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

Stride saw Guppo in the doorway behind him.

‘Alert everybody, Max. Canal Park. Downtown. The mall. The DECC. He’s going to show up somewhere.’

Guppo turned away, already pulling out his walkie-talkie.

‘Boss,’ Maggie called. Her voice told him the story.

She was in Jessie’s bathroom. Stride joined her there, already aware of what he was going to find. The bathroom was still humid and damp from the shower. The plastic curtain had been shunted aside. Jessie Klayman was sprawled on her back in the tub. She was naked, and her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Wet strands of red hair lay like veins across her face. The blood all over her body, on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling, on the porcelain tub, matched her hair.

Ross had shot his mother at least thirty times.

Guilty.

Cindy stood in a crowd around the window of an electronics store, watching the live news report on local television. The crawl at the bottom of the screen announced the jury verdict. Janine Snow had been found guilty of second-degree intentional murder in the death of her husband, Jay Ferris.

She’d expected it, but she wasn’t prepared for the finality of the result. It was hard to draw a line in her mind from that bitter January night to this hot summer afternoon. She’d driven Janine home. Her friend. She’d watched her go inside with her husband. Minutes later, Jay was dead, and now, months later, her friend had been convicted of his murder. Cindy had been there when it all began.

The reporters speculated about the sentence. The statute called for punishment in cases of intentional second-degree murder of not more than forty years. The sentencing guidelines suggested twenty-five years for a defendant with no criminal history. Archie Gale was on television, vowing an appeal and proposing a sharp downward adjustment in the jail time. Regardless, everyone expected the judge to sentence Dr. Janine Snow to at least twenty years at the women’s correctional facility in Shakopee, Minnesota.

Twenty years.

From the beginning, Jonny had said she was guilty. So had Maggie. So had everyone in the city, who’d convicted her in the court of public opinion from day one. And now a jury of twelve Minnesotans had agreed.

Cindy listened to the mutterings of the people around here. The sentiments all sounded the same — that it had ended the way it had to end. She wondered if it was schadenfreude , that joy in watching the downfall of someone who had climbed high. The television showed a picture of Janine in a white surgical coat, blond hair perfect, body perfect. A miracle worker. A millionaire. A murderer.

Dan Erickson appeared on the screen, lecturing about justice applying to everyone, taking no pleasure in the tragedy.

Jay’s brother Clyde came next, expressing satisfaction with the verdict but reminding everyone that a conviction wouldn’t bring his brother back to life. Which was true. If Janine had done this thing, no matter her motive, no matter the circumstances, then she had to pay the price.

The reporters talked about the jury and their willingness to convict without the discovery of the murder weapon. They interviewed the foreman, a woman named Eleanor, who praised the eleven people who served with her and the careful job they’d done. She expressed sorrow for victim and killer alike, but she said the verdict was the only reasonable conclusion that anyone could draw from the facts as they were presented to them.

Cindy tried to imagine herself on that jury. Would she have voted to convict? And to her surprise, she realized: Yes.

She heard her phone ringing and slid it out of her purse. Jonny was calling. She assumed he’d been in the courtroom when the verdict was read, and now he wanted to mend fences with her. They’d argued about it for months. It wasn’t in her nature to accept that she was wrong and Jonny was right. He was a stubborn man, but he had a stubborn wife, too.

‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ she said as she answered the phone. ‘You win.’

Jonny simply said: ‘Where are you?’

‘What?’

‘Cindy, where are you?’

‘I’m at Miller Hill Mall. I’m watching the news about—’

‘Get out of there,’ he interrupted.

‘Why?’

‘Cindy, get out of there right now. I don’t want you in any public place.’

‘What is going on—’ she began, but then she stopped.

Her words hung in the air. So did the noise of the mall. The music overhead. The laughter. The television in the store window. She found herself staring at a pretty woman in her thirties who’d been shopping at Aéropostale. She clutched a big bag in her hand. She smiled, joking to a friend, mouth open as if she were singing a karaoke song. That was who she was at that moment, but a moment later, the bag fell from her hand. The light vanished from her eyes. She threw her arms in the air and staggered forward, and dots of red spattered over her body the way rocks made splashes in the lake.

The noise caught up to Cindy’s ears. Staccato explosions of gunfire rocked back and forth between the walls. Dust blew, tile shattered, and smoke clouded the air. Her fingers loosened; her phone fell.

The pretty woman near her slumped to the ground. So did another woman. Then an older man.

As they dropped, as the people scattered around her, she saw him coming.

Everyone screamed. Everyone ran.

Howard sat with Carol in his car across the street from the courthouse. A crowd lingered on the steps. Some of the jurors had stayed behind to answer media questions, but he didn’t want to be interviewed. If he started talking, he’d say the wrong thing. An hour had passed, and already he regretted what he’d done.

He’d said it the first time in the jury room: ‘Guilty.’

And then again in the courtroom: ‘Guilty.’

Janine had watched him as the judge polled the jurors. Her eyes burned him. It was as if she knew . He expected her to reach out a hand, to touch him with her cool fingers, to whisper: ‘Don’t betray me.’

But he had. He squeezed his eyes shut, said the word, and cast her away like all the others. He was weak. When he looked again, she hadn’t looked away. He thought he saw the tiniest of sad smiles on her face. Forgiveness.

‘You did the right thing, Howard.’

It was Carol talking.

He stared at his wife in the driver’s seat of his LeBaron. She’d picked him up in white sweatpants and a Dells T-shirt. She looked at him like a hero, and he realized she was proud of him. He’d just sent a woman to prison, and she thought it was the greatest thing he’d ever done.

‘I know it was hard,’ Carol went on. ‘If you want the truth, I wasn’t sure you could do it. You’re a softy at heart, Howard. I mean, that’s a good thing most of the time, but it takes guts to convict somebody of murder, even when you know darn well she’s guilty.’

‘Let’s just go home,’ he murmured.

She nodded at the reporters near the courthouse flagpole. ‘Don’t you want to go answer some questions? I know this was a big thing for you. You’ve earned a little fame for being part of it. I can wait here.’

‘No, I don’t want to talk to anybody.’

Carol started the engine. Then she turned it off and took his hand. ‘Hey, listen, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been a bitch lately. You were in a tough spot, and I wasn’t being supportive.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t care about that.’

‘Well, let me make it up to you. We’ve got the Dells coming up in a couple weeks. That’ll be fun. We can get Annie a pizza and rent her a movie one night, and you and me can fool around, huh? It’s been way too long.’

He summoned a smile. ‘Sure.’

‘Anyway, I’m glad this is over,’ Carol said. ‘No more Dr. Perfect. We can go back to living our lives. Just you, me, and Annie. It’s about time, right? I’m ready for things to be exactly the way they were.’