Stalked (3 page)

“Hey, boss,” she said.

He looked at her, at a loss for words. “I’ll leave my boots outside,” he said finally. He slipped off his boots and took his coat off, too, and left them in a corner of the porch. As he stepped over the threshold, he bent down to study the lock on the door.

“It wasn’t picked,” Maggie told him. “I checked.”

“Don’t try to run the scene yourself, Mags.”

“I know whether a lock has been picked,” she sniped at him. She bit her lower lip, and then, as if to apologize, she hugged him. She was small but strong, and she spent long seconds embracing him. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Thanks for coming.”

“Why didn’t you call 911?” he asked, not liking the accusation in his voice.

Maggie backed up and folded her arms together. “I
know
what’s coming. Cops tramping through the house. Hours of interrogations. Newspapers. Television. I didn’t want to deal with it, not right away.”

“This is a murder investigation. Minutes count.”

She scoffed. “Investigation? This is going to be a witch hunt. Let’s not sugarcoat it. I’m in big trouble.”

He didn’t disagree with her. “Did you search the house?” he asked.

“No.”

“All right, let me look around.”

“I told you, he’s gone.”

“He?”

“I’m assuming it was a he. Then again, we’re talking about Eric, so I shouldn’t assume.” She gave a sour laugh.

Stride frowned. “I’m going to tell you something as a friend, Mags. Not as a cop. You should
not
say things like that. Okay? You should shut up.”

Maggie kicked at an imaginary piece of dust on the floor. “Yeah, but I don’t want to shut up. I want to get mad. I want to scream at someone.”

“That won’t help.”

“No? It’ll sure make me feel better.” She saw his face and softened. “I know, I know, you’re right. Look, you shouldn’t be here. If you want to leave, that’s okay.”

He didn’t reply, but it was true. He was on thin ice being here, because this wasn’t going to be his case. He and Maggie had been partners and friends for more than a decade, and as a result, he would be walled off from the investigation. He was the lieutenant in charge of the Detective Bureau that investigated major crimes in Duluth, at the southwestern corner of Lake Superior, where the lake narrowed like a knife point plunging into the city’s heart. Duluth was small enough that Stride played a lead role in most of the serious cases himself, but this homicide would wind up in the hands of one of his senior sergeants.

He knew that was why Maggie wanted him here before the others arrived. She wanted him to see the scene, to talk to her, to form his own opinions. She was drafting him onto her team.

“Make us both some coffee, okay?” he said. “I’ll check out the house.”

Maggie screwed up her face. “You know I don’t drink coffee.”

“You do now,” Stride told her. He added, “I could smell the alcohol on your breath when you opened the door.”

Her face blanched as she turned away.

Stride began in Eric’s office, but he stayed at the threshold and didn’t go inside. He saw the single gunshot wound in Eric’s forehead. His muscular body was stretched out on a burgundy leather sofa, a white blanket draped over his legs and stomach. His hairless chest was bare. His head and its long mane of blond hair lay propped on a pillow, which now cradled blood like a punch bowl. The gun was in the middle of the floor, at least ten feet away from the body. Too far to be a suicide. He looked for dirty water on the floor that might have been left by snowy boots, but whoever had done this had been careful. He had probably left his boots in the entryway where everyone else did and then crept through the house in stockinged feet.

Assuming anyone had been in the house at all.

He felt nothing looking at Eric’s body—he had deadened himself to that kind of emotion years ago. Even so, he knew Eric well. Eric and Maggie had been married for more than three years, and Stride had been to their house many times. It was awkward for all of them. Stride and Maggie had a long history before Eric entered the picture. For years, Maggie had indulged a quiet crush on Stride, and he wasn’t sure it had entirely gone away. Eric knew it.

