He offered to take her home. It was the only time that day he saw enthusiasm brighten her face.
Now he was going to steer them right into a storm. It couldn’t get much worse. He hoped she would stay below and not see the ugly blackness sliding toward them across the sky.
Stride tried to coax more speed out of the engine, but it was already doing its best to fight the lake. As it was, he would need to slow down soon simply to keep control. He angled the boat toward the waves and the wind, but the gusts kept shifting direction. He frowned as the clouds caught up with the sinking sun in the west, sending shadows across the blue water. The air seemed immediately colder. He wore gloves and a leather jacket and had a Twins baseball cap pulled down low on his brow, but his ears were raw, and his cheeks were pink and numb.
He felt hands slip around his waist and then felt Andrea’s head lean against his back. She sidled up beside him, and he leaned down to kiss her. She smiled at him, but her skin was pale, and her lips were cold. When she looked toward land and saw the approaching storm, her eyes widened. She glanced up at him, and he pretended everything was fine.
“How long until we make it back?”
He shrugged. “Maybe an hour.”
Andrea cast a wary eye at the storm. “That doesn’t look good,” she said.
“Don’t worry, we’re just going to get a little wet. Why don’t you wait below?”
Andrea didn’t want the truth. She wanted comfort and reassurance. Cindy would have taken a look at his eyes and seen right through him, and then prodded him until he revealed what was in his heart.
The truth was, he was nervous. He had a coiled ball of worry lodged in his gut. He was worried about the storm, because he hadn’t sailed in a year, and his skills were rusty. And he was anxious about the trial, which would begin tomorrow in earnest now that the jury had been impaneled after two weeks of extensive voir dire.
He was worried about Andrea, too.
He didn’t know if they were groping their way toward love or just covering up each other’s pain.
Their sex life had cooled. In the early weeks, they had been adventurous, working through months of pent-up passion. Andrea told him what a wonderful, caring lover he was, and how good he felt inside her. Now they made love only infrequently. Andrea let him take the lead, and she was strangely detached, kissing him, letting him love her, even reaching orgasm, but not letting herself go as she had before. Stride began to understand, although he would never breathe it out loud, why Robin had called her cold in bed. She seemed afraid to release herself. Or just afraid.
He kept asking himself if he was feeling the right things, if he was feeling the way he was supposed to feel. Stupid questions. What really mattered was that the hurt had now become something he could manage, and there was something much better in his life now. He liked the feel of Andrea’s body next to him. He enjoyed how good she made him feel. He wanted to be with her.
He looked down at her, watching the nervousness in her eyes, but seeing, too, the emotional hunger she felt for him. It was there whenever she saw him. He wanted to wrap himself up in it.
“You’re thinking about the trial, aren’t you?” Andrea asked.
He wasn’t, but it was convenient to say yes.
“What does Dan say about the jury?” she asked.
“It’s as good as we can hope for,” Stride said. “Dan likes his chances.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
Stride shrugged. “I wish we would have found more direct evidence. But Stoner is smart.”
“I don’t understand. You’ve got her blood in the van and at the murder scene. Won’t that be enough?”
“With some lawyers, maybe, but I’ve crossed swords with Archie Gale before. He could make the jury believe I killed her.” Stride laughed.
“Is he going to pull an O.J.? Try to say you planted evidence?”
Stride shook his head. “No, nothing like that. That wouldn’t work here. I don’t even think he’ll challenge the DNA. Chuck Yee is too good for that. But we don’t have a body, and we don’t have anyone who saw Graeme and Rachel together on the night she disappeared. We also don’t have anyone who can prove they were having sex, since Carver’s testimony got thrown out.”
“Are you sure he’s guilty?” Andrea asked.
“I’ve been wrong before, but everything points at Graeme. I’m just not sure we can prove it, and I hate to think of the bastard getting away with murder because he’s smarter than we are and richer than we are. I’ve got a bad feeling. Like there’s a piece of the puzzle we’re missing. And if I think so, God knows Gale will think so. He just might find it, too.”
“What are you missing?”
“I don’t know,” Stride said. “The case feels solid to me, but I can’t help thinking there’s part of the story we don’t know.”
He studied the sky. The clouds had almost reached them, and the blue sky had darkened around them until it was like night. The swells roared up and broke over the prow, dousing them in cold spray. The boat lurched, lifting out of the water and slapping down with a jolt. Andrea lost her balance and grabbed Stride’s arm. He backed off the throttle until the boat was barely holding its own.
The storm swooped down on them with a fury, much worse than Stride had expected. Sheets of rain beat against them, driven horizontal by the wind, pelting their skin with such force that the pellets felt like thousands of bee stings. Stride was blinded. He tried to squint, but even through slitted eyes he saw nothing. The horizon had disappeared. Their only reality was the black mass engulfing them and the twisting blanket of rain.
He pushed the button on the control panel that unfurled the anchor somewhere below them. He wanted to make sure they didn’t capsize. The lake tossed the boat in circles and made it dance on the tops of the waves. Even with the anchor down, the boat yawed so far left Stride thought they would overturn, and they had to grab the slippery brass handrail to avoid being thrown overboard. It righted itself but spun around crazily. He tried to keep it on an angle to the waves, but the effort was hopeless. He was more concerned now that they would be ditched into the water.
