A dirty yellow van rumbled off the highway. Stride caught a glimpse of the driver and recognized the narrow face and shaved head of Finn Mathisen. Finn didn’t see him. Stride waited while Finn backed up his truck to an open dock and watched him clamber out of the truck, climb the steps of the platform, and disappear inside the building. Even from twenty yards away, Stride could see that Finn’s uniform was soiled from a day in the heat. These were the days in Duluth that leached away everyone’s energy.

Stride waited half an hour before Finn strutted out of the building’s front door. He had showered and changed and was now wearing cutoffs that made his legs look like matchsticks and a gray tank top with gaping sleeve holes. He wore old sneakers with no socks.

“Finn,” Stride called.

He pushed off his Expedition and met Finn where the sidewalk ended and the parking lot began. Finn was three inches taller than Stride, but he looked as if he would blow away when the wind came off the lake.

“Who are you?” Finn asked. His eyes danced nervously.

Stride introduced himself. When Finn heard the word “police,” he shuffled his weight from one foot to the other and stared over Stride’s shoulder at the row of parked cars as if he wanted to bolt. Mint breathed out of Finn’s mouth like fire from a dragon.

“You got a date tonight, Finn?” Stride asked.

“Huh? No. What do you mean?”

“You’ve got sweet breath. Like you brushed your teeth fifty or sixty times.”

“I have halitosis, and I need to use those breath strips,” Finn said.

Stride nodded. “It’s funny, when traffic cops smell mint, they immediately think DUI. You wouldn’t be late because you stopped for a couple cold ones at a bar, would you?”

Finn glanced back over his shoulder at the company door. “Hell, no.”

“I’ve got a Breathalyzer in the car,” Stride told him. “You want to have a go at it?”

“I wasn’t drinking!”

“Okay, Finn. Whatever you say. I have some questions for you.”

“Yeah, my sister told me you came by the house. She said you were asking about Laura’s murder.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It was thirty years ago. It was a shitty time in my life.”

“Is your life any better now?” Stride asked, eyeing the man from top to bottom. Tish was right. He looked as if he were dying.

Finn flinched. “Yeah, all right, I’ve spent my life sitting in a park with God flying overhead crapping on me. Is that what you want to hear? I’m a loser.”

“What I want to hear is whether you told Tish the truth.”

“Man, what do you care? I mean, what are you after? Everyone from back then is old or dead.”

That was true. Stride didn’t really have an answer. He hadn’t asked himself why he cared so passionately about this case, thirty years after Ray Wallace called it solved. It wasn’t about Tish. It wasn’t about Pat Burns asking him to turn over rocks, in case the national press started asking questions. He had begun to realize that Laura’s murder had changed the course of his life, and it was disturbing to discover that he knew much less about the case—and about Laura—than he had ever believed.