Stalked

by Brian Freeman

  Nothing was disturbed inside her apartment. There was no evidence of violence or trouble. His first thought was suicide, and he kept his eyes open for a note, but wherever Tanjy had gone, she hadn’t left a message behind. She also hadn’t taken much with her. Her clothes were neatly hung and folded in the closet and dresser in her bedroom. Her suitcase was there, too, but he didn’t find a purse, wallet, or keys.

  Stride sat down on the end of her queen-sized bed, which had a red quilt neatly laid across the mattress and matching fringed pillows. He studied the books on the shelves near her bed—religion textbooks, a pile of romance novels, vegetarian cookbooks, and psychology books about rape. And, of course, The Da Vinci Code. The bed was prim and conservative, with another icon of Jesus hung over the headboard. He thought about Tanjy indulging in rape fantasies underneath the cross. Maybe that was part of the thrill, a forbidden mix of sacrifice and sacrilege.

  He hunted on her rolltop desk for a date book or Palm Pilot and didn’t find one. The desk was clean and organized, with a manila folder for bills, a neon purple folder from Byte Patrol with instructions for her laptop computer, a stack of software cases, and a collection of fashion magazines like Elle and Vogue. That fit her. Tanjy worked in a high-end dress shop, and she looked like many of the models on the pages.

  Stride turned on the desk lamp and picked up a small cube of notepaper to see if he could see indentations of anything Tanjy had written. He was able to make out a phone number, but when he called it on his cell phone, he found himself connected to the local Whole Foods market.

  He booted up her laptop computer. She didn’t use Outlook for e-mail, which meant she probably used a Web-based service, which would make it harder to find a record of her messages. There were no appointments recorded in the online calendar. He checked her Internet favorite pages and shook his head when he found a mixture of Christian sites and hardcore pornography, including rape sites with brutal, disturbing imagery of women bound and humiliated.

  When he checked her recent documents, he clicked on the first one, a Word file labeled ISLAND. The text flashed onto the screen:

  The natives tied Ellen spread-eagled to stakes they had pounded in the mud. One by one, they took turns ravishing her with their pierced tongues. She begged them to stop-No! No! she cried, you can’t do this!—but they were deaf to her desperate pleas. Despite herself, she felt the most intense of orgasms welling up inside her …

  Stride closed the file and checked the other documents, which were of a similar nature. He wondered again how to reconcile the calm, quiet girl in his office with the explicit, submissive fantasies filling her brain.

  He shut down the computer. Nothing here gave him any clues as to why Tanjy had disappeared, or whether she had even disappeared at all. There was nothing strange about someone getting in their car and driving away. People did it all the time. Sometimes they chose not to come back.

  Stride felt the house sag and heard a sharp pop from somewhere in the rear of the apartment. He got to his feet and stepped lightly to the bedroom door. He listened. There were cautious footfalls near the back window where he had entered the house.

  “Yo, dude!” a young male voice called. “What’s up? I know you’re here.”

  Stride emerged in the hallway and saw a young man in his twenties there, nervously brandishing a golf club like a weapon. The kid saw him and practically jumped.

  “I’ve called the police! They’ll be here any minute!”

  “They’re already here,” Stride told him, flashing his shield. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, shit. Wow, I’m sorry.” He was wearing gray sweatpants, an untucked flannel shirt, huge unlaced boots, and a bulky fur hat with a turned-up flap in front and ear flaps that hung down on either side of his head as if he were a bloodhound.

  I live in the land of stupid hats, Stride thought.

  “What’s your name?” Stride repeated.

  “Sorry, I’m Duke. Duke Andrews.”

  Even his name sounded like a dog’s. “What are you doing here?”

  Duke pushed up his black-framed glasses, which were slipping down his nose. He had a wispy goatee on his chin and a string of pimples on his cheek that looked like the Big Dipper. “I live in the house next door. My bedroom looks out on the yard. I saw you go in, and I was, like, hey, could be a burglar.”

