Stalked

20

Helen Danning could see her reflection in the window of the gift shop, and every few seconds, her face lit up like the glow of a wild fire as northbound traffic off the highway shot their twin beams through the glass. To Helen, the car lights were like the white tunnels of searchlights, wending back and forth across a field, hunting for her. When a car slowed and pulled off the road, she flinched. The headlights grew huge in the window as the car parked outside the shop, and Helen pushed her chair back and got up, leaving a half-drunk chai tea and her white Mac laptop open on the cast-iron table. She backed up between the oak shelves, which were stocked with Yankee candles and potpourri.

The shop door opened, and Helen felt as if the night were spilling inside. A burst of chill made her shiver. She glanced at the corridor leading to Evelyn's stockroom, where a back door butted up to frozen cornfields. Irrationally, she wanted to run, but she saw that the people coming into the shop were harmless. A man in a Minnesota State Fair sweatshirt ordered two coffees from Evelyn at the counter, while his wife browsed the sale-priced Christmas ornaments. Helen ducked her head and kept her face hidden.

She waited until their car was back on the highway before she sat down at the table again. When she took a sip of her sweet tea, her fingers were trembling. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and continued the methodical work on her laptop, opening each of the entries in her blog and erasing them. Her slim finger hovered over the Delete key as she reread a posting about the show Miss Saigon. She had seen the show dozens of times, as she had seen most musicals that came through the Ordway Center in Saint Paul. As an usher, she saw the performances night after night, and she could spot the nuances in every actor, song, costume, and set. She lived the shows almost as if they were more real than her own life. Some people became obsessed with soap operas, but Helen's obsession was Phantom, Les Miz, Rent, and all the other touring shows that ran over and over on the stage. Her blog was her outlet to pour out her thoughts about the characters.

She called her blog "The Lady in Me." She had come across a Shania Twain CD called The Woman in Me years earlier and bought it because she liked the title. The phrase became a kind of anthem to her. It summed up what she had lost in college and what she had been searching for her whole life. She even had the initials TLIM tattooed on her ankle, like a secret message she carried with her.

She didn't realize back then that she was making a mistake, that someone who wanted to find her could figure out who she was and where she worked by carefully reading the posts to her blog. She had just never dreamed that anyone would want to find her.

Helen looked up as the piano music playing overhead stopped. The gift shop went silent.

"Time to run, honeybun," Evelyn called. She was closing up the shop, cleaning out the coffeepot, toting up the register. Evelyn always seemed to do five things at once. She didn't walk. She bustled.

Helen shut down her laptop and waited. Evelyn was right. It was time to run, and that was what Helen was doing. Running.

With a flounce, Evelyn sat down in the chair opposite Helen. She had poured herself the dregs of the coffee. She took a sip and pushed her unruly, squirrel-colored curls out of her face. Under the table, she kicked off her Birkenstocks and wiggled her toes.

"How about we go home and feed Edgar?" Evelyn asked.

"Sure."

"You know, you're like my cat," she said, noticing Helen's nervous green eyes. "She's more scared of birds than the birds are of her."

"Every time someone comes in, I think it's going to be him," Helen told her.

"I understand."

"I promise I won't be in your hair too much longer."

Evelyn shrugged. "Stay as long as you like. We don't do it often enough, honeybun. What's it been? A couple years? The last few days have been like college, ordering pizza and chugging down cheap wine. Makes me forget all this gray hair."

In addition to running the gift shop, Evelyn was a painter, poet, and gardener, who lived alone in an old house on five acres near the Mississippi in rural Little Falls. They had been best friends since their days as roommates at the U of M. Several times, Evelyn had invited Helen to join her in the small central Minnesota town, but Helen was scared of open places, nervous about emptiness. She liked the anonymity of the city, where she could lose herself in crowds and live silently in the midst of the noise.

"You think I'm overreacting, don't you?" Helen asked.

Evelyn retrieved a bowl of wasabi soy nuts from the shop counter and placed it between them on the table. She took a green nut and crunched it in her mouth. "Yeah. I guess I do. But so what? You met this guy, not me."

"His name was Eric."

"Okay, Eric."

"He tracked me down, and a couple of days later, he was murdered."

"It could be a coincidence."

Helen shook her head. "He knew what happened to me."

"So?"

"So Eric was going to confront the bastard. I told you that."

Evelyn looked at her skeptically. "The papers said Eric's wife was the one who killed him."

"Well, I think they're wrong."

Evelyn sighed. "If you're so sure, honeybun, why not go to the police?"

Helen stuck out her tongue. "The police are no help. You remember last time?"

"They treated you badly."

"They told me it was my fault," Helen said. "I don't need to go through that again. They'd just dredge up what happened and in the end, they wouldn't do a thing. They'd say I was crazy or out for revenge."

Helen stared out the window at the highway. Evelyn reached out and covered Helen's hand. "Do you really think you're in danger?"

"I do."

"Then you need to tell someone," Evelyn insisted. "What if this guy is stalking someone else? Do you want another woman to go through what you did?"

"No."

"Okay then. You might be the only one who can stop this creep."

"I need time," Helen told her.

Evelyn smiled and stood up. "You got it, honeybun. Come on, let's go home and light a fire and crack open some Yellow Tail. The main thing is to stop worrying. No one's going to find you. You're safe here."

21

Is it Tanjy's body?" Stride asked.

Abel Teitscher nodded. His eyebrows and mustache were painted white by the snow that blew off the lake in sheets. "She's a frozen fish stick."

"Cause of death?"

"Someone caved in the back of her skull."

Stride swore and headed for the cluster of police gathered near the fish house. It was like a Gypsy city on the lake, a ragtag assortment of plywood boxes, tents, aluminum fish houses, campers, and pickup trucks. Tire and snowmobile tracks created a maze through the snow. There was litter everywhere, discarded boxes, beer bottles, tattered gloves, fish heads, and half-smoked cigars. The lake itself was huge, with spiderlike tentacles reaching around forested peninsulas, and he could see only a small slice of it from where he was. It was called Hell's Lake because of its reputation for hot spots, areas like eggshell where the ice never froze solid because of the strong current running underneath. Or maybe because lava bubbled up directly from hell and heated the water. It was a dangerous place, easy to get lost in when the mists came, easy to stray from the dense sections of ice to the fragile shelves laced with cracks. A few people went under every season; most were never rescued.

The wind across the ice was ferocious. With no trees to slow it down, it rocketed across the lake like a skate sail. Tanjy's body lay forlornly on a strip of plastic on the ice outside the fish house. Her skin's pigment had leached away. Either her killer or the current of the lake water had stripped her naked. He felt a stab of regret. Tanjy had spent her life obsessed with rape; now, like this, she really had been violated.

Stride returned to Teitscher. "You should have called me on this immediately."

Teitscher's wrinkled, weatherworn face didn't move. "We agreed I was taking over the investigation."

"You are, but I want to be in the loop."

"To me that means copying you on my paperwork," Teitscher snapped. "It doesn't mean having you second-guess me at the scene. I don't want you here, Lieutenant. Right now, I don't know which side you're on."

"Just bring me up to speed," Stride told him.

"Dan Erickson wants to know every move you make on this case," Teitscher said.

"Is that a threat?"

"Just a heads up."

"I don't care about Dan," Stride said.

Teitscher shrugged. "We found Tanjy's car. Someone drove it into the woods off a dead-end road."

"Nearby?"

"Maybe half a mile away."

"What's the scene look like?" Stride asked.

"There's blood in the trunk. We've got one set of boot prints in the deep snow leading away from the car back to the dead-end road. That's where they stop."

"So she wasn't killed where you found the car?"

"No, it looks like they killed her somewhere else and then dumped her in the trunk to drive her out onto the ice. They found an open fish house, put the body in the lake, and then ditched her car in the woods."

"They?"

"I'm thinking this would have been very difficult for one person to pull off. If she wasn't killed where her car was abandoned, whoever left it there needed another vehicle to get away. Someone else had to be driving the other car."

"What size are the boot prints?"

"Big, at least a size twelve," Teitscher said. He added, "Eric Sorenson wore a size twelve."

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

Teitscher shrugged. "He was one of the last people to see Tanjy alive, as far as we know."

"What about time of death?" Stride asked.

"She's been in the drink for several days. I don't think we'll ever know exactly how long. That should make Archie Gale happy."

"There's nothing to tie Maggie into this, is there?"

"Just that her husband was mixed up with Tanjy, and he's dead, too."

"To me, it says there might be more to Eric's death than meets the eye," Stride said.

"Yeah? You're big on theories, Lieutenant. Try this one on. Maggie and Tanjy had a big fight over her affair with Eric. Tanjy wound up dead. Maggie called Eric to help her get rid of the body. Eric had a fit of conscience and wanted to call the cops. Maggie killed him."

"You don't have a shred of evidence to back that up."

"Not yet, I don't, but I'm just saying you don't have to think real hard to tie these cases together."

Stride knew the argument was getting them nowhere. "How about the fish house? What have you got there?"

"Two kids found the body. They were screwing around when Tanjy popped up. The fish house belongs to the boy's dad, but the ev techs don't think Tanjy was dumped from there. She could have gone in anywhere around the lake and drifted up here. People leave these shanties unlocked and don't visit them for weeks."

"You'll never get a warrant to search every house on the lake," Stride said.

"I know, the best we can do is knock on doors. Maybe someone saw something."

Stride knew that without a time of death or a crime scene to mine for forensic evidence, it was going to be a tough case to solve. "If I can help you, call me. I mean that."

"Don't take this the wrong way, Lieutenant. If you want to help me, stay out of my way."

Teitscher turned into the wind and walked away. His foot slipped on the ice, and he fell to one knee. Pushing himself up, he shouted at one of the uniforms on the scene, and Stride saw the cop, who was a good kid, cringe. The only way Teitscher knew how to get things done was to bark in someone's face. He was a hard case who wasn't going to change.

Stride heard a faint buzz of music and realized his cell phone was ringing. He pulled it out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket and heard the Alabama song in his head. I'm in a hurry and don't know why.

He walked toward his truck as he answered. "Stride."

It was Maggie. "I need to see you. It's urgent."

"What's going on?"

"I don't want to do this over the phone," she said.

"Wherever you go, you'll have company. We can't be seen together."

"Leave that to me. I'll be alone."

Stride wasn't going to say no to her. "Let's do it late. Eleven o'clock."

"Where?"

"The high school parking lot. Up on the hill."

"Thanks, boss."

"You've left me in the dark on this," Stride told her. "You're hiding things from me."

"I know. I'm sorry." There was a long stretch of dead air, and then Maggie said, "Is it true about Tanjy? Have you found her body?"

"It's true."

Maggie expelled her breath as if she had been holding it. "There's something you need to know, but just you, not Teitscher."

"What is it?"

"Tanjy wasn't lying about the rape," Maggie told him quickly.

"What?"

"I'm telling you, it really happened."

"No way." He thought about the fantasies on Tanjy's computer and the explicit details of her sex life provided by Mitchell Brandt. "Tanjy told me flat-out that she made the whole thing up."

"I know how it sounds, boss. I didn't believe her myself, but I was wrong."

"How the hell can you be so sure?"

The silence this time was so long he thought he had lost the call. When he heard Maggie's voice, it didn't sound like Maggie at all.

"Because it happened to me, too."

22

He left the van in a deserted lot at the far end of the Point and hiked over the wooded slope to the lake. The roiled water and the thin strip of ice and sand stretched out before him toward the hazy lights of the city. When he emerged from the trees, a ferocious, twisting wind deadened his face. He pulled his wool cap down to become a mask and viewed the beach through slitted eyes. Inside his gloves and boots, he kept heat packs to keep his hands and feet limber and warm. He tucked his chin into his neck and hiked along the bumpy ice shelf, his coat doused by bitter spray as the waves assaulted the shore.

He was alone. The mile-long walk to Serena's house was cold and hard. The houses were indistinguishable without the brightness of the moon and largely hidden by the skeletons of trees. He knew where to veer west off the beach when he came upon the twin pieces of driftwood he had left as a marker earlier in the day. He followed the trodden-down path up through the wild rye and picked his way to the edge of the trees, where he was only a few yards from the rear door of the cottage. He waited there, invisible. The house was dark. The concrete driveway to the street was empty.

He allowed himself a maximum of five minutes inside and set a vibrating timer in his rear pocket. He glanced at the fences on either side of the narrow lot and marched down to the rear screen door, which was open. He left his boots on the porch, where his footprints were lost in the matted snow. In his wool winter socks, he crept through the porch to the back door, shone a penlight on the lock, and let himself inside in a few seconds.

Her smell was everywhere. It was the first time he had been close enough to inhale her aroma again. He allowed himself a moment to savor it. To him, that smell was all about dry heat, sweat, and soft flesh. He felt young. He felt reborn and powerful.

His first stop was in the living room. He didn't even need thirty seconds to choose a location, secrete the bug, and test the signal strength. The next stop was their bedroom. He had hoped to plant a Web cam, but he surveyed the white walls and knew there was nowhere that the equipment wouldn't be seen. He settled for a second bug and affixed it behind the beams of their headboard.

He was outside again before the timer went off. He scouted the rear of the house and attached a signal booster behind one of the aluminum downspouts, which would give him at least two miles of transmission. From inside the van in the park a mile away, he could listen.

Back in the woods, he waited for her. The cold made him stamp his feet. It was never this cold in the South. He didn't know how people lived here. It almost made him yearn for the soul-draining humidity of Alabama. His toes grew numb as time wore on, and finally, he saw headlights sweep across the driveway as Serena pulled in and parked. His muscles tensed. He watched her climb out and go inside the house, unaware of his presence. He slipped a receiver inside his ear and heard her footsteps and the rustle of her clothes as she removed her coat. When she got close to the bug, he heard her breathing.

He half-wondered whether, at some level, she smelled him in the house, too, as he had smelled her inside, like a rumor at the back of her mind. A flashback, a memory.

He slipped out from behind the trees and made his way to her car, keeping an eye on the cottage windows. Where they were lit, she couldn't see out, but he froze when he saw her pass in front of the glass and gaze toward him. Their eyes met, as they had so many times when he was watching her. She passed into another room.

He bent down under her car and positioned the GPS transmitter, then got up and retreated to the beach without looking back. The receiver was still in his ear. He listened to her as he retraced his route toward the van. In the bedroom, he heard her humming as she undressed. He heard the jangle of the loops on her gold belt. Nearby, the water of the shower ran. He pictured her naked body, saw her skin under his hands.

His cell phone buzzed on his thigh. He was annoyed by the distraction and did a quick survey of the beach to confirm he was alone. He pulled out the phone and recognized the number. Reluctantly, he shut down the receiver in his ear.

"What?" he hissed.

"They found Tanjy's body."

"So?"

"So you told me it would take months. Maybe years."

He trudged step-by-step along the gray sheet of ice. The lake rumbled next to him. It was fucking cold.

"It's bad luck they found her, but it doesn't change anything. Don't worry, you're safe."

"You told me you'd leave the city after this was done."

"I will."

"So why are you still here?"

"I have unfinished business," he snapped.

"What business?"

"My business. This one's personal."

The silence across the night air was lethal. "Do you have any idea what's at stake for me?"

"That's your problem," he said.

"What other schemes are you running? Tell me."

He breathed into the phone and saw steam evaporate like a ghost in front of his face. "You don't want to know."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I mean, Tanjy wasn't the only one. I decided to do some others, too."

He waited. It was funny how even the most arrogant, cold-blooded ego could get punctured like a fat balloon by fear.

"You're a monster."

"Yeah? What does that make you? Remember, it was your idea."

"Who were the others?"

"It doesn't matter. Alpha girls don't give up their secrets." He laughed.

"I want you gone. Is that clear? You've been well paid."

"I'll decide when I'm done, not you."

He snapped the phone shut and turned it off.

With his other hand, he switched on the receiver again and nestled it in his ear. He was back at the van. He slid inside, cranked the heat, and listened. His feet slowly thawed. He peeled off layers of clothes.

Inside Serena's house, the noise of the pipes ended. He heard her return to the bedroom and imagined her nude flesh, pink and scrubbed. Her long, wet hair. Her nipples hard and her mound glistening with moisture. With each of the others, he had imagined he was with Serena. Controlling her. Violating her. Paying her back for those ten years she had stolen from him.

It was her turn.

Soon.

23

Stride was worried. It was almost midnight, and Maggie was late.

He was parked in the lower lot of the high school, with a vantage on the lights of downtown and the black emptiness of the lake. He had gone through two cigarettes waiting for her. Snow fell in heavy sheets, blowing over the top of the hill and swirling around him like a tornado. It was hard to look straight on into the snow. His eyes squinted, and his face scrunched up, his windburnt cheeks turning pink. Ice clumped in balls on his eyebrows. The flakes streaking toward him were nothing by themselves, but together they were a relentless army. When the wind drove them home, they were like a million knives. They could blind him, freeze him, and bury him in the same storm.

Gauzy headlights appeared on the road above him and swung down into the lot. He recognized Maggie's Chevy Avalanche. Maggie drove fast, and the truck weaved on the slick, steep driveway. It was a huge truck for a tiny woman, so big that she needed wooden blocks to reach the pedals. She was a terrible driver. Stride thought she drove recklessly just to spite him, because she was worse whenever he was in the truck with her.

She parked at an angle near his Bronco and got out. She wore a leather coat that draped to her ankles and high, square-heeled boots. Her hands were shoved in her pockets. She kicked up wet snow as she came closer.

He hadn't seen her since he was at her house the night of the murder, and he realized how much he had missed her. He came closer, ready to hug her, but she pulled a hand out of her pocket and held it up to stop him.

"No," she told him. "No pity. Especially not from you."

The few feet between them may as well have been a canyon. "Come on, Mags. This is me. You don't have to prove how tough you are."

"I sure as hell do." She looked him up and down. "You ever heard of waiting inside your truck? You look like a goddamn snowman."

"I don't mind the cold."

"You mean, you don't want Serena smelling cigarette smoke inside the truck."

"Right."

"Well, I'm not standing outside. Let's get in the Avalanche."

They walked to opposite sides of her truck. Stride shook off as much snow as he could before climbing inside. The cab was warm, and he took off his gloves. Maggie didn't look at him. She sat behind the driver's seat staring at the panoramic view. He realized how strange it felt to see that she was older. There were tiny crow's-feet beside her eyes and a few strands of gray in her jet-black hair. She would always be a twenty-something kid to him, intense and smart. That was part of the problem-for him, she never grew up. It still felt like yesterday that Maggie was a young cop complaining about the Enger Park Girl murder, chewing on the rim of a Styrofoam coffee cup and insisting they had missed something, when Stride knew they hadn't missed anything at all. But that was a long, long time ago. It was as if he had put Maggie in a box in his mind, so that bad things never happened to her, but all the while she got older and bad things happened anyway.

"When?" Stride asked.

Maggie knew what he meant. She reached out and curled her fingers around the steering wheel and held on tightly. "It happened just before Thanksgiving. Eric was out of town."

Stride remembered. She had called in sick for nearly two weeks and blamed it on the flu.

"I was asleep. He had a knife." She brushed her hair back behind her ear and showed him a two-inch-long scar. "I've blocked out most of the details. I just don't remember."

"Jesus," Stride murmured.

"I said no pity, boss. Not from you. Got it?"

Stride thought that her bravado was cellophane-thick.

"You know what I did first?" she went on. "You'll love this. I laughed. It was all so fucking hilarious. This was God's big joke. I told myself I was dreaming, that I had made it all up in my head, that there was no way this could have happened to me. Then the next thing I knew, I was pounding on the floor and wailing. I sat in the dark and cried for two days."

He opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. There was nothing to say.

"You know what I did next?" Maggie continued. "I threw out all the food in the refrigerator. Nuts, huh? Everything. Right down to the bare shelves, and then I sprayed the whole thing down. Same in every room. I went through a dozen cans of Lysol. I didn't want to smell anything. The place was like a hospital."

He clenched his fists. Maggie saw him do it. "If I ever get my hands on this son of a bitch, I'll kill him," he said.

"I know you want to be a hero, boss, but this happened to me, not you. I'm only telling you this now because I don't have any choice."

"Why didn't you come to me back then?"

She turned and stared at him. Her eyes were fierce with pride. "Because this didn't happen to a cop. It happened to a woman. Don't you get it? I didn't want you or any other man to know about this. Not then. Not ever. It was bad enough telling Eric. He wanted me to report it, and I just wanted it to go away. I still do."

"At least tell me you got help."

"Haven't you been listening? I didn't want to talk to anyone. It's killing me to talk about this now. And yeah, I know, this is rape trauma syndrome, and I was in the acute phase, and I was expressive, not controlled, and you know what? It's all psycho bullshit. Everything I've told rape victims over the years is bullshit. This happened to me. If you haven't been where I've been, you don't have a fucking clue."

He searched for the right thing to say and wound up saying the wrong thing. "I just don't understand how you of all people would not report this."

"You saw what happened to Tanjy. She was humiliated. Destroyed. I didn't want the same thing to happen to me."

"It would have been different with you," Stride insisted.

Maggie shook her head. "You can be so stupid, boss. You're a great cop, but you can be so blind sometimes that it drives me crazy. Do you think I don't have secrets? Do you think there aren't things that I don't want out in public?"

"What things?"

"That's none of your business. The whole point is that I didn't go public because I didn't want to have my life ruined."

"How can I solve this case if you won't talk to me?" Stride asked.

Maggie dug inside the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a crumpled note. She smoothed it and handed it to Stride. There was a smeared sentence scrawled across the paper in a man's handwriting.

I know who it is.

"What the hell is this?" he asked.

"Eric left that for me the night he was killed. At first, I thought he was accusing me of having an affair, but that wasn't it at all. That wasn't what he meant."

"Tanjy left the same message for Dan Erickson the night she disappeared."

Maggie didn't look surprised. "I think Eric figured out who the rapist was. When I refused to go to the police, I think he went to see Tanjy on his own. Somehow, the two of them found something that led them to the rapist. Then this guy killed them both."

Stride recollected the chain of events in his mind. On Monday afternoon, Eric confronted Tanjy on the street in front of Java Jelly, and whatever he told her upset her deeply. Tanjy left work early, and that night, she called Lauren with a secret. I know who it is. Except she never got the chance to tell anyone. Someone killed her and buried her body under the ice. Two days later, Eric was killed, too.

He lowered the window on the passenger side of the truck. Snow blew in and dampened his face. He lit a cigarette, inhaled the tar into his lungs, and held it outside the window, where the smoke curled away. "Do you have any idea who Eric suspected?"

"No, but start with Tony. Eric talked to him that night. He may be able to help us."

"Maybe Eric suspected Tony was the rapist. You and Tanjy were both patients of his."

"Yeah, I thought about that, but Tony says Eric came to him about profiling a sexual predator, and that makes sense. Eric knew we worked with Tony on that kind of shit all the time."

"I'll talk to him," Stride said. "I'll go back over Tanjy's police statement, too. If she wasn't lying to us, then whoever raped her knew that Grassy Point Park was a place she took her boyfriends. At least, Mitchell Brandt says she took him there."

"Good."

"You're still hiding something, Mags," he told her. "My hands are tied if you're not completely honest with me."

"I'm sorry. I'm not just thinking about myself. Other people could be hurt by what I say."

"They could be hurt by what you don't say."

Their eyes connected. She knew what he meant. The rapist was still out there.

"If there's no other way, then I'll tell you why I couldn't report the rape, but as far as I know, it has nothing to do with Tanjy. There has to be a different connection."

"You know I should go to Teitscher with this. He's chasing his tail. This could take away the cloud over you, Mags."

She reached out and took his hand. It was the kind of intimate gesture she never made with him. She teased him. Winked at him. Insulted him. But she never touched him. "I'm asking you not to do that, Jonathan."

He didn't fight her. "If that's what you want. For now."

"I'm also trying to retrace Eric's steps," Maggie added. "I want to know how he found this guy."

"What have you found out?"

