In the Dark (24 page)

 

Tish knew that she was right. She swallowed down her loathing and drank more wine.

 

Peter stood up, stretching his legs. He caught his reflection in a brass mirror and dusted the broad lapels of his suit coat. His grin returned, more brightly than before. “I always wondered if you were upset that Laura found me attractive.”

 

“She didn’t.”

 

“You’re wrong about that. All the girls back then were interested in me. You were the exception. Or were you just playing hard to get?”

 

“Oh, please.”

 

“Is that why you didn’t like me dating your best friend?”

 

“Laura broke it off with you. She told me she did.”

 

“Ah, but are you sure she wasn’t lying? Maybe Laura didn’t want you to know what was really going on between us.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” Tish snapped.

 

“I wonder what you would have done if you’d found out the truth,” he said. “I imagine you would have been very upset.”

 

“Are you finished?”

 

“I haven’t even begun. Don’t tangle with a lawyer, Tish.”

 

“I’m going to get you,” she insisted.

 

He laughed. “You know that’s not going to happen.”

 

She cringed, feeling on display as he watched her. His eyes glittered with lust that he didn’t bother hiding.

 

“The sad thing is, I’m telling you that I think you’re a murderer, and you still want to sleep with me.”

 

Peter sat down next to her on the sofa and took an oversized swallow of his scotch. Their legs touched. “True.”

 

“Are you that desperate?”

 

“I’m not desperate at all.”

 

“I picture you with a harem of twenty-something models,” Tish said.

 

“Sometimes.”

 

“So why come on to a woman in her late forties who thinks you’re the devil?”

 

“I’m not the devil. I thought you were finally beginning to find me charming.”

 

“Hardly.”

 

“Believe it or not, I like women who are mature. Strong. Independent. I don’t find many women who stand up to me.”

 

“So you’re saying that having a woman accuse you of murder turns you on.”

 

“I’ve heard worse accusations than that.” He grinned. “I think you’re lying, Tish. You do find me attractive. You always have.”

 

“You find yourself attractive enough for both of us.”

 

“There aren’t many women who get to reject me twice.”

 

Tish felt a shiver of fear. “What does that mean?”

 

“Not what you think. I just mean you’ve managed to deflate my ego, not to mention my manhood, in two separate decades.”

 

“You’ll live.”

 

“I already told you that I don’t take rejection well. It just makes me more determined.”

 

“Do I need to scream?”

 

“Not at all. I wouldn’t dream of ravishing a woman who doesn’t want me to ravish her.”

 

“Good.”

 

“I am going to kiss you, though,” Peter said. “I think you owe me that.”

 

“I don’t owe you anything.”

 

“So slap my face if you want.”

 

He leaned across the sofa. Tish stared into his eyes and didn’t turn away. His lips were rough as they moved against hers. She felt nothing but responded as if she did. She put her hands around his neck and held him to her. He smelled like a man. She felt his fingers stroke her breast with a feathery touch, testing the waters. It was now or never.

 

Tish bit down on Peter’s fat lower lip. Hard. Warm blood sprayed onto their faces, and she mashed her cheek against him and held on tight. Peter bellowed in pain and fought to disentangle himself. He shoved her away and leaped to his feet. His chin was a messy cherry river dripping onto his shirt.

 

“You crazy bitch!” he shouted.

 

“Get the hell away from me, Peter,” Tish told him calmly.

 

He ripped open the guest room door. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

 

Tish watched him go as she dabbed smears of blood from her face onto the sleeve of her white dress.

 

She was thinking:
I’ve got you
.

 

 

 

 

Two hours later, a noise woke Tish out of a dead sleep in her condominium.

 

She bolted up in bed, the blanket bunching at her waist. She listened to sounds from the open window, where surf slapped at the base of the bluff. The air horn of a truck blared on the freeway. That was all.

 

She climbed out of bed and grabbed her robe from the closet. Her white dress was wrapped in plastic on the shelf.

 

She stopped. Waited.

