Stalked (27 page)

“I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice,” she added.

“You said it was important.”

Serena nodded. She figured if she actually waited here long enough, she would see the deer picking their way through the trees. It had happened before. She had seen deer, possum, rabbits, and even a fox once. The rust-colored animal with its bushy tail was much smaller than she expected.

She turned and went back to the sofa and sat down. She played with her hair. Tony was silent.

“What would happen if you wore something other than brown?” Serena asked.

“My head would explode.”

Serena laughed. “Maggie jokes about it, you know.”

“She’s kidded me about it for ten years.”

“Is it supposed to soothe your patients?”

“My patients?” Tony said. “No, it’s supposed to soothe me. Brown is my armor. That’s a trade secret, by the way, so don’t tell anyone.”

“Not even Maggie?”

“Especially not Maggie.”

Serena drummed her fingers on the arm of the sofa.

“I have to do something tonight that I’m not comfortable with,” she said finally.

“Okay.”

“I could use some advice on how to handle it.”

“Okay.”

He never led her. Sometimes it infuriated her, because she wanted him to give her a direction and not feel like the burden to say where they were going was always on her shoulders. That was stupid, of course. It was her therapy session.

“Let’s talk about something else first,” she said. “It’s about Eric.”

Tony waited. When he drank coffee, the black mug covered the lower half of his face, and all she saw were his hound dog eyes.

“Did he mention seeing a woman named Helen Danning?”

“No.”

“Have you ever treated a woman named Helen Danning?”

“No.”

“Well, that was easy,” she said. “I’m stalling, have you noticed?”

Tony didn’t reply.

“Aren’t you supposed to pull this stuff out of me?” she asked him.

“With what? Truth serum?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Serena sighed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you about something that you may or may not already know about from other patients. I realize you wouldn’t admit it even if you did. There’s a sex club in town. A place where singles and couples go to have sex with each other and with women who act as ‘volunteers.’ ”

“Okay.”

“I have to watch the club tonight because of an investigation. I’m not a participant, just an observer.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Nervous,” Serena admitted. “Much more so than I’ve told anyone. I’m afraid I could lose it. If I see a man climbing on top of a stranger, I’m afraid I’m going to have flashbacks of Blue Dog on top of me.”

“Are you having them now?” he asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Have you lost it yet?”

“No. I’m dealing with it.”

“Then why do you think you’re going to lose it tonight?”

“This is so much more explicit. It’s not like a mental image I can push away. These people are going to be right in front of me.”

“That makes sense,” Tony said. “You’re a fifteen-year-old girl. You don’t have any power or choice in what’s going to happen to you. You’re totally helpless. Right?”

Serena rolled her eyes. “No.”

“You’re not fifteen? You actually have some control over your life?”

“You’re a real shit, Tony.”

“I gather people go to this club because they consider it an erotic outlet. Do you consider it erotic?”

“Not particularly, but I’m curious.”

“So?”

“So I feel a little guilty about that.”

“What makes you more uncomfortable? Your nervousness or your guilt?”

“I don’t know. It’s about the same.”

Tony nodded. “I’m going to give you a pill that will completely remove all of your feelings and emotions about this.”

She looked at him. “What kind of pill?”

“It doesn’t really matter. What kind would you like? An aspirin? A chewable vitamin?”

“Funny.”

Tony shrugged. “From what you’ve described, you’re feeling exactly what I would expect you to feel about something like this. I can’t help you
not
to feel anything. The only issue is how you deal with those feelings and whether you control them, or they control you. I realize that when you were fifteen you weren’t in a position to control them. Fortunately—”

“I’m not fifteen anymore,” she concluded.

Tony spread his hands.

“I know what you’re saying,” Serena said. “It’s just not easy.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Back in the bad days, I used to escape. There was a place in my head I called the nothingness room. I’d go there and not feel a thing. That was how I dealt with it.”

“But?”

