Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

There were no vehicles parked outside. The only sign of life was Lori’s footprints, walking up to the front door.

She had a sense of Aimee’s voice in her head, stronger than ever.

Save me. Hurry.

Serena listened for the sirens of backup, but the morning was dead quiet. Even running, Jonny was five minutes away. She didn’t know how much time Aimee had left, huddled in a cage in the cold. All she knew was that Aimee was inside, and so was Lori Fulkerson.

She’d already guessed the truth before Jonny called. She didn’t believe in coincidences. When she reached the summit of the spur road, she’d recognized where she was. Jonny had taken her here once before, when he’d told her the story of Mort Greeley. That was how he confessed his mistakes, by going back to the places where they’d happened, as if the locations were sacred. Not even fifty yards away from Mort Greeley’s old house, Serena could see another fenced gray house with two cars out front and smoke rising from a chimney against the cloudy sky. Those were the only two homes on the wooded road.

More than twenty years earlier, that house had been the home of an eight-year-old boy who’d been abducted at the Duluth zoo. Eventually, all the suspicion in the crime had landed — falsely — on the man who lived next door.

Mort Greeley.

Lori’s father.

With Art Leipold leading the way, the police and media had crucified and ostracized Mort Greeley until he took his own life.

Serena closed on the house. The curtains were shut on every window. Sprays of snow blew off the peaked roof. She followed the footprints to the front door, and she slid her pistol into her hand. The butt was warm against her cold fingers. She tried the knob of the door; it was open. She pushed it ajar and shouted into the house.

“Lori Fulkerson! It’s Serena Stride from the Duluth Police. We know about your father. We know everything. It’s time to give up. It’s time to put an end to this.”

There was no answer from inside. She swung the door open with her boot, and the light from the gray day was the only light in the house. With her gun in front of her, she crept inside. The icy air couldn’t be more than a few degrees above freezing. The light switches didn’t work, and she took a small flashlight from her pocket, throwing a dim beam into the foyer. She listened. No one moved, and no one spoke.

“Lori Fulkerson!” she shouted again.

The house was quiet except for her footsteps on the loose panels of the hardwood floor. She made her way into the living room, shining her light into every corner. Dust floated like summer gnats in the beam of the flashlight. The room was furnished, but all the furniture was covered in white sheets. Flowered red wallpaper peeled from the ceiling in strips. The house had a musty, shut-up smell. She next went to the dining room, which looked like a room for a family of ghosts in a haunted house. The oak chairs were neatly positioned around the dining-room table, which was arranged with white linen place mats, as if dinner would be served soon. There was a bureau on the east wall, still stocked with wedding crystal and china.

In here, time had stood still. In here, Mort Greeley had never been accused, never lost his family and his job, and never shot himself in an upstairs bedroom.

The deeper she went into the house, the darker it got. The kitchen was empty. So was the main-floor bedroom. Serena kept searching, making her way into a long hallway. Her flashlight lit up a wooden floor, beige-painted walls, and a back staircase leading to the second story. She headed that way, swinging the light back and forth. A mouse scurried.

At the base of the stairs, she pointed the light upward.

It landed on the face of Lori Fulkerson.

Lori’s face was pale and expressionless in the glow of the flashlight. Her curly hair looked flat. She sat on the top step in a sweatshirt and khakis. Her arms were at her sides, and her right hand was curled tightly around a gun. Serena swung her own pistol to point at Lori’s chest.

“Place your weapon on the step, Lori, and then put your hands on top of your head.”

Lori paid no attention to her.

“I used to live here,” she said.

“Lori, I need you to put the gun down right now.”

“It’s been like this for years. Abandoned. My mother owned it, but she couldn’t sell it. No one wanted it.”

“The gun , Lori. Put it on the step.”

“Aimee’s up here,” Lori said, gesturing behind her. “I know that’s what you want. She’s in the box.”

“Lori, it’s time to end this,” Serena told her. “Too many people died for nothing. Including your father. Put down the gun. Let me come up there and help Aimee.”

“I said too much,” Lori went on, as if Serena hadn’t even spoken. “I heard the things she was saying on camera. I knew everyone would realize what I’d done. I knew the truth would come out. But it was more than that. It was like she already knew . I could feel her inside my head. She could see everything I remembered. I needed to stop her, to shut her out.”

“It’s over, Lori.”

“I know. Secrets always come out eventually, don’t they? You can’t run away from them forever. But I can still feel her watching me. It’s driving me crazy. I need to get her out of my head.”

Serena heard noise behind her as someone else entered the house. Then a voice shouted her name. It was Jonny.

“Lori’s armed,” she called back to him. “Stay back; don’t come any closer.”

But he didn’t listen. He came even faster. She heard footsteps, and a few seconds later he was there with her in the hallway. He was directly at her side, the two of them shoulder to shoulder. Above them, Lori tensed at the top of the stairs, with two flashlights trained on her now. Her eyes glistened with tears and lonely fury.

“Save me, Jonathan Stride,” she whispered with bitter irony.

Serena kept her eyes on the gun. If it moved, she was ready to fire.

“Lori, I know you blame me for what happened to your father,” Jonny told her. “That’s okay. I was a young cop, but I should have done more to help Mort. I knew what Art and my boss were doing was wrong. I thought your father was guilty — I was convinced he took that boy at the zoo — but he didn’t deserve to be lynched the way he was. It ruined his life, and it was all a terrible mistake. I’m sorry. I really am.”

“My mother took me away from him,” Lori murmured. “She took me away from my father and didn’t even leave a note. She left him alone. I found out later he sent me letters, but I never got to see them. I wrote him letters, but she never mailed them. My father thought I hated him, like everyone else. He thought I’d abandoned him. My bedroom was upstairs, you know. Just down the hallway. That’s where he shot himself. In my bedroom.”

Jonny nodded. “I know.”

“All he did was go to work that day,” Lori went on. “He went to the zoo. He never even saw that boy. And you made everyone in the city think he was guilty. That he was a murderer and a pedophile.”

Jonny spoke softly, trying to reach her. “You hate me. I understand that. I deserve what you feel toward me. But those women didn’t do anything to you or your father. Aimee didn’t do anything. She’s innocent.”

Lori didn’t seem to hear him. She glanced down the hallway, as if she could see inside the box that was down there and see all the women she’d imprisoned in the past.

“I went to work with my father at the zoo sometimes,” Lori recalled. “He had to clean out the cages for the animals. I kept thinking how horrible it was to be trapped like that. I thought there was nothing you could do to anyone that was worse than that. To put them in a cage. I remember there was this little bird that used to hang out with one of the tigers. It flew around in the cage for days. It would land on the tiger’s head, like they were friends. My dad took me to see it, and I thought it was so cute. And then one day, as I was watching, the tiger simply killed the bird with one swipe of its paw and ate it. I couldn’t stop crying. But my dad told me that’s just what tigers do.”