Maggie's eyes gleamed, looking like a cop's eyes again. "Eric was in the Twin Cities the weekend before he was killed. He came back on Monday, and that's when he went to see Tanjy. That's when everything started."

"You think he found something on his trip," Stride concluded.

"Exactly. That's why I was late. I was on the phone with people at the Saint Paul Hotel, trying to find out what Eric did while he was there. I got his invoice records from the hotel, and I checked his credit card and cell phone statements online."

"And?"

"He called and charged a ticket to a play at the Ordway Center on Saturday night. One ticket, not two."

"The Ordway is right across the park from the Saint Paul Hotel," Stride said. "He probably just wanted something to do on Saturday night."

"That's what I thought, but I checked with the Ordway anyway and followed up with the season ticket holders who sat next to him."

"Did they remember Eric?"

"Oh, yeah. They said he almost got kicked out of the theater."

"Kicked out? Why?"

"He was bothering the ushers. Asking them a lot of questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"I don't know, but I'd like to find out."

24

On Monday morning, Serena headed down the Point toward Canal Park, using the street as her path because the plows had cleared it of snow and ice. She took long, graceful strides as she ran. She wore a Lycra bodysuit, leggings, and a down vest, with mufflers over her ears and her long hair tied back in a ponytail. She did three miles in half an hour and made it to the lift bridge that towered overhead like a gray guillotine. Serena drifted to a stop and bent over, resting her hands on her knees. She took several deep breaths and then stretched her head back and stared at the sky. She took a few awkward steps, like a peacock, kicking her legs to keep them loose. She unhitched a bottle of water she kept on a Velcro strap at her waist and squirted a stream into her mouth. It was frosty cold.

She wandered out on the sidewalk into the center of the bridge. The shipping season was over, so the bridge rarely went up at this time of year. The water in the harbor on her left was frozen over, and even the narrow canal that lapped out into Lake Superior was glazed with ice. She leaned on the steel railing, staring out at the lake.

She was alone, but the sensation that someone's eyes were on her refused to go away. The feeling even dogged her at home, where she felt as if she were sharing her life with a ghost. It reminded her of the days in Vegas when Tommy Luck was on her trail. Serena remembered being in his apartment after they arrested him and finding the wall of photographs he had secretly taken of her. Like a shrine. Some on the street. Some in her car. Some, with a telephoto, through the bedroom window of her apartment. All of them disfigured and raped, as if he was fantasizing about the real thing. She kept an eye on Tommy after that, and when he got out on parole the first time, she thought seriously about taking care of him, neat and quick, before he could nurse his obsession again. The Vegas cops would have looked the other way, but Tommy was a nobody, and she decided she didn't want his corpse on her conscience.

It wasn't the first time she had faced that temptation. When Serena was in Phoenix, living her year of hell with her mother and Blue Dog, she thought constantly about ways to kill them. She went to sleep at night drumming up the courage to take a knife and slit his throat while he slept, and then to do the same to her mother. Murder them, and disappear. No one would miss them, and no one would find her. Many times she went so far as to take a kitchen knife and stand in the bedroom doorway and watch them sleep, but she never crossed the threshold. Instead, she ran away to Las Vegas and didn't look back.

Serena wondered how her life would be different now if things had gone another way.

If she had taken the kitchen knife into her mother's bedroom.

If she had put a bullet in Tommy Luck's head.

Her cell phone rang. She slid it out of the pocket of her vest and checked the calling number, which she didn't recognize. "Serena Dial."

"My name is Nicole Castro," a woman announced. "I got your number from Archie Gale."

"Oh?"

"He told me that you and I have something in common." Her voice was ironic and tough, like a comedian who had done too many shows.

"What's that?" Serena asked.

"You're sleeping with a guy named Jonathan Stride, and my boss used to be a guy named Jonathan Stride."

Serena didn't laugh. "Exactly what do you want, Ms. Castro?"

"Call me Nicole. I want to talk with you about the murder of Eric Sorenson."

"You should talk to the police."

Nicole scoffed. "We both know that Abel already has his teeth in a suspect. Believe me, he won't listen to anything I have to say."

"Why's that?"

"He used to be my partner."

Serena stood up straight and wiped her sleeve across her forehead. "What kind of information do you have, Nicole?"

"How about we talk face-to-face about that?"

"I don't recall Jonny mentioning you," Serena said.

"Jonny?"

"Stride."

"Oh, yeah. Well, I don't suppose he thinks much about me anymore. They all want to forget me. Look, Archie said you wanted to help out on this case. So do you want my help or not?"

"If it's a useful lead, absolutely."

"Then come see me."

"We could have lunch at Grandma's," Serena said.

Nicole's voice was bitter. "There's nothing I'd like more, believe me. Unfortunately, I don't live in Duluth anymore. I'm in the Twin Cities in a town called Shakopee."

"That's okay. I'm driving down to the Cities tomorrow anyway. Where would you like to meet?"

"You'll have to come to me. I'm in prison."

Serena exhaled steam and looked around to see if anyone was watching her. The bridge railing under her fingers was cold. "I thought you said you were a cop."

"That's right. I used to be in the Detective Bureau in Duluth. Then I was framed for my husband's murder. Just like Maggie."

Grassy Point Park was a speck of green shaped like a knife hooking into the narrow channel of St. Louis Bay. It was on a dead-end road in the heart of the city's industrial area, near ore docks and railroad tracks. The frozen harbor was on Stride's left. He could have driven onto the ice and taken a shortcut back home around the Wisconsin peninsula. On his right, where the park ended, he saw Santa Fe railcars loaded high with rock on the other side of a barbed wire fence. The wind was fierce and cold, and the morning sky overhead was a gray shroud.

This was where Tanjy said she was taken, tied to the tall fence by the rail yard, and assaulted.

He put himself in Tanjy's mind, imagining it was night in early November. The lights of the bridge to Superior glistened to the north. They were close enough to the water to hear waves slapping on the shore. Tanjy struggled, but there was a knife to her throat, and she didn't make a sound. She was tied up and stripped. The loops of the fence crushed against her naked skin.

After, she was alone. Humiliated. She didn't cry out for help. She freed herself, drove home, and washed away the shame and the evidence.

Stride shook his head. There was a piece of the puzzle that didn't fit.

When she first told Stride the story, one detail struck him as odd. After the rape, the assailant left Tanjy's car behind, because he had another car waiting for him in the park. At the time, Stride wondered how the rapist could have left a car behind for himself and made his way out of the park and back into the city. When Tanjy admitted lying about the rape, he forgot about the anomaly. Now it was back in his mind.

The murder scene left him with the same suspicion. If Tanjy's murderer transported her to Hell's Lake in the trunk of her car, and then disposed of the car in the woods after dumping her body in the ice, where was his own car? He couldn't have walked far in the subzero weather. He also couldn't very well drive two cars at the same time. So how did he vacate the desolate woods where he left Tanjy's car?

Answer: There was someone else involved. Someone driving another car.

Maybe. Or maybe he and Abel were both thinking what the killer wanted them to think.

Stride gripped the fence with both hands. The more he imagined Tanjy's rape, the more he felt a jolt of anger and regret, thinking about Maggie. He had to control his rage and dole it out into his veins in doses, like adrenaline. In Las Vegas, when his partner got shot, he had felt the same fury that left him teetering on the edge of control.

He was angry with Maggie, too. Angry that she had let it go, destroyed evidence, failed to report a crime. He knew it was easy for him to make that judgment when he didn't live through it, but he was also angry that she had cut him out of her life by not sharing her pain with him, by not trusting him. The intimacy between them felt broken, even though he had no right to expect it from her.

He turned away from the fence when he heard a muffled symphony of noise and felt a thumping bass ricochet inside his chest. He saw a brown Lexus SUV pull into a parking place next to his Bronco. The engine cut off, and the music stopped. Tony Wells got out, clutching a venti cup of Starbucks coffee. He took several sips as he walked over to Stride. He wore a tan parka with a fur-lined hood and dress pants and shoes that were ill-suited to the snow heaped over the park grass.

"Good morning, Lieutenant."

"Thanks for coming down here, Tony." He gestured at the car and added, "Castrating pigs again, are you?"

"Oh, yes, another country music fan," Tony said with a faint smile. "Smashing Pumpkins won a Grammy for that song, you know."

"For what? Song most likely to make a listener conduct his own autopsy?"

Tony pulled his hood down and smoothed his thinning hair. "I read a study recently about some poor lab mice who were subjected to Toby Keith twenty-four hours a day for a month. They all developed cancer."

Stride laughed. It was an old argument between them.

He was probably one of the few cops in Duluth who had never seen Tony Wells professionally. The job did that to you-it stirred up rat holes and made you do things you never wanted to do, like drink, or hit your wife, or roll your car on a slick highway. Tony was good at taming the rats. Maggie and Serena both liked him. Stride had needed counseling himself once, but he never wanted to see a cop's shrink. He didn't like sharing stories with someone who knew everyone else's stories. After Cindy died, he found a therapist thirty miles away in Two Harbors and went there once a week for six months, which wasn't enough to prevent him from rebounding into a bad marriage.

"You know this is where Tanjy Powell said she was raped?" Stride asked.

He watched Tony take the measure of the area around him. Parks looked lonely in the winter, devoid of life.

"Yes."

"You know that she really was raped, don't you? She didn't make it up."

Tony worked his jaw as if something were caught between his teeth. "I'm in an uncomfortable position, Lieutenant. I want to help, but I'm not sure I can."

"Tanjy is dead," Stride reminded him. "You can't do her any harm by talking to me. You can only help me find out who did this to her."

"Tanjy was an intensely private person."

"I know she was, but I need your help, Tony. We go back a long way. I respect your loyalty, but your patient is dead. I think she'd want you to talk to me."

Stride could see that the choice was a genuine struggle for Tony. As a therapist with close ties to the police, Tony had seen them all-detectives, victims, and perpetrators-and he didn't always have a rule book to work around ethical conflicts.

"Yes, all right," Tony said finally. "I'd like to see you catch whoever did this. Tanjy deserves that."

"Thanks."

"What can I tell you?"

"Do you know who Tanjy was seeing at the time of the assault?"

"No, she never gave me a name. She was very discreet. It made therapy difficult sometimes, because she gave me so few details about her life." Tony hesitated.

"What is it?"

"Well, she did think she had a stalker. She told me she was being watched."

"Did she know who it was?"

"No, she said it was just a feeling."

"When was this?"

"Shortly before the rape."

"Did she give you any other details?"

"No, she didn't. Truthfully, Lieutenant, I wasn't sure the rape really happened. She told me she only recanted to you because she couldn't stand the public humiliation, but I wondered about that. The venue of the rape was too similar to her own fantasies. That's not the way it works."

"Unless that was the whole point for the rapist."

"You mean you think she was targeted because of her fantasies," Tony concluded.

"It's a possibility."

Tony thought about this. "I don't see how. No one knew about them."

"Her boyfriend knew. She made him act out rape fantasies during sex. She posted rape stories on the Web, too."

Tony cocked his head. "True."

"Was Grassy Point Park important to her?"

"Very."

"Do you know why?"

"I think it was because of her parents. You can see the bridge from here, where her parents were killed in the car accident. The fact that she reen-acted rape fantasies at a place that's visible from the bridge is significant. I suspect she was acting out her repressed sexuality in front of her parents."

"So if she had other boyfriends, you think she would have taken them here."

"Yes, that's likely."

"Do you know who else she was seeing, other than Mitchell Brandt?"

Tony shook his head. "I'm sorry, no."

"Okay, let's talk about Eric," Stride said.

Tony shoved his free hand in his pocket and drank more coffee. The wind landed a kick across the harbor that made them both hunch their bodies against the frozen air.

"Now I'm really on thin ice," Tony said.

"I know, but I'm not asking for any privileged information. Eric talked about things that had nothing to do with Maggie, right?"

"Yes, he did," Tony acknowledged.

"What did he want to know?"

"He asked me if there were certain tells you could look for that would tip you off that someone might be a sexual predator."

"What did you tell him?"

"Not much," Tony said. "I told him you'd have to be a trained professional conducting an extended interview to make an assessment, and even then, there aren't any guarantees. Most sexual predators have spent a lifetime protecting their disguises."

"Did he tell you who he was thinking about?"

"No."

Stride watched Tony's brooding eyes. "Maybe he was thinking about you."

Tony looked back at him, steady and hard. "Me?" he said evenly.

"Right now, you're the only connection between Tanjy and Maggie. Maybe Eric thought you raped them."

"You knew them both, too, Lieutenant," Tony said. "Maybe he thought it was you."

"I'm serious."

"Yes, I know you are, so I'll be blunt. I did not rape those women. Okay? I had nothing to fear from Eric."

"Sorry, Tony, I had to ask."

Tony nodded. "I knew you would. I know how the game is played. For the record, I asked Maggie for the exact date she was raped, and then I went back and dug out my calendar from last year. I was in Seattle giving a speech that night. I can give you all the details you need to verify it."

"And Tanjy?"

"I pulled her file and cross-referenced my schedule. I had group therapy the night she was assaulted."

"Thanks. Sometimes I have to play bad cop, you know."

"I understand."

"I need to know if Eric said anything else. Did he talk about his visit to the Ordway over the weekend?"

"The Ordway?" Tony asked. "No, what does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't know yet." Stride shook his head. "I'm frustrated, Tony. Try to put aside the fact that Tanjy and Maggie were both patients. Just look at the facts of the rapes as you know them. Give me some kind of profile."

Tony scratched his beard. "I don't have nearly enough information."

"Neither do I, but you've worked with less in the past. Help me out here."

"Well, put a big asterisk next to this. I could be steering you wrong. Whoever is doing this is likely to be very intelligent and organized. He has a huge ego and a need to control his victims. He likes to play games, like a cat toying with a mouse. He researches his victims thoroughly-picks them, studies them, gets to know everything about them, before he moves in."

"You think there are other assaults we don't know about?"

"It's possible. You know as well as I do how many rapes never get reported. This perpetrator seems to choose victims who are vulnerable on sexual matters, which increases the likelihood that they won't go to the police."

"What do you mean, 'vulnerable on sexual matters'?"

Tony frowned. "I mean, like Tanjy and her rape fantasies."

"In other words, women with secrets to protect."

"That's right."

"How does he find out about their secrets?"

"I don't know. If you can find that out, you can probably identify him."

"Does he know these women? Could he have a personal relationship with them?"

"Possibly. That's not the typical profile, but the fact that he knows so much about the victims would lead me to think he has some connection to them."

"Would he be acting alone?"

Wells arched his eyebrows in surprise. "That's an odd question. Rapists almost always act alone."

Stride knew that was true, but he still wondered about the possibility of an accomplice. "Is this man likely to strike again?"

Wells nodded. "Rapists always strike again unless they find some alternate resolution for their pathology. Some other way to address their sexual tension. I don't think that's likely here."

"Why?"

"The time line is too short between assaults. Whoever is doing this is acting quickly. I'd say he's a sociopath-no conscience, no guilt, no hesitation. Many predators want to stop and wage a giant internal struggle to control their violent tendencies. They can succeed for months or even years before reoffending. Not this one. He's enjoying the game. In fact, I'd have to say that this rapist is more dangerous now than ever before."

"Why?" Stride asked again.

"You said it yourself, Lieutenant. This man probably killed Tanjy and Eric. He's upped the stakes. It's not just rape now, it's murder. He may decide that killing his victims gives him an extra thrill."

25

Serena passed through a cloud of warm steam billowing out of the sewer grates as she crossed First Street downtown. The green light turned yellow, and she hurried to reach the opposite sidewalk before the five o'clock traffic roared southward. A neighborhood pizza joint was on the far corner, and she pulled open the glass door and stepped inside. The steel pizza ovens were on her left. She waved at the sweaty men in T-shirts behind the counter and took a booth for herself inside the restaurant. She unbuttoned her coat and unwound her scarf from around her neck.

She pulled her laptop computer from its case and began searching for a wireless network. A young waitress greeted her, and Serena ordered a Diet Coke. They knew her here. She and Stride had a weakness for the pizza and usually dropped in a couple of times a month. They cut the pizza in squares, and she liked to roll up each tiny piece and pop it in her mouth.

She loaded Internet Explorer on her laptop. The signal was weak. Jonny had told her about Eric's visit to the Ordway a few days before he was killed, and she searched news stories to see if there had been any recent incidents in the Rice Park area surrounding the theater. Especially sexual assaults. She found stories about road construction, the winter carnival, and Broadway musicals, but nothing that gave her any clue as to Eric's motive. The only way to find out was to go there in person, which was on her calendar for tomorrow.

She found a lot more when she searched for Nicole Castro. The murder trial of Abel's ex-partner had been big news in Duluth six years earlier. She studied the photos of Nicole and saw someone not unlike herself, a cop in her late thirties, tall, athletic. Nicole was black with dark skin. Her hair was kinky and big. She had pink, puffy lips and flared nostrils, and coal-black eyes wide with defiance. In one photo, she was on the steps of the courthouse, surrounded by cops in uniform, her mouth open as she shouted at the media.

Nicole had a little boy, twelve years old. Serena wondered what had happened to him with his father dead and his mother doing twenty-five years for his murder. He was a cute kid, pretending to be tough, but you could see his heart breaking as he clung to his mother's arm in the photo. He would be nearly nineteen now.

Serena's cell phone rang. It was Maggie.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself," Maggie said. She added after a pause, "Stride told you, right?"

"He did. I'm really sorry."

"He couldn't understand why I didn't report it."

"Men never do."

"Even telling him now made me feel so fucking dirty," Maggie said.

Serena understood. It wasn't just about telling someone. It was about Maggie telling Stride. Leaving herself naked in front of him.

"Want to join me down at Sammy's? We could talk."

Someone slid a pepperoni pizza into one of the ovens. The tangy aroma filled the restaurant, and Serena realized she was hungry.

"I don't want to talk anymore," Maggie said. "I just want to catch this son of a bitch."

"Sounds like you're sailing that Egyptian river called Denial."

Serena waited for Maggie to fire back, but she didn't. "Yeah, I know, but being angry about it is better than locking myself in my bedroom. I called to tell you I have more dirt about Eric's visit to the Ordway."

"What is it?"

"I was able to reach their floor security attendant. The reason Eric was almost kicked out of the theater is that he kept trying to find a woman who worked there. He thought she was an usher. He wouldn't say what he wanted with her, and they started getting creeped out. They told him to sit down or they'd toss him out."

"Do you know who the woman was?"

"No, Eric didn't know her name."

"All right, I'll check it out tomorrow. You sure you don't want pizza?"

"No, thanks."

Through the restaurant window, Serena saw a tall man in a tan trench coat cross the street toward her. "That's okay, your nemesis is about to join me."

"Who?"

"Abel Teitscher."

"Why are you seeing him? You're not a spy, are you?"

"I want to talk to him about Nicole Castro."

"Yeah, Archie told me she called. I think you're wasting your time. Nicole tells everyone she was framed, but we had her dead to rights."

"Like you?"

"Yeah, okay, I see your point."

"I'll talk to you when I get back. Call Tony. Get some help."

"Anyone ever tell you you're a pushy bitch?"

"Everyone."

Serena hung up and closed her laptop. Abel Teitscher entered the restaurant, and his head swiveled over his long neck, looking for her. She waved at him. He nodded back at her but didn't smile. He was earnest and bleak, like the city in January. She had met him a few times in Jonny's office at City Hall, and although there was bad blood between Jonny and Abel, she felt sorry for him. She knew the story of his divorce and knew he kept people away with a prickly armor. He was smart, bitter, and lonely. Once upon a time, she had been the same way.

They shook hands. He had a solid grip. As he sat down, he smoothed his coat underneath him without taking it off. That sent her a message-he wasn't staying. She could see he was suspicious of what she wanted.

"Are you hungry?" she asked. "We could order something."

Abel shook his head. Serena sighed. She could smell the sausage now, blending with the pepperoni, and it was driving her crazy.

"You're a runner, aren't you?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Me, too. You've got that runner's look."

She was being kind. His face reminded her of the desert floor in Death Valley, leathery and cracked. His gray hair was trimmed to half an inch and squared off on top of his head. He looked old, but also lean and tough.

"What can I do for you?" Abel asked. "If this is about Maggie, you know I can't say a thing."

"It's not about Maggie."

"Oh?" He looked surprised.

"I was hoping you could tell me about Nicole Castro."

"Why?"

"I have to go down to the Cities tomorrow," Serena explained. "Nicole asked me to meet with her."

"She told you she was framed?"

Serena nodded.

"That's bullshit."

"You sound pretty harsh. Wasn't she your partner?"

"That's why I'm harsh. I don't like being lied to. Plus, she tells everyone that I planted evidence against her, which is a crock."

"Just give me some background," Serena said. "If it really is just bullshit, fine, but at least I'll know that going in."

Abel leaned back against the wooden wall of the booth. He worked a toothpick between his molars. "Look, Nicole was a good kid. She and I worked together for five years. She was a lot younger than me, but we got along. I'll tell you the truth, I wasn't all that keen about having a black partner. My experience is that black women assume you're going to treat them with disrespect, so you have to be careful about everything you say. I don't do a very good job of watching my mouth. You've probably figured that out."

Serena smiled.

"Nicole was just as nervous having a middle-aged white guy as a partner. We had our arguments from time to time. Having a partner is like being married, you know that. But we did okay."

"How did her problems start?" Serena asked.

"To begin with, she was married to a son of a bitch. The kind of guy that thinks the world owes him a living because he's got a good-looking face. Nicole denied it, but I know he hit her a few times."

"So what happened?"

Abel took off his glasses and stared at the ceiling. "It was just bad, bad luck. Nicole was coming back from Superior on the Blatnik Bridge on a Saturday night. There was a guy on the Minnesota side who had parked his car and was running around on the bridge deck in a winter coat. This was July. Nicole blocked off traffic and got out of her car to talk to him. He told her he had a bomb strapped to his chest, and he was going to blow up himself and the bridge."

"Oh, shit."

"She tried to talk him into keeping his hands in the air, but he wouldn't listen. He kept saying he was going to do it, he was going to set off the bomb. When he unzipped his coat and began to reach inside, Nicole shot him twice in the head."

Serena understood what Nicole had gone through in those few seconds on the bridge. She had faced the same situation in Las Vegas, when a man decided to commit suicide by cop by pointing a gun at her and Jonny. That time, she was the one to pull the trigger.

"Sounds like a good shooting," she said.

"It was, but then the second-guessing started. It turns out the guy was mentally ill. There was no bomb."

"It's not like she could take the chance."

"You know that, and I know that. But tell that to the people who weren't up on the bridge. There was more, too. A lot of people said they heard this guy shouting racial slurs at Nicole. So some politicians got the idea that she shot him because he was a racist."

"Great."

"There was an investigation. Nicole went on leave, and it was six months before they cleared her and got her back on the job. Six months. Unbelievable. She went to pieces sitting at home, watching the television stations chew her up night after night. She had a nervous breakdown."

"So what happened with her husband?"

"The son of a bitch started having an affair with a young cocktail waitress. Eighteen years old."

"Was Nicole back on the job at that point?"

Abel nodded. "Yeah, she said she was okay, but she was fragile. Therapy wasn't working. She didn't have much of a caseload, too. Stride was nervous about her getting in over her head too quickly, so she mainly pulled cold cases. He was right. She was coming apart. You'd hear her on the phone with her husband, and it was crazy, like you were listening to a stranger. Hell, I heard her threaten him myself. Nicole said she'd kill him if he didn't break off the affair."

"And?"

"I got the call. Bad smell coming out of an apartment in the Lincoln Park area. I went in and found Nicole's husband and his teenie girlfriend, both shot dead. They'd been gone at least two days. Nicole never even reported him missing."

"Was it her gun?"