Stride went room to room on all three levels. It took him nearly half an hour. The house was huge and ghostly for two people, full of cubbyholes with strange slanted ceilings, and secret spaces where cold breezes sneaked through the walls. It was in a neighborhood of vintage estates, clustered together a few blocks west of the north-south highway near Twenty-fourth Avenue. Once this had been an old money enclave, and now it was dominated by city professionals and entrepreneurs. Eric had owned the house for more than a decade. He was an ex–Olympic swimmer who had built a lucrative international sporting supply business, mostly serving athletes in the Winter Games. It was his kind of house, like a European castle, full of social aspiration. The outside was weathered tan brick and gables, an imposing monster from the street. Maggie hated it. When Eric went on business trips to Norway and Germany, she sometimes came down to Stride’s house on the lake and stayed with him and Serena.

When he returned downstairs, he found Maggie in the kitchen, staring into her coffee cup. The empty stretch of azure marble counter behind her was wiped clean. “I didn’t find anything,” he told her.

She nodded as if this wasn’t news.

“Go over it for me again,” he said. “Like you did on the phone. Tell me what happened.”

Maggie recited the events of the evening in a monotone. She told him about waking up, hearing the shot, seeing the car outside, and then finding Eric downstairs. She didn’t mention getting drunk, and Stride wondered what else she was leaving out.

“How did the killer get in?” Stride asked.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Maggie said. “He could have been waiting outside and slipped into the garage when I came home. We don’t lock the door from the garage to the house.”

“And your gun?”

“Let’s just say it wouldn’t have been hard for him to come into the bedroom without waking me up.”

“Has Eric been having problems with anyone?”

“Not that I know of.”

“How’s his business going?”

“As far as I know, great.”

“As far as you know?”

“I don’t ask. I have no idea how much money he has. The bills get paid. I assume he makes more than I do, even on a cop’s lavish salary.”

Stride smiled thinly. “Where was Eric today?”

“I don’t know. He was in the Cities over the weekend. He got back on Monday, but I barely saw him. He didn’t come home for dinner tonight.”

“How were things between the two of you?”

She shrugged. “Fine.” Her voice wasn’t convincing.

Stride waited to see if she would say something more, but she didn’t. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Can you think of anyone who would want to kill him?”

“You mean, other than me?” she asked sharply. “I
didn’t
do this. I need to know you believe that.”

“I do.”

“But?” Maggie was smart. She could see that he still had questions.

“You haven’t been yourself for weeks,” he said. “Why?”

Maggie’s face reddened with anger. “That has nothing to do with this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Drop it, boss. It’s none of your business.”

“I thought we didn’t have secrets from each other.”

“Stop treating me like a child.” She stood up, and her robe slipped. He saw more of her chest than was appropriate, but she made no effort to fix it. “I should get dressed. We better call in the dogs.”

“You know what they’re going to ask you,” he said.

She nodded. “Why wasn’t Eric sleeping in the bedroom with me.”

“So?”

Maggie shoved her hands in the pockets of her robe. “Eric had trouble sleeping. He’d go down to his office and work, and when he got tired, he’d crash out on the sofa.”

She didn’t meet his eyes as she left the room. He knew she was lying.

Stride sat outside in his Ford Bronco, watching the crime scene investigation unfold around him. His window was rolled down, and he was smoking a cigarette. He allowed himself one a day, sometimes two. This was his third. The snow continued to fall, sticking in wet sheets to his windshield and blowing into the truck. The icy flakes landed like mosquito bites on his cheek.

He didn’t like being shut out of the police activity, but he had already recused himself. When several cops came his way for instructions, he shrugged and pointed them inside Maggie’s house to find Abel Teitscher. None of them was happy to realize Teitscher was in charge. That included Stride.

His cell phone rang. He felt as if he could take the pulse of his life by the country song playing on his phone. For a while, he had used “Restless” by Sara Evans as his ring tone. He had been away from Duluth then, on a brief, strange detour to Las Vegas. Now he was back home, but he had never been able to relax, no matter where he was, and he didn’t know why. So he put Alabama’s “I’m in a Hurry” on his phone. As the song said, all he really needed to do with his life was live and die.

It was Serena on the other end of the phone. He and Serena shared a house and a bed, but they spent so much time with Maggie that they sometimes felt like a threesome.

“How is she?” Serena asked.

“She’s hiding something,” Stride said.

“You don’t think she did it, do you?”

