Stalked (26 page)

Stride nodded without saying anything. Maggie felt him grow colder, as if he were drawing a circle around himself and Serena to keep her out. It bothered her.

“What did I miss?” Serena asked.

“We just had sex,” Maggie said. “This is afterglow.”

It was a stupid joke. She felt bad when Serena’s face soured with discomfort.

“I’m sorry, dumb thing to say,” she added.

“Alpha girl humor,” Serena murmured.

Ouch. But Maggie knew she deserved it.

She tossed the bag of chips to Serena, who flipped her hair back, took a chip out of the bag, and crunched it in her mouth. Their eyes met. The coolness melted, and they declared a silent truce between them.

“Did you get any more background on Helen Danning?” Serena asked.

Maggie told them about the empty blog page she had discovered for “The Lady in Me.” Stride pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper from his jacket pocket.

“Here’s what Guppo found,” he said. “She’s thirty-six years old, born in Florida, moved to Minnesota when she was ten. She went to the U but dropped out in the early 1990s after two years, never graduated. She’s worked clerical jobs ever since. She doesn’t have a sheet, and there’s no record of anyone by her name filing criminal charges. She drives a blue Toyota Corolla, license NKU-167. I did a statewide ATL on it.”

“Parents?”

“They retired in Arizona. I haven’t been able to reach them. She’s got a sister, too, but she’s somewhere in Southeast Asia teaching English.”

“Is there anything at all that connects her to what’s going on?” Serena asked.

Stride shook his head. “Not that I can find.”

“I asked Guppo to do me a favor and see if he could track down any cached pages from her blog,” Maggie said. “Maybe he’ll come up with something that will tell us why Eric was interested in her.”

“Let’s back up,” Stride told them. “Let’s go back to the beginning on this. The first incident in the chain, at least as far as we know right now, is Tanjy being raped, right? That was in early November, based on what she told us. I talked to a couple women who were alpha girls before that date. Nothing happened to them.”

“I was assaulted about three weeks after Tanjy,” Maggie said. “Eric and I argued about reporting it throughout the first two weeks in December. He kept pushing me, I kept saying no.”

“Did you talk about what happened to Tanjy?” Serena asked.

“Yeah, Eric thought I should talk to her. I didn’t want to do it. Later, Eric must have decided to talk to Tanjy himself. I checked his cell phone records, and he called her for the first time on a Saturday in mid-December. There were several more calls over the next few weeks.”

“So we’re speculating that Eric somehow found a connection that led him to the rapist,” Stride said.

Maggie nodded. “We know that Eric asked Tony about the pathology of a rapist. He told Tony he was going to see someone the night he was killed. He talked to Tanjy two days earlier, and she wound up dead, too. He talked to Helen Danning over the weekend, and after Eric got killed, she left town.”

“I don’t understand how Helen Danning fits into the puzzle,” Stride said. “But we do know there’s a predator stalking women in the city, and this guy has latched on to the sex club. There’s a new alpha girl, Kathy Lassiter, who’s at risk starting tomorrow. If we can catch the rapist and connect the dots, then maybe we can connect him to the two murders, too.”

“Except Tanjy wasn’t in the sex club,” Maggie pointed out.

“Yes, but Mitchell Brandt was in the club, and he was Tanjy’s ex-boyfriend. Eric would have known that.”

“Mitch?” Maggie asked, surprised.

“You know him?”

“Yeah, a little.”

Maggie didn’t tell Stride that she remembered him from the sex club. Most of the men in the club were paunchy and short, and she figured that they popped Viagra before the party to get themselves ready. Mitch was different. She remembered a gleam in his eyes and a tiny smile and strong hands and a sensation as smooth as butter. She had the uncomfortable feeling that Stride was reading her mind.

“I’m not saying Mitch is involved,” Stride said, “but he connects Tanjy to the sex club.”

“Is there anything in his background?” Serena asked.

“Nothing of interest. I called the SEC to see whether there were any complaints about him from clients. They were less than helpful.”

“So what’s our next step?” Maggie asked.

