“I’ll go on ahead,” she said, nodding. “You can follow me in the Impala, when you’re free here. Give me your phone and I’ll put Ken Stock’s address in. I’ve got his cell and a landline, too.”
He handed it over and she entered the info.
Pop said, “Are you sure you don’t want to wait, for us to go out there together?”
“I’ll be fine. Get what you need here and join me. Interviewing Stock and his wife will take a while, unless he lawyers up. And then we’ll really know.”
Her father wasn’t thrilled with this plan, but he finally nodded, and she left him to wrap up here.
Outside the night and a windy cold February were waiting. The overcast sky could not quench the nearly full moon, which persistently peeked around the edges of clouds. In the parking lot, zipping up her thermal jacket, she stood for just a moment beside the Toyota, her breath fuming, and looked toward the trees that guarded Lake View Lodge, naked pillars of wood bursting out of patchy snow, their spindly arms seeming insufficient to their mission. As the moon and the clouds fought, ivory would sweep over the bare trees, giving them a glow only to be swallowed by darkness again.
She got behind the wheel and started out. The seven miles to the highway were windy and demanded respect, particularly on a night like this. Fairways and forest fought their own battle and they too would glow, then disappear, as the moon and clouds clashed.
Krista recalled a poem Pop had read to her as a child:
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
Years later she had asked Pop why that poem—the romantic tale of a criminal, after all—had been something a policeman chose to share with his young daughter.
“It’s the sound of it,” he’d told her, “and it’s an exciting story, too. I wanted you to think of reading as something enjoyable, fun, not just schoolwork.”
The irony of this moment, this flashback to a poem she’d treasured as kid, was that Mr. Stock had once asked her English class if anyone had a favorite poem.
She had responded with: “‘The Highwayman,’ Mr. Stock. By Alfred Noyes.”
He had laughed and now, in her memory, she detected a cruelty in his response that she’d missed as a student.
“‘Noyes,’ I’m afraid, is a misspelling,” he’d said. “That’s corny noise, Ms. Larson.”
She’d stood up for herself but sold out her favorite poem doing so, saying, “I was only eight and didn’t know better, but I liked the way the words flowed.”
“Fair enough,” Mr. Stock had said, bestowing upon her a smile.
Overall Mr. Stock had been a positive influence, encouraging her to write, enlisting her for The Spyglass, the school paper, and The Ship’s Log, the yearbook. And, as she’d told Pop, he’d never done anything, during all that time, to make him seem a letch much less a sexual predator.
The Lake View Lodge road, this time of year, wasn’t much traveled, except for a few stretches along which were condos and elaborate rentals tied in with the place. So the approach of headlights in the left lane, someone coming home from town or heading to the lodge, was nothing to be surprised much less alarmed by.
At least not until the driver hit the brights, all but blinding her, and those unrelenting headlights swung her way, washing the Toyota in glaring light, the vehicle bearing down on her, engine roaring.
She swung the wheel right and avoided being hit, but the ditch took her, not treacherously deep but enough for the weight of the Toyota to give way to gravity and then the car rolled and as it did her right hand on the wheel twisted at the wrist, almost breaking, and when the Toyota landed at the bottom of the mini-ravine, upright, airbag not deploying on rollover, she tried to open the door with her left hand, but the door was jammed, and when she got out of her seat belt to reach over to the rider’s side door, her right wrist sprained and hurting like hell, she couldn’t open it, not with her outstretched left, either.
Footsteps in brittle snow were crunching toward her, the brightness of the headlights gone, and yet she knew it wasn’t help on the way.
Keith was finished with David Landry, who had told him of the strict locked-door policy of the rehab facility in Florida. Landry provided phone numbers and names and other contact info, so Keith could verify that the resort manager had been a virtual prisoner, unlikely to be able to slip out and make a Clearwater murder run.
