Marathon
Page 1
New York • London
© 2017 by Brian Freeman
Jacket Design by Ervin Serrano
Jacket Photographs: Man by Nik Keevil / Arcangel; Shattered Glass by Arsgera / shutterstock.com; Texture by Photolinc / shutterstock.com
First published in the United States by Quercus in 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.
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eISBN 978-1-68144-239-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Freeman, Brian, 1963– author.
Title: Marathon / Brian Freeman.
Description: First edition. | New York : Quercus, 2017. | Series: A Jonathan Stride novel
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000663 (print) | LCCN 2017005927 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681442419 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781681442402 (softcover) | ISBN 9781681442396 (ebook) | ISBN 9781681442389 (ebook library edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Stride, Jonathan (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Police—Minnesota—Fiction. | Duluth (Minn.)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3606.R4454 M37 2017 (print) | LCC PS3606.R4454 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000663
Distributed in the United States and Canada by
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
www.quercus.com
For Marcia
ALSO BY BRIAN FREEMAN
The Night Bird
Spilled Blood
THE JONATHAN STRIDE SERIES
Goodbye to the Dead
The Cold Nowhere
The Burying Place
In the Dark
Stalked
Stripped
Immoral
Turn to Stone (A Jonathan Stride e-novella)
Spitting Devil (A Jonathan Stride e-short story)
THE CAB BOLTON SERIES
Season of Fear
The Bone House
Times of heroism are generally times of terror.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Also by Brian Freeman
Epigraph
Prologue
Saturday Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Sunday Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Monday Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Tuesday Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Wednesday Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
From the Author
Acknowledgments
The backpack is proudly made in the USA.
It is constructed of tough navy-blue canvas to stand up to the Minnesota ice and snow. It’s the kind of bag you can take with you wherever you go: to college, the office, or into the wilderness. In an outdoors-loving city like Duluth, hundreds of people carry the same backpack.
From the outside, this backpack looks like all the others.
From the outside, you cannot see the fifty pounds of metal, shrapnel, black powder, and wires contained within.
From the outside, you cannot see hatred, but that is what the backpack actually holds.
At 12:32 p.m. on the third Saturday in June—marathon day—the contents of the navy-blue backpack will receive their awakening signal. The signal will come via radio waves and be transmitted to a cell phone taped to the handle of the eight-quart pressure cooker within.
Everything that happens next will take no more than a millisecond. Once started, the process cannot be stopped. It is basic physics.
The cell phone sends an electrical impulse to a blasting cap.
The blasting cap, wired through the lid of the pressure cooker to the supply of black powder, triggers an explosive reaction.
The gases of the explosion expand under pressure until their outward force exceeds the structural integrity of the pressure cooker.
The pressure cooker shatters.
Thousands of ball bearings and nails launch with the speed and force of bullets shot from a gun. They will maim or kill anyone in their path. In that millisecond, lives will change.
You cannot stop physics.
You can only stop hatred.
SATURDAY
1
Jonathan Stride watched dozens of runners emerge from the Lake Avenue overpass and make the last turn on the way to the finish line in Canal Park. Sweet victory was in sight.
The rain, which had dogged the course all morning, didn’t stop the athletes. The rigors of traveling twenty-six miles by foot in just a few hours didn’t stop them. They came, one after another, dressed in neon colors, crossing under balloon rainbows that decorated the last two-tenths of a mile. Stride knew that the final, short stretch of pavement could feel as long as all the miles that had come before. Some runners smiled. Some cried. Some had beet-red faces twisted in pain. Some looked lost, their eyes wide, as if they could barely contemplate what this physical accomplishment meant to them. Regardless of their condition, completing the marathon was a moment they would remember all their lives.
More than two hours had passed since the leaders—a cadre of amazing Kenyan athletes—sprinted across the finish line as if the race were no more than a hundred-yard dash. Because of the weather, no one had set a record today, but Stride admired anyone who took on the entire distance from the small town of Two Harbors to the city of Duluth, with the shore of Lake Superior in vie
w along the way.
Next to him, Cat Mateo consulted her phone. “According to the tracking app, Serena should be here any minute now. This is so cool! She did it!”
Cat put two fingers into her mouth and produced a shrill whistle. She raised a red cowbell over her head and clanged it for the runners. So did a hundred other spectators crowded beside them, huddled under slickers and umbrellas. Rain didn’t stop the cheering section, either. On every marathon day, regardless of the weather, the people of Duluth poured into the streets to show their love for the runners. It didn’t matter if someone finished first or five thousandth or limped across the line six hours after starting. They all were treated like winners.