All Stride could think of was that if the boat went down, he hoped he drowned. Because otherwise, Guppo would kill him.
But they weren’t going down.
He realized that the waves were smaller now. The rain lessened, allowing him to see a glimpse of the sky, which was lighter overhead. The boat still rocked and swayed in the deep troughs, but the engine was fighting back again, keeping them pointed in one direction. A few seconds later, the rain stopped completely. The clouds began to disassemble, leaving a patch of blue sky. The wind became calm, as if the storm had sucked all the energy out of the atmosphere.
He could see land again. He glanced at his watch and saw that only twenty minutes had passed since the storm hit.
“It’s over,” he said. “Come on, look.”
Hesitantly, Andrea looked around, staring at the placid sky, then behind them at the storm disappearing out over the lake. She peeled her fingers away from his belt, then slipped, her knees buckling. Stride grabbed her.
“Why don’t you go down below?” he suggested. “Lie down and rest. We’ll be back home soon.”
She gave him a wan smile. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Jon.”
“We won’t do this again,” he said.
Andrea stretched, catlike, working out the kinks from her muscles. “I ache all over.” She studied his face and reached up to caress his cheek. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You look like something’s bothering you,” Andrea said.
He shrugged. “It’s just the trial. I always get this way.”
Andrea didn’t look convinced. “Is it me?”
He took his hands off the wheel and cupped her face. “You’re the best thing that’s entered my life in a long time.”
That was the truth.
“I don’t know, Jon. C
an two wounded people make a go of it?”
“How else will we ever get better?” he said.
Andrea took his hand and stared at him intently. “I love you, Jon.”
Stride waited several beats too long, but then told her, “I love you, too.”
21
When they finally got back to Duluth, Stride stayed overnight at Andrea’s house, which he now did several nights a week. They never stayed on the Point. He had to admit that Andrea’s pillow-top mattress was more comfortable than the sunken twelve-year-old model he used at home and that her coffeemaker made coffee that could be sipped, not chewed. Still, there were times when he missed the rustic solitude of his own home. He sometimes yearned for the icy touch of the wood floors on his feet in the morning, rather than plush carpet. He missed hearing and smelling the lake, which was now just a great expanse in the distance, viewed from Andrea’s bedroom window.
He fell asleep easily that night, with Andrea’s head nestled on his shoulder. In the middle of the night, though, he had a bad dream, of being back on the boat, with Andrea still clinging to him. This time, he couldn’t hold on to her, and she slipped away into the water. All he heard was her voice screaming to him before the lake swallowed her up. He woke up, panting, eyes wide. He was relieved to see Andrea still sleeping calmly beside him, but the dream was too intense for him to quickly get back to sleep.
Awake, he thought about the trial.
Dan was bursting with confidence, but Stride had seen Archibald Gale pull rabbits out of his hat for too many years. Besides, something still bothered him, as if he were overlooking something, missing a fact that would put his fears to rest. He wanted Graeme to be convicted. If something was out there, something that would seal the case, he wanted to find it.
The same feeling dogged him on many cases. He always wanted more. But as Maggie reminded him, there were only so many pieces left of the puzzle after the crime was done. They found as many as they could, and then they had to rely on the prosecutor and the jury to piece them together.
Dan was pleased with the jury. He had used a jury consultant, and they had ended up with what the consultant described as the ideal mix to be receptive to the circumstantial story of Graeme’s guilt, including the hypothesis of his affair with Rachel. Eight women, four men. Four of the women were married, with children ranging from four years old to twenty. Two were divorced, and two were young and single. One man was a grandfather and widower, another single and gay, another married with no children, and the last a college student.
What they had successfully avoided, at the consultant’s direction, was a middle-aged married man with teenage daughters—in other words, someone very much like Graeme.
When they completed the jury selection on Friday, Dan took Stride out for a celebratory beer. He spent two hours crowing about his victory over Gale, who had shown surprisingly little fight in the voir dire. The defense attorney’s only victory had been convincing Judge Kassel to order the jury sequestered, to protect them from the barrage of press coverage that was bound to accompany the trial.
Stride drank along with Dan, but he was worried. If the jury was so good for the prosecution, why had Gale allowed it? Gale, who wasn’t known for skimping, hadn’t even employed a jury consultant.
Why?
Dan dismissed his concerns. “He’s got you believing his mind games,” Dan said. “Gale doesn’t walk on water, Jon. He simply blew it. He thought he could handle the jury selection himself, and he got sandbagged. End of story.”
Stride wasn’t convinced.
He slipped out of bed, moving carefully so as not to awaken Andrea. Naked, he stood before the window. The city was illuminated by thousands of twinkling lights, with the blackness of the lake beyond. Silently, he cracked the window. Andrea didn’t like sleeping with the windows open, and Stride, who did so well into the winter, had trouble adjusting.
The night air was cool and sweet.
