“Ms. Lassiter?” he called.
She jogged down the driveway to meet him. “Can I help you?”
Stride introduced himself, and she gave him a look of mild surprise and asked to see his identification. As she studied his shield, she asked, “What’s this about? A legal matter?”
He remembered that Lassiter was a partner in a Minneapolis law firm. “No, but it is urgent. Could we go inside?”
She shook her head. “It’s time for my run. I have to stretch first though. How about we go across the street and you say what you want to say?”
They crossed the highway to a small park overlooking the lake. There was a picnic bench half-buried in snow and a stone beach below them where the azure water lapped at the shore. Their feet crunched in snow. The branches of the tall evergreens around them were motionless in the still air.
Lassiter swung her left leg nimbly to the top of the bench and bent her body until her face was almost level with her foot. She gripped her muscled calf and turned her face sideways to look at him with sharp, intelligent brown eyes. She was in her forties and wasn’t wearing makeup. Her cheeks were flushed red, and she had a flared nose.
“So what’s up, Lieutenant?” She had a lawyer’s voice, clipped and impatient.
He didn’t waste time. “I know about the sex club tonight.”
She kept stretching and shrugged her limber shoulders. “Yeah, so?”
“Am I correct that you’re going to be what they call an ‘alpha girl’?”
“That’s none of your business, is it?” She put her leg down and twisted her torso to her left. “I’m not breaking any laws. When did you become the morality police?”
“I’m not, but two alpha girls have been assaulted following their—performance—at this sex club.”
Lassiter stopped and folded her arms. Her breathing was even. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She started stretching again, but her eyes were thoughtful. “Are you suggesting that I back out?”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
“But you have something else in mind,” she concluded.
“Yes, I do. If we cancel the party, we tip our hand to whoever is doing this. He may find other targets.”
“In other words, you’re hoping he’ll come after me.”
“We’ll protect you. We’ll keep you under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”
“That won’t be easy. I go back and forth between Duluth and the Cities twice a week. My main office is in Minneapolis.”
“You’re a corporate lawyer, right?” Stride asked.
“Yes, I specialize in governance issues for emerging companies.”
“Long hours, but good pay.”
“The pay’s all right, but if you want to get really rich, don’t do it by the hour,” she told him.
Stride glanced across the street at her lavish home. “Four hundred thousand a year doesn’t go as far as it used to?” he asked.
“Since you asked, no, it doesn’t. You should see what top management of a start-up can walk away with from an IPO. But I know a lawyer isn’t likely to get much sympathy from a cop on a pension.”
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t trade jobs with you. Anyway, the commute to the Cities isn’t a problem. We’ll work with the police down there, and we’ll have the highway patrol with you—unmarked—every mile of the way.”
“Has this guy killed anyone?” Lassiter asked.
Stride frowned. “We think he may be involved in two murders to protect his identity. He hasn’t killed any of the alpha girls so far, but I won’t kid you, this is risky and dangerous. I understand entirely if you want nothing to do with it.”
“Do you think I’m safe if I forget about the party?”
“I don’t know. We’re not sure who this man is, or where he gets his information. He may already know who you are.”
“So I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lassiter stepped up and sat on top of the bench. “I’m disappointed, Lieutenant. I was looking forward to this evening. The club has always been a harmless bit of sin for me. When you spend most of your life filing 10-Ks and worrying about Sarbanes-Oxley, you don’t have time for a social life, let alone a sexual life. I’m divorced. My son is in college. There aren’t many outlets for a horny corporate lawyer in her forties.”
“Does that mean you’re going to back out?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll do it. It just won’t be what I was hoping for. Please tell me you won’t have video or wiretaps or anything like that inside. I won’t have to worry about showing up on the Internet because some cop sells my porn debut on the side, right?”
“No.”
“Good. I also want to go over details of the surveillance. Everything has to meet with my approval. Agreed?”
“Of course. I’ll send over a detective named Abel Teitscher to talk with you. Please keep this all confidential, too.”
Lassiter hesitated.
“Is that a problem?” Stride asked.
“Not at all. It’s just that I know the people inside the club. They’re harmless.”
“The man behind this may not be a part of the club at all,” Stride said. “But we don’t know who’s talking to whom. Secrets have a way of getting out.”
“Yes, they do,” Lassiter said.
She climbed off the bench, headed to the shoulder of the highway, and began jogging north.
THIRTY-SIX
Stride studied the nighttime street from inside the smoked windows of a Cadillac, borrowed from a lawyer who lived a few houses down on the Point. He used it sometimes when he wanted an upscale car that blended into the neighborhood during a stakeout. Teitscher sat ramrod straight in the seat next to him, and his buzzed gray hair tickled the roof of the car. He didn’t blink. Every few minutes, he used his index finger like a comb and smoothed his mustache. That was the only sign that he was nervous.
Stride was nervous, too. It was one thing to plan surveillance on a map, with pushpins to flag the cars and colored markers inking the escape routes. It was another to be here, surrounded by shadows where someone could hide. You could throw a cordon around any piece of land, and someone could always sneak through. On the ground, you couldn’t see everything and be everywhere.
