Stalked

by Brian Freeman

  Stride handed her money. “Are you Katrina?”

  She nodded. “Katrina Kuli. I own the place, I run the place, I book the music, I bus the tables when my students don’t show up, which is half the time.”

  “Cool spot,” he said.

  “And you look like an expert on cool,” she told him, clucking her tongue. “What’s your name? Joe Friday? Bob Thursday? Tom Monday?”

  “It’s Jonathan Stride.”

  “Well, well.” Katrina folded her arms across her ample chest. “I see it, yes, I do see it.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “Maggie Sorenson is a friend of mine,” she told him. “I’ve had to listen to a lot of stories about you.”

  “I’m sure none of them was flattering.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Katrina frowned as her memory caught up with her. “How is Maggie?”

  “Not good.”

  “I hear she’s been suspended.”

  “She’s on paid leave while we investigate this thing.”

  “I don’t believe she could have done what they say.”

  Stride didn’t want to go down that road. “How do you know her?”

  “We met in an aerobic dance class last year.”

  He had a good poker face, but a twitch of his lips betrayed him, and Katrina caught it immediately.

  “What, you think big girls don’t dance?” she asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “Let me tell you, big girls do everything, and we could teach lessons to some of those pretzel sticks in the girlie magazines. It ain’t how much you got, it’s what you do with it.”

  He held up his palms, surrendering. “You win. Can we talk?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Katrina waved a hand at a skinny boy with greasy black hair, who was slumped in a chair near the store’s fireplace with a dog-eared copy of Ulysses. “Billy, watch the counter for me, okay?”

  The kid grunted without looking up.

  Katrina led Stride to a raised platform that doubled as a matchbox stage when bands visited the shop. The chairs wobbled as they sat down, and the table shifted unsteadily on its legs when Stride put his elbows down to lean closer to Katrina. Her breath smelled like berry tea. When he was near her face, he noticed caked-on makeup covering purplish bruises on her cheekbones and neck, and a scabbed gash poking like a worm out of the collar of her shirt.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  Katrina shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “That’s not nothing,” Stride told her.

  “I slipped on the ice. Luckily, my tits broke the fall, or it would have been a lot worse.”

  “Did you cut yourself on the ice, too?”

  “I think there was a piece of glass, yeah.” She covered the gash with her hand.

  “It looks like someone beat you up.”

  “I don’t really care what it looks like.”

  “I’m not trying to pry. I just don’t like it when husbands or boyfriends use their women as punching bags.”

  “Well, I don’t have either one. Okay? Now what do you want?”

  “Sonia Bezac at the dress shop sent me down here.”

  Katrina’s eyes flashed with anger. “What the hell did she tell you?”

  “Just that you might know something about Tanjy Powell.”

  “Oh.” Katrina slumped.

  “Do you know Tanjy?”

  “Speaking of girlie pretzel sticks,” Katrina replied, sticking out her tongue.

  “So that’s a yes.”

  “Sure, I’m in Silk a lot, so I see her there. Sonnie gets me decked out when I’m headed down to the Cities for a weekend of clubbing.” She read Stride’s expression and said, “Do I have to give you my big girls speech again?”

  “No.”

  “Good. It’s not funny, you know, the way people treat us plus sizes. And it’s not just men. Women are the worst. Girls like Tanjy, they look at me like I’m some kind of freak.”

  “You’re sure it’s not the belly button ring, the tie-dye, and the tattoo?” he said.

  “Okay, yeah, I may look like a freak sometimes. Hell, I am a freak and proud of it. But put me in a short skirt on the dance floor, and I can rock it out. Some women act all disgusted. Well, fuck ’em, I am who I am. I’m not going to walk around in a muumuu just because I was born with fat genes and I like to eat.”

  “I can see why you and Maggie get along,” Stride said.

  “Yeah, Maggie’s got a foul little mouth on her. I love that. For a pretzel stick, she’s not half-bad.”

  “What about Tanjy?”

  Katrina growled. “Now there’s a bitch. Slinks around the shop like she’s better than everyone else. Always has her face stuck in a Bible, and then you find out she likes to get tied up and nasty. Fucking hypocrite.”

  “Does she come in here a lot?”

  “Oh, yeah, she gets a cuppa almost every day. Treats me like I’m the hired help. And what the hell is she? Like she’s anything more than a salesclerk herself?”

  “When did you last see her?”

  Katrina took hold of her pigtails and wiggled them like antennae. “I do that when I need to think. Helps focus the brain waves.” She thought for a moment and said, “I guess it was Monday.”

  “Was she here with anyone else?”

  “No, she came in, got a cup to go, and left.”

  “When was that?”

  “Oh, shit, I don’t remember. Sometime in the afternoon.”

  “How did she look?”

  Katrina rubbed her nose with the back of her palm. “Same as usual, I guess. Same stuck-up, bitchy attitude.”

  “Was she upset? Agitated?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  Stride tried to puzzle out the time line. Tanjy left Silk to get coffee and came back half an hour later, visibly shaken. That evening, she disappeared. Why?

  “Did you see where she went?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you see her talking to anyone?”

  “Negatory.”

  “Did you know Maggie’s husband?” he asked.

  “Eric? Yeah.”

  “Did you ever see Eric and Tanjy together?”

  “Nope.” Katrina stuck a fingernail in her mouth and chewed on it.

  “You look nervous,” Stride said.

  Katrina didn’t reply.

  “Was something going on with Eric?”

  “How would I know?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Katrina fidgeted in her chair. “I don’t know anything about Eric.”

  “When did you last see him?” he asked.

  “He was in on Monday, too,” Katrina told him.

  Stride’s face hardened. “Were Eric and Tanjy together?”

  “No.” She saw the disbelief in his eyes and added, “Hey, it’s true. They weren’t together. Eric came in about ten minutes after Tanjy left.”

  After leaving the coffee shop, Stride headed for the branch of Range Bank across the street and asked the head of security to queue up the tapes from the bank’s ATM camera on Monday afternoon. He sat alone in a windowless office, watching the grainy tape roll. The video was in black-and-white, but Duluth in January was like a black-and-white movie anyway. He sat under the fluorescent light, not moving a muscle, watching pedestrians come and go in silence on the tape.

  At five minutes after three o’clock, he watched Tanjy Powell disappear inside the door of Java Jelly. Three minutes later, she came out again with a tall cup of coffee in her hand. It was odd, seeing her again in the flesh, looking as cool and mysterious as ever. She sipped her coffee, and he could imagine the warmth of the liquid on her lips. She was dressed in a black wool coat that draped to her ankles, and she had a velvet pillbox hat nestled on her head. It was white leopard, with a matching scarf. Her raven hair flowed from under the hat and skittered across her face like streaks of chocolate skimming across the surface of espresso foam.

  His view was blocked as an old man approach
ed the ATM. His face filled the camera. Stride swore, trying to see behind him. He caught a glimpse of Tanjy turning away from the coffee shop, but in the opposite direction from Silk. He wanted to reach in and move the man out of the way.

  Where was she going?

  Stride fumed as nearly two minutes passed. Finally, the old man took his card and disappeared, and the camera offered an unobstructed view across Superior Street. He caught his breath. Tanjy was there, nestled against the side of a building.

  Eric was with her.

  He was wearing a dark suit, but no coat. His long blond hair blew wildly in the wind. The two of them were so close as to be nearly kissing. Eric spoke animatedly, clutching Tanjy’s shoulder with one hand. Suddenly, she turned away, and she stared right at the camera, as if she were looking straight at Stride across the street. Her hands flew to her mouth in a look of sheer horror.

  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

  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.