She’d met him because of Anna. Anna volunteered at local churches, and every couple of months, she twisted Cat’s arm to go along with her on community projects. It wasn’t Cat’s favorite thing, but she did it to stay friends with her. In May, she’d spent a weekend painting Al’s mother’s house from top to bottom. Cat and Anna supplied the labor, and the church donated the paint. Al got them burgers at the Anchor Bar for free when they were done.
Despite working two jobs, Al never had much money. The mortgage ate up most of his paycheck, and a backlog of credit card bills took the rest. His father had died of a stroke five years earlier, which was when the debt began piling up. His mother had emphysema and couldn’t work. His younger siblings were still in school, which was where he wanted them to stay. Between his days working maintenance at the Duluth Zoo, and evenings and weekends washing dishes at the Anchor, he didn’t have much time to spend with Cat. Stolen moments like this were precious to her.
The beach was mostly deserted. A mild lake breeze rustled her perfect chestnut hair. In the dark, fifty yards north of them, she could see another couple making out under the starlight. She knew Al had to go soon, because he worked in the morning, but she wished they could stay here all night.
‘I liked your mother when Anna and I met her,’ Cat said. ‘Don’t you think she’d like me?’
‘She’d love you, but she says I don’t have time for a girlfriend.’
‘Especially not a pregnant one, huh?’
‘Oh, that’s not it. Not really. She just doesn’t want me stuck on the bottom rung like her and Dad. Mom always says God has big plans for me, and if I don’t work hard, I’ll never find out what they are.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘It’s the way I was raised, so yeah, I have to believe it. She’d whack me if I didn’t. Except God must be pretty disappointed in me.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Cat asked.
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I do stupid shit that I really regret. I’m not worthy of big plans.’
‘Join the club,’ Cat told him.
‘You? Come on.’
‘It’s true. God doesn’t have any plans for me. I’m just a screw-up.’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ he chided her. ‘You’re special. Way more special than me. Why would you say that?’
‘It’s just hormones. I go up. I go down. I’m pregnant, so it comes with the territory.’
‘Oh.’
‘Hey, can I ask you something?’ she said.
‘Sure.’
‘Do you love me? Because I kinda think I love you.’
His eyes widened. ‘Cat, I—’
‘Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’m sorry. Wow, that was a really dumb thing to say. I’m pressing the delete button.’
Except you couldn’t delete things like that after you said them.
Al looked unhappy with her, and Cat didn’t blame him. She thought to herself: There I go again, screwing everything up. She stood up awkwardly and brushed sand from her skin. Al stood up, too. He looked as if she’d punched him in the gut.
‘We should go,’ she said.
‘Cat, listen, it’s not that I—’
‘No, don’t say anything. Please. Forget it, I was being stupid. I just want to get out of here. You have to work, and I’m sure Stride is waiting to read me the Riot Act.’
‘I’ll come with you. I’ll explain it to him.’
‘That would just make it worse.’
‘Well, let’s go back to my car,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘No, you go ahead. I’ll walk.’
‘Alone? Not a chance.’
‘It’s two houses, Al. I could shout, and Stride would hear me.’
He looked reluctant, but he allowed her to persuade him. He kissed her goodbye, which was normally magic, but she’d spoiled the moment for them. Stupid stupid stupid. He left her, his shoulders slumped, and disappeared southward along the beach. She watched him until he turned and headed for the street. She wondered if he’d call her tomorrow, or if she’d driven him away for good.
It wasn’t just talking about love before he was ready to hear it. That was a big mistake, but she was keeping other secrets, too.
She needed to tell him what she’d done.
38
Stride shook Troy Grange’s hand.
He didn’t see Troy often, but there was a bond connecting them. They’d both known personal losses that had upended their lives. Stride had lost Cindy to cancer almost eight years ago. Last summer, Troy’s wife Trisha had been murdered, leaving him to raise two young girls alone.
