He turned away from the fence when he heard a muffled symphony of noise and felt a thumping bass ricochet inside his chest. He saw a brown Lexus SUV pull into a parking place next to his Bronco. The engine cut off, and the music stopped. Tony Wells got out, clutching a venti cup of Starbucks coffee. He took several sips as he walked over to Stride. He wore a tan parka with a fur-lined hood and dress pants and shoes that were ill-suited to the snow heaped over the park grass.
"Good morning, Lieutenant."
"Thanks for coming down here, Tony." He gestured at the car and added, "Castrating pigs again, are you?"
"Oh, yes, another country music fan," Tony said with a faint smile. "Smashing Pumpkins won a Grammy for that song, you know."
"For what? Song most likely to make a listener conduct his own autopsy?"
Tony pulled his hood down and smoothed his thinning hair. "I read a study recently about some poor lab mice who were subjected to Toby Keith twenty-four hours a day for a month. They all developed cancer."
Stride laughed. It was an old argument between them.
He was probably one of the few cops in Duluth who had never seen Tony Wells professionally. The job did that to you-it stirred up rat holes and made you do things you never wanted to do, like drink, or hit your wife, or roll your car on a slick highway. Tony was good at taming the rats. Maggie and Serena both liked him. Stride had needed counseling himself once, but he never wanted to see a cop's shrink. He didn't like sharing stories with someone who knew everyone else's stories. After Cindy died, he found a therapist thirty miles away in Two Harbors and went there once a week for six months, which wasn't enough to prevent him from rebounding into a bad marriage.
"You know this is where Tanjy Powell said she was raped?" Stride asked.
He watched Tony take the measure of the area around him. Parks looked lonely in the winter, devoid of life.
"Yes."
"You know that she really was raped, don't you? She didn't make it up."
Tony worked his jaw as if something were caught between his teeth. "I'm in an uncomfortable position, Lieutenant. I want to help, but I'm not sure I can."
"Tanjy is dead," Stride reminded him. "You can't do her any harm by talking to me. You can only help me find out who did this to her."
"Tanjy was an intensely private person."
"I know she was, but I need your help, Tony. We go back a long way. I respect your loyalty, but your patient is dead. I think she'd want you to talk to me."
Stride could see that the choice was a genuine struggle for Tony. As a therapist with close ties to the police, Tony had seen them all-detectives, victims, and perpetrators-and he didn't always have a rule book to work around ethical conflicts.
"Yes, all right," Tony said finally. "I'd like to see you catch whoever did this. Tanjy deserves that."
"Thanks."
"What can I tell you?"
"Do you know who Tanjy was seeing at the time of the assault?"
"No, she never gave me a name. She was very discreet. It made therapy difficult sometimes, because she gave me so few details about her life." Tony hesitated.
"What is it?"
"Well, she did think she had a stalker. She told me she was being watched."
"Did she know who it was?"
"No, she said it was just a feeling."
"When was this?"
"Shortly before the rape."
"Did she give you any other details?"
"No, she didn't. Truthfully, Lieutenant, I wasn't sure the rape really happened. She told me she only recanted to you because she couldn't stand the public humiliation, but I wondered about that. The venue of the rape was too similar to her own fantasies. That's not the way it works."
"Unless that was the whole point for the rapist."
"You mean you think she was targeted because of her fantasies," Tony concluded.
"It's a possibility."
Tony thought about this. "I don't see how. No one knew about them."
"Her boyfriend knew. She made him act out rape fantasies during sex. She posted rape stories on the Web, too."
Tony cocked his head. "True."
"Was Grassy Point Park important to her?"
"Very."
"Do you know why?"
"I think it was because of her parents. You can see the bridge from here, where her parents were killed in the car accident. The fact that she reen-acted rape fantasies at a place that's visible from the bridge is significant. I suspect she was acting out her repressed sexuality in front of her parents."
"So if she had other boyfriends, you think she would have taken them here."
"Yes, that's likely."
"Do you know who else she was seeing, other than Mitchell Brandt?"
Tony shook his head. "I'm sorry, no."
"Okay, let's talk about Eric," Stride said.
Tony shoved his free hand in his pocket and drank more coffee. The wind landed a kick across the harbor that made them both hunch their bodies against the frozen air.
"Now I'm really on thin ice," Tony said.
"I know, but I'm not asking for any privileged information. Eric talked about things that had nothing to do with Maggie, right?"
"Yes, he did," Tony acknowledged.
"What did he want to know?"
"He asked me if there were certain tells you could look for that would tip you off that someone might be a sexual predator."
"What did you tell him?"
"Not much," Tony said. "I told him you'd have to be a trained professional conducting an extended interview to make an assessment, and even then, there aren't any guarantees. Most sexual predators have spent a lifetime protecting their disguises."
"Did he tell you who he was thinking about?"
"No."
Stride watched Tony's brooding eyes. "Maybe he was thinking about you."
Tony looked back at him, steady and hard. "Me?" he said evenly.
"Right now, you're the only connection between Tanjy and Maggie. Maybe Eric thought you raped them."
"You knew them both, too, Lieutenant," Tony said. "Maybe he thought it was you."
"I'm serious."
"Yes, I know you are, so I'll be blunt. I did not rape those women. Okay? I had nothing to fear from Eric."
"Sorry, Tony, I had to ask."
Tony nodded. "I knew you would. I know how the game is played. For the record, I asked Maggie for the exact date she was raped, and then I went back and dug out my calendar from last year. I was in Seattle giving a speech that night. I can give you all the details you need to verify it."
"And Tanjy?"
"I pulled her file and cross-referenced my schedule. I had group therapy the night she was assaulted."
"Thanks. Sometimes I have to play bad cop, you know."
"I understand."
"I need to know if Eric said anything else. Did he talk about his visit to the Ordway over the weekend?"
"The Ordway?" Tony asked. "No, what does that have to do with anything?"
"I don't know yet." Stride shook his head. "I'm frustrated, Tony. Try to put aside the fact that Tanjy and Maggie were both patients. Just look at the facts of the rapes as you know them. Give me some kind of profile."
Tony scratched his beard. "I don't have nearly enough information."
"Neither do I, but you've worked with less in the past. Help me out here."
"Well, put a big asterisk next to this. I could be steering you wrong. Whoever is doing this is likely to be very intelligent and organized. He has a huge ego and a need to control his victims. He likes to play games, like a cat toying with a mouse. He researches his victims thoroughly-picks them, studies them, gets to know everything about them, before he moves in."
"You think there are other assaults we don't know about?"
"It's possible. You know as well as I do how many rapes never get reported. This perpetrator seems to choose victims who are vulnerable on sexual matters, which increases the likelihood that they won't go to the police."