Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“Actually, Detective, I think I do. I think I’m dealing with a fundamentally decent man who did his best under impossibly difficult circumstances and who genuinely regrets taking the lives of those men. If you were anyone else, you wouldn’t drink so much.”

Rossi threw up his hands. “Why do you think coming after me is going to change anything for Alex?”

“Maybe it won’t. But at least you’ll know what it’s like to spend your life defending yourself for having done what you knew was right.”

Rossi set his jaw. “Then have at it.”

He rose and turned to go.

“Before you leave, Detective, come over to the window and look out in my backyard for a minute. There’s something I want you to see.”

Bonnie opened the blinds. Rossi hesitated but joined her. Looking out, he saw four women, three of them black, one Hispanic, along with a dozen others ranging from newborns to young adults. They were on the patio, a few talking in hushed tones, most of them silent.

“Who are they?”

“Those are your widows and their children and their grandchildren. The men you killed were drug dealers and thugs, no better or worse than Dwayne Reed. Maybe their wives and children knew all about them and maybe they didn’t. Either way, they haven’t forgotten that you killed their husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They want justice and peace. Go talk to them. Tell them that they’re wrong. Tell them that you have no regrets. Tell them that the men they loved got what they deserved.”

Rossi stared at them, swallowing hard. He looked at Bonnie.

“I was exonerated.”

“And so was Alex.”

Bonnie waited until Rossi drove away before opening the door to the patio.

“I want to thank you for coming over this afternoon. It’s so nice to get together outside of the hospital and see how all the kids are doing. The pizzas will be here in about twenty minutes. Who wants a soda?”

Alex drifted to the back of the courtroom, tuning out Judge Steele’s eulogy for Robin, focusing instead on their brief conversation. He’d been every bit as charming as she had imagined him until she mentioned Joanie Sutherland’s name and the light went out of his eyes. There had to be more behind his reaction than his decision years ago to put Joanie into a diversion program instead of sentencing her for shoplifting. He could have stayed in contact with her, using his position to take advantage of her only for her to turn the tables and blackmail him.

The friendship between Judge West and Judge Steele added another tantalizing element to her speculation. If Steele had killed Joanie, he’d have been ecstatic when Jared Bell was arrested for her murder. He might have talked to West about the case, nudging him to get the right public defender appointed to represent Bell. She discounted that possibility because Robin assigned the cases, not Judge West, leaving her to wonder whether West had somehow pressured Robin to assign Jared’s case to her. She decided that while there were too many moving parts for that to have happened, she had to dig deeper into the relationship between Judge Steele and Joanie.

Alex left the memorial for Robin, brooding about what Bonnie had said, that she didn’t have to go through this alone and that no matter what happened, Bonnie would be there. It was the kind of promise that lovers often made but less often kept because what ended up happening was more awful than either could have imagined. But she wanted to believe that Bonnie was different, that they were different, and that together they were stronger than either could be on her own.

She drove around, aimlessly at first, then purposefully, past the places that had meant so much to them. Where they first met, where they had their first date, where they were when Alex told Bonnie for the first time that she loved her and where they had first made love. Each stop along the way restored her faith in herself and in them until there was no place else to go but home.

She turned onto their street, bright-eyed and singing one of their favorite love songs, the words catching in her throat when she saw Rossi’s car in their driveway. She folded onto the steering wheel as if she’d been kicked in the gut, stopping in the middle of the street, staring at her house, the life gone out of her, body and soul.

At first Alex thought Rossi was there to harass Bonnie once again. She hoped Bonnie would tell Rossi that they’d broken up so that Rossi would leave Bonnie alone. Any chance of that happening would be lost if she walked in on them. And then she realized that it might be something worse. Convinced that Alex was going to destroy herself, Bonnie might have invited Rossi in an attempt to broker a deal to save her. It was just the sort of thing Bonnie would do: diagnose the patient’s condition and do the best she could to treat it, unaware that this time the cure was worse than the disease.

Crying, feeling like she’d been cut open from the inside out, Alex drove back to the Residence Inn and crawled into bed. She woke up at nine o’clock, not remembering falling asleep. She was groggy, her limbs felt rubbery, and though she wasn’t hungry, she knew she needed to eat, but first she needed to move, get her body working again, and that meant going for a run. Putting in five miles would perk her up. She changed into her running gear, laced up her shoes, tucked her cell phone and room key into a fanny pack, and went out into the night.

The temperature was perfect, in the low fifties. Standing on Main Street, she looked across at Penn Valley Park. Bonnie was right. The park was one of her favorite places, 176 acres of rolling hills with an off-leash dog park, baseball diamonds and tennis courts, the World War I Liberty Memorial, and, her favorite, the Scout, a ten-foot-tall statue of a Sioux Indian on horseback mounted on a limestone base and overlooking downtown Kansas City. She loved the simple majesty and power of the sculpture and the amazing view.

Alex didn’t share Bonnie’s concerns about running in Penn Valley Park at night but, nonetheless, stuck to Main, trotting north and taking advantage of the long descent down to Pershing Road to loosen up. She turned west onto Pershing, staying with it until she reached West Pennway, where she turned again, heading back south, the uphill grade payback for her downhill start on Main.

She was running easily as she started the climb, her arms and legs working together in a steady, fluid motion, her head upright, her chin level, her core holding everything together. There had been a lot of traffic on Main and on Pershing, but only a few cars passed her on West Pennway. South of Twenty-Sixth, the name of the street changed to Penn Valley Drive, signaling the beginning of its route through the park. She told herself that she wasn’t breaking her promise to Bonnie because, technically, she was running through the park, not in the park. The thought made her smile until she realized it would be a while before they’d have that conversation, if they ever had it.

Passing a small lake on her right, Alex forgot her promise and left the road, cutting across a wide grassy expanse enveloped in darkness, strong, sure strides carrying her up the gradual slope leading to the Scout. Her lungs swelled with each breath in, contracting with each breath out, in perfect rhythm with the beat of her heart. Sweat poured off her, cooled by the crisp night, her body in perfect harmony with earth and air, joyful at their union.

Alex could see the Scout a hundred yards ahead. It was illuminated at its base, the lights making the bronze shine in the dark. She sprinted as she got closer, the horse and rider looming larger and larger, her breath coming in deeper gulps, her heart pounding. An arm’s length away, she reached out to touch the limestone pedestal like she was breaking the tape at the finish line of a race, at once aware of furious footsteps behind her, coming out of nowhere, gaining on her, another runner’s labored breathing causing her to turn her head, but she was too late. She caught a glimpse of a black runner’s face mask, gasping at a flurry of quick, sharp pains in her back and something warm running down her legs, which had somehow given out on her. She dropped to her knees, collapsing facedown at the base of the statue, bewildered and bleeding.