“Stop shooting!” he screamed at her.
He thought she was aiming for Brandt, but he realized she might have been aiming for both of them.
She fired again. This time her aim was wild, off into the sky. She staggered two steps, and her eyes closed, and the gun slipped out of her fingers. She went down to her knees and then pitched forward. The wound on her head was bleeding profusely.
Brandt rose up, running and slipping in the slush. Stride leaped for him but missed and wound up with a cold mouthful of snow. He spit it out and gave chase, but Brandt had ten yards and ten years on him, and he watched the distance widen between them. Brandt shot into the trees and down the hill, picking up speed. The sirens were almost on top of them now, and Stride saw the lights of two patrol cars fighting through the impacted snow on the access road, winding up toward the tower. Brandt saw them, too, and changed direction, veering across the hillside, away from the cars parked below. The trees thickened. Stride held his arms ahead of him, blocking the branches that scraped at his skin, and tried to keep Brandt in view.
When Brandt broke from the woods onto a narrow trail and accelerated, Stride thought he had lost him, but suddenly, he saw Brandt become airborne, his legs cartwheeling and his body twisting and landing in the snow. Stride saw the glacial rock that had tripped Brandt and leapt it smoothly, and in another second, he closed the gap and threw himself at Brandt, who was struggling to get up. He connected solidly on the square of Brandt’s back, and the man gave way underneath him, his limbs splaying. With the heel of his hand, Stride slapped Brandt’s skull hard, harder than he really needed to, and then found the man’s wet hands and scissored his cuffs tightly around Brandt’s wrists. He slid his belt out of his jeans and secured Brandt’s ankles, too.
Stride took hold of Brandt’s shoulder and turned him over and saw Brandt’s face twisted like a mask, so caught up with fury that he was almost unrecognizable. Stride realized that everyone in this case was wearing masks.
FORTY-FOUR
Stride climbed into the rear of the patrol car. His willpower to stop smoking had evaporated by the time he reached the bottom of the hill, and he rolled the window halfway down, lit up, and blew a cloud of smoke outside. He was wet and cold, and his body hurt. He fingered the burnt skin on his neck, which looked like a red tattoo where Brandt’s belt had strangled him. Brandt sat next to him in the backseat, handcuffed, saying nothing and gazing through the glass at the outside world.
First-timers always did that as the reality dawned on them. Freedom was gone.
The circling red lights of an ambulance flashed like a strobe through the interior of the car. There were police cars and cops everywhere. Stride took another drag, then blew smoke inside the car this time, and Brandt coughed.
“Lassiter’s going to be fine,” Stride said.
Brandt’s mouth twitched, but he was silent.
“Here’s what I don’t understand, Mitch. You’re a hotshot broker, pulling down, what, a couple hundred thousand a year? That’s a fortune in this city. Why throw it away?”
No response.
Stride sighed and leaned back into the seat. “Lassiter told me it’s hard to get rich by the hour, and she was probably making twice what you were making. I guess it’s never enough, is that it?”
He looked for a signal in Brandt’s face, but the young broker was sullen and withdrawn.
“Or was it the thrill of the chase?” Stride asked. “Were you doing it to see if you could get away with it?” When Brandt still didn’t reply, he went on. “That’s okay, you don’t need to tell me anything. Get lawyered up and start negotiating a plea. We already have you on assault and attempted murder, so that’s at least the next six to nine years of your life gone. We’ll have to jockey with the feds, of course, because they’re going to want you in federal prison for the Infloron Medical deal.”
Brandt’s head snapped around. Stride nodded.
“Oh, yeah, we know all about the insider trading scheme. You and Lassiter. The SEC knows about it, too, but that’s not news to you, is it? That’s why you went after Lassiter tonight.”
Stride flicked his cigarette out the window. “The SEC is going to have to stand in line, though. Once we add multiple rapes to the list of charges, your white-collar crime stuff is going to seem like cheating on an exam. Now we’re talking twenty-five years to life. Hard time.”
Brandt heard the word rape, and he finally spoke. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Mitch.”
“I never raped anyone.”
“No? That was just a game at Sonia’s house tonight?” He saw Brandt do a double take, and he added, “Yeah, we know about the sex club, too.”
“You can’t make that out as rape.”
“What about the others?”
“What others?”
“The alpha girls,” Stride said.
“What about them? News flash, that’s why they come to the club. To have sex. No one got raped.”
Stride shrugged. “How about Tanjy?”
“What about her?”
“You playact a rape with her in Grassy Point Park, and after she dumps you, she winds up getting raped in the same place. That’s quite a coincidence. Rape stories just seem to follow you around, don’t they, Mitch?”
“Tanjy made up the rape,” Brandt insisted.
Stride shook his head. “No, she didn’t. Was it a thrill, getting back at her like that, knowing you could expose all her fantasies, and no one would believe her? What happened then? Did you decide you liked the power that came with it? When you got away with raping Tanjy, did you realize that the alpha girls would do anything to keep their secrets? Even after you raped them, too?”
