In the Dark (14 page)

 

He asked the receptionist to tell Pat Burns that he was outside.

 

Pat was new to the job. The previous county attorney, Dan Erickson, had resigned in the wake of a scandal during the winter. Stride and Dan had been enemies for years, and he was pleased to see him gone. The county board had taken several months to name a replacement but had finally turned to Pat Burns, who was the managing partner in the Duluth office of a large Twin Cities corporate law firm. She practiced in white-collar crime and had spent several years in the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago before moving to Minnesota. She was tough and smart.

 

Stride wondered why a lawyer earning a partner’s income in a corporate law firm would give up hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to
prosecute rapists and child pornographers, but he knew the answer boiled down to one word. Politics. Like everyone else whose backside graced a county attorney’s chair, she had her eyes on higher office. That didn’t bother Stride, but it meant that every prosecutorial decision was viewed through the lens of fund-raising and vote-getting.

 

He waited twenty minutes before Pat’s door opened. She was reading from a legal-sized file folder and looked up at him over half-glasses. “Hello, Lieutenant, come on in.”

 

He had been here once before on a courtesy call two weeks earlier. At that point, the office still looked as it did when Dan Erickson was the county attorney. Since then, the masculine touch had been erased. Dan’s heavy furniture was gone. Pat preferred glass and Danish maple. The paint was fresh and brightened the room with a peach color. The old carpet had been ripped out and replaced with a light frieze. The whole room smelled of renovation, like a new house.

 

“Very nice,” he said.

 

“Thanks. I kept Dan’s bottle of Bombay, if that’s what you’re into. Me, I prefer chardonnay.”

 

“Nothing for me.”

 

“Do you mind if I indulge?”

 

“Not at all.”

 

“I practiced in London for two years after law school. I started out with the European habit of wine over lunch, and I’ve never been able to break it.”

 

She put the file folder down on her desk and took off her reading glasses. She opened a stainless refrigerator, pulled out an open bottle, and poured white wine into a small bell-shaped glass. She took a sip and then waved him toward a desert-colored microfiber sofa on the wall. Above the sofa, on a wooden shelf, was a modern steel sculpture on a cinder-block base.

 

He was wearing jeans, a sport coat, and black boots and felt under-dressed. Pat wore a tailored cream-colored pantsuit with a low-cut jacket and a white shell. A necklace of interlaced metallic squares dangled above the faint line of her cleavage. Her brown hair was short and coiffed, like an ocean wave breaking over her forehead. She was tall and slim, and Stride knew from her bio that she had turned forty years old in January.

 

Pat sat on the opposite end of the sofa and crossed her legs. She balanced her wineglass on her knee and inclined her head toward the file folder on her desk. “The widow of that golfer who got killed by lightning last month is suing the county,” she told him.

 

“How is that our fault?” Stride asked.

 

“It’s not, but a new theory of legal liability is born every day.”

 

“Golfers are walking lightning rods,” Stride said. “We fry one or two every summer that way.”

 

“Exactly. He was on a county golf course, and the wife’s attorney says we had insufficient procedures in place to provide shelter from an inevitable and predictable threat.”

 

“How about a caution sign with a picture of Ben Franklin?” Stride asked.

 

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Pat replied, smiling. She added, “Anyway, let’s move on to police matters. Is Maggie making progress on the peeper case?”

 

“Not so far. He hasn’t struck again since the incident involving the disabled girl in Gary a couple weeks ago. We’re keeping an unmarked vehicle near her house for several hours each night in case he comes back.”

 

“Is that likely?”

 

“The father thinks he peeped her once before. He may have a special interest in this girl.”

 

“Keep me posted on this case,” Pat told him. “Families don’t get too upset when drug dealers kill each other, but they feel vulnerable when perverts are peering in the window at their daughters.”

 

“Understood.”

 

“I’d like to set up a monthly status meeting with you,” Pat added, “so we can go over outstanding cases. Okay?”

