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

‘And what do you mean by that?’ she asked.

‘Cancel the surgery,’ Stride told her.

‘Cancel it? Jonathan, I’ve been patient with you because of Cindy, but maybe you don’t realize who I am or what I do here. I don’t perform elective surgery that can be squeezed in between vacations and golf games. A man’s life is at stake. Days count. Minutes count.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s why I’d like this to happen without confrontation. I don’t want to alarm a patient or a patient’s family by talking to them myself, but I will if necessary.’

‘And say what? What’s going on? Are you planning to arrest me?’

‘We don’t have a formal arrest warrant yet,’ he acknowledged, ‘but it’s in process. We’ll be working with Mr. Gale on a time for you to surrender yourself. However, this decision won’t wait. You need to cancel all of the surgeries on your calendar.’

‘Well, unless you plan to haul me out of the hospital in cuffs, I don’t see why—’

‘Please, Janine,’ he interrupted her. ‘Don’t make this harder on yourself or your patients. You know why.’

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed an evidence bag that he placed on the impeccably neat desk in front of her.

No bluff.

Her eyes saw it, and her eyes closed. The evidence bag contained a prescription bottle of the painkiller Vicodin.

‘I’m sure you know where we found this,’ Stride told her. ‘This and about fifteen other bottles of Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycontin. You’re hooked on pain pills, Dr. Snow. I can’t let you in an operating room.’

Janine said nothing.

She knew there was no point in protesting or denying. She knew whose fingerprints they would find all over the bottles. If she’d had the strength, she would have disposed of them weeks ago, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

‘You may find it surprising, but doctors aren’t supermen or superwomen,’ Janine told him. ‘We’re human. After I broke my ankle last winter, I needed pain medication. I figured I could manage the risks, because I knew more about them than anyone. I was naive. By the time I realized it, it was too late.’

She reached to pick up the bag, and Stride pulled it away.

‘I’m clean today,’ she added. ‘I always make sure I’m clean before I walk into the OR. It’s my rule.’

‘That hardly matters, even if it’s true.’

She shrugged. He was right, and she knew it. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘What about Ira Rose? The patient who died?’

‘I was clean then, too,’ she insisted. ‘My problem had nothing to do with his death. Not that anyone will care.’

Janine was a realist about what came next. The fact of her addiction was enough to cost her everything she had. No doubt she’d lied on her malpractice insurance application, and the policy would be voided. The judgment in litigation over Ira’s death would cost her millions. Her fortune. Her house. Her license to practice medicine would soon be gone.

Everything she lived for — gone.

‘Jay knew,’ Stride said. ‘He threatened to expose your addiction, right? That’s what he held over your head.’

She didn’t answer. Her mental calculations had already shifted to the next battle of her life. Her career was over; now all that remained was guilt or innocence in a murder trial. She wouldn’t make his job easier.

‘You visited pharmacies all over the northland,’ he went on, ‘but the patient name on the prescriptions was the same. Holly Jorgenson. Holly . That was the name of the drug addict in Jay’s column last July. It was a threat against you, wasn’t it? A very public threat. You shut off his credit cards, and that was Jay’s way of letting you know that if you didn’t turn the money spigot on again, he’d expose your secret to the world.’

‘Jay,’ she said, and he could hear the depth of bitterness in her voice.

‘That’s when you bought the condo, too,’ Stride said. ‘Did you tell Jay you were quitting the pills? Instead, you just took your addiction underground. You found a way to keep it hidden from him.’

She didn’t break down. She didn’t cry. There were very few tears in Janine Snow.

‘What about Thanksgiving?’ he asked. ‘Jay hired Melvin Wiley to follow you, but was he even thinking about an affair? Or did he suspect you were still using pills, and he wanted proof? I’m curious, what exactly did Jay say when he confronted you? Did he call his friend Tamara Fellowes at the Stanhope law firm and say that he was prepared to offer damaging information in Esther Rose’s lawsuit? Did he threaten to destroy your whole life if you didn’t give up the affair with Nathan Skinner? And what else? Did he want a slave, Janine? Did you finally realize there was no way out with Jay except to see him dead?’

Her voice was low but calm. ‘It must be so nice to be perfect, Jonathan.’

‘I’m certainly not that. I’m sympathetic to your situation, Janine, but you have to make some hard choices. It’s time for you to talk to Archie about a plea. If you and Jay argued that night, if you lost control and shot him, then you’re better off admitting it. This crazy story about someone coming into the house won’t fly.’

‘I never lose control,’ she replied, ‘and I didn’t shoot Jay.’

‘No one’s going to believe you. Archie won’t be able to sell that to a jury. Were you on the pills that night? Is that why you had to stop the car with Cindy and throw up?’

Janine picked up her office phone, as if he weren’t there. She’d already dismissed him. ‘Patty, what room is Mr. Fernandez in?’ she asked her assistant. ‘I need to speak to him and his family about the surgery today. I’m afraid we have to cancel it. And get Archie Gale on the phone for me, will you? Tell him I need to see him immediately. I’m going to be arrested soon.’

Howard Marlowe pulled into his driveway at the end of the school day.

They were talking about the 1960s in his ninth grade Civil Rights class. Unrest. Riots. The assassination of JFK and then the Civil Rights Act of the following year. Kennedy was Howard’s hero. He wished he’d been born earlier, so he could have been alive when Kennedy was president. That was an era when people could still make a difference.

As he got out of his car, his head was still reeling from the comment one of his students had made. Howard had shown them headlines from the day after Kennedy’s death, and one of the fourteen-year-old girls had raised her hand and asked, ‘Why was it such a big deal?’

Someone took a rifle and killed the President of the United States.

No big deal.

He’d never felt so impotent and purposeless in life. He was absolutely certain that he was making no difference whatsoever with his stay on the planet. In a black mood, he grabbed the mail from the box at the end of the driveway, brought it inside, and sat down at the kitchen table. Carol was home, making dinner. Baked chicken and broccoli, because it was Monday. She whistled along to a pop song by Kelly Clarkson, as if it were a wonderful day. The anger of the break-in was behind her now.

Everything in their lives was back to normal, which was exactly what Carol wanted. Everything was the way it had always been and the way it would always be.

It made him want to scream.

‘What’s in the mail?’ Carol asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Howard picked at the letters and magazines in front of him. A credit card bill from Kohl’s. A copy of People magazine. Carol liked to read it. A flier about recycling and trash collection. A brochure with coupons from the local restaurants. Five dollars off at Pizza Hut. They’d use that one.

He pulled an official-looking envelope out from the pile. It was addressed to him from the Duluth District Court of St. Louis County.