Save me.
The Yorkshire terrier barked madly as Stride broke into the house. It quivered on its tiny legs with a combination of terror and bravado, making little yips that sounded like an elf coughing. He squatted down, and the Yorkie continued its ferocious din until Stride extended the back of his hand. The dog gave it a quick sniff, decided he was friendly, and began licking his fingers.
“Heck of a watchdog there, buddy,” Stride said.
He climbed the staircase, which was barely wider than his torso, to the second floor. A dark hallway led to the rear of the house. He was there when Serena called to let him know that she’d found footprints in the backyard, and he dialed Guppo to request backup. Then he searched the upstairs rooms. Lori Fulkerson might as well have been a ghost. If she’d ever had furniture upstairs, most of it had been moved out. The rooms were empty, just old paint, worn carpet, and occasional wires poking out of holes in the walls.
There was nothing to tell him who she really was.
According to the city and state records they’d found, Lori Fulkerson had arrived in Duluth eleven years earlier, only weeks before Kristal Beech had been abducted. Before that, she’d been a mystery. She didn’t seem to exist. She had no past, no credit, no previous address. If she’d grown up in Duluth as she claimed, she’d grown up as a completely different person.
He took the stairs back down to the ground floor. The dog followed him.
He went into the kitchen, where mail was stacked up on the table in piles. There were weeks of mail that looked as if she’d never gone through it. Everything was addressed to Lori Fulkerson, but most of it was junk. None of it was personal, from friends or family. He didn’t see a computer or a smart phone anywhere in the house. There was a calendar thumbtacked to the kitchen wall, but she’d written nothing on any of the dates.
The Yorkie ran for its food bowl in the corner. Stride saw that the food bag had been tipped over, spilling its contents onto a plastic tray. The dog had enough food to last for days. Its water dish was a large bucket filled almost to the rim. Lori Fulkerson wasn’t planning on coming back.
She knew the end was near.
Serena was right. There was only one explanation for Lori knowing secrets about the other three women in the cage. She’d put them there herself. She’d murdered Kristal Beech, Tanya Carter, and Sally Wills, and she’d left a trail of bread crumbs leading the police to Art Leipold. She’d manufactured the ultimate alibi by making herself the fourth victim. And then she’d waited for Stride to find her.
The question was why.
Stride went into the living room, which was a sea of old newspapers, dog toys, and CD jewel cases stacked like skyscrapers. Lori had cleared one little spot at a table where she ate her meals. She was a gatherer, someone who was afraid to let anything go or throw anything away. Those were typically people who’d had things taken away from them as a child.
He glanced at the pale yellow living room wall. Three photographs were hung there, all of them from decades earlier. They’d been taken in a children’s park near the house and showed a father and daughter together. Stride took one of the photographs off the wall and held it in his hand and stared at it. He had a hard time recognizing Lori Fulkerson’s face in the young girl in the picture. This ten-year-old looked innocent and happy, nothing like the angry woman she’d become later in life. She stood on the base of a kiddy slide, with her father standing next to her, his arm around her waist.
Her father.
Seeing the man beside Lori Fulkerson was a sucker punch to Stride’s gut.
He knew him. He recognized him all these years later. It was a face he would never forget.
Stride understood. He saw where the stone had gone into the lake and how the ripples had spread. The daughter lost her father, the daughter grew up nursing her rage, and eventually that rage led to revenge and murder. There were plenty of people to blame. Most of all he blamed himself.
He’d let it happen. Years ago he could have stopped it, and he’d done nothing.
Stride took his phone and dialed Serena.
“I know who Lori Fulkerson is,” he told her. “I know what this is about. She’s Mort Greeley’s daughter. Mort lived in a house on a spur road about two blocks from here. I’m betting that’s where she’s keeping Aimee Bowe.”
“I’m already there,” Serena replied, “and I’m going in.”
47
The footprints reappeared a hundred yards down the spur road, where Lori Fulkerson had emerged from the trees.
Nothing had led Serena to search the road except the feeling that Aimee was there. She walked through the deep virgin snow, seeing no sign of Lori’s trail until she reached the crest of a shallow hill. There she saw the footprints again, leading out of the woods. Lori didn’t try to hide her path. The footprints led to a turnaround at the end of the dead-end road. A two-story 1950s-era house was nestled inside a grove of trees below the slope of the I-35 freeway. Two huge electrical towers guarded the house like soldiers. So did a stand of snow-white fir trees that were twice as tall as the roof.
There were no vehicles parked outside. The only sign of life was Lori’s footprints, walking up to the front door.
She had a sense of Aimee’s voice in her head, stronger than ever.
Save me. Hurry.
Serena listened for the sirens of backup, but the morning was dead quiet. Even running, Jonny was five minutes away. She didn’t know how much time Aimee had left, huddled in a cage in the cold. All she knew was that Aimee was inside, and so was Lori Fulkerson.
She’d already guessed the truth before Jonny called. She didn’t believe in coincidences. When she reached the summit of the spur road, she’d recognized where she was. Jonny had taken her here once before, when he’d told her the story of Mort Greeley. That was how he confessed his mistakes, by going back to the places where they’d happened, as if the locations were sacred. Not even fifty yards away from Mort Greeley’s old house, Serena could see another fenced gray house with two cars out front and smoke rising from a chimney against the cloudy sky. Those were the only two homes on the wooded road.
More than twenty years earlier, that house had been the home of an eight-year-old boy who’d been abducted at the Duluth zoo. Eventually, all the suspicion in the crime had landed — falsely — on the man who lived next door.
Mort Greeley.
Lori’s father.
With Art Leipold leading the way, the police and media had crucified and ostracized Mort Greeley until he took his own life.
Serena closed on the house. The curtains were shut on every window. Sprays of snow blew off the peaked roof. She followed the footprints to the front door, and she slid her pistol into her hand. The butt was warm against her cold fingers. She tried the knob of the door; it was open. She pushed it ajar and shouted into the house.
“Lori Fulkerson! It’s Serena Stride from the Duluth Police. We know about your father. We know everything. It’s time to give up. It’s time to put an end to this.”
There was no answer from inside. She swung the door open with her boot, and the light from the gray day was the only light in the house. With her gun in front of her, she crept inside. The icy air couldn’t be more than a few degrees above freezing. The light switches didn’t work, and she took a small flashlight from her pocket, throwing a dim beam into the foyer. She listened. No one moved, and no one spoke.
“Lori Fulkerson!” she shouted again.