"You're thinking about the trial, aren't you?" Andrea asked.
He wasn't, but it was convenient to say yes.
"What does Dan say about the jury?" she asked.
"It's as good as we can hope for," Stride said. "Dan likes his chances."
"You don't sound convinced."
Stride shrugged. "I wish we would have found more direct evidence. But Stoner is smart."
"I don't understand. You've got her blood in the van and at the murder scene. Won't that be enough?"
"With some lawyers, maybe, but I've crossed swords with Archie Gale before. He could make the jury believe I killed her." Stride laughed.
"Is he going to pull an O.J.? Try to say you planted evidence?"
Stride shook his head. "No, nothing like that. That wouldn't work here. I don't even think he'll challenge the DNA. Chuck Yee is too good for that. But we don't have a body, and we don't have anyone who saw Graeme and Rachel together on the night she disappeared. We also don't have anyone who can prove they were having sex, since Carver's testimony got thrown out."
"Are you sure he's guilty?" Andrea asked.
"I've been wrong before, but everything points at Graeme. I'm just not sure we can prove it, and I hate to think of the bastard getting away with murder because he's smarter than we are and richer than we are. I've got a bad feeling. Like there's a piece of the puzzle we're missing. And if I think so, God knows Gale will think so. He just might find it, too."
"What are you missing?"
"I don't know," Stride said. "The case feels solid to me, but I can't help thinking there's part of the story we don't know."
He studied the sky. The clouds had almost reached them, and the blue sky had darkened around them until it was like night. The swells roared up and broke over the prow, dousing them in cold spray. The boat lurched, lifting out of the water and slapping down with a jolt. Andrea lost her balance and grabbed Stride's arm. He backed off the throttle until the boat was barely holding its own.
The storm swooped down on them with a fury, much worse than Stride had expected. Sheets of rain beat against them, driven horizontal by the wind, pelting their skin with such force that the pellets felt like thousands of bee stings. Stride was blinded. He tried to squint, but even through slitted eyes he saw nothing. The horizon had disappeared. Their only reality was the black mass engulfing them and the twisting blanket of rain.
He pushed the button on the control panel that unfurled the anchor somewhere below them. He wanted to make sure they didn't capsize. The lake tossed the boat in circles and made it dance on the tops of the waves. Even with the anchor down, the boat yawed so far left Stride thought they would overturn, and they had to grab the slippery brass handrail to avoid being thrown overboard. It righted itself but spun around crazily. He tried to keep it on an angle to the waves, but the effort was hopeless. He was more concerned now that they would be ditched into the water.
All Stride could think of was that if the boat went down, he hoped he drowned. Because otherwise, Guppo would kill him.
But they weren't going down.
He realized that the waves were smaller now. The rain lessened, allowing him to see a glimpse of the sky, which was lighter overhead. The boat still rocked and swayed in the deep troughs, but the engine was fighting back again, keeping them pointed in one direction. A few seconds later, the rain stopped completely. The clouds began to disassemble, leaving a patch of blue sky. The wind became calm, as if the storm had sucked all the energy out of the atmosphere.
He could see land again. He glanced at his watch and saw that only twenty minutes had passed since the storm hit.
"It's over," he said. "Come on, look."
Hesitantly, Andrea looked around, staring at the placid sky, then behind them at the storm disappearing out over the lake. She peeled her fingers away from his belt, then slipped, her knees buckling. Stride grabbed her.
"Why don't you go down below?" he suggested. "Lie down and rest. We'll be back home soon."
She gave him a wan smile. "You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Jon."
"We won't do this again," he said.
Andrea stretched, catlike, working out the kinks from her muscles. "I ache all over." She studied his face and reached up to caress his cheek. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"You look like something's bothering you," Andrea said.
He shrugged. "It's just the trial. I always get this way."
Andrea didn't look convinced. "Is it me?"
He took his hands off the wheel and cupped her face. "You're the best thing that's entered my life in a long time."
That was the truth.
"I don't know, Jon. Can two wounded people make a go of it?"
"How else will we ever get better?" he said.
Andrea took his hand and stared at him intently. "I love you, Jon."
Stride waited several beats too long, but then told her, "I love you, too."
21
When they finally got back to Duluth, Stride stayed overnight at Andrea's house, which he now did several nights a week. They never stayed on the Point. He had to admit that Andrea's pillow-top mattress was more comfortable than the sunken twelve-year-old model he used at home and that her coffeemaker made coffee that could be sipped, not chewed. Still, there were times when he missed the rustic solitude of his own home. He sometimes yearned for the icy touch of the wood floors on his feet in the morning, rather than plush carpet. He missed hearing and smelling the lake, which was now just a great expanse in the distance, viewed from Andrea's bedroom window.
He fell asleep easily that night, with Andrea's head nestled on his shoulder. In the middle of the night, though, he had a bad dream, of being back on the boat, with Andrea still clinging to him. This time, he couldn't hold on to her, and she slipped away into the water. All he heard was her voice screaming to him before the lake swallowed her up. He woke up, panting, eyes wide. He was relieved to see Andrea still sleeping calmly beside him, but the dream was too intense for him to quickly get back to sleep.
Awake, he thought about the trial.
Dan was bursting with confidence, but Stride had seen Archibald Gale pull rabbits out of his hat for too many years. Besides, something still bothered him, as if he were overlooking something, missing a fact that would put his fears to rest. He wanted Graeme to be convicted. If something was out there, something that would seal the case, he wanted to find it.
The same feeling dogged him on many cases. He always wanted more. But as Maggie reminded him, there were only so many pieces left of the puzzle after the crime was done. They found as many as they could, and then they had to rely on the prosecutor and the jury to piece them together.
Dan was pleased with the jury. He had used a jury consultant, and they had ended up with what the consultant described as the ideal mix to be receptive to the circumstantial story of Graeme's guilt, including the hypothesis of his affair with Rachel. Eight women, four men. Four of the women were married, with children ranging from four years old to twenty. Two were divorced, and two were young and single. One man was a grandfather and widower, another single and gay, another married with no children, and the last a college student.
What they had successfully avoided, at the consultant's direction, was a middle-aged married man with teenage daughters-in other words, someone very much like Graeme.
When they completed the jury selection on Friday, Dan took Stride out for a celebratory beer. He spent two hours crowing about his victory over Gale, who had shown surprisingly little fight in the voir dire. The defense attorney's only victory had been convincing Judge Kassel to order the jury sequestered, to protect them from the barrage of press coverage that was bound to accompany the trial.