Stalked

by Brian Freeman

  “You have got to be kidding,” Sherry said.

  “Help me,” he said, jerking on the line, his jeans around his ankles, his shaft still ready for action.

  Sherry sighed. “That’s what I was trying to do.” She added, “Don’t let your thingy get sliced off, okay?”

  He battled the fish for several minutes, until it was close to the surface.

  “Take the pole,” he said. “Keep it pointed up.”

  “That’s what I was—oh, never mind.” She took the fishing rod and held it while Josh grabbed a pair of gloves and reached down into the hole.

  “Reel in some more line,” he told her.

  “What am I, Supergirl? This thing is heavy.”

  She cranked the reel, and the line wound in slowly. It felt as if she were pulling up a boat anchor on the other end.

  “Almost got it,” he said.

  Suddenly, Josh yelped. He unleashed a girlish scream and fell back on his ass. His erection deflated. With his hands on the ice, he scrabbled away from the hole. “Shit!”

  Something black bobbed out of the ice like a gopher in a carnival whack-a-mole game. Sherry cranked the reel and inched closer, repelled but curious. When she saw it, she screamed, too.

  Matted black hair danced up and down at her feet. The smell, released out of the water, was rank; she covered her face. Invisible gases fouled the air. She watched through slitted fingers and saw a human head now, snow-white and hideously swollen, peeking above the ice. More of the body was trapped below. Mud and weeds clung to its skin. Its eyes were open but cloudy, like marbles. Its mouth was slightly open, and the splashing and sucking of the water made it sound as if it were talking. As if it were alive when it was obviously dead. The head said over and over, “Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out.”

  PART TWO

  ALPHA GIRLS

  TWENTY

  Helen Danning could see her reflection in the window of the gift shop, and every few seconds, her face lit up like the glow of a wild fire as northbound traffic off the highway shot their twin beams through the glass. To Helen, the car lights were like the white tunnels of searchlights, wending back and forth across a field, hunting for her. When a car slowed and pulled off the road, she flinched. The headlights grew huge in the window as the car parked outside the shop, and Helen pushed her chair back and got up, leaving a half-drunk chai tea and her white Mac laptop open on the cast-iron table. She backed up between the oak shelves, which were stocked with Yankee candles and potpourri.

  The shop door opened, and Helen felt as if the night were spilling inside. A burst of chill made her shiver. She glanced at the corridor leading to Evelyn’s stockroom, where a back door butted up to frozen cornfields. Irrationally, she wanted to run, but she saw that the people coming into the shop were harmless. A man in a Minnesota State Fair sweatshirt ordered two coffees from Evelyn at the counter, while his wife browsed the sale-priced Christmas ornaments. Helen ducked her head and kept her face hidden.

  She waited until their car was back on the highway before she sat down at the table again. When she took a sip of her sweet tea, her fingers were trembling. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and continued the methodical work on her laptop, opening each of the entries in her blog and erasing them. Her slim finger hovered over the Delete key as she reread a posting about the show Miss Saigon. She had seen the show dozens of times, as she had seen most musicals that came through the Ordway Center in Saint Paul. As an usher, she saw the performances night after night, and she could spot the nuances in every actor, song, costume, and set. She lived the shows almost as if they were more real than her own life. Some people became obsessed with soap operas, but Helen’s obsession was Phantom, Les Miz, Rent, and all the other touring shows that ran over and over on the stage. Her blog was her outlet to pour out her thoughts about the characters.

  She called her blog “The Lady in Me.” She had come across a Shania Twain CD called The Woman in Me years earlier and bought it because she liked the title. The phrase became a kind of anthem to her. It summed up what she had lost in college and what she had been searching for her whole life. She even had the initials TLIM tattooed on her ankle, like a secret message she carried with her.

  She didn’t realize back then that she was making a mistake, that someone who wanted to find her could figure out who she was and where she worked by carefully reading the posts to her blog. She had just never dreamed that anyone would want to find her.

