“So it’s you and Cindy Starr, huh, Stride?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“You know, her sister is the real prize.”
Stride didn’t reply.
“Laura’s the one with the tits,” Peter continued. “Half the guys here got boners when she walked by. Why aren’t you going after her?”
“Because I like Cindy.”
“Yeah? What’s she like?”
“Why do you care?” Stride asked.
“I’m not hot for her, if that’s what you think. I just wondered if the princess act runs in the family.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I mean that Laura walks around like some kind of ice queen,” Peter replied. “Somebody needs to thaw her out.”
“Shut up,” Stride said.
“So how about Cindy? Is she a frigid queer like her sister?”
Stride threw off his baseball glove and shoved both bare hands against Peter’s chest. Peter stumbled backward, lost his footing in the damp grass, and landed on his ass in the mud. Stride stood over him, fists clenched and cocked, ready to fight. He heard shouts from some of the other boys in the field. The pitcher dropped the ball; the batter threw the bat away; they all began to converge on Stride.
Peter laughed and got up, brushing dirt from his skin. He waved them away. “Hey, it’s okay, I had it coming.”
Stride watched carefully, expecting a sucker punch.
“Don’t sweat it,” Peter said. “I like to see how far I can push people before they push back. It’s a little lesson I learned from my dad.”
“Apologize,” Stride told him.
“Yeah, all right. I’m sorry. That do it for you? You need to lighten up, Stride.”
Stride ignored him. The game continued. The batter at the plate struck out, and another took his place. One inning to go, and it was over. He could barely make out the action on the field, as the night drew closer and the dark clouds massed.
“You seen The Deep yet?” Peter asked.
Stride grunted. He and Cindy had seen it the previous weekend.
“Saw it three times,” Peter said. “Fuck, Jackie Bisset in that T-shirt? Holy shit. I wish porn actresses looked like her. I saw Teenage Sex Kitten downtown last week. What a bunch of losers. Pimples and no tits.”
At the plate, Gunnar Borg punched a ground ball past the pitcher that took a jagged leap as it bounced off a half-buried rock in the field. Stride bounded to his right and scooped up the ball. He yanked it out of his glove and prepared to toss it to Nick Parucci at second for the out. Then he saw stars. Peter Stanhope ran over him, slamming Stride’s body into the dirt with his right shoulder and jarring the ball out of his hands. Stride recovered quickly and grabbed the ball out of the grass again, but by then, Peter was standing on second base, grinning, and the other runner was at first.
Stride’s right side was black with dirt. He felt as if someone had hit him with a shovel.
“Don’t mess with me, Stride,” Peter called.
Stride fired the ball back to the pitcher, turned on his heel, and marched back to first base. Gunnar Borg laughed.
At that moment, the sky finally opened up.
The wind blew in, and with it, the rain bucketed down. The pelting drops felt like needles. Lightning came, like flashbulbs popping, and the boys sprinted for the cars parked haphazardly in the weeds. Stride ran, too, but in the opposite direction, toward the woods and the lake. Toward Cindy. The field was already sodden, a river of mud. Stride saw beer bottles, a fallen baseball glove, and empty bags of chips. Peter Stanhope’s aluminum bat lay where he had thrown it as he ran for first base. Stride heard shouting a hundred yards away and then the roar of car engines. Headlights streaked across the field. Horns honked.
The downpour followed him into the forest. Rain beat down on a million leaves. His long hair was plastered against his skin. He ran, but it was too dark to see where he was going on the path, and he put a foot wrong and stumbled, cutting his knee. It stung, but the rain washed away the blood. He wiped moisture out of his eyes and pushed through the branches where a bent tree hung over the trail. The spindly twigs slapped back and scraped his face.
He smelled scorched wood and thought that part of the woods close by might be on fire. When the next flash of lightning struck, he could see the orange streak reflect on the surface of the water and see the silvery curtain of rainfall beyond the trees. The lake wasn’t far. He hurried.
