Turn to Stone Read Free Page B

he said. He added with a smile: “If that GSR test comes back positive, you know how to find me.”
    “Are you headed back to Duluth tonight?”
    “It’s a little late for that,” Stride said.
    “If you need a place to stay, I’ve got a hobby farm over on County CC. It’s just my daughter and me. We can fit you in.”
    “That’s kind of you, Neal, but I’ll be fine. There’s somebody in town I need to look up, anyway.”
    Gandy nodded. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Lieutenant, you seem pretty interested in Percy’s death. I get it, it’s not every day somebody kills himself in front of you. Fair warning, though, Sheriff Weik wouldn’t be too happy about you poking around. This is his turf. He’s pretty possessive about it.”
    “I appreciate it,” Stride told him. “No, I’m not here to interfere. I’m heading home in the morning. This mystery has nothing to do with me.”

3
    Stride had already decided that if the house was dark, he wouldn’t stop. Instead, he’d backtrack to the Comfort Inn near the highway and head out for Duluth at first light. When he followed the river past Kuckuck Park, however, he saw the downstairs lights of the tiny house ablaze. He had the feeling that he was expected.
    He parked in the weedy gravel driveway near the detached garage. He’d only been here once before, on that same trip with Cindy twenty years earlier. Oak trees that had grown on the street for decades towered over the neighborhood with barren winter arms. The World War II-era single-story houses were holdovers from a time when people were content to live in small rooms. Little bedrooms. Little kitchens. Simpler lives.
    Stride didn’t have to ring the bell. Richard Heling opened the door and waited on the front stoop as his nephew tramped through the snow.
    “I wondered if you’d stop by,” the man told him. “I gave it about fifty-fifty odds.”
    “Hello, Uncle Richard,” Stride said.
    “We’re both pretty old now, Jon. I think you can drop the ‘uncle’ part. Call me Richard. Or Dick, if you’d like. That’s what most of my students called me, and they didn’t even know my first name.”
    Stride smiled. Do you hug a man you’ve only met a few times in your life, even if he’s your mother’s brother? Stride extended a hand, and so did his uncle. They shook. Then, after an awkward pause, they embraced, too. He could see an echo of his mother in the man’s face. Richard would have to be 75 now. He’d outlived his older sibling by two decades.
    “News travels fast,” Stride said.
    “Well, you talked to Sheriff Weik, right? He called me. Wanted to know if I really had a nephew who was a Duluth cop.”
    “I appreciate your vouching for me.”
    “Actually, I told him you were a fraud and to clap on the leg irons,” Richard replied, winking. “That’ll teach you to get you out here for the occasional Thanksgiving.”
    His uncle waved him inside. The house hadn’t changed. The heavy furniture looked the same. Some of the wallpaper corners were peeling near the ceiling. A wood fire gave heat to the living room, and the house smelled of tuna casserole that had baked in the oven. A dirty dinner plate sat on a coffee table, and the old square television was muted. It looked lonely, but maybe that was because it reminded Stride of his own matchbox house on a spit of Duluth land that jutted into Lake Superior.
    Two beers had been opened.
    “You really were expecting me,” Stride said.
    Richard shrugged. “Okay, maybe I thought it was 60–40 in your favor.”
    The two men sat down. Richard took the sofa, and Stride sat in an armchair near the fireplace. They were both big men. His uncle looked like an unreformed 1960s radical, with a crown of gray hair around his balding skull and a professorial beard. Richard wore a red flannel shirt, cargo shorts despite the cold, and leather sandals. Physically, he reminded Stride of his mother, but the two siblings had never shared much in common