Alter Ego

by Brian Freeman

  “It freaks me out when I come back to Duluth,” Chris reflected in a slightly drunken monologue. “Seeing the old places. Seeing old school buddies from Denfeld. Of course, no one knows what to say to me anymore. Some of them think I’m a stuck-up alien because I live on the Coast. Some think I must be homicidal because I’m Art’s son. One of these days I’m going to wise up and remember that I just don’t belong here anymore. It’s all in my past.”

  Except it wasn’t in the past. Not by a long shot. Stride knew that, but he let Chris get his frustrations out.

  “And yeah, I know, it’s my fault,” Chris went on. “I did it to myself. I wrote the movie. I pushed to get the filming done here. Maybe you’re right, Lieutenant. Maybe this really is all about Art. I told myself all along that it wasn’t, but here I am. I’m right back where the son of a bitch wanted me to be.”

  “No matter what he did, Art was still your father,” Stride said.

  Chris took off his wire-rimmed glasses and cleaned them and positioned them on his face again. His brown eyes glistened. “I know. I’m stuck with that. When my mom called to say that he’d hanged himself, I actually cried. Not for long. One burst of tears and I was done. Mom didn’t cry at all. She knew he was a bastard long before the rest of us did. She was smart enough to get out of that marriage years ago.”

  Stride kept silent. He hadn’t liked Art, not from the very beginning, but he didn’t need to say so.

  “It goes without saying,” he told Chris, “but I’ll say it anyway. You’re not your father.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s hard living with bad genes.”

  “Art was careless about people’s lives long before he became a killer,” Stride said. “I saw him report stories that were reckless and wrong, but he never seemed to have any regrets about the collateral damage. That’s the kind of man he was. He didn’t have a conscience. But it’s not the kind of man you are. Anyone can see that in your movies.”

  Chris picked up his beer bottle and then put it back down without drinking. “Well, thank you for that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I know. You’re right. Sorry for pissing and moaning about my family tree. Generally, I don’t do that. I think it’s because I’m back home. You know, I did something last week that I haven’t done in years. I went out to see the cabin in the woods where Art brought all the victims. I guess I wanted to see it before we started filming.”

  “There’s not much left out there,” Stride said. “Somebody torched the cabin years ago.”

  “Yeah. Good riddance. People still go out to see it, though. Did you know that? There were footprints in the snow everywhere. It must be some kind of morbid tourist attraction.”

  “The movie’s been in the news,” Stride replied. “There have been a lot of stories about the murders. People are curious.”

  “So it’s my fault again,” Chris said with a wry smile. He put both hands flat on the table and shook himself to clear his head. He made the knot of his tie a little tighter as if it were time for business. “Well, anyway. I’m sure you didn’t call to listen to me go on about Art. I saw Serena at the party tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “I heard about Jack hitting on that teenage girl who lives with you guys. Sorry about that. I’m glad Serena intervened. You get something of an entitlement culture with celebrities. I’m not defending it or defending Jack. I’m just saying it is what it is. You might want to keep your girl away.”

  “Oh, believe me. We will.”

  Chris stared at his beer bottle again as if it were calling to him. He tilted it to his lips and finished it and wiped his mouth. Then he waved at the waitress to order another. “Do you know anything more about what happened to Haley Adams?” he asked.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. The more we learn about Haley, the more questions we have.”

  “There are rumors flying around the set, you know,” Chris said.

  “Like what?”

  “People are saying she’s dead. Is that true?”

  “I hope not,” Stride replied.

  “Do you have any reason to think she might be?”

  “For now, we just want to find her.”

  “You guys seem awfully interested in an intern who simply stopped showing up for work,” Chris pointed out. “That makes me think there’s something more going on here.”

  “Nothing that I can talk about,” Stride said.

  Chris pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay. I get it. What do you want to know?”

  “Who hired Haley to work on the crew? How did she get the job?”

  “The production manager hires local film students as interns. It’s pretty common. They’re usually cheap and enthusiastic. Haley was the best of the bunch. Mature. Reliable. It was strange, though. For a UMD student, she didn’t know much about Duluth.”

  “What do you mean?” Stride asked.

  “Being from Duluth myself, I made it a point to be friendly with the local kids. I talked to them when I could. Last week I was talking to Haley, and I made some offhanded joke about lefse. She didn’t know what it was. I laughed. I said, ‘How can you grow up in Minnesota and not know what lefse is?’”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she’s from Florida, not Minnesota. She came to Duluth to go to college. Apparently, one of her high school teachers grew up here and was telling her what a great area it is.”

  Stride frowned. “Okay. Maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe. The thing is, the next day I took some of the crew across the bridge to get burgers at the Anchor Bar. Haley went along and made a comment about never having been there. I mean, really? A UMD senior who has never been to the Anchor Bar? Hell, I was thrown out of there twice before the end of my freshman fall semester.”

  “So you think she’s not who she said she was?”

  “It raises some red flags,” Chris said. “It makes me wonder whether she was telling us the truth about her background.”

