Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) (22 page)

40

Janine Snow waited for her visitor.

To her surprise, she found that she looked forward to visits from Howard Marlowe. He came twice a month during the summers, less frequently during the school year. He told her about his research, his book, his determination to find evidence to set her free. When he ran out of things to say about Jay’s murder, which wasn’t often, he talked about his life, his dreams, his students, his daughter, and his wife.

In the early years, she’d thought of Howard’s visits as a slim thread connecting her to the real world. Then she realized that the real world was here inside the walls of the prison at Shakopee. Howard was a resident of a fantasy world. A world that didn’t exist anymore. A world in which she was free.

She was the same woman that she’d been in Duluth, and yet she was completely different. Age showed on her face more, because she couldn’t hide it now. Gray had painted over much of her blond hair. Her skin was natural, which meant the wrinkles near her eyes and mouth were there for everyone to see. She was still fit and trim, because she exercised regularly, but she fought with the weight of carb-heavy prison meals. Her nails were nothing more than the slimmest of crescent moons. She read voraciously. One of the benefits of Shakopee was an excellent library. She read history. Mysteries. Philosophy. Science. She’d never had much time to read in the past, and now she had nothing but time. Her old life had revolved around medicine and sex, and suddenly she had to make peace with a world where neither of those things played any role in her life. She kept up on medical journals for a year and then decided she never wanted to see them again. Even her sex drive waned.

Relationships with other inmates didn’t come easily to her. She was a woman who’d only been comfortable around men – people she could control, people she could manipulate – and now she lived in a community of women. She kept herself aloof at first. She couldn’t hide that she considered herself superior to the others, and they knew it. She didn’t like them. They didn’t like her. Even so, time passed, and time could smooth mountains. She joined the prison book club, and she found that the perspectives of other inmates were often deeper and more complex than her own. They defied her caricatures of who they were. When she finally opened her own mouth, she tried to show them that she was more than the bitch they thought she was.

A few became something close to friends. Some came and went after serving time for lesser offenses. Others stayed. Like her.

No one wrote. No one visited. Except Howard.

She found it strange that he was the only person, after all this time, who still doubted her guilt. Who still believed in her. He was the juror who’d put her in here. And yet he kept coming, more determined than ever, more in love with her than ever. She could have sent him away, but the loneliness would have driven her mad. She looked forward to seeing him. She even had a degree of fondness for him. The humane thing would have been to insist that he not waste his life on a foolish quest, but eight years hadn’t changed everything about her. She was still selfish.

‘Janine,’ Howard said.

She’d been far away, and he was standing above her. She smiled at him, got up, and shook his hand. His skin was clammy, as it usually was. She had the feeling that shaking her hand was the most erotic experience in this man’s life.

‘How are you?’ he asked as they sat down.

‘Much the same.’

‘It’s hot out. But nice.’

‘Good.’

‘You look great,’ he said.

‘Oh, well. Thanks.’

It was the usual small talk, followed by the usual silence. She didn’t mind. Years ago, she’d thought that Howard Marlowe was the most boring person on the planet. She still thought so, but boring didn’t seem entirely bad anymore. After a while, you looked forward to the predictable things. It was summer, so Howard wore his summer clothes, a collared short-sleeve shirt, black jeans, white tennis shoes. He’d had his curly brown hair cut before coming to see her, as he usually did. Five years ago, after consulting with her, he’d had LASIK surgery done, and he didn’t need glasses now. He had a suburban paunch that he tried to suck in when he was with her.

She knew he fantasized about her. He’d admitted it. She found it a little pathetic, but every now and then, she would make some coquettish gesture that she knew he’d remember. A meaningful look in her eyes or a tiny puckering of her lips. Or she would tug at her denim shirt in a way that emphasized the swell of her breasts. Harmless, but she felt she owed him something.

‘The book’s going well,’ he said.

‘Good.’