Troy greeted Maggie, too, and Stride didn’t miss the warmth in Troy’s face. He was pleased to see it. Troy was finally opening up again, which took a lot of time after the death of a spouse. He wondered if there was something more between the two of them. Troy and Maggie had worked together as colleagues for years, but it looked as if their friendship had drifted into attraction. At least for him. There was no way Maggie hadn’t picked up on Troy’s feelings, and Stride wondered whether the interest was reciprocated.
‘Sit down, guys,’ Troy told them in his foghorn voice. He was the senior health and safety manager for the Duluth Port, but his office was small, and he was rarely inside the building. Instead, he was out among the port’s docks, where thousands of tons of goods moved in and out of the city by boat and rail every day. Lumber. Coal. Iron ore. Cement. Grain. Limestone. The long boats brought in loads and took them out into the waters of Lake Superior, and from there to destinations around the world.
Along with that traffic came smuggling problems. Drugs. Weapons. People.
‘Maggie was telling me about this girl Kelly Hauswirth from Denver,’ Troy said. ‘Do you have any more leads on the guy who killed her?’
‘Not so far,’ Stride said. ‘We’re waiting for ballistics on the murder weapon.’
‘We’re assuming he’s the same guy who lured Kelly from Colorado to Duluth,’ Maggie added. ‘Someone established a fake online ID and built a relationship with her. When she figured out that this guy wasn’t who she thought he was, she tried to get away, and he shot her.’
‘I assume you interviewed everyone in the bar that night,’ Troy said.
‘As many as we could,’ Maggie replied. ‘A lot of them melted away before we got there.’
‘The Grizzly Bear is a watering hole for foreign crew off the boats,’ Troy said.
‘Yeah, and they’re a tight-lipped bunch. Nobody claimed to know the woman or who she was meeting.’
‘Figures.’
‘Why do you think there may be an Amsterdam connection?’ Stride interjected. ‘Maggie says Interpol reached out to you about another murder overseas.’
Troy grabbed a photograph from his office printer and passed it across the desk. The corpse in the picture was barely recognizable, with features bloated and bleached by time in the canals. A knife gash had split open her throat. Her strawberry hair was pasted to her skin. Her swollen torso had split open seams on her T-shirt, but Stride could still see the Grandma’s Marathon logo. Either the woman – or whoever had given her the shirt – had been in Duluth before she was killed.
‘When did they find this woman?’ Stride asked.
‘Last week.’
‘Have they identified her?’
‘No, the Dutch were hoping we could help them with that. The condition of the body doesn’t make it easy. They’re assuming she’s American because of the T-shirt and the quality of her dental work, but they don’t really know for sure. They also don’t know how long she was in the Netherlands. The marathon T-shirt was one of last year’s printings.’
Maggie leaned across the desk. ‘Can we get the jpeg?’
‘Of course, Sergeant.’
Stride smiled. Troy was invariably formal around the
m about official business. Stride was Lieutenant. Maggie was Sergeant. He was the kind of gruff ex-seaman who wore nothing but plaid shirts, jeans, and boots, but he had a serious way about him that Stride respected. He wasn’t tall, but he had the bulky build of a weightlifter. Nobody messed with Troy.
The security manager clicked a few keys on his computer. Stride’s and Maggie’s phones both chirped with an incoming e-mail as he sent them the photograph.
‘Do the Dutch police or Interpol know anything more about the circumstances of this woman’s murder?’ Stride asked.
‘Maybe. They found a tattoo on her wrist associated with an Estonian crime syndicate. Very brutal and very sophisticated. This group began with synthetic drug exports and high-end robberies, but Interpol thinks they’ve branched out into an international smuggling network. Illegal metals. Drugs. Weapons.’
‘And women,’ Maggie guessed.
‘Yeah. Exactly. Their guess is that this woman was kidnapped and dumped into a forced prostitution ring overseas.’
‘They think she was smuggled out through the Duluth Port?’ Stride asked.
