Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) (10 page)

16

Ross Klayman arrived at his mother’s house after dark.

The old RCA television in the living room was on. It was
always
on, driving him crazy. The same sewer of reality programs. Empty-headed sluts squeezing their silicone tits into bikini tops. Rich trust-fund babies playing drinking games. Celebrities grinning for the cameras and pretending they had ordinary lives. They were destroying the country. Chipping away the foundation brick by brick, until soon they would all be living in anarchy. Unless good people tried to stop it.

‘How can you watch this filth?’ Ross asked his mother.

Jessie shrugged and didn’t answer. She was draped across the sofa in a roomy T-shirt and yellow panties. Her feet were bare. She drank from a can of Miller Lite, and she already had two empties stacked on top of each other on the coffee table, next to an empty plastic tray from a Lean Cuisine dinner. Her eyes didn’t leave the television set.

‘Where were you today?’ she asked.

‘Out.’

‘Out where?’

‘The mall.’

He sat down next to her. The television was a noisy drone in his ears. She propped her feet on his thigh.

‘Did you eat?’ she asked.

‘I had a power bar.’

‘Do you want a beer?’

‘No.’

Ross rarely drank. Alcohol was poison. It clouded his mind, and he wanted his mind sharp. If you were a soldier and hunter, your only real weapon was the clearness of your brain. Your gun was an extension of your arm, which was an extension of your mind. You had to know how to focus. To plan. To execute. The drugs that fouled other people’s heads were the enemy.

‘I’ve got a temp shift working a concert at the DECC tomorrow,’ his mother said.

‘Uh huh.’

‘Might turn into something more.’

‘Good,’ he said.

But it wouldn’t. It never did. She couldn’t hold a job.

He found himself staring at his mother’s feet. She kept her nails painted red, and a callous bulged from her big toe. He knew what she wanted, so he massaged her arches, pressing deeply with his thumbs until she twitched on the edge of discomfort. It was their evening ritual. When she worked, she spent hours standing, leaving her flat feet sore by the time she came home.

Jessie gave him a crooked, slightly drunken smile. Her red hair, streaked with gray at the roots, was pulled back tightly behind her head, framing her oval face. She had a chirpy, too-happy voice. ‘You really are the best son in the world, you know that, don’t you?’

Ross rubbed her feet without answering.

‘The scale says I’m down a pound,’ she told him.

‘Good for you.’

He didn’t think one pound would make any difference. Twenty pounds might, but that wasn’t going to happen. His mother binged on diets to lose ten pounds, and then she binged on junk food to put on fifteen. She wasn’t fat, but her panties and T-shirt were both a size too small for her current weight.

It was just the two of them. Ross and Jessie. That was the way it had been since he was eight years old, when his father took a page from a Springsteen song and went out for a drive and never came home. Fifteen years had passed since then. Jessie in and out of jobs. Ross in and out of school. They’d spent most of those years in a little apartment in Fargo. His mother worked security at a local mall, and her boss was a former high school coach confined to a wheelchair. She spent most of her time straddling his lap. Wheels didn’t turn bad people into angels.

When the boss’s wife found out about the affair, he fired Jessie. She found a bus-stop-bench lawyer who wheedled a settlement out of the mall owner, and they used the money to get out of Fargo and buy a small house in the town of Gary, southwest of Duluth. That was a year ago. Jessie took part-time security jobs when she could get them. Some months were flush. Some weren’t.

Ross had applied for jobs, but he couldn’t wash the contempt off his face at interviews, and after a while, he gave up. He spent most days hiking in the woods. Sometimes he went far north, almost to Canada, taking with him only what he could carry on his back and living off the land for days at a time. That was how it was supposed to be. Man. Nature. Values.

He lifted his mother’s feet off his legs and stood up. He slipped off his camouflage jacket and hung it on a hook behind the front door. Jessie noted the shoulder holster and revolver without comment. Her own philosophy was to make sure you had a gun within reaching distance of your fingers at all times.

He went to her bedroom at the end of the hall, where the twin bed was unmade. The gun safe was on the wall. He undid the combination lock and stored the handgun in a sleeve on the door. There were six others. The safe allowed room for more than a dozen rifles, too. It was full.

With the safe open and the hardware in front of him, Ross heard a knocking on the front door.

That was the moment he’d long dreaded. The knock on the door. He thought about the woman at the mall. The cop’s wife. It seemed impossible that she could have recognized him, or that they could have tracked him down so quickly. He was a phantom in Duluth. The only one who had ever come close was the black bastard at the newspaper who’d stumbled onto his practice field. He wasn’t a problem anymore.

Even so. Be prepared.

Another knock.

‘Ross,’ his mother called.

