Brian Freeman - Stalked

"It doesn't really mean anything. It's just that I think I know who the other victim is."

"Oh?" Stride tensed, waiting to hear Maggie's name.

"She was in here a few weeks ago, talking to Sonnie. She looked like someone had beat her up."

Stride's eyes narrowed. "Who?"

"The plump girl who runs that Java Jelly coffee shop down the block. Katrina Kuli."

Serena arrived at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Shakopee in the early afternoon. It was the state's only prison facility for adult women, and it housed approximately five hundred females who had been convicted of crimes ranging from fraud to murder. Visiting hours didn't begun until three thirty in the afternoon, but Stride had paved the way with the warden for a private meeting between Serena and Nicole Castro. She still had to go through the metal detector and endure a pat-down from a female guard before being shown into the visiting room.

When she had visited such rooms in the past, they were usually crowded. Mothers visiting sons. Wives visiting husbands. Men and women getting teary as they touched the hands of children who were growing up without them. The room today was empty, and she liked it better that way, without the pain of separation and guilt that suffused these places, like cigarette smoke gathering over a blackjack table. It was an institutional room, with white walls and fluorescent lights overhead. Rows of gray plastic chairs sat facing each other on heavy-duty beige carpeting. The prisoners sat on one side, the visitors on the other. Behind a Plexiglas partition were the non-contact booths, where prisoners without personal visit privileges could talk by phone, separated by thick glass walls.

She noticed the small half-dome in the ceiling, hiding the video cameras. An eye in the sky, just like in the casinos. Everything was watched, taped, documented. There was no privacy here.

The guard pointed her to a specific, numbered chair in which she was supposed to sit. It felt like overkill, because the visiting room was empty, but Serena knew that prisons ran on rules. There were rules for everything, right down to how you trimmed your fingernails. The walls and bars kept prisoners in; the rules kept anarchy and chaos out.

She waited ten minutes before another guard showed Nicole into the visiting room. They shook hands, and Nicole sat opposite her. She was dressed in a khaki jumpsuit and tennis shoes. She squirmed in her chair and rubbed her thumb and fingers together like a nervous habit. Her foot drummed on the floor. She studied Serena with sharp, observant eyes. Detective's eyes.

"Wow," Nicole said. "Very nice. I'm surprised they didn't treat themselves to a cavity search with you."

Serena didn't smile.

"What, I'm a murderer, so I can't have a sense of humor?" Nicole asked.

"I thought the whole point was that you aren't a murderer."

"Figure of speech." She added, "So how's Stride?"

"Fine."

"What a dog. His wife dies, and he winds up with a hottie all the way from Vegas."

"Fuck you," Serena said and stood up to leave.

Nicole stood up, too. Her hostile façade crumbled. "Hey, take it easy. I'm sorry, okay? Please don't go."

Serena sat down. She barely recognized Nicole from the photographs she had seen on the Web. Prison had aged her. Her wild hair was cropped and graying. She was thinner. Serena knew she was in her early forties, but her mottled face looked ten years older.

Nicole noticed her appraisal. "It's not exactly a spa in here."

"I know."

"I meant what I said. I'm happy for you and Stride. It must have killed him when Cindy died. Those two were the real deal."

"Yes, they were." Serena didn't add that it made her feel a little jealous sometimes.

"I made a play for him once. Did he tell you that? It was right after I joined the force. He shut me down cold."

"He was married."

"Oh, and he wasn't married when you met him? Come on, girl." She added quickly, "Not that I'm judging. Look, people do what they do, and what do I care? I haven't had good luck with men. I envy you."

"We don't have a lot of time, Nicole. Maybe you should just tell me what you wanted to tell me."

Nicole shrugged. "It's easy to tell that you used to be a cop. All business. Let me ask you this, did you get shit in Vegas because of the way you looked? I mean, did people think you couldn't do the job because you look like some kind of showgirl?"

"Sure."

"Well, now imagine being a black detective in white bread Duluth. That was me."

"You're not in here because you're black," Serena told her.

"No? Slap some shoe polish on that pretty face of yours, and live like me for a year, and then tell me that. The fact is, I was always treated differently. People were just waiting for me to fuck up. When I did, they were right there to jump on me. If it were a white cop, you don't think they would have worked harder to find out what really happened? Hell, no. I was black. I was presumed guilty."

"I know Jonny. He's not like that."

"Yeah, the lieutenant tried, but racism in a place like Duluth is like drinking water. It's as natural as breathing, girl. They're doing it when they don't even know they're doing it. Stride included. He was always busting my ass over things that white cops did all the time."

"Like what?"

"Sometimes I missed shifts. My boy was sick. For white folks, that's called a child care issue. For me, it's being a lazy-ass black cop."

"That doesn't explain your hair being found in the apartment where your husband and his lover were killed."

"No, I'm just saying you got to understand the context."

Serena leaned forward. The plastic chair was uncomfortable. "Look, I've read the newspapers. I talked to Abel. I talked to Jonny. What I understand is that you had six months of hell. You had a good shooting on the bridge, and then you had everyone on your back over it. You were questioning yourself every damn day, reliving that moment when you pulled the trigger. Believe me, I know what that's like. I've been there. Then your husband started an affair with a teenage whore, and there you are, stuck on leave and feeling guilty and ashamed, trying to raise a boy, and feeling like the whole world is against you. Do I understand the context?"

Nicole was silent. She chewed her lip and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Yeah, okay. That was me."

"You were fragile."

"Yeah, but I was dealing with it. I was getting help. I was happy to be back on the job. Stride had me pull cold cases, because he didn't think I was ready to be back on the street, but that was okay. I liked it. I was on the phone and the Web ten hours a day, and I made some breaks in cases that had been stone-cold for years. It gave me my confidence back, you know?"

"What about your husband?"

"He was a prick. No other way around it. I was going to dump him."

"You didn't stalk him and his little girlfriend?"

"Okay, yeah, I did that a few times. I was wallowing in it, you know what that's like? Feeling sorry for myself. But I was done with that. I did not go over there that night. I did not kill them."

"Then who did?" Serena asked.

"Hell, I don't know. The girl was a junkie. Probably a dealer. But no one checked the drug angle."

"You said you were never in her apartment."

"I wasn't."

"How did your hair get there?"

Nicole jabbed a finger at Serena. " 'Cause it was planted, that's how."

"Who do you think did that?"

"I know exactly who. Abel fucking Teitscher, that's who. He framed me."

"Why would Abel do that?"

"He never wanted me as a partner, and he thought I was guilty, and this was the only way he could make the case. You know as well as I do that cops aren't angels. You've never helped a case along when you knew you had the perp and the evidence was weak?"