Funeral for a Friend

by Brian Freeman

  Whoever sent this had been watching her. Spying on her. But that wasn’t even the worst part.

  The photograph was covered in green marker, like the address on the outside of the envelope. One sentence was scribbled on the front and back of the picture over and over.

  I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you.

  Cat had received personal messages before. Invitations to prom. Invitations to sex. Even marriage proposals and engagement rings. But this one was different. Something about it felt threatening, not just that the postmark was local, not just that it was a picture of her, not just that someone was watching her.

  There was something else about it.

  What?

  And then her gaze drifted to the top of her dresser, and she knew. There it was, sitting upright next to her Bluetooth speakers, in plain sight. She hadn’t noticed it before, but she knew she hadn’t left it there herself.

  A green marker.

  He’d left behind the marker.

  He’d written the message on the photograph right here in her bedroom.

  3

  Steve’s yard was small and crowded with trees. There were only so many places to hide a body, and Stride knew where to tell the forensics team to dig.

  He remembered the day seven years ago when Steve had added a picket fence and a small garden near the street. That was an unusual project for him, because Steve didn’t exactly have a green thumb. He’d planted herbs like rosemary, parsley, and basil, because he said he was taking a cooking class and wanted to use fresh ingredients. The garden had lasted for all of one season, and since then, the rectangular plot had been nothing but a nest of weeds.

  The ground in the yard was soft, thanks to the rain, and their officers had erected a tent over the garden. Under the tarp, men with shovels carefully scraped away the mud layer by layer. Stride sat with Maggie in her Avalanche as the team worked. He drank coffee; she ate McDonald’s fries. Neither of them said a word, but he could feel her eyeing him across the truck. She was waiting for him to give her some kind of explanation for the search, but he couldn’t do that.

  Not yet.

  Not until they found Ned Baer’s body.

  He’d recited Steve’s dying words for Maggie exactly as he remembered them, leaving nothing out. He hadn’t tried to protect himself. She’d taken his statement with an expressionless face and not asked any follow-up questions. Instead, she’d written up the warrant application based on Steve’s confession and hand-delivered it to a friendly judge at the county courthouse. Now the search was underway. There was nothing to do but wait and see what the team found.

  They weren’t alone on the Point. Neighbors had already begun to gather near the house to observe the police activity. They all knew Steve and knew he had died the previous day. It hadn’t taken long in the tight-knit Point community for word to spread that something unusual was happening. Sooner rather than later, the local media would also pick up the story and descend on the area.

  The story of Ned Baer was going to be back in the news. This time, unlike seven years ago, Stride knew the truth was going to come out.

  No more sins of omission. No more lies.

  He needed to call Andrea and warn her.

  Stride checked his watch. The forensics team had been digging for less than an hour, but if the body really was here, they’d get to it soon. He was impatient to know if he was right, so he got out of the Avalanche and stepped into the pouring rain. He wore a vinyl slicker and pulled up the hood. There was no wind, and the summer rain was warm, but he still shivered. This was one of those moments when he missed smoking. A cigarette in his hand would have gone a long way toward calming his nerves.

  Maggie emptied the last few french fries into her mouth and joined him. She stood unprotected in the rain. He felt the weight of the silence between them, heavy and uncomfortable. He didn’t like feeling that way with her. They’d been partners and friends for two decades; they’d even been lovers for a brief, uncomfortable stretch of months. He trusted Maggie more than anyone else in his life except Serena, but Maggie was also a cop, and Stride was acting like a witness with things to hide.

  Under the tent on Steve’s front lawn, Sergeant Max Guppo used two fingers to let out a loud whistle.

  This was it. They’d found something.

  Stride marched that way, head down, his hands in his pockets. He heard Maggie clear her throat behind him, and he knew she wanted him to stay back and let her talk to the forensics team alone. She was right. She was in charge here. He needed to keep this case at arm’s length, but right now, he didn’t care about protocol. He wanted to see what Steve had hidden in the ground.

  His long legs carried him across the wet grass. Maggie hurried to catch up with him. The rain poured over the edges of the tent, and he crossed through a waterfall to the other side. Guppo was waiting beside a hole that went about two feet down into the wet soil. The other members of the team leaned on dirty shovels, and their faces were wet with sweat and rain.

  Stride stared down into the hole, which was really a grave.

  A skull stared back at him.

  That was all that was visible right now, a white skull against the black dirt. In seven years, all the flesh had long since been eaten away. Its eye holes gaped. Where the nose had been was a dark, open triangle. The mouth of the skull was parted, its two rows of teeth separated as if in midscream. And in the middle of the forehead bone was a single, round hole.

  A bullet hole.

  The man in the ground had been shot in the head.

  Maggie immediately grabbed Stride’s arm and pulled him away. He resisted, unable to take his eyes off the skull, caught somewhere between his nightmares and his memories. Maggie pulled again, hard, but he remained rooted in place. Then she got on tiptoes and whispered in his ear.

