Stalked (46 page)

Tony looked up from his desk. “The problem with your little story is that I didn’t rape you, Maggie. Or Tanjy. Even if Eric suspected something ridiculous like that, why would I care? I was innocent.”

“Sure, you may have been innocent of raping me and Tanjy. But what about your DNA?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the Enger Park Girl. Teena. The girl you met at the Aerosmith concert in Kansas City. The girl you raped, killed, and dismembered. You left semen inside her, Tony. You didn’t think about that back then, did you? But if we ran your DNA now, it would lead us right back to the Enger Park case. That’s why you killed Eric. To make sure that didn’t happen.”

“Please, Maggie, I’ve been around the block,” Tony said. “I know the standards a court would apply in granting a motion to take a DNA sample. Rumors and innuendo like that wouldn’t constitute probable cause.”

Maggie pointed a finger like a gun at Tony’s right hand, where he was cradling his coffee mug. “But Eric didn’t care about that. He just
took
a sample for himself. You know, I forgot all about the coffee mug. When I came back home the night Eric was killed, I was so drunk. Eric left me a note, and he put it on the counter under a black coffee mug. I didn’t think twice about it. The damn thing disappeared, and I never realized it. I didn’t even put it together until I saw you holding that coffee cup of yours. Same as always. Like you were daring me to notice. Eric took it from you that night, didn’t he? He was going to get
me
to run your DNA. So you had to get that mug back.”

Tony laughed. It sounded odd, laughter bubbling out of the man who never even smiled. He stared at the mug, shook his head as if it were the funniest thing in the world, and then flipped it across the room. The mug twisted in the air, and coffee streamed and splattered on the carpet, leaving a dark trail of stains. When the mug hit the floor, it bounced and rolled to a stop near the far wall.

Tony slid open the middle drawer of his desk.

“
Don’t
,” Maggie said. She knew what he was reaching for.

Tony drew out a black Glock from the drawer and cradled it in his hand.

“Take a look at the camera,” she said.

He glanced at the monitor that kept an eye on his waiting room. Stride was there, his own gun in his hand, staring back up at the camera as if he knew that Tony was watching him and deciding whether to run.

“And the door,” Maggie added.

Tony turned and studied the glass door that led out of the office into the field of birch trees, and Abel Teitscher was there, tall and windswept, looking back at Tony with his grizzled face. He had a gun in his hand, too.

“There are more,” Maggie said. “The place is surrounded. You’re not going anywhere, Tony. So just put down the gun, and let’s go.”

Tony held the Glock as if he were measuring its heft and how solid and heavy it felt in his hand. “You know, I was planning to kill you, too, Maggie. That night. But I didn’t.”

“Instead you used my gun to kill my husband and frame me,” she snapped.

“Don’t pretend it was such a loss. You didn’t love him.”

“Fuck you, that’s not the point.”

“Once I killed Eric, I couldn’t risk going back upstairs,” Tony said. “Kicking your husband out of your bed kept you alive. That’s rather ironic.”

“What about Nicole?” Maggie asked. “You framed her, too, didn’t you?”

Tony slipped his finger around the trigger of the Glock. “Yes, we had a session together, and she told me about tracking down the girl from the concert in Kansas City. I was stunned. I knew if she looked hard enough, she’d find me.”

“So why not just kill her?”

“If Nicole were killed, people would wonder why, but if she wound up in jail for murder, it would all just go away. I knew Nicole. She never wrote anything down. She was always forgetting our appointments because she didn’t keep a calendar.”

“So you killed her husband and his girlfriend and planted evidence against her.”

“She was always leaving hair behind on that couch,” Tony said. “It was actually pretty easy. It all went underground again for years until Eric started nosing around. He was raving about me raping you, raping Tanjy, about what a monster I was, about who I’d raped in the past. Can you imagine the horror? All these years, I’ve kept the secret, I’ve beat my demons down into a box. Now this fool was going to expose me over something I
didn’t do
.”

“What happened?”

“I went over there and waited until you were both home. You’re right. I needed to get that mug back.”

“Why wait for me?”

