“Let it go,” Maggie murmured.
Stride said, “It’s okay.”
Finn stared wildly at them. Tears ran from his eyes; mucus ran from his nose. He clapped a hand to his mouth, shoved them both aside with a stiff jerk of his arm, and bolted through the door, slamming it behind him. They heard the gasping, retching noise of his stomach spewing onto the marble floor of City Hall. When Stride opened the door again, the sweet stench of vomit made him cover his nose and look away.
Finn was gone.
Ten minutes later, the interrogation room still smelled of Finn’s body. Stride leaned back on the desk until his head banged against the wall. Maggie jumped off the desk, took the chair in which Finn had been sitting, and propped her feet up.
Her cell phone rang. She slid it out of her pocket and answered. Stride recognized the voice of Max Guppo, the overweight detective who had been leading the search team at Finn Mathisen’s house, along with cops from Superior. Maggie asked a few questions and then hung up. She didn’t look happy.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Come on.”
She shook her head. “They didn’t find a damn thing to link him to the peeping cases. His room looked as if it had been vacuum-cleaned of anything potentially incriminating. The computer had no hard drive, for God’s sake. Just a big hole in the tower. His shoes were all new. His clothes had been washed.”
“Rikke,” Stride said.
Maggie nodded. “She knows what he’s been doing. Maybe we can lean on her.”
“She’s been covering for Finn for thirty years. She’s not going to stop now. What about the car? The silver RAV?”
“Ditto. Cleaned and pressed. Even the tires had been hosed down.”
Stride sighed. “So where are we?”
“I think we’ll be able to make a charge of interference with privacy stick. If we can tie him to the other victims, a jury will make the leap.”
“If.”
“He had to find them somehow. We’ll track it down. Hell, he delivered to four out of the nine households where a girl was peeped. That’s a big coincidence right there.”
“Big, but still a coincidence,” Stride said. “If we can get six or seven, okay. Four’s not enough. Even with the silver RAV. He has no priors. We’ll never get the stuff from Minneapolis or his old janitorial job admitted in court. A defense lawyer can blow smoke and make a jury believe Finn is just a victim of circumstances.”
“And Mary’s murder?”
Stride shook his head. “You know that’s going nowhere. We’ll be lucky to pin the peeping charge on him. We can’t put him at the scene with Mary, and even if we could, we can’t establish what really happened.”
“At least we can charge multiple counts. He’s done it ten times that we know of. If we get the right judge, we can go for two years a count.”
Stride put a hand gently on Maggie’s leg. “I know this case means a lot to you, Mags, but you’re dreaming. With no priors? He’ll get a year for everything and be out in three months. If he sees the inside of a jail at all. That’s life.”
“That sucks.”
“I know it does.”
“What the hell do I tell Clark Biggs?”
“That we’re still working on the case. We’re not done yet. If we get the DNA test back and can prove that Finn was at the scene where Laura was murdered, we can take another run at him. Maybe he’ll confess. He might not go down for Mary’s death, but if we put him behind bars for Laura’s murder, that’s some justice.”
“If,” Maggie said, mocking him.
“Yeah, yeah.” Stride rubbed his hands over his face and felt a bone-deep tiredness throughout his body. “Think they’ve cleaned up the hallway yet?”
Maggie reached over and pushed the door open. “Nope.”
“Shit,” Stride said. “I have to wash my face.”
“Is that what guys say when they have to take a leak?”
“No, we say we have to take a leak.”
“Do most guys wash their hands after?” Maggie asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yuck.”
Stride laughed. He left the interrogation room and covered his nose against the pungent aroma of puke. The hallways were empty. It was evening, and City Hall was mostly deserted. He found the frosted glass door that led to the men’s room, opened it with his shoulder, and started a stream of cold water running in the nearest sink on the long countertop. He bent over, splashed water on his face, and rubbed his skin hard. His fingers ran through his hair, leaving it wet and disheveled.
He smelled it before he saw it.
Blood.
His eyes were closed, and when he opened them, blinking, he saw the first toilet stall reflected in the mirror, its door ajar. Twin trails of fresh blood outlined the grout in the white floor tiles in ruby red squares. Stride ran for the stall and shoved the door open, where it bounced against the wall of the stall. Finn Mathisen was sprawled on the seat, his head lolling back, his mouth open and slack. His arms dangled uselessly at his sides, and a Swiss army knife lay on the floor where it had spilled from his hand.
The blood on the tiles dripped from two jagged, vertical gashes Finn had carved into the veins on both wrists.
PART FOUR. Act of Mercy
28
Serena spotted Peter Stanhope in the corner of the main room at Black Woods. His table overlooked the calm lake waters through floor-to-ceiling windows. It was one o’clock, and the restaurant was crowded with the lunch rush. Peter drank a glass of red wine and checked e-mail on his BlackBerry with his other hand as she took a seat opposite him. She stared at his lower lip, which was swollen and purple.
He followed her gaze and shrugged. “Tish.”
“I heard.”
“It was my own fault,” Peter said. He used his fork to separate a flaky piece of white fish, which he chewed gingerly. “Even so, I never expected her to do something so crazy.”
“Not necessarily crazy,” Serena said.
Peter cocked his head with suspicion. “What do you mean by that?”
Serena said nothing. Peter thought about it, and then he glanced around the restaurant and lowered his voice. “This is about DNA? What the hell would Tish Verdure want with a sample of my DNA?”