“That’s right.”

“I was wondering if we could have lunch or dinner sometime. You know, talk about Laura and the old days. I’d really like that.”

Tish hesitated. “Sure, why not.”

“Do you have a cell phone number or something?”

“Of course.”

“Hang on,” Finn said. He pulled a pen out of his pocket and clicked it open. Stride saw him write TISH on the back of his hand. “Shoot.”

She rattled off her number, and Finn scribbled it on his skin.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“Okay.”

“You look really good, Tish.”

“Thanks.”

Finn retreated to his truck without saying anything to Stride. He drove away, waving to Tish through the open window as he did. Tish gave a half-wave in return.

“Old friend?” Stride asked.

“Laura’s friend more than mine.”

“He looks like he’s had a hard life.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t very good back then, either. His older sister, Rikke, was our math teacher. She asked Laura if she’d be willing to tutor him. Finn was into drugs in a big way. Very screwed up. Their parents were both dead.”

Stride nodded. “I remember Rikke Mathisen. She was one of those Nordic blond teachers, very attractive. The high school boys all had crushes on her.”

“I didn’t really like her, but Laura did,” Tish said. “I was pretty independent, but Laura still wanted a surrogate mother. I thought Rikke was being nice to Laura just to get help for Finn, and that bothered me.”

“Why?”

“You saw him. Finn had big problems. Laura wanted to rescue everyone, but she was pretty naive. I told her not to spend so much time with him.”

“Did you tell her the same thing about Peter Stanhope?” Stride asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Except she didn’t listen.”

Tish shook her head. “She did. Laura dumped Peter. He’s lying about the two of them dating secretly.”

“We have no way to prove that.”

“We can prove it with Peter’s DNA,” Tish insisted. “If you had that, you could prove that he was stalking Laura by matching it to the note.”

Stride didn’t like what he saw in her face. “Let me give you some advice, Tish. As a cop. If you want to write a book, then write a book, but if you try to put yourself in the middle of a police investigation, you could wind up in a lot of trouble. So don’t do anything stupid.”

12
___________

Stride checked his voice mail on the drive back to City Hall and found an urgent message waiting for him from the new county attorney for St. Louis County. He parked in his usual spot behind the building, but rather than head directly to his office in City Hall, he headed for the courthouse instead and took the elevator to the fifth floor. The glass doors to the county attorney’s office were immediately on the right as he exited the elevator.

He asked the receptionist to tell Pat Burns that he was outside.

Pat was new to the job. The previous county attorney, Dan Erickson, had resigned in the wake of a scandal during the winter. Stride and Dan had been enemies for years, and he was pleased to see him gone. The county board had taken several months to name a replacement but had finally turned to Pat Burns, who was the managing partner in the Duluth office of a large Twin Cities corporate law firm. She practiced in white-collar crime and had spent several years in the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago before moving to Minnesota. She was tough and smart.