He skidded on his heels and jumped down the rest of the steps. She heard his footsteps splashing into the creek below them. He was gone, breaking free into the wide-open land of the park. She hadn’t seen his face.
People from the bar ran toward her, shouting. Somewhere among them, Cat called her name over and over in fear. Serena tried to stand, but she was too dizzy, and she fell forward, tasting blood on her tongue. She was on all fours now. Her hands pushed blindly around the muddy steps, hunting for the railing to use as leverage as she stood up. She felt rocks and tree branches and bug-eaten leaves beneath her fingers, and then, finally, she brushed against the iron of the railing.
Except – no.
What she felt under the wet skin of her hand wasn’t the railing mounted beside the steps. It was something else. Something metal and lethal and still hot to the touch.
When her brain righted itself, she realized it was a gun.
THEN
1
Nine Years Ago
Cindy Stride noted the clock on the dashboard of her Subaru Outback. 9:32 p.m.
Eventually, everyone would ask her about that. Jonny would pepper her with questions, not as a husband but as a cop. What time was it? When did you leave the party at the Radisson? The county attorney, Dan Erickson, would interrogate her about it months later on the witness stand. Mrs. Stride, exactly what time was it when you took the defendant back to her house that night?
She didn’t know why she noticed the time, or why she remembered it, but she did. 9:32 p.m. Friday night. January 28.
Cindy glanced at the woman in the passenger seat beside her. Dr. Janine Snow. She couldn’t look at Janine without a twinge of jealousy. If you were a short woman, you wanted to be tall. If you had black hair, you wanted to be blond. If you were a physical therapist, like Cindy, you wanted to be a surgeon.
Janine was all of those things.
‘I’m sorry to make you leave the party early,’ her friend said, with a little hint of her Texas roots in her voice. ‘I’m not feeling well, and I didn’t think I should drive myself.’
Cindy shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. I wished the chief a happy birthday. I kissed his cheek. My duty was done.’
She squinted through the windshield of her Outback. She hated driving at night, and the hillside trek to Janine’s house made her nervous. Duluth was a city that made no sense in the winter, when ice turned the steep streets into luge tracks. Janine owned a Frank Lloyd Wright-style mansion high above Skyline Parkway, with a million-dollar view and drop-offs that made you hold your breath trying to climb the slick streets to get there. With each switchback over the treetops, the glazed roads felt as if they were a stairway into the clouds.
‘Could you stop?’ Janine asked suddenly.
‘What? Why?’
‘Please. I have to throw up.’
Cindy punched the brakes, and the Outback shimmied. Janine flung open the door and fumbled with the seat belt. Sub-zero air roared into the car, making Cindy shiver. She saw Janine sway on the shoulder, where the frozen ground dipped sharply at her feet.
‘Are you okay? Be careful!’
Janine sank to her knees and vomited the contents of her stomach. She tried to stand, but her heels slipped, and she nearly fell. She clung to the car door as she dragged herself back inside. The smell of puke came with her. Her untucked lavender blouse and her Paige jeans were soiled with dirt, snow, and regurgitated remnants of banquet shrimp. She put her fists on her knees and laid her head back with closed eyes.
‘I am so sorry,’ Janine murmured.
‘It’s okay,’ Cindy replied. ‘These days, it seems like eating anything makes me sick, too.’
The wheels of the Outback churned for traction as Cindy accelerated. She had nightmares sometimes about the Duluth streets, where she kept pushing the gas but could never get up an impossibly steep hill. She peered at the cliffside over the terraced road. Icicles dripped from the rocky ledges, remnants of a brief early-month thaw. Somewhere above her was Janine’s house. The mansion’s frame butted over the hillside, as if floating on air. It was a crazy place to live. She preferred the drafty cottage that she and Jonny owned on the spit of land between Lake Superior and the inner harbor. She liked living at sea level.
