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

‘Peter never mentioned it to me.’

‘Jay called an attorney named Tamara Fellowes. Do you know her?’

‘I don’t. As I say, I work exclusively with Peter. He owns the firm, and he handles most of my matters personally. Peter is the attorney who is suing Dr. Snow for me.’

Stride planned to call Archie Gale when he returned to his City Hall office, but he found that he didn’t need to do so. Gale was already waiting for him in a police conference room. With Janine Snow.

The attorney, looking dapper, hopped to his feet. ‘Ah, Lieutenant, sorry to barge in like this. Your assistant said you were on your way back to the office.’

‘I’m a little surprised to see you here,’ Stride admitted.

Gale cocked his head. ‘Well, Dr. Snow has something she wants to share with you.’

Stride sat down. Janine, on the other side of the table, looked chastened, which wasn’t typical for her. She stared at the table in front of her, not at Stride. Her hands were folded together. A few blond hairs strayed across her face.

‘What did you want to tell me?’ he asked.

She finally looked up, and her blue eyes were vacant. ‘It’s not something I’m proud of. Honestly, if it weren’t for a private detective threatening me with blackmail, I would have kept it to myself.’

Stride frowned. ‘What was this detective’s name?’

‘Melvin Wiley.’

‘And why was he trying to blackmail you?’

‘I was having an affair,’ Janine told him.

Stride said nothing. He looked at Janine and then at Gale. Finally, he said: ‘With whom?’

‘Someone my husband hated,’ she said. ‘And someone you know very well. A former cop named Nathan Skinner.’

Maggie parked on ice-covered ground and climbed down from her yellow Avalanche. A freight train clattered under the overpass of Highway 2 thirty yards away. Its cars were streaked with rust and graffiti. She was near a gritty industrial park in Superior, Wisconsin, in a residential neighborhood butting up to the train tracks. The land around her was piled high with plowed gray snow.

She saw the house she wanted to visit on the corner, protected by a soaring arborvitae that was twice the height of the roof. It was a small house, two stories, with vertical wooden siding painted in sea-foam green. A tall fence protected the yard, so she couldn’t see inside. The storm door had bars.

A white Toyota Rav was parked on the side street.

She and Guppo had already talked to more than two dozen Rav owners in the Twin Ports over the past several weeks. The interviews had produced nothing useful. There had been a white Rav parked near the base of the hill leading to Janine Snow’s house on the night of the murder, but they were no closer to discovering who owned it, or whether it had any connection at all to the death of Jay Ferris.

Maggie crossed to the house. The steps on the deck were slick with ice, and she gripped the wobbly railing to keep from falling. She knew her block heels weren’t made for winter, but she didn’t care.

A black man in his late twenties answered the door.

‘Seymour Pugh?’ Maggie asked.

He considered her with coal eyes. ‘What about it?’

‘That’s your Rav on the street, right?’

‘So?’ he asked.

She introduced herself. ‘I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.’

Pugh said nothing, but he stepped outside into the cold. Rule number one, Maggie thought: Never let cops inside your house. She took pride in the fact that she could size up a suspect as guilty or innocent within a few seconds, but Seymour Pugh’s face gave nothing away except calm distrust. That was no surprise, because he’d dealt with the police plenty of times in his life.

He was tall and skinny, wearing baggy red cargo pants and a white tank top stained with spaghetti sauce. He had a wide, flat nose with flaring nostrils and a chin that was fuzzy with long, curling hairs. His cornrows dipped below his ears. He had big hands with long fingers. His left ear sported an earring, and he wore a simple chain with a cross around his neck.

‘What’s this about?’ Pugh asked her.

‘Do you know a man named Jay Ferris?’

‘No.’

She dug in the pocket of her burgundy jacket for a photograph. ‘This is a picture of Mr. Ferris. Do you recognize him?’

‘No.’

‘He was murdered a few weeks ago. He lived in a big house up on the hill in Duluth. He wrote a newspaper column.’

‘Don’t get no paper,’ Pugh replied.

She rattled off the date of Jay’s death. ‘Do you remember what you were doing that night? It was a Friday.’

‘You’re kidding, right? One day’s like every other.’

‘Do you own a gun, Mr. Pugh?’

‘I got kids. No guns in my house. What are you talking to me for, anyway?’

‘You own a white Rav,’ Maggie said. ‘A witness spotted a white Rav not far from the house where the murder took place.’

Pugh chuckled and shook his head. ‘Yeah, how many of them trucks are there around here? Did you run through all the licenses and pick out the black faces?’

‘We picked out the people with criminal records,’ Maggie replied. ‘Jay Ferris was shot, and jewelry was taken from his home. You’ve had a series of convictions in the last decade for burglary and auto theft, Mr. Pugh.’

‘True enough. You see me using a gun in any of them?’

‘No.’

‘No, you didn’t. Nobody got hurt. And fact is, the last time I was inside was three years ago. I’m clean now. I got a job.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I drive a truck. I deliver machine parts all over the Midwest. Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas. Most days I’m hundreds of miles away from here. Hard being away from home, but it’s a living. An honest living. I got a job, a wife, kids. Jesus blessed me.’

‘Good for you.’ Maggie eyed the house, which needed work. ‘Looks like you could use some extra money, though.’

‘Yeah, and if I was breaking into rich people’s houses, I guess I could do better than this, huh?’

‘Sometimes desperate people will do just about anything,’ Maggie said.

Pugh jabbed a finger at her. He’d chewed his nails and cuticles until they were bloody. Maggie spotted movement in the front window and saw a boy’s face peering out with wide eyes. He’d pushed aside the curtain, which looked like a plastic tablecloth. A woman’s arm dragged him away.

‘Look, lady, don’t go throwing my past in my face,’ Pugh snapped. ‘Yeah, I made mistakes. I was a stupid kid. Fact is, when I stole shit, it was to put food on the table, okay? You and me may not have the same values, but don’t go thinking that means I don’t have any values. My family needs something, I make sure they get it, but I don’t steal anymore. We make do on what I earn.’

Maggie nodded. ‘Back to that Friday night,’ she said.

‘I told you, I have no idea where I was or what I was doing. Either I was on the road or I was home with my family. You can call my boss and find out. For me, Friday’s just another day on the calendar.’

‘That was the night of the multi-car crash up on the Bong Bridge. It was closed for hours. Does that help?’

‘I don’t pay attention to traffic unless I’m in it. Now, are we done?’

‘We’re done. Thanks for your time.’

Seymour Pugh retreated inside the house. Maggie heard the sound of his voice change and heard him greet his kids with the excited shout of a father. It made her smile.

She returned across the street to her Avalanche and got inside. As she headed back toward the bridge, she passed the white Rav on the street again, and she realized that this end of the investigation wasn’t going anywhere. Most cases had dead ends you had to follow. The car on the street near Janine’s house was one of those stray facts that got in the way of finding the truth.