Alter Ego

by Brian Freeman

  She went back out the front door. Guppo was waiting for her. Lori Fulkerson finally had driven away.

  “Have we found Jungle Jack?” Serena asked.

  “The uniform at Casperson’s place just checked in. Jack’s back. That means he didn’t have time to go to Hermantown.”

  “So where is Aimee Bowe?”

  “Jack says he dropped her here,” Guppo told her.

  Temper flared on Serena’s face, which wasn’t like her. “Well, she is not here.”

  “I know, Serena,” Guppo replied quietly.

  She shook her head at her outburst and turned her anger back on herself. She felt like this entire case had a wall around it that they couldn’t break through. “I’m sorry, Max. Call the officer back and get Jungle Jack on the phone. I want to talk to him myself.”

  “You got it.”

  Serena stamped through the snow into the middle of the yard. She shivered in the wind and studied the house and grounds from a distance. Footprints were everywhere, overlapping. They told her nothing. Some went around the house; some crossed the yard diagonally; some went downhill toward Skyline Parkway. Most probably had been made by kids.

  Then she remembered what Aimee had said about someone breaking into the house. Whoever it was didn’t just look through the windows. He came inside, too.

  What if he was waiting for her when she got home?

  Who?

  There was no sign of a struggle, but in Aimee’s condition, she wouldn’t have been able to put up a fight. Except there was almost no time between Jungle Jack leaving and Lori Fulkerson arriving for anyone to kidnap Aimee.

  She saw Guppo hustling toward her through the snow. He gave her his phone and said simply, “Jack.”

  “Mr. Jensen,” Serena barked into the phone. “This is Serena Stride with the Duluth Police. We’re at the house that Aimee Bowe is renting, and she’s not here. Where is she?”

  There was a long pause on the line. “I don’t know what to tell you, Detective. I was there less than twenty minutes ago. I dropped her off.”

  “Describe the house,” Serena said.

  “Blue, single story, way up on the hill.”

  Serena nodded. The description was right. “What exactly happened when you got here with Aimee?”

  “She got out of the car. She headed for the front door. I left. End of story.”

  “What was her physical condition?” Serena asked.

  “She said she was fine. I mean, she was wobbly and all, but I figured she’d simply had too much to drink.”

  “Did you get out of the car yourself? Did you help her?”

  “She didn’t want any help,” Jack replied. “You may find this hard to believe, but Aimee Bowe doesn’t exactly like me. She wasn’t crazy about the idea of my driving her home. She told me to go.”

  “Did you wait until she got inside the door?”

  “No, I just left.”

  Serena shook her head in frustration. “Were there any other cars on the street?”

  “I don’t remember any, but I wasn’t paying attention.”

  She hung up the phone and handed it back to Guppo. “It’s freezing out here. We need to find her, Max. If Jack’s not lying, Aimee was heading for her front door when he left. At most, we got here fifteen minutes later. And Lori Fulkerson was here before that. In that time, Aimee managed to disappear.”

  “But she never got inside the house,” Guppo said. “The floor mat inside wasn’t wet. She didn’t carry in any snow.”

  Serena looked around at the large, sloping expanse of yard and felt a new sense of urgency. “Then she may be outside. Have the men check the perimeter of the property. Hurry.”

  Guppo whistled with his fingers and shouted at the officers near the house. Serena headed through the snow for the lot line, where the yard was ringed with evergreens whose branches hung to the ground. Even in the moonlight, a body could lay there, unfound. The wind on the hill roared, fast and cold, cutting through her heavy coat and biting at the exposed skin on her face. Anyone outside in this weather didn’t have much time.

  “Go, go, go!” she shouted. “Spread out!”

  The police officers separated on the hillside, one small shadow after another. Serena headed for a sweeping ash tree near the street and had to duck to walk underneath it. The snow was deeper there. She saw nothing, so she pushed her way back into the open yard. Guppo was checking the fir trees near the neighbor’s house. Two officers hiked down the steep backside of the slope toward Skyline Parkway. Another was in the wooded land across the street.

  Serena thought: Footprints.

  If Aimee was out here, she had to leave footprints.

  She focused on the bed of snow filling the yard and tried to separate out the prints that didn’t matter. The tracks of animals. The tracks of kids cutting through the yard from one street to another. The random dimples of ice blown off the trees. The cops who had trampled most of the area near the house. She looked for prints that started near the front door and veered off in a single, lonely track. Just one set, wandering away, getting lost.

  She almost missed them.

  The ground was higher than she was, making the seam on the hillside almost invisible, like a wrinkle in the snow that the wind was already whisking away. Yet she knew it was footprints. She ran. She took large steps, and when she reached the tracks, she saw an uneven row of small indentations, spread far apart, vanishing toward a stand of blue spruces.

  Fifty yards away, where the trees spread their branches and the footprints ended, she saw an almost indistinguishable mound in the snow.

  “Over here!” Serena called.