 

A few seconds later, she heard it again. Sharp and musical. From somewhere outside came the sound of glass breaking.

 

Tish ran into the main room of the condo and hunted for her phone. The room was black with shadows. She was alone, no one lying in wait for her, no one charging her out of the corners. She didn’t hear the noise again.

 

A car peeled away on the street, its loud engine growing faint as it roared toward the curve leading back to the city. Tish crept to the front door and peered through the spyhole. Outside, the sidewalk and street were quiet. She opened the door carefully and watched tendrils of fog drift through the glow of the streetlight. When she stepped outside, sweat began to grow on her skin like a fungus.

 

Nothing moved.

 

The pavement scratched her bare feet. She took tentative steps toward the curb. When she saw her rental car, parked near the trees, she ran.

 

Half of the windshield was caved in, the other half frosted with starbursts of white glass. Scissor-sharp popcorn littered the seats. Jammed between the spokes of the steering wheel was a wooden baseball bat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

23
___________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The asphalt in the parking lot of the delivery company where Finn Mathisen worked was wet, with steam rising from pools of water. Rain showers had dodged in and out of the city all day, leaving behind a moldy smell of worms. The humid air made Stride’s black T-shirt cling to his skin, and the charcoal sport coat he wore over it felt damp. A line of sweat traced his forehead. It was Friday night. He wanted to go home and jump in the shower, but Finn was an hour late returning from his delivery route.

 

The parking lot was filled with cars left by delivery drivers for the day. Vans and trucks backed up to docks around him, loading and unloading. The company substation was less than a mile from the Duluth airport, making it easy to feed packages to outbound flights. He heard the thunder of a jet overhead, which he knew was the evening Northwest flight from the Twin Cities. It would suck up passengers and cargo and then roar back south.

 

A dirty yellow van rumbled off the highway. Stride caught a glimpse of the driver and recognized the narrow face and shaved head of Finn Mathisen. Finn didn’t see him. Stride waited while Finn backed up his truck to an open dock and watched him clamber out of the truck, climb the steps
of the platform, and disappear inside the building. Even from twenty yards away, Stride could see that Finn’s uniform was soiled from a day in the heat. These were the days in Duluth that leached away everyone’s energy.

 

Stride waited half an hour before Finn strutted out of the building’s front door. He had showered and changed and was now wearing cutoffs that made his legs look like matchsticks and a gray tank top with gaping sleeve holes. He wore old sneakers with no socks.

 

“Finn,” Stride called.

 

He pushed off his Expedition and met Finn where the sidewalk ended and the parking lot began. Finn was three inches taller than Stride, but he looked as if he would blow away when the wind came off the lake.

 

“Who are you?” Finn asked. His eyes danced nervously.

 

Stride introduced himself. When Finn heard the word “police,” he shuffled his weight from one foot to the other and stared over Stride’s shoulder at the row of parked cars as if he wanted to bolt. Mint breathed out of Finn’s mouth like fire from a dragon.

 

“You got a date tonight, Finn?” Stride asked.

 

“Huh? No. What do you mean?”

 

“You’ve got sweet breath. Like you brushed your teeth fifty or sixty times.”

 

“I have halitosis, and I need to use those breath strips,” Finn said.

 

Stride nodded. “It’s funny, when traffic cops smell mint, they immediately think DUI. You wouldn’t be late because you stopped for a couple cold ones at a bar, would you?”

 

Finn glanced back over his shoulder at the company door. “Hell, no.”

 

“I’ve got a Breathalyzer in the car,” Stride told him. “You want to have a go at it?”

 

“I wasn’t drinking!”

 

“Okay, Finn. Whatever you say. I have some questions for you.”

 

“Yeah, my sister told me you came by the house. She said you were asking about Laura’s murder.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“I don’t want to talk about it. It was thirty years ago. It was a shitty time in my life.”

 

“Is your life any better now?” Stride asked, eyeing the man from top to bottom. Tish was right. He looked as if he were dying.

 

Finn flinched. “Yeah, all right, I’ve spent my life sitting in a park with God flying overhead crapping on me. Is that what you want to hear? I’m a loser.”

