Serena wanted to say no, but Peter was right.

“Why Finn?” she asked. “Why not ask me to take a look at the black guy? Dada?”

“Lawyers look for weaknesses. Finn’s the weak link.”

“In other words, you’d prefer that Dada remains a mystery.”

“Anyone who’s a suspect in this case wants Dada to stay a mystery,” Peter admitted. “He’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. As long as no one knows where he is, no one can prove beyond a reasonable doubt who really killed Laura.”

Serena shook her head. “I’d make a lousy defense lawyer. I’d always be wondering if my client was guilty.”

“Sometimes you don’t want to know.”

“I do. I want to know.”

Peter unlocked the trunk of the Lexus. “I told you I was going to take a leap of faith. This is how much I want you to believe me.” He reached inside the trunk and extracted a narrow box, about four feet long and six inches wide. The tape holding it closed was crusted and yellow. Serena saw a single word written on the box in black marker.

DESTROY.

“What is this?” she asked.

Peter handed her the box. It was solid and heavy.

“You were right about Ray Wallace,” he said. “He conspired with my father to steer the case away from me. Randall wanted Ray to put it all on Dada.”

“What did Ray do?”

“He dropped the case. Later, he arranged for some of the key pieces of evidence to vanish from the police file. I think Randall figured someone might try to open up the case again someday, and he wanted a guarantee. So Ray destroyed most of the physical evidence. But not this. Randall insisted on keeping this himself. I think he knew it gave him leverage if Ray ever got a guilty conscience.”

“What is it?” Serena asked again.

“It’s the murder weapon,” Peter said. “It’s the baseball bat. The one that was used to kill Laura.”

29
___________

The hospital ward was like a church, where every voice disturbed the silence. Even the noise of Stride’s heels echoing between the walls felt as loud as fireworks. The corridor was dim. Most of the patients were sleeping through the late evening hours. He stopped at the nurse’s station and was directed to a room near the end of the hallway.

He watched Finn Mathisen from the doorway but didn’t go inside. The man’s face, always pallid and yellow, looked like ash now. His eyes were closed. His forearms were bundled in white bandages up to his elbows. An intravenous line dripped fluid into the flesh of his right shoulder. He was stable now and almost ready to be discharged, but in Stride’s eyes, he still looked like death. People in hospital beds always did.

If Stride had not gone into that bathroom, or if he had arrived even five minutes later, Finn would already be dead. That didn’t stop him from feeling guilty that he and Maggie had hounded Finn with their questions until he chose to escape by attempting suicide.