Stalked (13 page)

Eric pulled her back and said something more to her. Tanjy shook her head violently. She yanked away and hurried down the street away from him. He saw Eric call after her. Once, then twice. When she was gone, Eric stood there on the frigid street, alone, looking like some kind of Norse god. He shook his head and walked toward the coffee shop and went inside. He came back out again with a cup of coffee himself and headed in the opposite direction, his head down, his hair waving behind him. He walked until he vanished out of view of the camera.

Stride let the tape go. More people wandered by. Everyone was in a rush, trying to escape from the cold.

He pulled out his cell phone. His fingers hesitated over the keys, but then he dialed.

“Abel? It’s Stride. We need to talk.”

Fifteen minutes before midnight, Serena climbed from lake level up the sharp incline that twisted like a Chinese dragon through a series of tight switchbacks. She was driving Stride’s Bronco, its four-wheel drive clutching at the pavement. Her high beams illuminated the neighborhood. She was in the narrow greenway of Congdon Park, one of the richest areas of the city, on a secluded street that didn’t invite visitors. Grand homes lit up like monuments as her headlights swept across them, and then they vanished again into the shadows. The gated driveways were closed and locked, alarm systems on, lights extinguished.

This was a city with almost no middle class. You were rich, or you were poor, and never the twain shall meet.

She drove slowly, unsure of her directions, and almost missed the sign pointing her toward the cemetery. She followed Vermillion Road, and a few hundred yards later, the street became a rutted dirt track. The land opened up around her. Fir trees hugged the road, and beyond them, she could see slopes glowing in the moonlight and rows of silhouetted headstones. The area was primitive and empty, as if she had left the city miles behind her.

Serena slowed the Bronco to a crawl. On a stretch of straightaway, she saw a stake jutting at an angle out of the snow on the right shoulder. A white piece of cloth was tied around the stake and hung limply in the still air. She steered off the road and killed the engine, then got out and closed the door with a quiet
snick
. She stopped and listened. The night was silent, except for the rumble of a train far down in the port area below her. The clouds had passed away. Overhead, she saw a jumble of constellations and a slim moon. She took stock of the park around her. On her left was a steep hillside, and she could make out graves scattered among the trees. On her right was a tattered mesh fence mostly buried in snow. The cemetery continued beyond the fence, and she could see a plowed-out section of road where mourners could drive out to the plots.

She was dressed entirely in black: black jeans, a black turtleneck that nestled against her chin, and Stride’s beat-up black leather jacket that was warm and roomy. The jacket hid the holster for the Glock secured near her left shoulder. She wasn’t taking any chances. Not with a blackmailer. Not in an empty cemetery at midnight. And not with an envelope bulging with ten thousand dollars in cash inside the jacket pocket.

The snow was matted down. She climbed the shoulder of the road and then stepped over the crooked section of fence. On the other side, her feet landed in wetter, deeper snow, and some of it got into her boots. She felt cold dampness soaking through her socks. She slogged through the snow and broke free onto the plowed road, where she stopped again. The trees loomed around her like sentinels. Most were evergreens, but there were a few stripped oaks, barren of leaves. She took careful steps, trying to hush her footfalls. She slipped a flashlight out of her pocket and cast the beam around, lighting up several headstones. She read the names: Boe, Beckmann, Anderson.

Serena wasn’t superstitious by nature, but a sixth sense made her jump. She wasn’t alone.

“Turn off the flashlight.”

Something about the voice made her body melt with fear, as if she were a frightened teenager. She thought about reaching for her gun, but she soothed herself and swallowed hard. Her mouth was dry. She switched off the light, and her eyes, accustomed to the beam, went blind again.

“Come closer.”

She waited until she could see. He quickly became impatient.

“
Now
.”

Serena saw a silhouette near one of the skeletal oak trees. She drew near him, feeling the weight of the gun on her left side comfort her. Somewhere not far away, a dog bayed like a banshee. Its howl was plaintive and scared, and the sound reminded her that the rest of the world wasn’t so far away. But no one was close enough to make a difference if things went bad.

