‘Yeah.’
‘We’re trying to identify the man who’s standing next to you in this picture.’
Jessie took the photograph from Maggie with two thick fingers. The glib smile on her face wavered. ‘Why are you looking for him?’
‘Do you know him?’ Stride asked.
‘Has he done something?’
‘Ms. Klayman, is this your son?’ Maggie asked. ‘Troy Grange thought it was.’
She sat down on the old sofa. An empty bag of Doritos was on the coffee table in front of her. ‘Okay, yeah, that’s Ross. So what?’
‘Is he here?’ Stride asked.
‘No.’
Stride eyed the hallway that led to the bedrooms. ‘Does your son live with you?’
‘Yes. What is this about?’
‘We’d just like to talk to him. Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘No, he went for a walk. Do you think Ross has done something wrong? Because he hasn’t. He’s a great kid.’
Maggie withdrew another photograph from her pocket. This one was a blurry picture taken by Jay Ferris near Ely’s Peak, showing a man in camouflage aiming an assault rifle. ‘What about this photograph?’ she asked. ‘Is this Ross?’
Jessie studied it. ‘I don’t know. I can’t make out the face.’
‘Do you or Ross own a rifle like this?’
She shrugged. ‘We have guns. They’re all legal.’
‘Including a Bushmaster rifle?’ Maggie persisted.
‘Yeah, so what? I told you, they’re all legal.’
‘What about handguns?’
‘Yeah, we have some. Sure. I don’t have to remind you guys about the Second Amendment, do I? A person would have to be nuts not to carry a gun in this day and age. No offense to cops, but I don’t have time to wait for a patrol car to mosey over here if someone breaks into my house.’
‘Would you mind if we take a look at Ross’s room?’ Maggie asked.
Jessie folded her arms across her ample chest. The chirrup in her voice rose higher. ‘Actually, I do mind. You come in here asking all these questions about my son, and you won’t tell me what’s going on.’
Stride exchanged a glance with Maggie. ‘Well, thank you very much for your time, Ms. Klayman. We’d appreciate it if you or Ross could give us a call when he’s back. We need to meet with him in person.’
She shrugged. ‘Okay, but it’s a waste of time. He hasn’t done anything.’
Stride and Maggie let themselves out of the small house and returned to his Bronco. He turned on the engine, and a song by Sara Evans began playing on the stereo. ‘Born to Fly’. He put the truck in park but kept his foot on the brake.
‘You think it’s the same guy?’ Maggie asked him. ‘That Jay Ferris spotted Ross Klayman at Ely’s Peak?’
‘Probably, but I don’t think we’ll be able to prove it. We don’t have enough for a warrant to test their guns.’
‘The jury’s already out. Do we need to tell Dan about this?’
‘Yeah, I’ll tell him, for what it’s worth,’ Stride said. ‘It’s up to him whether he wants to disclose it to Gale. I don’t think this changes anything at all with regard to the case.’
Maggie glanced at the house, where Jessie Klayman stood at her front door, watching them. When the woman turned away, Maggie slid sunglasses over her face. ‘You don’t have any doubts about the case, boss?’
‘What, that Janine killed Jay?’ Stride asked. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘None at all?’
‘No reasonable doubt,’ he said. ‘That’s the only thing that matters.’
*
An hour later, Jessie jumped as she felt a hand tickling the back of her neck. She spun around and saw Ross standing behind the sofa. His lips folded into a grin. He could always sneak up on her.
‘You scared the crap out of me!’ she exclaimed.
‘Sorry.’
He wore an army hat, with the brim pulled low, and wraparound shades. A black tank top left his shoulders and skinny arms bare, exposing his tattoo of a skeleton dressed for combat. His skin glowed with sweat from the heat of the day, and he smelled of pine. He wore camouflage pants and heavy trail boots.
Jessie went back to her game show. ‘The police were here for you,’ she told him.
