Funeral for a Friend

by Brian Freeman

  “Hey, take it easy,” a voice said.

  He looked up and saw Serena standing next to him. She sat down in a chair and took his hand. He noticed that her face was a study in contradictions. She wore a smile of pure happiness, but her eyes were glassy with tears.

  “Look at you,” she went on. “All alive and everything.”

  Stride croaked out a word. The breath that went with it was painful, and he felt a lingering soreness in his throat. “Hey.”

  “Easy on the talking,” Serena told him. “Your chest is going to hurt for a while. If your throat hurts, too, that’s from the breathing tube. Other than that, the doctors say you’re on the road to recovery. They call it a miracle, and I don’t think they throw that word around here lightly.”

  He tried to cut through the fog in his brain. “How long?”

  “Almost three days.”

  His head turned slowly. He could see a sofa near the window and the brightness of sunshine outside. Pillows and blankets were strewn across the sofa, along with a cafeteria tray and a half-eaten meal.

  “Yeah, I’ve been here the whole time,” Serena said. “I haven’t left. You woke up a few times, but you were pretty out of it. Do you remember anything? Do you remember what happened?”

  Stride shook his head. “Tell me.”

  “We don’t have to do this right now. Let’s wait until you’re stronger.”

  “No. I need to know. Tell me.”

  She smiled at his stubbornness. “Okay. The person stalking Cat was a girl named Colleen Hunt. Actually, that’s not her real name. She took that name when she came here from Madison, where she was a suspect in at least three murders. Cat tried to get away from her at the town hall, and Colleen chased her on stage and opened fire. I fired back, and so did Brayden. Colleen was killed. It was Brayden who got her. You protected Cat—she’s fine—but you were shot in the heart, Jonny.” Her voice choked up as she tried to go on. “They had to perform an emergency thoracotomy. Basically, they cut open your whole chest cavity in order to stitch up your heart.”

  Stride closed his eyes. Then he struggled to speak again. “I died.”

  Serena struggled to speak, too. “Yeah. You did. Your heart stopped during the operation, and they had to revive you. You didn’t come back right away. Any longer, and they were going to call it. I almost lost you, Jonny.”

  “Sorry.”

  She laughed through her tears. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

  He managed a smile.

  “Cat?” he said.

  “I sent her home. She couldn’t handle seeing you like this. She was falling to pieces. I just texted her that you’re awake. She’ll be here soon.”

  Stride let his mind drift backward, but there was nothing to find in the moments before he was shot. That night inside the convention center, the town hall, everything was gone. The last thing he remembered was sitting outside the DECC with Serena in the pouring rain and listening to the thunder. And then, just a blink later, he was here.

  “Others hurt?” he said.

  Her face bent into a frown. “Well, the good news is, it could have been much worse than it was. One of the men in the crowd took a round in the shoulder, but he’s already out of the hospital and doing well. Colleen’s shots on stage were basically aimed at you and Cat, and other than the shot that hit you in the chest, all of her other rounds missed. She didn’t hit anyone else.”

  Somehow, Stride knew there was more. He could read the look on Serena’s face.

  “But,” she said.

  He already knew what was coming next. The memory of her face was in his head. “Andrea.”

  “How did you know?”

  Stride didn’t answer. He simply waited.

  “Yes, I’m sorry, Jonny. Andrea froze when the shooting began, and then she tried to run. She ended up in the crossfire, and she was hit. She was killed instantly. We got the ballistics report back. The bullet came from Brayden’s gun, but it wasn’t his fault. Andrea was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Stride nodded.

  He thought about Andrea, gone. They’d shared years together, most of them unhappy, but he felt sad that she’d lost any last chance to make peace with her past. And yet, somehow, he also believed that death had brought her that peace. He’d seen it in her face.

  He’d seen it in the suncatcher she held.

  “How did you know Andrea was dead?” Serena asked again. “You’d already been hit. You were unconscious.”

  “I saw her.”

  “Where?”

  “A dream.”

  “While you were …?”

  Stride nodded, feeling the exhaustion of trying to speak and the weight of sleep closing in on him again. Even so, he forced himself to say what he wanted to say. “I saw the dead with me. Steve. Michaela. And Andrea. So I knew.”

  “Wow.” She reached out and stroked his face with the back of her hand. “Tell me something. Was … she … there with you, too?”

  He knew who she meant, and he nodded.

  “You saw Cindy, and you still came back to me,” Serena murmured. There was a little bit of wonder in her voice, and he watched tears silently move down her cheeks again.

  He squeezed her hand, because he couldn’t do much more.

  “I’ll let you sleep,” she went on, seeing his eyes blink closed. “Cat will be here soon.”

  Stride shook his head firmly, despite the pain it caused. He moved one finger to beckon her closer, and he managed another word. “Autopsy?”

  “What? Who?”

  “Andrea.”

  Serena nodded with a little confusion. “Sure, we did an autopsy. Maggie called with the ballistics report, but I haven’t seen the autopsy report itself. Why? There’s no mystery about how she died.”