“You’re talking crazy here. I do not know what the fuck you are talking about.”
“I’m talking about two alpha girls getting assaulted after the parties. Just like you were doing to Kathy Lassiter tonight. And maybe you don’t know this, but this case is very personal to me.”
Brandt struggled with his cuffs. “No way.”
“This isn’t going to be a hard case to make, Mitch. We’ve got a dozen witnesses to the assault on Kathy Lassiter. You were one of only a handful of men who were at all of the sex club parties where the alpha girls were later raped. You’ve got the size and strength to pull it off. And you told me you played rape games with Tanjy every night at knifepoint. That’s just what you did to the other women.”
“Oh, fuck it. I cannot believe this.” Brandt swung his head into the window so hard that a cut opened up on his forehead and blood leaked down his face, matting at his eyebrow. A red smear stained the glass. Stride pulled a few tissues from his pocket and leaned close to Brandt, blotting the blood. The tissue turned crimson.
“The club was a secret, Mitch,” Stride continued. “No one else knew about the alpha girls. What’s a jury going to think? Do you honestly think they’ll picture someone like Delmar Bezac as a rapist? You’re the stud of the group.” He leaned in toward Brandt’s ear and whispered, “Eric Sorenson figured it out, didn’t he? He came to you and accused you of raping his wife. So you had to stop him. And Tanjy.”
Brandt was close enough that Stride could smell his sweat. With Stride’s hand over one eye, and his chiseled face needing a shave, Brandt looked like a pirate.
“You don’t know anything,” he told Stride. “You don’t know what’s going on in this city.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I’m being set up. Just like Maggie.”
“Sure.”
“Look, whatever Lassiter says, it was her idea. She met me in the club. She came to me with the whole scheme about Infloron Medical and the FDA approval. So when I found out she was negotiating a sweet deal with the SEC to put it all on me, I lost it.”
Stride shook his head. “You’ve got it wrong, Mitch. The SEC didn’t know a thing about Kathy Lassiter. You were the one they had in their sights, not her. They got an anonymou
s tip.”
He watched Brandt’s eyes, which changed like a chameleon.
“You’re lying to me,” Brandt said.
“No, someone set you up.”
“Son of a bitch,” Brandt retorted, air hissing between his teeth.
“You sound like you know who it is.”
Brandt closed his eyes. “Fuck this, I need to talk to my lawyer. I’ve got something to trade, and I want to find out how much it’s worth before I say another goddamn word.”
“What do you have to trade?” Stride asked.
“You said you’re after a rapist, right?”
Stride saw that blood had oozed out around the edges of the tissues on Brandt’s forehead. He pressed on the wound hard, and Brandt jerked in pain. “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, this guy may have killed two people. Right now, I think you’re good for it. If you’re not, then you better tell me why and help me find him.”
“I want credit if you nail this guy. Some kind of deal.”
“Yeah, we’ll put a plaque up for you in City Hall. Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to trade.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about him, but he’s the one you want.”
Stride waited.
“I paid him,” Brandt continued. “We had a deal, and now he blows up my life anyway. It’s like a fucking game to him.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“I told you, I don’t know,” Brandt insisted. “You said I was the only one who knew about the alpha girls, but you’re wrong. He knew all about them, too.”
“Who?”
“The son of a bitch who’s been blackmailing me.”
Stride crumpled the tissues and tossed them on the floor of the car. He backed away from Brandt and heard Serena’s voice, one word, just as he was falling asleep in the wake of their making love. One word in the box.
Blackmail.
“I’m still bleeding,” Brandt protested.
“You’ll live. Tell me more.”
“This guy knows things. I don’t know where he gets it. He came to me a couple of months ago, and he knew all about Infloron and the insider trading scheme. Dates, trades, dollars. He’s been bleeding me dry.”
“What about the alpha girls?”
“He knew about them, too. He joked about me and Lassiter meeting in the sex club. He asked me how it was with the alpha girls. He knew their names. And then last night, he called me again. He knew Lassiter was going to be the alpha girl tonight, and he told me that she’d been going behind my back with the SEC. He said I’d better take care of her. But the bastard must have called the SEC himself.”
“Were you trying to stiff him?” Stride asked.
“No! The son of a bitch just decided to fuck me.”
Stride got out of the patrol car and slammed the door behind him. He looked up at the outline of the tower on the hill and thought about the Enger Park Girl and then Maggie and Serena. And about rape, murder, and blackmail. He tried to sort it all out in his head and didn’t like where it took him.
Mitchell Brandt was being blackmailed. If Serena meant what he thought she did, then Dan Erickson was being blackmailed, too. By someone who also knew about the sex club and the alpha girls. That made him a prime suspect in the string of rapes and in the murders of Eric and Tanjy.
He suffered a flash of anger as he wondered how much Serena knew and why she didn’t tell him.
After months operating in the shadows, the blackmailer had to realize the clock was ticking. The police knew about the rapes now. It was only a matter of time before Stride put the pieces together.
