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

‘What’s that?’ his wife asked from the sink.

Howard was curious, and he unfolded the official letter inside. ‘It’s a summons,’ he said.

‘For what?’

He read the notice at the top of the page.

You are hereby notified that you have been selected to serve as a trial juror in the County District Court.

Summer came.

In Duluth, people sometimes wondered if the ice would never melt and if the trees would stay bare skeletons forever. Spring was often no spring, just cold gray days of mud and rain. However, even Duluth seasons eventually had to bow to the calendar, and by mid-year, the city became a paradise. The months spent as nothing but a cold nowhere were forgiven and forgotten. Lake Superior shimmered, a vast sapphire sea, catching dots of sunlight on each wave. Blue skies met green hills. Waterfalls surged and played through the cataract down Seven Bridges Road. Tourists swarmed Canal Park, and swimmers ran through the surf and wet sand stretching along the Point. Sea brine and popcorn perfumed the air.

Thousands of runners crowded the city for Grandma’s Marathon. A different festival filled up each weekend. Reggae and Blues. Tall Ships. The Blue Angels. Music floated out of the open doors of bars and clubs.

The length of the summer days almost made time hover in place, as perfect and fragile as a hummingbird. A Duluth summer felt as if it could be endless, not gone with the puff of a cold breeze. And yet everyone knew that perfection was a tease. The warmth was brief. July. August. Each sunset came with a little warning label to enjoy the moment while it lasted.

Stride lounged in a deck chair on the sand dune behind their house on their first night back from Alaska. Cindy sat beside him, nearly asleep. He wore sunglasses on the bright evening, which gave the lake a midnight glow. People jogged, and dogs ran along the sand in front of them. He was exhausted from the long flight back and the drive north from the Twin Cities, but he couldn’t recall a time when he’d felt so content with his life.

They’d had the perfect vacation. Luxurious food. Wine. Glaciers calving in front of them. Floatplanes over the remote wilderness. Hours spent in bed on a sea day, making love to the rough rhythm of the waves. Stride, who didn’t do vacations well as a rule, had set aside Duluth and the job for seven whole days. Cindy called it nothing short of a miracle.

Even so, he was happy to be home. To be in Duluth in the summertime. To feel a lake breeze, to hold Cindy’s hand, to drink cold beer from a bottle. His wife was quiet, and he knew a little part of her was sad to be back to reality, but he didn’t mind the ebb and flow of the world. He knew you could never predict the moments that would linger in your memory, but he thought this was one.

‘Favorite port?’ Cindy murmured, revisiting the trip.

‘Juneau.’

‘Favorite meal?’

‘That Chinese restaurant we ate at before we sailed from Vancouver. With the noodles. What was it called?

‘Hon.’

‘Yeah, that one,’ he said.

‘Favorite day overall?’

He nudged his sunglasses up to his forehead and let her see his eyes, and he just grinned. She laughed.

‘Sea day,’ she concluded.

‘Definitely.’

They were quiet for a while. The lake breathed waves in and out. As dusk spread shadows, the crowds on the beach thinned. Someone started a bonfire, and they could smell the wood and feel the smoke in their eyes. An ore boat glided through the nearby ship canal and rolled toward the open water. Stride wanted a cigarette, but he didn’t take one.

‘The trial starts next week,’ Cindy said.

‘I know.’

Back to reality.

The murder trial of State of Minnesota, Plaintiff, vs. Janine Snow, Defendant, was scheduled to begin on Monday. Stride knew that Dan Erickson planned to call Cindy as his first witness, and the idea of testifying weighed on his wife. She’d put it out of her mind during their trip to Alaska, but it was back as the clock ticked closer.

‘You’ll do fine,’ he told her, which was as much as he could say. His own testimony would follow hers. She would probably be off the stand in an hour; he would spend most of the day there. Then in the days to follow, Dan would build his house of cards witness by witness, and Archie would try to blow it down.

Eventually, Cindy said: ‘Do you think she’ll be convicted?’

Stride hesitated. Saying nothing would have been better, but he couldn’t remain completely silent. ‘You can never tell with juries.’

That was true. Jurors were a strange lot. Impossible to read or predict, always able to surprise. Dan said that trial attorneys were storytellers for a jury of children, and the lawyer with the best bedtime story won.

Stride respected the difficulty of what jurors had to do. They were asked to set aside a lifetime of bias, but they were also human beings, filled with prejudice and empathy. They were asked to evaluate nothing but the evidence in front of them, and yet they had to share a courtroom day after day with the man or woman whose fate they held in their hands. You couldn’t vote guilty in a felony murder case if you didn’t believe that the person behind the table ten feet away was capable of a terrible crime.

The state didn’t have to establish a motive. The defendant didn’t need a reason to cause the death of another person. Even so, every investigator and every prosecutor knew that jurors craved the why.

Why did respected surgeon Janine Snow murder her husband, Jay Ferris?

Because she was living under the threat of Jay stealing away the only thing she cared about. Her career.

‘You never found that man,’ Cindy pointed out.

‘No.’ Stride knew who she meant. They’d been unable to identify the man who’d threatened her at Miller Hill Mall. He was a ghost. ‘Guppo saw a man matching his description at the marathon, but he wasn’t able to get close. The guy disappeared before Guppo got there. But we haven’t stopped looking for him.’

‘It’s been months,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t found him by now...’

He didn’t answer, because he didn’t want to argue with her. Arguing only ruined the perfect day. She felt the same way, because she squeezed his fingers with her small hand and then pulled his fist to her mouth and kissed it.

‘Sorry,’ Cindy said.

‘That’s okay.’

They sat, and the evening got darker, and the wind grew a little bite off the water. It was time to go inside, to go to bed. She got up first. By then, she was mostly a shadow. She leaned down over his deck chair, with her long hair falling across him, and she kissed his lips. A hard kiss. A Cindy kiss.

‘I’m glad we went to Alaska,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

‘Nobody can ever take that away from us.’

He thought that was a strange thing for her to say, but he let it go, because it was a beautiful summer night, full of love and life. You don’t question such things. Even so, something in her voice made him shiver and think of winter.

Juror #5.

That was Howard Marlowe’s identifying number. He stood along with thirteen other men and women — twelve jurors, two alternates — to swear their oaths to the court. With that, the trial began.

The judge, the Honorable Jeffrey R. Edblad, spoke directly to the jury, and Howard tried to concentrate on his words. Edblad had short gray hair, black glasses, and a rounded face. If he hadn’t been a lawyer and a judge, Howard figured he could have been a teacher. He was calm, and he spoke slowly and deliberately, like a father offering words of wisdom to a teenager about to take the car out for the first time. I’ll be fair, I’ll be gentle, but I’ll be firm.