He raised his gun. He called after Rachel.
"Cindy."
He made his way into a small clearing, where the dirt under his feet was mossy and wet. A stream gurgled toward the lake, but the water tumbling over the rocks was bright red. The crackling and rustling in the forest got louder, almost deafening, a thumping in his ears. The rain sheeted down, soaking him.
He saw Rachel on the opposite side of the clearing. "You'll never find me," she called again.
When he stared at the blurry image on the far side of the stream, he realized it was no longer Rachel who stood there.
It was Cindy. She stretched out her hands toward him.
He saw the shadow again, moving behind her. A monster.
"You never do," she told him.
Stride lay sprawled in bed with his head engulfed in his pillow. He was half asleep now, slowly growing aware of his surroundings. He heard the rustle of paper somewhere close by and smelled burnt coffee.
He opened one eye. Maggie Bei sat a few feet away in his leather recliner, her short legs propped up, a half-eaten cruller in one hand and one of Stride's chipped ceramic mugs in the other. She had opened the curtains halfway, enough to reveal the early morning view of the lake behind her.
"That coffeepot of yours stinks," she said. "What is it, ten years old?"
"Fifteen," Stride said. He blinked several times and didn't move. "What time is it?"
"Six in the morning."
"Still Monday?" Stride asked.
"Afraid so."
Stride groaned. He had been asleep for ninety minutes. It was obvious that Maggie, who was still wearing the same jeans and burgundy leather jacket she had worn last night, hadn't slept at all.
"Am I naked?" he asked.
Maggie grinned. "Yeah. Nice ass."
Stride pushed his head off the pillow and glanced behind him. He, too, was wearing the same clothes from last night. "I hope you made enough coffee for me."
Maggie pointed at his nightstand, where a chocolate old-fashioned doughnut lay neatly placed on a napkin. A steaming mug of coffee was beside it. Stride grabbed a bite of the doughnut and took a sip of coffee. He ran his hand back through mussed hair. He finished off the doughnut in two more bites, then began unbuttoning his shirt. He yanked the belt from his jeans.
"It gets ugly from here," he said.
"Don't I know it," Maggie replied. She continued calmly eating her breakfast.
"Yeah, you wish."
He joked, but Stride knew he was on sensitive ground. He and Maggie had worked together as a team for seven years. She was a Chinese immigrant whose vocal participation in political rallies during her student days at the University of Minnesota had left her without a home to which to return. When Stride hired her right out of school, she proved to be a quick study. In less than a year, she knew the law better than he did, and she had demonstrated her instincts by seeing details in crime scenes-and suspects-that most officers missed. Stride had kept her at his side ever since.
The longer they worked together, the more Maggie blossomed. She became funnier, bolder, willing to laugh at herself. Her face became expressive, not a somber mask. She learned to speak English with no hint of an accent and with a healthy sampling of sarcasm and profanity.
Along the way, she fell in love with Stride.
It was Cindy who broke the news to him. She had spotted Maggie's feelings immediately and warned him he was going to break Maggie's heart into little pieces of Chinese porcelain if he wasn't careful.
When Cindy was gone, Maggie made her one and only play for his affections. Six months ago, when Stride was at his loneliest, Maggie had let herself into his house on a frigid spring morning and slid into bed beside him. He had awakened and never seen so much love in another person's eyes. It was tempting, because he needed someone badly, and she was warm and willing.
But he remembered Cindy's warning, and he thought of those little pieces of Chinese porcelain, and he said no. Last month, she thanked him. He was right, she said; it would have destroyed their friendship and never worked as a romance. He wondered if she really believed that.
"How did you enjoy your visit with the Stoners?" Maggie asked.
Stride opened the bathroom door and continued undressing, then stepped into the shower, shivering as the cold water slowly warmed. He called back to Maggie.
"The mother says there's no chance of a suicide. What do you think?"
"Mothers never think there's any chance of suicide," Maggie said. "But I think if this girl wanted to blow herself away, she would have done it in front of them and made sure there was a lot of blood on their nice carpet."
Stride smiled. Maggie had pegged Rachel already. This wasn't a girl who would slip away to die.
"How about Mommy and Stepdaddy?" Maggie called out. "You know the rule. Family first."
"They volunteered to take polygraphs," Stride replied. "But we have to run the questions through His Holiness Archie Gale."
He heard the sound of Maggie gagging. "Damn, I hate rich parents. Call the lawyer first, then the cops."
Stride grabbed a towel and used it to dry his damp hair, then rubbed it over his body. He wrapped it loosely around his waist and returned to his bedroom.
"We have to be careful," he said. "Check them both out, but be discreet. Graeme made it clear he knows K-2."
"Yeah, he told me that, too. Handball every week. I can't imagine K-2 playing handball. Not on a regulation court, anyway."
Stride laughed. K-2-Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick-was no taller than Maggie. Even the mayor sometimes called him "the leprechaun."
"We got a hit on one of the ATM cameras," Maggie added. "We got a glimpse of her car zooming by shortly after ten o'clock."
"Score one for Kevin. Was she alone?"
"No one else is visible in the car."
Stride donned a pair of tan Dockers, buttoned up a white shirt, and shrugged into a navy sport coat.
"Come on, I need more coffee," he said.
Maggie followed him into the kitchen. Stride opened a window. The morning air smelled like frost, and he felt cold needles pricking his damp neck.
"Do you always need to open a window when it's freezing outside?" Maggie complained, shivering.
Stride poured coffee and sat down at the butcher-block kitchen table. He saw Maggie glance in the sink, which was half filled with dirty dishes. She pushed aside a stack of newspapers and three days of junk mail and cleared a small spot for her mug.
"You live like this?" she asked.
Stride shrugged. "What?"
"Nothing," Maggie said.
"Let's keep going," Stride said. "We think she made it home, because we've got her on tape heading there, and the car is parked right where it should be."
"Nothing strange in the car. We're running prints, but I wouldn't expect much."
"Next question is, did she go inside? How about her bedroom?"
Maggie shook her head. "We know what she was wearing that night. No clothes matching that description were found in her room. We talked with Emily about whether anything was missing. She wasn't much help. Even so, the drawers were full of clothes, and Rachel had lots of personal stuff in her desk. If she left by herself, she traveled light. She wasn't dressed for running, either-not like Kerry."
"How about a diary?" Stride asked. "I know, I'm dreaming."
"You're dreaming," Maggie said. "I checked her computer. Very few personal files. I loaded her Web browser to see if she might have been talking with some psycho on the Internet, but there was just some school-related stuff in her e-mail, and she hadn't bookmarked any weird Web sites. We'll run it through forensics, in case there's stuff we can recover."
"How about the neighbors?" Stride asked.
"A handful of people remember seeing folks out on the street that evening, but it was dark. Not many faces. A couple people saw teenage girls walking outside, but no one resembling Rachel. We had one report of an unknown car parked that night about four blocks away. The witness couldn't remember many details-dark, maybe blue or black, four-door sedan, might have been out-of-state plates. We checked with neighbors near where the car was seen. No one claimed it, and no one had visitors from out of state."