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

Murmurs rippled through the courtroom, and Judge Edblad quieted the crowd. Dan waited.

‘Mr. Skinner, did you ever have a conversation with the defendant about guns?’ Dan asked.

‘Yes, I told her that I knew Jay owned a gun.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘When I had the altercation with Jay, he showed it to me.’

‘Did the defendant express surprise at the news that Jay owned a gun?’

‘No.’

‘Did you say anything else to her about it?’

‘Yes, I said she should be careful in case Jay found out about us.’

Stride waited for the bomb to drop and for a new wave of whispers through the courtroom. Gale, who knew exactly what was coming, waited for it, too. Stride thought he saw a ghost of a smile on Dan’s lips.

‘What did the defendant say?’ Dan asked.

‘She said maybe she should get a gun, too,’ Nathan said. ‘She asked me if I knew how she could get one off the books.’

Archie Gale stood up, well aware that he had a disaster on his hands.

‘Mr. Skinner, how much money do you make in your current job?’ Gale asked.

‘Objection — relevance,’ Dan interjected.

‘Your honor, Mr. Skinner has testified that he lost his job with the Duluth Police because of the actions of Mr. Ferris. It’s relevant to know the specific impact this had on his financial situation.’

‘The objection is overruled,’ Judge Edblad announced.

‘I make minimum wage,’ Nathan said, and some of his casual confidence seeped into bitterness. He didn’t like to be humiliated.

‘Did you lose your house to foreclosure because of your loss of income?’ Gale went on.

‘Yes.’ It was more like a hiss.

‘Do you have substantial credit card debt?’

‘I don’t know about substantial—’

‘More than fifteen thousand dollars?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is your current financial situation directly attributable to your dismissal from the Duluth Police?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘So is it fair to say you hated Jay Ferris for what he did to you?’

‘I suppose so, but that was a long time ago.’

‘The economic consequences are still very real to you today, though, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘You testified that you got to know Dr. Snow because you were doing part-time security work at her hospital, is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you ask to be assigned to work at St. Anne’s?’

‘I–I don’t remember.’

‘Shall I call your boss and subpoena your employment records so we can confirm it?’ Gale asked.

‘Okay. Yes, I heard about an opening there, and I asked to get it.’

‘Why?’

Nathan was silent.

‘Mr. Skinner,’ Gale went on, ‘did you go after that position with the specific goal of seducing Dr. Snow into an affair?’

‘It may have crossed my mind,’ Nathan admitted.

The body language from Janine Snow at the counsel table was eloquent. She oozed scorn. It was easy to see similar reactions on the faces of the women on the jury. For all his attractiveness, there was a dark side to Nathan Skinner.

‘Mr. Skinner, were you interviewed by the police shortly after the murder of Jay Ferris?’

‘Yes.’ His voice was clipped. Impatient. He wanted to be done and off the stand.

‘Did you say anything to the police at that time about your affair with Dr. Snow?’

‘No.’

‘Did you believe the police would consider you to be a suspect in the murder of Jay Ferris if they found out that you’d been having an affair with the victim’s wife?’

‘I figured I was a suspect anyway,’ Nathan said, and then he winced.

‘Okay, and as a suspect, would it be in your interest to deflect police attention to someone else?’

‘I didn’t do that.’

‘When you were first interviewed, did you say anything to the police about Dr. Snow asking you how she could get a gun?’

‘No.’

‘You only told this story after Dr. Snow informed the police of your relationship, is that right?’

‘Yes, but it’s true.’

‘Did anyone else overhear this conversation?’ Gale asked.

‘No, but Janine knows what she said.’

‘Mr. Skinner, is there anyone who can verify your whereabouts after 9:45 p.m. on the night of January 28?’

‘No.’

‘Were you drinking that night?’

‘I — yeah, I guess.’

‘How much did you drink?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Do you own a revolver, Mr. Skinner?’

‘I gave my gun to the police. They tested it. It was clean.’

‘Is that the only handgun you own?’

‘They tested all of them. Clean as a whistle.’

‘How many handguns do you own, Mr. Ferris?’

‘Eight.’

‘Eight guns,’ Gale murmured. ‘Mr. Skinner, did you make a statement to Lieutenant Stride that if you had committed this murder, you would have simply dropped the murder weapon through the ice? That the police would never find it?’

‘Yeah, I did, but it was a joke—’

‘That’s all, Mr. Skinner. Thank you.’

‘I found him,’ Cindy told Stride.

It was late, and he was surprised that she was still up. He’d spent most of the day at the trial and then caught up on the job in the basement of City Hall until nearly midnight. His wife sat at their small kitchen table with a laptop open in front of her. Only the light over the sink was on. She wore a nightgown, and her feet were bare. The house with its open windows was warm and humid, and he smelled old coffee. A stiff wind made the lake roar like a lion not far from their back door.

Stride sat down across from her. Like him, she was nearly forty, and yet in his eyes, she could have been seventeen. She was the same teenager he’d met in school. He could barely remember what his life was like before she came into it. School, college, career — all that time, it was him and her together.

‘I found him,’ Cindy repeated, pushing a photograph toward him across the table.

‘Who?’

‘The guy at the mall.’

Stride studied the photograph and saw a crowd shot taken downtown during Grandma’s Marathon. His wife had circled a man with a black marker, and he held the page close and squinted at the face. She’d enlarged the photograph, but the image was crisp and clear. The man was overdressed for the warm June day in a camouflage jacket.

‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

‘I know a photographer who covered the marathon. I’ve spent the last six hours analyzing every one of her pictures.’

She passed him the original photograph, before she’d zoomed in on the crowd. The picture had been taken from a second-floor window near the corner of Lake Avenue and Superior Street, facing northeast. Swarms of runners filled the street in the center of the frame; they were the jubilant, exhausted ones, within two miles of the finish line in Canal Park. Crowds twenty deep on the sidewalk cheered them on. Cindy had drawn an arrow to show the man in the original photo. He was little more than a stick figure standing by a lamp post in a brick-lined park well behind the flood of people.

The crowd watched the runners.

He watched the crowd.

Stride’s eyes snapped back and forth between the two pictures. ‘You’re certain this is him?’

His wife nodded. ‘I don’t know if this is the guy in Jay’s photos, but it’s definitely the man I followed at the mall. No question about it. I haven’t forgotten him, Jonny.’

‘I know.’

He studied the man and understood the aura of repressed violence that Cindy talked about. Maybe it was bravado, maybe it wasn’t. He focused on the people around the man and spotted a heavy-set redheaded woman seated on a bench no more than ten feet from the lamp post. She wore a lanyard and fluorescent vest that marked her as race security, but her face was turned away from the camera.