“We watch the club,” Stride said. “Sonia offered to cancel the party tomorrow, but I think that’s the last thing we want. This is our chance to flush this guy. We keep the alpha girl under surveillance after the party and hope he moves fast.”

“Assuming this woman is willing to be used as bait,” Serena said.

“I’ll talk to her.”

“What about Abel?” Maggie asked. “We can’t mount a surveillance operation under the radar screen. He’s got to be in the loop.”

Stride nodded. “Yeah, it’s time to see if we can get Abel on our side.”

“There’s something else,” Serena said. “Don’t you think we need someone inside the club?”

There was silence in the room.

“Are you serious?” Stride asked.

“I am. We need to see how people react to the alpha girl. If Mitchell Brandt is the guy, I want to see how he behaves.”

Stride shook his head. “I can’t send a cop inside something like that.”

“It can’t be me,” Maggie said. “Not with what’s going on.”

“Okay then,” Serena said. “I’ll do it.”

“No way,” Stride said.

“Come on, Jonny. I won’t be in the room itself. You said there was a one-way mirror on one of the walls.”

Maggie frowned. “That’s true.”

“I still don’t like it,” Stride said.

“I’ll be alone behind the wall. There’s no risk.”

“No risk? We don’t know who this guy is or how he knows about the club. He could be anywhere.”

“Yes, but we have an advantage,” Serena said. “This guy doesn’t know we’re on to him. For once, we’re a step ahead.”

This guy doesn’t know we’re on to him
.

Less than a mile away, he sat in the frosty solitude of the van. Listening.

Fog made the windows opaque. The shroud of darkness and the woods at the end of the Point made the van largely invisible. The wind gusted off the lake, and every few seconds, the vehicle shuddered on its tires, and the steel walls rattled. It reminded him of sitting in the rear of the patrol car while the hurricane roared closer. Back when he was a prisoner.

As he listened to them plan their stakeout around the club, he grinned at the thought of the trap they were laying. Tomorrow night, all the demons he had been hoarding would finally fly out. Tomorrow night, Serena would be the one walking into a trap.

Stride sat in silence in his City Hall office early the next morning. The lights in the rest of the Detective Bureau were dark as he caught up on paperwork and drank coffee. When he heard a cough, he looked up to see Abel Teitscher in his doorway. The older detective wore a brown suit with his hands jammed in his pockets and dusty black shoes. His leathery face looked like an old map of the West, tracking rivers and roads.

“Your message said you wanted to see me,” he said.

“I did. Have a seat, Abel.”

Teitscher closed the door and sat down in the chair in front of Stride’s desk. His long legs jutted out like a stork’s. “You’ve been pissing in my pool.”

Stride didn’t bother to argue. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“I’m not covering for you, Lieutenant. If you lose your job over this, don’t blame me.”

“I won’t.”

Teitscher’s face burned. “You cut corners and no one ever calls you on it. If I ignored a conflict of interest the way you have, I’d be out on my ass.”

“Could be.”

Teitscher leaned across the desk. “What really ticks me off is that you don’t show me any respect.”

“That’s not what I’m about, Abel.”

“No? You undercut me, you sabotage me, you put the whole goddamn investigation in jeopardy. Would you do that to anyone else in the Bureau?”

“Look, Abel, it’s not you. It’s the case. Do you want to listen to what I have to say, or do you want to cut me a new one?”

Teitscher shrugged. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his tie. “Go ahead.”

“I know that the evidence against Maggie is strong. You’ve done a good job pulling it together, and no one is ever going to thank you for it. That’s the way it goes. What I’m telling you, as a detective and a colleague, is that there’s another plausible motive for Eric’s murder that has nothing to do with Maggie.” He saw Abel about to object, and he raised his hand to stop him. “I’m not telling you to believe it. I’m telling you to keep an open mind.”

“You sound like a defense lawyer,” Teitscher said.

“Just hear me out.”

Teitscher waved his hand and let him continue. Stride told him the whole story, laying out everything he had found. He didn’t hold anything back. Maggie’s rape. The sex club and the alpha girls. Helen Danning. He took the facts and told him what he now suspected, that somehow the series of rapes in the city had led directly to the murders of Tanjy and Eric.