"No, but it was just as bad. Her husband's gun. He kept it in the glove compartment of his car, which was parked outside the apartment building. Nicole said she was home drinking on the night of the murders, but she didn't have any witnesses to back it up. She said he sometimes went off for days on end, so she didn't think anything was wrong when he didn't come home. But she knew he was with the other girl. She also swore to me-swore to me-that she had never been inside that girl's apartment. Except we found witnesses who placed her outside the building in her car on multiple occasions. Like she was stalking them. And we found two of her hairs in the bedroom with the bodies. Perfect DNA match."

Serena whistled. "That's a lot of evidence. What did Nicole say?"

"She said she didn't do it. I believed her, too, until we found the witnesses near the apartment and got the forensics report back. Then I knew she was just like every other perp. Covering her ass."

"This was personal for you."

"Very personal. Take my advice, Serena. Save yourself a trip."

Serena shrugged. "I have to go down there anyway."

"Suit yourself." The older detective slid out of the booth. He took black leather gloves out of his pockets and put them on his hands.

"Hey, Abel," Serena said. "I know you don't want to hear it, but Maggie's not Nicole."

"I need more than faith to believe that."

He left, and Serena drummed her fingers on the table. She was discouraged. The visit to Nicole Castro smelled like a waste of time now, but she couldn't back out, even though she knew what it would be like. She hated to see a cop's life ruined. They all walked close to the line sometimes, and when one of them took a step across, you just wanted to turn your eyes away.

The waitress stopped by her table. She had tomato sauce on her shirt. "You want to order pizza?"

"Oh, yeah."

26

Stride saw a light on inside Silk, shining in a yellow triangle from the office at the rear of Lauren Erickson's dress shop. He rang the bell beside the door and heard a distant chime. As he waited, he looked up and down Superior Street, which was deserted for the night. It was almost seven thirty, and the stores were closed. A string of streetlights illuminated the slush piled in gray mounds on the curb and on the edge of the sidewalks.

Inside, he saw Lauren's petite silhouette framed in the light from the office. She crossed the store in the darkness and unlocked the door. He felt uncomfortable as he came inside. He was dressed in a dirty flannel shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, which were crusted with mud. He smelled like smoke because of an arson fire he was investigating near the airport, and there was soot in the creases of his neck. Lauren, by contrast, wore a striped dress shirt with an open collar and a gold chain around her neck, tan pleated dress slacks with a braided belt, and leather pumps. Her wheat-colored hair was loose, bobbing around her shoulders.

"Lose the boots," she told him.

He left them on the rubber mat. The blue carpet felt deep and thick under his feet. "Sorry, I'm a mess."

"Don't get anything on the dresses," she said.

She led him back to the office, where moving boxes were scattered on the floor. The bottom drawers of several filing cabinets were open and half-filled with bulging file folders. She had a bottle of pinot noir on her desk and a crystal glass filled with wine.

She held up the bottle, offering him a drink, and he shook his head.

"I know you won't believe this, but I'm going to miss living in Duluth," she told him as he sat down.

Stride squeezed his body into a wooden chair designed for women whose trim backsides could fit in a thimble. "You're right. I don't believe it."

"I used to go hunting and fishing with my dad when I was a girl," she said. "I brought down an eight-pointer once. I had it on my bedroom wall for years."

"Don't look now, but you could be a redneck."

Lauren smiled thinly. "I'm just saying this is my home."

"You'll do okay in Georgetown," Stride said.

"I'm sure we will." She swirled her wine in the glass. "Who knows, maybe I can land Dan a job in the next administration. Something in the Justice Department."

"I always heard that 'under secretary' was the position Dan preferred," Stride said.

Lauren slapped her glass down on the desk so hard that wine sloshed over the top. Then she laughed and dabbed the crimson drops with a tissue. "Funny. You're funny. But you don't understand us."

"You're not so hard to figure out. Anything for power."

"What's wrong with ambition?" Lauren asked.

"If it means destroying people who get in your way, plenty."

"People usually get what they deserve. Look at Maggie."

"Maggie doesn't deserve what's happened to her."

"No? She's no angel. I knew that when she started an affair with Dan."

"That was years ago. Besides, I thought you looked the other way about Dan's affairs."

"Usually I do, because Dan knows who's responsible for everything he is. Me."

"So why do you still hate Maggie?"

"She asked Dan to leave me. I take that personally."

"Dan was just using her. Maggie got hurt."

"Poor angel. I hope you comforted her with your big strong arms."

Stride hated that Lauren knew how to push his buttons. "You know, there are bigger sharks than you in Washington. You may wish you were back in the small pond after a while."

"I'll take my chances. Now what do you want, Jonathan? I have a lot of work to do here."

"I want to talk about Tanjy."

"Again?"

"I need some more information."

"I heard this was Abel's case now, not yours."

"I'm not investigating Tanjy's murder."

"Oh?"

"I'm investigating her rape."

"What rape?" Lauren asked. "You said Tanjy made it up."

"No, I think it really happened."

"Why?"

"Because there's another victim," he told her.

Lauren reacted sharply. "Are you sure?"

Stride nodded.

"Who?"

"I can't say, but I think whoever raped Tanjy also killed her. And Eric."

Lauren rocked back in her chair. "That's horrible. I'm so sorry."

"Do you know who Tanjy began seeing after Mitch Brandt?" Stride asked. "I need to talk to anyone who was close to her during that time."

She shook her head. "I have no idea. Tanjy and I weren't exactly close."

"Did she ever talk about being stalked or watched?"

"Not to me. You should talk to Sonnie. She saw her every day."

"Tanjy said she was abducted going from the dress shop to her car. Do you remember seeing any suspicious individuals in the shop around that time? Or in the parking ramp?"

"In the shop? No. It's not uncommon to have vagrants in the Michigan ramp, you know that. I don't remember anyone specifically."

"Did you know about Tanjy's fascination with rape? Did she talk about it in front of you?"

"Are you kidding? No."

"How about men who came into the shop? Did anyone show an unusual interest in Tanjy?"

Lauren shrugged. "Men hit on her all the time."

"But no one special?"

"No one who was so taken with her that it seemed weird."

"All right," Stride said. Those were the answers he expected.

"Do you have any idea who the rapist is?" Lauren asked.

"Not yet."

"And are there only the two victims?"

"I don't know."

Lauren frowned and bit her lip. He could read in her face that she knew something.

"What is it?" Stride asked.

She hesitated. "Nothing."

"Come on, Lauren, I don't care what the history is between us. This is different."

"It doesn't really mean anything. It's just that I think I know who the other victim is."

"Oh?" Stride tensed, waiting to hear Maggie's name.

"She was in here a few weeks ago, talking to Sonnie. She looked like someone had beat her up."

Stride's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

"The plump girl who runs that Java Jelly coffee shop down the block. Katrina Kuli."

27

Serena arrived at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee in the early afternoon. It was the state's only prison facility for adult women, and it housed approximately five hundred females who had been convicted of crimes ranging from fraud to murder. Visiting hours didn't begun until three thirty in the afternoon, but Stride had paved the way with the warden for a private meeting between Serena and Nicole Castro. She still had to go through the metal detector and endure a pat-down from a female guard before being shown into the visiting room.

When she had visited such rooms in the past, they were usually crowded. Mothers visiting sons. Wives visiting husbands. Men and women getting teary as they touched the hands of children who were growing up without them. The room today was empty, and she liked it better that way, without the pain of separation and guilt that suffused these places, like cigarette smoke gathering over a blackjack table. It was an institutional room, with white walls and fluorescent lights overhead. Rows of gray plastic chairs sat facing each other on heavy-duty beige carpeting. The prisoners sat on one side, the visitors on the other. Behind a Plexiglas partition were the non-contact booths, where prisoners without personal visit privileges could talk by phone, separated by thick glass walls.

She noticed the small half-dome in the ceiling, hiding the video cameras. An eye in the sky, just like in the casinos. Everything was watched, taped, documented. There was no privacy here.

The guard pointed her to a specific, numbered chair in which she was supposed to sit. It felt like overkill, because the visiting room was empty, but Serena knew that prisons ran on rules. There were rules for everything, right down to how you trimmed your fingernails. The walls and bars kept prisoners in; the rules kept anarchy and chaos out.

She waited ten minutes before another guard showed Nicole into the visiting room. They shook hands, and Nicole sat opposite her. She was dressed in a khaki jumpsuit and tennis shoes. She squirmed in her chair and rubbed her thumb and fingers together like a nervous habit. Her foot drummed on the floor. She studied Serena with sharp, observant eyes. Detective's eyes.

"Wow," Nicole said. "Very nice. I'm surprised they didn't treat themselves to a cavity search with you."

Serena didn't smile.

"What, I'm a murderer, so I can't have a sense of humor?" Nicole asked.

"I thought the whole point was that you aren't a murderer."

"Figure of speech." She added, "So how's Stride?"

"Fine."

"What a dog. His wife dies, and he winds up with a hottie all the way from Vegas."

"Fuck you," Serena said and stood up to leave.

Nicole stood up, too. Her hostile façade crumbled. "Hey, take it easy. I'm sorry, okay? Please don't go."

Serena sat down. She barely recognized Nicole from the photographs she had seen on the Web. Prison had aged her. Her wild hair was cropped and graying. She was thinner. Serena knew she was in her early forties, but her mottled face looked ten years older.

Nicole noticed her appraisal. "It's not exactly a spa in here."

"I know."

"I meant what I said. I'm happy for you and Stride. It must have killed him when Cindy died. Those two were the real deal."

"Yes, they were." Serena didn't add that it made her feel a little jealous sometimes.

"I made a play for him once. Did he tell you that? It was right after I joined the force. He shut me down cold."

"He was married."

"Oh, and he wasn't married when you met him? Come on, girl." She added quickly, "Not that I'm judging. Look, people do what they do, and what do I care? I haven't had good luck with men. I envy you."

"We don't have a lot of time, Nicole. Maybe you should just tell me what you wanted to tell me."

Nicole shrugged. "It's easy to tell that you used to be a cop. All business. Let me ask you this, did you get shit in Vegas because of the way you looked? I mean, did people think you couldn't do the job because you look like some kind of showgirl?"

"Sure."

"Well, now imagine being a black detective in white bread Duluth. That was me."

"You're not in here because you're black," Serena told her.

"No? Slap some shoe polish on that pretty face of yours, and live like me for a year, and then tell me that. The fact is, I was always treated differently. People were just waiting for me to fuck up. When I did, they were right there to jump on me. If it were a white cop, you don't think they would have worked harder to find out what really happened? Hell, no. I was black. I was presumed guilty."

"I know Jonny. He's not like that."

"Yeah, the lieutenant tried, but racism in a place like Duluth is like drinking water. It's as natural as breathing, girl. They're doing it when they don't even know they're doing it. Stride included. He was always busting my ass over things that white cops did all the time."

"Like what?"

"Sometimes I missed shifts. My boy was sick. For white folks, that's called a child care issue. For me, it's being a lazy-ass black cop."

"That doesn't explain your hair being found in the apartment where your husband and his lover were killed."

"No, I'm just saying you got to understand the context."

Serena leaned forward. The plastic chair was uncomfortable. "Look, I've read the newspapers. I talked to Abel. I talked to Jonny. What I understand is that you had six months of hell. You had a good shooting on the bridge, and then you had everyone on your back over it. You were questioning yourself every damn day, reliving that moment when you pulled the trigger. Believe me, I know what that's like. I've been there. Then your husband started an affair with a teenage whore, and there you are, stuck on leave and feeling guilty and ashamed, trying to raise a boy, and feeling like the whole world is against you. Do I understand the context?"

Nicole was silent. She chewed her lip and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Yeah, okay. That was me."

"You were fragile."

"Yeah, but I was dealing with it. I was getting help. I was happy to be back on the job. Stride had me pull cold cases, because he didn't think I was ready to be back on the street, but that was okay. I liked it. I was on the phone and the Web ten hours a day, and I made some breaks in cases that had been stone-cold for years. It gave me my confidence back, you know?"

"What about your husband?"

"He was a prick. No other way around it. I was going to dump him."

"You didn't stalk him and his little girlfriend?"

"Okay, yeah, I did that a few times. I was wallowing in it, you know what that's like? Feeling sorry for myself. But I was done with that. I did not go over there that night. I did not kill them."

"Then who did?" Serena asked.

"Hell, I don't know. The girl was a junkie. Probably a dealer. But no one checked the drug angle."

"You said you were never in her apartment."

"I wasn't."

"How did your hair get there?"

Nicole jabbed a finger at Serena. " 'Cause it was planted, that's how."

"Who do you think did that?"

"I know exactly who. Abel fucking Teitscher, that's who. He framed me."

"Why would Abel do that?"

"He never wanted me as a partner, and he thought I was guilty, and this was the only way he could make the case. You know as well as I do that cops aren't angels. You've never helped a case along when you knew you had the perp and the evidence was weak?"

"No."

"Well, that's real high-and-mighty, but here in the real world, it happens."

Serena sighed. "So what does this have to do with Maggie?"

"Are you kidding me? Two detectives from the same bureau wind up on the hook for murdering their husbands? That doesn't smell like rotten fish to you?"

"Your case was six years ago. That's a long time."

"And I'm telling you, there's got to be a connection somewhere. You've got Abel on the case again, don't you? He had it in for me then, now he's got it in for Maggie."

"That doesn't sound like Abel," Serena told her. "He's a pain in the ass, but he's a straight shooter."

"Yeah, well, a lot of my hair wound up in Abel's car, girl, but the only way it got into that apartment is because someone carried it."

"You're not suggesting that Abel killed your husband and his girlfriend. Or Maggie's husband. Are you?"

Nicole shrugged. "I'm saying anything's possible. Maybe he's got it in for chick cops."

"Come on, Nicole."

"Look, I don't know. When I was a detective, I didn't like coincidences. This is a big one. Two cops with dead husbands."

Serena got up. "If I find anything that links the two cases, I'll call you."

"Yeah, right."

She extended her hand, and Nicole took it sullenly.

"That's all I can do," Serena said.

Nicole folded her arms over her chest. "My boy is going to college now, did you know that? A state school near his grandmother in Tennessee. If I'm lucky, I see him a couple of times a year. He's eighteen now. Almost nineteen. I missed the last six years of him growing up."

"I'm sorry."

"I didn't do this. He knows that."

"Okay."

"Say hi to Stride for me."

Serena nodded. Nicole shuffled toward the door that led back to the cells. Her head was down. Serena watched her go. She left the prison and was glad to get away from the antiseptic smell and the claustrophobia of the walls. As she got into her car, she realized everyone was right. Nicole was a waste of time.

Serena hoped she would have better luck at the Ordway.

She had visited Saint Paul several times in the past year. It was an easy two-and-a-half hour drive down I-35 from Duluth, and many of her investigative jobs had roots in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis was the larger of the siblings, with steel skyscrapers, trendy restaurants, and a fast-paced corporate culture. Saint Paul was slower, quieter, and smaller, boasting only a handful of high-rises that would have been dwarfed in other towns. The dominant look in the downtown architecture was turn-of-the-century stone. The state government took up most of the office space, and life in the city revolved around two domed buildings on the hill, the cathedral and the capitol. Between the twins, Serena preferred Saint Paul.

She found a parking place at a meter in Rice Park. The park was no more than a single square city block, with a central fountain and an odd juxtaposition of statues, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and characters from the Peanuts comic strip. St. Paul didn't forget its favorite sons, whether they were authors or cartoonists. The Ordway Center was only a few steps away, and the other buildings on the square were classical and grave-the mammoth central library, the Landmark Center with its clock tower and green dormers, and the venerable Saint Paul Hotel.

It was late afternoon and already dark. The streetlights were on. White lights twinkled in the trees in the park, and faery ice sculptures glistened, awaiting the opening of the city's annual winter carnival. Serena made her way to the Ordway, which was getting ready for a performance of The Producers that night. A doorman in a cape and top hat held the door for her. She was early; the theater staff in the lobby were sweeping the floor, arranging posters and T-shirts for sale, and preparing for the rush of ticket holders.

She found a security attendant in a white shirt. He was in his fifties, short and round. He remembered talking to Maggie the previous day.

"I was hoping to get some more information from the ushers," Serena told him.

"Suit yourself," he replied pleasantly. "But you've only got half an hour. When the guests start arriving, everyone will be busy around here."

"Do you know who would have been working a week ago Saturday?"

The security guard pointed at a kid in his early twenties, who was perched beside a velvet rope leading into the waiting area outside the orchestra doors. "Start with Dave."

Serena thanked him. Dave was a talkative farm boy who was majoring in geology at the University of Minnesota and used his ushering job to watch theater performances for free. He was dressed uncomfortably in a black tuxedo, with a paisley cummerbund and a bow tie that was so twisted it looked more like an hourglass spilling sand. Serena couldn't resist straightening it for him.

"Thanks," Dave replied. He didn't look unhappy to be in the circle of Serena's perfume. "I hate wearing the monkey suit, but they insist."

"Come on, you know women can't resist a man in a tuxedo," she told him, smiling.

His cheeks turned pink. "Yeah?"

"Oh, definitely." She asked Dave if he remembered Eric from the previous weekend, and he nodded vigorously.

"That dude? Absolutely. He looked like he should be captain of a Viking ship, know what I mean? Like he just stepped off a fjord."

"You talked to him?"

"Yeah, he peppered me with questions for ten minutes. It was a little awkward, because I needed to work, you know?"

"I'm sorry to be doing the same thing."

"Oh, hey, you I don't mind."

"What did Eric want to know?"

Dave had long brown hair, and he pushed it back behind his ears with both hands. "He was talking about this blog he had found on the Web. He was trying to track down the woman who wrote it."

"A blog?

"Yeah, I guess it was one of those MySpace things, like 'Lady in Red' or 'Dark Lady' or 'Lady in Waiting.' It was lady something."

"Did you know who the blogger was?"

"Nope. The Viking dude, he said it was probably a woman in her late thirties, but we've got lots of women like that here. So he started talking to them one by one."

"Did he say why he was looking for her?"

"No, he didn't. After he talked to a couple of the women, people started getting a little freaked-out. You know, like he might be a stalker or something. Security went to him and told him to lay off or they were going to kick him out."

"Did that stop him?"

Dave shook his head. "Not really. I saw him at intermission, and he was still talking up the women ushers. To tell you the truth, most of them didn't mind. I mean, he's a good-looking guy, you know? There was just one woman who got hot and bothered about it."

"Who was that?"

"Her name's Helen."

"Is she here tonight?"

"I haven't seen her for a while. You'd have to talk to the admin guys about her schedule. The thing is, she couldn't have been too upset, because when I left the theater that night, I saw her talking to the Viking guy in the park across the street."

"You saw Helen and Eric together?"

Dave nodded.

"You're a doll," Serena said.

Dave blushed again, and Serena retraced her steps to find the security guard hovering near the theater door. She asked him about Helen and discovered that the usher's full name was Helen Danning, single, late thirties, quiet.

"When is she next scheduled to work?" Serena asked.

The guard shook his head. "She's not."

"Why?"

"She quit last week. Called on Thursday and said she was moving out of town. No warning, no explanations, nothing."

"Did she say where she was going?"

"We don't even know where to send her last paycheck."

Serena frowned. "Do you know where she lived?"

"I think she had an apartment in Lowertown. Near the farmer's market. She told me it was nice to walk across the street on Saturday morning and get fresh tomatoes."

"And you're sure it was Thursday she called to give notice?" she asked.

"Yeah, I remember. They needed to find someone to take her place for the weekend shows."

Serena thanked him again. She checked her watch as she left the theater. It was getting late, and she still had to make the long drive back to Duluth that night. Even so, she needed to make a detour to Lowertown. She didn't like the chain of events. On Saturday, Eric was seen talking in the park with Helen Danning.

On Wednesday, Eric was murdered.

On Thursday, Helen fled the city.

28

When Katrina Kuli answered the door, Stride remembered that she had covered the bruises on her face with makeup and shrugged off the cut on her neck when he had first met her at the Java Jelly coffee shop. He wished he had put the truth together sooner. She held the door open and waited stiffly while he walked into her apartment.

"I'm glad you called me back," he said.

Katrina closed the door and locked it. "I'm not filing a police report. I don't want this to become public."

She gestured at a yellow futon by the living-room windows, and he sat down. She made sure the blinds were closed and then lowered herself gingerly into an upholstered chair across from him. He saw her wince as she breathed.

"Are you still in a lot of pain?"

She shrugged. "A couple of cracked ribs. They don't do anything for that these days. Just grin and bear it."

"What about other injuries?"

"Bumps, cuts, bruises. I'm healing."

"I just want to make sure you're being treated."

"I am."

"What about a counselor?"

"I've got some names," Katrina said. "I haven't called anyone yet. I figured I'd be hysterical, you know, but I don't really feel anything. It's weird."

"It happens like that sometimes. I've talked to a lot of women who have been through this, Katrina. Some become very emotional, some go numb. It's normal. Just don't deal with this alone. Call one of those names, okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

Katrina was wearing a loose-fitting flannel shirt and gray sweats. Her round face was blank, and her hair lay in clumps on her forehead. Every few seconds, she fingered the cut on her neck tenderly, as if it might have gone away since she last touched it. Her hands trembled, and the barbed wire tattoo quivered.

"When did it happen?" Stride asked.

"Last month."

"Here?"

She nodded.

"How did he get in?"

"He came up a back stairway."

"I'd like to have a forensics team go over the apartment for trace evidence."

"There's no DNA. I cleaned up."

"There could still be hair, fingerprints, residue."

"Look, he wore gloves and a stocking cap. Trust me, he didn't leave anything behind. I'd just like to move on."

"Do you have any idea who it was?"

"No, and I don't want to know."

Stride leaned forward and balanced his arms on his knees. "Why don't you want to report this?"

"Are you kidding? If a pretzel stick like Tanjy got raped all over again in the media, imagine what they'd do to a girl like me. I know exactly what kind of jokes people would tell. 'They're not sure if they can charge him with rape. Is having sex with a farm animal a crime?' "

"No one would say that."

"Sure they would."

"Did you tell anyone after it happened?"

She nodded. "I told Sonia at the dress shop."

"Not Maggie?"

"Especially not Maggie."

"Why? You said the two of you were friends."

"She and I haven't talked in a while," Katrina said. "Plus, she's a cop."

Stride thought about what Tony Wells had said. This perpetrator picks women who are sexually vulnerable. "There's something else, isn't there?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, this guy doesn't choose his victims by accident. He picks women who have something to hide."

"There are other victims?" Katrina asked.

"Yes, and they learned their lesson from Tanjy, just like you did. Don't report this if you want to keep your secret."

Katrina shoved herself out of her chair. She peeked through the blinds into the darkness and then turned back and folded her arms. She studied Stride. "If I tell you, the whole world will know."

"Not necessarily, but I can't promise you anything."

Katrina's lip bulged out in defiance. "What I do in my private life is my own damn business."

"I understand."

"You're right," she said finally. "I didn't report the assault, because there were some things about me that would have come out. Embarrassing things."

Stride waited.

"I was an alpha girl," Katrina continued.

"What's that?"

She hesitated and sat down on the other end of the futon sofa. "I'm not sure I should say anything. If you don't know what it is, it means you don't know about the club. I could cause problems for a lot of people."

"Katrina, you were raped."

"I know."

"Tell me what this is about. If it's something illegal-"

She shook her head. "It's not illegal. At least, I don't think it is. Immoral, maybe. I was part of a sex club in town. I was the alpha girl for the night."

Stride thought about his brief time in Las Vegas, which was a city that made a living on sex. Your basest desires were advertised on taxicab posters and hawked on the sidewalks. The only difference between Las Vegas and anywhere else was that Vegas didn't hide its lust. The city didn't invent sin; it imported it. All the people, all the desires, came to the desert from somewhere else. From places like Duluth.

"How did you get involved with this club?"

"Sonia recruited me."

Stride wasn't surprised that Sonia Bezac's name popped up in the middle of this. "She's a member?"

"She and Delmar started the club. It takes place at their house. There's a downstairs room she calls the temple."

"How many people are involved?"

"I'm not sure. There were a dozen or more people there when I was the alpha girl. Maybe seven or eight men and a few women, too."