Standing before the unhappy group of eight at their four tables, Keith said, “Mrs. Webster says rumor has it Ken Stock has had affairs with female students—perhaps with many over the years. Have any of you heard of that?”
Frank Wunder and his wife both shook their heads, and Landry said, “No. Never.” And Dawn didn’t react at all.
But the Braggs were exchanging troubled frowns.
“Bill?” Keith said. “Kelly? You wish to comment?”
The football coach said, “I don’t pay much attention to rumors. Repeating them just seems. . .” He shrugged, unwilling or unable to say more.
The girls’ gym teacher said, “I never witnessed anything. But the girls would talk. Still, it was all secondhand. Never did any of them say, ‘It happened to me.’ Always it was, ‘I know a girl who. . .’”
Both Braggs had trailed off, and Keith could well understand that the couple, in their situation, would be sensitive about what harm a nasty rumor could do to a good teacher’s life and career.
No longer the gracious host, Landry asked, “Are we done?”
“Wait here a moment,” he told the group.
In the hall Keith tried Ken Stock’s cell number; it went to voice mail. Then he tried the landline.
“Hello, Keith,” Mary Stock’s voice said. “What can I do for you?”
“Hi, Mary. Let me talk to Ken, please.”
“He’s not here, I’m afraid. He’s over in Dubuque doing some library research. Can I help?”
A chill went through him. “Uh, interesting. Does he do that often? Library research?”
“Oh, yes. He’s been working on a novel about the Civil War. That gets into everybody’s blood, I guess, in Galena, General Grant and all.”
“Was he researching last night, too, by any chance?”
“Why, yes. He’s really getting into it these days.”
“Thanks, Mary. I’ll call again later.”
He clicked off.
Stock was their killer, all right—and, on his cell, Stock had pretended to be home when he spoke to Krista, summoning her to come meet him. What exactly that portended, Keith did not know.
He only knew he had to move, and move fast.
He rushed back into the banquet hall, grabbed his jacket, and was about to speak, when Bill Bragg spoke up first.
“I don’t know if it’s important, Keith,” the coach said. “But I asked Ken today if he’d been called about this meeting. And he said no.”
Keith frowned and held up a hand. “Everyone please stay out here. Why don’t you go to the lounge, relax and have a drink. Run a tab on me, David.”
Everyone thought that was a good idea, but Keith was already gone.
Krista clambered over into and across the rider’s seat and, using her left hand, opened the door. She climbed out, got her feet under her, and looked back toward the road. Down the drop-off came a figure, vague under the cloudy sky. Then the clouds moved and moonlight lit him momentarily, like a strobe light, just long enough to reveal Ken Stock, in a brown leather jacket over the tie and khakis he’d no doubt worn when he stood before his students at GHS today, telling them what poetry to like.
But in class the teacher wouldn’t have been holding in his fist a butcher knife, which under another strobe of moon gleamed and reflected and winked at her. The blade wasn’t long, maybe six inches, but it
lacked the curve of most such knives, its point sharp.
He continued down the incline, not moving fast, because it was too steep to risk that, with clusters of snow here and there. She couldn’t use her right hand, the sprain making it useless, the fingers uncooperative, and when she reached over with her left to her holstered Glock, she fumbled with the self-locking strap, couldn’t work it, and then he was almost down the incline, knife in his fist held shoulder high, his eyes unblinking and zeroing in on her.
The trees were close. They didn’t offer much brush for shelter, only occasional pines among the mostly naked oaks, but if she could get in deep enough, she might tuck behind a trunk with the heft for hiding. Her feet crushed frozen remainders of snow, her boots snapping twigs and crinkling long-dead leaves.
She could hear him behind her.
He wasn’t moving as quickly as she was. The moon had found its way around the cloud cover, painting the world a blue-gray ivory now. She needed the clouds to win long enough for her to stop running and take cover and be able to get at her damn gun.
Into the woods she went.
Like Cinderella before her.
And she had been Red Riding Hood, hasn’t she?
