Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

Serena turned around slowly. “Excuse me?”

“Cat. Tell her I said thanks.”

“For what?”

“For saving me.”

“I never said Cat did anything at all,” Serena replied.

“You didn’t have to. I know she was there. Somewhere in my head, I can see her out on the roof. Cat on the roof; that’s pretty funny when you think about it.”

“Aimee, if you remember something — if you know what really happened—”

“I don’t,” Aimee insisted. “I already told you, I don’t remember a thing. I just know she was there.”

“Jonathan Stride, meet Cab Bolton,” Maggie told him.

Stride shook hands with the tall blue-eyed detective, whose linen suit and loud purple tie looked in perfect shape despite a three-hour plane ride and the long drive from the Minneapolis airport. It was hard to imagine this man as a former homicide investigator. Cab’s gelled blond hair and diamond earring looked better suited to a Miami nightclub than to a grubby police conference room filled with paper coffee cups and pizza boxes. Stride felt as if the entire city had been invaded by aliens, first from Hollywood, now from Florida. Their knowledge of Minnesota probably began and ended with Fargo .

“Welcome to Duluth, Cab,” Stride told him. “Cold enough for you up here?”

As if Cab could read his mind about Fargo , the man replied with a nonchalant smile, “You betcha.”

“I appreciate your making the trip. Maggie says you know Dean Casperson a lot better than we do, and right now we could use all the help we can get. Casperson thinks we can’t touch him.”

“He’s probably right,” Cab replied. The man didn’t hide his directness, and Stride liked that. “Casperson has been at this a long time without a whiff of suspicion. He’s not afraid of us.”

“Well, maybe you can help us even the odds,” Stride said.

“I will if I can, Lieutenant, but the detective you really needed on this case was Peach Piper.”

“I know this is personal for you. I’m sorry about Ms. Piper.”

Cab tilted his head in thanks without saying anything more. Stride could see that he was open about some things but not about grief.

They all took their seats around the conference table. Stride. Serena. Guppo. Maggie. And Cab Bolton. Maggie and Cab sat next to each other, and Stride sensed an unusual dynamic between them. It was as if Maggie had one foot in Duluth and one foot in Cab’s more glamorous Florida world. Serena obviously sensed it, too. She studied them across the table and made an under-her-breath comment that Stride missed.

He grabbed a square of Sammy’s pizza from the box on the table and popped the tab on a can of Coke. “So where do we stand?” Stride asked them.

“This won’t come as a surprise,” Serena began, “but Aimee Bowe has nothing to say about an attempted assault by Dean Casperson. She claims not to remember a thing about what happened at his house. Plus, she says she took the drugs herself. So she put Casperson completely in the clear.”

“Do you believe her?” Stride asked. “Could our — witness — have misinterpreted what was going on between them?”

Serena shook her head. “I don’t think so. Aimee’s lying. Whatever she does or doesn’t remember, she simply won’t implicate Casperson. She thinks it’s career suicide.”

Cab interjected from across the table: “This has been part of Casperson’s playbook for years. He exploits young actresses. He figures they owe him something for helping their careers. According to my mother, it’s an open secret in Hollywood but no one wants to say anything on the record.”

“And his wife is living in denial about all of it,” Maggie added. “Mo wouldn’t hear a thing against Dean. To her, he walks on water despite his infidelity. She puts all the blame on the actresses, not on him. They’re all just manipulative bitches trying to get ahead.”

“Rochelle Wahl wasn’t an actress,” Stride said. “She was a fifteen-year-old girl. Is that part of his pattern?”

“The underage part?” Cab said. “No. But Haley Adams wasn’t an actress, and neither were the other women who were murdered when Casperson was filming in various cities. He just likes young, beautiful women. If Rochelle was attractive, Casperson would have put the moves on her. He also would have been terrified once he found out how old she was. If there’s one thing that could destroy his public reputation, it’s having sex with an underage girl. Fans don’t have a lot of tolerance for that, even with superstars.”

“Do we have anything more that could actually tie Rochelle to Casperson? Have we found anybody who saw her at Casperson’s place?”

“Nobody will admit it,” Serena told him, “but I found circumstantial evidence that she was there. I reviewed the medical examiner’s report about the contents of her stomach. She ate sushi the evening before she died. Including uni, which you’re not going to find among the California rolls at Super 1.”

“Uni?” Stride asked.

“Sea urchin gonads,” Cab added helpfully.

Stride repeated that phrase very slowly. “Sea... urchin... gonads.”

“Yes, really quite good if you can get past the texture,” Cab said. “It has sort of a custard consistency. Imagine a saltwater flan.”

Guppo took a look at Stride’s face, which was a mask of disbelief, and smothered a laugh.

“Anyway, nobody flagged it at the time, because the death didn’t look suspicious,” Serena went on, “but I checked with the catering company that did the party at Casperson’s place. They had a whole table of sushi set up. Including sea urchin.”

“Which isn’t enough on its own to prove anything,” Stride said.

“Exactly. For now, the only other evidence we have is what Curt Dickes told me. He saw a girl who matched Rochelle’s physical characteristics getting into a car with John Doe outside the party. Unfortunately, he couldn’t identify her.”

“Plus, it’s Curt,” Stride added. “Not everyone’s favorite witness.”

“Yeah, that, too,” Serena said.

“So what’s your theory about Peach?” Cab asked them. “How did she fit into this? She was only there to keep an eye on Casperson and see if she could get evidence of his sexual assaults.”

“Well, she was watching the house on the Saturday night when Rochelle Wahl died,” Stride said. “If she saw Rochelle and John Doe together — and then saw the news about Rochelle’s death — she may have put it together and started digging into it. If that got back to Casperson, he would know he had a big problem.”

Cab nodded. His mouth was a grim line.

“Have we found out anything more about John Doe?” Stride asked.

Maggie pushed a manila folder across the table. “We still have no direct ties to Casperson, but the coincidences keep piling up. We already have John Doe linked to Peach’s murder and the murder of Haley Adams in Florida. Cab also identified at least five other murders or disappearances of young women in areas where Casperson was filming. One of those was a woman who vanished in Nashville. The Tennessee police had a witness who saw a man waiting in a car near where the woman was last seen, and they had a police artist draw a description. Guess who it looks like?”

Stride opened the folder. The artist’s sketch inside was a perfect likeness of the John Doe who died in the car accident on Lavaque Road. Right down to the black cowboy hat.

“But we can’t identify him?” Stride asked. “No actual name? No background?”

“No; he’s still a ghost.”

“What about John Doe’s local contact in Duluth? They were communicating by burner phone.”