Alter Ego

by Brian Freeman

  And then, cutting through all of that, she heard a tiny flutter of wings and a greeting from the darkness of the cage.

  Hey there.

  Like a good angel, a chickadee landed on the bars next to Aimee’s face and began to sing.

  48

  “You don’t have to drive me all this way,” Cab said to Maggie. “I can afford a cab, you know. Catch-a-Cab Bolton, that’s me.”

  Maggie shrugged behind the wheel of her Avalanche. It was late afternoon, and the sun already had set. They were on I-35 heading south out of Duluth toward the Minneapolis airport. Cab’s flight to Fort Myers was in four hours. She glanced in her rearview mirror at the highway behind her, which she shared with only one other vehicle. The storm had loosened its grip, but the roads were quiet.

  “Admit it,” she said. “You’re afraid of my driving.”

  “Terrified.”

  “Well, buckle up, buttercup,” she replied with a grin.

  Maggie passed the Grand Avenue exit. Not long afterward, she could see Mort Greeley’s house in the valley on the left side of the freeway. There were still police cars outside. She continued up the hill. Spirit Mountain loomed ahead of them; it was perfect skiing weather. Cab stared through the windows, and neither of them knew what to say. They had two hours alone in the car together, but she figured they would need all of it to figure out what came next between them. That was mostly because she was certain they would avoid the subject altogether until she was dropping him off at the curb at Terminal 1. Neither she nor Cab was an expert at emotions.

  “So your mother released a statement?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes, Tarla said she regretted not having come forward sooner to tell everyone about Dean Casperson. She wished she would have saved other women the trauma she’d gone through.”

  “Except it wouldn’t have done that,” Maggie said. “Dean would have destroyed her career and gone on abusing other women just the way he did.”

  “You’re right, but I was pleased to see Tarla say it.”

  Maggie tried to keep the truck inside the lane, but the white line went in and out of view as she steered with one hand and snaked her other hand onto Cab’s knee. She glanced in the rearview mirror again.

  “I really am sorry about Peach,” she told him.

  “Thanks.”

  “She didn’t suffer. That’s something.”

  “I know.”

  They’d found the scene of the crime in the daylight. Guppo had led the search behind the Hermantown apartments. They’d located a spruce tree thirty feet inside the dense woods that bore the red-black sheen of frozen blood. That was where John Doe had killed her.

  “You’ll probably have to come back here for the trial,” Maggie said.

  “Assuming there is one. I think Jack will make a deal.”

  “Maybe so.”

  That took them through another mile. They were nearly to the exit for the town of Proctor.

  “Have you ever thought about moving?” Cab asked with a suddenness that shocked her. She hadn’t expected him to be so blunt.

  “What do you mean?”

  “To Florida. I need another investigator. Obviously, you’re very good at what you do, and it goes without saying that you and I have chemistry.”

  “Leave Duluth? I’ve never even thought about it.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  Maggie did.

  She thought about her life in Duluth, which had occupied all of her memories for twenty years. She thought about Stride, Guppo, and Serena. And about Stride again. She thought about the heat of Florida and the Gulf waters and being in bed with Cab. She thought about all of that in five seconds, and then she said, “No. Sorry.”

  “I figured you’d say that,” Cab told her, “but it never hurts to ask.”

  “Duluth is my home. Florida’s a nice place to visit, though. I like the amenities down there.”

  “You should come back and see it sometime,” Cab said. “Maybe Troy and the girls would enjoy a vacation there. Magic Kingdom. Universal. Gatorland.”

  Maggie shot him a sideways look. He was teasing her, but he was right. She had unfinished business with Troy. And she was smart enough to know that Cab had unfinished business of his own. What they’d shared was simply the right interlude at the right time for both of them.

  “So do you have someone picking you up at the airport tonight?” she asked. “Since you don’t have your new Corvette yet.”

  Cab waited a beat to reply. “Lala’s meeting me, actually.”

