In the Dark (28 page)

 

“I can’t tell you anything. It’s gone.”

 

Stride shook his head. “It’s not gone. It’s still inside your head. You say you saw someone attacking Laura. Trying to rape her. Are you sure it wasn’t you?”

 

“No! That wasn’t me. It was someone else.”

 

“Who?”

 

“I don’t know who it was. I couldn’t see.”

 

“Then Dada broke it up. Laura ran into the woods. Are you sure you didn’t follow her?”

 

“No,” Finn told them. He uncrossed and recrossed his legs.

 

“You said you don’t remember. Isn’t it possible you
did
follow Laura into the woods? Toward the beach?”

 

“I wouldn’t do that.” His eyes darted around, looking for escape.

 

“That night didn’t end in the field. Someone went after Laura. Someone took the baseball bat and chased her up to the north beach. Someone killed her. Beat her to death. Hammered her until she was almost unrecognizable. If I did that, I’d probably black it out, too.”

 

“Oh, my God,” Finn murmured.

 

“Or did you just
see
it? You’re a watcher, right? Did you see who killed Laura? Because that’s what we need to know. We need to know what happened.”

 

“
I don’t remember
.”

 

Maggie leaned forward. “You remember Mary Biggs, though, don’t you? You remember what she looked like, right? Well, here’s what she looks like now.”

 

She spilled a stack of photographs onto the desk. Autopsy photos. She picked them up one by one and pressed them into Finn’s hands, watching him go blue, watching him swallow hard, watching his head bob back and forth like the ticking of a clock as he stared, unable to look away, at the swollen, lifeless remains of Mary Biggs, pulled from the water after she drowned.

 

“You killed her, Finn. You killed this wonderful girl.”

 

Finn squeezed his eyes shut.

 

“OPEN YOUR EYES!” Maggie bellowed at him. His eyelids sprang up in shock. She clutched a close-up photo of Mary’s face, her skin puffed and pale. She shoved the photo so close to Finn that Mary’s face was his whole world, and he couldn’t see anything else.

 

“Tell me why,” Maggie said. “Tell me why you did this to her.” Her voice softened. “Look, I know you didn’t mean to. Did you love her? Did you want a chance to tell her how you felt? But she didn’t understand. She was scared of you.”

 

Finn gulped air like a fish. He swallowed hard as if something were in his mouth that wouldn’t go down.

 

“Mary and Laura both deserved better,” Stride said quietly.

 

Finn was a rubber band that had been stretched until it was frayed and ready to snap. When Finn buried his face in his hands, Stride caught Maggie’s eye. They both thought the words would spill out now, like a dammed-up river seeping through sandbags and finally bursting free. He
would talk. He would confess. He would throw off the anvil that had weighed on his conscience. He would seek absolution for the secrets that had made his life so miserable that he could only escape it into a numbed world of marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol.

 

“Let it go,” Maggie murmured.

 

Stride said, “It’s okay.”

 

Finn stared wildly at them. Tears ran from his eyes; mucus ran from his nose. He clapped a hand to his mouth, shoved them both aside with a stiff jerk of his arm, and bolted through the door, slamming it behind him. They heard the gasping, retching noise of his stomach spewing onto the marble floor of City Hall. When Stride opened the door again, the sweet stench of vomit made him cover his nose and look away.

 

Finn was gone.

 

 

 

 

Ten minutes later, the interrogation room still smelled of Finn’s body. Stride leaned back on the desk until his head banged against the wall. Maggie jumped off the desk, took the chair in which Finn had been sitting, and propped her feet up.

 

Her cell phone rang. She slid it out of her pocket and answered. Stride recognized the voice of Max Guppo, the overweight detective who had been leading the search team at Finn Mathisen’s house, along with cops from Superior. Maggie asked a few questions and then hung up. She didn’t look happy.

 

“Nothing,” she said.

 

“Come on.”

 

She shook her head. “They didn’t find a damn thing to link him to the peeping cases. His room looked as if it had been vacuum-cleaned of anything potentially incriminating. The computer had no hard drive, for God’s sake. Just a big hole in the tower. His shoes were all new. His clothes had been washed.”

