Immoral

by Brian Freeman

  PRAISE FOR

  IMMORAL

  “In this compelling debut thriller, Freeman turns in a psychologically gripping, virtuoso performance with a detective who is likely to return. He deftly lays bare the demons lurking in many of us while keeping us tantalized through a series of plot shifts. Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Immoral is a slick and savvy offering and the best debut mystery in quite some time.”

  —BookPage

  “[Immoral] may very well be one of the best debuts of 2005…a near pitch-perfect first novel that soars with believable characters, crisp dialogue and, for the most part, logical twists and turns…Jonathan Stride literally strides onto the page—flawed, complicated, and very appealing.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “In one of the more thrilling debuts to come along in a while, Freeman takes the reader on a gloriously chilling ride through a world where nothing is as it seems.”

  —New Mystery Reader Magazine

  “With Stride, Freeman has created a world-weary detective with a strong moral compass and determination. Tightly written with a strong sense of place and character…a compelling read.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Immoral is an excellent book, filled with a masterfully complex plot with twists that make this into a real page-turner. Look for Immoral, and when you find it, do not pass by. Brian Freeman takes suspense writing to another level. You do not want to miss this book.”

  —ReviewingTheEvidence.com

  “[B]e warned. In the manner of the finest thrillers, nothing is as it seems in Freeman’s devilish story of revenge and double-cross.”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “Breathtakingly real and utterly compelling, Immoral dishes up page-turning psychological suspense while treating us lucky readers to some of the most literate and stylish writing you’ll find anywhere today.”

  —Jeffery Deaver, author of The Twelfth Card and Garden of Beasts

  “Freeman’s novel is one hell of a read, gut-wrenching and moving, exciting and powerful.”

  —Ken Bruen, author of The Killing of the Tinkers

  “Who is Brian Freeman? This guy can tell a story. Immoral is a page-turner of the highest caliber. It has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end.”

  —Michael Connelly, author of The Closers

  IMMORAL

  BRIAN FREEMAN

  ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS

  For Marcia

  The distance that the dead have gone

  Does not at first appear–

  Their coming back seems possible

  For many an ardent year.

  –EMILY DICKINSON

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Darkness was a different thing in the north woods than it was in the city. He had forgotten.

  The girl was invisible—no more than a ghost under the midnight sky—but he knew she was there, very close to him. He clutched her warm wrist in his hand. Her breathing was soft and measured; she was calm. Her perfume, always familiar to him, filled his nostrils again, a lingering, unusual essence of spring flowers. Lilac, he thought. And hyacinth. He remembered when that perfume alone, just the smell of it, could arouse him. He had missed her scent and her body. Now here they were—together again.

  A fist of dread gripped his insides. A wave of self-hatred washed over him. He didn’t know if he had the courage for what came next. Waiting, planning, wanting, he had fantasized about this night. She was so much a part of his mind that when he looked in the mirror, he could actually see her behind him, like a dark raven on his shoulder. But after all the anticipation, he hesitated at the threshold.

  One last little game, he thought.

  “Let’s get it over with,” the girl hissed, betraying irritation and impatience. He hated to hear any hint of disapproval in her voice. But she was right—she was always a step ahead of him. They had been outside in the frigid air for too long. The barn was a magnet for lovers. Someone might interrupt them in their hideaway, ruining everything.

  He felt wolfish eyes upon him. They were alone, but even so, he felt as if strangers were hiding behind the skeletal birch trees, stalking him. He took a deep breath, trying to rein in his fears. He couldn’t wait any more.

  He dug his left hand into the pocket of his coat, letting his fingers caress the blade.

  Time to play.

  He had waited for her in the darkest section of the street, along the route he knew she would come. Cold pellets of sleet, blown horizontal, rained down on the car, gathering like snow on his windshield. He shivered, pulled his light coat tighter around his shoulders, and nervously eyed the mirrors.

  He had arrived early, much earlier than was wise. But the neighborhood was quiet. His watch said ten o’clock. Soon, he thought.

  Each minute passed with excruciating slowness. He squirmed, his bowels like water. It occurred to him for a horrifying moment that she might not come. All the waiting, all the sacrifice, would be for nothing. As cold as it was in the car, he began to sweat. He chewed his upper lip between his teeth. The longer he sat, counting the seconds in his head, the more he felt his fears grow. Would she come?

