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

‘You want to come with me?’ she asked Serena. ‘We could be like Rizzoli and Isles or something.’

Stride saw the surprise in Serena’s face. He was surprised, too. Maybe there was a chance of a thaw in the ice between them. He didn’t know what Serena’s reaction would be, but she wasted no time sliding off the credenza. The two women stood next to each other, short and tall.

‘Okay, let’s go,’ she deadpanned to Maggie, ‘but I get to be Angie Harmon.’

49

It had taken Janine two whole years to stop dreaming about her old life when she fell asleep at night. Her unconscious brain would whisk her back to her mansion on the hill or stand her in scrubs over the open chests of patients in the operating room at St. Anne’s. Even awake, she would find herself making false mental leaps whenever she read a book or a magazine.

I should look for those shoes the next time I’m at Macy’s.

Abruzzo in Italy — that should be my spring vacation.

I need to try the lobster ravioli at Bellisio’s.

Then she would wake up or she would remember: Those things are never going to happen again. Don’t dream, don’t fantasize, because dwelling on what you can’t have will drive you insane.

Except now life had turned on its head again. It was happening so quickly that she was disoriented. Nothing seemed real. She hardly dared to believe it. Right now, she was at Shakopee, and at the same time tomorrow, she would be on the other side of the security doors. She wondered how long it would take her brain to give up thoughts of prison when she dreamed.

‘Will they attempt to try me again?’ she asked Archie on the phone.

‘If Dan Erickson was still the county attorney, I’d say yes,’ Archie replied. ‘With Ms. Burns in charge, I think it’s less likely. The evidence works in your favor now. Assuming they can’t ultimately show that you somehow acquired that gun after it left Chicago.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Or that you hid it after the murder. Or sold it. Or gave it away.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Then I think you’re safe, my dear.’

Janine wasn’t so sure.

She could hear the doubts in Archie’s voice. Not about her legal situation, but about her innocence. Her own attorney had never really believed in her. He’d given her a robust defense, but he thought she was guilty as sin. She’d told him over and over that she hadn’t pulled the trigger on that gun. She’d never so much as held it in her hand. Even so, Archie still suspected that she had simply outsmarted everyone else. Like a magician, she’d killed Jay and made the gun and the jewelry disappear. Until now.

Everyone else would think the same thing. She had no illusions about the public opinion of Dr. Perfect. People would still stare and wonder how she got away with it.

‘Welcome to the next chapter of your life,’ Archie told her. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

That was a good question. She didn’t know the answer.

She was accustomed to thinking day to day and ignoring the future. The thought of walking out into the world with no plan terrified her, because throughout her life, she’d always had a plan for everything.

The media would be waiting for her. She’d be mobbed. The release of Janine Snow would be big news. The surgeon murderer set free. She wasn’t ready for the questions they’d shout at her — What do you think really happened to your husband? Will you sue for wrongful imprisonment? — and she had no answers to give them.

She’d asked Archie if he could buy her some time. Get her past the media horde and hide her somewhere. She needed a few days to get her head around the idea of living outside the walls again, and then she could talk to the reporters. She couldn’t avoid the world forever, but she needed time. She needed to get used to different walls.

She would go back to Duluth. That was still home. For now.

Archie would put her up in a hotel. She’d paid enough to earn that treatment from him, at least for a while. She could stare at the waters of Lake Superior and order room service and drink wine. One day, then the next, then the next, until she figured out whether there was anything left to live for.

However, she had one immediate problem that wouldn’t go away. Howard Marlowe.

Howard, bland and boring. Howard, obsessed and driven by desire. This was his fantasy come true. Janine, free; the two of them, together. She’d never actually told him they had no future together, because all that time in prison, she’d had no future to give him. He was her little indulgence, someone to feed her ego.

Howard, Howard, Howard. Nice, unremarkable Howard, writing a book he would never finish, to rescue a woman who would never be in love with him. He would give up everything in his life for her. His wife. His child. When you’re an addict, nothing else matters except your addiction.

She couldn’t hide from Howard. He’d find her. That very first night, he’d be at the door of her hotel room. Probably with flowers, the poor fool. And champagne. Like she’d anticipated that moment the same way he had.

Janine realized that he deserved one night with her. She wouldn’t send him away without it. She’d toyed and played with the man for eight years, and if she let him enjoy his fantasy with her, that wasn’t such a great sacrifice. It was nothing but sex. Years earlier, when he’d showed up on her doorstep during the trial, she’d thought about taking him inside and sleeping with him. If she’d done it, would she be in prison right now?

Okay, Howard. This is what you’ve dreamed about. This is what it’s like to be in bed with me. She could live with that for one night. And in the morning, when she broke his heart, she wondered if he would still think it was worth the price.

Howard sat in his basement office, waiting for Archibald Gale to pick up the phone. A classical symphony played while he was on hold. He’d already listened to ten minutes of Beethoven, but Gale’s assistant assured him that the lawyer was anxious to speak with him. That was a big change from the days when he would make five or six calls to Gale’s office without getting a call back.

Finding the ring had changed his status. He would always remember the look of grudging admiration on Gale’s face when he showed him the ring.

Howard wasn’t stupid. He knew that Janine’s lawyer patronized him, full of hollow encouragement for his research. Yes, you keep digging, Howard. Yes, I have faith in you. And then he laughed behind his back. The truth was that Gale had never believed that Howard would discover anything remotely useful to Janine’s appeal.

So it was a triumphant moment to put the ring from the pawn shop in Gale’s hand and say: ‘I did it. I found it.’

That moment had changed everything between them. Suddenly, Howard wasn’t a crackpot, operating on the fringes of the case. Suddenly, Gale had called in an associate and taken Howard’s statement. Gale had clapped him on the back. Joked with him about lawyers and judges. Poured him a shot glass of expensive Scotch and sat and chatted with him as if they were fellow members of Duluth’s exclusive private club, the Kitchi Gammi.

Howard said, ‘Do you think she’ll finally be released?’

Gale, brimming with effervescence, replied, ‘Yes. Yes, this time I really do. Between the gun and the ring, I do.’

‘I always knew she was innocent.’

And then Archie Gale, with the strangest of grins, a little tipsy from his third shot of Laphroaig, said: ‘Yes, yes, innocent. Or exceedingly smart.’

Which Howard thought was an odd thing to say.

But it didn’t matter. It was really happening. Janine would be free tomorrow. He was dizzy with desire. Every nerve ending felt as if it were on fire with anticipation. He swiveled in his office chair and put his feet up on the basement wall and hummed along to Beethoven.