  He wasn’t sure if he was already asleep, but in his head, he heard himself telling Serena, “Check it.”

  * * * * *

  Maggie emptied the dregs from the bottle of champagne into the last of the plastic glasses and made an announcement to the police officers gathered in the conference room. “Ladies and gentlemen, a toast. To the Unsinkable, Indestructible, Very Much Alive Jonathan Stride.”

  A cheer arose from the cops. They downed their champagne and launched into a round of applause. Maggie grinned as she studied their faces. She wasn’t surprised to see a lot of big, tough cops working hard to hold back tears. She’d known every one of them for years, and she knew they would all risk their lives for Stride. They knew how close they’d come to losing him.

  Guppo didn’t even try to hide his emotions. He simply blubbered. Maggie wandered over and gave him a hug, and she found herself brushing tears of relief from her own cheeks, too.

  It was a happy moment, but then the devil walked in to spoil it.

  “Maggie.”

  She glanced at the doorway of the conference room and saw Dan Erickson signaling to her. He wore a phony smile of sympathy. Maggie rolled her eyes, then grabbed the remnants of another glass of champagne from the table and swallowed it down to give herself strength. She joined Dan in the hallway outside the room.

  “You want some bubbly?” she asked. “If you do, too bad, because we’re all out.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “We’re celebrating, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “What do you want, Dan? Because right now, all I want to do is go to Sammy’s and get a pizza and drink a lot of beer.”

  He shrugged. “Can we talk?”

  “Now? Really?”

  “Really.”

  Maggie sighed. “Yeah, sure, whatever you want.”

  She led him to her office, and she noticed that he closed the door when they went inside. She didn’t particularly enjoy being in a closed room with Dan, but she consoled herself with the idea
that if he tried anything, she had no qualms at all about kneeing him in the groin.

  “What’s up?” she asked, sitting behind her desk.

  “It’s good news about Stride, obviously. What a relief.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be touched by your concern, Dan.”

  “You may find it hard to believe, but I’ve always respected Stride, and I’d never want to see something bad happen to him. I couldn’t be happier that he survived. However, good news or not, I wanted to check in with you about the future. Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Come on, Maggie. Stride’s alive, but this was an extremely serious injury. He’ll need months to recover. He’s not coming back to the force anytime soon. I assume K-2 will be making you the new lieutenant.”

  “I’ve given that exactly zero thought,” she snapped.

  “Well, you should. It’s reality.”

  Maggie scoffed, but without saying so out loud, she knew that Dan was right. K-2 had already told her the same thing. She’d assumed that the chief would eventually relent and bring Stride back with a reprimand, regardless of whether the Baer case was resolved. But the shooting had changed everything. Stride wouldn’t be in any shape to return to the job for the foreseeable future.

  Assuming he wanted to come back at all.

  She was going to be in charge of the detective division. She was taking over. It scared the hell out of her.

  “Let’s focus on Ned Baer, okay?” she said. “We still have a murder to solve. That’s my priority right now.”

  “Have you learned anything more?” Dan asked.

  “Well, gee, the last couple of days have been a little busy, but actually, yes, I have. Debbi King tracked down a photo of Ned Baer from his college days, and Guppo showed it to Adam Halka. Halka identified him. Ned was definitely the roadie he brought to the party that summer. It doesn’t give us any conclusive evidence that Ned assaulted Andrea, but as far as the murder investigation goes, I think it’s reasonable to suspect he did. The question is whether that changes anything or gives us any new suspects. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it does.”

  “It gives Andrea an even more powerful motive to kill him,” Dan pointed out. “Stride, too. What would he have done if he found out that he was confronting the man who’d raped his wife as a teenager?”

  “Stride didn’t know.”

  “So he says.”

  “No one knew, Dan. Ned had every reason to keep it a secret.”

  “Maybe so, but we can’t be one hundred percent certain that no one remembered him. Particularly Andrea. If she was face-to-face with her rapist, even after all those years, maybe it triggered a memory.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Then why would she go to the town hall to confront Devin? That makes no sense. She obviously still thought Devin assaulted her. No, Andrea didn’t know about Ned, and I honestly don’t see how anyone else could have known, either. It was a fluke that we even discovered it.”

  “And yet of all the motives we’ve talked about, I like that one the best,” Dan said. “It’s the only one worth killing over. If Devin or Peter wanted to quash Ned’s story, I think they would have paid him the blackmail to spike it, not killed him. And as much as Andrea wanted to protect her privacy, I can’t really see her or Stride going as far as murder to keep her name out of the papers. But rape? That changes everything.”

  Maggie frowned. Once again, Dan was right. “I agree, but it’s too late to ask Andrea about it.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  Maggie rocked back in her chair. She knew where that left them. Nowhere. With an unsolved cold case that would be put back in the files. She chewed her lip and tried to think of something she’d missed, and as she did, her gaze drifted to a folder on her desk. She pulled it toward her and flipped open the cover. The printed contents stared back at her.

