In the Dark aka The Watcher

28

Serena spotted Peter Stanhope in the corner of the main room at Black Woods. His table overlooked the calm lake waters through floor-to-ceiling windows. It was one o’clock, and the restaurant was crowded with the lunch rush. Peter drank a glass of red wine and checked e-mail on his BlackBerry with his other hand as she took a seat opposite him. She stared at his lower lip, which was swollen and purple.

He followed her gaze and shrugged. “Tish.”

“I heard.”

“It was my own fault,” Peter said. He used his fork to separate a flaky piece of white fish, which he chewed gingerly. “Even so, I never expected her to do something so crazy.”

“Not necessarily crazy,” Serena said.

Peter cocked his head with suspicion. “What do you mean by that?”

Serena said nothing. Peter thought about it, and then he glanced around the restaurant and lowered his voice. “This is about DNA? What the hell would Tish Verdure want with a sample of my DNA?”

“What do you think?”

Peter shook his head, as if scolding himself. “That was stupid of me. I didn’t know that Stride had any forensic evidence in Laura’s murder.”

“You mean you thought Ray Wallace made it all disappear?”

“I don’t like your tone, Serena. Not from someone who works for me. What sort of evidence do they have?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Peter frowned. “I could file a motion to stop the police from running any tests.”

“You could, but then it’s all out in the open. In the press. People will wonder what you’re trying to hide.”

“I already told you that I didn’t kill Laura.”

“Then you have nothing to fear.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

Serena waited. Peter waved the waitress away from the table. He scowled and leaned back, folding his arms. “What did George Bush say? When I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid.”

“You sent Laura those stalking letters,” Serena concluded. “Didn’t you?”

“Okay, yes. You’re right.”

“Why?”

“Why? I went out with Laura, and she shut me down. I thought she was playing games, stringing me along. I was pissed off. So I started sending her those notes. It was a joke.”

“I saw one of the notes. This was no joke.”

“Give me a break, I was seventeen years old.”

“Don’t make excuses, Peter. You were terrorizing this girl.”

“Call it whatever you want. I didn’t kill her.”

“This isn’t just about sending ugly letters, is it? Finn was telling the truth. You attacked Laura that night in the softball field.”

Peter met Serena’s eyes. “I didn’t attack her. I went back to the field that night to get my baseball bat. I bumped into Laura coming out of the woods. Yes, I tried to kiss her, and yes, I may have pushed things too far. I thought she was playing hard to get. That’s all it was.”

“It sounds like rape to me,” Serena told him.

“I am not a rapist.”

“Yeah, rich boys never are.”

Peter’s face screwed up in anger. “I could have lied to you, and I didn’t.”

“Really? What choice do you have? You’ve painted yourself into a corner. You already told the police that you and Laura were making out in the field. You admitted the two of you were together that night.”

“The smart thing for me would be to say nothing at all. That’s what the lawyer in me says I should do.”

“Well, you’ve already started talking, so keep going. What happened after you accosted Laura?”

“The black guy broke it up. Knocked me out cold.”

“What happened after you woke up?”

“Laura was gone. So was the black guy. I had a splitting headache. I went home.”

“What about your bat?”

“I forgot all about it.”

“Was it still in the field?”

“I have no idea if it was or wasn’t. I didn’t look around for it. I didn’t even think about the bat. I just wanted to get out of there.”

“What else can you tell me about that night?”

“That’s it.”

“You don’t know what happened to Laura?”

“I don’t. As far as I know, the black guy killed her. That’s what I’ve thought all these years.”

“Did you see Finn Mathisen that night?”

“No.”

Serena shook her head. “As a cop, I wouldn’t believe your story, Peter. You were stalking Laura. You were obsessed with her. You attacked her the night she was killed. And then you just walked away? And someone else went after her with your bat? You must think I’m a sucker.”

“Serena, I was no angel back then, but killing a girl? Not me.”

Serena got up from the table. “I think we’re done here.”

“That sounds like you’re walking away from me. From the job.”

“I am.”

Peter reached into his wallet and dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the table. “Let me walk you out. I have something in my car that may change your mind. Call it a token of good faith.”

“What is it?”

“I have to show you.”

Serena shrugged and acquiesced. The two of them left the restaurant. In the parking lot, he pointed at a black Lexus near the rear of the lot. “That’s me.”

He took her arm as they walked.

“I heard about Finn’s suicide attempt last week,” Peter said. “Is he going to make it?”

“Assuming he doesn’t try again.”

“Finn should be Stride’s prime suspect, not me,” Peter said. “He admitted being in the park that night and following Laura. Now he tries to kill himself when he’s questioned.”

“Finn’s a suspect, but you just put yourself back in the game because of those letters.”

“There’s no game. Legally I don’t have any concerns about what’s going on. Pat Burns knows that. I’m sure Stride knows it, too. There are chain of custody issues, evidence issues, witness issues. No one’s ever going to charge me with a crime.”

“So what do you need me for?” Serena asked.

“My public persona is important to me. If this gets out in the press, and if suspicion continues to swirl around me, it will be extremely unpleasant for me and my business.”

They arrived at his Lexus. Peter ran his hand over the smooth finish.

“I don’t know who killed Laura,” he continued, “but if the media and the police are going to sink their teeth into anyone, I want it to be Finn. I want you to dig up everything you can about him. Find out about his background. Prove he’s the kind of man who could kill a young girl. You’re a detective. Investigate the suspect.”

“That’s Stride’s job,” Serena said.

“I’m not telling you to keep secrets from him. Whatever you find, you can share with Stride. But his hands are tied by police procedure and other cases. He also has Tish whispering in his ear that I’m guilty. I want someone on the playing field who’s working for me.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“I’m not asking you to trust me. If you find evidence that points to me, so be it. But you won’t, because I didn’t do it. Look, I know what kind of woman you are, Serena. Once a cop, always a cop. You want to be in on this investigation, and I’m offering you the chance to dive into it. And get paid handsomely for your time.”

Serena wanted to say no, but Peter was right.

“Why Finn?” she asked. “Why not ask me to take a look at the black guy? Dada?”

“Lawyers look for weaknesses. Finn’s the weak link.”

“In other words, you’d prefer that Dada remains a mystery.”

“Anyone who’s a suspect in this case wants Dada to stay a mystery,” Peter admitted. “He’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. As long as no one knows where he is, no one can prove beyond a reasonable doubt who really killed Laura.”

Serena shook her head. “I’d make a lousy defense lawyer. I’d always be wondering if my client was guilty.”

“Sometimes you don’t want to know.”

“I do. I want to know.”

Peter unlocked the trunk of the Lexus. “I told you I was going to take a leap of faith. This is how much I want you to believe me.” He reached inside the trunk and extracted a narrow box, about four feet long and six inches wide. The tape holding it closed was crusted and yellow. Serena saw a single word written on the box in black marker.

DESTROY.

“What is this?” she asked.

Peter handed her the box. It was solid and heavy.

“You were right about Ray Wallace,” he said. “He conspired with my father to steer the case away from me. Randall wanted Ray to put it all on Dada.”

“What did Ray do?”

“He dropped the case. Later, he arranged for some of the key pieces of evidence to vanish from the police file. I think Randall figured someone might try to open up the case again someday, and he wanted a guarantee. So Ray destroyed most of the physical evidence. But not this. Randall insisted on keeping this himself. I think he knew it gave him leverage if Ray ever got a guilty conscience.”

“What is it?” Serena asked again.

“It’s the murder weapon,” Peter said. “It’s the baseball bat. The one that was used to kill Laura.”

29

The hospital ward was like a church, where every voice disturbed the silence. Even the noise of Stride’s heels echoing between the walls felt as loud as fireworks. The corridor was dim. Most of the patients were sleeping through the late evening hours. He stopped at the nurse’s station and was directed to a room near the end of the hallway.

He watched Finn Mathisen from the doorway but didn’t go inside. The man’s face, always pallid and yellow, looked like ash now. His eyes were closed. His forearms were bundled in white bandages up to his elbows. An intravenous line dripped fluid into the flesh of his right shoulder. He was stable now and almost ready to be discharged, but in Stride’s eyes, he still looked like death. People in hospital beds always did.

If Stride had not gone into that bathroom, or if he had arrived even five minutes later, Finn would already be dead. That didn’t stop him from feeling guilty that he and Maggie had hounded Finn with their questions until he chose to escape by attempting suicide.

The question was-escape from what? From the guilt of stalking Mary Biggs to her death? Or from the guilt of beating Laura to death?

Or both?

If Finn had succeeded, he would have taken the answers with him. Finn dying would have been exactly like Dada jumping on that train. The investigation would have shut down again, and suspicion would have landed like a bird of prey on Finn’s dead body. Rightly or wrongly.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Stride turned and found Rikke Mathisen behind him. She clutched a cup of hospital coffee in her hand, and steam curled out of the brown liquid. She was tall; they were almost eye to eye. Her face was hard with rage. She pushed past Stride into the hospital room and tugged the flimsy curtain, blocking Finn from Stride’s sight.

“I said, what are you doing here?” she hissed again.

“I wanted to check on Finn.”

Rikke pointed her finger like an arrow out of the room. At the end of the corridor was a small waiting area, with dreadful orange sofas, out-of-date family magazines, and an overhead thirteen-inch television suspended from the ceiling. No one was there. The television was off. Stride went to the tall window and looked out on the main street of Superior below him. Rikke followed. She wore an oversized sweatshirt and jeans.

“You are not to come near him,” she insisted. “You are not to talk to him. Is that clear? I’ve hired a lawyer. We are through with you, starting now.”

“How is Finn?”

“Alive,” she snapped.

“I hear he’s going home tomorrow. I’m glad he’s okay.”

“He’s not okay.”

“I’m sorry about what happened.”

Rikke’s eyes were two blue stones. “Spare me. You knew perfectly well what kind of a man Finn is. He’s an addict, for Christ’s sake. An alcoholic. You deliberately went and pushed him over the edge. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Stride said.

“You’ve put salve on your conscience by coming here, Lieutenant. Now go home. Get away from me and my brother.”

Rikke sat down, grabbed a dated copy of People, and flipped the pages savagely.

“You knew about Finn peeping teenage girls,” Stride said.

“I have nothing to say.”

“A girl died.”

“That’s not Finn’s fault.”

“I think you know it is. You destroyed evidence, didn’t you? Our search team said someone burned papers in Finn’s room. The hard drive of his computer was missing. If he’s mentally ill, you’re not helping him by covering up what he did.”

Rikke slapped the magazine shut. “Finn does not belong in prison. He belongs with me. I can take care of him.”

“You can’t control him,” Stride said. “Isn’t that obvious? He’ll start all over again when he gets home. We both know it. What if another girl dies? How will you feel then?”

“Finn would never hurt anyone.”

“No? What about Laura?”

“I told you, he wasn’t there that night. He had nothing to do with it. He was with me. At home.”

Stride shook his head. “Someone masturbated near Laura’s body. We still have the semen that was collected. If Finn was there, we’ll be able to prove it.”

“I’m not letting you take a DNA sample from him.”

“We don’t need one. Finn provided a large sample of his blood on the floor of the bathroom in the Detective Bureau.”

“You took his blood off the floor?” Rikke asked. “What kind of barbarian are you? A man is dying, and all you can think about is your investigation?”

“My concern is with the victims,” Stride said. “I’m going to test his DNA. We’re going to find out that Finn was at the murder scene that night.”

“I’ll talk to my lawyer. He’ll put a stop to this rape of Finn’s body. You’re disgusting, do you know that? You’re an animal. You don’t understand what Finn has been through in his life.”

Stride squatted in front of her. “Finn took the car that night, didn’t he? When he came home, he was covered in blood. I think you did exactly what you did a few days ago. You covered up for him. You protected him.”

“I think you should go,” Rikke announced. “I have nothing more to say.”

“Finn was in love with Laura. He was obsessed with her. That’s how this all started.”

“You don’t know anything,” Rikke told him. “You should just leave it alone. Believe me, Finn’s problems began long before Laura.”

Serena rang the doorbell and waited. The Honda Civic that Tish drove was parked in the driveway of the lakefront condominium. Masking tape surrounded the edge of the windshield where the glass had been replaced. Across the street, Serena saw a Duluth police officer watching her from an unmarked police vehicle. She waved. He knew her.

It was after ten o’clock, but there were lights on inside the apartment. When there was no answer, she rang the bell again. This time, she saw Tish through the window as she came to the door. She wore a men’s white shirt that draped to the middle of her thighs. Her legs were bare. Tish opened the door, and tobacco wafted from her breath and clothes into the hot night air. The smell of smoke was mixed with the tart aroma of gin. Tish leaned against the doorway and picked at strands of her blond hair.

“Serena Dial,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping we could talk.”

Tish gave a casual shrug of her shoulders. “Okay.”

She turned away and wandered toward the rear of her condo. Serena came inside, closing the door behind her. The condo was sparsely decorated, without artwork on the white walls or curtains on the windows. The cream carpet under her feet was deep and lush, but the rental furniture was utilitarian. Serena saw a glass dining room table that doubled as a desk, where Tish kept her laptop and research notes. The kitchen counter was clean except for an empty box from a Lean Cuisine TV dinner and two drained bottles of Schweppes tonic.

She followed Tish onto the balcony. Tish sat in a folding chair, with her legs propped on the slats of the wooden railing. She had a drink in her hand and a cigarette smoldering in an ashtray on the floor. Her shirt slipped up, revealing a triangle of white bikini panties. Serena leaned on the balcony, which looked out on the black expanse of the lake. There was almost no bluff below them, just sixty feet of air and then dark water. Everything was calm, without even a breath of wind to stir the heat around.

Tish flicked a mosquito off her forearm. “I read about you,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I read about that guy who came after you last winter. You almost died.”

“You’re right. So?”

“That must have been terrifying.”

“It was.”

“I don’t think I would have survived an experience like that.”

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Serena said.

“Sure, I understand.” Tish added, “You know, when I first met you, I didn’t like you. I’m not sure I would have liked anyone that Stride was with.”

“Why is that?”

“Loyalty to Cindy, I guess.”

“And now?” Serena asked.

“Now I see that there’s a lot more to you than I realized.”

“How often does a girl get a compliment like that?” Serena said wryly.

“I just mean that when people meet you, I guess they don’t always see past the face and the killer body.”

“This body has a couple more pounds on it than I’d like.”

“You don’t have to be modest. Anyway, I shouldn’t have prejudged you. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Serena said. “But I need to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“Stride and I have a lot in common. He may not show it the way I do, but we’re both damaged. Losing Cindy damaged him a lot.”

“I’m sure it did.”

“I don’t like seeing that pain dragged up for him again,” Serena said.

“You mean me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re honest.”

“What about you, Tish? Are you honest?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did you really know Cindy?” Serena asked. “Or are you making it up? Because as far as I can tell, there’s no evidence that you ever even met Cindy. So if you’re playing games with us, I’m telling you right now that I will make you regret it.”

“I did know her.”

“Then why did she never mention you to Jonny?”

“Even the most loyal of women has secrets.” Tish picked up her cigarette with two fingers. “Don’t you keep secrets about yourself?”

“Some,” Serena admitted.

“There you go.”

“If I keep a secret, there’s a reason for it. Did Cindy have a reason to hide her relationship with you?”

“Maybe I asked her to.”

“Why would you do that?”

Tish swirled the ice in her drink and then drained the rest of it. “You already told me there are places in your own past that you don’t like to visit. Is it so hard to accept that I feel the same way? I wasn’t ready to come back here and face my past. Cindy understood.”

“Are you ready to face your past now?”

“I’m here. It took me thirty years, but I’m here.”

“Did something happen back then between you and Peter Stanhope?” Serena asked. “Is that what you’re hiding?”

“No.”

“Then why are you convinced that he’s guilty?”

“You didn’t know Peter back then. I did.”

Serena shook her head. “If you were a cop, I’d say you’ve fallen in love with a suspect. Not love-love, not romance. It’s easy when you’re a cop to fixate on one suspect and wind up wearing blinders.”

“Maybe you’re the one wearing blinders,” Tish said.

“Peter didn’t try to commit suicide after being questioned about Laura’s murder,” Serena reminded her. “Finn did.”

“Finn was just a pathetic, mixed-up kid.”

“People like that are capable of anything,” Serena said. “Including murder.”

“If Laura thought Finn was violent, she wouldn’t have spent so much time with him.”

“Maybe she didn’t know. Did Laura tell you anything about Finn’s background?”

“She told me that something terrible happened to him back in Fargo, but I don’t know what. That was when Rikke swooped in and rescued him.”

“Finn was in love with Laura,” Serena said. “Love can be pretty twisted for someone like that. We know he was spying on Laura. He’s been spying on young girls his whole life.”

“You mean the peeping incidents?”

Serena nodded. “Stride and Maggie are certain that Finn is the peeper. He hounded one girl until she died.”

“That doesn’t mean he killed Laura,” Tish said.

“You know what made that girl special? She had a tattoo of a butterfly on her back. Just like Laura did. He’s still obsessed with her.”

Tish’s eyes opened wide. “Is that really true?”

“It’s true.”

Tish brought her bare feet down onto the balcony and cupped her hands in front of her face as if she were praying. Then she shook her head. “Peter is the one who attacked Laura,” she insisted. “Not Finn. You don’t know how vengeful Peter could be when he was rejected.”

“Are you talking about Laura or yourself?” Serena asked.

“Both of us.”

“Come on, Tish. What are you not telling me? What did he do to you?”

Tish’s lips bulged with defiance. “You mean other than pushing me into a closet at school and groping my tits and pawing my crotch? Peter was the kind of boy who took what he wanted even if you said no. He thought he was entitled. He hasn’t changed a bit.”

“I’m not trying to defend his behavior,” Serena said.

“That’s good, because he was nasty. Vicious.”

“How so?”

“After I said I didn’t want to go out with him, he spread rumors about me all over school.”

“What rumors?”

“He told people I was queer. That made me very uncomfortable.”

“I’m sure it did,” Serena said. “Teenagers are quick to believe that kind of lie.”

Tish watched the moths buzzing around the porch light and didn’t say anything. She sucked on her cigarette.

Suddenly, Serena understood. “Wait a minute, it wasn’t a lie, was it? He was right. You’re gay.”

Tish nodded slowly.

“Did you tell Peter?” Serena asked her.

“No, he had no idea it was true, but it scared me to death to have the rumor out there.”

“So you knew back then?”

“I knew.”

“Are you still in the closet?”

“I don’t hide it, but it’s not like I wear a T-shirt that says ‘pink and proud.’ ” Tish blew smoke out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable,” Serena said.

“It doesn’t, but you have no idea how ugly and hateful people get over homosexuality. The same people who tell me that Jesus loves me would stone me to death if they could.”

“Not everyone feels that way.”

“Enough do that I’m still careful about who I tell.”

“Is there someone in your life?”

Tish crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “Not anymore. I lived with Katja, a photographer I met in Tallinn, for five years. She was getting too close, so I ran away. It wasn’t the first time for me. Lesbian relationships crash and burn a lot. We get emotionally close, and then you put the physical attraction in the middle of it, and a lot of times, it flames out.”

“Did Laura know you were gay?” Serena asked.

Tish’s face glowed with dew from the humid air. “We didn’t talk about it.”

“Not even with your best friend?”

“You have to remember the times, Serena. It’s bad enough today, but being gay was dangerous back then. This was when Anita Bryant was on the rampage about homosexuals. You didn’t advertise being different. You kept the closet locked up tight.”

“What about Laura? Was she gay?”

“I told you, we didn’t talk about it.” Tish stood up, shutting down the conversation. “I think you should go.”

“If that’s what you want,” Serena said.

“I do.”

Serena stood up, too. “Can I ask you about something else?”

“What?”

“What happened to your mother?”

Tish folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes were angry. “If you’re asking a question like that, you must already know.”

“I heard she was shot. She was a hostage who died in a bank robbery.”

“That’s right. Why do you care?”

