Stride swore his team to silence as they prepared for the search, but it didn’t help. As a battery of police cars pulled up outside the Stoner house, Bird Finch took to the airwaves, painting Graeme Stoner as a Jekyll-and-Hyde who had seduced his teenage stepdaughter and then killed her. Stride heard it on the radio and turned off the news in disgust.
Maggie, seated next to him, shook her head. “How the hell did he do that? No one knows about this.”
Stride shrugged. “Let’s go,” he told her.
They headed up the long walkway to the front door of the Stoner house with a swarm of uniformed officers. Stride gestured to one of the cops, pulling him closer.
“The word is out,” he said. “You can expect the press to begin descending on this place in droves. I don’t want them anywhere near here, okay? Tape it off, and keep them away. No curious neighbors, either.”
The officer nodded and retreated to one of the squad cars, motioning for three other policemen to join him.
Stride whispered to Maggie. “Let’s keep a close eye on the search, okay, Mags? I want everything by the book and witnessed. No screwups. If we end up charging this guy, he’s already got Archie Gale in his corner, and you can bet everything we do is going to be second-guessed.”
“Signed, sealed, and delivered,” Maggie said. “Count on it, boss.”
Stride didn’t need to ring the doorbell. As he climbed the steps, Graeme Stoner swung the door open. Stride could see icy fury in the man’s eyes.
“Hello, Lieutenant,” Graeme said. “I see you’ve brought a few of your friends with you.”
“Mr. Stoner, we have a valid warrant to search these premises for any evidence related to the disappearance and possible murder of Rachel Deese.”
“So I gathered. And is it ordinary police practice to engage in character assassination before you have any evidence? My phone is already starting to ring, thanks to Bird Finch’s little report a few minutes ago. I called Kyle personally to complain.”
Stride shrugged. Graeme’s contacts at city hall weren’t going to help him now. “I’ll stay with you while my officers conduct the search.”
Graeme turned on his heel and retreated through the living room without looking behind him. Stride followed him, and Maggie gathered the officers in the foyer, issuing instructions. Guppo would lead the team in the basement, she would handle the rooms upstairs, and they would do the first floor and the exterior and vehicles last.
“By the book,” she told them, reiterating Stride’s warning. “Stay in pairs at all times. Find it, photograph it, bag it, label it. You got all that?”
The sturdy police officers, all of them a foot and a half taller than the tiny Asian detective, nodded meekly and set about the search. Their footsteps sounded like thunder as they took different paths up and down the steps.
On the porch, Stride felt the chill in the room, emanating from the two people he found there. Emily Stoner sat where she had been when he first met her, in a recliner by the fireplace. She looked frail, her skin drained of color. Her body had shrunk, and her skin seemed to hang loosely on her frame. Her hair fell limply across her face. She was years older than she had been just a few weeks ago.
Emily didn’t move and didn’t say anything, but her eyes followed Graeme as he sat down in the recliner opposite her. Stride had always sensed tension between them, but this was different. Emily had heard the news along with everyone else. Stride knew what she was thinking—that the man sitting calmly a few inches away, who had shared her bed for five years, might be a monster.
It was Graeme’s demeanor that surprised him.
Stride had dealt with criminals many times in the first moments after the truth came out. Most made angry protestations of innocence, denying the obvious. Others crumbled and confessed, releasing the burden of guilt that had been weighing on their souls. But he had never seen anyone look as calm and confident as Graeme Stoner. The man was furious but utterly controlled, and he still had a look of detached amusement, as if this whole process were nothing but a sideshow attraction.
Stride didn’t know how to read him. He usually believed he could tell a man’s guilt or innocence by watching for the truth written in his eyes and face. Graeme was a mask.
“You realize you’ve destroyed my reputation in this town,” Graeme told him with a determined stare. “I hope the city can afford to pay the damages when I sue you.”
Stride ignored him. He turned to Emily. “Please accept my apologies, Mrs. Stoner. If there had been any way of making this easier for you, I would have done it. I know what you’ve been through.”
Emily nodded but said nothing. She kept staring at her husband, doing what Stride was trying to do—see the truth. Graeme’s face revealed nothing.
“Mr. Stoner, I have to read you your rights,” Stride said.
Graeme raised an eyebrow. “Are you arresting me?”
