Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Twenty-One

Jesse and Molly and Suit sat in the conference room, just past seven in the morning. They all had large coffees that Jesse had picked up at Dunkin’ in front of them, along with a small box of donuts. When Molly saw the donuts she compared Jesse to Satan. Then took out a Boston Kreme and put it on the paper plate in front of her and glared at him as she took a big bite.

“You’re an enabler,” she said.

“The first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem.”

“The problem is that you keep putting donuts in front of me,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

“You don’t have to eat them,” Jesse said.

“Like hell I don’t.”

Suit looked as if he hadn’t gotten much sleep. Or any sleep at all.

“You okay?” Jesse said to him, regretting the question as soon as he asked it, knowing Suit wasn’t okay, wasn’t going to be okay for a long time.

Might never be entirely okay ever again.

“I’m not hungover, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Not what I was thinking.”

“Well, I’m not,” Suit said.

Maybe he was so tired he didn’t know how defensive he sounded.

“Listen,” Molly said to him. “We’re on your side, Luther. We’re going to get through all of this, whatever it turns out to be, together, like we always do.”

Suit took a sip of his large coffee, put the cup down much too hard, and spilled some coffee on the table.

“This isn’t like always,” he said, and mopped up the spill with his napkin.

Jesse waited until he finished with his tidying up, Suit making it look as if drying the table was the most important thing he’d do all day.

“Suit, I need to know, right here, from you, if you can work this case with a clear head. Because if you can’t, I’ll understand. So will Molly.”

“Jesse, you know me. I have to be in on this. Not being in on it is what would make me lose it.”

Jesse looked across the table at Suit. Even knowing his actual age, and knowing full well how long they’d worked together, what he saw was the same sweet, open-faced kid who’d been sitting outside when Jesse had first walked through the door and become his boss. Suit wanted to be a cop as much as any young guy — or young woman — Jesse had ever known, all the way back to when he was starting out as a young cop in L.A. More than that, and from that very first day, he’d wanted to make Jesse proud of him.

Suit ducked his head, then looked up at Jesse. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

“I believe you.”

Because I know how much he wants me to.

Jesse said, “Just to reset: You two are going to run point on our investigation of Jack’s death. But everything you do and anything you find out, it all runs through me.”

Molly grinned.

“You being the chief,” she said. “Always so easy for both of us to lose sight of that in our impulsive moments. Or any moments.”

“Is that supposed to be amusing?”

“As Sunny says, if you have to ask.”

“Sunny who?”

“Is that supposed to be amusing, Chief?”

“And I want to make it clear that it wouldn’t hurt to keep the lines of communication open between this department and Nellie Shofner.”

“Does she need another friend in the department?” Molly asked. “How many does one girl need?”

“She has this way of occasionally finding out things before we do,” Jesse said.

“All due respect, Jesse?” Suit said. “The rest of the time we find out things before she does.”

“If I didn’t think she could help us, I wouldn’t have brought it up,” Jesse said. “And I think she can help us.”

“I stand corrected,” Molly said. “She’s not Gidget. Now she’s Nancy Drew.”

Then Jesse told them Nellie’s theory that the players on the team were hiding something, and that she had also heard that Ainsley Walsh might have been involved with Scott Ford.

“That would mean Ford lied and the girl lied,” Suit said.

“To officers of the law,” Jesse said. “Almost makes you question your core beliefs, doesn’t it?”

“What are there, fifteen players on the team?” Molly said. “We need to talk to them one by one, see if one of them breaks ranks if Nellie is right.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Suit said, “but do you trust Nellie on this?”

“Getting things right is a thing with her, same as it is us,” Jesse said. “And like I keep saying, I’ll take all the help we can get.”

“Too soon to give her a badge and uniform?” Molly asked.

“Only if she promises to wear it on Halloween,” Jesse said.

“Pig,” she said.

“No way to talk to a cop,” Jesse said.