She tried to make him out and narrowed her eyes, squinting. He was standing where the ground rose above her. He had a bulky coat with a fur hood pulled up over his head. His face was invisible. His arms hung down at his side, long, like ape limbs. She realized that he held things in both hands that made his arms look as if they dropped all the way to his knees. His left hand held a heavy flashlight. His right hand held a gun.

“Seen enough?” he asked.

Meaning: had she seen the gun?

He switched on the flashlight and directed the intense beam at her face. She felt a sharp pain as the light hit her pupils, and she covered her face and backed away.

“Turn that off, you son of a bitch,” she snapped.

He laughed in a low, deep rumble and switched the light off.

“Let’s get this over with,” Serena said. “Neither one of us wants to be out here long.”

“You mean you want to get back into bed with your cop lover?”

Serena let a few seconds of cold silence pass. “So you know who I am. Am I supposed to be scared?”

“I think you are.”

“Big words from a blackmailer. Blackmailers are cowards. You can’t let me see your face. You steal someone’s secrets and pretend it makes you a big man. Stealing secrets is what little girls do.”

He didn’t answer right away, and then he said, “I could tell you what I do to little girls.”

“What, do you dress up like them?”

“Watch your mouth,” he said.

“I’m not afraid of a pissant blackmailer. Do you want the money or not?”

“Did you count it?”

“Yes.”

“Ten thousand?”

“Yes.”

“I hope you didn’t do something stupid like mark the bills or write down the serial numbers. Or tell your cop lover about this.”

“I guess you’ll have to take your chances,” Serena said.

“So will you. Don’t forget that.”

“You’re taking a big risk, blackmailing someone like Dan,” she told him.

“Yeah? People like Dan pay me because they keep one face for the world and one face for all the fucking games they play when no one’s watching. You don’t
know
the shit that goes down in this town. You and your cop lover, you’re blind.”

“So it’s not just Dan,” Serena concluded. “Who else are you doing this to?”

“Like I said, some people around here have dirty secrets.”

Serena reached inside her jacket pocket.

“Stop,” he snapped, instantly raising his gun, pointing it at her head.

“I’m getting your money.”

He blinded her with the flashlight again. “Slowly. Use two fingers. Don’t be stupid.”

She extracted the envelope and held it up. “See?”

“Put it on the headstone and back away.”

She saw a stone encrusted with dead moss near her feet. It slanted backward toward the ground. The name, partly eroded by time, read BURNS. She lay the envelope on the arched summit of the marker and backed up slowly.

“That’s far enough,” he called when she was another fifteen feet away. “Turn around. Get on your knees.”

“No way.”

“
Get on your knees
.”

“I’m not turning my back on you.”

“Just do it.”

She sank to her knees in the snow. The wetness soaked through her jeans. “Make it fast.”

He kept the flashlight in her face. She couldn’t see a thing and had to close her eyes. She heard him slide down the low slope. The snow crunched under his boots as he came closer. Her bare hands stiffened in the cold, and she fluttered her fingers to limber them up, in case she needed to dive into her coat for her gun. He was at the headstone. She heard him ruffling through the cash in the envelope.

She waited for what he would do next. She listened carefully for any footstep that meant he was walking toward her.

“See you soon,” he said.

The white light disappeared behind her eyelids. She opened her eyes, blinking, seeing nothing but aftershocks of light. She heard footsteps heading away from her. He was jogging as he retreated up the hillside. When she could finally see again, she caught only a fleeting glimpse of a moving silhouette, and then it blended into darkness with the rest of the trees.

She was alone.

Serena pushed herself to her feet and brushed the snow away. She climbed back up to the fence by the road and stepped over it again. Her breathing was loud and fast. Her pulse was galloping like a Thoroughbred. Stride’s Bronco had never looked so good.

Closer by, the dog howled again. It was loose. Or maybe it was a prowling wolf, not a dog at all. She didn’t want to stick around and find out.