“No, but you are a suspect in this investigation. I want to make sure you understand your rights before we go any further.” Stride rattled off the Miranda warnings, watching Graeme frown in disgust as he did so.
“Knowing that you don’t have to say anything, are you willing to answer some questions, even though Mr. Gale is not present?”
Another shrug. “I have nothing to hide,” Graeme said.
Stride was surprised—rich suspects never talked—but he wasn’t about to question his good fortune.
“The leak regarding this situation was regrettable, Mr. Stoner. I apologize for that. I don’t know how it happened.” Stride didn’t want to leap into the tough questions and have Graeme realize he was better off staying quiet. He wanted to worm his way slowly toward the ugly details.
“I suggest you find out how it happened, Lieutenant.” Something in the man’s eyes made Stride believe that Graeme was perfectly aware of the detective’s strategy.
Stride nodded. “You can understand, however, that some of the details we have uncovered raise a lot of questions for us. We’d like to get your side of the story. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m sure.”
“Were you sleeping with Rachel?” Stride asked.
There was a heavy silence in the room. Emily seemed to hold her breath, waiting for Graeme’s answer. Stride watched the man set his jaw and saw anger creep into his face. There was no hint of guilt in his expression, only contempt. His conviction made Stride wonder if they were making a mistake. Or was the man simply a consummate actor?
“What an offensive question. But the answer is no. Never. I would never have slept with my stepdaughter, Lieutenant. It did not happen.”
“Rachel said it did,” Stride said.
“I can’t believe that,” Graeme retorted. “The girl may not have had the best relations with either of us, but I cannot believe she would make up such an outrageous lie.”
“She told a school counselor, Nancy Carver, that you started having sex with her shortly after you married Emily.”
Stride heard Emily wince and suck in her breath. Graeme glanced at his wife, then back at Stride.
“Carver? No wonder. That interfering little bitch. Do you know she actually called and interrogated me? But she never came out and made any accusations like that. I think she’s the one you should be investigating, Stride. It’s obvious the woman is a lesbian. As I recall, I even called the school to complain.”
Stride jotted a reminder in his notes. He wanted to check if there had really been a complaint lodged against Nancy Carver.
“Why would Rachel make up such a story?”
“I can’t believe she did. Carver probably made up the whole thing.”
“Rachel told someone else, too,” Stride lied.
This time he caught a glimmer of hesitation in Graeme’s eyes, but the moment quickly vanished. “I find that hard to believe. But if Rachel did that, all I can think is that she was having problems. Maybe the girl was having fantasies about me. Or maybe she was trying to drive a wedge between me and Emily. Who knows?”
“But you never slept with her?”
“I told you, no.”
“You never touched her or had any kind of sexual contact with her?”
“Of course not,” Graeme snapped.
“And she never touched you.”
“I’m not Bill Clinton, Lieutenant. No sex means no sex.”
Stride nodded. A definitive denial would help them in prosecution, if they could find any evidence to back up a relationship between Rachel and Graeme, but he knew that was a big if.
He doubted Stoner would be so adamant in his denial if there were any way of proving the two had been involved.
Or he was telling the truth.
“Do you know a friend of Rachel’s named Sally Lindner?” Stride asked.
Graeme furrowed his brow. “I think so. She goes out with that boy Kevin, as I recall. Why?”
“Have you ever given her a ride in your van?”
“I really don’t remember,” Graeme said. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Graeme scratched his chin. “I may have given her a ride to her car one day. Her bike was broken. This was several months ago, and honestly, I can’t even remember if it was her.”
“Where did you pick her up?”
“Oh, somewhere north of town, as I recall. I had been visiting one of our branches.”
“And where did you take her?” Stride asked.
“Like I said, back to her car.”
“Did you stop anywhere?”
“Not that I recall,” Graeme said.
“She says you took her to the barn.”
“The barn? No, certainly not. I picked her up and dropped her off at her car. That’s all, Lieutenant.”
“It didn’t happen?” Stride asked. “You never went there with her?”
“It didn’t happen,” Graeme told him firmly.
“Then why would Sally say it did?”
Graeme sighed. “How the hell would I know, Lieutenant? Maybe Rachel put her up to it.”
“Rachel?” Stride said. “Why would Rachel do that?”
“She’s a complicated girl,” Graeme said.
Maggie pointed at a three-drawer oak filing cabinet. “You start there. I’ll take the desk.”