  “Ah. Mosquito. She’s taking you home?”

  “Yes. She wants an update on everything that happened here.”

  “I bet she does,” Maggie said.

  “It’s not romantic.”

  “No, of course not.”

  She winked at Cab because she didn’t believe him. Then she glanced in the rearview mirror again.

  At first, she’d assumed she was mistaken, but she wasn’t. She made a snap decision. The exit for Highway 2 loomed in front of her, and she did a quick lane change to take the exit. Her eyes stayed on the mirror. Almost immediately, she turned left onto the frontage road. Then she made another right turn on a winding trail that took them up the hill.

  “Where are we going?” Cab asked with a puzzled look.

  “There’s a rest stop up here.”

  “Do you need to rest?”

  Maggie looked for the headlights. They were still behind her, right where they’d been since they’d left the city. As they climbed toward the Thompson Hill Information Center, the headlights climbed, too. It was a black SUV, but the windshield was tinted, and she couldn’t see inside.

  “Actually, I think we’re being followed,” Maggie said.

  *

  Stride was at a stoplight on Superior Street downtown when his phone rang. The number was unfamiliar, and the area code wasn’t local. He’d been getting media calls all day. He was tempted to ignore it, but he answered it anyway.

  “This is Stride,” he said.

  “Lieutenant, this is JoLynn Fields with the National Gazette.” The woman seemed to anticipate his reaction, and she rushed on before he could say anything. “I realize I’m not exactly flavor of the month for you right now.”

  “If you’re looking for another interview, Ms. Fields, you’re at the back of the line.”

  “Well, maybe I can change your mind.”

  “I don’t think so,” Stride replied.

  “I’m not coming to you empty-handed, Lieutenant. I’m talking about a quid pro quo. Hear me out.”

  Stride hesitated, letting the dead air stretch out on the call. He headed past the Fond-du-Luth Casino on his right. The turn toward Canal Park and the Point was two blocks away.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I find spies wherever I go,” JoLynn told him. “It’s part of how I get the information I need. One of my spies works at the Duluth Airport. He was getting off work this morning and noticed something unusual. A limo did a pickup at a private jet on the tarmac.”

  “We’ve had a lot of private jets coming into town today,” Stride said.

  “Yes, but my spy sent me photos. The woman getting off the plane was Mo Casperson.”

  The light at Lake Avenue turned green, but Stride stopped dead and waved the traffic around him. “You’re telling me that Mo is in Duluth?”

  “That’s right. I’ve spent most of the day trying to confirm it and find out where she is.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “She got a limo to the Sheraton downtown, where she rented a suite and then arranged for a black Lexus LX. She’s been holed up at the hotel most of the day, but she just left.”

  “Headed where?” Stride asked.

  “South on 35. That’s all I know. So how about that interview?”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Stride hung up as his phone buzzed. It was an incoming text from Maggie. Thompson Hill. 911.

  He jammed down the accelerator
on his Expedition, turned left, and shot onto the I-35 southbound ramp at high speed.

  *

  Maggie drove to the far end of the Thompson Hill parking lot and spun the Avalanche around so that her headlights faced the entry road. The rest stop was at the top of the hill. The dark Duluth sky stretched overhead, and the view overlooked the city and the lake below them. She saw two other cars parked near the tourist information building, but there were no people nearby.

  The Lexus SUV followed them slowly into the parking lot. It parked oddly far away on the other side of the lot. The two vehicles seemed to stare at each other through the gleam of their headlights. Maggie and Cab waited inside the Avalanche to see what would happen next.

  The door of the Lexus opened, and a woman got out.

  “Mo Casperson,” Cab said.

  Mo wore a sleek black leather overcoat that hugged her tall, slim body down to her ankles. Her hands were buried in the coat pockets. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses even in the gloom of dusk. Her golden hair was long and loose, flying in the hilltop wind. She walked in high heels in front of the Lexus and stood and stared at them from between the headlights.

