What’s this all about, Wallace? You’re out of your head if you’re accusing my daughter.”

Wallace adjusted his glasses on his face with his thumb and index finger. “I’m not accusing anybody, Mr. Starr. I’m just gathering information.” He turned back to me. “Cindy, do you still have the clothes you were wearing last night?”

“Yes.”

“Did you wash them?”

“No, they’re in a basket.”

“We’re going to need those, okay? I’ll have to take them with me.”

“Okay, sure.”

“And shoes.”

“I wasn’t wearing shoes.”

“Ah.” Wallace pulled a Polaroid snapshot from his shirt pocket. “This is you last night, right?”

“Right.”

“There’s some blood around your hands and on your legs and feet.”

“Yes, I know. I told you, I stepped-”

Wallace shook his head. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. The lab people tell me whoever did this would have been drenched in blood. I mean drenched. Head to toe. Not a little around the edges.” He looked at William Starr. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t mean to be so graphic. What I’m saying is that we already concluded that it was very unlikely that Cindy was involved. But I like to see people’s faces before I draw my own conclusions.”

“If you want to blame anyone, blame me,” Dad announced.

Wallace shifted, and the wooden chair squealed. He looked curious. “What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean, first it was my wife and now my daughter. They’re both dead. It doesn’t matter who held the bat. It was God who killed her.”

“I don’t believe God kills eighteen-year-old girls,” Wallace said.

“You’re wrong. He does it all the time. Every day. Sinners get punished.”

“I see.” Wallace’s voice became flat and cold. “Mr. Starr, your neighbors overheard you shouting at Laura the night before she was killed.”

I saw Dad’s fingers tighten on the Bible in his lap.

“Yes, we argued sometimes.”

“What was the fight about?”

“I wanted her to stay on God’s path.”

“But she didn’t?” Wallace asked.

“Not always.”

“In what way?”

“That’s between me and Laura,” Dad snapped. “How can you ask me that when God is deciding the fate of her soul right now?”

Wallace didn’t like that answer.

“Mr. Starr, did you know Laura wasn’t home last night?”

“Yes. I went to her room around ten o’clock, and she wasn’t there.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I went to bed.”

“Did you know where Laura had gone?”

“No.”

“Did you stay up to wait for her?”

“Yes, but I fell asleep.”

“Were you home all night?”

“Of course, I just told you that.”

“Did you talk to anyone?”

“No.”

Wallace nodded. “Mr. Starr, did you ever hit your daughter?”

Dad bolted out of his chair, trembling. His white shirt fluttered. I hadn’t seen him move so quickly in years. “How dare you!”

Wallace didn’t shrink. “You heard the question, sir.”

“Never,” my dad insisted.

“Sometimes fights get out of hand.”

“I never touched her.”

Wallace eyed me. It was as if, without saying it flat out, he wanted me to tell him yes or no. Pass the secret silently between us. He wanted to know if it was true, if Dad had ever struck Laura. Or me. I met his gaze.

“My father wouldn’t do that,” I said.

Wallace nodded. That was enough for now. I told myself that I was right, because I knew my father had never lifted a hand against me, and I didn’t believe he had ever done so to Laura. Even so, I couldn’t get Laura’s voice out of my head.

What if Dad were abusing me? Could you kill him?

I said nothing about that.

Wallace kept his attention on me. “Cindy, you’ve gone over with my men what happened last night. I’m going to ask you to repeat some of it for me.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I know you’ve been through hell, and I know how hard this is for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Please tell me again exactly what you did last night and everything that happened right up until the time when the police responded to the call. Don’t leave anything out.”

So I told him.

Well, I told him some of it. There were things I left out. About me and Jonny that night. And other things, too. Jonny chimed in along the way, about Peter and the baseball game, about the storm, and Peter’s bat lying in the field. I could see Wallace’s mind working furiously whenever Peter Stanhope’s name came up, like part of him was with us and part of him was somewhere else. I wasn’t stupid. We were practically accusing the son of one of the richest men in the city of murder. A cop hears that, and he looks for a place to run. Wallace found that place right away. A black man in the woods.

“So you and Laura thought someone was watching you,” he said when we were done.

Nothing about the stalker note. Nothing about Laura and Peter dating and then breaking up because Peter was demanding sex. Nothing about the bat, or the threats against Laura he made during the game.

“Yes.”

“It couldn’t have been Peter Stanhope, though, right? Because he was still in the baseball field with Jon here when you heard somebody.”

Jonny and I looked at each other. We both nodded.

“You’re sure it was marijuana you smelled?”

I glanced at my dad. “I’ve never used it, but I know what it smells like.”

“Did you see this black guy that Jon talked about?”

“I didn’t see anyone.”

Wallace looked at Jonny. “You must have seen this guy, this vagrant, in almost the same place where the girls were. Right?”

“Within a hundred yards or so,” Jonny said.

“Okay, tell me more about this guy with the dreadlocks.”

“They call him Dada.”

Wallace wet his lips with his tongue. “Whoa, whoa here, you know who this guy is? You’ve seen him before?”

Jonny nodded. “He hangs out by the tracks in the harbor. Where the trains head south.”

“What were you doing down in that area?”

“It’s somewhere to go,” Jonny said.

I knew why he went there. It was his private spot, his getaway, his place to think. Jonny told me he liked to hike down there, among the wanderers who came and went, eluding the police and the railway security. In his head, Jonny felt like a traveler, too. Homeless.

“Okay, so who is this guy?”

“I first saw him a month ago. He was in the woods down near Raleigh Street, where it heads out across the Arrowhead Bridge. The others are scared of him, because he’s so big. They think he’s some kind of ghost.”

Wallace snorted. “Ghost.”

“Most of the guys down there are a little crazy. They see someone like Dada, it’s easy to believe almost anything.”

“Is he violent?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only seen him a couple times.”

“Can you show me where you saw him?”

Jonny nodded. “Yeah, I think so. He moves around, though. They all do.”

“If he killed a girl, he probably took the first train south,” Wallace said. “My guess is he’s long gone.”

He stood up. His right leg, the one that limped, looked stiff. He rubbed his knee, and I saw him grimace in pain.

“I think that’s all for now,” he said. Then he looked at Jonny. “I could use your help, Jon. Do you have time to come with me?”

Jonny looked at me, and I nodded.

“Sure.”

Wallace cinched up his slacks over his stomach. I was disappointed. He was leaping at the idea that some stranger did this, even though Laura had been receiving threats for months. Even though Peter Stanhope’s bat killed her. Money talks.

“So you’re going after this man Dada?” my dad asked.

He believed it, too. Everyone did. No one wanted to think about the alternative, because it was too complicated. Too scary.

