Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

1

Jesse Stone no longer felt adrift. No longer a man caught between two coasts, he had finally left his days as an L.A. homicide detective behind him. If not his private shame at how his life there had gone to hell. He was chief of police in Paradise, Mass. This was his town now. Yet there were still some things about the East Coast and the Atlantic he had never gotten used to and wasn’t sure he ever would. Nor’easters, for one. He found their brooding, slate-gray clouds and roiling tides a little unnerving. These late-fall or winter storms seemed to blow up out of spite, raking across whole swaths of New England or the Mid-Atlantic, leaving nothing but pain in their wake.

As was his habit, he drove through the darkened streets of Paradise in his old Ford Explorer before heading home. He wanted to get a few hours sleep before going back to work. Maybe a drink, too. The storm wasn’t supposed to make landfall until about midnight, but the winds were bending trees back against their will, sleet already pelting his windshield. Jesse shook his head thinking about that. About how storms in the east warned you they were coming. About how they told you when they were coming and then kicked your ass.

It was different out west. He remembered how, when he was a kid in Tucson, a few inches of unexpected rain would morph into the cascading wall of a flash flood, washing away everything before it. One minute people would be horseback riding or hiking through bone-dry arroyos and the next they’d be swallowed up by waters squeezed between canyon walls and ground sunbaked so mercilessly hard it could not soak up a drop of rain. Jesse remembered that he had once gone out with his dad, searching for some missing hikers after one of the floods. How they had come upon the body of a drowned horse. It had been many years since he had thought of that horse, its carcass rotting in the Arizona sun.

Then in L.A. there were the choking Santa Ana winds that would blow across the mountains, swoop down into the valleys and through the canyons from the Mojave. The Santa Anas brought destruction with them, too, sucking the moisture out of the vegetation, wildfires following in their path. Fires that would consume whole hillsides, one after the other. Sometimes the winds blew so strongly through the canyons that they howled. His ex-partner used to say it was Satan whistling while he worked. At the moment, Jesse felt about as far away from those Santa Anas as a man could get, but he thought he could still hear Satan’s whistling in the winds that buffeted his SUV.

There weren’t many cars on the road, but a few brave or stupid souls dared the weather. Jesse knew most of the vehicles. Robbie Wilson, the fire chief, was out in his red Jeep, looking for trouble. Jesse didn’t have much patience for men like Wilson, guys who liked being big fish in tiny ponds. Little men with big chips on both shoulders. Men with something to prove, always on the prowl for a chance to prove it. Jesse could never figure out what it was Robbie Wilson had to prove. He also hated that Wilson refused to call him by his first name, always calling him Chief or Chief Stone.

Alexio Dragoa, one of the few commercial fishermen who still sailed out of Paradise, was coming from the docks in his ancient F-150. That damned pickup was nearly all rust. The thing was like an old married couple who stayed together more out of habit than anything else. No doubt Alexio had been securing his boat, the Dragoa Rainha, in anticipation of the storm. Jesse gave the fisherman a wave in passing. Dragoa, a gruff Portuguese SOB, couldn’t be bothered to return the gesture. Par for the course, Jesse thought. Par for the course.

Bill Marchand was out in front of his insurance brokerage on Nantucket Street, wrestling the wind for control of a storm shutter. Jesse pulled over to lend him a hand. Bill and Jesse were friendly, if not exactly friends. Jesse didn’t have friends, not the way other people had friends. But Marchand sponsored the police softball team and was generous with local charities. In all the years Jesse had served as chief, there hadn’t been many town selectmen who’d earned his respect. Most selectmen had proven themselves craven and spineless, rarely backing Jesse or the department in tough situations. Bill Marchand was the exception. He was a thoughtful man who had usually based his support not on the direction of the political currents but on the facts before him.

“Let me get that for you,” Jesse said, pinning the shutter to the wall.

“Thanks, Jesse. It’s gonna be a bad one, this nor’easter. You been through enough of these, you can smell it on the wind.”

“One is enough of these.” Jesse used his free hand to lift up the fleece-lined collar of his jacket against the sleet. The wind was gusting more intensely. “Ready for the shutter?” Jesse asked.

“I’ve got the latch ready.”

Jesse forced the shutter closed, Marchand helping the last foot or two. When the shutter was in place, the insurance broker latched it closed.

“I hope the damned thing holds. I’ve had to replace these shutters twice,” Marchand said, raising his voice above the wind.

“I’m sure your insurance will cover it.”

“You’re a funny man, Jesse Stone. Thanks again,” Marchand said, offering Jesse his gloved right hand. “It’s gonna be a bad one, all right. I’ll be busy for weeks after this. We’ll have to call adjusters in from all over the States. You watch yourself out there.”

But it was Jesse’s job to watch out for everyone else. He waited for Marchand to get into his massive Infiniti SUV and drive off before pulling away himself. As Jesse was about to turn for home, he caught sight of another vehicle he recognized. It was John Millner’s beat-up Chevy van. Millner was a career criminal, a petty thief who’d been in and out of commonwealth correctional facilities during Jesse’s tenure as chief. Millner was from the Swap — Southwest Area of Paradise — the only rough part of town. But even the Swap was changing. It was turning into a hipper, more ethnically diverse part of Paradise. Millner’s family was old-school Swap and John was more a lowlife than a tough guy. A parasite, an opportunist, not a mastermind.

Jesse followed the white van at a distance up into the bluffs that overlooked the ocean and the rest of town to the south. The Bluffs were where the rich founders of Paradise had built their big fussy houses more than a century and a half ago. Most of those families were gone, their manses knocked down, properties long since sold off. A few, like the Salter place, remained as summer homes. Many had fallen into disrepair.

Millner’s van pulled off the road by a darkened behemoth of a house: the old Rutherford place. It had been vacant for Jesse’s entire tenure in Paradise. For years there had been efforts by the town’s historical society to get it named to the commonwealth’s register of historical places, but those avenues had finally been exhausted, and come spring the Rutherford place would be demolished. Jesse had a pretty good idea of what Millner meant to get up to. Giant old houses were lined with miles of copper wiring and other metals that could be sold off to scrap dealers at good prices. The problem for crooked scavengers like Millner was opportunity. You needed time to break through plaster walls and lath to get to the wiring. And a big storm had opportunity written all over it. Emergency situations stretched the cops thin, especially small-town forces like the Paradise PD.

Normally, Jesse would have given Millner enough rope to hang himself. He would have let him break into the condemned house before arresting him, but Jesse didn’t have time for that now, not with the storm blowing in. When Millner, all six-foot-six of him, got out of his vehicle and went to swing open the van’s side door, Jesse shined his Maglite in the thief’s face.

“Who the hell is that?” asked Millner, holding his hand before his eyes to block the light.

“It’s Chief Stone, John. What are you doing here?”

Millner hemmed and hawed, thinking of any reasonable lie.

“Don’t bother,” Jesse said. “I’m not in the mood for your crap. Consider yourself lucky I don’t want to deal with you tonight. Now, get out of here and don’t let any of my people catch your ass up here again.”

Millner didn’t say a word, just got back into his van and drove away down toward town. Jesse watched the van’s taillights until they disappeared. Then he stepped to the edge of the bluff on which the Rutherford house stood. He looked out at the vast blackness of the Atlantic. He listened to the bones of the old house creak in the wind, listened to the wind whistling through the broken windows. He thought he heard the devil at work. He decided he really needed that drink.