‘Serena, look at me,’ he begged her. ‘Look at me. Stay with me. Help’s coming. Help’s almost here.’
He leaned in, kissed her, stroked her wet, dirty hair in the creek.
‘I love you. Don’t go.’
*
Ken McCarty coughed. Blood flecked from his mouth. He didn’t have to make it far. His car was near the freeway where he’d crashed it. He still had that cabin near Solon Springs waiting for him. He could hide there while he healed.
He put a hand on the wall and it left a bloody print. It didn’t matter.
Outside the graffiti graveyard, the night looked darker than it had before, as if the darkness were in his eyes. The rocks on the slope under the freeway looked funny. He realized it was because he was on all fours. Crawling. The mud and snow squished through his fingers.
He coughed. Liquid dripped from his neck. More blood made little pearls dotting the rocks, like a spatter painting. It would be easier to sleep. Sleep here, rest here, then get in the car and head across the bridge into Wisconsin in the sunshine of the morning. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.
No. He had to keep going. He couldn’t wait for daylight.
Ken pushed himself to his feet, an effort that felt impossibly hard. He saw his car. The light post was on top of it. The doors were open. He could reach it; he could run; he could escape. He took a wobbly step and sank to his knees again. Something cold pressed into his head. It was a feathery touch, but it nearly knocked him over. The barrel of a gun.
‘Hello, Ken,’ Maggie said.
Somewhere behind her, he saw flashing lights. He heard sirens. Police cars. Fire trucks. Ambulances. People running. People hurrying past him into the graffiti graveyard. Shouts. Radios.
‘I was hoping to shoot you but it doesn’t look like I need to bother,’ she told him.
‘Huh?’ Nothing made sense now.
‘You have a knife sticking out of your neck,’ she explained. ‘Looks like it got your carotid. Payback’s a bitch.’
‘Think I’m dying,’ he said.
‘I think so.’
‘Help me.’
‘Not much to help, Ken.’
‘Come with me.’
‘Not where you’re going.’
*
‘Serena,’ Stride said.
He saw the lights and heard the stampede of boots. They were coming for her.
‘Serena,’ he repeated.
She didn’t answer. She was still looking beyond him, as if she could see things that living persons shouldn’t see. He wanted her frozen green eyes to move. He wanted her to see him kneeling over her.
‘Don’t you dare leave me,’ he told her.
Brooke Hahne sat in the dirty, icy water six feet away. She shivered uncontrollably, her knees pressed together. Her fists were clenched in front of her face. She didn’t say a word; there was nothing to say, even though she had led them here to this place. He wanted to hate her, and he couldn’t.
Cat knelt beside him. Their eyes met, and in that moment she might as well have been his own daughter. His own flesh. He loved her; he needed her. The girl took his hand and squeezed it fiercely. She pulled Serena’s hand out of the water and clutched it, too, like a chain among the three of them. Cat’s eyes closed. Her head tilted toward an invisible sky.
He heard her murmuring, praying, over and over, the same words.
‘Do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her, do not take her.’
The medics were on top of them. They moved to gently push them away.
Stride took Serena’s other hand as they gathered around her. He and Cat held onto her, refusing to let go, as if blood and warmth could pass through their bodies. He prayed, too. The same words, aloud, in unison. Do not take her. Not after Michaela. Not after Cindy. There could be no more loss.
He held his breath, and out of nothingness something changed, like a miracle happening. He saw her eyes shift, finding his face, recognizing him again. She turned away from the angels and let them go.
There was life in her hand.
60
‘You know what would go great on this pizza?’ Cat said. ‘Peanut butter.’
Stride stared across the dining room table in disbelief. ‘You really are pregnant, aren’t you?’
Cat skipped into the kitchen in her socks. She came back with a jar of peanut butter and a knife and spread a dollop onto one of the tiny squares. When she popped it in her mouth, she rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, yeah. You really have to try this.’
‘I’ll pass,’ Stride said.
Serena laughed at the two of them, but she paid the price, wincing as pain jolted her chest. She smiled anyway. ‘You see, Cat, you’re violating the purity of a Sammy’s sausage pizza. For Jonny, that’s like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.’
Cat held out the jar to Serena with questioning eyes, but Serena shook her head. The girl shrugged and tossed her hair back, and she wagged a finger at them. ‘You guys don’t know what you’re missing.’
She hummed as she adorned more of the pizza, but Stride knew that her cheerfulness was an act. She was nervous and scared; he could see it in the little darts from her brown eyes as she tried to read their faces. He’d already told her that the two of them needed to talk to her. There wasn’t much pizza left now, and she was busy pretending that she didn’t have a care in the world.
‘So the car guy,’ Cat said. ‘He’s history, huh?’
Stride nodded. ‘Lenny resigned from the Council today.’
‘Rich men don’t go to jail.’
‘No, probably not,’ Stride admitted. ‘He’s got lawyers, money and leverage. He’ll probably walk.’
‘He kept his mouth shut back then. He should pay.’
‘He should. We’ll see. If we get him for anything, it’ll be his connection to this upscale prostitution ring in the city. We think Steve was right about that. We’re still digging into it.’