  “Here’s a little advice, Duke. Don’t try to confront burglars yourself. Let the cops handle it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, right, guess that was stupid.” Duke tugged at the hairs on his protruding chin.

  “A golf club isn’t much of a match for a gun.”

  “I don’t even golf, man. How dumb is that?”

  “Do you know who lives here?” Stride asked.

  Duke nodded eagerly as he bit one of his fingernails. “Oh, sure, yeah, it’s that girl who was in the news, you know. The whole rape thing. Tanjy. Short for Tangerine, right? Weird name. But wow.”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  “Not in a couple days, no.”

  “Do you remember exactly when you last saw her?”

  Duke didn’t have to think about it. “Monday night. I saw her go out in her car right around ten o’clock.”

  “You sound like you keep a close eye on her.”

  “What?” Duke was nervous and shuffled his feet.

  Stride was taller than Duke, and the kid shrank as Stride came closer. “I mean, what will I find if we go back to your place? A telescope focused on Tanjy’s bedroom? That’s better than binoculars for peeping, right? Leaves your hands free.”

  “Whoa, dude, what are you saying? No way.” Duke looked at the door as if he wanted to take a running dive through it.

  “Listen, you take your telescope and point it at the stars from now on, okay? I don’t want to charge you as a Peeping Tom. But right now, I need to know what kinds of things you’ve been seeing in Tanjy’s bedroom.”

  A small, excited grin flitted across Duke’s lips. He yanked at his sweatpants. “Oh, man. It’s so fresh. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “This girl, she’s better than a porn star. Always sleeps in the raw. Gets herself off like every night. I should sell tickets, man. Could pay my rent and then some.”

  “How about visitors?”

  “Nobody in the bedroom, not since I’ve been watching.”

  “Which is how long?” Stride asked.

  “I moved in to my apartment in early December. Didn’t take me long to realize the place had a great view.”

  “You have any idea where she went on Monday?”

  Duke took off his hat and scratched his head. His black hair stuck up in messy wings. “No idea. I just look. I don’t know her.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “When she left? Yeah.”

  “Have you ever seen her with anyone else?”

  “Like guys? Yeah, this one dude was over at her place around Christmas. I could see them talking on the back porch. I’ve seen him around a few times recently. I assume he’s her new boyfriend. Lucky guy, know what I’m saying? I was hoping to catch a little bedroom action, but they must do it at his place.”

  “What does he look like?” Stride asked.

  “Big guy. Even bigger than you. The kind of guy you expect a girl like that to go after. They don’t put out for the likes of me. It messes up the gene pool. Although some of these models, they’ve married real ugly dudes, you know? Gives me hope. You gotta feel sorry for their kids, though. Seems like they always come out looking like the wrong half.”

  “Tell me more about the guy you saw.” Stride had a bad feeling.

  “Not much to tell,” Duke replied. “Lots of muscles. Fancy dresser. Oh, and long hair, too. Long blond hair. Longer than most girls.”

  “And that’s the guy you’ve seen with Tanjy?”

  “That’s the dude.”

  Stride wanted to curse out loud. Duke had just described Maggie’s husband, Eric.

  TEN
/>   Maggie had bare feet, and her legs were pulled up to her chest with her hands laced around her knees. Her black hair was dirty. She was lost in an oversized armchair that made her look even smaller than she was. The yellow flames of the fire reflected in her eyes, which were far away and unblinking.

  “You can still smell it, can’t you?” she asked, whiffing the air.

  Serena didn’t smell anything. “What?”

  “The sweat of all the cops. And the superglue from the print box. It was two days ago, and I can still smell it.”

  Serena thought that Maggie was imagining things but didn’t want to say so. “You hungry?” she asked.

  “Not much.”

  “I’ve got smoked trout in the truck.”

  Maggie screwed up her face. “Yuck.”

  “Yuck? You were the one who turned me on to that stuff.”

  “I’ve been off it lately,” Maggie said.

