"Well, it's true."
He changed the subject. She was relieved to stop talking about it.
"Did Serena tell you? Katrina was assaulted, too. Right after the last party."
"Yeah, she did. I had no idea. I feel like a shit for not calling her."
"This guy is smart," Stride said. "He's making a bet that women in this sex club won't risk the humiliation of going public."
"When is Sonia's next party?"
"Tomorrow."
"Son of a bitch," Maggie said.
"Exactly. We need to move fast."
They both looked up as the back door opened. It was Serena, carrying a bag of groceries that she deposited on the kitchen counter. She kicked off her heels and joined them, taking a seat on the carpet and crossing her legs. Maggie noticed that she sat close enough to Stride that their clothes touched.
"You two okay?" Serena asked.
Stride nodded without saying anything. Maggie felt him grow colder, as if he were drawing a circle around himself and Serena to keep her out. It bothered her.
"What did I miss?" Serena asked.
"We just had sex," Maggie said. "This is afterglow."
It was a stupid joke. She felt bad when Serena's face soured with discomfort.
"I'm sorry, dumb thing to say," she added.
"Alpha girl humor," Serena murmured.
Ouch. But Maggie knew she deserved it.
She tossed the bag of chips to Serena, who flipped her hair back, took a chip out of the bag, and crunched it in her mouth. Their eyes met. The coolness melted, and they declared a silent truce between them.
"Did you get any more background on Helen Danning?" Serena asked.
Maggie told them about the empty blog page she had discovered for "The Lady in Me." Stride pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper from his jacket pocket.
"Here's what Guppo found," he said. "She's thirty-six years old, born in Florida, moved to Minnesota when she was ten. She went to the U but dropped out in the early 1990s after two years, never graduated. She's worked clerical jobs ever since. She doesn't have a sheet, and there's no record of anyone by her name filing criminal charges. She drives a blue Toyota Corolla, license NKU-167. I did a statewide ATL on it."
"Parents?"
"They retired in Arizona. I haven't been able to reach them. She's got a sister, too, but she's somewhere in Southeast Asia teaching English."
"Is there anything at all that connects her to what's going on?" Serena asked.
Stride shook his head. "Not that I can find."
"I asked Guppo to do me a favor and see if he could track down any cached pages from her blog," Maggie said. "Maybe he'll come up with something that will tell us why Eric was interested in her."
"Let's back up," Stride told them. "Let's go back to the beginning on this. The first incident in the chain, at least as far as we know right now, is Tanjy being raped, right? That was in early November, based on what she told us. I talked to a couple women who were alpha girls before that date. Nothing happened to them."
"I was assaulted about three weeks after Tanjy," Maggie said. "Eric and I argued about reporting it throughout the first two weeks in December. He kept pushing me, I kept saying no."
"Did you talk about what happened to Tanjy?" Serena asked.
"Yeah, Eric thought I should talk to her. I didn't want to do it. Later, Eric must have decided to talk to Tanjy himself. I checked his cell phone records, and he called her for the first time on a Saturday in mid-December. There were several more calls over the next few weeks."
"So we're speculating that Eric somehow found a connection that led him to the rapist," Stride said.
Maggie nodded. "We know that Eric asked Tony about the pathology of a rapist. He told Tony he was going to see someone the night he was killed. He talked to Tanjy two days earlier, and she wound up dead, too. He talked to Helen Danning over the weekend, and after Eric got killed, she left town."
"I don't understand how Helen Danning fits into the puzzle," Stride said. "But we do know there's a predator stalking women in the city, and this guy has latched on to the sex club. There's a new alpha girl, Kathy Lassiter, who's at risk starting tomorrow. If we can catch the rapist and connect the dots, then maybe we can connect him to the two murders, too."
"Except Tanjy wasn't in the sex club," Maggie pointed out.
"Yes, but Mitchell Brandt was in the club, and he was Tanjy's ex-boyfriend. Eric would have known that."
"Mitch?" Maggie asked, surprised.
"You know him?"
"Yeah, a little."
Maggie didn't tell Stride that she remembered him from the sex club. Most of the men in the club were paunchy and short, and she figured that they popped Viagra before the party to get themselves ready. Mitch was different. She remembered a gleam in his eyes and a tiny smile and strong hands and a sensation as smooth as butter. She had the uncomfortable feeling that Stride was reading her mind.
"I'm not saying Mitch is involved," Stride said, "but he connects Tanjy to the sex club."
"Is there anything in his background?" Serena asked.
"Nothing of interest. I called the SEC to see whether there were any complaints about him from clients. They were less than helpful."
"So what's our next step?" Maggie asked.
"We watch the club," Stride said. "Sonia offered to cancel the party tomorrow, but I think that's the last thing we want. This is our chance to flush this guy. We keep the alpha girl under surveillance after the party and hope he moves fast."
"Assuming this woman is willing to be used as bait," Serena said.
"I'll talk to her."
"What about Abel?" Maggie asked. "We can't mount a surveillance operation under the radar screen. He's got to be in the loop."
Stride nodded. "Yeah, it's time to see if we can get Abel on our side."
"There's something else," Serena said. "Don't you think we need someone inside the club?"
There was silence in the room.
"Are you serious?" Stride asked.
"I am. We need to see how people react to the alpha girl. If Mitchell Brandt is the guy, I want to see how he behaves."
Stride shook his head. "I can't send a cop inside something like that."
"It can't be me," Maggie said. "Not with what's going on."
"Okay then," Serena said. "I'll do it."
"No way," Stride said.
"Come on, Jonny. I won't be in the room itself. You said there was a one-way mirror on one of the walls."
Maggie frowned. "That's true."
"I still don't like it," Stride said.
"I'll be alone behind the wall. There's no risk."
"No risk? We don't know who this guy is or how he knows about the club. He could be anywhere."
"Yes, but we have an advantage," Serena said. "This guy doesn't know we're on to him. For once, we're a step ahead."
This guy doesn't know we're on to him.
Less than a mile away, he sat in the frosty solitude of the van. Listening.
Fog made the windows opaque. The shroud of darkness and the woods at the end of the Point made the van largely invisible. The wind gusted off the lake, and every few seconds, the vehicle shuddered on its tires, and the steel walls rattled. It reminded him of sitting in the rear of the patrol car while the hurricane roared closer. Back when he was a prisoner.
As he listened to them plan their stakeout around the club, he grinned at the thought of the trap they were laying. Tomorrow night, all the demons he had been hoarding would finally fly out. Tomorrow night, Serena would be the one walking into a trap.
34
Stride sat in silence in his City Hall office early the next morning. The lights in the rest of the Detective Bureau were dark as he caught up on paperwork and drank coffee. When he heard a cough, he looked up to see Abel Teitscher in his doorway. The older detective wore a brown suit with his hands jammed in his pockets and dusty black shoes. His leathery face looked like an old map of the West, tracking rivers and roads.
"Your message said you wanted to see me," he said.
"I did. Have a seat, Abel."