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

He parked his Bronco in the snow and ice of their driveway. Inside, he hung his leather jacket on the hook near the front door and wandered into their tiny bedroom, which was the first door in the stubby hallway. He found Cindy in a lotus position on a throw rug on the wooden floor. Her eyes were closed, and she wore nothing but panties. She knew he was there, but she didn’t react, and he simply watched her, smiling. Cindy was a pixie, not more than 110 pounds. Her black hair, parted in the middle, draped long and perfectly straight on either side of her face, all the way past her shallow breasts with their pretty pink tips. Her face was narrow, her nose as sharp as a shark’s fin.

He could hear the shower running in their bathroom. They didn’t have much water pressure, and it took forever to get hot water dripping into the tub.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Hey, babe,’ she replied cheerfully.

He no longer apologized for being late or missing dinner. That was just part of their lives.

She unfolded her legs and hopped nimbly to her feet. She came up to him, her forehead only reaching his chin, and got up on tiptoes to kiss him. Her arms slid around his waist. She had big brown eyes, with irises so large there was almost no room for the whites around them.

‘I’m going to hit the shower,’ she said.

‘Want company?’ he asked.

‘I’d love it, but not this week.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, back on the red river. Big surprise.’

He heard the frustration in her voice. They’d been trying to get pregnant for two years with no success. Cindy was rarely moody, but the first day of her period always left her feeling sorry for herself. It was taking so long that he’d begun to wonder whether God was sending them a message, but he would never say so aloud. Having children was so much a part of who Cindy was that he didn’t like to rain on her chalk painting dreams. She came from a small family. Her only sister had been murdered as a teenager. If she’d had her way, she already would have had three or four kids of her own.

He followed her into the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth and tied her hair in a ponytail behind her back. She slid down her panties, and he watched as she climbed into the shower and pulled back the old plastic curtain.

‘Any progress on Jay’s murder?’ she called.

‘I can’t really talk to you about that.’

‘Why? You talk to me about all your cases.’

‘You took Janine home. You’ll be a witness when this goes to trial.’

Cindy was silent in the shower for a long time. He wondered if it was the first time she realized that she was a part of this case, whether she liked it or not. Finally, her damp face poked around the side of the shower curtain. Her brow crinkled into an angry knot. ‘Assuming there is a trial,’ she told him. ‘Assuming she did it. Which she didn’t.’

‘Cin,’ he said, but she swept the curtain closed again with a dismissive shake.

He left the bathroom, rather than argue with her. He was still hungry, so he went to the kitchen and cut himself a blond brownie from the pan Cindy had made over the weekend. He ate it in two bites.

Their house had a drafty screened patio facing the lake. Technically, it was a three-season porch, unheated, but he sat out there throughout the winter season anyway. He didn’t bother turning on the lights. He sat in one of the chaise lounges and watched the windows. Snow flurries dotted the glass, making icy streaks. He must have dozed off, because his eyes closed, and when he opened them, Cindy lay in the other chaise beside him.

Her eyes were open. She wore a pajama top and boxer shorts, and her tiny feet were poked into moccasins. Like him, she was unaffected by cold.

‘I really don’t get it,’ she murmured.

‘You were there with Janine—’ he began, but she shook her head.

‘Not that.’

‘Oh.’

He understood. Kids. Babies. He slid off the lounger and knelt beside her and took her hand, which was warm from the shower. ‘It’ll happen.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it will.’

There was no point in trying to convince her. He didn’t know, and she didn’t know. Instead, he wrapped her small body up in his arms, the way he had for most of his life, since they were teenagers. At first, she was motionless, simply numb. Then her body began to shake, and she cried into his chest.

The next morning, Cindy Stride was annoyed with Cindy Stride.

She had no time for self-pity, and she was irritated with herself for giving in to negative emotions. She got out of bed while it was still dark, leaving Jonny to sleep. Despite the cold and the slick glaze of snow on the street, she went jogging, and she returned home red-faced and refreshed. She made a pot of coffee and drank a cup, leaving the rest for her husband.

Jonny was still asleep when she left. He usually was, because he kept late hours. Sometimes she woke him up to have sex, but not this week. On her way to work, she stopped at the basement bakery called Amazing Grace in Canal Park, and she talked with the college kids behind the counter while she ate a cranberry-walnut muffin. They all knew her. She stuck her nose into their lives and gave them advice. The kids probably rolled their eyes when she was gone, but she didn’t care. Unlike her husband, Cindy was an extrovert who felt energized by other people.

She arrived at the clinic before everyone else, which was part of her routine. Turned on the lights. Made more coffee. She caught up on insurance paperwork at her desk. This was her peaceful time of the day, when she was alone to think. She read the newspaper for a while, and then she stared at the photographs pinned to the fabric wall of her cubicle. Jonny, of course. Their neighbor and doctor, Steve Garske. Jonny’s boss and Cindy’s friend, the deputy police chief Kyle Kinnick, looking ridiculous in his golfing outfit.

Cindy’s sister, Laura.

She only had a teenage picture of Laura, because her sister had been killed when she was just eighteen. They hadn’t been particularly close, but sometimes she found herself looking at Laura’s face and wondering what she would have been like as an adult. It wasn’t that Cindy felt alone. Not really. She had Jonny, she had tons of friends. Even so, she wished that her relationship with Laura had been stronger when they were kids.

Her morning was busy with physio appointments. She worked with a seventy-two-year-old woman recovering from a hip replacement. She taught exercises to a thirty-something man dealing with a pinched nerve in his neck. A sixteen-year-old girl who’d broken her ankle playing soccer came in for work on the weight machines and got an extended lecture from Cindy about safe sex.

At lunchtime, she wandered around the corner of 3rd Street to St. Anne’s to eat in the cafeteria, but when she spotted the cardiac wing on the hospital sign, she took an impulsive detour and headed for Janine Snow’s office. She hadn’t seen her friend since the night of the murder.

Cindy asked the receptionist to get a message to Janine, and she sat down to wait. It was a typical doctor’s office. Old magazines. Soothing paintings on the wall. Children’s books and toys. The only other people in the waiting room were a black woman and her son. The boy was around ten, and he had his face pushed against an aquarium, making nose prints as he watched the brightly colored tropical fish.

‘Sherman,’ the woman called to her son. She was probably in her late twenties but had the tired posture and foghorn cough of an older woman. When he didn’t answer, she spoke more sharply: ‘Sherman, you look at me right now.’

The boy turned away from the aquarium and folded his arms across his chest. ‘What?’