‘Oh, Cat,’ Stride murmured. He was disappointed, and she knew it.
‘I’m sorry!’
He put his hands gently on the girl’s shoulders. ‘Are you telling me the truth? Because you know what happens next, don’t you? I get a search warrant tomorrow, and we tear Al’s house apart from top to bottom.’
‘The ring was in his house,’ she insisted. ‘That’s where I got it.’
‘What about the other jewelry I talked about? The earrings, necklace, brooch. Did you see any of those other pieces in the house?’
She shook her head. ‘I only had the ring.’
‘And the gun?’
‘I never saw a gun! I didn’t!’
Stride believed her. There were still secrets in Cat’s eyes, but he didn’t think she was lying about the gun. ‘This is important, Cat. Did Al ever say anything about this woman who was killed? Kelly Hauswirth?’
‘No!’
‘Did you ever have reason to think that he could be involved in criminal activity?’
‘No, no, that’s not him! He’s not a bad person.’
‘Cat, listen,’ Stride told her. ‘We think someone was trying to kidnap Kelly Hauswirth when she was killed. Possibly to sell her as a human slave. That’s as terrifying and cruel as it sounds. Someone in Duluth was making that happen, and whoever it is had access to that gun.’
‘He would never do anything like that.’
‘There’s another girl missing right now, Cat,’ he went on. ‘Her name is Erin. We need to find her. So please, think. Is there anything Al said – anything he did – that would help us find this girl? Do you know where she might be?’
Cat wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. ‘No. I swear, Stride, there’s nothing. I don’t know anything about a missing girl.’
52
It was morning, but Erin had no way of knowing what morning it was. Her world was black.
Every movement of her body brought pain now. Her skin was blistered where she’d struggled fruitlessly against her bonds. Cuts had scabbed over and broken again on her face. Her muscles, once so supple and strong from her visits to the gym, had balled into knots, like shoelaces tied so tightly they couldn’t be undone. She knew she had a urinary tract infection. Peeing brought a knifing sting.
Twice a day, the voice came back. The door would be unlocked and locked again, but the darkness was unrelenting. She was given food and a chance to relieve herself, with a knife at her throat and her limbs tied. Most days, she couldn’t hold it until then, so she found herself doused with a bucket of cold water to fight the smell. Even in the heat, she shivered so hard that she thought her bones would break.
She’d screamed once when the gag was removed. As she did, she found herself choked, every atom of air cut off until her limbs twitched, while the voice hissed obscenities in her ear. She didn’t scream again. She became docile, learning the routine, living by it.
Eventually, the animals at the zoo understand there is no way out.
One time, she’d murmured: ‘Why?’
She got no answer.
Another time – maybe it was yesterday, whatever yesterday was – she’d said: ‘When?’
Because she knew this was the beginning, not the end.
This time the voice told her: ‘Soon.’
Above her head, a summer rain began. It was still summer; the heat and drenching humidity told her that. She could smell the freshness of the rain from outside, and she could hear its drumbeat assaulting the roof. A squall, loud and sustained. She couldn’t see lightning through her blindness, but a growl of thunder made her prison tremble. It sounded like a devil’s throaty laughter.
Hammering raindrops squeezed through the roof. Drips leaked on her face, and she grabbed for them with her dry, swollen tongue. She heard a toneless plink-plink, too, water making music on metal. The change in pitch among the falling water told her there was something large inside the room with her, and she knew instinctively what it was. Her car was hidden with her. Her Barney-purple Nissan Versa. No one would find it. No one would find her.
In the beginning, she’d prayed for Matt to find her. Mattie_1987. Her confidant, her friend, her lover. When he arrived at the bar and found she wasn’t there, he’d spread the alarm throughout Duluth and call the police. He’d pass her photo from hand to hand. Strange how long it had taken the truth to sink into her brain. Even when it was obvious, she’d refused to believe it. There was no Matt. He was a figment of her imagination. An online fantasy. She’d been lured and trapped here by the voice.
What bothered her more than anything was how easy it had been to be tricked. She felt like the perfect fool. Growing up, she’d thought girls were naive to fall for scams. She couldn’t understand how women could believe the same tired lines from guys in bars. And now she’d allowed herself to fall in love with a lie. To be drawn into something far worse than a one-night stand.
More thunder. The devil chuckled at the joke. No one’s coming for you, Erin.
She had tried to escape, but the steel of handcuffs and chains was insurmountable. She’d screamed and struggled, achieving nothing. She’d cried. Wept. Prayed. God didn’t answer and left her in hell. When the gag came off twice a day, she’d beg for mercy and bargain with the voice. Let me go. Please. I’ll do anything. What do you want?
That was all buried somewhere in the past. Her tears had dried long ago. She’d realized that the darkness was a grieving process; struggling, protesting, challenging – and finally accepting the reality. Her life was over. What was left to her wasn’t life at all. She’d felt herself going dead inside as the darkness continued, until she felt nothing at all.
Erin had a choice. Early on, she’d known that the choice was available to her. The last choice. When she explored the tiny universe allowed by her chains, she discovered that she was affixed to a heavy steel table. It was immovable. Bags of sand or concrete had been laid on top of it. The table was weighted, as heavy as her car, imprisoning her where she was.