 

“Rikke,” Stride said.

 

Maggie nodded. “She knows what he’s been doing. Maybe we can lean on her.”

 

“She’s been covering for Finn for thirty years. She’s not going to stop now. What about the car? The silver RAV?”

 

“Ditto. Cleaned and pressed. Even the tires had been hosed down.”

 

Stride sighed. “So where are we?”

 

“I think we’ll be able to make a charge of interference with privacy stick. If we can tie him to the other victims, a jury will make the leap.”

 

“If.”

 

“He had to find them somehow. We’ll track it down. Hell, he delivered to four out of the nine households where a girl was peeped. That’s a big coincidence right there.”

 

“Big, but still a coincidence,” Stride said. “If we can get six or seven, okay. Four’s not enough. Even with the silver RAV. He has no priors. We’ll never get the stuff from Minneapolis or his old janitorial job admitted in court. A defense lawyer can blow smoke and make a jury believe Finn is just a victim of circumstances.”

 

“And Mary’s murder?”

 

Stride shook his head. “You know that’s going nowhere. We’ll be lucky to pin the peeping charge on him. We can’t put him at the scene with Mary, and even if we could, we can’t establish what really happened.”

 

“At least we can charge multiple counts. He’s done it ten times that we know of. If we get the right judge, we can go for two years a count.”

 

Stride put a hand gently on Maggie’s leg. “I know this case means a lot to you, Mags, but you’re dreaming. With no priors? He’ll get a year for everything and be out in three months. If he sees the inside of a jail at all. That’s life.”

 

“That sucks.”

 

“I know it does.”

 

“What the hell do I tell Clark Biggs?”

 

“That we’re still working on the case. We’re not done yet. If we get the DNA test back and can prove that Finn was at the scene where Laura was murdered, we can take another run at him. Maybe he’ll confess. He might not go down for Mary’s death, but if we put him behind bars for Laura’s murder, that’s some justice.”

 

“If,” Maggie said, mocking him.

 

“Yeah, yeah.” Stride rubbed his hands over his face and felt a bone-deep tiredness throughout his body. “Think they’ve cleaned up the hallway yet?”

 

Maggie reached over and pushed the door open. “Nope.”

 

“Shit,” Stride said. “I have to wash my face.”

 

“Is that what guys say when they have to take a leak?”

 

“No, we say we have to take a leak.”

 

“Do most guys wash their hands after?” Maggie asked.

 

“You don’t want to know.”

 

“Yuck.”

 

Stride laughed. He left the interrogation room and covered his nose against the pungent aroma of puke. The hallways were empty. It was evening, and City Hall was mostly deserted. He found the frosted glass door that led to the men’s room, opened it with his shoulder, and started a stream of cold water running in the nearest sink on the long countertop. He bent over, splashed water on his face, and rubbed his skin hard. His fingers ran through his hair, leaving it wet and disheveled.

 

He smelled it before he saw it.

 

Blood.

 

His eyes were closed, and when he opened them, blinking, he saw the first toilet stall reflected in the mirror, its door ajar. Twin trails of fresh blood outlined the grout in the white floor tiles in ruby red squares. Stride ran for the stall and shoved the door open, where it bounced against the wall of the stall. Finn Mathisen was sprawled on the seat, his head lolling back, his mouth open and slack. His arms dangled uselessly at his sides, and a Swiss army knife lay on the floor where it had spilled from his hand.

 

The blood on the tiles dripped from two jagged, vertical gashes Finn had carved into the veins on both wrists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART FOUR
______________
Act of Mercy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28
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Serena spotted Peter Stanhope in the corner of the main room at Black Woods. His table overlooked the calm lake waters through floor-to-ceiling windows. It was one o’clock, and the restaurant was crowded with the lunch rush. Peter drank a glass of red wine and checked e-mail on his BlackBerry with his other hand as she took a seat opposite him. She stared at his lower lip, which was swollen and purple.

