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

There was Janine’s house. He recognized it from the television reports and from the photographs at the trial. What an amazing place, like a palace built on the roof of the world. Lights were on. She was home, the defendant out on bail. There were no cars around. He wondered if she was alone. Just her, sitting amid the ruins of her perfect life. And Howard only a few feet away.

Judge Edblad had told them: You are not investigators.

Even so, he couldn’t restrain his imagination. He sat in the car with the engine running, and he realized that this was the very place where everything had happened. On January 28, inside that door, behind the glass windows, Jay Ferris had been murdered. If Howard had been here then, he would have heard the shot.

What would he have seen? A stranger running away?

Or Janine Snow pulling out of the garage in her husband’s Hummer to hide a gun?

Howard realized that what he wanted more than anything was to hear the story from Janine’s own mouth. He wished he could talk to her, look into her eyes, and listen to her answer every question. The frustrating thing was that he knew he never would. She wouldn’t take the stand. Defendants hardly ever testified. She was the one person who really knew the truth, and he would never hear her say what it was.

Somehow, his car engine turned off, and his door opened.

He didn’t think it was him getting out and walking toward the house. It was someone else. He felt his feet on the walkway, heading toward the front door. That was what a stranger would have done, coming to murder Jay Ferris. If there was a stranger.

Howard stood at the door. Janine’s door. He felt dizzy. His finger quivered; he wanted to stab the doorbell. If he did, she would come. He’d see her appear behind the glass. She would open the door — and that would be the end of everything.

He would have crossed a line from which there was no going back. Wheels would be set in motion. Attorneys would talk, and he would be called in front of the judge, and he would be admonished and dismissed, and one of the two alternates sitting in the jury box would take his place.

Howard Marlowe would be just Howard Marlowe again. A footnote in the newspaper, soon forgotten.

Carol would laugh at him.

He felt as if he were awakening from a bad dream. He turned and ran back to his Chrysler, needing to escape before he was seen. Before the police spotted him. Or the media. No one could know he’d ever been here. He got into his LeBaron and shot down the steep street.

Janine watched him go.

She sat in her office, where the security camera at her front door fed video to her computer. She’d installed the camera months ago when she had a parade of unwanted visitors coming to her house after the headlines brought notoriety.

She recognized him, of course. Juror #5. He was the one who sat closest to her in court. She hadn’t missed the fact that he liked to watch her. He tried to be discreet about it, but she caught his wandering glances in her direction. At first, she’d written it off as curiosity, but now she realized it was something more. She’d understood men all her life, much better than she ever understood women. This man was in love with her.

She knew she was attractive. Men had fallen for her since she was a high school girl in Texas growing up fast. This was different. Since the murder, men had sent her e-mails, proposals of marriage, and naked pictures. All types of men, married and unmarried, black and white, old and young, from across the country. For the stalkers, she’d become an object of fascination. And now, it seemed, one of those stalkers had made his way onto her jury.

He was an ordinary man. Physically, he was neither attractive nor repellent. If she’d met him on the street, she would have stared through him as if he didn’t exist. In other circumstances, the only way a man like that would have come into her circle was as a patient, but circumstances were different.

She was tempted. All she would have had to do was go to the door. Call to him through the speaker. Invite him into her home. She could have taken his hand and fulfilled his fantasy with a night unlike any he’d ever experienced. Sex meant nothing to her, but she knew it would have meant everything to him. For the price of giving up her body, she would have asked only one thing.

Hang the jury.

He would have done it, too.

Instead, she let him go.

Janine knew she should call Archie to have Juror #5 swiftly and quietly removed from the case, but she didn’t do that. He might yet be her salvation. She wondered if a man who was in love with her could really believe that she would shoot her husband in cold blood.

‘Mr. Skinner,’ Dan asked at trial when Nathan was sworn, ‘did you engage in a sexual relationship with the defendant, Janine Snow?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘How did this affair begin?’

‘Last spring I was doing part-time night security at the hospital where Janine practices. We got to know each other. One thing led to another.’

Nathan Skinner cocked his head with a little smile, as if it were simply nature’s way that two attractive people would fall into bed together. His magnetism would be felt by the women on the jury. Stride realized that Nathan was on his best behavior. Dan had probably counseled him to keep his ego and arrogance in check.

‘How long were the two of you involved?’

‘The relationship began in May. It ended in early December.’

‘Who ended it?’ Dan asked.

‘Janine. I think Jay found out and forced her to break it off.’

Archie Gale stood up. ‘Objection — speculative.’

‘Sustained,’ Judge Edblad ruled.

‘Mr. Skinner, were you acquainted with Jay Ferris?’

‘We knew each other, but neither of us would say we were friends.’

‘Can you explain?’

Nathan sighed, as if the dispute were nothing but a rueful part of his past. ‘I used to be employed by the Duluth Police. Unfortunately, I was on a vacation in the Wisconsin Dells and got pulled over by the local cops while I was very, very drunk. It was stupid. Stupid to be driving while drunk — and stupid to say the things I did to the police. I used offensive racial language that I really regret. As I say, I was drunk.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Mr. Ferris got a tip about my arrest, which was filmed by a dashboard cam on the police vehicle. He wrote a column about it — several columns, actually — calling for my dismissal from the Duluth Police. Ultimately, I lost my job.’

‘When was this?’

‘This was back in February of last year.’

‘Do you blame Mr. Ferris for being fired?’ Dan asked.

‘Back then? Sure. I was mad at him and mad at the world. I even took a swing at him in a club a couple weeks later. I felt like he was trying to make an example of me, but you know what? He was right. I deserved it. Like I said, I was stupid.’

If Nathan was acting, Stride was impressed with his performance.

‘Was your affair with the defendant an act of revenge against Jay Ferris?’ Dan asked.

‘I guess it started that way. After a while, though, we enjoyed each other’s company. I think Janine needed someone to talk to.’

‘Objection — speculative,’ Gale interrupted.

‘Sustained.’

‘During the course of your relationship, did the defendant offer her impression of her marriage to Jay Ferris?’

‘Yes, she told me she wanted a divorce.’

‘Did she express any opinion to you about the likelihood of obtaining a divorce?’

‘She said it would never happen.’

‘How exactly did she phrase it?’

‘She said Jay wanted to own her like a slave. She said she didn’t believe she would ever be able to get away from him while he was still alive.’