The Zero Night Read online

  praise for

  Brian Freeman

  “Brian Freeman is a first-rate storyteller.”

  —Nelson DeMille,

  #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “This guy can tell a story.”

  —Michael Connelly,

  #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Brian Freeman writes the best kind of psychological procedurals. His characters struggle with the moral consequences of the crimes they investigate, and his plots are as twisty and fast-moving as Lake Superior’s undertow.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Brian Freeman is masterful in setting up the pace and suspense.”

  —Bookreporter

  Copyright © 2022 by Brian Freeman

  E-book published in 2022 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Kathryn Galloway English

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-8236-3

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-8235-6

  Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  For Marcia

  “Which came out of the opened door—the lady or the tiger?”

  –Frank Stockton

  1

  The man with the briefcase sat on a bench in the drowning rain.

  When the wind gusted, Lake Superior punished him for his choice of location, rolling waves up and over the pier and drenching him with spray that was even colder than the downpour. In the twin glow of the lighthouses on either side of the ship canal, and beneath the ghostly light of the lift bridge, the muddy, wriggling surface of the water looked angry and alive.

  However, the man on the bench seemed unaffected by the October storm. He sat motionless, his back straight, his fingers spread atop the leather briefcase on his lap. Coils of his curly blond hair clumped like loose springs on his forehead. He wore a navy-blue button-down shirt, a neon-yellow tie, and black slacks, all soaked to the skin. His eyes appeared to be closed. His tall, skinny body, sitting alone on the bench, was a silhouette framed against the horizon of the lake.

  Lieutenant Maggie Bei watched the man from the sodden green grass of Duluth’s Canal Park. Rain lashed her, too, and the gales nearly lifted her off her feet. She didn’t like being here at three in the morning, wet and cold. The truth was, she also didn’t much like the man on the bench. His name was Gavin Webster, and he was a lawyer. She didn’t trust lawyers as a rule, but Gavin was a defense lawyer, which meant he was by definition a liar, an ambulance chaser, a headline hound, and a sworn enemy of the police. On the phone, he’d told her he was in trouble, which was enough to get her out of bed in the middle of the night. Then again, Maggie rarely believed a word that came from a lawyer’s mouth.

  She squinted into the driving rain, and her lips tightened into a grimace. Then she walked across the grass, listening to the squish of her calf boots. She tugged the belt of her trench coat tighter, but cold water dripped from the bowl cut of her black hair like fingers down her back. She shoved her hands into the coat pockets. When she got to the bench, she sat down next to Gavin. Her legs weren’t long enough to reach the ground, so her feet dangled. Her arrival elicited no reaction. He knew she was there, but he still didn’t move.

  Gavin was a good-looking man, Maggie acknowledged grudgingly to herself. He was in his midforties, like her, but his thick, curly hair and baby-smooth skin made him look younger than he was. He had a long narrow nose over a long narrow chin on a long narrow face. He hadn’t shaved in a while, giving him blond stubble. His mouth was a thin, pale slash.

  Among the community of Duluth lawyers, Gavin had long been considered a plugger. That wasn’t a compliment. The judgment on Gavin was that he was hardworking and intelligent, but not someone who had lived up to expectations. His former partner had cheated him and driven him into bankruptcy, which meant that the more respectable commercial firms wouldn’t hire him. He was a sole practitioner now. He wasn’t part of the legal upper crust, not a member of the Kitchi Gammi Club, where the real deals were done among the city’s movers and shakers. The big cases never came his way, so he took public defender work to make ends meet.

  He was a man on a treadmill, running fast to stay in place.

  “Hello, Gavin,” Maggie said.

  The lawyer’s watery eyes opened. His head swiveled, and he stared at her through the curtain of rain. His pale-blue eyes were his most distinctive feature, intense and oddly luminous in a way that Maggie had always found creepy. His gaze latched on to people and refused to let go, as if it were a staring contest that he was determined to win.

  “Thank you for coming,” Gavin replied in a voice that sounded low and lost. “I’m sorry to call so late, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Chelsey,” he said.

  Maggie didn’t know Gavin well enough to know who that was, but she made the obvious guess. “Is Chelsey your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her?” Maggie asked.

  “Someone took her.”

  Maggie’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Took her? What does that mean? What are you saying?”

  “I made a mistake. I should have called you sooner. I thought I could deal with this myself.”

  “Gavin, tell me what happened to your wife.”

  With his thumbs, the lawyer undid the two locks of his briefcase. He popped the lid. The case was empty inside, and rain began to soak the worn, stained interior. He ran his fingers along the wet calfskin.

  “I brought the ransom with me in this. I gave them the money. I did everything they asked. After that, they were supposed to call and let me know where she was, but it’s been three hours, and nothing. They’re not going to call, are they? I was a fool to believe them.”

  “Are you saying that your wife has been kidnapped?”