Serena wasn’t really sure why she cared, but it was a detective’s curiosity. “When someone’s life is touched by violence more than once, my instinct is to look for a connection.”

“There’s no connection,” Tish insisted. “The robbery has nothing to do with any of this. It was years before I even met Laura. My mother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“It must have been hard to be left alone at that age,” Serena said.

Tish shrugged. “It’s hard to be left alone at any age.”

30

Stride was stretched across the leather sofa in the great room of the cottage when Serena arrived home near midnight. He was sleeping, with a paperback novel still in his hand. One leg had fallen off the sofa, and his bare foot was on the carpet. Sara Evans sang on the stereo. Serena let him sleep while she undressed and got ready for bed. The windows were open, with the curtains blowing like sails, and the night air was humid and hot. She slept in a loose tank top in that kind of weather. Back in the living room, she turned down the lights, switched off Sara, and made herself a cup of pear tea, which she sipped in the love seat opposite Stride. Rose fragrance blew in from the bushes near the porch. Her eyes got lost in the shadows and felt heavy. When she put the teacup down, she leaned back into the folds of the sofa, and soon she, too, was dreaming.

In the mists of her brain, she was with Tish on a beach. A cool breeze kissed their bodies. She came upon Tish from behind, caressing the down of her neck. The bones of Tish’s spine traveled like the graceful arch of a harp into the small of her back. Her flesh was young and soft, and Serena felt no guilt, only freedom, as they began to make love. Later, after they were done, she found herself in water, floating, alone. It was paradise, except for a strange, rhythmic thumping that wormed into the stillness of her world and unnerved her. Like a drumbeat or a heartbeat. She felt herself coming naked out of the water, and what she saw was Jonny, covered in blood, swinging a baseball bat with a sucking thwack over and over into a body on the beach. Killing Tish.

Serena started awake, gasping for breath.

Jonny was awake, too, and staring at her. “You okay?”

She shook the sleep out of her head and blinked. “Yeah. What time is it?”

“Almost three.”

“I’m hungry,” Serena said.

“What would you like?”

Serena thought about her diet. “Forty-six eggs.”

“Do you want those scrambled or fried?”

“Don’t tease me. You think I’m kidding?”

Stride gestured at the narrow, heavy box she had left on the dining room table. “What’s that?”

“I picked up something of yours at the lost and found.”

His eyes narrowed with concern and curiosity.

“The bat,” she said simply.

He looked at her. “Stanhope?”

She nodded.

“That son of a bitch,” he said.

Serena knew he wasn’t talking about Peter Stanhope. He was talking about Ray Wallace. Ray, who had sabotaged a murder investigation for money and power. Ray, who had handed over the murder weapon to a man he suspected of committing the crime.

Stride went to the table. He didn’t touch the box immediately. Instead, he studied it closely, as if the cardboard, ink, and tape would talk to him. He bent down close to it, as if the smell of blood would still permeate the air. Then, using two fingers on each corner, he lifted it, measuring its heft.

“Peter called it a goodwill gesture,” Serena said. “He didn’t have to give it to me. He could have destroyed it.” She added, “He admitted that he was the one who sent those threatening letters to Laura.”

“He admitted it because we’ll find out anyway when we run the DNA, right?”

“Right.”

“Just when I’m convinced Finn is guilty, Peter elbows his way back onto the playing field,” Stride said.

“He says he’s innocent.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know, but I think it helps for me to stay close to him. He talks to me.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Nothing I can share right now, but nothing you wouldn’t guess anyway.”

“He assaulted Laura in the softball field,” Stride said. “There was no date, no affair.”

“No comment.”

Stride put the bat down. “Logically, everything points to Peter. She was killed with his bat, and he’s had the murder weapon for years. If it weren’t for Finn, I’d be certain that Peter killed her. Not that we’d be any closer to making a case.”

“Peter wants me to gather evidence against Finn,” Serena said.

“Are you going to do it?”

“I think so.”

“You may be helping the man who’s really guilty.”

“I know.”

“But you can’t resist the chase?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Rikke has shut Finn down,” Stride said. “She’s hired a lawyer. You can’t talk to her.”

“I’ve got a different angle,” Serena said.

“Oh?”

“I want to go to North Dakota tomorrow. I want to find out about Finn’s childhood. Tish said something terrible happened to him there. I’d like to find out what. Maybe that’s the missing link.”

“Take Maggie with you,” Stride suggested. “I’d like to have someone official on the trip.”

“You mean five hours each way arguing with Maggie about the radio station? We’ll kill each other.”

Stride laughed. “So take a private plane. Stanhope can afford it.”

“True.”

“We better get some sleep,” he said.

“To hell with sleep.”

Serena got up lazily from the love seat. She brushed her black hair back away from her face. Holding onto Stride’s shoulders, she straddled him on the sofa, with her knees on either side of his legs and her breasts near his lips. His hands slid behind her and cupped her buttocks through her panties. She put her hands on his face, bent her neck forward, and kissed him.

“I dreamed that you caught me sleeping with Tish and you beat her to death. You murdering bastard.”

“Tell me more,” he said.

“I don’t kiss and tell.”

“You’re a tease.”

“Do you find Tish attractive?” she asked him.

“Pretty, but not my type,” he said.

“Are you thinking about her or me right now?” she asked, pressing down with her hips.

“You.”

“Good answer.”

The phone rang.

“God hates me,” Serena said, rolling to her left and studying the caller ID screen on the receiver. “Private call.”

“Wrong number.”

“Ignore it?”

“No, better get it.”

She groaned and picked up the phone. “What?”

The male voice on the line was honey-smooth and deep as a foghorn. The caller asked for Stride. Serena punched the speakerphone button and held the phone to Jonny’s mouth as she climbed back on top of him and worked awkwardly on his clothes.

“Stride,” he said impatiently. “Who is this?”

“I’m a friend of a friend.”

“My friends don’t call at three in the morning,” Stride snapped.

“I’m sorry for the time.”

“What do you want?”

“Do you know a man named Hubert Jones?”

Stride looked at Serena, who stopped what she was doing long enough to shake her head. “No,” he said.

“He knows you.”

“Oh?”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Have him call me at the office in the morning. My secretary can schedule an appointment.”

“You’ll need to be on the road by then.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hubert Jones is flying into O’Hare Airport in Chicago at noon. From there, he has an afternoon flight to South Africa via London. He’ll be away in Johannesburg on an academic fellowship for nine months. If you want to talk to him, it has to be tomorrow. In Chicago.”

“Why would I drop everything to meet a man I don’t know?” Stride asked.

“Like I said, he knows you. Look him up, Mr. Stride. See what kind of a man he is. Then come to Chicago. And come alone, no other police, okay?”

“I’m hanging up,” Stride said. “If Mr. Jones wants to talk to me, he can call me at the office.”

“He said to give you a message,” the man interjected quickly.

“What is it?”

“He said to remind you that the girl had secrets.”

Stride didn’t reply. Serena felt his muscles tense and his arousal vanish. The silence stretched out.

“Are you still there, Mr. Stride?”

“Yes.”

“Does that message mean something to you?”

“You know it does.”

“Will you come to Chicago?”

Serena looked at Jonny, puzzled.

“I’ll be there,” Stride said. “Tell me when and where.”

The caller rattled off a meeting place at O’Hare, then hung up. Serena dropped the phone on the sofa and folded her arms over her chest.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Who the hell is Hubert Jones?”

“I don’t know, but I need to get to the office early to find out,” Stride said. “Then I’m heading to Minneapolis to grab a flight to Chicago.”

“To chase a stranger?”

“To chase Dada,” he said.

31

I don’t like small planes,” Maggie announced, strapping herself into the white leather seat of Peter Stanhope’s Learjet 25. She tightened the seat belt until it nearly cut off the blood flow across her tiny waist. “Does this thing have oxygen masks? I bet you have to use little nose plugs.”

“Relax,” Serena said. “Pretend you’re rich.”

“I am rich,” Maggie reminded her.

“So why don’t you own one of these things?”

“Because I don’t like small planes!”

Serena laughed. “Don’t be such a baby. This is better than driving.”

“The only reason we’re not driving is because you don’t want to argue with me about the radio station.”

“We still have to rent a car in Fargo,” Serena said. “Dibs on country.”

“I have my iPod with me. We can listen to my Bon Jovi collection.”

“I have my iPod, too. Martina.”

“Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

“Alan Jackson.”

“White Zombie.”

“Shania.”

“Oh, please,” Maggie scoffed. “I don’t listen to any singer with bigger tits than me.”

“Doesn’t that pretty much rule them all out?” Serena asked.

Maggie stuck out her tongue.

Serena leaned her arm on the glossy wooden shelf beside her seat and stared out the window as the jet lined up on the Duluth runway. Beside her, Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and dug her fingernails into the armrest. The plane accelerated with a roar and lifted at a sharp angle into the breezy air. The climb was bumpy, with the jet’s wings waggling like a shimmy dancer. Serena had flown in and out of Las Vegas so many times, riding the rocky thermals of the desert mountains, that turbulence no longer bothered her.

The plane headed straight west. Below them, she saw miles of forest dotted with jagged lakes, like the black footprints of retreating glaciers. Towns were thinly spread across the northern half of Minnesota. So were the roads and highways. Time passed quickly as the jet streaked over the land, crossing just south of the giant fingers of Leech Lake. Without clouds, Serena could see straight down. As they neared the western section of the state, the forested wilderness gave way to lush squares of farmland, ranging in color from muddy taupe to deep green, jutting up against one another like stripes in a flag.

They never climbed high enough to escape the unsettled pockets of air.

“This sucks,” Maggie told her.

“We’ll be there soon.” Serena changed the subject. “What’s the word on adopting a kid?”

Maggie exhaled loudly through her nose. “No one is very encouraging. Single Chinese chick cops need not apply.”

“You won’t know until you try.”

Maggie peeled her fingers off the armrest long enough to push her black bangs out of her eyes. “It’s not just that. I’m not sure I’m up to the job of raising a kid by myself. I don’t know if it would be fair to a kid. Plus, this thing with Mary Biggs really shook me up. Her parents threw everything into that girl. I don’t know if I’m ready to love anyone that much. I’m not ready to risk what it would do to me if something happened.”

“You can ‘what if’ yourself out of anything,” Serena said.

“Yeah, I know. Do you and Stride ever talk about it?”

“I can’t have kids.”

“I mean adoption.”

“I think the window has closed,” Serena said. “I grew up knowing my insides were messed up, so I never really developed the kid gene. Jonny says he’s too old. I don’t see it happening.”

“Do you think you’re missing something?”

“Sometimes.”

“I feel like I’m missing something,” Maggie said.

“Then you should do it.”

The plane lurched as they descended into Fargo. On the ground, they rented a car and headed south out of the airport, past the university and through the straight, tree-lined neighborhood streets toward downtown. They parked near the main library, which was located within a block of the curvy ribbon of the Red River, which served as the border between North Dakota and Minnesota and separated Fargo from its Minnesota twin, the city of Moorhead.

Inside the library, Serena asked at the help desk for Fargo phone books from the early 1970s. Soon after, the librarian deposited a stack of AT &T directories at the desk where the two women were waiting. The books smelled faintly of mildew. Maggie grabbed the volume for 1972 and groaned when she turned to the M pages.

“There are dozens of Mathisens in here,” she said. “This place is like Little Norway.”

“Do we know the first names of Finn’s parents?” Serena asked.

“Ole and Lena?”

“Yah sure. Dat’s funny. God, I’m actually becoming a Minnesotan.” Serena peered over Maggie’s shoulder at the list. “Most of these people are probably dead or gone.”

“I’ll call the Wisconsin DMV,” Maggie said. “If we can get Finn’s birth date from his driver’s license, then we can look up his birth announcement in the local paper. That way we can get his parents’ names.”

“Clever.”

Maggie pulled out her cell phone and dialed the DMV number from her directory. “I’m on hold,” she said. She hummed for a moment and then added, “So Ole brings home a vibrator for Lena on her birthday. And Lena goes, Vat’s dis for? So Ole says, Vell, you stick dis between yer legs and use it to tickle your puddin’. And Lena goes, Oh, dat’s great, I already have somethin’ like dat. Is dis thing called Sven, too?”

“You are a sick woman,” Serena said.

“Too true. Hey, hello, I need you to look up a birth date for me.” She rattled off her Minnesota shield number and Finn’s name and address. A few seconds later, she scribbled a date on a piece of scratch paper. “Got it, thanks.”

Serena read what Maggie had written. “April 22, 1959. I’ll get the microfiche for the Fargo paper.”

Ten minutes later, they found a birth announcement for Finn Mathisen, sister to Rikke Mathisen, son of parents Nils and Inger. Nils was a feed corn farmer with a large plot of acreage west of the city. Maggie used her index finger to run down the list of Mathisens in the 1972 phone book.

“No Nils listed, but here’s Inger,” she said. “Same address.”

“I think the father died in a car accident when Finn was a kid.”

“So what are you thinking? We go out there?”

Serena nodded. “Right.”

“Who the hell is going to remember them after thirty-five years?”

“Farmers don’t leave home unless it’s feet first or to hand the keys to a banker,” Serena said. “Hopefully, a couple of Finn’s neighbors are still around.”

“Do you have any idea what we’re looking for?” Maggie asked.

“Not a clue, but I bet we’ll know it when we find it. Finn didn’t get screwed up in Duluth. Whatever happened to him, it started right here.”

Fargo was flat. The kind of flat where highways disappeared into the hazy horizon without so much as a bend or an overpass and where only the curve of the earth blocked a view as far as Montana. The kind of flat where Canada would suck in its breath and expel wind across the plains with nothing in the way to slow it down, rocketing walls of black dust, rain, and snow into the city in fierce clouds. The kind of flat where a trickling, muddy stream like the Red River could lazily swell over its banks and drown everything in its path, like a pitcher of water spilling across a table.

Serena and Maggie drove west out of Fargo, passing fields of high corn and sprawling lots of soybeans, barley, and rapeseed. Hot wind and sun beat against the windshield of their rental car. They left the windows open, and as a compromise, they kept the radio off. Every few miles, they passed a car on the two-lane highway, but otherwise, the land was open and lonely. Serena drove. Maggie had a map on her lap.

They turned south off the county road thirty miles outside the city, and three miles later, they turned again onto an unpaved road and kicked up a hurricane of dirt behind them. Half a mile farther, they parked opposite a well-maintained white farmhouse notched into a huge expanse of leafy fields, like a summer photo from a calendar of rural homes. A ten-year-old girl in a sunflower dress chased a Labrador retriever that barked wildly as it galloped toward them. The girl corralled the dog by its collar and gazed at the car and the two women with open curiosity as she pulled it back toward the house.

“This is where Finn grew up,” Serena said.

She guessed that the house and outbuildings would not have looked much different several decades earlier. There would still have been a dirty pickup truck parked in the grass. There would still have been muddy tractor ruts leading into the rows of crops. They climbed out of the car and began sweating in the sun. Serena wore blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and sneakers. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. Maggie wore black jeans, an untucked button-down black shirt, and black boots with steep heels.

“Who wears heels in farm country?” Serena asked.

Maggie pushed her sunglasses to the end of her nose. “Hello,” she said in a rumbling voice. “I’m Johnny Cash.”

They crossed the dirt road and trudged up the driveway. Gravel crunched under their feet. The young girl they had seen a few minutes ago pushed herself in a swing set in the middle of the lawn. They waved at her, and she stared back at them without smiling. They heard the dog barking inside the house. As they got closer, Serena smelled flowers and the sweet-tart aroma of apples baking.

A thin woman in a summer dress, with dark curly hair, opened the screen door and let it bang behind her. She strolled to the edge of the front porch, watching them. She picked brown leaves from a hanging basket of fuchsias.

“Afternoon,” she said, with mild suspicion in her voice. “Can I help you?”

They introduced themselves, and Maggie produced her identification. The woman relaxed, but her eyebrows arched with interest. “Minnesota?” she said. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Chasing wild geese,” Maggie said.

“We’re interested in a family that owned this house a long time ago,” Serena said. “Their name was Mathisen. This was back in the 1960s and 1970s.”

“Mathisen? Well, that’s a good North Dakota name. I’m Pamela, by the way. Pamela Anderson. And yes, don’t say it, I’ve heard the jokes. Imagine my horror ten years ago when I realized what my married name would be.” She laughed. “I got my husband a framed pinup of the other Pamela as a wedding present.”

“So you’ve only lived on this property for ten years?” Serena asked.

“Me? Yes, but my husband has been here since he was a boy. This was the family home. I didn’t even realize anyone had owned the place before his parents did.”

“How old is your husband?”

“Not old enough to help you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Pamela replied. “He was born in 1973. However, my mother-in-law lives with us. This was her house until her husband died, and then she deeded it to us. Of course, I have no idea whether she knew anything about the people who lived here before she did, but around here, everyone has a way of knowing everyone else’s business.” She smiled.

“May we talk to her?” Serena asked.

“Oh, of course, she’ll love it. She’s in a wheelchair now and mostly blind from diabetes. You’ll be the highlight of her day.”

Pamela led them inside. Serena heard George Strait crooning on the stereo, and she grinned at Maggie, who rolled her eyes. The Labrador bounded up to greet them, concluding that they must be friends because they’d been allowed inside the house. Serena got down on her knees and mussed his fur.

“I’ve got some fresh pie,” Pamela said. “Would you like some?”

Serena saw Maggie smirk. She knew all about Serena’s diet.

“It sounds wonderful, but I better resist,” Serena said.

“I’ll take a big piece,” Maggie said. “With ice cream, if you have it.”

Pamela looked pleased. “I’ll be back. Mary Ann has a room at the rear of the house, so I’ll bring her out to meet you.”

She left them alone.

“Warm apple pie,” Maggie said. “Yum.”

“Bitch,” Serena muttered.

They took seats on the tweed cushions of the sofa. Pamela returned with a large slice of pie, adorned with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, and a glass of milk. Cinnamon wafted from the plate. She put it on the oval coffee table in front of Maggie, who thanked her profusely. She picked up the plate, shoved a large forkful into her mouth, and chewed loudly.

“Wow, is this good,” she said with her mouth full.

“If you choke, I am not giving you the Heimlich,” Serena said.

Pamela came back, pushing a wheelchair in front of her. The woman in the chair had snow white hair that framed her head like a halo. Her sun-browned skin was wizened and flecked with black spots, and sunglasses shielded her eyes. She had a crocheted blanket spread over her lap, and below it, there was nothing at all. Her legs had been amputated below the knees.

“Mary Ann, these ladies are here to see you,” Pamela said.

“To see me? Well, isn’t that lovely.” Her voice crackled like Rice Krispies, but her demeanor was warm and sunny. Her dry lips curled into a smile. “I smell pie. Pamela uses my recipe. Four-time blue-ribbon winner at the North Dakota State Fair. Darling, I don’t suppose I could have a small piece?”

“Mary Ann,” Pamela chided her gently. “You know better.”

The old woman sighed. She put a finger to the side of her nose. “I can still tell when a pie is done just by the smell,” she said.

Pamela turned off the music and sat down in the armchair next to her mother-in-law, who slid her hands under the blanket to warm them. Serena and Maggie introduced themselves again.

“Minnesota?” Mary Ann said. “My husband and I had a favorite fishing resort near Brainerd. It’s a beautiful area. All those lakes and trees. Out here, it’s just miles and miles of corn.”

“Your daughter-in-law says you’ve lived in this house since the 1970s,” Serena said.

“Oh, yes, Henry and I bought a small parcel of land near Minot shortly after we got married, with some money we got from his grandfather. Henry did very well with it. He had a degree, you know. He was very scientific.”

“Near Minot? How did you end up here?”

“Well, my family was from Minot, and Henry’s family was from Fargo, and that caused difficulties at the holidays. Relatives always want you to be in two places at the same time. So eventually, Henry’s father told him about the Mathisen place going up for sale, and we moved down here. My parents were ready to retire anyway, and they got a small home in Casselton. So it all worked out well, you see.”

