Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7)

by Brian Freeman

  ‘If I hear anything, I don’t talk about it. It’s not good for my business. Or my health.’

  Serena sighed with frustration. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a card. ‘If your ears start working again, give me a call.’

  Sissel bent the card between two fingers and flicked it to the floor. Laughter rippled around them. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

  Serena stalked out of the bar. Throaty catcalls followed her to the street. She emerged into the afternoon sunlight and shut the door sharply behind her. It was hot under a blue sky. Her blue jeans hugged her legs, and she stood atop slingback sandals with high heels. She wore a white tank top, and her wavy black hair scattered across her shoulders. She slid sunglasses over her face and walked diagonally across the street to the road that led down to Irving Park. Power lines streaked over her head.

  She saw the wall of trees. Tucked inside them, invisible, were the muddy steps to the creek. She remembered the chase, but she wished she remembered more. His face. His smell. Anything about him. She only knew that he was ruthless. He’d killed without hesitation, and he could kill again.

  Serena had a weakness for lost girls. Like Kelly. Like Cat. She’d been lost herself as a teenager, and she knew all about predators. The drug dealer who’d used her as his whore was long gone, but he lingered in her life in ways she couldn’t escape. She was closed off from people. She didn’t trust easily. She’d tried for years to get past things she couldn’t get past, before realizing they were simply part of who she was.

  Jonny lived the same way, for different reasons. He was wary of the future, wary of believing that anything would last. His affair with Maggie had shaken her, but there was a certain inevitability about it. Maggie was in love with him. Sooner or later, that attraction was bound to blossom into something when Jonny was vulnerable. Serena blamed herself a little for not preventing it. She’d tunneled inside herself when he needed her. She couldn’t pry him out of his own shell because she was locked in hers.

  But not anymore. She’d come a long way in six months alone. She’d made peace with a lot of things about who she was and who Jonny was. There was really just one ghost left between them.

  Her name was Cindy.

  ‘You’re the cop, aren’t you?’ said a voice behind her.

  When Serena turned around, she saw the waitress from the bar who was a friend of Cat. ‘I am,’ she replied. ‘It’s Anna, isn’t it?’

  The girl nodded. ‘Anna Glick.’

  Anna was older than Cat. Maybe twenty or twenty-one. She was anorexically skinny, all bones. Her makeup was so dark it was practically Goth, and her look was supplemented by studs in her nose, eyebrows, and lips. Spiky orange hair jutted out from under a wool cap. Serena could see in the girl’s eyes the smart, cynical expression of someone who knew how to read people and calculate the odds of getting what she wanted from them.

  ‘So how’s Cat doing?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘She lives with you, huh?’

  ‘Yes, she does.’ Serena added: ‘Cat says you helped her out when she was on her own. Found her places to stay.’

  ‘I did what I could. Not just for her.’

  ‘I’m grateful. I’m glad someone had her back in those days. But Cat doesn’t need that kind of help anymore.’

  Anna’s lips bent into a smirk. ‘In other words, stay away from her?’

  ‘It’s not about you. I just think it’s better if Cat cuts the cord with her past entirely. I hope you understand.’

  ‘Yeah, I hear you. Whatever you say. Just so you know, Cat came to see me, not the other way around. And just so you know something else, I have a house and, like, four jobs. Waitressing. Data entry. Medical coding. I’m not going back to who I was.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean anything personal.’

  Anna shrugged. She had a chip firmly lodged on her shoulder. ‘You over here talking to Fred?’

  ‘That’s right. How long have you worked at the bar?’

  ‘About a year.’

  Serena removed the photograph from her pocket of the dead woman in Amsterdam. She showed it to Anna, who didn’t flinch. The girl had a tough shell.

  ‘Do you remember seeing this woman around here?’ Serena asked.

  ‘What did Fred say?’

  ‘Does Fred’s memory affect yours?’

  ‘He doesn’t like us talking about what happens in the bar. Especially to cops.’

  ‘Well, Fred’s inside, and you’re out here with me,’ Serena said.

  Anna examined the picture again. ‘I don’t think so, but I’m only here three days a week. Welcome to the part-time economy. If she was here, it was when I wasn’t working.’

  ‘What about the girl who was killed outside the bar? Kelly Hauswirth. You served her that day, right?’

  ‘Yeah, vodka and lemonade. She didn’t touch a drop. I already talked to you people. I carded her when she got to the bar, but I didn’t remember her name or where she was from. All I look at is the birth date.’

  ‘How long was she there?’

  ‘Couple hours.’

  ‘Did you talk to her?’

  ‘Sure. We were BFFs. “What can I bring you?” “Vodka and lemonade.” “You still okay on that drink?” “Fine, thanks.”’

  Anna had a supple voice. Harsh and gravelly when she was being herself, as if she could scare off the world. Sweet and convincing when she channeled Kelly Hauswirth. When you lived on the street, you learned to be whoever your next meal ticket needed you to be.

