Brian Freeman - Stalked

She wore half-glasses pushed down her small nose. Her bare feet dangled off the recliner. She had a plastic bottle of Diet Coke on one side of her and a half-eaten bag of sour cream and cheddar potato chips on the other. The fingertips on her right hand were orange, and she had to lick them before she typed. She clicked through pages of search results on the name Helen Danning, but she was no closer to finding out who she was, or why Eric had gone to so much trouble to find her.

Headlights cut across the outside windows as Stride's Bronco pulled into the driveway. A couple of minutes later, she heard the door open and his heavy footsteps in the kitchen. She called out, "I'm in here."

It was his house. Maggie had a key. After Cindy died, she used Stride's house as a sort of second home, dropping in with doughnuts and coffee and bringing over movies. Sometimes Stride joined her, sometimes he didn't. That was the kind of casual relationship they had. She had pulled back during Stride's second marriage, but when he and Serena returned from Las Vegas and bought a place out on the Point again, Maggie gradually resumed her old ways. Neither of them complained about it. Most of the time, they spent evenings talking about open cases anyway, so it was easier for her to be here.

She knew that she was using his place as an escape to get away from Eric. And, despite Serena, to be close to Stride.

She didn't look up as Stride came into the living room. She was in his chair. "Chip?" she asked, holding up the bag.

"No thanks." He added, "Does Abel know you're here?"

"No, Guppo had the job of babysitting me tonight. I promised to bring him a bag of tacos when I came back, and he looked the other way."

"He's a credit to the badge," Stride said.

"Yeah. I hear that Pete McKay lost a patrol car."

Stride nodded. "He got a call up to the high school and heard some firecrackers around back. When he came back, his car was gone. Nice."

"Kids are getting smarter than the cops these days."

"Tell me about it."

"I think we should buy McKay a scooter with a siren."

"I'll tell him you said that."

Maggie smiled at their usual banter but knew it wouldn't last. Stride sat down on the brick hearth of the fireplace. He was still wearing his black leather jacket, and he smelled of cold and smoke. Maggie knew what to expect from him.

"Do I get the lecture now, Dad?" She adopted a deep voice and said, "I'm very disappointed in you, young lady."

"Come on, Mags."

"So now you know what your little girl does on weekends," she said.

"I'm not really in a mood to joke about this."

Maggie stripped off her glasses. "Hey, this is still me, okay? I joke about everything. I don't care what you think of me right now, it's still a riot to think about me playing Jenna Jameson in a sex club."

He looked at her in a way that made her feel as if he was seeing her for the first time. His face was drawn and tight.

"Please don't tell me you wore a blond wig," he said.

Maggie laughed. "And one of those cone-shaped bras, too. Like Madonna."

Stride smiled enough that she could see his white teeth showing. Relief bubbled out of her like a fountain.

"I guess you want to know why," she said.

"You don't owe me any explanations. It's your life."

"But you want one anyway."

He shrugged. "Sure, I'd like to know why you did it. I can't pretend I get it, Mags. Not from you."

"Why, because I'm not supposed to have sex? I'm not supposed to enjoy it?"

"That's not what I mean at all."

"Then spit it out. You don't have to sugarcoat things for me."

"Sex is one thing," he said. "This is women spreading their legs for strangers. With fucking gold masks."

"So what does that make me? A whore?"

"No, of course not."

"Then what?"

He looked frustrated. "I just hate the idea of you doing something like that."

"Tell me why."

"Because you deserve better. Okay? Because you're something special. Because I don't think a woman could do that unless, on some level, she hated herself, and I don't want to think of you feeling that way."

Maggie stared at the ceiling, not wanting to meet his eyes. "Lately, I have hated myself a little."

"You could have talked to me about it."

"About my marriage falling apart? About my husband cheating on me? About trying to rescue our sex life? I don't think so. Unless you're prepared to go all the way-and I know you're not, you don't need to say it-there are parts of my life I'm never going to share with you."

"So maybe I should just drop this. It's none of my business anyway."

"No, it's not. But since you know about it, I'll tell you anyway, because there really isn't that much to tell. I felt empty and was looking for something to fill the void. I thought it might bring Eric and me closer together, which it didn't do. And, yeah, okay, I was intrigued. For once in my life, I thought, what the hell. It was a mistake, if that's what you want to hear."

"You don't need to say that."

"Well, it's true."

He changed the subject. She was relieved to stop talking about it.

"Did Serena tell you? Katrina was assaulted, too. Right after the last party."

"Yeah, she did. I had no idea. I feel like a shit for not calling her."

"This guy is smart," Stride said. "He's making a bet that women in this sex club won't risk the humiliation of going public."

"When is Sonia's next party?"

"Tomorrow."

"Son of a bitch," Maggie said.

"Exactly. We need to move fast."

They both looked up as the back door opened. It was Serena, carrying a bag of groceries that she deposited on the kitchen counter. She kicked off her heels and joined them, taking a seat on the carpet and crossing her legs. Maggie noticed that she sat close enough to Stride that their clothes touched.

"You two okay?" Serena asked.

Stride nodded without saying anything. Maggie felt him grow colder, as if he were drawing a circle around himself and Serena to keep her out. It bothered her.

"What did I miss?" Serena asked.

"We just had sex," Maggie said. "This is afterglow."

It was a stupid joke. She felt bad when Serena's face soured with discomfort.

"I'm sorry, dumb thing to say," she added.

"Alpha girl humor," Serena murmured.

Ouch. But Maggie knew she deserved it.

She tossed the bag of chips to Serena, who flipped her hair back, took a chip out of the bag, and crunched it in her mouth. Their eyes met. The coolness melted, and they declared a silent truce between them.

"Did you get any more background on Helen Danning?" Serena asked.

Maggie told them about the empty blog page she had discovered for "The Lady in Me." Stride pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper from his jacket pocket.

"Here's what Guppo found," he said. "She's thirty-six years old, born in Florida, moved to Minnesota when she was ten. She went to the U but dropped out in the early 1990s after two years, never graduated. She's worked clerical jobs ever since. She doesn't have a sheet, and there's no record of anyone by her name filing criminal charges. She drives a blue Toyota Corolla, license NKU-167. I did a statewide ATL on it."

"Parents?"

"They retired in Arizona. I haven't been able to reach them. She's got a sister, too, but she's somewhere in Southeast Asia teaching English."

"Is there anything at all that connects her to what's going on?" Serena asked.

Stride shook his head. "Not that I can find."

"I asked Guppo to do me a favor and see if he could track down any cached pages from her blog," Maggie said. "Maybe he'll come up with something that will tell us why Eric was interested in her."

"Let's back up," Stride told them. "Let's go back to the beginning on this. The first incident in the chain, at least as far as we know right now, is Tanjy being raped, right? That was in early November, based on what she told us. I talked to a couple women who were alpha girls before that date. Nothing happened to them."