Serena’s body was ice-cold when she slid under the fleece blanket into bed an hour later. Frosty air breathed on her face and bare shoulders through a crack in the window. The bedroom was small, like the other matchbox rooms in the old house, which had no foundation underneath it, just wooden pilings that made the floors slant like a carnival fun house. The room had a comforting, musty smell about it, a smell of age and the sea that had long ago taken up residence deep in its timbers. She often woke up to that smell and heard odd noises in the night, as if ghosts were passing from room to room.

She had spent much of the past year haunting antique shops along the North Shore to pick up cherry wood dressers, throw rugs, and old nautical equipment. She was surprised at how much she enjoyed the contrast to her condominium in Las Vegas, which was stark and modern, done in blacks and whites, with her photographs of bitterroot and landscapes of the jagged Mojave hills on the walls. It was an emotionless place, and that was how she wanted it then. Since meeting Jonny, though, she had been flooded by emotions, and she was getting better now at managing the demons from her past, letting them out without feeling that they could control her. That was one of the reasons she enjoyed the antique quality of this house. She wanted a sense of the past again, which she had blocked out for years. When she held a clock from the early 1900s in her hands, she could feel all the people who had owned it and touched it.

She molded herself against Jonny in bed. She knew from his breathing that he was awake. He hadn’t said a word as she came into the bedroom, bringing the chill of the night with her, and quickly stripped. When she slid her fingers between his legs, she felt him stir.

“Do you know how cold that hand is?” he murmured.

“Sorry.”

“I’m not complaining.”

Serena kissed him. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

“Not when you’re out on a job at midnight.”

“I’m okay.”

“You took your gun,” he said.

“It was just a precaution.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“I can’t say anything,” Serena said.

“Even in the box?”

“Not yet.”

Stride turned his head toward her and opened his eyes. Serena could see he was troubled.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He pushed himself up in bed until he was sitting. “I found out that Eric was involved with Tanjy Powell. I had to tell Abel Teitscher about it.”

“So you’re off the case again.”

Stride nodded.

“Did Abel tell you anything about the investigation?”

“I pried a couple of things out of him,” Stride said.

“Like what?”

“The most intriguing thing was that Eric went to see Tony Wells the night he died,” Stride said.

Serena propped herself on one elbow and brushed her hair back out of her face. “Tony? Why?”

“Tony can’t say. Privilege.”

“Was Eric getting therapy?”

“Abel doesn’t think so.”

“But Maggie was.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think Tony knows something about Eric’s murder?” Serena asked.

“I do, and I think he wants to help, but he can’t talk unless Maggie says it’s okay.”

“That’s a no-brainer if it clears her of murder.”

“You’d think so, but the question is, what’s Maggie hiding?” Stride said. “Something’s going on that she wants to keep secret.”

“I have an appointment with Tony tomorrow morning. Maybe I can get something out of him.”

“Not likely. Not if it involves a patient.”

“Tell me about Tanjy,” Serena said.

“As far as I can tell, she left her place at ten o’clock on Monday night. She took her car, and that’s the last anyone saw of her.”

“Did you get any hits on the car?”

“No, we’ve got alerts on it all over the five-state area, and the media has picked up on it, too. So far, nothing. There hasn’t been any activity on her credit cards or bank accounts. Her cell phone hasn’t been used since Monday night.” He added, “I did find several calls to Eric over the last few weeks.”

“Do you know what was going on between them?”

“Abel thinks it was an affair.”

“Could Tanjy have killed Eric?”

“That was my first thought, but there isn’t any evidence that she did.”

“Except you say she’s unstable,” Serena said. “Maybe even violent.”

“She’s a strange girl.” He waited several beats and then added, “Look, don’t take this the wrong way. I’m just trying to understand who Tanjy was, so help me out here. Do women really fantasize about rape?”

Serena froze. She rolled away. “That’s an ugly question.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“You know what Blue Dog and my mother did to me in Phoenix.”