Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) (8 page)

The color evaporated from Janine’s beautiful face.

‘Jay must have lied,’ she murmured. Her expression turned severe. ‘He didn’t get rid of the gun when I asked him to. Or he bought another without telling me. I didn’t know he had it.’

‘The bullet we pulled out of your husband’s head is consistent with the ammunition used in the revolver Jay is carrying.’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said.

‘Where is the gun in this photograph?’ Stride asked.

‘I have no idea.’

‘That’s odd, don’t you think? Jay owned a gun, he was killed with a gun – but you don’t have any idea where that gun is. It’s not in the house. It’s not in his car. It just vanishes.’ Stride spread his arms. ‘Poof.’

Gale stood up. ‘This interview is over, Lieutenant. Dr. Snow was very forthcoming about an embarrassing personal matter. We don’t have any more to say right now. Frankly, if you’re so interested in guns, the person you should be talking to is Nathan Skinner. Now there’s a man who’s extremely fond of guns. And there’s one other thing you should know with regard to your ex-employee.’

‘What’s that?’ Stride asked calmly.

Gale nodded at Janine. She took a breath, and she looked in control again. As if she were about to gain the upper hand.

‘One time, Nathan and I did it in my house,’ she said. She leaned forward and stared directly at Stride, emphasizing each word for his benefit. ‘We fucked in my house. Jay was away. I think it was a turn-on for Nathan. It was part of his revenge fantasy.’

‘And yours?’ Stride asked.

Janine smiled and didn’t answer directly. ‘The thing is, I undressed for him, Lieutenant. I did a strip-tease. I took off my jewelry for him. Do you understand? He saw exactly where I kept my valuables in my bedroom. If he wanted to steal something after shooting Jay – if he wanted to make the murder look like a robbery – he knew exactly where to go.’

13

Howard Marlowe unzipped his heavy winter coat. The warm air inside Miller Hill Mall made him sweat. He dropped heavy shopping bags from Gap, Sam Goody, and Maurice’s on the tiled floor at his feet. It was Saturday, and the mall was jammed, but he and Carol were on their own. His wife had insisted on a no-kid weekend, so Annie was staying with his mother-in-law.

‘An affair,’ Carol announced loudly, as they sat on a bench outside the mall’s Barnes & Noble store. ‘That figures.’

Howard looked at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

She pointed at an older man reading the
Duluth
News-Tribune.
The headline screamed about Janine Snow’s relationship with Nathan Skinner.

‘Dr. Perfect was cheating,’ Carol said, shaking her head.

‘Having an affair doesn’t mean she killed her husband,’ Howard replied.

Carol’s mouth looked as if she were eating a sour candy. ‘Wow, do you have a crush on this rich bitch, or what? You can take her side all you want, but I don’t have any more sympathy for her.’

‘You didn’t have much to begin with,’ he pointed out.

Carol didn’t answer, but she shot him a resentful stare. Things had been cold between the two of them since the break-in, as if somehow the robbery had been his own fault. Bad moods generally didn’t last long with Carol, but when she was in one, it was best to leave her alone. Or let her run up a big credit card bill.

She hadn’t changed her mind about getting a gun for the house. He’d filed for a purchase permit at the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office. He had no idea what kind of gun to get, but he figured a store owner could help him. Then he needed to think about training for both of them. Maintenance. Practice at the range. He didn’t want to admit to Carol that he was terrified about the idea of actually owning a handgun.

Too often, people with guns snapped. They shot someone else, or they shot themselves. Jay Ferris owned a handgun. Without that gun in the house, would Ferris still be alive?

‘There’s a children’s author signing books at Barnes & Noble,’ his wife informed him. ‘I’m going to get a copy for Annie.’

‘Do you want me to go with you?’ he asked.

Carol shrugged without replying, which was as good as saying no. She gave him her back as she marched into the bookstore.

‘I’ll get a slice at Sbarro,’ he called after her. ‘Meet me in the food court when you’re done.’

Howard gathered up their shopping bags. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, and people bumped into him as he walked. Little kids dodged in and out of the crowds. Teenage girls from his high school classes chewed gum, blew bubbles, and waved at him, giggling. A couple of the girls carried tiny bags from Victoria’s Secret, and he wondered what they’d purchased. Panties. Sexy bra. Maybe a boyfriend would get to see them in it. Or out of it.

It depressed him to be forty.

Howard passed more stores. Suncoast. Gymboree. Wilson’s Leather. He stopped at a Rocky Mountain Chocolate kiosk and bought himself a piece of milk chocolate almond bark. After the pizza, he’d want dessert. He fumbled with his bags again as he headed for the food court, and he walked carefully, because the floor was slippery with wet boot marks.

