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

In the early years, she’d thought of Howard’s visits as a slim thread connecting her to the real world. Then she realized that the real world was here inside the walls of the prison at Shakopee. Howard was a resident of a fantasy world. A world that didn’t exist anymore. A world in which she was free.

She was the same woman that she’d been in Duluth, and yet she was completely different. Age showed on her face more, because she couldn’t hide it now. Gray had painted over much of her blond hair. Her skin was natural, which meant the wrinkles near her eyes and mouth were there for everyone to see. She was still fit and trim, because she exercised regularly, but she fought with the weight of carb-heavy prison meals. Her nails were nothing more than the slimmest of crescent moons. She read voraciously. One of the benefits of Shakopee was an excellent library. She read history. Mysteries. Philosophy. Science. She’d never had much time to read in the past, and now she had nothing but time. Her old life had revolved around medicine and sex, and suddenly she had to make peace with a world where neither of those things played any role in her life. She kept up on medical journals for a year and then decided she never wanted to see them again. Even her sex drive waned.

Relationships with other inmates didn’t come easily to her. She was a woman who’d only been comfortable around men — people she could control, people she could manipulate — and now she lived in a community of women. She kept herself aloof at first. She couldn’t hide that she considered herself superior to the others, and they knew it. She didn’t like them. They didn’t like her. Even so, time passed, and time could smooth mountains. She joined the prison book club, and she found that the perspectives of other inmates were often deeper and more complex than her own. They defied her caricatures of who they were. When she finally opened her own mouth, she tried to show them that she was more than the bitch they thought she was.

A few became something close to friends. Some came and went after serving time for lesser offenses. Others stayed. Like her.

No one wrote. No one visited. Except Howard.

She found it strange that he was the only person, after all this time, who still doubted her guilt. Who still believed in her. He was the juror who’d put her in here. And yet he kept coming, more determined than ever, more in love with her than ever. She could have sent him away, but the loneliness would have driven her mad. She looked forward to seeing him. She even had a degree of fondness for him. The humane thing would have been to insist that he not waste his life on a foolish quest, but eight years hadn’t changed everything about her. She was still selfish.

‘Janine,’ Howard said.

She’d been far away, and he was standing above her. She smiled at him, got up, and shook his hand. His skin was clammy, as it usually was. She had the feeling that shaking her hand was the most erotic experience in this man’s life.

‘How are you?’ he asked as they sat down.

‘Much the same.’

‘It’s hot out. But nice.’

‘Good.’

‘You look great,’ he said.

‘Oh, well. Thanks.’

It was the usual small talk, followed by the usual silence. She didn’t mind. Years ago, she’d thought that Howard Marlowe was the most boring person on the planet. She still thought so, but boring didn’t seem entirely bad anymore. After a while, you looked forward to the predictable things. It was summer, so Howard wore his summer clothes, a collared short-sleeve shirt, black jeans, white tennis shoes. He’d had his curly brown hair cut before coming to see her, as he usually did. Five years ago, after consulting with her, he’d had LASIK surgery done, and he didn’t need glasses now. He had a suburban paunch that he tried to suck in when he was with her.

She knew he fantasized about her. He’d admitted it. She found it a little pathetic, but every now and then, she would make some coquettish gesture that she knew he’d remember. A meaningful look in her eyes or a tiny puckering of her lips. Or she would tug at her denim shirt in a way that emphasized the swell of her breasts. Harmless, but she felt she owed him something.

‘The book’s going well,’ he said.

‘Good.’

‘You don’t mind my doing it, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I run chapters by Mr. Gale. Should I run them by you, too?’

‘No, you don’t have to do that.’

‘I understand.’

‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, Howard. It’s just that I don’t want to relive it.’

‘Oh, I get it.’

‘That doesn’t mean I’m telling you to stop.’

‘No, I’ll keep going,’ he assured her. ‘When I publish it, it will bring lots of new attention to your case.’

Janine smiled at him. She held out no hope that Howard would ever finish his book, or if he did, that he would ever publish it.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ Howard said. ‘Carol knows about us.’

‘What?’

‘She knows I come down here to visit you.’

‘Oh.’

‘I don’t know how she found out.’

‘Oh,’ Janine said again. She didn’t know what else to say.

‘She wants me to stop, but I’ll keep coming, I promise. Don’t worry about that.’

Janine found herself indescribably sad. Sad about everything. Sad that she was ruining this man’s life and marriage. Sad at even the possibility that he might stop visiting and leave her completely alone. Sad that she was here.

‘Look, Howard,’ she said, watching him hang on her words. ‘I want you to think about this. Maybe you shouldn’t come here anymore.’

‘What? No. No way.’

‘You’re hurting your wife.’

‘I don’t...’ he began, and she realized that he was about to say: I don’t care. He stopped without going on, but she knew it was true. She’d become his Mona Lisa. She was everything to him, beginning and end.

This was wrong. She had to put a stop to it.

‘Really, Howard,’ she said in a sterner voice. ‘Go home to Carol. Forget about me.’

He shook his head fiercely. ‘I won’t do that.’

‘This isn’t fair to you or to your wife. It means a lot to me that you visit, but I’ve let this go on way too long.’

‘Janine—’

‘No, I mean it. You have to stop.’

‘I can’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’m not going to give up. I won’t quit until I find something. I won’t stop until you’re free.’ He paused and added breathlessly: ‘Until we’re together.’

Janine tried to keep the horror from her face. That was the fantasy behind all of this. He would get her out of prison. He would rescue her. And they would live happily ever after, just the two of them. She had to kill that dream right now.

‘I’m never getting out of here,’ she said finally.

‘Don’t talk like that! Don’t give up. I promise I’ll find proof that you’re innocent.’

‘Howard,’ she told him sharply, in a voice that was barely a breath. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m not innocent. I’m guilty.’

Stride didn’t look up as Maggie came into his office on Friday night. It was late and already dark. The woodland outside the building was invisible. The Duluth Police had moved in the spring to a new location in the open land north of the city. He missed City Hall, but not the building’s rats. It had been several months, but moving boxes still littered his office floor. He never found time to unpack, which was an excuse for the fact that he didn’t like to deal with change.

Maggie didn’t say anything to him as she sat down.

‘Troy got back to me with crew lists for the boats that were in port when Kelly Hauswirth was killed,’ Stride said. ‘I’m working with the FBI and with Interpol to cross-reference for criminal records. It’s a long list, but it’s a place to start.’