Alter Ego

by Brian Freeman

  “Run, run, run!” Curt wailed.

  The guard in pursuit was faster than she was. She could almost hear his breath as he got closer. She reached the wall and leaped straight up with her arms outstretched, and Curt grabbed one of her wrists and yanked her up, nearly dislocating her shoulder. She felt herself flying. Below her, the guard’s hand grabbed her boot and tore it off, but in the next instant, she and Curt were tumbling free over the wall to the outside. Cat landed in the snow. Curt bounced off the recycling bin he’d grabbed to climb the wall. They didn’t hesitate; they were on their feet again, charging across the intersection to the school parking lot and piling into Cat’s car.

  She fired the engine of the Civic and sped down the hill. Her eyes were glued to the mirror. She turned, turned again, and turned yet again, and when she decided that she’d lost anyone who might be chasing them, she swung to the curb with the engine still running. She hit the speed dial button on her phone and felt a flood of relief when Serena answered on the first ring.

  “It’s me! Aimee needs help!”

  26

  Dean Casperson answered the door.

  He didn’t look surprised to see Serena flashing her badge at him. He gave her a friendly smile and cocked an eyebrow as he watched three separate squad cars with flashing lights stream into the driveway in front of the rented estate.

  “Mr. Casperson, my name is Serena Stride with the Duluth Police,” she said. “Where’s Aimee Bowe?”

  “Aimee? She came over here to chat, but she wasn’t feeling well. I asked Jungle Jack to take her home.” He added with a smirk, “Your name is Stride? Are you married to the lieutenant? I have to say, the man has spectacular taste.”

  Serena ignored the comment. “Please move aside, Mr. Casperson. We need to search this house.”

  “Search it? What exactly are you looking for? And don’t you need a warrant for that?”

  “I’ve got a credible report of an assault in progress in this house,” Serena told him.

  Casperson shrugged and moved out of the doorway. “Well, come inside, then. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed, but do what you have to do. Try not to break anything around here, okay? It’s a rental.”

  Serena swung around and waved to Guppo, who waddled into the house behind her, accompanied by three other police officers. “Check every room,” she told him. “Question the staff and see what they know about what’s been happening here tonight. Show them photos of Rochelle Wahl and Peach Piper, too.”

  “Peach Piper?” Casperson asked curiously. “Who’s that?”

  “You knew her as Haley Adams. Before she was murdered.”

  “What about this other girl? Rochelle?”

  “I don’t have time for this right now, Mr. Casperson. Where were you and Aimee Bowe talking?”

  “Upstairs, but I told you, she’s gone.”

  Serena saw the staircase leading to the second story, and she took the steps two at a time. Half the doors upstairs were closed, and she went down the hallway, opening each door and looking inside. The rooms were all empty. Then, at the end of the hallway, she twisted a knob and found a door that was locked.

  “What’s in here?” she called to Casperson as he came up the stairs behind her.

  “My bedroom and private study.”

  “Is this where Aimee was?”

  “Yes; it’s a good place to talk.”

  “Why is it locked?”

  “I always keep it locked. I keep sensitive materials in here. Scripts, contracts, that kind of thing.”

  “Please open it,” Serena told him.

  “If you’d like.”

  Casperson took a key from his pocket and undid the lock on the study and opened the door. Serena pushed past him. The large room was empty. A log fire burned on the wall beside her, crackling and spitting sparks onto the hearth. The air was warm. Soft jazz played from overhead speakers. She saw an open door leading to a master bedroom, and she went inside and searched it. No one was there.

  She returned to the study, where Casperson stood next to the wet bar, refilling a glass of whiskey and adding an ice cube. Her eyes noted the details around the room. She saw the leather sofa and went over to it and put her hand on the end of the cushion. It was wet. She recognized the fruity aroma of wine. She spotted the glint of a tiny shard of glass on the wood floor.

  “What happened here this evening?” Serena asked.

  “Aimee came over to talk. She had some wine, but she started feeling dizzy, so she made it an early night.”