Ahead of him, he spotted an empty storefront. A line of parents and kids stretched out the door into the mall corridor. Getting closer, he saw that the vacant space had been converted into a free weekend clinic for families, sponsored by St. Anne’s. Vaccinations. Strep tests. Flu shots. Massages. The clinic was a hive of activity. Nurses handled registration and gave out balloons to the children. A short, pretty woman with long black hair demonstrated muscle stretches to a young girl in a shoulder brace.

And in the midst of all of them – there she was.

Janine Snow.

Howard stopped. People bustled around Janine, but for him, she was the only person there, as if she were in the halo of a spotlight. She stood beside a portable curtain, talking to a patient who was invisible behind the white sheet. He’d never seen her before in the flesh. Real. Alive. She didn’t see him watching her, which was a good thing, because he found he couldn’t drag his eyes away. It made him feel like a voyeur, staring between the crowds. Others whispered as they walked by.

That’s her.

She had a magnetism that wasn’t like other people. Yes, she was beautiful and blond, with fullness and curves under her white coat, but to Howard, the attraction went deeper than that. It was her life; it was the drama of being her. She was famous, infamous, gifted, cool, erotic. She was as far removed from Howard’s own life as a distant star, and yet she was so close that he could have taken a few steps and touched her.

Somehow, after a while, she felt his stare. She looked up from her work and saw him, and their eyes met.

His physical reaction was immediate. A full erection squeezed its way into the pocket of his underwear. That wasn’t a common event at his age. Hard-ons didn’t just happen anymore. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d experienced something so intimate with a woman. She was staring at him, and he was staring back. There may as well not have been a single other soul in the mall around them.

She went back to her patient. He was nothing to her again. A stranger. Even so, they’d shared a connection. Something had passed between them. It had only lasted a moment, but it took his breath away.

*

‘Everyone looks at me now,’ Janine mused.

Cindy put down her clipboard and glanced at her friend, who’d spoken softly from a few feet away. Janine tilted her head toward the mall, and Cindy looked out at the crowds and saw a middle-aged man eyeing her friend like a fan stalking a celebrity. He was a little doughy, and he labored under the weight of numerous shopping bags. He had a long face with puppy-dog eyes behind old-fashioned black glasses. His coat, plaid shirt, and jeans were the uniform of a suburban husband.

When the man realized Cindy was watching him, he looked away, embarrassed, and trudged toward the mall’s food court.

‘He’s harmless,’ Cindy said.

Janine shrugged. ‘Oh, I know.’

Her friend stripped off her latex gloves and nodded at the child with her, indicating they were all done with the dreaded shot. The little boy scampered to join his parents. Cindy’s eyes followed him, and she felt the same old yearning that dogged her whenever she saw a mother and child together. As if she’d missed something in her life. Janine didn’t seem similarly affected. When her time with a patient was over, that person disappeared from her consciousness. Cindy didn’t understand it, but she’d seen it in doctors over and over.

‘You want some lemonade?’ she asked her friend.

‘Sure.’

Cindy filled two Dixie Cups from a large plastic pitcher near the check-in desk. She drank one and then refilled it, and she ate a stale butter cookie. They’d already been on their feet for hours, and she was exhausted.

‘Here you go,’ she said, handing a cup to Janine.

‘Thanks.’ Janine sipped pink lemonade and eyed the gawkers in the mall. ‘It’s odd. I’ve been saving lives for years, and no one had a clue who I was. Now people think I shot my husband, and I’m recognized everywhere.’

‘Duluth is still a small town,’ Cindy said.

‘Yes, that’s what Archie says. He told me to come here today. He said it would humanize me if people saw me giving shots to little kids. I guess my compassion is just a legal strategy. She lowered her voice further and added: ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

Cindy looked at her, confused. ‘No.’

‘Archie is already thinking about the jury pool.’

Cindy was shocked, but she realized that Janine was right. Archie knew that trials were shaped months in advance by the public perception of a defendant. Initial prejudices, good or bad, were hard to overcome. Janine’s lawyer wanted the people of Duluth to see her as a doctor. A healer. Not a rich, cold adulterer who could point a gun at her husband and pull the trigger.

‘I’ll be back in a minute, okay?’ Cindy said. ‘I need to splash some water on my face.’

She retreated to a bathroom at the back of the empty store. It was handicapped-accessible and smelled of pine disinfectant. She left the door open and didn’t bother turning on the light. She washed her hands, then her face, and she dried her skin with paper towels from the dispenser.

As she stared at her dark reflection in the mirror, it happened again.

Pain, like a lightning bolt between her legs.

Cindy couldn’t hold back a loud cry. She grabbed the porcelain sink, riding the wave, squeezing her eyes shut. Nausea rose in her throat, and she was ready to bolt for the toilet. Her body felt as if it were being torn in two. She wanted to scream again, but as quickly as it had come, the wave crested and washed away. She breathed slowly and deeply, relaxing. Her body was clammy with sweat.