 

“What I want to hear is whether you told Tish the truth.”

 

“Man, what do you care? I mean, what are you after? Everyone from back then is old or dead.”

 

That was true. Stride didn’t really have an answer. He hadn’t asked himself why he cared so passionately about this case, thirty years after Ray Wallace called it solved. It wasn’t about Tish. It wasn’t about Pat Burns asking him to turn over rocks, in case the national press started asking questions. He had begun to realize that Laura’s murder had changed the course of his life, and it was disturbing to discover that he knew much less about the case—and about Laura—than he had ever believed.

 

“If the guy who killed Laura is alive, then he still has a debt to pay,” Stride said.

 

“You don’t need to be behind bars to pay a price. You think living with something like that for thirty years doesn’t eat you up?”

 

“Is there something you feel guilty about?” Stride asked.

 

Finn swallowed hard. “I just want to go home. I don’t want to get involved.”

 

“Talk to me, Finn.”

 

“I already told the whole story to Tish.”

 

“I don’t like getting stories secondhand. Tell me again.”

 

Finn rubbed sweat off his bald head. “All right, all right.” He repeated his memories of the night Laura was killed in the park, which followed the story as Tish had recounted it. He skimmed over the details, but Stride let him continue without interrupting him. Finn ended with his claim that Dada had followed Laura into the woods, leaving the bat in the softball field.

 

“Is it possible you misunderstood what was happening between Laura and the boy in the field?” Stride asked.

 

“What do you mean, misunderstood?”

 

“Maybe they weren’t fighting. Maybe they were making out.”

 

Finn shook his head. “No way.”

 

“You’re certain that the black guy, Dada, left the baseball bat in the field?” Stride asked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“How can you be so sure?”

 

“I saw him throw it away, okay?”

 

“What else do you remember?” Stride asked.

 

“Nothing. I don’t remember a thing.”

 

Stride watched Finn’s eyes. The man was lying.

 

“You told Tish there are gaps in your memory,” Stride said.

 

“There are gaps in my life,” Finn replied.

 

“Sometimes people aren’t sure what’s real and what’s a dream, you know what I mean? Are there things like that?”

 

“I said I don’t remember, okay? Nothing means nothing.”

 

But it didn’t. Finn was keeping something from him. Stride was sure of it.

 

“Why were you following Laura?” he asked.

 

“I liked her.”

 

“Did you follow her to the park?”

 

“No, she wandered by. Her and her sister.”

 

“Did you know someone was stalking Laura? Threatening her? Sending her obscene messages?”

 

“No,” Finn replied.

 

“It wasn’t you?”

 

“No, I wouldn’t do that. All I did was follow her.”

 

“You knew Laura pretty well, didn’t you? Why not tell her you were there? Why spy on her?”

 

Finn opened his mouth and closed it. “I don’t know,” he muttered.

 

“Is that the best you can do?”

 

“I didn’t—I mean—I just liked to watch her. I was embarrassed.”

 

Stride nodded. “Is any of this story true, Finn?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Your sister says you weren’t in the park at all that night.”

 

Finn shook his head. “Rikke doesn’t think I can fight my own battles. I’m still just a kid to her.”

 

“So she lied.”

 

“Hey, she said we were watching fireworks, right? Well, you were there that night. It stormed. There weren’t any fireworks.”

 

Stride remembered. Finn was right.

 

“Why would she say that?” Stride asked.

 

“To protect me.”

 

“Do you need protection?”

 

“Back then, yeah, I probably did.”

 

“Did you kill Laura?”

 

“No.”

 

“How do you know? You said you don’t remember a thing. You said Dada left without the bat, and the boy who attacked Laura was unconscious in the softball field. That leaves you and the bat, Finn. Maybe you picked it up. Maybe you did what you’d been doing all night. You followed Laura to the north beach.”

 

Finn squeezed his head with big hands. His fingernails were chewed and bloody. “No.”

 

“How do you know?” Stride repeated.