An hour to go.
A cop would stay inside Kathy Lassiter’s house while she was at the party, and another car would keep her in constant sight on the way to and from the club. For the next several days, an unmarked car with two detectives would be within fifty yards of Lassiter’s house at all times. They had installed a downstairs alarm system that would send an intruder alert both to the station and directly to the surveillance car. If someone tried to break in, they could be inside her house in less than thirty seconds.
Here at the club, they had half a dozen cars on the surrounding streets and several detectives who would patrol the streets at intervals. If the rapist was an outsider, there was a chance he would be here, where he could keep an eye on his next alpha girl coming and going.
They were parked half a block from Sonia Bezac’s house. Several homes still had their Christmas lights turned on, and multicolored strings twinkled in the trees and along the roof lines. Lumpy snowmen dotted the front yards. Looks were deceiving. There was nothing picture-postcard about this place, not with a dozen men and women about to have sex with a stranger, not with a rapist haunting the neighborhood. It made him think of driving on a lonely rural road at night and seeing lights inside a peaceful farmhouse, and envying the lives the people there must have. It was just an illusion. Whoever lived inside those places was no different than anyone else, with husbands who drank, and old people who died slow deaths, and kids who killed themselves over a broken love affair. The only romance about it was in his head.
He wanted a smoke, but he couldn’t have one. His fingers twitched. He couldn’t escape the feeling of dread. The feeling that they had all missed some
thing.
“What else did the SEC tell you about this insider trading scheme?” Teitscher asked.
“They got an anonymous tip, but they haven’t found a connection yet between Mitchell Brandt and anyone at Infloron Medical or the FDA. They don’t know yet how he got advance word of the FDA approval.”
“It’s a long way from insider trading to rape.”
Stride nodded.
His cell phone rang. I’m in a hurry and don’t know why. He was in a hurry tonight, feeling as if he were running in place. He wanted to skip to the end.
It was Serena.
“I’m pulling up around the corner,” she said.
“You can still back out,” Stride told her.
“You need me inside, Jonny.”
“I know.”
“Maybe I’ll sign up to be the next alpha girl.”
“Sonia would like that. Be careful, okay?”
“I will.”
She hung up. A minute later, he saw her in his rearview mirror as she turned the corner. Serena passed the Cadillac on the sidewalk but didn’t look toward the smoked windows. She wore black jeans and heels and a sleeveless down vest. Her hands were in her vest pockets. She looked casual and unconcerned, but he knew her eyes were tracking the windows and the dark spaces between the houses.
She walked up to the doorway of the Bezac house and waited on the porch, surveying the neighborhood. The door opened, and light spilled out. He saw Sonia.
Serena disappeared inside.
Sonia greeted Serena with an uneasy smile. She let her inside and looked out into the night before closing the door behind them. The house was elegant, and the lights were dimmed. Sonia wore a Chinese silk gown tied at her slim waist. It was pink with flowers. Her feet were in heels. The two women were both tall, almost the same height.
“I don’t like spies,” Sonia told her.
“No one will know.”
“I don’t believe anyone in my club is a rapist.”
“Tell that to Maggie and Katrina,” Serena snapped. “Count yourself lucky that it wasn’t you.”
Sonia flushed. “I’ll take you downstairs.”
She led Serena through the upscale kitchen to a back stairway that led down to a laundry and storage room. The floor was cold cement. A musty smell came off the walls. Sonia unlocked a narrow door that looked like a gateway to a utility closet, but instead Serena found herself slipping inside a small but elegant bedroom. The wallpaper was gold with a burgundy pattern of interlaced squares. A queen-sized bed was decorated with shams and a ruffled fringe, as if it had been plucked from a showroom. There was a dressing table and mirror, a bureau, and a walk-in closet.
One wall of the bedroom was glass. It looked out on a large, plush open space, lit by candles. The temple.
Serena found her eyes drawn to the shadowy room. She felt exposed. “They can’t see through the mirror, right? They won’t know I’m here?”
“No, most members don’t know about this space. It’s kind of a VIP room.”
“Is the other room wired for sound?”
Sonia nodded. “You’ll hear everything.”
Serena could see herself in the glass. “I hate this,” she murmured.
“Give it a chance. You might be surprised.”
“Not likely.”
“You’re a very attractive spy,” Sonia said. “Jonathan has good taste.”
Serena didn’t reply.
“Did he tell you about him and me?”
“Yes, he did.”
Serena tried to imagine Jonny as a teenager, drunk in a car with this woman thirty years ago. She herself would have been a child then, during the good days in Phoenix, before her mother became a slave to cocaine and her father walked out. Before Blue Dog.
“He’s very intense,” Sonia said.
“That’s why he’s good at what he does.”
“I’m disbanding the club, you know. This will be our last party.”
“Oh?”
“It’s too risky now.”
Serena knew she was talking about the risk to herself and Delmar and their reputations, not the risk to the alpha girls. The risk of being exposed.