“Did you know the Mathisen family?” Maggie asked.

“Know them? Oh, no. As I said, we weren’t from around here. Henry’s parents knew them quite well, however. His parents had a farm about five miles east of here.”

“I wonder if your in-laws ever told you any stories about the Mathisens,” Serena said.

“Stories?”

“We’re trying to find out whatever we can about the family. Particularly their children.”

“I’m not sure if I can help you,” Mary Ann said. She tilted her head back, and her left hand darted from under the blanket to scratch her neck. “I don’t recall hearing very much about their children. They only had one, didn’t they? A boy? No, that’s right, the girl was older. She didn’t live there.”

“Did you hear anything unusual about the boy?”

“Unusual? I don’t think so. It’s just sad how it happened.”

“How what happened?” Maggie asked.

“Well, a teenage boy losing both of his parents. I hate to see it.”

“I heard the father died in a car accident,” Serena said.

“Yes, I think you’re right about that,” Mary Ann said. “It wasn’t easy to survive back then without a man in the house. It’s a wonder they made it at all. And then the mother-oh, how awful that was. I have to tell you, Henry and I weren’t sure we wanted to move into this house after that. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to sleep here.”

“Why?” Serena asked. “What happened to Inger Mathisen?”

“Oh, don’t you know? Being police, I just thought you would know. An intruder killed her. Murdered her in her bedroom. They said it was probably some drifter, looking for jewelry or cash. I just can’t believe anyone could do such a horrid thing. It’s bad enough to kill another human being, but how he did it-oh, dear, I still don’t like to think about it.”

“How was she killed?” Maggie asked.

“She was beaten to death,” Mary Ann whispered, tugging on her blanket. “Can you imagine? Beaten to death with a baseball bat.”

32

Stride bought a Chicago dog and staked out a seat near the British Airways gate in Terminal 5. He propped his legs on the opposite row of chairs. Outside the window, the international gates of O’Hare were like a parking lot for 747 jets sporting multicolored logos from airlines around the world. Inside, in the departure concourse, thousands of passengers streamed beneath overhead skylights and miles of white piping. He watched the bustle of people and planes while he finished his hot dog.

He was behind the international security checkpoint, thanks to an emergency call to a friend on the Chicago police. Dada-if it was Dada- would be arriving in the next hour from one of the airport’s three domestic terminals. Stride guessed that Dada was flying in from Missouri on his way to Johannesburg. The man he had found on the Web, Hubert Jones, was a professor of African studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

The school’s Web site included a faculty photo. Stride had stared long and hard at the picture to make a mental connection to the young drifter by the railroad tracks thirty years earlier. All he could say for sure was that Hubert Jones might be Dada. His dreadlocks were gone, replaced by a buzz cut of steel gray hair. His devil eyebrows had grown out thick and bushy. His broad, jowly face showed a man much heavier than the fit giant who had overpowered Stride. The eyes could have been Dada’s eyes-black and intense-but in the end, too much time had passed, and too much age was written in the man’s skin.

Stride swigged a large bottle of Coke to wash down the hot dog. He reread the dog-eared sheaf of materials on Hubert Jones that he had printed at his office before the sun came up. Jones was fifty-two years old, with undergraduate and graduate degrees from Berkeley. He had traveled and lectured extensively in Europe, and the visiting professorship he had accepted in South Africa was his third academic stint on the African continent. As a scholar, Hubert Jones was a star.

He had also written a book.

More than anything else, the book made Stride believe that Hubert Jones was Dada. It was called Dandelion Men, and it told the story of three years that Jones had spent living with itinerant laborers around the South and Midwest after he dropped out of college in his early twenties. Over time, he had become one of those wanderers, part of a community of people who came and went as easily as seeds traveling on the wind. They hiked. They hitched. They hopped trains. They worked, stole, got drunk, went to jail, and never knew any area long enough to call it home.

Stride found an excerpt from the book on the Web:

These were not the men that you would call homeless, not the mentally ill deposited onto our city streets in later years when our tax dollars discovered the limits of our compassion. This was a time and era when men chose this lifestyle because it made them free. It was predominantly a rural, not an urban, phenomenon. These men were children of our roots, children of our soil, who lived at the mercy of weather, food, and water. On most days they knew violence. Sometimes it was from those among them, but more often, it was from outside, from men who wore uniforms. You could beat Dandelion Men, you could even kill them, but you could never strip them of their dignity and of their primal humanness. I think sometimes that the people who were most violent toward them, who were most afraid, were those who envied them their freedom.

To Stride, the book sounded like Dada’s story, including its time frame, which spanned the years from 1976 to 1978. When he ran an online search inside the book, however, he found no references to Duluth or Minnesota or to the events that summer. No mention of murder in the park. No mention of escaping by coal train. If Hubert Jones was Dada, he had left those days out of his journal.

Stride eyed the terminal escalators. In his mind, he relived the events by the railroad tracks and felt Dada swatting him away like a fly. He remembered the panicked wheezing in his lungs as he struggled for air and the wet misery of the mud and rain. He heard the crack of Ray’s wild shots. Saw Dada, on the train, growing smaller.

That girl had secrets.

Thirty yards away, Stride spotted Hubert Jones on the escalator.

The noise of the airport became a muffled roar in his brain, crowding out everything but the man gliding down the steps. He was huge, at least six feet six, and round like the mammoth trunk of an aging tree. He wore a dark suit, a starched white shirt with jeweled cuff links, and a bright tie. The colors of the tie, Stride realized, were the Rasta colors of green, gold, and red, just like in the beret that Dada had worn. Stride wondered if it was an inside joke, a little signal for him to recognize. When Jones swiveled his head, their eyes met across the concourse, and the big man’s thick lips curled upward into a broad smile.

At that moment, Stride knew. He knew for sure.

It was Dada.

For a heavy man, he moved with grace and quickness. At the bottom of the escalator, he reviewed the people pushing around him, as if he were wondering whether Stride had arranged a welcoming party of police and security. When he saw that he was safe, he stepped nimbly through the crowd, which parted for the giant man in its path. Stride got out of his chair to meet him. He didn’t like looking up to other men, and Jones was as intimidating as an ogre at the top of the beanstalk. Jones extended his hand, and Stride shook it. He felt intense strength in the man’s grip.

“I see you still have the scar,” Jones said, pointing at Stride’s face with a meaty finger. “I’m sorry about that.”

“My wife always said it was sexy,” Stride replied.

Jones laughed. It was the same booming laugh from long ago, like the villain on an old radio show.

Stride recognized the man’s voice. “You called me last night,” he said. “Not a friend of a friend.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why the ruse?”

“I didn’t know what kind of man you were, Lieutenant. For all I knew, you would clap me in leg irons if you got the chance. I wanted to hear your voice. I’ve always believed I could take the measure of a man by how he talks to me.”

“I passed the test?” Stride asked.

“Oh, I still wasn’t entirely sure whether you would surround me with a posse of Chicago’s finest. But I figured that the boy who stood up to me by the railroad tracks would consider it a point of pride to meet me alone. You haven’t changed, Lieutenant.”

Stride hated to admit it, but Jones was right. It would have been smarter to bring backup, but he had wound up making the same arrogant mistake he had made as a boy. Taking on this man by himself. “If I wanted to have you arrested, I could,” he said.

“You could, but I hope enough time has passed that you now believe again what you believed as a boy. I didn’t kill anyone. Wisdom comes with innocence and experience, Lieutenant, and it’s only the in-between time that causes us problems.”

Jones sat down on the opposite row of chairs and laid his fists on his knees. Stride took an unopened bottle of spring water by the cap from the seat next to him. He handed it to Jones, who grabbed it in his big hand.

“You must be dry after your flight,” Stride said.

“In fact, I am.” Jones undid the cap and drank down half the bottle. He recapped it and then said, “May I keep this until I finish it, or would you like your fingerprint sample back right now?”

Stride actually felt himself blushing. “Keep it,” he snapped.

Jones grinned and put the bottle on the floor.

“Why contact me after so long?” Stride asked. “Do you know about Tish Verdure and the book she’s writing about the murder?”

“I still have friends in the Rasta community,” Jones explained. “As you know, there was an article in the Duluth paper recently that rehashed the crime and mentioned that a Rasta vagrant was a suspect. It made the rounds on our Web sites, and someone finally sent me the article with a note that said, ‘Was this you?’ ”

“But why come forward now? I assumed you were dead. You were safe.”

“I thought long and hard, believe me, but I decided it was time to put that part of the past behind me. I confess I was also a little curious about you. The article mentioned that you were a Duluth detective, and I was surprised to find out that you were the same boy I confronted that night.”

“I looked up Dandelion Men on the Web,” Stride said. “You didn’t mention what happened to you in Duluth.”

Jones eased back into the chair. His girth filled the space, and his waist squeezed against the armrests. “Oh, I wanted to talk about Duluth, but I knew that people were still looking for me. It’s like being a bear loose in the city streets. They don’t just put it in a cage when they find it. They shoot it dead.”

“The cop who shot at you back then,” Stride said. “He was dirty. I thought you should know.”

“That was a dirty time.”

“Why did you choose that life?” Stride asked. “Why be a drifter?”

“I guess you could say I was appalled by modern life,” Jones said. “I felt disconnected. Only a boy can be quite so naive. Still, the community I found in the shadows was deeper and stronger than any I have found since. It was hard to leave it behind. Every now and then, I try to find the dandelion men again, but they’re an endangered species. Like feral animals whose habitat has been destroyed. They scamper away when I come close. I’m no longer from their world, you see.”

“You sound like you miss it,” Stride said.

Jones tugged at the lapels on his suit with a bemused smile. “I do. Sometimes I fantasize about disappearing again. It’s only a fantasy.”

“Tell me about Laura.”

“Laura?”

“The girl who was murdered.”

Jones folded his hands over his chest. “Yes, of course. I never knew her name until I saw that newspaper article. She was just a girl in the park.”

“All these years, I thought you killed her,” Stride said.

Jones nodded. “And now?”

“Now I’m not so sure. We have a new witness. Someone who says you rescued Laura instead of attacking her.”

“A witness,” Jones said. “Yes, someone else was in the woods that night. I never saw him, but I knew he was there. I smelled the cannabis he was smoking.”

Finn, Stride thought.

“There was another boy in the softball field,” Jones added. “He was the one who attacked Laura. I stopped him from harming her.”

Stride nodded. “After the fight, Laura ran toward the north beach.”

“Yes, I know. I followed her.”

“Did you go all the way to the beach? Did you see her there?”

“I did,” Dada said.

“What did you see?”

Dada smiled. “I already told you, Lieutenant. That girl had secrets.”

33

We’re never going to make it back to Minnesota tonight,” Maggie said.

They were an hour west of Fargo, seated on top of a park bench overlooking a boat launch that dipped into the waters of Lake Ashtabula. Immediately to their left was the concrete wall of the Baldhill Dam, which held back the Sheyenne River and created a narrow stretch of man-made lake. It was late afternoon. The air smelled of boat fuel and hamburgers. Jet Ski riders left wakes in the water. Nearby, in the camping area, children splashed and squealed along a strip of sand beach.

“Peter wants his plane back,” Serena replied.

“Yeah, but this guy could be out there fishing until the sun goes down.”

After leaving the Mathisen farm, they had stopped at police headquarters in Fargo, where their North Dakota colleagues helped them identify the man who had served as lead detective investigating the murder of Finn’s mother, Inger Mathisen. The detective, Oscar Schmidt, had retired from the force more than a decade earlier and relocated with his wife to a town called Valley City. Serena and Maggie tracked down the Schmidt home, where his wife pointed them north to Lake Ashtabula, Oscar’s favorite spot for fishing.

“You want to go in the water?” Serena asked.

Maggie tented her sunglasses and squinted at the park. “You mean skinny-dipping?”

“I mean it’s hot. Let’s roll up our pants and dip our feet.”

“You’re on.”

They left their shoes on top of the bench and folded the legs of their jeans above their calves. The sand on the beach was scorching, but the lake was cold when they stuck in their toes. They shuffled a few feet out until they were standing in eight inches of water.

“So is it a coincidence?” Serena asked. “Finn’s mother was beaten to death? Just like Laura?”

“No.”

“Do you believe the intruder story?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. I wonder why Oscar did.”

“That’s what we’ll ask him. Assuming he ever gets in off the lake.”

Serena lifted her chin toward the warm sun. Maggie finished a can of Diet Coke while they waited, checking her watch impatiently as half an hour passed. Finally, a fifteen-foot aluminum boat that had obviously seen many years of service put-putted toward the boat landing. At the stern, an old man with shaggy gray hair and a mustache that curled over his upper lip cut off the Evinrude motor and let the boat drift into the shallow water. He wore navy blue swimming trunks with white vertical stripes and was shirtless. His belly bulged like a basketball, but the rest of his skin was loose and leathery. He was small, no more than five feet five, and wore sunglasses. As Serena and Maggie watched, Oscar Schmidt climbed into the water, dragged the prow until it was nearly beached on the concrete ramp, and then tramped toward his red Chevy truck in flip-flops.

“Mr. Schmidt?” Maggie called. They splashed out of the water toward the boat landing.

He stopped with his hands on his hips. “That’s me,” he replied gruffly. “Who are you?”

Maggie introduced herself and Serena. “We’d like to take five minutes to talk about an old case of yours,” she said.

“Which case?”

“Inger Mathisen.”

Schmidt folded his sunglasses and shoved them into the pocket of his swimsuit. “I wondered if that one would ever come back and bite me in the ass.” He sighed and added, “Let me get the boat out, then we’ll talk.”

Ten minutes later, the boat was dripping in the parking lot, and Schmidt sat opposite Maggie and Serena on the park bench. His bushy hair was damp, and they smelled beer on his breath.

Serena angled her head toward the water. “How’d you do?”

“Finished off a six-pack, took a swim, didn’t catch a damn thing. Typical day. Tell you the truth, I don’t like fish much. Never have. Most of the time, I just throw them back, because otherwise my wife would want to cook them.”

“Nice place to retire,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, it’s not so bad, huh? We’ve got a trailer in Texas where we go during the winter. I’d stick around here if it were up to me, but my wife hates snow.”

“Tell us about the Mathisen case,” Serena said.

“Not much to tell. Isolated farm. Saturday night. Woman was asleep in bed. Somebody bludgeoned her to death.”

“You never caught the guy?”

Schmidt shook his head. “Nah, we had nothing. Figured it was some bastard who got off the interstate and was looking for cash. Probably surprised to find anybody in the house.”

“The farm was five miles off the freeway,” Serena said. “And not easy to find.”

Schmidt shrugged and chewed on a fingernail.

“Did you find reports of any similar incidents along the interstate route?” Maggie asked. “Maybe out of Montana or Minnesota? You can usually track these guys like pins on a map.”

“There were no other incidents that looked like a pattern crime,” Schmidt said. “We figured the guy got spooked.”

“Any sign of forced entry?” Serena asked.

“Out here? Nobody locks their doors.”

“Did anyone see or hear anything?” Serena asked.

“You saw the place. Not a neighbor for miles.”

“What about the boy?”

Schmidt rubbed his mustache. “Boy?”

“Finn Mathisen. Inger’s son.”

“He wasn’t home.”

Maggie leaned across the park bench. “No offense, Mr. Schmidt, but you’re not a farmer, so why don’t you quit shoveling the shit?”

Schmidt’s mustache twitched as he grinned. “I like you. Never much liked Orientals, but you’re smart. Easy on the eyes, too. You both are.”

“Why’d you think this case would bite you in the ass?” Maggie asked.

Schmidt glanced at his truck, and Serena thought he wanted to be home eating dinner. “Look, ladies, why cause problems for good people after so many years? Who the hell cares?”

“A few years after Inger was killed, a teenage girl was murdered in Duluth,” Serena said. “She was beaten with a baseball bat. Finn is a suspect.”

Schmidt frowned. “Well, shit.”

“So you want to give us the real story?”

“Hey, there was no evidence to prove that an intruder didn’t kill her.”

“But you didn’t believe it.”

Schmidt jabbed a calloused finger at them. “Sometimes you have to decide whether you’re a cop or a human being, okay? Maybe it’s not that way in the big city, but it sure as hell works like that in a small town. The way I figure, Inger Mathisen’s murder was an act of mercy.”

“What do you mean by that?” Maggie asked.

“Inger was a mean fucking bitch. Why do you think her husband got drunk every night and finally wound up on the business end of a semi? He hated being in that house. He was weak. He didn’t stop it.”

“Stop what?”

Schmidt sighed with disgust. “The word in town was that Inger did stuff to her kids,” Schmidt said. “Sick stuff. Back then, you knew about that kind of thing, but you didn’t talk about it. A lot of fucked-up kids came out of those farms.”

“Go on.”

Schmidt coughed and spit on the ground. “The boy, Finn, was fourteen or fifteen. Already messed up. Into drugs. The way we figure it, he got stoned and decided he was done with his mother once and for all. It was his bat. His fingerprints were on it.”

“You said he wasn’t home,” Serena said.

“That’s what his sister told us.”

“Rikke?”

Schmidt nodded. “She got out of that hellhole when she went off to NDSU and got her teaching license. She was working in Fargo and living in an apartment there. She swore that Finn was with her that weekend.”

“Were there any witnesses near her apartment to back that up?”

“A couple people remembered seeing the boy,” he said. “They couldn’t be sure if it was Saturday or Sunday.”

“You think it was Sunday,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, I figure Finn killed Inger on Saturday night and then called his sister. She came out to get him and take him back to Fargo to sober him up and get their stories straight. No one saw a thing, though, so there was no way we could prove it. Rikke took Finn home on Tuesday, and that’s when they claim they found the body smelling up the house. She called us, and I came over.”

“Did you interrogate them?”

“Interrogate kids whose mother had just been killed? Yeah, not so much.”

“Except you didn’t believe them, did you?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t push too hard. Okay? None of us did. We talked about it. Everybody in town was going to be happier if it was just some stranger who killed her. The kids had suffered enough, so we figured, let them get on with their lives.”

“An act of mercy,” Serena said.

“Exactly right.”

34

Tish parked on a dirt road two blocks from Finn’s house, sheltered by the sagging branches of a weeping willow. She dangled a cigarette outside the open window of the Civic while she waited. She knew she should quit, but she had spent most of her life alone and anxious since she left Duluth, and smoking was like morphine in her bloodstream, dulling the pain. Her cigarettes were always there with her. On a sailboat in the harbor in Dubrovnik, after the war ended and the tourists started coming back. In a mud and stone hut halfway up a Tibetan mountain. In Atlanta, crying in the parking lot of a Borders bookstore in Snellville, after the breakup with Katja. In Duluth, when Laura ran away and shut Tish out of her life.

If only she had stayed. Things would have been so different.

She felt the car shiver as a train snaked its way toward her from the harbor. The engine came slowly, snorting like an animal and cutting off her view of Finn’s house. Coal dust blew off the overflowing boxcars and settled in a grainy film across her windshield. The clattering, rattling, squealing thunder made her clap her free hand over her ear. When the last of the freight cars passed, she saw Rikke, in a navy blue dress, marching down the front steps of her house. It was the first time she had seen Rikke since coming back to Duluth. The years hadn’t been kind. Her austere beauty and her Amazon physique had both flown away with age. Even from a distance, she could see a lifetime of unhappiness in her face. Rikke clutched an umbrella in her hand and cut across the lawn to a tan Impala. She drove out of the weeds onto the dirt road and across the maze of railroad tracks, not far from the car where Tish was waiting.

Tish ducked low so that Rikke wouldn’t see her. She waited until the Impala was gone, then climbed out of her car and headed for Finn’s house. She picked her way through the bed of rocks between the tracks. Her T-shirt clung to her skin in the sticky air. Looking around, she felt as if time had stood still in places like this. The town, the dirt roads, the house, and the trains were like a snapshot from her childhood. It made her think of old things. Cold, sweating bottles of Mountain Dew. Wham-O Frisbees. Black-and-white television. It made her think of a time when people she loved were still alive.

