The cop who shot at you back then, Stride said. He was dirty. I thought you should know.
That was a dirty time.
Why did you choose that life? Stride asked. Why be a drifter?
I guess you could say I was appalled by modern life, Jones said. I felt disconnected. Only a boy can be quite so naive. Still, the community I found in the shadows was deeper and stronger than any I have found since. It was hard to leave it behind. Every now and then, I try to find the dandelion men again, but theyre an endangered species. Like feral animals whose habitat has been destroyed. They scamper away when I come close. Im no longer from their world, you see.
You sound like you miss it, Stride said.
Jones tugged at the lapels on his suit with a bemused smile. I do. Sometimes I fantasize about disappearing again. Its only a fantasy.
Tell me about Laura.
Laura?
The girl who was murdered.
Jones folded his hands over his chest. Yes, of course. I never knew her name until I saw that newspaper article. She was just a girl in the park.
All these years, I thought you killed her, Stride said.
Jones nodded. And now?
Now Im not so sure. We have a new witness. Someone who says you rescued Laura instead of attacking her.
A witness, Jones said. Yes, someone else was in the woods that night. I never saw him, but I knew he was there. I smelled the cannabis he was smoking.
Finn
, Stride thought.
There was another boy in the softball field, Jones added. He was the one who attacked Laura. I stopped him from harming her.
Stride nodded. After the fight, Laura ran toward the north beach.
Yes, I know. I followed her.
Did you go all the way to the beach? Did you see her there?
I did, Dada said.
What did you see?
Dada smiled. I already told you, Lieutenant. That girl had secrets.
33
___________
Were never going to make it back to Minnesota tonight, Maggie said.
They were an hour west of Fargo, seated on top of a park bench overlooking a boat launch that dipped into the waters of Lake Ashtabula. Immediately to their left was the concrete wall of the Baldhill Dam, which held back the Sheyenne River and created a narrow stretch of man-made lake. It was late afternoon. The air smelled of boat fuel and hamburgers. Jet Ski riders left wakes in the water. Nearby, in the camping area, children splashed and squealed along a strip of sand beach.
Peter wants his plane back, Serena replied.
Yeah, but this guy could be out there fishing until the sun goes down.
After leaving the Mathisen farm, they had stopped at police headquarters in Fargo, where their North Dakota colleagues helped them identify the man who had served as lead detective investigating the murder of Finns mother, Inger Mathisen. The detective, Oscar Schmidt, had retired from the force more than a decade earlier and relocated with his wife to a town called Valley City. Serena and Maggie tracked down the Schmidt
home, where his wife pointed them north to Lake Ashtabula, Oscars favorite spot for fishing.
You want to go in the water? Serena asked.
Maggie tented her sunglasses and squinted at the park. You mean skinny-dipping?
I mean its hot. Lets roll up our pants and dip our feet.
Youre on.
They left their shoes on top of the bench and folded the legs of their jeans above their calves. The sand on the beach was scorching, but the lake was cold when they stuck in their toes. They shuffled a few feet out until they were standing in eight inches of water.
So is it a coincidence? Serena asked. Finns mother was beaten to death? Just like Laura?
No.
Do you believe the intruder story?
No.
Neither do I. I wonder why Oscar did.
Thats what well ask him. Assuming he ever gets in off the lake.
Serena lifted her chin toward the warm sun. Maggie finished a can of Diet Coke while they waited, checking her watch impatiently as half an hour passed. Finally, a fifteen-foot aluminum boat that had obviously seen many years of service put-putted toward the boat landing. At the stern, an old man with shaggy gray hair and a mustache that curled over his upper lip cut off the Evinrude motor and let the boat drift into the shallow water. He wore navy blue swimming trunks with white vertical stripes and was shirtless. His belly bulged like a basketball, but the rest of his skin was loose and leathery. He was small, no more than five feet five, and wore sunglasses. As Serena and Maggie watched, Oscar Schmidt climbed into the water, dragged the prow until it was nearly beached on the concrete ramp, and then tramped toward his red Chevy truck in flip-flops.
Mr. Schmidt? Maggie called. They splashed out of the water toward the boat landing.
He stopped with his hands on his hips. Thats me, he replied gruffly. Who are you?
Maggie introduced herself and Serena. Wed 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 well 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. Howd you do?
Finished off a six-pack, took a swim, didnt catch a damn thing. Typical day. Tell you the truth, I dont 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, its not so bad, huh? Weve got a trailer in Texas where we go during the winter. Id 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. Ingers son.
He wasnt home.
Maggie leaned across the park bench. No offense, Mr. Schmidt, but youre not a farmer, so why dont you quit shoveling the shit?
Schmidts mustache twitched as he grinned. I like you. Never much liked Orientals, but youre smart. Easy on the eyes, too. You both are.
Whyd 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
didnt
kill her.
But you didnt believe it.
Schmidt jabbed a calloused finger at them. Sometimes you have to decide whether youre a cop or a human being, okay? Maybe its not that way in the big city, but it sure as hell works like that in a small town. The way I figure, Inger Mathisens 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 didnt 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 didnt 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 wasnt home, Serena said.
Thats 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 couldnt 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 thats 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 didnt believe them, did you?
Lets just say I didnt 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 Finns 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 Finns 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 hadnt 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 wouldnt see her. She waited until the Impala was gone, then climbed out of her car and headed for Finns 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 like 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.
