Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

“Can you compare the semen to the DNA from the stalker note?” Tish asked.

“That’s the bad news.”

“What do you mean?”

“I did compare the two samples. The DNA on the stalker note doesn’t match the semen where Laura’s body was found.”

“That’s not good,” Tish agreed, frowning.

“No. Even if we could get a match to the stalker’s DNA, it means we’ve got someone else at the murder scene. The county attorney wouldn’t consider bringing charges against anyone unless we could identify the person who left that semen behind.”

“Do you have Dada’s DNA?”

“No.”

“So it could have been him. We know he was in the woods that night. He could have seen whoever killed Laura.”

“More likely, he killed her himself,” Stride reminded her. “Remember, Dada’s prints were on the bat. Besides, it’s all speculation. We don’t know who Dada was or where he went. After thirty years, he’s probably dead now. Life expectancy for vagrants like him isn’t long.”

“Do you remember anything that might help us track him down?”

“You know as much as I do. He was a Rasta. Dreadlocks, tam, the whole works. He probably wouldn’t look anything like that today.”

“He wasn’t old, though, was he?” she asked.

“No. Early twenties, maybe.”

“So he could still be alive.”

“You’d stand a better chance of finding Amelia Earhart.” Stride heard the cough of an engine and glanced at the street. “He’s back,” he said.

“Who?”

“The delivery driver.”

The same truck they had spotted earlier parked on the opposite side of London Road, near Tish’s Civic. This time, the driver’s door opened, and a man climbed down. He crossed the street and headed straight for them. He was tall and extremely thin, with pencil legs. He wore the delivery company’s uniform-short-sleeved button-down shirt, shorts, and white tennis shoes.

“Do you recognize him?” Stride asked.

Tish bit her lip. “No.”

As he came closer, Stride saw signs of age and dissipation in the driver. He looked like a heavy drinker. He was in his forties, but his skin was mottled across his bald scalp, and blood vessels had popped in his cheeks and nose, leaving a rosy web. When he pulled off his sunglasses, his pale blue eyes were rimmed in red. His blond eyebrows were trimmed short. He had a long, narrow face.

“Tish?” the driver said, ignoring Stride. “Is that you?”

She hesitated. “Yes, it’s me.”

“I heard you were back in town.”

“Have we met?” she asked.

“It’s me. Finn Mathisen. I know it’s been a long time. I don’t look like I did back then, but who does, huh? Remember, I had big curly hair?”

“Oh, Finn, sure, I’m sorry,” Tish said. She sounded as if she really did know who he was now. “How are you?”

“I’m getting by. I told Rikke you were in town, and she said I was crazy. But here you are.”

“Yes, here I am,” Tish said.

“I heard about the book you’re doing.”

“That’s right.”

“I was wondering if we could have lunch or dinner sometime. You know, talk about Laura and the old days. I’d really like that.”

Tish hesitated. “Sure, why not.”

“Do you have a cell phone number or something?”

“Of course.”

“Hang on,” Finn said. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and clicked it open. Stride saw him write TISH on the back of his hand. “Shoot.”

She rattled off her number, and Finn scribbled it on his skin.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“Okay.”

“You look really good, Tish.”

“Thanks.”

Finn retreated to his truck without saying anything to Stride. He drove away, waving to Tish through the open window as he did. Tish gave a half-wave in return.

“Old friend?” Stride asked.

“Laura’s friend more than mine.”

“He looks like he’s had a hard life.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t very good back then, either. His older sister, Rikke, was our math teacher. She asked Laura if she’d be willing to tutor him. Finn was into drugs in a big way. Very screwed up. Their parents were both dead.”

Stride nodded. “I remember Rikke Mathisen. She was one of those Nordic blond teachers, very attractive. The high school boys all had crushes on her.”

“I didn’t really like her, but Laura did,” Tish said. “I was pretty independent, but Laura still wanted a surrogate mother. I thought Rikke was being nice to Laura just to get help for Finn, and that bothered me.”

“Why?”

“You saw him. Finn had big problems. Laura wanted to rescue everyone, but she was pretty naive. I told her not to spend so much time with him.”

“Did you tell her the same thing about Peter Stanhope?” Stride asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Except she didn’t listen.”

Tish shook her head. “She did. Laura dumped Peter. He’s lying about the two of them dating secretly.”

“We have no way to prove that.”

“We can prove it with Peter’s DNA,” Tish insisted. “If you had that, you could prove that he was stalking Laura by matching it to the note.”

Stride didn’t like what he saw in her face. “Let me give you some advice, Tish. As a cop. If you want to write a book, then write a book, but if you try to put yourself in the middle of a police investigation, you could wind up in a lot of trouble. So don’t do anything stupid.”

Stride checked his voice mail on the drive back to City Hall and found an urgent message waiting for him from the new county attorney for St. Louis County. He parked in his usual spot behind the building, but rather than head directly to his office in City Hall, he headed for the courthouse instead and took the elevator to the fifth floor. The glass doors to the county attorney’s office were immediately on the right as he exited the elevator.

He asked the receptionist to tell Pat Burns that he was outside.

Pat was new to the job. The previous county attorney, Dan Erickson, had resigned in the wake of a scandal during the winter. Stride and Dan had been enemies for years, and he was pleased to see him gone. The county board had taken several months to name a replacement but had finally turned to Pat Burns, who was the managing partner in the Duluth office of a large Twin Cities corporate law firm. She practiced in white-collar crime and had spent several years in the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago before moving to Minnesota. She was tough and smart.

Stride wondered why a lawyer earning a partner’s income in a corporate law firm would give up hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to prosecute rapists and child pornographers, but he knew the answer boiled down to one word. Politics. Like everyone else whose backside graced a county attorney’s chair, she had her eyes on higher office. That didn’t bother Stride, but it meant that every prosecutorial decision was viewed through the lens of fund-raising and vote-getting.

He waited twenty minutes before Pat’s door opened. She was reading from a legal-sized file folder and looked up at him over half-glasses. “Hello, Lieutenant, come on in.”

He had been here once before on a courtesy call two weeks earlier. At that point, the office still looked as it did when Dan Erickson was the county attorney. Since then, the masculine touch had been erased. Dan’s heavy furniture was gone. Pat preferred glass and Danish maple. The paint was fresh and brightened the room with a peach color. The old carpet had been ripped out and replaced with a light frieze. The whole room smelled of renovation, like a new house.

“Very nice,” he said.

“Thanks. I kept Dan’s bottle of Bombay, if that’s what you’re into. Me, I prefer chardonnay.”