“How about the boy? The one on the bicycle?”
“Lucky. His vitals are good. The docs think he’ll pull through.”
“How are the girl’s parents?”
Maggie shook her head. “They’re both wrecks. Mary was everything to them. Taking care of her destroyed their marriage, but they lived and breathed for that girl.”
“I hope the mother doesn’t blame herself for leaving the girl alone,” Stride said. “It was a terrible accident. There was nothing she could have done.”
“I’m not so sure it was an accident.”
Stride balanced his elbows on his desk. “What do you mean?”
“Donna Biggs thinks the peeper was there. She thinks that’s what spooked Mary and made her run. When she went into the water, he took off.”
“Is there anything to back it up?”
“Donna swears she saw a car parked just up the hill from where she was. She says it was a silver RAV4, which tracks with the reports of a mini-SUV near several of the peeping scenes. No one got plates, of course.”
“That’s not much.”
“Donna also saw a man get into the RAV when she was running up the trail after she heard Mary scream.”
“Can she recognize him?”
“No.”
“Is there any physical evidence?”
“We’ll be searching the woods between the trail and the spot where the car was parked.”
“I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but even if you find this guy, it’s going to be a tough road to prove he was responsible for Mary’s death.”
“If he tried to grab her, and she wound up dead as a result of his actions, we can make a manslaughter case out of that.”
“I know, but with what evidence?” Stride asked.
“The peeping history with the girl. The car. Any physical evidence we can find. Mary’s scream. Hell, who knows what souvenirs this guy kept? Maybe when we find him, he’ll have pictures. If I can put a few of the pieces together, Pat Burns can make a jury see the light.”
“You sound like this case is personal,” Stride said.
Maggie nodded. “I saw the girl when she was sleeping at her house. She was sweet. I told her father he didn’t have anything to worry about, and now the girl winds up dead. We were staking out Clark’s house and Donna’s apartment, but it looks like he outsmarted us. Donna says she stopped at this park every Friday night before she dropped Mary off at her ex-husband’s place. He must have been following them.”
“Or the mother is wrong.”
“I don’t think she is.”
Stride trusted Maggie’s instincts. “Go with your gut,” he said.
He picked up the photograph from his desk and studied it again. He was having a hard time shrugging off the past. “You know, I’ve always believed that Ray’s death was one more ripple effect from Laura’s murder,” he said.
“How so?”
“I think the connection between Ray and Randall Stanhope started back then,” he told her. “That’s when Ray got corrupted.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No? After we interviewed Peter, Randall asked Ray to stay behind. Then Ray came out a while later, and the two of us went after Dada. It wasn’t until years later that I realized what must have happened.”
“You think Ray and Randall did a deal,” Maggie concluded.
Stride nodded. “Exactly. Ray didn’t go there with me to catch Dada. He went there to kill him.”
It was twilight. Ray drove onto the gravel shoulder within sight of the Arrowhead Bridge. The twin spans of highway jutted like wings at the arch, leaving the passage open for one of the rust red ore boats arriving from the Soo. The water was black and windswept. The two of them got out of Ray’s Camaro and leaned against the hood near the front bumper. Cool drops of rain burst on the windshield. Ashen clouds massed overhead, inching from the high hills toward the lake.
Ray slapped his pack of cigarettes and offered one to Stride, who took it. He coughed when the smoke hit his lungs. Ray smiled at him. The breeze rustled his red hair.
“So this is the area where you saw Dada?”
“Yeah.”
“Rough area for a kid to be walking around. You should think twice about coming down here by yourself, you know?”
“I’m all right.”
Ray gestured down the railroad tracks. “You know those guys?”
About a hundred yards away, Stride saw two twenty-something men in jeans, with no shirts, swigging beer and strolling across the muddy ground, kicking at stalks of wild wheat. Pyramids of taconite and stripped tree trunks rose around the tracks like mountains. One of the men finished his bottle of beer and laid it sideways on the track. When the next train came, it would shear the bottle in two.Stride had come across bottle halves all over this area. Some of the men used the bottoms as soup bowls.
“No, I’ve never seen them.”
Ray stubbed out his cigarette on the ground. “I’m going to talk to them.”
“Let me come with you,” Stride said.
“I’m sorry, Jon. If things get ugly, I can’t have a teenager in the midst of it.”
“Except I know the area.”
“I know you do. Right now, though, I need you to let me handle this myself. Okay?”
Stride shrugged. “Yeah, okay. I’ll hang out here.”
“Good.”
Ray hitched up his pants and set out along the dirt road toward the tracks. Stride climbed onto the hood of the car and watched him go. Ray got within fifty yards of the two men before one of them looked back and spotted him. They both took off. Ray cursed loudly and chased them, but with his limp, he couldn’t run fast or far. The two men cleared a shallow hill and disappeared from sight. It was five minutes before Ray crested the same hill and was gone.
Stride was alone. He felt the ground vibrate with the rumbling thunder of a train gathering speed out of the rail yard. A snake of red and green train cars, littered with graffiti and overflowing with iron ore, shuddered along the parallel tracks, growing closer. Stride slid down the roof of the car and crossed the asphalt highway. On the other side, a shallow slope led to a cluster of oak trees where a creek twisted lazily toward the harbor water. Stride skittered down the hill and hiked to the tracks. He waited for the train engine, which followed the coast of the water as it headed south. The train was long. Dozens of cars shouldered by him. He smelled ore dust, which was as tarry as a cigarette in his lungs. The cars banged, hummed, shimmied, and jolted.