Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

13

That night Jesse found he didn’t have much appetite for anything but amber liquid swirling around two clear ice cubes. Ritual was part of the joy, sure, but so, too, was the beauty of it. The sound of the cubes tinkling against the glass, against each other. The smoky aroma. The earthy hints of peat. Then there was the heat. The pleasant burn on the back of his tongue. The burn in his throat going down. The warmth in his belly. The electricity on the surface of his skin as the warmth spread over him. There had been a time in his life when he’d been able to enjoy the full experience of it, the permission Johnnie Walker granted him to surrender to his lesser angels. He had once been able to drink without hearing Dix’s voice in his head. No more.

They had been round and round about Jesse’s drinking so many times that he was dizzy from it. They had dissected the reasons, tossed the pieces up into the air, reassembled them a hundred different ways, but there was Jesse with another scotch in his hand. And there was Ozzie Smith on the wall. And the world spinning around in its own good time. One reason Jesse convinced himself that he drank was that it helped him with his silence. Silence was a great asset for a cop. He had learned that early on. If you keep quiet, the people you’re interviewing can’t bear it. They will fill up the empty space with their own chatter and sometimes, if you’re lucky, they fill it up with answers. When they would yammer, Jesse would think of drinking. Of course his drinking had helped him to an early retirement from the LAPD. He wasn’t thinking about that now.

There had been many instances over the course of his time in Paradise that he had given up drinking for weeks, even months, at a time. During those times, was he a better chief? Worse? He couldn’t say. He was certainly an unhappier one. Because during those weeks or months it was just a show, to prove something either to himself or to someone else. When he realized no one was applauding or handing out cash rewards for his efforts, he went right back to it. But there were nights that he knew exactly why he was drinking. Nights like this night.

The case was getting to him in a way that few cases did. He wasn’t a man to let things get under his skin. He prided himself on it, but this case had gotten under his skin, deep under it. And it wasn’t just one thing. It was everything. It was that he had been blindsided by it. That neither Molly nor Suit nor anyone on his own force had ever bothered mentioning it to him. It was Tess O’Hara burying herself alive. It was that they still didn’t have an ID on the guy in the blue tarp. It was the sight of the skeletons juxtaposed with the photos of the girls. It was that these girls had known Molly. That Molly had been part of their lives and now part of their deaths. It was what the case was doing to Molly.

For his decade-plus in Paradise, Jesse had been able to count on Molly to be Molly. Sure, he loved her, but it was love at arm’s length. Sure, he knew her husband and kids, but he didn’t involve himself in their lives. It was love born of his need for routine, and no one, not even Johnnie Walker, was more reliable, more rock-solid, than Molly. Until now. She had always been there when he needed her. He trusted her. Her judgments. She wasn’t anything like the other women Jesse had been attracted to in appearance or attitude. She wasn’t blond or classically beautiful. She wasn’t needy. She didn’t need or want to be rescued. Suddenly, that had all seemed to change.

It was more than that, too. More than Molly. It was that Jesse had always been good at seeing cases for what they were and what they were not. He had the knack of perspective. Not all cops do. He could almost immediately see how a case would come together, which pieces were missing and which ones were solid. Not with this case. And there was his sense that even though the investigation had only just begun, everyone was holding something back. Molly included. That didn’t bode well for a case where the entire town had a twenty-five-year head start on him.

Angry with himself for his self-doubt, Jesse poured himself another. He raised the glass to Ozzie.

“You were the better shortstop, Oz, but not even you would know what to make of this case.”

It wasn’t all bad. He had finally met the new ME and there was something about her that had gotten his attention. Something more than her sarcasm. Maybe it was that one smile she’d deigned to share with him. He had to admit that he found it hard not to stare at her face.

“What do think, Ozzie? Was I flirting with her?”

Ozzie kept his opinion to himself.