“‘You know all you need to know to find me,’” Serena quoted. “Did the others say anything like that?”
“Yes.”
“What about the tape itself?” she asked.
“There are no fingerprints on it. Apparently, Maxell cassettes are still surprisingly easy to find. Whoever did this could have gotten the tape just about anywhere. The forensic team thinks it’s new.”
“But why steal Art Leipold’s tape recorder? You can still buy tape recorders in various places, can’t you?”
“Maybe because it belonged to Art. If a copycat wanted to follow in Art’s footsteps, that’s one way to do it.” He noted Serena’s dubious expression, and he continued. “We found the tape recorder next to the box in the hunting lodge. Art’s fingerprints were all over it.”
“You worked that case, Jonny. I didn’t. I’m not doubting you.”
But he could see that she was, and it bothered him.
“Why did you ask me if the tape wasn’t real?” Serena said. “Did you hear something?”
Stride didn’t answer immediately. He rewound the tape and played it over from start to finish without stopping. When he heard the final words—Save me, Jonathan Stride—he clicked it off. He watched Serena’s face.
“You hear it, too, don’t you?” he asked. “It’s too perfect. The original tapes from the victims were rough. They stuttered. They made mistakes. They started and stopped. Aimee sounds rehearsed, like an actress, not a victim. She sounds as if she’s reading from a script.”
“She is,” Serena said.
“What do you mean?”
“Everything she said is from the script of the movie. I heard the first take she did in the warehouse when she was doing her scene in the box. The words match. I’m pretty sure they match exactly. The only thing she changed was to take out the fictional character, Evan Grave, and put in your real name.”
“So it’s fake?” Stride said.
“I’m not sure about that, Jonny.”
“You said yourself she’s an actress reading lines. What else could it be?”
Serena played the tape one more time. Then she said, “No, I don’t think it’s fake. Aimee’s in danger. But she knows I was there to watch her in that scene, so she knows I’d realize what she was doing. Somehow, she’s trying to send me a message.”
37
Stride met Chris Leipold at the dead end spur off Highway 44 near Art Leipold’s hunting land. When Chris got out of the car, Stride could feel the blast of warm air from inside. It was desolate out there. They were the only two people around for miles. He watched Chris shiver as the cold penetrated his skin. The man still looked dragged down by the flu virus. Or maybe he felt the ghost of his father in this place.
“Sorry to pull you away from the movie,” Stride said.
“I’ve got assistants to keep it rolling. Dean’s done. Really, all we need is Aimee, but we don’t have her.” A gust of wind made a mournful cry in the trees, and he added in the quiet aftermath, “I don’t understand what happened.”
“Neither do I.”
“You said you got an audiotape. A message. Like all those years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you want to meet me here?” Chris asked.
“Because someone is playing Art’s game. And this is where we found Art’s victims.”
Together, they took the bridge over the Cloquet River. Several more inches of snow had fallen overnight, covering up the evidence of anyone who had trespassed there in the interim. He noticed that Chris didn’t say much and looked uncomfortable being there at all. The cold air made the man cough repeatedly as he inhaled.
They followed the trail inside the trees, where the snow had trouble penetrating the branches overhead.
“Why did you never sell this land?” Stride asked him.
“I tried. No one wanted it. Can you blame them? The hunters come out here anyway. They don’t care who owns the land. And it wasn’t worth the money to keep curiosity seekers away from the cabin. So I just let it rot.”
Where the trail narrowed, Stride took the lead. Chris kept pace behind him. The remnants of footprints lingered where the snow was shallower, but there were too many to isolate fresh tracks. Even so, he noticed a few places where the prints had been scrubbed away down to the mud, and it made him wonder if someone had been trying to make sure that nothing was left behind. He kept an eye on the dense woods ahead of him, looking for movement.
“What did Art say to you when he was first arrested?” Stride asked.
“That he didn’t do it.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Sure. He was a son of a bitch, but he was my dad. I didn’t want to think that he could be such a monster.”
“After the trial was over, did you ever wonder?” Stride asked.
“Wonder what?”
“Whether Art really did it.”
There was no answer behind him. Stride took a few more steps, then turned around. Chris had stopped where he was. It was hard to interpret the look on his face. Anger. Disbelief. Confusion.
“What the hell are you saying?” Chris asked.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Art killed those women. You said so. The county attorney said so. The jury said so.”
“I know.”
“How could he be innocent? The women died here. They were all connected to Art. You found evidence in our house. You told me it didn’t point any other way.”
“That’s all true.”
Stride started walking again. Eventually, he heard the slushy footsteps of Chris catching up with him. They didn’t talk more as he pushed through the trees that grew across the trail. He stopped at the fringe of the clearing as the ruined cabin came into view. Chris stood beside him, and they both stared at it like it was a monument to bad history. Stride watched and listened. The cabin was deserted.
“Did you come out here much as a kid?” Stride asked.
“To the cabin? Not very often. It was pretty rustic. I remember the spiders and the wasp nests. It scared me to sleep here, so I didn’t like it. Art was a hunter. Me, not so much. I didn’t really see the point.”
Stride knew Chris was cold and wanted to leave. The man danced on his feet impatiently, and his nose ran.
“How did you write the script for Aimee’s scenes?” Stride asked in a low voice.
“What do you mean?”
“How did you make it convincing? We didn’t release much information to the public.”
“You released transcripts of the audiotapes,” Chris said.
“But that’s all we did. Nothing else. What the women said on the tapes was coached. It wasn’t really them talking. I was just wondering how you got inside their heads for the movie.”
“Well, that’s what writers do. We put ourselves inside someone else’s life.”
Stride nodded. “There was something strange in Aimee’s message on the tape. She used your words.”
“My words?”
“She took it straight from the film script. Do you have any idea why she would do that?”
“No.”
“Serena thinks she was sending us some kind of message,” Stride said.
“I don’t know what it could be. Aimee’s an actor. Actors memorize lines. If she was under pressure, maybe that’s all she could think to say.”
“You said Aimee liked to improvise. After the first take, she almost never stuck to the script.”
“That’s true.”
“So I wonder why she would go back to your original words right now.”
“I can’t explain it, Lieutenant.”
Stride nodded. “Okay. That’s fine. You can leave now if you want, Chris. You look like you’re freezing.”
“I am.”
Chris turned around and hiked at a fast pace back into the woods, which swallowed him up quickly and left Stride alone. He waited until he couldn’t hear or see Chris at all, then made his way into the small clearing. The evidence of trespassers was everywhere. In the daylight, he could see the black scorch marks where the walls had burned and the open mouth of the caved-in roof. He walked all the way up to the front of the cabin, where he could see inside.
There had been a cage there eleven years ago. A box.
Not now. Now it was empty. He was in the wrong place.