“Nope,” Wallace said. “I mean, we will, but not yet.”

I stared at him, surprised. But maybe I shouldn’t have been. After all, he was smart.

“The first thing I want to do is get the truth out of Peter Stanhope,” Wallace said.

14

Ray Wallace.

For years, he had been Stride’s best friend. His mentor on the police force. It was as if, in the restless months he spent after losing his father, he had been waiting to find someone who could give him a new direction. Later, Stride discovered that when you put someone on a pedestal, they’re almost certain to break when they fall.

He still remembered the first question he had asked Ray when they walked out the door of Cindy’s house on July 5, 1977.

“So what’s with the limp?”

Ray stopped with his hand on the driver’s door of his Camaro. “Vietnam,” he said. “I took a bullet in the knee.”

“Oh, man.”

“Yeah, it was a bitch, but you know what? After something like that, it’s hard to get bent out of shape about any of the bad stuff that life throws at you.”

Stride would remember that comment for years.

Right up until the moment that Ray shot him.

“I like the way you stood up for your girlfriend, Jon,” Ray said as he started the car.

“Cindy didn’t do anything wrong,” Stride told him.

“I think you’re right, but she’s not giving me the whole story, either.”

“She’s not a liar.”

“I didn’t say she was, but there’s a difference between lying and leaving out part of the truth, you know?”

Stride was silent.

Ray steered with one hand, with his elbow balanced on the Camaro’s open window. He sucked cold coffee under his red mustache with the other hand.

“Do you think you’ll figure out who killed Laura?” Stride asked.

“I hope so. I’ll tell you right now, though, it won’t be easy. From what you say, there were a lot of people in the woods. That means a lot of suspects and a lot of crap for a defense lawyer to throw around in court. Unless someone saw something, we might never know the truth. And the fact is that truth is as slippery as ice sometimes.”

Warm summer air blew through the open windows. The car engine roared as Ray stepped on the gas.

“I have to make a stop first,” he said.

He drove along the lakeshore on London Road until he reached the Glensheen Mansion, where he turned into the mammoth estate’s main driveway. Stride saw several police vehicles parked inside. Ray shut down the engine and got out, then leaned back through the window of the Camaro.

“Wait here for a minute, okay?”

Stride saw Ray approach another detective who was standing with two or three uniformed officers in the middle of the driveway. The huge red brick mansion with its three distinctive peaks was visible through the trees. Ray lit a cigarette. Stride could hear the murmur of conversation but couldn’t make out the words. He guessed what they were talking about. A week earlier, the heiress to the Congdon mining fortune, Elisabeth Congdon, and her live-in nurse had both been found murdered inside the mansion. One suffocated, one bludgeoned. The papers said the motive was robbery, but Stride had already heard rumors floating around the city that the murders might have involved a member of Congdon’s family and an estate worth tens of millions of dollars.

Fifteen minutes later, Ray got back in the car.

“Money,” he said. “It makes the world go around.”

“Did you arrest someone?”

Ray winked and looked pleased. “Keep an eye on the papers.”

He turned the Camaro around. “It’s not a good year for the filthy rich,” Ray said. “In May, they found that woman in Indianapolis. Marjorie Jackson. Shot in the stomach and five million bucks stashed around her house. I mean, can you imagine keeping your money in your vacuum cleaner bag? Now we lose Mrs. Congdon. Sometimes you wonder if it’s really worth it, having all that dough.”

“Like Randall Stanhope,” Stride said.

Ray nodded. “Yeah.”

“I think Peter killed Laura,” Stride told him.

“Yeah? Why is that?”

“It was his bat. I think he attacked her in the softball field, and she managed to get away, and he chased her up to the north beach.”

“Say you’re right,” Ray said. “How do you prove it?”

“Maybe someone saw him.”

Ray spilled coffee on his pants, and he dabbed at the stain with his fingers. “Maybe, but we need to find a witness first, and that witness has to be willing to testify against the son of one of the richest men in the city. Don’t kid yourself. Most witnesses won’t do that.”

“So you’re saying we can’t touch him?”

“I’m not saying that at all. But sometimes you know in your head that someone is guilty, and you still can’t make a case. Oh, and keep your opinions to yourself, Jon. When we’re inside the house, don’t speak unless I tell you to speak. Got it?”

“Sure. Why do you want me along anyway?”

Ray smiled. “Three reasons. First, I want Randall to think Peter is just another witness, not a suspect, and having you there will help me sell that idea. Second, I think Peter is less likely to lie if you’re in the room, because he’s not sure what you saw.”

“And the third?” Stride asked.

“Third, I don’t want anyone to think I gave Peter a free ride because of his daddy’s money. You’re my backup, Jon. Welcome to the police force.”

It was the kind of estate that reeked of old money. Robber baron money. The house and its grounds were surrounded by a fence made of iron spikes, with intermittent stone columns that matched the mottled fieldstones of the mansion. The brooding estate itself was a quarter mile inside the fir trees, nearly invisible from the road. Ray stopped at the two-story gatehouse and announced himself at the intercom. A minute later, an iron fence swung silently open. He drove through the trees and parked under the mansion’s porte cochere.

Stride had never been this close. He glimpsed fountains in the rear. Trimmed globe bushes. A fenced tennis court. The Tudor estate towered above him in sharp peaks, dozens of chimney stacks, and red Duluth stone. Most of the chambered windows were swathed in thick curtains.

“Did Randall build all this?” Stride asked.

Ray shook his head. “No, this is turn-of-the-century stuff. Before income taxes, know what I mean? For a while in those days, Duluth had more tonnage running through its harbor than New York. We were number one. A handful of families like the Stanhopes and the Congdons got very, very rich.”

“And now?”

“Now they’re doing everything they can to hold on to it.”

A maid greeted them at the door and showed them to a library on the other side of the vaulted foyer. Stride felt self-conscious, wearing shorts and a white baseball jersey. His sneakers slipped on the marble. Inside the library, he noticed squared beams stretching the length of the ceiling, wheat-colored wall coverings, and an Oriental rug overlaying a hardwood floor. One wall featured hand-carved bookshelves, lined with old volumes of ship logs from the 1800s. He saw oil paintings of old men in suits.

“Maybe I should go,” Stride said.

“Don’t be intimidated,” Ray replied. “These people belch, fart, and have bad breath like everyone else.”

They heard laughter from the doorway and smelled cigar smoke.

“Do I? I guess I should never have had the puttanesca for lunch.”

It was Randall Stanhope.