The other officer, a gangly twenty-five-year-old rookie who hadn’t outgrown his pimples, nodded and chewed his gum loudly. His name was Pete, and he had been in private security for several years before joining the force a few months ago. Maggie liked his cocky confidence, but he had a lot to learn. Pete had made the mistake of blowing a bubble with his gum and popping it with his gloved finger. Maggie nearly took his head off, reading him the riot act about contaminating the scene. Besides, the noise really bugged her.
Pete stopped blowing bubbles, but he kept chewing the gum, just to annoy her. That was exactly the kind of thing she would have done, and she liked that.
They were in Graeme Stoner’s upstairs office. He kept it impeccably organized. There was a monitor and keyboard on the big, custom-built oak desk, a small array of books arranged by subject, and two stacks of compact discs. Maggie glanced at them. One set of discs reflected Graeme’s taste in music, which ran to loud Mahler symphonies. The other set included discs labeled as confidential and bearing the stamp of Graeme’s bank.
“We’ll have to get Guppo to look at all the discs and the hard drive,” she said. “Make sure we label them and take them all with us.”
Pete grunted. He dug his gloved hands into the first drawer of the file cabinet.
Maggie glanced around the room, absorbing Graeme Stoner’s tastes. The walls were papered in a dark blue pattern, with a gold fleck that matched the rich gold color of the carpeting. Several original watercolors hung on the walls, mostly nature scenes, and to Maggie’s untrained eye, they looked professional and expensive. The desk and its elaborate leather chair were the main furnishings, supplemented by the filing cabinet, a wall of built-in bookshelves lined with hardcovers, and an overstuffed chair with matching ottoman. A slender brass lamp with a globe light sat on the corner of the desk.
It was a rich, sterile room, full of money and devoid of character. The same had been true of the master bedroom—the kind of elegant space in which it was hard to believe people actually lived. She and Pete had spent nearly two hours in the bedroom and bathroom, sifting through drawers and searching for secrets. They found little. The rooms were as interesting for what they didn’t find as for what they did. No birth control. No sex toys. No adult videos. She wondered when Graeme and Emily had last had sex.
It didn’t really matter. The question was whether Graeme and Rachel had ever had sex. They had turned up nothing yet in either room to prove Nancy Carver’s allegation, and Maggie knew from their original search of Rachel’s room after the disappearance that she had left nothing behind as physical evidence of an incestuous affair.
Maggie shuddered. She tried to imagine Rachel alone with Graeme in this house. Was it in the bedroom? In her room? On the bathroom floor? Did he take her on top, or did he make her straddle him? Did he take her from behind? Did he force her to her knees and make her suck him off?
Evidence. That was the troublesome part. Graeme was safe in denying the affair, as long as Rachel never showed up, because little proof ever remained that two people had been having sex. All they had was what Rachel told people—which was worthless in court.
“What’s in the filing cabinet, Pete?” Maggie asked.
The cop shrugged. “Tax records. Warranties. The guy saved everything.”
“Check every file, and box up the tax records. We’ll want to copy those.”
Maggie focused on the desk. She took each book from the desk, flipped through the pages, and returned it. She opened the drawers one by one, examined them from front to back, then got down on her knees and checked the bottom of each drawer to make sure nothing was taped underneath.
She booted up the computer. She didn’t have time to examine the hard disk byte by byte—that was Guppo’s job—but she at least wanted to do a search for e-mails and review the pages Graeme had been visiting on the Internet. To avoid accidentally altering the evidence, she first printed out a full directory listing on the laser printer, noting the details of every file on the hard drive. Then she hooked up a jump drive to the machine’s USB port and copied Graeme’s hard disk. When she was done, she swapped the drive to the laptop she had brought with her and called up a mirror of Graeme’s computer on her own machine.
When she called up Internet Explorer, she was surprised to find that the history of sites visited had been deleted and there was no listing at all in the Favorites box.
“This is interesting,” Maggie said aloud. “Looks like Graeme has been cleaning up after himself.”
“Huh?” Pete said.
“No Web sites at all. And yet the man is head of e-commerce at his bank. Does that make any sense? He doesn’t want anyone to see where he’s been surfing.”
Maggie loaded Outlook. The e-mail software was equally clean, nothing in his in-box, nothing sent, nothing saved. It was as if the man had never sent an e-mail on the computer, although Maggie knew that was absurd.
