“Mr. Schmidt?” Maggie called. They splashed out of the water toward the boat landing.
He stopped with his hands on his hips. “That’s me,” he replied gruffly. “Who are you?”
Maggie introduced herself and Serena. “We’d like to take five minutes to talk about an old case of yours,” she said.
“Which case?”
“Inger Mathisen.”
Schmidt folded his sunglasses and shoved them into the pocket of his swimsuit. “I wondered if that one would ever come back and bite me in the ass.” He sighed and added, “Let me get the boat out, then we’ll talk.”
Ten minutes later, the boat was dripping in the parking lot, and Schmidt sat opposite Maggie and Serena on the park bench. His bushy hair was damp, and they smelled beer on his breath.
Serena angled her head toward the water. “How’d you do?”
“Finished off a six-pack, took a swim, didn’t catch a damn thing. Typical day. Tell you the truth, I don’t like fish much. Never have. Most of the time, I just throw them back, because otherwise my wife would want to cook them.”
“Nice place to retire,” Maggie said.
“Yeah, it’s not so bad, huh? We’ve got a trailer in Texas where we go during the winter. I’d stick around here if it were up to me, but my wife hates snow.”
“Tell us about the Mathisen case,” Serena said.
“Not much to tell. Isolated farm. Saturday night. Woman was asleep in bed. Somebody bludgeoned her to death.”
“You never caught the guy?”
Schmidt shook his head. “Nah, we had nothing. Figured it was some bastard who got off the interstate and was looking for cash. Probably surprised to find anybody in the house.”
“The farm was five miles off the freeway,” Serena said. “And not easy to find.”
Schmidt shrugged and chewed on a fingernail.
“Did you find reports of any similar incidents along the interstate route?” Maggie asked. “Maybe out of Montana or Minnesota? You can usually track these guys like pins on a map.”
“There were no other incidents that looked like a pattern crime,” Schmidt said. “We figured the guy got spooked.”
“Any sign of forced entry?” Serena asked.
“Out here? Nobody locks their doors.”
“Did anyone see or hear anything?” Serena asked.
“You saw the place. Not a neighbor for miles.”
“What about the boy?”
Schmidt rubbed his mustache. “Boy?”
“Finn Mathisen. Inger’s son.”
“He wasn’t home.”
Maggie leaned across the park bench. “No offense, Mr. Schmidt, but you’re not a farmer, so why don’t you quit shoveling the shit?”
Schmidt’s mustache twitched as he grinned. “I like you. Never much liked Orientals, but you’re smart. Easy on the eyes, too. You both are.”
“Why’d you think this case would bite you in the ass?” Maggie asked.
Schmidt glanced at his truck, and Serena thought he wanted to be home eating dinner. “Look, ladies, why cause problems for good people after so many years? Who the hell cares?”
“A few years after Inger was killed, a teenage girl was murdered in Duluth,” Serena said. “She was beaten with a baseball bat. Finn is a suspect.”
Schmidt frowned. “Well, shit.”
“So you want to give us the real story?”
“Hey, there was no evidence to prove that an intruder didn’t kill her.”
“But you didn’t believe it.”
Schmidt jabbed a calloused finger at them. “Sometimes you have to decide whether you’re a cop or a human being, okay? Maybe it’s not that way in the big city, but it sure as hell works like that in a small town. The way I figure, Inger Mathisen’s murder was an act of mercy.”
“What do you mean by that?” Maggie asked.
“Inger was a mean fucking bitch. Why do you think her husband got drunk every night and finally wound up on the business end of a semi? He hated being in that house. He was weak. He didn’t stop it.”
“Stop what?”
Schmidt sighed with disgust. “The word in town was that Inger did stuff to her kids,” Schmidt said. “Sick stuff. Back then, you knew about that kind of thing, but you didn’t talk about it. A lot of fucked-up kids came out of those farms.”
“Go on.”
Schmidt coughed and spit on the ground. “The boy, Finn, was fourteen or fifteen. Already messed up. Into drugs. The way we figure it, he got stoned and decided he was done with his mother once and for all. It was his bat. His fingerprints were on it.”
“You said he wasn’t home,” Serena said.
“That’s what his sister told us.”
“Rikke?”
Schmidt nodded. “She got out of that hellhole when she went off to NDSU and got her teaching license. She was working in Fargo and living in an apartment there. She swore that Finn was with her that weekend.”
“Were there any witnesses near her apartment to back that up?”
“A couple people remembered seeing the boy,” he said. “They couldn’t be sure if it was Saturday or Sunday.”
“You think it was Sunday,” Maggie said.
“Yeah, I figure Finn killed Inger on Saturday night and then called his sister. She came out to get him and take him back to Fargo to sober him up and get their stories straight. No one saw a thing, though, so there was no way we could prove it. Rikke took Finn home on Tuesday, and that’s when they claim they found the body smelling up the house. She called us, and I came over.”
“Did you interrogate them?”
“Interrogate kids whose mother had just been killed? Yeah, not so much.”
“Except you didn’t believe them, did you?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t push too hard. Okay? None of us did. We talked about it. Everybody in town was going to be happier if it was just some stranger who killed her. The kids had suffered enough, so we figured, let them get on with their lives.”