  Stride eased back in the chair and drank his coffee, which was getting cold. “Odd question, but can you think of any reason Haley would have been spying on Dean Casperson?”

  Chris stared at him. “Was she?”

  Stride waited a moment and then said, “It looks that way.”

  “What kind of spying do you mean?”

  “Focusing a high-powered telescope on his bedroom window,” Stride said.

  Chris’s brown eyes widened. “Wow. That’s disappointing. I thought better of the girl than that. But yeah, that kind of stuff happens all the time. It’s a real problem during location shooting, when celebrities don’t have the same privacy protections they do at the studio.”

  “What would someone be looking for?” Stride asked.

  “Anything. Sometimes it’s paparazzi trying to get candid photos they can sell. There’s big money in that. Sometimes it’s tabloid reporters looking for gossip and dirt. They’ll spy, bribe, hunt through garbage, whatever it takes. You already mentioned something about the National Gazette today, didn’t you? Believe me, this kind of crap is their specialty.”

  Stride thought about the possible motives. Photos. Gossip. Dirt. Scandal. That would explain Haley Adams peering through the bedroom window at Dean Casperson. It didn’t explain why she was missing. It also didn’t explain John Doe and the recently fired Glock.

  “Have there been any leaks about the film or the cast?” he asked.

  “There are always leaks.”

  “Anything serious or embarrassing?”

  Chris shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. The weather has put us behind schedule and hurt our budget, but that’s par for the course. I don’t get too worried if something like that shows up in Variety.”

  “What about other problems? Things that you wouldn’t want to see in a tabloid headline.”

  Chris hesitated. “I’m sure I don’t know half the crap that goes on when the cameras are off. And I don’t ask.”

  “That seems like a
cautious response, Chris.”

  “Well, filming a movie is like a nonstop high school dance. There are rumors, fights, hookups, romances, parties, breakups. Most of the time, you simply try to drag the project across the finish line before complete chaos ensues. By that standard, things have gone pretty smoothly so far.”

  Stride heard something in Chris’s voice that hadn’t been there before. It was an airy lightness that sounded forced and insincere. He wasn’t talking like a Minnesotan anymore. He was keeping secrets.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” Stride said.

  Chris took a long time to answer. “Okay, you’re right, but it has nothing to do with Haley.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Chris sighed. His mouth squeezed into an unhappy frown. He played with the beer bottle between his fingers. “One of the other interns quit the crew after two days. There was an incident.”

  “What kind of incident?” Stride asked.

  “She went out drinking with a cast member. Things got out of hand. At first she claimed she was sexually assaulted. Then she changed her story and said it was simply a misunderstanding.”

  “Rape’s not a misunderstanding.”

  “I’m only telling you what she said. She didn’t want to pursue it and didn’t want the police involved. She quit. That was the end of that.”

  “What was her name?” Stride asked.

  “I’d rather not say. She won’t talk to you anyway.”

  “Why not? Was she paid off? Is that why she changed her story?”

  “I can’t say anything more,” Chris said. “Our lawyers would freak. I’m sorry, Lieutenant.”

  Stride shook his head in disgust. He hated seeing people played like pawns. “Which cast member? Who assaulted her?”

  “There was no assault,” Chris insisted. “Please don’t characterize it like that.”

  “Who?”

  Chris looked over his shoulder as if to make sure they weren’t being watched. Spies were everywhere. His voice sank to a whisper.

  “Jungle Jack,” he said.

  7

  Stride was restless. He didn’t go home.

  Instead, he drove north out of the city on Jean Duluth Road until the buildings, traffic, and people disappeared around him. It didn’t take long to leave civilization behind in Duluth. There was nothing but small towns and dense forest all the way to the Canadian border. Sometimes he felt as if the city were the last pioneer outpost, holding back the encroaching wilderness. It was grayer up there. More primitive. And more ominous.

  His headlights guided him. He had to be cautious about deer at night, as John Doe had learned too late. This far north, he had to think about wolves, too. Stride stayed on the road until it ended, and then he turned onto Highway 44 and continued into the middle of nowhere. There was nothing on either side of him but evergreens crowding the pavement. He passed no homes and no crossroads. A few snow flurries kept him company by skittering across his windshield.

  He knew where he was going, but he didn’t really know why. He hadn’t been to this place in years. He hadn’t even thought about going back until Chris had mentioned it. This was the part of the Northland where Art Leipold had owned hunting ground. This was where three women had died.

  Instinct guided him. He remembered what he was looking for and knew when to slow down. Ahead of him, through his headlights, he saw a spur road snaking off the left side of the highway. It was a dead-end road that didn’t get much attention from the plows. Stride turned onto the road, and the tires of his Expedition chewed through the packed snow. He went slowly. Every so often, a rusted mailbox leaned into the road. A couple of recluses lived up here, but not many.

  He drove until the road ended at a yellow gate marked with “private property” and “no trespassing” signs. On the other side of the gate was an old bridge over the Cloquet River that wasn’t likely to support the weight of anything other than foot traffic. That was the border of Art Leipold’s land.

  Stride pulled to the gate and stopped. He wasn’t alone.