Keith, at the wheel of the Impala, had no idea what to expect. He only knew that Stock had lured Krista out this way, that Stock had not been home when she called but somewhere presumably close, since the bastard knew about the gathering of suspects.
And he hadn’t been able to raise Krista on her cell. More damn voice mail.
He didn’t have a weapon. He’d maintained his conceal-and-carry permit, but without a gun on his hip, he might as well not have renewed the damn thing. He should have gone back to his old habit of carrying even when he was off duty, only retirement had seemed the end of that—when Krista brought him on to this case, though, with a crazy goddamn killer loose, he should have been smart enough to use his gun for something other than self-pitying thoughts of suicide.
The hell of it was, he didn’t know whether to drive fast or slow. His daughter was in danger and all he could do was swiftly scan the road and the left and right, and try to think through the pounding of his heart in his ears.
Then there it was.
Up ahead, at right, on the wrong side of the road, parked at a half-ass angle, a white Ford Edge. Keith pulled over, the two cars nose to nose, and got out and came around.
Banged-up some at the bottom of the ditch was the Toyota—had it rolled and landed upright? Nobody was on the steep downward slope, then perhaps a hundred yards leading to, and into, the trees, a thickness of forest made thin by winter. The ground was mottled with snowy remnants, but until the moon took hold of the cloud-streaked sky, and lighted the earth up for him, Keith hadn’t seen the footprints—two sets of them.
Wide-spaced—running.
Closer-together—striding.
The tracks took him to the brink of the trees, where he stopped to call it in.
“Officer in trouble,” he told the sheriff’s department dispatcher.
Tucked behind a tree now, her back to it, she used her left hand, her good hand, to pat her pockets for the cell phone; but it wasn’t there—she’d lost it in the rollover.
Never mind, she told herself. The gun. The gun is the thing.
She worked her left hand over and released the locking hood on the holster, which took pushing down on the gun butt and rotating the weapon to release—not easy with the left hand for a Glock holstered on the right hip.
But she managed it.
Breathing hard, yet in control, she turned to face the tree trunk. She peeked around. She listened.
She heard nothing.
Was he gone? Had he given up? Was he the fleeing one now? Surely Stock knew killing the cop looking for him would serve no rational purpose.
Or was rationality even a factor now?
Was he, as her father had put it, devolving and accelerating? Was madness all he had now? Or did he think by stopping her that he might buy himself a few hours to make a better escape?
She listened.
Could she risk moving out of these woods?
She thought of another poem, about deep, dark woods, and promises to be kept before sleep could come. . .
Now that was a poem Mr. Stock would have approved.
She listened for footsteps, heard nothing, nothing, nothing. . . then a crunch of snow and snapped twigs and she spun and there he was, his expression as blank as the blade he raised at her, unchanging as it came down.
She moved to her right, protecting her chest but sacrificing her left arm, somewhat, the blade catching mostly her thermal jacket, though she felt the wetness of the wound. The shock of it, though, had sent her arm reflexively to the right and the Glock flew somewhere, thunking in the night.
She ran, barely keeping her balance.
She could hear her pursuer behind her now, crunching along in the stocking feet she’d glimpsed. He’d taken his shoes off to creep up on her.
The better to see you with, my dear.
She ran now, back the way they’d come, some logical part of her mind saying rescue might be on the way by now, her car in the ditch, the parked Ford on the wrong side of the road. . . maybe help would come from that direction. . . but help might not come, so her route included where she’d unintentionally tossed the Glock. . .
Keith could hear the movement.
Feet on frozen clumps of snow, branches snapping, leaves crinkling, and he was so close now he could hear the heavy breathing, like an obscene phone call, two people participating, his daughter and the man after her.
He thought he’d misjudged but then finally saw Krista and the teacher, and found he was coming at them at an angle. His daughter seemed to be leading her attacker back toward the ditch and the road. Stock didn’t discern the difference between the footsteps of stalked and stalker until Keith was almost on him.