Stride had never seen him in person, only on television and in photographs in the newspaper. He was smaller than he expected, no more than five foot eight. He had trimmed gray hair and boxy black glasses, and like the men in the paintings on the wall, he wore a three-piece dark suit. In his left hand, he held a lowball glass filled with ice and an amber-colored drink. In his right hand, he pinched a cigar between his thumb and index finger.

“You’re Ray Wallace, is that right? The chief has told me a lot about you. Says you’re an up-and-comer in the department. I like that.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Who’s the boy?” Stanhope asked, fixing his blue eyes on Stride.

“This is Jon Stride,” Ray said. “He was in the park with Peter last night. He’s helping me re-create what happened that led to the death of this young girl, and I thought Peter could fill in some details where Jon wasn’t around.”

Stanhope smiled. “You’re a baseball player, like my son.”

Stride nodded. “That’s right.”

“Well, good.” Stanhope turned to Ray. “I hear they’re about to pick up Elisabeth Congdon’s son-in-law for the murders at Glensheen. Quick work.”

“That’s actually not public yet, sir.”

“Oh, I know, but the mayor called me. Nasty business.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But I know that’s not why you’re here.”

“No, sir. Is Peter in the house? I’d like to ask him a few questions.”

“Absolutely. I was horrified to learn about this girl’s murder. Brutal thing. Naturally, Peter will tell you everything he can. This girl was a friend of his, and he’s anxious to help you find out who killed her.”

“I appreciate that,” Ray said.

“Tell me something honestly, Detective. You don’t for one moment consider my boy to be a suspect, do you?”

“I don’t really have enough information to consider anyone a suspect, sir,” Ray replied.

Stanhope smiled. Ray smiled back.

“The sheriff was right in calling you a smart man, Detective.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ve talked to Peter in detail about this incident myself. I believe he can help you identify the guilty party.”

Ray’s eyebrows shot up. “He saw who killed Laura?”

“Not the crime itself, but when you hear his story, I think you’ll feel as I do.”

“I’d like to talk to him.”

“Of course. Peter!”

Peter Stanhope sauntered into the library. He had been waiting outside. His blond hair was washed and combed. He was close-shaven. He wore dress pants, a white shirt, a tie, and a tweed blazer. Stride noticed deep scratches on Peter’s broad, freckled face and a misshapen purplish bruise on his forehead. Peter’s gait was stilted and stiff. He shoved his hands in his pockets and grimaced in pain.

Behind Peter, the same maid who had answered the front door entered the library silently and handed Randall Stanhope a large cardboard box. She left, and Stanhope passed the box to Ray.

“Peter’s clothes from last night,” Stanhope said. “Unwashed. Plenty of mud and grass stains, but as you will see, no blood, other than, perhaps, a little of his own. I anticipated that would be one of your first concerns, so I made sure we preserved the evidence.”

Ray crooked a finger at Stride, who peered into the box. He took a quick glance at the clothes and nodded. The clothes in the box were the same clothes Peter had been wearing the night before.

“What happened to you, Peter?” Ray asked.

“Someone kicked the shit out of me, what does it look like?”

Peter snapped. “Peter!” his father interrupted sternly. Stanhope turned to Ray. “I’m sorry. Peter is very upset about what happened.”

“Of course.”

“You see, Peter and Laura were lovers.”

Stride opened his mouth to protest, then clamped it shut. Ray folded his arms and studied Peter, who was leaning uncomfortably against the bookcase. “Is that true, Peter?”

Peter shrugged. “Yeah.”

“For how long?”

“A couple months.”

“Her sister told me that Laura broke up with you. She said you were pressuring Laura for sex, and Laura said no.”

“I hear yes a lot more than I hear no.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Laura wanted to keep it a secret. Her and me. She didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Why is that?”

“Who knows? Girls are weird that way. Maybe she didn’t want everyone asking her for favors, you know? When people hear my last name, they want stuff.”

“So what happened last night?”

Peter glanced at Stride. “There was a big storm up there. It washed out the ball game, and I went running for my car. I waited there until the rain had mostly stopped, and then I went back into the field.”

“Why?”

“I knew Laura would be coming.”

“Did the two of you arrange to meet? Was this a date?”

“We didn’t plan anything in advance, but I saw her in the field with her sister. She gave me a look. I knew what she meant. She was telling me to hang around, so we could get together.”

“A look?” Ray asked.

“Yeah, a look.”

“Okay, go on.”

“I heard her coming, so I surprised her. Came up behind her. She freaked out for a minute, because she didn’t know who it was. That was when she scratched me.” He touched his face.

“She scratched you by accident?”

“Exactly.”

“Then what?”

“Then we started making out. I mean, when she realized it was me, she was really sorry. She said she had heard someone in the woods earlier, and she was scared. Then we started kissing, and we lay down in the grass, and, well, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Ray said.

“We were going to have sex.”

“Right there in the softball field.”

“Sure.”

“And did you?”

Peter shook his head. “No. We were rolling around in the grass, and we were starting to get our clothes off, and that’s when it happened.”

“What happened?”

“This guy attacked us.”

“What guy?”

“I don’t know who he was. Some big black guy.”

“What did this guy do?”

“He hit me with my baseball bat.”

“How did he get your bat?”

“I left it in the field. He must have picked it up. He hit me in the back. The doc says I’ve got some broken ribs. Then he yanked me off Laura. I mean, he picked me up like I was a rag doll. This guy was strong. Laura screamed, and I saw her run for the woods, trying to get away. He started after her. He still had the bat in his hand. I got up and took a swing at him, and he punched me in the head with his fist. Knocked me out cold, flat on my back. That’s all I remember.”

Ray looked at him. “What happened when you woke up? How long were you out?”

“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes maybe.”

“Where was Laura? Where was this black guy?”

“They were both gone.”

“Didn’t you look for her?”

Peter shuffled his feet. “No.”

“This girl is your lover, and some guy chased her into the woods, and you woke up and just left?”

“I panicked. I was scared to death.”

Randall Stanhope interrupted. “I’m sorry, Detective. Obviously, my son should have made efforts to see if his girlfriend was safe. I’m very disappointed in his behavior.”

Peter’s eyes flashed with anger. “Hey, what could I do? If I’d gone after him, I’d be dead now, too. Is that what you want?”

“Shut up, Peter,” his father told him.

“Let’s get back to this man who assaulted you,” Ray said. “What else do you remember about him?”

Peter shrugged. “He was big. Like a bear. I think he had dreadlocks.”

“Have you ever seen him before?”

“No.”

Ray nodded. “Jon saw a black man matching this description in the woods that night, too.”

“Ah,” Randall said. “Well, that’s good. Another witness. Do you think you’ll be able to find him?”

“Jon says he’s a vagrant who lives down by the tracks,” Ray said.

“Oh, so you’ve seen him before?” Randall asked Stride.