‘You don’t mind my doing it, do you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I run chapters by Mr. Gale. Should I run them by you, too?’

‘No, you don’t have to do that.’

‘I understand.’

‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, Howard. It’s just that I don’t want to relive it.’

‘Oh, I get it.’

‘That doesn’t mean I’m telling you to stop.’

‘No, I’ll keep going,’ he assured her. ‘When I publish it, it will bring lots of new attention to your case.’

Janine smiled at him. She held out no hope that Howard would ever finish his book, or if he did, that he would ever publish it.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ Howard said. ‘Carol knows about us.’

‘What?’

‘She knows I come down here to visit you.’

‘Oh.’

‘I don’t know how she found out.’

‘Oh,’ Janine said again. She didn’t know what else to say.

‘She wants me to stop, but I’ll keep coming, I promise. Don’t worry about that.’

Janine found herself indescribably sad. Sad about everything. Sad that she was ruining this man’s life and marriage. Sad at even the possibility that he might stop visiting and leave her completely alone. Sad that she was here.

‘Look, Howard,’ she said, watching him hang on her words. ‘I want you to think about this. Maybe you shouldn’t come here anymore.’

‘What? No. No way.’

‘You’re hurting your wife.’

‘I don’t . . .’ he began, and she realized that he was about to say:
I don’t care.
He stopped without going on, but she knew it was true. She’d become his
Mona Lisa
.
She was everything to him, beginning and end.

This was wrong. She had to put a stop to it.

‘Really, Howard,’ she said in a sterner voice. ‘Go home to Carol. Forget about me.’

He shook his head fiercely. ‘I won’t do that.’

‘This isn’t fair to you or to your wife. It means a lot to me that you visit, but I’ve let this go on way too long.’

‘Janine
—
’

‘No, I mean it. You have to stop.’

‘I can’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’m not going to give up. I won’t quit until I find something. I won’t stop until you’re free.’ He paused and added breathlessly: ‘Until we’re together.’

Janine tried to keep the horror from her face. That was the fantasy behind all of this. He would get her out of prison. He would rescue her. And they would live happily ever after, just the two of them. She had to kill that dream right now.

‘I’m never getting out of here,’ she said finally.

‘Don’t talk like that! Don’t give up. I promise I’ll find proof that you’re innocent.’

‘Howard,’ she told him sharply, in a voice that was barely a breath. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m not innocent. I’m guilty.’

*

Stride didn’t look up as Maggie came into his office on Friday night. It was late and already dark. The woodland outside the building was invisible. The Duluth Police had moved in the spring to a new location in the open land north of the city. He missed City Hall, but not the building’s rats. It had been several months, but moving boxes still littered his office floor. He never found time to unpack, which was an excuse for the fact that he didn’t like to deal with change.

Maggie didn’t say anything to him as she sat down.

‘Troy got back to me with crew lists for the boats that were in port when Kelly Hauswirth was killed,’ Stride said. ‘I’m working with the FBI and with Interpol to cross-reference for criminal records. It’s a long list, but it’s a place to start.’

Maggie was still quiet, but he didn’t notice her silence.

‘Speaking of Troy,’ he went on. ‘I haven’t teased you about him, have I? I think he’s got a thing for you. He was giving you the eye when we saw him.’

He waited for the usual sarcastic reply, and when he didn’t get it, he wondered if he had crossed a line with her. Their own break-up, and his reunion with Serena, were still too fresh.

He looked up and said: ‘Mags?’

Her golden face was a ball of confusion. Her bangs were in her eyes, but she didn’t blow them away.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘I got the ballistics report from the BCA on the murder weapon. The one that Serena found. The one that killed Kelly Hauswirth.’

‘Okay.’

‘They got two hits.’

‘Really? Excellent.’

Maggie was quiet again. Then she said: ‘The gun matches a bullet fired during a smash-and-grab robbery at a Chicago jewelry store more than eight years ago where a security guard was wounded. This was right before Christmas.’

