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state.’
    ‘Was Lenny here himself?’
    ‘Yeah, but he left early. He was gone by eleven o’clock.’
    ‘You saw him leave?’
    ‘He walked right past me down the steps. Had his F-150 parked across the street.’
    Stride wasn’t surprised to hear Leonard Keck’s name in connection with the party. Lenny was one of the richest men in the northland, thanks to his string of Ford dealerships and his commercial real estate developments around the state. He’d served on the Duluth City Council for a decade. He was also a close personal friend of Stride’s boss, Kyle Kinnick, the Chief of Police. The combination of money and political power, and a relationship with K-2, made Lenny believe he was bullet-proof.
    ‘Let me guess,’ Stride said. ‘The girls arrived later.’
    ‘Girls?’
    Stride was getting impatient. ‘Marcus, you play for the Bulldogs, right?’
    ‘I do, that’s right.’
    ‘Your parents won’t be too happy if your scholarship gets yanked, but that’s what happens when you lie to the police. Understand? So don’t play dumb with me. I know there were girls here.’
    Marcus’s face reddened. ‘Okay, yeah, about a dozen girls showed up before midnight. Some guy brought them in a van.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘He was a little guy, skinny, with Hitler hair. Lots of cologne.’
    Stride nodded. The description sounded like Curt Dickes.
    ‘I’m interested in one girl in particular. Small, Hispanic, brown hair and eyes, very attractive.’
    ‘Yeah, I remember a girl like that,’ Marcus admitted. ‘She was hard to miss.’
    ‘When did she leave?’
    ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see her.’
    ‘Were you here all night?’ Stride asked.
    ‘Well, I grabbed a nap after midnight,’ Marcus admitted. ‘I figured all the guys were busy with the girls upstairs, and I had a tough practice yesterday.’
    ‘Where’d you go?’
    ‘There are beds in the crew quarters on the stern. The party was on the other end.’
    ‘Did you see or hear anything?’
    ‘Nah, I crashed. I sleep like the dead. I set my phone to get up in twenty minutes, but I blew through the alarm. I was gone for an hour.’ He looked nervous. ‘Don’t tell anybody, okay?’
    ‘I better not find out you were with one of the girls, Marcus,’ Stride said.
    The kid shook his head. ‘I wasn’t. No way. I got a girlfriend, sir, and she’d rip me a new one if I messed around.’
    ‘Good.’
    Stride left Marcus and took the stairs to the main deck. He stood alone outside, surrounded by the long expanse of red steel. The
Frederick
was small compared to the thousand-foot freighters thatnow traversed the Great Lakes, but it was still an imposing boat. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and followed the starboard railing toward the fantail, where Cat said she’d run from her pursuer. Puddles of melted snow gathered on the metal deck. Cold wind swirled off the lake.
    At the stern, where the massive anchor chain slipped into the water, he saw no ice choking the channel, but the water temperature could be no more than forty degrees. He imagined Cat throwing herself toward the canal. He knew what that long second felt like before the frigid impact. He’d gone off the side of the Blatnik Bridge between Duluth and Superior the previous year during a police chase and nearly died of the fall. Panic attacks had dogged him for months. Even now, the height made him dizzy.
    He examined the channel. Near the pedestrian bridge, he spotted something caught on one of the wooden posts where pleasure boats tied up during the summer. It swished and eddied with the movement of the waves. When he squinted, he saw what looked like flowers opening and closing on a sodden mass of fabric. It looked like a girl’s dress.
    Cat’s dress. She’d been in the water, just like she said.
    Stride backtracked the length of the boat. He reached the multistory superstructure of the bridge, and the door to the guest quarters was open. He heard laughter somewhere above