Brian Freeman: The Burying Place

'If you want my help, you can tell me what the hell is going on,' Stride retorted.

Denise folded her arms in impatience. She cocked her head and frowned. 'A child is missing. A baby. Snatched right out of her room tonight, according to the father. I need you to take over the investigation.'

When Stride slipped inside his bedroom, he saw that Serena Dial was already half-dressed. She buttoned a burgundy flannel shirt over her bra and pushed a brush several times through her long black hair. She sat on the end of the bed and began to squeeze her long legs into a pair of jeans.

'What's up?' she asked.

'Denise Sheridan wants to pull me into one of her cases. Missing kid.'

'Why can't the locals handle it?'

'I don't know. We haven't gotten that far.'

Serena stood up, zipped up her jeans, and left the flannel shirt untucked. 'Couldn't sleep again?' she asked him.

'No.'

She stepped into leather boots and hooked dangling ruby earrings in both ears. Even though it was the middle of the night, in the middle of the northern Minnesota woods, Serena wasn't casual about her looks. She had spent most of her life in Las Vegas, and two years in Duluth hadn't softened her touch of glamour.

He shrugged a charcoal turtleneck over his chest and tucked it into his jeans. He rubbed his chin and decided to push an electric razor quickly around his face. When he was done, he retrieved a wool sport coat from the closet and squeezed into it.

Serena came up to Stride and kissed him on the cheek. In her heels, she was as tall as he was. 'This is a mistake,' she murmured.

'What?'

'You. Working. You need more time.'

'I didn't tell her I was in. I just said I'd listen.'

'Sure,' Serena said. Her voice was cool.

He opened the door and waited for Serena to go ahead of him into the living room, where Serena and Denise shook hands. He could see Denise sizing Serena up with suspicion. Most cops in the northland knew Serena because of her relationship with Stride, but that didn't give her a free pass with the local police. To them, she was a big city detective treading on small town turf.

'Maggie tells me you used to be a Vegas cop,' Denise said.

'I spent ten years in the Metro Police,' Serena replied with a cynical smile. She could read the hostility in Denise's face. 'Homicides, mostly,' she added.

Denise shoved her hands in her pockets, and her gun bulged from the holster in her belt. 'Good for you.'

'If I'm in, Serena's in,' Stride told her. 'I want her on the case with me.'

'My boys won't like it,' Denise replied sourly.

'I don't care. Do what you have to do. Serena's worked more abductions than either of us. She's in.'

Denise scowled but didn't protest. 'Fine. Whatever. Look, let's be quick about this. The clock is ticking. There's a surgeon named Marcus Glenn who lives out on Pokegama Lake. Rich doctor, big house. He called nine one one about two hours ago to report that his eleven-month-old daughter was gone. A couple uniforms reported to the scene, did a search of the house and found no trace of the girl, and called me.'

'The cops searched the scene?' Stride said unhappily.

'Yeah, I know, they probably screwed up the forensics. We don't get many cases like this, and these guys are twenty-three year olds working the graveyard shift.'

'Did they find anything?'

Denise shook her head. 'No. There was nothing disturbed in the house, nothing taken, no sign of forced entry at the doors or windows. Everything was locked and intact. The girl just vanished.'

'Does Marcus Glenn live alone?' Stride asked.

'No, he's married,' Denise snapped with surprising venom. 'His wife was in the Cities last night. They only have the one child.'

'So what happened?'

'Marcus says the baby was sleeping in her bedroom by seven o'clock. He checked on her and went to bed around ten. He got up about one, and she was gone. The baby was there, and then she wasn't. Or so he says.'

'Did the cops look for a ransom note?'

'They did, and they didn't find one. Marcus checked his email, too. Nothing. He's well-known around Grand Rapids, though. People know he has money.'

'What's the girl's name?' Serena interjected.

Denise softened and smiled for the first time. 'Callie.'

'Have you gathered all of her physical information? Photograph, weight, hair color, identifying features?' 'Yes, I've already got the BCA doing a statewide notice to the crime alert network. They're sending a team up here to run the scene in the morning.'

'Do you have her picture?' Serena asked.

Denise reached into the shirt pocket of her uniform. 'This is Callie.'

Serena held the picture in her hand, and Stride looked at it over her shoulder. Callie Glenn sat on a quilted blanket and looked at them with happy blue eyes from under a fluffy mop of blonde hair. Two white teeth peeked out from her smile. She was dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of pink sweatpants, and she clutched one of her bare feet awkwardly in a pudgy hand.

'Sweet little girl,' Serena said. 'Is she walking?'

'She can walk a few steps if she's holding on to something.'

'What about climbing?'

'She hasn't climbed out of her crib yet, but even if she could, the window was closed and so was the bedroom door. She didn't wander off.'

'No offense, Denise,' Stride told her, 'but what does this have to do with us?'

'I'd like you to run the investigation.'

'Yes, but why give up the case?' Stride asked.

Denise snorted. 'Marcus raised a stink. He wanted me to call the Attorney General, the FBI, hell, he probably expected me to call the Governor. He wants me to give the case to the feds.'

'That's what parents always want,' Serena said.

'Yeah, but most parents don't have the clout in the northland that Marcus Glenn does. If I'm going to put someone else in charge, I'd rather it be someone I know and trust, and that's you, Stride. Anyway, not that I would ever say so to the bastard's face, but the fact is, I don't really have the resources or experience on my team to handle something like this. This is about the kid, not about my ego.'

'What are you leaving out?' Serena asked Denise.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, you obviously know Marcus Glenn. There's something personal going on here.'

Denise took back the photograph of Callie Glenn from Serena and held it tenderly between her fingers. 'OK, there's a conflict, too. I can't take the lead on this one. It hits too close to home.' 'What's the conflict?' Serena asked.

'Callie is my niece,' Denise replied. 'Marcus Glenn is married to my sister.'

Stride and Serena followed Denise through the dirt roads to Highway 2, which was the main artery connecting the lakeside city of Duluth with its closest inland neighbor to the northwest, Grand Rapids. The two towns were less than ninety minutes apart in good weather. At three in the morning, the highway was deserted, and the dense fog that had dogged the area for most of the night had dissipated as a dry front pushed southward from Canada. At high speed, it took them ten minutes to reach the heart of downtown Grand Rapids.

They passed the giant superstructure of the UPM mill, which served as the economic engine of the region, chewing up trees and pulping them into paper products. The other backbone of the town was tourism. In a state pockmarked with lakes, Grand Rapids played host to thousands of tourists who came to fish in the warmer weather or ski and snowmobile during the harsh winters. November was an in-between month, however, when the summer lake dwellers had gone home and the winter sports season was still a few weeks away.

Stride sailed through the green lights. Serena sat beside him, and he felt the tension simmering between them.