  “What’s that?” Dan asked.

  “Andrea’s autopsy summary. Serena said that Stride thought we should check it. She didn’t know why or what he thought we would find. He was still pretty groggy from the surgery.”

  “Did you look it over?”

  “Sure, but there was nothing unusual about the external examination. It shows what you’d expect. Single GSW to the head.”

  “What about the internals?”

  Maggie shrugged. She flipped open the report and turned to the page that summarized the internal findings. “Nothing strange there, and I don’t know why there would be. She was a healthy forty-six-year-old female. Lungs normal, gastro normal, endocrine normal, genitourinary shows—”

  She stopped in mid-sentence.

  “Hang on. Wait a minute.”

  “What is it?” Dan asked.

  Maggie picked up the report and reread the postmortem examination of the genital organs and reproductive system. After she did, she put the report down and scoured her memory for what she knew about Andrea Forseth. She went over everything that Stride had told her years earlier. About himself and Andrea and their marriage. About her earlier marriage and divorce to Robin Jantzik.

  She knew she was remembering the facts correctly. It had come up too many times for her to be mistaken about it. Stride had always told her that the problem in both of Andrea’s marriages had stemmed from her not being able to get pregnant. She was desperate to have a child, and she never did.

  And yet there it was in black and white.

  “Something’s wrong,” Maggie said. “This doesn’t make any sense. According to the autopsy, at some point in her life, Andrea delivered a baby.”

  41

  “A baby?” Denise said. “No, that’s not right. That’s impossible. My sister never had a baby.”

  Serena and Maggie exchanged a glance with each other, because that was the reaction they’d expected. Denise didn’t know. No one knew. It had been the secret of Andrea’s life.

  “I’m sorry, but the evidence is conclusive,” Maggie told her. “I checked with the medical examiner again to make absolutely certain there was no mistake. She told me that her analysis of the pelvic area during the autopsy left no room for doubt. Andrea had gone through childbirth. If it wasn’t with Stride or Robin, then when did it happen?”

  Denise got up from the kitchen chair in Andrea’s house with a start. Her fingers twitched. She went to the back door, opened it, and lit a cigarette from the pack in her pocket. After she inhaled, she tilted her head and blew smoke into the air. Her chest rattled with a cough. “I can’t believe this.”

  Maggie joined her in the doorway and waited as Denise tried to process the shock. “She never said a word about it? She never gave you any hint?”

  “None.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “They didn’t say a thing to me. But I don’t suppose they would.”

  Serena got up, too, and looked around the kitchen. She saw it in a new light, now that Andrea was gone. She always felt a keen sense of loss when she entered the house of someone who had recently died. Everything still spoke of their presence. The food in the refrigerator. The mail on the counter. The coffee cup in the sink. The house still acted as if someone would be coming back soon and picking up where they left off. Knowing the truth about Andrea’s life made it even worse.

  She wandered to the window, where Andrea had kept her array of suncatchers. She spotted the one that Stride had remembered, the one he’d seen Andrea holding in his dream while under surgery. The sun catcher had been sending him a message.

  The stained glass, molded in chips of blue and red, showed a mother holding a baby.

  “You said Andrea didn’t know where these sun catchers came from?” she said to Denise.

  “No. She said a secret admirer sent them to her. Apparently, it had been happening for years.”

  “We’re going to have to take them with us,” Serena said.

&n
bsp; “Why?”

  “To look for prints. To see if we can figure out who sent them.”

  “Why does that even matter?” Denise asked.

  “Because there was someone in Andrea’s life that no one knew anything about. It’s important that we find out who it was. Particularly if it’s possible that it was her child.”

  A flood of emotions crossed Denise’s face. Confusion. Anger. Regret. And ultimately grief. “My whole life, Andrea and I only saw each other every couple of years. When we did, we had practically nothing in common. I thought when I came back to Duluth, we’d find a way to be sisters again. These last few months, I was hoping we were finally getting closer. Now I realize I didn’t know a thing about her.”

  “When did that start?” Serena asked. “When did the two of you begin to grow apart?”

  Denise threw down her cigarette and began to cry. “After that fucking party.”

  They waited for Denise to get control of herself. She stood outside for a while, staring at the lake on the horizon, her lips pushed together in a hard line. Then she came back inside and slammed the door, and she sat down at the kitchen table again.

  “We need to know what really happened, Denise,” Serena said. “Is it possible that Andrea ended up pregnant after the rape?”

  Denise gave a long sigh. “Possible? I suppose so. I left town a couple of days later. It was probably two years before I came back for a visit. I’m not the nostalgic type, and I was looking to get out of Duluth. I called home every few weeks, but nobody said a thing. That doesn’t surprise me. This would have been horrifying for my parents. Their little angel getting pregnant? They would have kept it a secret any way they could. But I do remember one thing—”

  She stopped.

  “What is it?” Serena asked.

  “I remember they pulled Andrea out of school in the second semester that year. After Christmas. They told me it was mono. She finished the year at home.”