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

‘I heard you. What did they want?’

‘I don’t know. They didn’t say.’

‘What did you tell them?’ he asked.

She heard accusation in his voice, which annoyed her.

‘What do you think I told them? Nothing. I said they should leave us alone.’

Ross went to the living room window and pushed aside the curtain to watch the empty street outside. He did that a lot, as if he were waiting for someone who never showed up. She heard the muffled engine of a lawn mower in the neighborhood. Typical summer day.

‘I’m sure it’s no big deal,’ she went on. ‘Somebody probably saw you practicing with the Bushmaster and got freaked.’

‘They said that?’ he asked, his back to her.

‘They had a picture. You with a rifle. It was blurry, so I said it could have been anybody. It was you, though.’

She got up from the sofa. The credits rolled on the game show. She wasn’t sure why she watched; it was people earning money by knowing stupid things. She’d tried to get on a show herself once, but they never wrote back to her. It didn’t matter. They had enough money to live.

Jessie came up behind her son, wrapped her arms around his waist, and laid her head against his back. ‘You’re so tense,’ she said.

He said nothing.

‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she told him. ‘A cool one. It’s so hot.’

Still he didn’t answer, and she didn’t let go.

‘Love me?’ she asked.

A long time passed, but finally he said: ‘Yes.’

That was all she needed to hear.

The vote was 11–1.

They’d all declared themselves now, even the two jurors who had originally been undecided. Howard remained the hold-out. They’d spent three hours in deliberation. He’d begun to see impatience in their faces, especially Bruce, who acted as if Howard were standing between him and a steak dinner and a bottle of wine. Eleanor, the foreman, remained calm as the others grumbled.

‘Howard, you understand that reasonable doubt is a different thing from having no doubt, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I get that,’ Howard said.

‘No one’s asking you to change your opinion simply because we feel differently,’ she went on, ‘but I want to make sure we’re all looking at the evidence the same way.’

Howard pushed his water glass in circles around the wooden table. He stared down, rather than looking up. ‘I just don’t see it the way the rest of you do.’

He got up and went to the lone window in the jury room that looked out on the city. He didn’t want to sit with the rest of them. He felt isolated, and being on his own made him more stubborn. They couldn’t tell him how to vote. They couldn’t convince him that the beautiful woman whose face was always in his head had taken a gun and put a bullet through her husband’s brain.

‘Howard?’ Eleanor said. ‘Let me ask you a couple questions, okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘Do you believe that Dr. Snow felt trapped in her marriage and didn’t see a way out?’

‘Lots of people are unhappy in their marriage!’ Howard snapped. ‘They don’t take a gun and shoot their spouse. It doesn’t work like that.’

Bruce opened his mouth, but Eleanor held up her hand sharply to silence him. ‘Howard, yes, of course, that’s true, but Jay Ferris is dead. Someone did shoot him. And my question to you was — do you believe that Dr. Snow felt trapped? Did the state establish that to your satisfaction?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, sure. I’m not arguing about that.’

‘Okay. Do you also believe that Jay Ferris was dangling a threat over Dr. Snow’s head regarding her addiction to pain pills?’

Howard remembered the newspaper column. Holly. The prescription drugs in the condo. He imagined the pressure Janine had been under. As a surgeon. As a wife. Nowhere to turn, no way to escape, except for the drugs. He’d been on morphine once, when he’d had his appendix removed as a teenager. He knew its allure, the way it could make your whole body float on a cloud.

‘Yes. I think he was.’

‘So let’s think about this,’ Eleanor said quietly. ‘Dr. Snow wanted out of her marriage, but her husband knew a secret that would have destroyed her life and career. Regardless of whether you’re convinced she did kill him, do you believe that she would have seen Jay’s death as a way out of her problem?’

How lonely it must have been, Howard thought. To have everything and nothing at the same time. With Jay alive, she was in a cage. With Jay gone, she would be free.

‘Yes, she probably did,’ Howard said.

‘Fine. Good. If we’re all on the same page about that, then let’s think about the night that Jay Ferris was killed. We know that Dr. Snow was in the house. We know that she and her husband argued. A few minutes later, he was dead. The state wants us to go one step further and believe that Dr. Snow killed him.’

‘I’m just not convinced that she did—’

Eleanor stopped him with a smile. ‘Hang on, Howard. Let’s think about what we have to believe to conclude that there isn’t sufficient proof that Dr. Snow killed him. Okay? We have to believe that someone else chose that same foggy, slippery night to go to her house. If it was someone bent on robbery, as Dr. Snow contends, then we have to believe that they saw the lights on and a car in the garage and still decided to proceed with their plan. We have to believe that they either knocked or rang the doorbell — because there was no forced entry — and that Jay Ferris let them inside. This person then shot Ferris in the head, went downstairs without tracking any outside dirt or debris in the house, found jewelry in the bedroom, removed it, went back upstairs, and left. We have to believe that this all happened during the exact period of time when Dr. Snow was in the shower. We also have to believe that whoever did this either chose not to dispose of the jewelry despite committing murder to get it or somehow sold these distinctive, expensive pieces of jewelry without any of the sales coming to light. Okay? Howard, have I said anything that you disagree with?’

He shrugged. It sounded ridiculous when she put it like that, but she was right. ‘No, that’s true.’

‘Well, my question is this: Do you believe that is a reasonable theory of what happened? Anything is possible, but is that a credible alternative in the absence of evidence? Because we see this case differently. We see a successful woman with a terrible secret. She’s home alone with her husband. They argue, and she shoots him. Then she showers and washes her clothes to destroy evidence, and she takes the gun and some jewelry and hides them to make it look like a robbery. That’s what we think the evidence shows, Howard. Eleven of us believe there is no reasonable doubt that that is what actually happened.’

Howard returned to the jury table and sat down. He took the glass of water and drained it empty.

‘What about the Rav4?’ he asked.

‘The witness who saw the car is unreliable about the time and location,’ Eleanor said. ‘It makes it hard to take the story at face value. And really, a car parked on a nearby street? Is that enough to create doubt?’

‘There was a man with a gun,’ Howard added. ‘Ferris took pictures of him in the park.’

Eleanor nodded. ‘He did, but it’s clear that Ferris never even knew who this man was. Why would this person suddenly get it in his head to kill Jay Ferris? And really, Howard, isn’t it stretching coincidence to think that it happened during the exact time Dr. Snow was in the shower?’

Howard wanted to give her an answer. He wanted to keep defending Janine. Carol was right: he dreamed of rescuing her. He’d stared at her face on his computer for months, until he could remember every feature of her eyes, her hair, and her skin. She excited him, interested him, and aroused him in a way no other woman ever had. And now she needed him. She needed him to remain strong in the face of eleven people who were ready to condemn her. She needed him to have faith that the evidence was not what it appeared to be.