Stride nodded.

“Isn’t that lucky,” Randall said. “Detective, I hope you can apprehend him. Of course, I know that these people are often desperate itinerants. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s long gone by now. He must know that the police will be on his trail.”

“No doubt,” Ray said.

“Do you need anything else from Peter right now?”

Ray shook his head. “Not for the moment.”

“That’s good. Do you have another minute, Detective? I’d like to share something with you privately.”

Ray rubbed his mustache and nodded at Stride. He tossed him the keys to the Camaro, which Stride caught in midair. “Wait outside for me, okay, Jon? I won’t be long. Play the radio, if you like.”

Stride and Peter left the room together. The waning sunlight gathered through the high windows in the vault of the foyer, but where the two boys were, the room was filled with dusty shadows. Stride heard a clock ticking. A gamey smell of venison rose from the downstairs kitchen. Peter escorted him silently to the front door, and Stride felt a frozen tension between them.

“You weren’t dating Laura,” Stride said.

“What are you, a cop? Leave it alone.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No, I didn’t, you asshole. Get the hell out of here.”

Peter yanked the heavy door open. Stride shoved past him and heard the door slam as soon as he had cleared the threshold. He kicked at the loose gravel, then bent down and picked up a loose rock and hurled it into an oval duck pond. He walked past Ray’s Camaro and found a black wrought-iron bench in the gardens, where he sat down, his long legs stretched out. He waited. Silhouettes of birds flitted among the fir trees. The air outside was humid, and he began to sweat. Twenty minutes later, the front door opened again, and Ray came out alone. Ray lit a cigarette and strolled over to the bench.

“Hey, Jon, sorry that took so long.”

“No problem.”

Ray exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “So what do you think?”

“I think Peter is lying.”

“Maybe,” Ray said, “but his story about this guy Dada tracks with what you saw. You didn’t spot this guy until after the storm hit and you left the softball game, right?”

“Right.”

“Any chance Peter saw him hanging around before the game?”

“Not likely,” Stride said. “I was already in the field when Peter arrived, and I didn’t see Dada anywhere around there.”

“So Peter must have seen him after you did. After the storm. When Laura was coming back to the softball field.”

“I guess so,” Stride said.

“Do you think Laura could have been hiding her affair with Peter?”

Stride frowned. “I think Cindy would have known.”

“Sisters don’t always tell sisters everything.”

“Well, yeah, that’s true. Cindy and Laura weren’t best pals or anything. But Peter didn’t make it sound like he was dating Laura when he talked to me during the game.”

“That could be him keeping it secret.”

“Maybe.” Stride wasn’t convinced.

“Anyway, can you stay with me a while longer? I could use your help again.”

“Sure,” Stride said.

Ray reached inside his sport coat and withdrew a long-barreled revolver. He opened the chamber and checked it. Stride could see the silver jackets of bullets loaded inside. Ray spun and locked it with a solid click and shoved it back in his shoulder holster.

“Okay then,” Ray said. “Let’s go get Dada.”

15

Donna Biggs pulled off Highway 23 near the river overlook at Perch Lake Park. She shut off the car and sat silently by the water, which was drenched in the orange glow of the dying sunlight. The river here was broken up by narrow swirls of land, like chocolate ribbons dropped into vanilla cake batter. From the bank at Fond du Lac, it was a cool hundred-foot swim with the stars overhead to the beaches and birch trees of the nearest island. She remembered midnight skinny-dipping here as a teenager, when a dozen or more kids would steal off from the fishing pier to drink, smoke weed, and have awkward sex in the sand. She and Clark had hooked up for the first time on one of those nights.

Mary tugged at her sleeve, demanding attention. “Mama?”

Donna knew what her daughter wanted. They had made a ritual of these stops on Friday nights. A few final peaceful moments together before the lonely weekend. “Would you like to sit by the river for a while?” she asked.

Mary’s head bobbed vigorously.

“Come on then.”

They were only a few miles from Clark’s home in Gary. She was late dropping Mary off, and Clark had already called twice, wondering where she was. Usually, Donna had Mary at his house in time for the two of them to go to dinner, but tonight, she had had to work late, and she stopped at McDonald’s to get Mary some chicken nuggets and French fries because she was hungry. Donna herself didn’t eat at all; she felt tired and nauseous. By the time she had packed Mary’s bag and got on the road, it was after eight o’clock.

Mary clambered out of the car and ran in her gangly way toward the water.

“Careful, honey, not too close,” Donna called.

She stretched her legs and took a seat on an old wooden bench. When she looked through the maze of trees to her right, she squinted into the sinking sun. On her left, a narrow dirt trail climbed away from the river. Thin green vines and white flowers dangled over the path, blowing off pollen dust in the warm breeze. Honeybees buzzed near her face, and she shooed them away with a flip of her hand.

Mary chased a monarch butterfly with orange-and-black wings. The fluttering insect dotted up and down, and Mary held out a finger, hoping it would land there. She ran back and forth, following the butterfly until it disappeared over the water.

“Come sit by me, sweetheart,” Donna told her.

Mary plopped down heavily on the bench. Donna wrapped an arm around her big girl’s shoulder and pulled Mary’s head into the crook of her neck. She kissed the girl’s blond curls and poked a finger into her cheek. Mary giggled. They were an odd mismatch of mother and daughter. Mary got all her tall, heavy genes from Clark. Donna was small, at least six inches shorter than Mary and fifty pounds lighter. She knew it looked strange, this oversized teenager clinging to the tiny hand of her mother. Mary was still a child. Donna was the one who had gotten older and more conscious of the burden of being a parent. It was one thing to care for a child when you were twenty-five and something else altogether when you were almost forty.

Donna was still dressed for the office. She worked as a legal secretary in a small Wisconsin law firm, where they insisted she wear business suits and keep her sandy hair fashionably styled. The salary and benefits were good, though, and the firm gave her flexibility when Mary needed special care. She had worked there for five years, ever since she and Clark split up. Security was a trade-off for the long hours and loneliness in her life.

“Did you see that?” Donna asked, pointing at a splash in the water and the widening ripples. “That was a fish.”

“Fish!” Mary said.

“Would you like to be a fish?” Donna asked. “You could swim underwater and make friends with turtles. Maybe you could even be a mermaid with a big fish tail. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“Fish!” Mary said again.

Donna smiled. She held Mary’s hand, and they sat watching the hawks circle above them and the boats come and go lazily on the river. They counted birds in the trees. Donna picked a wildflower and let Mary pluck the petals. Half an hour passed as easily as the water at their feet, and the sun eased below the trees. Golden sparkles on the water became shadows.

