‘Yes.’
But Janine didn’t need her key. Through the glass door, Cindy spotted Jay Ferris coming to meet them. She noticed a visceral reaction in her friend’s body when she saw her husband. Nothing brought this strong woman low like the man she’d married. Cindy wondered how long someone could live that way before they did something about it.
‘I’ll come inside with you,’ Cindy told her.
‘No.’ Janine’s voice was hushed and shaken. ‘No, you don’t need to do that. I can handle it myself. Thank you for taking me home.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I want to throw myself into the canyon,’ she said.
‘Janine.’
‘I’m kidding. I’m fine.’
‘Come home with me. You don’t have to stay here with him.’
Janine shook her head. ‘Yes, I do.’
The front door opened. A jazz clarinet sang from hidden speakers inside. Jay had a glass of red wine in his hand. He was slim and three or four inches shorter than his wife. He wore an untucked white silk shirt and gray dress slacks. His feet were bare. He cast a withering glance at Janine and paid no attention to Cindy.
‘Look at you. Is that puke? Very nice.’
Janine squared her shoulders and pushed past him. He slammed the door without acknowledging Cindy. Through the glass, she saw Janine kick off her heels in the marble foyer. She could hear their loud voices, already arguing. Jay reached for his wife, and she watched her friend violently shake him off. Cindy thought about ringing the bell to intervene, but Janine looked back through the window and mouthed: Go.
Cindy returned to her Outback and steeled herself for a slow, slippery drive home. She gave a silent prayer of thanks, not for the first time, for the husband she had and the life she led.
The streets around her were empty. No one else was foolish enough to be out on a night like this. It was just one of the details they would eventually ask her to remember.
As you left the house that night, Mrs. Stride, did you see anyone else?
‘No. There was no one else there. I was alone.’
Cindy awoke to the smell of cigarette smoke.
Their small bedroom was dark. She didn’t know what time it was. Through the half-open window, she heard the roar of Lake Superior yards from their back door. She shivered with cold in her nightgown as she sat up in bed, and the blanket slipped down her chest. She pushed tangled hair out of her face.
Where the moon made a triangle of light on the floor, she saw the silhouette of her husband. He was tall, almost six-foot-two. Strong and fit. His black hair wavy and untamed. He’d shrugged clothes onto his lean frame when he should have been getting undressed. He put a cigarette to his mouth — a habit she hated, but which he’d been unable to quit.
The bed was cold. He hadn’t climbed in with her yet.
She said: ‘What’s up?’
He realized she was awake and sat down beside her. When he flicked his cigarette lighter, it cast a flame. She could see his eyes now. She adored his eyes. Dark, teasing, fierce, funny, and so in love whenever they looked at her.
But his eyes weren’t happy.
‘Bad news,’ Jonathan Stride said. ‘I have to go out.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Did you see Janine at the chief’s party tonight?’
‘Of course. I took her home. She wasn’t feeling well.’
Stride stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You drove Janine home? What time was that? When did you leave the party at the Radisson?’
The time popped into her head. ‘9:32 p.m.’
‘Almost an hour and a half ago,’ Stride murmured. ‘Did you see Jay?’
‘Briefly, yes. Why?’
Stride kissed her forehead. He stood up again. ‘Jay’s dead. Janine called 911 a few minutes ago. She says someone shot him.’
2
‘The thing about dead husbands and dead wives is that the cases are always like a knock-knock joke,’ Maggie Bei said.
Jonathan Stride eyed his tiny Chinese partner, who stared up at him from behind her black bangs. He played along. ‘How’s that?’
‘Knock knock,’ she said.
‘Who’s there?’
‘We know.’
‘We know who?’ Stride asked.
Maggie cocked her finger like a gun. ‘Yes, we do.’
Stride smothered a laugh. Maggie was right. He was hard-pressed to remember a dead spouse at home who hadn’t been shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned by their loving husband or loving wife. The investigations typically didn’t take long to produce enough evidence to lay in front of a jury. However, Dr. Janine Snow wasn’t an ordinary suspect.
She was rich.
She was a local hero who saved lives on the operating table.
She was one of his wife’s closest friends.
Stride ran his hands back through his wavy hair and blinked to stay awake. He was tired and cold. The temperature hovered around zero, and here on the high hillside, the lake wind hit his skin like acid. They’d already spent two hours outside this evening, up on the arch of the Bong Bridge that connected Duluth to its Wisconsin twin port town, Superior. A semi had spilled over on the icy bridge deck, closing the span and stranding cars for hours. One woman freaked out at the height and began threatening to throw herself into the water. A typical January evening.
He’d barely had time for a hot shower at home when Maggie called about the murder of Jay Ferris. Now he was cold again, but in Duluth, the chill of winter never really went away. You lived your life cold. Even under a wool blanket, your bones never forgot the cold. They reminded you with a little involuntary shiver.
Stride stood with Maggie next to his Ford Bronco, which was crusted with dirt and road salt. He studied the street and the house. His team had already closed off the scene, and it was remote enough and late enough — after midnight — that news of the murder hadn’t leaked to the media yet. That wouldn’t last long, particularly given the prominence of the husband and wife involved in the crime.
The road banked sharply downward from where he was parked. The street was free of snow, but six-foot drifts had been piled on the shoulders by the plows. There were three houses here, all on the cliffside overlooking the lake, all worth in excess of a million dollars. He knew the families who owned them. Janine and Jay. Next to them, another surgeon, along with his gay partner and their three adopted children. Next to them, behind a wrought-iron gate, the owners of a successful restaurant chain located in the tourist heart of the city in Canal Park. Duluth’s upper-crust was a small community, and the chief made it a point that he and his lieutenants keep good relationships with them.
‘I want you to interview the neighbors yourself,’ he told Maggie.
‘Sure.’
‘Be polite.’
‘Me? I’m always polite.’
Stride smiled at her. Another joke. Maggie was, in fact, foul-mouthed and sarcastic. He was amazed at how much she’d changed in the few years they’d been working together. She was a whip-smart Chinese immigrant and criminology grad from the University of Minnesota, but Stride had been reluctant to hire her, because she came across as too strait-laced for his rowdy team. That didn’t last long. She loosened up, learned how to swear, and learned how to boss around colleagues who were at least a foot taller than she was. She dressed in trendy clothes from the teen racks, wore ridiculous block heels that made her sound like a clog dancer when she walked, and constantly had to blow bangs from her mop of black hair out of her eyes.
‘Come on,’ Stride said, ‘let’s go inside.’
Janine Snow’s house was three stories high, but the entrance was on the uppermost level, and the other two floors were built below them into the side of the hill. They walked up the semi-circular driveway past an open three-car garage. Gravel and salt littered the sidewalk. At the doorway, where a uniformed officer guarded the door, they donned gloves and plastic coverings over their shoes. The marbled foyer opened into a living area with a high ceiling that was decorated with African-themed paintings and abstract onyx sculptures. A triptych portrait of Malcolm X loomed over a black-and-white sofa, and the modern chairs looked uncomfortable. The living room stretched to the back of the house, where high windows overlooked the city lights and the dark mass of Lake Superior.