When he was done, he saw Abel struggling to reconcile the facts with what he had already found. “A sex club?” Abel asked.

“That’s right.”

“You actually confirmed this? You’ve got proof?”

“I have names, dates, release forms, everything. It’s an A-list of Duluth high society.”

Teitscher bared his yellowing incisors. “What’s the old expression? The rich are different? Yeah, isn’t that a joke. All that money, and this is the kind of sleaze they go in for.”

“I feel the same way, but that doesn’t really change anything,” Stride said.

“So why are you telling me all this now? Why not wait until you crack the case and make me look like a fool?”

“I need your help.”

Teitscher frowned. “It doesn’t look that way to me.”

“The next meeting of the sex club is tonight,” Stride explained. “I want your help pulling together a surveillance team. We need to watch who comes and goes, and we need to keep a twenty-four-hour team on the new alpha girl, Kathy Lassiter. If we handle this right, she might just lead us to the rapist. I’m asking you to take charge of the surveillance operation personally.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have to talk to this Lassiter woman and convince her to let us risk her life to catch this guy.”

Teitscher scratched his chin. “You haven’t convinced me about Maggie yet.”

“I understand.”

“But I’d be a lousy cop to ignore this, and I’m a damn good cop whatever the hell you think.”

“I know you are.”

Teitscher stood up. “Okay, I’ll get the wheels rolling on the surveillance.”

“Thanks, Abel. I think we should keep the details about the sex club and the rapist between you and me for now.”

“You going political on me?”

“No, I don’t want to tip our hand. The more people who know about this, the easier it is to have a leak.”

“All right, fair enough.”

Stride watched Teitscher leave. He was glad to have a truce in the war between them and to have his own role in the investigation out in the open. That was the only thing he felt good about. Otherwise, he was filled with anxiety about what lay ahead, as if he were tangled in the sheet of his parachute as the ground streaked closer. He almost wished that Kathy Lassiter would pull the plug, which would cancel the party and thwart Serena’s determination to go inside the walls. He was concerned for the safety of both of them.

He was surprised when his phone rang. It was still early. The caller ID was from a 312 area code. Chicago.

“Stride.”

“You’re an early riser, Lieutenant. I like that.”

“Who is this?” Stride asked.

“My name is Philip Proutz. I’m with the Securities and Exchange Commission at our Midwest office in Chicago. I work on compliance investigations.”

“I see.” Stride was on guard, and Proutz sensed it.

“If you’d like to confirm who I am, you can look up our office number on the Web and call me back through the main switchboard.”

“No offense, Mr. Proutz, but I think I will do that.”

They were reconnected two minutes later.

“All right, what can I do for you, Mr. Proutz?” Stride asked.

“You contacted our office yesterday, Lieutenant, making inquiries about a broker in Duluth named Mitchell Brandt. I’d be interested in knowing the reason for your request.”

“I’m not really in a position to discuss that right now,” Stride told him.

“You do realize that if this is in conjunction with Mr. Brandt’s securities activities, then the jurisdiction is federal. It’s our baby.”

Stride hesitated. “It has nothing to do with that.”

“Ah.” Proutz sounded surprised. “What about a company called Infloron Medical?”

“I’ve never heard of it. Now you’re making
me
curious, Mr. Proutz.”

“I understand. I thought we could save each other time, you see, if we were working the same case from different ends. Infloron Medical is a public company in the Twin Cities that produces a drug called Zerax that promotes tissue regeneration in burn victims. The drug was recently approved by the FDA.”

“You lost me,” Stride said.

“Infloron’s stock more than doubled after FDA approval of Zerax last summer. We’re looking into some large stock purchases shortly before the FDA ruling was announced. We think Mitchell Brandt may have made substantial trades based on insider information.”

Serena stood at the windows looking out from Tony’s office to the birch forest behind his house. She saw more dotted lines of deer tracks in the snow. They were everywhere, leaving trails for her to follow.

“This is a beautiful spot, Tony,” she murmured without looking behind her.

Tony was in his leather chair by the sofa, sipping coffee and waiting as she paced. He didn’t push her to talk. He was wearing a brown suit, shined brown shoes, and a brown tie.