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

‘I liked your mother when Anna and I met her,’ Cat said. ‘Don’t you think she’d like me?’

‘She’d love you, but she says I don’t have time for a girlfriend.’

‘Especially not a pregnant one, huh?’

‘Oh, that’s not it. Not really. She just doesn’t want me stuck on the bottom rung like her and Dad. Mom always says God has big plans for me, and if I don’t work hard, I’ll never find out what they are.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘It’s the way I was raised, so yeah, I have to believe it. She’d whack me if I didn’t. Except God must be pretty disappointed in me.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Cat asked.

He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I do stupid shit that I really regret. I’m not worthy of big plans.’

‘Join the club,’ Cat told him.

‘You? Come on.’

‘It’s true. God doesn’t have any plans for me. I’m just a screw-up.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ he chided her. ‘You’re special. Way more special than me. Why would you say that?’

‘It’s just hormones. I go up. I go down. I’m pregnant, so it comes with the territory.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hey, can I ask you something?’ she said.

‘Sure.’

‘Do you love me? Because I kinda think I love you.’

His eyes widened. ‘Cat, I—’

‘Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’m sorry. Wow, that was a really dumb thing to say. I’m pressing the delete button.’

Except you couldn’t delete things like that after you said them.

Al looked unhappy with her, and Cat didn’t blame him. She thought to herself: There I go again, screwing everything up . She stood up awkwardly and brushed sand from her skin. Al stood up, too. He looked as if she’d punched him in the gut.

‘We should go,’ she said.

‘Cat, listen, it’s not that I—’

‘No, don’t say anything. Please. Forget it, I was being stupid. I just want to get out of here. You have to work, and I’m sure Stride is waiting to read me the Riot Act.’

‘I’ll come with you. I’ll explain it to him.’

‘That would just make it worse.’

‘Well, let’s go back to my car,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you home.’

‘No, you go ahead. I’ll walk.’

‘Alone? Not a chance.’

‘It’s two houses, Al. I could shout, and Stride would hear me.’

He looked reluctant, but he allowed her to persuade him. He kissed her goodbye, which was normally magic, but she’d spoiled the moment for them. Stupid stupid stupid. He left her, his shoulders slumped, and disappeared southward along the beach. She watched him until he turned and headed for the street. She wondered if he’d call her tomorrow, or if she’d driven him away for good.

It wasn’t just talking about love before he was ready to hear it. That was a big mistake, but she was keeping other secrets, too.

She needed to tell him what she’d done.

Stride shook Troy Grange’s hand.

He didn’t see Troy often, but there was a bond connecting them. They’d both known personal losses that had upended their lives. Stride had lost Cindy to cancer almost eight years ago. Last summer, Troy’s wife Trisha had been murdered, leaving him to raise two young girls alone.

Troy greeted Maggie, too, and Stride didn’t miss the warmth in Troy’s face. He was pleased to see it. Troy was finally opening up again, which took a lot of time after the death of a spouse. He wondered if there was something more between the two of them. Troy and Maggie had worked together as colleagues for years, but it looked as if their friendship had drifted into attraction. At least for him. There was no way Maggie hadn’t picked up on Troy’s feelings, and Stride wondered whether the interest was reciprocated.

‘Sit down, guys,’ Troy told them in his foghorn voice. He was the senior health and safety manager for the Duluth Port, but his office was small, and he was rarely inside the building. Instead, he was out among the port’s docks, where thousands of tons of goods moved in and out of the city by boat and rail every day. Lumber. Coal. Iron ore. Cement. Grain. Limestone. The long boats brought in loads and took them out into the waters of Lake Superior, and from there to destinations around the world.

Along with that traffic came smuggling problems. Drugs. Weapons. People.

‘Maggie was telling me about this girl Kelly Hauswirth from Denver,’ Troy said. ‘Do you have any more leads on the guy who killed her?’

‘Not so far,’ Stride said. ‘We’re waiting for ballistics on the murder weapon.’

‘We’re assuming he’s the same guy who lured Kelly from Colorado to Duluth,’ Maggie added. ‘Someone established a fake online ID and built a relationship with her. When she figured out that this guy wasn’t who she thought he was, she tried to get away, and he shot her.’

‘I assume you interviewed everyone in the bar that night,’ Troy said.

‘As many as we could,’ Maggie replied. ‘A lot of them melted away before we got there.’

‘The Grizzly Bear is a watering hole for foreign crew off the boats,’ Troy said.

‘Yeah, and they’re a tight-lipped bunch. Nobody claimed to know the woman or who she was meeting.’

‘Figures.’

‘Why do you think there may be an Amsterdam connection?’ Stride interjected. ‘Maggie says Interpol reached out to you about another murder overseas.’

Troy grabbed a photograph from his office printer and passed it across the desk. The corpse in the picture was barely recognizable, with features bloated and bleached by time in the canals. A knife gash had split open her throat. Her strawberry hair was pasted to her skin. Her swollen torso had split open seams on her T-shirt, but Stride could still see the Grandma’s Marathon logo. Either the woman — or whoever had given her the shirt — had been in Duluth before she was killed.

‘When did they find this woman?’ Stride asked.

‘Last week.’

‘Have they identified her?’

‘No, the Dutch were hoping we could help them with that. The condition of the body doesn’t make it easy. They’re assuming she’s American because of the T-shirt and the quality of her dental work, but they don’t really know for sure. They also don’t know how long she was in the Netherlands. The marathon T-shirt was one of last year’s printings.’

Maggie leaned across the desk. ‘Can we get the jpeg?’

‘Of course, Sergeant.’

Stride smiled. Troy was invariably formal around them about official business. Stride was Lieutenant. Maggie was Sergeant. He was the kind of gruff ex-seaman who wore nothing but plaid shirts, jeans, and boots, but he had a serious way about him that Stride respected. He wasn’t tall, but he had the bulky build of a weightlifter. Nobody messed with Troy.

The security manager clicked a few keys on his computer. Stride’s and Maggie’s phones both chirped with an incoming e-mail as he sent them the photograph.

‘Do the Dutch police or Interpol know anything more about the circumstances of this woman’s murder?’ Stride asked.

‘Maybe. They found a tattoo on her wrist associated with an Estonian crime syndicate. Very brutal and very sophisticated. This group began with synthetic drug exports and high-end robberies, but Interpol thinks they’ve branched out into an international smuggling network. Illegal metals. Drugs. Weapons.’

‘And women,’ Maggie guessed.

‘Yeah. Exactly. Their guess is that this woman was kidnapped and dumped into a forced prostitution ring overseas.’

‘They think she was smuggled out through the Duluth Port?’ Stride asked.

‘Well, that was their question to me. I couldn’t rule it out.’ Troy folded his meaty hands together. ‘Look, port security guys talk all around the world. We’ve got tech guys who trawl the Deep Web — you know, the places that Google doesn’t reach. It’s practically a Craigslist for slavery. Women, girls, boys, babies, even pets. If you’ve got the money, you can write up specs for who you want like you were placing an order for custom drapes. And syndicates like this Estonian group will go out and grab someone who fits the profile and smuggle them out. It could be a girl in Sydney. Or Cape Town. Or Cancun.’