Beside her, Janine’s skin was ghostly white. The annoying thing about Janine was that she could be sick and still look good. Her natural blond hair swished about her shoulders like waves of sunshine. It didn’t matter whether her hair was styled or messy; somehow it always looked right. She was the perfect weight and the perfect size, and at thirty-nine years old, she seemed to stay that way effortlessly. She had ice-blue eyes that hardly ever blinked. It was unnerving when those eyes looked at you and made you stutter like a fool, because you were standing in front of someone who was so beautifully put together.
Yes, Cindy was a little jealous of Janine Snow.
‘Where’s your husband?’ Janine asked. ‘I’m surprised he’d miss the chief’s party.’
‘Jonny and Maggie got stuck on top of the Bong Bridge coming back from Superior. A semi overturned on the ice. Shut the whole thing down. It’s a mess.’
Janine gave a thin smile. ‘So is his little Chinese partner still in love with him?’
‘Maggie? Oh, yeah. She is.’
‘Does that worry you? They spend a lot of time together.’
‘No, it doesn’t bother me. Maggie may be in love with him, but Jonny’s in love with me.’
Janine pursed her lips as if she wanted to say something more, but she held her tongue. She wasn’t always blessed with social graces. If anyone else had insinuated a relationship between Jonny and Maggie, Cindy would have cut them off at the knees, but she made allowances for Janine’s prickly side.
They’d been friends for five years, ever since St. Anne’s recruited Janine from Texas to a top spot in cardiac surgery at the downtown hospital. Cindy worked as a physical therapist in an adjacent building, and they’d met at the cafeteria. Janine didn’t make friends easily, particularly with other women, but Cindy took pride in the fact that she herself was impossible to dislike. The two of them soon became close. Or as close as a doctor could be to anyone else.
Janine made no secret of her Texas-sized libido, but she was one of those women who always seemed to have the wrong man in her life. She’d already been divorced twice before relocating to Duluth. One marriage was teen love, naive and doomed. One was mercenary, to pay for medical school. Through both marriages, she’d kept her own name. Snow. And like the snow, she was cold, driven, and blinding.
Two years after arriving at St. Anne’s, Janine married again. This time it was a News-Tribune columnist named Jay Ferris, and the two of them were from Mars and Venus. Jay was black, and Janine was white. He was an Iron Range Democrat, and Janine was a Lone Star Republican. Their differences made the attraction hotter. Janine freely admitted to Cindy that her interest in Jay was rooted more in lust than love, but after the heat between them flamed out, their passion veered to the other extreme. Cindy didn’t need to ask why Jay hadn’t accompanied his wife to the party at the Radisson. Janine and Jay never went anywhere together. Not anymore. Not for months.
Cindy turned toward Janine’s house. The last hill was the steepest of all. There were three houses perched at the summit of a dead end, built to soak up views of the city and the lake. Janine’s house was the most recent, the most modern, and the most expensive. It had flat roofs, heated to melt the snow. The back of the house, built on columns mounted into the hillside, featured a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. The rounded porte cochère extended over the semi-circular driveway like a flying saucer.
Lights were on at the house. Jay Ferris was home. The garage door was open, revealing Jay’s new Hummer and an empty space where Janine usually kept her Mercedes, which she’d left behind in the parking ramp at the Radisson.
Cindy st
opped in the driveway. ‘Here you go.’
‘Do you mind coming in with me? I’m pretty unsteady.’
‘Sure.’
Cindy got out. The hilltop wind swirled her long black hair and pinked up her cheeks. She went to the other side of the Outback and helped Janine out of the car. The taller woman put an arm around Cindy’s shoulder to support herself. Janine still walked with a limp after a painful fall on the ice the previous year. Cindy didn’t understand why her friend insisted on wearing heels, but to a Texas blond, leaving her heels at home was like suggesting she go to the party naked.
‘Do you have your key?’ Cindy asked.
‘Yes.’
But Janine didn’t need her key. Through the glass door, Cindy spotted Jay Ferris coming to meet them. She noticed a visceral reaction in her friend’s body when she saw her husband. Nothing brought this strong woman low like the man she’d married. Cindy wondered how long someone could live that way before they did something about it.