Something felt wrong. She wondered if Graeme had a drop box stored on one of the public Web sites like Yahoo or Hotmail, where he could send and receive personal e-mails without leaving a trail on his computer. That was going to be a lot harder to find.
Her walkie-talkie crackled, and Maggie picked it up. “Yeah?”
It was Guppo. “We’ve covered the basement.”
“Anything?”
“Clean as a whistle. Even the garden implements shine like brand-new. I don’t think he spends a lot of time down here.”
“Damn,” Maggie said. She was hoping they might find evidence of the murder itself, even if they couldn’t prove that Rachel and Graeme were having sex. Based on the evidence at the barn, though, she realized it was unlikely that he had killed her in the house. It was more logical that they had gone to the barn and that something had happened between them there—something that ended in Rachel’s death.
“Okay, Guppo, you and Terry go after the minivan outside, and work it over. Check out every inch, pull up the carpet, run the UV search for blood residue. Hair. Fiber. Semen. Fingerprints. Anything. I want to know if Rachel was in that van.”
“Gotcha.”
The next voice that crackled over the walkie-talkie belonged to Terry. “Son of a bitch, Maggie, you want me locked up in a van with Guppo? It was bad enough being in the basement with him.”
Maggie laughed. “Hey, I put up with it at the barn, Terry. You don’t get any sympathy from me. Over and out.” She hooked the walkie-talkie onto her belt again.
“I’m going to start on the bookshelves,” Maggie said, eyeing the wall of hardcovers with distaste.
“The computer’s clean?” Pete asked.
“At least on the basic stuff, yeah. Looks like Graeme kept it tidy. We’ll have to have Guppo do a more thorough search.”
“How about pictures?” Pete said. “You know, GIFs, JPEGs, that kind of stuff. Maybe he kept some dirty photos or other X-rated stuff around.”
Maggie nodded. She did a search of the jump drive. First she typed in “Rachel” and did a global search for any file that might include the girl’s name. That would have been too easy, she figured, and she was right. The search came up empty. She tried again with files starting with R but was overwhelmed by the results. She searched for “sex,” then “fuck,” then “porn,” but found nothing.
Then she had another idea. She narrowed the search list to identify any file that had been created or edited in a two-week span surrounding Rachel’s disappearance.
The search turned up only a handful of files. She scrolled down slowly, ruling out the system files and checking out anything that looked like a word processing document or spreadsheet. Everything seemed work-related, full of details about online mutual fund transactions and branch profit-and-loss statements. She went through the files one by one, mentally crossing them off her list, doubting this search was going to be any more productive than the others. Graeme was too smart.
And then she saw it.
Fargo4qtr.gif. A picture file created two days before Rachel disappeared.
The name sounded like a business file, but it was in the wrong directory. And she hadn’t seen any other GIFs among Graeme’s work files. She moved the mouse over to highlight the file, and she hesitated before clicking on it. She held her breath. With a flutter of her fingertip, she clicked and watched the screen go blank. The picture seemed to take forever to load, although she knew that it was only a second or two as she heard the laptop’s hard drive whirring. Then the screen refreshed, and a photo jumped onto the screen, filling it in full color.
Maggie gasped. “Oh my God.”
She heard Pete turn curiously behind her. Then, seeing the screen over her shoulder, he exhaled, too. “Shit.”
It was one of the most amazing pictures she had ever seen. Maggie considered herself a staunch heterosexual, but even she found herself wetting her lips with her tongue. Rachel’s eyes drew hers like a magnet.
In the photo, Rachel was naked. She was in the wilderness somewhere, with trees out of focus behind her. The rain was falling, coating her bare skin, running in silver rivulets down her body. The photo captured drops of water on her breasts and little streams of water running into her damp crotch and slipping to the ground. Rachel’s knees were bent. She had one hand between her legs, two fingers pushed out of sight into her slit. Her other hand cupped her right breast, reaching up to graze her nipple. Rachel’s mouth had fallen open in pleasure, but her bright green eyes were open, staring into the camera.
Maggie realized Pete was beside her, practically panting. “God, I hope the girl’s not dead,” he said. “What I wouldn’t give to fuck that.”
“Shut up,” Maggie said sourly. She fed the photo to the printer. It printed slowly, line by line, inking out the image of the teenager masturbating in the woods.
“That son of a bitch,” she murmured.