He hadn’t been honest with himself about how much this case meant to him. That was why he wanted even more evidence—to be absolutely sure that Graeme would not slip through the fingers of justice. It was as if, having failed Cindy, having failed Kerry, he could not bear to fail Rachel, too. This time, one of the women in his life could rely on him to come through.
Stride stood there for almost half an hour, staring at the horizon and letting the gentle breeze swirl over his bare skin. Then, when he heard Andrea begin to stir, he closed the window and slipped back under the covers. He tossed and turned and finally drifted back to sleep.
The morning was stunning, as perfect a day as Duluth had ever enjoyed, with blinding sunshine, light blue skies, and a mild breeze floating in from the lake. Stride slipped sunglasses out of his pocket as he neared the courthouse. He put them on, hoping he could merge into the crowd and slip inside the building without being assaulted by the press.
The courthouse was just off First Avenue on a dead end called Priley Drive. A circular driveway led around a garden area, with the courthouse in the center, city hall on the right, and the federal court building on the left. It was normally a peaceful place to have lunch away from his basement office, on a bench near a bubbling fountain and a tulip garden, with the American flag snapping overhead atop a giant flagpole.
Not today.
The crowd filled the cobbled walkway and spilled into the street, which was clogged with television vans. Camera crews filmed reporters from different angles, all of them capturing the five-story brownstone courthouse overrun with curiosity-seekers, demonstrators, and other reporters. Traffic had ground to a halt, backed up for blocks. Stride saw several of his officers at the top of the courthouse steps, struggling to hold back the crowd from entering the building. A cluster of reporters stood on the steps, thrusting microphones and cameras toward Dan Erickson, who was shouting answers to their questions.
The noise was overwhelming. Horns honked as drivers grew frustrated. Stride could hear radios and televisions booming. Several dozen women chanted loudly, carrying signs that protested pornography. Graeme Stoner’s taste for adult entertainment had been big news in the press, and the anti-porn crowd had seen his affair with Rachel, and the subsequent violence, as a useful rallying cry.
Chaos. The Stoner trial was the biggest legal event to hit Duluth in years, and no one wanted to miss it.
Stride casually drifted into the crowd. He politely excused himself as he navigated through the milling people. When he saw reporters, he glanced away, just one more face among hundreds. Those who knew him rarely saw him in a business suit, so today he could well have been an executive on his way to pay a parking ticket. He left the crowd behind him and made it unscathed to the courthouse steps. He entered the foyer and took the marble steps two at a time. There was continual traffic up and down the stairs around him. He reached the fourth floor, slightly winded, and followed the hallway to the courtroom. He paused long enough to glance through the windows down at the seething mass below.
Archibald Gale was arriving. The media converged on him.
Two officers guarded the massive oak doors of the courtroom. They recognized Stride and let him pass. Everyone else had either a courthouse pass or one of the coveted visitor passes that had been distributed by lottery. A handful of media members had also been allowed inside, but without cameras. Judge Kassel didn’t want any more of a circus in her courtroom than she already had.
The courtroom itself was old-fashioned and imposing, with long pews for spectators and dark, intricately carved wood railings. The visitor rows were largely filled. He saw Emily Stoner, seated in the first row behind the prosecutor’s table. She stared at the empty defense table, as if Graeme were already there. Her eyes were tear-stained and bitter.
Stride slid into the row beside her. Emily looked down at her lap and didn’t say anything.
Dan Erickson was directly in front of him, whispering to his assistant prosecutor, an attractive blonde named Jodie. Stride assumed Dan was sleeping with her, although Dan ha
dn’t formally admitted it. He leaned forward and tapped Dan on the shoulder. The prosecutor paused, glanced back, and gave Stride the thumbs-up sign. Stride saw Dan’s fingers strumming like a nervous tic and his lower body quivering underneath the table. Dan was pumped.
“You look like you’re in the zone, Dan,” Stride told him.
Dan laughed. “I’m ready to rock.”
He turned back to his conversation with Jodie. Stride watched Dan’s right hand graze his assistant’s shoulder. Then it briefly moved down and squeezed her thigh. Yes, he was sleeping with her.
Stride heard a whisper. “The man is a pig.”
He realized that Maggie had slid silently into the row next to him. Maggie shot an icy stare at Dan’s back. In the wake of her aborted pass at Stride the previous year, Maggie had wound up in a brief affair with Dan. It came to an ugly end when Dan turned out to be sleeping with two other women at the same time. Maggie’s stare reflected zero forgiveness.
“He’s cute, though,” Stride said. He knew he was poking the bear, but he couldn’t resist.
Maggie frowned. “You’re a pig, too.”
“Oink,” Stride said.
“How’s the teacher?”
“I almost killed both of us on a boat yesterday afternoon. Other than that, fine.”
“She went on a boat with you voluntarily?” Maggie deadpanned.
“Funny. Don’t tell Guppo. He almost lost his boss and his boat with one wave.”
“The boss would be no big deal. He’d sue your estate over the boat.”
A ripple of noise filled the courtroom. They noticed spectators craning their heads and turned to see Archibald Gale make his entrance with the panache of a movie star. Gale wore a navy three-piece suit, perfectly tailored as usual, with a neat triangle of handkerchief showing above his pocket. His small gold glasses glinted in the light.
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