Brian Freeman - Stalked

They went through his apartment door with battering rams at two in the morning, but Stride knew he wouldn't be there, and he wasn't.

He was using the name William Deed, and the people who knew him called him Billy. Mitchell Brandt and Sonia Bezac both confirmed that Billy Deed was the Byte Patrol tech who worked on their computers, and the store owner who was now seated in front of the computer in Deed's apartment checked his records and told Stride that Deed had handled the setup and firewall for Tanjy Powell.

There was no record of William Deed in the state's criminal justice database, and the social security number he had provided on his employment application was false.

Stride ran both hands through his wavy hair and tried to hold himself in check. His adrenaline raced, coursing through his bloodstream as if he had swallowed down half a dozen cups of strong coffee. His heart was skipping beats; he could feel it stutter every minute. Along with the adrenaline was a coiled fist of dread in his stomach, churning up acid that burned a backward path up his throat. He couldn't think about Serena now. If he did, he would go crazy. He could only think about William Deed and how to find him.

Max Guppo emerged from Deed's bedroom. He was a flatulent, three hundred pound detective, fifty years old, with the worst comb-over in the upper Midwest, and he was also Stride's best evidence technician. They had worked together since Stride joined the force. No one wanted to be locked up in a van with Guppo on a stakeout, but the man was a wizard with latent prints and evidence maps and knew his way around computers as well as anyone from Byte Patrol.

"Plenty of prints," Guppo told Stride. He had a line of perspiration on his upper lip. "I raised the best of them. I'm on my way to City Hall to scan them in."

"Call the duty officer at BCA in Saint Paul, and get someone in the lab to check the database for us right now. If there's no state match, have them send it on it to the feebs and put a rush on it."

"Already done," Guppo replied. "I woke up my buddy who's the top guy in the BCA lab, and he's on his way downtown. He said he'll handle it personally."

"You're beautiful."

"Don't worry, sir, I'll get back to you in less than an hour even if I have to wake up the special agent in charge."

Guppo hustled from the apartment, and when Guppo hustled, the floor shook. Stride knew that Guppo and the rest of the team were working double-time all night on this case. They'd do it on any abduction, but this one was personal. Their loyalty was the one comfort he had right now.

Teitscher arrived at the apartment a few minutes later, and his bloodhound eyes found Stride by the window. His trench coat was wet with snow.

"Anything?" Stride asked, but when he saw Abel's face, he knew it was bad news. His heart misfired again.

Teitscher's mustache formed a frown. "We found Pete McKay's squad car in a downtown parking ramp."

"Did you check it out?"

"Yeah. Look, Lieutenant, I can't sugarcoat this. We found bloodstains in the trunk. But we're not talking about a lot of blood. No one bled out in there, okay?"

Stride needed a cigarette badly. His racing nerves made his fingers tremble. He reminded himself again not to think about Serena and not to dwell on what might be happening to her. Think about Deed. Work the case.

"So you think he switched cars," Stride said.

"Yeah. I also think Serena's alive."

Teitscher didn't explain, but Stride knew what he meant. If Serena were dead, Deed would have left her body in the trunk of the car. "Were there any cameras in the ramp?" Stride asked.

"No, but this guy has one of the purple Byte Patrol vans checked out to him. We haven't found it. We're calling everyone with an emergency ATL on the van. We've got highway patrol staking out all three of the north-south arteries-Thirty-five, Sixty-one, and One sixty-nine-in case this guy tries to head toward the Cities. The Canadian border is on alert, too."

"How about Wisconsin?"

"Yeah, we've got Wisconsin Thirty-five covered. K-2 pulled in off-shift personnel, and we're blanketing the city. The media's on it, too. I know it won't do much good until the morning news programs, but we'll have the public on the lookout tomorrow. We'll get helicopters up when it stops snowing."

Stride couldn't escape the feeling that tomorrow would be too late. "He probably has another vehicle," he said.

"Probably."

Stride shouted at the store owner, who was sifting through the material on Deed's computer. Craig was no more than thirty, wearing gray sweatpants and a red UMD sweatshirt with ratty sneakers. He looked half-asleep. He was tall and thin, with big, frizzy red hair and a lumberjack's beard. "Hey!" Stride called. "Do you know if this Deed had another car? Did you ever see him driving anything other than your van?"

Craig rubbed his eyes. "No, he kept the van overnight most of the time."

"Hiding in plain sight," Teitscher said. "Those vans are so noticeable that no one notices them."

"So maybe we'll get lucky, and he's still in it," Stride replied. "Keep me posted. Check in every half hour."

"I will. Look, Lieutenant, I know this doesn't mean shit coming from me, but I feel bad about this."

"Thanks, Abel."

"I'm also not saying I was wrong about Maggie, but this thing looks more complicated than I thought."

"You played it the way I would have done in your shoes," Stride told him.

"Maggie called and asked me if she could be part of the search. I probably shouldn't have done it, but I said okay."

Stride shrugged. "She would have done it anyway."

"I know."

"Better be careful, Abel, people will start saying you're soft."

"Yeah. That'll happen soon."

Teitscher left, and Stride continued studying Deed's apartment, looking for clues to the man. The apartment building was a drab high-rise near the pawn shops and gun stores on the far south end of Superior Street. Through his sixth-floor window, Deed looked out on a jigsaw puzzle of highway overpasses where the freeway broke apart into the city streets. It was cheap, anonymous, and seconds away from a quick escape.

Inside the one-bedroom apartment itself, there was little to distinguish the man. He ate chicken TV dinners, tacos, guacamole chips, and frozen chunks of walleye wrapped in aluminum foil. The kitchen reeked of fish. The apartment came furnished, and Deed had added little of his own other than a high-end PC. They found no magazines, no bank records, and no receipts. All they had was a description of the man: tall, heavy, strong, early forties, with black hair down below his neck, dark eyes, and a hawklike nose. He wore jeans and denim shirts when he wasn't wearing the Byte Patrol purple T-shirt.

Something about the apartment bothered Stride, but whatever it was waited like a ship in the fog and refused to show itself. The more he tried to focus his senses, the more the feeling became gauzy, as if he were imagining things. There was nothing to see here and nothing to find.

Stride pulled a kitchen chair next to the store owner, Craig, who was clicking the computer keys and staring at the screen through bleary eyes.

"What have you got?" Stride asked.

"Enough to fucking well put me out of business," Craig retorted. "This asshole put back doors and spyware into every computer he touched through the store."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning he could use their Internet connections to log on to their systems, paw through their hard drives, and track every fucking keystroke they made. He knew everything."

"I'm going to need names."

"Yeah, sure, I'll print you a list. They're all going to sue me."

"What else?" Stride asked.

"What else am I looking for?"

"Anything that will help us find this guy. Where he goes. Where he shops. What he does. He's got to have a hideaway somewhere."