‘Who is it?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not decent.’

Ross had no way of knowing if this was the moment. This might be the beginning of the end.

He left the safe open and crept to the doorway of the living room, where he could see windows facing the nighttime yard. No flashing lights. No cars on the street. Then fingernails tap-tapped on the glass, and he saw a girl’s face. Two girls. They called through the window to him.

‘Hey, hello!’

He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath. He exhaled.

Ross crossed to the front door and yanked it open. The girls jumped and giggled. They were taller than he was, both around sixteen or seventeen, probably sisters. Their hair was too long, their makeup too loud, their jeans too tight. He had no expression on his face, and he watched them catch their breath, smirk, roll their eyes, and whisper back and forth. They weren’t scared of him. They were laughing at him and could barely hide it. He felt a roaring in his head, his fury as calm as an ocean wave gathering force as it rolled toward shore.

‘Hi,’ the first girl said. She had red hair, cheap earrings. She twisted a curl around her fingers.

‘Hi,’ her sister echoed.

He said nothing at all. They were strangers, but he knew their type. These were the girls at school. These were the girls at the mall. These were the girls on television. They were all the same. They didn’t know who he was, but he wanted to shout at their painted faces: I AM GOD.

I am the Decider. I am the Bringer of Life and Death.

Kneel for your Judgment.

Unbidden, his fingers curled into fists, and his breath came faster.

‘Um,’ the first girl said.

‘We’re your neighbors across the street,’ the second girl added.

He didn’t know the neighbors, and they didn’t know him. I AM GOD. The girls peeked over his shoulder and saw Jessie on the sofa, her T-shirt riding up her stomach. They giggled again, as if looking down their noses at both of them.

Kneel.

‘Our dog’s missing,’ the first girl said.

‘Have you seen him?’ her sister asked.

He could barely hear his voice over the blood pulsing in his brain. ‘No.’

‘He’s a black Lab.’

‘We call him Ducks. He’s a hunting dog. Dad hunts ducks.’

Ross saw a tall silhouette in the house across the street. A man was at the window, peering out, keeping an eye on his girls. ‘I haven’t seen the dog.’

‘Well, if you do, could you call
—
’

He slammed the door in their faces. Behind the frame, he heard silence, then an explosion of laughter. Heels skipped on concrete. He closed his eyes and measured each breath, in, out, slowly, carefully. Count to ten. Relaxation washed over him. Your only real weapon is the clearness of your brain.

Ross sat down on the sofa again, and his mother presented her feet for his attention. He began to massage them again, but in no time, she gave an annoyed yelp as he squeezed too hard.

On television, two girls on a reality show discussed the penis size of a man who lived in the dormitory with them.

Disgusting.

‘Is that the dog who’s been pooping in our backyard?’ Jessie asked when the show went to a commercial.

‘Yes.’

‘He’s missing?’

‘I guess.’

Jessie’s face got a curious little look. ‘Did you take that dog along on one of your trips?’

‘No.’

‘I thought I heard barking when you went out.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘Oh. Well, whatever.’

Ross got up from the sofa. ‘I’m going to my room.’

‘Okay.’ She hugged him around the waist. ‘I told you that you were the best son ever, right?’

‘Yes.’

She wanted him to say she was the best mother in the world, but he didn’t do that.

He separated himself from her and headed to the hallway. His bedroom door was the first on the left. It was painted black, and he pulled out a key to unlock the deadbolt he’d installed. He went inside and shut the door behind him and locked it again.

*

It was the middle of the night when Jessie Klayman awoke on the sofa. Six empty beer cans were spilled across the table; the pyramid she’d built had toppled when she kicked it in her sleep. The TV was still on, and she used the remote control to switch it off. She stretched out her bare leg, fighting a cramp. Her head throbbed. When she stood up, she felt dizzy.

It was stupid to drink so much the day before a job. She hoped she could get in a few more hours of sleep before the alarm rang in the morning.

Jessie zigzagged to her bedroom, steadying herself on the wall.

As she passed Ross’s room, she saw a crack of light under the door. He was still awake. From inside, she heard what she usually did. Gunfire. Explosions. Screams. He was killing zombies or aliens or mutants or whatever else was in the silly games he liked to play. Sometimes he was up all night, fighting his wars.

17

Dan Erickson smelled blood.

Stride hadn’t known the new St. Louis County attorney for long, but he recognized Dan’s pattern. When they were close to making an arrest on a major case, Dan began taking a more personal role in the investigation, nudging the police aside and inserting himself into the news. Like most politicians, he had a radar for cameras.