Ross didn’t say anything. She turned and saw her son staring down at her from behind his shades. The grin was gone. His mouth had no expression. She saw a twitch ripple through his bones.
‘Did you hear me?’ she said. ‘The police were asking about you.’
‘I heard you. What did they want?’
‘I don’t know. They didn’t say.’
‘What did you tell them?’ he asked.
She heard accusation in his voice, which annoyed her.
‘What do you think I told them? Nothing. I said they should leave us alone.’
Ross went to the living room window and pushed aside the curtain to watch the empty street outside. He did that a lot, as if he were waiting for someone who never showed up. She heard the muffled engine of a lawn mower in the neighborhood. Typical summer day.
‘I’m sure it’s no big deal,’ she went on. ‘Somebody probably saw you practicing with the Bushmaster and got freaked.’
‘They said that?’ he asked, his back to her.
‘They had a picture. You with a rifle. It was blurry, so I said it could have been anybody. It was you, though.’
She got up from the sofa. The credits rolled on the game show. She wasn’t sure why she watched; it was people earning money by knowing stupid things. She’d tried to get on a show herself once, but they never wrote back to her. It didn’t matter. They had enough money to live.
Jessie came up behind her son, wrapped her arms around his waist, and laid her head against his back. ‘You’re so tense,’ she said.
He said nothing.
‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she told him. ‘A cool one. It’s so hot.’
Still he didn’t answer, and she didn’t let go.
‘Love me?’ she asked.
A long time passed, but finally he said: ‘Yes.’
That was all she needed to hear.
30
The vote was 11–1.
They’d all declared themselves now, even the two jurors who had originally been undecided. Howard remained the hold-out. They’d spent three hours in deliberation. He’d begun to see impatience in their faces, especially Bruce, who acted as if Howard were standing between him and a steak dinner and a bottle of wine. Eleanor, the foreman, remained calm as the others grumbled.
‘Howard, you understand that reasonable doubt is a different thing from having no doubt, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I get that,’ Howard said.
‘No one’s asking you to change your opinion simply because we feel differently,’ she went on, ‘but I want to make sure we’re all looking at the evidence the same way.’
Howard pushed his water glass in circles around the wooden table. He stared down, rather than looking up. ‘I just don’t see it the way the rest of you do.’
He got up and went to the lone window in the jury room that looked out on the city. He didn’t want to sit with the rest of them. He felt isolated, and being on his own made him more stubborn. They couldn’t tell him how to vote. They couldn’t convince him that the beautiful woman whose face was always in his head had taken a gun and put a bullet through her husband’s brain.
‘Howard?’ Eleanor said. ‘Let me ask you a couple questions, okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘Do you believe that Dr. Snow felt trapped in her marriage and didn’t see a way out?’
‘Lots of people are unhappy in their marriage!’ Howard snapped. ‘They don’t take a gun and shoot their spouse. It doesn’t work like that.’
Bruce opened his mouth, but Eleanor held up her hand sharply to silence him. ‘Howard, yes, of course, that’s true, but Jay Ferris is dead. Someone did shoot him. And my question to you was – do you believe that Dr. Snow felt trapped? Did the state establish that to your satisfaction?’
He shrugged. ‘Well, sure. I’m not arguing about that.’
‘Okay. Do you also believe that Jay Ferris was dangling a threat over Dr. Snow’s head regarding her addiction to pain pills?’
Howard remembered the newspaper column. Holly. The prescription drugs in the condo. He imagined the pressure Janine had been under. As a surgeon. As a wife. Nowhere to turn, no way to escape, except for the drugs. He’d been on morphine once, when he’d had his appendix removed as a teenager. He knew its allure, the way it could make your whole body float on a cloud.
‘Yes. I think he was.’
‘So let’s think about this,’ Eleanor said quietly. ‘Dr. Snow wanted out of her marriage, but her husband knew a secret that would have destroyed her life and career. Regardless of whether you’re convinced she did kill him, do you believe that she would have seen Jay’s death as a way out of her problem?’