  “Where’s her wineglass?”

  Casperson stared at her with practiced nonchalance. “Like I said, she was dizzy. She dropped it, and it broke. I cleaned it up and threw away the pieces.”

  “If I tested the glass fragments, what would I find?” Serena asked.

  “What would you find? Sad remnants of a Chateau Margaux Bordeaux, I guess.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Like what?” Casperson asked.

  “Drugs.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Do you have any drugs here?” Serena asked.

  “The strongest thing you’ll find in this house is Xanax. I have trouble sleeping.”

  “Did you spike Aimee’s wine with it?”

  “I’m sorry, is this a joke, Detective? Of course not. However, what Aimee does is up to her. I have no idea whether she took anything before she got here. And she used my bathroom while I was here, so for all I know, she dipped into my medicine cabinet. The fact is, I don’t interfere with how other actors cope with this business.”

  “What was Aimee doing here?” Serena asked.

  “We were talking about box office prospects for the film. I was telling her how impressed I was with her performance. And I was suggesting that she would be perfect for a role in a picture I’ll be filming this summer in Switzerland. I wanted to see if she’d be interested.”

  Serena shook her head. They had nothing to use against Casperson, and he knew it.

  She went to the window and pushed aside the curtains. On the roofline of the next wing, she could see the disruption in the snow where Cat had fallen. The girl had been telling the truth, but enough time had passed that Casperson had managed to circle the wagons to protect himself.

  She turned around and found that Casperson had crept up silently behind her. He wasn’t even six inches away. They were eye to eye.

  “What are you really doing here, Detective?” he asked.

  “I told you; we had a report of a possible assault in progress,” Serena said.

  “What kind of report? From who?”

  “It was anonymous.”

  Casperson didn’t move or give her any more space. “We had a trespasser tonight.”

  “Do you know who it was?” Serena asked.

  “No, it was too dark to see, but I imagine whoever it was called in this fictitious report. You can’t trust spies, you know. They lie.”

  Serena leaned even closer to prove she wasn’t intimidated. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. It was strange, standing here in the presence of someone who was instantly recognizable anywhere in the world. It was strange, knowing he wore two totally different faces. He was Dean Casperson, actor and philanthropist. He was Dean Casperson, serial predator.

  “Tell me about Rochelle Wahl,” she said.

  “You mentioned that name downstairs. Who is she?”

  “She was a girl who came to your party last Saturday night. She was found dead outside her house the next morning.”

  “Who told you she was here?”

  Serena was silent. Casperson’s lips curled into a small smile of satisfaction.

  “So no one did,” he said. “You’re fishing. Look, Detective, I’m going to do you and your husband a favor. I’m not going to call the mayor and have you fired for storming in here tonight, although we both know I could. You can just leave and not come back. But we’re done. You and the lieutenant and your whole team are done. I don’t want you in this hous
e again. I don’t want you talking to me again. I don’t want you anywhere near the filming. Do you understand?”

  Serena didn’t say anything. She just stared at him. After a few seconds passed, he stepped aside and waited. She marched out of the room and headed back downstairs. She heard Casperson closing and locking the upstairs room behind her. On the lower level, she found Guppo and directed him and the team out of the house.

  “You didn’t find anything?” she said.

  Guppo’s round head swung back and forth. “No. Sorry.”

  “Who was in the house?”

  “Some people from a catering company. A maid. A chef. They were all deaf, dumb, and blind, and I get the feeling they’re well paid to stay that way. I showed them Rochelle’s photo. Nobody remembered her.”

  Serena exhaled steam into the frigid air. “That son of a bitch is going to get away with this. According to Maggie, he’s been at it for thirty years. And nobody has breathed a word about it in public.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Leave someone here to talk to Jungle Jack when he gets back,” Serena said. “Let’s go find Aimee Bowe and make sure she’s okay.”