"What's an alpha girl?"

Katrina squirmed on the sofa. "Look, I wasn't ashamed of it. I did it because I'm a wild chick, and I like to experiment. I'm not hung up about sex. But it's different when you have to start telling people about it."

"I'm not judging you."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that. There's a different alpha girl each time. We're basically there to have sex with anyone who wants us. Sometimes it's men who like to do it in front of other people. Sometimes it's wives whose husbands like to see them with other women. Sometimes it's the husband and wife together at the same time. There are also couples who simply like to see public sex and make out or masturbate while they watch us."

"That all sounds like an invitation to STDs."

"Condoms are the rule. Nobody goes bareback. Even the husbands and wives who have sex with each other have to use condoms while they're there."

"I'm having trouble understanding why you would want to do this to yourself," he said, choosing his words carefully.

"But you're not judging me, right? Ha. Hey, we're swingers, so what. I told you that most people wouldn't get it. That's why it's a secret. That's why I don't advertise it, and neither does anyone else."

"It feels dehumanizing to me, not erotic."

"Well, that's you. Me, I loved it. I was never more turned on in my life than I was that night. You have no idea how a big girl like me struggles with body image. But that night, every man wanted me. A bunch of women, too. I've never felt more desirable."

Stride wanted to get the facts and get out. "When was this?"

"Last month. December."

"How often does the club meet?"

"I'm not sure. Once a month, maybe."

"Do you think the rapist knew about the club?"

"Hell, he came after me the day after the party. It's not like that could be a coincidence, right?"

"Could it have been someone who was at the sex party with you?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I doubt it."

"Who else was there?"

"I don't know."

"You mean you didn't recognize them?"

"I mean, everyone wears masks. It's part of the game. The anonymity."

"So when you go, you don't know who else is going to be there?"

"No. Other than Sonia and Delmar, of course." She twitched and pressed her lips together. Her eyes darted to the floor.

"What is it?"

"I did know someone else who was there," she admitted.

"Who?"

"Maggie's husband. Eric. He was easy to spot. Him and his long blond hair."

Stride thought about Maggie. Do you think I don't have secrets?

"Did Maggie know about Eric and the club?" he asked, but he already knew what Katrina was going to say.

"Oh, yeah. She knew."

"You're sure?"

"We talked about it before I did it."

Stride shook his head. He couldn't believe any of this.

"What did she tell you?"

"She said I should do whatever I wanted, but we haven't talked since then. I called her after Eric was killed, but she never called me back. I guess I don't blame her."

"Are you telling me that Maggie was in the club?" Stride asked, and he could taste horror like sour wine in his mouth.

"Fasten your seat belt, Lieutenant. Maggie was the alpha girl the month before me."

29

Serena hated driving through the winter nights in Minnesota.

It was nearly eleven o'clock, and the northern highway was a long stretch of nothingness. She was an hour from Duluth, in the empty stretch where miles went by between towns. On either side of the road, the evergreens pressed in like dark towers, and the wilderness behind them was a black mass. She was afraid of deer springing out from the woods. There were carcasses on the shoulder every few miles, and when her headlights lit up the median, she could see hoof tracks cutting through the snow. The beasts were out there, tracking her.

She found a country radio station, but the signal came and went. She heard bits and pieces of songs by Miranda Lambert, Alan Jackson, and LeAnn Rimes, and she found herself singing along, making her feel less alone in the car. Country music was one of the things that she and Jonny had in common. You either got it or you didn't. Most people groaned when they heard her playing Terri Clark on the stereo, or when she told them about driving six hours to go to a Sara Evans concert in Des Moines. She didn't bother explaining. If you didn't get tears in your eyes listening to "No Place That Far," you wouldn't understand.

Her cell phone rang on the seat next to her.

"Oh, man, what are you listening to this time?" Maggie asked.

Serena laughed and switched off the radio. Maggie was like Tony Wells, a fan of hard rock and heavy metal.

"That's Garth, you heathen. Say one word against him, and I'll be forced to shave your head."

"Jeez, one innocent remark, and you country music fans go all shotguns and hound dogs on me." She added, "Where are you?"

"I'm heading north on Thirty-five. I'm just about to Finlayson."

"Watch out for deer."

"I'm trying to."

"Have you talked to Stride?"

"Not tonight. I tried earlier, but I got his voice mail."

"He wants the three of us to get together tomorrow," Maggie told her. "He thinks he knows how some of the pieces connect."

"Do you know what he's got?"

Maggie's voice was flat. "Yeah, I did something stupid. I should have told him about it myself. I didn't think there was any connection to what happened to me, but I guess I was kidding myself."

Serena let the silent air drag on, waiting for Maggie to continue. She didn't. "You want to tell me about it?"

"I'll let him do it. I feel like enough of an idiot already."

"Whatever you want, kiddo. You want to hear what I found at the Ordway?"

"Sure."

Serena filled her in about Eric's visit to the theater and the sudden decision by Helen Danning to skip town the day after Eric's murder. "I checked the restaurant where you said Eric had dinner. The waiter recognized Helen Danning. He saw the two of them together."

"Did he hear what they were talking about?"

"Whatever it was, Helen wasn't happy. She left halfway through the meal."

"And now she's gone."

"Seriously gone," Serena said. "No forwarding address. I sweet-talked the building manager, and he let me take a look at her apartment. She left behind her furniture, but she took everything else she could cram into her car. I swiped a coffee mug from her counter so we could run it for prints."

"You did what?"

"I swiped a coffee mug. Why?"

Maggie was silent.

"You there?" Serena asked.

"Yeah. Yeah. Something didn't feel right for a second there, like I had forgotten something important. I almost had my finger on it, but it's gone now. What was this stuff about a blog?"

"Eric apparently found Helen through some blog she was running. Lady something. Does that ring a bell?"

"Not with me. The cops took Eric's computers, so Guppo might be able to pull a record of sites he visited. I'll see what I can find online."

"Any guesses on how Helen fits into this?" Serena asked.

"I think Eric told her something that scared the shit out of her. When he died, she ran."

"Or maybe she told him something."

"That's a good point. I'll see you tomorrow. Drive carefully."

Serena hung up, and she was back in the cocoon of the quiet car. In the rearview mirror, about a half mile behind her, she noticed headlights. The vehicle matched her speed, and she wondered if he was skating in her wake. She did that herself sometimes on long drives at night, shadowing a semi in front of her and letting it clear a path by killing off the deer. Right now, though, she didn't like the idea that there were just the two of them on the highway.

Her cell phone rang again, and she jumped at the noise. She assumed it was Maggie calling back. Or Jonny. It wasn't.

"Hello, Serena."

It took her a moment to recognize the voice, which awakened a shapeless fear inside her. It was the blackmailer she had met at midnight in the cemetery.

"You're out late," he told her.

"What do you want?"

She was certain it was him in the other car.

"In about a mile, you'll come to a rest stop. Take the exit and park."

"Why should I?"

"I have something for you. Something you'll find very interesting."

"What is it?"

"Take the exit and park."

He ended the call.

Serena had to make a snap decision. The exit to the rest stop was practically on top of her. She swung the wheel, braked sharply, and steered in among the trees. The rest stop was closed for the season; the road was slippery and snow-covered. She carved tracks as she went. She kept an eye on her mirror and was surprised to see the headlights of the other car pass by on the highway without stopping.

She got out of her car and stepped down into six inches of powdery snow. She reached back inside and turned off the lights, wanting it dark, not wanting to paint herself as a target. She didn't trust this man and wanted her gun in her hand. She went immediately to the trunk, opened it, and retrieved her Glock. Its heft comforted her. She walked away from the car and swung slowly around in a circle, pointing the gun in front of her. Fir trees swayed overhead, cradling snow in their outstretched branches. They looked like faceless monsters. As the wind blew, making a fearsome hiss, it sent a cold, silvery mist down from the trees into her face.

The rest stop itself was dark. There were a few other blurry tire tracks in the parking lot from drivers who had ignored the closed sign, like her, and come inside to piss or sleep. None of the tracks was fresh. She stood alone in the middle of the blanket of snow, dwarfed by the forest, feeling both invisible and exposed at the same time. The wind blinded her senses. Where was he?

Back in the car, her phone rang again. She ran for it.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Close by."

"Are you too scared to let me see you?"

He laughed. "I know you have your gun in your hand."

Serena wheeled around and scanned the forest. She tried to find movements or shadows in the dark, but she saw only the great trees towering over her. She felt small.

"I'm leaving," she said.

She returned to her car, got in, and locked the doors behind her. She started the engine.

"I told you, I have something for you," he said.

"What is it?"

"Look in the glove compartment."

He had been in her car. "What's in there?"

"Dan's secret," he said. "Tell him I want one hundred thousand dollars this time."

"You're crazy. Nothing is worth that much."

"You'd be surprised what people will do to hide their sins."

"When do you want it?"

"Soon. I'll let you know."

She looked at her phone. She was offline.

She sped out of the rest stop, her wheels spinning in the snow. The dark highway felt like a friend compared to the cloister where she had stopped. A truck passed on the interstate, and she accelerated to catch it and fell in behind. Let it scare off the deer. Let it crush them. Even so, in the median, she saw more tracks of hoofprints, tiny and persistent, as if they were running to catch her.

She waited until she was in the heart of the city, and the woods were miles behind her, before she pulled over and looked in the glove compartment. It was after midnight. There was a slim white envelope inside that hadn't been there before. She turned on the dome light in the car and opened the envelope. A photograph was inside.

The picture was taken at night. The skin of the two people in the photograph glowed unnaturally. It took Serena a moment to figure out what she was looking at. She saw mocha-colored skin, long hair, and realized when she studied their profiles that one of the people was Tanjy Powell. She was naked. Outside, in a park. Her hands were tied to a fence, and in the blurry darkness behind her, Serena could make out railway cars. She was crying out. Or maybe she was moaning. She couldn't tell.

A man was behind Tanjy. He had a long knife poised at her throat, and his pants were at his ankles, revealing an obscene white ass. He was buried inside her. It was Dan Erickson.

30

Serena parked in Canal Park in the shadow of the lift bridge. Home was just three miles away, but she wasn't ready to go there yet. She sat for a long time, staring at the photograph and feeling trapped. Whoever the blackmailer was, he was enjoying the game. He could have put the photograph directly in Dan's hands and left Serena in the dark, but instead, he wanted her to be caught in the middle.

She needed to decide what to tell Jonny. If she kept the photo to herself, she ran the risk of derailing an investigation into rape and murder. This wasn't something she could put in the box, for Jonny to pretend he didn't know. If she told him, the only thing he could do was run with it. That would be the end of Dan's career.

Did the photograph show Dan raping Tanjy, or was this consensual sex between twisted lovers? Whatever the truth was, the question in Serena's mind was how far Dan would go to hide the secret. Would he kill Tanjy to keep her quiet? If he did, how did Eric fit into the puzzle?

Then there was Helen Danning at the Ordway. The coincidence of her leaving town the day after Eric's murder was too strong to ignore.

Serena put the photograph back in the glove compartment. She knew she couldn't involve Jonny yet. She had to confront Dan first and interrogate him.

She also thought about the man in shadows. The blackmailer who was tormenting Dan. He seemed to know all the secrets, all the things that people would do anything to protect. He pulled a string, and the city unraveled. Who was he, and how did he know so much about the private world of everyone around him?

At the rest stop, he knew she had a gun in her hand. He had to be hiding nearby, but there was no other car around her and no way he could have positioned himself so quickly. He had to have waited somewhere else, maybe at the rest stop on the opposite side of the highway, and then walked across the road to scout out a place to watch her.

That meant he knew she was coming. He knew where she was.

She got out of the car with a sudden realization. The ground was cold and wet, but she got down on her knees and hunted under the chassis. When she couldn't see, she retrieved a flashlight from the trunk and slid beneath the frame of the car. Her skin became blackened with grease. Fifteen minutes later, she found the small box attached magnetically to the interior side of the wheel well. She yanked it off and stood up and studied it in her dirty palm. A silver antenna poked out of one corner. She recognized the unit, because she had used it herself in her own work.

It was a GPS locating device. He had been tracking her everywhere she went.

Serena took the box to the side of the canal and dropped it into the cold, sluggish water.

Jonny was still awake when she got in. He sat in a chair in front of the fireplace with a measure of scotch poured in a shot glass. He rarely drank. Serena was an alcoholic, so they didn't keep much liquor in the house. A dusty bottle of Oban was in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen, and she had only seen him pour from it twice. Once was on the anniversary of Cindy's death. The second time was when Maggie told him about her third miscarriage.

Her clothes were wet and dirty. He eyed her as she washed the grease off her hands and then stripped down to her panties and pulled a white T-shirt over her head. She sat down on the floor beside the recliner, laid her head casually on his thigh, and watched the flames dance.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Sure."

"You're late getting back."

"I had trouble with the car."

"Uh-huh."

She knew he didn't believe her.

"What about that word you put in the box?" he continued. "Tell me more about this blackmailer."

"I can't say anything more," she said. "Not yet."

"I'd like to know what's going on with Dan."

"You know I can't tell you that."

She was glad that he didn't push her.

"You saw Nicole?" he asked.

"Yes, you were right. She's grasping at straws."

"How did she look?"

"Old."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

She told him about Helen Danning.

"I'll have Guppo run her through the system," Stride said. "Maybe she has relatives or friends who can help us find her."

"Maggie called me. She said you found something."

He nodded. "Another rape victim."

Serena lifted her head and brushed her hair back. "Who?"

"Katrina Kuli. She owns a coffee shop on Superior, not far from Silk."

"Does she have a connection to Maggie?"

"Oh, yeah."

He downed the Oban in a single shot and didn't say anything. Serena came around in front of him and leaned on his knees. "What is it?" she asked.

"Maggie was in a sex club." He recited the details without any expression on his face.

Serena sat back, and her eyes widened. "Wow."

"That's not the Maggie I know," Stride said.

"Have you talked to her about it?"

"Not yet."

"I think you should."

"I want to talk to Sonia first and find out more about this so-called club. Like whether Tanjy was involved, too. I'm betting they were all 'alpha girls,' and that's what ties the assaults together."

She heard the disappointment and disbelief rippling through his voice. "Since when do you get all judgmental on me? You always tell me you don't care what anyone else does behind closed doors."

"This is Maggie," he said.

"Okay, I know, it's like finding out your daughter's not a virgin anymore."

"Funny."

"I'm sorry. Look, sex with strangers isn't my thing, but what Maggie does with her body is her business, not mine. And not yours, either."

"I know that."

Serena frowned. "Do you? You've spent the last ten years trying to pretend that Maggie has no sexuality at all. She's a complex, pretty, erotic, troubled, funny, exasperating woman. Sometimes I get nervous that you'll wake up and realize all that and find yourself attracted to her."

"You don't have to worry about me and Maggie."

"No?" She wondered how honest she could be. "You know, when the three of us are together, I feel like I'm the third wheel sometimes, not her."

He was obviously shocked. "I had no idea you felt that way."

"Women can be tough and neurotic at the same time, Jonny."

"I thought you two were friends."

"We are, but don't think we're not rivals, too."

"There's no rivalry," he told her. "It's you and me. Period."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, but it's not that simple, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the only way you're going to make it through this case is to see Maggie as a woman, not as a partner. That's the only way any of this will ever make sense to you. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't, but everything will be different."

"I'm just trying to understand how she could do what she did," he said.

Serena stood up. "Maggie is the only one who can explain it to you. Just remember that sometimes you're better off not knowing the truth about your friends."

She went to bed and left him sitting in front of the fire.

31

Stride sat in his Bronco opposite Sonia Bezac's house. His window was open, and he was in a foul mood. He held a cigarette outside, letting the wind carry the smoke behind him. It was almost nine in the morning. The street was straight out of Norman Rockwell, with Tudor homes sitting on comfortable lots. The median was landscaped with evergreen trees spaced to break up the view from one side to the other. Snow dotted the roofs. It was a mature neighborhood of forty-something couples and families, less than a mile from Hunters Park and UMD, a quiet enclave of women who did Pilates and walked golden retrievers and men who drank brandy and pretended to be their fathers.

He wondered if the neighbors knew about the sex club. He didn't think so. The people next door probably thought Sonia and Delmar hosted elegant dinner parties behind drawn curtains and would have been appalled to find out what was really going on. Appalled. Curious. Excited. Angry that they weren't invited.

Sonia's husband Delmar, the urologist, emerged from the front door, wearing a gray suit and a dressy wool coat. He was several inches shorter than Sonia and considerably wider. The wind mussed the comb-over across his bald pate. He patted his hair down and got behind the wheel of a new, black Mercedes sedan.

Penises paid well.

Delmar roared off down the hill. Stride stubbed out his cigarette, got out of his Bronco, and crossed to the median. The front door opened again, and Sonia came out. He felt a stir of nostalgia, seeing her. It took him back to a time when his body was young and hormone-filled, like a showroom car itching for the highway. In her forties, Sonia still carried an aura of sex. Her red hair blew like a tornado. She was tall and took quick, careful steps in her heels down the icy brick walkway. Her coat was open, and he saw a forest-green silk blouse and black skirt.

He crossed the rest of the street, and she melted, too, just a little, when she saw him. There was a softness in her face that came and went quickly. She realized he wasn't smiling.

"Hello again," she said.

"I need to talk to you, Sonia. Can we go inside?"

"I'm late. I need to open the shop. It's mine now, you know."

"This won't wait."

Sonia crossed her arms. "Maybe I watch too much television, but I don't really have to talk to you at all, do I? I can just get in my car and go."

"Sure. I'll just talk to the newspapers instead."

"About what?"

He leaned close to her and whispered. He smelled jasmine perfume. "Alpha girls."

Sonia's face, already pale, went bone-white. "All right."

She led him back to the house. Inside, she took off her coat and showed him to the living room. He took a seat on a lemon-colored sofa, which was firm and didn't give under his weight. The room was modern and expensive. An oil painting on the wall showed what looked to him like squiggles of red and blue paint. The coffee table was chrome and glass. He saw an abstract metal sculpture of a nude near the fireplace.

Sonia kicked off her heels and sat in an armchair across from him. She grabbed a pack of cigarettes. "It's okay to smoke, if you'd like." She lit one up and blew the smoke toward the ceiling fan.

"I've had my one for the morning."

"What willpower." She put a stocking-clad foot on the ottoman. Her leg was long and slender. "The club meets downstairs, if you're wondering."

"I wasn't."

"So what, do you and Serena want to join? We'd love to have you." She smiled.

"No, thanks."

"It's not a coven, for Christ's sake. Nobody gets hurt."

"I think a rapist is targeting your club."

Her smile vanished. "That's not funny."

"No, it's not. You know what happened to Katrina, don't you?"

"Yes, but what makes you think that had anything to do with the club?"

"Katrina was assaulted one day after the last party. Did you think that was just a coincidence?"

Sonia jabbed her cigarette at him. "I know every man who was there. It couldn't have been any of them. So yes, I thought it was just a coincidence. Or even-"

"Even what?"

"I even thought Katrina might have made it up. You know, like Tanjy did. I thought she might be feeling guilty about what she did at the club. It happens."

"It wasn't just Katrina," Stride told her. "Another alpha girl was assaulted."

Sonia closed her eyes. "Son of a bitch," she murmured. "Who?"

"I can't say."

"Are you sure she was in the club?"

"I'm sure."

"Is this going to become public?"

"Very likely."

"Shit, shit, shit." She shook her head. "Do you have any idea what this is going to do to us?"

"Try thinking about the women who were brutalized, Sonia."

"Yes, of course, I know. I just can't believe this could involve the club. We are very careful about who gets in."

"What about Tanjy? Was she an alpha girl?" Stride asked.

"No. I put out a couple feelers with her, but she wasn't interested."

"Tanjy had no connection at all to the club?"

"None. Are you telling me she really was raped? Look, that means there must be some other connection. Tanjy didn't know a thing about the club."

"Don't get carried away. Two of your alpha girls were assaulted. That's not a coincidence." He added, "Tell me how this all works, Sonia. How you get your members. How often people meet. What happens."

Sonia put her cigarette in a turquoise clamshell ashtray. "I'm not sure I should be telling you any of this."

"Every woman in the club may be in danger, Sonia. Including you."

"Even so, it might be better if I talked to a lawyer first."

"Go ahead, but then it all comes out," Stride said. "Do you want me to get a subpoena? Do you really want all this in a filing with the court? We're just getting started with the information I need."

Sonia leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling. Her neck was slim, like a swan's. "Just between us?" she asked.

"For now."

"All right," she said with obvious reluctance. "We have about twenty members. Mostly couples, but some singles, too. No one gets in without a personal invitation from me and Delmar. Referrals only. We do background checks on everyone before letting them in."

"Have you ever had to ask anyone to leave? Someone who behaved inappropriately?"

She nodded. "Once we had a couple who declined to wear condoms when having sex with each other at the club. I'm very, very strict about that. We didn't invite them back. Another time we had a man who slapped an alpha girl. Two of the men escorted him out immediately."

"What was his name?"

"Wilson Brunt. I don't think you'll find that he was involved, though. He was transferred out of state at least six months ago. He's in Oregon now."

Stride wrote his name down. "How long has the club been going on?"

"About a year. It was my idea."

"Big surprise."

"Oh, come on, Jonathan, don't you get bored sometimes?" Sonia waved her hand around at the living room, as if she despised her suburban surroundings. "We're in our forties. Old age is knocking on the door. You think this red hair doesn't come out of a bottle now? You think Delmar's equipment just springs to life when I take off my clothes? Tick tick tick, that's the fucking mortality clock staring us both in the face. You can go buy a convertible to deal with your midlife crisis. I wanted something else."

Stride ignored her. "How often do you meet?"

"Usually about once a month. Sometimes more."

"Does any money change hands?"

"No!"

"What about drugs or illegal substances?"

"Absolutely not. No way." Her eyes danced nervously, and he figured she was lying.

"Tell me about the alpha girls."

Sonia shrugged. "I was the first. I took on six men and three women in one night. That's still the record."

"Good for you," he said flatly. Their eyes met. Sonia knew what he thought and didn't care.

"When we started, the only alpha girls were wives of members," she continued, "but a few times, we've had women who were interested in being alpha girls for the night."

"How do they find out about it?"

"Through members. We're all very discreet. We only approach a woman if we have reason to believe she's liberated sexually, and even then, we take it slow. We don't share any details about the club itself until the woman expresses interest. An outside alpha girl never knows the names of members. It's all anonymous."

"You mean the masks?"

Sonia frowned. "You know about that?"

Stride didn't say anything.

"Yes, we wear masks. It's partly to protect identities, but frankly, we've heard from the women that they like it. There's an extra kick, an extra thrill, when they don't see the faces."

"What actually happens?"

"Why not join us and see?" Sonia asked.

"Don't be cute."

"I'm not. You're always welcome. I asked Maggie if you might be interested, but she said you'd sooner trim your nose hair with a razor blade." She realized what she had done and said, "Shit. I never use names. It's just that she-"

"Never mind. I know all about it."

"Oh my God, did something happen to Maggie?"

Stride's face was stone.

"Oh shit, I'm so sorry," Sonia said. "I can't believe this. She didn't come back after she was the alpha girl, and I just thought she was freaked-out by the experience."

"You brought it up. Tell me about Maggie and Eric."

Sonia shook her head. "This is just fucking terrible." She reclaimed her cigarette, and it wobbled between her fingers. "Eric was involved from the beginning. The first outside alpha girl was an athlete from the Czech Republic who was in town about her Olympic equipment."

"Was Maggie involved from the beginning, too?"

He realized he was holding his breath, not wanting to hear the answer.

"No, she was only here twice. The first time, she and Eric were behind the wall."

"What does that mean?"

Sonia hesitated. "One wall of the temple is all mirrors. There's a small bedroom behind the middle section where someone can watch. Eric wanted Maggie to see what the club was like."

"So no one knew they were there?"

