Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Forty

Before Jesse left the office for the day, Molly came in and sat down and said, “You need to listen to me.”

“When have I not?” he said.

“When you do whatever you want to do without caring what anybody else thinks,” she said. “That’s when.”

He waited, knowing she was just getting started. Because he knew her. Jesse wondered if Michael Crane knew her this well, even being married to her. Wondered at the same time if anybody would ever know him as well as Molly Crane knew her boss.

“I know how well you are at compartmentalizing,” she said. “Maybe as good at it as anybody I’ve ever met. And I know how you want to be the one to find out who killed Charlie — you’re on one of your missions.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Hush and listen,” she said.

He did.

“But we’ve got three bodies now,” she said. “And we are a team. And there is no reason on God’s earth why we all shouldn’t be working together on everything, the way we always have. So if you can help us with Jack Carlisle’s death, we can also help you with Charlie’s. And we all have enough time to work together to find out who put that guy in the wheelchair in the water.”

She blew out some air.

“All I got.”

Jesse felt himself smiling.

“You’re right,” he said.

Molly smiled.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, you’re right.”

“Would you mind putting that in writing?” she said. “Then I could take a picture of it and use it as my screen saver.”

“You’ve made your point.”

“I know.”

Jesse said, “You and Suit head over to that apartment Waterfield shared with this guy Marin, and see what you can find.”

She stood. “On it.”

“Hey, Mols? Thank you.”

“You never have to thank me.”

“Yeah,” Jesse said. “I do. Because sometimes I forget.”

She asked what he was up to. He told her where he was going, and why.

“You gonna tell the mom?”

Jesse shook his head.

“I don’t have to ask for her permission.”

Molly slapped her forehead. “I forgot! You’re the chief!”

“Fuck, yeah.”

He got into the Explorer and made the short drive to one of the older sections of Paradise, near where the Strand Theater used to be on Washington Street. Over the last few years, a lot of town houses like this had gone up in Paradise for people who didn’t require a view of the water.

Jesse parked on the street and walked up to the door. There was an old silver Cherokee parked in the driveway, with a Paradise High sticker on the back bumper.

Jesse walked up and rang the doorbell and the blond kid answered the door, still dressed in tennis shorts and a gray PHS T-shirt, a head taller than Jesse at least. When Jesse would occasionally watch tennis on television, it struck him that the star players were getting bigger. Men and women.

“Kevin,” Jesse said, “I’m Chief Stone.”

“I know who you are,” Hillary More’s son said.

“May I come in?” Jesse said.

“Am I in trouble?”

“You’re not,” Jesse said. “But I might be for not calling your mom before I came over here.”

“What do you want to talk to me about?” Kevin More said.

“What you were doing in Jack Carlisle’s room the other day,” Jesse said.