“But after a while, I couldn’t get out. I was stuck there. I felt like I was spending my whole life in that empty room. It wasn’t until I met Jonny that I was able to climb out, and now what scares me more than anything is the idea of going back there.”

Tony leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “You can run from who you are, Serena, but sooner or later, you’re going to come face-to-face with the past again. That’s when you’ll be able to decide if it’s really behind you.”

Stride drove along the North Shore highway that hugged the lake between Duluth and Two Harbors. It was a gorgeous day, with a blue sky arching overhead like a cathedral dome. He’d forgotten what the sun looked like and couldn’t remember when he last had to put on his sunglasses as he drove. The light cast a wide, sparkling swath over the water. It was quiet, with little traffic on the road. Except for the freezing temperature, it looked like summer outside, but at this time of year, it got even colder when the sun came out.

He found Kathy Lassiter’s home about ten miles north of the city. It was several decades old, but large and solidly built, with windows on both levels looking out on the lake. The home was neatly painted in a dusty blue that shimmered in the sunlight. She had a multiacre lot, thick with trees except for a large square of white snow surrounding the house. He parked in the dirt driveway behind her Audi. Before he could go to the front door, he saw it open and a woman came outside, dressed in a maroon-and-silver fleece tracksuit with her brown hair tied in a ponytail. She wore fluorescent running shoes.

“Ms. Lassiter?” he called.

She jogged down the driveway to meet him. “Can I help you?”

Stride introduced himself, and she gave him a look of mild surprise and asked to see his identification. As she studied his shield, she asked, “What’s this about? A legal matter?”

He remembered that Lassiter was a partner in a Minneapolis law firm. “No, but it is urgent. Could we go inside?”

She shook her head. “It’s time for my run. I have to stretch first though. How about we go across the street and you say what you want to say?”

They crossed the highway to a small park overlooking the lake. There was a picnic bench half-buried in snow and a stone beach below them where the azure water lapped at the shore. Their feet crunched in snow. The branches of the tall evergreens around them were motionless in the still air.

Lassiter swung her left leg nimbly to the top of the bench and bent her body until her face was almost level with her foot. She gripped her muscled calf and turned her face sideways to look at him with sharp, intelligent brown eyes. She was in her forties and wasn’t wearing makeup. Her cheeks were flushed red, and she had a flared nose.

“So what’s up, Lieutenant?” She had a lawyer’s voice, clipped and impatient.

He didn’t waste time. “I know about the sex club tonight.”

She kept stretching and shrugged her limber shoulders. “Yeah, so?”

“Am I correct that you’re going to be what they call an ‘alpha girl’?”

“That’s none of your business, is it?” She put her leg down and twisted her torso to her left. “I’m not breaking any laws. When did you become the morality police?”

“I’m not, but two alpha girls have been assaulted following their—performance—at this sex club.”

Lassiter stopped and folded her arms. Her breathing was even. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She started stretching again, but her eyes were thoughtful. “Are you suggesting that I back out?”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“But you have something else in mind,” she concluded.

“Yes, I do. If we cancel the party, we tip our hand to whoever is doing this. He may find other targets.”

“In other words, you’re hoping he’ll come after me.”

“We’ll protect you. We’ll keep you under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”

“That won’t be easy. I go back and forth between Duluth and the Cities twice a week. My main office is in Minneapolis.”

“You’re a corporate lawyer, right?” Stride asked.

“Yes, I specialize in governance issues for emerging companies.”

“Long hours, but good pay.”

“The pay’s all right, but if you want to get really rich, don’t do it by the hour,” she told him.

Stride glanced across the street at her lavish home. “Four hundred thousand a year doesn’t go as far as it used to?” he asked.

“Since you asked, no, it doesn’t. You should see what top management of a start-up can walk away with from an IPO. But I know a lawyer isn’t likely to get much sympathy from a cop on a pension.”