 

“Of course. I’ll set it up with your assistant.”

 

“I’m not trying to tread on your turf, but I like to know what’s in the pipeline. I don’t want to be surprised by headlines or get sandbagged by reporters.”

 

“I understand,” Stride said. “If anything happens, either K-2 or I will call you directly to keep you in the loop.”

 

K-2 was the departmental nickname for Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick.

 

“I appreciate it,” Pat said. She added, “Peter Stanhope called me this morning.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“He’s concerned about this reporter, Tish Verdure, and the book she’s writing about an unsolved murder back in the 1970s. There was an article in today’s paper.”

 

“That’s right,” Stride said.

 

“This is the kind of thing I need to know about
in advance
, Lieutenant.” She didn’t snap at him, but her voice was cool and direct. “Particularly if someone like Peter Stanhope is involved. I don’t like to be blindsided when a major campaign contributor calls me to talk about a murder investigation, and I don’t know anything about it.”

 

Stride nodded. “You’re right. I apologize. I should have called you when I first met Tish and heard about her project. Candidly, I didn’t think that—”

 

Pat cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Never mind. I don’t want explanations or excuses. It’s done. I just want us to be clear for the future, okay?”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“Now you can tell me about this case. I gather you knew the victim?”

 

“She was my wife’s sister.”

 

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry. Tell me what happened.”

 

Stride sketched out the facts of the case and retraced the investigation for her. He also told her what he knew about Tish’s book and about the DNA tests he had run in the past several weeks.

 

Pat sipped her wine and listened carefully to the story. “Peter was asking if we had any plans to reopen an active investigation of this case.”

 

“I don’t think we have enough evidence to do so,” Stride said. “So far, nothing changes the original theory of the crime, which is that Laura was killed by a vagrant. Tish hasn’t come up with anything to disprove or discredit that idea.”

 

“But you’re running tests on physical evidence.”

 

Stride nodded. “That’s true. If we had made a DNA match to find out who was stalking Laura, or to find out whose semen was near her body, that certainly would have changed things. We’d have new questions to ask and potentially someone with new information.”

 

“Except from what you say, one of the key pieces of physical evidence is missing,” Pat said. “Namely, the murder weapon. We also don’t have any
idea how to find this vagrant after thirty years, or know whether he’s even still alive. I don’t know how we would go about bringing a case against anyone under those circumstances.”

 

“Agreed,” Stride said. “We’ve got a lot of suspects and a lot of reasonable doubt.”

 

“That means we need to be extremely careful about allowing speculation to make its way into the media. I don’t want anyone tried in the press when we have no intention of bringing charges in court.”

 

“You mean Peter Stanhope,” Stride said.

 

“I mean anyone.” Pat paused. “Look, Lieutenant, I’m a practical person. You and I both know that money talks. If I could prove Peter Stanhope was guilty of something, would I throw the book at him? Absolutely. Do I want you to avoid spreading rumors about him if we can’t prove he’s guilty of anything? Absolutely. I’d say that about any suspect, but yes, I’m going to be extra careful when it comes to someone who is a friend and supporter. That’s life.”

 

“I’m well aware of that.”

 

“I have no idea what Peter Stanhope was like as a teenager or a young man. All I can tell you is that my firm has been on the other side of his in litigation, and my partners spoke highly of his professionalism.”

 

“Understood.”

 

“So let’s set some ground rules. First, be extremely cautious with what you tell Tish Verdure. We don’t know her. She’s a journalist and potentially a loose cannon. The last thing we need is her turning this into another Martha Moxley case, all right?”

 

“Fair enough.” He didn’t mention that he had just come from a meeting with Tish and that he had already shared something with her that he probably shouldn’t. The existence of semen near Laura’s body.

 

Pat held up two fingers. “Second, we both know that this case could blow up in our faces no matter what we do. If Tish gets someone in the New York media to take an interest, we’re going to get hounded with queries. This could wind up on
20/20
or
Cold Case.
National press.”