Dan went to the judge personally to get the search warrant approved for Janine’s condo above Michigan Street. He also fast-tracked an immunity deal for Melvin Wiley to get the private detective talking about his surveillance of Janine Snow and Nathan Skinner. Stride wouldn’t have let Wiley off the hook so readily. The detective was guilty of breaking and entering, invasion of privacy, and blackmail, and Stride would have preferred to get the information they wanted somewhere else.

Dan didn’t see it that way.

The three men stood in the hallway outside Janine’s condo while Stride’s team conducted a search inside. Wiley drank Perrier supplied by Dan and wiped his mustache after each swig from the green bottle. He wore a Twins baseball cap, a gray sweatshirt, and blue jeans. The man’s face bore a smug grin. He was enjoying his turn in the spotlight. There was nothing a private detective liked more than having the police and prosecutors come to him for information.

Dan asked the questions himself. The county prosecutor wasn’t a tall man, but he had an undeniable presence. Cindy, who didn’t like him at all, called it charisma. He was blond and slick and knew how to connect with juries the way an actor would. He oozed success, confidence, and money, although the money wasn’t his own. He was married to one of the city’s most successful real estate developers, who’d bankrolled his career and his thousand-dollar suits. Dan and Lauren had an estate on the lake. A Lexus. Their eyes were on the prize. He was going places in state politics.

‘We need to stick to the facts,’ Dan told Wiley. He paced back and forth between the narrow walls of the hallway. He had the kind of hyperactive personality that couldn’t sit still. ‘Archie is going to paint you as a sleazy peeping Tom when you’re on the stand. The jury won’t like you. You better be prepared for that.’

‘It’s a hazard of the profession,’ Wiley said. ‘Nobody pays me to be liked.’

‘Tell me about the video you took in the bedroom. What exactly does it show?’

‘Like I told the doc, it shows her having sex with Nathan Skinner,’ Wiley replied. He drank more Perrier and added: ‘Me and Ferris watched it together. It doesn’t leave anything to the imagination.’

‘What was his reaction?’

‘Cold,’ Wiley said, shaking his head. ‘Ice cold. I see a lot of husbands when they face the ugly truth, you know? Most go to pieces. Big strong guys blubbering, how could she do this to me, blah blah blah. Not Ferris. He just got this frozen rage.’

‘When was this?’

‘Thanksgiving week. Late November.’

Stride thought about the timing of Wiley’s revelation. Thanksgiving week. Janine and Nathan both said that the affair ended shortly afterward. Jay also contacted a divorce lawyer named Tamara Fellowes around the same time. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Wiley’s video landed like a bomb in Jay’s life. It was bad enough to learn that your wife was having an affair, but even worse to know she was sleeping with someone you loathed.

Janine said he was itching to confront Nathan Skinner, but Nathan said it never happened.

Nathan said Jay would have done anything to keep Janine under his thumb, but Janine said they were headed for an amicable separation.

Who was lying?

Stride left the two men and wandered inside the apartment. It was small and furnished sparsely. Janine hadn’t spent much time decorating her secret space. His team was searching the rooms and screening surfaces for evidence of blood, in case Janine had tracked something from her house on the night of the murder. Maggie was at the apartment window, staring across Michigan Street toward Canal Park.

‘So you’ve got a big mansion up on the hill,’ she said, when Stride joined her. ‘Why do you buy a one-bedroom condo like this?’

‘Sounds like the bedroom got a lot of use,’ Stride said.

‘Well, yeah, it’s a nice love nest. She’s got a Tempur-Pedic mattress in there. Pretty good for rocking and rolling.’

‘Why didn’t we find out about this place before now?’ Stride asked.

‘Janine set up a corporate entity for lab referrals. Medicare reimbursement crap. The ownership is under the business name. There’s nothing to tie it to her. She hasn’t had the place long. Just since late July. You think she stashed the gun and jewels here that night?’

‘It would have been easy and fast,’ Stride said, ‘and it would have bought her time to get rid of them.’

‘Well, we haven’t found anything so far. No gun. No blood. Maybe this is just what Nathan said it was. Somewhere to unwind after surgery. No work, no papers, no husband. Nice bed when you want to bang an ex-cop.’

Stride shook his head. ‘No, we’re missing something. There’s something else here.’

‘You sound pretty sure.’

He looked around the apartment, but the walls gave up no secrets. ‘I know Janine, and I know Archie. If there wasn’t anything to find here, they would have told us about it weeks ago. Janine kept it hidden. This place is more than a love nest.’

He realized that the private detective, as nauseating as he was, might have more answers. He returned to the hallway and interrupted the conversation between Wiley and Dan Erickson.

‘Hey, Wiley, when you met Dr. Snow in the parking lot across the street, did she say why she was here?’ Stride asked the detective.