“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t trade jobs with you. Anyway, the commute to the Cities isn’t a problem. We’ll work with the police down there, and we’ll have the highway patrol with you—unmarked—every mile of the way.”

“Has this guy killed anyone?” Lassiter asked.

Stride frowned. “We think he may be involved in two murders to protect his identity. He hasn’t killed any of the alpha girls so far, but I won’t kid you, this is risky and dangerous. I understand entirely if you want nothing to do with it.”

“Do you think I’m safe if I forget about the party?”

“I don’t know. We’re not sure who this man is, or where he gets his information. He may already know who you are.”

“So I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lassiter stepped up and sat on top of the bench. “I’m disappointed, Lieutenant. I was looking forward to this evening. The club has always been a harmless bit of sin for me. When you spend most of your life filing 10-Ks and worrying about Sarbanes-Oxley, you don’t have time for a social life, let alone a sexual life. I’m divorced. My son is in college. There aren’t many outlets for a horny corporate lawyer in her forties.”

“Does that mean you’re going to back out?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ll do it. It just won’t be what I was hoping for. Please tell me you won’t have video or wiretaps or anything like that inside. I won’t have to worry about showing up on the Internet because some cop sells my porn debut on the side, right?”

“No.”

“Good. I also want to go over details of the surveillance. Everything has to meet with my approval. Agreed?”

“Of course. I’ll send over a detective named Abel Teitscher to talk with you. Please keep this all confidential, too.”

Lassiter hesitated.

“Is that a problem?” Stride asked.

“Not at all. It’s just that I know the people inside the club. They’re harmless.”

“The man behind this may not be a part of the club at all,” Stride said. “But we don’t know who’s talking to whom. Secrets have a way of getting out.”

“Yes, they do,” Lassiter said.

She climbed off the bench, headed to the shoulder of the highway, and began jogging north.

Stride studied the nighttime street from inside the smoked windows of a Cadillac, borrowed from a lawyer who lived a few houses down on the Point. He used it sometimes when he wanted an upscale car that blended into the neighborhood during a stakeout. Teitscher sat ramrod straight in the seat next to him, and his buzzed gray hair tickled the roof of the car. He didn’t blink. Every few minutes, he used his index finger like a comb and smoothed his mustache. That was the only sign that he was nervous.

Stride was nervous, too. It was one thing to plan surveillance on a map, with pushpins to flag the cars and colored markers inking the escape routes. It was another to be here, surrounded by shadows where someone could hide. You could throw a cordon around any piece of land, and someone could always sneak through. On the ground, you couldn’t see everything and be everywhere.

An hour to go.

A cop would stay inside Kathy Lassiter’s house while she was at the party, and another car would keep her in constant sight on the way to and from the club. For the next several days, an unmarked car with two detectives would be within fifty yards of Lassiter’s house at all times. They had installed a downstairs alarm system that would send an intruder alert both to the station and directly to the surveillance car. If someone tried to break in, they could be inside her house in less than thirty seconds.

Here at the club, they had half a dozen cars on the surrounding streets and several detectives who would patrol the streets at intervals. If the rapist was an outsider, there was a chance he would be here, where he could keep an eye on his next alpha girl coming and going.

They were parked half a block from Sonia Bezac’s house. Several homes still had their Christmas lights turned on, and multicolored strings twinkled in the trees and along the roof lines. Lumpy snowmen dotted the front yards. Looks were deceiving. There was nothing picture-postcard about this place, not with a dozen men and women about to have sex with a stranger, not with a rapist haunting the neighborhood. It made him think of driving on a lonely rural road at night and seeing lights inside a peaceful farmhouse, and envying the lives the people there must have. It was just an illusion. Whoever lived inside those places was no different than anyone else, with husbands who drank, and old people who died slow deaths, and kids who killed themselves over a broken love affair. The only romance about it was in his head.

He wanted a smoke, but he couldn’t have one. His fingers twitched. He couldn’t escape the feeling of dread. The feeling that they had all missed something.