Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

In fact, Stride couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a Dean Casperson movie, but he knew that the expected thing to do with famous people was to stroke their egos. He’d met dozens of actors and singers at Duluth events over the years, and most of them were insecure about their fame.

But not Casperson.

The gleam in the actor’s eyes let Stride know that Casperson was well aware that he was being flattered. Obviously, Casperson didn’t need anyone pretending to be starstruck around him.

“That’s kind of you to say, Lieutenant, but all I do is go out and read lines that other people give me. It’s people like you that are the heroes. Police officers. Firefighters. Soldiers. You do the real work.”

Stride smiled, because he knew he was being flattered right back. He was cynical enough to wonder whether Casperson was sincere or simply practiced at saying the right things to strangers.

He sized up the man who was playing him in the movies. Casperson was smaller in real life than he appeared on the big screen. Stride was over six feet tall, and Casperson was at least four inches shorter. The actor was several years older than Stride, but he had the Hollywood ability to appear years younger than he was. At fifty-five, he could have passed for forty. Casperson’s hair was whatever color and style the movie needed it to be. In this case, it was much like Stride’s: wavy, unkempt, and laced with gray. Otherwise, the two men looked nothing like each other. Stride had a weathered face that was like a map of every winter he’d experienced. Casperson’s face featured a strong chin, a sharp nose with a bulb at the end, and arresting sky-blue eyes.

“Are you enjoying Duluth?” Stride asked.

“I am, thanks. You have some of the friendliest people around here that I’ve ever met. I guess that makes up for my balls feeling like ice cubes.”

Stride laughed. “Yeah, welcome to January. Where are you staying while you’re in town?”

“I rented a little place from one of your docs. It’s an area called Congdon Park, I think. Nice. Feels like going back in time. Several of the cast members found places over there.”

Stride doubted that any home Casperson had found in Congdon Park was a little place. More likely, it was a sprawling brick estate from the city’s glamour days in the previous century.

“We should have a drink sometime,” Casperson went on, flashing his grin again. “In fact, we’re having a party for the cast and crew this evening at one of the lakefront restaurants. You should come.”

“Thanks, but we’re in the middle of an investigation right now.”

Casperson squeezed Stride’s arm in a solid grip. “Sure, of course. The job comes first. Enough small talk; you’re a busy man. I appreciate your coming over here so quickly. We’re all worried about Haley.”

Stride cocked his head in confusion. “Who?”

“Haley. Our intern. Aren’t you here about her?”

“Sorry, I’m not.”

When Casperson realized that Stride didn’t know what he was talking about, the actor’s blue eyes shot to Chris Leipold. In that instant, Stride could see an angry flash of the man’s power. It was like watching a tiger and realizing that he could eat you whenever he wanted.

“Didn’t you call him, Chris?” Casperson asked.

Chris wilted in front of the star. “No. We’re still checking around. We didn’t want to push the panic button prematurely.”

“What’s going on?” Stride asked. “Who’s Haley?”

Casperson turned his attention back to Stride, and there was concern in his eyes. “Haley Adams. She’s a local film student who’s been interning with us. She was supposed to be working with my costar, Aimee Bowe, but Haley hasn’t shown up at the set for the last two days. That’s not like her. We’ve had people looking for her ever since, but we haven’t had any luck. She’s missing.”

“I checked the apartment in Hermantown where John Doe was staying,” Maggie told Stride as she climbed into the passenger seat of his Ford Expedition. “He was paid up for the rest of the month, but it looks like he decided to leave early. The room was empty, and we found a suitcase in the trunk when we dug the Impala out of the snowbank.”

“What was in the suitcase?” Stride asked.

“Clothes. That’s all. No personal effects.”

“Was there anything else in the trunk?”

“Like a body?” Maggie asked. “No, he didn’t make it that easy for us. No body, no blood. But I don’t think he was out in the woods doing target practice with his Glock in the middle of a winter storm.”

“Did he leave anything behind at the apartment?” Stride asked.

“Nothing. I mean nothing . We didn’t find so much as a strand of hair in the room. He bleached everything. He even cleaned the drain traps in the sink and shower. This guy was a pro. If that deer hadn’t clocked him, he would have disappeared without a trace.”

Stride frowned. They had an unidentified dead man with a gun who’d taken pains to leave no evidence behind of who he was or why he was in Duluth. John Doe had all the hallmarks of a paid assassin.

And now they had a missing girl, too.

He was parked on Third Avenue in the Central Hillside area, across the street from the apartment of Haley Adams. He wanted to know whether Haley had any connections to John Doe.

“So who was this guy?” Stride asked.

Maggie shook her head. “We still have no clue about his real identity. I had one of the uniforms drive the DNA and fingerprint samples down to the FBI office in the Cities, along with the Glock. I sweet-talked the Gherkin to see if she could expedite a search through their databases.”

Stride’s eyebrows arched. “Sweet talk? You and Gayle?”

“Hey, we’re friends now.”

He suspected that was an exaggeration. Gayle Durkin was an FBI agent and Duluth native who’d worked with his team during the marathon bombing the previous summer. Maggie, who wasn’t known for her love of the feds, had nicknamed her the Gherkin, and the name had followed Gayle ever since. Maggie thought it was funny. Gayle didn’t.

Maggie was an acquired taste for most people. She was full of sharp edges, and she had almost no life outside work. Stride had hired her nearly twenty years earlier, when she was a young, way-too-formal Chinese immigrant with a criminology degree from the University of Minnesota. She’d loosened up and developed a tart tongue over the years. She’d also nursed a romantic crush on Stride for most of their time together. They’d had a short-lived affair a few years earlier, and Stride still regretted the damage it had caused, like a Lake Superior storm tearing up the boardwalk. The affair had driven Serena out of his life for months, and the inevitable breakup had wounded Maggie much more than she’d let on. Her bravado hid a fragile soul, which Stride knew better than anyone.

In the aftermath, Maggie finally had moved past her feelings for him, but she was still a disaster when it came to relationships. She’d been dating Troy Grange, the head of security at the Duluth Port, for the past eighteen months, but at Christmastime, Troy and Maggie had crashed and burned. She still hadn’t told anyone the details of what had happened.

“What about the woods on Lavaque Road near the crash site?” Stride asked. “Any luck searching there?”

Maggie shook her head. “Guppo’s been leading teams all day. If John Doe hid a body up there before the accident, we haven’t found it. But that’s like finding a needle in a haystack. We’re using dogs, but the snow’s not helping.”

“Okay. Let’s see if Haley’s apartment tells us anything.”

Stride got out of the Expedition. It was already night. Darkness fell like a stone during Duluth winters. So did the temperature as soon as the sun went down. The snow had stopped, but the wind lanced his face like the slash of a knife. Maggie grumbled and cursed under her breath. They tucked their chins into their coats as they crossed the street.