In the Dark (31 page)

 

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

 

“Excuse me?”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“What is it?”

 

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

 

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

 

“Are you still there, Mr. Stride?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Does that message mean something to you?”

 

“You know it does.”

 

“Will you come to Chicago?”

 

Serena looked at Jonny, puzzled.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“To chase a stranger?”

 

“To chase Dada,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31
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I don’t like small planes,” Maggie announced, strapping herself into the white leather seat of Peter Stanhope’s Learjet 25. She tightened the seat belt until it nearly cut off the blood flow across her tiny waist. “Does this thing have oxygen masks? I bet you have to use little nose plugs.”

 

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

 

“I am rich,” Maggie reminded her.

 

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

 

“Because I don’t like small planes!”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“I have my iPod, too. Martina.”

 

“Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

 

“Alan Jackson.”

 

“White Zombie.”

 

“Shania.”

 

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

 

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

 

Maggie stuck out her tongue.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“This sucks,” Maggie told her.

 

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

 

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

 

“You won’t know until you try.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“I can’t have kids.”

 

“I mean adoption.”

 

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

 

“Do you think you’re missing something?”

 

“Sometimes.”

 

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

 

“Then you should do it.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Ole and Lena?”

 

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

 

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

 

“Clever.”

 

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

 

“You are a sick woman,” Serena said.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Serena nodded. “Right.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Chasing wild geese,” Maggie said.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“How old is your husband?”

 

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

 

“May we talk to her?” Serena asked.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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