 

He followed her gaze and shrugged. “Tish.”

 

“I heard.”

 

“It was my own fault,” Peter said. He used his fork to separate a flaky piece of white fish, which he chewed gingerly. “Even so, I never expected her to do something so crazy.”

 

“Not necessarily crazy,” Serena said.

 

Peter cocked his head with suspicion. “What do you mean by that?”

 

Serena said nothing. Peter thought about it, and then he glanced around the restaurant and lowered his voice. “This is about DNA? What the hell would Tish Verdure want with a sample of my DNA?”

 

“What do you think?”

 

Peter shook his head, as if scolding himself. “That was stupid of me. I didn’t know that Stride had any forensic evidence in Laura’s murder.”

 

“You mean you thought Ray Wallace made it all disappear?”

 

“I don’t like your tone, Serena. Not from someone who works for me. What sort of evidence do they have?”

 

“I can’t tell you.”

 

Peter frowned. “I could file a motion to stop the police from running any tests.”

 

“You could, but then it’s all out in the open. In the press. People will wonder what you’re trying to hide.”

 

“I already told you that I didn’t kill Laura.”

 

“Then you have nothing to fear.”

 

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

 

Serena waited. Peter waved the waitress away from the table. He scowled and leaned back, folding his arms. “What did George Bush say? When I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid.”

 

“You sent Laura those stalking letters,” Serena concluded. “Didn’t you?”

 

“Okay, yes. You’re right.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why? I went out with Laura, and she shut me down. I thought she was playing games, stringing me along. I was pissed off. So I started sending her those notes. It was a joke.”

 

“I saw one of the notes. This was no joke.”

 

“Give me a break, I was seventeen years old.”

 

“Don’t make excuses, Peter. You were terrorizing this girl.”

 

“Call it whatever you want. I didn’t kill her.”

 

“This isn’t just about sending ugly letters, is it? Finn was telling the truth. You attacked Laura that night in the softball field.”

 

Peter met Serena’s eyes. “I didn’t attack her. I went back to the field that night to get my baseball bat. I bumped into Laura coming out of the woods. Yes, I tried to kiss her, and yes, I may have pushed things too far. I thought she was playing hard to get. That’s all it was.”

 

“It sounds like rape to me,” Serena told him.

 

“I am not a rapist.”

 

“Yeah, rich boys never are.”

 

Peter’s face screwed up in anger. “I could have lied to you, and I didn’t.”

 

“Really? What choice do you have? You’ve painted yourself into a corner. You already told the police that you and Laura were making out in the field. You admitted the two of you were together that night.”

 

“The smart thing for me would be to say nothing at all. That’s what the lawyer in me says I should do.”

 

“Well, you’ve already started talking, so keep going. What happened after you accosted Laura?”

 

“The black guy broke it up. Knocked me out cold.”

 

“What happened after you woke up?”

 

“Laura was gone. So was the black guy. I had a splitting headache. I went home.”

 

“What about your bat?”

 

“I forgot all about it.”

 

“Was it still in the field?”

 

“I have no idea if it was or wasn’t. I didn’t look around for it. I didn’t even think about the bat. I just wanted to get out of there.”

 

“What else can you tell me about that night?”

 

“That’s it.”

 

“You don’t know what happened to Laura?”

 

“I don’t. As far as I know, the black guy killed her. That’s what I’ve thought all these years.”

 

“Did you see Finn Mathisen that night?”

 

“No.”

 

Serena shook her head. “As a cop, I wouldn’t believe your story, Peter. You were stalking Laura. You were obsessed with her. You attacked her the night she was killed. And then you just walked away? And someone else went after her with your bat? You must think I’m a sucker.”

 

“Serena, I was no angel back then, but killing a girl? Not me.”

 

Serena got up from the table. “I think we’re done here.”

 

“That sounds like you’re walking away from me. From the job.”

 

“I am.”

 

Peter reached into his wallet and dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the table. “Let me walk you out. I have something in my car that may change your mind. Call it a token of good faith.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“I have to show you.”