Then Stride heard something strange.
Whistling.
It was so close that someone had to be standing almost at his shoulder. He turned and pushed his way through the brush lining the path and broke through into a tiny clearing. A campfire had been built there. A few warm embers remained, throwing up smoke where the rain had doused them. That was the burning smell he had noticed. He didn’t see anyone in the clearing, but then a shadow large enough to be a bear detached itself from one of the birch trees and approached the dying fire. Instinctively, Stride retreated. The man didn’t see him at first. He was a huge black man, at least six foot five, with dreadlocks down to his shoulders and an oddly colorful beret of red, green, and gold. His limbs were as thick as some of the larger tree trunks, with well-defined muscles. He wore a white T-shirt and loose-fitting black pants that had the same tricolored stripe as his hat.
Stride recognized him. They called him Dada. He was one of the vagrants who hung out near the railroad tracks during the warmer months. Dada was whistling, not like a nervous man in a cemetery, but like a cardinal at winter’s end. Free. Loud. Stride backed up silently, but Dada saw him. Their eyes met. The music from his mouth stopped. Stride saw the man’s lips curl into a smile, revealing white teeth against his coal skin. Dada didn’t look afraid or surprised. He laughed as Stride made his way back to the trail without saying a word. His laughter lingered in Stride’s ears, growing fainter as the storm drowned it out.
He continued toward the lake, making his way by feel as he slogged through the trees. Water streamed down his face. Mosquitoes harassed him, and he squashed them with his fingers. He didn’t know how many minutes passed before the path opened onto the sandy clearing and his eyes could see what was ahead of him.
He found Laura first. She had taken cover under one of the older pine trees, its outstretched branches forming a green roof over her head. Her clothes were soaked. She clutched her backpack against her chest and gazed across the dimpled water. In the inch of skin between her shirt and her jeans, he could see the colors of her butterfly tattoo. She looked bottled up and anxious. When he touched her shoulder, she screamed, then clapped her mouth shut.
“It’s just me,” he said.
“You scared me to death.”
“Where’s Cindy?” he asked.
Laura pointed. He looked out onto the beach, and there she was. She had taken off her shorts and was in her bikini, dancing in the rain. That was Cindy. A water sprite. A free spirit.
“Hey,” Stride shouted.
Cindy stopped when she saw him and bounded up the beach in her bare feet. “Hey, you.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Her skin was wet and soft. Her long hair fell across his face.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked her. “We weren’t counting on a storm.”
“No, no, let’s stay,” she insisted.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Really. I want to, Jonny.”
Laura slung her backpack over her shoulder and put her thumbs in the pockets of her jeans. She gave the two of them a strange smile. “You guys be good, okay? I’m going to go.”
Cindy looked torn. She bit her lower lip. “No, you better not, Laura. Not by yourself.”
“I’m fine, little sister.”
“Stay with us. It’s okay.”
“You two don’t need a chaperone. Not tonight. I told you I’d leave when Jon got here.”
“We’ll go with you,” Stride said. “All of us.”
“Yes, we’ll al
l go,” Cindy said.
Laura hugged Cindy hard. “You two stay. Don’t worry about me.”
“No way. How will you get home? You can’t get a ride now. I’m sure everyone left when the storm hit.”
“I can hike up to the highway and catch a bus.”
“No, no, no, that’s crazy. Come on, we’re all going.”
Laura detached herself from her sister and put a hand on Cindy’s chest. “Look, I’m not being noble. I love you, but I have to go.”
“Not alone,” Cindy repeated. “I won’t let you go alone.”
“I won’t be alone,” Laura said.
“Not alone?” Serena asked. “She was meeting someone?”
Stride nodded in bed. “That’s what she told us.”
“Who?”
“Peter Stanhope said it was him. He told the police that he and Laura were dating.”
“Did you believe him?”
