"You're talking crazy here. I do not know what the fuck you are talking about."
"I'm talking about two alpha girls getting assaulted after the parties. Just like you were doing to Kathy Lassiter tonight. And maybe you don't know this, but this case is very personal to me."
Brandt struggled with his cuffs. "No way."
"This isn't going to be a hard case to make, Mitch. We've got a dozen witnesses to the assault on Kathy Lassiter. You were one of only a handful of men who were at all of the sex club parties where the alpha girls were later raped. You've got the size and strength to pull it off. And you told me you played rape games with Tanjy every night at knifepoint. That's just what you did to the other women."
"Oh, fuck it. I cannot believe this." Brandt swung his head into the window so hard that a cut opened up on his forehead and blood leaked down his face, matting at his eyebrow. A red smear stained the glass. Stride pulled a few tissues from his pocket and leaned close to Brandt, blotting the blood. The tissue turned crimson.
"The club was a secret, Mitch," Stride continued. "No one else knew about the alpha girls. What's a jury going to think? Do you honestly think they'll picture someone like Delmar Bezac as a rapist? You're the stud of the group." He leaned in toward Brandt's ear and whispered, "Eric Sorenson figured it out, didn't he? He came to you and accused you of raping his wife. So you had to stop him. And Tanjy."
Brandt was close enough that Stride could smell his sweat. With Stride's hand over one eye, and his chiseled face needing a shave, Brandt looked like a pirate.
"You don't know anything," he told Stride. "You don't know what's going on in this city."
"Then explain it to me."
"I'm being set up. Just like Maggie."
"Sure."
"Look, whatever Lassiter says, it was her idea. She met me in the club. She came to me with the whole scheme about Infloron Medical and the FDA approval. So when I found out she was negotiating a sweet deal with the SEC to put it all on me, I lost it."
Stride shook his head. "You've got it wrong, Mitch. The SEC didn't know a thing about Kathy Lassiter. You were the one they had in their sights, not her. They got an anonymous tip."
He watched Brandt's eyes, which changed like a chameleon.
"You're lying to me," Brandt said.
"No, someone set you up."
"Son of a bitch," Brandt retorted, air hissing between his teeth.
"You sound like you know who it is."
Brandt closed his eyes. "Fuck this, I need to talk to my lawyer. I've got something to trade, and I want to find out how much it's worth before I say another goddamn word."
"What do you have to trade?" Stride asked.
"You said you're after a rapist, right?"
Stride saw that blood had oozed out around the edges of the tissues on Brandt's forehead. He pressed on the wound hard, and Brandt jerked in pain. "Maybe I didn't make myself clear, this guy may have killed two people. Right now, I think you're good for it. If you're not, then you better tell me why and help me find him."
"I want credit if you nail this guy. Some kind of deal."
"Yeah, we'll put a plaque up for you in City Hall. Who is he?"
"I don't know."
"Then you've got nothing to trade."
"Look, I don't know anything about him, but he's the one you want."
Stride waited.
"I paid him," Brandt continued. "We had a deal, and now he blows up my life anyway. It's like a fucking game to him."
"Who are you talking about?"
"I told you, I don't know," Brandt insisted. "You said I was the only one who knew about the alpha girls, but you're wrong. He knew all about them, too."
"Who?"
"The son of a bitch who's been blackmailing me."
Stride crumpled the tissues and tossed them on the floor of the car. He backed away from Brandt and heard Serena's voice, one word, just as he was falling asleep in the wake of their making love. One word in the box.
Blackmail.
"I'm still bleeding," Brandt protested.
"You'll live. Tell me more."
"This guy knows things. I don't know where he gets it. He came to me a couple of months ago, and he knew all about Infloron and the insider trading scheme. Dates, trades, dollars. He's been bleeding me dry."
"What about the alpha girls?"
"He knew about them, too. He joked about me and Lassiter meeting in the sex club. He asked me how it was with the alpha girls. He knew their names. And then last night, he called me again. He knew Lassiter was going to be the alpha girl tonight, and he told me that she'd been going behind my back with the SEC. He said I'd better take care of her. But the bastard must have called the SEC himself."
"Were you trying to stiff him?" Stride asked.
"No! The son of a bitch just decided to fuck me."
Stride got out of the patrol car and slammed the door behind him. He looked up at the outline of the tower on the hill and thought about the Enger Park Girl and then Maggie and Serena. And about rape, murder, and blackmail. He tried to sort it all out in his head and didn't like where it took him.
Mitchell Brandt was being blackmailed. If Serena meant what he thought she did, then Dan Erickson was being blackmailed, too. By someone who also knew about the sex club and the alpha girls. That made him a prime suspect in the string of rapes and in the murders of Eric and Tanjy.
He suffered a flash of anger as he wondered how much Serena knew and why she didn't tell him.
After months operating in the shadows, the blackmailer had to realize the clock was ticking. The police knew about the rapes now. It was only a matter of time before Stride put the pieces together.
That meant Dan Erickson was in the path of the hurricane. So was Serena.
45
Serena parked in an empty lot underneath the soaring span of the Blatnik Bridge leading across Superior Bay to Wisconsin. Its concrete Y-shaped supports aligned like a row of soldiers marching from the city out into the water, following a trail of white lights. Every time a car sped by overhead, the steel highway bed became a tin drum and boomed. As Serena got out of her car, the ice sheet of the harbor was on her right. On the opposite side of the road, where it circled back to the city, were the dark fields leading to the silos of the port terminal. This was where the industry of the city was done during the warmer months, bustling with dozens of ore boats loading and offloading their bellies. The port was abandoned now, locked up with ice and awaiting the spring thaw.
Snow had begun, whipping through the bridge lights like a field of shooting stars. She blinked as the flakes assaulted her eyes. She had her Glock tightly in one hand and a duct-taped shoe box under her arm, heavy with hundred dollar bills. The road, the park, the frozen water, the port buildings, and the fields leading across the railroad tracks were all deserted. She wondered where he was.
Her heels were buried in six inches of wet snow, and her feet quickly grew numb and cold. She didn't have time to change after finding the note, only time to make the pick up at Dan's house and follow the freeway back to the harbor basin. Now, she wished she had kept spare boots in the car. She found an open area near the bridge tower where the snow was matted down and waited there. She danced impatiently, stamping her feet. The chill traveled up her body.
A wave of vibration rumbled through the concrete as a double-trailored semi streaked along the bridge out over the water directly above her. The thunder of the tin drum made her shudder, as if the bridge were falling around her.
Her cell phone rang, and she put the shoe box down in the snow so she could grab her phone with her free hand.
"Where are you?" Stride asked.
Serena took a cautious look around the empty lot. As the snow intensified, it was becoming hard to see. "I'm on a job. I can't talk."
"Is this about Dan's blackmail?"