  She charged downhill, and as she reached the small mound, she dropped to her knees. The wind had mostly covered the body in drifts already, and Serena had to brush aside snow to find the arms, the chest, and finally the face. It was Aimee. Her eyes were closed, the lids white with ice. Her skin was already way too cold. Her mouth was parted and unmoving, the lips slightly open. Serena patted Aimee’s cheek and called her name into her ear.

  “Aimee, it’s me. It’s Serena.”

  There was no answer.

  “Get an ambulance!” she shouted over her shoulder.

  Serena stripped off a glove and tried to take a pulse, but her fingers were too numb to find it. She put her cheek down next to Aimee’s mouth, and as she did, she felt the one thing that made her heart leap. Even in the frigid air, she could feel the steamy puff of a breath as Aimee exhaled.

  She was alive.

  28

  In the middle of the night, Stride finally made it back home to the cottage. He went into Cat’s room and found the girl still awake, sitting up in the darkness in her T-shirt and sweatpants. One of the front windows was cracked an inch open, letting in icy air. She’d adopted that habit from him.

  “Aimee’s alive?” Cat asked. “She’s okay?”

  Stride sat down next to her and turned on a nightstand lamp to give the room a soft glow. “Yes, she’s in the hospital now. Serena’s with her. It looks like she’ll be fine.”

  “Thank God. I was so scared.”

  Cat stared at him with wide, vulnerable eyes. She shoved an index finger between her teeth and chewed on a nail, and that made her look younger than she was. He knew part of it was an act. When she was in trouble, when she felt guilty, she tried to look like a little girl.

  He didn’t know what to say to her this time. He’d seen Cat do bad things in their two years together. She’d stolen. She’d lied. She’d protected people who didn’t deserve protection. This was different. It wasn’t about herself; it was about someone else. He wanted to ground her for her recklessness, but at the same time he was proud of her.

  “That was a brave thing you did tonight,” Stride told her.

  Cat looked down, embarrassed. “Thanks.”

  “It was also very, very foolish.”

  “Well, Aimee said I would do something like that. I guess she was right.”

  He noticed t
hat she didn’t apologize, and he wasn’t going to make her do that.

  “Tell me why you did it,” he said.

  “I don’t know. I was so angry about that article about you. I wanted to help. I thought if I saw something, if I could spy on Dean Casperson for you, I could help you prove what kind of person he really is.”

  “Another girl tried to do the same thing, Cat,” Stride said, “and she wound up dead. This is dangerous business. You don’t belong anywhere near it. Climbing that wall tonight wasn’t just trespassing. You were putting yourself at risk. Anything could have happened to you at that house.”

  “Yeah, I know. I was glad Curt was there to pull me over that wall.”

  Stride rolled his eyes. “As much as I hate to say it, I’m glad Curt was there, too, but I wish he’d stopped you from going over it in the first place.”

  “That’s not his fault. Nothing was going to stop me.”

  Stride knew that was true. When Cat set her mind to something, she was as relentless as a runaway train. “Why was it so important to get inside?”

  “Because when I saw Aimee getting out of the limousine, I could feel her reaching out to me from across the street. It was just like she said. Save me. She needed my help. I knew I had to do something.”

  “Doing something didn’t mean going in there yourself. You could have called me. You could have called Serena.”

  “And told you what?” Cat protested. “That I saw Aimee going into Dean Casperson’s house? There’s nothing you could have done about that. That’s why I had to find out what was really going on.”

  Stride hesitated before saying anything, because on one level she was right. If Cat hadn’t been there, he didn’t know what would have happened to Aimee Bowe. Maybe she would have been fine. Or maybe she would have awakened to find herself being assaulted. Whatever Dean Casperson’s plans had been, Cat had interrupted them.

  “So what happens next?” Cat asked him.

  He hated to tell her the truth. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? What do you mean?”

  “I mean there was no crime committed, Cat,” Stride said.

  “Why, just because he didn’t get a chance to rape her? That’s crazy! I saw what he was going to do to her.”

  Stride took hold of Cat’s hand. “Okay, tell me exactly what you saw.”

  Cat sniffled and squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to remember. Then she opened them, and her face was serious. “I saw what Aimee looked like. She was drugged; I’m sure of it. She looked completely out of it, like she didn’t even know what was going on.”

  “Did you see Casperson give her anything? Did you see him tamper with her drink?”

  Cat shook her head in frustration. “No. They were already drinking by the time I got on the roof.”

  “So you didn’t see anything that couldn’t be written off with an innocent explanation.”

  “This wasn’t innocent, Stride.”

  “How can you be sure?” he asked.

  “Because I saw his face. It was scary as hell. Aimee got all disoriented and dropped her glass. Casperson didn’t do anything. He didn’t look surprised or concerned. It was like he was expecting it, you know? He got up, calm as anything, and he walked over and sat right down next to her. He didn’t get help. He didn’t freak out. He just sat there and reached over and started touching her.”

  “Touching how?”

  “Her face. He was caressing her cheek. Real slow, real smooth, like she was some kind of robot. And his eyes? Look, you know some of the things I’ve done. I know what men look like when they want sex and they’re with a girl who can’t tell them no. That was Casperson.”

  Stride’s mouth was a thin, angry line. Those were the details that made him crazy.