  There was a tremble in his lower lip as he snapped the briefcase shut. It was hard to tell because of the rain, but she thought he was crying. “They said if I called the police, they’d kill her. So I didn’t call. I thought if I just gave them what they wanted, I’d get her back.”

  He focused on Maggie with those strange, inscrutable eyes again.

  “Now she’s dead,” he went on helplessly. “I’ve lost her.”

  * * * * *

  Serena Stride noticed the time on the clock glowing beside the bed. It was just past three in the morning. Sometime during the night, she always woke up long enough to check the time. When she did, she remembered her magic number, which increased by one with every toll of midnight. Her brain made the calculation automatically; she didn’t even need to think about it.

  6,607.

  That was the count tonight.

  For eighteen years, she’d kept track of the total, day by day, night by night. She couldn’t turn it off. Even when she tried to forget it or put it out of her mind, she would wake up somewhere during the dark hours, and the number would click forward one more digit.

  6,607.

  That was the number of nights she’d survived without a drink.

  Normally, Serena would acknowledge the number and then turn over and go back to sleep. But she was restless tonight. Out of sorts. With her eyes open, she stared at the bedroom ceiling and listened to the rain hammering outside. She glanced at Jonny, who slept soundly beside her. His chest was bare despite the chill of a cracked-open window—he liked fresh air even in the freezing weather—and there was enough light for her to see the wrinkled scar where the surgeons had sewn up his heart the previous year. He’d been shot. He’d almost died. But here he was, still beside her. Even so, the scar was always there, reminding her that even Stride was mortal.

  His salt-and-pepper hair, which he’d been letting grow longer than usual for more than a year, fell messily across his handsome, weathered face. With the barest touch of her fingertips, she pushed back his forelock. She thought about waking him up. A part of her wanted to talk to him and tell him what she was feeling; a part of her wanted to make love to him. He wouldn’t complain about that. But she wasn’t in a mood for romance; she was too agitated, too consumed by her thoughts. Actually, it had been months since they’d been intimate. Life kept getting in the way and pushing them apart. She missed the closeness, and her body missed the sex. She felt the absence of him inside her, but they were too distant emotionally to be physically close. So she slipped out of bed alone and crossed the cold wooden floor to the living room. She pulled the bedroom door shut behind her as quietly as she could, but the knob always rattled.

  There was no mystery in why she felt unsettled. It wasn’t just the strained awkwardness between her and Stride. The answer was also the open door on the other side of the living room, leading to the empty bedroom where Cat Mateo had slept for almost four years. Cat was gone now. Well, not gone—but she was moving on with her new life
. She was in a dorm at UMD, where she was a freshman. Serena hadn’t anticipated the empty-nest feeling she had without the girl around every day.

  She went and turned on the lights in Cat’s room. Some of her posters and pictures, the ones she hadn’t taken to college, still decorated the walls. The air still smelled like her, floral and fresh. Serena could have texted her to say, hello, how are you, do you miss me? Cat was new to dorm life, which meant she was probably still awake, hanging out with the other freshmen until all hours. But this was Serena’s problem. She didn’t need to burden Cat with her own loneliness.

  Behind her, a pulse of music filled the living room. It came from her phone, which was charging on a table near the bedroom door. Maggie was calling. She’d given Maggie her own ringtone: Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time,” a tribute to ego run wild. The other detectives always gave her a wry smile when they heard it. Maggie had taken over the major crimes unit for the Duluth Police after Stride was shot, and her new role had proved to be an uncomfortable fit. The assignment was supposed to be temporary, but Stride’s leave had gone on for more than a year now, and people were beginning to wonder if he’d ever return. That made the rest of the cops nervous. The snarkiness and impatience that made Maggie a good number two for Stride didn’t always translate well when she was the one snapping out orders. Serena felt that more keenly than the others because she worked most closely with Maggie day to day.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she said, answering the phone.

  “I’m soaking wet, that’s what’s up,” Maggie replied in a sour voice.

  Serena eyed the tall, rain-streaked windows that led to the cottage’s front porch. “Why do I get the feeling I’m about to be soaking wet, too?”

  “Yeah, I’m in Canal Park. Guppo’s already on the way.”

  “What’s up?” she repeated, because Maggie sometimes seemed to think that Serena could follow her thoughts telepathically.

  “We’ve got a kidnapping.”

  “Who?”

  “Do you know Gavin Webster, the defense lawyer? It’s his wife. Chelsey. Chelsey Webster. The abduction happened two days ago. Two days! He tried to deal with the kidnappers directly, and they screwed him.”

  “Took the money and ran?” Serena asked.

  “Right. No call, no sign of Chelsey, no evidence of where she is or whether she’s still alive. Anyway, that’s Gavin’s story, so we need to check it out.”

  “You don’t believe him?” Serena asked because she could hear doubt in her voice.

