Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

'Maybe someone thought he would.'

'Hey, you fool around with a married man, you take your chances. Don't look to me for sympathy if you get hurt.'

'I heard there was one affair that was more serious,' Serena said.

Ellen glanced at her watch. 'I should be getting back. I've already said too much.'

'Come on, Ellen. Who was it? Do you know the woman?'

'Oh, yeah. Everyone knows Regan.'

'Regan?'

'Regan Conrad. She's a nurse. I never saw them together, but I heard people talking about the affair. It was hot and heavy for a while, although you wouldn't believe it to look at her.'

'Why?'

'Well, Regan is no Valerie. Hell, she's almost anorexic, lots of tattoos, hoy breasts, lip ring. All I can figure is she must be dynamite in bed.'

'Are they still seeing each other?'

'No, I heard that Marcus wised up and dumped her earlier this year. I think he figured out she's crazy.'

'Crazy?' Serena asked.

'Volatile,' Ellen said. 'She's a good nurse, but man, she can go off on you. And she plays dirty, too. A few years ago, she had a run-in with a young lab tech. Not long after, they found hundreds of hardcore porn images on the guy's computer, so they fired him. And hello, who was Regan sleeping with at the time? Some geek in IT.'

'She sounds like someone who carries a grudge.'

'Oh, yeah, but if you're thinking she had something to do with Callie's disappearance, you can forget that. She didn't do it.'

'How do you know?'

'She worked the graveyard shift on Thursday night. So did I. I remember seeing her in the cafeteria, because she got into a shouting match with the cook over a hair she said she found in her pasta.'

Serena didn't care if Regan had an alibi. 'How do I find her?' she asked. 'Does she work in the orthopedics area with you and Marcus Glenn?'

Ellen shook her head. 'Regan is an obstetrics nurse in the maternity ward. She works with mothers and babies.'

Maggie Bei ripped open the latest letter from the lawyer at the adoption agency in Minneapolis. She unfolded it and read it carefully, then tore the letter into pieces. The paper scraps fluttered to the floor around her. She pushed her black bangs out of her eyes and slapped the dinette table with her palm.

'Fuck it,' she announced.

She stomped into the kitchen and swung open the doors of the liquor cabinet. She extracted a half-empty bottle of Brazilian cachaça, then grabbed a lime from a basket near the refrigerator. After slicing the lime and squeezing it into a lowball glass, she added sugar and ice and filled the rest of the glass with Brazilian rum. Out of deference to the remnants of her head cold, she also dropped in a couple tablets of vitamin C and watched them fizz. She swirled the concoction around, drank it down in two swallows, and made another.

'That's better,' she said.

Maggie carried her drink into the living room of her condominium. She lived on the upper floor of condo units built over the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Duluth, with a view toward Lake Superior. There were still unpacked boxes scattered around the apartment. She had moved in a month earlier, and since then, most of her time had been taken up with the murder investigation in the north farmlands. She'd barely had time to do anything in her new place except sleep.

Maggie sipped her caipirinha and stared at the lake. She knew she shouldn't be drinking, but she didn't care. It was Saturday afternoon, and she needed to pick up Kasey Kennedy in a few hours. The two of them were going to visit Troy Grange, whose wife Trisha had disappeared on Halloween night more than two weeks earlier. She could sugar-coat it however she wanted, but after the discovery of the fourth victim, Troy knew the truth. He was now a single father to two young girls.

The intercom near her front door buzzed. Maggie put down her glass and walked over and pushed the button. 'Yes?'

'You've got a visitor downstairs,' the lobby guard told her. 'Her name's Serena Dial.'

'Tell her you need to do a strip-search.'

Maggie heard an expletive in the background.

'She's coming up,' the guard said, laughing.

'Thanks.'

Maggie retrieved her drink and waited. Two minutes later, she heard a knock on the door.

'Hey, stranger,' she told Serena.

'Hey, yourself.'

Serena nodded her head in approval as she cast an eye around the apartment. 'Very nice. I love the place.'

'One day I'll actually move in,' Maggie said, nodding at the boxes. She swirled the ice in her drink. 'You want something? I can do nonalcoholic beverages under duress.'

'No thanks.'

Maggie slumped sideways into an oversized chair and dangled her feet over the cushion. 'Have a seat. Talk to me. The diet's working; you look great.'

'The last five pounds are the hardest,' Serena said. She took a seat on the sofa opposite Maggie and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. 'You look good, too.'

'Yeah? How do you think I'd look with red hair?' Maggie asked.

'Red? You?'

'There's this cop named Kasey Kennedy with this amazing red hair. Makes me want to try it. I'm bored with black.' She added, 'I hear you're back on the job.'

Serena nodded. 'I'm official.'

'Good for you. Are you in town because of Callie Glenn?'

'Yeah, I was asking questions over at St Mary's,' Serena told her.

'Tonight I'm seeing a nurse who lives on the north side of Duluth. She was having an affair with Marcus Glenn.'

'The media has been hitting the doc pretty hard,' Maggie said. 'Do you think he was involved?'

'We haven't crossed him off the list.'

'How's Stride?' Maggie asked. 'Is he still coming back next week?'

'I guess.'

Maggie raised an eyebrow. 'You guess?'

'Something's wrong, but he won't talk about it,' Serena said.

'I'm sorry.'

Serena took a long time to reply. 'Yeah, it's the old story with us. Two stubborn people with baggage.'

'He loves you,' Maggie said.

'I know, but if he won't let me in, what the hell am I there for? I'm getting tired of being alone even when we're together.'

Maggie didn't say anything. This wasn't a conversation she particularly wanted to have with Serena. They both knew the score. Maggie had made her one and only play for Stride in the months after his wife died, but to him, she was still the young kid he had hired as his partner. Not a lover. Then Serena — who wasn't much older than Maggie — had arrived in town, and Stride fell for her hard. Maggie liked Serena as a friend and a cop, but they still tiptoed around their mutual feelings for Stride, trying not to let the competition come between them. She couldn't help the occasional stabs of jealousy that Stride had turned to Serena, not her.

'What do you think I should do?' Serena asked.

'I wish I could tell you.'

'I know I'm not a saint in this. I should push him, but I'm too busy wrapping barbed wire around myself.' She got up impatiently. 'I want a drink.'

'No, you don't.'

'I'm not going to, but I want one. I hate that.' She shook her head and changed the subject. 'What about you? How are you?'

'If I'm thinking about dyeing my hair red, what does that tell you?' Maggie asked.

'I heard you got DNA on the bastard who's been snatching these women.'

'We do, but we don't have results back. Either way, we still have to catch him, and I don't think he's done yet.'

'What about the adoption agencies?' Serena asked. 'Are you any closer to finding a kid?'

Maggie clucked her tongue in frustration. 'I always thought this was the good old USA, where money can buy you anything. Apparently not a baby, however.'

'Give it time.'

'Yeah, time. I don't have time for a kid, so I don't know why I'm trying.' Maggie raised her glass in a toast. 'We're really having a Thelma and Louise kind of day, aren't we?'