Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

JoLynn looked outside, too. Her eyes were pale and gray. She shivered and tugged on the sleeves of her pink turtleneck, as if she could feel the winter chill simply by looking outside. The blue tints in her red hair looked like twisting snakes. “It’s pretty here, but I’m not built for the cold.”

“It’s a lot warmer in Florida,” Stride said.

“You checked me out at the desk, huh? Of course you did. Yes, I’m from Sarasota. Born and raised.”

“What brings you to Minnesota, Ms. Fields?” he asked.

“The movie is what brings me here, but I’m sure you already guessed that. I’m a reporter. Entertainment beat.”

“Who do you work for?”

“The National Gazette . And yes, I know, people roll their eyes when they hear that. Don’t worry, I don’t cover UFOs or Bigfoot. Although if Bigfoot is hiding anywhere, it would be somewhere like this.”

“Why are you investigating me?” Stride asked again.

“I’m doing a story on you.”

“What kind of story?”

“Human interest,” JoLynn told him. “That’s what our readers like. They want to know: Who is Jonathan Stride? Why is Hollywood making a movie about him? What is he like in real life? What kind of a hero is he?”

Stride shook his head. He thought about Jungle Jack’s warning the previous day, and he didn’t think the timing was a coincidence. Dean Casperson had made a call and put the tabloid on his trail.

“First of all, nobody’s making a movie about me. It’s an adaptation based on a case I worked on, but Evan Grave is not Jonathan Stride. And second of all, I’m nobody’s hero, believe me.”

“Even better,” JoLynn replied. “People love strong men with flaws.”

“The point is, I have no interest in anybody doing a story about me.”

She shrugged. “No offense, Lieutenant, but that’s not how it works. I’m not asking for permission. I’m doing the story. If you won’t let me interview you, that’s unfortunate, but I’ll find other sources. However, I’d prefer to have your voice as part of it. I want to know what you have to say. Readers will want to know, too.”

Stride leaned forward in the chair and put his hands on his knees. “Whose idea was this? Yours?”

“Of course. You’re the man behind the mask. Dean Casperson is playing you. That’s news.”

“Following me secretly feels like stalking, not reporting,” Stride said.

“I was going to approach you about an interview, but once you know I’m there, you behave differently. Everybody does; it’s human nature. I wanted a chance to observe you before you realized you were going to be the subject of a profile. I wanted to see the real you.”

“What you see is what you get with me,” Stride said.

“Okay. So can I ask you some questions?”

“You can ask. I won’t guarantee that I’ll answer.”

“Do you mind if I tape this?”

“Yes, I do mind,” he replied.

“It’s only to make sure I get the quotes right.”

“I’ll speak slowly,” Stride said.

JoLynn smiled and leaned way back in the chair. She grabbed a hotel pen and chewed on it thoughtfully. She wiggled her toes on the bed. “You really are interesting. Dean is a good choice to play you.”

“How well do you know him?”

“Dean? Pretty well. I’ve been to their place in Captiva a few times. He and Mo are about as open as celebrities get. They make my job easy.”

“He doesn’t have any secrets?” Stride asked. “I thought people want strong men with flaws.”

JoLynn’s pale eyes saw right through him. “Just who’s interviewing whom, Lieutenant?”

He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with your work as a cop. I heard you went off a bridge a few years ago during a fight with a killer. You almost died.”

“True.”

“That’s pretty amazing. Did you think about quitting?”

“I thought about it on the way down,” Stride said.

“Funny. Is that how you deflect serious things? With jokes?”

“Going off that bridge nearly destroyed my life in a lot of ways. So no, there’s nothing funny about it.”

“You’ve had failures in your career, right? Criminals you haven’t caught? Mistakes you’ve made?”

“Plenty.”

“How do you deal with regrets? How do you let your failures go?”

“I never let them go,” Stride said. “As soon as you do that, you run the risk of making the same mistake again. The trick is learning to live with them. I’m still working on that.”

“Was the Art Leipold case a success or a failure? I mean, you caught him, but three women died before you did.”

“Obviously, it was both.”

“You’d known Art ever since you were a young detective, right? He reported on some of your earliest cases. And you never once suspected he was the killer?”

“No, I never did.”

“How did that change you?” she asked.

“Well, for one thing, I learned not to trust reporters.”

“There you go again,” JoLynn said. “Making jokes. It’s like a defense mechanism, huh? What about your personal life? Your job must take a toll. You’ve been married three times.”

“I don’t think I like where this is going,” Stride told her.

“Your first wife, Cindy, died. Then you married a Duluth teacher, but that only lasted three years. The people I’ve interviewed say you don’t talk about that marriage much. Is it because it ended when you cheated on her with the detective you’re married to now? Serena?”

Stride stood up. “Okay. We’re done.”

“But then you cheated on Serena, too, right? Before the two of you got married? I heard you slept with your Chinese partner.”

He headed for the hotel room door, but JoLynn’s legs blocked him where they were propped on the bed. “Let me through,” he told her.

“I’m not trying to roast you, Lieutenant. I just want the whole story.”

“I told you, the interview’s over. Move your legs.”

“What’s with the girl? Cat? That must have raised some eyebrows, huh? A teenage prostitute moving in with one of the city’s top cops.”

He knew she was baiting him. And she was good at it. She wanted him to fly off the handle, to say something he’d regret. Or worse, he would do what he really wanted and physically throw her out of his way. He pushed down the anger he felt and kept his voice calm and cold.

“Move. Your. Legs.”

JoLynn shrugged in resignation. She turned sidewise, and he headed for the door. He threw it open and marched into the hallway. As the door slammed shut, he heard the reporter calling after him in a sunny voice.

“See you in the papers, Lieutenant!”

In the parking lot outside the Ritz, Maggie found that she and Cab had twin Corvettes. She’d rented a yellow one. His was candy-red with an odd personalized license plate: catcha.

“CATCHA?” she asked. “Is that the guy who gets balls from the pitcha?”

Cab smiled as he held the passenger door open so that she could climb inside. He was elegantly polite. “Actually, my colleagues on the police gave me a nickname that followed me for a while. Catch-a-Cab. I moved around a lot. Never stayed in one place for more than a year or two.”

“You’ve been in Florida for a while, haven’t you?”

“Yes, I guess I’ve settled down. Hence the license plate. I try to embrace the worst things people say about me. And it’s not like I can complain about nicknames, because I’m notorious for coming up with them myself.”

“You give people nicknames?” Maggie asked.

“I know; it’s not my most appealing trait. I get it from my mother. She referred to Lala Mosqueda as Wawa from the moment we started dating. She knew that it drove Lala crazy.”