through the neighborhood, past unlit houses and oak trees slumping like giants over the road. On Stinson Avenue, Finn turned diagonally toward the northeast, heading into wasteland behind the municipal airport. The road cut through cornfields and past the stinking smokestacks of the oil refinery. Clark felt the bump of railroad tracks under his tires.
After several miles, the road led into the East End neighborhood, not far from the main highway and the harbor basin. Clusters of houses built on open lots dotted both sides of the road. The blocks here were laid out in neat squares. Clark noticed the red lights on the RAV grow larger as Finn slowed down, and he braked, not wanting to get too close. Finn turned, and the lights disappeared. Clark cruised past the intersection and eyed the street on his right. He did a U-turn and swung into the street, driving slowly and peering at the road ahead. There were more trees here, like parkland. He saw a playground and an old fence surrounding twin tennis courts.
Two blocks ahead, he spotted brake lights. Clark slowed to a crawl. When he arrived at the intersection, he saw that the RAV had vanished. He drove several more blocks and then retraced his steps and turned onto the side street where he had last noticed the brake lights. There was a handful of cars parked on the street and in driveways, but no RAV. No Finn. He had been gathered up by the night.
“Where are you?” Clark murmured.
He followed the checkerboard of streets like a rat through a maze. Once, he noticed a RAV parked adjacent to a detached garage, but when he got closer, he realized the color was wrong. Sand, not silver. He kept driving, wondering how Finn had managed to lose him and whether the detour through the East End had been a ruse to throw off anyone who might be behind him. Clark worried that Finn had escaped to the highway and turned north or south, heading for a completely different destination.
But no.
There he was.
Clark eased around the next corner and saw Finn’s silver RAV shunted off the shoulder of the road under the umbrella shade of an elm tree. The lot was vacant and overgrown. Clark stopped, put the pickup truck in reverse, and backed around the corner. He turned off his engine and got out, leaving the baseball bat inside the truck. To the northwest, the sky lit up for an instant and then went dark. Lightning. Clark counted until the bass drum of thunder reached his ears, but he didn’t have to wait long. The storm was drawing near.
He used the closest house as cover, ducking in and out of the trees. When he was opposite the RAV, he crossed the open lot and approached the passenger side. The truck was empty. Finn was gone. Clark examined the neighborhood in every direction. He didn’t see Finn and didn’t hear anything other than the whoosh of quaking elm leaves and another, louder peal of thunder.
Clark pulled on the passenger door of the RAV. It was open. The overhead dome light stayed dark. He smelled the man inside the car; there was an odor of sweat and a stale aroma of fried food. He looked for street maps, photos, or notes, but the garbage on the floor mats of the truck didn’t help him. The glove compartment was locked, and Clark dug in his pants pocket and yanked out a pocket knife and forced it open. He found the sports section of the local newspaper inside, folded to reveal a photo of three girls on the Superior High School swim team. One girl’s face was circled in blue marker. A pretty blonde. He remembered what Maggie had told him, that this man didn’t simply happen on his victims by accident. He identified them. Studied them. Stalked them. He had a destination in mind, a specific house, a specific girl.
Clark read the caption with the girl’s name. Angela Tjornhom. But where did she live?
He closed the door and studied the nearby homes. He looked for squares of light, but the neighborhood was dark. He shifted away from the RAV, off the street and back into the shelter of the houses. For a big man, he moved quickly and quietly in the spongy grass. At the corner of each house, he looked for Finn crouching in the earth near a first-floor window. He used the lightning to illuminate the way.
Rain began a frenzied beating in the trees over his head. Where he came into open space, water slapped his skin and soaked him. In seconds, he was drenched, wiping his eyes so he could see. At the end of the street, he stood under the downpour, debating which way to turn. With each bursting floodlight in the sky, he tried to penetrate the gray sheets of rain protecting each backyard. Finn was nowhere to be found. Clark chose to go right, jogging now. He made his way to the end of the next block without coming upon Finn.
Then, through the blaze of another jagged track of lightning, he saw him. Finn was fifty yards away, standing in the cover of a shaggy evergreen, only steps from the rear corner window of a modest rambler. Clark crept closer, staying out of sight. Once, as if he could feel eyes upon him, Finn spun around. Had the lightning struck then, Clark would have been exposed, but instead, he stood shock still, invisible in the darkness. Finn stared right at him and didn’t see him. When he turned away, Clark took cover behind a row of skinny pines and followed a winding route that brought him within ten yards of Finn’s back.
The window in the rear of the house was dark. Finn brought a hand to his head, and Clark realized that Finn had a cell phone. He was making a phone call. A few seconds later, the window flashed with light, and Clark understood. Finn was calling the girl. Waking her up.
Clark could see through the vertical blinds on the window. The girl in the photo, no more than sixteen, climbed out of bed and padded in her gray half-shirt and pajama bottoms to a white desk. She picked up the phone. Spoke into it. Hung up. She headed back to bed, but before she could turn off the light, Finn called again, and Clark saw the girl answer, her face cross with annoyance.
She hung up again, but she was awake now. She approached the window to stare at the storm and the rain pelting down. Finn was enraptured, staring at the girl framed in the bright square, with her flimsy shirt and her flat expanse of midriff. She was awkwardly beautiful, stroking her messy hair, biting a fingernail. Unaware that she was vulnerable and on display. Clark took advantage of Finn’s obsession to come up behind him. All he wanted was for the girl to turn away.
For almost a full minute, all three actors in the play were motionless. The girl, inside, staring with huge blue eyes at the rain and the night. Finn, watching from beside the evergreen. Clark, so close he thought Finn might smell his breath.
Then the blond girl wheeled around abruptly, and a moment later, the window went black again.
Before Finn could move, Clark was on him. His huge forearm encircled Finn’s neck with the crushing grip of a snake, and he lifted the man bodily off the ground. Finn couldn’t breathe. He struggled, kicking his legs spastically, landing harmless blows on Clark with his fists. Clark thought about choking him, feeling the life drain out of his body, but instead he dropped Finn and backhanded his skull with a swift blow of his fist. Finn collapsed onto the wet ground, unconscious.
Clark slipped off his belt and tied Finn’s ankles, then grabbed the man’s shoulders and pulled him up in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. He didn’t notice Finn’s weight. Instead, through the swirl of the storm, he hauled Finn back toward his truck.
41
Donna’s right,” Maggie said unhappily. “Clark must be going after Finn Mathisen.”
Stride took his eyes off the road. “Do you think Clark would throw his life away over a nothing like Finn?”
“To get vengeance for his daughter? Yeah, I do.”
“Add Finn’s silver RAV to the ATL on both sides of the border. Let’s hope Rikke can tell us where Finn went.”
“That would mean admitting he’s guilty.”
“To save his life,” Stride said.
Maggie punched the buttons on her cell phone while Stride drove.
As they sped through the driving rain, the St. Louis River twisted like a dragon on their right. Walls of water sprayed from under his tires as Stride shot through deep, fast-moving rivers that poured off