  *

  Maggie’s phone rang at one in the morning in Florida, waking her up. She could see the screen glowing and hear the phone vibrating on the nightstand. She reached across the bare torso of Cab Bolton in his bed and grabbed it. It was Stride, which meant it was an emergency. As she talked to him, Cab used a remote control to switch on the light and then sat up next to her.

  They were both naked.

  Cab listened curiously to her end of the conversation, which didn’t take long.

  “Dean Casperson got interrupted in midassault,” Maggie explained when she hung up the phone. “They think he drugged Aimee Bowe and was planning to rape her.”

  “Can they prove it?” Cab asked.

  “No. There was no evidence of anything by the time the police got there. Even if Aimee talks, Casperson laid the groundwork to blame it on her.”

  Cab shook his head. “The man is Teflon.”

  He got out of the four-poster bed, and she watched him walk over to the full-length mirror on the back of his bathroom door. It wasn’t a large bedroom, and Maggie wasn’t a fan of the lime-green paint, but she wasn’t here for the decor. The air-conditioning kept it cold, and the overhead ceiling blew a constant breeze over her bare skin.

  In the mirror, Cab examined his upper arm, which was mottled with red-and-purple bruises. As he moved it, his face twisted with a stab of pain.

  “How’s the arm?” she asked.

  “Feels like someone hit it with a baseball bat.”

  “Weird,” she said.

  “Yeah, I can’t figure it out. How about you? How’s the neck?”

  “Pretty loose now, actually. Intense physical activity must be good for it.”

  “I hope you mean the sex,” Cab said. “Or did you get up while I was sleeping and use my in-home gym?”

  “You have an in-home gym?”

  “Oh, please. Not a chance.”

  Cab wandered over to the glass doors that led to the balcony and then went outside. Maggie got out of bed and joined him. They didn’t bother with clothes. Cab’s house was small, but it was in a secluded location on the sandy peninsula ten miles south of Naples. The balcony looked right out on the Gulf, where moonlight made the calm water glow. Steps led down to the beach. Palm trees guarded the house like soldiers.

  “This is one hell of a place,” Maggie said.

  “I bought it earlier this year. If you’re going to live in Florida, you might as well live on the water.”

  “Any bugs?”

  “The size of Cadillacs. If they unionize, I’m doomed.”

  “So it’s not entirely paradise?” Maggie asked.

  “Oh, no. It is. It definitely is. Do you want to go for a naked swim? Sex in the water isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but you get bragging rights when you tell your friends you did it.”

  “I wish I could,” Maggie said unhappily.

  “Ah. All good things come to an end?”

  “I need to get back to the Ritz. I have to catch an early-morning flight. Stride wants me back in Duluth.”

  “Plus, we’re at a standstill here,” Cab said. “So go.”

  “I hate to leave you stranded,” Maggie said. “You don’t have a car.”

  “Don’t worry, my Corvette dealer delivers.”

  Maggie crooked a finger for a kiss, and Cab bent down to deliver it. Then she went back into the bedroom, leaving him alone on the balcony. She retrieved her clothes, which were strewn across the gray ceramic tiles on the floor, and got dressed. In the bathroom, she studied herself in the mirror. She looked like someone who’d had sex that night. She decided it was a look that worked for her.

  She really didn’t want to leave.

  The balcony doors were still open, letting the sticky air in. She went back to the doorway, and Cab turned around and smiled. The trees and the water framed his tall, skinny body in the moonlight like a portrait. His spiky hair was even messier than usual, which was her doing. He leaned against the balcony, utterly relaxed and utterly naked. He flicked a small lizard off his wrist.

  “Come with me,” Maggie told him.

  “What?”

  “You know Dean Casperson and this case better than anyone,” she said. “And you know what Peach was doing, so you can help us figure out what happened to her. Come back and work with us. Just for a couple days. You can stay at my place.”

  Cab tilted his face to the sky as if pondering the idea. He looked back over his shoulder at the perfect water of the Gulf, and then a grin crept across his face. “Duluth in January,” he said. “Well, who could resist an invitation like that?”

