‘Gunfire,’ she said. ‘We need to get out there.’
‘Where?’
‘Dickson Street, boss. In Gary. Neighbors report multiple shots.’
‘Is it—?’
She nodded as she ripped open the door, and they both sprinted into the tunnel. ‘It’s Jessie Klayman’s house.’
32
The Pontiac Firebird that had been parked in the driveway was gone. Otherwise, the house looked as it had two hours earlier when they interviewed Jessie Klayman. Two police cars had Dickson Street closed at 108th, and two more were parked at the dead end. An ambulance waited behind the barricade. The handful of neighbors on the street had been warned to stay inside and away from windows.
Stride called the phone inside the house. No one answered.
‘We think Ross is gone,’ Maggie said. ‘Guppo talked to two teenagers who live across the street. They said he usually drives the Firebird.’
‘Did they see him go?’
‘No, but he may have headed out the back. There’s a dirt road behind the house that leads through the trees to Gary Street.’
‘Get his photo out around the city. The car and license, too.’
‘In process,’ Maggie said.
They wore their vests. Through binoculars, Stride examined the small house and saw no movement at the windows. All the curtains were closed. So was the door to the detached garage. Overhead, the sun was bright in their eyes.
‘We’ve got two officers staking out the back of the lot,’ Maggie said. ‘There’s no activity.’
‘Okay, let’s check it out.’
They used a neighbor’s lawn to approach the house from the east. There were no windows on the east wall other than at the basement level, where there was a door and a look-out window. The detached garage was on their left. As they cleared the neighbor’s house, Stride saw one of his officers in position at the rear of the Klayman lot near the tree line. The cop gave a thumbs up; the rear of the house was secure.
Stride had his gun in his hand. So did Maggie. Guppo and three other cops followed twenty yards behind them.
They reached the Klayman driveway. The house was built against a slope, and a two-level retaining wall and garden led to the front yard. Jessie Klayman kept stone nymphs among the weeds. Stride climbed the first level of the retaining wall at the corner of the brick basement. The windows of the living room were above their heads, and another window at ground level looked into the basement.
No activity.
He pulled himself up to the front lawn. Crossing under the living room windows, he took the wooden steps to the door and pounded sharply with his fist. ‘Jessie! Ross! Police!’
There was no answer. Looking through the storm door, he saw that the front door was wide open. The room where they’d sat with Jessie was empty, but the television was still on. He shouted again and heard nothing but the laughter of a TV sitcom. The living room showed no sign of disturbance.
Stride opened the screen door and went inside. Maggie followed.
‘Jessie!’ he called again. ‘It’s Lieutenant Stride.’
They cleared the kitchen and the living room, which were both deserted. He used the remote control to switch off the television, restoring silence to the house, except for the rattle of the rotating floor fan. It was dim inside with the curtains closed. He pointed at the hallway, where he could see entrances to two bedrooms.
The first door was painted black, but it was open, and an overhead light was on. He nudged around the threshold into the bedroom, and the interior took his breath away. Maggie entered behind him.
‘Oh, shit,’ she said.
There was no bed, just a mattress on the floor. The walls, like the door, were painted black. The glass of the windows had been covered over with black plastic garbage bags duct-taped to the frame. A television sat on an old microwave stand in front of the mattress, and dozens of video games were strewn across the carpet. Gold ammunition littered the floor like popcorn. At least thirty bullet-ridden paper targets were thumbtacked to the wall, along with bizarre posters: a skeleton wearing a Nazi uniform; a naked girl with the head of a jackal and gun barrels for nipples; a skinless zombie in a diaper with blood spurting out of his face; and a Las Vegas casino street littered with torsos and severed limbs.
Across the entire wall, Ross had spray-painted in five-foot red letters: I AM GOD.
‘Jesus, who is this kid?’ Stride murmured.
But they knew who he was. They’d seen him before, in other cities, in schools, in workplaces.
Stride had made mistakes in his life. He’d arrested people who turned out to be innocent. He’d left cases unsolved. He’d failed to protect people he’d sworn to protect. This was different. This time, he’d missed a threat that Maggie had seen too clearly. That his wife had seen. He knew there was no bright line between social misfit and mass murderer, but he hadn’t seen this one coming.
Ross Klayman was out there somewhere. He was going to kill.
‘Where are the guns?’ Maggie asked. ‘Troy said Jessie had guns.’
They investigated the next bedroom, which was Jessie’s room. The gun locker was there, open and empty. No rifles. No handguns. No ammunition. Ross had taken everything when he left the house. If Troy was right, then Ross had an arsenal with him.
Stride saw Guppo in the doorway behind him.
‘Alert everybody, Max. Canal Park. Downtown. The mall. The DECC. He’s going to show up somewhere.’
Guppo turned away, already pulling out his walkie-talkie.
‘Boss,’ Maggie called. Her voice told him the story.
She was in Jessie’s bathroom. Stride joined her there, already aware of what he was going to find. The bathroom was still humid and damp from the shower. The plastic curtain had been shunted aside. Jessie Klayman was sprawled on her back in the tub. She was naked, and her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Wet strands of red hair lay like veins across her face. The blood all over her body, on the walls, on the floor, on the ceiling, on the porcelain tub, matched her hair.
Ross had shot his mother at least thirty times.
Guilty.
Cindy stood in a crowd around the window of an electronics store, watching the live news report on local television. The crawl at the bottom of the screen announced the jury verdict. Janine Snow had been found guilty of second-degree intentional murder in the death of her husband, Jay Ferris.
She’d expected it, but she wasn’t prepared for the finality of the result. It was hard to draw a line in her mind from that bitter January night to this hot summer afternoon. She’d driven Janine home. Her friend. She’d watched her go inside with her husband. Minutes later, Jay was dead, and now, months later, her friend had been convicted of his murder. Cindy had been there when it all began.
The reporters speculated about the sentence. The statute called for punishment in cases of intentional second-degree murder of not more than forty years. The sentencing guidelines suggested twenty-five years for a defendant with no criminal history. Archie Gale was on television, vowing an appeal and proposing a sharp downward adjustment in the jail time. Regardless, everyone expected the judge to sentence Dr. Janine Snow to at least twenty years at the women’s correctional facility in Shakopee, Minnesota.
Twenty years.
From the beginning, Jonny had said she was guilty. So had Maggie. So had everyone in the city, who’d convicted her in the court of public opinion from day one. And now a jury of twelve Minnesotans had agreed.