It was time to go. Clark was waiting, and it wasn’t fair to be so late. He missed Mary.

Donna missed Clark, too. She kept waiting for her love for him to die out completely, but instead, it was the bitterness of their breakup that had begun to seem distant and unimportant. They had both been desperate, unable to cope with Mary together. When she saw him now, she found herself drawn all over again to his courage and his solemn manner. She had even allowed herself to stay over a few weeks ago, to climb back into their bed. They hadn’t talked about it. She had slipped away in the morning before Clark awoke, not because it felt like a mistake, but because she was scared that Clark didn’t feel the same way.

“Hey! Mary!”

Someone shouted a faraway greeting from the highway behind her. Donna looked back and saw a teenage boy about Mary’s age, hurtling down the sharp hill on a bicycle. He waved madly at them, his face cracked into a grin, his black hair twisting in the currents of air. She recognized him, a neighbor boy from her years in Gary, who lived two blocks away from their old house. He was an adopted Korean child, squat and strong. He loved Mary and had played with her growing up. As they got older, he was one of the few boys who didn’t make fun of her retardation.

Mary saw him, too. “Charlie! Charlie!”

Charlie veered across the highway. His wide backside hung over the bike’s banana seat. He yanked back on the handlebars, hiking the front wheel off the road, showing off the way boys do. Mary squealed with delight. Donna heard the skid of rubber as Charlie braked hard. The bike slowed, and tread burned off onto the highway in a black streak.

Through the screech of the tire, she also heard rocks scraping on the ground. Loose gravel.

Her breath caught in her chest before she could shout a warning. The bike’s front tire rose higher, like a whale breaching, and the back tire spilled out underneath it. In the next instant, it was airborne. Charlie flew, too. The bike bounced, clanged, and made circles as it crashed on the pavement, its spokes spinning like tops. Charlie’s hands and legs stretched out in an X in midair. He soared and snapped down headfirst, bone on asphalt, and even fifty yards away, the sound popped through the brittle air like a firecracker.

He lay still in the middle of the highway.

“Charlie!” Mary wailed.

Donna bolted upright. She stood, paralyzed, her face swinging back and forth between Charlie and Mary. Her instinct was to run and help, but her instinct was also never to leave her daughter alone. She bent down and grabbed Mary’s face between her hands and spoke softly but firmly. “Mary, you sit right here. Do not move, okay? Do not move. Sit right here. Please, baby, I need you to understand. Show me you understand.”

Mary’s eyes were filled with confusion and glassy tears. She didn’t move.

“That’s good, baby, you sit right there, you don’t move.”

Donna sprinted for the highway, fumbling with her cell phone and punching the numbers 911 as she ran. Her work clothes felt clumsy. Her blouse came untucked from her skirt. She lost her balance as her high heels tripped her up, and she swore and kicked them off. Rocks chewed at her nylons and cut her feet. When she reached Charlie, she murmured a prayer as she watched the bloodstain spreading like a cancer under the boy’s head. She craned her neck to stare up and down the highway, which was dark now in the deepening twilight. There were no cars approaching from either direction. She spotted a silver RAV4 parked on the shoulder a quarter mile to the north, but she didn’t see anyone inside. She was alone.

Donna saw Mary. Still on the bench. Her thumb in her mouth.

She heard the 911 operator in her ear and was relieved to hear another person’s voice. She took a breath and swallowed down her panic. She tried to remember exactly where she was, but the names of the streets and towns didn’t come. For an instant, she could have been anywhere on earth. Then the location burbled out of her brain, and she stuttered, trying to relay it. The operator was annoyingly calm, asking her the same questions over and over, making Donna repeat herself.

“I need help!” she insisted. “Get me some help!”

The operator finally told her what she wanted to hear. The police were on their way. An ambulance was on its way. Everyone was coming. Stay with him.

Donna heard moaning at her feet. Charlie was waking up, trying to move his limbs.

“No, no, stay still,” she murmured. She didn’t know if he heard her. She got on her knees on the highway and took his hand. It was limp. He didn’t squeeze back. “Stay still.”

His eyes were closed. He tried to turn his head, and she put her lips next to his ear. Her hand was in his blood. “Don’t move. Stay right there, Charlie. Help’s coming.”

She listened for the sirens. Where were they? She took another glance up and down the highway, looking for headlights, afraid that the cars wouldn’t see her and Charlie in the gloom until it was too late to steer around them.

Her cell phone rang. She answered it with sticky fingers and heard Clark’s voice.

“Where the hell are you? This is so damn unfair, Donna.”

Words spilled out of her mouth. She couldn’t slow them down. “Clark, get down here, get down here now!”

“What’s going on? Is it Mary?”

“Just come now, I’m on the highway south of town. Come right now!”

God bless him, he didn’t ask any more questions. The phone was dead. He was already gone and on his way. When you needed him, Clark always came through. That was why she had loved him for so long.

All she had to do was wait. Wait for the sirens. Wait for Clark.

Donna turned over. Crouching on the ground, she couldn’t see the bench by the river where Mary was sitting. She didn’t want to call Mary’s name and risk her wandering into the road. She laid Charlie’s hand on the pavement. “I’m still here,” she told him.

Donna stood up.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed.

The wooden bench was empty in the shadows. She didn’t see Mary anywhere. Donna tore at her hair. Blood smeared on her face. She looked everywhere, at her car, at the trees, at the path that disappeared up the river bank. “Mary! Mary!”

She screamed over and over, but she didn’t see her beautiful girl.

“Oh, God, someone help me! Help! Mary!”

A baby rabbit no bigger than Mary’s fist poked its nose out of the goldenrod and hopped into the middle of the dirt trail. Mary wanted to hold it so she could feel better. She had held a rabbit before, and its fur was soft on her fingers and its warm little body made her happy. She got up and crept toward the path, laying each foot down softly and quietly. The rabbit watched her come. Its big dark eyes blinked at her. Its nose smelled her. The animal took two more hops, turning its white puffball tail toward Mary. They began a little dance, Mary taking a step, the rabbit taking a hop, as if they were playing with each other.

“Bunny,” Mary cooed. “Here, bunny.”

She followed it up the trail. She looked down at her feet, not at the trees or the river, and not at the highway, which soon disappeared from view behind her. She didn’t notice it was getting dark. The bunny led her away, a hop at a time, and when it finally shot north on the trail and disappeared, Mary ran, trying to catch it. She called out for the bunny in a murmur and hunted in the brush. It was gone, but when she jumped into a patch of wildflowers, she flushed another butterfly, which floated just out of her reach. She forgot about the rabbit and followed the butterfly instead.

