“You called the police?” Serena asked.
“Yeah. I was afraid she was going to kill him. Anyway, they were in there for a while, and then it got real quiet, and the woman stormed out and left, didn’t say anything else. Ben came out, and I told him the police were on their way, and he swore and said what did I do that for. He said she was just an unhappy customer, a drunk, it was no big deal.”
“Did the police come?”
Leon nodded. “Yeah, and Ben told him it was nothing. He blamed me. Said I overreacted, and it was all a misunderstanding. He told them he didn’t want to get the woman in any trouble and asked if they could forget about the whole thing. The cop was a bowling buddy of Ben’s, so he let it slide. That was that.”
Serena held up the photo of Nikki again. “And you’re sure this is the woman?”
“I’m sure.”
“All right. Thank you, Leon. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention our conversation to Ben.”
Leon looked relieved to be able to keep it to himself. “Whatever you say.”
Her emotions churning, Serena left the garage and walked back into the heavy rain. She was thinking about Nikki, thinking about Delaney, and thinking about Samantha. She was thinking about daughters protecting mothers and mothers protecting daughters.
In the Mustang, it didn’t take her long to retrieve the details of a 911 call in Proctor two years earlier at the location of Larsen Auto Repair. Ben was mentioned by name; the woman was unidentified. The resolution of the incident was written up simply as: Customer assault. Owner declined to press charges.
Serena was more concerned about the date of the altercation.
Nikki Candis had confronted Ben Larsen on a Wednesday afternoon. Two days later, she was dead.
29
The woods around Fredenberg Lake refused to give up their secrets. They’d been searching for hours through nearly impenetrable terrain and had still covered only a fraction of the land. It was slow work. Fallen trees blocked their way, making a tangle of moss and dead branches, their trunks sprawled like bodies. Birch trees grew tightly together like columns of snow soldiers, forcing them to step sideways to squeeze between them. There were sharp valleys everywhere, with treacherous footing and swollen creeks soaking their boots. Wind rumbled in the high treetops like ocean waves. The rain fell hard, as it had throughout the day, making everyone wet and miserable. Even the dogs looked unhappy.
What made it worse for Maggie was knowing they might never find what they were looking for. If the body had been buried deep, even the dogs might not smell it. If it hadn’t been buried at all, then they would be lucky to find any random bones that had been left behind by wolves and scavengers. There were definitely wolves not far away. Every few minutes, Maggie would freeze as a bloodcurdling howl rose above the noise of the storm.
She checked her phone. Signal came and went with the wind, and for the moment, she had none. She folded her arms across her skinny chest and examined the forest, which got darker minute by minute.
“Do you think Chelsey is really out here?” Guppo asked. The round detective was flushed and breathing hard as he kept pace with her in the forest, but Maggie had never heard him complain.
“I don’t know. Stride’s going to talk to Gavin about what the hell he was doing up here two days before his wife was kidnapped. But I don’t like it.” She leaned her head back against the nearest birch tree. Briefly, she closed her eyes. “Did you talk to the neighbors around here?”
“I did, but there aren’t many. Nobody recognized photos of Gavin or Chelsey or Hink. There’s not much traffic on the road, but most of the houses are set back, so they can’t see who’s coming and going. Nobody mentioned suspicious vehicles.”
“How about gunshots?”
“There are always gunshots up here,” Guppo said. “People around here don’t even notice. I asked about shouts or screaming, but nobody heard anything like that. Not a surprise. If somebody brought Chelsey up here, odds are she was already dead.”
“Yeah,” Maggie said again, with a sigh.
In the distance, a wolf howled again, mournful and ominous. Another chimed in, and soon they heard the chorus of an entire pack in the distance.
“They sound hungry,” Guppo said.
Maggie shivered. “Man, I can think of a lot of ways to go, but being torn apart by wolves is really low on my list. One time I was up on the Gunflint, and I saw a deer by the lake. Half a dozen wolves came out of the woods and surrounded it. That was not a pretty sight.”
“With me, they wouldn’t need to eat again for days,” Guppo said.
Maggie burst out laughing. Then she shook her head and wiped some of the rain from her eyes. In the gray forest around them, half a dozen police officers tramped through the wet leaves, leading dogs who kept their noses in the weeds. The searchers dodged around an uprooted pine and headed down into a steep gully, where they disappeared from view. With them gone, Maggie felt as if she and Max were alone in the woods.
“So is Stride back for good?” Guppo asked.
Maggie thought about what she’d seen in Stride’s face that day. “I think he is. I figured once he got a taste, he couldn’t stay away.”
“What does that mean for you? If Stride’s back, does he become the lieutenant again?”
“Hell if I know. That’s up to K-2.”
“You’ve been in charge for over a year. Could you go back to being number two?”
“With anybody else? No. With Stride? I guess that would feel normal.” She was about to make a bad joke, but then she stopped herself. I’ve been under him before.
“Think it would work the other way?” Guppo asked. “With you as the boss?”
This time she couldn’t resist. “Me on top? If history’s any judge, I think he’d like that.”
The joke flew over Guppo’s head, and she was grateful.
“The thing is, his ego doesn’t have to fill the room like mine,” she went on. “But could I ever order him around? I don’t know. Plus, I can’t say I’d miss being at the front of the room. And you don’t have to tell me that none of you would miss me.”
“Not true.”
“Serena’s ringtone? ‘Big Time’?”
Max chuckled. “Oh, you know about that, huh?”
“I know about it. You all think my ego’s out of control. Which it is.”
“It’s not ego when you’re good at what you do. And if we miss Stride, it’s only because we miss Stride.”
“Yeah. I miss him, too.”
Maggie checked the time and squinted through the treetops at the charcoal sky. Where they were standing, darkness and shadow crept through the forest like a damp fog. The rain beat down on her head, as hard as ever, and showed no signs of letting up.
“We’re going to have to knock off for the night soon,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll start again in the morning.”
She squeezed through the nest of sharp branches to the edge of the slope. Where the land fell off sharply, she could no longer see the bottom of the gully thirty feet down. The cops below her had switched on their flashlights, making a crisscross pattern of lights winking on and off through the trees. She cupped her hands around her mouth to call the team back to higher ground.
Then she heard a noise below her, and she froze.
One of the dogs barked. It was a frantic, excited bark, and it didn’t stop. In the aftermath, she heard one of the police officers shout, then another, then another. The overlapping voices carried up the gully, and when she understood what they were saying, Maggie dove down the slope at a run.
“We’ve found something.”