  Serena was stretched out on a sofa in Maggie’s den. It was a man’s room with walnut paneling and a mounted deer head staring down from the wall with two glass eyes. The furniture was black leather. A grandfather clock ticked hypnotically in the shadows. The wood fire gave off a semicircle of heat. Serena had been here for nearly an hour, but they had spoken only sporadically.

  “Jonny was sorry he couldn’t come,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m a leper,” Maggie said. “Don’t get too close to me, you might catch something.”

  “If there’s anything he can do for you behind the scenes, he’ll do it,” Serena said.

  “What can he do? This is the Abel Teitscher show.”

  Serena knew that was true. “Has Abel talked to you?”

  “Oh, yeah. Three hours yesterday. He treated me like I was no better than one of the drug dealers at First and Lake. He wants me up on his wall, like Bambi there. Shot and stuffed. This is like déjà vu for Abel, you know. His own partner Nicole was guilty of killing her husband, so I must be, too.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking to him,” Serena advised her.

  “Yeah, I know, but what would you think about a suspect who shut up and hired a lawyer?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Exactly. I didn’t do it, so the truth can’t hurt me, right? That’s why I let Abel question me. Except I know I’m being an idiot. I called Archie Gale today, and he told me the same thing, so now I’m lawyered up and not saying another word.”

  “Abel’s reporting directly to Dan,” Serena said.

  “Oh, great. More good news. That would be a nice going-away present for Dan and Lauren. My head on a plate.”

  “You know, if you want an investigator to run down leads for you, you’ve got one,” Serena said.

  Maggie smiled and whistled the Charlie’s Angels theme.

  “Ha-ha,” Serena said.

  “If you were an angel, would it be Kate, Jaclyn, or Farrah?” Maggie asked.

  “Jaclyn. Cool as ice.”

  “Farrah,” Maggie said.

  “Oh, yeah, you as a blonde, that works.”

  Maggie flashed a toothy grin.

  “Seriously, is there anything I should look into?” Serena asked.

  “I’ll talk to Archie and let you know. It’s a different world, you know, being on the other side of the case. Anything we find out about Eric may just make it worse for me.”

  “Okay, what about you?” Serena asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean old cases. People you put in prison. Could someone be out for revenge?”

  Maggie wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think there were any perps where it was personal between us.”

  “Not for you anyway. Maybe for him.”

  “Have you ever had a perp come after you?” Maggie asked.

  Serena nodded. “A couple of times. Maybe Las Vegas killers are more prone to settling scores. It’s the mob influence. There was a sack of shit that I sent up for aggravated assault because he was cutting up his girlfriend. Tommy Luck. Great Vegas name, huh? Tommy got out and tried to return the favor.”

  “He attacked you?”

  “He never got the chance,” Serena said. “He was stalking me, but he got caught running a protection racket on some local dry cleaners before he could move in for the kill. They found photos of me all over his apartment. He’d cut the eyes out of most of them. Slashed me up with a knife. Smeared my body with red paint.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He’s rotting in prison again.”

  “I don’t think there’s a Tommy Luck in my past,” Maggie said.

  “Then someone else must have had a motive to kill Eric.”

  “I’m glad you think so. Most people think all the motives point back to me. I killed him for the money. I killed him because he was having an affair. I killed him because I was having an affair.” Maggie ducked her head and shoved her hair off her forehead.

  Serena wasn’t sure how far to push her. “Look, it doesn’t take a mind reader to know you two were having problems.”

  “I can’t talk about it. My lawyer will kill me.”

  “This conversation never happened, you know that. Some thing’s been bothering you for weeks. Was it Eric? Was he involved with someone else?”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “For Eric, women were like potato chips. You can’t fuck just one.”

  “What about you? Were you having an affair?”

  Maggie had her chin on her knees. She cocked her head and gave Serena a sideways glance. “Eric thought I was.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was convinced I was sleeping with Stride.”

  This was delicate ground between them.

  “I know how you feel about Jonny,” Serena told her softly.

  “I know how he feels about you, too.”

