In the Dark aka The Watcher

by Brian Freeman

  “I like that.”

  “Plus, I have to start taking the pill.”

  “You could use condoms,” she said.

  It was the strangest conversation she and I had ever had, because it was such a normal sister-sister kind of thing. We just didn’t talk like that. But I knew what she was doing. She had changed the subject from her to me.

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “If I’m going to have sex, I want to really feel it, you know?”

  Laura laughed. “No, I don’t know.”

  “Are you on the pill?”

  “Don’t need it.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to say next. “I’ve got a job for the summer.”

  “Yeah? Doing what?”

  “Waitressing at that new place by the bridge. Grandma’s.”

  “Good for you.”

  “They need people. I can get you in there if you’re thinking of sticking around.”

  That was as close as I had come to asking flat out if Laura was planning to leave home after she graduated next month. For months she had told Dad she was going away as soon as school was out. Travel. Work. See the world. Now I wasn’t so sure. No ring.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” Laura said.

  I got out of the beanbag. “I’m going for a run,” I said.

  “Have fun.”

  I decided to stick my nose a little further into her business. “Listen, I really think you should tell someone about that note. Whoever this creep is, he sounds dangerous.”

  Laura slid open her nightstand drawer and looked inside. The letter was on top. I saw the lipstick through the thin paper. “He’s just some freak,” she said. “I’m going to throw them out.”

  She took the note and tore it over and over until the pieces were the size of confetti. Then she sprinkled them into her wastebasket.

  I felt uneasy. “Them? Are there more?”

  “Yeah.” Laura shrugged.

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. Ten maybe.”

  “Ten? When did this start?”

  “A few weeks ago.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  She nodded.

  “I want to see them,” I told her.

  Laura sighed theatrically, as if I were making a big deal over nothing, and dug inside the drawer. She came out with a small stack of papers tied together with a rubber band. She pulled them apart and spilled them onto the blanket.

  I couldn’t believe what I saw.

  Some were written in lipstick like the other one. All of the messages were obscene and violent.

  I’m going to fuck you.

  Keep your door locked.

  Are you going to be alone tonight, whore?

  There were photographs, too. Whoever had done this had cut them out of porno magazines. I saw black-and-white shots of men with huge penises and women servicing them with their mouths. More messages were scrawled on the photos.

  You’ll suck mine, too.

  Is your ass still a virgin?

  “Are you crazy?” I nearly screamed at her. “You have to go to the police with this.”

  “I don’t want to make things worse. School will be done soon, and he’ll stop.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Come on, he hasn’t done anything. He’s just trying to creep me out. He’s like some peeping tom trying to get under my skin. Well, I won’t let him.”

  “Do you have any idea who’s doing this?” I asked again.

  “No. I talked to a few guys, you know, to see if they’d heard anything. I thought maybe he’d be bragging about it to his buddies. But nobody knew who it was, or if they did, they wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Did you tell Dad?”

  “Are you kidding? He’d flip. And don’t you dare breathe a word, little sister. Somehow it would wind up as my fault.”

  While I watched, Laura began tearing up all of the notes and photographs. I wanted to stop her. I told her I thought she was making a big mistake, but Laura shredded and ripped and tore until she had a small mountain of remnants that she slid off her bed into the garbage.

  “So much for that,” she said.

  3

  Stride and Tish left Grandma’s Saloon together. Tish lit a cigarette when they were alone on the concrete pier that jutted out into Lake Superior. Her muscles unwound. She tilted her chin and exhaled a stream of smoke like a sigh. The breeze caught and dispersed it, but Stride could taste the ghost of smoke in the air, and he had to jam his hands in his pockets to beat down the craving.

  She leaned against the wall bordering the canal. Stride was next to her. The deep, narrow channel led from the lake to the inner harbors of Duluth and Superior. A century-old lift bridge, resplendent in gray steel, rose and fell over the canal when the boats came. On the opposite side of the bridge was the area known as the Point, a tiny finger of land jutting out like a natural shelter for the harbor. Stride and Serena lived there, in a lakeside cottage that dated back to the 1890s. The city side of the bridge was known as Canal Park, and it had become a haven for restaurants and hotels in the last twenty years. Tourists came to Canal Park to watch the big boats because it was like seeing living dinosaurs from the city’s past. Once upon a time, Duluth had been an industrial boomtown, whose economy was linked to the fate of hundreds of great boats carrying iron ore. The downtown area was filled with Victorian-style mansions that were reminders of a time when the city was rich from mining and shipping. Not anymore.

  “I can’t believe how this area has changed,” Tish said. “When I was a kid, there was nothing but old factory buildings down here. Now it’s like Coney Island.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of money in Canal Park, but it doesn’t trickle down,” Stride told her. “They’re building condos to lure people up from Minneapolis, but the city is struggling. Like always.”

  “You live out on the Point?” Tish asked.

  Stride nodded.

  “Nobody lived out there in the old days. The Point was where kids went to smoke dope and have sex on the beach.”