“No, but she’s not being honest. That’s going to hurt her.”

“Who’s running the investigation?”

“I talked to K-2,” Stride said, using the department’s nickname for Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick. “He handed it off to Teitscher.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, he wouldn’t have been my choice.”

“Can you help her?”

“Not much. I’m between a rock and a hard place.”

“I’m not,” Serena said.

“That’s true, you can do whatever you want.”

“Keep me posted.”

Stride closed the phone.

He had been given a second chance after the death of his first wife, Cindy, five years ago. Serena was a former homicide detective from Las Vegas. They had worked a case that had roots in both cities and wound up as lovers. When the case came to an ugly end, he followed Serena back to Las Vegas, but it was obvious after only a few months that Stride was a fish out of water there. When he had a chance to get his old job back in Duluth, he jumped at it and asked Serena to come with him. She didn’t offer any promises or guarantees; she was worried that she would be as much an outcast in Duluth as Stride had been in Vegas. But she had been with him here for more than a year now.

Stride glanced at the stone steps leading to Maggie’s front door and saw Abel Teitscher heading his way. Strangely, he had Teitscher to thank for the opportunity to come back to Duluth. When Stride left the city, Teitscher had applied for and won the job as lieutenant overseeing the Detective Bureau. He was a solid investigator, dogged and thorough, and he had the gray hair for the job. Teitscher, in his mid-fifties, was almost a decade older than Stride, but he was a stubborn loner with no gift for leadership. The detectives on the force launched a near rebellion after a few months with Teitscher in charge, and K-2 was forced to rescind Teitscher’s promotion. He used the opportunity to lure Stride back from Las Vegas to lead the squad again.

Teitscher still carried the grudge.

The older detective came around to the passenger side of Stride’s Bronco and squeezed his long legs inside without being asked. They eyed each other with strained politeness.

“Hello, Abel,” Stride said.

Teitscher nodded. “Lieutenant.”

The older detective carried all of his years in his face. He was tall and lean, with white skin and a spider’s web of wrinkles carved into his narrow cheeks. His hair was gray, clipped in a military crew cut that neatly matched his trimmed Hitler mustache. He was an obsessive runner, without an ounce of fat on his body, but he wound up looking skeletal and unhealthy, with jutting cheekbones and a protruding jawline. His wire-rimmed glasses were too large for his face.

“Have you lost your mind, Lieutenant?” Teitscher asked.

“Meaning what?”

“You contaminated a crime scene.”

Stride shook his head. “I did no such thing.”

“You were here for an hour with the body and the suspect before you called the police.”

“I am the police,” Stride reminded him.

“Not on this case. You knew damn well K-2 would yank you. What the hell were you thinking?”

“This is Maggie we’re talking about. She didn’t do it.”

“No? You’re not looking at the evidence, Lieutenant.”

Stride didn’t want to get into a fight, not here, not now. “Look, Abel, Maggie called me first. We’ve worked side-by-side for ten years. I came and talked to her. I made sure there was no one else in the house. Then I rallied the troops. End of story.”

“You’re a witness now. I have to interrogate you.”

“Go ahead.”

Teitscher shook his head. “Not now. But I want a report from you of everything that went on while you were alone in the house with her. This is on the record.”

“Fine,” Stride said.

“I want it by noon.”

Teitscher opened the truck door, and Stride clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good cop, Abel, but sometimes you get so focused on what’s in front of you that you don’t see the big picture.”

“What does that mean?”

“This is Maggie. If she says she didn’t do it, you can take that to the bank. Something else is going on here.”

Teitscher leaned in close, and Stride winced at the musk of his cologne. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. I’ve got a woman inside with a dead husband and her gun on the floor. And she’s lying to me. You think I can’t tell?”

“If she’s hiding something, it’s not about the murder.”

“Listen to yourself, Lieutenant,” Teitscher said scornfully. “If this were anyone else, you’d practically have her in cuffs by now.”

Stride knew he was right, but he also knew that Abel had his own bias, too. “Are we talking about Maggie here, or are we talking about Nicole?”