Stalked (20 page)

“What is it?”

“I was able to reach their floor security attendant. The reason Eric was almost kicked out of the theater is that he kept trying to find a woman who worked there. He thought she was an usher. He wouldn’t say what he wanted with her, and they started getting creeped out. They told him to sit down or they’d toss him out.”

“Do you know who the woman was?”

“No, Eric didn’t know her name.”

“All right, I’ll check it out tomorrow. You sure you don’t want pizza?”

“No, thanks.”

Through the restaurant window, Serena saw a tall man in a tan trench coat cross the street toward her. “That’s okay, your nemesis is about to join me.”

“Who?”

“Abel Teitscher.”

“Why are you seeing him? You’re not a spy, are you?”

“I want to talk to him about Nicole Castro.”

“Yeah, Archie told me she called. I think you’re wasting your time. Nicole tells everyone she was framed, but we had her dead to rights.”

“Like you?”

“Yeah, okay, I see your point.”

“I’ll talk to you when I get back. Call Tony. Get some help.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a pushy bitch?”

“Everyone.”

Serena hung up and closed her laptop. Abel Teitscher entered the restaurant, and his head swiveled over his long neck, looking for her. She waved at him. He nodded back at her but didn’t smile. He was earnest and bleak, like the city in January. She had met him a few times in Jonny’s office at City Hall, and although there was bad blood between Jonny and Abel, she felt sorry for him. She knew the story of his divorce and knew he kept people away with a prickly armor. He was smart, bitter, and lonely. Once upon a time, she had been the same way.

They shook hands. He had a solid grip. As he sat down, he smoothed his coat underneath him without taking it off. That sent her a message—he wasn’t staying. She could see he was suspicious of what she wanted.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “We could order something.”

Abel shook his head. Serena sighed. She could smell the sausage now, blending with the pepperoni, and it was driving her crazy.

“You’re a runner, aren’t you?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Me, too. You’ve got that runner’s look.”

She was being kind. His face reminded her of the desert floor in Death Valley, leathery and cracked. His gray hair was trimmed to half an inch and squared off on top of his head. He looked old, but also lean and tough.

“What can I do for you?” Abel asked. “If this is about Maggie, you know I can’t say a thing.”

“It’s not about Maggie.”

“Oh?” He looked surprised.

“I was hoping you could tell me about Nicole Castro.”

“Why?”

“I have to go down to the Cities tomorrow,” Serena explained. “Nicole asked me to meet with her.”

“She told you she was framed?”

Serena nodded.

“That’s bullshit.”

“You sound pretty harsh. Wasn’t she your partner?”

“That’s why I’m harsh. I don’t like being lied to. Plus, she tells everyone that I planted evidence against her, which is a crock.”

“Just give me some background,” Serena said. “If it really is just bullshit, fine, but at least I’ll know that going in.”

Abel leaned back against the wooden wall of the booth. He worked a toothpick between his molars. “Look, Nicole was a good kid. She and I worked together for five years. She was a lot younger than me, but we got along. I’ll tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that keen about having a black partner. My experience is that black women assume you’re going to treat them with disrespect, so you have to be careful about everything you say. I don’t do a very good job of watching my mouth. You’ve probably figured that out.”

Serena smiled.

“Nicole was just as nervous having a middle-aged white guy as a partner. We had our arguments from time to time. Having a partner is like being married, you know that. But we did okay.”

“How did her problems start?” Serena asked.

“To begin with, she was married to a son of a bitch. The kind of guy that thinks the world owes him a living because he’s got a good-looking face. Nicole denied it, but I know he hit her a few times.”

“So what happened?”

Abel took off his glasses and stared at the ceiling. “It was just bad, bad luck. Nicole was coming back from Superior on the Blatnik Bridge on a Saturday night. There was a guy on the Minnesota side who had parked his car and was running around on the bridge deck in a winter coat. This was July. Nicole blocked off traffic and got out of her car to talk to him. He told her he had a bomb strapped to his chest, and he was going to blow up himself and the bridge.”

“Oh, shit.”

