Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) (11 page)

18

Stride found Janine in her surgical office at St. Anne’s. The window behind her desk faced the expanse of Lake Superior. Wherever she went, she had a view. Her home, her condominium, and her office all looked out on the lake. He wondered whether she was even conscious of it being there day after day in all its changeable glory.

Janine waved him to a chair in front of her desk, but she wasn’t happy to see him. He could see an enlarged CT scan on the computer monitor in front of her, and she was reviewing a patient’s file. Her pretty face was intense, her normally lush blond hair tied back behind her head. This was what she did. She was a surgeon, and he was interrupting her.

‘It’s not a good time, Lieutenant,’ Janine snapped. ‘I can’t afford the distraction. I have a delicate operation this afternoon.’

‘I know.’

Her eyebrows flickered with annoyance. ‘Excuse me? You know?’

‘I checked your schedule.’

In the blink of an eye, her mind ran through calculations. He watched concern mingle with curiosity. ‘You should run anything you need by Archie. If you have questions, talk to him, not me. You know how it works.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘So if you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant?’ she asked sharply.

Stride didn’t get up from the chair. He felt sadness that it had come to this. Dismantling anyone’s life was a task he hated, even when he had no choice. ‘This is a unique situation, Janine. I don’t have time to get a court order, so I’m relying on you to do the right thing.’

‘And what do you mean by that?’ she asked.

‘Cancel the surgery,’ Stride told her.

‘Cancel it? Jonathan, I’ve been patient with you because of Cindy, but maybe you don’t realize who I am or what I do here. I don’t perform elective surgery that can be squeezed in between vacations and golf games. A man’s life is at stake. Days count. Minutes count.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s why I’d like this to happen without confrontation. I don’t want to alarm a patient or a patient’s family by talking to them myself, but I will if necessary.’

‘And say what? What’s going on? Are you planning to arrest me?’

‘We don’t have a formal arrest warrant yet,’ he acknowledged, ‘but it’s in process. We’ll be working with Mr. Gale on a time for you to surrender yourself. However, this decision won’t wait. You need to cancel all of the surgeries on your calendar.’

‘Well, unless you plan to haul me out of the hospital in cuffs, I don’t see why
—
’

‘Please, Janine,’ he interrupted her. ‘Don’t make this harder on yourself or your patients. You know why.’

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and removed an evidence bag that he placed on the impeccably neat desk in front of her.

No bluff.

Her eyes saw it, and her eyes closed. The evidence bag contained a prescription bottle of the painkiller Vicodin.

‘I’m sure you know where we found this,’ Stride told her. ‘This and about fifteen other bottles of Vicodin, Percocet, and Oxycontin. You’re hooked on pain pills, Dr. Snow. I can’t let you in an operating room.’

Janine said nothing.

She knew there was no point in protesting or denying. She knew whose fingerprints they would find all over the bottles. If she’d had the strength, she would have disposed of them weeks ago, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

‘You may find it surprising, but doctors aren’t supermen or superwomen,’ Janine told him. ‘We’re human. After I broke my ankle last winter, I needed pain medication. I figured I could manage the risks, because I knew more about them than anyone. I was naive. By the time I realized it, it was too late.’

She reached to pick up the bag, and Stride pulled it away.

‘I’m clean today,’ she added. ‘I always make sure I’m clean before I walk into the OR. It’s my rule.’

‘That hardly matters, even if it’s true.’

She shrugged. He was right, and she knew it. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘What about Ira Rose? The patient who died?’

‘I was clean then, too,’ she insisted. ‘My problem had nothing to do with his death. Not that anyone will care.’

Janine was a realist about what came next. The fact of her addiction was enough to cost her everything she had. No doubt she’d lied on her malpractice insurance application, and the policy would be voided. The judgment in litigation over Ira’s death would cost her millions. Her fortune. Her house. Her license to practice medicine would soon be gone.

Everything she lived for – gone.

‘Jay knew,’ Stride said. ‘He threatened to expose your addiction, right? That’s what he held over your head.’

She didn’t answer. Her mental calculations had already shifted to the next battle of her life. Her career was over; now all that remained was guilt or innocence in a murder trial. She wouldn’t make his job easier.

‘You visited pharmacies all over the northland,’ he went on, ‘but the patient name on the prescriptions was the same. Holly Jorgenson.
Holly
. That was the name of the drug addict in Jay’s column last July. It was a threat against you, wasn’t it? A very public threat. You shut off his credit cards, and that was Jay’s way of letting you know that if you didn’t turn the money spigot on again, he’d expose your secret to the world.’

‘Jay,’ she said, and he could hear the depth of bitterness in her voice.