  27

  Serena recognized the red Toyota Yaris that was parked outside Aimee’s rental house on Thirteenth Street. Lori Fulkerson was there.

  The woman stood at Aimee’s front door, where she’d tramped across the beaten-down snow. She turned around in surprise when she saw Serena and Guppo marching toward her, and her surprise turned to wide-eyed fear when several other police cars arrived at the same time. She looked like a rabbit, ready to run.

  “What’s going on?” Lori asked.

  “We’re looking for Aimee Bowe, Ms. Fulkerson. Have you seen her?”

  “No, I just knocked on the door. There was no answer.”

  “Have you been here long?” Serena asked.

  “Just a couple of minutes.”

  Serena checked her watch and studied the empty street around them. “It’s pretty late to be paying a visit, Ms. Fulkerson. Why are you here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I needed to talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “To be honest, Aimee seems like the only person who has ever understood me. It’s the strangest sensation, like I can feel her inside my head. Like we’re connected.” Lori crossed her arms over her chest in the cold. “I don’t like it.”

  “Did you tell her you were coming over?”

  Lori shook her head. “No. I just got in my car and drove.”

  “Did you see anyone coming or going as you arrived?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Okay, why don’t you go back home now,” Serena told her.

  “Is everything all right? Did something happen?”

  “It’s nothing for you to be concerned about.”

  Lori looked at the faces of the police officers. Then she wandered into the snow and headed back toward her car. She got into the Yaris, but Serena noticed that she didn’t drive away. Lori stayed there, watching the activity outside the house.

  Serena pounded on the front door. “Aimee! Aimee, are you there?”

  There was no answer.

  “She could be unconscious,” Guppo said. “If she was drugged, she might not hear us.”

  Serena was about to put her shoulder to the flimsy door when she remembered Aimee’s comment that half the locks in t
he old house didn’t work. She turned the doorknob, and the front door opened with a squeal of its hinges. The interior was dark and cold.

  “Aimee,” she called again. “It’s Serena.”

  Still no answer.

  She walked into the living room with Guppo beside her. A narrow corridor led to the bedrooms, and they checked each one, expecting to find Aimee sprawled on the bed or the floor. The actress wasn’t there. Serena checked the two bathrooms, but they were empty.

  They did a search of the rest of the house, which didn’t take long. It was obvious that Aimee had never made it home. Serena continued to the rear porch, which had a view out onto the dark mass of Lake Superior. Frost coated the windows, and wind whistled through a seam in one of the frames. It sounded like the cry of a witch. She was hoping she’d find Aimee stretched out on a wicker sofa under a blanket, but no one was there.

  “Is Jungle Jack back at Casperson’s house yet?” she asked Guppo.

  “As of two minutes ago, no.”

  “Where did the son of a bitch take her if it wasn’t here? Get a car over to the apartment Jack’s renting in Hermantown. I want to make sure he didn’t decide to finish what Dean Casperson started.”

  Guppo nodded. “I’ll make the call.”

  The sergeant turned around and left the house, leaving Serena alone.

  Serena stood on the back porch, thinking about Aimee Bowe. There was something odd about her, and she had no idea how to explain it. It wasn’t rational, and Serena believed only in rational things. She thought about the story Stride had told her about Aimee and Cat. Save me. It was so unbelievable that Cat hadn’t even wanted to tell her about it, because she knew Serena would tell her it wasn’t real.

  And now Lori Fulkerson.

  It’s the strangest sensation, like I can feel her inside my head. Like we’re connected.

  Not rational.

  Serena closed her eyes. She tried to open her mind, as if she could feel a connection with Aimee simply by being there. Aimee’s presence was in this house. A hint of her perfume floated over the cold. Serena listened to the wind and thought: Where are you? Tell me.

  Aimee didn’t answer, because things like that weren’t possible. Serena felt silly for even having considered it. What mattered was evidence you could feel, touch, taste, hear, and see.