"Just me. Afterward, Eric persuaded Maggie to be the alpha girl at the next meeting."

"I'd love to know how he did that," Stride said, half to himself.

"Maybe she saw it as payback for all of Eric's affairs. He had to stand there and watch."

"Skip the details, what happened afterward?"

"I did her, too, you know."

"I said, skip the details," he snapped. His voice was loud.

Sonia looked pleased to have riled him. "Maggie didn't come to the next party, but Eric did. Katrina was the alpha girl. That was the last time for Eric. He told me later he was giving it up for Maggie's sake."

"When is the next party?" he asked.

"Tomorrow."

Tomorrow, Stride thought. They didn't have much time, but they also had a new chance to lure the rapist out of his cave.

"Who's the alpha girl?"

Sonia hesitated again, and Stride said, "Just tell me, and skip the bullshit, Sonia. I have plenty of probable cause for a warrant."

"Her name is Kathy Lassiter. She's a partner with a Twin Cities law firm. She has a house on the North Shore. She's been to several parties before, but not as the alpha girl."

"Have you ever heard of a woman named Helen Danning? Was she in the club, or was she an alpha girl?"

"No, I've never heard of her."

"All right, let's talk about how this information is getting out. How could someone find out that a woman was an alpha girl in the club?"

"I don't see how they could," Sonia protested. "All the alpha girls not only sign a form releasing us from legal liability, they also sign a nondisclosure agreement."

"You're kidding."

"No way. We don't want people having an attack of the guilts and suing us, and we don't want loose lips spreading this around all over the city. Members sign similar documents, too, when they join. Plus a code of conduct."

"Good luck litigating those contracts."

Sonia smiled. "Well, I don't think we'd take anyone to court, but signing the docs makes people realize how serious we are about confidentiality and responsible behavior."

Stride tried not to laugh at the irony. "Even so, everyone who's there on a given night knows who the alpha girl is."

"Not necessarily. We don't give people a name if the alpha girl is an outsider. They'd have to know her or recognize her from outside the club."

"Or follow her."

"I suppose so."

"Do you keep records of members and who attends individual parties?"

Sonia nodded. "Absolutely. I keep that on our home computer upstairs. We don't want any legal hassles over the club, so we're fanatical about records, contracts, nondisclosure agreements, background checks, etcetera. We keep all that stuff. No one has ever challenged us, but we're ready if they do."

"How secure is your computer? Do you have a wireless network?"

"Are you kidding? Not a chance."

"How about an Internet connection?"

"Well, yes, but it's totally secure. I had Byte Patrol install the most sophisticated firewall available. It's about as hacker-proof as you can get. Believe me, no one got the information out of our computer."

"That leaves the members," Stride said.

Sonia frowned. "I told you, we vet them."

"I'm going to need names."

"Oh, shit, there's got to be another way."

"No, we have to interview them all."

"Look, you said two alpha girls were assaulted," Sonia argued. "We don't have the same members at every party. Different people come, depending on their schedules. I can get you the names of men who were at both parties with those women, and that should narrow it down."

Stride nodded. "I'll start there, but give me the whole list. All the members, and all the participants at every party. Include the alpha girls, too. I'll need to talk to all of them, because I need to find out if anyone else was assaulted." When Sonia hesitated, he added, "I'm not kidding. I'll go to court, and I'll splash this all over the papers if I have to."

Sonia got out of the chair. "It'll take me a few minutes," she said in a pinched voice.

"I've got time."

Ten minutes later, Sonia came back with a sheaf of papers in her hand.

"This is everything. Look, I'm begging you, be discreet. Delmar will kill me if this gets out."

"No promises, Sonia."

He found the lists for the two parties where Maggie and Katrina were alpha girls, and it took him only a few seconds to compare the names to see who had been at both events. Other than Sonia's husband, Delmar, there were only four men who were present both times.

Three names he didn't know.

The fourth was Tanjy's ex-boyfriend. Mitchell Brandt.

32

Serena didn't have the same feeling of being watched as she climbed the steps of the courthouse. She hoped that destroying the GPS device had given her a temporary escape from the blackmailer's prying eyes.

The photograph he had given her was now in a large manila envelope addressed to Dan Erickson, marked personal and confidential. She wasn't sure if she was doing the right thing by keeping Jonny in the dark, but she didn't see any alternatives. She couldn't destroy Dan's life if he was guilty of nothing more than kinky sex practices. The trouble was that Tanjy was dead. A photo like this would vault Dan to the top of the suspect list, if only because he would do anything to keep it hidden. Even so, Dan was a client. He was paying her. Until she knew something different, she couldn't expose him.

In Dan's office, Serena handed the envelope to the receptionist and told her to take it inside. A minute later, she came back and told Serena to go in. Serena closed the office door behind her and clicked the lock in place. Dan was standing behind his mahogany desk, with the photograph in his hand. His other fist was clenched. He took the envelope and photo to a crosscut shredder on the wall and fed them in. The machine whirred as it diced the evidence. He checked the bin to make sure the papers had been cut into confetti, then whirled around on Serena.

"Where the fuck did you get that? What are you trying to do to me?"

Serena held up her hands. "Blackmail is an ugly business. I told you it was going to get worse."

"He gave this to you?"

She nodded.

"How did he get it?"

"You'd know that better than me."

"This is a fucking disaster. You realize that, don't you? A disaster. What does he want?"

"One hundred thousand dollars."

"Son of a bitch." He pointed an accusing finger at her. "Are the two of you in this together? Are you gaming me?"

Serena came closer and slapped his hand away. "Don't insult me. You're lucky I didn't turn this over to Jonny instead of coming here. And I'm going to tell Jonny all about it unless you can convince me right now that you had nothing to do with Tanjy's murder."

"That's crazy."

"Then tell me about you and Tanjy. Is the photo legit? Is that you and her together?"

Dan shoved his hand back roughly through his blond hair. "Yeah."

"Did you rape her?"

"Hell, no. Rape was her fantasy, remember? This was just a game. We went down there in the middle of the night, and we took pictures."

"Do I have to tell you how incredibly stupid that was?"

His cheeks were tomato-red with fury. "No, I knew the risks, but Tanjy was worth it."

Serena didn't need details. "How did you and she hook up?"

"I met her in the dress shop. We had chemistry."

"Did Lauren know?"

Dan snorted. "No one knew."

"Well, someone did. You could have destroyed your career. You still might."

"That's why I broke it off. I ended it months ago."

"Despite the great sex?"

Dan went to a cabinet and opened the bottom door, revealing a small refrigerator. He extracted a bottle of Bombay gin from the freezer, filled a lowball glass with ice, and took a long drink. He extended the bottle to Serena, and she shook her head. "The whole fake rape thing was a nightmare," he said. "I couldn't afford to keep the affair going, not after all her rape fantasies came to light in the press."

"Weren't you afraid she'd go public about your affair after you dumped her?"

"Yeah, but she didn't have much credibility left. No one would have believed her."

"Except she obviously had pictures."

Dan shook his head. "I went to her place. I had a key. I deleted all the pictures from her digital camera and from the hard drive."

"Shit, Dan, do you know how easy it is to recover deleted files?"

"Not for Tanjy. She was beautiful, but she was hopeless about technology. She had to have someone show her how to do everything. Believe me, she couldn't have found those files again."

"Someone did."

Dan gestured angrily, and gin slopped over the side of the crystal. "No one knew the pictures were there! She and I were the only ones who knew about that night in the park."

Serena shook her head. "Wrong."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Tanjy really was raped. It happened in Grassy Point Park, just like in that photograph. Do you think that's a coincidence?"

"Oh, bullshit," Dan insisted. "The rape story was a lie. Tanjy made it up."

"Jonny already knows about two other victims. We think Eric was helping Tanjy find out who assaulted her. That's what got both of them killed."

"The rape was a fantasy," Dan insisted.

"Did Tanjy tell you that?"

He hesitated. "No. She always swore it really happened."

"You should have listened to her."

"I just wanted to get her away from me. I was scared to death the media was going to find out about us."

Serena nodded. "You know that if I tell Jonny about you and Tanjy, he'll think you're good for both murders."

"I didn't kill anyone. I didn't rape anyone, either."

"Where were you on the Monday night that Tanjy disappeared?" Serena asked.

"I was in Saint Paul. I was telling the attorney general about my move to Washington. I stayed overnight."

"Where?"

"The Saint Paul Hotel."

"Do you know a woman named Helen Danning?" she asked.

"No."

"She worked at the Ordway as an usher. Right across the park from your hotel. She's disappeared. Eric saw her shortly before he was killed."

"I don't know her."

Serena watched him. He looked away and finished his gin.

"Do you have any idea who's doing this to you?" she asked.

"I wish I did. I'd kick his ass."

"I don't think this is someone you want to mess with, Dan. When did he first contact you?"

"Last Tuesday."

"Tuesday? That was the day after Tanjy disappeared. You didn't think that was significant?"

"I didn't know she had disappeared at that point."

"You know what that means. This guy may have raped and killed Tanjy himself. And set you up to take the fall."

"This can't become public," Dan said.

"It's going to come out sooner or later."

"Are you going to tell Stride?"

Serena hesitated. She had to make a judgment about Dan's credibility, which was like guessing what was in the pockets of a magician. "Not right now."

Dan looked relieved.

"But that's only until we're sure what's going on," Serena added. "As soon as I have any hard evidence, I have to tell Jonny. If this guy really is involved in rape and murder, he's got to be stopped, even if it means the truth about you and Tanjy coming out."

"I can't believe this," he said.

"Believe it. You're in big trouble."

33

Maggie typed the e-mail on her laptop:

HD. If this is you, we need to talk. I think you know what happened to my husband after he found you. I think that's why you left. I need your help. Please contact me. M.

She clicked the Send button, and the e-mail disappeared. The handle of the blogger she had found was "The Lady in Me." The contents of the blog had been stripped, but Maggie had located a posting on another blog, in which a woman who signed herself as "The Lady in Me" mentioned seeing the musical Les Miserables at least sixty times as an usher at the Ordway Theater. It had to be Helen Danning. Before leaving town, she had wiped her past clean, deleting every posting and every response on her blog, but there was still a link to send electronic mail. Maggie didn't know if the e-mail link was live, or if Helen would ever check it, but she tried anyway.

She wore half-glasses pushed down her small nose. Her bare feet dangled off the recliner. She had a plastic bottle of Diet Coke on one side of her and a half-eaten bag of sour cream and cheddar potato chips on the other. The fingertips on her right hand were orange, and she had to lick them before she typed. She clicked through pages of search results on the name Helen Danning, but she was no closer to finding out who she was, or why Eric had gone to so much trouble to find her.

Headlights cut across the outside windows as Stride's Bronco pulled into the driveway. A couple of minutes later, she heard the door open and his heavy footsteps in the kitchen. She called out, "I'm in here."

It was his house. Maggie had a key. After Cindy died, she used Stride's house as a sort of second home, dropping in with doughnuts and coffee and bringing over movies. Sometimes Stride joined her, sometimes he didn't. That was the kind of casual relationship they had. She had pulled back during Stride's second marriage, but when he and Serena returned from Las Vegas and bought a place out on the Point again, Maggie gradually resumed her old ways. Neither of them complained about it. Most of the time, they spent evenings talking about open cases anyway, so it was easier for her to be here.

She knew that she was using his place as an escape to get away from Eric. And, despite Serena, to be close to Stride.

She didn't look up as Stride came into the living room. She was in his chair. "Chip?" she asked, holding up the bag.

"No thanks." He added, "Does Abel know you're here?"

"No, Guppo had the job of babysitting me tonight. I promised to bring him a bag of tacos when I came back, and he looked the other way."

"He's a credit to the badge," Stride said.

"Yeah. I hear that Pete McKay lost a patrol car."

Stride nodded. "He got a call up to the high school and heard some firecrackers around back. When he came back, his car was gone. Nice."

"Kids are getting smarter than the cops these days."

"Tell me about it."

"I think we should buy McKay a scooter with a siren."

"I'll tell him you said that."

Maggie smiled at their usual banter but knew it wouldn't last. Stride sat down on the brick hearth of the fireplace. He was still wearing his black leather jacket, and he smelled of cold and smoke. Maggie knew what to expect from him.

"Do I get the lecture now, Dad?" She adopted a deep voice and said, "I'm very disappointed in you, young lady."

"Come on, Mags."

"So now you know what your little girl does on weekends," she said.

"I'm not really in a mood to joke about this."

Maggie stripped off her glasses. "Hey, this is still me, okay? I joke about everything. I don't care what you think of me right now, it's still a riot to think about me playing Jenna Jameson in a sex club."

He looked at her in a way that made her feel as if he was seeing her for the first time. His face was drawn and tight.

"Please don't tell me you wore a blond wig," he said.

Maggie laughed. "And one of those cone-shaped bras, too. Like Madonna."

Stride smiled enough that she could see his white teeth showing. Relief bubbled out of her like a fountain.

"I guess you want to know why," she said.

"You don't owe me any explanations. It's your life."

"But you want one anyway."

He shrugged. "Sure, I'd like to know why you did it. I can't pretend I get it, Mags. Not from you."

"Why, because I'm not supposed to have sex? I'm not supposed to enjoy it?"

"That's not what I mean at all."

"Then spit it out. You don't have to sugarcoat things for me."

"Sex is one thing," he said. "This is women spreading their legs for strangers. With fucking gold masks."

"So what does that make me? A whore?"

"No, of course not."

"Then what?"

He looked frustrated. "I just hate the idea of you doing something like that."

"Tell me why."

"Because you deserve better. Okay? Because you're something special. Because I don't think a woman could do that unless, on some level, she hated herself, and I don't want to think of you feeling that way."

Maggie stared at the ceiling, not wanting to meet his eyes. "Lately, I have hated myself a little."

"You could have talked to me about it."

"About my marriage falling apart? About my husband cheating on me? About trying to rescue our sex life? I don't think so. Unless you're prepared to go all the way-and I know you're not, you don't need to say it-there are parts of my life I'm never going to share with you."

"So maybe I should just drop this. It's none of my business anyway."

"No, it's not. But since you know about it, I'll tell you anyway, because there really isn't that much to tell. I felt empty and was looking for something to fill the void. I thought it might bring Eric and me closer together, which it didn't do. And, yeah, okay, I was intrigued. For once in my life, I thought, what the hell. It was a mistake, if that's what you want to hear."

"You don't need to say that."

"Well, it's true."

He changed the subject. She was relieved to stop talking about it.

"Did Serena tell you? Katrina was assaulted, too. Right after the last party."

"Yeah, she did. I had no idea. I feel like a shit for not calling her."

"This guy is smart," Stride said. "He's making a bet that women in this sex club won't risk the humiliation of going public."

"When is Sonia's next party?"

"Tomorrow."

"Son of a bitch," Maggie said.

"Exactly. We need to move fast."

They both looked up as the back door opened. It was Serena, carrying a bag of groceries that she deposited on the kitchen counter. She kicked off her heels and joined them, taking a seat on the carpet and crossing her legs. Maggie noticed that she sat close enough to Stride that their clothes touched.

"You two okay?" Serena asked.

Stride nodded without saying anything. Maggie felt him grow colder, as if he were drawing a circle around himself and Serena to keep her out. It bothered her.

"What did I miss?" Serena asked.

"We just had sex," Maggie said. "This is afterglow."

It was a stupid joke. She felt bad when Serena's face soured with discomfort.

"I'm sorry, dumb thing to say," she added.

"Alpha girl humor," Serena murmured.

Ouch. But Maggie knew she deserved it.

She tossed the bag of chips to Serena, who flipped her hair back, took a chip out of the bag, and crunched it in her mouth. Their eyes met. The coolness melted, and they declared a silent truce between them.

"Did you get any more background on Helen Danning?" Serena asked.

Maggie told them about the empty blog page she had discovered for "The Lady in Me." Stride pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper from his jacket pocket.

"Here's what Guppo found," he said. "She's thirty-six years old, born in Florida, moved to Minnesota when she was ten. She went to the U but dropped out in the early 1990s after two years, never graduated. She's worked clerical jobs ever since. She doesn't have a sheet, and there's no record of anyone by her name filing criminal charges. She drives a blue Toyota Corolla, license NKU-167. I did a statewide ATL on it."

"Parents?"

"They retired in Arizona. I haven't been able to reach them. She's got a sister, too, but she's somewhere in Southeast Asia teaching English."

"Is there anything at all that connects her to what's going on?" Serena asked.

Stride shook his head. "Not that I can find."

"I asked Guppo to do me a favor and see if he could track down any cached pages from her blog," Maggie said. "Maybe he'll come up with something that will tell us why Eric was interested in her."

"Let's back up," Stride told them. "Let's go back to the beginning on this. The first incident in the chain, at least as far as we know right now, is Tanjy being raped, right? That was in early November, based on what she told us. I talked to a couple women who were alpha girls before that date. Nothing happened to them."

"I was assaulted about three weeks after Tanjy," Maggie said. "Eric and I argued about reporting it throughout the first two weeks in December. He kept pushing me, I kept saying no."

"Did you talk about what happened to Tanjy?" Serena asked.

"Yeah, Eric thought I should talk to her. I didn't want to do it. Later, Eric must have decided to talk to Tanjy himself. I checked his cell phone records, and he called her for the first time on a Saturday in mid-December. There were several more calls over the next few weeks."

"So we're speculating that Eric somehow found a connection that led him to the rapist," Stride said.

Maggie nodded. "We know that Eric asked Tony about the pathology of a rapist. He told Tony he was going to see someone the night he was killed. He talked to Tanjy two days earlier, and she wound up dead, too. He talked to Helen Danning over the weekend, and after Eric got killed, she left town."

"I don't understand how Helen Danning fits into the puzzle," Stride said. "But we do know there's a predator stalking women in the city, and this guy has latched on to the sex club. There's a new alpha girl, Kathy Lassiter, who's at risk starting tomorrow. If we can catch the rapist and connect the dots, then maybe we can connect him to the two murders, too."

"Except Tanjy wasn't in the sex club," Maggie pointed out.

"Yes, but Mitchell Brandt was in the club, and he was Tanjy's ex-boyfriend. Eric would have known that."

"Mitch?" Maggie asked, surprised.

"You know him?"

"Yeah, a little."

Maggie didn't tell Stride that she remembered him from the sex club. Most of the men in the club were paunchy and short, and she figured that they popped Viagra before the party to get themselves ready. Mitch was different. She remembered a gleam in his eyes and a tiny smile and strong hands and a sensation as smooth as butter. She had the uncomfortable feeling that Stride was reading her mind.

"I'm not saying Mitch is involved," Stride said, "but he connects Tanjy to the sex club."

"Is there anything in his background?" Serena asked.

"Nothing of interest. I called the SEC to see whether there were any complaints about him from clients. They were less than helpful."

"So what's our next step?" Maggie asked.

"We watch the club," Stride said. "Sonia offered to cancel the party tomorrow, but I think that's the last thing we want. This is our chance to flush this guy. We keep the alpha girl under surveillance after the party and hope he moves fast."

"Assuming this woman is willing to be used as bait," Serena said.

"I'll talk to her."

"What about Abel?" Maggie asked. "We can't mount a surveillance operation under the radar screen. He's got to be in the loop."

Stride nodded. "Yeah, it's time to see if we can get Abel on our side."

"There's something else," Serena said. "Don't you think we need someone inside the club?"

There was silence in the room.

"Are you serious?" Stride asked.

"I am. We need to see how people react to the alpha girl. If Mitchell Brandt is the guy, I want to see how he behaves."

Stride shook his head. "I can't send a cop inside something like that."

"It can't be me," Maggie said. "Not with what's going on."

"Okay then," Serena said. "I'll do it."

"No way," Stride said.

"Come on, Jonny. I won't be in the room itself. You said there was a one-way mirror on one of the walls."

Maggie frowned. "That's true."

"I still don't like it," Stride said.

"I'll be alone behind the wall. There's no risk."

"No risk? We don't know who this guy is or how he knows about the club. He could be anywhere."

"Yes, but we have an advantage," Serena said. "This guy doesn't know we're on to him. For once, we're a step ahead."

This guy doesn't know we're on to him.

Less than a mile away, he sat in the frosty solitude of the van. Listening.

Fog made the windows opaque. The shroud of darkness and the woods at the end of the Point made the van largely invisible. The wind gusted off the lake, and every few seconds, the vehicle shuddered on its tires, and the steel walls rattled. It reminded him of sitting in the rear of the patrol car while the hurricane roared closer. Back when he was a prisoner.

As he listened to them plan their stakeout around the club, he grinned at the thought of the trap they were laying. Tomorrow night, all the demons he had been hoarding would finally fly out. Tomorrow night, Serena would be the one walking into a trap.

34

Stride sat in silence in his City Hall office early the next morning. The lights in the rest of the Detective Bureau were dark as he caught up on paperwork and drank coffee. When he heard a cough, he looked up to see Abel Teitscher in his doorway. The older detective wore a brown suit with his hands jammed in his pockets and dusty black shoes. His leathery face looked like an old map of the West, tracking rivers and roads.

"Your message said you wanted to see me," he said.

"I did. Have a seat, Abel."

Teitscher closed the door and sat down in the chair in front of Stride's desk. His long legs jutted out like a stork's. "You've been pissing in my pool."

Stride didn't bother to argue. "Yeah, you could say that."

"I'm not covering for you, Lieutenant. If you lose your job over this, don't blame me."

"I won't."

Teitscher's face burned. "You cut corners and no one ever calls you on it. If I ignored a conflict of interest the way you have, I'd be out on my ass."

"Could be."

Teitscher leaned across the desk. "What really ticks me off is that you don't show me any respect."

"That's not what I'm about, Abel."

"No? You undercut me, you sabotage me, you put the whole goddamn investigation in jeopardy. Would you do that to anyone else in the Bureau?"

"Look, Abel, it's not you. It's the case. Do you want to listen to what I have to say, or do you want to cut me a new one?"

Teitscher shrugged. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his tie. "Go ahead."

"I know that the evidence against Maggie is strong. You've done a good job pulling it together, and no one is ever going to thank you for it. That's the way it goes. What I'm telling you, as a detective and a colleague, is that there's another plausible motive for Eric's murder that has nothing to do with Maggie." He saw Abel about to object, and he raised his hand to stop him. "I'm not telling you to believe it. I'm telling you to keep an open mind."

"You sound like a defense lawyer," Teitscher said.

"Just hear me out."

Teitscher waved his hand and let him continue. Stride told him the whole story, laying out everything he had found. He didn't hold anything back. Maggie's rape. The sex club and the alpha girls. Helen Danning. He took the facts and told him what he now suspected, that somehow the series of rapes in the city had led directly to the murders of Tanjy and Eric.

When he was done, he saw Abel struggling to reconcile the facts with what he had already found. "A sex club?" Abel asked.

"That's right."

"You actually confirmed this? You've got proof?"

"I have names, dates, release forms, everything. It's an A-list of Duluth high society."

Teitscher bared his yellowing incisors. "What's the old expression? The rich are different? Yeah, isn't that a joke. All that money, and this is the kind of sleaze they go in for."

"I feel the same way, but that doesn't really change anything," Stride said.

"So why are you telling me all this now? Why not wait until you crack the case and make me look like a fool?"

"I need your help."

Teitscher frowned. "It doesn't look that way to me."

"The next meeting of the sex club is tonight," Stride explained. "I want your help pulling together a surveillance team. We need to watch who comes and goes, and we need to keep a twenty-four-hour team on the new alpha girl, Kathy Lassiter. If we handle this right, she might just lead us to the rapist. I'm asking you to take charge of the surveillance operation personally."

"What are you going to do?"

"I have to talk to this Lassiter woman and convince her to let us risk her life to catch this guy."

Teitscher scratched his chin. "You haven't convinced me about Maggie yet."

"I understand."

"But I'd be a lousy cop to ignore this, and I'm a damn good cop whatever the hell you think."

"I know you are."

Teitscher stood up. "Okay, I'll get the wheels rolling on the surveillance."