  “And then what?” he asked.

  “Then I fell,” Cat said. “He heard me and alerted the guards. That’s when everybody started chasing me. If that hadn’t happened, Casperson would have raped her. I know it. I’m sure of it.”

  “Between you and me, I think you’re right.”

  “You believe me?” Cat asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then let me tell people what I saw.”

  He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  “But why not?”

  “I’m sorry, Cat. You were there illegally, and as far Serena and I are concerned, you were never there. The tip we got was anonymous. Serena didn’t use your name, and we’re going to keep you out of it. That’s it. It’s not up for discussion.”

  Cat leaped out of bed. She paced angrily back and forth across the slanting wooden floor of the old bedroom. “That’s just wrong. So Casperson gets away with it? We don’t do anything?”

  “I’m sorry, Cat.”

  “Look, I know I was trespassing. Fine. I’ll admit it. If I have to get punished for that, I will. But why can’t I just tell the truth?”

  Stride got off the bed, too. He held on to Cat’s shoulders to keep her in place and bent down until they were eye to eye. “Because if you say anything in public—anything—these people will destroy you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You saw what they did to me. They were just getting started. They didn’t leave you out of it to be nice. They left you out to make sure I knew what would happen if we kept going after Dean Casperson. If you stand up and make any kind of accusation, they will rip open your whole life, Cat. They will dredge up every mistake you ever made, every lie you ever told, every law you broke. They’ll print every rumor, every innuendo, everything, to humiliate you and obliterate you. They will make sure no one ever believes a word you say.”

  “Let them try,” Cat said, with her forehead crinkled in determination. “I can take it. I’m strong now.”

  “It’s not about being strong. Strong people break, too. I’ve seen lives ruined this way. Do you remember what I told you about Mort Greeley? He was an innocent man who lost his whole life to false accusations. You can’t imagine what the pressure is like when the media and the public turn on you. I won’t let you go through that.”

  “You didn’t break,” Cat said.

  “I’m a cop. It’s my job to take the heat. You’re a teenager with your whole future ahead of you.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter,” Stride said. “It’s the only thing that matters to me and Serena. I know you want to do something. I know your heart is in the right place. But it’s up to me to protect you and keep you safe. That means you need to stay out of this. Are you listening to me, Cat? Stay away from Dean Casperson.”

  Cat folded her arms across her chest. She spoke softly and intensely as she challenged him. It was the first time he’d ever really thought of her as a woman and not a girl. “Even if it means other people get hurt?” she asked.

  Stride didn’t hesitate.

  He stared at Catalina Mateo, who was as close to a daughter as he would ever have, and he didn’t hesitate.

  “Yes,” he told her. “Even if other people get hurt.”

  29

  Sitting up in the hospital bed, Aimee Bowe didn’t look famous. Her skin was pale, her hair flat and unwashed. She wore a blue plaid hospital gown that even a supermodel couldn’t have made fashionable. Her face was turned sideways as she looked out the window toward the gray city and the deep blue waters of the lake.

  Serena tapped her fingernails on the door in greeting, and Aimee gave her a thin smile and gestured her inside. Serena closed the door behind her. The hospital room was already crowded with flowers, stuffed animals, and balloons. She couldn’t help noticing one particularly large bouquet of roses. The attached card hung open at an angle, so she could read it.

  This will make quite the story for your Oscar speech. Stay strong, and see you back on the set.

  Dean

  Stay strong.

  Serena could hear the underlying message: Stay quiet.

  She sat down in the chair next to the bed.

  “The n
urses are already talking about autographs,” Serena said, “so you must be feeling better.”

  “I am. No permanent damage. I counted fingers and toes. All still there.”

  “I’m relieved.”

  “They tell me I could have died out there. Thank you.”

  “I’m just glad we found you in time,” Serena said. “Can we talk about what happened? Are you feeling up to it?”

  A shadow passed across Aimee’s face. “If you’d like.”

  “How did you wind up out in the snow?”

  “I’m honestly not sure,” Aimee replied.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I have this image of myself running in the moonlight. I’m not even sure it’s really a memory. It’s a flash in my head, nothing more.”

  “Why were you running?” Serena asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Serena knew she was dealing with an actress, and she didn’t know what story to trust. She had no idea whether Aimee’s memory loss was real or she was just covering up the truth.

  “Do you remember where you were earlier in the evening?” she asked.

  Aimee’s eyes flicked to the roses. “I was at Dean’s.”

  “Why?”

  “He wanted to talk about the film. And about new projects. He was offering me another role in his next movie. That’s big for me.”

  Serena waited for Aimee to say more, but she didn’t.

  “How did you get home from Dean’s?” she asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did someone take you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You don’t know who drove you?”

  Aimee’s face flashed with annoyance. “I said I don’t remember. One minute I was at Dean’s, the next minute I was outside running in the cold. There’s nothing in between.”

  “That’s okay. I understand.”

  Serena thought about the footprints in the snow outside Aimee’s house. They were far apart; she really had been running. But running from what? There was only one set of footprints. No one had been chasing her.