  A red Toyota Yaris was parked in the tall weeds. Chris was right. The killing ground from years earlier had become a tourist attraction for beer parties, ghost stories, and teenage make-out sessions. Beyond the gate, he could see that the deep snow was riddled with footprints.

  Stride got out of the truck and walked around the gate. The ribbon of river water was frozen solid under the bridge. He listened for the noise of whoever had come there in the Yaris, but the only sound was the creepy rattling of tree branches in the wind. He remembered where he was going. Even if he hadn’t, the overlapping footprints in his flashlight beam showed him the way. The trail went north into the pines, and it was so narrow that he had to turn sideways in places and duck to avoid the low-hanging branches. Snow dusted his hair and melted down his back like cold fingers.

  He didn’t have far to go. The cabin was built only a hundred yards into the forest, but the cold and night made it feel like a long trek. He still didn’t know why he had come back after so many years. Maybe, like Chris, the movie made him want to confront old demons.

  Ahead of him, the trail widened. A tiny clearing had been hacked out of the woods. The cabin was in front of him, or what was left of it. His flashlight lit up beams scarred into black charcoal by fire. One wall had fallen, and so had most of the roof. Snow and dead brush pushed up to the door. Much of the forest had burned, too, but nature had begun to bring it back to life. Saplings had squeezed in on the ground, and the branches of the surviving pines spread overhead like the open arms of a priest.

  He remembered.

  Here, in here!

  Mags, get a lock cutter out here now.

  Is the ambulance on the way?

  Water, we need water.

  She’s alive, she’s alive!

  His voice echoed down to him over the years. He remembered ripping open the cabin door much the way Dean Casperson had done it in the movie. Every second counted. He remembered the cage itself, built of steel mesh and covered with sound-resistant foam. You could stand next to it and barely hear someone screaming inside. He remembered the microphone wire that had been used in recording the messages to him.

  Save me, Jonathan Stride.

  He remembered dragging Lori Fulkerson from the cage, her muscles atrophied, her hair dirty and brittle, her lips desiccated. Later, the doctors said she would have died if they’d reached the cabin even two hours later. It was that close.

  They’d found the bodies of the other three victims buried in the woods behind the cabin. Kristal Beech. Tanya Carter. Sally Wills. He’d been too late for them. They’d died in the box. Along the way, terrible things had happened as they dealt with hunger, thirst, and desperation. Stride had never shared the graphic details with anyone else. Not even Serena.

  Stride directed his flashlight beam into the open, burned interior of the cabin. He was startled to find a bone-white face staring back at him like one of the walking dead. He wondered for an instant if he was dreaming, but he wasn’t. It was Lori Fulkerson. She was the one who’d driven here in the Toyota Yaris. She stood in darkness in the same place where she’d been held prisoner eleven years earlier.

  Lori was pointing a gun at him.

  “Who are you?” she screamed. “Get out of here!”

  Stride turned the flashlight toward his own face. “Ms. Fulkerson, it’s Jonathan Stride with the police. You’re safe. Put the gun down.”

  He didn’t hear an answer.

  “Ms. Fulkerson? There’s no reason to be alarmed.”

  He waited again, and finally her voice murmured out of the black night, barely audible. “Okay. I’m okay.”

  He pointed his flashlight toward the ground. He stepped closer, through the missing wall, inside what would have been the entrance of the cabin. Lori was six feet away. The cage would have been right there where she was standing. He watched her slip the gun into her pocket.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

>   She said nothing. He didn’t like what he saw in her face. Her skin had no color. Her lips were pushed tightly together and blue with cold. She wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the night. Her dark eyes had the fury and fear of someone who’d never gotten over what was done to her, and she trembled like a deer that was ready to run. She was tall and stocky with tight brown curls on her head. She’d been twenty-two years old when she was imprisoned, so she was only in her early thirties now. She looked much older.

  “Ms. Fulkerson?” he said again.

  The trance she was in seemed to break. She slumped and could barely hold herself up. He went to grab her, and she was ice cold.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Stride coaxed her arm around his shoulder and helped her toward the forest trail with an arm around her waist. Her trembling turned into out-and-out shivering. Her knees were weak, and she stumbled as they inched through the snow. He bent her down when the branches were low. She didn’t say a word. When they finally broke from the trees near the river, he took her to his Expedition and guided her into the passenger seat. He got in and made the truck’s heater roar. He grabbed blankets from the rear seat and draped them over her shoulders and lap.

  “Let’s get you to the hospital,” he said.

  “No.”

  “You may have hypothermia.”

  “I’m just cold. I wasn’t out there long.”

  Stride didn’t like it, but he left the truck in park. He noted that the heat had begun to revive her. Her voice was stronger and clearer. She stretched out her fingers. Color came back to her face.

  “Do you have any water?” she asked.

  He didn’t comment on his sense of déjà vu. He found a plastic bottle of water that was mostly frozen and unscrewed the cap. He made sure she dribbled only a little between her lips.

  “What were you doing out here?” he asked.

  “I come out here sometimes. This place draws me back.”