"Thanks, Abel. I think we should keep the details about the sex club and the rapist between you and me for now."

"You going political on me?"

"No, I don't want to tip our hand. The more people who know about this, the easier it is to have a leak."

"All right, fair enough."

Stride watched Teitscher leave. He was glad to have a truce in the war between them and to have his own role in the investigation out in the open. That was the only thing he felt good about. Otherwise, he was filled with anxiety about what lay ahead, as if he were tangled in the sheet of his parachute as the ground streaked closer. He almost wished that Kathy Lassiter would pull the plug, which would cancel the party and thwart Serena's determination to go inside the walls. He was concerned for the safety of both of them.

He was surprised when his phone rang. It was still early. The caller ID was from a 312 area code. Chicago.

"Stride."

"You're an early riser, Lieutenant. I like that."

"Who is this?" Stride asked.

"My name is Philip Proutz. I'm with the Securities and Exchange Commission at our Midwest office in Chicago. I work on compliance investigations."

"I see." Stride was on guard, and Proutz sensed it.

"If you'd like to confirm who I am, you can look up our office number on the Web and call me back through the main switchboard."

"No offense, Mr. Proutz, but I think I will do that."

They were reconnected two minutes later.

"All right, what can I do for you, Mr. Proutz?" Stride asked.

"You contacted our office yesterday, Lieutenant, making inquiries about a broker in Duluth named Mitchell Brandt. I'd be interested in knowing the reason for your request."

"I'm not really in a position to discuss that right now," Stride told him.

"You do realize that if this is in conjunction with Mr. Brandt's securities activities, then the jurisdiction is federal. It's our baby."

Stride hesitated. "It has nothing to do with that."

"Ah." Proutz sounded surprised. "What about a company called Infloron Medical?"

"I've never heard of it. Now you're making me curious, Mr. Proutz."

"I understand. I thought we could save each other time, you see, if we were working the same case from different ends. Infloron Medical is a public company in the Twin Cities that produces a drug called Zerax that promotes tissue regeneration in burn victims. The drug was recently approved by the FDA."

"You lost me," Stride said.

"Infloron's stock more than doubled after FDA approval of Zerax last summer. We're looking into some large stock purchases shortly before the FDA ruling was announced. We think Mitchell Brandt may have made substantial trades based on insider information."

35

Serena stood at the windows looking out from Tony's office to the birch forest behind his house. She saw more dotted lines of deer tracks in the snow. They were everywhere, leaving trails for her to follow.

"This is a beautiful spot, Tony," she murmured without looking behind her.

Tony was in his leather chair by the sofa, sipping coffee and waiting as she paced. He didn't push her to talk. He was wearing a brown suit, shined brown shoes, and a brown tie.

"I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice," she added.

"You said it was important."

Serena nodded. She figured if she actually waited here long enough, she would see the deer picking their way through the trees. It had happened before. She had seen deer, possum, rabbits, and even a fox once. The rust-colored animal with its bushy tail was much smaller than she expected.

She turned and went back to the sofa and sat down. She played with her hair. Tony was silent.

"What would happen if you wore something other than brown?" Serena asked.

"My head would explode."

Serena laughed. "Maggie jokes about it, you know."

"She's kidded me about it for ten years."

"Is it supposed to soothe your patients?"

"My patients?" Tony said. "No, it's supposed to soothe me. Brown is my armor. That's a trade secret, by the way, so don't tell anyone."

"Not even Maggie?"

"Especially not Maggie."

Serena drummed her fingers on the arm of the sofa.

"I have to do something tonight that I'm not comfortable with," she said finally.

"Okay."

"I could use some advice on how to handle it."

"Okay."

He never led her. Sometimes it infuriated her, because she wanted him to give her a direction and not feel like the burden to say where they were going was always on her shoulders. That was stupid, of course. It was her therapy session.

"Let's talk about something else first," she said. "It's about Eric."

Tony waited. When he drank coffee, the black mug covered the lower half of his face, and all she saw were his hound dog eyes.

"Did he mention seeing a woman named Helen Danning?"

"No."

"Have you ever treated a woman named Helen Danning?"

"No."

"Well, that was easy," she said. "I'm stalling, have you noticed?"

Tony didn't reply.

"Aren't you supposed to pull this stuff out of me?" she asked him.

"With what? Truth serum?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Serena sighed. "Okay, I'm going to tell you about something that you may or may not already know about from other patients. I realize you wouldn't admit it even if you did. There's a sex club in town. A place where singles and couples go to have sex with each other and with women who act as 'volunteers.' "

"Okay."

"I have to watch the club tonight because of an investigation. I'm not a participant, just an observer."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Nervous," Serena admitted. "Much more so than I've told anyone. I'm afraid I could lose it. If I see a man climbing on top of a stranger, I'm afraid I'm going to have flashbacks of Blue Dog on top of me."

"Are you having them now?" he asked.

"Sometimes."

"Have you lost it yet?"

"No. I'm dealing with it."

"Then why do you think you're going to lose it tonight?"

"This is so much more explicit. It's not like a mental image I can push away. These people are going to be right in front of me."

"That makes sense," Tony said. "You're a fifteen-year-old girl. You don't have any power or choice in what's going to happen to you. You're totally helpless. Right?"

Serena rolled her eyes. "No."

"You're not fifteen? You actually have some control over your life?"

"You're a real shit, Tony."

"I gather people go to this club because they consider it an erotic outlet. Do you consider it erotic?"

"Not particularly, but I'm curious."

"So?"

"So I feel a little guilty about that."

"What makes you more uncomfortable? Your nervousness or your guilt?"

"I don't know. It's about the same."

Tony nodded. "I'm going to give you a pill that will completely remove all of your feelings and emotions about this."

She looked at him. "What kind of pill?"

"It doesn't really matter. What kind would you like? An aspirin? A chewable vitamin?"

"Funny."

Tony shrugged. "From what you've described, you're feeling exactly what I would expect you to feel about something like this. I can't help you not to feel anything. The only issue is how you deal with those feelings and whether you control them, or they control you. I realize that when you were fifteen you weren't in a position to control them. Fortunately-"

"I'm not fifteen anymore," she concluded.

Tony spread his hands.

"I know what you're saying," Serena said. "It's just not easy."

"I didn't say it was."

"Back in the bad days, I used to escape. There was a place in my head I called the nothingness room. I'd go there and not feel a thing. That was how I dealt with it."

"But?"

"But after a while, I couldn't get out. I was stuck there. I felt like I was spending my whole life in that empty room. It wasn't until I met Jonny that I was able to climb out, and now what scares me more than anything is the idea of going back there."

Tony leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. "You can run from who you are, Serena, but sooner or later, you're going to come face-to-face with the past again. That's when you'll be able to decide if it's really behind you."

Stride drove along the North Shore highway that hugged the lake between Duluth and Two Harbors. It was a gorgeous day, with a blue sky arching overhead like a cathedral dome. He'd forgotten what the sun looked like and couldn't remember when he last had to put on his sunglasses as he drove. The light cast a wide, sparkling swath over the water. It was quiet, with little traffic on the road. Except for the freezing temperature, it looked like summer outside, but at this time of year, it got even colder when the sun came out.

He found Kathy Lassiter's home about ten miles north of the city. It was several decades old, but large and solidly built, with windows on both levels looking out on the lake. The home was neatly painted in a dusty blue that shimmered in the sunlight. She had a multiacre lot, thick with trees except for a large square of white snow surrounding the house. He parked in the dirt driveway behind her Audi. Before he could go to the front door, he saw it open and a woman came outside, dressed in a maroon-and-silver fleece tracksuit with her brown hair tied in a ponytail. She wore fluorescent running shoes.

"Ms. Lassiter?" he called.

She jogged down the driveway to meet him. "Can I help you?"

Stride introduced himself, and she gave him a look of mild surprise and asked to see his identification. As she studied his shield, she asked, "What's this about? A legal matter?"

He remembered that Lassiter was a partner in a Minneapolis law firm. "No, but it is urgent. Could we go inside?"

She shook her head. "It's time for my run. I have to stretch first though. How about we go across the street and you say what you want to say?"

They crossed the highway to a small park overlooking the lake. There was a picnic bench half-buried in snow and a stone beach below them where the azure water lapped at the shore. Their feet crunched in snow. The branches of the tall evergreens around them were motionless in the still air.

Lassiter swung her left leg nimbly to the top of the bench and bent her body until her face was almost level with her foot. She gripped her muscled calf and turned her face sideways to look at him with sharp, intelligent brown eyes. She was in her forties and wasn't wearing makeup. Her cheeks were flushed red, and she had a flared nose.

"So what's up, Lieutenant?" She had a lawyer's voice, clipped and impatient.

He didn't waste time. "I know about the sex club tonight."

She kept stretching and shrugged her limber shoulders. "Yeah, so?"

"Am I correct that you're going to be what they call an 'alpha girl'?"

"That's none of your business, is it?" She put her leg down and twisted her torso to her left. "I'm not breaking any laws. When did you become the morality police?"

"I'm not, but two alpha girls have been assaulted following their-performance-at this sex club."

Lassiter stopped and folded her arms. Her breathing was even. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She started stretching again, but her eyes were thoughtful. "Are you suggesting that I back out?"

"I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"But you have something else in mind," she concluded.

"Yes, I do. If we cancel the party, we tip our hand to whoever is doing this. He may find other targets."

"In other words, you're hoping he'll come after me."

"We'll protect you. We'll keep you under twenty-four-hour surveillance."

"That won't be easy. I go back and forth between Duluth and the Cities twice a week. My main office is in Minneapolis."

"You're a corporate lawyer, right?" Stride asked.

"Yes, I specialize in governance issues for emerging companies."

"Long hours, but good pay."

"The pay's all right, but if you want to get really rich, don't do it by the hour," she told him.

Stride glanced across the street at her lavish home. "Four hundred thousand a year doesn't go as far as it used to?" he asked.

"Since you asked, no, it doesn't. You should see what top management of a start-up can walk away with from an IPO. But I know a lawyer isn't likely to get much sympathy from a cop on a pension."

"Don't worry, I wouldn't trade jobs with you. Anyway, the commute to the Cities isn't a problem. We'll work with the police down there, and we'll have the highway patrol with you-unmarked-every mile of the way."

"Has this guy killed anyone?" Lassiter asked.

Stride frowned. "We think he may be involved in two murders to protect his identity. He hasn't killed any of the alpha girls so far, but I won't kid you, this is risky and dangerous. I understand entirely if you want nothing to do with it."

"Do you think I'm safe if I forget about the party?"

"I don't know. We're not sure who this man is, or where he gets his information. He may already know who you are."

"So I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't."

"I'm sorry."

Lassiter stepped up and sat on top of the bench. "I'm disappointed, Lieutenant. I was looking forward to this evening. The club has always been a harmless bit of sin for me. When you spend most of your life filing 10-Ks and worrying about Sarbanes-Oxley, you don't have time for a social life, let alone a sexual life. I'm divorced. My son is in college. There aren't many outlets for a horny corporate lawyer in her forties."

"Does that mean you're going to back out?"

She shook her head. "No, I'll do it. It just won't be what I was hoping for. Please tell me you won't have video or wiretaps or anything like that inside. I won't have to worry about showing up on the Internet because some cop sells my porn debut on the side, right?"

"No."

"Good. I also want to go over details of the surveillance. Everything has to meet with my approval. Agreed?"

"Of course. I'll send over a detective named Abel Teitscher to talk with you. Please keep this all confidential, too."

Lassiter hesitated.

"Is that a problem?" Stride asked.

"Not at all. It's just that I know the people inside the club. They're harmless."

"The man behind this may not be a part of the club at all," Stride said. "But we don't know who's talking to whom. Secrets have a way of getting out."

"Yes, they do," Lassiter said.

She climbed off the bench, headed to the shoulder of the highway, and began jogging north.

36

Stride studied the nighttime street from inside the smoked windows of a Cadillac, borrowed from a lawyer who lived a few houses down on the Point. He used it sometimes when he wanted an upscale car that blended into the neighborhood during a stakeout. Teitscher sat ramrod straight in the seat next to him, and his buzzed gray hair tickled the roof of the car. He didn't blink. Every few minutes, he used his index finger like a comb and smoothed his mustache. That was the only sign that he was nervous.

Stride was nervous, too. It was one thing to plan surveillance on a map, with pushpins to flag the cars and colored markers inking the escape routes. It was another to be here, surrounded by shadows where someone could hide. You could throw a cordon around any piece of land, and someone could always sneak through. On the ground, you couldn't see everything and be everywhere.

An hour to go.

A cop would stay inside Kathy Lassiter's house while she was at the party, and another car would keep her in constant sight on the way to and from the club. For the next several days, an unmarked car with two detectives would be within fifty yards of Lassiter's house at all times. They had installed a downstairs alarm system that would send an intruder alert both to the station and directly to the surveillance car. If someone tried to break in, they could be inside her house in less than thirty seconds.

Here at the club, they had half a dozen cars on the surrounding streets and several detectives who would patrol the streets at intervals. If the rapist was an outsider, there was a chance he would be here, where he could keep an eye on his next alpha girl coming and going.

They were parked half a block from Sonia Bezac's house. Several homes still had their Christmas lights turned on, and multicolored strings twinkled in the trees and along the roof lines. Lumpy snowmen dotted the front yards. Looks were deceiving. There was nothing picture-postcard about this place, not with a dozen men and women about to have sex with a stranger, not with a rapist haunting the neighborhood. It made him think of driving on a lonely rural road at night and seeing lights inside a peaceful farmhouse, and envying the lives the people there must have. It was just an illusion. Whoever lived inside those places was no different than anyone else, with husbands who drank, and old people who died slow deaths, and kids who killed themselves over a broken love affair. The only romance about it was in his head.

He wanted a smoke, but he couldn't have one. His fingers twitched. He couldn't escape the feeling of dread. The feeling that they had all missed something.

"What else did the SEC tell you about this insider trading scheme?" Teitscher asked.

"They got an anonymous tip, but they haven't found a connection yet between Mitchell Brandt and anyone at Infloron Medical or the FDA. They don't know yet how he got advance word of the FDA approval."

"It's a long way from insider trading to rape."

Stride nodded.

His cell phone rang. I'm in a hurry and don't know why. He was in a hurry tonight, feeling as if he were running in place. He wanted to skip to the end.

It was Serena.

"I'm pulling up around the corner," she said.

"You can still back out," Stride told her.

"You need me inside, Jonny."

"I know."

"Maybe I'll sign up to be the next alpha girl."

"Sonia would like that. Be careful, okay?"

"I will."

She hung up. A minute later, he saw her in his rearview mirror as she turned the corner. Serena passed the Cadillac on the sidewalk but didn't look toward the smoked windows. She wore black jeans and heels and a sleeveless down vest. Her hands were in her vest pockets. She looked casual and unconcerned, but he knew her eyes were tracking the windows and the dark spaces between the houses.

She walked up to the doorway of the Bezac house and waited on the porch, surveying the neighborhood. The door opened, and light spilled out. He saw Sonia.

Serena disappeared inside.

Sonia greeted Serena with an uneasy smile. She let her inside and looked out into the night before closing the door behind them. The house was elegant, and the lights were dimmed. Sonia wore a Chinese silk gown tied at her slim waist. It was pink with flowers. Her feet were in heels. The two women were both tall, almost the same height.

"I don't like spies," Sonia told her.

"No one will know."

"I don't believe anyone in my club is a rapist."

"Tell that to Maggie and Katrina," Serena snapped. "Count yourself lucky that it wasn't you."

Sonia flushed. "I'll take you downstairs."

She led Serena through the upscale kitchen to a back stairway that led down to a laundry and storage room. The floor was cold cement. A musty smell came off the walls. Sonia unlocked a narrow door that looked like a gateway to a utility closet, but instead Serena found herself slipping inside a small but elegant bedroom. The wallpaper was gold with a burgundy pattern of interlaced squares. A queen-sized bed was decorated with shams and a ruffled fringe, as if it had been plucked from a showroom. There was a dressing table and mirror, a bureau, and a walk-in closet.

One wall of the bedroom was glass. It looked out on a large, plush open space, lit by candles. The temple.

Serena found her eyes drawn to the shadowy room. She felt exposed. "They can't see through the mirror, right? They won't know I'm here?"

"No, most members don't know about this space. It's kind of a VIP room."

"Is the other room wired for sound?"

Sonia nodded. "You'll hear everything."

Serena could see herself in the glass. "I hate this," she murmured.

"Give it a chance. You might be surprised."

"Not likely."

"You're a very attractive spy," Sonia said. "Jonathan has good taste."

Serena didn't reply.

"Did he tell you about him and me?"

"Yes, he did."

Serena tried to imagine Jonny as a teenager, drunk in a car with this woman thirty years ago. She herself would have been a child then, during the good days in Phoenix, before her mother became a slave to cocaine and her father walked out. Before Blue Dog.

"He's very intense," Sonia said.

"That's why he's good at what he does."

"I'm disbanding the club, you know. This will be our last party."

"Oh?"

"It's too risky now."

Serena knew she was talking about the risk to herself and Delmar and their reputations, not the risk to the alpha girls. The risk of being exposed.

"Do the members know?"

"No, I didn't think you'd want me to tell them."

"I don't."

Sonia eyed her figure. "It's a shame you won't be at the party. You could still join us on the other side."

"No thanks."

"Suit yourself. No one will know what you're doing in here. If it turns you on, there are vibrators in the bureau."

"This doesn't turn me on, Sonia."

"No? It's different when you put on the mask. It changes everything."

Sonia opened a dresser drawer and emerged with a gold mask, feminine and catlike. She slipped the band around her head and slid it down so that the elastic fell under her curly hair and nestled behind her ears. She reached around with both hands to adjust the mask gently.

Serena saw them both in the mirror, red hair next to black hair. Behind the mask, Sonia had become a stranger. Someone entirely different.

Sonia slid a warm arm around her waist, and Serena wondered if the other woman was about to kiss her. "Want to have a go with me?" Sonia asked.

"Pass."

"No one will ever know. I won't tell Jonathan if you don't."

"I'm not interested, Sonia."

"No? Women make the best lovers. I'll bet you know that."

Serena leaned into her ear and whispered with a smile, "Get the hell away from me."

Sonia's face darkened. She put on a false smile, too, as if she had brushed it on like makeup, but her eyes glinted through the mask with rage. She marched away and left Serena alone in the hideaway.

37

Maggie wanted to drive the memories of the club out of her brain, but it wasn't working. Not tonight. When she looked at her watch, she knew the party was going on. Serena was inside the secret room, and Kathy Lassiter was on the bed, as Maggie had been that night in November. She remembered exactly what it was like. The temple was open and dark, and the half-windows in the walls were blacked out with electrical tape and shrouded by curtains. She remembered thick carpet under her bare feet and hot air pouring out of the vents. The room was lit by a dozen candles flickering in glass bowls. Their aromas left an odd mix of fragrances in the air, and she caught traces of ginger and green tea, sage, lilac blossoms, and juicy orange. Soundscapes played softly from hidden speakers. She heard ocean surf, harps, and birdsong. There were wooden chairs, cocktail tables with open bottles of shiraz, and crystal glasses that reflected the numerous lights of the candles. Lush bearskin rugs. Sex toys. Condoms heaped in a bowl like candy. Subtle, shadowy erotic photographs of nudes on the walls.

The circular bed in the center of the room was draped to the floor in red silk, which was cool and slippery on her nude skin. She spent ten minutes alone before the others joined her. The alpha girl was always first, Sonia said. Do what you want. Drink wine. Listen to the music. Sleep. Touch yourself. Maggie simply squirmed on the silk and thought about running far, far away.

She had allowed Eric to pull her into this world because he said he wanted it so badly. Do this for me, let me see you like that. With other people. It was his ultimate fantasy. Looking back, she couldn't believe she had done it. Her face grew hot with humiliation.

They were so pathetic as they filed in and shed their robes. It was like going to the beach and realizing that, underneath everyone's clothes, naked flesh was the great equalizer. Models made their money because they were so rare. The sex club was a parade of paunchy rolls, cellulite, drooping breasts, and double chins. There were beautiful bodies among them, but en masse, the impression of so much skin was nauseating and ugly. She wondered again what she was doing there and why she had ever thought this was a way to be close to Eric. Or why she thought it mattered.

Most of the time, she kept her eyes closed. She had recollections of soft lips and sweet breath from one woman, garlic and cold hands from a man, panting and sweat, sounds of moaning, none of it hers. When she opened her eyes once, she saw Eric, standing in the shadows, rapt, with his hand around his stiff member. Then she closed her eyes again and felt time drag out through more sensations of rough fingers, tongues leaving wet trails like snails on her skin, and men who came and went quickly.

She wanted to pretend that she had simply climbed aboard the roller coaster and hung on for dear life, but that was a lie. Some of the dips and valleys excited her. Sonia was surprisingly talented. So was Mitchell Brandt. For a few moments in the midst of a closed-eyed nightmare, she found herself not caring what was going on around her, because she was into what was being done to her. Enough to climb the heights and come back down. She felt guilty, but she couldn't take it back. On some level, she had enjoyed it.

That was one of the reasons she didn't report the rape when it happened a few weeks later. She knew what Serena had told her about the questions she got from men who didn't know any better. Did you enjoy what Blue Dog did to you? If she went public, the sex club would be exposed, and people would talk about what she did that night, and somewhere along the line someone would wonder. Did she enjoy it? Was she asking to be raped?

"Fuck you, Eric," she said aloud.

She was angry that he had left these memories in her brain. She couldn't separate the sex club and the rape in her mind, and she blamed Eric for both. For an instant, she was glad that he was dead, and she wished she had been the one to pull the trigger that night.

Maggie wanted to be out on the street, not alone here at home, dwelling on her mistakes. She should have been in the car with Stride, not Abel Teitscher. She wanted to be there to track this bastard and catch him and see what his face really looked like. She wanted to know what Eric had found and how he had found it.

And who Helen Danning was.

She thought about Helen Danning and looked over to see her Black-Berry on the coffee table, its red light flashing. She had e-mail.

No one had sent her e-mail lately. Since the cloud of the murder began hanging over her head, she was a nonperson.

With a shiver, Maggie unwound her body from the couch, slid the PDA out of its case, and clicked over to her in-box. She had one unread message, and the return address was "The Lady in Me."

Maggie opened the message and saw a single sentence:

Stop trying to find me. HD.

38

Serena watched Mitchell Brandt and knew something was very wrong. His muscles rippled with tension on his chest and down his legs. He clenched and unclenched his fists. His mask made it hard for her to see his eyes, but she could see that his head never swiveled away from Kathy Lassiter to stare at the other naked women in the room, even as some of those women caressed themselves, used vibrators, or had sex with their partners on the soft rugs spread around the floor. Brandt focused on Lassiter as if it were him and her alone in the temple.

She felt a bad vibe emanating from the way he held himself. He looked like a racehorse, snorting and pawing at the ground, anxious to break free from the gate. Lassiter already had her limbs entwined with another man, but she stared back at Brandt, no more than six feet away, and something electric and scary passed between them.

The nudity in front of her had long ago lost its novelty. She was self-conscious at first, even hidden behind the mirror, but after a while, she became numb to it. Her unease became boredom. There was so much sex that none of it was enticing, as if she had wandered onto the set of a low-budget porn flick.

A naked man approached the mirror and stood directly in front of the glass, distracting her. She took a step backward involuntarily and held her breath. He was in his mid-forties, tall and bony, with a matte of graying hair on his chest. He sucked in his stomach and touched himself. Serena wanted to close her eyes.

Sonia came up next to the man. Her pale skin glowed with sweat. She had been the first to have sex with Kathy Lassiter, and since then, Serena had seen Sonia take turns with two other men in the room and a husband-and-wife duo at the same time. Sonia looked breathless and exhilarated. She was drinking a lot, too. So were most of the others.

"Just imagine if someone were on the other side of the mirror, watching us," Sonia told the man.

Serena watched a smile glint on the corner of Sonia's lips.