She knocked on the door. When no one answered, she peered through the cream-colored lace on the window. She wondered if Finn was sleeping.

Tish turned the door handle, but the front door was locked. When she checked each of the window frames, she found one where the inside latch was undone. She slid the window open and climbed through the flimsy curtains into the living room. The house was silent and close. When she felt something brush against her leg, she jumped, then realized it was a cat pushing past her feet. She closed the window behind her.

“Hello?” she called. “Finn?”

No one answered.

She did a nervous survey of the downstairs space. The kitchen was small, with avocado appliances that hadn’t been replaced in years. The screen door to the backyard was tattered, its mesh hanging down from the corner. She pushed open a door and found a small toilet, no bigger than a closet, with a bare bulb hanging overhead for light and an empty pill bottle on the ledge of the sink. Tamoxifen. She felt a stab of sympathy for Rikke.

Back in the living room, she saw the narrow steps near the front door that led to the second floor. She hesitated at the base of the stairway.

“Finn?” she called again.

Tish climbed the stairs, wincing at the noise as her feet pushed down on the warped slabs of wood. Upstairs, she was faced with a closed door immediately in front of her. Without knowing why, she knew Finn was inside. She didn’t knock. She nudged the door with her foot and waited in the doorway while it swung open.

The room was dark, the curtains drawn, letting only cracks of daylight knife through the gloom in narrow, dusty streams. Her eyes adjusted. She saw Finn on the floor, sitting with his back against the bed, his arms hugging his knees. His forearms were swaddled in white bandages. He wore underwear but nothing else.

“It’s me, Finn,” she said. “Tish.”

His eyes were lost in the shadows. He didn’t look at her, and she wasn’t sure if he knew she was there. Then he spoke in a tired voice. “You should go, she’ll be back soon.”

“I don’t care.”

“She won’t want to see you.”

“I’m here to see you. How are you?”

“How am I?” Finn said. “I wish I was dead.”

“Don’t say that. You’re lucky.”

“Yeah. People see me, they say, there goes a lucky man.”

Tish sat down on the floor next to Finn and slid an arm around his shoulder. His bare skin was clammy. “Maybe you should be in bed.”

“I’ve been in bed for days. I pretended to be asleep so Rikke would finally leave me alone. She’s afraid of what I’ll do.”

“Does she have reason to be afraid?”

“You mean, will I do it again? I want to, but I’m a coward. How pathetic is that?”

“I feel guilty,” Tish told him. “Like I did this to you by coming back.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Then why did you do it?” she asked. “Was it because of Laura’s murder? Did you remember something more?”

Finn squeezed his eyes shut. A tear bloomed like a rose out of the corner of his eye and trickled past his nose to the corner of his mouth. “Everyone wants me to remember, but I don’t.”

“I think you do.”

Finn shook his head. “I never should have gone to the park that night.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I can’t stop!” Finn exclaimed. “Don’t you get it? I’ve never been able to stop.”

“Stop what?”

He clenched his fists. “Watching. That’s who I am. I’m a watcher.”

“You mean the young girls in their bedrooms?” Tish asked. “That was you?”

He put his face in his hands and nodded.

“Why, Finn?”

“You think it’s my choice? You think I want to be like this?” He stared at the floor and added, “Mom made me watch. I didn’t even know what was going on, but she made me watch. I hated her for that.”

Tish stared at the bed and began to understand. “Did you watch Laura?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Here. I would watch her in bed when she stayed with us.”

“Did she know?”

“No. Not at first.”

“You said you were in love with her, Finn. How could you do that to someone you loved?”

“I told you. I can’t stop. I wish I could gouge my eyes out.”

“Did you know Laura was going to be in the park that night?”

Finn’s head bobbed.

“How did you know?” Tish asked.

“She told me. I knew she was running away. It was my fault. I scared her.”

“Did she find out you were spying on her?”

“Yes. I told her everything. I had to. But it was a mistake. She didn’t understand.”

“You kept following her after the fight with Peter, didn’t you? You followed her all the way to the beach.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I did.”

Tish felt as if she were being suffocated. “What happened?”

“I don’t remember,” he said.

“Finn, you have to tell me.”

“I don’t remember.”

Tish closed her eyes and leaned close to him, smelling his sweat and fear, murmuring in his ear. “You’re so close. What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you ever dream about it?” she asked.

“No. I don’t dream.”

“I bet you do, Finn.”

“Go. Just go. Get away from me.”

“Tell me about your dreams.”

Finn shook his head mutely. She knew he was ready to break.

“Tell me,” she repeated.

“I have nightmares,” he whispered. “I’ve had them for years.”

“About what? What do you see?”

“Blood.”

Tish waited.

“There’s so much blood,” he said. “It’s all over her.”

“What else?”

“Noise. Like something sucking. Gurgling. And the wind. Except it’s not the wind. It whooshes. Like a bird’s wings.”

“What is it?” Tish asked. But she knew.

Finn’s eyes grew wide, and his mouth opened into a hole like the entrance to a cave. “It’s the bat. I can see it going up and down. Up and down. I can’t make it stop. Somebody make it stop!”

He stared at his hands. His bandaged hands.

“I killed her,” he said. “Don’t you understand? I killed her.”

35

Who killed her?” Stride asked Hubert Jones.

“I have no idea.”

Stride shook his head in frustration. “Then why are we here?” Jones tilted his bottle of beer and drained it, then dabbed at his puffy lips with a napkin. They had relocated to a quiet table in the rear of a bar in Terminal 5.

“I never said I knew who killed that girl,” Jones said. “I only know that it wasn’t me. When I last saw her, she was alive. I was shocked when word spread at the tracks that she had been murdered.”

“Why not come forward?”

Jones chuckled and shook his head. “When a white girl gets murdered, the first question that the police ask is, ‘Who was the nearest black man?’ You said yourself, the cop on the case was dirty. I knew what was coming. I knew I had to get out of town.”

“You said Laura had secrets,” Stride said.

“Yes, she did. I knew it the moment I saw this girl.”

“When was that?” Stride asked.

“In the woods. I saw her pass me no farther away than you are now, but she didn’t even see me. She was determined. She had a destination in her heart. It was in her walk and how she held her backpack. I looked at her and I thought to myself, tomorrow this girl will be gone. Not gone as in dead, mind you. Gone as in somewhere else. Gone as in starting a new life.”

Stride wasn’t convinced. “Tell me about the fight in the softball field.”

“I heard the girl scream. I came upon the two of them in the long grass. The boy had her pinned. He was kissing her, tearing at her clothes, and she was fighting back, beating at him.”

Stride waited.

“I became enraged,” Jones continued. “To me, rape is the ultimate disrespect. It’s the barbarian who strips a woman of her soul.”

“Exactly what did you do?”

“I saw something in the grass. A baseball bat. I picked it up and struck the boy in the back. I jabbed it like a spear and heard his ribs breaking. He let go of the girl, and I picked him up bodily and threw him into the weeds. When I bent over to see to the girl, the boy launched himself at me again. I hit him in the face then. He fell backward. He was unconscious.”

“What about the girl?”

“She ran into the woods.”

“The boy who attacked her-was this the same person you heard near you? The one who was smoking marijuana?”

Jones thought about it. “No.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. You know what that park was like in the summer, Lieutenant. There were lurkers everywhere.”

“What about Laura?” Stride asked. “Did you go after her when she ran?”

“Of course. I wanted to see if she was all right. That was foolish of me, I know. In her state, she probably didn’t even realize who had attacked her. She could easily have assumed it was me. Not many white teenage girls like to find a large black man chasing them through the woods anyway.”

“Did you take the baseball bat with you?”

“No, I left it behind.”

“Weren’t you afraid the boy would come after you with it?”

“He wasn’t in much shape to follow me.”

“You’re certain you didn’t take the bat,” Stride repeated.

“Yes.”

“The police matched your fingerprints to it.”

“Like I told you, I picked it up. I hit the boy.”

“Laura was killed with that bat,” Stride said. “The police found it near her body on the beach almost a mile away. How did it get there?”

“Obviously, someone carried it, but not me.”

“Do you have any idea who could have done that?”

“No, but I already told you that someone else was in the woods.”

“Could Laura have taken the bat with her?”

“No, she just ran.”

“You said you followed her,” Stride said. “What happened then?”

Jones steepled his fingers under the folds of his chin. “First, let me ask you something. Do you still consider me a suspect?”

“Yes.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“You were there. Your fingerprints are on the murder weapon. You fled the city.”

“I’ve explained all of those things.”

“Except I have no way of knowing if you’re telling the truth,” Stride said. “Keep going. Tell me about Laura.”

Jones settled into the plastic-and-steel airport chair, which groaned in protest under his weight. “At first, I thought I had lost her. I thought she had made her way out of the park.”

“Did you find her?”

“Yes, the trail wound along the lake to another beach. I saw her there.”

“Did you speak to her?” Stride asked.

“Oh, no, she had no idea I was there.”

“Was this the beach where her body was found?”

“I assume so.”

“But she was alive?”

“Very much so.”

“Did she have the bat with her?”

“I told you, no.”

“Then what happened?”

“I left.”

“Just like that?” Stride asked.

“The girl was safe. There was nothing else I could do. I wasn’t going to help her by announcing myself.”

“We found semen at the edge of the clearing near the beach. Was it yours?”

His eyebrows arched. “Semen? No.”

“Did you go back to the softball field?”

“No, I took a different trail and left the park.”

“Did you meet anyone else? Did you see the other person you thought was in the woods?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Is that it?” Stride asked. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

“There’s nothing else.”

Stride leaned across the small table and stared at Jones until the big man blinked uncomfortably. “You’re lying,” he said. “Why bring me all the way out here if you’re not going to tell me the whole story?”

“Everything I’ve said is the truth,” Jones insisted.

“The question is what you’re leaving out.”

“What makes you think I’m leaving anything out?”

“The girl had secrets,” Stride said. “That’s what you keep saying. I think you know something else about Laura. Something specific. I want to know what it is and why you’re covering it up. Until you tell me, you’re not getting on that plane.”

Jones ran his tongue across his white teeth and smiled.

“You saw something, didn’t you?” Stride asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“What was it? What did you see when you found Laura on the beach?”

“I’m not sure it will help anyone if I tell you. Least of all the girl who was killed.”

“Let me decide that,” Stride said.

“What I saw was innocent and beautiful. There was no violence.”

“Tell me.”

Jones sighed. “Laura wasn’t alone.”

“Who was she with?”

“I don’t know. It was no one who would have killed her. They were kissing. They were in love. You can understand why I didn’t bother intervening at that point. They didn’t want me around.”

“What did he look like?” Stride asked. “Laura’s lover.”

Jones shook his head. “Laura had the kind of lover you didn’t talk about back then. It wasn’t a boy, Lieutenant. It was another girl. Laura was on the beach with a blond girl about the same age. They were holding each other as if they never wanted to let go.”

36

Tish studied the framed photographs on the credenza in Jonathan Stride’s office in City Hall. She saw a photo of Stride with his arm around Serena, taken somewhere with a view across the Strip in Las Vegas. Beside it, she saw a picture of Cindy, with the Vancouver harbor behind her. Her hair was dark and straight. Her eyes teased the camera. Over time, Tish’s memories of Cindy had dimmed to the point where she couldn’t hear her voice in her head and couldn’t call up a picture of her face. Then a photo like this brought it all back.

She felt her eyes misting. Behind her, she heard the noise of someone approaching, and she quickly put the photograph down, wiped her face, and pasted a smile on her lips. Stride came into the office, and she didn’t think she had fooled him. His eyes strayed to the line of photographs, and she thought they lingered on Cindy.

He pointed at the chair in front of his desk and then took his own chair and leaned back, his jaw tight and hard. His hair was unruly, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept. Tish sat down uncomfortably. She heard the office door close and turned around to see the tiny Chinese cop, Maggie Bei, leaning against the door. She wasn’t smiling.

“Is something wrong?” Tish asked.

“What did you want to see me about?” Stride said.

Tish took a deep breath. “He confessed.”

“Who?”

“Finn,” Tish said. “I went to see him yesterday.”

“I thought I told you not to play cop,” Stride snapped.

“I felt responsible for his suicide attempt. I wanted to find out why he did it. We wound up talking about Laura’s murder, and that’s when he blurted it out.”

“Exactly what did he say?”

“He talked about dreams he has. About seeing the blood all over her and about the bat going up and down. And then he just said it. He said it flat out. I killed her.”

“Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Tish asked.

“Did he use Laura’s name?” Stride asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s a simple question, Tish. Did Finn say he killed Laura?”

“No, but who else would he mean?” Tish said. “What is going on?”

“I think we’re done here,” Stride said. “Thanks for coming in.”

Behind her, Maggie opened the office door and stood beside it.

“We’re done? That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Are you going to arrest him?” Tish asked.

“No.”

“No? What more do you need? I mean, look, this isn’t what I expected. I admit that I was wrong. I was convinced Peter Stanhope was involved. But now you can match Finn’s DNA to the crime scene. He told me he was there. He told me that he killed her. This is the break we’ve needed.”

“For your book?”

“Not just for the book. To solve the case.”

“The confession is useless,” Stride told her.

“Useless? How can you say that?”

Stride held up his hand and counted on his fingers. “One, Rikke hired a lawyer. The law says we can’t talk to Finn anymore without his lawyer present. Because I was stupid enough to talk to you about this case, a defense attorney can make a persuasive argument that you were acting as an instrument of the police in questioning Finn. Result? The confession gets tossed. Two, Finn was recently discharged from the hospital and was almost certainly under the influence of painkillers when you talked to him. So his attorneys will argue that he was not in full possession of his faculties. The confession gets tossed. Three, the fact that Finn did not use Laura’s name leaves doubt about who he was talking about. The confession gets tossed.”

“That’s crazy.”

Stride gestured to Maggie. “Tell her.”

Maggie closed the door again and sat on the edge of Stride’s desk. “Serena and I did some digging into Finn’s past. His mother abused him. The cops think Finn snapped and bludgeoned his mother to death. With a baseball bat. They let him walk because they couldn’t prove it, and frankly, no one wanted to see him put away. Getting rid of that woman was a community service, they figured.”

“Poor Finn,” Tish said softly.

“You get the picture?” Maggie said. “Regardless of whether Finn said Laura’s name or not, his attorney will argue that it’s memory transference from the death of his mother. I mean, hell, he said this came to him in a dream? Who knows what his brain has concocted after years of drug and alcohol abuse?”

“The confession gets tossed,” Stride repeated.

Tish thought furiously. “I was there,” she insisted. “Finn wasn’t hopped up on drugs. He wasn’t talking about his mother. He was back there. In the park. With Laura.”

“You didn’t let me continue,” Stride said. “Four, we recovered the murder weapon. The baseball bat.”

“What?”

“Peter Stanhope had it. Ray Wallace gave it to him as a little gift. We tested the bat, and Finn’s fingerprints are not on it.”

“That’s not possible.”

“There are fingerprints we can’t identify, but they don’t belong to Finn,” Stride said.

“So maybe he wore gloves.”

“In July?”

“What about DNA? Test the semen.”

“Even if it matches, all that proves is that he jerked off near the murder scene.”

“Damn it, Jonathan, he told me he killed her.”

“Five,” Stride continued, holding up his last finger, “the confession gets tossed because the only two people who heard it are you and Finn.”

Tish shrugged and held up her hands. “So what? What difference does that make?”

“No one will believe you. You have no credibility.”

“Excuse me?”

“No one will believe you because you are a manipulative, self-serving liar.”

Tish shot to her feet. “How dare you! What the hell are you talking about?”

Stride stood up, too. “Don’t play games with me, Tish. I don’t appreciate it when someone twists me around her finger. I don’t appreciate it when someone toys with people who are close to me. I don’t appreciate it when someone uses me and lies to me in order to further some secret goal. What’s your motive, Tish? Why are you really here?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tish said.

But she did. She saw it in his face. He knew.

“I’m talking about the fact that I have one more suspect to add to the list,” Stride said. “Finn, Peter, Dada, and now you.”

Tish looked down at his desk. She wilted back into the chair. “No, Jonathan, you’re wrong.”

“I found Dada. Or rather, he found me. He told me that he followed Laura to the beach that night.”

“It’s not what you think,” she said.

“He saw you, Tish. He saw you and Laura together. You were there.”

37

Stride waited for her to deny it, but she didn’t.

“Okay, you’re right,” Tish said, looking like a flower that had been left out of water. “Yes, I was there that night. I should have told you long before now, but I never wanted anyone to know. It was private. It was something for me and her. But you can’t possibly believe I would ever harm her. I loved her.”

His voice was hoarse with anger. “You’ve lied to me over and over. You lied about where you were that night and what you were doing. You lied about remembering the fight between you and Laura. You were at the crime scene when Laura was murdered, and you never said a word about what you saw. You’ve deceived me from the outset.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You’ve irreparably compromised this investigation.”

“Without me, there would be no investigation,” Tish reminded him. “I’m the only reason anyone cares. If I made mistakes, they weren’t with any malice. You have to understand-”

Stride sliced the air with his hand, cutting her off. She stared at him, scared and silent. Maggie studied the floor with her arms folded. He shoved his chair back and paced in the small space of the office, wrestling with his fury. He stared at the photographs on his credenza.

“Did Cindy know you were there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Tish admitted.

“That’s why she wanted you to do the book, isn’t it? That’s why she went to you, not me.”

“Yes.”

He shook his head in disbelief. He felt as if he now had to question all the years they had spent together. His wife had lied to him and kept secrets from him. He wasn’t just angry at Tish. He was angry at Cindy, too.

“Start at the beginning,” Stride told her. “Tell me everything.”

Tish took a slow breath. “It was a different world. You know that.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning there were things you didn’t talk about. Not to anyone. Look, it’s hard enough being a gay teenager today, even when most schools have resources and counselors. All you want to do is fit in, and you don’t. Back then, it was a secret you kept to save your life. I struggled with it, but at least I knew who I was. It was much harder for Laura. She resisted. She was scared. She was desperate to be normal.”

“Did Laura know you were gay?” Maggie asked.

Tish’s fingers twitched. Stride knew she was desperate for a cigarette.

“Not at first,” she said. “We were just friends. I was attracted to her, but I didn’t do anything about it for months, because I didn’t know how Laura felt, and I didn’t want to scare her off. I mean, on some level, I was pretty sure she felt the way I did, but she was so deep in the closet that she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself. A lot of people never do.”

“At some point you told her,” Stride concluded.

“Yes.”

“Is that what the fight was about?” he guessed. “Is that what split you up?”

“Yes,” Tish acknowledged. “Things were changing between us. We were touching more. It was casual, but it meant something. We’d do homework on her bed, and we’d drape our legs over each other and sort of idly caress and pretend it was nothing. We’d give each other massages after we went running. We’d sleep together, not doing anything, but sharing the same bed. It was like we were circling each other, groping toward both of us admitting what was going on.”

“What happened next?”

“Laura was getting very anxious about her feelings,” Tish said. “She started going out on dates with boys. Like she was trying to convince herself she was straight. I didn’t like it. I was really upset and jealous, but I didn’t let on. Most of the dates were disasters. She froze up. Peter Stanhope was the worst. He kept pressuring her for sex, and Laura didn’t want that at all, but she didn’t really understand why. It came to a point where I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I loved her too much, and I was sure she loved me. So finally, in May of our senior year, I suggested we go camping on a Saturday night. It was just the two of us. We shared a sleeping bag, and we were talking and laughing, and my heart was just aching for her. I don’t even remember how it happened, but I kissed her. She kissed me back. Romantic kisses, not like friends. I told her I loved her. And things- happened.”

“What went wrong?” Maggie asked.

“It was a mistake. We went too far, too fast. Laura wasn’t ready to accept that she was gay. She rebelled against it. She rebelled against me. The next day, she hardly said a word to me. She began avoiding me. She was never home. She just shut me out of her life. I was devastated.”

“What did you do?”