Stride was pleased to see joy in Cat’s face as she watched the race. The seventeen-year-old had battled melancholy as long as he’d known her. Fifteen months earlier, he and Serena had rescued Cat, who was pregnant and undernourished at the time, from a life on the streets, and she’d lived with them ever since. It had been a rocky road for all of them. Today, though, none of that mattered. Today, she was happy. Stride put an arm around the girl, and she leaned her head into his shoulder.
Near them, two teenage boys eyed the beautiful girl and murmured, “Wow,” and Stride had to resist an impulse to knock their heads together. He felt like a father to Cat, which was a responsibility that he’d never expected as he turned fifty years old.
While the crowd watched the runners, Stride watched the faces in the crowd. The spectators pushed ten deep against metal barriers that blocked off the street. Drizzle spat on their hoodies and hats from a charcoal sky. It was a chilly morning if you weren’t running, but these were Duluthians, and most wore shorts despite the cold. They were young and old, laughing, cheering, sipping hot coffee, and dancing to Eagles and Steely Dan songs blasting out of loudspeakers.
This was always one of Duluth’s best days. Since the first race decades earlier, the Duluth Marathon had grown from a local event for a handful of die-hard runners to a Minnesota institution drawing tens of thousands of athletes and visitors from more than forty countries. The North Shore route, steps from the Great Lake and cutting through miles of wilderness, was probably the most beautiful marathon course in the country.
Every year, Stride relished the excitement of the event, but he was also a lieutenant in the Duluth Police, and he felt the tiniest unease seeing so many people crowded together in such a small area. Crowds were vulnerable, and after the Boston Marathon attack, they’d learned that the threat of violence lurked wherever people gathered. That was why they had a black tactical van parked at the entrance to Canal Park, along with bomb-sniffing dogs and armed officers patrolling the street. That was why he and his team watched individual faces, looking for something in a person’s eyes that shouldn’t be there.
Hatred. Calculation. Evil.
He was taking no chances today. Duluth had been an uneasy place this spring. An activist named Dawn Basch had taken up residence in the city in preparation for a so-called free-speech convention. Basch called it a defense of First Amendment rights; her opponents called it a thinly veiled assault on Muslims. The resulting protests had divided the Northland, and social media was lit up with bitterness and finger-pointing. Everyone was angry, and anger had a way of spiraling out of control. He didn’t like having the marathon take place in the midst of the city’s worst unrest in years.
Stride brushed rainwater out of his wavy black-and-gray hair, which he kept shorter than he had in his younger days. He was a tall man, nearly six-foot-two, with a weathered face and intense dark eyes. He’d crossed the half-century mark a few months earlier. His friend and doctor, Steve Garske, had told him he’d quickly a notice a difference between his fifties and forties, and Steve was right. Whenever Stride rolled out of bed in the morning, his body felt knotted together, and it took a hot shower and a pot of coffee before he was loose and ready to face the day.
He wasn’t young anymore, but as far as he was concerned, youth was overrated. He’d known loss and recovered from it. He’d made mistakes and learned to live with them. Imperfection had made him who he was. It had taken most of his fifty years to learn that lesson, and for the first time in a long time, he wouldn’t trade the present for the past.
Ten feet away, in the crowd, Stride spotted a twenty-something male with his arms tightly folded across a camouflage jacket. The man’s mouth was a thin, angry slash, and he wore a baseball cap with #noexceptions embroidered in large white stitching across the crown. The slogan on the hat was a red flag for Stride. The recent troubles in Duluth had a name, and the name was #noexceptions. That was the hashtag Dawn Basch used whenever she posted on Twitter. According to Basch, free speech was free speech. No ifs, ands, or buts. No exceptions.
The young man didn’t look like a threat, but Stride adjusted his leather jacket so that his badge was visible on his belt. Most of the people who sported the slogan were harmless, but some were spoiling for a fight, and he wasn’t going to let anyone disrupt the marathon. The mayor had spread the word in a press conference the previous day: No protests that could endanger the runners or the crowd would be tolerated.
His radio earpiece crackled to life.
“Hey, boss, I’m at the Guppo station,” his partner, Maggie Bei, announced. “It’s a party over here.”
Stride grinned and tapped his microphone. “What’s on the menu this year?”
“Fried mac-and-cheese balls. The things are amazing.”
“Are the runners actually getting any?” he asked.
