Stride nodded. “After the fight, Laura ran toward the north beach.”
“Yes, I know. I followed her.”
“Did you go all the way to the beach? Did you see her there?”
“I did,” Dada said.
“What did you see?”
Dada smiled. “I already told you, Lieutenant. That girl had secrets.”
33
We’re never going to make it back to Minnesota tonight,” Maggie said.
They were an hour west of Fargo, seated on top of a park bench overlooking a boat launch that dipped into the waters of Lake Ashtabula. Immediately to their left was the concrete wall of the Baldhill Dam, which held back the Sheyenne River and created a narrow stretch of man-made lake. It was late afternoon. The air smelled of boat fuel and hamburgers. Jet Ski riders left wakes in the water. Nearby, in the camping area, children splashed and squealed along a strip of sand beach.
“Peter wants his plane back,” Serena replied.
“Yeah, but this guy could be out there fishing until the sun goes down.”
After leaving the Mathisen farm, they had stopped at police headquarters in Fargo, where their North Dakota colleagues helped them identify the man who had served as lead detective investigating the murder of Finn’s mother, Inger Mathisen. The detective, Oscar Schmidt, had retired from the force more than a decade earlier and relocated with his wife to a town called Valley City. Serena and Maggie tracked down the Schmidt home, where his wife pointed them north to Lake Ashtabula, Oscar’s favorite spot for fishing.
“You want to go in the water?” Serena asked.
Maggie tented her sunglasses and squinted at the park. “You mean skinny- dipping?”
“I mean it’s hot. Let’s roll up our pants and dip our feet.”
“You’re on.”
They left their shoes on top of the bench and folded the legs of their jeans above their calves. The sand on the beach was scorching, but the lake was cold when they stuck in their toes. They shuffled a few feet out until they were standing in eight inches of water.
“So is it a coincidence?” Serena asked. “Finn’s mother was beaten to death? Just like Laura?”
“No.”
“Do you believe the intruder story?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. I wonder why Oscar did.”
“That’s what we’ll ask him. Assuming he ever gets in off the lake.”
Serena lifted her chin toward the warm sun. Maggie finished a can of Diet Coke while they waited, checking her watch impatiently as half an hour passed. Finally, a fifteen-foot aluminum boat that had obviously seen many years of service put-putted toward the boat landing. At the stern, an old man with shaggy gray hair and a mustache that curled over his upper lip cut off the Evinrude motor and let the boat drift into the shallow water. He wore navy blue swimming trunks with white vertical stripes and was shirtless. His belly bulged like a basketball, but the rest of his skin was loose and leathery. He was small, no more than five feet five, and wore sunglasses. As Serena and Maggie watched, Oscar Schmidt climbed into the water, dragged the prow until it was nearly beached on the concrete ramp, and then tramped toward his red Chevy truck in flip-flops.
“Mr. Schmidt?” Maggie called. They splashed out of the water toward the boat landing.
He stopped with his hands on his hips. “That’s me,” he replied gruffly. “Who are you?”
Maggie introduced herself and Serena. “We’d like to take five minutes to talk about an old case of yours,” she said.
“Which case?”
“Inger Mathisen.”
Schmidt folded his sunglasses and shoved them into the pocket of his swimsuit. “I wondered if that one would ever come back and bite me in the ass.” He sighed and added, “Let me get the boat out, then we’ll talk.”
Ten minutes later, the boat was dripping in the parking lot, and Schmidt sat opposite Maggie and Serena on the park bench. His bushy hair was damp, and they smelled beer on his breath.
Serena angled her head toward the water. “How’d you do?”
“Finished off a six-pack, took a swim, didn’t catch a damn thing. Typical day. Tell you the truth, I don’t like fish much. Never have. Most of the time, I just throw them back, because otherwise my wife would want to cook them.”
“Nice place to retire,” Maggie said.
“Yeah, it’s not so bad, huh? We’ve got a trailer in Texas where we go during the winter. I’d stick around here if it were up to me, but my wife hates snow.”
“Tell us about the Mathisen case,” Serena said.
“Not much to tell. Isolated farm. Saturday night. Woman was asleep in bed. Somebody bludgeoned her to death.”
“You never caught the guy?”
Schmidt shook his head. “Nah, we had nothing. Figured it was some bastard who got off the interstate and was looking for cash. Probably surprised to find anybody in the house.”
“The farm was five miles off the freeway,” Serena said. “And not easy to find.”
Schmidt shrugged and chewed on a fingernail.
“Did you find reports of any similar incidents along the interstate route?” Maggie asked. “Maybe out of Montana or Minnesota? You can usually track these guys like pins on a map.”
“There were no other incidents that looked like a pattern crime,” Schmidt said. “We figured the guy got spooked.”
“Any sign of forced entry?” Serena asked.
“Out here? Nobody locks their doors.”
“Did anyone see or hear anything?” Serena asked.
“You saw the place. Not a neighbor for miles.”
“What about the boy?”
Schmidt rubbed his mustache. “Boy?”
“Finn Mathisen. Inger’s son.”
“He wasn’t home.”
Maggie leaned across the park bench. “No offense, Mr. Schmidt, but you’re not a farmer, so why don’t you quit shoveling the shit?”
Schmidt’s mustache twitched as he grinned. “I like you. Never much liked Orientals, but you’re smart. Easy on the eyes, too. You both are.”
“Why’d you think this case would bite you in the ass?” Maggie asked.
Schmidt glanced at his truck, and Serena thought he wanted to be home eating dinner. “Look, ladies, why cause problems for good people after so many years? Who the hell cares?”
“A few years after Inger was killed, a teenage girl was murdered in Duluth,” Serena said. “She was beaten with a baseball bat. Finn is a suspect.”
Schmidt frowned. “Well, shit.”
“So you want to give us the real story?”
“Hey, there was no evidence to prove that an intruder
