Brian Freeman - Stalked

Helen looked up as the piano music playing overhead stopped. The gift shop went silent.

"Time to run, honeybun," Evelyn called. She was closing up the shop, cleaning out the coffeepot, toting up the register. Evelyn always seemed to do five things at once. She didn't walk. She bustled.

Helen shut down her laptop and waited. Evelyn was right. It was time to run, and that was what Helen was doing. Running.

With a flounce, Evelyn sat down in the chair opposite Helen. She had poured herself the dregs of the coffee. She took a sip and pushed her unruly, squirrel-colored curls out of her face. Under the table, she kicked off her Birkenstocks and wiggled her toes.

"How about we go home and feed Edgar?" Evelyn asked.

"Sure."

"You know, you're like my cat," she said, noticing Helen's nervous green eyes. "She's more scared of birds than the birds are of her."

"Every time someone comes in, I think it's going to be him," Helen told her.

"I understand."

"I promise I won't be in your hair too much longer."

Evelyn shrugged. "Stay as long as you like. We don't do it often enough, honeybun. What's it been? A couple years? The last few days have been like college, ordering pizza and chugging down cheap wine. Makes me forget all this gray hair."

In addition to running the gift shop, Evelyn was a painter, poet, and gardener, who lived alone in an old house on five acres near the Mississippi in rural Little Falls. They had been best friends since their days as roommates at the U of M. Several times, Evelyn had invited Helen to join her in the small central Minnesota town, but Helen was scared of open places, nervous about emptiness. She liked the anonymity of the city, where she could lose herself in crowds and live silently in the midst of the noise.

"You think I'm overreacting, don't you?" Helen asked.

Evelyn retrieved a bowl of wasabi soy nuts from the shop counter and placed it between them on the table. She took a green nut and crunched it in her mouth. "Yeah. I guess I do. But so what? You met this guy, not me."

"His name was Eric."

"Okay, Eric."

"He tracked me down, and a couple of days later, he was murdered."

"It could be a coincidence."

Helen shook her head. "He knew what happened to me."

"So?"

"So Eric was going to confront the bastard. I told you that."

Evelyn looked at her skeptically. "The papers said Eric's wife was the one who killed him."

"Well, I think they're wrong."

Evelyn sighed. "If you're so sure, honeybun, why not go to the police?"

Helen stuck out her tongue. "The police are no help. You remember last time?"

"They treated you badly."

"They told me it was my fault," Helen said. "I don't need to go through that again. They'd just dredge up what happened and in the end, they wouldn't do a thing. They'd say I was crazy or out for revenge."

Helen stared out the window at the highway. Evelyn reached out and covered Helen's hand. "Do you really think you're in danger?"

"I do."

"Then you need to tell someone," Evelyn insisted. "What if this guy is stalking someone else? Do you want another woman to go through what you did?"

"No."

"Okay then. You might be the only one who can stop this creep."

"I need time," Helen told her.

Evelyn smiled and stood up. "You got it, honeybun. Come on, let's go home and light a fire and crack open some Yellow Tail. The main thing is to stop worrying. No one's going to find you. You're safe here."

Is it Tanjy's body?" Stride asked.

Abel Teitscher nodded. His eyebrows and mustache were painted white by the snow that blew off the lake in sheets. "She's a frozen fish stick."

"Cause of death?"

"Someone caved in the back of her skull."

Stride swore and headed for the cluster of police gathered near the fish house. It was like a Gypsy city on the lake, a ragtag assortment of plywood boxes, tents, aluminum fish houses, campers, and pickup trucks. Tire and snowmobile tracks created a maze through the snow. There was litter everywhere, discarded boxes, beer bottles, tattered gloves, fish heads, and half-smoked cigars. The lake itself was huge, with spiderlike tentacles reaching around forested peninsulas, and he could see only a small slice of it from where he was. It was called Hell's Lake because of its reputation for hot spots, areas like eggshell where the ice never froze solid because of the strong current running underneath. Or maybe because lava bubbled up directly from hell and heated the water. It was a dangerous place, easy to get lost in when the mists came, easy to stray from the dense sections of ice to the fragile shelves laced with cracks. A few people went under every season; most were never rescued.

The wind across the ice was ferocious. With no trees to slow it down, it rocketed across the lake like a skate sail. Tanjy's body lay forlornly on a strip of plastic on the ice outside the fish house. Her skin's pigment had leached away. Either her killer or the current of the lake water had stripped her naked. He felt a stab of regret. Tanjy had spent her life obsessed with rape; now, like this, she really had been violated.

Stride returned to Teitscher. "You should have called me on this immediately."

Teitscher's wrinkled, weatherworn face didn't move. "We agreed I was taking over the investigation."

"You are, but I want to be in the loop."

"To me that means copying you on my paperwork," Teitscher snapped. "It doesn't mean having you second-guess me at the scene. I don't want you here, Lieutenant. Right now, I don't know which side you're on."

"Just bring me up to speed," Stride told him.

"Dan Erickson wants to know every move you make on this case," Teitscher said.

"Is that a threat?"

"Just a heads up."

"I don't care about Dan," Stride said.

Teitscher shrugged. "We found Tanjy's car. Someone drove it into the woods off a dead-end road."

"Nearby?"

"Maybe half a mile away."

"What's the scene look like?" Stride asked.

"There's blood in the trunk. We've got one set of boot prints in the deep snow leading away from the car back to the dead-end road. That's where they stop."

"So she wasn't killed where you found the car?"

"No, it looks like they killed her somewhere else and then dumped her in the trunk to drive her out onto the ice. They found an open fish house, put the body in the lake, and then ditched her car in the woods."

"They?"

"I'm thinking this would have been very difficult for one person to pull off. If she wasn't killed where her car was abandoned, whoever left it there needed another vehicle to get away. Someone else had to be driving the other car."

"What size are the boot prints?"

"Big, at least a size twelve," Teitscher said. He added, "Eric Sorenson wore a size twelve."

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

Teitscher shrugged. "He was one of the last people to see Tanjy alive, as far as we know."

"What about time of death?" Stride asked.

"She's been in the drink for several days. I don't think we'll ever know exactly how long. That should make Archie Gale happy."

"There's nothing to tie Maggie into this, is there?"

"Just that her husband was mixed up with Tanjy, and he's dead, too."

"To me, it says there might be more to Eric's death than meets the eye," Stride said.

"Yeah? You're big on theories, Lieutenant. Try this one on. Maggie and Tanjy had a big fight over her affair with Eric. Tanjy wound up dead. Maggie called Eric to help her get rid of the body. Eric had a fit of conscience and wanted to call the cops. Maggie killed him."

"You don't have a shred of evidence to back that up."

"Not yet, I don't, but I'm just saying you don't have to think real hard to tie these cases together."