She forgot about Charlie, too. And Mama. She didn’t think about being alone, because the butterfly was with her. It wasn’t until the butterfly soared off into the treetops that Mary stopped and looked around her and realized that no one was close to her anymore. It was nearly dark inside the trees. She could see the river down the bank below her, but the dancing dots of sunlight were gone, and the water looked black. Mary stood in the middle of the trail, not knowing what to do. She bit her lip and blinked. Tears dripped down her cheeks.

“Mama?”

She didn’t dare speak loudly. She didn’t know who would hear her. She wished the bunny would come back. Somewhere below her, awfully far away, she thought she heard Mama’s voice. Mary didn’t know how to find her, and she was afraid that Mama would be angry at her for running away. She had done that before, and Mama always got upset, although she hugged her hard.

Mary wanted a hug right now.

She heard noises in the woods. Her eyes grew wide. She hoped it would be Mama, or Charlie, or Daddy, and that they had come to get her and take her home. She took a step backward and laced her fingers together over her stomach. It was hard to see anything at all now, just shadows that were like the night outside her bedroom window. She looked up, wanting to see the sky, but the branches drooped like arms over her head, and she didn’t like it at all. The noises got louder. She cried harder and whimpered.

“I’m sorry.”

The trees moved. They were alive. Mary saw a man climb out of the trees, not even ten feet away from her. He reached out his hands toward her the way a monster would, but it wasn’t Charlie, or Daddy; he was a stranger, and she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t scream, because she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers. Not at all. Not ever.

She didn’t want to look at him. She thought if she closed her eyes, he would go away, like a bad dream. But when she did, and she opened them to slits, he was still there, and he was coming closer. When he was close enough that she could see his face, her mouth fell open in a terrible O, because this man was worse than a stranger.

He was the man outside her window.

The man who scared her.

“Him him him him him him him!”

He said something to her. He moved toward her, his grasping arms outstretched.

“No no no no no!”

Mary ran, falling as she did, then getting up and crying. She didn’t look behind her. She never wanted to see the man again, never wanted to see his face, never wanted to feel him watching her, never wanted to find him outside her window. She wanted Mama and Daddy to make him go away. She wanted to wake up and be in her bed.

She couldn’t see anything in front of her as she ran. She didn’t know where she was. She knew only that the world was going down, that the branches and brush grabbed at her like the hands of monsters, that she heard animals breathing and snorting.

The ground under her feet became a dark pool of quicksand.

Water.

She was in water. She was in the river.

Then there was no ground under her feet at all, and she was sinking.

16

Stride slid open a small cubbyhole inside the cabinet of his desk. The drawer was empty except for a photograph, which Stride removed and held at the corner between his thumb and forefinger. The picture was more than ten years old. It showed two men, dressed in suits, standing in front of a brick fireplace at the Kitch, which was the private club where the movers and shakers of Duluth sipped martinis, ate red meat, and decided the city’s future. Stride was the man on the left. Next to him was Ray Wallace, with an arm around Stride’s shoulder and a smile as big as the lake. It was the night Stride had been named to lead the city’s Detective Bureau. Ray was the police chief.

He could see paternal pride in Ray’s eyes. There was nothing fake about that glow. Ray had guided every step of his career from his earliest days on the police force. That night at the Kitch, Ray told him that the only thing that would ever make him happier was the day he could hand the keys to the chief’s office to Stride as he retired.

Two years later, Ray drilled a bullet through Stride’s shoulder.

He used the same long-barreled revolver he had kept in pristine condition since his own days as a detective, the same gun he had used to hunt Dada. While Stride watched, bleeding, from the floor of Ray’s cabin, Ray took that revolver, put the barrel in his mouth under his droopy red mustache, and blew out most of his brain through the back of his skull.

Looking back, Stride knew he should have seen the signs. He could see them in the photograph as he stared at it. Ray was heavy. His cheeks were florid from the four scotches he drank at dinner. Age wore on him. He had trappings of wealth he never should have had, like the watch on his hand, the bottle of champagne at dinner, the spring vacation to Aruba, and the pearls around his young wife’s neck. Back then, Stride had never wanted to see the signs. He had refused to allow them into his mind, until a whistle-blower from Stanhope Industries laid out all the papers for him at a Twin Cities hotel, and Stride could see twenty years of bribery and corruption with only one name to explain it all away. Ray.

Stride hired a forensic accountant who followed the paper trail to Ray and to a handful of senior executives at Stanhope. The mayor and county attorney would have been content to let Ray resign and slip away quietly, but the media got their teeth in the story, and Ray was staring not only at disgrace and bankruptcy but at jail time, too. When Ray’s wife called Stride from their cabin near Ely, Ray was threatening to kill all of them. His wife. Their two kids. Stride went up there alone, wanting to talk Ray out of it, man to man, detective to chief. He thought he had a chance of making it all end peacefully when Ray let his wife and kids walk safely out the door. He only realized later that this was between himself and Ray, that Stride’s betrayal was like a son taking down a father. Ray wanted Stride to be there when he killed himself.

“You don’t still blame yourself, do you?”

Stride saw Maggie in the doorway of his office. The rest of the Detective Bureau was dark behind her; it was after midnight. She strolled inside and sat down sideways in the upholstered chair he kept in the corner. Her short legs dangled off the ground. She had a can of Diet Coke in one hand.

“I’ve been down that road too many times,” Stride said. “There’s nothing I would have done differently.”

Maggie and Cindy had been the two people in his life who helped him climb out of a well of depression after Ray died. Without Maggie, he doubted that he would have gone back on the job after his shoulder healed. He had been ready to quit, but Maggie had nagged him about open cases until he realized that he still loved being a cop, with or without Ray.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Stride said.

“What’s that?”

“I still wonder why Ray never tried to corrupt me. He was on the take all those years, but he never once asked me to cut a corner for him. He never asked for my help.”

“He knew you’d say no,” Maggie said.

“Do you think so? If Ray came to me when I was a young cop and asked me to look the other way on something, do you think I wouldn’t have done it? No way I would have said no to him.”

“Maybe that’s the point, boss.”

“What?”

“You were the one thing Ray was really proud of,” Maggie told him. “He wasn’t going to mess you up the way he was messed up. He didn’t want you to wind up like him.”

Stride laid the photo down on his desk. “Maybe you’re right.” He looked up at her and added, “Why are you here so late?”

“I saw your light.”

“Any more news on the adoption front?”

“Not yet. I still can’t make up my mind.”

“You know what I think. You’re a natural.”

Maggie shrugged and didn’t say anything more.

“Were you on the scene in Fond du Lac?” he asked.

Maggie took a long swallow from her can of soda. She draped her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Yeah.”

“Did the girl make it?”

“No. She was dead when they pulled her out of the water.”

