herself; she felt a pang of jealousy. She put the photos back, not wanting to look anymore. She felt as if she had intruded on something sacred.
“You okay?” she asked.
Jonny looked lost. He didn’t share his memories easily. Serena had made it a point never to push him, because she had spent years dealing with the ghosts in her own past, and she knew that you couldn’t open up about them on anyone else’s time. Every now and then, he opened a window to her. Only a crack. Only when he was ready.
He lay back, propping himself up on his palms. When he looked up into the shadows of the high ceiling, she saw dark stubble on his face. For a man in his late forties, he was fit and strong. His stomach was taut. He worked out ferociously, as she did. It was only a stall, of course. Age was catching up to both of them, in their skin, their eyes, their muscles, their hair, and their bodies.
“Did I ever tell you about the day I found out Cindy had cancer?” he murmured.
“No, you didn’t.”
She could almost see his mind traveling back, retrieving the memory from among the cobwebs. She knew she was about to learn something important.
“I was investigating a girl’s disappearance,” he told her. “You remember the Kerry McGrath case? I was working on it sixteen hours every day. Cindy had been having unusual pain and vaginal bleeding, and so she had an MRI scheduled. I was supposed to go with her, but I totally forgot. She had to go alone. I didn’t get home until nearly midnight, and I never even remembered the appointment. She was sitting on the bed, smiling at me. This fragile smile, like glass. I didn’t notice. I was talking about the investigation, going on and on, and Cindy just smiled at me.”
“Oh, Jonny,” Serena said softly.
“It was like I never took a breath, you know? I was so caught up in it. And then finally, I looked at her, and I still didn’t get it. I didn’t have a clue what was wrong. So she said, still smiling, ‘It’s not good, baby.’ Just like that. Her smile broke up into little pieces, and I knew. I knew what was coming. I knew that every plan we had made for the future had just evaporated. I looked at this little jewel of mine on the bed, and I watched her start sobbing, and I knew I was going to lose her.”
His voice caught. He closed his eyes.
Serena felt tears on her cheeks.
“I am so sorry,” she said.
He exhaled a long, slow breath. “No, I’m sorry. This isn’t fair to you.”
“You don’t have to keep things from me,” Serena told him. “It took me a long time to be vulnerable around you. I was so busy protecting myself that I forgot that you had demons of your own.”
“It’s this case. It’s brought it all back.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I don’t know. I spent years getting over Cindy. Now I feel like the stitches have been ripped open.”
Serena wondered whether to say anything. “Is it making you question things?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Me.”
She saw his face cloud over.
“Don’t think that,” he said. “That’s not it at all.”
She thought he was trying to convince himself.
“There are days when I feel like I’m competing with a ghost,” she admitted. “Someone who’s always perfect, who’s always young.”
“There’s no competition. I apologize if I ever made you feel that way.”
“No, this is my problem, not yours.”
“It’s not that this case makes me miss Cindy any more than I do already,” Stride told her. “I always will, you know that. The hard part is that I’m learning things that make me question my whole life. Cindy was keeping secrets from me. I never would have thought that was possible.”
He told her about meeting Tish on the beach and about everything she had shared with him. He gestured at the boxes and said, “I’ve been through all of Cindy’s old papers. There isn’t a word about Tish anywhere. She was hiding something, and for some reason, she decided not to share it with me. I don’t understand.”
“Don’t be too quick to believe what Tish tells you,” Serena warned him. “This woman has her own agenda. I’m worried that she’s playing with your head, Jonny. I don’t know what her game is, but I don’t like it.”
“If she wanted to get me hooked, I’m hooked,” Stride said. “All I can do is keep following the trail.”
“Just don’t start doubting your past because of her. Maybe there’s a reason Cindy never mentioned Tish to you. Maybe Tish is lying.”
Stride nodded. “I know. I thought about that, too, but there’s a casualness in how she talks about Cindy. I really think they knew each other. She may be lying about other things, but not about that.”
Serena wasn’t convinced. “I think you should let this case go.”
“You’re probably right, but I can’t.”
“You’re not going to get the satisfaction you want. Pat Burns is right, and you know it. This case isn’t going to trial unless someone decides to confess, which isn’t going to happen. So exactly what do you hope to accomplish?”
Stride began to gather up the leftovers from Cindy’s life and put them back in their boxes. He handled each item delicately, as if it were an antique that might break apart in his hands if he was too rough. “I’m not sure.”
He reached inside one of the boxes and extracted a leather-bound Bible, its cover rubbed and smooth. With a puff of his lips, he blew dust off it. Stride turned it over in his hands and then flipped through the tissue-thin pages. The corners were worn and well thumbed.
“Did that belong to Cindy?” Serena asked.
“Her father.”
He tried to remember a time when he had seen William Starr without this Bible in his hand. It was always there, propping him up like a crutch.
“Cindy was different after he died,” he said.
“We all are.”
Stride nodded, but he didn’t put the Bible down. “This was something else. I saw a change in her. Back then, I thought it was grief, but now I realize it was more than that. It was Tish.”
26
Maggie stopped in the town of Gary on Saturday afternoon to visit Clark Biggs, but the house was empty. His truck was gone. She left a handwritten note wedged inside the screen door and used a cell phone to leave a message on his answering machine. She was worried about him. This was the worst time, in the days after a child died. More than once, she had witnessed a double tragedy, when a child was killed and a parent committed suicide soon after.
At the highway, she turned south toward Fond du Lac, rather than heading north to the city. It was her day off, but she wanted to go back to the park where Mary Biggs had died. There was nothing more she could learn from the scene, but she often returned to places where crimes had occurred, as if echoes of what had happened, or what the victim saw, could still make their way into her brain. It was superstition, but she believed in it. It was also the perfect day to wander on the trails near the St. Louis River.