“An act of mercy,” Serena said.
“Exactly right.”
34
Tish parked on a dirt road two blocks from Finn’s house, sheltered by the sagging branches of a weeping willow. She dangled a cigarette outside the open window of the Civic while she waited. She knew she should quit, but she had spent most of her life alone and anxious since she left Duluth, and smoking was like morphine in her bloodstream, dulling the pain. Her cigarettes were always there with her. On a sailboat in the harbor in Dubrovnik, after the war ended and the tourists started coming back. In a mud and stone hut halfway up a Tibetan mountain. In Atlanta, crying in the parking lot of a Borders bookstore in Snellville, after the breakup with Katja. In Duluth, when Laura ran away and shut Tish out of her life.
If only she had stayed. Things would have been so different.
She felt the car shiver as a train snaked its way toward her from the harbor. The engine came slowly, snorting like an animal and cutting off her view of Finn’s house. Coal dust blew off the overflowing boxcars and settled in a grainy film across her windshield. The clattering, rattling, squealing thunder made her clap her free hand over her ear. When the last of the freight cars passed, she saw Rikke, in a navy blue dress, marching down the front steps of her house. It was the first time she had seen Rikke since coming back to Duluth. The years hadn’t been kind. Her austere beauty and her Amazon physique had both flown away with age. Even from a distance, she could see a lifetime of unhappiness in her face. Rikke clutched an umbrella in her hand and cut across the lawn to a tan Impala. She drove out of the weeds onto the dirt road and across the maze of railroad tracks, not far from the car where Tish was waiting.
Tish ducked low so that Rikke wouldn’t see her. She waited until the Impala was gone, then climbed out of her car and headed for Finn’s house. She picked her way through the bed of rocks between the tracks. Her T-shirt clung to her skin in the sticky air. Looking around, she felt as if time had stood still in places lik
e this. The town, the dirt roads, the house, and the trains were like a snapshot from her childhood. It made her think of old things. Cold, sweating bottles of Mountain Dew. Wham-O Frisbees. Black-and-white television. It made her think of a time when people she loved were still alive.
She knocked on the door. When no one answered, she peered through the cream-colored lace on the window. She wondered if Finn was sleeping.
Tish turned the door handle, but the front door was locked. When she checked each of the window frames, she found one where the inside latch was undone. She slid the window open and climbed through the flimsy curtains into the living room. The house was silent and close. When she felt something brush against her leg, she jumped, then realized it was a cat pushing past her feet. She closed the window behind her.
“Hello?” she called. “Finn?”
No one answered.
She did a nervous survey of the downstairs space. The kitchen was small, with avocado appliances that hadn’t been replaced in years. The screen door to the backyard was tattered, its mesh hanging down from the corner. She pushed open a door and found a small toilet, no bigger than a closet, with a bare bulb hanging overhead for light and an empty pill bottle on the ledge of the sink. Tamoxifen. She felt a stab of sympathy for Rikke.
Back in the living room, she saw the narrow steps near the front door that led to the second floor. She hesitated at the base of the stairway.
“Finn?” she called again.
Tish climbed the stairs, wincing at the noise as her feet pushed down on the warped slabs of wood. Upstairs, she was faced with a closed door immediately in front of her. Without knowing why, she knew Finn was inside. She didn’t knock. She nudged the door with her foot and waited in the doorway while it swung open.
The room was dark, the curtains drawn, letting only cracks of daylight knife through the gloom in narrow, dusty streams. Her eyes adjusted. She saw Finn on the floor, sitting with his back against the bed, his arms hugging his knees. His forearms were swaddled in white bandages. He wore underwear but nothing else.
“It’s me, Finn,” she said. “Tish.”
His eyes were lost in the shadows. He didn’t look at her, and she wasn’t sure if he knew she was there. Then he spoke in a tired voice. “You should go, she’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t care.”
“She won’t want to see you.”
“I’m here to see you. How are you?”
“How am I?” Finn said. “I wish I was dead.”
“Don’t say that. You’re lucky.”
“Yeah. People see me, they say, there goes a lucky man.”
Tish sat down on the floor next to Finn and slid an arm around his shoulder. His bare skin was clammy. “Maybe you should be in bed.”
“I’ve been in bed for days. I pretended to be asleep so Rikke would finally leave me alone. She’s afraid of what I’ll do.”
“Does she have reason to be afraid?”
“You mean, will I do it again? I want to, but I’m a coward. How pathetic is that?”
“I feel guilty,” Tish told him. “Like I did this to you by coming back.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Then why did you do it?” she asked. “Was it because of Laura’s murder? Did you remember something more?”
Finn squeezed his eyes shut. A tear bloomed like a rose out of the corner of his eye and trickled past his nose to the corner of his mouth. “Everyone wants me to remember, but I don’t.”
“I think you do.”
Finn shook his head. “I never should have gone to the park that night.”
“Then why did you?”
“Because I can’t stop!” Finn exclaimed. “Don’t you get it? I’ve never been able to stop.”
“Stop what?”
He clenched his fists. “Watching. That’s who I am. I’m a watcher.”