“How about the boy? The one on the bicycle?”

“Lucky. His vitals are good. The docs think he’ll pull through.”

“How are the girl’s parents?”

Maggie shook her head. “They’re both wrecks. Mary was everything to them. Taking care of her destroyed their marriage, but they lived and breathed for that girl.”

“I hope the mother doesn’t blame herself for leaving the girl alone,” Stride said. “It was a terrible accident. There was nothing she could have done.”

“I’m not so sure it was an accident.”

Stride balanced his elbows on his desk. “What do you mean?”

“Donna Biggs thinks the peeper was there. She thinks that’s what spooked Mary and made her run. When she went into the water, he took off.”

“Is there anything to back it up?”

“Donna swears she saw a car parked just up the hill from where she was. She says it was a silver RAV4, which tracks with the reports of a mini-SUV near several of the peeping scenes. No one got plates, of course.”

“That’s not much.”

“Donna also saw a man get into the RAV when she was running up the trail after she heard Mary scream.”

“Can she recognize him?”

“No.”

“Is there any physical evidence?”

“We’ll be searching the woods between the trail and the spot where the car was parked.”

“I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but even if you find this guy, it’s going to be a tough road to prove he was responsible for Mary’s death.”

“If he tried to grab her, and she wound up dead as a result of his actions, we can make a manslaughter case out of that.”

“I know, but with what evidence?” Stride asked.

“The peeping history with the girl. The car. Any physical evidence we can find. Mary’s scream. Hell, who knows what souvenirs this guy kept? Maybe when we find him, he’ll have pictures. If I can put a few of the pieces together, Pat Burns can make a jury see the light.”

“You sound like this case is personal,” Stride said.

Maggie nodded. “I saw the girl when she was sleeping at her house. She was sweet. I told her father he didn’t have anything to worry about, and now the girl winds up dead. We were staking out Clark’s house and Donna’s apartment, but it looks like he outsmarted us. Donna says she stopped at this park every Friday night before she dropped Mary off at her ex-husband’s place. He must have been following them.”

“Or the mother is wrong.”

“I don’t think she is.”

Stride trusted Maggie’s instincts. “Go with your gut,” he said.

He picked up the photograph from his desk and studied it again. He was having a hard time shrugging off the past. “You know, I’ve always believed that Ray’s death was one more ripple effect from Laura’s murder,” he said.

“How so?”

“I think the connection between Ray and Randall Stanhope started back then,” he told her. “That’s when Ray got corrupted.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No? After we interviewed Peter, Randall asked Ray to stay behind. Then Ray came out a while later, and the two of us went after Dada. It wasn’t until years later that I realized what must have happened.”

“You think Ray and Randall did a deal,” Maggie concluded.

Stride nodded. “Exactly. Ray didn’t go there with me to catch Dada. He went there to kill him.”

It was twilight. Ray drove onto the gravel shoulder within sight of the Arrowhead Bridge. The twin spans of highway jutted like wings at the arch, leaving the passage open for one of the rust red ore boats arriving from the Soo. The water was black and windswept. The two of them got out of Ray’s Camaro and leaned against the hood near the front bumper. Cool drops of rain burst on the windshield. Ashen clouds massed overhead, inching from the high hills toward the lake.

Ray slapped his pack of cigarettes and offered one to Stride, who took it. He coughed when the smoke hit his lungs. Ray smiled at him. The breeze rustled his red hair.

“So this is the area where you saw Dada?”

“Yeah.”

“Rough area for a kid to be walking around. You should think twice about coming down here by yourself, you know?”

“I’m all right.”

Ray gestured down the railroad tracks. “You know those guys?”

About a hundred yards away, Stride saw two twenty-something men in jeans, with no shirts, swigging beer and strolling across the muddy ground, kicking at stalks of wild wheat. Pyramids of taconite and stripped tree trunks rose around the tracks like mountains. One of the men finished his bottle of beer and laid it sideways on the track. When the next train came, it would shear the bottle in two.Stride had come across bottle halves all over this area. Some of the men used the bottoms as soup bowls.

“No, I’ve never seen them.”

Ray stubbed out his cigarette on the ground. “I’m going to talk to them.”

“Let me come with you,” Stride said.

“I’m sorry, Jon. If things get ugly, I can’t have a teenager in the midst of it.”

“Except I know the area.”

“I know you do. Right now, though, I need you to let me handle this myself. Okay?”

Stride shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I’ll hang out here.”

“Good.”

Ray hitched up his pants and set out along the dirt road toward the tracks. Stride climbed onto the hood of the car and watched him go. Ray got within fifty yards of the two men before one of them looked back and spotted him. They both took off. Ray cursed loudly and chased them, but with his limp, he couldn’t run fast or far. The two men cleared a shallow hill and disappeared from sight. It was five minutes before Ray crested the same hill and was gone.

Stride was alone. He felt the ground vibrate with the rumbling thunder of a train gathering speed out of the rail yard. A snake of red and green train cars, littered with graffiti and overflowing with iron ore, shuddered along the parallel tracks, growing closer. Stride slid down the roof of the car and crossed the asphalt highway. On the other side, a shallow slope led to a cluster of oak trees where a creek twisted lazily toward the harbor water. Stride skittered down the hill and hiked to the tracks. He waited for the train engine, which followed the coast of the water as it headed south. The train was long. Dozens of cars shouldered by him. He smelled ore dust, which was as tarry as a cigarette in his lungs. The cars banged, hummed, shimmied, and jolted.

It took ten minutes for the entire train to pass. When the caboose wiggled past him, the giant noise diminished, getting farther away. He watched it go. He realized his skin was damp with rain.

“Who’s your friend?”

Stride jumped. He spun around and found Dada behind him. A dead oak tree loomed behind the black man, and its spindly branches seemed to grow out of his head. Dada dwarfed him, and Stride wasn’t small.

“Is he a cop?”

Dada was six inches away, and Stride wanted to back up, but he didn’t. Thisclose, he could see that Dada was young. Maybe twenty. He wasn’t wearing his colorful beret. His ropes of matted hair sprouted off a high forehead and dangled like wriggling worms to his chest. The whites of his eyes were stark against his dark skin. He had arched, devil-like eyebrows.

“I said, is he a cop?”

Dada’s voice was surprisingly smooth, almost hypnotic.

“Yes,” Stride said.

“Is this about that girl?”

“Yes.”

“They think I killed her?”

“They want to talk to you,” Stride said.

Dada swung a dented canteen by the silver chain on its cap, and then he lifted it to his lips and took a swallow. He wiped his scraggly beard.

“Talk? A white girl gets killed, and a black man is seen with her, and all the police want to do is talk?”

