Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Thirty-Six

Nicholas Farrell’s voice was thick with sleep when he finally answered his phone.

“Jesse,” he said. “You know what time it is, right?”

“I do.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Now it is.”

He then told Nicholas about a body being discovered not far from where they’d found Jack Carlisle. And about the wheelchair discovered along with it.

“You have an ID yet? The wheelchair community in Paradise isn’t exactly the size of the Junior League.”

“There may already be one as we speak.”

“Can you call me back when you have a name?”

Jesse said he would.

“Somebody in a wheelchair going over the Bluff?” Nicholas said. “Would somebody do something like that?”

“Only in the movies,” Jesse said, thinking about a famous old black-and-white film, he couldn’t remember the name, the crazy bad guy pushing an old woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs.

When Jesse got to the Bluff he walked past a couple of his squad cars to the edge and looked down at the water, the wheelchair still in the rocks, looking as small as a kid’s tricycle from up here.

The smaller ME van they’d used for Jack Carlisle was back down there. So were Molly and Suit. Molly turned and looked up and saw Jesse and gave him a small wave. Jesse waved back. He was certain she was Suit’s second call, after Jesse; that was the locked-in drill.

For the second time in a week, which had now become an even shittier week, Jesse made his way down the trail to the narrow strip of beach at the water’s edge. Suit had waited to touch the wheelchair. He was already wearing his blue nitrile gloves. Jesse reached into the side pocket of his windbreaker now and put on his own and the two of them lifted up a wheelchair that looked a lot like Nicholas’s onto the second off-road vehicle down here, this one with a flatbed in back. Then the two of them secured it with rope.

“Evidence,” Jesse said.

Suit smiled, and for a moment he was Suit again, and things were the same as they always were between them.

“Why you’re chief,” Suit said. “Never would have figured that out on my own.”

Jesse walked over to where Molly was standing with Dev Chadha. Molly had her notebook out. Without Jesse asking she said, “Vic’s name is Sam Waterfield.”

“Wallet?”

“Soggy as hell. But still in the pocket of his jeans,” Molly said.

“Phone?”

She shook her head.

“The only Waterfield I ever heard of played for the Rams a thousand years ago,” Jesse said.

“Good to know,” Molly said.

“Nicholas Farrell told me the wheelchair population in our town is small.”

“Just got smaller,” Molly said.

“Tell me about it.”

“So how’d he end up down here?” she said.

“He had help,” Jesse said, “if you want to call it that.”

“And you know this how?”

He pointed up to where he’d been standing a few minutes ago.

“The wheel tracks stopped about ten feet from the edge,” he said.

“Not like he got out of the chair and tossed it and then jumped,” Molly said.

“Not only do I think somebody did this,” Jesse said, “I think somebody wanted to send a message with the chair. But what do I know?”

“Everything?” Molly said, and grinned.

Suit was still talking to Dev Chadha.

“You think there’s any way this is connected to Suit’s nephew?” Molly asked.

Jesse was staring again up at the Bluff.

“A police spokesman,” he told Molly, “said they’re not ruling anything out at this point.”

“I’m not your girlfriend,” Molly said.

“You can say that again,” he replied.