‘I’ll come inside with you,’ Cindy told her.
‘No.’ Janine’s voice was hushed and shaken. ‘No, you don’t need to do that. I can handle it myself. Thank you for taking me home.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I want to throw myself into the canyon,’ she said.
‘Janine.’
‘I’m kidding. I’m fine.’
‘Come home with me. You don’t have to stay here with him.’
Janine shook her head. ‘Yes, I do.’
The front door opened. A jazz clarinet sang from hidden speakers inside. Jay had a glass of red wine in his hand. He was slim and three or four inches shorter than his wife. He wore an untucked white silk shirt and gray dress slacks. His feet were bare. He cast a withering glance at Janine and paid no attention to Cindy.
‘Look at you. Is that puke? Very nice.’
Janine squared her shoulders and pushed past him. He slammed the door without acknowledging Cindy. Through the glass, she saw Janine kick off her heels in the marble foyer. She could hear their loud voices, already arguing. Jay reached for his wife, and she watched her friend violently shake him off. Cindy thought about ringing the bell to intervene, but Janine looked back through the window and mouthed: Go.
Cindy returned to her Outback and steeled herself for a slow, slippery drive home. She gave a silent prayer of thanks, not for the first time, for the husband she had and the life she led.
The streets around her were empty. No one else was foolish enough to be out on a night like this. It was just one of the details they would eventually ask her to remember.
As you left the house that night, Mrs. Stride, did you see anyone else?
‘No. There was no one else there. I was alone.’
*
Cindy awoke to the smell of cigarette smoke.
Their small bedroom was dark. She didn’t know what time it was. Through the half-open window, she heard the roar of Lake Superior yards from their back door. She shivered with cold in her nightgown as she sat up in bed, and the blanket slipped down her chest. She pushed tangled hair out of her face.
Where the moon made a triangle of light on the floor, she saw the silhouette of her husband. He was tall, almost six-foot-two. Strong and fit. His black hair wavy and untamed. He’d shrugged clothes onto his lean frame when he should have been getting undressed. He put a cigarette to his mouth – a habit she hated, but which he’d been unable to quit.
The bed was cold. He hadn’t climbed in with her yet.
She said: ‘What’s up?’
He realized she was awake and sat down beside her. When he flicked his cigarette lighter, it cast a flame. She could see his eyes now. She adored his eyes. Dark, teasing, fierce, funny, and so in love whenever they looked at her.
But his eyes weren’t happy.
‘Bad news,’ Jonathan Stride said. ‘I have to go out.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Did you see Janine at the chief’s party tonight?’
‘Of course. I took her home. She wasn’t feeling well.’
Stride stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You drove Janine home? What time was that? When did you leave the party at the Radisson?’
The time popped into her head. ‘9:32 p.m.’
‘Almost an hour and a half ago,’ Stride murmured. ‘Did you see Jay?’
‘Briefly, yes. Why?’
Stride kissed her forehead. He stood up again. ‘Jay’s dead. Janine called 911 a few minutes ago. She says someone shot him.’
2
‘The thing about dead husbands and dead wives is that the cases are always like a knock-knock joke,’ Maggie Bei said.
Jonathan Stride eyed his tiny Chinese partner, who stared up at him from behind her black bangs. He played along. ‘How’s that?’
‘Knock knock,’ she said.
‘Who’s there?’
‘We know.’
‘We know who?’ Stride asked.
Maggie cocked her finger like a gun. ‘Yes, we do.’
Stride smothered a laugh. Maggie was right. He was hard-pressed to remember a dead spouse at home who hadn’t been shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned by their loving husband or loving wife. The investigations typically didn’t take long to produce enough evidence to lay in front of a jury. However, Dr. Janine Snow wasn’t an ordinary suspect.
She was rich.
She was a local hero who saved lives on the operating table.
She was one of his wife’s closest friends.