“I had never felt so totally alone. When school was over, I ran away. I moved down to the Cities, and I tried to forget about Laura, but I couldn’t. I was still completely in love with her.”

“Did you contact her?”

“Yes, I wrote to her and told her where I was. I told her I was sorry. I asked if we could just be friends, nothing else, nothing physical. That wasn’t what I wanted, and I was kidding myself to think I could be around her at that point without needing to be with her. But I would have done anything to have her back in my life.”

“Did Laura write back?”

“Yes. A few days later, she sent me this long, long letter. About how scared she had been. About how ashamed she was for running away from me. She said she had finally accepted the truth about who she was, and she loved me and wanted to be with me. I don’t have to tell you, I was over the moon. Ecstatic. This was going to be the real deal, our whole lives. Sure, we were naive. We were teenagers. But I’ve never loved anyone like that, ever again.”

“Tell us about the night in the park,” Stride said.

Tish closed her eyes. “I try not to think about that night. I’ve pushed it out of my mind.”

“You have to tell us.”

“It’s too awful. It was the best night of my life, and then just like that, it became the worst night of my life. I couldn’t believe God would be so cruel. So heartless.”

“What happened?” Stride asked.

“Laura and I talked on the phone every night. We made plans to run away. I had an old car, so I told her I would come up to Duluth and meet her. She picked July 4. She said it was her independence day. We said we’d meet on the north beach. It was going to be magical.” Tish gave a sad smile. “For a little while, it was.”

“She found you there?” Maggie asked.

“Yes, I came early to wait for her. She came running out of the trees. She told me what had happened in the field, that someone had attacked her. I knew all about the person who had been stalking her, and I knew how scared she was. I thought we should leave right away, but Laura didn’t want to go back into the woods yet. So we waited. And the longer we were there, the more we forgot about anything else, because we were so happy to be together again. I can’t remember how many times we said we loved each other. Being there on the beach, in the wake of the storm, was like a cocoon. We kissed. We made love. We fell asleep for a little while in the sand in each other’s arms. We never wanted to leave.”

Stride remembered being on the opposite side of the lake on that same night, with Cindy, and feeling the same way.

“It didn’t last,” he murmured.

Tish blinked. Her voice was so low he could barely hear it. “No.”

Tish lay awake, naked, and stared at the sky. The clouds had broken up into a patchwork of dark islands, and she could see open spaces crowded with stars. Near her feet, the lake slurped at the shore. Tufts of cottonwood blew like snow out of the forest and drifted to the ground beside wet masses of heart-shaped leaves. The two of them were on their backs, sand rubbing their skin. Their fingers were laced together, their legs apart, like two dolls in a paper chain. She propped herself on one elbow and watched Laura sleep beside her. She saw a teardrop of rain land on Laura’s breast, and she bent over and tasted it with her tongue and then closed her lips over the nub of a hardened nipple. She was rewarded with a sigh of pleasure, a stirring, a rumbling in Laura’s throat.

“Do you want to swim?” she whispered.

“Mmm, you go.”

Laura barely came out of her dream, and then she was sleeping again. A spider no bigger than the head of a pin scampered over Laura’s shoulder, and Tish pursed her lips and blew it off. Laura murmured and turned over, balancing her head on the down of her forearm. Hair tumbled like a wild mask over her face. Her curving back was slick with sand. Her tattoo fluttered its wings at her.

Tish got up, glorying in the night wind on her body. She glided to the wet beach, where an inch of water pooled between her toes, and then stepped over moss and rocks as she dipped lower into the lake like a mermaid. As she got farther from the beach, the bottom fell away, and the deep water lifted her off her feet. She stroked lazily with her arms, floating. She turned over on her back, feeling cold fingers on her scalp. Her feet kicked and barely stirred a splash, nudging her body out toward the far center of the lake. The water was silk on her naked skin.

She wanted to shout for Laura to join her, but the beach was far away and black, and the silence felt sacred, as if she were in church. She let her feet dangle below her, swishing her arms to keep her face above the surface. When a mosquito whined in her ear, she allowed herself to sink. The lake enveloped her and roared in her ears. She drifted down, and when her chest demanded air, she sprang up with a flutter kick. Water dripped from her eyelashes, nose, and chin and ran from her hair down the middle of her back like the tickling caress of fingertips. She couldn’t hear, except for her own breath. She could barely see the angry ripples of the lake where she had disturbed it. A swampy dankness filled her nose. She was cut off from all of her senses, and she didn’t care. Out in the center of the lake, in a nether land between past and future, she realized she was happy. This was a moment unlike any other in her life. A moment without worry, only bliss.

As quickly as it had come, it wriggled through her fingers like a sea creature and never returned to her again.

Back on land, where the trees and water intersected invisibly on the half-moon of shoreline, she heard a noise. It radiated across the lake and landed in her ears and traveled through her body like shudders of thunder. Her head cocked in confusion. The noise repeated itself, dull and wet, a noise that had no business here in the woods. Her body became indescribably cold. She knew, without any glimmer of how she knew, that the noise was very, very bad.

Breaking the cathedral silence, she screamed, “Laura! Are you okay?”

There was no response, and somehow she knew there would never be a response. No musical voice. No laughter. No call from the shore. “I’m fine, silly, what’s the problem?”

Just a beating, pounding, thumping drumbeat. A killing beat.

She swam. She put her face in the water and clawed with her arms and kicked up waves behind her. She swam so far and so fast that her body scraped on the sand before she even realized she had scissored into shallow water. Panting, she stood up, wiping water from her eyes. Her mouth fell open, and when she tried to scream again, she couldn’t make a sound. She saw Laura’s body where it had been before, but nothing else was the same. Her limbs were sprawled and twisted. She smelled of copper and death. Beside her, thrown carelessly to the ground, was a silver bat.

Tish dived across the sand, crying, and wrapped her arms around the girl on the beach, rocking her like a baby, bathing herself in her blood, whispering in her ear, telling her to wake up, telling her how much she loved her.

Over and over.

Until they were both cold.

Tish wept silently into her hands. Maggie squeezed her shoulder while Stride opened his office door and signaled for a bottle of water. Tish took labored breaths and then straightened up and wiped her face.

“I didn’t expect it to hit me so hard,” she said. “I’ve held it in for a long time.”

Stride nodded. One of the secretaries brought in a bottle of water, and he twisted off the cap and handed it to Tish. She sipped it slowly.

“How did Cindy know you were there that night?” he asked.

“I was still on the beach when she arrived,” Tish murmured. “I hid in the woods, but she heard me behind her. I told her what had happened. I told her the truth about me and Laura.”

“Cindy never told anyone that she saw you there. Why did she protect you?”

“She knew I didn’t kill Laura.”

“That’s not a reason to keep quiet. You were a witness.”

Tish shook her head. “I didn’t see anything. Besides, Cindy wasn’t just protecting me. She was protecting her father, too. If people knew the truth about me and Laura, it would have killed him.”

“You should have talked to the police.”

“And say what?” Tish demanded. “For God’s sake, I was eighteen. I was scared out of my mind. I thought whoever killed her might think I could identify him. I thought people would blame me. To be gay back then meant you were a deviant, a child molester. I had already lost Laura, and I couldn’t bring her back. I didn’t know who did this. I didn’t have any information that would help the police. I just wanted to escape.”

“Did you touch the bat?” Maggie asked. “Will we find your fingerprints on it?”

Tish’s eyes flashed with anger. “You see? Even now, you’re wondering if I did it.”

“You were the last person to see her alive,” Stride told her.

“I never touched the bat,” Tish said. “I don’t care what you think of me now, but I’m telling you the truth. Finn confessed. He must have followed Laura that night and seen us making love. He must have been crazy with jealousy. So when I went into the lake, he lost control. For all I know, he was stoned and had no idea what he was doing.”

“I’d like to tell you that this changes things, but it doesn’t,” Stride said. “Maybe you can put this in a book, but Finn is never going to see the inside of a courtroom.”

“Is this because I lied?” Tish asked.

Stride nodded. “I happen to believe you, but a jury could easily conclude that you and Laura had a fight. That Laura met you to say good-bye and you couldn’t deal with it. That’s what a defense attorney will say. Or maybe Peter woke up, took the bat, and followed the trail. He was stalking Laura, we know that. He had the bat all these years. Who knows what he was capable of? There’s also Dada. He fled the scene. His prints are on the murder weapon. Don’t you see? We may know what happened, but we’ll never prove what happened. You’re going to have to be satisfied with that.”

Tish stood up. She put the half-finished bottle of water on Stride’s desk and smoothed her clothes. Stiffly, she extended a hand for him to shake. Her grip was weak and unconvincing. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” she said.

She slipped out of the office and closed the door behind her.

Maggie looked at Stride. “What do you think?”

Stride frowned. “She’s still lying about something.”

38

Clark Biggs sat in a bar on the main street in Gary, with his big fingers laced around a bottle of beer. Donna nursed a Diet Coke beside him, but they had hardly talked. When she put her hand tentatively on his shoulder, he couldn’t even turn his head to look at her. She laid her head against his arm, and he knew she was crying, but he didn’t feel anything. He couldn’t comfort her when he was numb all over. He wanted to cry, and he couldn’t. He wanted to get angry, and he couldn’t. It was like being in a dream where you wanted to run and your legs wouldn’t go.

He knew what Donna wanted-to see if they could rebuild a life, to put their marriage back together after Mary had forced them apart. She wanted something to fill the emptiness, but it was never going to happen. Without Mary, he had no life and didn’t want one.

“I wish you’d let me in,” Donna murmured.

Clark didn’t reply. He drank his beer. The bar was crowded, but the cacophony of voices created a bubble of privacy around the two of them. He would have been happier being alone. He didn’t want Donna or anyone else to share his grief.

“Do you still blame me?” she asked.

Clark hesitated and then shook his head. He had given up the anger he felt for Donna. She had no way of knowing that a monster was in the woods. It was just that life was so damn fragile, and there were so many predators out there. A girl goes to a store to buy a graduation gift and winds up kidnapped and strangled. A girl goes to a Halloween party and gets beaten to death in the backyard. A girl goes to an island resort and disappears forever. Fragile. There and gone in the time it takes to cry. No one was ever to blame, and no one ever seemed to pay the price.

“It wasn’t you,” he told her. “It could just as easily have been me with her when it happened.”

“Thank you, Clark. I needed to hear that.”

Clark realized that his hands were wrapped so tightly around the bottle of beer that his knuckles were white. The truth was that he wasn’t numb at all. He was holding his emotions down like a bathtub toy under the water, because he was afraid of them popping up. Afraid that his grief and fury would be like a tidal wave washing him away if he stared them in the face. He didn’t know how to deal with any of it. He could be hollow and dead, or he could open the locked door in his heart and go insane.

Behind him, wind and heat blew through the smoky air as the door opened. He heard a chorus of teenage chatter, and both he and Donna turned around as the players from a girls’ softball team squeezed into the bar, dressed in white jerseys and shorts, their long hair tumbling and blowing as they peeled off their caps. Their faces glowed with pinkness and sweat. They laughed and shoved each other; it was a postgame victory celebration. They dropped bats, gloves, and balls in a corner near the door, and one of the softballs rolled across the wooden floor and wound up at Clark’s feet. He leaned down and scooped it up. It was dirty and solid. A girl about Mary’s age, stocky and strong, with chestnut hair, clapped her hands and waved at him. Clark tossed the ball to her underhanded. She caught it with a big grin and juggled it in her hands as she slouched into a chair.

“Do you ever wish that Mary had been like that?” Donna asked. “Just an ordinary girl?”

“She was who she was,” Clark said.

“Yes, but she missed so much. Getting crushes. Getting her first kiss. Having a best friend. It could have been her on that team, Clark. She could have been any one of those girls.”

“She was happy,” Clark insisted.

Donna stared wistfully at the girls on the other side of the bar. “She was only happy because she didn’t understand what she couldn’t have.”

“What are you saying?” Clark asked.

“I don’t know. We always said it was God’s will, but did God really want her to be like that? Did God want us to split up because we couldn’t handle it? I don’t think God was watching us at all when He let it happen.”

“Are you saying Mary is better off dead?”

“No.” Then she said, “I don’t know. I can hardly put it into words, but yes, on some level, don’t you think she’s better off?”

Clark swung back to the bar. He didn’t want to look at the girls’ team anymore. He couldn’t bear their sweetness and young noise. “Mary’s not better off,” he said. “I’m not better off. Maybe you are.”

“That’s not what I mean. You know it’s not. I just need to find some meaning in this. Some explanation. Some purpose.”

“There’s no purpose at all.” He waved at the bartender. “Another beer over here.”

“Getting drunk won’t bring her back,” Donna said.

“What do you care? I’m not your husband anymore, so just leave me alone.”

Donna sniffled and took a sip from her cola. Clark was impatient as the bartender poured his beer, and he drank a third of it in the first swallow when the man put it down in front of him. The more he drank, the more the wall began to crack. Emotions slipped out. He felt his eyes burning with tears.

“Oh, no,” Donna murmured.

“What?”

She pointed at the television screen over the bar. Clark saw a press conference under way live on the nine o’clock news. The St. Louis County attorney, Pat Burns, stood in front of a battery of microphones in the lobby of the courthouse. Behind her, he saw the two Minnesota detectives he knew. Maggie Bei and Jonathan Stride. He caught the last few words of a crawl on the bottom of the screen.

NO CHARGES TO BE FILED.

“Hey!” Clark shouted at the bartender. “Turn that up, okay?”

The bartender aimed a remote control at the television. Clark leaned forward, straining to hear. Some of the conversation in the bar dwindled as faces turned toward the screen. It was a small town. They all knew Clark and Donna.

“… substantial speculation about the murder of Laura Starr that occurred in Duluth in 1977,” Pat Burns said. “Recent reports in the media have suggested that we have a suspect in custody and that charges in that case are imminent. Unfortunately, these reports are not accurate. We have made no arrests to date, and we do not have sufficient evidence at this time to put before a grand jury. We will continue to investigate any leads that emerge in this terrible crime, but it isn’t appropriate to raise false hopes in a community that wants justice.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Clark asked.

Donna wiped her eyes. “They’re giving up. That’s how lawyers talk.”

Clark heard one of the reporters ask a question. “Is it true that a suspect in the crime attempted suicide following interrogation by Duluth police?”

A photo appeared in the upper right corner of the television screen, and Clark saw the face of the man in the photo array that Maggie had shown him. He saw the name. Finn Mathisen.

“I can’t comment on that,” Burns replied.

“… heard there might be a confession in the case,” another reporter said over the chorus of voices.

Burns shook her head. “We’ve conducted numerous interviews with witnesses, and we’re still evaluating them. At this point, the police do not have any statement in hand from anyone claiming responsibility for the murder.”

“Has Peter Stanhope been cleared of involvement in the murder?”

“I’m not going to discuss anyone’s guilt or innocence.”

“Do you think this case will ever be solved?”

“I very much hope so.”

Clark didn’t look at Pat Burns. He studied Maggie’s face behind her. What he saw there turned the hope in his heart to dust. When she looked at the camera, it was as if she were looking directly at him, admitting she had failed, apologizing.

Another voice. “… is reporting that the suspect is a Superior resident named Finn Mathisen, and that Mathisen is also a suspect in the recent string of peeping incidents involving teenage girls?”

Clark held his breath. Donna clung to his arm.

“We are gathering evidence with regard to the so-called peeping tom cases,”Burns said. “Mr. Mathisen is a person of interest in that investigation, but he has not been charged. That’s all I’ll say.”

“Is it true that one of the peeping incidents led to a girl’s death?”

“We are investigating whether the death by drowning of a mentally challenged girl in Fond du Lac is in any way related to a peeping incident involving the same girl. It’s too early to draw any conclusions.”

“Turn if off,” Clark told the bartender.

The bartender looked back at him with his arms crossed. “You sure, Clark?”

“Turn if off,” he repeated.

The man switched channels.

“Too early to draw any conclusions?” Clark asked.

Donna stroked his bare arm. “They have to say that. It doesn’t mean he won’t be charged. You can’t obsess about it, Clark. Let them do their jobs.”

“He’s going to get away with it.”

“You don’t know that.”

Clark closed his eyes. His drunken mind was like a dam, cracking and sprouting fissures under the relentless pressure of a swollen river. Each time one of the girls behind him squealed with laughter, he heard Mary’s laugh. It was as if she were still alive, holding out her hand and calling for him. When he tried to picture her face, however, he couldn’t see it. Another face intervened in his mind.

The sallow, leering face of Finn Mathisen.

“Clark?”

He heard Donna, but she was far away.

“Clark?” she asked again.

“I’m here,” he said hoarsely.

“I’m going to take you home,” she told him.

Clark nodded.

“Let me run to the ladies’ room, and then I’ll drive us back to the house. I’ll stay there, okay? I won’t leave you alone. I’ll stay with you tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right back,” Donna said. She hesitated and added, “I need to tell you something, but not here. When it’s just the two of us, we can talk.”

She nudged past him, but he grabbed her arm. They were surrounded by people pushing and shoving against them, smelling of smoke and stale beer, screeching a jumble of words that made his head spin. He pulled her face close, so that he could inhale her lilac perfume. He saw yearning and despair in her eyes. The down on her neck felt soft and familiar under his fingers. Her chest rose and fell like a scared bird.

“Mary was lucky to have you,” he said.

Her face twisted with emotion. She put a hand on his face, and her skin was warm. He thought he would be able to feel that touch all night.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Clark nodded. He watched his ex-wife as she navigated the crowd and disappeared through the oak door into the restroom. This could have been a night like so many they had spent in their early years. He could imagine Donna as she had been at twenty-one years old, when their bodies were fit and their hormones racing. Before their dreams grew up, got old, and died.

He shoved a tip into the bartender’s jar and got off the bar stool, swaying as he tried to walk. No one paid any attention to him. He balanced himself against strange shoulders until his head cleared. Through the sea of drinkers, he saw the two tables of teenage girls, sipping Coke, laughing with mouths full of white teeth and braces, their innocent giggles like music. Some had dirt on their faces; others had their baseball caps turned backward. Under the table, they were all bare legs and white socks. Clark felt as if he had been stabbed in the heart.

He made his way to the bar door. The girls had piled their softball equipment in the corner there. He opened the door into the night, but before he left, he grabbed one of the wooden baseball bats by its knob handle and took it with him.

39

Tish sat with the manuscript of her book open on the laptop screen. Her fingers lingered over the keyboard, but no words came. She was at the point where she had to decide. Lie or tell the truth. She had postponed the decision on the belief that, by the time she reached this crossroads, it would be easy. But it wasn’t. She was nearly done, but she wasn’t sure now if she wanted to finish it at all.

She reached for a cigarette, but even the solace of smoking didn’t appeal to her tonight. Angrily, she slapped the cover of the laptop shut.

When she had first opened the door to the past, it had felt right, as if the time had finally come in her life to flush out the night creatures from their hiding places. To fulfill her promise to Cindy. To come home. Now she wondered if it would have been better for everyone if she had stayed away.

She crossed to the glass door that led to the porch, built high above the slashing waters of the lake. She opened the door and took a tentative step onto the deck without looking down. Fear of heights was an odd thing. People who didn’t have it didn’t understand it. They could shimmy up cliff faces or stand on rooftops or dangle their feet from ski lifts and feel nothing at all. For her, just thinking about those things made her flinch and sweat. It wasn’t the height that scared her. It was her own lack of self-control that brought terror. What frightened her was the idea that some foreign, desperate part of her soul would cause her to fling herself over the edge whenever she was faced with a sharp drop. It didn’t matter where she was. An escalator. A mountain. A bridge. She had to hold on tight and clench her fists to make sure she didn’t panic. It was bad enough to die, but she didn’t want to die by falling.

Her breath fluttered in her chest.

She went back into the apartment and shut the door. In the bedroom, she saw her suitcase lying open on the floor, mostly packed. There was no reason to stay in the city any longer. She had the answers she needed, and she would be happy to do what she had done years ago. Escape. Get away. Put as many miles between herself and Duluth as she possibly could.