  Stride laughed. “It still is.”

  Tish zipped up her leather jacket. The early evening breeze off the lake was cool. “I forgot that the summers aren’t hot here.”

  “We’re counting on global warming,” Stride said. “In a few years, we’ll be the new Florida.”

  “You sound cynical.”

  “You can’t live your whole life in Duluth and not be a little cynical,” Stride said. “Everyone here is always looking for the next big thing, but no one wants to admit that our time is past. Back when you and I were growing up, shipping was already on the way out. Nothing ever really took its place. The politicians keep selling dreams, but most of us have learned to tune it out and get on with life.”

  “There’s a big world out there,” Tish said.

  “Yeah, well, don’t get me wrong. I love this place. I tried to move away once, and I had to come back.”

  Tish nodded. “I know. I read up on you. You’ve been a cop your whole life. You’ve been in charge of the Detective Bureau for more than ten years, and you could probably be the police chief if you wanted, but you like it on the street. A couple of years ago, during an investigation into the disappearance of a teenage girl, you quit your job and followed a cop named Serena Dial to Las Vegas. That didn’t last long. A few months later, you were right back in Duluth, and Serena came with you.”

  “Is this all research for your book?” Stride asked.

  “Yes,” Tish admitted. “Plus, I was curious about you. I felt like I knew you through Cindy. I wondered what happened to you after she died.”

  “Let’s make one thing clear,” Stride told her. “Anything I say is off the record. Okay? I only agreed to talk with you because you’re right. Laura’s death still bothers me. But nothing I tell you goes into any book unless I give you the green light.”

  Tish frowned. “That ties my hands.”

  “You’re right, it does.
You probably don’t work with sources when you’re writing travel essays, but this is how it goes in the real world. If you want my help, then you’ll have to hope I say yes at the end of the day.”

  “You don’t trust me, do you?” Tish asked.

  “No.”

  She threw the cigarette at her feet and crushed it. “I understand,” she said. “I was naive coming here, figuring you’d open up to me. I keep forgetting. Cindy knew me, but you didn’t.”

  Stride said nothing. He didn’t know what to think about Tish. He didn’t hear any guile in her voice, but he didn’t believe that Cindy would have carried on a relationship with a woman from their teenage years and never told him about it. Even so, he found himself liking Tish. Maybe it was because she reminded him of Cindy, and maybe it was because he sensed that her passion about Laura wasn’t faked. This was about more than a book. This was personal to her. He wanted to know why.

  “What can I do to make you trust me?” Tish asked.

  “You can start by telling me your story,” Stride said.

  “What else can I do?” she said, smiling.

  He didn’t smile back.

  Tish sighed and studied the hills of the city, where the streets climbed from the water like terraces on the face of a cliff. “You’re right, the city hasn’t changed much in thirty years. All the old buildings, all the old houses, are still there. I could close my eyes and be a kid again.”

  Stride heard a tremor in her voice. “Is that not a good thing?”

  “Not really. Most of the places I go, people complain about too much change. Nothing’s the way it used to be. I guess I expected Duluth to be different, too. I wasn’t ready for the memories to hit me in the face.”

  He waited.

  “Back then, I couldn’t wait to get out of Duluth,” Tish continued. “I left the city the day after I graduated from high school.”

  “What year was that?”

  “It was June of 1977, the month before Laura was killed. I moved to St. Paul, got a job, got an apartment. I never wanted to see Duluth again.”

  “Why were you so anxious to get away?”

  Tish hesitated. Stride watched her carefully, wondering if she was about to lie. He had interviewed suspects for years, and most of them got that same look on their faces when they made up a story. It was as if they needed those few seconds to play the lie out in their heads to see if it hung together. He expected a generic lie from Tish that didn’t tell him anything about her life. I was a kid. I was born to run. Something like that.

  She surprised him.

  “Look, I was screwed up, okay? My mom was killed when I was eleven. For the next few years, I bounced around the city in foster homes. I was an angry girl. I felt homeless. I don’t blame it on any of my foster parents. They did their best, and I didn’t make it easy for them.”

  “What about your father?” Stride asked.

  “He wasn’t in the picture. Mom got pregnant when she was only twenty-two. She sold perfume in a department store back then, so she met a lot of married men. When I was a kid, she told me that she dated a handsome Finnish sailor who came to the city one day on an ore boat. To me, that sounded romantic. She didn’t bother explaining the truth. It wasn’t until much later that I realized what a coward I had for a father.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me,” Tish said. “Mom was the one who had it tough. Being single and pregnant in the 1950s was like having the plague. She got run out of her church. Got fired from her job. She was out of work for months before she landed a teller position at a bank. We were always scratching to make ends meet. But she was great. Very proud. Very independent.”

  “I’m sure it was hard to lose her.”

  “It was.”

  Stride knew a little of how she felt. He had felt homeless himself when his father died. He was sixteen. If he hadn’t been rescued when he met Cindy a few months later, he might have wound up a lost child, like Tish. Bitter. Lonely. Looking for escape.