‘Well, that was their question to me. I couldn’t rule it out.’ Troy folded his meaty hands together. ‘Look, port security guys talk all around the world. We’ve got tech guys who trawl the Deep Web – you know, the places that Google doesn’t reach. It’s practically a Craigslist for slavery. Women, girls, boys, babies, even pets. If you’ve got the money, you can write up specs for who you want like you were placing an order for custom drapes. And syndicates like this Estonian group will go out and grab someone who fits the profile and smuggle them out. It could be a girl in Sydney. Or Cape Town. Or Cancun.’
‘Or Denver, Colorado,’ Stride said.
‘Yeah. Exactly. They just disappear. Order fulfilled. Huge payday for the smugglers. And once they’ve outlived their usefulness, the girls wind up like this woman in Amsterdam.’
Stride got up and went to the window in Troy’s office. He could see train cars covered with graffiti. Silos. Pyramids of taconite. The sheer volume of everything that passed through the port made a single human being seem like a needle in a haystack. Easy to hide.
‘I’m not saying that’s what happened to Kelly Hauswirth,’ Troy went on, ‘but I think we have to consider the possibility. She was lured here, and somebody did that for a reason. Plus, I don’t like the fact that the meeting place was a bar where a lot of the overseas sailors hang out.’
Stride nodded. ‘We’ll need a list of the salties that were in port when the murder took place. And when each of them is expected back in Duluth.’
‘You got it.’
‘I want to talk to your contacts at Interpol, too.’
‘Sure.’ Troy stood up, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Listen, I hope I’m wrong about this, but if someone is smuggling girls through here, they didn’t start with Kelly, and they’re not going to stop there. It’s peak shipping season. For all we know, they’ve already got other girls hidden in the city, and they’re just waiting to get them out on a boat.’
*
Her name was Erin. She was from Grand Forks.
She knew who she was, but when she awoke, she found that her other senses had been stripped. Her mind swam, making her dizzy. She couldn’t tell the difference anymore between consciousness and dreams. She opened her eyes, but the world was black. A blindfold. When she tried to speak, to shout, to scream, she couldn’t make a sound. Something filled her mouth, muffling her cries. Her wrists pressed against each other behind her back, and she couldn’t move them. Her ankles were tied, too.
Panic rippled over her, like a wave so tall and strong it would cover her up and drown her. She squirmed and struggled in a fit of despair, but she was frozen in place. Blind. Mute. Bound.
This was a nightmare.
No.
Erin knew she was awake. She lay on a wooden floor on her side. Her blond hair spilled across her face. Dirt and splinters pressed into her skull like sharp fingernails. Her neck spasmed with pain. This was real. She could hear things. Somewhere close by, she recognized the trill of a cardinal in the trees, penetrating the walls around her. It sang to her, but she couldn’t sing back. Even so, it made her realize that the world was still out there.
She rolled onto her back, where her knuckles dug into the small of her spine. The weight of the gag stuffed into her mouth made her choke. She was afraid she would vomit. With a thrust of her body, she rolled again, all the way onto her face, where dust blew into her nose. It became difficult to breathe, and the stricture in her throat made her suck in each breath faster. She hyperventilated. Her heart raced.
Erin heaved herself onto her side. She had no sense of the space around her. How big. How small. She was inside, somewhere, but the room was hot. Damp sweat covered her skin. When she tried to bring her knees toward her chest, her ankles resisted. They were tethered on a short leash to something heavy and solid. A steel table, immovable. She kicked at it and realized her feet were bare. Her shoes had been taken. She wriggled around and sat up.
She knew who she was but not where she was or how she’d gotten here or how long she’d been in this place. Time had no meaning. My name is Erin. I am a dental hygienist in Grand Forks. I am on vacation to see . . .
