Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

“The first thing I want to do is get the truth out of Peter Stanhope,” Wallace said.

Ray Wallace.

For years, he had been Stride’s best friend. His mentor on the police force. It was as if, in the restless months he spent after losing his father, he had been waiting to find someone who could give him a new direction. Later, Stride discovered that when you put someone on a pedestal, they’re almost certain to break when they fall.

He still remembered the first question he had asked Ray when they walked out the door of Cindy’s house on July 5, 1977.

“So what’s with the limp?”

Ray stopped with his hand on the driver’s door of his Camaro. “Vietnam,” he said. “I took a bullet in the knee.”

“Oh, man.”

“Yeah, it was a bitch, but you know what? After something like that, it’s hard to get bent out of shape about any of the bad stuff that life throws at you.”

Stride would remember that comment for years.

Right up until the moment that Ray shot him.

“I like the way you stood up for your girlfriend, Jon,” Ray said as he started the car.

“Cindy didn’t do anything wrong,” Stride told him.

“I think you’re right, but she’s not giving me the whole story, either.”

“She’s not a liar.”

“I didn’t say she was, but there’s a difference between lying and leaving out part of the truth, you know?”

Stride was silent.

Ray steered with one hand, with his elbow balanced on the Camaro’s open window. He sucked cold coffee under his red mustache with the other hand.

“Do you think you’ll figure out who killed Laura?” Stride asked.

“I hope so. I’ll tell you right now, though, it won’t be easy. From what you say, there were a lot of people in the woods. That means a lot of suspects and a lot of crap for a defense lawyer to throw around in court. Unless someone saw something, we might never know the truth. And the fact is that truth is as slippery as ice sometimes.”

Warm summer air blew through the open windows. The car engine roared as Ray stepped on the gas.

“I have to make a stop first,” he said.

He drove along the lakeshore on London Road until he reached the Glensheen Mansion, where he turned into the mammoth estate’s main driveway. Stride saw several police vehicles parked inside. Ray shut down the engine and got out, then leaned back through the window of the Camaro.

“Wait here for a minute, okay?”

Stride saw Ray approach another detective who was standing with two or three uniformed officers in the middle of the driveway. The huge red brick mansion with its three distinctive peaks was visible through the trees. Ray lit a cigarette. Stride could hear the murmur of conversation but couldn’t make out the words. He guessed what they were talking about. A week earlier, the heiress to the Congdon mining fortune, Elisabeth Congdon, and her live-in nurse had both been found murdered inside the mansion. One suffocated, one bludgeoned. The papers said the motive was robbery, but Stride had already heard rumors floating around the city that the murders might have involved a member of Congdon’s family and an estate worth tens of millions of dollars.

Fifteen minutes later, Ray got back in the car.

“Money,” he said. “It makes the world go around.”

“Did you arrest someone?”

Ray winked and looked pleased. “Keep an eye on the papers.”

He turned the Camaro around. “It’s not a good year for the filthy rich,” Ray said. “In May, they found that woman in Indianapolis. Marjorie Jackson. Shot in the stomach and five million bucks stashed around her house. I mean, can you imagine keeping your money in your vacuum cleaner bag? Now we lose Mrs. Congdon. Sometimes you wonder if it’s really worth it, having all that dough.”

“Like Randall Stanhope,” Stride said.

Ray nodded. “Yeah.”

“I think Peter killed Laura,” Stride told him.

“Yeah? Why is that?”

“It was his bat. I think he attacked her in the softball field, and she managed to get away, and he chased her up to the north beach.”

“Say you’re right,” Ray said. “How do you prove it?”

“Maybe someone saw him.”

Ray spilled coffee on his pants, and he dabbed at the stain with his fingers. “Maybe, but we need to find a witness first, and that witness has to be willing to testify against the son of one of the richest men in the city. Don’t kid yourself. Most witnesses won’t do that.”

“So you’re saying we can’t touch him?”

“I’m not saying that at all. But sometimes you know in your head that someone is guilty, and you still can’t make a case. Oh, and keep your opinions to yourself, Jon. When we’re inside the house, don’t speak unless I tell you to speak. Got it?”

“Sure. Why do you want me along anyway?”

Ray smiled. “Three reasons. First, I want Randall to think Peter is just another witness, not a suspect, and having you there will help me sell that idea. Second, I think Peter is less likely to lie if you’re in the room, because he’s not sure what you saw.”

“And the third?” Stride asked.

“Third, I don’t want anyone to think I gave Peter a free ride because of his daddy’s money. You’re my backup, Jon. Welcome to the police force.”

It was the kind of estate that reeked of old money. Robber baron money. The house and its grounds were surrounded by a fence made of iron spikes, with intermittent stone columns that matched the mottled fieldstones of the mansion. The brooding estate itself was a quarter mile inside the fir trees, nearly invisible from the road. Ray stopped at the two-story gatehouse and announced himself at the intercom. A minute later, an iron fence swung silently open. He drove through the trees and parked under the mansion’s porte cochere.

Stride had never been this close. He glimpsed fountains in the rear. Trimmed globe bushes. A fenced tennis court. The Tudor estate towered above him in sharp peaks, dozens of chimney stacks, and red Duluth stone. Most of the chambered windows were swathed in thick curtains.

“Did Randall build all this?” Stride asked.

Ray shook his head. “No, this is turn-of-the-century stuff. Before income taxes, know what I mean? For a while in those days, Duluth had more tonnage running through its harbor than New York. We were number one. A handful of families like the Stanhopes and the Congdons got very, very rich.”

“And now?”

“Now they’re doing everything they can to hold on to it.”

A maid greeted them at the door and showed them to a library on the other side of the vaulted foyer. Stride felt self-conscious, wearing shorts and a white baseball jersey. His sneakers slipped on the marble. Inside the library, he noticed squared beams stretching the length of the ceiling, wheat-colored wall coverings, and an Oriental rug overlaying a hardwood floor. One wall featured hand-carved bookshelves, lined with old volumes of ship logs from the 1800s. He saw oil paintings of old men in suits.

“Maybe I should go,” Stride said.

“Don’t be intimidated,” Ray replied. “These people belch, fart, and have bad breath like everyone else.”

They heard laughter from the doorway and smelled cigar smoke.

“Do I? I guess I should never have had the puttanesca for lunch.”