“This time, I wanted to kill you both,” Tony explained. “I wanted the focus to be on
you
, not Eric. But like I say, you weren’t in bed together. And the frame-up worked with Nicole, so I figured I could make it work again.”

“What about Helen Danning?”

Tony shrugged. “Loose ends.”

“You bastard.”

“If anyone found her, the arrow was going to point straight to me. She had to go. And you know what? It was
such a thrill
doing it again. To stop fighting the desire and finally give in after all these years. It was like reliving my greatest triumph to lay another body out in Enger Park. It was like yelling it to you and Stride and the whole world. I’m back, baby, I’m back. I told Serena there comes a time when you have to look your past in the eye and decide who you really are. I know who I am, Maggie.”

Maggie’s skin shivered. She stood up. “Let’s go, Tony.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“There’s no way out.” She stepped closer to the desk.

“Actually, there is. I’ve always known the way out. I knew one day the monster would come back, and I would have to exterminate him. I was kidding myself to think I could hold out forever.”

“Tony,” she said, her voice a warning.

“It’s okay, Maggie. I’m a psychiatrist. I know how these things work. You know the trick to committing suicide? Speed. Hesitation is the enemy. If you put the gun in your mouth and think about it, well, you won’t do it. I’ve had lots of people sit on my couch and tell me about it, and the fact is, if you don’t pull the trigger immediately, you never will.”

“Put the gun down.”

“I want you to remember something, Maggie.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the gun. Her whole body was still, as taut as a cable spanning the towers of a bridge. She was measuring how fast she could run, how far she could jump.

“Cops like you and Stride think you can spot the monster,” Tony went on. “You think if you look in someone’s eyes, you can see what’s in their heart. The fact is, you don’t have a clue. You really don’t. Everyone wears a mask.”

Maggie jumped. She shouted as she took two steps and leaped across the desk, her arms outstretched like the talons of a hawk as it drops toward the earth, her fingers curled, clawing for the gun. She wasn’t nearly fast enough. Tony swallowed the black barrel of the Glock and pulled the trigger, just like that, without a millisecond of hesitation, and he was already dead as she came across the desk. The explosion jangled her brain like a marble rolling around an empty bowl. She kept coming anyway, momentum carrying her, and her body spilled into Tony’s as they both tumbled head over heels and landed together, and his blood, tissue, and shards of bone spattered across her skin and clothes.

Stride kicked in one door. Teitscher kicked in the other. They both thundered in, guns leveled.

“I’m okay!” Maggie screamed. She shoved Tony’s fleshy corpse away from her own small body, and she stood up, spitting his blood out of her mouth and wiping her face with the back of her arm. She wobbled on her feet, but she stood over him, unable to tear her eyes away. “I’m okay.”

Ten years of her life came and went with the man lying on the floor. She heard Stride say something, but didn’t hear what it was. The gunshot was still roaring in her head, making her deaf. She had a vision of Eric on the floor, remembering the sprawl of his naked body, and she still didn’t feel anything at all. When she finally looked up, she stared into the crazy reflections of the dark glass, and somewhere out there, she thought she saw the Enger Park Girl in the woods, not desecrated and alone, but alive and dancing. The beat she was following was an Aerosmith song. That was the way it was supposed to be, the way it should have been, with that girl out there paying no attention to her at all.

She felt Stride’s arm around her.

“I’m okay,” she said again.

Abel Teitscher stabbed a shrimp from a greasy paper plate, where it was swimming in a candy-red sauce. It was rubbery as he chewed, but his tongue relished the sweet-and-sour tang, even though it tasted burnt. He took a forkful of fried rice, too, and then washed it all down with a sip of green tea. He leaned back against the stiff frame of his old sofa and watched a school of lemon tetras race around his fish tank in streaks of shining blue.

Sinatra was singing softly on the stereo. Ring-a-ding-ding.

It was a Monday like any other Monday, and like lots of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, as well. Potsticker Palace. Old music. Bubbles whooshing in the tank. “Dad, you’ve got to get out more,” his daughter told him when she called from San Diego, but it was easy to say that when you were living in California.