The porch was silent. Emily and Graeme sat in dueling recliners. Emily stared vacantly into space, motionless, her hands folded in her lap. Graeme examined a file through his half-glasses, studiously ignoring Stride. When the detective had run out of questions, Graeme had simply gone back to work, as if he had nothing at all to be concerned about.
Stride knew that at least part of Graeme’s calm demeanor was an act, because the insinuation alone would be enough to destroy his reputation. Like it or not, Graeme Stoner was finished in Duluth. And the man knew it. The only question was whether he would be free to go somewhere else or whether they would find what they needed to put him away for a long time.
The waiting game got old as the hours dragged by. Stride heard Guppo and Terry trudge back upstairs, then heard them disappear through the front door. He assumed Maggie had directed them to search the van, although he didn’t hear the conversation. He had turned off his walkie-talkie rather than let the Stoners hear their dialogue.
He stared at Graeme, studying the man’s face. He knew that Graeme could feel his stare even as he turned pages in the file, but the banker didn’t flinch. It would be interesting to watch Dan Erickson do battle in court to put the man behind bars. Assuming they ever made it to court.
More time passed.
Stride heard Maggie’s footsteps. She marched into the room, a piece of white paper flapping in her hand. This time, Graeme looked up with genuine curiosity and a faint nervousness.
Maggie whispered in Stride’s ear. “Check this out.”
Stride looked at the photo and blinked at the sight of the naked girl. He had to remind himself this was the teenager who was missing and presumed dead.
He looked up from the paper to find Graeme staring back at him. Stride suddenly felt he had an edge over the arrogant bastard.
“Tell me, Mr. Stoner, do you own a digital camera?” Stride asked.
Graeme nodded. “Of course.”
“We’ll need to take it with us,” Stride said. “Do you recognize this photograph?”
He handed the paper to Graeme. Stoner’s reserve cracked, and Stride saw his hand tremble as he tried to hold the paper steady. Emily saw what was on the page, and her hand covered her open mouth as she stifled a scream.
“Where did you find this?” Graeme said, trying to keep his voice even.
“On the computer in your office,” Stride told him.
“I have no idea how it got there. I’ve never seen this before.”
“Really?” Stride asked. “You didn’t take the photo?”
“No, of course not. I told you, I had no idea it was on the computer. Rachel must have put it there. As a joke.”
“A joke?” Stride asked, his eyebrows climbing. “Quite the joke.”
“Who knows why she did it?” Graeme said.
Stride nodded. “You have no idea where or when this was taken?”
“None at all.”
Maggie studied the man with cold eyes. “The file was added to your computer two days before Rachel disappeared.”
“Two days?” Graeme asked.
“That’s quite a coincidence,” Stride added.
“Well, as I say, Rachel must have left it there. Maybe it was her way of saying a bizarre good-bye before she ran away.”
Stride stepped closer to the man. “But she didn’t run away, did she, Mr. Stoner? You and she went out to the barn that night. You went to have sex with her, like you had been doing for years. Did she say no this time? Did she try to run away? Did she threaten to tell your wife?”
“Graeme,” Emily begged him in a weak voice. “Please tell me none of this is true.”
He sighed and looked at her. “Of course not.”
“We know Rachel was at the barn that night, Mr. Stoner. We know she made it back to your house, and that you were the only one here. Would you like to tell us what happened then?”
Graeme shook his head. “I never heard her come in. And I think that’s all I have to say until Mr. Gale gets here.”
He looked dazed. Stride was pleased to see that the man was capable of human error after all, that he could make mistakes, leave clues behind, and not know how to react when his lies were uncovered.
“Keep searching, Mags,” Stride told her.
Maggie was about to return upstairs when her walkie-talkie squawked. Everyone in the room heard Guppo’s voice.
“Maggie, Stride, we need you out here. There’s residue of blood on the floor under the carpet in the back and on a knife he’s got in a toolbox.”
Maggie quickly switched off the handset, but it was too late.
Emily screamed.
Stride and Maggie both watched her, feeling the raw pain that sliced her voice.
She bolted up from the recliner, her face ashen. She turned and stared in horror at Graeme, who sat with a curious smirk frozen on his face, like a cat who had swallowed a canary. Emily sank to her knees.
Stride jumped forward, ready to catch her if she crumpled into a faint.
Instead, Emily moaned, then got down on all fours and vomited over the white carpet.