Stalked

by Brian Freeman

  Stride waited.

  “I was an alpha girl,” Katrina continued.

  “What’s that?”

  She hesitated and sat down on the other end of the futon sofa. “I’m not sure I should say anything. If you don’t know what it is, it means you don’t know about the club. I could cause problems for a lot of people.”

  “Katrina, you were raped.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me what this is about. If it’s something illegal—”

  She shook her head. “It’s not illegal. At least, I don’t think it is. Immoral, maybe. I was part of a sex club in town. I was the alpha girl for the night.”

  Stride thought about his brief time in Las Vegas, which was a city that made a living on sex. Your basest desires were advertised on taxicab posters and hawked on the sidewalks. The only difference between Las Vegas and anywhere else was that Vegas didn’t hide its lust. The city didn’t invent sin; it imported it. All the people, all the desires, came to the desert from somewhere else. From places like Duluth.

  “How did you get involved with this club?”

  “Sonia recruited me.”

  Stride wasn’t surprised that Sonia Bezac’s name popped up in the middle of this. “She’s a member?”

  “She and Delmar started the club. It takes place at their house. There’s a downstairs room she calls the temple.”

  “How many people are involved?”

  “I’m not sure. There were a dozen or more people there when I was the alpha girl. Maybe seven or eight men and a few women, too.”

  “What’s an alpha girl?”

  Katrina squirmed on the sofa. “Look, I wasn’t ashamed of it. I did it because I’m a wild chick, and I like to experiment. I’m not hung up about sex. But it’s different when you have to start telling people about it.”

  “I’m not judging you.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. There’s a different alpha girl each time. We’re basically there to have sex with anyone who wants us. Sometimes it’s men who like to do it in front of other people. Sometimes it’s wives whose husbands like to see them with other women. Sometimes it’s the husband and wife together at the same time. There are also couples who simply like to see public sex and make out or masturbate while they watch us.”

  “That all sounds like an invitation to STDs.”

  “Condoms are the rule. Nobody goes bareback. Even the husbands and wives who have sex with each other have to use condoms while they’re there.”

  “I’m having trouble understanding why you would want to do this to yourself,” he said, choosing his words carefully.

  “But you’re not judging me, right? Ha. Hey, we’re swingers, so what. I told you that most people wouldn’t get it. That’s why it’s a secret. That’s why I don’t advertise it, and neither does anyone else.”

  “It feels dehumanizing to me, not erotic.”

  “Well, that’s you. Me, I loved it. I was never more turned on in my life than I was that night. You have no idea how a big girl like me struggles with body image. But that night, every man wanted me. A bunch of women, too. I’ve never felt more desirable.”

  Stride wanted to get the facts and get out. “When was this?”

  “Last month. December.”

  “How often does the club meet?”

  “I’m not sure. Once a month, maybe.”

  “Do you think the rapist knew about the club?”

  “Hell, he came after me the day after the party. It’s not like that could be a coincidence, right?”

  “Could it have been someone who was at the sex party with you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I doubt it.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You mean you didn’t recognize them?”

  “I mean, everyone wears masks. It’s part of the game. The anonymity.”

  “So when you go, you don’t know who else is going to be there?”

  “No. Other than Sonia and Delmar, of course.” She twitched and pressed her lips together. Her eyes darted to the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “I did know someone else who was there,” she admitted.

  “Who?”

  “Maggie’s husband. Eric. He was easy to spot. Him and his long blond hair.”

  Stride thought about Maggie. Do you think I don’t have secrets?

  “Did Maggie know about Eric and the club?” he asked, but he already knew what Katrina was going to say.

  “Oh, yeah. She knew.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “We talked about it before I did it.”

  Stride shook his head. He couldn’t believe any of this.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said I should do whatever I wanted, but we haven’t talked since then. I called her after Eric was killed, but she never called me back. I guess I don’t blame her.”

  “Are you telling me that Maggie was in the club?” Stride asked, and he could taste horror like sour wine in his mouth.

  “Fasten your seat belt, Lieutenant. Maggie was the alpha girl the month before me.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Serena hated driving through the winter nights in Minnesota.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock, and the northern highway was a long stretch of nothingness. She was an hour from Duluth, in the empty stretch where miles went by between towns. On either side of the road, the evergreens pressed in like dark towers, and the wilderness behind them was a black mass. She was afraid of deer springing out from the woods. There were carcasses on the shoulder every few miles, and when her headlights lit up the median, she could see hoof tracks cutting through the snow. The beasts were out there, tracking her.

  She found a country radio station, but the signal came and went. She heard bits and pieces of songs by Miranda Lambert, Alan Jackson, and LeAnn Rimes, and she found herself singing along, making her feel less alone in the car. Country music was one of the things that she and Jonny had in common. You either got it or you didn’t. Most people groaned when they heard her playing Terri Clark on the stereo, or when she told them about driving six hours to go to a Sara Evans concert in Des Moines. She didn’t bother explaining. If you didn’t get tears in your eyes listening to “No Place That Far,” you wouldn’t understand.

  Her cell phone rang on the seat next to her.

  “Oh, man, what are you listening to this time?” Maggie asked.

  Serena laughed and switched off the radio. Maggie was like Tony Wells, a fan of hard rock and heavy metal.

  “That’s Garth, you heathen. Say one word against him, and I’ll be forced to shave your head.”

  “Jeez, one innocent remark, and you country music fans go all shotguns and hound dogs on me.” She added, “Where are you?”

  “I’m heading north on Thirty-five. I’m just about to Finlayson.”

  “Watch out for deer.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Have you talked to Stride?”

  “Not tonight. I tried earlier, but I got his voice mail.”

  “He wants the three of us to get together tomorrow,” Maggie told her. “He thinks he knows how some of the pieces connect.”

  “Do you know what he’s got?”

  Maggie’s voice was flat. “Yeah, I did something stupid. I should have told him about it myself. I didn’t think there was any connection to what happened to me, but I guess I was kidding myself.”

  Serena let the silent air drag on, waiting for Maggie to continue. She didn’t. “You want to tell me about it?”

  “I’ll let him do it. I feel like enough of an idiot already.”

  “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 Danni
ng. 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.

  THIRTY

  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?

&nbs
p; 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.”