“His story fit the facts, but Laura told Cindy she had broken it off with Peter because he was pressuring her for sex. Tish told me the same thing.”
“Unless Laura didn’t want anyone to know that they were seeing each other.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“What happened next?” Serena asked.
Stride listened to the waves outside the window. The old house rattled in the wind. “I don’t know. That was the last time I saw Laura. Something happened to her in the softball field, where her shoe was found. But that’s not where she was killed. She took another trail from the field and wound up on a beach on the north side of the lake almost a mile away. That’s where Cindy found her.”
“So Peter’s bat wasn’t found in the softball field where you last saw it?” Serena asked.
“No. It was on the beach by the body. Someone took the bat, followed the trail from the softball field to the beach, and killed Laura there. There was something else, too.”
“What?”
“No one knows about this,” Stride said. “It was never released to the press. I only found out when I took over the Detective Bureau and pulled the file. The police found semen near the body.”
“Laura had sex that night?” Serena asked.
Stride shook his head. “Not in the body. Near the body. In the woods near the beach where Laura was murdered. Whatever went down that night, someone was there watching. Either he killed her, or he saw who did.”
WHO KILLED LAURA STARR?
By Tish Verdure
EIGHT
What do I remember about that night?
I remember the two of us alone, after Laura left to follow the trail back to the field. Me and Jonny. I know it was wrong to let her go, but back then, we were all blinded by our desires. Any one of us could have made a different decision. If we had, the night would have gone another way. I try not to dwell on it. Life happens the way it’s going to happen. So does death.
I remember us walking hand in hand out of the shelter of the trees. The rain came in sheets, but there was no more lightning, no more thunder, just wind and water. It sounds romantic, but it was funny, actually. We were laughing. We blinked our eyes and gulped air like fishes, as if we were breathing under a waterfall. We shivered in the cold. The wind whipped us around like dolls.
I remember saying, “Let’s swim.”
I had to start. If Jonny had reached to remove my clothes, I would have let him, but he would never do that. I unhooked my bikini top in back, let the straps slide off my shoulders, and saw my white breasts come free in the darkness. My long, wet hair covered them. I pushed my hair out of the way so he could see me. My pink nipples and the little bumps around them were swollen. I took his hand to make him touch me, and I showed him how, guiding his fingers with mine, caressing and rubbing the way I liked it. When we kissed again, I remember the feel of our wet, bare chests pressing together.
I remember stepping back and staring at my feet as I peeled my bikini bottoms down and feeling nervous and self-conscious when I was finally naked in front of him. I couldn’t look into his eyes. I felt an urge to cover myself, which was stupid. I remember finding the courage to look up, spread my arms wide, and say, “Now you’ve seen the whole deal.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. He was transfixed. His face was in awe.
“You’re beautiful,” he told me.
I was, but how can you not be beautiful when you’re seventeen? I wasn’t a model, but I was the girl he loved. I remember folding my arms over my breasts and saying, “Your turn.”
He had it worse than me. Guys do. I was intensely curious, without wanting to show him how much. He stalled. He fumbled with his shorts. When he got them off, his underwear was even whiter than my sun-starved breasts. It jutted out because of his erection. He looked nervous like me as he went the rest of the way, and it took him even longer to meet my eyes again.
I remember wanting to reach out and touch it, but I didn’t.
“Are we ready for this?” he asked.
“You sure look ready.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
No, I wasn’t ready. I was scared to death. I knew he was, too. But I wasn’t going back.
I remember us swimming. We waded out naked into the dark lake, with the rain cascading over us. The lake bed under our feet was a slippery mix of sand and stones. The water wrapped around us and rose up to our necks. You feel so exposed and vulnerable like that, naked and submerged, with the whole sky stretching over your head. You think strange thoughts about what might be in there with you. I remember yelping as a fish brushed my stomach, swimming between us, and then, of course, I realized it was not a fish at all, and it was a good thing Jonny couldn’t see my face turn red.
