The Stranger

Chapter 26

Beachwood, Ohio, Police Chief Johanna Griffin had never been to a homicide scene.

She had seen her share of dead bodies, of course. Plenty of people called the police when they found that a loved one had died of natural causes. Same with a drug overdose or a suicide, so, yeah, Johanna had been around death and then some. There’d also been a fair number of gory car crashes over the years. Two months ago, a semi cut across the divider line, and when it slammed into a Ford Fiesta, the car’s driver had been decapitated and his wife’s skull had been crushed like a Styrofoam cup.

Bloody and gross and even dead didn’t bother Johanna. But boy, this did.

Why? First off: murder. It was just hard to get around the word. Murder. Just say it out loud and feel the chill. Nothing compared, really. It was one thing to lose your life to illness or accident. But to have your life snatched away from you intentionally, to have a fellow human being actually decide to snuff out your very existence-that just offended on so many levels. It was an obscenity. It was something beyond a crime. It was playing God in the most ungodly way possible.

But even that, Johanna might have been able to live with.

Johanna tried to keep her breath steady, but she could feel it coming in hurried gulps. She stared down at the corpse. Heidi Dann stared back up out of unblinking eyes. There was a bullet hole in Heidi’s forehead. A second bullet-or maybe the first bullet, come to think of it-had blown away her kneecap. Heidi had bled out on the Oriental carpet she’d bought for a song from a guy named Ravi, who sold them out of a truck in front of the Whole Foods. Johanna had halfheartedly chased Ravi off more than once, but Ravi, who gave his customers great value and a ready smile, always came back.

The rookie working with her, a kid named Norbert Pendergast, was trying not to look too excited. He sidled up to Johanna and said, “The county guys are on their way. They’re going to take this away from us, aren’t they?”

They would, Johanna knew. Local cops in this area spent most of their days dealing with traffic violations and bicycle licenses and maybe a domestic dispute. Major crimes, like murder, were handled by the county police. So yep, in a few minutes, the big boys would come in, swinging their little dicks to make sure everyone knew they were in charge now. They would cast her aside, and not to sound overly melodramatic, but this was her town. Johanna had grown up here. She knew the lay of the land. And she knew the people. She knew, for example, that Heidi loved to dance and played a great game of bridge and had a naughty, contagious laugh. She knew that Heidi enjoyed experimenting with weird-color nail polish, that her favorite TV shows of all time were The Mary Tyler Moore and Breaking Bad (yep, that was Heidi), and that she had bought the Oriental rug on which she had bled out from Ravi in front of the Whole Foods for $400.

“Norbert?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s Marty?” Johanna asked.

“Who?”

“The husband.”

Norbert pointed behind him. “He’s in the kitchen.”

Johanna hoisted up her pants-no matter how hard she tried, the pants waist on the police uniform never quite fit right-and started toward the kitchen. Marty’s pale face tilted up when she entered as though pulled on a string. His eyes were shattered marbles.

“Johanna?”

The voice was hollow and ghostlike.

“I’m so sorry, Marty.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Let’s take it a step at a time.” Johanna pulled out the kitchen chair across from him-yes, that had been Heidi’s chair-and sat down. “I need to ask you some questions, Marty. That okay with you?”

The county swinging dicks would spend a long time looking at Marty as the perp. He hadn’t done it. Johanna knew that, but there’d be no point in trying to explain, because the truth was, she knew because, well, she knew. The county dicks would laugh that off and talk about the percentage of murders like this being committed by the husband. Fine with her. And who knew? Maybe they were right (they weren’t), but either way, the county dicks could go in that direction. She’d try others.

Marty nodded numbly. “Yeah, okay.”

“So you just got home, right?”

“Yeah. I was at a convention in Columbus.”

No reason to ask for confirmation. The county dicks could chase that down. “So what happened?”

“I parked in the driveway.” His voice was flat and very far away somehow, beyond detached. “I opened the door with my key. I called out to Heidi-I knew she was home because her car was there. I walked into the den and…” Marty’s face twisted into something barely human and then collapsed into something all too human.

Normally, Johanna would give a grieving spouse time to recover, but the county dicks would be here soon. “Marty?”

He tried to regain his composure.

“Is anything missing?”

“What?”

“Like in a robbery.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t see anything missing. But I didn’t really look.”

A robbery, she knew, was unlikely. The contents of the house didn’t have a lot of value, for one thing. For another, Heidi’s engagement ring, which Johanna knew had been her grandmother’s and was the most expensive thing she owned, was still on her finger. A thief would have taken that for certain.

“Marty?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s the first person to pop into your head?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who might have done this?”

Marty stopped and thought about it. Then his face twisted up again. “You know my Heidi, Johanna.”

Know. Still using the present tense.

“She doesn’t have an enemy in the world.”

Johanna took out her notepad. She opened it to an empty page and stared at it and hoped that no one would see her eyes well up. “Think, Marty.”

“I am.” He let out a moan. “Oh my God, I have to tell Kimberly and the boys. How am I going to tell them?”

“I can help with that, if you’d like.”

Marty leapt on that like onto a lifeboat. “Would you?” He was a nice guy, Johanna thought, but no way had he ever been good enough for someone like Heidi. Heidi was special. Heidi was the kind of person who always made everyone around her feel special. Simply put, Heidi was magic.

“The kids adore you, you know. So did Heidi. She’d want you to be the one.”

Johanna kept her eyes on the blank page. “Has anything happened lately?”

“What? You mean, anything like this?”

“I mean, anything like anything. Have you gotten any frightening calls? Did Heidi get in an argument with someone at Macy’s? Did someone cut her off in traffic on 271? Did she give someone the finger when they cut the line at Jack’s? Anything.”

He slowly shook his head.

“Come on, Marty. Think.”

“Nothing,” he said. He looked up at her, his face lined with anguish. “I got nothing.”

“What’s going on here?”

The authoritative voice came from behind her, and Johanna knew that her time was up. She stood and faced two county dicks. She introduced herself. They eyed her as though she might steal silverware, and then they told her that they would take over now.

And so they would. Johanna would let them. They had experience at this, and Heidi deserved the best. Johanna headed out, content to let the homicide detectives do their thing.

But she’d be damned if that meant she wasn’t going to do her thing too.