She was right, though. He was lonely. It wasn’t warm enough yet for the spring crime wave to wash over the city, so he didn’t have to spend his evenings closeted away in his cubicle in City Hall. Sometimes that was easier than being home.

His doorbell rang, surprising him. He twisted around and looked out the living room window and saw a dirty Ford Taurus under the streetlight that he didn’t recognize. He got up, noticing the wrinkles in his untucked white dress shirt. His gray slacks were baggy, because his waist had shrunk by a couple inches in the past year, and he hadn’t bothered buying new clothes. He just cinched his belt tighter.

He opened the door.

“Hello, Abel,” Nicole Castro said.

They stared at each other across the threshold. He felt self-conscious standing there, wondering if he had Chinese sauce on his mouth. He wiped his face. “Hi.”

“Can I come in? It’s okay, I’m not going to kill you.”

“Funny.”

He pulled the door wide, and Nicole wandered into the living room. She was dressed in a Minnesota Vikings jersey and jeans, with a new pair of Nikes. Her gray hair was still short, a prison cut. Her hands were in her pockets. She looked as uncomfortable as he felt.

“I heard you got out,” he said. “I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah. Free bird, that’s me.”

She stood in the middle of the room, biting her lower lip.

“You want some Chinese?” he said.

“No, that’s okay. It looks like cherry barf, Abel.”

“Yeah, it’s only so-so, but it’s kind of a routine for me.”

“Uh-huh.”

He rubbed his own flattop steel hair and tried to think of something to say. “Look, I’m sorry, Nicole. I don’t know what else I can tell you. I didn’t trust you, and I was wrong.”

“Actually, I came here to apologize to you.”

“What the hell for?”

“For thinking you set me up all these years.”

“I would never do that,” Abel said.

“Yeah, well, I know that now. I guess I needed someone to blame, you know. You were a big ol‘ white target.”

Abel sat down on the sofa and put his hands on his knees. “I didn’t see the big picture. I saw the evidence, and that was it. The evidence said you were guilty, so you were. Same thing with Maggie.”

“Not like you were the only one.”

“You want to sit down?” he asked.

Nicole shook her head. “I can’t stay. I’m driving south. My son and my momma are in Knoxville, and I’m moving down there.”

“You going to join the force?”

“No way, not for me. Forget that. I don’t want to put anyone in prison ever again, know what I mean? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand the idea of being wrong. No, momma’s got a restaurant, I’ll probably work there.”

“What kind of restaurant? Chinese?”

Nicole laughed. “That’s a good one. I forgot you could be funny.”

“I guess I did, too.”

She looked around the living room and frowned. “What the hell are you still doing here, Abel? Ain’t it about time you got yourself a life? That whore you were married to is long gone, so why hang around?”

He winced, but she was right. His ex-wife had sucker punched him, and he was still sitting here gasping for air. “I wound up in a ditch, and I was stuck for so long I figured I must like it there,” he said.

“Well, go down to the pancake breakfast at church and get yourself a chicky.”

Abel snorted. “I forgot how to date about forty years ago.”

“I’m not talking about dating, I’m talking about getting yourself some.” She grinned. Her teeth were yellowed. She was ten years younger than he was, but they could have passed for the same age. He felt responsible.

“You won’t believe this, but I miss having you as a partner,” Abel said.

“That’s ‘cause I was the only one who would put up with your shit.”

He nodded. “Yeah, you’re right about that.”

“What say you dump that Chinese barf, and you and I go to dinner someplace, huh? Before I leave town. For old times.”

“My treat,” he said.

“Damn right it’s your treat.”

Maggie tilted a bottle of imported lager to her lips and drained the last third, then tossed it into the pile of empties on the sand. “You know what I would have paid good money to see?” she said.

Stride and Serena both looked up, and the orange glow of the bonfire reflected on their skin.

“What?” Stride asked.

Maggie began giggling. “I would have loved to see your face when your beloved Bronco sank to the bottom of that lake.”

Serena laughed, too.

“Hey,” Stride said. “That’s not funny.”

The two women laughed so hard they had to hold onto each other to avoid spilling backward off the driftwood.

“Are you kidding?” Maggie said. “I can’t believe you didn’t dive in after it.”