  Then she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, looking ethereal under the pale glow of a streetlight. He gasped at how beautiful she was. His pulse raced, and more sweat gathered in a clammy film under his arms and on the back of his neck. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t swallow. As she glided closer, his eyes drank her in. She had full red lips and black hair falling in wet strands below her shoulders. The cold brought a ruby flush to her cheeks, startling against the creamy alabaster of her skin. A single hoop earring dangled in a glint of gold from her left earlobe, and a gold bracelet hung loosely on her right wrist. She was tall and took long, hurried strides. She wore a white turtleneck over her slim torso, its damp fabric clinging to her body. Her black jeans fit snugly.

  He imagined what it was like to be so powerful and confident. He could almost feel himself inside her skin, keenly aware of her body: the taste of rain on her lips, the singing and biting of the wind in her ears, and the wanton, supple sensation between her legs.

  Her eyes found him. He knew she couldn’t see him inside the car,
but he could feel her stare anyway. And he knew those eyes, intense and green, like sea foam in which he wanted to drown. She was coming straight toward him.

  He knew what to do—stay in the car, wait, let her come to him. But the aching in his heart was too much. His eyes flicked up and down the street, checking to see if they were safe. Then he opened the car door and called to her, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

  “Rachel.”

  Now, miles away, she was running. Trying to escape. He reached out, grabbing for her shirt. He snagged a fistful of her turtleneck, but she slapped his hand away. Slipping, he lunged again for her wrist, but his gloved fingers yanked on her bracelet instead. She wriggled free, the bracelet tumbled away, and she galloped into the tall weeds.

  He followed, barely two steps behind her. But Rachel was like a gazelle, fleet and graceful. He felt clumsy, slowed by his big shoes and the sticky grasp of mud and brush. She widened the gap. He called her name, pleading with her to stop, and she must have heard him. Or maybe she stumbled in the rutted ground. When he clawed out blindly with his hands, he felt the soft flesh of her shoulder. He squeezed hard and spun her around. Their bodies collided. He held her tight as she wriggled in his grasp, her chest heaving. He smelled her sweet breath.

  She didn’t say a word.

  He hooked his right foot around her ankle, trapping her, and pressed their hips together. He tugged her shirt. The fabric bunched in his hand, and he brought up his other fist, the one with the knife. With just the point of the blade, he sliced the shirt like butter, hearing the cloth tear and fray. He cut the shirt again. And again, turning it into rags. He let his fingers touch her skin, feeling the swell of her breasts, which rose up and down, up and down, like a roller coaster.

  He put the point to her chest, right where the heart must be, somewhere deep inside. If she truly had a heart. She struggled, playing along. A dying game. He knew she wanted him to do it. This was never about him, he reminded himself. This was all about Rachel.

  He pushed. A gasp finally escaped her lips. Something wet ran on the blade. That was all it took, and they were free.

  PART ONE

  1

  Jonathan Stride felt like a ghost, bathed in the white spotlights that illuminated the bridge.

  Below him, muddy brown swells flooded into the canal, spewing waves over the concrete piers and swallowing the spray in eight-foot troughs. The water tumbled over itself, squeezing from the violent lake to the placid inner harbor. At the end of the piers, where ships navigated the canal as delicately as thread through a needle, twin lighthouses flashed revolving beams of green and red.

  The bridge felt like a living thing. As cars sped onto the platform, a whine filled the air, like the buzz of hornets. The honeycomb sidewalk vibrated, quivering under his feet. Stride glanced upward, as he imagined Rachel would have done, at the crisscross scissors of steel towering above his head. The barely perceptible sway unsettled him and made him dizzy.

  He was doing what he always did—putting himself inside the mind of the victim, seeing the world through her eyes. Rachel had been here on Friday night, alone on the bridge. After that, no one knew.

  Stride turned his attention to the two teenagers who stood with him, impatiently stamping their feet against the cold. “Where was she when you first saw her?” he asked.

  The boy, Kevin Lowry, extracted a beefy hand from his pocket. His third finger sported an oversized onyx high school ring. He tapped the three inches of wet steel railing. “Right here, Lieutenant. She was balanced on top of the railing. Arms stretched out. Sort of like Christ.” He closed his eyes, tilted his chin toward heaven, and extended his arms with his palms upward. “Like this.”

  Stride frowned. It had been a bleak October, with angry swoops of wind and sleet raining like bullets from the night sky. He couldn’t imagine anyone climbing on top of the railing that night without falling.

  Kevin seemed to read his mind. “She was really graceful. Like a dancer.”

  Stride peered over the railing. The narrow canal was deep enough to grant passage to giant freighters weighted down with bellies of iron ore. It could suck a body down in its wicked undertow and not let go.

  “What the hell was she doing up there?” Stride asked.