That was it. Matt. Mattie_1987. Matt the paralegal. Funny, sweet, athletic, such a shy, sexy face. Most men didn’t understand her, but Matt did. He seemed to know what it was like to be her, all the insecurities, all the nervousness when she looked in the mirror, all the doubts about where she was going in life. She’d never believed she could fall in love with someone online, but that was before she found Matt in the chat room. It was easier to talk to him than to anyone in her real life. There was something about the anonymity of the darkness and the screen that made her tell him secrets. She shared things with him that she’d never shared with her family or friends. Not that she had many friends. Or family, other than a distant sibling and parents who didn’t really understand her.
That’s me, too, he said. I know how you feel.
He was like her soul mate.
But her soul mate never showed up. She felt as if she’d lost hours in her brain. Lost days that were gray in her memory. She had a cloudy memory of a bar. Drinking. Waiting. Growing sad and anxious as time passed and the evening waned. More drinking. Where was he? She’d driven to Duluth to meet him. He’d said he would be there for her.
Texting over and over. No response. I’m here, Mattie, where are you?
Then the blackness descended. And now the terror. Not knowing where she was or how she’d gotten to this place or why she’d been imprisoned. It was an empty road between there and here.
Outside, she heard the scratch of footsteps on dirt. The cardinal, alarmed, stopped singing. Her first thought was of rescue, but she knew that no one was coming to release her. She listened, hearing the footsteps pause. There was a stretch of silence and then the metallic rattle of a lock being undone.
The hinges of a door squealed. Light stabbed the blindfold, but only for a moment as the door was closed again. She felt herself shivering. He was inside with her, coming closer. She thought she heard breathing, but her own breathing reverberated inside her head, like the panting of a trapped animal. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t cry for help.
He was near her. Inches away.
Fingers touched her hair, almost seductively, and she jumped. The gag loosened, but it still filled her mouth. Something cold and sharp pricked her neck, deep enough to make her gasp at the sting. The breathing came back, right beside her, warm and measured in her ear.
A disembodied voice filled her head.
‘If you scream, I’ll cut your throat.’
39
‘She’s never been in my bar,’ Fred Sissel told Serena.
The bar owner folded up the photograph of the dead woman in Amsterdam and slid it back t
o her with one finger, as if the paper carried a communicable disease. He took a towel from his sleeve and ran it over the varnished counter. It was mid-afternoon on Wednesday. The place was mostly empty.
‘You sound pretty sure,’ Serena said. ‘It’s not a great photograph. I don’t think I could answer one way or another.’
‘Then why show it to me?’ Sissel asked.
‘Sometimes we get lucky. We got this photo two days ago, and we’re canvassing the area to see if anyone remembers her.’
‘Well, I don’t.’
Sissel tweaked his mustache and smoothed his slicked-back, graying hair. He didn’t hide the fact that he wanted Serena to leave. The murder of Kelly Hauswirth had brought a lot of cops and news cameras to his bar. His customers didn’t like it, and they’d voted with their feet.
‘What about others?’ Serena asked him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Other young women who didn’t fit in with the crowd here. Women like Kelly Hauswirth.’
‘It’s a bar,’ Sissel said. ‘People come and go. I look at the credit cards, not the faces.’
‘You took a pretty good look at my face,’ Serena pointed out.
Sissel’s mouth flickered into a smile. ‘Well, you’ve got a face worth looking at.’
‘Come on, Fred. Kelly Hauswirth had a suitcase with her. She stuck out in your crowd like a church lady at a biker rally. All I’m asking is whether you’ve spotted any other girls who match the same profile.’
Sissel tugged on his sleeves. ‘Sorry.’
Serena cast her eyes around at the handful of men at other tables. She leaned across the bar and lowered her voice. ‘Look, this woman in Amsterdam with her throat cut? The police there think she was a sex slave. Do I need to tell you what that’s like? Kelly Hauswirth may have been headed for the same life. You’ve got foreign sailors in and out of this bar every day. Somebody knows something. I want to know what you’ve heard. Rumors. Gossip. Whatever.’
Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) Page 24