Rain fell harder around them. Water beaded on Dada’s head and face. Stride heard the drops slapping on the earth.

“Did you do it?” Stride asked.

“What do you think?”

Stride stared at him. “No, I don’t think you did.”

“Then get out of my way. There’s another train coming. It’s time for me to go somewhere else.”

“I can’t do that,” Stride said.

He felt the ground shake again with the earthquake of a train getting closer. Every minute, another long dragon left the harbor.

“You’re brave to stand there, but you’re a fool if you think you can stop me.”

“Just talk to him,” Stride said. “Tell him what you saw. Without you, they’re never going to solve this case.”

“Did you know the girl?”

“She was my girlfriend’s sister.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

A train whistle screamed. The rain sheeted down and dripped from Stride’s eyelashes.

“That girl had secrets,” Dada said.

He laid a paw on Stride’s shoulder and shoved him effortlessly aside. A trainengine growled by behind them, dragging rusted gray boxcars. The grinding of steel wheels on the track unleashed an awful squeal. Stride had seen baby pigs castrated. It sounded like that.

He threw himself at Dada, but it was like tackling a tree trunk. Dada angled an elbow sharply into Stride’s chest and jabbed once, like a single blow from a hammer. The air fled Stride’s lungs. He was knocked backward onto his ass and sat in the mud, struggling to breathe. Dada was steps away from the shuddering train cars. Stride scrambled to his feet and dived again, aiming low. He launched his upper body against the black man’s ankle. Dada’s foot scraped across the wet ground, and then he toppled and fell. The canteen spilled from his hand and rolled.

“Tell me!” Stride shouted.

Their skin was streaked in mud. The train cars clattered past them only ten feet away, deafening and huge. Stride clawed for a hold on Dada’s wrist, but Dada climbed to his feet, carrying Stride with him. Stride chopped at the man’s neck. The blow did nothing. Dada shooed him away like a fly, pushing him backward, but Stride charged again and hung on, hammering the man’s kidneys with his right fist. Dada’s knotted muscles were like a punching bag, absorbing the blows.

“Stupid boy,” Dada said.

He hit Stride across the mouth. His silver ring sliced Stride’s face. The punch felt like a metal shovel swung into his teeth. Stride staggered two steps and crumpled backward into the weeds. He coughed and tasted blood. When he bit down, his jaw didn’t align, and one of his molars dangled as if held by a thread. He wanted to get up, but his eyes sent his brain jumbled images of what was in front of him. Pain throbbed and beat against his skull.

He heard something. A crack. A sharp metallic ping.

A voice.

“Stop!”

It was Ray. He was shooting.

Stride struggled to all fours. His mouth hung open, blood trailing from both sides of his lips like a vampire. He shook his head, trying to rearrange his blurred vision. When the picture cleared, he saw Dada sprinting for the train as it accelerated. On the highway, near the Camaro, Ray held his revolver in both hands and fired again.

The bullet ricocheted off one of the boxcars.

Dada grabbed the rung of a steel ladder and swung his big leg gracefully onto the bottom step. The last few cars in the huge centipede wriggled past. Stride saw Ray limping, trying to run, failing. The train left them both behind. Dada shrank in his eyes, lost in the growing darkness, vanishing, escaping.

Stride crawled a few inches, felt the world spin again, and then passed out.

“Well, you are just so cool,” Maggie told Stride with a smile.

“It wasn’t my finest moment,” he admitted.

“How did Ray feel about Dada getting away?”

“In retrospect, I think he was relieved. He knew that Dada was long gone once he got on that train. We were never going to see him again. Everyone got what they wanted. Ray. Laura’s dad. Peter Stanhope and his father. They could all believe that we knew who killed Laura, and he had left town for good. It could all go away, go underground. And that’s what happened.”

“But did Dada kill Laura?” Maggie asked.

“Ray had the lab check Dada’s canteen for fingerprints, and they compared them with Peter’s bat. There was a match. Dada had his hands on that bat, which tracked with Peter’s story. There weren’t any other witnesses.”

“That was enough for Ray?”

“That was enough for everyone. Even me. Until now.”

WHO KILLED LAURA STARR?

SEVENTEEN

I never believed the story about Dada. I couldn’t say anything, though. My dad needed closure, not an open wound. The police wouldn’t listen. They barely pretended to search for Dada around the country, because no one really wanted to find him. If he came back, questions would be asked, and the answers were better off buried with the body.

It’s easy to believe in evil. Easy to spot it. The black devil came to town, and he picked one girl to sacrifice, and then he rode the dirty train back to the wilderness. That’s the kind of fable they used to tell us in church. People around here like to think that good and evil are as easy as black and white. Good people wear the cross. Bad people don’t. Bad people are strangers. It’s so much harder to accept that evil could be living among you. Your neighbor. Your teacher. Your friend.

The stalker? No one wanted to know about him. Dada wasn’t the one on the school grounds, slipping vile notes into Laura’s locker. He wasn’t mailing threats to her. It didn’t matter. If Dada killed her, why look for a stalker? If Dada killed her, the city was safe again. Parents could stop holding their breath. Kids could make out in the park. That’s what we all wanted.

So I let it go, even though I knew it was a lie. Even though I knew there was a killer among us. I didn’t know his face, but I was sure I knew who he was.

Someday I hoped the truth would come out, but that wasn’t up to me.

Jonny took it hard. He felt as if he had let me down. He took the blame on himself; he had let Dada escape. The doctors worked on his jaw, but his face always looked imperfect after that, slightly flawed. I liked it. It made him human. He looked older, too. Tougher. Like the scar on his face from Dada’s ring was a reminder that you could fight and lose, but you could never win if you didn’t fight at all. I began to see the man I would live with. Love. Marry.

The strange thing is, I knew he was going to be a cop before he did. The experience with Laura, Peter, and Dada changed him. So did Ray. I never told him that I didn’t trust Ray, not ever, not for a minute. But Jonny had found someone’s footsteps to follow, the way he once expected to follow his father’s path. I always thought he would be a better cop than Ray, because Ray was in it for himself. Jonny was different. He was in it because something had been taken from him that year, and this was a way to get it back.

Not that he ever would. When you lose some things, they’re gone for good.

Life goes on, for better or worse, but sometimes in the silence, your mind travels back. I never really got past that summer. We never talked about it again, but I carried it with me every day. I knew he did, too.

I never went back to the park. To the lake. I didn’t want to be reminded. Even so, there would be days when I drove along the highway that skirted the wilderness refuge, and I would stare down into the nest of trees, and I would be seventeen again. In my bare feet. The baseball bat in my hands.

If only I could tell Jonny the truth about what happened that night.