  “Anyway, I try not to dwell on it,” Tish said. “That’s just how it was. I’ve lived a pretty amazing life, and that wouldn’t have happened if I had had a normal childhood. We all pay our dues.”

  “What did you do after you left the city?” Stride asked.

  Tish leaned on the wall of the pier and stared down into the chocolate brown water. “If you’re running away from Duluth, St. Paul isn’t far enough to get away, so I decided to go someplace warmer. I went down to the Caribbean and did odd jobs, buzzing from island to island. Eventually, I wrote an article about my experiences, and I sold it to a travel magazine in the UK. That was what got me started. I began to do more articles, and I built relationships with other magazines around Europe. They started paying me to go all over the world, so I did.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It was. I did it for a long time. Then I met someone, a photographer who worked with me on a piece from Tallinn in Estonia. We fell in love. That was how I wound up in Atlanta. We both got jobs at the Journal-Constitution. It was great for a while, but it didn’t work out. I mean, we’re still friends, but we realized after several years that we weren’t going to make it as lovers. So I started traveling again, but my heart just hasn’t been in it. That was when I decided to take some time off. When I did, I realized I was thinking a lot about Laura.”

  “Laura died a long time ago,” Stride said.

  “I know, but some wounds never really heal.” Tish slid a silver chain away from her neck and let it swish against the white silk of her blouse. She fingered a slim ring that dangled on the end of the chain. “See this ring? Laura had one just like it. We got them together at the Grandstand at the State Fair. That was the summer before she died. It’s cheap, but I like to keep it with me.”

  “You two were close?”

  Tish nodded. “Inseparable.”

  “So how come I don’t remember seeing the two of you at Cindy’s house?”

  “Oh, that. You were never a teenage girl.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning we had a fight. That was probably around the time you and Cindy got together. We didn’t talk to each other for a few weeks. It was May, not long before school let out. I went to the Cities right after that.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  “I don’t remember. Something stupid.”

  This time, Stride thought she was lying.

  “How did the two of you meet?” he asked.

  “We were both in Rikke Mathisen’s geometry class in our junior year,” Tish said. “Laura and I sat next to each other. It was like we were kindred spirits. Laura was restless, like me. She had lost her mom, too, and her dad was a piece of shit, so she could relate to what I was going through.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, I guess I shouldn’t have said that. He was your father-in-law.”

  Stride shrugged. He and William Starr had never been close. The man had dealt with the tragedies of his life by taking his anger and his Puritan guilt out on everyone around him. Except Cindy. He knew better than to tangle with his youngest daughter. Cindy had pretty much run her dad’s life for the next fifteen years after his wife’s death, until William Starr succumbed to cancer. Just as Cindy would do ten years later. Stride finally understood how easy it would have been to end up like his father-in-law, when he lost his own wife in the prime of her life.

  “I think Cindy was a little jealous of me in those days,” Tish said. “You know as well as I do that Cindy and Laura were never really the same after their mom died. Cindy took over, and Laura let her, but that’s not the same as being sisters. So when I came along, it was like I was the sister Laura had been looking for. Cindy never said anything, but I don’t think she liked it. I was always there. I slept over a lot. Laura and I shared everything. We were going to run away from Duluth together, see the big wide world, you know?”

  “Except you moved away, and Laura didn’t,” Stride said.

  Tish’s face clouded over. “Yeah.”
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br />   “What happened?”

  “I told you, it wasn’t important.”

  “No, you told me you didn’t remember,” Stride said.

  Tish looked at him. “You’re right, I don’t.”

  She was still lying.

  “Anyway, we were past it,” Tish went on. “I wrote to her when I moved to St. Paul, and she wrote back, and we became friends again, just like before. Laura was going to join me in the Cities. She never got the chance, though. She was killed before she could get away. I guess that’s why it’s gnawed at me all these years. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She and I were supposed to escape together. Instead, we let some silly argument come between us, and she stayed behind. And she never made it out.”

  She made it sound as if Duluth were a war zone, and Laura had been a soldier trapped behind enemy lines.

  “When did the stalking begin?” Stride asked.

  “During the spring. Late April, early May.”

  “Did Laura have any idea who was doing this to her?”

  Tish shook her head. “No, but it must have been someone at school. Most of the notes wound up in her locker. She thought it would all go away after graduation.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “No, the letters and photos started arriving by mail after school let out. Laura told me about it when she wrote to me in the Cities. I was scared for her.”

  “Why did you bring up Peter Stanhope’s name? Do you have any reason to believe he was the one who was stalking her?”

  “He was one of the last people to see her alive. I know he was a suspect in the murder.” She added, “Does your girlfriend have some kind of relationship with Peter Stanhope?”

  “He’s a client,” Stride said.

  He didn’t tell her that the relationship went deeper than that. Stanhope had asked Serena to be a full-time investigator at his law firm, and Serena was wrestling with the decision. Stride thought she was planning to say yes.

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Tish asked.