How lonely it must have been, Howard thought. To have everything and nothing at the same time. With Jay alive, she was in a cage. With Jay gone, she would be free.
‘Yes, she probably did,’ Howard said.
‘Fine. Good. If we’re all on the same page about that, then let’s think about the night that Jay Ferris was killed. We know that Dr. Snow was in the house. We know that she and her husband argued. A few minutes later, he was dead. The state wants us to go one step further and believe that Dr. Snow killed him.’
‘I’m just not convinced that she did—’
Eleanor stopped him with a smile. ‘Hang on, Howard. Let’s think about what we have to believe to conclude that there isn’t sufficient proof that Dr. Snow killed him. Okay? We have to believe that someone else chose that same foggy, slippery night to go to her house. If it was someone bent on robbery, as Dr. Snow contends, then we have to believe that they saw the lights on and a car in the garage and still decided to proceed with their plan. We have to believe that they either knocked or rang the doorbell – because there was no forced entry – and that Jay Ferris let them inside. This person then shot Ferris in the head, went downstairs without tracking any outside dirt or debris in the house, found jewelry in the bedroom, removed it, went back upstairs, and left. We have to believe that this all happened during the exact period of time when Dr. Snow was in the shower. We also have to believe that whoever did this either chose not to dispose of the jewelry despite committing murder to get it or somehow sold these distinctive, expensive pieces of jewelry without any of the sales coming to light. Okay? Howard, have I said anything that you disagree with?’
He shrugged. It sounded ridiculous when she put it like that, but she was right. ‘No, that’s true.’
‘Well, my question is this: Do you believe that is a reasonable theory of what happened? Anything is possible, but is that a credible alternative in the absence of evidence? Because we see this case differently. We see a successful woman with a terrible secret. She’s home alone with her husband. They argue, and she shoots him. Then she showers and washes her clothes to destroy evidence, and she takes the gun and some jewelry and hides them to make it look like a robbery. That’s what we think the evidence shows, Howard. Eleven of us believe there is no reasonable doubt that that is what actually happened.’
Howard returned to the jury table and sat down. He took the glass of water and drained it empty.
‘What about the Rav4?’ he asked.
‘The witness who saw the car is unreliable about the time and location,’ Eleanor said. ‘It makes it hard to take the story at face value. And really, a car parked on a nearby street? Is that enough to create doubt?’
‘There was a man with a gun,’ Howard added. ‘Ferris took pictures of him in the park.’
Eleanor nodded. ‘He did, but it’s clear that Ferris never even knew who this man was. Why would this person suddenly get it in his head to kill Jay Ferris? And really, Howard, isn’t it stretching coincidence to think that it happened during the exact time Dr. Snow was in the shower?’
Howard wanted to give her an answer. He wanted to keep defending Janine. Carol was right: he dreamed of rescuing her. He’d stared at her face on his computer for months, until he could remember every feature of her eyes, her hair, and her skin. She excited him, interested him, and aroused him in a way no other woman ever had. And now she needed him. She needed him to remain strong in the face of eleven people who were ready to condemn her. She needed him to have faith that the evidence was not what it appeared to be.
Doubt.
But was it really doubt?
He looked at the facts the others saw and knew the truth. Yes, Janine did it. He was grasping for reasons to believe otherwise, but she did it. Even so, could he really be the one to convict her? She deserved better than Jay Ferris. She was a hero. A life-saver. A beautiful woman. If she saw no other way to escape that despicable man, could he really call it a crime?
They would poll the jury. They always did. They would ask each of them to verify their verdict to the court. He would have to say it out loud. He would have to say it in front of her, so that she knew he’d betrayed her.
Could he do that?
Eleanor was watching him. So were the others. It was as if she could see tectonic plates shifting inside his mind.
‘Let’s take another vote,’ Eleanor said quietly. ‘Guilty or not guilty.’
