Chapter Twenty-one

He met Emily Bishop in a coffee shop in a small shopping center near the town common. She wore the gray tee shirt she had promised to wear. It was too big for her. PROPERTY OF SWAMPSCOTT ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT was printed across the front. Below the tee shirt were baggy blue jeans held up by wide blue suspenders. Her feet were up on the chair next to her. She was wearing lace-up black boots with thick soles. Her hair was very short. Her face was without makeup. The hint of a good figure showed through the jeans and tee shirt. A pack of Marlboros lay on the table in front of her. She was smoking and drinking coffee. He wondered if Billie looked like her. Jesse stopped at the counter and got a large coffee with cream and sugar and brought it over to the table where Emily was sitting. She'd already decided who he was.

"I'm Jesse Stone," he said.

"Show me your badge," Emily said.

She had a flat, unpleasant voice. Jesse showed her his badge.

"Christ," she said. "The fucking chief."

"It's nothing," Jesse said.

"So what happened to my sister?" Emily said.

There was no way to soften it. Jesse had long since learned to just say it.

"We think she was shot in the head and dumped in a lake in Paradise."

"You think?"

"Body is hard to identify."

"So why do you think it's my sister?"

Jesse told her. Emily smoked her cigarette and drank some coffee and listened with no expression.

"Billie, Billie," she said when Jesse finished.

Jesse took a sip of his coffee. He waited. Emily dropped her cigarette into the half inch of coffee in the bottom of her cup.

"Christ, didn't they fuck her up," Emily said.

"Parents?"

"Of course, parents. Probably fucked me up, too. Except I got out in time, maybe."

How and why they had fucked up their daughters was interesting, but it didn't lead Jesse anywhere he wanted to go at the moment.

"Do you have a picture of your sister?" Jesse said.

"Not her alone," Emily said. "But I got a picture in the dorm of her and me and Carla."

"I'd like to borrow it," Jesse said. "I promise I'll get it back to you."

Emily nodded.

"When they kicked Billie out," Jesse said, "do you know where she went?"

"Someplace in Boston."

"You know where?"

"No. Some nun runs it."

"A shelter?"

"I guess."

"She get along okay with Hooker?" Jesse said.

"Hooker was nice to her," Emily said.

"Anybody that might have harmed her?"

"Half the guys in the high school were bopping her. Probably some older guys, too."

"Any names?"

"No. I don't know. She thought it made her popular. I didn't want to hear about it."

"Anything else you can tell me that might help?"

Emily lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply and let it out slowly though her nose. There was something practiced about it, Jesse thought, as if it were a trick recently learned.

"I got a letter from her back in my room," she said. "I think she said the nun's name in it."

"Can we get that? When I pick up the picture?"

"Yeah, sure."

They were silent. Jesse watched her smoke. He could see her eyes well up, but she didn't cry.

"You okay?" he said.

"Yeah, sure."

"Can we get the picture and the letter?"

"Yeah, sure."

They left the coffee shop and walked to the campus. Jesse thought how different it would feel to go there and graduate. Old stone, old trees, wide paths, white houses with dark shutters, green grass in spring, new snow glistening in winter. Different from being a desert high school grad with a sore arm.

In Emily's room there were clothes on the floor in a pile. The bed was unmade. On her desk, books and papers were jumbled with no pattern. Amidst the jumble was a framed picture of the Bishop girls. In color, all smiling at the camera.

"How old is the picture?" Jesse said.

"Last summer."

Jesse stared at it while Emily looked in her desk drawer and in a moment came out with a letter. It was postmarked July 3. Emily handed it to him and Jesse took it. She picked up the picture and handed it to Jesse.

"The happy family," Emily said.

Jesse took the picture.

"I hope Carla gets out before they get her, too."

Jesse didn't comment. There wasn't any comment to make.

"They aren't going to get me," Emily said. "I'm outta there. I'm on my own and I'm never going back."

"Your father still pay your tuition?"

"Of course he does. You think he wants to have his daughter drop out of a seven fucking sisters school?"

"Good to be able to count on something," Jesse said.

"Fuck him," Emily said. "He owes it to me. I'll take him for everything he's got if I can."

Quite suddenly she began to cry. Jesse put an arm on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and stepped away from him. He stood quietly in the room without touching her until she stopped crying.

"You got someone to talk to?" Jesse said.

She nodded.

"Shrink?"

She nodded again. Jesse took out a card.

"You think of anything… or you need anything."

He handed her the card. She looked at it as if it meant more than it did.

"You'll do that?" Jesse said.

"Yes."

"Might be good if you called your shrink," Jesse said.

She didn't speak or move. Jesse stood for another moment and then he left.

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