  “Stride, I’m not kidding around. You can’t be here. You need to come with me right now.”

  This time, he let her drag him into the rain. His hood slipped from his head and the downpour drenched his face. The two of them hiked past Steve’s old house, dodging the tall spruce trees until they got to the small backyard. They were steps from the bay. The water was dimpled, and fog and rain blocked the far Wisconsin shore from view. Maggie glanced over her shoulder, making sure that none of the other cops could see where they were.

  “Okay, boss, what the hell?” she demanded in a loud voice. “What’s going on?”

  Stride understood Maggie’s reaction. He would have been just as upset with her if the tables were turned. “You know as much as I do about this, Mags. The last thing Steve said to me was that he buried a body. I didn’t know if it was real or not. For all I knew, he was delirious. Hallucinating. But it’s not like I could ignore what he said. We had to check it out.”

  “Be straight with me, boss. Did you already know about this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you know about the body before yesterday?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Is that the truth? I can keep this off the record for now, but as soon as we go back out there, everything goes in the file. I have to know what happened.”

  “It’s the truth, Mags. I didn’t know about the body. Steve never said a word about it before now. This was a dying confession. I’m as shocked as you are.”

  Maggie swore. She bent down and picked up a thick branch that had blown off one of the trees and threw it into the water. “We’re talking about a murder victim. Somebody shot this guy.”

  “I know that. Obviously.”

  She closed her eyes, wiping away the rain from her face with both hands. “It’s Ned Baer, right?”

  Stride shrugged. “I assume so. I don’t see who else it could be.”

  “Did you know he was dead?”

  “No, I didn’t. I knew what you k
new. What we all knew. Baer was missing. We assumed he’d drowned in the Deeps and the body was lost in the lake. I sure as hell didn’t know he’d been shot.”

  “Do you think Steve killed him?” Maggie asked.

  “Steve? No way.”

  “He buried the body. What the hell am I supposed to think?”

  “Steve didn’t even own a gun, Mags. As far as I know, he never fired a gun in his life.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Maggie replied.

  “I’m telling you, Steve had no reason to kill Ned Baer. He didn’t do it.”

  “So why hide the body? Why cover up a murder?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Maggie made sure they were still alone. They didn’t have much time before the other cops got curious and came looking for them. Maggie leaned in close to Stride and jabbed a finger at his face. Her voice was an angry hiss.

  “Like hell you don’t know! You told me what Steve said. You’re safe, buddy. If Steve didn’t kill Ned Baer, then the only reason he hid the body was because he thought you did it. Now why the hell would he think that?”

  “I’m telling you, Mags, I don’t know. Steve and I never talked about Ned Baer. Not before he disappeared, not after. I had no idea that Steve even knew who the hell Ned was. There’s no reason he would have thought that I killed him.”

  Maggie let a hostile silence draw out between them. “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Oh, come on. Are you serious, Mags? I can’t believe you would ask me that.”

  “I’m totally serious.”

  “Well, what’s next? Should I call a lawyer? I came to you. I told you what Steve said. If I killed Ned Baer, why wouldn’t I just keep my mouth shut? No one would have known about the body if I hadn’t told you to get the warrant.”

  “Yeah, until somebody bought the house and decided to plant a new garden, right? Come on, Stride. It’s an official question, and I need an official answer. We’re back on the record. This all goes in the file. I don’t have any choice about this. Did you kill Ned Baer?”

  “No. I did not.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No, I don’t. And obviously, Steve didn’t know either, because if he thought it was me, he was wrong.” Stride glanced over his shoulder and saw Max Guppo lumbering toward them. The sergeant’s round face was furrowed with concern, watching the two of them argue. “But since we’re back on the record, Mags, we might as well go to the station and make everything official. Interview me. Ask me whatever you want. I know you have more questions. Because even though I didn’t kill him, we both know that I was the last person to see Ned Baer alive.”

  4

  Stride had never spent any time on the opposite side of the witness table. He was typically the one conducting the interrogations, and he had a better sense now of what it was like to be on the receiving end of suspicion and mistrust from the police. Maggie sat across from him. Her face was a mask, the way it always was when she was in this room. No emotion, nothing personal between them. Except the two of them were close enough that they always knew what the other was thinking. She didn’t believe for a moment that he’d murdered Ned Baer, but she also knew that he hadn’t been honest with her when Ned disappeared.

  Maggie had an overstuffed folder on the table. Two evidence boxes were stacked on the chairs on either side of her. He recognized all the materials they gathered seven years ago. This was the sum-total of what they learned while investigating the disappearance of Ned Baer.

  An investigation he led.

  An investigation that he’d deliberately obstructed.

  He knew how this interview would go; he knew what he had to say. He was surprised to find himself oddly calm about admitting it after all this time.

  Maggie opened the folder. On top was a photograph, which she removed and pinned to the bulletin board behind her. Stride recognized the picture. He’d long ago memorized the man’s face.

