Brian Freeman - Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7)

‘Do you know what kind of gun it was?’

‘Like I said, a revolver. Beyond that, who knows? You may not believe this, but not all black folks know about guns.’

Stride smiled. ‘Okay.’

Clyde retreated to his bulletin board again. He grabbed a photograph and brought it back and put it in Stride’s hands. ‘I want this picture back at some point, but for now, you take it. I don’t want anyone taking Janine’s word over mine about that gun. See what I mean?’

Stride studied the photograph. It was a picture of Clyde and Jay in a Duluth bar, along with half a dozen other men. Jay had his arm slung around the shoulder of his younger brother, and where his sport coat fell open, Stride could see the black grip of a revolver poking out of a shoulder holster. Clyde wasn’t lying.

‘When was this taken?’ he asked.

Clyde shrugged. ‘Last October, maybe? Not long ago. It was a bachelor party for one of the boys there. I’m telling you, I never saw Jay without his gun.’

Maggie sat in her Avalanche in the shadow of Ely’s Peak.

The craggy hilltop looming over the highway was dotted with trees clinging to the earth against the bitter wind. It was raw and wild, like most winter days. Duluth in the cold season was a black-and-white movie, as if all the colors of the world had been leached away. Black trees met the milky gray sky, and the white ice of the lakes blended into the snow-covered hills. Hoarfrost deadened the clustered needles of the pines, turning green to silver. Most of the time, the sun didn’t dare show its face.

She’d been up since before dawn, and she typically didn’t sleep until one or two in the morning. So far, the pace hadn’t caught up with her. All she did was work, but she didn’t really miss having a social life. Twice since she’d moved to Duluth, she’d had one-night stands, and two years earlier, she’d had a relationship that lasted three months before it crashed and burned. That was it. Most men couldn’t deal with her insane work hours. They also couldn’t deal with her attachment to Stride. Anyone who spent ten minutes listening to her talk about him knew that her feelings ran deep.

Stride had taken a chance on Maggie right out of college, when she was a stiff kid who knew a lot about books and not much about people. She was grateful for the opportunity, but she wasn’t sure when gratitude had morphed into something else. Most days, she pushed those thoughts out of her head. Stride was the boss. Cindy was his wife. End of story. It was one of those fantasies that was best left in the back of a closet somewhere.

Maggie saw a dented pick-up drawing closer on Becks Road, and she switched off her radio, which was blasting Aerosmith. The truck slowed and turned into the parking lot near the train tunnel overpass where Maggie waited. The door of the pick-up opened, and Nathan Skinner climbed out.

The two of them had never been friends. Maggie scared the hell out of most cops, despite her size. She was smarter than they were, and she had a wicked tongue. One of the newbies, Ken McCarty, said a meeting with her was like sticking a finger in boiling water. Nathan was different. He was a UMD hockey hero, with a chip on his shoulder from the day she’d met him. Politicians and business people in the city fawned over him because of his victories on the ice. He was part of the boys’ club, and he resented Maggie because she was small, young, a woman, and Chinese. To him, if you weren’t a white male with Scandinavian roots, you didn’t really belong in Duluth.

When Jay Ferris leaked a videotape of Nathan’s highway arrest near the Wisconsin Dells, Maggie wasn’t surprised by the man’s drunken rant. Nathan wasn’t really a hardcore racist, but he oozed privilege, which was the worst kind of arrogance for a cop. He thought he could do anything and say anything and never pay a price. When Stride finally fired him, she was glad to see him go.

Nathan knew it.

He wore the drab uniform of a security guard as he climbed inside her truck, but his demotion hadn’t wiped the self-satisfied grin from his face. Nothing dented Nathan’s ego. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but she felt the attraction of his physical magnetism. He was an asshole, but he was a good-looking asshole. He was still built like a college athlete, with muscles testing the seams of his uniform. He had short blond hair, and his face bore the dents of hockey sticks to his nose and chin, but the effect was to make him look tough. Which he was. He had a casual smile that didn’t hide what he wanted, and though Maggie would never have gone to bed with him, she knew lots of women who would have jumped at the chance.

‘Let’s get this over with, Nathan,’ she told him. ‘You know why you’re here.’

‘Sure, I figured you’d be calling. What a shame about Jay, huh?’ The edge in his voice made it clear that Nathan didn’t consider Jay’s death a shame at all. ‘Why meet out here in the middle of nowhere? Are you afraid people would talk if they saw us together?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself. Jay filed a report about a shooting incident near here. I’m checking it out. Besides, I figured you wouldn’t want anyone to know the police were questioning you. You don’t want your name in the papers again, do you?’

‘Oh, I don’t really care. If people think I shot Jay, they might give me a medal for it.’

‘Did you?’ she asked.

‘What, shoot him? No. Unfortunately, I don’t have much of an alibi for last Friday. Sorry.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘I was sick. Flu. I spent the evening alone in my apartment.’

‘Did you go to a doctor?’

‘No.’

‘Can anyone confirm that you were home that night?’

‘I had a Sammy’s pizza delivered,’ he said. ‘The driver will remember me. She was cute.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Too early to make a difference,’ he said. ‘I still could have gone out later and blown Jay’s head off. But I didn’t.’

‘When did you last see Jay?’ Maggie asked.

‘See him? When his face was at the other end of my fist at the Saratoga last April. After that, he took out a restraining order, so I stayed away from him. Look, my gun is in my truck. If you want to test it, feel free. I didn’t shoot him.’

‘Okay,’ Maggie said. ‘Go get it.’

Nathan looked surprised and annoyed. He climbed down from the Avalanche, kicked through snow back to his pick-up, and retrieved a Smith & Wesson.357 Magnum revolver with a wooden grip from his glove compartment. He emptied the cartridges and shoved them in his pocket. When he returned to the Avalanche, Maggie held an open evidence bag, and he put the gun inside.

‘How long do you plan to keep that?’ Nathan asked.

‘Until the test is done. Few days. Couple years. Somewhere in there.’

She shoved the evidence bag with the gun into her glove compartment, and Nathan swore under his breath. She grabbed a print-out from her dashboard of one of the photographs taken from Jay’s camera. She showed the picture of the man in camouflage to Nathan.

‘Ever seen this guy around town?’ she asked.

His blue eyes squinted at the paper. ‘Nope.’

‘Either on the force or after?’

‘Like I said, no.’ Nathan checked his watch. ‘Are we done here, Maggie? I’ve got a shift starting soon. Nothing like minimum wage and no benefits. I live the glamorous life.’

‘Where do you work?’

‘Wherever they send me.’

‘Yeah, we’re done here,’ Maggie said.

Nathan stalked back to his pick-up and drove off with his tires spinning. Maggie watched the truck disappear northward toward Interstate 35. She knew the test would come back negative on Nathan’s gun. He wouldn’t have offered it up if it were the murder weapon. Even so, the streets of Duluth were a little safer with him disarmed.