  There was a trace of bitterness in her voice. They had become close friends, but Serena knew that Maggie resented how quickly Jonny had overturned his life to be with her. That was something he had never chosen to do for Maggie, even after his first wife died.

  Serena was jealous, too. She sometimes felt like an outsider when the three of them were together, because Maggie shared such an easy friendship with Stride with so much history between them.

  “I shouldn’t be saying any of this,” Maggie added. “If Eric thought I was having an affair, it gives me one more motive to blow him away.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “No, but if he believed it, he might just decide to leave me, right? High and dry with no money. That’s what Teitscher will think.”

  “Was Eric planning to leave you? Was that the problem?”

  Maggie snorted. “No, that’s the irony in all this. Eric said he’d do anything to make things better. He loved me, he was sorry for his mistakes, he was committed to me, he’d keep it in his pants. Sweet, huh?”

  “But?”

  “But I was planning to leave him. Not by killing him, Serena. I was going to divorce the bastard. I was planning to tell him that night.”

  “Do you want to tell me why?”

  “Let’s just say there were things going on that I couldn’t stomach,” Maggie said.

  “Like what?”

  Maggie shook her head. “I’m not going there.”

  Serena persisted. “A few months ago, you asked me about sex. I got the feeling that Eric wanted you to do things you weren’t comfortable with.”

  “Just drop it, okay? Please?” Her voice rose.

  “I’m sorry,” Serena said. She added, “Are you getting help?”

  “What makes you think I need help?”

  “Come on, Maggie.”

  She shook her head. “No, I haven’t talked to Tony since before Thanksgiving.”

  “Why not?”

  “I dealt with the miscarriages. I’m okay. I’m past that part of my life now.”

  Serena was frustrated. “You’re not past anything. You were so upset about something you were ready to get a divorce, and now someone just killed your husband.”
/>   “Sure, go see a shrink,” Maggie said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “That’ll help. Give me another motive, Serena. I’m nuts. Maybe I can plead not guilty by reason of mental defect.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I know.” Maggie held up her hands in surrender. “I’m sorry for being a pain in the ass. I’ll go see Tony again when I’m ready. I promise. But I can’t face any of this right now.”

  ELEVEN

  Stride swung his Bronco into a parking place at the twenty-four/seven fitness club on Miller Hill on Saturday morning. The strip-mall building faced the street through a series of floor-to-ceiling windows, and he saw half a dozen twenty-something girls in sweats and sports bras, jogging on treadmills as they listened to their iPods. The rhythm and noise of athletic machines deafened him when he went inside. He saw chests heaving and smelled perspiration. Stride scanned the pink-flushed faces, looking for Mitchell Brandt. Brandt worked at an investment firm in downtown Duluth and made money for clients playing the stock market like a lottery. He was also Tanjy Powell’s ex-boyfriend and the man who had spilled the secrets about her sexual habits to the media after she cried rape.

  If Tanjy had a relationship with Eric Sorenson, Stride wanted to know more about her background, in order to figure out whether Tanjy’s disappearance was somehow connected to Eric’s death. Brandt probably knew Tanjy’s secrets better than anyone.

  Stride spotted the stockbroker at a weight training machine in the rear of the club and squeezed between the obstacle course of fitness equipment to meet him.

  “Mitchell Brandt?”

  Brandt continued his bench-press routine without looking at Stride. The black lead weights banged furiously as he pumped the handlebars. He was wearing a sleeveless gray T-shirt with a Minnesota Twins logo and red nylon shorts. His limbs were sculpted and strong. Sweat beaded on his skin and left a V-shaped stain at the neck of his shirt.

  “Yeah, who wants to know?”

  “My name is Stride. I’m with the Duluth police. We met a few months ago.”

  Brandt sat up, breathing heavily. He grabbed a white towel, wiped his face, and draped it around his shoulders. He was about thirty years old, with curly brown hair cut short on his scalp and an angular, closely shaved chin. His eyes were as light as oak. He considered Stride. “Yeah, I remember. What can I do for you?”