Stride turned on the desk lamp and picked up a small cube of notepaper to see if he could see indentations of anything Tanjy had written. He was able to make out a phone number, but when he called it on his cell phone, he found himself connected to the local Whole Foods market.
He booted up her laptop computer. She didn't use Outlook for e-mail, which meant she probably used a Web-based service, which would make it harder to find a record of her messages. There were no appointments recorded in the online calendar. He checked her Internet favorite pages and shook his head when he found a mixture of Christian sites and hardcore pornography, including rape sites with brutal, disturbing imagery of women bound and humiliated.
When he checked her recent documents, he clicked on the first one, a Word file labeled ISLAND. The text flashed onto the screen:
The natives tied Ellen spread-eagled to stakes they had pounded in the mud. One by one, they took turns ravishing her with their pierced tongues. She begged them to stop-No! No! she cried, you can't do this!-but they were deaf to her desperate pleas. Despite herself, she felt the most intense of orgasms welling up inside her…
Stride closed the file and checked the other documents, which were of a similar nature. He wondered again how to reconcile the calm, quiet girl in his office with the explicit, submissive fantasies filling her brain.
He shut down the computer. Nothing here gave him any clues as to why Tanjy had disappeared, or whether she had even disappeared at all. There was nothing strange about someone getting in their car and driving away. People did it all the time. Sometimes they chose not to come back.
Stride felt the house sag and heard a sharp pop from somewhere in the rear of the apartment. He got to his feet and stepped lightly to the bedroom door. He listened. There were cautious footfalls near the back window where he had entered the house.
"Yo, dude!" a young male voice called. "What's up? I know you're here."
Stride emerged in the hallway and saw a young man in his twenties there, nervously brandishing a golf club like a weapon. The kid saw him and practically jumped.
"I've called the police! They'll be here any minute!"
"They're already here," Stride told him, flashing his shield. "Who are you?"
"Oh, shit. Wow, I'm sorry." He was wearing gray sweatpants, an untucked flannel shirt, huge unlaced boots, and a bulky fur hat with a turned-up flap in front and ear flaps that hung down on either side of his head as if he were a bloodhound.
I live in the land of stupid hats, Stride thought.
"What's your name?" Stride repeated.
"Sorry, I'm Duke. Duke Andrews."
Even his name sounded like a dog's. "What are you doing here?"
Duke pushed up his black-framed glasses, which were slipping down his nose. He had a wispy goatee on his chin and a string of pimples on his cheek that looked like the Big Dipper. "I live in the house next door. My bedroom looks out on the yard. I saw you go in, and I was, like, hey, could be a burglar."
"Here's a little advice, Duke. Don't try to confront burglars yourself. Let the cops handle it."
"Yeah, yeah, right, guess that was stupid." Duke tugged at the hairs on his protruding chin.
"A golf club isn't much of a match for a gun."
"I don't even golf, man. How dumb is that?"
"Do you know who lives here?" Stride asked.
Duke nodded eagerly as he bit one of his fingernails. "Oh, sure, yeah, it's that girl who was in the news, you know. The whole rape thing. Tanjy. Short for Tangerine, right? Weird name. But wow."
"Have you seen her lately?"
"Not in a couple days, no."
"Do you remember exactly when you last saw her?"
Duke didn't have to think about it. "Monday night. I saw her go out in her car right around ten o'clock."
"You sound like you keep a close eye on her."
"What?" Duke was nervous and shuffled his feet.
Stride was taller than Duke, and the kid shrank as Stride came closer. "I mean, what will I find if we go back to your place? A telescope focused on Tanjy's bedroom? That's better than binoculars for peeping, right? Leaves your hands free."
"Whoa, dude, what are you saying? No way." Duke looked at the door as if he wanted to take a running dive through it.
"Listen, you take your telescope and point it at the stars from now on, okay? I don't want to charge you as a Peeping Tom. But right now, I need to know what kinds of things you've been seeing in Tanjy's bedroom."
A small, excited grin flitted across Duke's lips. He yanked at his sweatpants. "Oh, man. It's so fresh. You wouldn't believe it."
"Try me."
"This girl, she's better than a porn star. Always sleeps in the raw. Gets herself off like every night. I should sell tickets, man. Could pay my rent and then some."
"How about visitors?"
"Nobody in the bedroom, not since I've been watching."
"Which is how long?" Stride asked.
"I moved in to my apartment in early December. Didn't take me long to realize the place had a great view."
"You have any idea where she went on Monday?"
Duke took off his hat and scratched his head. His black hair stuck up in messy wings. "No idea. I just look. I don't know her."
"Was she alone?"
"When she left? Yeah."
"Have you ever seen her with anyone else?"
"Like guys? Yeah, this one dude was over at her place around Christmas. I could see them talking on the back porch. I've seen him around a few times recently. I assume he's her new boyfriend. Lucky guy, know what I'm saying? I was hoping to catch a little bedroom action, but they must do it at his place."
"What does he look like?" Stride asked.
"Big guy. Even bigger than you. The kind of guy you expect a girl like that to go after. They don't put out for the likes of me. It messes up the gene pool. Although some of these models, they've married real ugly dudes, you know? Gives me hope. You gotta feel sorry for their kids, though. Seems like they always come out looking like the wrong half."
"Tell me more about the guy you saw." Stride had a bad feeling.
"Not much to tell," Duke replied. "Lots of muscles. Fancy dresser. Oh, and long hair, too. Long blond hair. Longer than most girls."
"And that's the guy you've seen with Tanjy?"
"That's the dude."
Stride wanted to curse out loud. Duke had just described Maggie's husband, Eric.
10
Maggie had bare feet, and her legs were pulled up to her chest with her hands laced around her knees. Her black hair was dirty. She was lost in an oversized armchair that made her look even smaller than she was. The yellow flames of the fire reflected in her eyes, which were far away and unblinking.
"You can still smell it, can't you?" she asked, whiffing the air.
Serena didn't smell anything. "What?"
"The sweat of all the cops. And the superglue from the print box. It was two days ago, and I can still smell it."
Serena thought that Maggie was imagining things but didn't want to say so. "You hungry?" she asked.
"Not much."
"I've got smoked trout in the truck."
Maggie screwed up her face. "Yuck."
"Yuck? You were the one who turned me on to that stuff."
"I've been off it lately," Maggie said.
Serena was stretched out on a sofa in Maggie's den. It was a man's room with walnut paneling and a mounted deer head staring down from the wall with two glass eyes. The furniture was black leather. A grandfather clock ticked hypnotically in the shadows. The wood fire gave off a semicircle of heat. Serena had been here for nearly an hour, but they had spoken only sporadically.