"No."
"Okay then. You might be the only one who can stop this creep."
"I need time," Helen told her.
Evelyn smiled and stood up. "You got it, honeybun. Come on, let's go home and light a fire and crack open some Yellow Tail. The main thing is to stop worrying. No one's going to find you. You're safe here."
21
Is it Tanjy's body?" Stride asked.
Abel Teitscher nodded. His eyebrows and mustache were painted white by the snow that blew off the lake in sheets. "She's a frozen fish stick."
"Cause of death?"
"Someone caved in the back of her skull."
Stride swore and headed for the cluster of police gathered near the fish house. It was like a Gypsy city on the lake, a ragtag assortment of plywood boxes, tents, aluminum fish houses, campers, and pickup trucks. Tire and snowmobile tracks created a maze through the snow. There was litter everywhere, discarded boxes, beer bottles, tattered gloves, fish heads, and half-smoked cigars. The lake itself was huge, with spiderlike tentacles reaching around forested peninsulas, and he could see only a small slice of it from where he was. It was called Hell's Lake because of its reputation for hot spots, areas like eggshell where the ice never froze solid because of the strong current running underneath. Or maybe because lava bubbled up directly from hell and heated the water. It was a dangerous place, easy to get lost in when the mists came, easy to stray from the dense sections of ice to the fragile shelves laced with cracks. A few people went under every season; most were never rescued.
The wind across the ice was ferocious. With no trees to slow it down, it rocketed across the lake like a skate sail. Tanjy's body lay forlornly on a strip of plastic on the ice outside the fish house. Her skin's pigment had leached away. Either her killer or the current of the lake water had stripped her naked. He felt a stab of regret. Tanjy had spent her life obsessed with rape; now, like this, she really had been violated.
Stride returned to Teitscher. "You should have called me on this immediately."
Teitscher's wrinkled, weatherworn face didn't move. "We agreed I was taking over the investigation."
"You are, but I want to be in the loop."
"To me that means copying you on my paperwork," Teitscher snapped. "It doesn't mean having you second-guess me at the scene. I don't want you here, Lieutenant. Right now, I don't know which side you're on."
"Just bring me up to speed," Stride told him.
"Dan Erickson wants to know every move you make on this case," Teitscher said.
"Is that a threat?"
"Just a heads up."
"I don't care about Dan," Stride said.
Teitscher shrugged. "We found Tanjy's car. Someone drove it into the woods off a dead-end road."
"Nearby?"
"Maybe half a mile away."
"What's the scene look like?" Stride asked.
"There's blood in the trunk. We've got one set of boot prints in the deep snow leading away from the car back to the dead-end road. That's where they stop."
"So she wasn't killed where you found the car?"
"No, it looks like they killed her somewhere else and then dumped her in the trunk to drive her out onto the ice. They found an open fish house, put the body in the lake, and then ditched her car in the woods."
"They?"
"I'm thinking this would have been very difficult for one person to pull off. If she wasn't killed where her car was abandoned, whoever left it there needed another vehicle to get away. Someone else had to be driving the other car."
"What size are the boot prints?"
"Big, at least a size twelve," Teitscher said. He added, "Eric Sorenson wore a size twelve."
"Don't get ahead of yourself."
Teitscher shrugged. "He was one of the last people to see Tanjy alive, as far as we know."
"What about time of death?" Stride asked.
"She's been in the drink for several days. I don't think we'll ever know exactly how long. That should make Archie Gale happy."
"There's nothing to tie Maggie into this, is there?"
"Just that her husband was mixed up with Tanjy, and he's dead, too."
"To me, it says there might be more to Eric's death than meets the eye," Stride said.
"Yeah? You're big on theories, Lieutenant. Try this one on. Maggie and Tanjy had a big fight over her affair with Eric. Tanjy wound up dead. Maggie called Eric to help her get rid of the body. Eric had a fit of conscience and wanted to call the cops. Maggie killed him."
"You don't have a shred of evidence to back that up."
"Not yet, I don't, but I'm just saying you don't have to think real hard to tie these cases together."
Stride knew the argument was getting them nowhere. "How about the fish house? What have you got there?"
"Two kids found the body. They were screwing around when Tanjy popped up. The fish house belongs to the boy's dad, but the ev techs don't think Tanjy was dumped from there. She could have gone in anywhere around the lake and drifted up here. People leave these shanties unlocked and don't visit them for weeks."
"You'll never get a warrant to search every house on the lake," Stride said.
"I know, the best we can do is knock on doors. Maybe someone saw something."
Stride knew that without a time of death or a crime scene to mine for forensic evidence, it was going to be a tough case to solve. "If I can help you, call me. I mean that."
"Don't take this the wrong way, Lieutenant. If you want to help me, stay out of my way."
Teitscher turned into the wind and walked away. His foot slipped on the ice, and he fell to one knee. Pushing himself up, he shouted at one of the uniforms on the scene, and Stride saw the cop, who was a good kid, cringe. The only way Teitscher knew how to get things done was to bark in someone's face. He was a hard case who wasn't going to change.
Stride heard a faint buzz of music and realized his cell phone was ringing. He pulled it out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket and heard the Alabama song in his head. I'm in a hurry and don't know why.
He walked toward his truck as he answered. "Stride."
It was Maggie. "I need to see you. It's urgent."
"What's going on?"
"I don't want to do this over the phone," she said.
"Wherever you go, you'll have company. We can't be seen together."
"Leave that to me. I'll be alone."
Stride wasn't going to say no to her. "Let's do it late. Eleven o'clock."
"Where?"
"The high school parking lot. Up on the hill."
"Thanks, boss."
"You've left me in the dark on this," Stride told her. "You're hiding things from me."
"I know. I'm sorry." There was a long stretch of dead air, and then Maggie said, "Is it true about Tanjy? Have you found her body?"
"It's true."
Maggie expelled her breath as if she had been holding it. "There's something you need to know, but just you, not Teitscher."
"What is it?"
"Tanjy wasn't lying about the rape," Maggie told him quickly.
"What?"
"I'm telling you, it really happened."
"No way." He thought about the fantasies on Tanjy's computer and the explicit details of her sex life provided by Mitchell Brandt. "Tanjy told me flat-out that she made the whole thing up."
"I know how it sounds, boss. I didn't believe her myself, but I was wrong."
"How the hell can you be so sure?"
The silence this time was so long he thought he had lost the call. When he heard Maggie's voice, it didn't sound like Maggie at all.
"Because it happened to me, too."
22
He left the van in a deserted lot at the far end of the Point and hiked over the wooded slope to the lake. The roiled water and the thin strip of ice and sand stretched out before him toward the hazy lights of the city. When he emerged from the trees, a ferocious, twisting wind deadened his face. He pulled his wool cap down to become a mask and viewed the beach through slitted eyes. Inside his gloves and boots, he kept heat packs to keep his hands and feet limber and warm. He tucked his chin into his neck and hiked along the bumpy ice shelf, his coat doused by bitter spray as the waves assaulted the shore.