I remember floating, my small breasts like little snowy peaks above the waterline. Jonny held me. His hands explored. It felt good.
I remember finally touching him and watching his eyes close and his mouth fall open.
We could have stayed out there all night, postponing what both of us really wanted to do. Out in the lake, we were in a kind of frozen world, nothing behind us, nothing ahead. The splashing rain and the whistle of the wind blocked out every other sound. There was no moon to glisten on the surface, just complete darkness. I was blind to reality. Blind to the violence I had let my sister walk into.
I remember us lying on our backs on the beach. No stars. Fog and mist rising like clouds out of the low lands. The rain no more than spatters on our skin now. Hungry mosquitoes starting to wake up, buzz, and hunt for blood. If we didn’t do it now, it wouldn’t be tonight.
I remember him on top of me. I felt crushed and didn’t care. Our kisses were urgent. We were both clumsy. I remember my legs spread wide like wings. We were laughing and struggling. I helped him, and somewhere after the pressure and pain, somewhere after our hands, feet, and knees found their right places, we both realized that we were really doing it. There was this little pause in the middle when we caught our breath and our eyes met with a kind of amazement. Then I felt his muscles all bunch into one, and I wrapped my legs tight around him, and I watched his face as it happened.
I remember we stayed like that for a very long time. I remember sweat and rain. When he withdrew, I showed him with my hands how to touch me, and I watched him watching me right up to the moment when our fingers working together pushed me over the top, and I closed my eyes, and it happened to me, too.
I remember thinking that in the morning, the world would be a very different place.
And God help me, it was.
PART TWO. Talking to Strangers
9
Maggie was already awake when the phone rang at three in the morning.
She sat with her feet propped up on a kitchen chair and a cup of oolong tea getting cold on the table beside her. She wore a flowered silk robe. Every downstairs light was blazing, making it look as if she had thrown an all-night party and forgotten to send invitations. Light was the only way to give the house any warmth at all. Maggie c
alled it her Dark Shadows house. It reminded her of the cheesy Gothic soap opera from the 1960s she had seen in reruns. Outside, the vanilla stone towered four stories, with ornamental molding along the roof lines like an ocean wave. A hodgepodge of arches and bays made it look like a LEGO castle designed by a child. Inside, there were curious little rooms everywhere, and dusty lace hung in the windows.
As a single person, she rattled around in it. Even when she was married, she had never liked the dark way the house felt at night. Maggie liked modern, bright, open spaces, with everything made of chrome and glass. The house was on the market now, and she was waiting for an uptick in housing sales to net her an offer. Once the house was sold, she had her eye on a downtown condo.
Maggie found herself up in the middle of the night several times a week, battling nightmares. The previous year had been the worst of her life, culminating in the murder of her husband in January and the cloud of suspicion that fell over her regarding his death. She still regretted her mistakes and secrets, which had temporarily strained the relationship between her and Stride and put not only herself but Serena in the hands of a brutal stalker. In the daylight, it was easy to forgive herself. The nights were another story.
She had a laptop in front of her, and she tapped her way through adoption Web sites. For months, she had been wondering about adopting a child, but the length and bureaucracy of the formal process intimidated her. She wasn’t sure if she could wait years, only to be disappointed. She had made inquiries with a number of international adoption agencies, but their replies weren’t encouraging. She was a naturalized U.S. citizen but had sought asylum from China after the uprising in Tiananmen Square, which essentially ruled out the possibility of adopting a baby from China. Being Chinese, however, she faced racism from countries that had no interest in turning over a white baby to an Asian mother. Her personal characteristics also worked against her, even in the States. She was unmarried. She was over thirty-five. She worked in a job where her personal safety was always at risk. The only thing on the plus side of the ledger was that she had inherited millions of dollars from her late husband’s business. Money always talked.
In the Dark aka The Watcher Page 7