However, the metal corner of the table above her head came to a sharp point. It was jagged, hooked, like the end of a dentist’s pick. The jab of metal was useless against the steel holding her in place, but that wasn’t what she needed it for. God had given her a way out of this hell, if she had the courage to use it.
The rain kept on, as hard as ever, but the thunder quieted. It was as if the devil knew what she was going to do.
Erin twisted her body, pushing herself onto her knees in the dirt, until she could nudge her chin over the smooth cold tabletop. She smelled the concrete dust, but she took a breath anyway, savoring it. Funny how you took life for granted. Breathe in, breathe out. She slid her face leftward, hunting for the prickly corner, like the needle of a cactus. It bit into her neck. Her salvation. Metal couldn’t penetrate metal, but it could penetrate flesh.
Home squirmed into her brain. Her apartment in Grand Forks. Good days. Swimming in the river. Red wine on Saturday nights. She couldn’t let those thoughts control her. Home didn’t exist. That life – her life – didn’t exist anymore. She pressed against the point of the table, which bit harder. Her body wanted to jerk away, but she didn’t let it.
The little claw took hold of her neck. Erin slung her head in a single sharp pivot. The pick held, and ripped, and tore. Pain awakened her, but pain was a friend. Rain leaked onto her body, warming her skin, but she knew with a wild sense of freedom that the rain had stopped.
This was blood.
This was escape.
*
Bernd Frisch didn’t smile at the coast guard officer. Smiling was what guilty people did. He wasn’t concerned by the search of the boat or the extra security. His fake Dutch passport would come through the computer databases as clean as spring rain. The entire crew had cleared customs inspections over and over, and today would be no different.
He answered questions. Politely. Offering nothing but facts. Where the ship had been. Where they had docked. What they loaded and unloaded. The voyage of the Ingersstrom was routine.
The one surprise was the photographs they showed him. The officer presented him with pictures of women. Had he seen them? Had he witnessed any of the crew interacting with these women? Had he seen them here in Duluth or elsewhere in Europe?
No. No. No.
Did he have any knowledge of human trafficking activities on this or other foreign ships operating in the St. Lawrence Seaway?
No.
Bernd recognized the photograph of the woman he’d delivered from Duluth last year – the woman who’d been found murdered in Amsterdam. He recognized Kelly Hauswirth, whom he’d shot in the back of the head. He recognized the woman who would be smuggled on board after dark tonight, before the boat set sail into the waters of Lake Superior at 2:00 a.m.
‘These women are unfamiliar to me,’ he said.
And that was that.
Bernd was cleared. He took his backpack and left the boat. They didn’t search him, so they didn’t find the gun at the bottom of the pack, fully loaded now. If they had spotted the gun, he would have told them that America wasn’t a safe place. Didn’t they watch television?
He swaggered down the gangplank to the busy port. Steam rose from the ground in humid clouds. The sky over the lake was black where a storm blew eastward away from the city. It had rained, but the rain was gone.
Welcome to Duluth.
Bernd slipped out his phone and texted. I’m here.
53
As soon as they climbed out of Stride’s Expedition at the house in Superior, Maggie knew she’d made a terrible mistake nine years earlier.
This was where Cat’s boyfriend lived, but she recognized exactly where she was. She remembered the sea-foam green, two-story house on the corner. The coming-and-going of the trains across the street. The overpass of Highway 2. The arborvitae, even taller now, towering over the roof.
‘I’ve been to this house before,’ she said.
Stride and Serena both stared at her. ‘What? When?’
‘After Jay Ferris was killed.’
Maggie’s memory painted the picture for her. Back then, it had been winter. Mountains of snow were piled on the street corner. The engineer who waved at her from a passing train wore an orange down coat and gloves. The sky was slate gray over her head, like it was today. And across the street, parked beside the two-story house, was a white Toyota Rav4.
The Rav wasn’t there anymore. There were no cars on the street or in the driveway. Even so, she remembered being here, questioning a man on the front porch. She and Guppo had interviewed dozens of Rav owners in Duluth and Superior, trying to pinpoint one of them who may have been parked on the street near Janine Snow’s home on January 28.
‘The owner’s name was Seymour Pugh,’ Maggie recalled. ‘He was on our checklist back then. He owned a white Rav, and he had a criminal record for burglary. I talked to him about Jay’s murder.’
‘Cat’s boyfriend is Al Pugh,’ Serena said.
Maggie nodded her head in frustration. ‘Al must be his son. That’s the connection.’
She’d misread Seymour Pugh all those years ago. He’d fooled her.
She was angry with herself, but there was no way she could have put the pieces together back then. Pugh was just one of many interviews, one playing card dealt from a full deck. She remembered liking him. He was a family man. A man who stayed with his wife and kids instead of running out. A man who got a solid job after his run-ins with police and prison.
A job. Maggie remembered Seymour Pugh’s job, and it meant something important to her now.
‘Pugh told me that he drove a truck,’ she said. ‘He was all over the Midwest delivering machine parts. Including Illinois.’