"Hell, yes," he said.

"Let's put on a show," Sonia told him.

Sonia pushed on the man's shoulders, and he didn't need further encouragement to lie on his back on the thick carpet. Sonia straddled him in front of the mirror and leered directly at Serena as she lowered herself onto his body. She moaned loudly for effect and leaned forward so that her contorted face was nearly glazing the surface of the glass.

Serena shook her head. "What a bitch," she whispered.

She wanted to pound the wall and let them all know she was there.

She tore her eyes away from the frenzied coupling in front of her. Behind Sonia, another drama was playing out, and Serena didn't like it.

Kathy Lassiter was alone on the bed now, propped up on her elbows. Mitchell Brandt, naked and solidly built, approached and stood over her, but he made no move to climb on the bed. Lassiter turned over onto all fours, crawled across the rumpled sheets, and began performing oral sex on him. Brandt didn't react at all. His passiveness made Lassiter work harder, but she may as well have been giving her attention to a stone. He looked down at the top of her head, and the deadness in his lower face made Serena's insides lurch with unease.

What the hell was he doing?

Brandt took hold of her shoulders and separated himself from her. With both hands, he shoved Lassiter so hard that she flew upward and backward, landing on the far side of the bed with her hair mussed and her legs splayed. Her mask came askew, and Serena saw her eyes now, which were confused and afraid. Brandt climbed onto the bed and moved toward her on his knees. Lassiter scrambled away from him.

Serena took two steps toward the door, trying to decide if this was a game.

Inches away, Sonia was still having sex by the mirror. The others watched her. No one noticed Brandt and Lassiter.

Brandt leaped forward like a cat and locked Lassiter's wrists in his hands. He yanked her up, her hair twirling. He took the mask, ripped it off her face, and threw it on the floor. In a single motion, he moved his hands to her hips, lifted her bodily off the bed, and crushed her against his chest. His lips moved as he whispered in her ear. Lassiter shook her head violently and struggled to get away, but Brandt held on, trapping her arms so she couldn't wrestle free. When she tried to speak, he choked her mouth with a brutal kiss.

Serena hesitated. When she saw Lassiter wriggling in Brandt's grasp, she was convinced that this was not playacting or fantasy. She couldn't let this go on.

"Stop!" Serena shouted.

The people in the room heard the muffled voice and looked up, confused and aghast. Brandt made no move to stop.

Serena bolted out of the hideaway and took the stairs two at a time. She thundered through the house and found the main stairway leading to the basement and the oak door that led to the temple. Her shoulder collided with the door, and it flew around on its hinges. She ran into the fragrant room.

A dozen naked people screamed and covered themselves with their hands. They dove to the floor. Sonia's face was screwed up with rage.

Serena focused on Brandt, who shoved Lassiter down onto her back and threw his full weight on top of her. Breath expelled from her chest like air from a popped balloon. He kept whispering, and her eyes turned moon-white. She tried to speak again, but her pleas were smothered.

"Get off her now!" Serena screamed, running to the bed.

She clawed at Brandt's shoulder, but he was deadweight. Serena delivered a backhand fist to the side of Brandt's head, her knuckles cracking sharply on his temple. Brandt reared back in pain and toppled away from Lassiter, who squirmed from under him. He cleared his head and clutched for her again, but Serena used the palm of her hand to jab directly into his forehead. His head snapped; he groaned and fell back, sliding off the slippery silk onto the floor.

Lassiter scrambled off the bed. Brandt staggered to his feet and took a few unsteady steps. The other members of the club were paralyzed, hiding by the walls and on the floor. Serena eyed Brandt and angled her body so that Lassiter was behind her. He stared at both of them, his face screwed up with rage, and then shifted his attention to the others as if he was noticing them for the first time.

"Fuck all of you," he hissed.

Brandt ran from the room. One of the men grabbed for him, but Brandt shoved him hard, and he fell back, collapsing into one of the tables and spilling wine bottles onto the floor. Shiraz flowed like blood, and sharp triangles of glass scattered on the carpet. Brandt wrenched open the temple door and slammed it behind him. His footsteps pounded upstairs.

"Are you okay?" Serena asked Lassiter.

"I'm fine," Lassiter said, her face dark. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm a friend of Lieutenant Stride."

"Well, you shouldn't have interfered."

Serena backed up. "What?"

"You should have stayed out of it," Lassiter repeated.

"He was assaulting you," Serena protested. "He could have killed you."

"You don't know anything."

Sonia joined them. Her pale skin was white, and her eyes were wild and on fire. "How dare you," Sonia hissed. "Get the hell out of here."

Serena ignored her. "What did he say to you?" she asked Lassiter.

"He didn't say anything."

"I saw him whispering to you."

"He didn't say anything," Lassiter insisted.

Serena put her lips close to Lassiter's ear. "I can get the police in from outside."

"No." Lassiter shook her head. "I need to get out of here. Right now."

"Let me help you," Serena said.

"I don't need any help."

"Are you sure you don't need a doctor?" Serena asked.

"I just need to get away from here."

Serena called after her as Lassiter broke from the others and made her way to the door that led out of the temple. "Wait, he could still be in the house."

"No, he's gone," Lassiter replied. "He's not coming back."

39

That's Mitchell Brandt," Stride said. He put his coffee cup on the dashboard of the Cadillac and leaned forward to watch.

"He's in a hurry," Teitscher said.

Brandt slammed the front door of Sonia Bezac's house and ran down the sidewalk toward the street. His open coat billowed behind him. He wore black jeans and an untucked, unbuttoned dress shirt. The shirt fell open, and they saw his bare chest. He took off across the street, dodging through the headlights of a car that blared its horn at him. He climbed into a dark Porsche.

"I don't like this," Stride said.

"Should we pick him up?"

"No, let's see where he goes."

Teitscher radioed Guppo in a tan Caprice around the corner. "Brandt is on his way. He's hauling ass. Stay on his tail, but don't make it obvious."

The Porsche shot off down the residential street and vanished, heading into the steep curves leading toward the lake. The Caprice accelerated onto the same street moments later.

"Do you want to go in?" Teitscher asked.

"Not yet."

They waited fifteen minutes. The other members of the club streamed out of the house in pockets of ones and twos, hiding their sullen faces from each other as they left. They formed a procession out of the neighborhood, and soon headlights swung past them one after another, driving fast.

Serena was among the last to leave. She took quick, tight steps from the house. Her down vest was unzipped, and her face was tense with worry. She eyed the people around her and then bent down and scrambled inside the backseat of the Cadillac. She fell back against the leather seat and whistled long and loud.

"What the hell happened in there?" Stride asked.

Serena put her elbows on the front seat between them. "Brandt freaked."

"What?"

"He attacked Kathy Lassiter right in front of everyone."

"Did someone stop him?"

Serena nodded. "I did. Lassiter says she's okay, but Brandt was out of his skull. When I broke it up, he bolted."

"We saw him. Guppo's on his tail."

Teitscher was still watching Sonia's front door. "What set Brandt off?"

"I don't know. He was on edge all night. He never took his eyes off Lassiter."

"What about you?" Stride asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, but you know what they say to do when you're nervous? Just imagine everyone naked and you'll relax? It doesn't work when they're really naked."

Stride couldn't help but laugh.

"Perverts," Teitscher snapped.

"Do you think Brandt is our man?" Stride asked. "Could he have attacked the other women?"

"I don't know. This wasn't random. It was more like he had a grudge against Lassiter."

"Did something happen between them?"

Serena shook her head. "No, that's it, nothing happened. He came into the room with a hard-on for her, if you know what I mean. It was personal."

"Personal? Like they knew each other?"

"I think so, yeah."

Teitscher glanced at Stride. "What do we know about Lassiter?"

"Not enough," Stride said. He was angry with himself.

"She's a lawyer, right?" Serena asked. "See if her law firm has a bio on their Web site."

Stride grabbed his laptop and ran a search that led him to the law firm's home page. He drilled down to the lawyer biographies and pulled up a page for Lassiter that included a photo and a summary of her practice areas and experience. He read through the narrative and then swore and slammed the cover down.

"Kathy Lassiter is outside counsel for Infloron Medical."

"You think she fed advance info on the FDA approval to Brandt?" Serena asked. "And he used it to do inside trades?"

"Either that, or she's the one who fingered him to the SEC. Proutz in Chicago said they got an anonymous tip."

Teitscher was frowning. "What do you want to do?"

"Pick him up," Stride said. "He assaulted her. We can use that to hold him."

"We need to make sure the net around Lassiter is secure," Serena added. "Brandt may go after her again, and if he's not our guy, then she's got two people who may be gunning for her."

Teitscher stared at Sonia's front door. "We have a problem."

"What is it?" Stride asked.

"Lassiter never came out."

Serena leaned forward into the front seat. "What are you talking about? She should have been one of the first ones out the door."

"I've been watching everyone," Teitscher said, shaking his head. "Lassiter never left."

40

Sonia threw open the door. Her red hair was a mass of limp curls, like sleeping snakes. She wore a robe loosely tied at her waist, and her body smelled of sex. "What are you people doing here? Haven't you done enough?"

"Where's Kathy Lassiter?" Stride demanded.

Sonia shrugged. "You should know that. You're the spies."

"She's still inside," Teitscher insisted. The furrows in his forehead stretched taut, and his eyes registered disapproval, flicking over the deep V of open skin between the folds of her robe. Sonia read his expression.

"You think I have her tied to a bed somewhere? Sorry, Detective. She left."

"Can we look in the house?" Serena asked.

Sonia curled her lip and shook her head at them. "You can stand out here and freeze for all I care."

"Sonia," Stride chided her.

"Oh, fuck it, all right." She held the door wider, and they poured in. Along with musk and perfume, Stride smelled alcohol on Sonia's breath. She swayed on her feet. Her nipples protruded in two bumps through the silk robe.

"I'll check upstairs," Serena said.

Teitscher stood uncomfortably in the foyer, as if he were dipping new shoes in mud. His cell phone rang, and Stride watched his face blacken as he listened to the call. He snapped his phone shut and clenched it in his fist. "That was Guppo," he told Stride. "Brandt jumped a red light downtown, and Guppo got stuck in traffic. He lost him."

"Shit," Stride swore. Things were getting out of control. Teitscher crooked a thumb at the front door, and Stride nodded. "Go, go. Get an ATL out in Duluth and Superior. Use the highway police, too, in case he's headed south on the interstate."

Teitscher left.

Stride checked the living room. The lights were low, and the room was empty.

Sonia trailed behind him. "I told you, she's not here."

"She didn't fly away," Stride snapped.

He pushed past her and headed for the opposite side of the house, but found no sign of Lassiter in any of the downstairs rooms.

"Where's Delmar?" he asked.

"Sleeping," Sonia replied.

"Alone?"

Sonia snickered. "Unless Serena wants to give him a go. He might not even need Viagra with her."

Stride felt his patience wearing down, like a bare patch of carpet that's been walked on too many times. "Show me the basement."

"All the fun's over down there."

"Just show me."

Sonia shrugged and led him to a staircase that descended to a closed oak door below him. It was heavy but unlocked. Sonia was on his heels as he crossed into the temple. He smelled smoke from the burnt-out candles, and he felt on the wall for a light switch, bathing the room in fluorescent light.

He squinted, and Sonia shielded her eyes. He sized up the room with a pit of dismay in his stomach. The sheets on the circular bed were soiled. Condom wrappers littered the floor, along with wine stains and glass. The musk of lovemaking was strong here. For an instant, he saw Maggie, draped on the bed, and felt an irrational anger.

It took him only a moment to survey the open room and see that everyone had left. When he turned around, Sonia was right there, and she laced her fingers behind his neck and drew close so he could inhale her. She leaned in to him.

"Kiss me," she murmured. "I need to be kissed."

He pried her hands away. "You've been kissed enough."

Sonia spun dreamily. "Oh, no, no, no. I've been fucked plenty, but not kissed at all. You were a great kisser."

"Shut up, Sonia. Where is Kathy Lassiter?"

"I don't know."

"You're lying."

Sonia shrugged. "Kiss me, and maybe I'll tell you."

Stride took Sonia by the shoulder and squeezed harder than he should.

"Go on, hit me," she said. "You know you want to."

He pulled his hand away as if her skin were burning him.

"This is no game, Sonia. She could be in serious danger. What the hell would you have done if Serena wasn't there? Would you all have stood around while Brandt raped her?"

"Serena misunderstood. It was sex play that got a little out of hand. Kathy told me so."

"When?"

"After."

"You talked to her," Stride said. "So you know what's going on. Tell me where she is."

Sonia ignored him and undid the bow of her robe and let it fall like a dirty towel. She was naked. "Bring back memories?"

It did. He remembered her body in vivid detail, right down to the freckle on her left breast and the appendix scar creasing her stomach. He pushed the memory out of his mind. "Tell me where Kathy Lassiter is right now, or I'll march your bare ass downtown and put you under arrest. So help me, Sonia, I'm not kidding."

Stride picked up her robe and threw it at her. She clutched it to her chest and smelled it. "We're going upstairs," he said. "Put it on."

Sonia tied the robe around her waist, letting her breasts wobble free. She grabbed for Stride's belt and sank to her knees in front of him. He wrenched away and looked down into her dilated eyes. "What are you on?"

She giggled. "A little Diet Coke and a little regular coke," she whispered.

"Son of a bitch. How much did you take? Do you need to go to a hospital?"

Sonia stuck out her tongue. "Come on, Jonathan. For old times, huh? I'm wet, and you're hard, so why the hell not?"

Stride felt the bones in his hand stiffen like a club. He hated Sonia at that second and hated that she had anything to do with his past. He jerked his hand back and knew that in the next instant he would slap her and watch her tumble backward, her cheek tattooed red with his fingerprints.

"No, Jonny."

He turned and saw Serena standing beside him. She was unbelievably calm as she shook her head.

He swore and turned away. He watched as Serena knelt down in front of Sonia, who gave him a crooked grin. Sonia closed her eyes and rocked back.

"Where is Kathy Lassiter?" Serena asked her in a mellow voice.

"I told you, she's not here." Sonia opened her eyes and waggled a finger at Stride. "She borrowed my car. She didn't want you to find her."

"Where the hell was she going?" Stride demanded.

"To meet Mitchell Brandt. She said she had to stop him before he ruined everything."

41

Serena sat for a long time in the frozen silence without starting her car. She wrinkled her nose. A faint aroma of fish lingered in the leather seats, and she wrote it off to the smoked fish she had bought at Russ Kendall's last week. She opened the window, trying to dispel it, but the smell had already made its way inside her nose and lodged there. The wind whistled into the car and brought crystals of snow with it.

Jonny was gone. The alert for Mitchell Brandt and Kathy Lassiter had spread through the city, but she wasn't part of the chase. Her frustration gnawed at her. This was the time she regretted giving up her shield, when she felt cut off from the adrenaline rush as it began. She had to watch his car peel away from the curb and not follow him. She hated it.

She was worried about Jonny, too. He was surrounded by lies and secrets, and she felt guilty because some of the lies were her own. She wondered again if she was making a terrible mistake by keeping him in the dark.

Was the man in shadows just a blackmailer?

Or was he a predator whose evil went far deeper? Someone who raped. Someone who killed.

Someone who was following her.

She was uneasy, because the feeling was back. She was being watched. She didn't know where he was, but he was close to her again, and time felt short. Her unease trebled as she realized the streets were empty. All the cops were gone, and she was alone. Was that what he wanted all along?

Serena jumped as her cell phone let out a jangling ring. She thought, It's him.

But it was Dan Erickson.

"He wants the money tonight," Dan said. "I've got it."

"We should bring in the police right now," Serena advised him.

"I hired you because you were a homicide cop," Dan retorted, his voice hoarse with anger. "You said you could deal with this guy. Now you're telling me to throw away my life by making this public?"

"We don't know who we're dealing with."

"I don't care. I want this over. He says this is the final hit. He's on his way out of town."

"He's telling you what you want to hear," she said.

"You're not listening to me. We're doing this my way. If this guy so much as smells a cop, the photo of me and Tanjy goes to the papers. Do you understand what that means?"

"Completely."

"Then get down here to pick up the money."

"Where's the drop?"

"He said he'd let you know."

"I don't like this."

"This isn't about you," Dan said.

He hung up.

Serena threw the phone down and gripped the steering wheel, which felt like ice. Dan was right. This was business, and she couldn't make it personal. She had a job to do, period. Make the drop. Just like before.

She turned the key and started the car. Her heart stopped.

Shattering noise exploded inside the car like a bomb. Rap music screeched from the speakers, so loud and painful that she felt the beat in her chest and instinctively pressed her palms against her ears. She reached for the volume switch and turned it so hard and so fast that the plastic knob broke off in her hand.

The car fell silent. She breathed hard.

The reality sank in. He had been in her car.

She felt as if ants were crawling inside her clothes. Her skin rippled, and she rubbed her palms with her fingertips. When she realized the window was still open, she quickly closed it. She studied the front and backseats of the car to see what was missing, but nothing was disturbed.

He was playing head games with her.

This isn't about you.

She drove away and kept her eyes on her mirror, but there was no one behind her. He had been here for a reason. When she glanced at the glove compartment, she knew without opening it that he had left a message for her there. Again. She had begun to think like him.

She pulled over to the curb and looked inside. Another white envelope was there, with a note in red ink:

Under the high bridge. Bring the money. One hour.

42

Stride was in the Lincoln Park area, a rectangle of green climbing from the freeway that served as a hot spot for crime and drugs. Even the winter cold didn't deter buyers and sellers. He did a circuit of the park and then began a slow survey of the nearby residential streets.

He was on and off his cell phone as he drove. He connected with the detective who was waiting in the dark inside Kathy Lassiter's home, but Lassiter hadn't returned. The uniforms outside did a search of the perimeter around the house and in the woods behind, but reported no sign of Mitchell Brandt or anyone else. Stride checked with the team outside Brandt's apartment and got the same response. Throughout Duluth and Superior, squad cars were hunting for Brandt's Porsche and Sonia's Mercedes, but so far, Brandt and Lassiter had eluded them.

His cell phone rang again.

"This is Philip Proutz with the SEC, Lieutenant. My office said you were trying to reach me."

"I am," Stride said. "We have a situation here, and I could use some information."

"Does this concern Mitchell Brandt?"

"Yes, but I'm more interested in someone else. Kathy Lassiter."

Proutz took a long time to reply. "Why don't you tell me about this situation you've got?"

"I take it you know who Lassiter is," Stride said.

"Yes."

"She's primary outside counsel for Infloron Medical, isn't she? So she would be among the first to know about the status of the company's applications with the FDA."

"Of course." Proutz sounded pained. "Please don't tell me she has a relationship with Mitchell Brandt."

"We think she does. They're both part of an underground sex club here in Duluth."

"A sex club?" Proutz groaned.

"Did Lassiter know you were launching an insider trading investigation into Infloron's stock sales? Or that Brandt was a target?"

"No, we didn't know where the trail would lead us. We don't alert the company or its counsel until we've gathered more information."

"You weren't focusing on Lassiter as the source of the leak about the FDA approval?"

"Not at all. She would have been way down our list. Think what you will of lawyers, Lieutenant, it's rare for corporate counsel to be personally involved in this kind of criminal conduct. But we'd have looked at her and her law firm eventually, I assure you."

Stride didn't think they would have found the connection easily, not without access to Sonia's member lists.

"Could Lassiter have been your anonymous informant?" he asked.

"If she was, she didn't make the call herself. The phone call that alerted us to Mitchell Brandt's trading activities came from a man."

Stride tried to figure out who else could have unearthed the connection that tied Brandt, Lassiter, and Infloron Medical together. Anyone in the sex club would have known the two of them, but he didn't see how they could have made the leap to an insider trading scheme that never made the papers.

"I've shown you mine, why don't you show me yours, Lieutenant?" Proutz asked. "What's going on?"

"Brandt and Lassiter are both missing," Stride told him.

"Do you think they've fled the area?"

"I don't know. I'm more concerned with Lassiter's safety. Brandt assaulted her earlier this evening. Could he have been tipped off to your investigation?"

"I don't see how that's possible. My staff understands that confidentiality is essential in these matters. Unless it was someone on your end, Lieutenant."

Stride counted in his head. Himself. Serena. Maggie. Teitscher. They were the only ones who knew. "That's very unlikely," he said. "Tell me something, if Lassiter disappeared, how hard would it be for you to make an insider trading case against Brandt?"

"Not impossible, but difficult," Proutz admitted. "It depends on how well they covered their tracks. Without evidence of how the information leaked, it's hard to prove that Brandt actually had material nonpublic information when he made the trades. Usually we play one conspirator against the other by making deals."

That meant Brandt had a motive to make sure that Lassiter was never seen again.

"I'll keep you posted, Mr. Proutz."

"Please do."

Stride hung up the phone, and it rang again immediately. This time it was Teitscher.

"Are you anywhere near Enger Park?" he asked.

Stride was heading north on Lincoln Park Drive. The two parks connected near a bridge over Highway 53. "Less than five minutes," he said. "Why?"

"We got a 911 call from a motorist in the area. He heard a woman screaming near the Enger tower."

43

Two cars were parked in the snow on the shoulder of the winding road that circled around the base of the Enger Park hillside. One was Brandt's Porsche, and the other was Sonia's Mercedes.

Stride parked his Bronco behind the two cars, blocking them in. He unlocked the glove compartment, grabbed his Ruger, and got out of the truck. Overhead, a comma-shaped moon came and went behind swiftly moving clouds, silhouetting the five-story bluestone tower that crowned the summit of the hill. He smelled snow massing to the west. In the valleys of the stiff wind, he heard someone moving far away, but the sound blew around him and he struggled to pinpoint its direction.

Enger Park was the highest land in the city, serene and beautiful, and he hated it. The rolling slopes of the golf course were across the street from him, deep with snow and crisscrossed with ski tracks. But for Stride, it was never winter in Enger Park. It was always August, ten years ago, in the grip of a heat wave that made him feel as if the entire state had melted and washed down the Mississippi to spill out in the humid air of the Gulf. Even at two in the morning that summer, standing in the fairway with Maggie, his shirt was soaked with sweat. At their feet was the girl, cocoa-skinned, tattooed, butchered, and nameless. Looking at her made him angry, and his anger only grew as the months passed and the investigation froze up like the lakes. No matter how much time passed, no matter what season it was, the girl was still there, forever haunting the park. He saw her in his dreams to this day. It was the same for Maggie.

He studied the golf course long and hard, watching and listening. Brandt and Lassiter weren't there. He slipped a flashlight out of his pocket and lit up the snow around the two cars, which were parked side-by-side. The footprints told the story. Brandt came around the rear of his Porsche, using long, angry paces. Lassiter was standing by the driver's door of Sonia's car. They struggled, and the tracks became a maze. There was an oversized snow angel where one of them had fallen and cherry-red blood spots in the slush.

Her footsteps sprinted away up the hill. Brandt's shoes followed in her path. Stride led with his gun and chased the tracks along the road that twisted up toward the tower. The tamped-down snow was a mess of tire ruts and boot marks. He followed the thin beam of his flashlight, searching for the fresh prints. Stands of young trees pressed in on him from both sides. Power lines drooped overhead, and he heard electricity snapping through the lines like bacon frying.

Above him a woman's voice cried. "No!"

And then, "Stop! Help!"

Stride veered off the road and into the trees that led straight up to the summit. The snow clawed at his thighs, and he pushed his way through spindly branches that snagged his leather jacket and cut his face. The forest was claustrophobic. He could see only the web of trees obstructing his path, and all he could hear was the crack of wood breaking and his own labored breathing. Five minutes passed as he fought his way up the hill. Then ten. He was taking too long. When he broke from the trees into a small clearing, he had to stop and balance his hands on his knees, sucking in air.

He vowed in his head that he had smoked his last cigarette.

He saw two bodies moving, running, near the tower. They were still far away. "Help!" the woman shouted again.

