Maggie seemed to understand that, so she didn’t force Serena off the job entirely. Instead, while Maggie and Stride left to find Hink Miller in Superior, Serena stayed behind at police headquarters, closeted in her cubicle. She took four Advil, but it didn’t help the throbbing behind her eyes. She unwrapped and ate some dry crackers, but they tasted like dust.
Most of all, she thought about the woman she’d seen on the street. That woman had become an obsession for her.
Who was she?
It was true. Serena knew her. The face hadn’t clicked in her mind right away; she’d only noticed the blood. But she’d seen that face before. Not in person and not recently. The woman wasn’t someone she’d met, and that was what made it disorienting to see her on the street. Serena knew her only from photographs, from witness statements, from being in the woman’s house, from seeing her bank statements and credit card records.
She’d seen that woman’s face in a police file somewhere. Serena was sure of it. She had a mental block about the woman’s name and what had happened to her, but she also had the sense that there was unfinished business between them.
Who was she?
She started by reviewing cold cases. She dug out the handful of files from her desk that were unsolved and stalled, lacking new evidence. Drug cases. Missing persons. One homicide involving a homeless person on the Lakewalk. She reviewed everything she’d gathered on the open investigations, looking for a photograph that matched the woman she’d seen, but she came up empty. And it felt like she was searching in the wrong place, because she didn’t believe she would have forgotten someone who was part of her active caseload.
Next, she pulled up computer records of the other cold cases spread around the department. There were dozens of them, and even though she wasn’t the lead detective, she would have gotten updates and seen pictures of victims and suspects at Maggie’s team meetings. So maybe her mystery woman was hidden in one of those files. She went through them one by one. The Cray overdose, the Mathers home invasion, the Karpeles Museum theft, the Fallon hit-and-run, the threats sent to half a dozen local judges, the break-in at the DECC, the Palen disappearance, and more, until the brightness of the screen made her headache unbearable.
While she was in the midst of her research, Guppo stopped by her desk. He made no comment on how bad she looked — she knew Guppo always saw her through rose-colored glasses — and instead, he apologized profusely for letting the truth slip about the incident with the gun at Gavin Webster’s house. Serena kissed his cheek and told him to forget about it. Gun or no gun, she would have been kicked off the case anyway.
Then she asked for his help.
Serena described the woman she’d seen on the street and asked if the details rang a bell with Guppo from any of their old cases. Max had a good memory for faces. He huffed a little, his breath smelling like cheese popcorn, and his eyes narrowed into a squint. Then he made her repeat the details.
“You actually saw this woman?” Guppo asked.
Serena hesitated. “Yes, I did.”
She didn’t want to believe what Stride suspected. She couldn’t accept that she’d imagined the whole thing, that the image of the woman was nothing more than a drunken hallucination. But in the cold light of day, she really didn’t know anymore.
“Then no,” Guppo replied, shaking his head. “I can’t place her.”
Serena frowned. “It sounds like the description reminded you of somebody. Who?”
“Nobody you could have seen on the street,” he said with a smile.
“Please, Max. Who?”
“Nikki Candis,” Guppo replied. “Remember? Two years ago? This woman sounds exactly like her. Skinny red jeans and all. But obviously, it couldn’t be her.”
Nikki Candis.
Yes. Everything came rushing back as soon as Serena heard the name. The face. The photograph.
The body on the bed.
“Thank you, Max,” she said.
“Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
“No, you were. I appreciate it.”
Guppo heaved his sizable girth out of the chair, gave Serena a strange look as if she were an angel with a broken wing, and disappeared toward his own cubicle. As soon as he was gone, Serena opened her desk drawer.
Not the open cases. The closed cases.
Nikki Candis.
She yanked out the thin file — there hadn’t been much to investigate — and she opened the manila folder. Nikki’s photograph was right on top. The photograph they’d taken when they found her. There was no doubt about it. The hair, the face, even the clothes down to those red jeans, were all the same. They matched the picture in her head precisely.
This was definitely the woman that Serena had chased into the trees last night.
But there was also no denying the fact that Stride was right. It hadn’t been real. The image on the street, the pursuit into the woods, had been nothing but a dark fantasy dredged up by a bottle of Absolut Citron.
Nikki Candis was dead. She’d shot herself in the head.
Stride parked on the dirt road across from the house belonging to Hink Miller’s mother. The house was quiet, and there were no signs of life inside. He kept an eye on the curtains, but they didn’t move. There was a Ford Taurus parked outside the detached garage, and based on the tire tracks left in the mud, it had been driven sometime during the most recent rainstorm.
Next to him, Maggie checked her watch. Her knee twitched impatiently as they waited for the Superior Police to arrive. “Where the hell is Lance?”
“The judge needed to sign off on the warrant,” Stride reminded her. “Let’s face it, our probable cause is pretty thin.”
Maggie shook her head. “Hink’s a Gavin Webster client, and he was flashing a wallet full of hundred-dollar bills a few hours after the ransom payout. Plus he’s got a history of assault. That should be enough.”
“Depends on the judge.”
“Lance is just making us wait,” Maggie complained.
“Well, that’s possible, too,” Stride agreed with a smile. “You know Lance.”
He lowered the window of the SUV. Cool October air blew through the truck, and a few dead leaves rolled toward them down the dirt road. Through the trees on his right, he saw the monuments of a quiet cemetery. As they waited, he glanced at Maggie. They hadn’t talked about Serena or the events of the previous night or Maggie’s decision to kick her off the Webster case. And Stride hadn’t mentioned the woman on the street. He knew Serena was lucky not to be suspended entirely, but if Maggie suspected that Serena was having hallucinations, she’d demand a psych evaluation before letting her back in the building.
Maybe that was what Serena needed. Time and a couch.
Stride had gone through it himself. Over the summer, as he debated whether to return to the police, he’d visited with the department psychologist several times. She’d had to clear him to go back if that was his choice. Stride had never been a fan of sharing secrets with people closest to him, let alone with strangers, but he’d tried to overcome that. The shrink had asked about death and loss; and his late wife, Cindy; and Serena and Cat. She’d asked about being the lieutenant and about not being the lieutenant. Eventually, she’d told him that the only way he’d know if he was ready was by going back and seeing if he was ready. He’d asked her wryly how much she was billing the city for that insight.
She’d cleared him anyway.
He glanced in the rearview mirror of the SUV. Behind them, two squad cars from the Superior Police turned off Highway 35. Both vehicles pulled ahead of him and parked on the dirt road. Four cops got out: three men, one woman. Stride and Maggie got out, too, and one of the men waved a piece of paper in his hand like he’d just been awarded an Oscar.