That meant Dan Erickson was in the path of the hurricane. So was Serena.
FORTY-FIVE
Serena parked in an empty lot underneath the soaring span of the Blatnik Bridge leading across Superior Bay to Wisconsin. Its concrete Y-shaped supports aligned like a row of soldiers marching from the city out into the water, following a trail of white lights. Every time a car sped by overhead, the steel highway bed became a tin drum and boomed. As Serena got out of her car, the ice sheet of the harbor was on her right. On the opposite side of the road, where it circled back to the city, were the dark fields leading to the silos of the port terminal. This was where the industry of the city was done during the warmer months, bustling with dozens of ore boats loading and offloading their bellies. The port was abandoned now, locked up with ice and awaiting the spring thaw.
Snow had begun, whipping through the bridge lights like a field of shooting stars. She blinked as the flakes assaulted her eyes. She had her Glock tightly in one hand and a duct-taped shoe box under her arm, heavy with hundred dollar bills. The road, the park, the frozen water, the port buildings, and the fields leading across the railroad tracks were all deserted. She wondered where he was.
Her heels were buried in six inches of wet snow, and her feet quickly grew numb and cold. She didn’t have time to change after finding the note, only time to make the pick up at Dan’s house and follow the freeway back to the harbor basin. Now, she wished she had kept spare boots in the car. She found an open area near the bridge tower where the snow was matted down and waited there. She danced impatiently, stamping her feet. The chill traveled up her body.
A wave of vibration rumbled through the concrete as a double-trailored semi streaked along the bridge out over the water directly above her. The thunder of the tin drum made her shudder, as if the bridge were falling around her.
Her cell phone rang, and she put the shoe box down in the snow so she could grab her phone with her free hand.
“Where are you?” Stride asked.
Serena took a cautious look around the empty lot. As the snow intensified, it was becoming hard to see. “I’m on a job. I can’t talk.”
“Is this about Dan’s blackmail?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“Get the hell out of there,” he told her. “Brandt was being blackmailed, too. This guy knows all about the sex clubs and the alpha girls. He may be our perp.”
“Then this is our chance to get him,” Serena said.
“Not by yourself.”
“I was a cop for ten years. I can take care of myself.”
“You should have told me what was going on with Dan.”
“I couldn’t, you know that.”
“Where the hell are you?”
She thought about not telling him, but she realized she was being stupid and stubborn. “I’m down in Rices Point under the bridge.”
“Are you completely fucking crazy?”
“He picked the spot.”
“Get out right now, he may be coming after you.”
“He’s coming after a box full of money. That’s what he wants.”
“I’m sending a car down there.”
“Don’t do that,” Serena insisted. “You’ll scare him off.”
“Then I’ll come myself.”
Her phone beeped in her ear. Another call was coming in. She knew who it was.
“No, don’t do that, Jonny. Not yet. Give me half an hour. If I don’t call you back, send in the troops.”
She hung up before he could answer. When she switched over to the other call, she heard the blackmailer’s voice and realized there was something distantly familiar about it. She wished she knew why, but it was one of those memories that had to come in its own time and couldn’t be rushed. The one thing she knew was that the memory carried something dark with it, and the vibration in her spine this time wasn’t from the traffic on the bridge, but from a sudden fear.
“Did you have fun tonight?” he asked.
Serena was silent.
“I was picturing you inside,” he went on. “Did you get naked like all the others?”
“Fuck off.”
“Did all that sex make you wet? Did you play with yourself?”
“I’m leaving,” Serena said. “With your money.”
“No, you’re not. You’re staying rig
ht there.”
“Watch me.” Serena bent down to pick up the shoe box and hoped he could see her. She waited, wanting to see what he did next.
“Tell me what it’s like,” he said.
“It sounds like you know.”
“Do you want to be an alpha girl?”
“No thanks.”
“Too bad,” he said. “You could be just like your friend Maggie. Or Katrina. They were alpha girls.”
The implications of what he said made her whole body go rigid. She clutched her gun tighter and didn’t reply.
“You’re afraid of me now,” he said.
“Why should I be?”
“You know what I did to them.”
She stood there, frozen, letting the snow paint her body white. “Yes.”
“I’m going to do the same thing to you. I just wanted you to know that now.”
“You bastard.”
“And much worse, Serena. Much, much worse.”
She hung up the phone. Stumbling, falling, getting up, she began running back to her car. She peered over her shoulder, hair flying, and then spun, spying everywhere around her, certain that she would see him coming for her. The tin drum boomed again; she screamed and bit her tongue, quieting herself, and tasted blood. Snow swarmed down and followed her like bees roused from a hive.
As she ran, the box of money slipped from her grasp and tumbled away. She cursed and bent to retrieve it, and when she stood up, she was blinded by the glare of a white beacon bathing her body in light. A familiar siren shrieked and stopped. She saw twisting red lights rotating atop a Duluth city police car, and she had never been so grateful that Jonny hadn’t listened to her.
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