Brian Freeman: Immoral

I caught a husband for you and a murderer for him.

He was closing in on something. He could feel the confusion in his brain clearing, like fog on the lake.

Stride heard the whine of tires striking the steel deck of the bridge. He was startled to see a red Volkswagen speeding from the Point, with a dark-haired girl behind the wheel. She grinned at him as she roared by. He had a wild thought that it might be Rachel. Even knowing she was dead, he thought she could find a way to haunt him.

But it wasn't Rachel's car. It wasn't…

…the Blood Bug.

Stride suddenly could see through the fog. And he knew. Rachel had been sending him a message all along.

Eleven hundred feet in the air, atop the saucerlike crown of the Stratosphere tower, the temperature was a comfortable fifteen degrees cooler than the Strip below. When Stride stepped out onto the open-air observation platform, he felt a disconcerting vibration under his feet as the tower swayed with the turbulent air. He had never been particularly afraid of heights, but being so far up, on what felt like an exposed catwalk, was enough to make him dizzy.

"Try the tower," Cordy had told him.

Serena once told Cordy that when she couldn't sleep, she sometimes drove to the Stratosphere and spent a few hours staring out at the city.

In the three weeks Stride had been gone, they had talked occasionally by phone, but he still wondered if the electricity would he there when they saw each other again. He worried that the few days they had spent together would already have been eclipsed in her mind.

Looking out on the panorama of Las Vegas, he asked himself if he could come to like this town, which was so unlike anything he had known. It was hard to take a creature of the wilderness and drop him in the neon jungle. But he wasn't sure he wanted to live in Duluth anymore. He had done his time, enough for a full pension, and this was his chance to make a break with the past. Plus, as of last week, he had learned that Maggie was pregnant and that her husband had prevailed upon her to hang up her shield. The prospect of doing his old job without her seemed empty.

He found he could walk by the edge and look down without a sense of vertigo. He followed the platform to his right, which led him on a course overlooking the eastern half of the city, free of the long stretch of glittering casinos. As he made his way to the south side, he saw the hypnotic grandeur of the Strip, jutting into the desert like a bent laser beam. At first, he saw only a dazzling ribbon of colors, devoid of detail. But the more he stared, the more he found himself focusing on individual details, like the emerald glow of the MGM Grand or the superstructure of the faux Eiffel Tower at Paris. He was so taken by the view that he spent several moments before realizing that he wasn't alone.

Serena stood a few feet away, watching him with a smile. She wore black jeans and a white mock turtleneck. He couldn't help but remember that Rachel was wearing almost the same outfit on the night she disappeared. With her black hair and athletic body, Serena must have looked very much as Rachel did then, atop the bridge over the canal. It gave him a little bit of sympathy, understanding how easily Robin, Graeme, Kevin, and everyone else could have been seduced by Rachel. Serena, with the same beauty, had that kind of power over him.

Why does a man do anything? Robin asked. A woman.

With a quiet grace, she came and put her arms around his back and pressed her cool cheek tenderly against his face, which was flushed and warm. He reached up and stroked her dark hair. Holding her felt natural, as if they had been doing it for years. He never wanted to let go, and for a long while, it felt as if they never would. They could stand there, wrapped around each other in the breezy night, forever. The electricity was still there, as vibrant as it had been at the start.

"You came back," she said, with a hint of surprise in her voice.

"I told you I would."

"I know. But promises don't always mean a lot in this city."

He let go and studied her, becoming familiar with her face again. "You looked good on television," he said.

Serena grinned. "You're such a charmer."

Two of the Minneapolis network affiliates had sent reporters to Las Vegas to do stories about Rachel's death. They interviewed Serena and Cordy, took footage inside and out at the strip club where Rachel had worked, and did live feeds from the open spot in the desert where Robin's trailer had been parked. The broken-down trailer had already been towed to the junk yard and its pest-ridden contents burned.

The television crews had no photograph of Jerky Bob to put on the air. Stride had seen to it that the only known photograph was lost during the investigation. So it was up to Serena to describe him, which she did. He was a vagrant. A nowhere man. There were a lot of them in Vegas, most of them mentally ill, and this one had nursed an obsession until it grew violent. Rachel had the bad luck to be the girl he couldn't let go.

That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

"They picked up your line, you know," Stride said. "'Rachel Killed By "Nowhere Man"' That was the headline in the paper."

"I like it."

"So what if it isn't true," he murmured.

"We talked about this," Serena said. "You had to protect her."

He placed his hands gingerly on the shield that prevented jumpers and peered downward, feeling dizzy again at the height. Serena joined him, laying a hand on his back.

"What else could you do?" she asked.

"I know. But I'm sorry I put you in the middle of it. I made you lie for me."

"That was my choice," Serena told him. She saw he was ready to say more, and she put a finger over his lips. "It's over and done, Jonny. End of story."

"Not quite the end," he said.

He took a breath and thought about how to tell her the rest He still blamed himself for not seeing the truth earlier, even though it would have made no difference. The deed was done.

Serena watched him, waiting.

"There's still the relationship between Rachel and Graeme," he said. "Something happened-something that made them blood enemies."

"We know they were having sex," Serena said. "Rachel wanted to stop. Graeme didn't. I've been there, Jonny. If he raped her, or if he tried to, that's enough to make a girl like Rachel get revenge."

"Yes, it is. But Graeme got his revenge first."

Graeme watched his hand tremble as he held a glass of brandy up to the light. He brought the drink to his lips and took a sip, hoping the alcohol would settle his nerves. The fumes filled his nose, and the brandy burned his dry throat. He swirled the liquor in the glass and took another swallow. But the quivering in his fingers refused to be quieted. He felt his desire rise.

Emily was at a church retreat in St. Paul. Rachel was in her room, waiting, knowing he would come. Graeme put the brandy down and slipped up the steps and down the hall to her bedroom door. He moved stealthily, measuring each step on the carpet to avoid a creak that would alarm her. A light came from under the door. He pictured Rachel on her bed, staring up at the ceiling with her head on the pillow. Thinking about the many times they had made love.

He twisted the knob silently and pushed. The door was locked.

"Rachel," he called out, just loud enough for her to hear. "You know how much I need you."

Nothing. She was inside, listening, but not saying a word.

"We're made for each other, Rachel," he told her. "You can't run away from that. We're like two sides of the same soul."

He knew she was there. The lingering silence began to erode his control. He found himself clenching and unclenching his fists and breathing harshly through his nose.