Tish went into the bedroom and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her suitcase. Her clothes were neatly folded. She reached across the main compartment to the zipped pouch at the back and tugged it open. The envelope was inside, faded and wrinkled with time. She pulled it out and let it sit in her hands. She had caressed it so many times that the paper was shiny. The ink on the envelope was thin and black.

The handwriting was Cindy’s.

Tish read the words again: For Jonny.

She had held on to the letter ever since Cindy died. It wasn’t right to leave town without giving it to him. On the other hand, she wondered if it was fair to stir up his life any more than she already had, to reawaken the past when he had managed to lay it to rest. Let him go on with Serena and not think about Cindy anymore.

Lie or tell the truth.

There was no need to protect William Starr. He had never earned an ounce of her compassion. She didn’t need to protect herself, either. Not anymore. It was time to let go of the shame she had felt when Cindy told her the truth.

Tish slipped her hand inside the suitcase pouch again and extracted the plastic zip-top bag in which she kept the clipping. She removed it delicately, careful not to rip the yellowed newspaper. It was a fragment from another era. A lifetime ago. She unfolded the creases and held it at its edge with the tips of her fingers.

The headline screamed at her. Tore at her heart.

HOSTAGE SHOT, KILLED IN BANK STANDOFF

She read it for the thousandth time and then carefully refolded it and slid it back inside the plastic bag. As if, by putting it away, it didn’t exist. She got angry all over again to think of William Starr hiding this clipping in the pages of his Bible. Until Cindy found it.

The phone rang in the other room. Tish secured the envelope inside her suitcase and went to answer it.

“This is Tish,” she said.

“This is Peter Stanhope.”

She thought about hanging up, but she didn’t. “What do you want?”

“First, I want to apologize.”

“Oh?”

“I know you had ulterior motives during our rendezvous the other night, but I shouldn’t have done what I did. It was wrong. I’m sorry.”

“If you expect me to apologize, too, you can forget it.”

“I understand. I’m not asking for anything in return.” He added, “I saw the press conference tonight. The authorities are essentially walking away from the case. I was wondering what that means for your book.”

“What I write in my book and what the police and prosecutors do are two different things,” Tish told him.

“So what are you going to write?” Peter asked.

“You’ll have to read it and find out.”

“You don’t still think I’m guilty, do you? I heard that Finn admitted to you that he killed Laura. I also heard about his mother and her murder. It’s a tragic story.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m sure you’re disappointed that no one is going to answer for Laura’s death,” he said. “All I can tell you, as a lawyer, is that getting to a courtroom doesn’t mean that you’ll find justice. Don’t judge yourself a failure because you couldn’t convince prosecutors to file charges in a thirty-year-old murder.”

“I know that. I feel sorry for Finn, but not for you, Peter. At least Finn had an excuse. He grew up in an abusive family. You were a stalker and an attempted rapist, and your only excuse was arrogance and money.”

“As to being rich and arrogant, I plead guilty.” He laughed.

Tish hated the fact that he was so smooth. So unflappable. Even now, with the truth coming from Finn’s mouth, she was reluctant to give up the idea that Peter had been the one to swing the bat.

“Tell me something, did you know Finn was in the woods that night?” Tish asked. “Did you see him there?”

“No.”

“What about his family background?”

Peter responded with an exaggerated sigh. “What is this about?”

“It just occurred to me that Finn makes a very convenient fall guy,” Tish told him. “Particularly if you knew about his mother’s murder.”

“I didn’t.”

“So why were you so quick to hire a detective to look into his past?”

“That’s how lawyers win cases,” Peter said. “We dig up secrets.”

“I just wonder if you already knew what Serena would find.”

“I didn’t. Don’t go looking for conspiracy theories, Tish. I had no idea Finn was in the park, and I didn’t know a thing about his past.”

Tish said nothing.

“You may hate me, but wishing I was guilty doesn’t make it true,” Peter added.

“Ray Wallace thought you were guilty. So did your father.”

“They didn’t know about Finn.”

“If you were innocent, why did you let the police hide and destroy evidence for you?”

“Because plenty of innocent men have gone to jail,” Peter snapped. “I’m getting tired of this, Tish. People like you assume that being rich makes you guilty.”

He sounded defensive. Nervous. As if she had struck a chord.

“Pat Burns may be done with you, but I’m not,” Tish said. “I was planning to leave town, Peter, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe Finn only thinks he killed Laura, because he saw who did. Maybe he saw you.”

Maggie was almost asleep when she heard what sounded like the angry chatter of an insect somewhere in her bedroom. Her eyes sprang open. Disoriented, she fumbled for the lamp on her nightstand and blinked at the bright light. The buzzing sounded like a june bug, one of those brown summer beetles that flies blindly into screen doors and then drops like a rock and beats its wings in agitation. She realized, however, that the muffled noise was too melodic. When it continued into a third chorus, she remembered that she had switched her cell phone to vibrate mode during the press conference and then left her phone in the pocket of her black slacks draped over a chair.

The phone was ringing.

She glanced at the clock and saw that it was midnight. She climbed out of bed and retrieved the phone. The bedroom curtains billowed like sails in the lake breeze.

“Maggie Bei.”

“Ms. Bei, I’m sorry to be calling you so late. This is Donna Biggs.”

Maggie wandered to the window with the phone in her hand. Outside, the night clouds were black. She smelled a storm. “What can I do for you, Donna? Is something wrong?”

She heard hesitation in the woman’s voice. “I don’t know. I think so.”

“What is it?”

“Clark and I were together at a bar in Gary this evening. We saw the press conference that Ms. Burns held.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Maggie said. “I tried to reach both of you to tell you what you were going to hear, but I couldn’t connect with you in time.”

“I understand.”

“I hope you realize that I’m still chasing the peeping incidents aggressively. I’m not giving up on this case. I only wish I could be more encouraging about charges related to Mary’s death.”

“It’s not your fault,” Donna replied. “I’m just afraid that Clark is very upset. I could see it in his eyes tonight. He’s devastated.”

“I know this has been terrible for both of you,” Maggie said.

“Clark disappeared from the bar, Ms. Bei. He left, and he didn’t tell me where he was going. He was drinking heavily. I went to his house to find him, and I’ve been here for several hours now. I was hoping he’d come home, but he hasn’t. I’ve tried his cell phone, but he must have it turned off.”

“Did he say anything to you?” Maggie asked.

“Nothing. I went to the restroom, and when I came back, he was gone.”

“Have you called 911?”

“No, I wanted to talk to you first. I’m not sure what I should do.”

“I’ll put out an alert for Clark and his truck,” Maggie told her. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”

“I’m afraid of what he might do,” Donna added.

Maggie thought about Clark’s face when she had come upon him in the woods where Mary died. “Does Clark own a gun?” she asked softly.

“He owns hunting rifles, but they’re all still here at the house. I checked. He doesn’t own a handgun.”

“That’s good news,” Maggie told her. She waited a beat and then added, “I know that Clark has been depressed, but has he talked at all about harming himself? Are you afraid he might commit suicide?”

“No, that’s not it,” Donna said. “I’m not worried about Clark killing himself. I’m worried that he might kill someone else.”

“Someone else? Like who?”

“They talked about that man on the news tonight. The one you’ve been investigating. Clark knows his name now. He knows where he lives.”

“You mean Finn Mathisen?”

“Yes. I think Clark might try to do what you can’t. Get justice for Mary.”

Maggie swore under her breath. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

“Ms. Bei, you have to find him. You can’t let Clark do this.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t. I don’t care about this other man. He deserves whatever happens to him. But I don’t want Clark throwing away his life. He can’t. Not now.”

Maggie heard the pleading in Donna’s voice. “What are you saying?”

“Clark doesn’t know,” Donna told her. “He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”

40

Midnight in the rural neighborhoods of Superior was quiet. The media trucks that had surrounded Finn’s house for the ten o’clock news were gone. The house was dark and silent. Even so, Clark knew that Finn was hiding there, sitting in some room with the lights off. The silver RAV sat like a ghost truck in the driveway. He hoped that the man who had killed his daughter couldn’t sleep.

He thought about breaking in. Kick down the door or smash a window. He told himself that all he wanted to do was confront Finn and look for the guilt in his face, and tell him that he had robbed two lives when he set his sights on Mary. But that was a lie. Clark had darker things in his heart.

He squirmed in his seat because he needed to piss. He opened the door of his pickup and climbed down to the dirt. Overhead, there were no stars, only angry clouds growing blacker and more threatening as he stared at them. Wind drummed on his back. He stood between the steel rails of the tracks and unzipped and drained a clear stream of urine into the crushed rock. When he was done, he went back to the truck and reached across the seat to grab the baseball bat he had stolen. It was heavy and satisfying in his hand, like an instrument of justice.

Before he could close the truck door, he heard a voice over the howl of the wind, whispering in his ear.

“No, Daddy.”

Clark spun around. “Mary?”

He looked for her spirit in the darkness, but he was alone. His mind was playing games with him. Even so, the memory of his daughter’s voice, which was as clear and familiar as if she had been standing next to him, softened the fury in his heart. Clark stood for a long moment, hesitating. The storm was close and violent. The brittle air felt as if it would snap.

He wondered if Mary had come back to stop him. To tell him that what he was doing was wrong.

He threw the bat back into the truck, where it banged against the far door. He pulled himself up into the driver’s seat and held tightly to the steering wheel. The gales rattled the pickup. He took out his wallet and removed the photograph he kept of himself and Mary on the beach. The picture had been taken two summers ago. After staring at it silently and remembering the perfect Sunday afternoon they had spent together, he craned his neck back until his skull bumped against the head rest. His mouth hung open, gulping air. The tears he had been waiting for finally came. They were a silent army, marching out of his eyes, streaking his stubbled chin. He didn’t move or react, or feel his shoulders clench with sobs. It was just his grief letting go in a calm rain.

When it was over, Clark straightened up and wiped his face. He couldn’t do what he had been planning. He couldn’t kill in cold blood. He reached for the key, wanting to be away from this terrible place. He hoped that Donna was waiting for him at home. Maybe she was right. Maybe something could be salvaged between them. There had been an old yearning in her eyes at the bar, like an ember in a fire that could be coaxed back to life with a warm breath.

Before he could start the engine of his truck, however, he saw a ripple of movement on the front porch of the house across the tracks.

The door opened like the lips of a black monster, and someone tall and skinny sneaked out into the night. It was Finn, nearly invisible in dark clothes. He took each step awkwardly, like a sick man. He stopped at the bottom step, and his head swiveled, surveying the neighborhood. Clark held his breath as Finn’s eyes lingered on his pickup, but the darkness protected him. When Finn thought he was alone, he crept beside the towering lilacs in the front yard and made his way stealthily to his RAV.

Clark knew exactly what Finn was doing. It was the watching hour. It didn’t matter that a sweet girl had died. It didn’t matter that his face had been exposed to the city as a suspect. He was off to find another window, another girl.

That was something Clark couldn’t allow.

He shoved the photo of Mary into his front pocket. He apologized to Donna in his mind. He waited until Finn’s RAV pulled out of the gravel driveway, then started his own truck and left the lights off. He hung back several blocks, but the taillights of Finn’s vehicle were easy to follow. Finn led him on a crisscross path through the neighborhood, past unlit houses and oak trees slumping like giants over the road. On Stinson Avenue, Finn turned diagonally toward the northeast, heading into wasteland behind the municipal airport. The road cut through cornfields and past the stinking smokestacks of the oil refinery. Clark felt the bump of railroad tracks under his tires.

After several miles, the road led into the East End neighborhood, not far from the main highway and the harbor basin. Clusters of houses built on open lots dotted both sides of the road. The blocks here were laid out in neat squares. Clark noticed the red lights on the RAV grow larger as Finn slowed down, and he braked, not wanting to get too close. Finn turned, and the lights disappeared. Clark cruised past the intersection and eyed the street on his right. He did a U-turn and swung into the street, driving slowly and peering at the road ahead. There were more trees here, like parkland. He saw a playground and an old fence surrounding twin tennis courts.

Two blocks ahead, he spotted brake lights. Clark slowed to a crawl. When he arrived at the intersection, he saw that the RAV had vanished. He drove several more blocks and then retraced his steps and turned onto the side street where he had last noticed the brake lights. There was a handful of cars parked on the street and in driveways, but no RAV. No Finn. He had been gathered up by the night.

“Where are you?” Clark murmured.

He followed the checkerboard of streets like a rat through a maze. Once, he noticed a RAV parked adjacent to a detached garage, but when he got closer, he realized the color was wrong. Sand, not silver. He kept driving, wondering how Finn had managed to lose him and whether the detour through the East End had been a ruse to throw off anyone who might be behind him. Clark worried that Finn had escaped to the highway and turned north or south, heading for a completely different destination.

But no.

There he was.

Clark eased around the next corner and saw Finn’s silver RAV shunted off the shoulder of the road under the umbrella shade of an elm tree. The lot was vacant and overgrown. Clark stopped, put the pickup truck in reverse, and backed around the corner. He turned off his engine and got out, leaving the baseball bat inside the truck. To the northwest, the sky lit up for an instant and then went dark. Lightning. Clark counted until the bass drum of thunder reached his ears, but he didn’t have to wait long. The storm was drawing near.

He used the closest house as cover, ducking in and out of the trees. When he was opposite the RAV, he crossed the open lot and approached the passenger side. The truck was empty. Finn was gone. Clark examined the neighborhood in every direction. He didn’t see Finn and didn’t hear anything other than the whoosh of quaking elm leaves and another, louder peal of thunder.

Clark pulled on the passenger door of the RAV. It was open. The overhead dome light stayed dark. He smelled the man inside the car; there was an odor of sweat and a stale aroma of fried food. He looked for street maps, photos, or notes, but the garbage on the floor mats of the truck didn’t help him. The glove compartment was locked, and Clark dug in his pants pocket and yanked out a pocket knife and forced it open. He found the sports section of the local newspaper inside, folded to reveal a photo of three girls on the Superior High School swim team. One girl’s face was circled in blue marker. A pretty blonde. He remembered what Maggie had told him, that this man didn’t simply happen on his victims by accident. He identified them. Studied them. Stalked them. He had a destination in mind, a specific house, a specific girl.

Clark read the caption with the girl’s name. Angela Tjornhom. But where did she live?

He closed the door and studied the nearby homes. He looked for squares of light, but the neighborhood was dark. He shifted away from the RAV, off the street and back into the shelter of the houses. For a big man, he moved quickly and quietly in the spongy grass. At the corner of each house, he looked for Finn crouching in the earth near a first-floor window. He used the lightning to illuminate the way.

Rain began a frenzied beating in the trees over his head. Where he came into open space, water slapped his skin and soaked him. In seconds, he was drenched, wiping his eyes so he could see. At the end of the street, he stood under the downpour, debating which way to turn. With each bursting floodlight in the sky, he tried to penetrate the gray sheets of rain protecting each backyard. Finn was nowhere to be found. Clark chose to go right, jogging now. He made his way to the end of the next block without coming upon Finn.

Then, through the blaze of another jagged track of lightning, he saw him. Finn was fifty yards away, standing in the cover of a shaggy evergreen, only steps from the rear corner window of a modest rambler. Clark crept closer, staying out of sight. Once, as if he could feel eyes upon him, Finn spun around. Had the lightning struck then, Clark would have been exposed, but instead, he stood shock still, invisible in the darkness. Finn stared right at him and didn’t see him. When he turned away, Clark took cover behind a row of skinny pines and followed a winding route that brought him within ten yards of Finn’s back.

The window in the rear of the house was dark. Finn brought a hand to his head, and Clark realized that Finn had a cell phone. He was making a phone call. A few seconds later, the window flashed with light, and Clark understood. Finn was calling the girl. Waking her up.

Clark could see through the vertical blinds on the window. The girl in the photo, no more than sixteen, climbed out of bed and padded in her gray half-shirt and pajama bottoms to a white desk. She picked up the phone. Spoke into it. Hung up. She headed back to bed, but before she could turn off the light, Finn called again, and Clark saw the girl answer, her face cross with annoyance.

She hung up again, but she was awake now. She approached the window to stare at the storm and the rain pelting down. Finn was enraptured, staring at the girl framed in the bright square, with her flimsy shirt and her flat expanse of midriff. She was awkwardly beautiful, stroking her messy hair, biting a fingernail. Unaware that she was vulnerable and on display. Clark took advantage of Finn’s obsession to come up behind him. All he wanted was for the girl to turn away.

For almost a full minute, all three actors in the play were motionless. The girl, inside, staring with huge blue eyes at the rain and the night. Finn, watching from beside the evergreen. Clark, so close he thought Finn might smell his breath.

Then the blond girl wheeled around abruptly, and a moment later, the window went black again.

Before Finn could move, Clark was on him. His huge forearm encircled Finn’s neck with the crushing grip of a snake, and he lifted the man bodily off the ground. Finn couldn’t breathe. He struggled, kicking his legs spastically, landing harmless blows on Clark with his fists. Clark thought about choking him, feeling the life drain out of his body, but instead he dropped Finn and backhanded his skull with a swift blow of his fist. Finn collapsed onto the wet ground, unconscious.

Clark slipped off his belt and tied Finn’s ankles, then grabbed the man’s shoulders and pulled him up in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. He didn’t notice Finn’s weight. Instead, through the swirl of the storm, he hauled Finn back toward his truck.

41

Donna’s right,” Maggie said unhappily. “Clark must be going after Finn Mathisen.”

Stride took his eyes off the road. “Do you think Clark would throw his life away over a nothing like Finn?”

“To get vengeance for his daughter? Yeah, I do.”

“Add Finn’s silver RAV to the ATL on both sides of the border. Let’s hope Rikke can tell us where Finn went.”

“That would mean admitting he’s guilty.”

“To save his life,” Stride said.

Maggie punched the buttons on her cell phone while Stride drove.

As they sped through the driving rain, the St. Louis River twisted like a dragon on their right. Walls of water sprayed from under his tires as Stride shot through deep, fast-moving rivers that poured off the hills and flooded across the highway. He skidded onto the railway bridge that crossed from Minnesota into Wisconsin over the marshy river lands. Wind howled through the canyon created by the river, and an ore train thundered the opposite way on the trestle above him. He hung on to the wheel. The entire superstructure of the bridge shuddered as if it would come apart in pieces.

Stride braked at the sharp curve on the far side of the bridge and then flew past the block-long town of Oliver onto the lonely highway leading into Superior. Through the sheeting water on his windshield, he saw miles of birch trees growing parallel to the two-lane road. Cattails swayed in the ditch like spinning toys. He drove through a long stretch of nothingness before arriving at the southernmost end of the city. It was one in the morning. Superior was dead. Silver rain blew diagonally through the glow of streetlights.

He followed the chain of streets until he was at the end of the developed land near Finn Mathisen’s house, which was ablaze with light. A squad car from the Superior police was parked out front.

Stride pulled up behind the police car, and he and Maggie both got out. A blond policewoman with matted wet hair jogged from the porch to meet them. The three of them shook hands while the rain pricked at them like needles.

“Lynn Ristau, Superior police,” the woman said. She wasn’t tall but had a tough, strong physique that would make larger men think twice before messing with her.

“I’m Lieutenant Stride. This is Senior Sergeant Maggie Bei.”

“You guys from Duluth know how to pick the right weather for losing suspects,” Ristau said with a smile.

“Any hits on the ATL?” Stride asked.

Ristau shook her head. Water sprayed from her blond hair. “Nobody’s spotted your guy.”

“Did you talk to the woman inside?”

“Yeah, but she’s not saying much. She says she didn’t know that her brother had left the house until I knocked on her door. She has no idea where he went.”

“All right, we’ll see if we can pry anything else out of her,” Stride said. “Can you hang out and keep us posted? We may need some help.”

“You bet.”

