Brian Freeman - Stalked

Serena jumped as her cell phone let out a jangling ring. She thought, It's him .

But it was Dan Erickson.

"He wants the money tonight," Dan said. "I've got it."

"We should bring in the police right now," Serena advised him.

"I hired you because you were a homicide cop," Dan retorted, his voice hoarse with anger. "You said you could deal with this guy. Now you're telling me to throw away my life by making this public?"

"We don't know who we're dealing with."

"I don't care. I want this over . He says this is the final hit. He's on his way out of town."

"He's telling you what you want to hear," she said.

"You're not listening to me. We're doing this my way. If this guy so much as smells a cop, the photo of me and Tanjy goes to the papers. Do you understand what that means?"

"Completely."

"Then get down here to pick up the money."

"Where's the drop?"

"He said he'd let you know."

"I don't like this."

"This isn't about you," Dan said.

He hung up.

Serena threw the phone down and gripped the steering wheel, which felt like ice. Dan was right. This was business, and she couldn't make it personal. She had a job to do, period. Make the drop. Just like before.

She turned the key and started the car. Her heart stopped.

Shattering noise exploded inside the car like a bomb. Rap music screeched from the speakers, so loud and painful that she felt the beat in her chest and instinctively pressed her palms against her ears. She reached for the volume switch and turned it so hard and so fast that the plastic knob broke off in her hand.

The car fell silent. She breathed hard.

The reality sank in. He had been in her car.

She felt as if ants were crawling inside her clothes. Her skin rippled, and she rubbed her palms with her fingertips. When she realized the window was still open, she quickly closed it. She studied the front and backseats of the car to see what was missing, but nothing was disturbed.

He was playing head games with her.

This isn't about you .

She drove away and kept her eyes on her mirror, but there was no one behind her. He had been here for a reason. When she glanced at the glove compartment, she knew without opening it that he had left a message for her there. Again. She had begun to think like him.

She pulled over to the curb and looked inside. Another white envelope was there, with a note in red ink:

Under the high bridge. Bring the money. One hour.

Stride was in the Lincoln Park area, a rectangle of green climbing from the freeway that served as a hot spot for crime and drugs. Even the winter cold didn't deter buyers and sellers. He did a circuit of the park and then began a slow survey of the nearby residential streets.

He was on and off his cell phone as he drove. He connected with the detective who was waiting in the dark inside Kathy Lassiter's home, but Lassiter hadn't returned. The uniforms outside did a search of the perimeter around the house and in the woods behind, but reported no sign of Mitchell Brandt or anyone else. Stride checked with the team outside Brandt's apartment and got the same response. Throughout Duluth and Superior, squad cars were hunting for Brandt's Porsche and Sonia's Mercedes, but so far, Brandt and Lassiter had eluded them.

His cell phone rang again.

"This is Philip Proutz with the SEC, Lieutenant. My office said you were trying to reach me."

"I am," Stride said. "We have a situation here, and I could use some information."

"Does this concern Mitchell Brandt?"

"Yes, but I'm more interested in someone else. Kathy Lassiter."

Proutz took a long time to reply. "Why don't you tell me about this situation you've got?"

"I take it you know who Lassiter is," Stride said.

"Yes."

"She's primary outside counsel for Infloron Medical, isn't she? So she would be among the first to know about the status of the company's applications with the FDA."

"Of course." Proutz sounded pained. "Please don't tell me she has a relationship with Mitchell Brandt."

"We think she does. They're both part of an underground sex club here in Duluth."

"A sex club?" Proutz groaned.

"Did Lassiter know you were launching an insider trading investigation into Infloron's stock sales? Or that Brandt was a target?"

"No, we didn't know where the trail would lead us. We don't alert the company or its counsel until we've gathered more information."

"You weren't focusing on Lassiter as the source of the leak about the FDA approval?"

"Not at all. She would have been way down our list. Think what you will of lawyers, Lieutenant, it's rare for corporate counsel to be personally involved in this kind of criminal conduct. But we'd have looked at her and her law firm eventually, I assure you."

Stride didn't think they would have found the connection easily, not without access to Sonia's member lists.

"Could Lassiter have been your anonymous informant?" he asked.

"If she was, she didn't make the call herself. The phone call that alerted us to Mitchell Brandt's trading activities came from a man."

Stride tried to figure out who else could have unearthed the connection that tied Brandt, Lassiter, and Infloron Medical together. Anyone in the sex club would have known the two of them, but he didn't see how they could have made the leap to an insider trading scheme that never made the papers.

"I've shown you mine, why don't you show me yours, Lieutenant?" Proutz asked. "What's going on?"

"Brandt and Lassiter are both missing," Stride told him.

"Do you think they've fled the area?"

"I don't know. I'm more concerned with Lassiter's safety. Brandt assaulted her earlier this evening. Could he have been tipped off to your investigation?"

"I don't see how that's possible. My staff understands that confidentiality is essential in these matters. Unless it was someone on your end, Lieutenant."

Stride counted in his head. Himself. Serena. Maggie. Teitscher. They were the only ones who knew. "That's very unlikely," he said. "Tell me something, if Lassiter disappeared, how hard would it be for you to make an insider trading case against Brandt?"

"Not impossible, but difficult," Proutz admitted. "It depends on how well they covered their tracks. Without evidence of how the information leaked, it's hard to prove that Brandt actually had material nonpublic information when he made the trades. Usually we play one conspirator against the other by making deals."

That meant Brandt had a motive to make sure that Lassiter was never seen again.

"I'll keep you posted, Mr. Proutz."

"Please do."

Stride hung up the phone, and it rang again immediately. This time it was Teitscher.

"Are you anywhere near Enger Park?" he asked.

Stride was heading north on Lincoln Park Drive. The two parks connected near a bridge over Highway 53. "Less than five minutes," he said. "Why?"

"We got a 911 call from a motorist in the area. He heard a woman screaming near the Enger tower."

Two cars were parked in the snow on the shoulder of the winding road that circled around the base of the Enger Park hillside. One was Brandt's Porsche, and the other was Sonia's Mercedes.

Stride parked his Bronco behind the two cars, blocking them in. He unlocked the glove compartment, grabbed his Ruger, and got out of the truck. Overhead, a comma-shaped moon came and went behind swiftly moving clouds, silhouetting the five-story bluestone tower that crowned the summit of the hill. He smelled snow massing to the west. In the valleys of the stiff wind, he heard someone moving far away, but the sound blew around him and he struggled to pinpoint its direction.

Enger Park was the highest land in the city, serene and beautiful, and he hated it. The rolling slopes of the golf course were across the street from him, deep with snow and crisscrossed with ski tracks. But for Stride, it was never winter in Enger Park. It was always August, ten years ago, in the grip of a heat wave that made him feel as if the entire state had melted and washed down the Mississippi to spill out in the humid air of the Gulf. Even at two in the morning that summer, standing in the fairway with Maggie, his shirt was soaked with sweat. At their feet was the girl, cocoa-skinned, tattooed, butchered, and nameless. Looking at her made him angry, and his anger only grew as the months passed and the investigation froze up like the lakes. No matter how much time passed, no matter what season it was, the girl was still there, forever haunting the park. He saw her in his dreams to this day. It was the same for Maggie.