  Helen looked up as the piano music playing overhead stopped. The gift shop went silent.

  “Time to run, honeybun,” Evelyn called. She was closing up the shop, cleaning out the coffeepot, toting up the register. Evelyn always seemed to do five things at once. She didn’t walk. She bustled.

  Helen shut down her laptop and waited. Evelyn was right. It was time to run, and that was what Helen was doing. Running.

  With a flounce, Evelyn sat down in the chair opposite Helen. She had poured herself the dregs of the coffee. She took a sip and pushed her unruly, squirrel-colored curls out of her face. Under the table, she kicked off her Birkenstocks and wiggled her toes.

  “How about we go home and feed Edgar?” Evelyn asked.

  “Sure.”

  “You know, you’re like my cat,” she said, noticing Helen’s nervous green eyes. “She’s more scared of birds than the birds are of her.”

  “Every time someone comes in, I think it’s going to be him,” Helen told her.

  “I understand.”

  “I promise I won’t be in your hair too much longer.”

  Evelyn shrugged. “Stay as long as you like. We don’t do it often enough, honeybun. What’s it been? A couple years? The last few days have been like college, ordering pizza and chugging down cheap wine. Makes me forget all this gray hair.”

  In addition to running the gift shop, Evelyn was a painter, poet, and gardener, who lived alone in an old house on five acres near the Mississippi in rural Little Falls. They had been best friends since their days as roommates at the U of M. Several times, Evelyn had invited Helen to join her in the small central Minnesota town, but Helen was scared of open places, nervous about emptiness. She liked the anonymity of the city, where she could lose herself in crowds and live silently in the midst of the noise.

  “You think I’m overreacting, don’t you?” Helen asked.

  Evelyn retrieved a bowl of wasabi soy nuts from the shop counter and placed it between them on the table. She took a green nut and crunched it in her mouth. “Yeah. I guess I do. But so what? You met this guy, not me.”

  “His name was Eric.”

  “Okay, Eric.”

  “He tracked me down, and a couple of days later, he was murdered.”

  “It could be a coincidence.”

  Helen shook her head. “He knew what happened to me.”

  “So?”

  “So Eric was going to confront the bastard. I told you that.”

  Evelyn looked at her skeptically. “The papers said Eric’s wife was the one who killed him.”

  “Well, I think they’re wrong.”

  Evelyn sighed. “If you’re so sure, honeybun, why not go to the police?”

  Helen stuck out her tongue. “The police are no help. You remember last time?”

  “They treated you badly.”

  “They told me it was my fault,” Helen said. “I don’t need to go through that again. They’d just dredge up what happened and in the end, they wouldn’t do a thing. They’d say I was crazy or out for revenge.”

  Helen stared out the window at the highway. Evelyn reached out and covered Helen’s hand. “Do you really think you’re in danger?”

  “I do.”

  “Then you need to tell someone,” Evelyn insisted. “What if this guy is stalking someone else? Do you want another woman to go through what you did?”

  “No.”

  “Okay then. You might be the only one who can stop this creep.”

  “I need time,” Helen told her.r />
  Evelyn smiled and stood up. “You got it, honeybun. Come on, let’s go home and light a fire and crack open some Yellow Tail. The main thing is to stop worrying. No one’s going to find you. You’re safe here.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Is it Tanjy’s body?” Stride asked.

  Abel Teitscher nodded. His eyebrows and mustache were painted white by the snow that blew off the lake in sheets. “She’s a frozen fish stick.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Someone caved in the back of her skull.”

