Brian Freeman - Stalked

"Don't blame me," Guppo snapped. "One of the skiers called his wife, and she happens to be a secretary at KBJR. They broke it first, and the others have piled on. We've got reporters from the Cities up here, too. They're all smelling a serial killer. Everyone's asking about the original Enger Park Girl case and whether there's a connection."

"More likely a copycat to throw us off the scent," Teitscher said.

Guppo shrugged. "These guys are all talking like this is something out of the next John Sandford novel."

"Well, we're not ruling anything in or out," Stride said. "It's a long time between killings if we're talking about the same perp, but you never know. If it's a copycat, he's just as bad."

"Do we have any idea at all who this woman is?" Teitscher asked. "Are there any reports of missing persons in the region that fit the profile?"

"No likely candidates except for Lauren Erickson."

Stride shook his head. "It's not her. Too tall."

He figured Lauren was somewhere at the bottom of Hell's Lake, and they would find her in the spring.

His cell phone rang, and he took a few steps away into the deeper snow to answer it. He heard Maggie's voice. "I'm watching the news," she said. "They've got you on live TV, did you know that?"

"Great."

"You've got something green on your front teeth."

"Ha-ha."

"Tell me they've got this wrong," she said. "Tell me this isn't a rerun of the Enger Park Girl."

"It's the same M.O., Mags. The scene is virtually identical."

"Shit."

Stride couldn't help but think of standing on this same ground with Maggie ten years ago on that hot August night. They had only been together for a year then. Maggie was young and smart, coming out of her shell slowly, more like a kid than a woman.

"You talk to Blue Dog?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Did you kill him?"

"I wanted to."

"What did he tell you?"

"He says he had nothing to do with Eric's death," Stride said.

"Do you believe him?"

"Unfortunately, I do. He has an alibi."

"Meaning it's back to me."

"Come on, you're off the hook, Mags. Even Abel doesn't want to charge you."

"Because they can't convict me, or because I'm innocent?"

Stride was silent.

"I thought so," Maggie said. "Look, that's not good enough, boss, you know that. I can't come back on the job if everyone still thinks I'm a murderer."

"It's not over, Mags."

"No? Abel thinks I did it, but he can't prove it. He's not going to invest a lot of energy in solving the case."

"Give me time."

"I want back in," Maggie insisted, impatience bubbling up in her voice. "I want to be with you on the scene right now. I deserve to be on that case."

"I know."

She sighed over the phone. "Look, I'm sorry, I know this isn't your fault. You've got work to do. I'm going over to see Serena, okay?"

"Thanks."

"She's probably watching you on TV, too, so why don't you moon the camera?"

"Goodbye, Mags."

He hung up the phone and rejoined Guppo and Teitscher, who were standing stiffly a few feet apart from each other. There was no love lost between them. Guppo had been among the loudest to complain during Teitscher's short tenure as lieutenant, and Teitscher knew it. It didn't help that Guppo also had a long and close relationship with Stride.

"I want to review the original case file on the Enger Park Girl," Stride said. "Who's got it now?"

Teitscher blanched. "I think it's in my desk."

"What's up with it?"

"What's up? Nothing's up. You know how it is with cold cases, Lieutenant. Every few months, you pull it out of the drawer and rifle through it to see if you get a new idea. It's not like I've got the time to work a ten-year-old file."

"Especially if the victim's just a black teenager, huh?" Guppo asked.

"Now just one goddamned minute," Teitscher exploded. "That is bullshit, and you know it."

Stride held up his hands. "Both of you, knock it off. We're not going to do this now."

"This is not about black or white," Teitscher insisted, jabbing his finger at Guppo. "This is about a case that's ice-cold ."

"You're right," Stride said. "It's a cold case, and I never said it wasn't. Both of you drop it, and move on. Who was the last person to really touch the case?"

"Other than you and Maggie?" Guppo said. "It was Nicole."

Stride looked at him in surprise. "Nicole?"

"Sure, when she came back after the shooting on the bridge, you gave her half a dozen cold cases rather than put her right back on the street. The Enger Park case was one of them."

"I don't recall seeing any of Nicole's notes in the case file," Teitscher complained.

"That's a surprise?" Guppo said. "Nicole was always months behind in her paperwork."

"Well, if she was working it, we should find out if she latched onto something we've missed," Stride said. "Abel, I want you to go down and talk to her."

Teitscher's brow knitted into a maze of angry lines. "You're shitting me."

"No. Do it tomorrow. We need to move fast."

"It was six years ago. What the hell is she going to remember?"

"You won't know until you ask her."

"I'm the last person she's going to talk to," Teitscher said. "Send Guppo. He and Nicole were as thick as thieves."

"We need Guppo working the evidence here. I need you to do this, Abel, so suck it up."

Abel shook his head fiercely. "This is unfuckingbelievable."

He turned and stalked away from them, climbing back up the deep snow of the hillside toward Hank Jensen Road. His trench coat flew up behind him as if he might become airborne, and each of his strides was long and hard.

"I'd give good money to see him and Nicole together," Guppo said.

Stride smiled. "Yeah." He and Guppo looked up as the medical examiner investigator on the scene waved to them.

"Hey, detectives!"

Violet Gabor was a short, squat woman in her early thirties with a baseball cap turned the wrong way on her head. She was bent over the corpse, with a magnifying glass focused on the victim's ankle.

"We got something here," she told them.

Stride bent down. His knees were quickly wet with snow. He squinted where Violet was pointing. "I can't see, what is it?"

"Man, you're old," she told him.

"I'm seasoned, Vi."

"Roasts are seasoned," she replied. "You're just old. It's a tattoo, a small one, on the back of her ankle."

Stride saw it now. The tattoo was nestled in the skin of the victim's ankle and appeared to be a series of letters crafted in an old-fashioned font, the kind of typeface he would expect to see written on parchment. The tiny brand was easy to miss if you weren't looking for it or didn't know it was there. "What does it say?"

"Near as I can tell, it says TLIM," Violet told him. "Whatever the hell that means."

"TLIM? Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's in purple ink, and the script is a little hard to read, but I'm sure that's what it says. Why, does that mean something to you?"

"Yeah, it does." Stride got to his feet and brushed off the snow. He added in a hushed voice, "Damn."

He felt as if they had killed her themselves by dragging her name into it. By not finding her sooner while she was out there, unprotected, a target. His only salvation was that this time around, the killer had made a mistake. Not catching the tattoo. Not knowing the victim had a secret identity.

Stride knew whose mutilated body was lying in the snow, and it meant this wasn't a random slaying at all. It was somehow connected to Eric's death.

TLIM.

The Lady in Me.

It was Helen Danning.

Maggie found Serena in her hospital bed, vacantly staring at the television suspended from the ceiling. When she saw Maggie, she clicked off the screen with the remote control and offered up a weak smile. Her shoulder was bandaged. A clear tube looped around her ears and stretched across her pale, pretty face, delivering oxygen to her lungs. Her black hair was pulled back and tied behind her head. A blanket covered her body, but Maggie could see her bare arms, which were patchy with cherry-red burns.