  “He’s a lawyer,” Maggie repeated, using the word like it was a piece of fish that smelled past its prime. “So who knows? Gavin looks like he’s in shock, but lawyers are good actors.”

  “Where are you?” Serena asked.

  “I’m taking him to the lobby at the Comfort Suites so we can get out of the rain. I’ll interview him there.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  Serena put down the phone.

  She headed for the house’s third bedroom. That was where she kept her clothes now, rather than in the closet of the master bedroom. Getting called out in the middle of the night wasn’t uncommon, so she’d decided to use the other closet to avoid waking Stride up every time it happened. Not that he’d ever complained. She stripped, put on a bra and a red turtleneck, and zipped up snug jeans. Her legs were long, and when she put on her heeled boots, she cleared six feet. Staring into the mirror over the dresser, she used a brush to get some of the tangles out of her long, lush black hair, and then she tied it in a ponytail behind her.

  She grabbed her keys. Her wallet. Her badge. Her gun.

  Before she left the bedroom, she hesitated, studying her face in the mirror the way she would examine a suspect who was hiding things from her. Emerald-green eyes stared back in the gray light. Her nose was sharp and straight. Her skin still had a mellow brown glow from the summer days outside. She was a harsh critic of her own looks, despite Jonny telling her that she hadn’t lost the glamour she’d brought to Duluth from her old life in Las Vegas. With a critic’s eye, she noticed laugh lines making parentheses around her mouth and a tiny web of wrinkles near her eyes. Her cheeks were fuller than she liked; no matter how much she worked out, time and the Duluth seasons managed to keep her weight a few pounds above her target.

  That was Serena at forty-three years old.

  Forty-three.

  The middle of life. As much behind her as ahead of her. How had that happened? She hadn’t really come to terms with the reality that she was no longer young, and she didn’t like it. Being mature was supposed to mean you had less to prove to yourself, but if anything, she’d become increasingly dissatisfied with herself and her life. She felt a hole in her soul, an emptiness that followed her like a shadow and was always with her.

  Serena turned off the light and headed out of the bedroom. The rest of the cottage was dark, and rain thumped on the roof. In the kitchen, she plucked her coat off a hook near the back door, then grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. Before she could open it, her cell phone rang again. Quickly, she dug in the pocket of her jeans to retrieve it.

  The caller ID showed a telephone number she didn’t recognize. Except for the area code, which she knew well.

  602. Phoenix.

  Serena tensed. Nothing good ever came out of calls from Phoenix.

  “Yes?” she answered cautiously. “Who is this?”

  “Ma’am, my name is Deputy Lawrence Moray with the Maricopa County Sheriff ’s Office in Arizona. I’m trying to reach a woman named Serena Dial, and this is the number I have for her.”

  “My name’s Serena Stride now, Deputy, but you’ve got the right person.”

  “Okay, well, good, thank you.” His voice stumbled uncomfortably. “The thing is, Ms. Dial—Ms. Stride—I found your name and number in the possession of a woman we’ve identified as Samantha Dial.”

  Serena sighed and squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes, of course, you did. That’s the way it always works. Samantha Dial is my mother, Deputy. I assume you have her in jail again. What has she done now?”

  Drugs.

  Assault.

  Theft.

  Even prostitution. Being in her sixties wouldn’t stop Samantha from ringing that bell.

  What was it this time, Serena wondered.

  Deputy Moray cleared his throat in a nervous way that Serena had heard police officers use many times before. She’d used it herself when she had to deliver bad news. That was when she realized that this was a very different kind of phone call.

  “No, ma’am, it’s nothing like that,” the deputy went on. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, and I really apologize for doing it on the phone. But you see, we found your mother’s body tonight. She’s dead.”

  2

  Even when Jonathan Stride was asleep, his mind was usually conscious of his wife leaving their bed, of the crunch of her footsteps on the gravel outside the open window, of the growl of her Mustang’s engine as she drove off. He knew when she’d been called away and wasn’t surprised to wake up alone. But this time, his eyes opened with a start. He’d been vaguely aware of her getting up, but he hadn’t heard her leave the house, and at least half an hour had passed since then.

  He threw back the blanket and dropped his feet on the cold bedroom floor. As he did, he felt a tug in his chest, as if someone had given him a sharp punch to the ribs. Most of the pain had gone away over the past fourteen months of rehabilitation, after the surgery that had saved his life. He was running again, lifting weights again, feeling maybe 80 to 90 percent of the man he’d been before he was shot. However, his bones gave him a bracing reminder every morning of what he’d gone through on the operating table.

  Stride went to the bedroom window and checked the driveway. He’d been right. Serena’s car was still there. Bare-chested and barefoot, he went into the living room, where the lights were off. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Serena sitting on the brick hearth of the fireplace. Her chin was balanced on her hands, her head down, her black hair mostly covering her face.