  Stride swore and headed for the cluster of police gathered near the fish house. It was like a Gypsy city on the lake, a ragtag assortment of plywood boxes, tents, aluminum fish houses, campers, and pickup trucks. Tire and snowmobile tracks created a maze through the snow. There was litter everywhere, discarded boxes, beer bottles, tattered gloves, fish heads, and half-smoked cigars. The lake itself was huge, with spiderlike tentacles reaching around forested peninsulas, and he could see only a small slice of it from where he was. It was called Hell’s Lake because of its reputation for hot spots, areas like eggshell where the ice never froze solid because of the strong current running underneath. Or maybe because lava bubbled up directly from hell and heated the water. It was a dangerous place, easy to get lost in when the mists came, easy to stray from the dense sections of ice to the fragile shelves laced with cracks. A few people went under every season; most were never rescued.

  The wind across the ice was ferocious. With no trees to slow it down, it rocketed across the lake like a skate sail. Tanjy’s body lay forlornly on a strip of plastic on the ice outside the fish house. Her skin’s pigment had leached away. Either her killer or the current of the lake water had stripped her naked. He felt a stab of regret. Tanjy had spent her life obsessed with rape; now, like this, she really had been violated.

  Stride returned to Teitscher. “You should have called me on this immediately.”

  Teitscher’s wrinkled, weatherworn face didn’t move. “We agreed I was taking over the investigation.”

  “You are, but I want to be in the loop.”

  “To me that means copying you on my paperwork,” Teitscher snapped. “It doesn’t mean having you second-guess me at the scene. I don’t want you here, Lieutenant. Right now, I don’t know which side you’re on.”

  “Just bring me up to speed,” Stride told him.

  “Dan Erickson wants to know every move you make on this case,” Teitscher said.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Just a heads up.”

  “I don’t care about Dan,” Stride said.

  Teitscher shrugged. “We found Tanjy’s car. Someone drove it into the woods off a dead-end road.”

  “Nearby?”

  “Maybe half a mile away.”

  “What’s the scene look like?” Stride asked.

  “There’s blood in the trunk. We’ve got one set of boot prints in the deep snow leading away from the car back to the dead-end road. That’s where they stop.”

  “So she wasn’t killed where you found the car?”

  “No, it looks like they killed her somewhere else and then dumped her in the trunk to drive her out onto the ice. They found an open fish house, put the body in the lake, and then ditched her car in the woods.”

  “They?”

  “I’m thinking this would have been very difficult for one person to pull off. If she wasn’t killed where her car was abandoned, whoever left it there needed another vehicle to get away. Someone else had to be driving the other car.”

  “What size are the boot prints?”

  “Big, at least a size twelve,” Teitscher said. He added, “Eric Sorenson wore a size twelve.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

  Teitscher shrugged. “He was one of the last people to see Tanjy alive, as far as we know.”

  “What about time of death?” Stride asked.

  “She’s been in the drink for several days. I don’t think we’ll ever know exactly how long. That should make Archie Gale happy.”

  “There’s nothing to tie Maggie into this, is there?”

  “Just that her husband was mixed up with Tanjy, and he’s dead, too.”

  “To me, it says there might be more to Eric’s death than meets the eye,” Stride said.

  “Yeah? You’re big on theories, Lieutenant. Try this one on. Maggie and Tanjy had a big fight over her affair with Eric. Tanjy wound up dead. Maggie called Eric to help her get rid of the body. Eric had a fit of conscience and wanted to call the cops. Maggie killed him.”

  “You don’t have a shred of evidence to back that up.”

  “Not yet, I don’t, but I’m just saying you don’t have to think real hard to tie these cases together.”

  Stride knew the argument was getting them nowhere. “How about the fish house? What have you got there?”

  “Two kids found the body. They were screwing around when Tanjy popped up. The fish house belongs to the boy’s dad, but the ev techs don’t think Tanjy was dumped from there. She could have gone in anywhere around the lake and drifted up here. People leave these shanties unlocked and don’t visit them for weeks.”

  “You’ll never get a warrant to search every house on the lake,” Stride said.

  “I know, the best we can do is knock on doors. Maybe someone saw something.”

  Stride knew that without a time of death or a crime scene to mine for forensic evidence, it was going to be a tough case to solve. “If I can help you, call me. I mean that.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Lieutenant. If you want to help me, stay out of my way.”