“She tried to talk him into keeping his hands in the air, but he wouldn’t listen. He kept saying he was going to do it, he was going to set off the bomb. When he unzipped his coat and began to reach inside, Nicole shot him twice in the head.”

Serena understood what Nicole had gone through in those few seconds on the bridge. She had faced the same situation in Las Vegas, when a man decided to commit suicide by cop by pointing a gun at her and Jonny. That time, she was the one to pull the trigger.

“Sounds like a good shooting,” she said.

“It was, but then the second-guessing started. It turns out the guy was mentally ill. There was no bomb.”

“It’s not like she could take the chance.”

“You know that, and I know that. But tell that to the people who weren’t up on the bridge. There was more, too. A lot of people said they heard this guy shouting racial slurs at Nicole. So some politicians got the idea that she shot him because he was a racist.”

“Great.”

“There was an investigation. Nicole went on leave, and it was six months before they cleared her and got her back on the job. Six months. Unbelievable. She went to pieces sitting at home, watching the television stations chew her up night after night. She had a nervous breakdown.”

“So what happened with her husband?”

“The son of a bitch started having an affair with a young cocktail waitress. Eighteen years old.”

“Was Nicole back on the job at that point?”

Abel nodded. “Yeah, she said she was okay, but she was fragile. Therapy wasn’t working. She didn’t have much of a caseload, too. Stride was nervous about her getting in over her head too quickly, so she mainly pulled cold cases. He was right. She was coming apart. You’d hear her on the phone with her husband, and it was crazy, like you were listening to a stranger. Hell, I heard her threaten him myself. Nicole said she’d kill him if he didn’t break off the affair.”

“And?”

“I got the call. Bad smell coming out of an apartment in the Lincoln Park area. I went in and found Nicole’s husband and his teenie girlfriend, both shot dead. They’d been gone at least two days. Nicole never even reported him missing.”

“Was it her gun?”

“No, but it was just as bad. Her husband’s gun. He kept it in the glove compartment of his car, which was parked outside the apartment building. Nicole said she was home drinking on the night of the murders, but she didn’t have any witnesses to back it up. She said he sometimes went off for days on end, so she didn’t think anything was wrong when he didn’t come home. But she knew he was with the other girl. She also swore to me—swore to me—that she had never been inside that girl’s apartment. Except we found witnesses who placed her outside the building in her car on multiple occasions. Like she was stalking them. And we found two of her hairs in the bedroom with the bodies. Perfect DNA match.”

Serena whistled. “That’s a lot of evidence. What did Nicole say?”

“She said she didn’t do it. I believed her, too, until we found the witnesses near the apartment and got the forensics report back. Then I knew she was just like every other perp. Covering her ass.”

“This was personal for you.”

“Very personal. Take my advice, Serena. Save yourself a trip.”

Serena shrugged. “I have to go down there anyway.”

“Suit yourself.” The older detective slid out of the booth. He took black leather gloves out of his pockets and put them on his hands.

“Hey, Abel,” Serena said. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but Maggie’s not Nicole.”

“I need more than faith to believe that.”

He left, and Serena drummed her fingers on the table. She was discouraged. The visit to Nicole Castro smelled like a waste of time now, but she couldn’t back out, even though she knew what it would be like. She hated to see a cop’s life ruined. They all walked close to the line sometimes, and when one of them took a step across, you just wanted to turn your eyes away.

The waitress stopped by her table. She had tomato sauce on her shirt. “You want to order pizza?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Stride saw a light on inside Silk, shining in a yellow triangle from the office at the rear of Lauren Erickson’s dress shop. He rang the bell beside the door and heard a distant chime. As he waited, he looked up and down Superior Street, which was deserted for the night. It was almost seven thirty, and the stores were closed. A string of streetlights illuminated the slush piled in gray mounds on the curb and on the edge of the sidewalks.

Inside, he saw Lauren’s petite silhouette framed in the light from the office. She crossed the store in the darkness and unlocked the door. He felt uncomfortable as he came inside. He was dressed in a dirty flannel shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, which were crusted with mud. He smelled like smoke because of an arson fire he was investigating near the airport, and there was soot in the creases of his neck. Lauren, by contrast, wore a striped dress shirt with an open collar and a gold chain around her neck, tan pleated dress slacks with a braided belt, and leather pumps. Her wheat-colored hair was loose, bobbing around her shoulders.