  The other teenager, Sally Lindner, spoke for the first time. Her voice was crabbed. “It was a stunt, like everything else she did. She wanted attention.”

  Kevin opened his mouth to complain but closed it again. Stride got the feeling this was an old argument between them. He noticed that Sally had her arm slung through Kevin’s, and she tugged the boy a little closer when she talked.

  “So what did you do?” Stride asked.

  “I ran up here on the bridge,” Kevin said. “I helped her down.”

  Stride watched Sally’s mouth pucker unhappily as Kevin described the rescue.

  “Tell me about Rachel,” Stride said to Kevin.

  “We grew up together. Next-door neighbors. Then her mom married Mr. Stoner and they moved uptown.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Well, uh, pretty,” Kevin said nervously, shooting a quick glance at Sally.

  Sally rolled her eyes. “She was beautiful, okay? Long black hair. Slim, tall. The whole package. And a bigger slut you’re not likely to find.”

  “Sally!” Kevin protested.

  “It’s true, and you know it. After Friday? You know it.”

  Sally turned her face away from Kevin, although she didn’t let go of his arm. Stride watched the girl’s jaw set in an angry line, her lips pinched together. Sally had a rounded face, with a messy pile of chestnut curls tumbling to her shoulders and blowing across her flushed cheeks. In her tight blue jeans and red parka, she was a pretty young girl. But no one would describe her as beautiful. Not a stunner. Not like Rachel.

  “What happened on Friday?” Stride asked. He knew what Deputy Chief Kinnick had told him on the phone two hours ago: Rachel hadn’t been home since Friday. She was missing. Gone. Just like Kerry.

  “Well, she sort of came on to me,” Kevin said grudgingly.

  “Right in front of me!” Sally snapped. “Fucking bitch.”

  Kevin’s eyebrows furled together like a yellow caterpillar. “Stop it. Don’t talk about her like that.”

  Stride held up one hand, silencing the argument. He reached inside his faded leather jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes that he had wedged into the pocket of his flannel shirt. He studied the pack with weary disgust, then lit a cigarette and took a long drag. Smoke curled out of his mouth and formed a cloud in front of his face. He felt his lungs contract. Stride tossed the rest of the pack into the canal, where the red package swirled like a dot of blood and then was swept under the bridge.

  “Back up,” he said. “Kevin, give me the whole story, short and sweet, okay?”

  Kevin rubbed his hand across his scalp until his blond hair stood up like naked winter trees. He squared his shoulders, which were broad and muscular. A football player.

  “Rachel called me on my cell phone on Friday night and said we should come hang out with her in Canal Park,” Kevin said. “It was about eight-thirty, I guess. A shitty night. The park was almost empty. When we spotted Rachel, she was on the railing, playing around. So we ran up on the bridge to get her off there.”

  “Then what?” Stride asked.

  Kevin pointed to the opposite side of the bridge, to the peninsula that stretched like a narrow finger with Lake Superior on one side and Duluth harbor on the other. Stride had lived there most of his life, watching the ore ships shoulder out to sea.

  “The three of us wandered down to the beach. We talked about school stuff.”

  “She’s a suck-up,” Sally interjected. “She takes psychology and starts spouting all the teacher’s theories on screwed-up families. She takes English, and the teacher’s poetry is so wonderful. She takes math and grades papers after school.”

  Stride silenced the girl with a stony stare. Sally pouted an
d tossed her hair defiantly. Stride nodded at Kevin to continue.

  “Then we heard a ship’s horn,” he said. “Rachel said she wanted to ride the bridge while it went up.”

  “They don’t let you do that,” Stride said.

  “Yeah, but Rachel knows the bridge keeper. She and her dad used to hang out with him.”

  “Her dad? You mean Graeme Stoner?”

  Kevin shook his head. “No, her real dad. Tommy.”

  Stride nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well, we went back on the bridge, but Sally didn’t want to do it. She kept going to the city side. But I didn’t want Rachel up there by herself, so I stayed. And that’s where—well, that’s where she started making out with me.”

  “She was playing games with you,” Sally said sharply.

  Kevin shrugged. Stride watched Kevin tug at the collar around his thick neck and then caught a glimpse of the boy’s eyes. Kevin wasn’t going to say exactly what happened on the bridge, but he clearly was embarrassed and aroused thinking about it.

  “We weren’t up there very long,” Kevin said. “Maybe ten minutes. When we got down, Sally—she wasn’t…”

  “I left,” Sally said. “I went home.”

  Kevin stuttered on his words. “I’m really sorry, Sal.” He reached out a hand to brush her hair, but Sally twisted away.