Stride ran his hands back through his wavy hair and blinked to stay awake. He was tired and cold. The temperature hovered around zero, and here on the high hillside, the lake wind hit his skin like acid. They’d already spent two hours outside this evening, up on the arch of the Bong Bridge that connected Duluth to its Wisconsin twin port town, Superior. A semi had spilled over on the icy bridge deck, closing the span and stranding cars for hours. One woman freaked out at the height and began threatening to throw herself into the water. A typical January evening.
He’d barely had time for a hot shower at home when Maggie called about the murder of Jay Ferris. Now he was cold again, but in Duluth, the chill of winter never really went away. You lived your life cold. Even under a wool blanket, your bones never forgot the cold. They reminded you with a little involuntary shiver.
Stride stood with Maggie next to his Ford Bronco, which was crusted with dirt and road salt. He studied the street and the house. His team had already closed off the scene, and it was remote enough and late enough – after midnight – that news of the murder hadn’t leaked to the media yet. That wouldn’t last long, particularly given the prominence of the husband and wife involved in the crime.
The road banked sharply downward from where he was parked. The street was free of snow, but six-foot drifts had been piled on the shoulders by the plows. There were three houses here, all on the cliffside overlooking the lake, all worth in excess of a million dollars. He knew the families who owned them. Janine and Jay. Next to them, another surgeon, along with his gay partner and their three adopted children. Next to them, behind a wrought-iron gate, the owners of a successful restaurant chain located in the tourist heart of the city in Canal Park. Duluth’s upper-crust was a small community, and the chief made it a point that he and his lieutenants keep good relationships with them.
‘I want you to interview the neighbors yourself,’ he told Maggie.
‘Sure.’
‘Be polite.’
‘Me? I’m always polite.’
Stride smiled at her. Another joke. Maggie was, in fact, foul-mouthed and sarcastic. He was amazed at how much she’d changed in the few years they’d been working together. She was a whip-smart Chinese immigrant and criminology grad from the University of Minnesota, but Stride had been reluctant to hire her, because she came across as too strait
-laced for his rowdy team. That didn’t last long. She loosened up, learned how to swear, and learned how to boss around colleagues who were at least a foot taller than she was. She dressed in trendy clothes from the teen racks, wore ridiculous block heels that made her sound like a clog dancer when she walked, and constantly had to blow bangs from her mop of black hair out of her eyes.
‘Come on,’ Stride said, ‘let’s go inside.’
Janine Snow’s house was three stories high, but the entrance was on the uppermost level, and the other two floors were built below them into the side of the hill. They walked up the semi-circular driveway past an open three-car garage. Gravel and salt littered the sidewalk. At the doorway, where a uniformed officer guarded the door, they donned gloves and plastic coverings over their shoes. The marbled foyer opened into a living area with a high ceiling that was decorated with African-themed paintings and abstract onyx sculptures. A triptych portrait of Malcolm X loomed over a black-and-white sofa, and the modern chairs looked uncomfortable. The living room stretched to the back of the house, where high windows overlooked the city lights and the dark mass of Lake Superior.
The view was stunning, but right now, it was overshadowed by the body of Jay Ferris, who lay sprawled on his back on a gray-striped area rug. A circular wound had burned through the middle of his forehead, and the floor under his head was matted with blood. None of the blood had stained his shirt, which was cloud-white against his black skin. Aside from the hole in his head, he was still a handsome man. Shaved scalp. Tightly cropped goatee.
‘Jay Ferris,’ he murmured. He had to be honest. He’d never liked this man.
Jay was a Duluth lifer, like Stride. He’d grown up in the city’s Lincoln Park area and tangled with the police as a teenager over drugs and theft. Even so, Jay was a smart, ambitious kid. He’d studied at UMD on a scholarship, got a journalism degree with honors, and worked his way up at the Duluth News-Tribune from the copy-editing desk to a gig as a daily columnist. He knew that controversy sold newspapers, and he supplied a lot of it. In a city that smoothed over its racist past, Jay was a crusader against the white-bread elite. Stride didn’t mind that – there were skeletons in any town’s closet that needed to see the light of day – but he resented the carelessness with which Jay used his bully pulpit to destroy ordinary people.
Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) Page 2
