Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

24

It was Maxie Connolly’s body. Jesse was sure of it from thirty feet away. The second he caught sight of that blond hair, a shade that wasn’t on God’s original color palette, he knew. Even if he hadn’t recognized her hair, he saw that ridiculous mink coat. But there was nothing ridiculous about Maxie Connolly in death. All the brassiness, the come-on, the crudeness, was gone to wherever those things go when the life is sucked out of you. It was evident from the rips, mud, and twigs caught in her coat that she had come to rest at the base of the bluffs after a long, hard tumble.

Oddly, though, she had come to rest on a long rock, almost as if she were napping. One arm at her side, one bent across her chest. Her legs, separated by only a few inches, were straight ahead of her. Jesse might have been able to accept the illusion of sleep but for two factors impossible to ignore: her head was twisted at an angle that only an owl might achieve and her eyes were open and unseeing. Perhaps because of the cold temperatures or because she hadn’t been dead very long, Maxie Connolly’s blue eyes hadn’t yet taken on the milky, opaque quality of the dead.

It wasn’t yet eight o’clock and the narrow slit of beach was pretty deserted in winter. Jesse liked it that way. He was glad to see that Peter Perkins had followed Jesse’s long-standing rule against his cops using their sirens or light bars unless they absolutely had to. It was Jesse’s experience that all flashing lights did was slow traffic and attract unwanted attention. The only people there were Tamara Elkins, Peter Perkins, the jogger who’d found the body, and Stu Cromwell. Jesse understood that Maxie’s death was going to complicate his life and the case. Texting Stu Cromwell accomplished two things: It would help Jesse control the details that got out to the public and it showed Cromwell that Jesse was a man of his word.

Jesse walked over to the ME.

“Do you know the victim’s ID?” the ME asked, her demeanor completely professional, her mouth once again neutral.

“Maxie Connolly. Ginny Connolly’s mom.”

“Holy shit!”

“Uh-huh.” Jesse pointed at Maxie’s body. “What do you think, Doc?”

“I think she snapped her neck on the way down. My guess, without opening her up, is that C-five or C-six, maybe both, are broken. And although she may look intact, I bet I find a whole host of broken bones and internal damage when... you know. Mink coats may cover a multitude of sins, but she took a long, hard fall, Chief.”

So it was Chief again. He let it go. “Suicide?”

The ME looked up to the top of the Bluffs, shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make a definitive determination unless I find evidence indicating something else killed her.”

“Evidence like what?”

“Bullet wound, stab wound, ligature marks, like that.”

“Did you find a note on her?”

“I just got here a few minutes ago,” she said. “But there doesn’t seem to be anything on her except her clothes.”

Jesse shrugged. Then he said, “I have to treat it as a homicide until you tell me different. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll let you get back to work.”

He walked over to where Stu Cromwell was standing. “Give me a few minutes to talk to my man and to the jogger and I’ll have a statement for you.”

“Okay.”

Jesse turned his back on the sea spray. The air was a bit warmer and clearer than it had been the night before, but it was still pretty cold and the icy ocean water didn’t help. He called Peter Perkins over.

“What’s the deal?”

“Suit dispatched me after he got the call,” Perkins said. “I checked the body. She was cold, unresponsive. Did the initial forensics, but it’s pretty clear this is where she landed.”

Paradise had no budget for a dedicated crime scene unit, so a few of Jesse’s cops had been certified by the state to do basic forensics. Jesse didn’t love the setup, but he’d given up trying to convince the powers that be to spend the necessary funds. It had been hard enough to get the county to fund a certified ME. When the situation called for it, as with the remains of the girls and John Doe, Jesse asked Healy’s people to do the forensics. They had the training and the resources to do it properly.

Jesse asked, “Any sign of a struggle?”

“None that I could see. The scene was pristine around the body and the only footprints near it were the jogger’s.”

Jesse turned, tilted his head at the jogger. “What’s his story?”

“Name’s Rand Smythe. Age forty-seven. Retired. Lives down the beach on Falmouth Circle with his wife.”

“Retired?”

“Made it big in the computer software business,” Perkins said. “One of the big companies bought him out. Says he runs this stretch of the beach beneath the Bluffs every day.”

“What happened?” Jesse asked, eyeing the trim, silver-haired Smythe in his cold-weather running getup and two-hundred-dollar running shoes.

Perkins pointed behind him. “Smythe says he came around the elbow there where the bluff juts out and the beach narrows at five-fifty-seven.”

“Pretty sure of his timing, isn’t he?”

“Watch.” Perkins tapped his wrist. “He’s got one of those fancy runner’s watches, shows the actual time and the time of the runner. Measures his heart rate, all stuff like that. He was checking his time when he noticed the body. He touched her neck. She was cold and there was no pulse. Then he called it in. He didn’t hear or see anyone or anything.”

Shielding his eyes with his hand, Jesse looked at the sky over the water. Then he turned back to the Bluffs and to the jogger.

“That time of the morning it would just be the gulls,” he said. “Tell Mr. Smythe he can go and that we’ll keep his name confidential, but that we might need to speak to him again.”

“Okay, Jesse.”

“And, Peter, when you’re done with Smythe, call Molly and get her down here.”

As Peter walked away from him, Jesse kept looking up at the Bluffs.