‘I heard about Brooke, too,’ Cat said. ‘That’s bad, huh?’
‘It could be worse,’ Stride said.
‘I guess.’
Three weeks had passed since the events at the graffiti graveyard. Serena had spent a week in the hospital, but the bullet had spared her major organs. The immediate danger of blood loss had passed after treatment on the first night in intensive care, and the lingering effect now was mostly the pain of broken ribs and torn muscles. She wasn’t moving well; she would be out of work for at least two more months.
For Brooke Hahne, it had been three weeks of behind-closed-door legal maneuvering.
‘If she’d gone to court, she would have faced multiple counts of first degree murder,’ Stride went on. ‘That’s life without parole. As it is, they pled her down to murder two because she wasn’t personally responsible for any of the homicides. She’ll still spend twenty-five years behind bars.’
‘I don’t know how I feel about that,’ Cat said. ‘She saved my life.’
‘But not before putting it in danger,’ Serena pointed out.
Cat nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘Listen,’ Stride said.
The girl’s knee bounced nervously under the table. ‘Yeah?’
‘We need to talk about someplace for you to live,’ Stride said. ‘It’s been more than a month.’
‘I know.’ Cat played with a piece of pizza on her plate, pushing it back and forth with her fingertip. ‘Hey, it’s been fun. I’m really grateful. You’ll never know how much.’
‘You need somewhere permanent,’ Stride said. ‘You deserve more than a temporary solution.’
‘Yeah, I get it.’ She got off the chair with a shrug that belied her sadness. ‘Foster parents, huh? I know how the system works. I guess I better go pack. So where’s it going to be? Who are they?’
‘Cat, I want you to stay here with me,’ Stride told her.
She stopped. ‘With you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. If you want to, that
is.’
The girl shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘Why, because you feel guilty about my mother?’
‘No. That wouldn’t change how I feel at all.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because the more I thought about you being somewhere else, the more I realized I wanted you here,’ Stride said.
Cat sat down again. ‘For how long? A few months?’
‘As long as you need to stay. Until you’re an adult and on your own. I want to be your new legal guardian.’
‘I’m going to have a baby. It’s going to be crazy.’
‘Probably,’ he said.
‘A cop with a teenage hooker? How will that look?’
‘I don’t care how it looks.’
She didn’t want to smile. He realized that, to her, it felt like a candy cane on a string, and when she reached for it, someone would pull it away. Her eyes went back and forth between him and Serena. ‘You two are getting back together. I’ll be in the way. You don’t want me here.’
‘We both want you here,’ Serena said. ‘We talked about it.’
‘Will you stay here, too?’
‘I thought I’d stick around while I recuperate,’ Serena said, winking. ‘It’s easier than going back and forth to Grand Rapids. You and I can get to know each other better. When you’re not in school or doing homework, that is. Besides, if you and Jonny were alone here, all you’d ever eat is Sammy’s pizza.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing,’ Stride said.
Cat giggled. She couldn’t hold it back anymore. She smiled. It was the smile he remembered from the first night, as glorious as a sunrise. ‘Well, maybe I could stay for a little while,’ she said.
She got up and began to clear the table, stacking the plates, making a clatter of china and silver. As he watched her in the kitchen, he felt Serena watching him. He had no idea if he was ready to have a teenager in the house. And then a baby, like an instant family. He and Serena hadn’t even talked about each other yet and where their own relationship was going. There was time for that. He only knew that it felt right, the way it did when you examined a missing puzzle piece from every angle and finally found the one that fit.
As much as Cat needed someone in her life, he thought he needed her more.
When Cat finished the dishes, she came over to him, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. ‘I thought I’d go for a walk on the beach, if that’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s safe to do that now, right?’
Stride glanced at Serena, who couldn’t hide a tiny grin. From this moment forward, every day would test his limits. It was odd how quickly he could think like a parent and a cop at the same time. The evening was dark, and there were monsters outside. Always monsters.
‘It’s safe,’ he told her, ‘but be back in an hour.’
61
Cat stood by the dunes, breathing in the lake air that floated over the hill. April had given way to May, and winter had finally given way to spring. The breeze was mild. The long grass swished and bent. She climbed the trail to the top of the sand and saw the great expanse of Lake Superior stretched out in front of her. It was midnight blue under the stars, but there were whitecaps agitating the waves.
She hadn’t told Stride why she needed to go outside, but she wondered if he knew. She had to say goodbye. Goodbye to her parents. Goodbye to Dory. Goodbye to who she was.
Her past was finally behind her.
‘Catalina Mateo,’ said a voice from the shadows.
Cat jumped. When she looked down the stretch of dunes, she saw two rusty old deck chairs stuck in the sand. Maggie Bei sat in one of them.
‘Oh!’ Cat exclaimed. ‘You startled me. What are you doing here?’
Maggie shrugged. She had a bottle of wine in her hand. Even at night, she wore sunglasses. Cat could see that the woman was a little drunk. ‘I like to come out here sometimes and watch the lake. I’ve done it for years.’
‘So you can be close to Stride?’ Cat asked.