Stride and Maggie climbed the front porch and passed through a curtain of water streaming from the roof. Rikke yanked open the door before they could ring the bell. She wore a yellow cotton robe that draped to her ankles, and her face was pinched into a frown.

“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.

“May we come in?” Stride asked.

Silently, the tall, husky woman stood aside. Stride and Maggie shook off as much as water as they could and entered the house, where they dripped on the throw rug. The walls shook as gusts of wind assaulted the frame from the west. Rikke closed the door behind them and folded her arms.

“Well?” she asked.

Stride studied the empty living room. Rikke had been sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee in a china mug. “Where is Finn?”

“I have no idea. You didn’t answer my question. What is going on?”

“We think someone may be hunting for Finn.”

“Who?”

“It’s the man whose daughter died in the river.”

Rikke paled and turned away. “That’s ridiculous.”

“We know Finn was at the river that day,” Maggie told her. “He was stalking that girl. She drowned because of him.”

“If you could prove that, Finn would be in prison right now,” Rikke snapped. She turned back and jabbed a finger in Stride’s face. “This is your fault. You won’t quit until my brother is dead.”

“We’re trying to protect him,” Stride replied.

“It’s a little late after everything you’ve done. Plaster his face all over the television. Reporters banging on our door all night. It’s no wonder some animal decided to come after him. You couldn’t arrest him, so you hung him out in the media and let someone else do your dirty work.”

“I’m sorry about the reporters,” Stride said. “They have their sources, and it’s hard to stop them. None of this changes the fact that we need to find Finn before Clark Biggs does.”

“I can’t help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Maggie asked.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I have no idea where Finn went. I told the officer outside that I didn’t even know he had left the house. I was sleeping.”

“Do you know what time he left?”

Rikke shrugged. “It must have been after midnight. Finn was downstairs when I went to bed.”

“So he’s been gone for less than an hour,” Stride said. “How is Finn’s physical condition?”

“Weak. He shouldn’t be out.”

“Did he say anything to you about leaving the house?”

“No. He’s not strong enough to go anywhere.”

Stride leaned closer to Rikke’s face. “There’s only one thing Finn would be doing after midnight. We both know what that is.”

He saw it in her eyes. She knew.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rikke protested, looking down at the floor.

“I know you want to protect him, but right now, all you’re doing is putting him in harm’s way by lying. Let’s not play games, Rikke. Finn is sick. He went out to stalk a teenage girl, and if we’re right, Clark Biggs followed him. This is a man who believes that Finn is responsible for his daughter’s death. If he finds Finn standing outside another girl’s window, what the hell do you think he’s going to do?”

Rikke swelled her chest with a deep breath. Her jaw hardened like concrete, and Stride saw her hands curl into fists. She marched over to the sofa and sat near the cold fireplace. Water dripped down the chimney onto the grate. She took her cup of coffee in her hand, but she didn’t drink from it.

“We know what happened to your mother,” Maggie told her. “I talked to the police in North Dakota. Finn needs help.”

Rikke rolled her eyes, as if she were a teacher again and one of her students had made a stupid mistake. “Help? You think I haven’t tried to get him help? He’s been in and out of therapy for years.” She added, “I protected him all these years because I felt responsible.”

“Finn’s an adult,” Stride said.

Rikke shook her head. “You didn’t grow up in our house. You don’t know what we went through.”

“The police told me there were rumors that Finn was abused,” Maggie said.

“Rumors? Yes, that’s all they were. Rumors. Let’s keep it hush-hush so our nice little farm town doesn’t have to face something ugly.” Rikke’s voice was bitter. “Our neighbors, our teachers, our pastor, they all knew. They pretended everything was fine. Inger baked cookies and pies. She had it so hard after her husband died, the poor soul. Who cares about her kids? Who cares if she’s really a wad of phlegm that the devil spat up from hell?”

“You got out of that house,” Maggie said.

“Yes, but I left Finn behind.”

“You couldn’t have brought him with you,” Stride told her. “Not at your age.”

“No? Then how stupid I am to beat myself up over it for thirty-five years. I knew what was going to happen to Finn after I left. Inger started with me. I was her little piece of cherry pie. It wasn’t so bad during the day, but Finn and I hated the nights. The farm felt like we were on the moon. Just the three of us in that twisted triangle. She used to make Finn watch, you know. Pretty picture, isn’t it? She made Finn watch as she went down on me. Made him watch as she held my head to make me go down on her. He’s still watching. He can’t stop.”

“Where is he?” Stride asked her.

“I told you, I have no idea.”

“We’ve sent cops to the homes of all the girls who were involved in the peeping incidents,” Stride said. “There’s no sign of Finn or Clark at any of them. So he probably found someone new. A girl we don’t know about yet.”

“We know you sanitized his room before we searched it,” Maggie added. “We need to know if you found anything.”

Rikke put the cup down and folded her hands as if she were praying. “If you find him, you’ll put him in jail.”

“If we don’t find him tonight, he may wind up dead,” Stride said.

“There were pictures,” Rikke murmured. “Lots of them. Teenage girls. Some naked, some not. Taken through bedroom windows.”

“Did you destroy the photos?”

She nodded.

“Did you recognize any of the girls?” Maggie asked.

“Yes, I had seen some of them on the news,” Rikke admitted. “Including the retarded girl. The one who died.”

“Was there anyone recent? Someone he might have found since Mary?”

“Yes, he had new pictures. They were still on his camera. Another blonde. She looked young, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She looked a little like Laura did back then.”

“Do you know who this girl is?” Stride asked.

“I don’t.”

“Do you have any idea how he found her?”

“No.” Rikke thought about it and said, “She probably goes to Superior High School. In one of the photos, she was wearing a Spartans T-shirt.”

Stride turned to Maggie. “Talk to Ristau outside. See if we can track down a current yearbook from Superior High ASAP. Rikke might recognize this girl in the class photos.”

Maggie was already halfway to the door. “I’m on it.”

42

Less than an hour later, Stride and Maggie sat in the East End living room of a frightened teenager named Angela Tjornhom. Her parents sat on either side of her. Angela wore a gray Spartans T-shirt and pajama bottoms, with bare feet. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap. She was as waiflike as a model, with a pretty face and tiny frame. Stride could see that Rikke was right. If he looked for it in her face, he could see that Angela bore a faint resemblance to Laura.

“So this guy had pictures of me?” Angela asked.

“I’m sorry, but yes, we think so,” Maggie told her.

“That is so creepy. I mean, like, nude pictures even?”

“We don’t know.”

“I am never opening my blinds again, you know? I can’t believe this.” She nestled her head against her mother’s shoulder.

“Where the hell is this bastard?” Angela’s father demanded. He was small, with a thin ring of black hair around his bald head. His cheeks flushed red with rage. “Is this the pervert who was on the news?”

“We’re trying to locate him right now,” Stride said. “We’d like your permission to search your backyard.”

“Do it,” he told them. “Do whatever you have to.”

Stride nodded. “Angela, can you tell us if anything happened tonight?”

The girl had been crying. She tugged at her shirt and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I got a couple hangup calls on my cell phone.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. Sometime after midnight.”

“What did you do?”

“I turned on the light. The calls woke me up. I looked out the window, but I didn’t see anybody. It’s not like I could really see anything with all the rain, though.”

“Has this happened before?” Maggie asked.

Angela nodded. “Yeah, two or three times. Always at night. I just figured it was somebody with a wrong number, you know? I knew one of the other girls at school who got peeped, but I never thought about it happening to me.”

“Someone will come by tomorrow to take a full statement from you,” Stride said.

Maggie put a hand on the girl’s knee. “You should talk to someone, Angela. It’s natural for girls who experience something like this to be frightened. You shouldn’t deal with it alone.”

Angela shrugged and hid a little deeper inside her mother’s arms.

“We’ll get her help,” her father said.

Stride and Maggie left the family and returned to the pounding rain outside the house. Both of them switched on flashlights and swept the beams like searchlights ahead of them as they made their way to the backyard. The grass was sodden under their feet. Streams poured out of the swollen gutters. Behind the house, the lot was large and flat and dotted with evergreens. Stride could see the next street more than a hundred feet away. As he shined his flashlight through the grass, pools of standing water glistened back at him.

The room on the corner was Angela’s bedroom. The light was on, and the blinds were shut. Stride examined the grass underneath her window.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Maybe the rain washed away his footprints,” Maggie replied.

Stride shook his head. “He can’t have been this close. If he was standing here, she would have seen him.”

He examined the rest of the yard. Lightning turned the night to day for an instant. Stride saw disarray in the wet ground, twenty feet from Angela’s window. He used the flashlight to guide his footsteps to a soggy patch of mud and lawn beneath one of the fir trees, where tree roots bulged from the wet soil. In the cone of light, he saw a mess of footprints and crushed grass.

Maggie bent down and studied the overlapping tread marks. “Two different sets,” she said. “Looks like a fight.”

Stride spotted a single line of tracks leading away from the scene toward the street. He followed them with his flashlight. Where they passed through a bare patch of dirt, the prints in the mud were deep and clear.

“He was carrying someone,” Stride said, pointing to where the heel marks sank like weights into the soft earth.

“I think we’re running out of time, boss,” Maggie said.

They followed the footprints to the street, where they disappeared. Water overflowed from the sewers and poured along the curb in a river. Stride wiped rain from his eyes. He jogged to the vacant lot on the opposite side of the block to see if the footprints started again, but he couldn’t find the trail. Clark and Finn had both vanished.

Stride gestured to Maggie, pointing her to the south, while he followed the street to the north, running down the middle where the flooding was lightest. Twin rivers surged through the gutters. He used intermittent bursts of lightning to see between the houses and down the long stretches of asphalt. Each subsequent drumbeat of thunder was closer and longer. The storm was getting worse, not better, and the atmosphere felt violent around him, as if the pressure in the air were building toward an explosion. Wet cold worked its way inside his bones. Trees bowed over his head with the rotating winds, and when he stopped in the dead center of an intersection where two wide streets met, he felt small.

Another branch of lightning cut open the sky, looking like a hangman drawn by a child. Right then and there, Stride saw it. Three blocks away, glinting in the white light, was a silver RAV, parked under the sagging branches of an elm tree. He splashed through deep water. His feet sloshed inside his boots. As he got closer, he saw Maggie, sprinting for the RAV from the opposite direction. They arrived at almost the same time and slowed to study the ground around the truck. Both of them shot their flashlight beams inside the RAV, expecting to see Finn’s body slumped in back. Instead, the truck was empty.

“Finn never made it back here,” Maggie said.

“Did you spot Clark’s truck?”

She shook her head and got down on her knees. “Hang on, there’s something caught under the tire.”

Stride saw it, too. Maggie reached around beneath the chassis of the RAV and extracted something white from under the rubber of the tire. When she held it up, they saw that it was a wallet-sized photograph, dirty and wet. She illuminated it with the beam of her flashlight.

“It’s Clark and Mary Biggs,” she said.

“Do you think he left it there for us?”

Maggie shook her head. “It probably fell out of his pocket.”

“If Clark grabbed Finn, where would he take him?” Stride asked.

“I don’t know. Unless he already killed Finn and dumped the body somewhere else.”

Stride put himself in the shoes of a despondent father, confronting the man who had driven his daughter to her death. “I think if he was going to kill him, he’d have done it outside Angela’s window.”

“I’ll get more cars on the street, but we’re at a dead end.”

“What about Perch Lake Park?” Stride asked. “That’s where the girl died.”

“That was my first thought, but the parking lot was empty,” Maggie said. “I’ve got a car waiting in case he shows up.”

“What about Donna? She might know where Clark would go.”

Maggie nodded. “I’ll call her.”

She reached into her pocket for her phone, then stopped. “Wait a minute,” she said, shining a light on the picture again. “Where do you think this photograph was taken?”

Stride leaned closer. “It’s a beach somewhere around here. Probably along the Point. You can see the lake in the background.”

“We’re not too far from the Wisconsin Point, are we?”

“It’s just a few miles to the south.”

Maggie shoved the photograph in her pocket. “Clark told me that he used to take Mary out to the Point. It was one of their favorite places.”

“You think that’s where he took Finn?”

“It’s isolated, it’s close by, it reminds him of Mary.”

“That sounds like our best bet,” Stride said.

“How fast can you go?” Maggie asked.

43

Clark dragged Finn’s body one-handed through the wet sand by the belt tied around the man’s ankles. In his other hand, he dangled the baseball bat over his shoulder. As the uneven ground jolted Finn’s body, the bound man awakened and began to struggle, clawing at the mud for traction with his fingers. He spat out grass and dirt from his mouth and screamed. Clark ignored his cries, which were drowned out by the ferocious wailing of the wind and the beating of lake waves against the shore.

The beach was a long, lonely strip of sand and trees. The sky belched out rain and blinded him with a near-continuous chain of lightning flashes. Somewhere, he could smell wood burning, where electricity had blasted through bark and roots. The thunder was so near and loud that he felt the earth tremble under his feet. If he had believed in God, Clark would have believed that God was angry, but he had given up his faith long ago. He had stopped believing on that day when Mary first went into the water and came out a ghost of who she had once been.

There was no God, he realized then. No mercy.

Clark was not prepared to show any mercy tonight.

He dropped Finn in the empty center of the beach, where a fat, bleached tree trunk had washed up after months rolling and floating on the surface of the lake. It was bare and white, pockmarked with insect holes drilled into its wood. He grabbed a fistful of Finn’s shirt and propped him with his back against the tree trunk. Blood trickled down Finn’s face where brambles and rocks had scraped open his skin, but the rain quickly washed it away. Finn’s ankles strained at the belt that secured them, and his muscles twitched with fear.

“Who are you?” Finn asked. He was practically screaming, but his voice was a whisper.

“You killed my daughter,” Clark said.

Finn gazed in horror at Clark, who was as big and broad as a bear. He read the hardness of Clark’s face and knew immediately who Clark was and what Clark planned to do. Finn’s torso slid off the tree trunk, and he crawled away, dragging his feet behind him, his body flopping like a fish on the bottom of a boat. Clark took two steps and yanked him back by the collar of his shirt. When Finn was upright again, Clark drove the head of the bat like a spear into Finn’s stomach, so hard that blood and stomach juices spewed from Finn’s mouth. When Finn took a breath, there was nothing in his lungs, and his fingers clutched the sand in panic as he gasped for air. Tears mingled with the rain on his face.

Clark thought he would take more satisfaction in Finn’s pain, but he didn’t. He was as lifeless as the huge piece of driftwood where Finn sat.

Thirty feet away, sweeping waves broke across a black mirror of surf and slid almost to Clark’s boots. Foam flew up in a white curtain that was as tall as he was. When the water receded across the slick sand, he saw glints of quartz. If he looked hard enough, he could see Mary here as a young girl, her feet slapping through the pools and streams. He could watch the summer sun as it kissed her hair. Hear her squeals of delight. Feel the strength of her damp arms as she hugged him.

“No, Daddy,” she whispered to him again. Urgently.

Clark forced her ghost away. There were some things a child didn’t understand. There were some things a father has to do. I’m sorry, baby.

He clutched the bat with both hands and held it the way a baseball player would, with tight, thick fingers on the grainy wood. Finn’s lips formed the word No, but nothing came out of his chest. Clark unleashed the bat in a fierce arc and whipped it into the meat of Finn’s shoulder. Bones cracked. Muscle tore. Finn’s body rose off the sand and landed in a sprawl four feet away. He curled his limbs together like a baby. His eyes were closed. He wailed.

Clark still felt nothing. He was impervious. Dead.

He retrieved Finn and propped him up again. The man’s collarbone jutted out from his neck like a chicken bone snapped in half. Finn’s skin was white.

“Stop,” he begged Clark. “Please stop. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t deserve to live.”

“I know.”

Clark squatted down inches from Finn’s face. “You took away my whole life. Everything I am, everything I’ve done, it was all for that little girl. When you killed her, I died. Understand? I’m dead right now because of what you did. And what was she to you? Tell me, what right did you have to be a part of her life?”

Mucus dripped out of Finn’s nose. His lips trembled. “I never meant for anything to happen. I’m so sorry she died. I only wanted to talk to her. I never touched her.”

“You stood outside my little girl’s window,” Clark said. “Did you see her naked?”

Finn was silent.

“Answer me.”

“Yes.”

“Did you take pictures of her?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

Finn shut his mouth again.

“Goddamn it, what else? Did you jerk off? Is that what you did while staring at my little girl?”

“Yes. Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, yes.”

Clark stood up again with terrible purpose.

“No, no, no,” Finn screamed, but it was too late. Clark swung again, connecting with the soft side of Finn’s knee, hearing it pop as the femur and tibia tore apart. Finn held on to his leg as if he could make the pain stop by covering it up. The sounds from his throat were guttural, like an animal’s. He writhed on the ground. Clark took a heavy breath and walked away, letting the rain and wind pour over him. He wandered into the surf and let the waves splash around his legs, so fierce that they almost toppled him. God was definitely angry now. The lightning was a white strobe light, flashing in his face, knifing across half the sky.

Finn shouted. “Kill me! For God’s sake, just kill me.”

Clark heard Mary again, as if she were right there, tugging at his arm, pleading for attention. “No, Daddy, no.”

I’m sorry, baby. No mercy.

Except now the merciful thing would be to end it. There was that time when his truck had sideswiped a huge buck, and he found it in the deep weeds on the shoulder of the highway, twitching, in agony, dying slowly. He couldn’t drive away and leave it there. Donna was in the truck, and he made her stay inside and not watch. Then he retrieved a rifle from the tailgate and shot the deer in the brain.

An act of mercy.

Clark marched out of the surf. He came up behind Finn, not in front. Finn felt him there but didn’t try to turn around. Clark could see the man’s chest heaving in and out. The bald pate of Finn’s skull was like a melon balanced on the tree trunk. Clark knew it would take one swing of the bat to end it. To end both their lives. One millisecond of pain and light to put Finn, Mary, and himself out of their shared agony.

“Just do it,” Finn shouted.

Clark wrapped his fingers around the wet grip of the bat. His eyes found a misshapen mole on the back of Finn’s head and focused on it. His target. His sweet spot. He wound up and prepared to swing.

44

The Wisconsin Point was a twin sister to the Minnesota Point, separating Lake Superior from Allouez Bay with a needle of land that suffered the pummeling of waves and gales. Only an inlet of open water not even a thousand feet across separated the two splinters of beach. Unlike its Minnesota sibling, where Stride and Serena lived, the Wisconsin Point was largely undeveloped parkland, so narrow in most places that there was no room to sink a foundation. The only road leading out to the Point was a country lane called Moccasin Mike at the southeastern edge of Superior.

Stride shot through the storm on Moccasin Mike at seventy miles an hour. His windshield wipers sluiced aside the hammering rain. The road was arrow straight, but it was a roller coaster of shallow hills and dips. He didn’t see the worst of the water-filled depressions in the road until the truck was airborne and he and Maggie rose out of their seats. His breath expelled as he landed back down in moving water with a sharp jolt in his back. The truck groaned through the flooded valley and threatened to stall and float, but then the tires chewed back onto solid ground and roared up the opposite slope, cascading spray behind them.

At high speed, the truck gobbled up the two-mile stretch of highway, and Stride nearly missed the left turn to the Point. He braked hard and overcorrected, sending the rear of the Expedition into a fishtail, and then he accelerated again onto the broken asphalt. The truck lurched through a moonscape of potholes. Evergreens leaned in from the shoulders of the road, and he sheared off branches as he drove. His high beams stabbed the darkness, but all he could see was silver rain and black forest, until suddenly the truck burst free from the wilderness onto the slim peninsula and the bay opened up on his left. A roar of wind rattled the truck and threatened to spill it onto its side.

He slowed down. The thunder was a tin can banging in their ears.

“I don’t like this storm,” Stride said. “The lightning is right on top of us.”

They rocked along the uneven road for half a mile, and then Stride caught a reflection of metal in his headlights. A 1990s-era pickup truck was parked in the long grass on the right-hand shoulder by the slope that led to the lakeside beach. Clark’s truck.