“Lose the boots,” she told him.

He left them on the rubber mat. The blue carpet felt deep and thick under his feet. “Sorry, I’m a mess.”

“Don’t get anything on the dresses,” she said.

She led him back to the office, where moving boxes were scattered on the floor. The bottom drawers of several filing cabinets were open and half-filled with bulging file folders. She had a bottle of pinot noir on her desk and a crystal glass filled with wine.

She held up the bottle, offering him a drink, and he shook his head.

“I know you won’t believe this, but I’m going to miss living in Duluth,” she told him as he sat down.

Stride squeezed his body into a wooden chair designed for women whose trim backsides could fit in a thimble. “You’re right. I don’t believe it.”

“I used to go hunting and fishing with my dad when I was a girl,” she said. “I brought down an eight-pointer once. I had it on my bedroom wall for years.”

“Don’t look now, but you could be a redneck.”

Lauren smiled thinly. “I’m just saying this is my home.”

“You’ll do okay in Georgetown,” Stride said.

“I’m sure we will.” She swirled her wine in the glass. “Who knows, maybe I can land Dan a job in the next administration. Something in the Justice Department.”

“I always heard that ‘under secretary’ was the position Dan preferred,” Stride said.

Lauren slapped her glass down on the desk so hard that wine sloshed over the top. Then she laughed and dabbed the crimson drops with a tissue. “Funny. You’re funny. But you don’t understand us.”

“You’re not so hard to figure out. Anything for power.”

“What’s wrong with ambition?” Lauren asked.

“If it means destroying people who get in your way, plenty.”

“People usually get what they deserve. Look at Maggie.”

“Maggie doesn’t deserve what’s happened to her.”

“No? She’s no angel. I knew that when she started an affair with Dan.”

“That was years ago. Besides, I thought you looked the other way about Dan’s affairs.”

“Usually I do, because Dan knows who’s responsible for everything he is. Me.”

“So why do you still hate Maggie?”

“She asked Dan to leave me. I take that personally.”

“Dan was just using her. Maggie got hurt.”

“Poor angel. I hope you comforted her with your big strong arms.”

Stride hated that Lauren knew how to push his buttons. “You know, there are bigger sharks than you in Washington. You may wish you were back in the small pond after a while.”

“I’ll take my chances. Now what do you want, Jonathan? I have a lot of work to do here.”

“I want to talk about Tanjy.”

“Again?”

“I need some more information.”

“I heard this was Abel’s case now, not yours.”

“I’m not investigating Tanjy’s murder.”

“Oh?”

“I’m investigating her rape.”

“What rape?” Lauren asked. “You said Tanjy made it up.”

“No, I think it really happened.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s another victim,” he told her.

Lauren reacted sharply. “Are you sure?”

Stride nodded.

“Who?”

“I can’t say, but I think whoever raped Tanjy also killed her. And Eric.”

Lauren rocked back in her chair. “That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”

“Do you know who Tanjy began seeing after Mitch Brandt?” Stride asked. “I need to talk to anyone who was close to her during that time.”

She shook her head. “I have no idea. Tanjy and I weren’t exactly close.”

“Did she ever talk about being stalked or watched?”

“Not to me. You should talk to Sonnie. She saw her every day.”

“Tanjy said she was abducted going from the dress shop to her car. Do you remember seeing any suspicious individuals in the shop around that time? Or in the parking ramp?”

“In the shop? No. It’s not uncommon to have vagrants in the Michigan ramp, you know that. I don’t remember anyone specifically.”

“Did you know about Tanjy’s fascination with rape? Did she talk about it in front of you?”

“Are you kidding? No.”

“How about men who came into the shop? Did anyone show an unusual interest in Tanjy?”

Lauren shrugged. “Men hit on her all the time.”

“But no one special?”

“No one who was so taken with her that it seemed weird.”