Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

He saw Tish park on the opposite side of London Road and get out of a navy blue Honda Civic. She waited while a package delivery truck passed her and then crossed the street to the park. She waved at Stride and followed the cobblestone path through the garden to join him.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly, sitting down. She had no lunch with her, but she carried a white takeaway cup of coffee. She wore sunglasses, and she was dressed in a white Georgia T-shirt and gray sweatpants. She wore Nikes with no socks.

“Hello, Tish.”

“Sorry I’m so late. I was at the city engineer’s office, and I had to wait for their copy machine.”

“What did you need there?” Stride asked.

“Aerial photos of the city from the late 1970s.”

“For the book?”

Tish nodded. “I wanted to see exactly what the terrain looked like back then.”

“The Duluth paper ran a story about you and your book today,” Stride said.

“Yes, I thought it might flush out more people who remember what happened back then. There aren’t too many still around.”

“A heads-up would have been nice,” Stride said. “I’m getting calls.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t think about that.”

Stride took another bite of his sandwich and didn’t reply. He saw the delivery truck that had passed Tish return down London Road in the opposite direction and pull into a no-parking zone across from them.

“I heard about the break-in at your condo,” Stride said.

“The cops who showed up thought it was just kids.”

“Probably,” Stride told her. “They may have seen you move in and figured they could make a quick score. Those lakefront condos usually go to people with money.”

Tish shrugged. “No such luck. I’m doing a spread on Duluth for a Swedish magazine, and the condo managers let me use an unsold unit for the summer. That’s one of the perks of being a travel writer.”

“We’re still looking into the break-in, but it sounds like nothing was taken.”

“Right, my laptop was in my car,” Tish said. She added, “I don’t think it was kids, though.”

“No?”

“I think someone’s trying to scare me off.”

“Because of your book?”

“Yes. I suppose you think that’s paranoid.”

“A little,” Stride admitted. “It’s been thirty years, Tish.”

She didn’t answer.

“Tell me about the life of a travel writer,” he said, changing the subject. “It sounds glamorous.”

“Not as much as you might think. Sometimes I feel permanently homeless. Whenever I fall in love with a place, I leave.”

“What was your favorite place?”

Tish blew on her coffee and then took a sip. “Tibet. I love the mountains, but I couldn’t live there.”

“Why not?”

“Heights,” Tish said. “I hate heights. I always have. I had to cross this rope bridge over a canyon, and I swear they had to sedate me and pull me across on my ass with my eyes closed.”

Stride laughed.

“What about you?” Tish asked. “What are you afraid of?”

“Me? I don’t know.”

“Come on, there must be something,” Tish said. “Or do tough guys like you never get scared?”

“I’m afraid of a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“Loss.”

She looked at him. “You mean like losing Cindy?”

“I mean like losing anything. I hate endings, good-byes, funerals, everything like that. The ends of books. The ends of movies. The ends of vacations. I like it when things keep going, but they never do.”

“How about you and Serena?” Tish asked.

“What about us?”

“Will the two of you keep going?”

Stride frowned. “Why do you care? Do you need to flesh out our characters in your book?”

“No, it’s not that. I think a lot about you and Cindy, so I wondered if Serena makes you happy.”

“She does.” He was curt.

“I’m sorry, is that too personal?”

He shrugged. “I’m a Minnesotan. We talk about the weather and the Twins, Tish. That’s as personal as I get.”

“Oh, I forgot,” Tish said. She added, “Beautiful day.”

“Yeah.”

“How about those Twins?”

“This could be their year.”

“You’re right, this is much better,” Tish said, smiling.

Stride winked and finished his sandwich. He crumpled the wrapper into a ball, got up, and deposited it in a wastebasket twenty yards away. He returned and sat down next to Tish again.

“Are you expecting a package?” he asked her.

“What?”

He nodded at the delivery truck parked illegally fifty yards away. “The driver in that van is watching you. He was following your car when you arrived.”

Tish stared. A face appeared in the window of the truck and then disappeared. The man had wraparound sunglasses and a shaved head.

“Can’t you do something?” she asked.

“I can write him a parking ticket.”

Tish put down her coffee cup and stripped off her sunglasses. Her face was tense.

“Do you recognize him?” Stride asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“He knows we’ve spotted him.”

The truck engine started like the growl of a tiger. The delivery truck jerked away from the curb and continued north on London Road. Tish watched it until the van disappeared behind a row of brick buildings.

“Do you still think I’m paranoid?” she asked.

Stride wasn’t sure. “Have you noticed the truck before?”

“Now that I think about it, I may have seen it a number of times in the last few days.”

“It may be nothing, but I’ll do a check with the delivery company,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I haven’t been ignoring you these past couple weeks,” he added. “I didn’t want to call until I had something more to tell you.”

“Do you have results back on the DNA tests?”

Stride nodded. “I got them from the lab this morning.”

“And?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. There was no match. We collected DNA from the flap of the envelope on the stalker letter that was sent to Laura, and we were able to get a good sample. When we ran it against the state and FBI databases, we came up empty. Whoever he is or was, he’s not in our files.”

“Damn.”

“It was a long shot.”

“Let me ask you this,” Tish said. “Would Peter Stanhope’s DNA be included in a database somewhere?”

“I doubt it.”

“So it could be his DNA, and we just don’t know it.”

“Sure.”

“Can’t we get a court to compel him to provide a sample of DNA?” Tish asked.

“Not without probable cause,” Stride said. “We would need to have something specific to tie him to the murder.”

“Laura was killed with his bat,” she protested.

“That might get us a DNA sample if the crime happened last week and if we still had the bat. After thirty years, no judge would grant a motion with what we have today.”

“You mean, because Peter Stanhope has more money than God.”

“Frankly, yes. I’m sorry, Tish, but there are certain realities to face here.”

Tish watched the calm blue water on the lake. A light breeze rippled through her hair. “I can’t believe there’s nothing we can do. There has to be a way to get a DNA sample from Peter.”

“There’s something else,” Stride said. “More bad news.”

“What?”

“This can’t go in the book.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“We have additional genetic material from the crime scene. There was semen found near the body. The police kept that fact secret.”

“You still have the sample? It’s still intact?”

Stride nodded. “I ran the DNA from the semen. It’s not the first time I’ve done that, but we add thousands of people to those databases every year. It didn’t make any difference. There was no match.”