Stride lit a cigarette and let it soothe his nerves. He kept trudging through the miserable drizzle.
He’d known Nathan for years, all the way back to his UMD hockey days. Most men in Duluth had. Nathan was a genuine star, who’d brought home an NCAA championship for the Bulldogs. People in Duluth didn’t forget that kind of thing. It was a shame that the kid had blown out his knee before he had a chance to prove himself as a pro. Nathan never claimed to be bothered about it, but Stride didn’t believe him. You couldn’t come that close to fame and money and not be bitter about missing the gold ring.
One day you’re about to be a starting forward for the Blackhawks.
The next day you’re a street cop.
And not long after that, you’re booted off the force, doing fill-in security in malls and hospitals.
Stride knew that Maggie didn’t like Nathan. He couldn’t really blame her. Nathan had the chauvinist arrogance of a man who’d had women fawning over him his whole life. Stride knew that Nathan was a sexist and probably a racist. He didn’t condone the man’s attitudes, but if you rejected every male in the white-bread northland because they didn’t understand women or blacks, then you weren’t left with much of a hiring pool. His job was to purge those attitudes and help his cops see the complex reality of the world they policed. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
He’d been reluctant to fire Nathan, partly because he thought Nathan was smart enough to have long-term potential, and partly because he didn’t like Jay whipping up public sentiment against his team. He gave in when the chief wanted Nathan gone, but he was stubborn enough to believe that with enough time and training, he still could have turned Nathan Skinner into a solid police officer.
‘Hello, Nathan,’ Stride said as he approached the pick-up.
Nathan nodded. His face was wet, his blond hair flat. ‘Lieutenant.’
Stride blew smoke into the air. ‘You should be off the ice.’
‘I’m packing up now.’
Stride nodded. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
‘I figured. I wasn’t really in a mood to be found. I can read the newspapers.’
‘Is it true?’ Stride asked. ‘The affair with Janine?’
‘Sure, it’s true.’
Nathan shrugged, as if the information were of no importance. He had a CD boombox in his hands, covered by plastic wrap, and he wedged it behind the driver’s seat of his truck. He returned to the small icehouse, and Stride followed him inside. There was barely room for the two men. A wooden chair sat next to a hole drilled in the ice, revealing murky black water below.
‘Maggie talked to you a while ago. You didn’t mention your relationship with Janine.’
‘So? I don’t think I’m under any obligation to discuss my sex life with Maggie Bei. She didn’t ask. I didn’t volunteer.’
Stride flicked his cigarette into the open water. ‘Don’t be cute.’
Nathan sat in the rickety chair and stretched out his legs. He wore blue jeans and a down vest, but his arms were bare. ‘Fine. I didn’t say anything about it, because you guys already had Janine in your sights. I didn’t feel the need to make her any more of a suspect than she was.’
‘Or to make yourself a suspect,’ Stride said.
‘Yeah. Me, too. I get it. The fact is, I didn’t really think anyone would find out about us. We were pretty discreet. I sure didn’t think Janine would advertise it.’
Stride shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Rain plinked on the metallic roof, and drops leaked inside. A gust of wind rocked the corrugated metal. ‘She says you were in love with her.’
Nathan snorted. ‘Are you kidding? No, I wasn’t.’
‘Why would she say that?’ Stride asked.
‘Why do you think? To make it look like I had another reason to blow her husband away. I wanted her for myself. Real nice. I guess there’s no honor among cheaters.’
‘You said another reason to kill Jay,’ Stride pointed out.
‘Oh, come on, Lieutenant. You don’t need to play gotcha games with me. We both know I hated Jay Ferris. He cost me my job. He made it his business to ruin my life. So I made it my business to fuck his wife. Which I did. I already had my revenge against Jay.’
‘You don’t have much of an alibi for that night.’
‘Maybe not, but I was sick. The pizza girl will tell you that. Besides, you tested my gun. It’s clean.’
‘Is that your only handgun?’ Stride asked. ‘Archie Gale seems to think you have more.’
Nathan shrugged. ‘Okay, I’ve got others. You want to test all of them? You want to search my place? Go for it. Look, it doesn’t matter. I’m not an idiot. If I killed him — which I didn’t — I would have dropped the gun through this hole in the ice. You’d never find it. That’s probably what Janine did, too.’
‘You think she killed him?’
‘Of course she did.’
‘Did you know that Jay Ferris owned a gun?’ Stride asked.
‘Yeah, Jay waved it at me when I went after him at the Saratoga.’
‘Did you ever tell Janine about Jay’s gun?’
Nathan didn’t answer right away. He rubbed his bare arms against the cold. Stride thought he was deciding whether to lie, and he realized he couldn’t trust anything that came out of Nathan’s mouth. That was true of Janine, too. It would be a he said/she said between them all the way to the courtroom.
‘Yeah, sure, I told her about it,’ Nathan said.
‘Just to be clear,’ Stride reiterated. ‘You’re saying that you told Janine that Jay carried a gun. She knew about it.’
‘I did. I joked about it once. I said we’d better be careful if Jay found out about us, in case he decided to blow us away.’
‘When was this?’
‘I don’t remember. Months ago.’
‘What did Janine say?’
‘She didn’t look surprised.’
Nathan smiled. If he was a liar, he was good at it, but so was Janine. Nathan obviously realized that Stride doubted his story, so he added: ‘Janine knew how to shoot, too. I taught her. We went to a range together once. It was over in Superior, where I figured no one would see us.’ He dug in the pocket of his vest for his flip-phone. ‘I got a pic of it, actually. I took it while she was firing. It was pretty hot. She was really into it.’
He pushed several buttons on his phone and turned it around so that Stride could see the small screen. He recognized Janine Snow, ear defenders over her head, goggles over her eyes, a Smith & Wesson revolver at the end of her outstretched arms. She aimed at a target, and her face was hard and focused. When Janine Snow did anything, she did it well.
‘I’ll send you a copy of the picture,’ Nathan added.
Stride nodded. ‘Tell me more about the affair.’
‘There’s not much to tell. I met her when I was doing security at the hospital last May. I figured I’d take my chances getting her into bed. It wasn’t hard.’
‘How often did you see her?’
‘Not often. A couple times a month. She’s a busy woman.’
‘Where did you meet?’
‘Hotels at first. Then she bought her chill place, and we’d meet there.’
Stride cocked his head. ‘Her what?’
‘She keeps an apartment downtown. It’s her getaway when she doesn’t want to be home with Jay.’ Nathan read the confusion in Stride’s face, and he grinned. ‘You didn’t know about it, did you? How’d you miss that one, Lieutenant? Well, I doubt it’s under her name, so don’t kick yourself too hard.’
Nathan rattled off a downtown address, and Stride wrote it down. He knew the location, and he was angry that they hadn’t discovered the condo before now. It was only a ten-minute drive from Janine’s house on the hill. If she were looking to stash a gun and jewels after the murder, it would have been an easy place to do so. And now she’d had time to dispose of them permanently.