“Yeah, Gina’s making sure that Max doesn’t eat them all.”
Stride laughed out loud. Over the years, the “Guppo station” had become legendary among marathon runners. Max Guppo was one of his detectives, built like a snowman, with a pumpkin-shaped torso and perfectly round head. Normally, marathon day meant all-hands-on-deck for the police, but Guppo had been excused for the past two decades to run an elaborate “nutrition stop” for the runners. It had started small, with Guppo, his wife, and their oldest daughter, Gina, handing out lemonade and crackers. Today, the Guppo station featured Max, his wife, all five of their daughters, a dozen volunteers, live music, and an endless supply of homemade, carb-heavy treats. They staked out a location near the race’s twenty-two-mile mark, just after the shallow slope called Lemon Drop Hill that nonetheless loomed like Kilimanjaro in front of the tired runners. At the Guppo station, they could get a jolt of encouragement and energy for the final miles leading into the heart of the city.
“Did Max see Serena?” Stride asked.
“Yeah, he says she’s looking good,” Maggie replied. “Did she get to you yet?”
“No, but she’ll be here soon, according to Cat.”
“Well, good for her. She’s crazy, but good for her.”
“Hey, she asked you to run with her, Mags,” Stride said, smiling.
“Yeah, no thanks. If I’m going to travel twenty-six miles, it’ll be in my truck.”
“With you driving, it’s safer to run.”
“Ha-ha,” Maggie replied sourly.
“I spotted one protester here in Canal Park,” Stride said. “Any issues up where you are?”
“No, we’re good for now. Guppo saw a couple people in #noexceptions T-shirts, but there haven’t been any serious altercations with the Muslim runners. A few slurs from one jerk, but people in the crowd shouted him down.”
“Okay. Keep me posted.”
Maggie supervised the police security detail for the marathon. She sped up and down the race route in her yellow Chevy Avalanche all day, checking every detail from first aid stations and medical emergencies to parking and traffic.
This year, everyone was on high alert.
“Any sign of Dawn Basch?” Maggie asked Stride.
“Not so far.”
“Do you think she’ll stay away?”
“It’s not like her to be out of the spotlight, but let’s hope so,” he said. Stride signed off the call and switched off his microphone.
Dawn Basch lived for controversy, regardless of the consequences. She dared Islamist extremists: “If you want to shut me up, you’ll have to kill me.” At her last convention, in Portland, she’d nearly gotten her wish. A Muslim radical had stormed the hotel with an assault rifle and been shot dead by police in the lobby. The incident had sparked national headlines and made Basch even more famous. Or infamous. Hatred accompanied her wherever she went.
Now it was marathon day, and Basch was in their city. Stride was on edge.
“Hey, there’s Serena—there she is!” Cat shouted, grabbing the sleeve of Stride’s jacket.
Stride spotted Serena immediately among the runners making the turn toward Canal Park. She ran gracefully on her long legs, with no obvious sign of the fatigue she had to be feeling. She’d been training for an entire year, and her lean body showed the results. She wore black Lycra running shorts, fluorescent green sneakers, and a vibrant green-and-yellow tank top. Her black hair, tied in a ponytail, bounced behind her. Her expression was intense. Her skin was damp with sweat and rain. Beyond her, the city’s lift bridge loomed over the ship canal just behind the finish line. She was within steps of her goal.
Cat screamed with an ear-splitting volume that only a teenage girl could manage. “HEY! SERENA STRIDE!”
Her voice was so loud that other spectators giggled. Serena couldn’t help but hear her. Her face turned, and her lips creased into a smile. She winked at Cat and at Stride, and then she was gone, swept by onto Canal Park Drive, immersed in the pack of runners pounding out the last steps of their 26.2 miles.
Serena Stride, formerly Serena Dial.
His wife.
It was still strange for him to think of her that way. After several years of living together, they’d gotten engaged the previous summer and married in January at a tiny church on Park Point five blocks from the cottage where they lived. It had been an intimate ceremony, and they could count on two hands the people they’d invited to share the moment with them. Taking that step hadn’t come easily for them. He’d been unsure for years if he could truly say good-bye to his first wife, Cindy, and put his heart at risk again after her death. For her part, Serena had been unsure whether she could close the door on the childhood abuse that had made her reluctant to trust anyone who claimed to love her. They’d struggled in their relationship and even separated for a while, but they’d finally discovered that they weren’t afraid of the future. They didn’t need to be together, but they wanted to be together.