Brian Freeman - Stalked

So Lauren told her.

" It was me, you sick bitch ."

As Tanjy turned to run, Lauren let out all her rage with one swing. Just one, that was all it took. Tanjy dropped and died. Cold-blooded? Never. She was on fire.

But there was always a price to pay. That was what her father told her. Her father knew about cutting corners, making deals with the devil. Justice always found a way to even the scales.

Like now.

At least she felt no pain. Not anymore. The doctors would say it was a rush of endorphins as the body got itself ready for death, but the peace as she drove was almost blissful.

She didn't feel anything even as the Lexus sped past the warning flags onto one of the hot spots on the lake, didn't feel anything as the nose of the car broke through the thinning ice and the car jerked and spun to a stop and the air bag deployed. Nothing.

She noticed that as the air bag deflated, it was stained burgundy, as if she had poured a bottle of red wine over it.

The Lexus settled lazily into the water. It was virtually soundproof, and she could barely hear the ice spindling into fragments, giving way. Near-freezing water seeped in at her feet, and she didn't feel that either. She knew she should open the car door, but the signals from her brain didn't travel to her limbs anymore. It occurred to her that Tanjy had come out of the lake, and now she was going into it. Balancing the scales. Body for body.

The water reached her waist. Her stomach. Her breasts. Her neck. She was floating. The car dipped below the surface, and the lake and the storm and the snow disappeared from view, and there was nothing but the cold, wet hands of the devil taking hold of her. Her lungs rebelled, as if wondering why they should die just because the rest of her was lost, but soon enough, they gave up to the inevitable, too, and she took a breath that was no breath at all.

She had a fleeting thought that the ice would close over the top of her by morning, and she wondered if anyone would ever know what happened to her. She would simply be gone.

Poor Dan. He would miss the car.

The prison doctors made the police wait three days before interviewing Blue Dog. Stride himself spent a day in the hospital, treated for hypothermia and minor burns. Serena would be hospitalized for several more days, maybe weeks, as the doctors dealt with smoke inhalation and the more serious burns, mostly on her legs. She would need skin grafts where the burns were worst and for the cuts in her abdomen. It was too early to tell about the long-term pulmonary effects of the smoke. Even so, she was lucky. Lucky to be alive, lucky that the damage wasn't more severe.

Stride stared at Blue Dog through the window before going inside, feeling his muscles clench into knots. Raw hatred coursed through his veins.

Teitscher, who was standing next to him, saw his reaction. "This is personal to you. You shouldn't be in the room."

"I want to be there," Stride insisted.

He pushed the door open before Teitscher could lodge any more protests, and the two men went inside. The room was painted in institutional gray and smelled of disinfectant. The bedsheets were bleached white. Teitscher folded his arms and stood beside the bed, looking down at Blue Dog. Stride leaned against the wall and shoved his hands in his pockets.

Blue Dog's legs were manacled to the bed frame. So was his right arm, which was inked over with tattoos. The doctors had amputated his left arm when he was brought in from the lake. He had suffered too much damage from the shotgun wound to save it. He was hooked up to intravenous drips of morphine and antibiotics. His long hair had been chopped off, leaving him with a black-and-gray buzz cut. The stubble on his chin was thick, and his skin was pale under the fluorescent light. His barrel chest was naked.

"Hey," Stride called. "Wake up, asshole."

Blue Dog's bloodshot eyes blinked open, and he took note of both men in the room. He shifted, straining against his bonds, and pain shot through his body, making him grimace. He looked down at the bandaged stump on the left side of his torso.

"Hurts, huh?" Stride asked. "Good."

"Fuck off."

Teitscher removed a digital tape recorder from his pocket and set it on the table beside the bed. "We're going to tape this conversation. My name is Detective Abel Teitscher, and this is Lieutenant Jonathan Stride of the Duluth police."

"I know who you are," Blue Dog replied. He looked at Stride. "I'm just sorry you dragged that bitch out of the fish house. I would have liked to hear her scream as the fire got her."

Teitscher ignored him. "You were read your rights when you were arrested. Do you need them read to you again?"

"I know my rights."

"Do you want a lawyer?"

"For what? A lawyer won't do me any good."

"Are you willing to talk to us?"

"What's in it for me?" Blue Dog asked.

Teitscher shrugged. "We've already been in touch with the authorities in Alabama. They're anxious to get you back to Holman. You'll wind up on trial for the cops you killed in the hurricane, and then they'll stick a needle in your arm. Of course, it'll have to be your right arm."

"Fuck you," Blue Dog said.

"I'm just telling you how it is. Before you go back to that hellhole down south, where they are going to execute you, you have to make it through the courts up here. We're going to put you on trial for murder, attempted murder, rape, assault, blackmail, fraud, you name it."

"Maybe I don't have to go back to Alabama," Blue Dog said. "Maybe you can just keep me up here."

Teitscher shook his head. "You mean, in a state like Minnesota where we don't have capital punishment? Where we don't sleep prisoners twenty to a cell? Sorry, but the fact is, no one is too anxious for you to hang around here. But it can go fast or it can go slow. You might be back in Holman in a couple of months, or the whole process might drag out, and it could be a year or more before we get around to sending you back down there. We might even need to keep you in a private cell because of your medical condition. So where would you like to spend the next year? Minnesota or Alabama?"

Blue Dog scowled. "Yeah, so, what is it you want?"

"Tell us about Lauren Erickson and Tanjy Powell."

"Like what?"

"Did you rape Tanjy?" Teitscher asked.

"Okay, yeah. But that was Lauren's idea."

"I'll bet you put the idea in her head."

"Not me. Hey, I didn't give a shit about Tanjy. I wanted money. I knew Lauren would pay to keep the photos of Tanjy and Dan out of the papers. Lauren was the one who turned it all around and wanted me to do her."

"Why?" Teitscher asked.

"Punishment. Payback. Whatever you want to call it. Those photos made Lauren crazy."

"So what went wrong?"

"Nothing went wrong. It all worked like Lauren planned. But then Tanjy called Lauren a couple of weeks ago and said she knew who raped her. Lauren freaked and called me."

"What did you do?"

"Lauren told me to meet her at their lake house. The two of them were already going at it when I got there. Tanjy saw me pull up-she probably thought it was going to be Dan, you know? Tanjy looked like she was going to bolt, but Lauren hit her hard. Real hard. Dropped her like a bag of cement. So we put her in the trunk and took her out to the lake."

"What about Maggie and Katrina?" Stride asked from the wall. "Were you the one who assaulted them?"

"Yeah, that was me."

"Was that Lauren's idea, too?"

"No, she didn't know anything about it. Not until later."

"So why did you rape them?" Stride asked.

"Why the hell not? After I did Tanjy, I realized what a rush it was. Hell, it was like fucking Serena in my head before I got to the real thing, you know?"