“That’s good. That’s what I want.”

“But this isn’t just about Peter Stanhope,” he added.

“What do you mean?” Tish asked.

“I mean that Finn put himself at the scene of the murder with his statement,” Stride explained. “We had no idea he was there until now. He admitted to you that he was following Laura that night. So yes, I want to know what Finn thinks he saw. But the reality is, he just made himself a suspect, too.”

21
___________

Stride took a left exit off the interstate and headed for the steep span of the Blatnik Bridge. The narrow crossing over Superior Bay was also known as the High Bridge, a nickname held over from the days when the second bridge between the cities of Duluth and Superior was the lowly Arrowhead Bridge. Ever since the Bong Bridge had opened in 1985, and the Arrowhead Bridge was torn down, the two bridges had provided identical clearance for ships, about 120 feet from the roadway to the cold waters of the harbor. But for locals, the Blatnik Bridge would always be the High Bridge.

Police on both sides of the bay hated the bridge. Fog, ice, and snow caused numerous accidents. Wind blew cars and trucks across the lanes. Jurisdiction was always a headache, because the state line cut right through the center of the bridge. Then there were the citizens who used the High Bridge like the Golden Gate, as a favorite spot for suicides. The Blatnik offered no pedestrian walkway, only a gravel-strewn shoulder and a three-foot concrete barrier. Leave your car at the height of the span, get out, and take a three-second journey to neverland.

Stride had seen the bridge from both sides, helping untangle wrecks on the highway in the fog and sailing under the bridge in Coast Guard boats as they trolled for bodies. To him, the bridge meant death.

He drove fast in the left lane, crossing under the blue steel arch of the bridge and descending into the decay of northern Superior. He made his way off the highway onto Tower Avenue, driving past shuttered storefronts, where the main street was a ghost town. The two cities were known as the Twin Ports, but Superior was the poor sister, its population declining, its economy staggered by industrial decline. No one made money here. No one built houses. Everyone looked for work and staved off the wolf at the door.

Stride drove south, past the city’s small retail strip into the low, empty land. He turned onto a dirt road that led across a series of railroad tracks. The home that Rikke and Finn Mathisen shared was on a two-acre lot at the end of the developed land, where the road ended in waste and fields. The grass on the square lot was long. Oak trees yawned over the three-story Victorian house. Blue paint chipped away from the siding.

He parked his Expedition across the street and got out. He was immediately adjacent to an unguarded railroad crossing, where nothing but a white X marked the tracks. Tilting poles of telephone wires paralleled the railway. Stride could see a train rumbling between houses a quarter mile away. Its whistle blasted through the quiet in several staccato bursts. When it stopped, he noticed the calmer noise of wind chimes tinging from the Mathisen porch.