‘Interesting. What was the other hit?’

His partner shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand it.’

‘Understand what?’ Stride asked.

‘I asked the BCA if they could run the test again. They said it was a lock. No question about it.’

‘Mags,’ he repeated. ‘What the hell are you saying?’

‘The gun that Serena recovered in the Kelly Hauswirth case,’ Maggie said. ‘That’s the gun that killed Jay Ferris.’

41

Serena knew that Jonny was awake. Their bedroom was dark, and they both lay atop the blankets. It was a warm night. The windows were open. She heard the trill of crickets in the bushes outside.

He’d told her about the case. Janine Snow. Jay Ferris. The investigation and trial. They’d talked about old cases before, but not that one. Typically, he only told her about cases that were unsolved, but the murder of Jay Ferris had been open-and-shut from the beginning. He’d never doubted what happened. There was only one loose end from the entire investigation – the missing gun – but even that detail hadn’t stopped a jury from convicting Janine Snow.

Except now the gun had been found. Serena had found it.

She slid her hand across the bed and laced his fingers. ‘Question,’ she murmured.

‘Okay.’

‘You said there were two hits on the gun. How come the ballistics database didn’t pick this up years ago during the original investigation?’

Jonny pushed himself up in bed. He reached over and switched on his nightstand lamp. A moth tapped against the glass. There were shadows on Jonny’s face and in his eyes.

‘It’s the usual backlog bureaucracy. The bullet from the Chicago shooting didn’t get logged for years, and when it did, they didn’t do a cross-region search. Just Illinois. Somebody didn’t want to bother sifting through false hits.’

‘Chicago,’ Serena said. ‘What’s the connection?’

‘There is no obvious connection that I can see. A jewelry store near Calumet Park on the south side of Chicago was robbed at gunpoint on December 20 almost nine years ago. That was just over a month before Jay Ferris was killed. A security guard tried to intervene and took a bullet in the thigh. The guard ID’d the perp from mug shots, and Chicago police found him a week later living with his aunt not far from Wrigley Field. He was wearing a Rolex watch he’d grabbed at the store. Real smart.’

‘But no gun.’

‘No gun. They didn’t need it to make a case. They had the guard’s ID and jewelry from the store. The shooter took a plea. In his statement, he said he’d sold the gun for cash the day after he hit the store. He didn’t know the buyer and couldn’t describe him. It was just one more gun on the Chicago streets. No one tried to track it down.’

‘And yet a month later that same gun was here in Duluth being used to shoot Jay Ferris,’ Serena said.

‘Exactly.’

‘Can you find the Chicago perp to get more details on the sale?’

‘He’s off the grid,’ Jonny replied. ‘He did three years, got out, never even bothered with a single parole meeting. There’s an outstanding warrant, but the police don’t think he’s anywhere near Chicago.’

Their bedroom door was closed, but they heard movement in the living room. Cat was up. She was a restless sleeper, and they often found her awake in the middle of the night. She’d suffered from nightmares for most of her life. When she couldn’t sleep, she turned on the television, or ate cold pizza from the refrigerator, or sat in silence on the back porch. Hearing her footsteps, Jonny looked at the door, wanting to check on her.

Serena got out of bed. She slid her nightgown over her head and then slipped a T-shirt over her bare chest. She stepped into shorts. She opened the bedroom door a crack, saw Cat sprawled on the living room floor in front of the television, and closed the door again. She draped herself across the end of the bed at Jonny’s feet.

‘So what happens next?’ she asked.

His face showed his frustration. ‘The gun has torpedoed the entire case against Janine. Archie’s filing an emergency motion for her release. The county attorney thinks he may get it. If the gun didn’t have a history, it probably wouldn’t be enough to convince a judge, but the fact that it was used in a violent crime prior to Jay’s death – and now in another murder years later – changes everything.’

‘I hate to admit it, but I agree with Archie,’ Serena said. ‘It looks like Janine never had that gun at all.’

