Rikke detached the rest of the buttons, letting the flaps dangle, and then used her fingernails to push the collar back off her shoulders until the shirt slid off her arms and fluttered to the ground. Her stomach bulged over the waist of her shorts. Her left breast drooped like an underfilled water balloon, its nipple flat and pale pink. Her other breast was a wrinkled cross of scars.
She sank to her knees and spread her arms wide, beckoning Finn to her bare skin. She was crying. He was crying. Finn made a mewling noise like a trapped kitten and sloughed his body toward her.
They were almost touching when another wrenching, involuntary spasm shuddered through his body. His finger twitched on the trigger.
The gun was still pointed at the meat of his skull.
Finn’s expression turned to glass as the bullet tunneled through his brain. Fire and noise cracked open the beach. Rikke wailed, and Stride saw one last flashback of Ray Wallace’s face before he was jolted back to the present, where Finn slumped forward, lifeless and free.
PART FIVE. Fear of Heights
46
Serena stood apart from the cluster of mourners while they prepared to bury Finn Mathisen in the Riverside Cemetery. She tugged her trench coat tighter. Her black hair swished around her face. They were beyond the southern edge of Superior, out past the railroad tracks and landfill, in sloping fields dotted with pines whose branches reached for the gray sky like praying angels. Water gurgled over stones in a creek beside the path. The lawn was lush and neatly trimmed.
She stood fifty feet away from the ceremony, beside one of the larger marble headstones on the wooded slope. Finn didn’t have a big crowd. Rikke was there, ramrod straight, her face a severe mask. Everyone kept their distance from her. Serena didn’t recognize the dozen or so strangers, but she saw Jonny, Maggie, and Tish standing in a trio. She knew she should be at Jonny’s side, but she had never met Finn or Rikke and didn’t want to intrude on anyone’s grief. The truth was that it gave her a convenient excuse to be far away. She liked cemeteries but hated funerals. She didn’t mind death but hated dying. If something had to end, she simply wanted it to be over.
Serena heard footsteps behind her and was surprised to see Peter Stanhope. The lawyer’s mane of silver hair barely moved in the wind. His lip showed a reddened scar.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Serena told him.
Peter stood beside her and made no effort to get any closer to the funeral. “I suppose I feel responsible.”
“Why?”
“Because I sent you off to expose Finn’s secrets, and now he’s dead.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Serena told him. “Finn’s probably better off this way.”
“That’s true.”
Serena turned and met his eyes with her own. “That doesn’t mean you walk away with a clean conscience, Peter. There’s still Laura and what you did to her.”
“You mean the stalking? I already told you that I was a crass, stupid kid.”
“Don’t make it sound like you were a boy stealing gum from a drugstore. You tried to rape that girl.”
Peter rubbed the scar on his lip. “So that’s it? You’ve decided I’m a monster?”
“I don’t know what you are.”
“And that means you can’t work with me?” he asked. “You’re turning down the job because of a mistake I made as a teenager?”
Serena looked up at the profiles of the trees, which were like spiny bottlebrushes. She heard the murmur of solemn voices near the grave. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter if it was yesterday or 1977. The answer is no. Keep your job, Peter. I don’t want it.”
“You’re walking away from a lot of money.”
“It’s not about the money,” Serena said.
“I thought you were different. I expected better from you.”
Serena shrugged. “Well, don’t let me spoil your moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is your independence day,” Serena said. “With Finn dead, Laura’s case dies with him.”
Peter nodded. “Okay, yes, it worked out fine for me, but I’m not getting a free ride. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“No?” Her voice betrayed her suspicion.
“You sound as paranoid as Tish,” Peter said.
“Your own father didn’t believe you,” Serena told him.
Peter’s eyes turned black. “He was never my biggest fan. I told Randall I didn’t kill her, but he knew what happened between me and Laura in the softball field. I suppose he figured I was a liar. Or maybe it was all about protecting the Stanhope name. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The easiest thing for Stride and Pat Burns and everyone else in Duluth is to believe that Finn swung that bat. Just like it was the easy thing back in 1977 to assume that Dada killed her. We believe whatever makes us feel safe.”
“Aren’t you afraid of what Tish will say in her book?” Serena asked.
Peter studied Tish, who stood next to Stride among the people near the wooden coffin. It was as if she could feel eyes on her back, because she turned and saw Serena and Peter standing together up the hill. Her lips folded into a frown.
“Tish can write what she wants,” Peter said. “I don’t care. Sometimes the easy explanation is the right one, Serena. Finn was in love with Laura, and Laura didn’t want him. So he decided that no one else was going to have her, either.”
“Except some people might think you felt the same way,” Serena said.
“Maybe I did, but Laura’s big mistake wasn’t saying no to me.”
“Then what was it?”
“It was letting Rikke get her tangled up with Finn. That was like buying a ticket to a house of horrors.”
He nodded his head toward Finn’s sister, who stood with her hand resting on the coffin, but with her face turned toward Tish. Serena could see fury in the woman’s taut skin. Her eyes never left Tish, and Tish stared at the ground rather than look up at her.
“Rikke knows what Finn did,” Peter said.
Serena pursed her lips and thought about the macabre striptease that Stride had described on the beach between Finn and his sister.
“Finn and Rikke were a strange family,” she agreed.
“You’re right, but don’t forget one thing,” Peter told her.
“What’s that?”
“Back in 1977, Laura was in the middle of that family.”