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

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.