  Maggie tapped out a quick message to Stride.

  Then she and Cab got out of the Avalanche. Maggie already had her pistol in her hand, and she leveled it at Mo at the end of her arms. The sight of the gun didn’t seem to bother Mo at all. She watched them take slow, careful steps in her direction, but they were separated by most of the parking lot. Maggie and Cab slowly converged from both sides of the Avalanche.

  “Hello, Cab,” Mo called.

  They both stopped where they were. Maggie didn’t lower her gun.

  “I’m surprised to see you here, Mo,” Cab replied. “I figured you’d be hiding out on an island somewhere.”

  “I never hide.”

  “No? Well, maybe you don’t appreciate the situation you and Dean are in.”

  “I appreciate it very well. Believe me. You must be proud of yourself. You and Tarla finally got what you wanted. You took down a great man.”

  Cab shook his head. “He’s a serial rapist. You’re the murderer who’s enabled him all these years. Truly, I don’t how you do it. I don’t know how you sit on your patio in Captiva and justify it to yourself.”

  “Dean made the world a better place,” Mo shot back. “Everything worth doing has a price.”

  Maggie still had her gun trained on Mo, who hadn’t moved at all from her position in front of the Lexus. “Mrs. Casperson, take your hands out of your pockets very slowly. I want to see your hands right now.”

  Mo made no effort to comply. She didn’t even look at Maggie, as if there were no more than the two of them in the parking lot. Her gaze was trained on Cab. He was the one she wanted.

  “Did you think there would be no consequences, Cab?” Mo called. “Did you think I would go down without a fight?”

  “Hands,” Maggie repeated, but Mo ignored her.

  “You’re the one facing consequences,” Cab said. “It’s called jail.”

  Maggie started walking again, step by step, across the parking lot. She felt the breeze blowing off the hill onto her face, and an American flag snapped and clanged on its pole near the information building. The standoff between them crackled with danger. She tried to guess the plan. The game. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew something was about to happen.

  “Oh, Cab,” Mo retorted with a nasty smile. “So naive. You forget that I’m much, much richer than you and Tarla.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I have the resources to do this.”

  Maggie’s Avalanche exploded.

  A cloud of hot flame billowed out of the truck, and shattered glass sprayed around them like bullets. The concussion wave lifted Maggie off the ground and threw her across the parking lot, where her body slammed into the pavement and rolled. Her gun bounced away. She was facedown. Her ears heard nothing, only silence. She pushed herself onto her elbows and watched red rain drip to the ground from her hair. It was blood. She got to her knees, but the world spun like a roulette wheel. The heat of the fire burned her cheek, and the black asphalt sparkled with diamonds.

  She shouted Cab’s name, but she couldn’t hear her own voice.

  Maggie crawled on the ground. The glass cut her hands. She shook her head to clear her brain. Cab was thirty feet away, lying on his back, with his arms and legs spread into an X. She shouted his name again, and she heard herself like an echo on the other side of a wide canyon. He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

  Untouched by the blast, Mo Casperson marched calmly across the parking lot. Her heels crunched on broken glass. She passed within a few feet of Maggie, and Maggie lurched upward to grab her but fell back as the world spun. Mo kicked Maggie’s gun away and headed straight for Cab. Her gloved hands emerged from her pockets. In one hand, she held a phone; in the other, she clutched a small revolver with a pink grip. She stood over Cab on the ground and dialed the phone.

  Maggie was too far away to do a thing. She heard Mo speaking, and it sounded no louder than a whisper in her head.

  “Tarla?” Mo said into the phone. “My dear, it’s Mo calling. Listen carefully. I wanted to congratulate you on destroying me and Dean. Job well done. I hope you’ll decide it was worth it, because the next sound you hear will be me putting a bullet into your son’s brain.”