“You mean the young girls in their bedrooms?” Tish asked. “That was you?”
He put his face in his hands and nodded.
“Why, Finn?”
“You think it’s my choice? You think I want to be like this?” He stared at the floor and added, “Mom made me watch. I didn’t even know what was going on, but she made me watch. I hated her for that.”
Tish stared at the bed and began to understand. “Did you watch Laura?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Here. I would watch her in bed when she stayed with us.”
“Did she know?”
“No. Not at first.”
“You said you were in love with her, Finn. How could you do that to someone you loved?”
“I told you. I can’t stop. I wish I could gouge my eyes out.”
“Did you know Laura was going to be in the park that night?”
Finn’s head bobbed.
“How did you know?” Tish asked.
“She told me. I knew she was running away. It was my fault. I scared her.”
“Did she find out you were spying on her?”
“Yes. I told her everything. I had to. But it was a mistake. She didn’t understand.”
“You kept following her after the fight with Peter, didn’t you? You followed her all the way to the beach.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I did.”
Tish felt as if she were being suffocated. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember,” he said.
“Finn, you have to tell me.”
“I don’t remember.”
Tish closed her eyes and leaned close to him, smelling his sweat and fear, murmuring in his ear. “You’re so close. What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you ever dream about it?” she asked.
“No. I don’t dream.”
“I bet you do, Finn.”
“Go. Just go. Get away from me.”
“Tell me about your dreams.”
Finn shook his head mutely. She knew he was ready to break.
“Tell me,” she repeated.
“I have nightmares,” he whispered. “I’ve had them for years.”
“About what? What do you see?”
“Blood.”
Tish waited.
“There’s so much blood,” he said. “It’s all over her.”
“What else?”
“Noise. Like something sucking. Gurgling. And the wind. Except it’s not the wind. It whooshes. Like a bird’s wings.”
“What is it?” Tish asked. But she knew.
Finn’s eyes grew wide, and his mouth opened into a hole like the entrance to a cave. “It’s the bat. I can see it going up and down. Up and down. I can’t make it stop. Somebody make it stop!”
He stared at his hands. His bandaged hands.
“I killed her,” he said. “Don’t you understand? I killed her.”
35
Who killed her?” Stride asked Hubert Jones.
“I have no idea.”
Stride shook his head in frustration. “Then why are we here?” Jones tilted his bottle of beer and drained it, then dabbed at his puffy lips with a napkin. They had relocated to a quiet table in the rear of a bar in Terminal 5.
“I never said I knew who killed that girl,” Jones said. “I only know that it wasn’t me. When I last saw her, she was alive. I was shocked when word spread at the tracks that she had been murdered.”
“Why not come forward?”
Jones chuckled and shook his head. “When a white girl gets murdered, the first question that the police ask is, ‘Who was the nearest black man?’ You said yourself, the cop on the case was dirty. I knew what was coming. I knew I had to get out of town.”
“You said Laura had secrets,” Stride said.
“Yes, she did. I knew it the moment I saw this girl.”
“When was that?” Stride asked.
“In the woods. I saw her pass me no farther away than you are now, but she didn’t even see me. She was determined. She had a destination in her heart. It was in her walk and
how she held her backpack. I looked at her and I thought to myself, tomorrow this girl will be gone. Not gone as in dead, mind you. Gone as in somewhere else. Gone as in starting a new life.”
Stride wasn’t convinced. “Tell me about the fight in the softball field.”
“I heard the girl scream. I came upon the two of them in the long grass. The boy had her pinned. He was kissing her, tearing at her clothes, and she was fighting back, beating at him.”
Stride waited.
“I became enraged,” Jones continued. “To me, rape is the ultimate disrespect. It’s the barbarian who strips a woman of her soul.”
“Exactly what did you do?”
“I saw something in the grass. A baseball bat. I picked it up and struck the boy in the back. I jabbed it like a spear and heard his ribs breaking. He let go of the girl, and I picked him up bodily and threw him into the weeds. When I bent over to see to the girl, the boy launched himself at me again. I hit him in the face then. He fell backward. He was unconscious.”
“What about the girl?”
“She ran into the woods.”
“The boy who attacked her-was this the same person you heard near you? The one who was smoking marijuana?”
Jones thought about it. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. You know what that park was like in the summer, Lieutenant. There were lurkers everywhere.”
“What about Laura?” Stride asked. “Did you go after her when she ran?”
“Of course. I wanted to see if she was all right. That was foolish of me, I know. In her state, she probably didn’t even realize who had attacked her. She could easily have assumed it was me. Not many white teenage girls like to find a large black man chasing them through the woods anyway.”
“Did you take the baseball bat with you?”
“No, I left it behind.”
“Weren’t you afraid the boy would come after you with it?”
“He wasn’t in much shape to follow me.”
“You’re certain you didn’t take the bat,” Stride repeated.
“Yes.”
“The police matched your fingerprints to it.”
“Like I told you, I picked it up. I hit the boy.”
“Laura was killed with that bat,” Stride said. “The police found it near her body on the beach almost a mile away. How did it get there?”
In the Dark aka The Watcher Page 25
