‘Janine says you had sex at her house once,’ Stride went on.
Nathan shook his head firmly. ‘No. Definitely not.’
‘You never went there?’
‘Never.’
‘She was very specific about it. She did a striptease for you in her bedroom, and you saw where she keeps her jewelry.’
‘Well, give that woman extra credit, she’s clever. I guess you do what it takes when you’re trying to duck a murder charge. But come on, Lieutenant. You really think she’d take the risk of her friends or neighbors seeing me at her house? No way.’
‘When did the affair end?’ Stride asked.
‘December. Not long after Thanksgiving.’
‘Who broke it off?’ Stride asked.
‘She did.’
‘Why?’
‘She didn’t give me a reason, and I didn’t ask. She just said we were done. She’s a cold fish. I didn’t really expect anything more.’
‘Did you want to keep the affair going?’
‘I didn’t care. I liked the sex, but I can get plenty of sex. I said thanks for the memories. We did it one last time, and we were over. It wasn’t emotional.’
‘Janine thinks Jay was planning to confront you about the affair.’
‘Confront me? Hell, no. Do you really think Jay Ferris would admit to my face that he knew I’d been screwing his wife? Not him. He’d never give me the satisfaction.’
‘And yet he knew what you were doing,’ Stride said. ‘He hired a detective.’
‘Okay, so he knew about the affair. I’m sure he forced Janine to dump me. It would have driven him crazy to think of me and her together, and he would have done anything to make her stop. I mean, she always said it was a control game with Jay.’
Stride’s eyes narrowed. ‘How so?’
‘That marriage was a war, and Jay wanted to win. He wanted to rule over her like some kind of king, you know? He was never going to give her up. I told her she should pay him off and divorce him, but she said he’d destroy her life before he walked away. She couldn’t escape. Those were the words she used, Lieutenant. She said Jay would have to die before he let her get away from him.’
15
Cindy sat with Jonny and Maggie in the basement conference room of the Detective Bureau. She had a cup of coffee in front of her, which she cradled between her palms. Jonny picked at the sprinkles on a chocolate donut, and Maggie — whose appetite belied her tiny size — wolfed down a quarter-pounder from McDonald’s. The furnace was loud through the air vents. Hours had passed since her confrontation with the man at Miller Hill Mall, but Cindy was still jittery. Her hands shook, making the coffee slosh. Her eyes darted back and forth between her husband and his Chinese partner, and the long silences made them all uncomfortable.
On the bulletin board, Maggie had thumbtacked photos from Jay Ferris’s camera of the man in camouflage with the assault rifle. Beside the photos was the sketch they’d drawn from Cindy’s description. Cindy was sure the man in the photographs was the same man she’d followed at the mall.
Almost sure. She couldn’t swear to it.
‘I talked to Colin in mall security,’ Maggie said between generous bites of her hamburger. ‘I gave him Jay’s photos and the artist’s sketch, but he didn’t recognize the guy. Whoever he is, he’s not a regular visitor at the mall. Colin will pass the pics around to his team, in case somebody knows him or the guy comes back.’
Another long silence. Cindy smoothed her hair. She tried to catch Jonny’s eye, but he refused to look at her. She knew he was furious.
‘I pulled the CCTV footage, too,’ Maggie added. ‘You can’t see the guy’s face in most of the angles. When you catch a glimpse, he’s got a cap and sunglasses, so there’s nothing to help us. He’s smart.’
‘Why is he hiding?’ Cindy asked. ‘I mean, what’s he up to?’
There was no answer. Cindy went back to her coffee, which was growing cold.
Jonny got up and stood in front of the bulletin board. He stared at the man in the photos with smoky eyes. She knew her husband; he was mad, and he was focused. His black hair was messier than usual, because he rubbed it like a nervous tic when he was deep in thought.
‘So what is this really about?’ he said, mostly to himself. ‘Jay spots a guy with an assault rifle near Ely’s Peak. He takes a few pics and makes a police report. We get a couple more reports of gunfire in the same area, and the guy leaves targets behind like he’s playing soldier. And now my wife tries to be a hero, following an armed stranger who may or may not be the same guy.’
Cindy frowned. ‘I said I was sorry, Jonny.’
He didn’t look at her. Instead, he grabbed a copy of the sketch from the conference table and sat down. ‘So far, this adds up to nothing,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t nothing,’ Cindy snapped. ‘You weren’t there. You didn’t see him.’
Again, her husband acted as if she were invisible. Cindy felt her face get hot as her temper flared. She was quick to blow off steam when she got angry. ‘Are you ever going to look at me?’
Her voice was loud. Too loud. Jonny turned and stared at her, and she could feel his own anger, too. She expected him to lash out, but instead, he got up and left the conference room without speaking. His silence as he passed her had the chill of morning frost. Cindy continued to fume.
‘He’s mad because he’s scared,’ Maggie said.
Cindy tapped her foot nervously on the floor. Her anger mixed with embarrassment. ‘I know.’
Maggie finished a super-sized cup of Coke with a loud slurp. She tried and failed to cover a belch. ‘Sorry. Not to piss you off, but he’s right. What you did was pretty stupid.’
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Cindy asked.
‘So why’d you do it?’
‘I don’t know. I thought I recognized this guy, and I just — I didn’t want him to walk away. I knew you were trying to find him.’
Maggie blew the black bangs out of her face. ‘From a police standpoint, Stride’s right. It does add up to nothing. Even so, I’d like to know who this man is. Something about him feels off.’
Cindy was pleased that Maggie shared her concerns. She liked Maggie. They were friends, but not really close friends. Maggie was hard rock, and Cindy was country, and that summed up the two of them. Jonny’s partner was almost ten years younger than she was, and ten years was a long time at their ages. Cindy worried about turning forty, and Maggie worried about turning thirty. Big difference.
There was the crush thing, too. Maggie was in love with Jonny. Love and hero worship were hard to separate when it came to cops. Jonny had mentored Maggie and coaxed her out of her shell, and she fed on it. Cindy trusted Jonny and didn’t think Maggie would ever act on her feelings, but it paid to be careful.
Like most wives, she had a keen appreciation of her husband’s strengths and weaknesses. When it came to women, Jonny felt the need to rescue them. He didn’t always understand the rush of emotions he provoked in return, and he wasn’t entirely immune to feelings of his own. There had been a case the previous year that had tested both of them. Jonny had become involved in protecting a woman named Michaela Mateo from an abusive ex-husband. Michaela was pretty and vulnerable — a dangerous combination for Jonny. Cindy could see easily enough that Michaela was attracted to her husband, and although she didn’t believe anything had happened between them, she knew that Jonny’s own feelings went deeper than he let on. When Michaela was killed, the loss cut him worse than anything she’d seen in his years with the police.