  *

  Stride heard the explosion of the car bomb like a boom of thunder on the hillside above him. Black smoke rose in a thick column above the trees. He floored the accelerator, and his truck fishtailed as he sped up the Thompson Hill access road, which curved like the body of a snake.

  He wheeled into the parking lot and jammed the brakes. With his gun in his hand, he dived out of the driver’s door and ran. His eyes took in the flaming hulk of Maggie’s yellow Avalanche turning black, its hood bent in half, its windows open shells with a few fragments of frosted glass. The melted tires gave off a burned rubber smell. The smoke in his face made him squint.

  There were three people in the parking lot in front of him.

  Maggie crawled, screaming Cab’s name. Cab lay motionless on his back, his face and hands streaked with blood. Mo Casperson had her slim arm outstretched with the barrel of a revolver pointed at Cab’s head.

  “Freeze!” Stride shouted across the parking lot.

  He stopped dead, raising his pistol and aiming it at the dead center of Mo’s back. He steadied his wrist with his other hand. There was no more than twenty feet between them. “Put the gun down!”

  Mo’s arm was steady and straight. The hammer of her gun was cocked and ready, her finger on the trigger. Her head swiveled, and her honey hair swished. She stared at Stride with the disinterest of an A-lister bumping into an extra on the set.

  “Too late, Lieutenant,” she said.

  “Mo, put the gun down; you’re under arrest!”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she replied.

  She focused on Cab again. She was going to fire, so he fired first.

  Stride pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, four times, five times, six times. Every bullet hit Mo Casperson. She jerked with each shot; her arm flew up; her finger yanked back and sent a wild shot into the trees. Her knees sagged beneath her, and she slid straight down like a building imploding. She sank into a pile of black leather and golden hair next to Cab on the ground, her gun spilling from her open fingers.

  He ran to them and scooped up Mo’s gun and checked on Cab. The blond detective was unconscious, but his pulse was strong. Maggie, wobbling, staggered his way. He grabbed his phone to call for an ambulance, but he already could hear sirens below them on the southbound freeway.

  Maggie steadied herself by taking hold of Stride’s arm.

  “You should sit down,” he told her.

  “I’m all right. How’s Cab?”

  “He’s alive.”

  She watched her Avalanche burn to a crisp. “I can’t believe that bitch blew up my tru
ck.”

  “Yeah.”

  He stared down at Mo Casperson, whose eyes were wide open and fixed. Her blood made a lake under her body. She was already dead, but she stared back at him, as arrogant and condescending as ever. In his decades as a cop, he’d never taken a human life until that moment. The quality of the life didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that she’d given him no choice. He’d been the one to kill her. He’d been the one to pull the trigger.

  Stride didn’t have to bother memorizing her face. She was never going to go away. Mo’s eyes would be in his dreams for years to come.

  49

  Cab opened his eyes. He was certain he was either dreaming or hallucinating.

  “There you are, darling!” Tarla Bolton announced from the other side of the hospital room. “I’ve been here watching you sleep. I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re all right.”

  “You and me both,” Cab replied. “What are you doing here, Mother?”

  Tarla folded her arms across her chest with a look of annoyance. She was wearing skinny jeans and a red Duluth sweatshirt that was several sizes too large for her. Her long blond hair was pulled back and pinned behind her head, but several strands had made a break for freedom and spilled down her face. She looked perfect, as she always did.

  “What, you didn’t think I would hop on a plane immediately? I will be with you night and day until you are one hundred percent. Plan on my being your constant companion.”

  “Constant companion?” Cab asked. “Lucky me.”

  “Yes, don’t worry; I have everything planned. The doctors say you should be out of here in another day or two, and then we can fly back to Florida together. I’ve already made arrangements to move some of my things into your house in Naples.”

  “Into my house?”

  Now he really hoped he was dreaming.

  “Well, you’re not going to stay alone yet, obviously. I have everything I need to be with you for a month. After that, we’ll just take things as they come. Wawa offered to stay with you instead, but I told her I had everything under control.”