Then, through the blaze of another jagged track of lightning, he saw him. Finn was fifty yards away, standing in the cover of a shaggy evergreen, only steps from the rear corner window of a modest rambler. Clark crept closer, staying out of sight. Once, as if he could feel eyes upon him, Finn spun around. Had the lightning struck then, Clark would have been exposed, but instead, he stood shock still, invisible in the darkness. Finn stared right at him and didn’t see him. When he turned away, Clark took cover behind a row of skinny pines and followed a winding route that brought him within ten yards of Finn’s back.
The window in the rear of the house was dark. Finn brought a hand to his head, and Clark realized that Finn had a cell phone. He was making a phone call. A few seconds later, the window flashed with light, and Clark understood. Finn was calling the girl. Waking her up.
Clark could see through the vertical blinds on the window. The girl in the photo, no more than sixteen, climbed out of bed and padded in her gray half-shirt and pajama bottoms to a white desk. She picked up the phone. Spoke into it. Hung up. She headed back to bed, but before she could turn off the light, Finn called again, and Clark saw the girl answer, her face cross with annoyance.
She hung up again, but she was awake now. She approached the window to stare at the storm and the rain pelting down. Finn was enraptured, staring at the girl framed in the bright square, with her flimsy shirt and her flat expanse of midriff. She was awkwardly beautiful, stroking her messy hair, biting a fingernail. Unaware that she was vulnerable and on display. Clark took advantage of Finn’s obsession to come up behind him. All he wanted was for the girl to turn away.
For almost a full minute, all three actors in the play were motionless. The girl, inside, staring with huge blue eyes at the rain and the night. Finn, watching from beside the evergreen. Clark, so close he thought Finn might smell his breath.
Then the blond girl wheeled around abruptly, and a moment later, the window went black again.
Before Finn could move, Clark was on him. His huge forearm encircled Finn’s neck with the crushing grip of a snake, and he lifted the man bodily off the ground. Finn couldn’t breathe. He struggled, kicking his legs spastically, landing harmless blows on Clark with his fists. Clark thought about choking him, feeling the life drain out of his body, but instead he dropped Finn and backhanded his skull with a swift blow of his fist. Finn collapsed onto the wet ground, unconscious.
Clark slipped off his belt and tied Finn’s ankles, then grabbed the man’s shoulders and pulled him up in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. He didn’t notice Finn’s weight. Instead, through the swirl of the storm, he hauled Finn back toward his truck.
41
Donna’s right,” Maggie said unhappily. “Clark must be going after Finn Mathisen.”
Stride took his eyes off the road. “Do you think Clark would throw his life away over a nothing like Finn?”
“To get vengeance for his daughter? Yeah, I do.”
“Add Finn’s silver RAV to the ATL on both sides of the border. Let’s hope Rikke can tell us where Finn went.”
“That would mean admitting he’s guilty.”
“To save his life,” Stride said.
Maggie punched the buttons on her cell phone while Stride drove.
As they sped through the driving rain, the St. Louis River twisted like a dragon on their right. Walls of water sprayed from under his tires as Stride shot through deep, fast-moving rivers that poured off the hills and flooded across the highway. He skidded onto the railway bridge that crossed from Minnesota into Wisconsin over the marshy river lands. Wind howled through the canyon created by the river, and an ore train thundered the opposite way on the trestle above him. He hung on to the wheel. The entire superstructure of the bridge shuddered as if it would come apart in pieces.
Stride braked at the sharp curve on the far side of the bridge and then flew past the block-long town of Oliver onto the lonely highway leading into Superior. Through the sheeting water on his windshield, he saw miles of birch trees growing parallel to the two-lane road. Cattails swayed in the ditch like spinning toys. He drove through a long stretch of nothingness before arriving at the southernmost end of the city. It was one in the morning. Superior was dead. Silver rain blew diagonally through the glow of streetlights.
He followed the chain of streets until he was at the end of the developed land near Finn Mathisen’s house, which was ablaze with light. A squad car from the Superior police was parked out front.
Stride pulled up behind the police car, and he and Maggie both got out. A blond policewoman with matted wet hair jogged from the porch to meet them. The three of them shook hands while the rain pricked at them like needles.
“Lynn Ristau, Superior police,” the woman said. She wasn’t tall but had a tough, strong physique that would make larger men think twice before messing with her.
“I’m Lieutenant Stride. This is Senior Sergeant Maggie Bei.”
“You guys from Duluth know how to pick the right weather for losing suspects,” Ristau said with a smile.
“Any hits on the ATL?” Stride asked.
Ristau shook her head. Water sprayed from her blond hair. “Nobody’s spotted your guy.”
“Did you talk to the woman inside?”
“Yeah, but she’s not saying much. She says she didn’t know that her brother had left the house until I knocked on her door. She has no idea where he went.”
“All right, we’ll see if we can pry anything else out of her,” Stride said. “Can you hang out and keep us posted? We may need some help.”
“You bet.”
Stride and Maggie climbed the front porch and passed through a curtain of water streaming from the roof. Rikke yanked open the door before they could ring the bell. She wore a yellow cotton robe that draped to her ankles, and her face was pinched into a frown.
“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
“May we come in?” Stride asked.
Silently, the tall, husky woman stood aside. Stride and Maggie shook off as much as water as they could and entered the house, where they dripped on the throw rug. The walls shook as gusts of wind assaulted the frame from the west. Rikke closed the door behind them and folded her arms.
“Well?” she asked.
Stride studied the empty living room. Rikke had been sitting on the sofa with a cup of coffee in a china mug. “Where is Finn?”
“I have no idea. You didn’t answer my question. What is going on?”
“We think someone may be hunting for Finn.”
“Who?”