Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Seventy-One

Jesse waited an hour. When Suit still hadn’t shown up he tracked him on his phone, not surprised when he saw his location.

He was at O’Hara Field, sitting up in the same part of the bleachers where they’d watched Jack make the play that won his team the league championship.

“Hey,” Jesse said.

His voice didn’t startle Suit. He didn’t seem surprised to see Jesse. He just smiled.

“Hey,” Suit said.

Jesse would think of him as a kid today and always. The big, sweet, good-hearted kid who was almost as tough as he wanted to be. But then nobody was ever as tough as they wanted to be, if you really thought about it. Not Jesse. Not even Crow, though Crow came as close as anybody Jesse had ever known.

“Figured you’d eventually come find me,” Suit said.

“Even if you didn’t want to be found.”

Jesse walked up the steps and sat down next to him.

“Can’t believe how little time has passed since Jack won the big game,” Suit said, “and how much has happened since.”

“What they always say in sports,” Jesse said. “Next moment can change everything.”

“Like when you got hurt.”

“Like then.”

“Not just sports,” Suit said.

Jesse stared out at the big patch of dirt between second base and third that had felt like his whole life once.

“You okay?” he said to Suit.

Jesse saw him swallow hard.

“He should have told me,” Suit said. “Or I should have known. Either way. I could have helped him with it.”

He was wearing the same outfit he pretty much always wore once Jesse promoted him to detective. Maybe the only nice blazer he owned. White shirt. Jeans. Dressing the way Jesse dressed a lot of the time. Getting out of uniform had been one of the happiest days of Suit’s life. Which had been a mostly happy life. Until now.

Jesse said, “Maybe the best part of this, if there is a best part, is that the friends of his who did know seemed to have been cool with it. Which, by the way, they should have been.”

“So why’d he get into a fight that night?”

“Kevin told Molly that Scott Ford wanted Jack to just come out with it,” Jesse said. “No more sneaking around. They were about to graduate. Only idiots would really care. But according to what the Ford kid told Kevin later, that made Jack snap, and it escalated from there, and Jack threw the first punch. Ford was the one who’d had a few by then, and slugged him back, even though he thought he was trying to help.”

“But then why did Ford catch a beating from Matt Loes?”

“To be determined, now that new information is rolling in,” Jesse said. “How’s your sis?”

“She’s just sorry that she wasn’t there for him,” Suit said. “She talked about how hard it must have been for him, being a jock, to come to terms with it. But it was one more part of his life he kept bottled up.”

Suit took out his phone. “While I was sitting up here by myself, I looked it up,” he said. “You know how many openly gay players there are in the big leagues right now?”

Jesse said, “As many as there were on the Paradise High baseball team.”

They went several moments without either one of them saying anything. Both of them staring out at the ballfield.

Suit turned to Jesse. “Don’t you feel like we ought to be out there throwing a ball around?”

He had been a first baseman when he’d been at Paradise High, playing because his friends did, always more of a football player.

“I always feel that way,” Jesse said, “even when I’m nowhere near a field.”

Grass had just been cut. Infield dragged recently from the looks of it. New white lines for the softball season.

“You know, just because he was gay doesn’t mean he killed himself,” Suit said.

“Hell no.”

“Somebody still could have done it.”

“Still an open investigation, even with what Kevin More told Molly this morning.”

He’d tell him about Hillary More’s visit to Roarke when they were back at the office. Right now, just the two of them here, this was all about Suit’s nephew. Athlete who’d died young.

“If his friends were cool with it,” Suit said, “and they’ve only just been trying to protect him, I like them a lot more today than I did yesterday.”

Suit sighed and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes still fixed on the field.

“Maybe I owe the Ford kid an apology,” he said.

“For doing your job?” Jesse said. “You looking to get busted down to desk duty, Detective?”

Suit turned to him. Not a kid. A grown-ass man, the way he kept reminding Jesse.

“So let me detect for a second,” he said. “Did Molly ask Kevin More if he was with Jack after the party at the Bluff that night?”

“She did. He said he was not.”

“Molly believe him?”

Jesse nodded.

“So I’ve still got a question we haven’t answered,” Suit said. “Where was Jack between his fight with Scott Ford and when he ended up in the water? And who might he have been with?”