Opening her eyes, she saw Janine watching her closely from the bathroom doorway.

‘Is everything okay?’ Janine asked. ‘I heard you cry out.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you feeling all right?’

Cindy brightened her smile. ‘Sure. It’s just stomach cramps.’

Patients lied to doctors all the time, and doctors knew it. Janine didn’t believe her. ‘The pain looked sharp. Has this been happening a lot?’

‘Every now and then.’

‘Have you seen your doctor?’ Janine asked. ‘Because you should.’

‘I will. I’m due for a physical in a couple months. Right now, I’m too busy.’

Janine frowned. ‘Too busy’ was every patient’s excuse.

‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ Cindy added, which was a stupid thing to say to a doctor when you weren’t a doctor yourself. Her gut told her it was something, but she wasn’t ready to face whatever it might be.

‘Take a break,’ Janine told her. ‘Go sit in the food court for a while.’

‘Yeah, maybe I will.’ Cindy changed the subject and added: ‘I’m sure Archie’s just covering his ass about the jury pool.’

‘That’s sweet, but no.’ Janine looked behind her to make sure they were alone. ‘Your husband can put a gun in my hand now. That idiot, Jay, hiding his gun from me. It doesn’t matter that the police can’t
find
it. Jay had a gun, so the jury will assume I killed him with it.’

Cindy stared at her friend. ‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘It’s reality. The fact is, they don’t need much more than that to convict me. Archie already sat me down and told me the facts of life. Jay and I were alone in the house. We hated each other. My story of what happened is unlikely at best. That’s enough to get most jurors to a guilty verdict right there.’

‘If something else happened, Jonny will find out what,’ Cindy insisted.

Janine smiled. ‘If.’

Cindy flushed. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘I do.’ Janine opened her purse and closed it. She nodded at the toilet. ‘Well, I need to use the facilities, and you need to sit down and take a break.’

‘Okay.’

It was awkward between them.

Cindy left and heard Janine close and lock the bathroom door behind her. She threaded through the mall crowds to the food court, where she got in line and bought herself a grape Mister Misty at Dairy Queen. She found a table and hummed along with an Alan Jackson song playing as background noise. The skylight over her head let in gray afternoon light. She felt better. As she sipped her frozen drink, trying to avoid brain freeze, she people-watched. Old men and women drinking coffee. Children playing tag. Teens in packs, boys eyeing girls, girls eyeing boys. She saw the man who’d been watching Janine at the clinic, and his wife had joined him now. She talked at him, and it looked as if her words sailed through her husband’s head without stopping.

Cindy’s drink was nearly gone, and she was feeling the sugar buzz, when she spotted someone else. She wasn’t sure why her eyes were drawn to him, but once she saw him, she couldn’t look away.

He was a young man, maybe in his early twenties. Not tall. Not buff. A skinny kid. He wore a camouflage jacket and blue jeans, and his hands were shoved in his jacket pockets. He had a navy blue wool cap pulled low down his forehead, and he sported wraparound reflective sunglasses. He stood fifteen feet away, leaning against a column near Burger King. He studied everything in the mall without seeming to study anything at all. His head barely moved, but over the course of ten minutes, he shifted positions periodically so that he surveyed the entire food court. Every restaurant. Every table. Every entrance and exit.

She didn’t know him, but he looked familiar. She’d seen him before.

Where?

She wracked her brain but couldn’t place him, but then he withdrew a tatted hand from his jacket pocket and removed his sunglasses in order to rub his eyes with his sleeve. When he was done, she found herself staring dead-on into those eyes, and she realized who he was. She’d seen his face in photographs on her kitchen table. Photographs that were part of the evidence that Jonny had gathered while investigating the murder of Jay Ferris.

A young man in camouflage in the woods, carrying an assault weapon. A young man with gray, lifeless eyes that reminded her of a shark seeing only the black water.

It was him. This was the man that Jonny was looking for.

She realized she was still staring at him. So did he. The young man put his sunglasses on and stalked away, melting into the crowd of the mall. Acting on instinct, she leaped to her feet and followed him. She spotted his camouflaged back, marching like a soldier. Pushing past people, who parted to let him through. Bumping into others without apologizing. He kept his chin tilted down. Cameras wouldn’t catch him. He was small, but he walked quickly, and she had to hurry to keep him in sight.

He looked back. He saw her.

She pretended to be window-shopping, but she didn’t think he was fooled. He turned sharply right and yanked open a door labeled For Employees Only. The door shut, and he disappeared.

Cindy hurried to the same door and stopped with her fingers clenched around the metal handle. People came and went around her, oblivious to her anxiety. She looked for a mall security guard but saw no one to help her. In seconds, the man would be gone. She hesitated – what was she doing? – but then she opened the door herself, finding an empty, unfinished corridor ahead of her. She stepped inside and let the door close, shutting out most of the noise of the mall.