  Ned Baer had been a compact man, five foot six, with a scrawny, underfed frame. At the time he disappeared, he’d been thirty-nine years old. He had messy, receding black hair that left only a U-shaped tongue on his high forehead. His eyes were brown, with dark half-moons beneath them. He wore a wispy beard, and his lips were thin and unsmiling. In the picture, he wore hiker’s clothes: boots, cargo pants, and a navy blue zipped REI jacket. The photo had been taken in the Colorado mountains, two hours from where Ned kept a Denver apartment.

  “Are you ready?” Maggie asked.

  “Sure. Let’s go.”

  Maggie turned on a voice recorder in front of her and recited her name, Stride’s name, and the date and time of the interview. She used her cop voice.

  “Lieutenant Stride, can you confirm for me that you’re conducting this interview willingly and under no duress?”

  “I am.” He added after a moment, “It was my idea.”

  “Do you want me to read you your rights?”

  “No, that’s not necessary. I’m pretty familiar with them.”

  Maggie hesitated, then turned off the recorder. When she spoke to him again, she was the snarky friend he’d known for two decades. “Just so we’re clear, I know this is bullshit, boss.”

  “I know you do. Let’s just get through it, Mags.”

  She switched the recorder back on, and her voice was professional again. “Lieutenant Stride, can you review the facts of Ned Baer’s disappearance for me?”

  He allowed himself a silent laugh. Maggie, who had a near-photographic memory, could have rattled off nearly every page of the investigative folder without so much as turning over a piece of paper. But this was official. This was about what he knew.

  “Ned Baer was a writer for a journal called the Freedom Reporter Online,” Stride replied. “FR Online is a conservative newspaper, and Ned was one of their investigative journalists. He lived in Colorado but traveled extensively on research projects around the country. His focus was primarily digging up dirt on left-leaning politicians. Seven years ago, in July, Ned Baer came to Duluth and paid for an open-ended summer rental at a motel on the west end of Superior Street.”

  “Why was he in Duluth?”

  Stride took a swallow from the can of Coke Maggie had given him before the interrogation. He eased back in the chair and rubbed his chin.

  “Ned was investigating sexual assault allegations against a politician named Devin Card. The allegations had broken in the media the previous month. At the time, Card was the Minnesota Attorney General and was running for an open seat in the US House of Representatives. An anonymous woman alleged that Card had raped her more than twenty years earlier, while she was a high school student in Duluth. Ned was in town, along with half the political reporters in the country, to see if he could figure out who the woman was and whether there was any truth to the allegations.”

  “How long was Ned in Duluth?” Maggie asked.

  “He disappeared the third week in August, so at that point, he’d been here for approximately one month.”

  “How did you become aware of his disappearance?”

  “I received a call from Ned’s editor, Debbi King. She told me that she hadn’t had any communication with Ned in five days and that the voice mailbox on his cell phone was full. According to her, it was very unusual for Ned to be out of touch for so long, and she was concerned. At that point, I launched an investigation. Of course, you already know that, since we worked on it together.”

  Maggie ignored his comment. “Can you summarize how the investigation proceeded?”

  “Yes. Our first step was to visit the motel where Ned was staying. You and I talked to the manager and the housekeeping staff, and we concluded that Ned hadn’t been back to his room for several days. However, no one at the motel could tell us exactly when he’d last been there. We
searched the room but found nothing to explain his whereabouts or what he’d been working on. There was no cell phone, no notes, no computer, no calendar, etc. At the same time, we ran a check on the credit card he’d used to pay for the room, and there had been no activity on the card in Duluth or anywhere else for nearly a week.”

  “And then what?” Maggie asked.

  “We obtained records for Ned’s cell phone, based on the number his editor gave us. The records indicated that Ned’s phone had last been used for a call to his editor on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 24. That was also the last time he used his credit card; to purchase breakfast at the Duluth Grill. As a result, we began to focus on that time period as the likely point when Ned disappeared, although we didn’t know what had happened to him. However, a series of incoming calls in his phone records gave us another clue.”

  “Where did those calls come from?”

  “A rental car agency at the Minneapolis airport. Ned had a rental contract on a green Kia Rio, but as it turns out, we actually had the car in custody ourselves. That is, the police did. The car had been illegally parked, ticketed, and subsequently towed to an impound lot. When the officer who requested the tow ran the plates, he noted that it was a rental vehicle and contacted the agency. They started calling Ned to find out what was going on with their car.”

  “What information came out about the Kia?” Maggie asked.

  “The parking ticket was written the morning of Wednesday, August 25. The car was towed the following day when it still hadn’t been moved. This helped us confirm the timeframe when we believe Ned disappeared. It also told us what we believe was his last known location. The car had been parked off the shoulder on the south end of Seven Bridges Road, near a popular cliffside swimming area on Amity Creek, known as the Deeps.”

  “So the evidence suggested that Ned was at or near the Deeps shortly before he disappeared?”