‘That’s when you bought the condo, too,’ Stride said. ‘Did you tell Jay you were quitting the pills? Instead, you just took your addiction underground. You found a way to keep it hidden from him.’

She didn’t break down. She didn’t cry. There were very few tears in Janine Snow.

‘What about Thanksgiving?’ he asked. ‘Jay hired Melvin Wiley to follow you, but was he even thinking about an affair? Or did he suspect you were still using pills, and he wanted proof? I’m curious, what exactly did Jay say when he confronted you? Did he call his friend Tamara Fellowes at the Stanhope law firm and say that he was prepared to offer damaging information in Esther Rose’s lawsuit? Did he threaten to destroy your whole life if you didn’t give up the affair with Nathan Skinner? And what else? Did he want a slave, Janine? Did you finally realize there was no way out with Jay except to see him dead?’

Her voice was low but calm. ‘It must be so nice to be perfect, Jonathan.’

‘I’m certainly not that. I’m sympathetic to your situation, Janine, but you have to make some hard choices. It’s time for you to talk to Archie about a plea. If you and Jay argued that night, if you lost control and shot him, then you’re better off admitting it. This crazy story about someone coming into the house won’t fly.’

‘I never lose control,’ she replied, ‘and I didn’t shoot Jay.’

‘No one’s going to believe you. Archie won’t be able to sell that to a jury. Were you on the pills that night? Is that why you had to stop the car with Cindy and throw up?’

Janine picked up her office phone, as if he weren’t there. She’d already dismissed him. ‘Patty, what room is Mr. Fernandez in?’ she asked her assistant. ‘I need to speak to him and his family about the surgery today. I’m afraid we have to cancel it. And get Archie Gale on the phone for me, will you? Tell him I need to see him immediately. I’m going to be arrested soon.’

*

Howard Marlowe pulled into his driveway at the end of the school day.

They were talking about the 1960s in his ninth grade Civil Rights class. Unrest. Riots. The assassination of JFK and then the Civil Rights Act of the following year. Kennedy was Howard’s hero. He wished he’d been born earlier, so he could have been alive when Kennedy was president. That was an era when people could still make a difference.

As he got out of his car, his head was still reeling from the comment one of his students had made. Howard had shown them headlines from the day after Kennedy’s death, and one of the fourteen-year-old girls had raised her hand and asked, ‘Why was it such a big deal?’

Someone took a rifle and killed the President of the United States.

No big deal.

He’d never felt so impotent and purposeless in life. He was absolutely certain that he was making no difference whatsoever with his stay on the planet. In a black mood, he grabbed the mail from the box at the end of the driveway, brought it inside, and sat down at the kitchen table. Carol was home, making dinner. Baked chicken and broccoli, because it was Monday. She whistled along to a pop song by Kelly Clarkson, as if it were a wonderful day. The anger of the break-in was behind her now.

Everything in their lives was back to normal, which was exactly what Carol wanted. Everything was the way it had always been and the way it would always be.

It made him want to scream.

‘What’s in the mail?’ Carol asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Howard picked at the letters and magazines in front of him. A credit card bill from Kohl’s. A copy of
People
magazine. Carol liked to read it. A flier about recycling and trash collection. A brochure with coupons from the local restaurants. Five dollars off at Pizza Hut. They’d use that one.

He pulled an official-looking envelope out from the pile. It was addressed to him from the Duluth District Court of St. Louis County.

‘What’s that?’ his wife asked from the sink.

Howard was curious, and he unfolded the official letter inside. ‘It’s a summons,’ he said.

‘For what?’

He read the notice at the top of the page.

You are hereby notified that you have been selected to serve as a trial juror in the County District Court.

19

Summer came.

In Duluth, people sometimes wondered if the ice would never melt and if the trees would stay bare skeletons forever. Spring was often no spring, just cold gray days of mud and rain. However, even Duluth seasons eventually had to bow to the calendar, and by mid-year, the city became a paradise. The months spent as nothing but a cold nowhere were forgiven and forgotten. Lake Superior shimmered, a vast sapphire sea, catching dots of sunlight on each wave. Blue skies met green hills. Waterfalls surged and played through the cataract down Seven Bridges Road. Tourists swarmed Canal Park, and swimmers ran through the surf and wet sand stretching along the Point. Sea brine and popcorn perfumed the air.

Thousands of runners crowded the city for Grandma’s Marathon. A different festival filled up each weekend. Reggae and Blues. Tall Ships. The Blue Angels. Music floated out of the open doors of bars and clubs.

The length of the summer days almost made time hover in place, as perfect and fragile as a hummingbird. A Duluth summer felt as if it could be endless, not gone with the puff of a cold breeze. And yet everyone knew that perfection was a tease. The warmth was brief. July. August. Each sunset came with a little warning label to enjoy the moment while it lasted.