  ‘Did Kelly say who she was meeting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anybody hit on her?’ Serena asked.

  ‘You saw what she looked like. Lots of guys hit on her. She shot them all down.’

  ‘Are there guys in the bar who don’t take no for an answer?’

  ‘Sure, we’ve got plenty of those. I ran interference with anyone that was getting too fresh. The boys don’t mess with me. If I tell them to back off, that’s what they do.’

  ‘So you had to help Kelly with some of them?’

  Anna tugged her wool cap lower on her forehead. ‘I told some of the drunker ones to leave her alone. It was no big deal.’

  ‘Have you seen others like her in the bar? Girls waiting for somebody? Maybe a girl from out of town, with a suitcase?’

  ‘No, but like I said, I’m a part-timer.’

  Serena nodded. She didn’t think Anna was sharing everything she knew, but talking to cops was an occupational hazard. ‘Tell me something, Anna. Does Cat have a boyfriend?’

  ‘You should ask her about that,’ Anna replied. ‘Not me.’

  ‘She says no.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Then I guess she doesn’t.’

  ‘If Cat shows up here again, I’d appreciate it if you give me a call.’

  ‘So you can come drag her out?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You’re a real mother superior,’ Anna said.

  ‘No, but I’ve been in her shoes,’ Serena told her. ‘And yours.’

  40

  Janine Snow waited for her visitor.

  To her surprise, she found that she looked forward to visits from Howard Marlowe. He came twice a month during the summers, less frequently during the school year. He told her about his research, his book, his determination to find evidence to set her free. When he ran out of things to say about Jay’s murder, which wasn’t often, he talked about his life, his dreams, his students, his daughter, and his wife.

  In the early years, she’d thought of Howard’s visits as a slim thread connecting her to the real world. Then she realized that the real world was here inside the walls of the prison at Shakopee. Howard was a resident of a fantasy world. A world that didn’t exist anymore. A world in which she was free.

  She was the same woman that she’d
been in Duluth, and yet she was completely different. Age showed on her face more, because she couldn’t hide it now. Gray had painted over much of her blond hair. Her skin was natural, which meant the wrinkles near her eyes and mouth were there for everyone to see. She was still fit and trim, because she exercised regularly, but she fought with the weight of carb-heavy prison meals. Her nails were nothing more than the slimmest of crescent moons. She read voraciously. One of the benefits of Shakopee was an excellent library. She read history. Mysteries. Philosophy. Science. She’d never had much time to read in the past, and now she had nothing but time. Her old life had revolved around medicine and sex, and suddenly she had to make peace with a world where neither of those things played any role in her life. She kept up on medical journals for a year and then decided she never wanted to see them again. Even her sex drive waned.

  Relationships with other inmates didn’t come easily to her. She was a woman who’d only been comfortable around men – people she could control, people she could manipulate – and now she lived in a community of women. She kept herself aloof at first. She couldn’t hide that she considered herself superior to the others, and they knew it. She didn’t like them. They didn’t like her. Even so, time passed, and time could smooth mountains. She joined the prison book club, and she found that the perspectives of other inmates were often deeper and more complex than her own. They defied her caricatures of who they were. When she finally opened her own mouth, she tried to show them that she was more than the bitch they thought she was.

  A few became something close to friends. Some came and went after serving time for lesser offenses. Others stayed. Like her.

  No one wrote. No one visited. Except Howard.

  She found it strange that he was the only person, after all this time, who still doubted her guilt. Who still believed in her. He was the juror who’d put her in here. And yet he kept coming, more determined than ever, more in love with her than ever. She could have sent him away, but the loneliness would have driven her mad. She looked forward to seeing him. She even had a degree of fondness for him. The humane thing would have been to insist that he not waste his life on a foolish quest, but eight years hadn’t changed everything about her. She was still selfish.

  ‘Janine,’ Howard said.

  She’d been far away, and he was standing above her. She smiled at him, got up, and shook his hand. His skin was clammy, as it usually was. She had the feeling that shaking her hand was the most erotic experience in this man’s life.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked as they sat down.

  ‘Much the same.’

  ‘It’s hot out. But nice.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You look great,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, well. Thanks.’

  It was the usual small talk, followed by the usual silence. She didn’t mind. Years ago, she’d thought that Howard Marlowe was the most boring person on the planet. She still thought so, but boring didn’t seem entirely bad anymore. After a while, you looked forward to the predictable things. It was summer, so Howard wore his summer clothes, a collared short-sleeve shirt, black jeans, white tennis shoes. He’d had his curly brown hair cut before coming to see her, as he usually did. Five years ago, after consulting with her, he’d had LASIK surgery done, and he didn’t need glasses now. He had a suburban paunch that he tried to suck in when he was with her.

  She knew he fantasized about her. He’d admitted it. She found it a little pathetic, but every now and then, she would make some coquettish gesture that she knew he’d remember. A meaningful look in her eyes or a tiny puckering of her lips. Or she would tug at her denim shirt in a way that emphasized the swell of her breasts. Harmless, but she felt she owed him something.

