Brian Freeman - Stalked

As he sat there, Stride reached out and softly laced his fingers with Serena's hand on the bed. He tried not to wake her, but he felt her squeeze back with a weak touch. Her eyes blinked slowly, as if opening them were like lifting weights. She was groggy and drugged. When she saw him, her faced warmed, and he did his best not to break down. Cindy did that, too, lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw him, even when her time was short.

Serena mumbled something, and he couldn't hear her. When she said it again, it sounded intense and important.

"Couldn't go there," she told him.

He leaned toward her, but he didn't understand. "What?"

"Tried to," she murmured in a cottony voice. "Couldn't go there."

Stride smiled as if he knew what she was trying to tell him.

" 'Cause of you," she said.

"Don't talk," he said. "Let yourself sleep."

"Still here," she said, and her eyes closed.

Stride watched her for a while longer, until the weights on his own eyes felt like lead sinkers pulling them closed, and he slept and dreamed of a long-ago summer on the Point.

Abel Teitscher sat stiffly in the private meeting room in the women's prison in Shakopee. He held a white Styrofoam cup with both hands and stared at the black coffee without drinking it. He was wearing a pressed gray suit, the kind of outfit he would wear to church if he ever went there. His trench coat was neatly folded on the chair next to him. His black shoes were shined. He made it a point to dress well when he visited correctional facilities, as if the suit and tie were another set of bars between him and the prisoners incarcerated there.

He hadn't seen Nicole Castro in six years, not since she was led out of the St. Louis County courtroom after she was convicted. She had shot him daggers then with her eyes, and he looked back at her and saw a stranger. There was no morbid curiosity in his mind about what she looked like now, no desire to do anything but forget her. He never wanted to see her again, and it killed him to be here, hat in hand, coming to her for information. He knew what kind of reaction to expect.

The door unlocked loudly. A guard led her in. Abel didn't look up, but he felt her eyes as she saw him, and the warm, stale air in the room turned frigid. She didn't spit or scream, but she turned back to the guard and said calmly, "Get me the fuck out of here."

"Be nice," the guard retorted in a bass voice that boomed in the small space. He filled most of the doorway.

"I don't want to see him. Take me back."

"He's a police officer, so be polite and sit your ass down and hear what he has to say."

Nicole slouched to the chair on the opposite side of the wooden conference table and slumped down. She eyed Abel as if he were a spider and picked at the grooves in the wood with her fingernail. He didn't look up from his coffee. The guard closed the door, locking them in. The room was absolutely silent, and they sat alone for two or three minutes without saying anything. Her contempt radiated across the table, and he sat there and stewed, letting it wash over him and wishing he could walk out.

"You look like shit," Nicole said finally. "Tell me you're dying or something."

Abel's eyes drifted away from the smoky pool of coffee and drank her in. She wasn't the young cop he remembered. "Look who's talking."

"I hear you got divorced. Found your wife humping some stud."

"You heard right."

"So what do you do now? Sit on that old sofa of yours and stare at your fish all night?"

Abel hated the fact that she was right. "I run."

"Yeah? You got a lot to run from, Abel. A whole trainload. Word is you washed out as lieutenant, too. People hated you so much they had to bring Stride back, or everyone was going to take a hike."

Abel shrugged. "You done yet?"

"I'm not even getting started."

"You can blame me all you want, but I'm not the reason you're in here. You fucked up, Nicole. I couldn't help you."

"Oh, yeah, like your help is worth shit. You helped me right into a twenty-year sentence. My son had to grow up without his momma."

"I didn't kill those people. You did."

"You know that ain't true."

Abel shook his head. It was the same song. "Please."

"Don't you sit there and shake your head at me. Not after you messed with the crime scene to lay it on me."

"Is that still the best you can come up with? I framed you? I thought after six years you'd try a new story."

"Fuck you, I'm out of here."

Nicole got up and pounded on the locked door. The guard's square face loomed behind the window, and he ignored Nicole and looked questioningly at Abel, who shook his head. The door stayed locked. Nicole swore in frustration and sat back down heavily and folded her arms.

"What the fuck do you want anyway?" she asked. "Why are you here?"

"I'm here because Stride asked me to talk to you."

"Yeah? About what?"

"About the Enger Park Girl case."

Nicole's head bobbed in surprise. "Say what?"

"You heard me."

"You want my help with a case? Are you kidding me?"

"I want to know if you found anything when you were working it as a cold case. There's nothing in the file."

"Yeah, well, paperwork was never my thing."

"So meanwhile, the case sits in my desk gathering dust."

"It's not like you ever asked me. No one did. Six years, and no one ever asked me about it. I had a good angle, too."

Nicole was always pretending she was a supercop. Most of the time, her trails were dead ends. "I'm asking now," he said grudgingly.

"Well, why should I tell you a fucking thing now? Do your own research. I'm not exactly on the job anymore."

"Another woman was murdered and dumped in the park," Abel told her.

Nicole was quiet. She drummed her legs nervously under the table. "Same M.O.? Chopped off the head and hands?"

Abel nodded.

"Damn. Another kid?"

"No, she was older. We think her name was Helen Danning. You ever come across that name?"

Nicole shook her head. She was subdued. "No."

"What was your angle?"

"You think it's the same perp?" Nicole asked. "After all this time?"

"Maybe, or maybe it's a copycat. Either way, we're trying to find out if there are any connections between the murders. If you know something, it would really help us out." He got the words out as quickly as he could, before he choked on them.

"Why'd Stride send you?"

"It wasn't my choice," Abel admitted.

"So what? You're like some virgin sacrifice Stride's giving me? Give me a chance to rag on you, and in return, I tell you what I know?"

"Something like that. The cold case is technically mine now."

"Technically, meaning you're not doing shit with it."

"Okay, sure, you're right. I don't have time to waste on cases that aren't going anywhere, because I've got plenty of new files laid on my desk every day."

"Cases where the victims are white, you mean."

"Don't put that bullshit on me. We've been down that road. You've got Guppo believing I'm a damn racist, and you know that isn't true."

"Oh, yeah, like you were so surprised when your black partner got arrested for murder. Dem colored apples don't fall far from the tree, do they?"

"Look, I didn't give up on you because you were black. I gave up on you because you were guilty."

"That's the same thing in your book, Abel. The same damn thing."

"Are you going to help me? Or am I wasting my time here?"

"What makes you think I even remember a fucking thing about the case after six years?"

Abel had said the same thing to Stride, but looking in her eyes now, he knew she did. She remembered everything. Somewhere deep down, she was still a cop. "Because you've got a kid," he said. "And you wouldn't want him ending up like that girl in the park."