And so it began. He listened to each voice, man and woman, old and young. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. They went around the room, and each one announced their decision, free of doubt, free of hesitation. They weren’t burdened by what they were doing to her. They weren’t shamed by the thought of a good woman brought to this moment by a bad man.
Guilty.
Guilty.
On and on.
As it had each time, it came down to him. He sat in silence, while they waited for him. He tried to open his mouth, but despite the water, he was dry. His voice caught in his throat. He thought the world was spinning; he wanted to throw up.
‘Howard?’ Eleanor asked him.
He needed to speak. Guilty or not guilty.
He saw Janine’s face. Her blue eyes. The curve of her lips. There was one person between her and her fate. Himself. Him and his strength. If he surrendered, there was no one.
Eleanor met his eyes.
‘Howard?’
31
Miller Hill Mall was a blur.
It was a summer afternoon. Sun burned through the skylights, making orange reflections on the cool squares of tile. Cindy heard Rick Springfield singing through the overhead speakers, but young laughter drowned out most of his music. The food court was thick with teenagers. Girls giggled and screamed. Boys with newly changed voices shouted. They ran and pushed around her table.
So many people. Duluth was a small city, but it had always felt busy to her. Normally she thrived on dense crowds, but recently she’d found herself enjoying remote, empty spaces. Alaska was like that. She and Jonny had flown over glaciers and forests where there was nothing human at all, only thousands of miles without civilization, untouched and unspoiled. It was a place, like the Canadian wilderness to the north of them, owned by the animals and the earth, not the people. The loneliness and sheer size of it made her feel small, but sometimes small was a good thing. She didn’t mind being small.
She smelled caramel corn mixing with the garlic of tomato sauce and the sweetness of baking bread. The air conditioning couldn’t keep up with the heat of the day, and she felt warm in her long-sleeve red blouse and jeans. Her black hair felt like a coat on her shoulders, so she pushed it back.
Her plate of Chinese food wouldn’t go down. She picked at it, but she had no appet
ite. Instead, she drank Aquafina from a plastic bottle.
She kept thinking about Janine. She didn’t begrudge her friend her weaknesses as a human being. Some people dealt with pressure by taking pills. Some people drank. Some people didn’t deal with it at all. In the end, it was the same. The shame of it was knowing that Janine had a gift, and her gift was wasted now. She remembered meeting a young mother and her son in Janine’s office, a little boy with a zipper scar on his chest and his whole life in front of him because of what Janine had done for him. His was one story among hundreds of patients who owed their lives to her.
And yet what did it do to someone to know that people lived or died because of you? Cindy knew what it had done to Janine. It had made her an addict. Maybe it had made her a killer, too. She’d been so jealous of Janine’s coolness that she didn’t realize how many cracks riddled the ice queen.
She found herself watching the young people in the mall. They always made her smile. Every generation had to make the same mistakes, had to get it wrong before getting it right. They blundered on, innocent, happy, foolish. She saw a boy and girl at a table near her. Both of them looked to be about sixteen. Definitely dating. They shared a Blizzard from Dairy Queen with two spoons, and they leaned across and kissed.
That had been her and Jonny ages ago. Two teenagers in love. Cindy tried not to be too obvious about watching them, but something about their cute preoccupation with each other made it hard to look away. Mooning eyes. Whispers. Touches.
The boy checked his watch, made a noise like, ‘Oh, no!’ He had to go. He slung his backpack onto his arm, kissed the girl again, kissed her several times more, and then jogged to the exit with a wave. He disappeared into the parking lot. The girl was on her own, missing him already. Maybe it would last, and maybe it wouldn’t. It would be a summer romance, or, like her and Jonny, it would be a lifetime thing.
Cindy wondered what the girl’s name was, and almost on cue, another teenager shouted and waved. ‘Hey, Laura!’
Laura. Her own sister’s name. There were always little twists of fate like that.
Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) Page 19