Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

“I’m sure it did,” Serena said. “Teenagers are quick to believe that kind of lie.”

Tish watched the moths buzzing around the porch light and didn’t say anything. She sucked on her cigarette.

Suddenly, Serena understood. “Wait a minute, it wasn’t a lie, was it? He was right. You’re gay.”

Tish nodded slowly.

“Did you tell Peter?” Serena asked her.

“No, he had no idea it was true, but it scared me to death to have the rumor out there.”

“So you knew back then?”

“I knew.”

“Are you still in the closet?”

“I don’t hide it, but it’s not like I wear a T-shirt that says ‘pink and proud.’ ” Tish blew smoke out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable,” Serena said.

“It doesn’t, but you have no idea how ugly and hateful people get over homosexuality. The same people who tell me that Jesus loves me would stone me to death if they could.”

“Not everyone feels that way.”

“Enough do that I’m still careful about who I tell.”

“Is there someone in your life?”

Tish crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “Not anymore. I lived with Katja, a photographer I met in Tallinn, for five years. She was getting too close, so I ran away. It wasn’t the first time for me. Lesbian relationships crash and burn a lot. We get emotionally close, and then you put the physical attraction in the middle of it, and a lot of times, it flames out.”

“Did Laura know you were gay?” Serena asked.

Tish’s face glowed with dew from the humid air. “We didn’t talk about it.”

“Not even with your best friend?”

“You have to remember the times, Serena. It’s bad enough today, but being gay was dangerous back then. This was when Anita Bryant was on the rampage about homosexuals. You didn’t advertise being different. You kept the closet locked up tight.”

“What about Laura? Was she gay?”

“I told you, we didn’t talk about it.” Tish stood up, shutting down the conversation. “I think you should go.”

“If that’s what you want,” Serena said.

“I do.”

Serena stood up, too. “Can I ask you about something else?”

“What?”

“What happened to your mother?”

Tish folded her arms over her chest. Her eyes were angry. “If you’re asking a question like that, you must already know.”

“I heard she was shot. She was a hostage who died in a bank robbery.”

“That’s right. Why do you care?”

Serena wasn’t really sure why she cared, but it was a detective’s curiosity. “When someone’s life is touched by violence more than once, my instinct is to look for a connection.”

“There’s no connection,” Tish insisted. “The robbery has nothing to do with any of this. It was years before I even met Laura. My mother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“It must have been hard to be left alone at that age,” Serena said.

Tish shrugged. “It’s hard to be left alone at any age.”

Stride was stretched across the leather sofa in the great room of the cottage when Serena arrived home near midnight. He was sleeping, with a paperback novel still in his hand. One leg had fallen off the sofa, and his bare foot was on the carpet. Sara Evans sang on the stereo. Serena let him sleep while she undressed and got ready for bed. The windows were open, with the curtains blowing like sails, and the night air was humid and hot. She slept in a loose tank top in that kind of weather. Back in the living room, she turned down the lights, switched off Sara, and made herself a cup of pear tea, which she sipped in the love seat opposite Stride. Rose fragrance blew in from the bushes near the porch. Her eyes got lost in the shadows and felt heavy. When she put the teacup down, she leaned back into the folds of the sofa, and soon she, too, was dreaming.

In the mists of her brain, she was with Tish on a beach. A cool breeze kissed their bodies. She came upon Tish from behind, caressing the down of her neck. The bones of Tish’s spine traveled like the graceful arch of a harp into the small of her back. Her flesh was young and soft, and Serena felt no guilt, only freedom, as they began to make love. Later, after they were done, she found herself in water, floating, alone. It was paradise, except for a strange, rhythmic thumping that wormed into the stillness of her world and unnerved her. Like a drumbeat or a heartbeat. She felt herself coming naked out of the water, and what she saw was Jonny, covered in blood, swinging a baseball bat with a sucking thwack over and over into a body on the beach. Killing Tish.

Serena started awake, gasping for breath.

Jonny was awake, too, and staring at her. “You okay?”

She shook the sleep out of her head and blinked. “Yeah. What time is it?”

“Almost three.”

“I’m hungry,” Serena said.

“What would you like?”

Serena thought about her diet. “Forty-six eggs.”

“Do you want those scrambled or fried?”

“Don’t tease me. You think I’m kidding?”

Stride gestured at the narrow, heavy box she had left on the dining room table. “What’s that?”

“I picked up something of yours at the lost and found.”

His eyes narrowed with concern and curiosity.

“The bat,” she said simply.

He looked at her. “Stanhope?”

She nodded.

“That son of a bitch,” he said.

Serena knew he wasn’t talking about Peter Stanhope. He was talking about Ray Wallace. Ray, who had sabotaged a murder investigation for money and power. Ray, who had handed over the murder weapon to a man he suspected of committing the crime.

Stride went to the table. He didn’t touch the box immediately. Instead, he studied it closely, as if the cardboard, ink, and tape would talk to him. He bent down close to it, as if the smell of blood would still permeate the air. Then, using two fingers on each corner, he lifted it, measuring its heft.

“Peter called it a goodwill gesture,” Serena said. “He didn’t have to give it to me. He could have destroyed it.” She added, “He admitted that he was the one who sent those threatening letters to Laura.”

“He admitted it because we’ll find out anyway when we run the DNA, right?”

“Right.”

“Just when I’m convinced Finn is guilty, Peter elbows his way back onto the playing field,” Stride said.

“He says he’s innocent.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know, but I think it helps for me to stay close to him. He talks to me.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Nothing I can share right now, but nothing you wouldn’t guess anyway.”

“He assaulted Laura in the softball field,” Stride said. “There was no date, no affair.”

“No comment.”

Stride put the bat down. “Logically, everything points to Peter. She was killed with his bat, and he’s had the murder weapon for years. If it weren’t for Finn, I’d be certain that Peter killed her. Not that we’d be any closer to making a case.”

“Peter wants me to gather evidence against Finn,” Serena said.

“Are you going to do it?”

“I think so.”

“You may be helping the man who’s really guilty.”

“I know.”

“But you can’t resist the chase?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Rikke has shut Finn down,” Stride said. “She’s hired a lawyer. You can’t talk to her.”

“I’ve got a different angle,” Serena said.

“Oh?”

“I want to go to North Dakota tomorrow. I want to find out about Finn’s childhood. Tish said something terrible happened to him there. I’d like to find out what. Maybe that’s the missing link.”