In the Dark aka The Watcher

but you could never strip them of their dignity and of their primal humanness. I think sometimes that the people who were most violent toward them, who were most afraid, were those who envied them their freedom.

To Stride, the book sounded like Dada’s story, including its time frame, which spanned the years from 1976 to 1978. When he ran an online search inside the book, however, he found no references to Duluth or Minnesota or to the events that summer. No mention of murder in the park. No mention of escaping by coal train. If Hubert Jones was Dada, he had left those days out of his journal.

Stride eyed the terminal escalators. In his mind, he relived the events by the railroad tracks and felt Dada swatting him away like a fly. He remembered the panicked wheezing in his lungs as he struggled for air and the wet misery of the mud and rain. He heard the crack of Ray’s wild shots. Saw Dada, on the train, growing smaller.

That girl had secrets.

Thirty yards away, Stride spotted Hubert Jones on the escalator.

The noise of the airport became a muffled roar in his brain, crowding out everything but the man gliding down the steps. He was huge, at least six feet six, and round like the mammoth trunk of an aging tree. He wore a dark suit, a starched white shirt with jeweled cuff links, and a bright tie. The colors of the tie, Stride realized, were the Rasta colors of green, gold, and red, just like in the beret that Dada had worn. Stride wondered if it was an inside joke, a little signal for him to recognize. When Jones swiveled his head, their eyes met across the concourse, and the big man’s thick lips curled upward into a broad smile.

At that moment, Stride knew. He knew for sure.

It was Dada.

For a heavy man, he moved with grace and quickness. At the bottom of the escalator, he reviewed the people pushing around him, as if he were wondering whether Stride had arranged a welcoming party of police and security. When he saw that he was safe, he stepped nimbly through the crowd, which parted for the giant man in its path. Stride got out of his chair to meet him. He didn’t like looking up to other men, and Jones was as intimidating as an ogre at the top of the beanstalk. Jones extended his hand, and Stride shook it. He felt intense strength in the man’s grip.

“I see you still have the scar,” Jones said, pointing at Stride’s face with a meaty finger. “I’m sorry about that.”

“My wife always said it was sexy,” Stride replied.

Jones laughed. It was the same booming laugh from long ago, like the villain on an old radio show.

Stride recognized the man’s voice. “You called me last night,” he said. “Not a friend of a friend.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why the ruse?”

“I didn’t know what kind of man you were, Lieutenant. For all I knew, you would clap me in leg irons if you got the chance. I wanted to hear your voice. I’ve always believed I could take the measure of a man by how he talks to me.”

“I passed the test?” Stride asked.

“Oh, I still wasn’t entirely sure whether you would surround me with a posse of Chicago’s finest. But I figured that the boy who stood up to me by the railroad tracks would consider it a point of pride to meet me alone. You haven’t changed, Lieutenant.”

Stride hated to admit it, but Jones was right. It would have been smarter to bring backup, but he had wound up making the same arrogant mistake he had made as a boy. Taking on this man by himself. “If I wanted to have you arrested, I could,” he said.

“You could, but I hope enough time has passed that you now believe again what you believed as a boy. I didn’t kill anyone. Wisdom comes with innocence and experience, Lieutenant, and it’s only the in-between time that causes us problems.”

Jones sat down on the opposite row of chairs and laid his fists on his knees. Stride took an unopened bottle of spring water by the cap from the seat next to him. He handed it to Jones, who grabbed it in his big hand.

“You must be dry after your flight,” Stride said.

“In fact, I am.” Jones undid the cap and drank down half the bottle. He recapped it and then said, “May I keep this until I finish it, or would you like your fingerprint sample back right now?”

Stride actually felt himself blushing. “Keep it,” he snapped.

Jones grinned and put the bottle on the floor.

“Why contact me after so long?” Stride asked. “Do you know about Tish Verdure and the book she’s writing about the murder?”

“I still have friends in the Rasta community,” Jones explained. “As you know, there was an article in the Duluth paper recently that rehashed the crime and mentioned that a Rasta vagrant was a suspect. It made the rounds on our Web sites, and someone finally sent me the article with a note that said, ‘Was this you?’ ”

“But why come forward now? I assumed you were dead. You were safe.”

“I thought long and hard, believe me, but I decided it was time to put that part of the past behind me. I confess I was also a little curious about you. The article mentioned that you were a Duluth detective, and I was surprised to find out that you were the same boy I confronted that night.”

“I looked up Dandelion Men on the Web,” Stride said. “You didn’t mention what happened to you in Duluth.”

Jones eased back into the chair. His girth filled the space, and his waist squeezed against the armrests. “Oh, I wanted to talk about Duluth, but I knew that people were still looking for me. It’s like being a bear loose in the city streets. They don’t just put it in a cage when they find it. They shoot it dead.”

“The cop who shot at you back then,” Stride said. “He was dirty. I thought you should know.”

“That was a dirty time.”

“Why did you choose that life?” Stride asked. “Why be a drifter?”

“I guess you could say I was appalled by modern life,” Jones said. “I felt disconnected. Only a boy can be quite so naive. Still, the community I found in the shadows was deeper and stronger than any I have found since. It was hard to leave it behind. Every now and then, I try to find the dandelion men again, but they’re an endangered species. Like feral animals whose habitat has been destroyed. They scamper away when I come close. I’m no longer from their world, you see.”

“You sound like you miss it,” Stride said.

Jones tugged at the lapels on his suit with a bemused smile. “I do. Sometimes I fantasize about disappearing again. It’s only a fantasy.”

“Tell me about Laura.”

“Laura?”

“The girl who was murdered.”

Jones folded his hands over his chest. “Yes, of course. I never knew her name until I saw that newspaper article. She was just a girl in the park.”

“All these years, I thought you killed her,” Stride said.

Jones nodded. “And now?”

“Now I’m not so sure. We have a new witness. Someone who says you rescued Laura instead of attacking her.”

“A witness,” Jones said. “Yes, someone else was in the woods that night. I never saw him, but I knew he was there. I smelled the cannabis he was smoking.”

Finn, Stride thought.

“There was another boy in the softball field,” Jones added. “He was the one who attacked Laura. I stopped him from harming her.”