“I’m saying if Rikke went to the park to pick up Finn, maybe she came upon the baseball bat lying in the field.”

“Or maybe Elvis found it,” Maggie suggested. “Maybe he was so wracked with guilt about killing Laura that he OD’d a month later.”

Stride nodded. “Yeah, I could be crazy, but Finn’s prints aren’t on the baseball bat. We’ve got prints from Peter, Dada, and Cindy, but not Finn. If he killed her, why wouldn’t his prints be on the bat? Instead, we’ve got a set of prints that we can’t identify.”

“Why would Rikke kill Laura?” Maggie asked.

“That depends on what was really going on between the two of them,” Stride told her. “Amanda said that every daughter becomes her mother sooner or later. We see it all the time in abusive relationships, right? Abuse begets abuse. Rikke admitted to us that her mother sexually molested her. The question is, did Rikke take after her mother and become an abuser herself?”

“You think that Rikke had a sexual relationship with Laura?” Maggie asked.

“I think it’s not impossible. Laura spent a lot of time there when she was struggling with her sexuality. After her breakup with Tish, maybe she was confused and vulnerable and needed someone to confide in. So she went to her favorite teacher for help. What if Rikke took advantage of her trust? We already know she got kicked out of the school district later for an affair with a student. We’ve been saying all along that Finn was insanely jealous of Laura’s relationship with Tish, but maybe we’ve got it backwards. Maybe Rikke was the one who was jealous.”

Maggie took time to think about it, but then shook her head. “Even if Rikke did seduce Laura, why would she kill her?”

“If she was abusive and obsessed, who knows what she would have done when she found out Laura was running away from her?” Stride replied. “You’re talking about a brother and sister who were raised on violence and incest. We know what it did to Finn. Do you think Rikke doesn’t have demons, too?”

“Except we know that Finn is the one who’s capable of murder,” Maggie said.

Stride had a vision of a lonely North Dakota farm, glowing faintly in the center of miles of nighttime fields. It was like being on the moon, Rikke had said. His eyes grew hard.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Do we?”

Maggie opened her mouth to protest and then clamped it shut.

“Son of a bitch,” Serena gasped. “No, we don’t.”

“I want to talk to Rikke,” Stride said, standing up. “I want to get her prints to match to the murder weapon, and I want to know what was really going on in that house.” He stood up and looked around the bookstore. “Is she still here?”

Serena shook her head. “Rikke left right after Tish. I saw her go.”

“All right, let’s see if we can catch her,” Stride said.