Jonny shook his head. He was stubborn. ‘Not necessarily. The buyer in Chicago was a man, but street guns change hands all the time. Janine probably bought the gun later. Or Jay bought it for himself, and then Janine used it.’

‘And then what? You don’t murder your husband and sell the gun on the street. You get rid of it.’

‘She may have tried to get rid of it, but somebody else found it.’

‘Or somebody else shot Jay,’ Serena told him. ‘You may not like it, but that’s reality.’

He was quiet. Then he said: ‘I’m going down to Shakopee. I want to talk to Janine.’

‘She won’t tell you anything. The gun is her ticket out. She’s not going to jeopardize that.’

‘I know, but even if she won’t talk, I want to see her face when I ask her about it. Believe me, I know Cindy. I’ll know if she’s hiding something.’

Serena gave him a sad smile. ‘Cindy?’

He closed his eyes, realizing what he’d said. ‘Sorry. Janine. Freudian slip.’

She knew that the discovery of the gun had awakened ghosts for him. The murder of Jay Ferris, and the conviction of Janine Snow, didn’t exist in a vacuum. She could do the math. Jay Ferris had been killed in January. One January later, Jonny lost his wife. In between were some of the hardest days of their lives.

‘This must bring back some tough memories,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ he admitted.

‘Want to tell me about it?’

She waited to see if he would keep talking. Or if he would shut down the way he usually did.

‘You know the timing,’ he said. ‘It was a bad year.’

‘I know.’

He hesitated, and then he plunged ahead.

‘There was a shadow about Cindy in those days. She was so up and down. I thought she was angry because she thought Janine was innocent and I was trying to put her in prison. But it wasn’t just that. She was holding out on me. I was focused on the case, and all the while . . .’

Serena said nothing, but she knew. All the while, Cindy was dying.

She looked in his eyes for tears but didn’t see any.

‘I told you about Ross Klayman, didn’t I?’ he went on, staring at the ceiling of their bedroom. ‘The shooting at Miller Hill Mall?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured, wondering where he was going with this story. ‘Awful thing.’

‘Cindy was there. The wrong place at the right time. She saved a girl’s life and probably others, tackling Klayman the way she did. And you know what? I was angry with her. I was glad that girl was alive, but I was furious. I felt like she had put our lives in jeopardy by risking her own. It was stupid of me. Selfish.’

‘Hardly,’ Serena said softly, holding back tears herself.

‘I’ve thought about that day a lot ever since.’

‘Of course.’

‘I think Cindy knew what was happening to her. That’s why she did it. That’s why she took the risk in the mall. Steve Garske told me later there would have been symptoms. Warning signs. And she did nothing. She let months go by, until it was too late.’

‘Don’t lay that burden on her, Jonny,’ Serena said. ‘It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t yours. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

He didn’t reply.

She realized that she’d missed something important all these years. This wasn’t just about grief and loss for him. It was about anger, too. He was mad at Cindy for dying. For leaving him alone.

It was strange. For the first time, she saw Cindy not through Jonny’s eyes, but through her own. She’d put Cindy on a pedestal for years, but that wasn’t fair to either of them. Cindy was a woman, like her. Strong and afraid. Full of goodness and mistakes. If Cindy were alive now, Serena wouldn’t be in this bed, but Cindy was gone.

Life followed its own twisting path.

‘Nine years is a long time for a gun to stay out of circulation,’ she said.

‘Janine knows where it’s been,’ Jonny insisted.

‘Does she? Or do you not want to accept the possibility that you were wrong about her?’

‘I’m not wrong.’

Serena spoke softly. ‘If this is really about you and Cindy
—
’

‘It’s not,’ he snapped. ‘I know you think losing Cindy is clouding my judgment, but it’s not. I didn’t make a mistake back then. I’ve been wrong about plenty of things in my life, but not about Janine Snow.’