He stopped the Expedition askew on the Point road. He and Maggie piled out of both sides. Maggie ran to Clark’s truck and pressed her face against the window.

“It’s empty,” she called. “They must be on the beach.”

“Call for backup.”

Stride unholstered his Glock. Maggie grabbed her phone and shouted instructions.

A muddy path only a foot wide wound between the long grass and sagging birch trees to the top of the slope. The wet ground sucked at Stride’s boots, and he slipped as he climbed, falling to his knees and nearly losing his gun. He had to sink his free hand in the dirt to push himself up. Maggie followed behind him, swearing as her heels got trapped. She kicked them off, leaving herself in bare feet.

They reached the crown of the hill, where the expanse of beach and lake opened up below them. Superior was a living thing, violent and huge, invading the puny finger of sand. Around them, the trees yawned and spun. Lightning popped in their eyes, and the circling beam of the Superior lighthouse flashed through the darkness out on the water.

At first, the beach looked empty.

“Where are they?” Maggie screamed, cupping her hand beside her mouth.

“I don’t see them!” The lightning broke again, and Stride pointed. “Wait, there they are!”

Fifty yards away, looking no larger than dolls, Clark Biggs and Finn Mathisen were on opposite sides of a giant trunk of driftwood. Finn lay sprawled on the ground, half his torso propped against the tree. Clark stood behind him. When the next flash of lightning illuminated the beach, they realized that Clark held a baseball bat in his hands and was preparing to swing with deadly intent at the back of Finn’s head.

“Stop!” Maggie shouted.

She might as well have been mute. Clark couldn’t hear a thing.

“Clark! Stop!”

Stride aimed his Glock into the sky and squeezed off a round. To him, with the gun by his ear, the report sounded loud, but he wasn’t sure the shot could be heard over the wind, rain, thunder, and surf. For a few long seconds, the beach was dark, and they were blind. When they could see through the next streak of light, they saw Clark, stopped, the bat poised high above his head, as he stared directly at them on top of the hill. Stride half expected him to swing, but Clark froze, hesitating at the brink.

Finn’s face was turned toward them. He was alive.

Stride stumbled down the slope to the flat stretch of wet sand and rye grass. He splashed through pooled water with Maggie on his heels and stopped ten feet from the slab of driftwood. Stride pointed his Glock at the ground, but he held it out from his body where Clark could see it. He studied Finn and saw that the man was badly hurt, his shoulder broken, his left hand pressed frantically on his disjointed knee, his face twisted in agony. He had bitten his lip so hard that it was bleeding.

“Son of a bitch,” Maggie murmured. Then she said loudly, “Clark! Don’t do this! Put the bat down!”

Clark’s face was hard as stone. His eyes were black. He shook his head.

“This is your life,” Maggie told him. “Don’t destroy it. Mary wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“Mary’s dead,” Clark said.

“Listen to me, Clark. I know the kind of man you are. You’re not a murderer.”

Finn grimaced and pushed himself higher off the ground. He shouted at Clark behind him. “Be a man and swing the fucking bat!”

Stride watched Clark tighten his grip. The big man’s elbows bent as he twisted the bat back behind his shoulders. Stride stood up and stretched out his arms, steadying his Glock with both hands and aiming straight at Clark’s head. The wind buffeted him. Rain poured over his face and body.

“Put the bat down, Clark,” Stride said.

“You won’t kill me,” Clark said. “Not to protect a piece of shit like this.”

They played a game of chicken, staring each other down.

“Please, Clark,” Maggie pleaded with him.

Clark’s eyes flicked to Maggie. “You know what this man did to Mary. He deserves to die.”

“That’s not up to you or me.”

The storm swooped down off the hills like the invasion of an army. Wind shrieked and drove their bodies backward. Over the furious lake, veins of lightning tore across the entire sky. The world snapped from black to white to black. Stride felt the pressure and temperature dropping. An explosion was coming.

“We have to go right now,” Stride told Clark. “It’s not safe here.”

“So go. Leave me alone.”

“Put down the bat.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Clark, Donna called me,” Maggie told him. “She doesn’t want to lose you. She’s scared to death.”

Clark hesitated.

“She still loves you,” Maggie said.

“Do it!” Finn screamed.

Clark’s eyes burned into the back of Finn’s skull, as if he could see the bat landing there. Hear the awful crack. Watch the blood and brain fly. Stride knew what was going through the man’s head. Clark wanted to feel something again. Anything.

“This won’t give you what you want,” Stride said.

“Look at me, Clark!” Maggie implored him. “Listen! There’s something Donna didn’t tell you. She’s pregnant. The two of you are having another baby.”

Clark’s eyes wrenched away from Finn. “You’re lying to me.”

“I’m not.”

“She can’t be pregnant,” Clark said.

“It’s true. I swear. This is your second chance, Clark. Don’t give it up.”

Stride thought Clark was crying, but in the rain, he couldn’t be sure.

“Mary’s dead!” Clark shouted. “Someone should pay!”

“Yes, someone should,” Maggie agreed. “But not you. Not now.”

Clark took a step backward. The fight had fled from the man. His head sank, and his chin disappeared into his neck. One hand dropped away from the bat and fell to his side. The fingers on his other hand spread open, and the bat tumbled end over end to the sand. Clark backed away and raised his hands in the air in surrender.

“Thank God,” Stride murmured. His own gun hand sagged. Beside him, Maggie holstered her gun and crouched down in front of Finn.

Clark stumbled toward the surf. He was twenty feet away, ankle deep in lake water, his hands still high in the air.

“Make sure there’s an ambulance-” Stride began, but he never finished.

The ground under his feet suddenly felt strange, as if every particle of sand clinging to his wet skin were alive.

The hairs on his head and arms defied gravity and stood at attention like soldiers. His flesh tingled. He tasted hot metal in his mouth. Stride knew what was coming. Death was hurtling through the ground.

Lightning.

Billions of ions searching for a bridge to the sky. Like a body.

He shouted a warning at Maggie, threw his gun down, and fell into a crouch, propping himself up on the balls of his feet. He squeezed his eyes shut and clapped his hands over his ears so tightly that the storm was sucked into a vacuum of silence. It didn’t last. Less than a second later, a concussion bomb cracked inside his brain, as if tacks were blowing outward into bone and tissue. His feet left the ground as he was jolted backward, lofted like a javelin. He saw a white flash through his closed eyes, felt the cold air melt into heat, and smelled the char of flesh burning.

He wondered if it was his own.

45

The tingling in Stride’s flesh disappeared as quickly as it had come.

He lay on his back, eyes open, tasting the rain that spilled out of the sky into his mouth. The world was oddly quiet. No wind. No thunder. No slap of waves and surf. He heard himself call Maggie’s name, but the sound was muffled, as if it came from someone else at the end of a long tunnel. He heard the roar a child hears in a seashell.

His head throbbed. His limbs felt like jelly. He patted his face, chest, and legs and felt no tenderness and no burns. The soles of his shoes were intact, without any signs of melting or scorched entry and exit holes from the electricity. His clothes were wet but untorn. When he felt his neck for his pulse, he found that the beating of his heart was fast but even. However close the lightning bolt had been, and whatever path it had taken up to the cloud, it hadn’t gone through his body.

He pushed himself up on his elbows, and the beach spun like a carousel. The sound wave had scrambled his sense of balance. He closed his eyes, letting his brain right itself. When he tried to stand, his legs bent like rubber, and he fell onto all fours in a slurry of sand. The disorientation made him nauseous, and he swallowed down bile at the back of his mouth.

He tried standing again, and the dizziness made him stagger, but he was able to stay on his feet. The air around him smelled burned. Lightning continued to flicker like a loose bulb over the lake. Each flash made his eyes tighten. Somewhere in his head, he sensed that the rain that had drilled into his body was gentler now. The wind was dying.

When he took a step, his knee buckled. He felt a hand on his arm, steadying him.

“Shit, that hurt,” Maggie said. Her voice sounded as if she were underwater.

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Stride said. “How about you?”

“I have the mother of all headaches, but I don’t think I was hit.”

Twenty feet away, Finn groaned. Stride and Maggie held on to each other as they limped over and dropped to their knees on either side of him. He sat in a pool of water by the slab of driftwood. His fingers clawed over and over into fists, and his head swung rhythmically back and forth. His eyes were closed. Red blood trickled along his jawline from his ears.

“Finn!” Stride shouted.

He grabbed the man’s face with both hands, and Finn’s eyes sprang open. The whites were shot through with red, and his pupils were black and wide with panic.

“Can you hear me?” Stride yelled, but his own voice was distant.

Finn pummeled Stride with his hands. Stride fought to gain control of the man’s wrists and restrain him as he squirmed in confusion and fear. Finn’s chest heaved with frantic, openmouthed breaths. Stride found a pulse and felt no irregularities. His eyes flicked over Finn’s body and saw no burns, but the man’s eardrums had obviously burst when the thunder exploded over them, and Stride knew the torrent of pain had to be excruciating.

Maggie rose up on her knees beside him. “Where’s Clark?”

Stride studied the beach where he had last seen Clark standing in the water. The man was gone. He hunted in the shadows of rye grass and down the stretch of sand and didn’t see him anywhere.

Maggie stood up, swaying. “Clark!”

Stride let go of Finn, who twisted restlessly and crawled away, dragging himself with one arm. The effort overwhelmed Finn, and he stopped, panting and gulping down rain. Stride got to his feet and circled slowly. He didn’t think Clark could have gone far, but it was as if the man had been sucked into a cloud. The beach was empty.

“Where the hell is he?”

Maggie pointed. A violent wave drew back down toward the lake, and as the sheet of water slid off the sand, Stride saw a body prone in the surf, nearly thirty feet from where Clark had been standing. It was almost invisible, just a darker shadow against the black shoreline. The body didn’t move as another wave surged in and completely submerged him.

They stumbled over the driftwood and ran. Maggie spilled onto her face as her legs became tangled, and Stride stopped and helped her up. She waved him on as she waited for her head to clear. Stride splashed down to the edge of the lake and found Clark’s body, which was ashen white. Each wave buried the big man in almost eight inches of water and foam. Stride dug his hands under Clark’s shoulders and dragged him higher onto the beach, away from the reach of the waves.

Maggie arrived at his side. “Oh, my God.”

Clark’s clothes were shredded, as if they had exploded off his body. His chest was laced with a massive spiderweb of burns. His shoes appeared to be melted onto his feet, and when Stride checked the soles, he saw two circular black holes. Entry and exit wounds from the massive electricity of the lightning. They were still warm when he fingered them. He picked up Clark’s wrist, which was limp and cold, and felt no pulse. He checked again at the carotid and still found nothing. When he pushed open Clark’s eyelids, the man’s eyes stared back, dead and unmoving.

“There’s an AED in the back of my truck,” Stride said.

Maggie took off at a sprint. Stride mentally took stock of the time that had passed and concluded that Clark had been lying in the sand, his heart stopped, for at least five minutes. Way too long. Stride tilted the man’s head back and lifted his chin. He pried open Clark’s mouth, pinched the man’s nose shut, and covered Clark’s cold lips with his own. He exhaled two slow breaths and watched Clark’s chest rise and fall as the air filled his lungs.

Stride repositioned himself and placed the heel of his right hand in the middle of Clark’s chest and laced the fingers of both hands together. He rose up for more leverage and shoved down hard and fast, counting to thirty in his head. When he was done, he moved back and swelled the man’s chest with two more slow breaths and then frantically pumped against his rib cage thirty more times. He repeated the process again, his mind oblivious to anything around him except the time passing. Then again. And again. When he had completed the cycle five times, he pressed two fingers against Clark’s neck.

Nothing.

The clock in his head was at nearly eight minutes.

He continued applying CPR and was vaguely conscious of Maggie arriving next to him with the small AED box, which began to chirp instructions as she unpacked it. He alternated between breaths and chest massage as Maggie worked around him to dry Clark’s skin with a towel she had brought from the truck and then position the two electrodes of the defibrillator on his chest. She hovered over him, trying to block the rain.

“It’s too fucking wet,” she said.

“I know.”

Maggie turned on the machine. “Clear,” she told him.

Stride stopped and removed his hands from Clark’s body. Maggie pushed the analyze button on the defibrillator, which measured Clark’s heart activity and responded aloud with a discouraging message. “No charge.”

There was nothing to shock. No fibrillation.

“Goddamn it,” Stride said. He checked for a pulse and still found nothing. He bent over and continued several more cycles of CPR and then backed away as Maggie stabbed the button one more time.

“No charge.”

Ten minutes had passed.

Stride tried again. And again. And again. Two minutes later, there was still no pulse. No heart activity. Nothing for the defibrillator to regulate. He assaulted Clark’s chest with his fists, harder and faster, and then he heard Maggie’s soft voice at the end of the wind tunnel.

“Boss.”

He hammered and breathed, hammered and breathed, hammered and breathed. Clark’s body endured the punishment without moving. Two more minutes passed.

“Boss.”

He counted to thirty. Counted to two. Counted to thirty. Counted to two.

“Jonathan, it’s over.”

Maggie’s hand took hold of his shoulder in a grip that was gentle but unyielding. Midway through the final series of chest compressions, Stride finally stopped and sat back on his haunches. His arms dangled at his sides. He could hardly lift them now. He had known from the beginning that Clark was dead, that the electricity had savaged his heart, but it was only when he gave up, when there was nothing else to do, that the reality sank in. His head sank forward against his chest.

“Where’s the damn ambulance?”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference, boss. You did everything you could do.”

He knew that was true, but it didn’t bring Clark back to life. He stared at the body and leaned over and closed the man’s eyes again. Like that, Clark looked more at peace, free of his despair.

Stride got up slowly. His wet, cold muscles complained. His hearing was coming back, and he heard a distant whine of police sirens growing closer. He could see fireworks out on the lake where the storm had slouched to the east. A few lingering drops of rain splashed on his skin. The air behind the front was steamy and warm, and his clothes clung to his body.

He needed to get away. “I’m going to check on Finn,” he said.

Maggie nodded.

Down the beach, Stride saw Finn pawing in the sand and pushing aside the long grass with his good arm. He looked like a scuttling crab with one claw stripped from his body. Stride cocked his head, confused, and took a few tentative steps in Finn’s direction. “What is he doing?”

Maggie looked. “I don’t know.”

“Finn!” Stride called, but the man couldn’t hear him.

Stride walked faster in the deep sand back toward the driftwood. Maggie lingered behind him with Clark’s body. Stride felt a formless sense of unease.

“Finn!”

Without hearing him, Finn sensed Stride approaching. Their eyes met across the dark beach, and an unspoken hostility passed between them. With increasing desperation, Finn turned his attention back to the ground surrounding the huge tree trunk. Stride suddenly understood. He became aware of a lightness under his shoulder and when he tapped his chest, he realized that his holster was empty. His Glock wasn’t in it. As the ground current streaked toward him, he had ditched his gun in the sand.

Where Finn was now searching.

Stride broke into a run across the remaining distance. Before he could dive past the driftwood, Finn’s left arm broke free of the mud with Stride’s gun in his palm. He curled his hand around the grip, shoved his finger against the trigger, and pointed it at Stride ten feet away.

Stride stopped. He held up his hands. The sirens he had heard were close now. Police cars streaked down the Point.

“Put the gun down, Finn.”

Finn ignored him and trained the barrel of the Glock at the center of Stride’s chest.

Stride felt an old, sharp pain reawaken in his shoulder. It was a wound from years earlier, where a bullet had torn through skin and muscle and driven him to the floor. A bullet from Ray Wallace’s gun. When Stride looked at Finn, he saw Ray Wallace’s face, the same agony, the same desperation, the same intent. They were both men with nothing to lose.

“Don’t do this, Finn.”

When Stride took a tentative step, Finn jerked, waving the gun to stop him. Finn’s muscles were spastic. Stride watched the man’s index finger and worried that it would twitch on the trigger and unleash a bullet into Stride’s heart. He edged sideways, but Finn’s arm followed him.

“Put it down.” Stride motioned toward the ground with his palm.

Finn flipped the barrel up, waving Stride away.

They stared at each other just the way he and Ray had. A standoff over the barrel of a gun. Stride thought about Ray coming to grips with his disgrace at the hands of his own protйgй. Ray, who planted a memory in Stride’s brain of bone, hair, blood, and brain oozing in streaks down the white wall. Ray, his best friend.

Ray, who had pulled the trigger.

Stride reminded himself that this was Finn, not Ray. This standoff could end the right way, but he was running out of time. Maggie called to him, and she was close. Over Finn’s shoulder, he spied the reflected glow of red revolving beacons from a squad car’s light bar. Police would soon be spilling over the hill. All of them converging on Finn like a pack. Making him panic. Making him shoot.

“Maggie, stay back,” he called and hoped she could hear him.

Finn cringed. Beads of sweat and rain dripped down his skull. His eyes darted back and forth. Stride watched the man’s anxiety shoot up like a needle on a pressure gauge.

“Take it easy,” Stride told him, his voice calm and steady. “You’re okay.”

Behind Finn, Stride saw two silhouettes crossing the peak of the dune and stumbling to the flat sand and tall grass. Police. With his fingers spread and his arms already in the air, Stride held one hand higher than the other, hoping they could read his body language. Stop.

One of the figures saw his gesture and froze, but the other kept coming. The shadow who had stopped shouted a warning. “Wait!”

Stride recognized the voice of the policewoman from Superior they had met earlier. He also recognized the other woman, who ignored the warning and ran toward Finn, screaming his name.

It was Rikke.

“He can’t hear you,” Stride called to her. He added, “Finn has a gun.”

Rikke stopped in her tracks. She stood behind Finn, twenty feet away. She wore an untucked, misbuttoned white shirt and navy shorts. Her once sleek long legs were lumpy like tree trunks.

“Finn!” she shouted, but her brother didn’t react.

Stride pointed behind Finn, gesturing toward Rikke. When Finn didn’t move, Stride took two careful steps backward, giving him space. He pointed and gestured again. Finally, with a painful flick of his head, Finn turned and saw his sister.

“Everybody stay where you are,” Stride called.

Finn swung the barrel of the gun to his left, and Stride understood. Finn wanted him and Rikke both in his line of sight. Stride debated standing still, but then took slow sideways steps down the beach until Finn could watch the two of them without turning his head.

Rikke’s eyes were locked on Finn. When she took a step toward him, Finn immediately raised the Glock and jammed the barrel into the side of his own head. His finger was tight on the trigger.

“Easy,” Stride told her.

“This is between him and me, Lieutenant,” Rikke said. She took another step, and Finn shook his head violently and shoved the barrel harder against his skin.

“He’s not kidding,” Stride warned her.

“I know what he needs,” Rikke said.

Her fingers came together, meeting at the first button on her shirt, which she undid. Finn’s eyes followed, wide and staring. She separated another button and pulled the flaps of her shirt apart, revealing a V of white skin. Finn inhaled loudly through his nose. His entire body trembled, as if he were wracked with chills. His mouth fell open, and he drew the gun slowly away from his head.

“I’m sorry for what she did to us,” Rikke told Finn. “I’m sorry for what we became.”

Rikke detached the rest of the buttons, letting the flaps dangle, and then used her fingernails to push the collar back off her shoulders until the shirt slid off her arms and fluttered to the ground. Her stomach bulged over the waist of her shorts. Her left breast drooped like an underfilled water balloon, its nipple flat and pale pink. Her other breast was a wrinkled cross of scars.

She sank to her knees and spread her arms wide, beckoning Finn to her bare skin. She was crying. He was crying. Finn made a mewling noise like a trapped kitten and sloughed his body toward her.

They were almost touching when another wrenching, involuntary spasm shuddered through his body. His finger twitched on the trigger.

The gun was still pointed at the meat of his skull.

Finn’s expression turned to glass as the bullet tunneled through his brain. Fire and noise cracked open the beach. Rikke wailed, and Stride saw one last flashback of Ray Wallace’s face before he was jolted back to the present, where Finn slumped forward, lifeless and free.