Stride pointed his gun high into the air and squeezed off a shot. The explosion was loud in his ears, and then it echoed wildly, passed back and forth around the hillside. He saw the taller shadow freeze. Stride started running again.

He found a rough trail and made faster progress as the path snaked around the bands of trees, climbing steadily higher. His boots slipped, and his knees burned, and his chest was shot through with pain, but the tower grew ever larger as he closed in on the summit. He heard trampling footfalls nearby, but when he cast the beam of his flashlight to his left, he caught a glimpse of a buck in midbound, antlers bone-white, fleeting gracefully toward the cover of the woods. A few yards later, the ground leveled off underneath his feet.

He stopped, waiting for his breath to come back and the dizziness to right itself in his brain, then stepped silently from the trees. He was in the hibernating gardens around the memorial tower. The stone monolith loomed sixty feet above his head, and the moon glowed on the mottled stone and dark window squares like a checkerboard. Where the slope fell away, he could see the city encircling the black lake. He turned all the way around, studying the emptiness of the park. Naked trees, picnic benches, snow-capped grills, fire pits, deer tracks and footprints. Brandt and Lassiter were nowhere to be seen. He listened for their movements and heard nothing. Lassiter wasn't screaming now. She was hiding, or silenced by Brandt's hand clapped over her mouth, or dead.

In his memory, he saw the Enger Park Girl again. Limbless and anonymous. She was silent, too.

"Don't be a fool, Brandt," he called. His voice was picked up by the wind and whisked away. He edged closer to the base of the tower. His fingers brushed the stone. He switched off his flashlight and let his eyes adjust to the night, and then he began a slow march around the circumference, his back protected, his Ruger pointed at the trees. At each bend in the octagonal shape, he paused before taking the next quiet step.

Far below him, sirens were drawing near. Brandt had to hear them, too.

He almost tripped over Kathy Lassiter's body slumped against the rock on the north side of the tower. Her brown hair spilled messily over her face, and a dark stain of blood trickled in three streaks over her ear and along her cheek.

Stride bent down and pressed two fingers against the warm skin of her neck. She was semiconscious and alive. As he turned her over on her back, she moaned and stirred. Her limbs flailed, and her eyes fluttered open. She couldn't see him clearly, and she screamed as she saw his shadow over her and beat her fists against his chest. He clutched for her wrists, trying to calm her.

"It's okay, it's okay."

"No!"

Too late, he realized she wasn't looking at him but over his shoulder.

A cold strap wrapped itself around his neck and choked off his air. He felt himself being dragged backward, the leather biting into his skin and tightening around his windpipe. His gun dropped nose-down into the snow. When he took a breath, his lungs found nothing there, and his body seized with panic. He clutched for his neck, trying to squeeze his fingers under the edge of the belt, but Brandt had him in a death grip. His fingernails drew blood on his own throat. Part of his mind felt detached, like a spectator at his own funeral, and there was no pain at all. He found that odd. No pain.

His foot found a solid piece of ground, and he launched himself backward, colliding with Brandt's chest and tumbling them both off their heels. They landed heavily, body on top of body. He felt the grip on his neck loosen as Brandt's wrist lost its hold on the strap. When he breathed in, his chest swelled, and he clawed at the belt and ripped it away, sending it twirling like a piece of ribbon. Below him, Brandt cursed and rolled him off with a violent shove. He got to his feet, but Stride hooked his ankle as he ran and spilled him onto his face.

Brandt was fast. Stride reached for his cuffs and Brandt's right hand at the same time, but before he could reach either one, Brandt spun and knocked him sideways. The force of the blow dizzied Stride. He grabbed a fistful of Brandt's coat and hung on as the man pushed himself to his knees.

A flash of light and sound blinded and deafened both of them. Nearby, way too close, a bullet buried itself in the earth and stirred up a cloud of wet snow. Stride and Brandt both ducked and flattened themselves into the ground. When Stride glanced back, he saw Kathy Lassiter, standing and swaying, his own gun bobbling in her unsteady hands. He followed the dancing path of the barrel with horror, and as he watched, fire burst from the gun again, and the sound wave cracked through his ears, and he could feel the heat of the next bullet as it streaked past his cheek and sparked off the metal leg of a picnic bench. A couple inches more, and it would have drilled through his eye.

"Stop shooting!" he screamed at her.

He thought she was aiming for Brandt, but he realized she might have been aiming for both of them.

She fired again. This time her aim was wild, off into the sky. She staggered two steps, and her eyes closed, and the gun slipped out of her fingers. She went down to her knees and then pitched forward. The wound on her head was bleeding profusely.

Brandt rose up, running and slipping in the slush. Stride leaped for him but missed and wound up with a cold mouthful of snow. He spit it out and gave chase, but Brandt had ten yards and ten years on him, and he watched the distance widen between them. Brandt shot into the trees and down the hill, picking up speed. The sirens were almost on top of them now, and Stride saw the lights of two patrol cars fighting through the impacted snow on the access road, winding up toward the tower. Brandt saw them, too, and changed direction, veering across the hillside, away from the cars parked below. The trees thickened. Stride held his arms ahead of him, blocking the branches that scraped at his skin, and tried to keep Brandt in view.

When Brandt broke from the woods onto a narrow trail and accelerated, Stride thought he had lost him, but suddenly, he saw Brandt become airborne, his legs cartwheeling and his body twisting and landing in the snow. Stride saw the glacial rock that had tripped Brandt and leapt it smoothly, and in another second, he closed the gap and threw himself at Brandt, who was struggling to get up. He connected solidly on the square of Brandt's back, and the man gave way underneath him, his limbs splaying. With the heel of his hand, Stride slapped Brandt's skull hard, harder than he really needed to, and then found the man's wet hands and scissored his cuffs tightly around Brandt's wrists. He slid his belt out of his jeans and secured Brandt's ankles, too.

Stride took hold of Brandt's shoulder and turned him over and saw Brandt's face twisted like a mask, so caught up with fury that he was almost unrecognizable. Stride realized that everyone in this case was wearing masks.

44

Stride climbed into the rear of the patrol car. His willpower to stop smoking had evaporated by the time he reached the bottom of the hill, and he rolled the window halfway down, lit up, and blew a cloud of smoke outside. He was wet and cold, and his body hurt. He fingered the burnt skin on his neck, which looked like a red tattoo where Brandt's belt had strangled him. Brandt sat next to him in the backseat, handcuffed, saying nothing and gazing through the glass at the outside world.

First-timers always did that as the reality dawned on them. Freedom was gone.

The circling red lights of an ambulance flashed like a strobe through the interior of the car. There were police cars and cops everywhere. Stride took another drag, then blew smoke inside the car this time, and Brandt coughed.

"Lassiter's going to be fine," Stride said.

Brandt's mouth twitched, but he was silent.

"Here's what I don't understand, Mitch. You're a hotshot broker, pulling down, what, a couple hundred thousand a year? That's a fortune in this city. Why throw it away?"

No response.

Stride sighed and leaned back into the seat. "Lassiter told me it's hard to get rich by the hour, and she was probably making twice what you were making. I guess it's never enough, is that it?"

He looked for a signal in Brandt's face, but the young broker was sullen and withdrawn.

"Or was it the thrill of the chase?" Stride asked. "Were you doing it to see if you could get away with it?" When Brandt still didn't reply, he went on. "That's okay, you don't need to tell me anything. Get lawyered up and start negotiating a plea. We already have you on assault and attempted murder, so that's at least the next six to nine years of your life gone. We'll have to jockey with the feds, of course, because they're going to want you in federal prison for the Infloron Medical deal."

Brandt's head snapped around. Stride nodded.

"Oh, yeah, we know all about the insider trading scheme. You and Lassiter. The SEC knows about it, too, but that's not news to you, is it? That's why you went after Lassiter tonight."

Stride flicked his cigarette out the window. "The SEC is going to have to stand in line, though. Once we add multiple rapes to the list of charges, your white-collar crime stuff is going to seem like cheating on an exam. Now we're talking twenty-five years to life. Hard time."

Brandt heard the word rape, and he finally spoke. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Mitch."

"I never raped anyone."

"No? That was just a game at Sonia's house tonight?" He saw Brandt do a double take, and he added, "Yeah, we know about the sex club, too."

"You can't make that out as rape."

"What about the others?"

"What others?"

"The alpha girls," Stride said.

"What about them? News flash, that's why they come to the club. To have sex. No one got raped."

Stride shrugged. "How about Tanjy?"

"What about her?"

"You playact a rape with her in Grassy Point Park, and after she dumps you, she winds up getting raped in the same place. That's quite a coincidence. Rape stories just seem to follow you around, don't they, Mitch?"

"Tanjy made up the rape," Brandt insisted.

Stride shook his head. "No, she didn't. Was it a thrill, getting back at her like that, knowing you could expose all her fantasies, and no one would believe her? What happened then? Did you decide you liked the power that came with it? When you got away with raping Tanjy, did you realize that the alpha girls would do anything to keep their secrets? Even after you raped them, too?"

"You're talking crazy here. I do not know what the fuck you are talking about."

"I'm talking about two alpha girls getting assaulted after the parties. Just like you were doing to Kathy Lassiter tonight. And maybe you don't know this, but this case is very personal to me."

Brandt struggled with his cuffs. "No way."

"This isn't going to be a hard case to make, Mitch. We've got a dozen witnesses to the assault on Kathy Lassiter. You were one of only a handful of men who were at all of the sex club parties where the alpha girls were later raped. You've got the size and strength to pull it off. And you told me you played rape games with Tanjy every night at knifepoint. That's just what you did to the other women."

"Oh, fuck it. I cannot believe this." Brandt swung his head into the window so hard that a cut opened up on his forehead and blood leaked down his face, matting at his eyebrow. A red smear stained the glass. Stride pulled a few tissues from his pocket and leaned close to Brandt, blotting the blood. The tissue turned crimson.

"The club was a secret, Mitch," Stride continued. "No one else knew about the alpha girls. What's a jury going to think? Do you honestly think they'll picture someone like Delmar Bezac as a rapist? You're the stud of the group." He leaned in toward Brandt's ear and whispered, "Eric Sorenson figured it out, didn't he? He came to you and accused you of raping his wife. So you had to stop him. And Tanjy."

Brandt was close enough that Stride could smell his sweat. With Stride's hand over one eye, and his chiseled face needing a shave, Brandt looked like a pirate.

"You don't know anything," he told Stride. "You don't know what's going on in this city."

"Then explain it to me."

"I'm being set up. Just like Maggie."

"Sure."

"Look, whatever Lassiter says, it was her idea. She met me in the club. She came to me with the whole scheme about Infloron Medical and the FDA approval. So when I found out she was negotiating a sweet deal with the SEC to put it all on me, I lost it."

Stride shook his head. "You've got it wrong, Mitch. The SEC didn't know a thing about Kathy Lassiter. You were the one they had in their sights, not her. They got an anonymous tip."

He watched Brandt's eyes, which changed like a chameleon.

"You're lying to me," Brandt said.

"No, someone set you up."

"Son of a bitch," Brandt retorted, air hissing between his teeth.

"You sound like you know who it is."

Brandt closed his eyes. "Fuck this, I need to talk to my lawyer. I've got something to trade, and I want to find out how much it's worth before I say another goddamn word."

"What do you have to trade?" Stride asked.

"You said you're after a rapist, right?"

Stride saw that blood had oozed out around the edges of the tissues on Brandt's forehead. He pressed on the wound hard, and Brandt jerked in pain. "Maybe I didn't make myself clear, this guy may have killed two people. Right now, I think you're good for it. If you're not, then you better tell me why and help me find him."

"I want credit if you nail this guy. Some kind of deal."

"Yeah, we'll put a plaque up for you in City Hall. Who is he?"

"I don't know."

"Then you've got nothing to trade."

"Look, I don't know anything about him, but he's the one you want."

Stride waited.

"I paid him," Brandt continued. "We had a deal, and now he blows up my life anyway. It's like a fucking game to him."

"Who are you talking about?"

"I told you, I don't know," Brandt insisted. "You said I was the only one who knew about the alpha girls, but you're wrong. He knew all about them, too."

"Who?"

"The son of a bitch who's been blackmailing me."

Stride crumpled the tissues and tossed them on the floor of the car. He backed away from Brandt and heard Serena's voice, one word, just as he was falling asleep in the wake of their making love. One word in the box.

Blackmail.

"I'm still bleeding," Brandt protested.

"You'll live. Tell me more."

"This guy knows things. I don't know where he gets it. He came to me a couple of months ago, and he knew all about Infloron and the insider trading scheme. Dates, trades, dollars. He's been bleeding me dry."

"What about the alpha girls?"

"He knew about them, too. He joked about me and Lassiter meeting in the sex club. He asked me how it was with the alpha girls. He knew their names. And then last night, he called me again. He knew Lassiter was going to be the alpha girl tonight, and he told me that she'd been going behind my back with the SEC. He said I'd better take care of her. But the bastard must have called the SEC himself."

"Were you trying to stiff him?" Stride asked.

"No! The son of a bitch just decided to fuck me."

Stride got out of the patrol car and slammed the door behind him. He looked up at the outline of the tower on the hill and thought about the Enger Park Girl and then Maggie and Serena. And about rape, murder, and blackmail. He tried to sort it all out in his head and didn't like where it took him.

Mitchell Brandt was being blackmailed. If Serena meant what he thought she did, then Dan Erickson was being blackmailed, too. By someone who also knew about the sex club and the alpha girls. That made him a prime suspect in the string of rapes and in the murders of Eric and Tanjy.

He suffered a flash of anger as he wondered how much Serena knew and why she didn't tell him.

After months operating in the shadows, the blackmailer had to realize the clock was ticking. The police knew about the rapes now. It was only a matter of time before Stride put the pieces together.

That meant Dan Erickson was in the path of the hurricane. So was Serena.

45

Serena parked in an empty lot underneath the soaring span of the Blatnik Bridge leading across Superior Bay to Wisconsin. Its concrete Y-shaped supports aligned like a row of soldiers marching from the city out into the water, following a trail of white lights. Every time a car sped by overhead, the steel highway bed became a tin drum and boomed. As Serena got out of her car, the ice sheet of the harbor was on her right. On the opposite side of the road, where it circled back to the city, were the dark fields leading to the silos of the port terminal. This was where the industry of the city was done during the warmer months, bustling with dozens of ore boats loading and offloading their bellies. The port was abandoned now, locked up with ice and awaiting the spring thaw.

Snow had begun, whipping through the bridge lights like a field of shooting stars. She blinked as the flakes assaulted her eyes. She had her Glock tightly in one hand and a duct-taped shoe box under her arm, heavy with hundred dollar bills. The road, the park, the frozen water, the port buildings, and the fields leading across the railroad tracks were all deserted. She wondered where he was.

Her heels were buried in six inches of wet snow, and her feet quickly grew numb and cold. She didn't have time to change after finding the note, only time to make the pick up at Dan's house and follow the freeway back to the harbor basin. Now, she wished she had kept spare boots in the car. She found an open area near the bridge tower where the snow was matted down and waited there. She danced impatiently, stamping her feet. The chill traveled up her body.

A wave of vibration rumbled through the concrete as a double-trailored semi streaked along the bridge out over the water directly above her. The thunder of the tin drum made her shudder, as if the bridge were falling around her.

Her cell phone rang, and she put the shoe box down in the snow so she could grab her phone with her free hand.

"Where are you?" Stride asked.

Serena took a cautious look around the empty lot. As the snow intensified, it was becoming hard to see. "I'm on a job. I can't talk."

"Is this about Dan's blackmail?"

She hesitated. "Yes."

"Get the hell out of there," he told her. "Brandt was being blackmailed, too. This guy knows all about the sex clubs and the alpha girls. He may be our perp."

"Then this is our chance to get him," Serena said.

"Not by yourself."

"I was a cop for ten years. I can take care of myself."

"You should have told me what was going on with Dan."

"I couldn't, you know that."

"Where the hell are you?"

She thought about not telling him, but she realized she was being stupid and stubborn. "I'm down in Rices Point under the bridge."

"Are you completely fucking crazy?"

"He picked the spot."

"Get out right now, he may be coming after you."

"He's coming after a box full of money. That's what he wants."

"I'm sending a car down there."

"Don't do that," Serena insisted. "You'll scare him off."

"Then I'll come myself."

Her phone beeped in her ear. Another call was coming in. She knew who it was.

"No, don't do that, Jonny. Not yet. Give me half an hour. If I don't call you back, send in the troops."

She hung up before he could answer. When she switched over to the other call, she heard the blackmailer's voice and realized there was something distantly familiar about it. She wished she knew why, but it was one of those memories that had to come in its own time and couldn't be rushed. The one thing she knew was that the memory carried something dark with it, and the vibration in her spine this time wasn't from the traffic on the bridge, but from a sudden fear.

"Did you have fun tonight?" he asked.

Serena was silent.

"I was picturing you inside," he went on. "Did you get naked like all the others?"

"Fuck off."

"Did all that sex make you wet? Did you play with yourself?"

"I'm leaving," Serena said. "With your money."

"No, you're not. You're staying right there."

"Watch me." Serena bent down to pick up the shoe box and hoped he could see her. She waited, wanting to see what he did next.

"Tell me what it's like," he said.

"It sounds like you know."

"Do you want to be an alpha girl?"

"No thanks."

"Too bad," he said. "You could be just like your friend Maggie. Or Katrina. They were alpha girls."

The implications of what he said made her whole body go rigid. She clutched her gun tighter and didn't reply.

"You're afraid of me now," he said.

"Why should I be?"

"You know what I did to them."

She stood there, frozen, letting the snow paint her body white. "Yes."

"I'm going to do the same thing to you. I just wanted you to know that now."

"You bastard."

"And much worse, Serena. Much, much worse."

She hung up the phone. Stumbling, falling, getting up, she began running back to her car. She peered over her shoulder, hair flying, and then spun, spying everywhere around her, certain that she would see him coming for her. The tin drum boomed again; she screamed and bit her tongue, quieting herself, and tasted blood. Snow swarmed down and followed her like bees roused from a hive.

As she ran, the box of money slipped from her grasp and tumbled away. She cursed and bent to retrieve it, and when she stood up, she was blinded by the glare of a white beacon bathing her body in light. A familiar siren shrieked and stopped. She saw twisting red lights rotating atop a Duluth city police car, and she had never been so grateful that Jonny hadn't listened to her.

Paralyzed in the light, feeling like a deer on the highway, she also realized she was holding a gun and a box filled with cash.

The cop saw it, too. He used a loudspeaker, and she heard a Southern accent. "Throw the gun away."

She did.

"Put the box down."

She did that, too.

"Lie down and keep your arms away from you."

Serena's arms were in the air. She went down on both knees and then laid her palms flat on the snow as she stretched out her body. She craned her neck to see, but the searchlight was in her eyes. She heard the door of the squad car open, and the cop shouted to her without the microphone.

"Don't move."

She was absolutely still, holding her breath.

"It's okay, officer," she said as he came closer. "My name is Serena Dial. I'm Lieutenant Stride's partner."

"Shut up."

He was angry, and under the anger was probably fear. She didn't say anything else, not wanting to rile him. She saw a silhouette of long, muscled legs, and in his hand, by his thigh, was his gun, pointed at her. He came around behind her. She lay there, not moving; it was like having a bear sniff around you as you played dead. He retrieved her gun where she had thrown it in the snow, removed the magazine, and deposited it in his pocket.

She grimaced as his knee landed in the center of her back. He took one of her wrists roughly, twisted it behind her, and latched her wrist in the loop of his handcuffs. He took her other arm, too, and secured her. He grabbed the scruff of her neck with thick fingers. She smelled his hands.

"Get up."

He hadn't holstered his gun yet. She came up to her knees as he pulled her, and she got to her feet carefully, not making any sudden movements.

"What's in the box?" he asked.

"Money. Look, call Stride. He knows what's going on."

"Get in the car."

He landed the heel of his palm on her neck and shoved her forward. He picked up the box as they headed for the police car. She walked a couple of paces ahead of him and listened to her senses, which were saying an odd word to her.

Fish.

In her nose, a stench of fish spoiled the fresh aroma of snow, and she realized it came from the cop, where his fingers had roughly grabbed her skin. His hands smelled like fish.

That was just how her car smelled when she got back into it after the party.

Exactly like that.

Thoughts spilled through her brain, and the more they did, the more her relief blew away like ash from a fire. She thought about how odd it was that Jonny would ignore her and send a car down here anyway. She thought about how fast the car had made it here. She thought about an offhanded comment Jonny had made to her yesterday.

Pete McKay managed to get his patrol car stolen while he was on a call at the high school.

She had made a horrible mistake. The accent in his voice was a disguise. There was no cop behind her. It was him. He had told her what he was going to do to her, and she let him walk right up to her, disarm her, and put her in cuffs.

Serena didn't look back or change her gait, but she knew she had only a few seconds to make a move. Once they got to the car, she was trapped. Overhead, on the bridge, she saw the lights of a truck speeding away from the city, and she knew that it was about to bang the tin drum loudly. She tensed.

The highway bed boomed, and the man behind her jerked involuntarily. She could hear his clothes rustle as his instincts kicked in and he looked back over his shoulder just for a split second. Serena ran. She galloped through the snow, breaking away from him and heading for the fields and long grass that led toward the port terminal. He recovered and was after her immediately, but Serena was fast. Her shoes slipped off her feet, and she ran even faster that way, struggling to stay balanced with her arms locked behind her. She didn't look back, but heard him grunt as he fell. She reached the road, shot across it, and leaped down into the tall brush, which rose almost to her neck. When she risked a look back, she didn't see him.

Fighting through the snow was like running through deep water. The effort exhausted her, and only the blood pumping madly through her veins kept her feet from freezing. She passed under drooping telephone wires and near the concrete skeletons of a bridge that had been torn down years ago, leaving behind rubble that may as well have been the bombed-out remains of a war zone. He was back behind her again; she could hear him beating through the weeds. She emerged out of the field after a hundred yards and found herself in the middle of a field of snow-lined railroad tracks winding into the heart of the port. Rusted railway cars sat there, abandoned for the season. The struggle to run without her arms pumping at her side was wearing her down. As she followed the tracks, she pitched forward, tripping on a brick of ice. Something hard and sharp cut her face. She lost precious seconds twisting and turning and fighting back to her feet, and she saw him behind her, a violent shadow, bursting from the grassy field and steering for her, closing the gap.

She didn't know how much time had passed, and she prayed that Jonny would soon be flooding the area with police.

The tracks led her into the port, and she found herself in a world populated by sleeping giants. Cranes soared into the sky, hooks dangling on steel cables like hangmen. Snow-covered mountains of dirt, scrap metal, and taconite dwarfed her, and concrete silos more than a hundred feet tall towered over the flat land. She tried to lose herself in the huge, silent maze, where the only noise was the hiss of the blizzard. She watched and listened for him, but he had melted into the port behind her and vanished. He could be anywhere.

She had trouble walking. Her feet trailed blood, and she could barely feel them or move her toes. Cuts and bruises stung her face, and she tasted more blood on her lips. The handcuffs rubbed her wrists raw. She couldn't move anymore. She stopped where a crevice had eroded into a pyramid of earth and forced herself inside, hating that she couldn't see out, hoping he wouldn't cross in front of her. She squatted, making herself small, but she swayed on her frostbitten feet and toppled forward, exposed. Snow continued to fall in a white rain that chilled and enveloped her. She tried to right herself, but she had no strength anymore except to lie there and hope that the giants would protect her.

Her cell phone began ringing. It was ungodly loud. Her hands were tied, and all she could do was listen to it shoot up a flare for him. She heard the slow, sure crunch of his footsteps as he found her and glimpsed his shadow looming over her, and she didn't even care. He laughed, staring down at her prone body, and dragged her by her collar off the ground. His revolver was flipped in his hand, the butt facing out. She had no more fight.

"Time for a little payback," he said.

The gun flew up, it flew down, and somewhere she saw the orange light of the sun coming closer and burning her eyes and leaving her blind.