Stride lounged in a deck chair on the sand dune behind their house on their first night back from Alaska. Cindy sat beside him, nearly asleep. He wore sunglasses on the bright evening, which gave the lake a midnight glow. People jogged, and dogs ran along the sand in front of them. He was exhausted from the long flight back and the drive north from the Twin Cities, but he couldn’t recall a time when he’d felt so content with his life.

They’d had the perfect vacation. Luxurious food. Wine. Glaciers calving in front of them. Floatplanes over the remote wilderness. Hours spent in bed on a sea day, making love to the rough rhythm of the waves. Stride, who didn’t do vacations well as a rule, had set aside Duluth and the job for seven whole days. Cindy called it nothing short of a miracle.

Even so, he was happy to be home. To be in Duluth in the summertime. To feel a lake breeze, to hold Cindy’s hand, to drink cold beer from a bottle. His wife was quiet, and he knew a little part of her was sad to be back to reality, but he didn’t mind the ebb and flow of the world. He knew you could never predict the moments that would linger in your memory, but he thought this was one.

‘Favorite port?’ Cindy murmured, revisiting the trip.

‘Juneau.’

‘Favorite meal?’

‘That Chinese restaurant we ate at before we sailed from Vancouver. With the noodles. What was it called?

‘Hon.’

‘Yeah, that one,’ he said.

‘Favorite day overall?’

He nudged his sunglasses up to his forehead and let her see his eyes, and he just grinned. She laughed.

‘Sea day,’ she concluded.

‘Definitely.’

They were quiet for a while. The lake breathed waves in and out. As dusk spread shadows, the crowds on the beach thinned. Someone started a bonfire, and they could smell the wood and feel the smoke in their eyes. An ore boat glided through the nearby ship canal and rolled toward the open water. Stride wanted a cigarette, but he didn’t take one.

‘The trial starts next week,’ Cindy said.

‘I know.’

Back to reality.

The murder trial of State of Minnesota, Plaintiff, vs. Janine Snow, Defendant, was scheduled to begin on Monday. Stride knew that Dan Erickson planned to call Cindy as his first witness, and the idea of testifying weighed on his wife. She’d put it out of her mind during their trip to Alaska, but it was back as the clock ticked closer.

‘You’ll do fine,’ he told her, which was as much as he could say. His own testimony would follow hers. She would probably be off the stand in an hour; he would spend most of the day there. Then in the days to follow, Dan would build his house of cards witness by witness, and Archie would try to blow it down.

Eventually, Cindy said: ‘Do you think she’ll be convicted?’

Stride hesitated. Saying nothing would have been better, but he couldn’t remain completely silent. ‘You can never tell with juries.’

That was true. Jurors were a strange lot. Impossible to read or predict, always able to surprise. Dan said that trial attorneys were storytellers for a jury of children, and the lawyer with the best bedtime story won.

Stride respected the difficulty of what jurors had to do. They were asked to set aside a lifetime of bias, but they were also human beings, filled with prejudice and empathy. They were asked to evaluate nothing but the evidence in front of them, and yet they had to share a courtroom day after day with the man or woman whose fate they held in their hands. You couldn’t vote guilty in a felony murder case if you didn’t
believe
that the person behind the table ten feet away was capable of a terrible crime.

The state didn’t have to establish a motive. The defendant didn’t need a reason to cause the death of another person. Even so, every investigator and every prosecutor knew that jurors craved the why.

Why did respected surgeon Janine Snow murder her husband, Jay Ferris?

Because she was living under the threat of Jay stealing away the only thing she cared about. Her career.

‘You never found that man,’ Cindy pointed out.

‘No.’ Stride knew who she meant. They’d been unable to identify the man who’d threatened her at Miller Hill Mall. He was a ghost. ‘Guppo saw a man matching his description at the marathon, but he wasn’t able to get close. The guy disappeared before Guppo got there. But we haven’t stopped looking for him.’

‘It’s been months,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t found him by now . . .’

He didn’t answer, because he didn’t want to argue with her. Arguing only ruined the perfect day. She felt the same way, because she squeezed his fingers with her small hand and then pulled his fist to her mouth and kissed it.

‘Sorry,’ Cindy said.

‘That’s okay.’

They sat, and the evening got darker, and the wind grew a little bite off the water. It was time to go inside, to go to bed. She got up first. By then, she was mostly a shadow. She leaned down over his deck chair, with her long hair falling across him, and she kissed his lips. A hard kiss. A Cindy kiss.

‘I’m glad we went to Alaska,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

‘Nobody can ever take that away from us.’

He thought that was a strange thing for her to say, but he let it go, because it was a beautiful summer night, full of love and life. You don’t question such things. Even so, something in her voice made him shiver and think of winter.