  Teitscher turned into the wind and walked away. His foot slipped on the ice, and he fell to one knee. Pushing himself up, he shouted at one of the uniforms on the scene, and Stride saw the cop, who was a good kid, cringe. The only way Teitscher knew how to get things done was to bark in someone’s face. He was a hard case who wasn’t going to change.

  Stride heard a faint buzz of music and realized his cell phone was ringing. He pulled it out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket and heard the Alabama song in his head. I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.

  He walked toward his truck as he answered. “Stride.”

  It was Maggie. “I need to see you. It’s urgent.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t want to do this over the phone,” she said.

  “Wherever you go, you’ll have company. We can’t be seen together.”

  “Leave that to me. I’ll be alone.”

  Stride wasn’t going to say no to her. “Let’s do it late. Eleven o’clock.”

  “Where?”

  “The high school parking lot. Up on the hill.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  “You’ve left me in the dark on this,” Stride told her. “You’re hiding things from me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” There was a long stretch of dead air, and then Maggie said, “Is it true about Tanjy? Have you found her body?”

  “It’s true.”

  Maggie expelled her breath as if she had been holding it. “There’s something you need to know, but just you, not Teitscher.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tanjy wasn’t lying about the rape,” Maggie told him quickly.

  “What?”

  “I’m telling you, it really happened.”

  “No way.” He thought about the fantasies on Tanjy’s computer and the explicit details of her sex life provided by Mitchell Brandt. “Tanjy told me flat-out that she made the whole thing up.”

  “I know how it sounds, boss. I didn’t believe her myself, but I was wrong.”

  “How the hell can you be so sure?”

  The silence this time was so long he thought he had lost the call. When he heard Maggie’s voice, it didn’t sound like Maggie at all.

  “Because it happened to me, too.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  He left the van in a deserted lot at the far end of the Point and hiked over t
he wooded slope to the lake. The roiled water and the thin strip of ice and sand stretched out before him toward the hazy lights of the city. When he emerged from the trees, a ferocious, twisting wind deadened his face. He pulled his wool cap down to become a mask and viewed the beach through slitted eyes. Inside his gloves and boots, he kept heat packs to keep his hands and feet limber and warm. He tucked his chin into his neck and hiked along the bumpy ice shelf, his coat doused by bitter spray as the waves assaulted the shore.

  He was alone. The mile-long walk to Serena’s house was cold and hard. The houses were indistinguishable without the brightness of the moon and largely hidden by the skeletons of trees. He knew where to veer west off the beach when he came upon the twin pieces of driftwood he had left as a marker earlier in the day. He followed the trodden-down path up through the wild rye and picked his way to the edge of the trees, where he was only a few yards from the rear door of the cottage. He waited there, invisible. The house was dark. The concrete driveway to the street was empty.

  He allowed himself a maximum of five minutes inside and set a vibrating timer in his rear pocket. He glanced at the fences on either side of the narrow lot and marched down to the rear screen door, which was open. He left his boots on the porch, where his footprints were lost in the matted snow. In his wool winter socks, he crept through the porch to the back door, shone a penlight on the lock, and let himself inside in a few seconds.

  Her smell was everywhere. It was the first time he had been close enough to inhale her aroma again. He allowed himself a moment to savor it. To him, that smell was all about dry heat, sweat, and soft flesh. He felt young. He felt reborn and powerful.

  His first stop was in the living room. He didn’t even need thirty seconds to choose a location, secrete the bug, and test the signal strength. The next stop was their bedroom. He had hoped to plant a Web cam, but he surveyed the white walls and knew there was nowhere that the equipment wouldn’t be seen. He settled for a second bug and affixed it behind the beams of their headboard.

  He was outside again before the timer went off. He scouted the rear of the house and attached a signal booster behind one of the aluminum downspouts, which would give him at least two miles of transmission. From inside the van in the park a mile away, he could listen.