Stalked (23 page)

“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.

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.

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.