“Do the members know?”
“No, I didn’t think you’d want me to tell them.”
“I don’t.”
Sonia eyed her figure. “It’s a shame you won’t be at the party. You could still join us on the other side.”
“No thanks.”
“Suit yourself. No one will know what you’re doing in here. If it turns you on, there are vibrators in the bureau.”
“This doesn’t turn me on, Sonia.”
“No? It’s different when you put on the mask. It changes everything.”
Sonia opened a dresser drawer and emerged with a gold mask, feminine and catlike. She slipped the band around her head and slid it down so that the elastic fell under her curly hair and nestled behind her ears. She reached around with both hands to adjust the mask gently.
Serena saw them both in the mirror, red hair next to black hair. Behind the mask, Sonia had become a stranger. Someone entirely different.
Sonia slid a warm arm around her waist, and Serena wondered if the other woman was about to kiss her. “Want to have a go with me?” Sonia asked.
“Pass.”
“No one will ever know. I won’t tell Jonathan if you don’t.”
“I’m not interested, Sonia.”
“No? Women make the best lovers. I’ll bet you know that.”
Serena leaned into her ear and whispered with a smile, “Get the hell away from me.”
Sonia’s face darkened. She put on a false smile, too, as if she had brushed it on like makeup, but her eyes glinted through the mask with rage. She marched away and left Serena alone in the hideaway.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Maggie wanted to drive the memories of the club out of her brain, but it wasn’t working. Not tonight. When she looked at her watch, she knew the party was going on. Serena was inside the secret room, and Kathy Lassiter was on the bed, as Maggie had been that night in November. She remembered exactly what it was like. The temple was open and dark, and the half-windows in the walls were blacked out with electrical tape and shrouded by curtains. She remembered thick carpet under her bare feet and hot air pouring out of the vents. The room was lit by a dozen candles flickering in glass bowls. Their aromas left an odd mix of fragrances in the air, and she caught traces of ginger and green tea, sage, lilac blossoms, and juicy orange. Soundscapes played softly from hidden speakers. She heard ocean surf, harps, and birdsong. There were wooden chairs, cocktail tables with open bottles of shiraz, and crystal glasses that reflected the numerous lights of the candles. Lush bearskin rugs. Sex toys. Condoms heaped in a bowl like candy. Subtle, shadowy erotic photographs of nudes on the walls.
The circular bed in the center of the room was draped to the floor in red silk, which was cool and slippery on her nude skin. She spent ten minutes alone before the others joined her. The alpha girl was always first, Sonia said. Do what you want. Drink wine. Listen to the music. Sleep. Touch yourself. Maggie simply squirmed on the silk and thought about running far, far away.
She had allowed Eric to pull her into this world because he said he wanted it so badly. Do this for me, let me see you like that. With other people. It was his ultimate fantasy. Looking back, she couldn’t believe she had done it. Her face grew hot with humiliation.
They were so pathetic as they filed in and shed their robes. It was like going to the beach and realizing that, underneath everyone’s clothes, naked flesh was the great equalizer. Models made their money because they were so rare. The sex club was a parade of paunchy rolls, cellulite, drooping breasts, and double chins. There were beautiful bodies among them, but en masse, the impression of so much skin was nauseating and ugly. She wondered again what she was doing there and why she had ever thought this was a way to be close to Eric. Or why she thought it mattered.
Most of the time, she kept her eyes
closed. She had recollections of soft lips and sweet breath from one woman, garlic and cold hands from a man, panting and sweat, sounds of moaning, none of it hers. When she opened her eyes once, she saw Eric, standing in the shadows, rapt, with his hand around his stiff member. Then she closed her eyes again and felt time drag out through more sensations of rough fingers, tongues leaving wet trails like snails on her skin, and men who came and went quickly.
She wanted to pretend that she had simply climbed aboard the roller coaster and hung on for dear life, but that was a lie. Some of the dips and valleys excited her. Sonia was surprisingly talented. So was Mitchell Brandt. For a few moments in the midst of a closed-eyed nightmare, she found herself not caring what was going on around her, because she was into what was being done to her. Enough to climb the heights and come back down. She felt guilty, but she couldn’t take it back. On some level, she had enjoyed it.
That was one of the reasons she didn’t report the rape when it happened a few weeks later. She knew what Serena had told her about the questions she got from men who didn’t know any better. Did you enjoy what Blue Dog did to you? If she went public, the sex club would be exposed, and people would talk about what she did that night, and somewhere along the line someone would wonder. Did she enjoy it? Was she asking to be raped?
“Fuck you, Eric,” she said aloud.
She was angry that he had left these memories in her brain. She couldn’t separate the sex club and the rape in her mind, and she blamed Eric for both. For an instant, she was glad that he was dead, and she wished she had been the one to pull the trigger that night.
Maggie wanted to be out on the street, not alone here at home, dwelling on her mistakes. She should have been in the car with Stride, not Abel Teitscher. She wanted to be there to track this bastard and catch him and see what his face really looked like. She wanted to know what Eric had found and how he had found it.
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