 

“What do you suggest?” Stride asked.

 

“I suggest you make sure you know this case inside and out. Okay? Go back over everything. Make sure you’re able to answer any question that comes up. Revisit the entire investigation, but be discreet.”

 

Stride hesitated.

 

“What is it?” Pat asked.

 

“I have some concerns that the original investigation may have been compromised.”

 

Pat nodded. “You mean Ray Wallace.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Ray was before my time, but I’ve heard stories. He was a big problem.”

 

“Ray was a good cop, but he crossed the line,” Stride said. “He may have leaped too quickly to a theory of the crime that exonerated Peter Stanhope. He may have made the murder weapon and the original stalker letter disappear.”

 

“Well, if Ray screwed the pooch, we should know about it before Tish or someone else gets there ahead of us.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“One last thing,” Pat said.

 

“Yes?”

 

“At some point, I may pull the plug. If all we’re doing is chasing our tail, and it’s obvious we’re never going to have enough evidence to put someone on trial, then I’m going to shut this down. I’m sorry, I know this girl meant something to you and your late wife. But if we don’t find anything new, then you and Tish are both going to have to live with the idea that the case will always be unsolved.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHO KILLED LAURA STARR?

 

 

By Tish Verdure

 

 

 

 

 

THIRTEEN

 

 

 

 

July 5, 1977

 

 

 

 

The three of us were in our living room on Tuesday afternoon. It was me, my dad, and Jonny. The house had never felt so small. I hadn’t slept at all, and the walls felt like they were closing in, and the ceiling was coming down on top of me. I couldn’t breathe. The room was baking hot and so sticky that you broke into a sweat without doing anything at all. We all sat there, not saying a word, watching the dusty stream of sunlight through the front window. Jonny held my hand, and I buried my head in his shoulder. Tears of anger and regret streamed down my dad’s face. His face was beet red. He blamed Laura for living when my mom died, and now he blamed her for dying like she did. He had lost another one.

 

My dad. He was never a big man, and year by year, he seems to shrink. His dark hair, which was so full and thick when I was a little girl, is mostly gone now. His clothes don’t fit, but he won’t let me buy new ones, so his white dress shirts balloon at his shoulders. He sits in his recliner in the evenings and reads his leather Bible by the dim light. No ambition
anymore. Just crushed dreams and a tug-of-war with God. I remember how he used to come home from Wahl’s in his sharp pinstriped suits, like a man on top of the world, a man going places. He was going to run that department store someday. That’s what he told Mom. Now other men have climbed over his shoulders, and Dad writes newspaper ads for white sales. At fifty, he looks sixty. You just don’t realize how one person depends on another, and when they’re not there, it’s like going off a bridge, and you’re falling and falling.

 

I went to Jonny’s place. After. In the middle of the night. He answered the door, and I looked a sight, crying, dotted with blood. He called the police, because I couldn’t do it. They came and took us back there, and I led them through the woods to the body, but I couldn’t go out to the beach. I couldn’t see it again. Even the big, tough cops couldn’t believe what had been done to her. Things like that don’t happen. Not here in Duluth.

 

They asked me a lot of questions in a police car parked back in the weeds and had me repeat over and over what I did and what I saw. I think they could have done that for hours, but Jonny stood up to them and insisted that they take me home. I needed to tell my dad. I needed to stand under the shower and wash away the blood. They took pictures of me first, though, flashbulbs popping in my face out there in the woods. They scraped blood from my skin. I realized that they thought maybe I had done this myself. I had killed her. I didn’t understand how anyone could think that. I told them I was innocent. I’m not sure they believed me.

 

“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I murmured.

 

I felt a need to take this on myself, for his sake. I never should have let her go.

 

Dad didn’t look at me. “God’s punishment is a terrible thing.”

 

“You know I don’t want to hear that.”

 

“I told Laura she was sinning,” he said.

 

I wanted to scream at him, but I didn’t. I bit my tongue. This was how he dealt with grief, how he explained awful,