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

Which he hadn’t. He had no phone in the basement, and his cell phone was in their bedroom. He gripped the rubber handle of the bat with sweaty hands and took two more steps toward the closed door above him.

‘Did you hear me? Get out!’

Carol screamed from upstairs. His wife’s voice was gutted with fear. ‘Oh, my God, Howard! What’s going on? Where are you?’

He reached the top step and grabbed the handle of the plywood door. He found he couldn’t summon the courage to twist the knob. He listened and heard footsteps, barely six feet away on the other side of the flimsy piece of wood. Voices, too. More than one. The footsteps thumped, and he heard his front door open and felt the house seize with the change in air pressure. Icy drafts blew under the door and chilled his legs.

‘Howard! Howard!’

Other than the half-finished basement, their house was on one level. A hallway off the living room led to three bedrooms. Carol was trapped in one of those bedrooms, steps away from the people who had invaded his house. His six-year-old daughter was in another bedroom.

‘The police are almost here!’ he shouted. ‘You better get out!’

The noises had stopped. There were no more voices, nothing but the rush of air from the front door. He pushed an ear to the door, and when a minute of silence passed, he twisted the door knob and inched the basement door open. The lights were off, but the glow of the streetlight revealed a shower of glass on the hardwood floor like diamonds. He didn’t see anyone, but he could smell the sweaty odor that strangers had left behind. His finger flicked the light switch, and he squinted. The intruders had fled. The front door was wide open, letting in snow and wind. He took tentative steps into the middle of the room, twisting his head to check in every direction, and feeling ripples of cold and fright down his back.

Carol’s laptop was missing from the dining room table. She’d been using it there before they went to bed. The three drawers of his grandmother’s oval accent table had been pulled out and dumped. He kept almost one hundred dollars in cash there for pizza deliveries, and the money was gone. Next to the living room sofa, two of their tall casement windows had been kicked inward, leaving shards around the frames.

‘They’re gone,’ he called to his wife. ‘It’s okay.’

He grabbed the phone and dialed 911. When he hung up the phone, he realized that Carol hadn’t come out of their bedroom. He went to check on her, but the bedroom was empty. The sheets were rumpled. A flicker of concern flashed in his heart. He rushed to the closed door of the next bedroom, which belonged to Annie, and flung it open. The nightlight was on. Carol was in a rocking chair, and Annie was asleep in her arms, utterly undisturbed.

His wife’s face was a mask of tears. Her eyes were wide open and red. Mucus dripped from both nostrils. Her lower lip trembled, and she clutched their daughter so tightly that Howard was afraid she would suffocate her. He knew Carol, and he understood. The bubble had popped. The wolf had come. Carol cherished their ordinary, predictable life, and now its sanctity had been violated. Certain things, when they were taken away, never returned.

‘They’re gone,’ he repeated.

She opened her mouth and closed it. She wiped her nose on her wrist. ‘You weren’t in bed. You weren’t there.’

‘Sorry, I was working in my office. I couldn’t sleep.’

Carol leaned her cheek against Annie’s hair. ‘They could have murdered us.’

‘Carol, they were probably just kids,’ Howard told her. ‘They took your laptop.’

‘That’s what you’re concerned about? A laptop? I could have been raped! Killed! They could have taken Annie!’

‘I know. The police will be here soon. I’m going to check if anything else is missing.’

Howard left Annie’s bedroom. He returned to the icy living room and realized he would need to board up the broken windows tonight. The temperature was around zero. He went to the front door, which was still open. Looking out through the storm door, he saw footprints running across their yard in the snow. Kids, he told himself.

He closed the door.

Howard returned to his empty bedroom and slipped on sweatpants and a white T-shirt. He checked the other rooms and made sure nothing else had been taken. Just the computer and the cash. His shouts had interrupted them before they made their way deeper into the house.

Just kids.

I could have been killed.

Howard heard his wife’s voice in his head as he stood in front of the broken windows and waited for the police lights to appear on the street. He thought to himself: And what if she had been killed? What if he’d gone into the bedroom and found his wife’s body there?

Shot. Or strangled. Or stabbed.

Howard thought about Janine Snow.

That was her story, too. She took a shower, and when she came out of the bathroom, she found her husband dead on the living room floor. An intruder had come and gone. Murdered Jay Ferris. Taken jewelry from their bedroom. So she said.

It was such a long way from Howard’s little house to that mansion on the hill. He had nothing in common with a woman like Janine Snow. Except now he did. A burglary could happen to anyone. He thought about her photograph, her blond hair, her put-together look, her arrogant beauty that was so intoxicating. And then he imagined her standing over her husband’s murdered body.

No one believed her.

Howard thought: Would anyone believe him ?

What if those kids had killed his wife? You’re living your life, and suddenly a random act of violence changes everything. People start tearing apart your whole world. The police. The media. Pretty soon, they find out your secrets. Things that make you look guilty, even when you’re not. Everybody had things like that. You could take anybody’s ordinary life and turn it into something dark and criminal.

Look at Howard Marlowe. He murdered his wife.

Look at Janine Snow. She murdered her husband.

He heard movement behind him. Carol stood there, arms folded across her chest. She looked like someone who’d opened a closet door and seen the devil hiding inside.

‘I want to get a gun,’ she said.

Howard cocked his head. His wife hated guns. She’d told him over and over that if you brought a gun into the house, sooner or later, it got used, and someone got killed. Accidents happen. Arguments happen. Kids play games.

No guns.

‘Are you sure about that?’ Howard asked. ‘I thought that you—’

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Carol screamed at him. He barely recognized her. ‘I’m never going through something like that again! Get me a gun, Howard! I want a gun! ’

The North Shore home of Esther and Ira Rose had a For Sale sign in the snow. A moving van was parked in the driveway, and Stride saw two men struggling to relocate an oak china cabinet from the house to the interior of the truck. As he headed for the front door, he saw moving boxes through the picture window.

The Roses had a perfect location on the North Shore highway. Their large yard sloped toward the scenic drive, and the entire house looked out on the blue expanse of Lake Superior. Every day offered a sunrise on the water. However, Esther Rose had obviously decided to move on with her life somewhere else, after her husband died under Janine Snow’s hands on the operating table.

Esther met Stride at the door. She didn’t look like a murderer, but she also didn’t look like a woman who would send a threatening letter in exquisite penmanship — which is what she’d done. You stood there and watched Ira die. You killed him. I hope you can feel something in that cold, cold heart of yours. I hope you suffer the same fate someday — standing helpless over the dead body of someone you love.