  ‘The book’s going well,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You don’t mind my doing it, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I run chapters by Mr. Gale. Should I run them by you, too?’

  ‘No, you don’t have to do that.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, Howard. It’s just that I don’t want to relive it.’

  ‘Oh, I get it.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I’m telling you to stop.’

  ‘No, I’ll keep going,’ he assured her. ‘When I publish it, it will bring lots of new attention to your case.’

  Janine smiled at him. She held out no hope that Howard would ever finish his book, or if he did, that he would ever publish it.

  ‘I wanted to tell you,’ Howard said. ‘Carol knows about us.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She knows I come down here to visit you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I don’t know how she found out.’

  ‘Oh,’ Janine said again. She didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘She wants me to stop, but I’ll keep coming, I promise. Don’t worry about that.’

  Janine found herself indescribably sad. Sad about everything. Sad that she was ruining this man’s life and marriage. Sad at even the possibility that he might stop visiting and leave her completely alone. Sad that she was here.

  ‘Look, Howard,’ she said, watching him hang on her words. ‘I want you to think about this. Maybe you shouldn’t come here anymore.’

  ‘What? No. No way.’

  ‘You’re hurting your wife.’

  ‘I don’t . . .’ he began, and she realized that he was about to say: I don’t care. He stopped without going on, but she knew it was true. She’d become his Mona Lisa. She was everything to him, beginning and end.

  This was wrong. She had to put a stop to it.

  ‘Really, Howard,’ she said in a sterner voice. ‘Go home to Carol. Forget about me.’

  He shook his head fiercely. ‘I won’t do that.’

  ‘This isn’t fair to you or to your wife. It means a lot to me that you visit, but I’ve let this go on way too long.’

  ‘Janine—’

  ‘No, I mean it. You have to stop.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’m not going to give up. I won’t quit until I find something. I won’t stop until you’re free.’ He paused and added breathlessly: ‘Until we’re together.’

  Janine tried to keep the horror from her face. That was the fantasy behind all of this. He would get her out of prison. He would rescue her. And they would live happily ever after, just the two of them. She had to kill that dream right now.

  ‘I’m never getting out of here,’ she said finally.

  ‘Don’t talk like that! Don’t give up. I promise I’ll find proof that you’re innocent.’

  ‘Howard,’ she told him sharply, in a voice that was barely a breath. ‘Don’t you understand? I’m not innocent. I’m guilty.’

  *

  Stride didn’t look up as Maggie came into his office on Friday night. It was late and already dark. The woodland outside the building was invisible. The Duluth Police had moved in the spring to a new location in the open land north of the city. He missed City Hall, but not the building’s rats. It had been several months, but moving boxes still littered his office floor. He never found time to unpack, which was an excuse for the fact that he didn’t like to deal with change.

  Maggie didn’t say anything to him as she sat down.

  ‘Troy got back to me with crew lists for the boats that were in port when Kelly Hauswirth was killed,’ Stride said. ‘I’m working with the FBI and with Interpol to cross-reference for criminal records. It’s a long list, but it’s a place to start.’

  Maggie was still quiet, but he didn’t notice her silence.

  ‘Speaking of Troy,’ he went on. ‘I haven’t teased you about him, have I? I think he’s got a thing for you. He was giving you the eye when we saw him.’

  He waited for the usual sarcastic reply, and when he didn’t get it, he w
ondered if he had crossed a line with her. Their own break-up, and his reunion with Serena, were still too fresh.

  He looked up and said: ‘Mags?’

  Her golden face was a ball of confusion. Her bangs were in her eyes, but she didn’t blow them away.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘I got the ballistics report from the BCA on the murder weapon. The one that Serena found. The one that killed Kelly Hauswirth.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘They got two hits.’

  ‘Really? Excellent.’

  Maggie was quiet again. Then she said: ‘The gun matches a bullet fired during a smash-and-grab robbery at a Chicago jewelry store more than eight years ago where a security guard was wounded. This was right before Christmas.’

  ‘Interesting. What was the other hit?’

  His partner shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Understand what?’ Stride asked.

  ‘I asked the BCA if they could run the test again. They said it was a lock. No question about it.’

  ‘Mags,’ he repeated. ‘What the hell are you saying?’

  ‘The gun that Serena recovered in the Kelly Hauswirth case,’ Maggie said. ‘That’s the gun that killed Jay Ferris.’

  41

  Serena knew that Jonny was awake. Their bedroom was dark, and they both lay atop the blankets. It was a warm night. The windows were open. She heard the trill of crickets in the bushes outside.

  He’d told her about the case. Janine Snow. Jay Ferris. The investigation and trial. They’d talked about old cases before, but not that one. Typically, he only told her about cases that were unsolved, but the murder of Jay Ferris had been open-and-shut from the beginning. He’d never doubted what happened. There was only one loose end from the entire investigation – the missing gun – but even that detail hadn’t stopped a jury from convicting Janine Snow.