Stock’s blank expression distorted into rage and the knife was raised very high when Keith tackled him, taking him down between two trees onto brittle snow that cracked like little bones. Bigger bones within Keith, that busted rib and its bruised brothers, proved they could push their demands through even the best painkillers and he was screaming when the son of bitch squirmed out of his grasp.
Then Stock was on his feet, Keith on the ground, a few yards separating them. The killer, butcher knife high, began to close the distance.
Krista almost tripped over the Glock.
She knelt, grabbed it up into her left-handed grasp. That arm was slashed, not bad maybe, gashed at the bicep, and her other hand was a useless thing.
But when she turned, through the spaces between barren oaks, she could see Stock with the blade raised, moving toward Pop, who was on the ground, trying to get up.
“Stay down!” she yelled.
She fired, fired again, again, the shots irregular, her unsteady arm doing her no favors, carving chunks of bark from trees and missing her favorite teacher, who turned and with a ghastly grin charged toward her, circling a tree to do so, and the moon through the witchy branches let that high-held blade wink at her one last time.
She fired again and took off a chunk of his ear.
That froze him.
He stood wide-eyed, hand going to the mangled flesh hanging from the left side of his head, getting blood all over his fingers, his expression telling her that Ken Stock experiencing pain had never been part of the plan.
She had a millisecond before he could compose himself enough to complete his murderous onslaught and she fired one more time.
The bullet entered his forehead—not in the dead center, but close enough—the metal projectile emerging from the back of his skull in a stew of blood, bone, and brains. He tottered, not feeling anything, already as dead as the leaves under his stockinged feet, and then he fell flat on his back, between a pair of trees that didn’t notice him at all.
She went over to Pop and helped him up.
He grimaced and groaned and said, “This pro b
ono work is hard.”
She laughed. He did, too. She hugged him. Gently. She hadn’t forgotten his broken rib. They looked at each other. Smiling. Tears streaming.
“Not exactly ambidextrous, huh?” she asked.
“You got the job done, honey. Right, Mr. Stock?”
But Stock—on his back, eyes and a dime-size hole in his forehead staring sightlessly up through a skeletal filigree of forest, under a ghostly galleon of a moon—had not a thing to say.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Police Chief Lori Huntington of the Galena Police Department, who welcomed my wife Barb and me into her office, answering many questions and giving us a tour of the station. Throughout the writing of Girl Most Likely, Chief Huntington responded to my ongoing questions about procedure and other Galena matters. Her help and her patience went above and beyond the call of duty. But liberties have been taken and any inaccuracies are my own.
I should also note that Chief Huntington is not the basis of Krista Larson—the plot and characters for Girl Most Likely were already developed when research revealed the happy coincidence of Galena’s actual chief being a young woman who had risen through the ranks.
Other references included various issues of The Galenian magazine; Galena, Illinois: A Timeless Treasure (2015) by Philip A. Aleo; and Galena Illinois: A Brief History (2010) and Galena (Images of America, 2005), both by Diann Marsh.
Barb, who writes the Antiques mysteries with me (bylined Barbara Allan), provided vital editing and suggestions throughout. Also, my frequent collaborator, Matthew V. Clemens, answered a number of police procedure questions.
I’d like also to thank my editor at Thomas & Mercer, Liz Pearsons, and editorial director Grace Doyle for their support, belief, and patience. As usual, thanks go as well to my friend and agent, Dominick Abel.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 M.A.C. Productions LLC
Max Allan Collins was named a Grand Master in 2017 by the Mystery Writers of America. He has earned an unprecedented twenty-three Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award nominations, winning two for his Nathan Heller novels. That series also earned Collins the PWA Hammer Award for making a major contribution to the private-eye genre. He received the PWA Eye Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. His other books include the New York Times bestseller Saving Private Ryan and the USA Today bestselling CSI series.
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