In the Dark aka The Watcher

Stride laughed. “It still is.”

Tish zipped up her leather jacket. The early evening breeze off the lake was cool. “I forgot that the summers aren’t hot here.”

“We’re counting on global warming,” Stride said. “In a few years, we’ll be the new Florida.”

“You sound cynical.”

“You can’t live your whole life in Duluth and not be a little cynical,” Stride said. “Everyone here is always looking for the next big thing, but no one wants to admit that our time is past. Back when you and I were growing up, shipping was already on the way out. Nothing ever really took its place. The politicians keep selling dreams, but most of us have learned to tune it out and get on with life.”

“There’s a big world out there,” Tish said.

“Yeah, well, don’t get me wrong. I love this place. I tried to move away once, and I had to come back.”

Tish nodded. “I know. I read up on you. You’ve been a cop your whole life. You’ve been in charge of the Detective Bureau for more than ten years, and you could probably be the police chief if you wanted, but you like it on the street. A couple of years ago, during an investigation into the disappearance of a teenage girl, you quit your job and followed a cop named Serena Dial to Las Vegas. That didn’t last long. A few months later, you were right back in Duluth, and Serena came with you.”

“Is this all research for your book?” Stride asked.

“Yes,” Tish admitted. “Plus, I was curious about you. I felt like I knew you through Cindy. I wondered what happened to you after she died.”

“Let’s make one thing clear,” Stride told her. “Anything I say is off the record. Okay? I only agreed to talk with you because you’re right. Laura’s death still bothers me. But nothing I tell you goes into any book unless I give you the green light.”

Tish frowned. “That ties my hands.”

“You’re right, it does. You probably don’t work with sources when you’re writing travel essays, but this is how it goes in the real world. If you want my help, then you’ll have to hope I say yes at the end of the day.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?” Tish asked.

“No.”

She threw the cigarette at her feet and crushed it. “I understand,” she said. “I was naive coming here, figuring you’d open up to me. I keep forgetting. Cindy knew me, but you didn’t.”

Stride said nothing. He didn’t know what to think about Tish. He didn’t hear any guile in her voice, but he didn’t believe that Cindy would have carried on a relationship with a woman from their teenage years and never told him about it. Even so, he found himself liking Tish. Maybe it was because she reminded him of Cindy, and maybe it was because he sensed that her passion about Laura wasn’t faked. This was about more than a book. This was personal to her. He wanted to know why.

“What can I do to make you trust me?” Tish asked.

“You can start by telling me your story,” Stride said.

“What else can I do?” she said, smiling.

He didn’t smile back.

Tish sighed and studied the hills of the city, where the streets climbed from the water like terraces on the face of a cliff. “You’re right, the city hasn’t changed much in thirty years. All the old buildings, all the old houses, are still there. I could close my eyes and be a kid again.”

Stride heard a tremor in her voice. “Is that not a good thing?”

“Not really. Most of the places I go, people complain about too much change. Nothing’s the way it used to be. I guess I expected Duluth to be different, too. I wasn’t ready for the memories to hit me in the face.”

He waited.

“Back then, I couldn’t wait to get out of Duluth,” Tish continued. “I left the city the day after I graduated from high school.”

“What year was that?”

“It was June of 1977, the month before Laura was killed. I moved to St. Paul, got a job, got an apartment. I never wanted to see Duluth again.”

“Why were you so anxious to get away?”

Tish hesitated. Stride watched her carefully, wondering if she was about to lie. He had interviewed suspects for years, and most of them got that same look on their faces when they made up a story. It was as if they needed those few seconds to play the lie out in their heads to see if it hung together. He expected a generic lie from Tish that didn’t tell him anything about her life. I was a kid. I was born to run. Something like that.

She surprised him.

“Look, I was screwed up, okay? My mom was killed when I was eleven. For the next few years, I bounced around the city in foster homes. I was an angry girl. I felt homeless. I don’t blame it on any of my foster parents. They did their best, and I didn’t make it easy for them.”

“What about your father?” Stride asked.

“He wasn’t in the picture. Mom got pregnant when she was only twenty-two. She sold perfume in a department store back then, so she met a lot of married men. When I was a kid, she told me that she dated a handsome Finnish sailor who came to the city one day on an ore boat. To me, that sounded romantic. She didn’t bother explaining the truth. It wasn’t until much later that I realized what a coward I had for a father.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry for me,” Tish said. “Mom was the one who had it tough. Being single and pregnant in the 1950s was like having the plague. She got run out of her church. Got fired from her job. She was out of work for months before she landed a teller position at a bank. We were always scratching to make ends meet. But she was great. Very proud. Very independent.”

“I’m sure it was hard to lose her.”

“It was.”

Stride knew a little of how she felt. He had felt homeless himself when his father died. He was sixteen. If he hadn’t been rescued when he met Cindy a few months later, he might have wound up a lost child, like Tish. Bitter. Lonely. Looking for escape.

“Anyway, I try not to dwell on it,” Tish said. “That’s just how it was. I’ve lived a pretty amazing life, and that wouldn’t have happened if I had had a normal childhood. We all pay our dues.”

“What did you do after you left the city?” Stride asked.

Tish leaned on the wall of the pier and stared down into the chocolate brown water. “If you’re running away from Duluth, St. Paul isn’t far enough to get away, so I decided to go someplace warmer. I went down to the Caribbean and did odd jobs, buzzing from island to island. Eventually, I wrote an article about my experiences, and I sold it to a travel magazine in the UK. That was what got me started. I began to do more articles, and I built relationships with other magazines around Europe. They started paying me to go all over the world, so I did.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was. I did it for a long time. Then I met someone, a photographer who worked with me on a piece from Tallinn in Estonia. We fell in love. That was how I wound up in Atlanta. We both got jobs at the Journal-Constitution. It was great for a while, but it didn’t work out. I mean, we’re still friends, but we realized after several years that we weren’t going to make it as lovers. So I started traveling again, but my heart just hasn’t been in it. That was when I decided to take some time off. When I did, I realized I was thinking a lot about Laura.”

“Laura died a long time ago,” Stride said.

“I know, but some wounds never really heal.” Tish slid a silver chain away from her neck and let it swish against the white silk of her blouse. She fingered a slim ring that dangled on the end of the