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

‘Can I see Al?’ Cat asked suddenly.

‘Maybe a little later,’ Serena told her. ‘You should get some rest.’

‘No, no, I’m fine. I want to see him. He saved my life, too, you know. I don’t want him thinking that I hate him.’

Stride turned back from the window. ‘Al’s lucky. The bullet went through his shoulder muscles but nothing vital. He’ll be okay.’

‘Please, can I see him? Five minutes.’

Stride and Serena both nodded. ‘Five minutes.’

Cat didn’t waste time. She slid out of bed and pushed her toes into slippers, and the three of them went into the hospital corridor. At the nurse’s station, Stride checked on Al Pugh’s room. When they reached the boy’s doorway, and Cat saw Al in bed, she flew to his side.

‘Al!’ she exclaimed. She bent down and hugged him, then let go as he flinched in pain. ‘Oh, sorry! Sorry!’

He laughed, which made him wince again. ‘That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Wow, you look good. I’m so glad you’re okay.’

‘You, too!’

Al was propped up in bed. His hospital gown was tied loosely at his neck, and the bandages on his left side extended from his neck to his elbow. Otherwise, his eyes were bright. Stride saw him for the first time as a handsome young man, with his neatly trimmed hair and beard. Friendly smile. The lanky physique of a basketball player. He understood Cat’s attraction to him.

Cat danced on the balls of her feet and stared at the floor. ‘Listen, Al, I’m sorry about all sorts of things. Lying to you. The things that Anna and I stole. I was such a jerk.’

‘Hey, I was a jerk, too. I just hope someday you can forgive me.’

Cat nodded. ‘How’s your shoulder? Are you okay?’

‘It hurts,’ he admitted.

‘You heard about Anna?’

‘I did.’

A nurse came into the room, and Serena touched Cat’s shoulder gently. ‘Come on, we should go and let Al rest. Trust me, I know what it’s like to get shot. It takes a lot out of you.’

‘Yeah, okay.’

She bent down and kissed Al lightly on the lips. Stride could see the kid’s face bloom with happiness. Al took Cat’s hand and didn’t want to let her go. It was a little gesture that made Stride realize that Cat had actually chosen well in finding her first real boyfriend. Al was solid. Hard-working. Not perfect, but no boy could be nineteen years old without doing stupid things. Something about the two of them made Stride smile and think about being nineteen himself. With Cindy. Back when he believed in the future.

He was still watching them when it happened.

The nurse undid the knot at Al’s neck to check on the bandage, and the fabric of the hospital gown slipped down, exposing his bare torso. Exposing something that didn’t belong on the chest of a healthy teenager. It took Stride a moment of shocked disbelief to understand exactly what he was seeing. Then, with the swiftness of a bullet from a decade-old gun, everything in the present and past made perfect sense.

This innocent young man. He was the key. He was what they’d all missed back then.

‘Jonny?’ Serena asked, watching his face.

The nurse retied Al’s gown, but Stride had already seen the zipper scar.

The scar of someone who’d had heart surgery.

They found Al’s mother in the hospital cafeteria.

She was with her three daughters, who ranged in age from ten to sixteen. When she saw Stride, Serena, and Maggie converging on their table, her lips puckered into a frown. Under her breath, she spoke to her children, and the girls picked up their trays and moved.

She continued eating calmly as the detectives joined her. She didn’t even look up when Stride said: ‘Janine Snow operated on Al, didn’t she? She saved his life.’

Toiana Pugh put her knife and fork back on the tray and folded her hands in her lap. She took a long breath, and a tear wept from her eye.

‘Yeah, she did. That woman was an angel sent from heaven. My little Sherman Aloysious was going to die. We were going to lose him. And that beautiful woman gave him back to us.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’ Stride asked.

Anger flashed on Al’s mother’s face. ‘So you could give her more trouble? Haven’t you done enough? That woman doesn’t belong in a jail cell. She should be helping other families. Other kids.’

Stride leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. The front legs of the chair came off the floor. He looked around at the cafeteria. Most of the people eating there were nurses in scrubs, but there were families, too. He knew what it was like to spend hours in a place like this. Waiting. Praying. Crying.

‘I understand,’ he told her. ‘Really, I do. But we need to know exactly what happened.’

Toiana jabbed a finger with a long purple fingernail at him. ‘You know how many docs we talked to back then? I can’t count. No insurance? Sorry, we can’t help you. My boy could turn blue in front of them for all they cared. But not Dr. Janine. She said she’d take care of Al. We had no money, no insurance, and she said, don’t you worry about that. I’m not ashamed to say, I was on my knees crying. Seymour, too. And Dr. Janine was as good as her word. She did the surgery. She saved him. Never asked us for one penny.’

‘I can hardly imagine how grateful you must have felt,’ Stride said.

‘Grateful? That’s not half of it. We owed her everything. Seymour and me, we told her, what can we do? How do we pay you back? She said, you just make sure Al lives a good life. That’s all. But we told her, if there is anything — anything you need — you call us. No matter what.’

There was a long silence at the table.

Finally, Maggie said, ‘And did she call you?’

Toiana grabbed her fork and picked at the lasagne on her plate, but she’d lost her appetite. ‘There were lots of follow-up appointments after the surgery. Dr. Janine talked about that husband of hers. What a beast he was. How trapped she was. Smart people can be the absolute worst when it comes to relationships. Here’s this amazing doc, but in her personal life, she wasn’t any different from the wives and girlfriends who end up at the shelters.’

Or that’s what she wanted you to believe , Stride thought.

‘We knew things were bad,’ Toiana went on, ‘but what happened next—’

She stopped.

‘Mrs. Pugh?’ Maggie murmured.

‘Not sure I should tell you any more.’

‘Do you want to talk to a lawyer?’

‘I don’t trust lawyers. Besides, I didn’t know a thing about what went on back then. I don’t blame Dr. Janine for what she did. Guess I don’t blame Seymour either. He felt he had a debt to pay. We owed her in ways you can’t measure.’

They didn’t press her, but they waited.

‘Dr. Janine came by our house,’ she told them. ‘This was a couple weeks before Christmas. It was a surprise. She’d never been there. Said she wanted to see how Al was doing. Me, I felt like it was a visit from the queen, you know? Everybody was so excited. And then she and Seymour — they went out and sat in her car. Talked. Must have been an hour or more. She left after that, and Seymour came back inside, and that man had some kind of big burden on his shoulders. I asked him what they talked about, but he put me off. Said it was nothing. The thing is, he was never really the same man after that. Never ever. He had secrets.’

It wasn’t hard to imagine how that conversation had gone. Janine asking for help to get rid of her husband. Seymour Pugh feeling like he had no choice but to do what she wanted. This doctor who had saved his son’s life wanted repayment in blood. A killing. A murder. And the next time Seymour Pugh was in Chicago, he bought a gun on the street.