“You find yourself attractive enough for both of us.”
“There aren’t many women who get to reject me twice.”
Tish felt a shiver of fear. “What does that mean?”
“Not what you think. I just mean you’ve managed to deflate my ego, not to mention my manhood, in two separate decades.”
“You’ll live.”
“I already told you that I don’t take rejection well. It just makes me more determined.”
“Do I need to scream?”
“Not at all. I wouldn’t dream of ravishing a woman who doesn’t want me to ravish her.”
“Good.”
“I am going to kiss you, though,” Peter said. “I think you owe me that.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“So slap my face if you want.”
He leaned across the sofa. Tish stared into his eyes and didn’t turn away. His lips were rough as they moved against hers. She felt nothing but responded as if she did. She put her hands around his neck and held him to her. He smelled like a man. She felt his fingers stroke her breast with a feathery touch, testing the waters. It was now or never.
Tish bit down on Peter’s fat lower lip. Hard. Warm blood sprayed onto their faces, and she mashed her cheek against him and held on tight. Peter bellowed in pain and fought to disentangle himself. He shoved her away and leaped to his feet. His chin was a messy cherry river dripping onto his shirt.
“You crazy bitch!” he shouted.
“Get the hell away from me, Peter,” Tish told him calmly.
He ripped open the guest room door. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”
Tish watched him go as she dabbed smears of blood from her face onto the sleeve of her white dress.
She was thinking:
Two hours later, a noise woke Tish out of a dead sleep in her condominium.
She bolted up in bed, the blanket bunching at her waist. She listened to sounds from the open window, where surf slapped at the base of the bluff. The air horn of a truck blared on the freeway. That was all.
She climbed out of bed and grabbed her robe from the closet. Her white dress was wrapped in plastic on the shelf.
She stopped. Waited.
A few seconds later, she heard it again. Sharp and musical. From somewhere outside came the sound of glass breaking.
Tish ran into the main room of the condo and hunted for her phone. The room was black with shadows. She was alone, no one lying in wait for her, no one charging her out of the corners. She didn’t hear the noise again.
A car peeled away on the street, its loud engine growing faint as it roared toward the curve leading back to the city. Tish crept to the front door and peered through the spyhole. Outside, the sidewalk and street were quiet. She opened the door carefully and watched tendrils of fog drift through the glow of the streetlight. When she stepped outside, sweat began to grow on her skin like a fungus.
Nothing moved.
The pavement scratched her bare feet. She took tentative steps toward the curb. When she saw her rental car, parked near the trees, she ran.
Half of the windshield was caved in, the other half frosted with starbursts of white glass. Scissor-sharp popcorn littered the seats. Jammed between the spokes of the steering wheel was a wooden baseball bat.
23
The asphalt in the parking lot of the delivery company where Finn Mathisen worked was wet, with steam rising from pools of water. Rain showers had dodged in and out of the city all day, leaving behind a moldy smell of worms. The humid air made Stride’s black T-shirt cling to his skin, and the charcoal sport coat he wore over it felt damp. A line of sweat traced his forehead. It was Friday night. He wanted to go home and jump in the shower, but Finn was an hour late returning from his delivery route.
The parking lot was filled with cars left by delivery drivers for the day. Vans and trucks backed up to docks around him, loading and unloading. The company substation was less than a mile from the Duluth airport, making it easy to feed packages to outbound flights. He heard the thunder of a jet overhead, which he knew was the evening Northwest flight from the Twin Cities. It would suck up passengers and cargo and then roar back south.
A dirty yellow van rumbled off the highway. Stride caught a glimpse of the driver and recognized the narrow face and shaved head of Finn Mathisen. Finn didn’t see him. Stride waited while Finn backed up his truck to an open dock and watched him clamber out of the truck, climb the steps of the platform, and disappear inside the building. Even from twenty yards away, Stride could see that Finn’s uniform was soiled from a day in the heat. These were the days in Duluth that leached away everyone’s energy.
Stride waited half an hour before Finn strutted out of the building’s front door. He had showered and changed and was now wearing cutoffs that made his legs look like matchsticks and a gray tank top with gaping sleeve holes. He wore old sneakers with no socks.
“Finn,” Stride called.
He pushed off his Expedition and met Finn where the sidewalk ended and the parking lot began. Finn was three inches taller than Stride, but he looked as if he would blow away when the wind came off the lake.
“Who are you?” Finn asked. His eyes danced nervously.
Stride introduced himself. When Finn heard the word “police,” he shuffled his weight from one foot to the other and stared over Stride’s shoulder at the row of parked cars as if he wanted to bolt. Mint breathed out of Finn’s mouth like fire from a dragon.
“You got a date tonight, Finn?” Stride asked.
“Huh? No. What do you mean?”
“You’ve got sweet breath. Like you brushed your teeth fifty or sixty times.”
“I have halitosis, and I need to use those breath strips,” Finn said.
Stride nodded. “It’s funny, when traffic cops smell mint, they immediately think DUI. You wouldn’t be late because you stopped for a couple cold ones at a bar, would you?”
Finn glanced back over his shoulder at the company door. “Hell, no.”
“I’ve got a Breathalyzer in the car,” Stride told him. “You want to have a go at it?”
“I wasn’t drinking!”
“Okay, Finn. Whatever you say. I have some questions for you.”
“Yeah, my sister told me you came by the house. She said you were asking about Laura’s murder.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. It was thirty years ago. It was a shitty time in my life.”
“Is your life any better now?” Stride asked, eyeing the man from top to bottom. Tish was right. He looked as if he were dying.