The Chinese cop laughed. She was cute and as tiny as Cat, but she had a hardness about her. ‘Don’t try to psychoanalyze me. It doesn’t work. Besides, the last shrink I visited shot himself in the head.’
Cat swallowed hard. It was an odd thing to say.
Maggie patted the empty chair with the base of the wine bottle. ‘Sit by me,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Okay.’
Cat didn’t want to stay, but she stayed anyway. She sat in the deck chair beside Maggie, and the two of them stared at the lake water under the night sky. Maggie didn’t say anything. Cat kicked at the weeds with the toe of her boot.
‘Stride asked me to stay with him,’ Cat said.
‘I heard.’
‘Serena, too.’
‘Peachy.’
‘I know you don’t like me,’ Cat said.
‘I like you fine, Cat, but I don’t trust you.’
Cat squirmed in the chair. ‘Why not?’
Maggie’s head swiveled. She didn’t take off her sunglasses, and Cat couldn’t see her eyes. The cop had a tiny diamond in her nose. She didn’t explain anything to her. Not yet.
But it didn’t matter. Cat knew exactly what she meant.
‘Those are two people I care about in that house,’ Maggie went on. ‘Stride’s my best friend in the whole world. He always will be. For a while, I thought maybe, maybe, it might be something more than that, but who was I kidding? As for Serena, well, I still like her. One of these days maybe we’ll figure out how to be in the same room without killing each other.’
Cat waited. ‘I’m not sure-’
‘You being there with them is either going to bring them together or drive them apart,’ Maggie continued. ‘I’ll probably regret saying this, but I’d rather you bring them together, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘If you give them shit, you will answer to me.’
‘I understand.’
Cat began to get up, but Maggie shook her head. ‘I’m not done,’ she said.
Cat sank back into the chair. She waited for Maggie to talk, but the cop sat there in frustrating silence, and the silence felt like a balloon, getting bigger and bigger until all it could do was pop. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the tension anymore, she blurted out, ‘What do you want from me?’
‘The truth.’
‘About what?’
‘You know what.’
Cat did, but she couldn’t say. Now the silence was hers. She said nothing at all. Her whole body felt cold.
Maggie finally took off her sunglasses. ‘I was down in Minneapolis just before everything went to hell,’ she said. ‘Can you believe Ken McCarty had the balls to come see me? What a bastard he was.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t need you to be sorry. I didn’t feel a thing for him when he was alive. I don’t feel a thing for him now that he’s dead.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Cat said.
‘See, you sound like a shrink again, Cat. Don’t do that.’
‘Sorry,’ she repeated.
‘Speaking of shrinks, did you kill Vincent Roslak?’ Maggie asked, so suddenly it felt like a scab being ripped off her skin.
Cat began shaking. ‘No.’
‘No? That’s your story? That’s all you have to say about it? You see why I don’t trust you.’
She heard Vincent’s voice, like an echo she couldn’t get out of her head. She still loved him. Is sex a violent act for you? Are there any sexual acts you won’t do?
‘I didn’t kill him.’
Maggie nodded. ‘You never saw him after he moved to Minneapolis, right? That’s what you told Stride.’
Cat said nothing.
‘Except you did see him down there, didn’t you?’ Maggie said. ‘I knew something was wrong when I visited his office, and it took me a while to figure out what was driving me crazy. You know what it was? The bells. Just like Quasimodo. The bells, the bells. It was the light rail line that goes by Roslak’s apartment.
I’d heard it before, and you know where? It was on a tape that Roslak made of one of his sessions with you. I could hear the light rail chimes in the background. It was in Minneapolis, Cat. Why would you lie about that if you didn’t have something to hide?’
Do you think you could kill someone, Cat?
‘I–I didn’t want anyone to think-’
‘You didn’t want anyone to think you killed him. Sure. By the way, I showed your photo to a Jefferson Lines driver who does the bus route between Duluth and Minneapolis. He remembered you really well. That’s the problem when you’re such a stunner. Men don’t forget you. He said you made that trip every week. How many times, Cat? How many times did you see Roslak down in the Cities?’
Cat couldn’t lie anymore. ‘A lot. I loved him.’
‘So what happened? Did you realize he was just abusing you and all of his other patients? Did you realize he was just interested in sex? He didn’t give a shit about you, Cat.’
‘I didn’t kill him,’ Cat repeated.
‘So who did? Ken? That’s what I thought at first. Roslak must have figured out about the burglary. He saw the ring, or you said something under hypnosis, and he somehow made the connection to Ken. It would be easier if we left it like that, but I don’t think that’s what happened.’
‘I didn’t kill him!’ Cat shouted again. ‘How can you say that to me? I couldn’t even put the knife in your boyfriend’s back! I stood there as he was about to shoot Serena, and I couldn’t do it! Is that the problem? Do you wish you’d killed him yourself? I could never do that to another soul. I know what knives do. I’ve seen it.’
‘You’ve seen it?’
Cat bit her lip. ‘My mother.’
‘You didn’t see your mother.’
‘Leave me alone!’
‘Who killed Roslak?’
Cat sat down again and inhaled loudly.
‘If you cry, so help me, I’ll slap you,’ Maggie said.
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