Wiley shrugged. ‘No.’

‘How did you find her? Did you follow her?’

‘I didn’t need to. She comes here a lot. Few times a week, for sure. All I had to do was wait.’

Stride remembered what Nathan Skinner had told him. Janine was a busy woman. They only met for sex a couple times a month. And yet she was here in her secret condominium regularly.

‘When did you remove your camera from the bedroom?’ Stride asked.

‘Thanksgiving Day. After I reported what I found to Jay, he shut down the investigation. He had what he wanted, and I needed my equipment back. Holidays are good for that sort of thing. Nobody’s around to see what you’re doing.’

‘You must have captured video of Dr. Snow when she was here alone,’ Stride said. ‘Not just with Nathan Skinner.’

‘Sure. All the time.’

‘Was there anything unusual about the rest of the videos?’

‘Nothing out of the ordinary. She wasn’t in the bedroom much when Skinner wasn’t around. Jay asked me the same thing, though.’

Stride looked up. ‘What?’

‘Jay wanted to see videos of his wife when she was alone,’ Wiley said.

‘Did he say why? Or what he was looking for?’

‘Nope.’

‘Did you show him?’ Stride asked.

‘Yeah, we watched videos for another hour or so. It was just her alone.’

‘What did you see?’

‘Nothing much,’ the detective said. ‘She came into the bedroom, had a big glass of wine with her. Undressed down to her birthday suit. She left the room and probably showered, because her hair was wet when she came back. She put on music, danced a little, took a pill, read a book on the bed for a while. That’s it.’

‘That was what Jay saw?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What did he do next?’

‘He thanked me and gave me a fat bonus. End of contract. For a guy who’d just figured out he was being cuckolded, he seemed in better spirits by the time we were done. I think I even mentioned it to him. I said, hey, aren’t you mad?’

‘What did Jay say?’

‘He laughed. He said, “I don’t get mad, Melvin, I get even.”’

Stride returned to the apartment, which seemed to be the epicenter of all the problems between Jay and Janine. He ran his hands through his black hair and left his fingers laced on the back of his head. He wanted a cigarette.

‘July,’ he said to Maggie. ‘Janine bought this place in late July, right? What was going on between her and Jay that month?’

Maggie grabbed the answer from her perfect memory. ‘She turned off the spigot on Jay’s credit cards right before the Fourth.’

‘And then turned it back on a couple weeks later,’ Stride said.

‘Yeah, so? What does that have to do with the condo?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Stride dug in his pocket and snapped on gloves. He crossed the room and went into Janine’s bedroom, where Guppo was leading the search. He saw that his team had removed the face plate of the vent on the wall, exposing the area where Melvin Wiley had placed his spy camera. The location gave a perfect vantage on the bed.

He thought about Janine spending time here alone several times a week. He saw the contents of Janine’s nightstand spread on plastic sheeting across the bed, and he examined the items, seeing nothing unusual. Tissues. Condoms. Makeup. A few jewelry items that didn’t match what had been taken from the house. Compact discs of Celtic music by Clannad. A Texas romance by Lorraine Heath. Nothing medical at all.

In this place, Stride realized, she wasn’t a doctor.

He went into the adjoining bathroom. At her mansion on the hill, Janine’s bathroom was her spa and temple, a place to escape. Not here. It was clean but small, with a toilet, medicine cabinet, sink, built-in closet, and a combination tub and shower. He checked the closet, which contained luxury bath towels and shower supplies from L’Occitane. Inside the medicine cabinet, he found a toothbrush, toothpaste, and over-the-counter medications for stomach disorders.

Nothing special.

And then Stride noticed the paint on the wall.

The medicine cabinet was framed by four panels of oak trim. In two places beside the right-most panel, he saw faint scratches on the white paint. They were the kind of scratches fingernails would make. With his gloved hand, he pushed against the plasterboard and nudged one finger against the piece of oak trim.

It popped off the wall.

Beneath the trim was a set of hinges.

‘Mags,’ he called.

She joined him in the small bathroom and whistled when she saw the hinges. Stride checked the oak trim on the opposite side of the medicine cabinet and removed the corresponding panel. Beneath it, the fringe of the cabinet was fitted into a steel rod that held it firmly in place against the wall. Two small fingerholds allowed someone to detach the entire cabinet from the rod and swing it on the hinges.

He removed the other two panels of oak trim. Without touching the finger-holds – they’d need to dust those for prints – he pried the medicine cabinet away from the steel rod, and it opened to reveal a small compartment built into the sheetrock.

‘Whoa,’ Maggie said.

Stride shook his head. The truth never made him happy, because the truth of human nature was usually dark. ‘That’s why she killed Jay,’ he said.