‘You think he was the one who bought the gun on the street in Chicago,’ Serena concluded. ‘That’s how the gun got to Duluth.’
Maggie banged her fist into her palm. She was stupid. Pugh had given her a song and dance about his values, about supporting his family, about finding God. She’d believed him. And now, she was convinced that he’d lied to her. The clues fit, and they all pointed in one direction. The white Rav. The connection to Chicago, where the murder weapon had been sold. The stolen jewelry that came from Pugh’s house.
She’d been talking to the man who murdered Jay Ferris.
‘Come on,’ Stride said. ‘Let’s go inside.’
The two streets leading to the house were barricaded a block away. They had a dozen officers with them, all in militia gear, with vests on. They weren’t taking any chances with what might be waiting behind those doors. The team fanned out around them, staking out positions on all sides of the house. A wooden fence surrounded the yard, and half a dozen officers made their way through the gate.
Gray clouds layered the sky. The street steamed with puddles. Stride, Serena, Maggie, and Guppo approached the front door, which was secured with bars. So were the windows. Maggie drew her Glock and aimed it at the door, and Guppo did the same. Stride pounded on the wall and shouted for anyone inside.
Those were the tensest moments. The silence. The waiting. Either this would go well or it wouldn’t.
Ten seconds later, they heard the knock of the deadbolt being undone. The door inched open. A young black man stared out at them, eyes wide. Just a sliver of his body was visible. He saw the guns and their stony faces.
‘Al Pugh?’ Stride demanded.
‘Yeah – yeah, what the hell—’
‘Put your hands up, open the door slowly, and come outside.’
The young man did as he was told, but he looked scared. Maggie thought he couldn’t be more than nineteen years old. He was tall but underfed, all skinny arms and legs. He was good-looking with his trimmed goatee and black hair against smooth cocoa skin. It was easy to see why a girl like Cat had fallen for him. He wore a T-shirt and loose-fitting cargo pants, and dressed like that, he looked a lot like the man Maggie had interviewed years earlier. But this young man would have been a child when Jay Ferris died.
Al nudged onto the porch, and Stride grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him down the steps. Stride spun the boy around, kicked his legs apart, and frisked him from head to toe. No weapons. He put a strong hand on Al’s shoulder and pushed him down on the front step at their feet.
‘Who else is inside?’ Stride asked.
‘My mom and my sisters. What’s going on?’
‘We have a warrant to search the property.’
‘Search? For what?’
Stride ignored him and barked at Guppo. ‘Gather the people inside in one room, and make sure someone stays with them. Search everything inside and out. Attic, basement, garage. Keep an eye out for false walls and false floors.’
‘False walls?’ Al asked. ‘What are you talking about? What are you looking for? We don’t have anything like that.’
Guppo led the team inside. Maggie heard shrill protests from a woman. Al’s mother.
Stride crouched in front of Al Pugh. ‘Are you Cat’s boyfriend?’
‘Cat? Is that what this is about? What did she say? Hey, I’m sorry I cheated on her, man. I don’t know what she told you, but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch her either!’
‘How did you meet her?’
‘Here at my mom’s house. It was a church painting project. I thought she was cute, and we started going out. Tell me what she said, man! I didn’t do anything!’
Maggie held up a photograph of Kelly Hauswirth. ‘Do you know this woman?’
‘What? No! No, I – aw, wait, isn’t that the chick who got shot? That was all over the news, right? I recognize the face, but I don’t know her.’
Serena held up a photograph of Erin Tierney. ‘What about her?’
Al shook his head. ‘No way. Never seen her.’
‘She’s missing.’
‘I’m telling you, I don’t know who she is! That’s the truth.’
‘We’re taking your laptop, Al. We’ll find out all about the chat rooms. You might as well tell us about it. And who you’re working with.’
‘Man, I can’t tell you what I don’t know! I don’t even own a laptop.’
‘Cat says she took a ring from your house,’ Stride said. ‘A black pearl ring. Where did you get it?’
Al stared at them. ‘Ring? I don’t have any ring. Shit, man, laptops and pearl rings. Does it look like we got the money for stuff like that? I’m lucky if we got mac and cheese for dinner.’
‘This ring was stolen during a murder in Duluth almost nine years ago,’ Stride told him. ‘The gun that was used back then is the same gun that murdered a woman outside the Grizzly Bear Bar last month. The ring and the gun are connected, Al. And Cat says that ring came from this house.’
Al tried to stand up, but Stride shoved him down. ‘Aw, man, are you kidding? I don’t know anything about a ring, and I sure as hell don’t know anything about a gun! You guys are crazy!’
Maggie looked up as they heard a commotion inside the house. The front door wrenched open, and a woman in her late thirties stormed onto the porch, long hair flying. Guppo, in hot pursuit behind her, grabbed her flailing wrists, but when that didn’t stop her, he bear-hugged the woman and lifted her off the ground. Her legs kicked, and one high heel flew off like a missile. Her voice got louder and screeched for the heavens.
‘You people let me go and get out of my house!’
Al stood up again, trying to calm her. ‘Mom, Mom, knock it off, it’s okay.’
‘Put me down!’ she screamed at Guppo.
Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) Page 32
